The Speed of Dreams

New Place, Same Blog, Same Name

2009-01-09T10:24:00.006-04:00

As you may recall, about a week ago I mentioned that I was in the process of moving this blog over to Wordpress...and that process is now complete.

I have already begun posting over at the new location, so come take a look and take part in the discussion.

Also, and this is one of the primary reasons I moved, check out my various guides on indigenous issues. I have a Native Struggles Study Guide, a chronology of indigenous resistance, as well as a glossary of the most common indigenous phrases and terms I make use of.

So come on over, read some posts, ask some questions, argue with me, and maybe we can all learn something from each other and become better revolutionaries for it.

I will keep this site up and going, but posting on it will cease. This site will also be left running as many images and links to older posts on the new blog link back to this one and I have hardly the patience to go over several hundred posts and correct each and every link.

The new blog can be found here.

Update From Summer 2011

The new version of this site ain't so new anymore. It's been running strong and my visitor count has been on a steady climb for the last two and half years.

Anyway, I am updating this old version of the blog for the first time in about 30 months because I want to say that I have made a decision to permanently keep this version open. Over the last 30 months I had considered many time taking it down, especially as I have under gone some major political shifts (though still on the revolutionary left) during this period and the content of this version no longer reflects how I currently feel on a great deal many issues.

However, I have made this final decision to keep it open because I want to be honest with my readers about where I came from politically. While I am now politically quite different from the Autonomist-Trotskyist with post-Maoist flirtations that I was back when this site was still going, this site is a record of how I used to feel and act with regards to many things. It was also during the second half of this sites run that many of the stirrings in me that would lead to my current politics began to emerge and be discussed. It is politically honest of me to keep this open. I have no intention of hiding who I was once.

So while some of the things I wrote and posted on here may make me cringe today, I have no problem leaving them out here for people to read. As they always say, never forget where you came from!

Auto Bailout A Bludgeon Against UAW Workers

2009-01-08T00:43:00.000-04:00

Who is really to blame for auto industry crisis?

The opposition in Congress over a proposed bailout of the U.S. auto industrywas not a principled stance against another massive giveaway of public funds to corporations. Instead, it was a calculated anti-union offensive targeting the United Auto Workers. The Republican members were more blatant in their demand that union workers "do their part" to help rescue the "Big Three" by accepting massive concessions.

The auto industry is in crisis
because it has produced more
cars than it can sell at a profit.

But the Democrats—while nominally expressing concern for the auto workers—did not defend the workers when the Bush administration unveiled its alternative bailout plan laying out a major attack on unionized workers’ wages and benefits.

If implemented, the White House’s $17.4 billion in emergency loans to General Motors and Chrysler will come at a high cost for workers. The companies are expected to provide a restructuring plan by March 31, following a Bush administration blueprint that would force workers’ wages and benefits downward to make the companies "more competitive."

Accompanying the Bush "rescue" plan has been an all-out media blitz to portray UAW workers as outrageously overpaid. Its message is the following: "The workers’ incessant demands and high wages broke the Big Three."

Media pundits and Congress members are quoting from a study published by the right-wing Heritage Foundation that claims UAW workers "earn $75 an hour in wages and benefits—almost triple the earnings of the average private sector worker." (Heritage Foundation, Nov. 19)

A closer examination, however, reveals the study to be an egregious distortion of the truth.

According to a Dec. 9 article by New York Times journalist David Leonhardt, the figure of $75 per hour is a combination of "three very different categories"—compensation, active employee benefits and retiree benefits.

An active UAW worker earns a total of roughly $55 per hour, including healthcare and pension benefits, about $10 more per hour than non-union workers. At Honda and Toyota plants in the United States, autoworkers make on average about $45 per hour.

But the media claim fails to account for the heavy concessions shoved down the throats of UAW workers in recent years, including a two-tiered wage system and deep cuts in benefits.

In 2007, for example, the UAW agreed to take over autoworkers’ healthcare costs from General Motors when it accepted the Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association. GM’s financial obligation was thus reduced from $58 billion to only $30 billion, even as U.S. medical costs are expected to rise by double-digit figures. The UAW now is forced to cut back on workers’ health care coverage.

Of course, another fundamental question is raised: Why is health care not provided as a guaranteed right to all the people in the United States—instead of the high cost of health care being tagged to a workers’ income as a "privilege"?

Overproduction to blame, not workers’ wages

The campaign of slander and disinformation launched by the media and the politicians has been quite effective. The very fact that the UAW feels compelled to defend the wages earned by unionized autoworkers exposes its weak, defensive position.

Despite the government’s criticism of the UAW, labor costs still only account for about 10 percent of the cost of producing a vehicle. The truth is that the Big Three’s inability to compete in the global market is not related to high labor costs for U.S. auto companies versus foreign auto corporations like Toyota and Honda.

Toyota, the biggest foreign-owned auto firm in the United States, also suffered huge losses in late 2008. Sales of the Camry, its most popular model, fell 57 percent in November from a year before. From Germany to Spain to Belgium to Poland, car sales are plunging and factories are scaling back production. Capitalist overproduction worldwide is driving the crisis hitting the Big Three, not the UAW or any worker, unionized or not.

Overproduction does not mean that more goods are produced than needed, but rather that more goods are produced than can be sold at a profit. It is the result of a system in which individual capitalists compete to acquire an ever-expanding share of a finite market, creating an inevitable economic bust when markets become saturated with products.

Production is cut, workers are laid off and consumption is decreased, leading to further production stoppages and even more layoffs until "excess" production and inventories have been eliminated and an economic upswing can get underway.

What is really behind attacks on unions

The real aim behind the corporate media’s campaign against the UAW is to further erode the already declining living standards of autoworkers and the working class in general in order to increase the profit margins of the bosses.

A revealing statement by GM’s vice chairman, Robert A. Lutz, makes the motivations behind the anti-worker campaign abundantly clear: "You get these people who say, ‘I know what I’d do if I were CEO of GM, like close up all the union plants and set up plants down South with non-union labor. Well, any idiot can figure that one out. But how conceivably can you get that done?" (New York Times, Dec. 8)

The current media campaign against the living standards of UAW members is clearly an attempt to "get that done."

Workers at Chicago’s Republic Doors and Windows, faced with unexpected layoffs and being denied their benefits and severance pay, took over their plant in early December. They refused to budge until they received what they were owed—and they won. Though that limited struggle did not save their jobs, it did show that workers can take the offensive and win. The same tactic was used by autoworkers in the 1930s, and helped fuel the upsurge in the labor movement that characterized that period.

Workers should not succumb to ruling-class attempts to pit worker against worker. Workers must take the offensive if labor is to withstand the ruling-class onslaught, which is certain to expand as the economy worsens. Broad-based working-class unity and militancy are the key to successfully defeating attempts by the bosses at rolling back the hard-won gains of the labor movement.

Executive pay at U.S. banks and corporations

While UAW workers have been attacked for their excessive wages, corporate executives take home millions in pay and bonuses, living in opulence even during the deep economic crisis we are now facing. If anyone should be sacrificing “privilege” as a condition for the bailout money, it should be the fat cats atop the Big Three—not the workers who already struggle to provide for their families.

According to a study by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy, the chief executives of companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index received pay packages valued at an average of $10.5 million - 344 times the pay of the typical American worker. (Washington Post, Dec. 21)

Ford CEO Allan Mulally’s total compensation package last year came to $21.7 million while General Motor’s CEO Rick Wagoner brought in $14.4 million. Chrysler is a private company and does not disclose executive pay. (CNN Money Dec.4)

CEOs at major banking institutions rake in even more in compensation. Merrill Lynch paid its former chief executive, E. Stanley O’Neal, a total of $46 million in 2006. The company’s former co-president of Global Markets and Investment Banking Group, Dow Kim, took in $35 million the same year. (New York Times, Dec. 18) In 2007, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein’s salary and bonus package totaled $68.5 million while the companies’ two co-presidents grossed roughly $67.5 million a-piece. (New York Times, Nov. 16)

California's Gov. Schwarzenegger Declares War on Workers

2009-01-08T00:42:00.000-04:00

Let the rich pay for their crisis!

Two public employee unions are suing California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to stop a scheme imposing two unpaid days off per month as a cost-cutting measure. (Associated Press, Dec. 22, 2008)

California's Gov. Schwarzenegger
has launched a full-scale attack
on state workers.

The state government is slashing health services and education programs. Under Schwarzenegger’s plan, University of California, California State University and state community colleges will be forced to lay off workers and make other employees accept unpaid furlough days. (Los Angeles Times, Dec. 20, 2008)

The governor has also proposed relaxing environmental regulations and the privatization of numerous public works programs. Since most public employees are unionized, privatization will amount to an attack on all unions and workers. Schwarzenegger’s plan will hurt unions to create new sources of profits for private interests—all at the expense of workers’ rights.

Schwarzenegger also has ordered all state agencies to cut their payrolls by 10 percent, guaranteeing layoffs for thousands of workers.

(Los Angeles Times, Dec. 23, 2008)

The Professional Engineers in California Government, a union that represents 13,000 engineers, surveyors and others, along with the California Association of Professional Scientists, filed a lawsuit charging that Schwarzenegger’s plan illegally adjusts union salaries without labor negotiations. California’s largest state employee union, the Service Employees International Union, Local 1000, filed an unfair labor practice charge with the state Public Employee Relations board.

Workers are the backbone of all economic production. Our labor creates all social wealth, be it in the form of products, services or infrastructure, but in a capitalist economy, our needs are tossed aside so that the interests of the wealthy may be protected. These priorities are something that both capitalist parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, agree on: A Democratic counterproposal in the state legislature called for $550 million in "workforce cuts."

The state of California wants workers to pick up the tab for a fiscal crisis they did nothing to create. If the capitalists are the ones who profit during economic booms, why should workers be the ones to pay during economic crises? The state’s budget gap of $42 billion should be closed by taxing the ultra-rich, transnational corporations such as banks and big oil, and taxes on stock market transactions.

Celebrating 50 Years of Cuban Internationalism by Carlos Alvarez

2009-01-08T00:40:00.000-04:00

From Africa to Latin America, Cuba spreads working-class solidarity

The 1959 Cuban Revolution marked the single most important event in Cuban history. Washington watched in disbelief as the first Latin American socialist revolution unfolded only 90 miles off the U.S. coast. The revolution freed the island from the clutches of U.S. imperialism, setting in motion a transition to a planned economy in the hands of a revolutionary government. The interests of foreign capital no longer trumped the needs of Cuban workers.

Fidel Castro meets with Malcolm X
at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem,
New York City, 1960.

But the Cubans would not keep the gains of the revolution to themselves; they would share them with the world. Cuba also benefited from international solidarity of other socialist countries, especially from the Soviet Union and China, which stepped in with major economic trade after the United States eliminated Cuba’s sugar sales and imposed a blockade. The USSR provided Cuba’s military equipment, including for its African missions.

In a genuine example of solidarity and working-class internationalism, Cuba has aligned itself with workers and oppressed peoples across the globe in their struggle against capitalism and foreign domination. Cubans have fought alongside the national liberation and socialist movements of the world, always under the unrelenting attacks of the U.S. government.

In the very early years of the revolution, Cuba began the first of its legendary medical missions. The missions were undertaken when Cuba was implementing its far-reaching reforms in land distribution, literacy and expropriations and defending itself against U.S. invasion and terrorist aggression. Algeria was the first recipient of that internationalist solidarity, with a Cuban medical team of 55 in May 1963. Since then, 104,437 Cuban medical workers have served in internationalist missions in 101 countries around the world. Currently, there are 30,421 doctors providing free medical care in 71 countries.

Cuba has set out to tackle the scourge of illiteracy that runs rampant through much of the formerly colonized and underdeveloped world. Providing the first example in the western hemisphere, Cuba declared itself the first country in Latin America free of illiteracy in 1961. With the help of Cuba’s special program, Yo Sí Puedo ("Yes I Can"), Venezuela became fully literate in 2006, and Bolivia in December 2008. Cuban teachers are now helping implement Yo Sí Puedo in dozens of countries—Nicaragua expects to be free of illiteracy in 2009, and Angola in 2014.

African missions and the defeat of apartheid

Cuba’s missions to Africa were the earliest examples of Cuba’s commitment to the international struggles of workers and oppressed peoples. In 1965, revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara led a Cuba military mission to assist guerrilla forces in the Congo. In the film "Cuba: An African Odyssey," Congolese fighters spoke years later of their astonishment at seeing Cuban troops travel such great distances to support their struggle, and of how that display of selfless solidarity impacted their own consciousness as revolutionaries.

Cuban troops were sent to Ethiopia in late 1977 to help defend its revolutionary struggle against the U.S.-backed Somali invasion and further U.S. counter-revolutionary attacks. Cuban fighters also supported the Liberation Front of Mozambique, FRELIMO, in its struggle against the anti-communist, U.S.-South African apartheid force Mozambican National Resistance, RENAMO, during the Mozambican civil war.

But most importantly, Cuba played a decisive role in the dismantling of the South African apartheid system, sending troops to fight with the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) against South African apartheid forces. Starting in 1975, Cuban troops aided the MPLA and were decisive in smashing the South African army at Cuito Cuanavale, Angola. The defeated South African military retreated from Namibia—a blow to the racist regime that would reenergize South African resistance in their fight against apartheid.

In an address to the United Nations in defense of Cuba’s military actions, Fidel Castro said the following of the operation: "Angola is rich of natural resources; Cabinda has large oil reserves. Some imperialists ask why we’re helping the Angolans, what our interest is? They assume that countries only act out of a desire for petrol, copper, diamonds or some other resource. No! We have no material interest. Of course the imperialists don’t understand this. They would only do it for chauvinist, nationalist and selfish reasons. We are fulfilling an elementary internationalist duty in helping the people of Angola."

Cuban internationalism has reached every corner of the globe. The Cuban government has condemned the U.S. invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and has consistently stood with the people of the Middle East in their struggle against U.S. imperialism and Israel’s occupation of Palestine. It has recently expanded trade relations with Syria, and is expanding cooperation on the basis of solidarity and mutual cooperation with Iran, China and other Asian countries.

Revolutionary leadership in Latin America

Washington quickly recognized the implications of the first successful socialist revolution in the continent. Fearful of the example set by Cuba, U.S. officials helped usher in the fascist governments that characterized Latin American politics for much of the 1960s and 1970s, crushing leftist and progressive forces to stem the threat of revolution.

Confronting U.S. designs head on, Cuba provided indispensable aid to Latin America in its struggles for self-determination and socialism. From Nicaragua to Guatemala to Venezuela and Bolivia, Cuba has been a base of support for the workers’ struggle.

During the years that followed the Nicaraguan revolutionary triumph in 1979 with the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship, Cuba offered assistance in the fields of education, health care, industry, agriculture and military training.

Direct U.S. intervention, with the destructive Contra war, caused the deaths of tens of thousands of Nicaraguans, and helped engineer the electoral defeat in 1990 of the Sandinistas. But this has not prevented Cuba from reinforcing its ties to progressive forces within Nicaragua and providing material support to this country.

In recent years, Cuba has played a key role in pushing forward the shift to the left in Latin America, working hand in hand with Venezuela’s own revolutionary government.

The two countries launched the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA)—a cooperation agreement with a focus on social gains in response to the U.S.-touted, plunder-oriented Free Trade Area of the Americas. Cuba has provided thousands of doctors and teachers to Venezuela, as well as other human resources and revolutionary experience. Venezuela has responded in kind, in particular by providing highly discounted oil that has been vital for Cuba. Bolivia and Nicaragua have since joined ALBA, and other countries also participate.

Cuba and Venezuela have jointly carried out "Operation Miracle," providing vision-restoring surgeries to nearly half a million people in Latin American and Caribbean countries as of November 2008.

Washington’s hostility to socialist Cuba has not stopped it from extending its solidarity to the U.S. people in their moments of greatest need. Cuba offered the assistance of more than 1,000 doctors who were ready to go to the U.S. Gulf region following Hurricane Katrina. The U.S. government refused this much-needed assistance for purely political reasons. Dozens of U.S. youth are studying medicine completely free of cost in Cuba at the famed ELAM, the Latin American School of Medicine. The students’ only obligation is to commit to practice medicine in poor communities in the United States upon graduation.

If the U.S. ruling class and its political lackeys have failed to appreciate the Cuban Revolution, the most oppressed sectors of the U.S. working class certainly have not. In 1960, the Shelburne Hotel in Manhattan contemptuously evicted Castro and his delegation, who were in New York for the 15th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Castro found new accommodations at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, where the Harlem community welcomed him with warm cheers. The class character of the Cuban revolution could not have been made clearer.

Just as Cuba has steadfastly stood by the workers of the world, we too must fight alongside Cuba. The people of Cuba have endured nearly five decades under the crippling U.S. economic blockade, and following the devastating 2008 hurricane season, need our support more than ever. On the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, the elementary internationalist duty that motivates Cuban solidarity should inspire U.S. workers to defend Cuba and raise the flag of working-class internationalism.

Anti-2010 Resources

2009-01-06T23:20:00.006-04:00

The 2010 Winter Olympics are to be held in British Colombia, Canada on occupied and unceded native land. There is a growing movement that is resisting the corporate circus, of which I have posted on many times in the past.

As an active supporter of, and participant in the movement, I would just like to provide any other interested parties with information that may be pertinent to the cause.

All files are in Adobe PDF format. If you don't already have Adobe Reader download it for Free by Clicking Here

Anti-2010 Booklet (PDF)

Sports Action 2010 (PDF)

2010 Police State Fact Sheet (PDF)

Olympic Resistance Issue 1 (PDF)

Convergence 2010 Poster (PDF)

Treaty Negotiating Times - Summer 2007 (PDF)

Riot 2010! Riot Now! - Printable Booklet (PDF)

Security Culture - A Handbook for Activists (PDF)

Insurrectionary Anarchy - Organizing for Attack (PDF)

Sutikalh: It Takes a Whole Community to Stop a Ski Resort (PDF)

Commemorating Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht

2009-01-05T23:29:00.003-04:00

This month marks the 90^th anniversary of the murder of the German revolutionary communist leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, two outstanding revolutionary leaders of the German working class, by the reactionary forces opposed to the German Revolution.

In commemoration of the tragic events of that day the good people over at the International Marxist Tendency are republishing Rosa Luxemburg's last article "Order Prevails in Berlin" as well as Karl Liebknecht's famous speech against voting the war credits in the German parliament in 1914 and his 1915 leaflet "The Main Enemy Is At Home!".

They are also publishing Trotsky's appraisal of the two revolutionaries, written just after they were murdered in 1919, and "Hands Off Rosa Luxemburg", his defence of what Rosa Luxemburg really stood for, against Stalinist slanders, as well as an extract from Lenin's "Notes of a Publicist" in which he defends Rosa Luxemburg against the reformists.

Check them out and lets keep the memory of these two great revolutionary leaders in our hearts as we move forward into this new year.

Cuba: 50 Years of Revolution

2009-01-01T12:49:00.005-04:00

What I would like to do here is provide a bit of a counter balance to the coverage of the revolution's 50th in the bourgeoisie media. Unlike they, who will undoubtedly focus on the admitted negatives that are faced by the Cuban people, I will focus here on the real and serious gains of the Cuban people that are a result of the revolution. I hope you find these facts enlightening.

Here is just a quick look at some before and afters:

Literacy Before & After The Revolution
1952	54%
2005	100%
Sources: (1) UNICEF & (2) Encarta Encylopedia.

Life Expectancy Before & After The Revolution
1950	55.8 years
2006	78 years
Sources: (1) UNICEF & (2) "The Health Revolution in Cuba," Sergio Díaz-Briquets, University of Texas Press. Austin, Texas. 1993. pp. 19.

*Infant Mortality Before & After The Revolution**
1958	60
2004	5.8
Sources: (1) Statistics Bureau, Cuban Ministry of Public Health & (2) UNICEF.

* The number of deaths of infants under one year old in a
given year per 1,000 live births in the same year.

And here are some stats about how Cuba ranks up against other Latin American, Caribbean and Western nations in various ways:

Infant Mortality:

Infant Mortality Rate*
Haiti	93.35
Bolivia	57.52
Guyana	38.37
Peru	38.18
Dominican Republic	33.41
Ecuador	33.02
Nicaragua	32.52
Honduras	30.48
Paraguay	28.75
El Salvador	27.58
Mexico	24.52
Trinidad & Tobago	24.20
Suriname	23.48
Colombia	23.21
Panama	19.57
Argentina	17.20
Dominica	15.94
Grenada	14.63
Jamaica	13.71
French Guinana	13.22
Barbados	11.71
Costa Rica	10.87
Puerto Rico	9.30
United States	7.00
Cuba	5.80
Sources: (1) Statistics Bureau, Cuban Ministry of Public Health, (2) CIA factbook & (3) UNICEF.

* The number of deaths of infants
under one year old in a given year
per 1,000 live births in the same year.

Literacy:

Youth Literacy Rate
Haiti	67.0%
Honduras	86.4%
Brazil	95.8%
Colombia	97.2%
Mexico	97.4%
Argentina	98.7%
Cuba	100%
Sources: (1) World Development Indicators, (World Bank, 1998, 1999) & (2) U.N. Statistics Division, Millennium Indicators.

Adult Literacy
Haiti	45%
St Lucia	67%
Dominican Republic	82%
French Guiana	83%
Bolivia	83%
Brazil	83%
Jamaica	85%
Peru	88%
Puerto Rico	89%
Ecuador	90%
Venezuela	91%
Colombia	91%
Paraguay	92%
Suriname	93%
Chile	95%
Argentina	96%
Cuba	100%
Sources: (1) UNICEF & (2) UNESCO Institute for Statistics.

Poverty:

Human Poverty Index*
Haiti	42.3%
Honduras	20.5%
Brazil	12.2%
Mexico	9.4%
Colombia	8.9%
Cuba	4.1%
Sources: United Nations Development Program (UNDP) 2003 Human Development Indicators and Project On Human Development.

* Lower is better.

Doctors:

Persons Per Doctor
Haiti	10,005
Honduras	2,500
Colombia	1,105
Dominican Republic	949
Brazil	844
United States	421
Cuba	169
Sources: (1) World Development Indicators, (World Bank, 1997), (2) "World Almanac and Book of Facts 2004," (3) "Student Atlas of World Politics 4th Edition," Dushkin/McGraw-Hill, 2000 & (4) Encarta Encylopedia.

Hospitals:

Persons Per Hospital Bed
Haiti	1,250
Honduras	1,000
Colombia	909
Dominican Republic	670
Brazil	370
United States	303
Cuba	185
Sources: (1) "Student Atlas of World Politics 4th Edition," Dushkin/McGraw-Hill, 2000, (2) Encarta Encylopedia.

Attended Births:

Proportion of Births Attended by Skilled Health Personnel
Haiti	24%
Honduras	54%
Colombia	86%
Mexico	86%
Brazil	88%
Argentina	98%
Cuba	100%
Source: U.N. Statistics Division, Millennium Indicators.

Unemployment:

Unemployment Rate
Haiti	70%
Guadeloupe	26.9%
French Guiana	19.2%
Dominican Republic	17%
Uruguay	16.8%
Argentina	15.6%
Colombia	14.2%
Suriname	13.8%
Venezuela	12.2%
Puerto Rico	12%
Trinidad & Tobago	10.4%
Ecuador	11.4%
Peru	10.3%
Brazil	9.7%
Paraguay	9.2%
Guyana	9.1%
Chile	8.1%
Bolivia	8%
Canada	7%
United States	6.5%
Cuba	1.9%
Sources: (1) CIA World Factbook, (2) Encarta Encylopedia & (3) "Investigating the Effects of Withheld Humanitarian Aid," a report of the Haiti Reborn/Quixote Center.

Inflation:

Inflation Rate (%)
Dominican Republic	51.20
Haiti	27.00
Venezuela	16.00
Jamaica	12.60
Argentina	9.60
Suriname	9.50
Paraguay	9.20
Bolivia	8.50
Brazil	8.20
Uruguay	7.40
Colombia	7.10
Chile	6.60
Mexico	6.10
Guyana	6.70
Puerto Rico	6.50
Peru	5.70
United States	3.20
Canada	3.00
Cuba	0.30
Sources: (1) CIA World Factbook, (2) World Development Indicators, (World Bank, 2004, 2005), (3) Latin Business Chronicle, 2002.

Sanitation:

Proportion of Population with Access to Improved Sanitation (Urban and Rurual)
Haiti	28%
Mexico	74%
Honduras	75%
Argentina	82%
Colombia	86%
Cuba	98%
Source: U.N. Statistics Division, Millennium Indicators.

Women in Government:

Women In Parliamentary Seats
Haiti	4%
Honduras	6%
Brazil	9%
Colombia	12.2%
United States	14%
Mexico	15.9%
Argentina	31.3%
Cuba	36%
Source: U.N. Statistics Division, Millennium Indicators.

And, leading on from the women in government stats, here are some other gains that the women of Cuba have made over the last 50 years:

The Cuban constitution guarantees full equality for women. Women receive equal wages as men for doing the same work, and sexual discrimination is forbidden by law.
By law, men must share equally in house work with women with whom they live.
Pregnant women in Cuba are guaranteed maternity leave, with full pay, before and after the birth of their child/ren.
49.5% of all Cubans who have graduated college, and 62% of all Cubans who are currently university students are women.
Before the Cuban Revolution women made up less than 20% of the workforce (17% in 1956). One of the largest areas of employment for women was prostitution (mostly with tourists from the U.S.). Today women comprise 44% of the workforce in Cuba.
66.4% of all technicians, 87% of all administrators, 53.9% of all service workers, 51% of all doctors, 43% of all scientists and 33.5% of all managers in Cuba are women.
35% of the members of Cuban Parliament are Women. 16.1% of the State Council, 18% of the ministers, 22.7% of the Vice-Ministers, 61% of all attorneys, 20% of all officers in the armed forces, 49% of all judges and 47% of all judges in the Supreme Court in Cuba are women.
The life expectancy of women in Cuba is 79.8 years, several years higher than the average in Latin America.
Maternal mortality in Cuba is only 33.9 per 100,000 live births. The average for Latin America in 2004 was 94.7.
Infant mortality in Cuba is 5.8 per 1000 live births (the lowest in Latin America, and lower than that of the U.S.).
As for all Cubans, access to education and health services, including sexual and reproductive health is universal and free for all Cuban women.
Abortion, which was legalized in 1965, is free to all Cuban women on demand.
Childcare is provided in Cuba for all children from 3 months to school age at rates so low, it's basically free.Eighty-five percent of Cuban women over the age of 14 are members of a grass roots Non-governmental organization called the "Federation of Cuban Women." To a large extent, the success in implementing the legislation relating to the rights of women has been achieved thanks to the work of the Federation of Cuban Women. The Federation plays a major part in the debate and creation of laws that affect Cuban women.

And finally, here are some other facts about Cuba and its revolution:

Cuba is among the top five Latin American countries in protein and calorie intake.
Cuba has compulsory education through the ninth grade and available to 12th grade to all youth; university enrollment exceeding 200,000 with another 90,000 students graduating annually from one of 600 technical and professional training institutes -- all absolutely free.
The average Cuban worker has ten years of education; one of every ten scientists in Latin America and the Caribbean is in Cuba (although Cuba makes up only 2% of the region's population).
In Cuba, 50% of all skilled workers or professionals (including physicians) are women & 29% of management positions are held by women.
Ninety-four percent of the population has electrical service in Cuba, surpassing the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean by some 20%. Television reaches even remote mountain areas and Cuban radio covers the entire island.
The Cubans have built formidable pharmaceutical, genetic engineering and biotechnology industries, and have twenty scientific research centers investigating products from inexpensive pharmaceuticals to "green medicine."
The UN recently announced that Cuba is the only country in Latin America that has no malnutrition.
The majority of Cubans own their homes. During the urban reforms in the early sixties, those Cubans paying rent to landlords who had fled to Miami, continued to pay the same rent to the State for a period of 5 to 10 years after which time the house or apartment became theirs. Servants who lived in the houses of the rich paid rent to the State and became owners of those homes after a period of years. New homes were bought with a government mortgage for approximately $5,000 (with a 2% to 4% interest rate payable over 20-30 years, paid off at no more than 10% of the chief breadwinner's income).
Gas bills in Cuba average 2-4 pesos (8-16 cents) a month; electricity 5-7 pesos (20-28 cents) a month; telephone 6-8 pesos (24-32 cents) a month, the first 300 minutes being free. As you can see, all these services are subsidized by the State.
In 1999, the Latin American Laboratory for the Evaluation of Educational Quality (LLECE) tested 4,000 students in third and fourth grades in 100 randomly selected schools in 14 Latin American countries. Cuba's Elementary Education came out on top. The Cuban children scored 350 points on a scale of 400. Despite the economic blockade, the State maintained free education with a 1,585 billion pesos educational budget in 1999. School enrollment is 100% on the elementary level, and 95% on the secondary level. There is one teacher per 40 children compared to one per 103 in the world. While in 1959 Cuba had only 3 Universities, it now has 47 which have graduated 600,000 students. In 1952, less than 50% of Cuban children went to school, over 40% of the population was illiterate, and 10,000 of the existing 25,000 teachers were unemployed. Now, every child has access to free education, remains in school through 6th grade, and then continues on with secondary education. In most Latin American countries 50% of all enrolled children leave by 4th grade.
The Cuban "Yes, I can" literacy method has been used to teach 3,192,000 people in 28 countries how to read and write.
A divorce usually takes about 3 months in Cuba and costs $5. Everything is split equally between the separating couple. If there are children involved, the ex-husband has to pay 10% of his wages as alimony, and usually leaves the house so that his ex-wife and children can live in it.
In Cuba, sovereignty resides in the people. Over 97% of the people eligible to vote, vote in an electoral system which serves to nominate and then elect those best suited to fulfill their position. There are three Assemblies: the Municipal Assembly, the Provincial Assembly, and the National Assembly. In the Municipal Assembly, neighbors nominate their candidates who are finally selected by secret ballot vote by the entire constituency. The fact that candidates are not nominated by the Communist Party but by the people themselves, itself marks the democratic nature of the process. In the same way, the election of the members for the Provincial and National Assemblies are selected by secret ballot vote by the people directly. The election process has two phases: it consists of (1) electing the delegates for the Municipal Assembly, and (2) electing the deputies to the Provincial and National Assemblies.
The Cuban Constitution (discussed and created through numerous public meetings and adopted by secret ballot in a referendum in 1976) states, in the First Article of the Electoral System, Article 131, that: "All citizens with the legal capacity to do so, have the right to take part in the leadership of the State, directly or through their elected representatives to the bodies of People Power, and to participate for this purpose and as prescribed by law in the periodic elections and people's referendums through free, equal, and secret vote." In Cuba, you will find grass-roots democracy never seen anywhere else in the world, where the people themselves nominate their candidates for election. A candidate must get more than 50% of a secret ballot vote to get elected. Every candidate nominated faces the electorate on his/her own merit.
The Communist Party of Cuba is forbidden by law to play any role in the elections. The only publicity allowed candidates is a posted biography with a photograph of the candidate. They are not allowed to spend money on furthering their chances for selection. Neither are State organizations permitted to issue statements favoring any candidate.
In order to join the Partido Comunista Cubano (PCC - Cuban Communist Party), Cubans must be chosen as model workers by their co-workers.
Cuba's highest leadership body is the Council of State, of which Raul Castro is the elected President. He was last elected in 2008.
Cuba is a founding member of the Human Rights Council and the United States is not. Cuba was elected with the overwhelming support of 135 countries, more than two-thirds of the United Nations General Assembly, while the United States did not even dare to run as a candidate.
Despite all the media coverage of all the people leaving by boat, by percentage, few Cubans actually leave Cuba, and there are many issues involved. Firstly, before the Cuban Revolution the United States gave very few Cubans visas to come to the United States, but after the revolution the doors were opened wide. Secondly, the United States has held an unjust trade embargo against Cuba for 40 years (which has been condemned several times in the United Nations by almost every country in the world) which has caused the people of Cuba to suffer. Finally, the United States enacted the 'Cuban Adjustment Act', the only act of its kind anywhere in the world, which grants residency to anyone, no matter if they are a criminal or not, who leaves Cuba and reaches the United States in any fashion. Imagine if the same act applied to all of Latin America! How many people from other countries would leave for the United States? How many people leave places like Mexico and the Dominican Republic now?

Also, if you want to learn more, check out the the Cuba Truth Project.

21 Questions for 2008

2008-12-31T20:18:00.003-04:00

It seems each year, around this time, a quiz like this one makes the rounds on the various blog-myspace-facebook-email rounds that I am a part of. I normally do not take part in these sorts of things, but I thought to myself, why the hell not? So now as I sit here at my computer, with less than four hours before we are officially in the year 2009 here in Bermuda, I give you my thoughts on the year 2008 in review in the form of a 21 question quiz.

1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before?

Witness, for the first time, the election of a non-white person, though still a man, to the highest office of the United States government. I also got published, twice, in the IWW's Industrial Worker Newspaper and the zine published by Queers Without Borders

2. Did anyone close to you die?

No one close to me, but alot of comrades though in the struggle did pass, including singers and musicians like Utah Phillips, Miriam Makeba, Odetta and writers Aime Cesaire, Mahmoud Darwoush, Studs Terkel

3. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?

There is lots, but up at the top would have to be a withdrawal of troops from both Iraq and Afghanistan, universal health care for the U.S., a real effort to reconstruct the city of New Orleans, universal access to all levels of education, accountability for war criminals, including those responsible for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a real redistribution of wealth, not the fake crap that Obama spoke of, acceptable housing for everyone, a real plan to save the environment and cut emissions, real democracy, including the right to an informed vote, the right to a recall and the right to initiate legislation, immediate withdrawl by Canada and the U.S. from Free Trade Agreement (FTA), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), NORAD and NATO and democratization of the United Nations based on the principle that all nations, big or small, have an equal say.

4. What was the biggest achievement of the year?

There were lots of big victories this past year, but the ones that stick out in my mind the most are the successful occupation of Chicago's Republic Windows and Doors, the occupation of the New School by the SDS, the decisive defeat of the McCain-Palin ticket (though this is not to say the Obama victory was a true one) and the many successes we had this year we had resisting the coming 2010 Olympics in Canada.

5. Whose behavior merited celebration?

At the the forefront of my mind would have to be Muntadar al-Zeidi, the Iraqi journalist who took it upon himself to throw his shoes at Bush and show him that Iraq will never be grateful for having been invaded. I also think of Evo Morales, and his efforts in working to unite Bolivia and hold oligarchic criminals accountable after their attempt to topple him in a violent reactionary uprising.

6. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?

The same old, same old here, but the failure of the anti-proposition 8 forces in California to build a truly united front against the reactionary measure left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I am also extremely disappointed in the leadership of the Canadian NDP's decision to join an attempted coalition with the Liberal Party.

7. Where did most of your money go?

Into the hands of various fact cats, not least of which were the bastards on Wall Street.

8. Compared to this time last year, are you richer or poorer?

Given the state of the global capitalist economy, and it associated plummeting wages, loss of retirement funds and emptying of my wallet to give cash to the fuckers that caused the problem, I would have to go with poorer.

9. What do you wish you'd done more of?

Organization and party building, forging new alliances, more to help the No 2010 efforts

10. What do you wish you'd done less of?

Sitting around and complaining rather than getting to action

11. What was the best book you read?

This year saw me become what I now describe myself as, which is a post-Maoist revolutionary democratic socialist, and I would have to say that reading On Practice and Contradiction by Mao (from Verso) helped in this. I also really enjoyed reading the works of Louis Althusser, especially For Marx and On Ideology (both from Verso) and taking another look back at the classic works of Lenin and Marx.

12. What did you want and get?

Gay marriage in California, before it got taken away by reactionary bigots, paid-out vacation days and severance for the workers at Republic Windows and Doors, the stay of execution for Troy Anthony Davis, the election of Fernando Lugo the office of President of Paraguay, the success of the PSUV in the Venezuelan elections, and the success of Evo Morales in the Bolivia. I also can't say that I am disappointed in anyway by the gaining of gay marriage in Nepal.

13. What did you want and not get?

The defeat of Prop. 8, the University of Waterloo not crawling into bed with the U.A.E., a new trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal and Troy Anthony Davis, the release of Ahmad Sa'adat and Jose Maria Sison, conviction for Sean Bell's murderers, the release of the Jena 6, the release of Leonard Peltier and the Cuba 5, the extradition of Luis Posada Carriles from the US.

14. What was your favourite film of this year?

I didn't see too many new films that made me think, though I am looking forward to eventually seeing films like Milk, Persepolis, Trouble The Water, and Under The Same Moon (La Misma Luna), otherwise I did pick up on DVD some films that really did take me back and/or make me think like Reds and Catch a Fire.

15. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Socialist revolution in either, but preferably both, the United States or Canada, an end to patriarchial oppression of women and LGBTQQ people and an end to racial/national oppression.

16. What kept you sane?

Work, solidarity and my friends and family, especially my partner.

17. Who did you miss?

This year I missed the presence of a lot of people. With the success of the Obama campaign wonder how it may have been if people like Malcolm, Fanon and Newton had been here. Also with the 90th anniversary of the launch of the German revolution I missed Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.

18. Did you know anybody who got married?

I knew, in spirit, all of the 18,000 same-sex couples in California that got married before the reactionaries had their way.

19. Did you, or anyone you know, move anywhere?

Personally no, but many other people had to leave their homes because they could no longer pay rent or mortgage. Others were displaced by hurricanes and wildfires, symptoms of our rabid planet. Others still were displaced from their own nations by a strangled economy.

20. What pop culture event will you remember 2008 by?

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin on SNL sticks out in my mind.

21. Quote a song lyric that sums up 2008:

I can't find one nice little short bit of song lyrics, so I will leave off with one my favorate songs of '08, the Iron Wheel by Tom Morello, aka The Nightwatchman, ft. Shooter Jennings:

Sometimes they'll tell you to just sit still
When you know that it's time to run
Sometimes they'll tell you it's all over
When you’re sure that it’s just begun

Sometimes they'll tell you to move along
When you're sure you should stand and fight
Sometimes they'll tell you you're a lucky man
But the numbers they don't add up right

The iron wheel slowly spins around
It takes you from the cradle
'Til you're six feet underground
You can push and pull against it
But you’ll ride it 'til it’s through
And those who spin the wheel
Well those fuckers ride it too

The good wife rides the wheel
As the years just slip away
T.V. preacher rides the wheel
As he leads the flock astray
Lady Justice rides the wheel
But her balance is unsure
Cause the truth it lies in pieces
Scattered on the newsroom floor

Sometimes they'll tell you to just let go
When you're sure you should hold on tight
Sometimes they'll tell you your time
Will never come
When you're sure that your time's come tonight

The iron wheel slowly spins around
It takes you from the cradle
'Til you're six feet underground
You can push and pull against it
But you'll ride it 'til it's through
And those who spin the wheel
Well those fuckers ride it too

Happy 2009, lets make this year the best year yet as we march forward towards a better world for all humanity!

The Cat Is Out of the Bag...I Guess

2008-12-30T18:33:00.003-04:00

Well, this was something that I had been working on for about two weeks, but it seems I accidentally allowed people to become aware of it prematurely. So I may as well make the announcement now. This blog is in the process of being preped for a move Wordpress.

I have been working on this for about two or three weeks now (I had no clue how to use Wordpress so there was a steep learning curve), and had initially planned to launch it on January 1st, the anniversary of this me starting this blog, but due to the complication of not having descent internet access in Bermuda, this is being delayed. Anyway, it seems when I imported my old posts from here to the new blog, trackbacking on other sites posted links to the new one, letting the proverbial cat out of the back, which, on my end, was unintentional.

Anyway, I am moving to Wordpress because I feel that there is much more I can do with it, in terms of site organization, though on a purely aesthetic level, I cannot say that I like it more than blogger, as I find the ability to easily create custom headers, implant pictures on the site and other things like that much more easy to accomplish. Wordpress though will allow me to better develop my study guide to revolutionary Marxism, as well as a sort of Marxist FAQ I am working on.

If you want to check it out, the new URL will be bermudaradical.wordpress.com, but do not expect to find much there as I have not finished the site yet. I will make an announcement when it is ready to launch.

Until then this site will continue to have new postings.

Call to Action: Defend Palestine Against Israeli Aggression

2008-12-29T08:49:00.003-04:00

As I am sure you know, as we now speak hundreds of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been the victims of a cold-blooded massacre, with many more wounded, as the Zionist colonial-settler state, otherwise known as Israel, has launched a massive and inhumane bombing campaign against the people of the strip. The rampage of air-attacks against the people of Palestine took place as thousands of children filled the streets as they made their way back to their homes from school. As the U.S. armed Zionists rained more than 100 bombs and missiles from American made F-16s and Apache gunships, terrified Palestinian parents were forced run through the streets in frantic searches for their children.

The AFP has reported that, "There was no space left in the morgue and bodies were piled up in the emergency room and in the corridors, as many of the wounded screamed in pain." The U.S.-backed zionist apartheid occupiers destroyed every singe security station in Gaza during the attack.

This is compounded by the continuing existence of the 18-month old U.S.-backed Israeli blockade and strangulation of the people of Gaza. Due to the continued Zionist prevention of goods entering the strip, there is little to no medicine that can be used to treat the wounded, there is little to no electricity for hospitals, or supplies of food or clean water for much of the population are running low at this moment.

However, this seems to only be the first step in a widening Israeli attack on the people of occupied Palestine, as an Israeli military spokesperson said, "The operation is ‘only just beginning’." Also, the Israeli Defense Ministry said in a statement: "The action will continue and will widen as much as is demanded according to the evaluation of the situation by the high command of the army."

We must act now to put an end to this!

The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) has issued a call to action for December 30th (tomorrow) in response to the attacks by the zionist apartheid Israeli state that have so far killed over 270 people in Gaza.

The day of action in solidarity with Palestine and its people is being called by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, Free Palestine Alliance, National Council of Arab Americans, and Al-Awda: International Palestine Right to Return Coalition to show solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza and to demand an immediate end to the murderous attacks carried out by the Israeli military against the people of Gaza.

The events that will be taking place are listed below:

Washington, D.C.
Tuesday, December 30
4:30 pm
State Department: 22nd St & C St NW
Contact: 202-544-3389 x14, dc@answercoalition.org
San Francisco
Tuesday, December 30
5:00 pm
Israeli Consulate:456 Montgomery St.
Contact: 415-821-6545, answer@answersf.org
Los Angeles
Tuesday, December 30
4:30 pm
Israeli Consulate: 6380 Wilshire Blvd.
Contact: 213-251-1025, answerla@answerla.org
New York City
Tuesday, December 30
5:00 pm
Israeli Consulate: 800 2nd Ave (b/w 42nd and 43rd Sts)
Contact: 212-694-8720, nyc@answercoalition.org
Fort Lauderdale, FL
Tuesday, December 30
5:00 pm
Federal Building: 299 E. Broward Blvd.
Contact: 954-707-0155, FtLauderdale@answerfl.org
Chicago
Details to be announced
Contact: 773-463-0311, answer@chicagoanswer.net
Boston
Details to be announced
Contact: 857-334-5084, boston@answercoalition.org
Seattle
Saturday, January 3
12:00 noon - 2:00 pm
Westlake Park: 4th and Pine
Initiated by Voices of Palestine
Contact: general@voicesofpalestine.org

A number of demonstrations have already taken place as of yesterday, Sunday December 28th in Toronto, New York and Anaheim.

You can also send a letter to the State Department and Congress demanding an end to U.S. aid to Israel, you can send a letter with just a click. Without U.S. aid, the Israeli military attacks, siege and blockade of Gaza could not be continued. Click this link now to send a letter to the State Department and elected officials in Congress. (provided by A.N.S.W.E.R.)

This is an urgent situation and we must all act now!

In Love and Rage
In Solidarity with the People of Palestine

Unión del Barrio on Israel and Gaza

2008-12-29T08:39:00.002-04:00

San Diego, California- Occupied Mexico

Unión del Barrio, a Revolutionary Nationalist organization with more than 25 years of struggle for the Self-Determination andNational Liberation of the Mexican people, energetically denounce the cowardly attacks upon the Palestinian people in the Gazastrip carried out by the zionist apartheid Israeli state.

It is without question that the terrorist Israeli attacks by plane and helicopters upon this densely populated area in Gaza, were not meant exclusively and solely targeted at “military objectives,” as claimed by the Israeli government. Based on the information by international sources, and as far as we can tell, these cowardly attacks have produced more than 250 dead and more than 700 wounded. Among the dead are civilians, men, women, children and the elderly of that region.

We express our total and complete solidarity with the people and government of the Palestinian state and we make the call to the international community to unite with the protests that are expressing themselves in the West Bank and throughout the Arab countries.

The Mexican/Latin-American people, that live north of the militarily imposed political border (within the U.S. empire), unite and express our solidarity by joining the international protests that are taking shape in response against this attack by the zionist government of Israel. Only the voice of the international community can bring an end to these coldly calculated provocations and cowardly attacks on the martyred people of Palestine.

Central Committee
Unión del Barrio

PFLP Statement on the Massacre in Gaza

2008-12-29T00:35:00.002-04:00

From the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

Over 270 killed in Gaza and hundreds have been wounded in a series of massacres and crimes committed by the Zionist occupier against the Palestinian people in Gaza on December 27, 2008. The occupier shot dozens of missiles from Apache helicopters and F-16 planes at dozens of Gaza government buildings, directly in the middle of heavily populated residential neighborhoods and simultaneously with teachers and students returning to school.

Demonstrations have broken out throughout the West Bank and the Arab world in protest and outrage at the brutality and the nature of these massive crimes.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine issued a statement calling for the broadest resistance to meet and confront this aggression against the Palestinian people and to respond to these massacres, and for the unity of the resistance, and the unity of the Palestinian people, to greet the occupier with resistance, strength and steadfastness despite his brutal crimes. The statement stressed the urgent need for national unity immediately to confront the crimes against our people and to greet the occupier and its brutality with tremendous and unified resistance that is capable of shaking its foundations.

The PFLP statement further called upon all resistance forces to come together now and establish unified resistance front to coordinate and take up the challenge of these attacks against our people. It pointed to the responsibility of the United States for these attacks, as a strategic partner of the occupier, working hand in hand with its massacres and crimes against the Palestinian people, and as the source of the arms used by the occupier against our people. It also pointed to the complicity of the Arab regimes in these crimes, particularly the Egyptian regime, for its ongoing and active participation in the blockade and siege of the Palestinian people in Gaza and its meetings and discussions with the occupier about its plans for Gaza. These massacres are taking place because of Arab and international silence and active complicity.

The PFLP further called for the immediate end to any and all negotiations with this brutal occupier who plans massacres against our people and stated that if he will not end the negotiations immediately, Abu Mazen must resign now. The nature of the Zionist enemy and its dedication to the eradication of the Palestinian people is laid bare and clear by this series of attacks, calculated to cause maximum damage and human cost. For the past sixty years, there is an unbroken history of massacres and crimes against our people and this massacre today is yet one more expression of the nature of the illegitimate colonial state that has implanted itself on Palestinian land and continues to live on U.S. support through massacres and crimes against the Palestinian people.

The statement concluded by calling upon all of its fighters and military branches to take the strongest actions and to resist the occupation and its massacres by all methods and forms of action and resistance, and by calling for the broadest solidarity on Arab and international levels, for people to come into the streets, demonstrate, march, and take action to declare that these massacres and crimes are unacceptable, that the Arab people and the world are with Palestine and the Palestinian people, and that they will not allow these crimes to continue nor for the Arab regimes and international regimes to be silently complicity or actively involved in the occupation's crimes.

The Palestinian people will greet these massacres with steadfastness, strength, unity and resistance and all of the crimes, massacres, targeting of civilians, residential neighborhoods, and schoolchildren and teachers will do nothing to crush the resistance of our people, the statement said, it will only ensure Palestinian unity in the face of this brutality which makes clear the true face of the occupier to the world.

The God of Small Things

2008-12-28T10:53:00.003-04:00

"He says naïvely, outspokenly and without suggestion of embarrassment 'I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God.' It is only another way of saying "I, the Lord thy God, am a small God; fretful about small things?" - Mark Twain

On the 21st of December, 2008, a Monday, the current Pope, Benedict XVI, formerly Joseph Alois Ratzinger, made a statement about the Church's duty to save the world. However, along with recognizing man's ecological duty to the planet, the Pope also made mention of another supposed threat to humanity and the Earth. He said in his statement that saving humanity from homosexual and transsexual behaviour was important, in fact, it is as important as protecting the environment.

This is not new for the office that is supposedly god's spokesman on Earth, but it is dangerous in that in doing so he is inviting a fresh wave of attacks on homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals and intersexed people. His words only act to throw more fuel on the fire. With his words of hate, which have no other purpose other than harm the LGBTQQ community, "his holiness" is giving tacit permission to all those right-wing reactionaries out there who are resisting all the hard work and education that has been done, and is still being done, to broaden humanity's self-definition.

God's vicar on Earth's exact words were:

“We need something like human ecology, meant in the right way. The Church speaks of human nature as 'man' or 'woman' and asks that this order is respected.

“This is not out-of-date metaphysics. It comes from the faith in the Creator and from listening to the language of creation, despising which would mean self-destruction for humans and therefore a destruction of the work itself of God.”

“What is often expressed and signified with the word 'gender' leads to the human auto-emancipation from creation and from the Creator. The human being wants to make himself on his own and to decide always and exclusively by himself about what concerns him.

“But, in so doing, the human being lives against the truth and against the Spirit creator. Rain forests deserve, yes, our protection but the human being - as a creature which contains a message that is not in contradiction with his freedom but is the condition of his freedom - does not deserve it less.”

For me, as a progressive and a revolutionary, I recognize that the words of this man, this supposed representative of the most high god, are in the very least irresponsible, unacceptable and hurtful to the LGBTQQ community. At the most, it can lead to a further hardening of the hearts of his flock towards this most vulnerable of minorities. I would also like to echo the call of some of my comrades that this man, who is not a god, and his fellow travellers and ring-leaders, must be reminded again, by any and all means necessary, that the people of the LGBTQQ community are not a threat to the planet and the human race, but that his religiously based homo and trans phobia is a threat to their lives.

Related to this, the Holy See, the Vatican, has also refused to take part in a United Nations appeal for the universal decriminalisation of homosexuality that was launched on December 18th by some 66 countries. It is a fact that in more than 80 countries there are laws that restrict, and many cases outright prohibit, homosexuality and homosexual acts. Of these 80 countries, nine of them have laws on the books which allow for homosexuality to be punished by the death penalty. It the fear of the religious, reactionary bigots in the Vatican that if such a proposed resolution were passed in the UN (as if UN resolutions hold any weight) that it would encourage the legalization of same-sex marriage around the world.

We must show this old dog and his ilk that we will not stand for this sort of religiously based crap any more. For too long has reactionary religion held humanity back, and it time we moved forward. This is a call for both secular progressives and revolutionaries, as well as religious ones, to stand up and oppose hateful and reactionary rhetoric by this supposed man of god. If you, like me, would like to give add your voice to the chorus that is already speaking out against the Pope, you may do so by sending him a letter at this address.

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
00120 Vatican City, Italy, Europe (thanks to Richard at Queers Without Borders for the address)

No Bigots At the Inauguration

2008-12-27T23:03:00.006-04:00

I really hate to say "I told you so", often because it seems to relate to something that is not so positive, but, unfortunately, this seems to be another case of "I told you so." Despite the illusions of some people on the "left" about him, this past week President-elect Barack Obama has continued down the path he has cut that demonstrates his ultimate faithfulness to the politics of the ruling-class in the United States. He has done this with every single one of his post-election decisions, beginning with his choice of cabinet officials and now continuing with his announcement that the right-wing evangelical pastor Rick Warren will be his choice for delivering the invocation at the presidential inauguration ceremony on Jan. 20, 2009.

For those who are not aware of who Rick Warren is, he is a(nother) multi-millionaire evangelist and head of the right-wing reactionary Saddleback mega-church in Orange County, Calif. He is well known in the country for his decidedly bigoted views when it comes to members of the LGBTQQ community and women's rights, especially the right to choose. In other words, he is another cog in the murder machine that is capitalist patriarchy.

On the issues at hand, the Rev. Rick Warren’s record is a clear, and indisputable one. On the LGBTQQ community, he has expressed long-held views that are, to say the least, completely backward. Like many, his apparently long-held views find their roots in the oppressive and narrow prism of Christian fundamentalist ideology. He has spoken openly that he considers homosexuality to be a "sin", and that gay marriage is an "abomination", right up there with incest, paedophilia and polygamy. He also believes in the false and reactionary notion that gay people can, and should, magically become heterosexuals by turning to prayer and god. In line with these views he was outspoken in his support for California’s bigoted Proposition 8, which ultimately say the rights of same-sex couple to marry stripped.

People may also remember Rev. Warren for his hosting of a so-called "town hall" event in August of this year that featured both of the then presidential candidates Obama and John McCain. In the one-on-one discussions, led by Warren, with both of the candidates, the topics covered were vague and abstract, with such subjects as "faith" and "vision." During the event, Obama and McCain, both of whom went out their way to reach out to right-wing Christian evangelical voters, were also quizzed on their stances on various issues important to that segment of the voting population, like the "war on terror," abortion and same-sex marriage.

As could have been foreseen, on abortion rights, now President-elect Barack Obama completely failed to defend, in any real strong manner, the right of a woman to choose when, where and how she will be come pregnant and whether or not she can decide to terminate it. On the issue of same-sex marriage (which Warren claims is an "abomination"), both candidates were fast to declare to the audience their firm belief that marriage is strictly between a man and a woman. Indeed, the so-called "progressive" candidate, Obama, made a point of going out his way to oppose same-sex marriage.

Now it would seem that Obama and his transition team were not prepared for the mass and angry backlash against the choice of Warren for the inauguration. I guess they did anticipate that the people would actually pay attention to his choice. Across the country, LGBTQQ people and organizations, along with there allies in the progressive and radical community, were immediate in voicing their justified outrage at Obama’s pick of Warren for the inaugural invocation. After the announcement, one group. Equality California, launched an email and letter-writing campaign demanding that Obama revoke the invitation. Along side this there have been demonstrations across California. Some people and organizations have even urged a boycott of the inauguration.

Predictably, this sudden and obvious out-showing of anger by the people has forced Obama to respond in a public manner. He has done so by assuring people that he is indeed a "fierce advocate of equality," and that "no matter our differences we must work together."

As with any politician of the parties of capital however, his words, have rung hollow in many quarters. His decision to feature a right-wing bigot such as the Rev. Rick Warren in the official, government-sponsored inauguration ceremony is rightly seen as a blow and an insult to the LGBTQQ community in America, the struggle for same-sex marriage and people who fight for equality of any kind everywhere. The selection itself is also a nod to reaction and antiquated ruling-class notions of marriage that are steeped in the history patriarchy and the oppression of women and homosexuals. In the end, something is revealed in Obama’s basic agreement with Warren’s stance on same-sex marriage (they both oppose it), as we now see his true agenda. It should be clear to all that in the realm of same-sex marriage rights, President-elect Barack Obama aims to do nothing more than maintain the current status quo. We can all be in agreement, I hope, that there is nothing progressive about that.

It should be clear to everyone in the progressive and radical community that the LGBTQQ community and the working-class have nothing in common with the likes of a multi-millionaire reactionary, right-wing evangelist like Rick Warren. This reactionary preacher would not even be speaking at such a government-sponsored function if the idea of the separation of church and state were more than an flimsy illusion. It is also the truth that such reactionary church leaders work hand in hand with the capitalist state to aid them in perpetuating backward ideologies that divide the working-class.

But this is not over. Despite the blow of Rick Warrens presence at the inauguration in January, it is indisputable that tens of thousands of people have been flooding the streets, of not just California, but the whole country, in the weeks after the passage of Prop. 8, showing that the LGBTQQ community and their allies are not willing to concede the fight for the rights. They will continue the decades-long fight for equality until they see it through to the end.

The struggle for marriage equality and other basic right for the LGBTQQ community is not over. In times such as these, standing up against any and all forms of bigotry and hate is more necessary than ever before. It is our basic duty as revolutionaries and progressives to hold hands with the LGBTQQ community and support their efforts to remove Warren from the inauguration ceremony. Despite the claims of Obama's campaign messages, genuine hope and change comes from below—not from the politicians at the top.

40 Years Since the Founding of the Communist Party of the Philippines

2008-12-27T20:05:00.001-04:00

STRENGTHEN THE PARTY AND INTENSIFY THE PEOPLE’S STRUGGLE IN CELEBRATING THE 40th FOUNDING ANNIVERSARY

Message of the Central Committee, Communist Party of the Philippines December 26, 2008

With utmost joy, we celebrate today the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) as the advanced detachment of the Philippine working class under the theoretical guidance of Marxism-Leninism- Maoism. Forty years ago today, we reestablished on a new foundation what originally was the Communist Party of the Philippine Islands (CPPI).

On this happy occasion, we in the Central Committee of the CPP salute all comrades in all Party organs, units and spheres of work, all Red commanders and fighters of the New People’s Army, all allied forces in the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, all leaders and functionaries of the local organs of the people’s democratic government, all activists in the mass movement and the broad masses of the Filipino people.

We congratulate all Party cadres and members for all the accumulated and recent victories in ideological, political and organizational work and all revolutionary forces and people for the great victories in pursuing the new democratic revolution through protracted people’s war and united front work against foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.

The revolutionary cause of the people cannot advance without the principled commitment, militancy and perseverance of the entire Party in revolutionary struggle. We have won our victories through hard work, arduous struggle and sacrifices. We must render the highest tribute to our revolutionary martyrs and heroes, including those who have died in the battlefield and those who have devoted their lives to various types of revolutionary work beyond the battlefield.

From year to year, the US-Arroyo regime has ranted that it would completely destroy, strategically defeat or debilitate the armed revolutionary movement of the oppressed and exploited people. It has in fact unleashed the most barbaric attacks against the millions of people in the guerrilla fronts and against unarmed persons, including leaders and members of legal mass organizations workers, peasants, youth and women, teachers, church people, lawyers, journalists, judges and all other personalities, who criticize and oppose its rotten policies and criminal acts.

At this time, we can proclaim the utter failure of the so-called Enhanced National Internal Security Plan and Oplan Bantay Laya I and II. These have only served to incite the people to intensify the armed revolution and other forms of struggle. The people and revolutionary forces have gained strength in the course of militant struggle. They must not slacken but must intensify all forms of struggle.

Let us celebrate our Party’s 40th founding anniversary throughout 2009 by undertaking educational, organizational, political, cultural and other activities to advance and bring the revolution to a new and higher level. Let us strive to bring about a great leap forward in all forms of our revolutionary struggle.

We must carry out vigorously the education and training of our Party cadres and members in Marxism-Leninism- Maoism and in the new democratic revolution. Our Party must lead the broad masses of the people by arousing, organizing and mobilizing them. We must wield firmly and effectively the weapons of armed struggle and united front. We must further strengthen the Party organization by accelerating the recruitment of Party candidate-members from the revolutionary mass movement and the building of Party branches in communities, factories, farms, schools and other institutions.

The armed struggle must be intensified in conjunction with land reform, the dismantling of big landholding and landgrabbing enterprises, and the widening and deepening of the mass base. The local organs of political power and the mass organizations must be further strengthened. Mass campaigns must be carried out to raise the level of the people’s consciousness on major issues, raise production, promote health work, step up the training of militia and self-defense units and carry out cultural activities on a wide scale. The guerrilla fronts must be developed in the direction of creating relatively stable base areas. The various forms of alliance must be built within the framework of the anti-imperialist and antifeudal united front.

Conditions for advancing the Philippine revolution are excellent. The No.1 imperialist power oppressing and exploiting the Filipino people and the people of the world is in the throes of a historically unprecedented economic and financial crisis that is worse than the Great Depression of 1929 and is incurring serious losses in its two current wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan. Contradictions are sharpening between the imperialist powers and the oppressed peoples and nations, among the imperialist powers and between the monopoly bourgeoisie and the working class in the imperialist countries.

The chronic crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system in the Philippines is rapidly worsening and is making the big compradors, landlords and their political agents more than ever incapable of ruling in the old way. The broad masses of the people are intensely desirous of revolutionary change and they trust the Communist Party of the Philippines as the leading force of the revolution. This is the Party that has steadfastly fought the domestic ruling system, the imperialist system of plunder and war and has upheld the aspirations of the Filipino people for national liberation and democracy and for a socialist and communist future.

I. Unprecedented Economic and Financial Crisis

For more than two years, we had observed the impending total unravelling and complete discredit of the “free market” pretense of monopoly capitalism and the full bankruptcy of the policy of “neoliberal globalization. ” But the leaders of the US and other imperialist countries and the puppet states were always lying and boasting about the so-called strong fundamentals of their economies. Only recently have they been compelled by the circumstances to admit that the US and global capitalist system are beset by the worst economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Soon after the bursting of the hightech bubble in the stock market in 2000, which had hit hard the pension funds and savings of at least 40% of American households, US authorities and financial institutions devised the housing bubble in order to hook American households into taking mortgages at low interest rates and into believing that the rising value of houses would enable them to borrow further and consume imports as much as they wanted even if they did not have enough income or employment. The increased hightech military production under the Bush regime could not make up for the longrunning industrial decline, service orientation and financialization of the US economy.

The housing bubble started to burst in 2006. A growing number of US households could not pay the amortization of their mortgages as interest rates were raised to counter inflation. From month to month the epidemic of foreclosures spread. This exposed the unbridled leveraging by and resultant bankruptcies of the biggest investment banks and financial institutions and other major commercial banks (Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Merril Lynch and Goldman Sachs), the biggest insurance company (the American International Group), the federal government sponsored enterprises (Federal National Mortgage Association or Fannie Mae and the Federal Housing Finance Agency or Freddie Mac), and so on.

The mortgage meltdown has exposed US financial institutions as having exported to Europe and other continents toxic financial products, involving the securitization of the bad mortgages, labeled with such exotic names as mortgaged-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, structured investment vehicles, credit default swaps and so on. These have generated a chain of financial collapses, including the credit crunch in interbank lending and in the money market and the stockmarket crash, not only in the US but also on a global scale. The US and other imperialist states have given priority to bailing out the banks and other financial institutions with public money rather than the people victimized by the depredations of monopoly finance capitalism.

The mortgage meltdown has certainly ignited the current financial crisis. But the fundamental cause of this crisis goes much deeper. It involves the ever persistent drive of the monopoly bourgeoisie to extract surplus value from the working class, to maximize superprofits even further by pushing down wage levels and thus to unwittingly contract the market by reducing the income of the working class and effective demand for products. Thus, the crisis of overproduction and the cycle of boom and bust. These have been further aggravated and deepened by the US’ drive to seek and exploit cheaper labor abroad as well as to provide investment and market accommodation to its main allies.

The US adopted the policy of “neoliberal globalization” to overcome the phenomenon of stagflation in the 1970s which it blamed on rising wage levels and government social spending but not on economic concessions it had to give to its anticommunist allies, military competition with the USSR in the Cold War and big government spending for military production, the overseas deployment of US military forces and the costly wars of aggression in Korea and Indochina. In accordance with its line of “neoliberal globalization, ” the US has pushed down domestic wage levels, caused industrial decline, favored the military-industrial complex and oil giants and promoted the so-called post-industrial service economy as well as the shadow financialization of the economy.

The falling real incomes of the American people relative to GDP has led to the recurrence of increasingly severe crisis of overproduction in the form of recessions from decade to decade since the 1980s. But the US has always resorted to debt financing in order to override recessions and the persistent trade and budgetary deficits. All three sectors of the US economy have gone into extreme and unsustainable borrowings: the government, the private corporations and the households. These have gone too far beyond the limits and have caused the current gravity of the US and global financial and economic crisis.

The US has incurred the understated total debt of US$53 trillion, which is 350 percent of the US GDP of US$14.6 trillion. This is a far cry from the Great Depression when such debt was only 250% of the US GDP. The US total debt consists of the national government debt of US$10.6 trillion, corporate debt (non-financial and financial) of US$23 trillion and household debt of US$14 trillion.

The US national debt was less than US$1 trillion at the end of the Carter administration in 1982. It went up to US$3.6 trillion by the end of the Reagan administration. This turned the US from No.1 creditor to No.1 debtor of the world. Reagan had engaged in highspeed, hightech military production, incurred large trade deficits in order to accommodate the exports of its anticommunist allies; and attracted foreign investments in US stocks and bonds. Clinton promoted “neoliberal globalization” and kept on increasing the trade deficit even as he balanced the budget. At the end of the Clinton term, the US national debt was US$5.7 trillion. The Bush regime bloated this even furtherat a much faster rate. The national debt now stands at US$10.6 trillion. A great part of this debt (estimated at US$2.5 trillion) is owed to China, Japan, United Kingdom, Germany, Saudi Arabia, the Caribbean banking center, and so on.

The US corporate debt of US$23 trillion is understated. The non-financial corporations take loans from the banks as well as issue bonds. The biggest US corporations like General Motors and General Electric are far more involved in finance than in production. It is easily conceivable that the financial corporations are far more indebted than the nonfinancial. Banks can generate credit nine to ten times that of bank deposits and, as a result of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, investment banks have been allowed to generate credit 12 to 30 or even more times the placements of investors. Under the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 1999, various types of financial institutions can generate derivatives without any restraint.

The US household debt is in the form of housing mortgages, auto loans, credit cards and student loans. It has been bloated mainly by the housing bubble. The general run of American households have negative savings; aggregate household income in relation to aggregate household debt has risen to 138%, with a 40-year record increase of 37%. Millions have lost their homes. The unemployment rate is higher than the official one of 6.7%, which excludes those who have stopped applying for jobs and those supposedly unqualified for available jobs. More than half a million are now losing jobs every month. The drastic fall of employment and income in US households spells further loss of effective demand for the products of both US and foreign productive enterprises.

It took decades for the current financial and economic crisis to grow before bursting . This will not be solved in the short term of one to two years. The solutions made so far, like the bail out for collapsing financial institutions, aggravate the problem. Government dispensing of public money for this sort of bailout is a case of further robbing those who have been robbed to bail out the thieves. It is also a case of throwing good money after bad. It does not at all revive production, employment and effective demand. Even the credit crunch among the banks has not eased because producer firms would not borrow money for production if they cannot sell their products. Bailout money is simply being used by the strongest finance monopoly groups to consolidate and enlarge their monopoly positions. Worst of all, the national debt bubble is growing and is about to burst. The market for treasury and corporate bonds is expected to collapse next year.

Obama’s plan of creating 2.5 million jobs through infrastructure projects and expansion of social services will not offset even only the low estimate of 4.0 million job losses from further financial collapses, bankruptcies, plant closures and mass layoffs. The public funds available for Keynesian pump-priming are limited by further demands of the financial institutions and giant non-financial corporations such as the Big Three automakers (General Motors, Ford and Chrysler), by the continuing wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, by the drastic reduction of tax collection and by the continuing need to import goods from abroad.

A prolonged recession or depression in the US similar to that in Japan is in the horizon. After the spike in food and oil prices, which delivered superprofits to the giant oil and food corporations, a deflationary trend has emerged and has prompted the US Federal Bank to cut down the basic interest rate to nearly zero. However, the beneficiaries are not the millions of American workers who have lost their jobs, homes, savings and pension funds, but the stronger financial institutions, which are gobbling up the weaker ones, A longrunning global depression is already being aggravated and deepened by the international credit squeeze and by reduced demand from the American consumer market.

Within the last quarter of this year, millions of workers have been laid off at an unprecedented rate in the imperialist countries and even more so in the neocolonies. The number of people who live on less than US$1 to US$2 a day is rapidly rising. A billion people go hungry daily. Two billion people have no access to clean water. The current turmoil guarantees even more rapid increase in misery in the years to come. Millions of low-wage workers in export-processing zones of monopoly capitalist firms in the neocolonies are particularly vulnerable to the reduced orders for consumer goods and semimanufactures in the industrial countries. Millions of peasants, farm workers and workers in the extractive industries are bound to suffer even graver destitution as demand for raw materials decline. Migrant workers, especially undocumented laborers will become ever more vulnerable, targeted as they are as scapegoats for rising unemployment in capitalist countries and sent back to their countries of origin.

Beneath their rhetorical concern over climate change and the environment, the imperialist countries continue to intensify plunder of natural resources in the neocolonies, They contunue to emit virtually all the greenhouse gasses that is causing global warming and is already leading to declining crop yields, increasing food and water insecurity, diseases and deaths in the exploited and oppressed countries.

Under the auspices of “neoliberal globalization, ” the US has been vaunted as the engine of growth and market of last resort for the global economy in the last three decades. But now, it has clearly become the center of the global financial and economic crisis and is thus clearly recognized as the generator of the destruction of productive forces and of socio-economic and political turmoil. As a result of the current severe crisis, the position of the US as the No. 1 imperialist power is deeply undermined, especially in economic and political terms, even if it remains the strongest in military terms. The current crisis is causing an over-all weakening of the US and it is loosening its control over its imperialist allies. The latter are scrambling to protect their national and ultra-national interests and are demanding a multipolar world and moving away from a unipolar world of unquestioned US dominance.

The US is being undermined not only by the financial and economic crisis but also by its own wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global deployment of its military forces. Iraq will remain a quagmire for the US and its puppets for as long as the US maintains military bases and troops and has a stranglehold over the Iraqi economy and oil resources. The Iraqi people will not give up their resistance. If the US under Obama brings more of its military forces to Afghanistan, it will ultimately suffer the same fate as the Soviet forces of aggression in the past. Afghanistan can become a more sucking quagmire for both the US and NATO.

Competition is growing among the imperialist powers for oil and other natural resources, markets, fields of investment and spheres of influence. Imperialist powers other than the US increasingly protect their national interest as they adopt fiscal and monetary measures independently of the US in order to cope with the financial and economic crisis and as they avoid or restrain themselves from being dragged by the US into wars of aggression. There are definite signs that certain imperialist powers are contradicting the position of the US on economic, financial, political and security issues.

As objects of imperialist interest and as active aspirants for a bigger say in global affairs, certain large but less developed countries like China and India have an impact on the changing balance of forces among the imperialist powers. China has become the biggest foreign creditor of the US even as it remains poor and dependent on the US as market for its cheap consumer manufactures and is vulnerable to the looming collapse of the bond market and the fall of the US dollar. However, it competes with the US for sources of oil and other natural resources and independently seeks markets and fields of investments in various parts of the world. Russia is using its oil and gas resources and its continuing military capabilities to keep itself a major imperialist power.

Complaints are growing against US dominance in the UN, IMF, World Bank, WTO and other global institutions. On the western front, France has joined Russia in demanding the formation of a new European security alliance to replace NATO and in opposing the missile shield put up by the US in Poland and Czechoslovakia. On the eastern front, China and Russia are spearheading the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a security alliance which includes the former Soviet republics in Central Asia and major countries in the Middle East and South Asia. Beneficial to the US at first, the full reintegration of Russia and China into the world capitalist system has in the long run resulted in the intensification of inter-imperialist contradictions rather than an amicable and peaceful expansion of capitalism.

Even as its No. 1 position is being undermined, the US remains a key player among the imperialist powers in the foreseeable future. It must be pointed out that the imperialist powers remain allied against the oppressed peoples and nations of the world and always try to shift the burden of crisis to them. The contradiction between the imperialist powers and the oppressed peoples and nations is still the main contradiction in the world, not only in terms of the given fact that the imperialists and their puppets inflict the worst forms of oppression and exploitation on the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America, but also because of the growing real and potential struggles for national and social liberation.

The current crisis of imperialism inflicts severe suffering on billions of people in the third world but also incites the people of the world to resist and provides them with a bigger room for maneuver in the struggle to liberate themselves from imperialism and all reaction. The broad masses of the people detest the ever worsening general crisis of the world capitalist system and their ever worsening oppression and exploitation. From year to year, we can expect the rise of various legal and illegal forms of mass resistance by the people.

The revolutionary armed struggle of the people will rise to a new and higher level in such countries as Iraq and Afghanistan, which the US and other imperialist powers invade and occupy. The long-running armed movements for national liberation and democracy, such as in the Philippines, Colombia, India, Peru and Turkey, will make great advances and will inspire more people’s wars to arise in various continents. The peoples and governments of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and other Latin American countries are noticeably asserting national independence against the hostile policies of the US imperialists.

South Asia remains the fertile ground for the rapid growth of the armed revolution for national liberation, democracy and socialism. The people’s war in Nepal has allowed the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) to overthrow the monarchy, establish a republic and take leadership over the coalition government. The people and revolutionary forces led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) can play the great role of bringing the world proletarian revolution to a new and higher level in the same way that those of Russia did in the wake of the First World War and those of China did in the wake of the Second World War. At any rate, the proletariat and peoples of Russia and China are in deep discontent on a wide scale. The revolutionary communist parties are steadily growing to raise high the red banner and legacy of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao.

The implosion of the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc revisionist regimes, the return of the worst forms of oppression and exploitation in Russia and China and the current depredations of the US and global financial and economic crisis expose the rottenness of the world capitalist system and point to the great challenges and opportunities for the peoples of the world to carry forward their revolutionary cause. Social unrest is now spreading in China, the former Soviet republics and former Soviet bloc countries. The people are increasingly rejecting capitalism and demanding socialism.

Within the imperialist countries, the class struggle between the monopoly bourgeoisie and the working class is surfacing and coming to the fore. The workers, the youth, women, the migrants seethe with anger as they face rising unemployment and decreasing income and the scandalous greed and arrogance of the monopoly bourgeoisie. They increasingly condemn capitalism and clamor for socialism. The Parties of the Left have gained strength in several countries of Europe. To deflect the proletariat and people from class struggle and anti-imperialist solidarity, the monopoly bourgeoisie and its slimy politicians are doing everything to drum up chauvinism, racism, fascism and war hysteria.

But it has been demonstrated time and again that the proletariat and people in the imperialist countries, including the US, are capable of rising against the exploitative and oppressive policies of monopoly capitalism. The current severity of the current financial and economic crisis has definitely begun to stir the broad masses of the people against the capitalist system. As the crisis prolongs for several years and probably more than a decade, there is ample opportunity for the revolutionary forces to arouse, organize and mobilize the masses and to develop and grow ideologically, politically and organizationally.

The total bankruptcy of “neoliberal globalization” is impressing the proletariat and people of the world that monopoly capitalism is evil because it destroys the forces of production and inflicts intolerable suffering and that there is an urgent necessity for revolutionary struggles for national liberation, democracy and socialism. The conditions of crisis are conducive to revolutionary activity but do not automatically or inevitably bring about revolution. The conscious and organized revolutionary forces, chiefly the revolutionary party of the proletariat, need to work and struggle hard in order to call upon and bring the broad masses of the people on to the road of revolution.

II. Desperate State of the Philippine Ruling System

The semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system in the Philippines is in chronic crisis, subjected as it is to the worst forms of exploitation and oppression by foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism. It is therefore vulnerable to the vagaries of the general crisis of the world capitalist system and to the current financial and economic crisis that has already been described by chieftains of imperialist countries as the worst since the Great Depression and by some economic analysts as unprecedented in the last 100 years.

However, most of the year, the Arroyo regime and its economic experts were giving false assurances to the Filipino people that the Philippines was decoupled from or even immune to the financial and economic crisis of the US and world capitalist system. They were boasting about the supposed strong fundamentals of what actually is a pre-industrial, semifeudal and agrarian economy, dependent on the export of raw materials and low value-added semimanufactures, on the remittances of overseas contract workers and on foreign borrowing for covering trade and budgetary deficits.

The lies of the regime have been ineffective, especially when the prices of food and fuel were soaring. The people are disgusted that even as the Philippines is an agricultural country and historically the base of the “miracle rice” it has become the No. 1 rice importer of the world. This has been a result of decades of rice dumping on the country under the auspices of trade liberalization, even way ahead of the schedule for tariff reduction set by the World Trade Organization. This has also been a result of converting land from the production of rice and corn to other crops for export or to entirely nonagricultural uses.

The regime boasted that by raising the people’s tax burden through the expanded value added tax under orders from the International Monetary Fund it had protected the economy from global financial and economic crisis. It pointed out that only 20% of Philippine exports go to the US and that any export drawdown would not be painful to the Philippines. In fact, the direct exports of the Philippines to the US amount to as much as 25%. Moreover, the increased Philippine exports to Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan are actually destined for the US after some additional processing.

Certainly, the contraction of the consumer market and production in the US hits the Philippines hard in terms of decreased US demand for Philippine exports. Worst of all, the international credit crunch deprives the Philippine rulers of the key resource for covering trade and budgetary deficits and for servicing old debts with new debts to conjure an illusion of economic growth. As the financial and economic crisis protracts and worsens, the demand for Filipino contract workers abroad will decrease. This means the decrease of the foreign exchange remittances as a major financial resource to which the Philippines has been accustomed.

The depression of the Philippine economy will worsen. The decrease of export income, foreign loans and remittances of overseas contract workers will mean less resources for Philippine production and consumption. Even now the Arroyo regime has already scaled down the previous projections of economic growth rates, which are anyway still exaggerated and do not fully take into account the credit crunch. The reality of depression will include more bankruptcies, closures, reduced production, mass layoffs and the drastic fall of incomes for the toiling masses and even for the middle social strata.

Under current circumstances, the economic depression in the Philippines is already causing acute and widespread discontent among the broad masses of the people. The demand for jobs, decent wages, industrial development, land reform, adequate social services and respect for the democratic rights of the working people will ring louder and move the broad masses of the people to march and rally on the streets and convene at various public places.

For the reactionaries, there is no way out of the depression and the chronic crisis of the ruling system. No part of the huge amounts of funds borrowed domestically and abroad, collected as taxes from the people or remitted by overseas contract workers has gone into industrial development. Even the agricultural land devoted to staple crops has been reduced in the shift to export crops, real estate speculation and other land-extensive enterprises.

The people will increasingly desire and demand a revolutionary way out of the economic and social crisis as the counterrevolutionar y rulers employ deception and violence to mislead and suppress them. The people will be further goaded to rebel by the counterrevolutionar ies themselves who trample on their basic democratic rights and who offer no solutions to the social and economic problems but only further betrayal of national independence, economic sovereignty and the national patrimony under the auspices of the totally discredited policy of “neoliberal globalization. “

The competing political factions of the ruling classes of big compradors and landlords are differentiated by the names of their parties and coalitions but are quite undifferentiated in their subservience to the US-dictated policy of “neoliberal globalization. ” What they similarly compete for are the blessings of the US and the spoils of political power. Whichever is the reactionary faction that ascends to power tends to monopolize the spoils. The opposition factions, on the the hand, preoccupy themselves with the clamor for clean government and against corruption, but avoid the fundamental issues of national independence, democracy, industrial development, genuine land reform, people’s culture and independent foreign policy.

Every reactionary ruling clique, from that of Ramos to that of Arroyo, has proposed to amend the 1987 Constitution of the reactionary government in order to extend its rule and delete or rewrite provisions that were the fruit of the struggle against the US-instigated Marcos fascist dictatorship, such as those restraining the proclamation of martial law, protecting human rights and civil liberties, upholding economic sovereignty and national patrimony and banning foreign military bases, foreign troops and nuclear weapons storage and transport on Philippine territory. In fact, these have been undermined and circumvented through legislation and executive agreements.

Even as the US-directed policy of “neoliberal globalization” has been totally discredited by the current financial and economic crisis, the minions of the Arroyo regime in the House of Representatives have proclaimed that their purpose in seeking to amend the 1987 constitution of the reactionary government is to cast away economic sovereignty and national patrimony and to allow foreign investors 100 percent ownership of land and all kinds of enterprises. The Arroyo regime has embarked on treason in exchange for prolonging itself in power.

The ever worsening social and economic crisis has continuously pushed the political crisis of the ruling system. And the ruling classes have increasingly become unable to rule with any lasting moral authority through any of the reactionary factions that assume power. The broad masses of the people have long become disgusted with the puppetry, corruption, mendacity and brutality that have characterized every reactionary ruling clique. They are therefore intensely desirous of revolutionary change and strongly wish the revolutionary party to lead and hasten the advance of the struggle for the overthrow of the entire ruling system and establish the people’s democratic state.

With the Arroyo ruling clique at the top, three political formations collaborate in an unstable alliance for dominating the people. These are the Kabalikat ng Mamamayang Pilipino (KAMPI) of the fake president Arroyo, the Lakas-NUCD of ex-president Ramos and the Nationalist People’s Coalition of the old Marcos crony Eduardo Cojuangco. These are the largest and most moneyed political formations but are discredited, especially for corruption.

Ranged against these dominant formations are the far smaller parties which stand to benefit from the discredit of the dominant parties, but which tend to be fractious. These include the Nacionalista Party of Manuel Villar, the Liberal Party of Mar Roxas, the Partido ng Masang Pilipino of former president Joseph Estrada, the PDP-Laban of Aquilino Pimentel, and the makeshift coalition called United Opposition (UNO).

The Arroyo ruling clique is pushing charter change through a constituent assembly in a maneuver to prolong its rule. But the Senate has refused to collaborate with the House of Representatives, especially because of popular opposition to the Arroyo project of charter change. The Arroyo ruling clique is preparing to rig the 2010 elections in order to protect its loot and secure impunity for its criminal liabilities. It is preparing to employ massive electoral fraud and terrorism to secure the election of its own candidates.

Contradictions among the reactionary political formations are bound to sharpen as the Arroyo ruling clique tries to rig the 2010 elections as in 2004. Contradictions among the factions in the military and police will also sharpen. They have run deep and wide because the Arroyo ruling clique has persecuted those officers and men who have denounced its criminal policies and activities and has favored those who are not only partisan of the ruling clique but are also flagrantly engaged in corruption and other lucrative criminal activities within and outside the military and police services.

The Party is correct in adopting and implementing the policy of the broad united front in taking advantage of the contradictions and rifts among the reactionaries and in seeking the objective or conscious alliance and cooperation of groups and individuals in the reactionary parties and coalitions, in the civil bureaucracy and in the military and police services who express patriotic and progressive positions against the reactionaries who are the worst and are the most rabidly loyal to the imperialists. The broad united front has taken up important issues against the Arroyo regime, including electoral fraud in 2004, numerous mega cases of corruption, the gross and systematic violations of human rights, unequal trade and economic agreements with foreign powers and the scheme to amend the 1987 constitution.

The Arroyo regime stands as the worst of the reactionaries and is therefore categorized as the enemy of the people and the revolutionary movement. It is comparable to the Marcos fascist dictatorship in its puppetry to US imperialism. It caninely follows the US-dictated policies of “neoliberal globalization” and “war on terrorism” despite the bankruptcy and total discredit of these policies. It is rated as the the most corrupt regime in the whole of Asia and the No.2 most corrupt in the entire world. It has engaged in gross and systematic violations of human rights.

These human rights violations include the massive military campaigns of suppression against workers, urban poor, peasant masses and national minorities; and the extrajudicial killings, disappearances and torture of legal democratic activists (including workers, peasants, women, youth, church people, lawyers, human rights defenders and peace advocates) and consultants of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) who are guaranteed safety and immunity under the GRP-NDFP Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees.

The US imperialists have instigated the Arroyo regime to unleash barbaric military campaigns of suppression against the people and the revolutionary forces and to prevent the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations from proceeding to address the roots of the armed conflict with social, economic, political and constitutional reforms. The US and the Arroyo regime have drummed up the so-called “global war on terror” in order to allow US military intervention in the civil war between the revolutionary and counterrevolutionar y forces and the continuous basing and operation of US military forces in our country.

In line with the dictates of its US master, the Arroyo regime has rendered impossible the resumption of formal talks between the negotiating panels in the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations by preconditioning it with the surrender and pacification of the revolutionary forces and people under the guise of a prolonged ceasefire and by refusing to affirm and comply with the previously signed bilateral agreements without the precondition of a prolonged ceasefire. The malicious objective of the regime is to replace the peace negotiations with ceasefire and surrender negotiations, discard the previously signed agreements and prevent substantive negotiations on social, economic, political and constitutional reforms. After murdering so many NDFP consultants and progressive activists, the Arroyo regime demands the surrender of the very life of the entire revolutionary movement.

The Party and the entire revolutionary movement of the people have no choice but to intensify the revolutionary armed struggle against the priorly escalating military campaigns of suppression against the people under Oplan Bantay Laya and the Enhanced National Internal Security Plan. The New People’s Army and all other revolutionary forces of the people can take advantage of the rapidly worsening crisis of the domestic ruling system and the US and world capitalist system. Most concretely, they can take advantage of the fact that the reactionary government and armed forces are now faced with the problem of having to fight on two war fronts, one in Moroland and another all over the Philippine archipelago.

The Arroyo regime has closed the door to peace negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front by casting away the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MoA-AD) and demanding the resumption of informal talks without the MoA-AD. It has also closed the door to the resumption of formal talks with the NDFP by preconditioning it on the violation of The Hague Joint Declaration and all other previously signed agreements.

It is of strategic importance to the Filipino people and the Bangsamoro to fight for their revolutionary cause in their respective territories and to maximize their unity, coordination and cooperation in accordance with the longstanding alliance agreement between the NDFP and the MILF.

It is to the great advantage of the revolutionary forces and the people represented by the NDFP and the MILF that in common they fight a thoroughly discredited and isolated regime under severe conditions of domestic and global crisis. They have the critical mass to systematically deliver lethal blows against the many weak points of the enemy armed forces and ruling system. The main thing is to hit hard at those weak points in order to incapacitate and destroy the ruling system. Thus the revolutionary strength of the people can further grow and win greater victories. We can trust the people and the revolutionary forces to build a new Philippines that is independent, democratic, just, progressive and peaceful.

III. Great Victories of the Communist Party of the Philippines

In the last forty years, the Communist Party of the Philippines has won great ideological, political and organizational victories which are of lasting value and have served to advance the new democratic revolution of the Filipino people against US imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords. These victories have been won against tremendous odds through resolute and militant struggles that have gone through twists and turns but have ascended to new and higher levels of revolutionary consciousness and fighting capability.

The US imperialists and their local puppets, have unleashed so many nationwide and localized campaigns of military suppression against the Party, the New People’s Army and the Filipino people in vicious attempts to destroy the armed revolutionary movement. After trying in the period of 1969-71, to “nip in the bud” the people’s war in one and then in two guerrilla fronts, the US imperialists instigated the Marcos regime to impose fascist dictatorship on the people for 14 years–from 1972 until this was weakened by the people’s resistance and brought down by an uprising in 1986. Then this would be followed by the series of post-Marcos regimes, pretending to be democratic and trying in vain to destroy the people’s democratic revolution through deception and violence.

All attempts to destroy the armed revolution have failed. They have merely served to make the people suffer further and incite them to fight more fiercely for their national and social liberation. We must underscore the fact that the new democratic revolution through protracted people’s war has endured and has advanced in a big and all-round way in a country, which has long been a major base of US imperialist hegemony in the entire East Asia. This is a great victory which is ever inspiring to the Filipino people and other peoples of the world.

In leading the Philippine revolution successfully, the Party has always sought to integrate the theory of Marxism-Leninism- Maoism with the concrete conditions of the Philippines and with the concrete practice of the revolution. It has seriously studied the history of the Filipino people and the international working class movement and has taken advantage of crisis conditions of, and contradictions within, the Philippine ruling system and the world capitalist system.

In ideological work, the Party has firmly adhered to Marxism-Leninism- Maoism and has always sought to develop the dialectical materialist stand, viewpoint and method among Party cadres and members, rejecting subjectivism, be it empiricism or dogmatism. In political work, it has set forth the line of new democratic revolution through protracted people’s war, rejecting Right and “Left” opportunism. In organizational work, it upholds the principle of democratic centralism, rejecting liberalism and bureaucratism, and has built itself nationwide and struck deep roots among the toiling masses of workers and peasants.

The Party has improved its work and style of work by conducting periodic and timely sessions of criticism and self-criticism. But major errors can persist and grow when Party cadres in higher organs or even in the Central Committee continue to hold andspread these in the Party. In the face of such errors, a rectification movement of major proportions needs to be conducted. In this regard, the Party has victoriously engaged in two great rectification movements, each being a campaign of education to draw lessons from experience, rectify major errors and set forth the tasks for advancing the revolutionary cause.

The First Great Rectification Movement prepared the founding of the Party from 1965 onward and proceeded during the foundational years of the Party from 1968 to 1977. It criticized and repudiated the accumulated errors of the Lavas and Lavaite revisionists and the Taruc-Sumulong gangster clique. The Second Great Rectification Movement dealt with the “Left” and Right opportunist errors in the 1980s and early 1990s. The “Left” opportunists inflicted serious harm to the Party and the mass base during most of the 1980s. After the “Left” opportunists openly swung to the Right in the late 1980s, the Right opportunists sought to liquidate the Party with their eclectic hodgepodge of notions derived from bourgeois liberalism, Gorbachovism, Trotskyism and social democracy.

As a consequence of the resounding victory of the Second Great Rectification Movement, which took its course for more than six years since 1992, the Party has revitalized and further strengthened itself ideologically, politically and organizationally. The worst of the “Left” and Right opportunists have turned into out-and-out anticommunists and counterrevolutionar ies. They act as special agents of imperialism and reaction as they specialize in anticommunist slander. Some of them have become racketeers in imperialist- funded “nongovernmental organizations” and others have joined the military and intelligence services of the enemy as consultants and psywar experts.

The Party has developed its ideological line of Marxism-Leninism- Maoism by studying the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao as well as by confronting, exposing and repudiating opportunism, reformism and revisionism and the various anti-communist and anti-socialist ideas. It has taken up the most important issues in the history and current circumstances of the revolutionary struggles of the proletariat and people in the Philippines and the world. It has confronted the problems of foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism and has advanced the theory and practice of new democratic revolution.

The Party has produced and issued major decisions, analytical articles and books that have a high theoretical and practical value. These are published in Pilipino and other Philippine languages as well as in English and other foreign languages. Together with the classical works of the great communist thinkers and leaders, they are in the syllabi of study courses undertaken by the Party. Study guides and aids are provided to enable the workers, peasants and other people with less formal education to advance in their theoretical and political education.

The primary course includes the study of the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism- Maoism and the history, basic problems of the Filipino people and the new democratic revolution as solution. The intermediate course seeks to analyze and compare the Philippine revolution with other revolutions abroad. The advance course involves the study of the works of the great communist thinkers and leaders in philosophy, political economy, social science, strategy and tactics and history of the international communist movement.

The Party membership runs into several tens of thousands. It is deeply rooted among the toiling masses of workers and peasants through the length and breadth of the Philippine archipelago. Party members are recruited from the revolutionary mass movement of workers, peasants, women, youth and other sectors. They are developed through courses of study and training in and out of their work units, through collective work and individual assignments and through revolutionary mass struggles.

The Party follows the principle of democratic centralism, with centralism based on democracy and democracy guided by centralism. A territorial structure of leading organs and organizations covers the entire country at various levels: regions, provinces, districts, cities and municipalities and barangays. The leading organs have staff organizations that assist them in various types of work. The basic organization of the Party is the branch, which is based in local communities, factories, farms, transport lines, campuses, offices and the like. The Party group is also the basic Party organization at various levels of a mass organization or social institution.

The Party has drawn the general political line of new democratic revolution through protracted people’s war for the purpose of overthrowing the semi-colonial and semifeudal ruling system and establishing the people’s democratic state system on the basis of the worker-peasant alliance. It wields the weapons of revolutionary armed struggle and the united front. It takes the mass line. It relies on the masses and learns from the masses to be able to arouse, organize and mobilize them.

The Party has aroused, organized and mobilized the broad masses of the people in their millions. It leads the thousands of fighters of the New People’s Army and millions of organized peasants in 120 to 130 guerrilla fronts in 70 provinces, more than 800 municipalities and more than 10,000 barangays. The Party cadres within the people’s army and in the localities have formed the organs of political power and the mass organizations of workers, peasants, women, cultural activists and others. Units of the people’s army can move freely in more than 80 percent of the Philippines because the regular personnel of the reactionary forces can occupy no more than 10% of the country at any single period of time.

Historically, the New People’s Army has been the largest revolutionary army ever built in the Philippines. It is larger than the Philippine revolutionary army against Spanish colonialism in the period of 1896 to 1898 and then against US imperialism from 1899 onwards. It is far larger than the Hukbong Bayan Laban sa Hapon or the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan. On its own track, the NPA is stronger than what it was in the 1980s in both political and military terms. The NPA never reached the level of 25,000 riflemen in the 1980s. Its peak strength in that decade was only 6,100, without any clear accounting of firearms lost in Mindanao as a result of Kampanyang Ahos.

In the countryside, the Party has integrated the revolutionary armed struggle, land reform and base building in order to advance the new democratic revolution. Revolutionary armed struggle is the main form of struggle. It destroys the armed power of the big compradors and landlords and thereby builds the people’s army in the countryside until it gains the capability of seizing political power in the cities. As a result of the Second Great Rectification Movement, the NPA has strengthened itself politically and militarily by waging intensive and extensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever widening and deepening mass base.

Only with armed power have the Party and the people been able to carry out land reform as the main content of the democratic revolution. This has involved the minimum program of rent reduction, elimination of usury, raising the wages of farm workers, improving prices at the farm gate and raising production in agriculture and other economic activities. On the basis of such program, it is possible to move up to the maximum level of land confiscation and free distribution of land. Upon the advance of the armed struggle and agrarian revolution, it becomes possible to move up from the level of guerrilla fronts to that of stable base areas by strengthening the organs of political power, the mass organizations, the militia units and self-defense units.

The Party has built the united front as an important weapon of the new democratic revolution. This weapon involves several types of alliances. The most important of these is the basic alliance of the workers and peasants. It is the alliance of the working class as the leading class and the peasantry as the main force of the Philippine revolution. As the advanced detachment of the working class, the Party has pursued the antifeudal class line in its alliance with the peasant masses: rely mainly on the poor peasants and farm workers, win over the middle peasants, neutralize the rich peasants and take advantage of the splits among the landlords in order to isolate and destroy the power of the biggest and most despotic landlords.

Only with an effective basic alliance of the workers and peasants for the armed struggle can the other types of alliances in the united front become effective. We refer to the progressive alliance of such basic revolutionary forces as toiling masses and the urban petty bourgeoisie, the patriotic alliance of these progressive forces and the middle bourgeoisie and the broad united front of patriotic forces and certain reactionary forces to oppose the enemy, defined as the worst reactionary force and most servile to imperialism.

The Party has employed the united front policy and the various forms of alliances in order to augment the strength of the basic revolutionary forces and to reach, arouse and mobilize the people in their millions in various forms of struggle and on a wide range of issues. Together with allied organizations, the Party has built the National Democratic Front of the Philippines as the united front framework for all basic revolutionary forces. The NDFP is open to internal broadening as to include patriotic forces of the middle bourgeoisie or external broadening as to engage in a formal or informal broad united front with reactionary forces opposed to the worst reactionary force at a given time.

In legal mass struggles against US imperialism and the worst of the local reactionaries, the Party always calls on the broad masses of the people and the patriotic and progressive forces to unite and act resolutely and militantly. The people have rallied to the Party’s calls and have risen in massive protest actions that have led to the ouster of Marcos and Estrada from power. They have foiled schemes to amend the 1987 constitution for the purpose of serving pro-imperialist and reactionary ends as they continue to expose and condemn the pro-imperialist and reactionary policies of the ruling clique.

By itself alone, the legal democratic mass movement may oust a particular reactionary regime from power but cannot overthrow the entire reactionary ruling system. The Party has always recognized that the legal democratic mass movement can weaken the ruling system, gain strength and affirm the justness of the revolutionary cause of the people. But such a movement is vulnerable to brutal attacks by the reactionary die-hards. In this connection, the Party has constantly urged patriotic and progressive legal activists to join the revolutionary armed struggle when they are targeted for extrajudicial killing, kidnapping, torture and incarceration by the reactionary state.

The Party stands for the democratic rights and welfare of overseas Filipinos and has called upon them to support the revolutionary struggle of the Filipino people for national liberation and democracy. In scores of foreign countries, it has encouraged Filipino immigrants, permanent residents and land-based and seaborne contract workers in forming their associations and in fighting for their own rights and interests.

Our Party enjoys a high standing in the international communist movement as well as in the broad anti-imperialist movement. This is due to the great victories of the Party and the Filipino people in waging the new democratic revolution against US imperialism and the local reactionaries as well as due to the revolutionary stand taken by the Party on international issues. Communist and workers parties study the publications of our Party and seek exchanges of ideas and experiences with our Party. Our Party has established and developed comradely or friendly relations with other parties through bilateral meetings and multilateral conferences. It has thereby entered into agreements of practical cooperation in the spirit of proletarian internationalism. A broad range of anti-imperialist and democratic forces has also established relations with the Party and the mass organizations led by the Party in the spirit of anti-imperialist solidarity.

IV. Plan for a Qualitative Leap of the Armed Revolution

Our Party considers of crucial importance how to bring the new democratic revolution to a new and higher level of development or a qualitative leap on account of the rich accumulated revolutionary experience, strength and great victories of the Party, New People’s Army, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and the broad masses of the Filipino people and the ever worsening crisis and depression of the Philippine reactionary ruling system and the world capitalist system.

It is necessary for the Party to formulate the plan for accelerating the advance of ideological, political and organizational work, enlarging the subjective forces of the revolution and taking advantage of the ever worsening crisis of imperialism and the local reactionaries in order to approach the goal of overthrowing the rotten ruling system and establishing the people’s democratic republic.

We can have a five-year central plan of work. It must have clear objectives to be accomplished from year to year involving cumulative growth as well as flexibility and adjustability in order to achieve better results. It must be based on the current level of strength, track records and plans of the lower Party organs and organizations, on further inquiries to confirm current strength and estimate potential growth and on a determination to be clear about tasks and methods of carrying out the tasks and undertaking the necessary check-ups, follow-ups and necessary adjustments.

The overriding objective of the plan must be to increase the strength of the revolutionary forces and approach the goal of destroying the ruling system and replacing it with the people’s democratic state. The plan must encompass the following points:

1. Educate and train Party cadres and members on the ideological line of Marxism-Leninism- Maoism and the general political line of new democratic revolution

The Party must educate and train a large number of Party cadres and members on the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism- Maoism and on the general line of new democratic revolution through protracted people’s war in order to serve as the steel core and leading force of the revolutionary mass movement. We need tens of thousands of Party cadres and hundreds of thousands and then millions of Party members to carry out the gigantic tasks of the revolution and bring about a qualitative leap in the revolutionary movement.

The Party branch and groups must undertake the basic political course and the basic Party course in order to promptly educate and train a large number of Party candidate-members to become full Party members and for the latter to refresh and consolidate their knowledge. The higher Party organs must undertake the intermediate and advanced Party courses and pay attention to the education and training of instructors for all courses of study.

The Party organs concerned must plan how the existing and forthcoming Party candidate-members must take and finish the basic Party course without any delay. Those with lesser ability than others to read and comprehend original texts must be provided with simplified study materials and interesting visual aids. Those with more ability must provide comradely assistance to others in the process of learning under the direction of the instructor.

2. Accelerate the recruitment of Party candidate-members from the revolutionary mass movement and expand the Party boldly

The Party must recruit candidate members from among the most active and advanced elements of the mass movement. Our constant policy is to expand the Party without letting in a single enemy agent. The mass movement is a reliable way of determining the honest elements who accept the Party Constitution and Program and who are resolute and militant in pursuing the general line of people’s struggle for national liberation and democracy. We may also recruit such elements in reactionary institutions and organizations who accept the Party Constitution and Program but who must take precautions in order to carry out effectively special tasks for the Party.

It is the responsibility of the Party organs concerned to make candidate members become full members within the time specified by the Party Constitution, according to class considerations. Immediately after taking the general and special mass courses, advanced elements of the mass movement should be able to take the mass and the basic Party course as candidate members. To achieve full Party membership, the candidate member must complete the basic Party course, must be active in a Party branch or group and must carry out the tasks assigned. Such tasks in the period of candidature may be construed as the trial work.

The Party is aware that its organizational growth has been restrained by negligence to recruit candidate members and if and when these are recruited at whatever rate there is negligence in providing the basic Party course and minding the period of candidature. All Party cadres and members are reminded that mass activists become inspired when they become Party candidate members and the latter become even more inspired to work harder and fight more fiercely for the revolutionary cause when they become full Party members and that the Party will be capable of accomplishing greater victories if there is a cumulative increase of Party cadres and members.

3. Intensify the campaigns to arouse, organize and mobilise the people along the general line of the new democratic revolution.

We must always learn from the masses through social investigation of their oppressed and exploited conditions and their concrete needs and demands. Thus, we learn how to carry out mass campaigns to arouse, organize and mobilize the people. We must trust and rely on the people in being able to act effectively on issues that concern their rights and interests and to take the direction towards empowering and benefiting themselves along the general line of the new democratic revolution.

The Party must ensure that the leaders and members of the mass organizations undergo and understand the general mass course on Philippine society and revolution and the appropriate sectoral mass course. With such a growing corps of conscious activists in the mass organizations, the Party can bring the revolutionary message to ever larger numbers of people. The task of arousing the people must be well carried out through mass actions and publications and in various forms of agitation and propaganda.

The mass organizations of workers, peasants, women, youth, professionals, cultural activists and other sectoral or issue-based formations must be constantly expanded and consolidated. Every mass organization must have a clear plan of expanding its membership cumulatively and consolidating it through political education, tasking and checking of results. Mass mobilizations and mass campaigns should be ways for exercising the current strength as well as increasing strength by attracting more people to become members.

4. Intensify the revolutionary armed struggle and hit the targets to maximize the political and military victories

Under the absolute leadership of the Party, the New People’s Army must continue to pursue the strategic line of protracted people’s war. It must grow in strength in the countryside until it attains the capability of seizing the cities on a nationwide scale. The revolutionary armed struggle is integrated with the agrarian revolution and the building of the mass base.

The NPA must advance from the stage of the strategic defensive to that of the strategic stalemate and finally to that of the strategic offensive. At every strategic stage, it must launch tactical offensives to change the balance of forces by inflicting more and more defeats on the enemy and gaining more and more armed strength through increased fighting experience, weapons and technical capabilities.

Currently, the NPA is waging intensive and extensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever expanding and deepening mass base. It must intensify this guerrilla warfare in order to wipe out enemy units, destroy enemy facilities, interdict enemy lines of supply, force the enemy to take guard duties and go on the defensive. It must also dismantle the landgrabbing operations of foreign and local agri-corporations, mining companies, logging companies for export, real estate companies and similar enterprises that reduce the land for agriculture and land reform and that result in the destruction of the environment.

The NPA must deal with the impunity of high bureaucrats and military officials in perpetrating treason, plunder and human rights violations. Those who commit these grave crimes are subject to summons for investigation and arrest and if armed and dangerous or protected by armed personnel are subject to battle by the NPA arresting unit. Retirement from reactionary government service does not free the suspects from criminal liabilities, arrest or battle. Close relatives and friends who benefit from the criminal offenses or fruits thereof must be treated as accomplices in crime. Dynasty-building and cronyism must be combated.

5. Raise land reform to a new and higher level towards the maximum level

The Party must raise land reform to a new and higher level towards the maximum program of land reform, wherever possible. The minimum land reform program may be maintained wherever it is still advantageous to the tillers and the requirements for maximum land reform are not yet present, such as the sufficient strength and readiness of the Party, the people’s army and the peasant association.

In striving for maximum land reform, the main blow must be directed at the big despotic landlords and the landgrabbing corporations that have armed personnel or use the reactionary military and police to oppress the peasant masses and fight the revolutionary movement. The NPA must employ the tactics of dismantling and rendering unprofitable the operations of these land-greedy entities and thus forcing them to leave the land. Concomitantly the landless tillers must be organized to take over the land.

When the despots and landgrabbers insist on holding the land by employing the reactionary military and police and the private armed guards, the NPA must turn the latter into sources of weapons by repeatedly assaulting the isolated guard posts or ambushing the guards on the road. The bigger the landholding, the more difficult it is to guard. It would prove excessively costly for the big landlords or the corporations to try to hold the land against the resolute resistance of the people and the people’s army.

6. Develop the guerrilla fronts toward becoming relatively stable base areas

The guerrilla fronts must be increased to the level of 168. This means having a guerrilla front in every congressional district in all the provinces in consonance with the line of intensive and extensive guerrilla warfare based on an ever widening and deepening mass base. Armed city partisan units with specific missions in highly urbanised congressional districts can be deployed and directed from the nearest guerrilla front commands in coordination with the appropriate urban district Party organ.

Having a definite goal for increasing the number of guerrilla fronts leads us to think of the next stage in the development of revolutionary territory. It is realistic and logical to anticipate and work for the emergence of relatively stable base areas from the increase, merger, integration or expansion of existing guerrilla fronts under a base area command, capable of launching company-size tactical offensives on the scale of a province or several provinces, if based on an inter-provincial border area.

To build the relatively stable base area, the Party must lead the NPA in suppressing and driving away the oppressors and exploiters and dismantling the reactionary organs of political power over extensive areas. The Party, the people’s army, the revolutionary organs of political power and the mass organizations must attain a new and higher level of development. As internal security is maintained by the people’s militia and the self-defense units of the mass organizations, the NPA fighting units can increase and intensify their tactical offensives and carry out battles with short rest periods.

7. Develop the various alliances under the united front policy in order to reach the people in ever larger numbers

We must develop the various alliances under the united front policy in order to arouse , organize and mobilize the people in ever larger numbers. The most important of these alliances is the basic worker-peasant alliance as it is the very foundation of the people’s democratic revolution. It combines the working class as the revolutionary leading class and the peasantry as the most numerous class and main force of the revolution. The people’s democratic government is based now and in the future on the worker-peasant alliance.

We must continue to develop the progressive alliance of the toiling masses of workers and peasants with the urban petty bourgeoisie. All of them are the basic forces of the revolution. At the moment,their alliance is best embodied in the revolutionary underground by the National Democratic Front of the Philippines. We must also continue to develop the patriotic alliance of the basic revolutionary forces with the middle bourgeoisie by promoting anti-imperialism and espousing national industrial development.

Further, we must develop the broad united front, involving the alliance of the patriotic and progressive forces with certain sections of the reactionary classes against the enemy, defined as the worst reactionary clique and most servile to imperialism. This kind of alliance is temporary and unstable because the allies are reactionary in character and may abandon or betray the alliance. In this regard, we must always be vigilant, maintain independence and initiative, be skillful at unity and struggle and gain revolutionary strength while the alliance holds.

8. Uphold proletarian internationalism and broad anti-imperialist solidarity

The Party must uphold proletarian internationalism and remain active in the international communist movement. The best way we can contribute to the advance of the world proletarian revolution is to make further advances and win further victories in the ongoing new democratic revolution in the Philippines and to condemn and combat imperialism, revisionism and all reaction. We must exchange revolutionary experiences and ideas with other Parties and arrive at possible and necessary forms of practical cooperation.

The Party must uphold the broad anti-imperialist solidarity of the people of the world. Together with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, it has long been active in promoting anti-imperialist solidarity by relating to, and cooperating with, national liberation movements and various people’s organizations and institutions abroad. We are encouraged that mass organizations of the Filipino people are active domestically and internationally in fighting imperialist plunder and war which have been pushed by the US under such slogans as “neoliberal globalization” and “war on terror.”

The Party must further develop its relations with parties, people’s organizations and institutions abroad not only to garner support for the Filipino people in their struggle for national liberation and democracy but also to contribute what it can and participate in the efforts of all peoples to attain greater freedom, democracy, social justice, development and world peace.

For an Ecosocialist Response to the Ecological Crisis

2008-12-26T21:01:00.003-04:00

A Call for signatures

The declaration that follows was written and prepared by an elected committee, for this purpose, at the 2007 Paris Ecosocialist Conference. The committee included Ian Angus, Joel Kovel and Michael Löwy, who were also aided by Danielle Follett. This coming year, 2009, in January, it will be distributed at the World Social Forum in Belem, Brazil.

I fully endorse the content of the declaration, and if you to would wish to add your name to the list of signatories who support the analysis and political perspectives set forth in this statement, you can email your name and country of residence to ecosocialism at gmail dot com

The Belem Ecosocialist Declaration

“The world is suffering from a fever due to climate change, and the disease is the capitalist development model.”
— Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, September 2007

Humanity’s Choice

Humanity today faces a stark choice: ecosocialism or barbarism.

We need no more proof of the barbarity of capitalism, the parasitical system that exploits humanity and nature alike. Its sole motor is the imperative toward profit and thus the need for constant growth. It wastefully creates unnecessary products, squandering the environment’s limited resources and returning to it only toxins and pollutants. Under capitalism, the only measure of success is how much more is sold every day, every week, every year – involving the creation of vast quantities of products that are directly harmful to both humans and nature, commodities that cannot be produced without spreading disease, destroying the forests that produce the oxygen we breathe, demolishing ecosystems, and treating our water, air and soil like sewers for the disposal of industrial waste.

Capitalism’s need for growth exists on every level, from the individual enterprise to the system as a whole. The insatiable hunger of corporations is facilitated by imperialist expansion in search of ever greater access to natural resources, cheap labor and new markets. Capitalism has always been ecologically destructive, but in our lifetimes these assaults on the earth have accelerated. Quantitative change is giving way to qualitative transformation, bringing the world to a tipping point, to the edge of disaster. A growing body of scientific research has identified many ways in which small temperature increases could trigger irreversible, runaway effects – such as rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet or the release of methane buried in permafrost and beneath the ocean – that would make catastrophic climate change inevitable.

Left unchecked, global warming will have devastating effects on human, animal and plant life. Crop yields will drop drastically, leading to famine on a broad scale. Hundreds of millions of people will be displaced by droughts in some areas and by rising ocean levels in others. Chaotic, unpredictable weather will become the norm. Air, water and soil will be poisoned. Epidemics of malaria, cholera and even deadlier diseases will hit the poorest and most vulnerable members of every society.

The impact of the ecological crisis is felt most severely by those whose lives have already been ravaged by imperialism in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and indigenous peoples everywhere are especially vulnerable. Environmental destruction and climate change constitute an act of aggression by the rich against the poor.

Ecological devastation, resulting from the insatiable need to increase profits, is not an accidental feature of capitalism: it is built into the system’s DNA and cannot be reformed away. Profit-oriented production only considers a short-term horizon in its investment decisions, and cannot take into account the long-term health and stability of the environment. Infinite economic expansion is incompatible with finite and fragile ecosystems, but the capitalist economic system cannot tolerate limits on growth; its constant need to expand will subvert any limits that might be imposed in the name of “sustainable development.” Thus the inherently unstable capitalist system cannot regulate its own activity, much less overcome the crises caused by its chaotic and parasitical growth, because to do so would require setting limits upon accumulation – an unacceptable option for a system predicated upon the rule: Grow or Die!

If capitalism remains the dominant social order, the best we can expect is unbearable climate conditions, an intensification of social crises and the spread of the most barbaric forms of class rule, as the imperialist powers fight among themselves and with the global south for continued control of the world’s diminishing resources.

At worst, human life may not survive.

Capitalist Strategies for Change

There is no lack of proposed strategies for contending with ecological ruin, including the crisis of global warming looming as a result of the reckless increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The great majority of these strategies share one common feature: they are devised by and on behalf of the dominant global system, capitalism.

It is no surprise that the dominant global system which is responsible for the ecological crisis also sets the terms of the debate about this crisis, for capital commands the means of production of knowledge, as much as that of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Accordingly, its politicians, bureaucrats, economists and professors send forth an endless stream of proposals, all variations on the theme that the world’s ecological damage can be repaired without disruption of market mechanisms and of the system of accumulation that commands the world economy.

But a person cannot serve two masters – the integrity of the earth and the profitability of capitalism. One must be abandoned, and history leaves little question about the allegiances of the vast majority of policy-makers. There is every reason, therefore, to radically doubt the capacity of established measures to check the slide to ecological catastrophe.

And indeed, beyond a cosmetic veneer, the reforms over the past thirty-five years have been a monstrous failure. Isolated improvements do of course occur, but they are inevitably overwhelmed and swept away by the ruthless expansion of the system and the chaotic character of its production.

One example demonstrates the failure: in the first four years of the 21st Century, global carbon emissions were nearly three times as great per annum as those of the decade of the 1990s, despite the appearance of the Kyoto Protocols in 1997.

Kyoto employs two devices: the “Cap and Trade” system of trading pollution credits to achieve certain reductions in emissions, and projects in the global south – the so-called “Clean Development Mechanisms” – to offset emissions in the highly industrialized nations. These instruments all rely upon market mechanisms, which means, first of all, that atmospheric carbon dioxide becomes a commodity under the control of the same interests that created global warming. Polluters are not compelled to reduce their carbon emissions, but allowed to use their power over money to control the carbon market for their own ends, which include the devastating exploration for yet more carbon-based fuels. Nor is there a limit to the amount of emission credits which can be issued by compliant governments.

Since verification and evaluation of results are impossible, the Kyoto regime is not only incapable of controlling emissions, it also provides ample opportunities for evasion and fraud of all kinds. As even the Wall Street Journal put it in March, 2007, emissions trading “would make money for some very large corporations, but don’t believe for a minute that this charade would do much about global warming.”

The Bali climate meetings in 2007 opened the way for even greater abuses in the period ahead. Bali avoided any mention of the goals for drastic carbon reduction put forth by the best climate science (90% by 2050); it abandoned the peoples of the global south to the mercy of capital by giving jurisdiction over the process to the World Bank; and made offsetting of carbon pollution even easier.

In order to affirm and sustain our human future, a revolutionary transformation is needed, where all particular struggles take part in a greater struggle against capital itself. This larger struggle cannot remain merely negative and anti-capitalist. It must announce and build a different kind of society, and this is ecosocialism.

The Ecosocialist Alternative

The ecosocialist movement aims to stop and to reverse the disastrous process of global warming in particular and of capitalist ecocide in general, and to construct a radical and practical alternative to the capitalist system. Ecosocialism is grounded in a transformed economy founded on the non-monetary values of social justice and ecological balance. It criticizes both capitalist “market ecology” and productivist socialism, which ignored the earth’s equilibrium and limits. It redefines the path and goal of socialism within an ecological and democratic framework.

Ecosocialism involves a revolutionary social transformation, which will imply the limitation of growth and the transformation of needs by a profound shift away from quantitative and toward qualitative economic criteria, an emphasis on use-value instead of exchange-value.

These aims require both democratic decision-making in the economic sphere, enabling society to collectively define its goals of investment and production, and the collectivization of the means of production. Only collective decision-making and ownership of production can offer the longer-term perspective that is necessary for the balance and sustainability of our social and natural systems.

The rejection of productivism and the shift away from quantitative and toward qualitative economic criteria involve rethinking the nature and goals of production and economic activity in general. Essential creative, non-productive and reproductive human activities, such as householding, child-rearing, care, child and adult education, and the arts, will be key values in an ecosocialist economy.

Clean air and water and fertile soil, as well as universal access to chemical-free food and renewable, non-polluting energy sources, are basic human and natural rights defended by ecosocialism. Far from being “despotic,” collective policy-making on the local, regional, national and international levels amounts to society’s exercise of communal freedom and responsibility. This freedom of decision constitutes a liberation from the alienating economic “laws” of the growth-oriented capitalist system.

To avoid global warming and other dangers threatening human and ecological survival, entire sectors of industry and agriculture must be suppressed, reduced, or restructured and others must be developed, while providing full employment for all. Such a radical transformation is impossible without collective control of the means of production and democratic planning of production and exchange. Democratic decisions on investment and technological development must replace control by capitalist enterprises, investors and banks, in order to serve the long-term horizon of society’s and nature’s common good.

The most oppressed elements of human society, the poor and indigenous peoples, must take full part in the ecosocialist revolution, in order to revitalize ecologically sustainable traditions and give voice to those whom the capitalist system cannot hear. Because the peoples of the global south and the poor in general are the first victims of capitalist destruction, their struggles and demands will help define the contours of the ecologically and economically sustainable society in creation. Similarly, gender equality is integral to ecosocialism, and women’s movements have been among the most active and vocal opponents of capitalist oppression. Other potential agents of ecosocialist revolutionary change exist in all societies.

Such a process cannot begin without a revolutionary transformation of social and political structures based on the active support, by the majority of the population, of an ecosocialist program. The struggle of labour – workers, farmers, the landless and the unemployed – for social justice is inseparable from the struggle for environmental justice. Capitalism, socially and ecologically exploitative and polluting, is the enemy of nature and of labour alike.

Ecosocialism proposes radical transformations in:

1. the energy system, by replacing carbon-based fuels and biofuels with clean sources of power under community control: wind, geothermal, wave, and above all, solar power.

2. the transportation system, by drastically reducing the use of private trucks and cars, replacing them with free and efficient public transportation;

3. present patterns of production, consumption, and building, which are based on waste, inbuilt obsolescence, competition and pollution, by producing only sustainable and recyclable goods and developing green architecture;

4. food production and distribution, by defending local food sovereignty as far as this is possible, eliminating polluting industrial agribusinesses, creating sustainable agro-ecosystems and working actively to renew soil fertility.

To theorize and to work toward realizing the goal of green socialism does not mean that we should not also fight for concrete and urgent reforms right now. Without any illusions about “clean capitalism,” we must work to impose on the powers that be – governments, corporations, international institutions – some elementary but essential immediate changes:

*drastic and enforceable reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases, *development of clean energy sources, *provision of an extensive free public transportation system, *progressive replacement of trucks by trains, *creation of pollution clean-up programs, *elimination of nuclear energy, and war spending.

These and similar demands are at the heart of the agenda of the Global Justice movement and the World Social Forums, which have promoted, since Seattle in 1999, the convergence of social and environmental movements in a common struggle against the capitalist system.

Environmental devastation will not be stopped in conference rooms and treaty negotiations: only mass action can make a difference. Urban and rural workers, peoples of the global south and indigenous peoples everywhere are at the forefront of this struggle against environmental and social injustice, fighting exploitative and polluting multinationals, poisonous and disenfranchising agribusinesses, invasive genetically modified seeds, biofuels that only aggravate the current food crisis. We must further these social-environmental movements and build solidarity between anticapitalist ecological mobilizations in the North and the South.

This Ecosocialist Declaration is a call to action. The entrenched ruling classes are powerful, yet the capitalist system reveals itself every day more financially and ideologically bankrupt, unable to overcome the economic, ecological, social, food and other crises it engenders. And the forces of radical opposition are alive and vital. On all levels, local, regional and international, we are fighting to create an alternative system based in social and ecological justice.

To read the initial list of signatories, visit the Ecosocialist International Network

Still Here

2008-12-26T18:38:00.003-04:00

This is just to let people know that I am still here, I have not posted often because upon returning to Bermuda for the holidays I discovered that I did not have access to the internet and as such have been able to post much.

I am writing this on a friend's laptop as he is fixing my computer, so hopefully my internet will be working again soon and I can be back to posting, as there is much I have to catch up on.

No Coalition Resolutions by Fightback

2008-12-21T19:36:00.001-04:00

The NDP-Liberal coalition is on its last legs but unfortunately the NDP leadership will not recognize what a disaster it has been. Below are three resolutions to highlight the issue of the coalition. Please forward these resolutions widely and pass them at your riding association, youth/student group, union local, etc. The Ontario NDP is currently organizing resolution and delegate selection meetings in the run up to its convention - these meetings are a perfect opportunity to move these resolutions and make it clear that there is no unanimous support for the leadership's actions amongst the rank-and-file.

No Confidence in the Conservatives, no Liberal-NDP Coalition

Whereas, the Harper Conservatives pursue a pro-corporate, anti-women, pro-war and anti-worker agenda, and deserve to be defeated, and

Whereas, the Federal Liberals have followed the same agenda by supporting Harper’s corporate tax cuts, supporting the war in Afghanistan, opposing anti-scab legislation and instituting massive cuts when in government, and

Whereas, maintaining an independent principled position on Afghanistan and corporate tax cuts enhanced NDP support in the 2008 Federal election, while abandoning these principled positions in a coalition has seen NDP support to drop to 12% in some polls, and

Whereas, abandoning the NDP platform merely feeds into the disappointment of the 41% of non-voters who believe that all politicians are the same and will abandon their principles to gain power, and

Whereas, Ignatieff’s call for a “coalition if necessary, but not necessarily a coalition” uses the NDP as a bargaining chip, in a humiliating way, to gain pro-Liberal concessions from the Conservatives.

Therefore be it resolved that this body recommends that the Federal NDP parliamentary caucus vote no confidence in the Harper Conservatives but does not enter into any coalition with the Federal Liberals who uphold the same anti-worker, anti-women and pro-war policies.

Bring the Troops Home from Afghanistan

Whereas, in 2006 the Federal NDP took a courageous stand against the war in Afghanistan, and

Whereas, 2/3 of the Canadian population want to bring the troops home as the war is leading to a shameful loss of life on all sides and is clearly unwinnable, and

Whereas, the $18-billion price tag of the war is a waste of money that should go to fund childcare, health, education or the protection of manufacturing jobs, and

Whereas, there is no way that any NDP member should assume a position where they take responsibility for this war.

Therefore be it resolved that this body recommends that the Federal NDP parliamentary caucus table legislation, in the next session, to end the war and that all caucus members vote according to party policy during this and any other related vote.

Reallocate Corporate Tax Cuts to aid Canadians

Whereas, the Federal NDP’s principled opposition to the Conservative’s $50-billion corporate tax cuts won the party significant support in the 2008 election, and

Whereas, reversing these tax cuts would enable the creation of a universal childcare program, a catastrophic drug program, and programs to help seniors and young families, as outlined in the 2008 NDP election platform.

Therefore be it resolved that this body recommends that the Federal NDP parliamentary caucus table legislation, in the next session, to reallocate the corporate tax cuts to help the Canadian population and that all caucus members vote to oppose the corporate tax cuts during this and any other related vote (such as a budget vote).

Talking Points on the Economic Crisis

2008-12-21T19:32:00.002-04:00

From the National Executive Committee of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization/Organizacion Socialista del Camino para Libertad

What’s happening?

The economy is in a slow motion train wreck, and the worst is yet to come.

People are being hurt through home foreclosures and layoffs, while huge amounts of money—more than $7 trillion so far—are going to prop up banks and insurance companies.

The election of Obama, together with the deep disgust for Bush & co., opens up the possibility for significant shifts—if people can organize to make it happen.

What’s the context?

U.S. imperialism is overextended and being challenged on all sides. Decades of exporting manufacturing jobs have left the U.S. with a hollowed-out economy. Reliance on U.S military power to solve problems works against the interests of the world’s peoples.

A looming ecological crisis ups the stakes for people across the globe to avoid an epoch of resource wars and social barbarism.

The history of race, national, and gender oppression in the United States suggests leadership must be centered among people of color and women—within the U.S. working class—in order to avoid rampant scapegoating and extreme divisions among grassroots forces.

Where did the crisis come from?

Short term: A collapse of high-risk housing loans beginning in the summer of 2007 led to a wave of financial failures. A mountain of worthless paper assets has been hidden away from bank regulators and their value is difficult to assess. Many banks, however, are probably insolvent and would have to close if their accounts were brought to light.

Medium term: A regime of deregulation began in the 1970s and gained full steam with the Reagan administration. Eventually this reliance on pure market forces removed all the financial safeguards put in place after the 1930s depression. Deregulation is one piece of a policy package called neoliberalism that relies on union-busting, privatization, cuts in the social wage, and the imposition of market forces on working people around the globe. But as we've seen in the current crisis, when the dominant capitalist institutions find themselves in trouble, public money flows freely.

Long term: By the 1970s the post-World War II boom had played out and outlets for new investment became harder to find. Profits came under pressure and companies sought out new ways to invest. The result has been a series of bubbles and crashes for the past 30 years: farm, Third World debt, savings and loan, Asian economic, dot-com, and, most recently, housing. The temporary resolution of one crisis sets the stage for the next, eventually building up a huge disconnect between profit-making activity in the financial sphere and real production.

Who benefits from the crisis?

The capitalist system benefits because it is through a crisis like this one that the system corrects itself and establishes the true monetary value of all the resources in society—both material and human. Once everything shakes out through the widespread destruction of value and people, conditions will then be in place for a new upturn in the cycle. By the logic of the system, everything is working just fine.

The top 1% of society are in good shape. In fact, they are likely to come out ahead if things run according to their expectations. They’ve made out during the past decades of increasing economic inequality. While some nasty infighting is likely to take place, the top financiers and industrialists are well-situated to ride out the storm. Then when things settle down, and their competitors have been squeezed out, these capitalists buy up the cheap assets and further consolidate their position at the top of the economic pyramid. We’re already seeing this process with the closing and merging of various financial institutions.

Those who feed on division and despair to council reliance on the next world, or on demagogic leaders, or on a narrow sense of community that excludes and scapegoats other working people are likely to find fertile ground for their message.

Who’s being hurt by the crisis?

Working class people, and people of color and women in particular:

Unemployment is increasing at a rate not seen since the early 1980s and is predicted to reach 10% or more over the next couple years.

Marginal workers, the last hired and first fired, are often unable to collect unemployment insurance.

Some two-thirds of the epidemic of home foreclosures are affecting people of color. Along with foreclosures come pressures on affordable rental properties, crowding in with family members, and increased homelessness.

Health problems increase, and muggings and break-ins impact people in poor communities more than the well-off.

Retired people have seen their pensions nearly halved by the fall of stock market values. With the shift away from defined benefit plans—one more example of how working people have lost out in recent decades—people are left dependent on the ups and downs of the stock market.

Government budgets are under pressure due to reduced business activity. Forced cuts in the social wage are underway, affecting education, child care and public transportation—another example of how the power structure transfers the impact of the crisis onto working people.

What’s coming?

The Japanese economy’s doldrums of the 1990s after their housing bubble burst suggests that we are in for an extended period of difficult economic conditions.
All the trillions of dollars in bailouts have to be paid for in some way, and the options seem to point to an eventual strong increase in prices:

People in the U.S. are being asked to spend rather than save—and actually being forced to use up savings since almost none of the bailout money has gone to grassroots people.

The U.S. government could end the wars in Central Asia and cut back on the mammoth military budget. More likely, however, there will be pressures at all levels of government to cut the social wage.

China and Europe are experiencing their own problems and cannot be expected to increase their purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds. In fact, movement toward multiple reserve currencies is likely to occur as a way to break dependence on the U.S. dollar. The eventual result will probably be a significant erosion of the value of the dollar. Because of the hollowed-out economy, prices of foreign produced goods will then increase.
The Federal Reserve System will, in effect, print up more money. Internally, this excess of dollars will likely push prices up, adding to the impact of devaluation of the dollar internationally.

We are likely to be faced with stagflation worse than the 1970s: an economic depression accompanied by rising prices, or inflation. The last time this occurred, the result was the “Reagan revolution” and 30 years of reaction. The stakes are probably even higher this time. Taking advantage of openings provided by the Obama administration, the social movements will have to shift power significantly to the base. If not, we are likely to see as a backlash an even more rabid rightwing administration coming to power.

How can we respond, resist, and take the offensive?

Focus our efforts on collective activities: planning, action, sharing, and summing-up. Individual responses to the crisis, by contrast, are bound to lead to despair and infighting. Examples of collective activities include:

Local crisis centers that can be a focus for collective resistance.

Producer and consumer cooperatives that can reinitiate economic activity to fill in the hollow economy.

Local farming ventures that draw on environmentally friendly practices, as are being practiced in Cuba’s urban farming program.

Defending people from being evicted from their homes.

Inclusive, multi-lingual forms of organization that give voice and vote to everyone who lives and works in a region.

Carry out struggles aimed at

Increasing the social wage and shifting the burden from the working class to the ruling sectors that caused the crisis and are currently administering it in their own interest.

Empowering the base—and not just the “middle class,” which is often viewed as white, straight, and male, and therefore more legitimate.

Unleashing organizing of workplace and community organizations of all kinds—and their coming together in regional councils that can exercise local power.

Establishing real public oversight over finance and industry.

Refound an influential left in the U.S. that brings together into a single formation—front, alliance, or party—the leading forces in the social movements with a consciously anti-capitalist analysis and program.

Understanding the Economic Crisis and Socialist Perspectives for Change

2008-12-20T07:35:00.003-04:00

The crisis in global financial and stock markets that began with the September-October meltdown is shaping up to be quite unlike anything that has been experienced by most of us in our lifetimes. It is true that many in the United States may be old enough to remember the market crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression. And in Japan, many people are well aware of the so-called “lost decade” that followed after the bank crashes of the 1980s. Both of these were easily crisis of this magnitude, but current financial is taking place on a global scale.

Many in the radical, revolutionary and socialist left are treating this crisis in the global capitalist system as the one that will forever break the camel's back. In other words, what they believe is that this crisis will be the one to finally usher in socialist revolution. Could this be the case?

I myself try to avoid any sort of mechanistic or deterministic analysis of a given situation, but I have to admit to sensing the potentially historical nature of this situation. But just sitting back and waiting for revolution will not make revolution happen. To use the analogy of the apple falling from the tree, if we just sit back and wait for the apple to drop, then we will find ourselves waiting here for an extended period of time, but if we see that the apple's stem is becoming weak we can shake the branch and make the apple fall.

This situation is the weakening of the stem, but we must organize in order to shake the tree and force the apple, the revolutionary situation, to fall.

But in order to act we must first understand the situation and the work that is needed in order to turn another periodic crisis in capitalism into a truly revolutionary situation, and that gets me to the point of this post. Here I have brought together a number of statements and other articles from several revolutionary socialist sources on the crisis and what is to be done, or rather can be done, about it.

Statements

Their Crisis, Our Consequences: Is this what 1931 Looks Like? (from Solidarity)
Understanding and Responding to the Economic Crisis (pdf) (from Solidarity)
The Financial Meltdown and a Socialist Response (from Solidarity)
The Economic Crisis and the U.S. Left (from Freedom Road/El Camino)
Talking Points on the Economic Crisis (from Freedom Road/El Camino)
Reform or Revolution (from the Party of Socialism and Liberation)
A Lesson From the Auto Bailout Struggle: Capitulation is Not the Only Way (from the Party of Socialism and Liberation)
No to the Wall St. Bail-Out! (from the Socialist Party USA)
The Crisis of World Capitalism is Gathering Speed (from the International Marxist Tendency/In Defence of Marxism)
The Crisis: Make the Bosses Pay! - Manifesto of the International Marxist Tendency (from the International Marxist Tendency/In Defence of Marxism)

Articles

The Spark We Need - The Chicago Sit-Down Strike by Daniel Gross
Making the World’s Poor Pay: The Economic Crisis and the Global South by Adam Hanieh
The Financial Calamity, Blacks and Obama by Malik Miah
The Crisis Beneath the Bailout by Jack Rasmus
The Sub-Prime Market Crisis by Nomi Prins
Devastating Crisis Unfolds by Bob Brenner
A New Phase of Economic Crisis Jack Rasmus
The Economic Crisis, the American Working Class, and the Left: The Situation Today and the Situation in 1930 by Dan LaBotz
Confronting the Economic Crisis: The New Deal at 75 - Lessons for Today Dan LaBotz
The Financial Crisis: A View from the Left by Dan LaBotz
World's Labor Federations React to Financial Crisis with Proposals from Re-regulation to Socialism by Dan LaBotz
Financial Implosion and Stagnation: Back to the Real Economy by John Bellamy Foster & Fred Magdoff
Postscript to "The Financialization of Capital and the Crisis" by John Bellamy Foster
Root Causes of the Current Crisis by Charlie Post
The Problem is Capitalism, Not Just the Banks by Rick Kuhn
Financial Regime Change? by Robert Wade
How to Think About the Crisis by Michael Perelman
A Crisis For the Centre of the System by Andrew Kliman
The Current Crisis: A Socialist Perspective by Leo Panitch & Sam Gindin
Capitalist Crisis, Marx's Shadow by Rick Wolff
Global Instability and Challenges to the Dollar: Assessing the Current Financial Crisis by David McNally
Financialised Capitalism: Direct Exploitation and Periodic Bubbles by Costas Lapavitsas
The Financialization of Capital and the Crisis by John Bellamy Foster
The Subprime Crisis by Robin Blackburn
Value-Creation and the Crisis Today by Sander
Karl Marx and the Credit Crunch by Keith Spencer
Financial Crisis - A Lesson On the Character, Performance and Power of Finance Capital by Konrad Hecker
The Rate of Profit and the World Today by Chris Harman
Debt, Economic Crisis, and the Tendential Fall in the Profit Rate by Andrew Kliman

Interviews

Audio and Video

I'll update this as more articles are written and I read them

New School SDS VICTORY!

2008-12-19T18:11:00.001-04:00

Breaking News!

After negotiations throughout the day and a large rally last night outside the occupied Graduate Faculty building at 65 5th Ave., New School university president Bob Kerrey has conceded to many of the RSU’s demands, including an agreement not to press charges or impose academic punishments for students involved in the protest, the implementation of a Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) committee within the university, more autonomy and power for Student Senate to communicate with the student body, more representation on the Board of Trustees for students and faculty, and finally the creation of more student study space on campus.

Check out the full text of the victories here.

For videos, press info and updates, check out:

http://www.newschoolinexile.com/

http://www.newschoolinexileblog.blogspot.com/

New School SDS Occuppies Faculty building in escalation of Accessible Education Campaign

2008-12-18T22:03:00.003-04:00

From the Students for a Democratic Society. As both a student and a revolutionary I wish to extend my warmest regards from Canada to the brothers and sisters who have taken this daring action against a university administration run by bourgeoisie war criminals. This is exactly what the U.S. and North American radical movements need, a new revolutionary student movement. We need this, and I think this, and the occupation of the window factory in Chicago are going to go along in helping answer the question as to whether or not Obama's election would be a roadblock to the development of radical and revolutionary action in America. As the Obama administration becomes racked with the finacial crisis and the continuing wars I can only wish to see more actions like these. I can then only hope that such radical student politics can spread outwords from the United States to Canada.

For a united North American revolutionary movement! For a revolutionary working-class and youth!

------------

Beginning at 8pm Wednesday, December 17, members of New School SDS, in coalition with SEAC & UFPJ, organized as the New School Radical Student Union, have been occupying a Graduate Faculty building at 65 5th Ave. btween 13th and 14th streets in New York City.

The occupation is part of a more than year-long campaign to demand accountability from the school administration. The students demands include:

The removal of Bob Kerrey as president of the university.
The removal of James Murtha as executive vice president of the university.
Students, faculty, and staff elect the president, EVP, and Provost.
Students are part of the interim committee to hire a provost.
The removal of Robert B. Millard as treasurer of the board of trustees.
Intelligible transparency and disclosure of the university budget and investments.
The creation of a committee on socially responsible investments.
The immediate suspension of capital improvement projects like the tearing down of 65 fifth Ave.
Instead, money towards the creation of an autonomous student space.
Instead, money towards scholarships and reducing tuition.
Instead, money for the library and student life generally.

As of 1pm on Thursday, the students have been joined in solidarity by UNITE HERE Local 101 who represents the New School cafeteria workers. Union members have refused to cross the barricades.

For more information, check out:
http://www.newschoolinexile.com/

For round the clock updates from within the occupation:
http://www.newschoolinexileblog.blogspot.com/

Sign the petition:
http://www.petitiononline.com/nokerrey/petition.html

Show your support on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=43831775754&ref=nf

New York Times coverage:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/nyregion/18newschool.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

Check out this video of SDSers protesting outside the New School Board of Trustee meeting on Dec 12:

More updates to come as events unfold…

Greece: We Didn't Need Another Martyr

2008-12-18T09:20:00.003-04:00

(This another statement about the recent street fighting in Greece, this time a collection of platformist anarchist communists)

While Greece was preparing for its general strike on Wednesday 10 December against the Karamanlis government and against the economic crisis, and with the grassroots mobilization in schools and universities growing for some time against proposed reforms, Alexandros Grigoropolous, only 16 years old, was the unlucky choice to become victim and scapegoat of the police apparatus and was killed in cold blood by the State's forces of repression.

The economic crisis sparked off by international capitalism against the exploited of the whole world, which is being managed with measures imposing general impoverishment by the States, is damaging the fragile equilibriums and the precarious alliances of power between groups of power and both right-wing and center-left parties, enabling us to see the true anti-democratic, subversive vocation of the State and its apparatus of (in)security): alienation, criminalization and the elimination of social opposition.

It happened with Carlo Giuliani in Genoa in 2001, it has happened many times in recent years in place like Palestine and Oaxaca in Mexico. Last Saturday it happened in Greece.

At the moment thousands of school students are demonstrating outside police headquarters in Athens, but also in a great many cities and towns all over Greece.

Spontaneous demonstrations throughout the country are the result of political, popular anger with the Karamanlis government and the criminal actions of the police. The Greek government first armed and unleashed the killer cops, then set up a pathetic ballet of excuses and resignations, but is not punishing anyone. In fact it is trying to shift attention onto the destruction of public and private property, while attempting to repress the demonstrators, attacking people with chemical weapons and torturing arrested demonstrators.

The revolt is only beginning. And the general strike, a union and social, political and class-struggle general strike, can transform the people's rage into organized, grassroots building of the libertarian alternative.

In every country, capitalism's growing crisis is presenting the bill to the working classes and the exploited of society.

We must respond, in every country, by building together the social opposition that is needed to defend ourselves from annihilation in the name of Profit.

Solidarity with the Greek anarchist movement and with the victims of repression, international solidarity with all social struggles, in Greece and in the rest of Europe!

8 December 2008

Signatories:
Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici (Italy)
Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group (Australia)
Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (South Africa)
North-Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists (USA)
Union Communiste Libertaire (Canada)

Raza Press and Media Association Summit and First General Meeting 2009

2008-12-17T23:18:00.003-04:00

41 Years on the Road to Victory! Actions and Events Mark PFLP Anniversary

2008-12-17T23:09:00.003-04:00

(Reproduced from the website of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine also check out photos the events here)

Marking 41 glorious years of struggle on the road to victory, towards the achievement of national liberation, numerous events and activities are taking place throughout Palestine, the Arab world and in exile in honor of the 41st anniversary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP was formed on December 11, 1967, and December 11, 2008, marks 41 years of struggle for self-determination, return and liberation. This is a continually updated list of reports of events and activities marking 41 years of the PFLP.

Ramallah

On December 6, 2008, the PFLP in Ramallah held a large march and festival to commemorate the 41st anniversary of the founding of the Front. The march was led by Palestinian flags and PFLP banners, as well as banners bearing slogans pledging to continue towards victory and liberation after 41 years of struggle and steadfastness.

Deputy General Secretary of the PFLP, Comrade Abdel-Rahim Mallouh, spoke at the event, focusing on the right of our people to resist occupation as a national duty for all of our people and a natural right. He demanded an end to the siege of Gaza and denounced the vicious racist settler attacks happening throughout the West Bank and Jerusalem, noting that they reveal the nature of the Zionist state.

He emphasized the importance of national unity, saying that our struggle is in a stage of national liberation and requires the commitment of all to liberation and to the Palestinian cause and the rights of our people, to resist occupation, to return home, and to self-determination.

He denounced the state terrorism of the occupier and called for the international community to end its silence and complicity with the crimes of the occupier and take action to implement the rights of the Palestinian people. He recalled the strong and glorious history of the PFLP, paying tribute to Dr. George Habash and national poet Mahmoud Darwish, as well as to all of the martyrs of the Palestinian revolution, and pledged to be faithful to the path of the martyrs and the prisoners, and to the Palestinian national cause.

Bassam al-Salhi, General Secretary of the People's Party, spoke, and paid tribute to the PFLP's work for national unity and national rights, and denounced the brutal attacks of the settlers upon our people. Mohammed Barakeh, speaking about our people in the occupied homeland of 1948, also paid tribute to the PFLP and its commitment to national liberation. He greeted the steadfast people in al-Khalil facing down the mobs of settlers and demanded the dismantlement of the settlements, and called for national unity and breaking the siege on Gaza.

Rafah

Under siege and in candlelight, the Martyr Basil Alizuri organization of the PFLP organized an event on December 12, 2008 marking the 41st anniversary of the Front, attended by a group of cadres, members and friends of the PFLP. The event began with a moment of silence in memory of the martyrs, followed by a speech by Comrade Mohammed Makkawi.

Comrade Makkawi reviewed the history of the front and its martyrs, stressing upon the need to follow along the path of the martyrs, led by the founder Dr. George Habash and Comrade martyr Abu Ali Mustafa. He emphasized the importance of ending division and the tireless work of the Front to forge national unity. He also paid tribute to the prisoners and to Comrade General Secretary Ahmad Sa'adat inside the Zionist jails, pledging to continue struggle and resistance.

The PFLP in Rafah governorate held a festival and mass rally marking the 41st anniversary of the founding of the Front on December 10, 2008, including the participation of many leaders, cadres and members of the Front. Comrades Kayed al-Ghoul, Jamil Mezher, Imad Abu Rahma, Mohammed Saqqa, members of the Central Committee of the PFLP, and many national leaders participated alongside masses of our people.

The festival began with a moment of silenve in memory of the martyrs. Comrade Iyad Awadallah welcomed attendees on behalf of the Front, saluting the founder Comrade Dr. George Habash and speaking of his memory, and added that this is the first anniversary marked by the Front in the absence of Dr. Habash, saying that he gave his honor, sacrifice and selflessness for the sake of Palestine. He also paid tribute to the great national leader Abu Ali Mustafa, as a model of sacrifice and martyrdom.

He saluted the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, and their historic operation of October 17, 2001 when AAMB eliminated the Zionist racist extremist tourism minister Rehavam Ze'evi. He also recalled the martyrs of the Front, including Wadie Haddad, Ghassan Kanafani, Mohammed al-Aswad (Guevara Gaza), Walid al-Ghoul, Nidal Salameh, Basil Alizuri and all of the martyrs of the Palestinian people.

He also paid tribute to the General Secretary Comrade Ahmad Sa'adat, stressing that he is leading in the forefront of struggle with the people in the front lines against the Zionist enemy - the prisoners in the Zionist jails, and called for all of their freedom, including the freedom fighter Marwan Barghouthi, Dr. Aziz Dweik and all of the prisoners.

Comrade Awadallah highlighted the importance of national unity, comprehensive national dialogue and rebuilding the PLO in order to uphold the national cause of the Palestinian people for liberation, return and self-determination. He called for an end to political detentions, and demanded that Abu Mazen end the futile and harmful negotiations, saying they only provide a cover for the occupation and work in favor of the enemy, noting that our people are depending on unity and resistance and continuing struggle for our rights, noting that the negotiations pose a great danger to our people of undermining their fundamental rights.

Comrade Awadallah also denounced the "calm" and said it has turned into a sword upon the neck of our people and a justification for the crimes of the occupation, calling instead for a unified national front of the armed resistance to respond to the crimes of the enemy. He concluded by vowing to continue the struggle until the achievement of the objectives for which our martyrs died, in particular the right of return and self determination and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital on the road to a democratic Palestine on all of the land of Palestine.

Nafeth Ghoneim of the Palestinian People's Party addressed the rally,paying tribute to the PFLP and sending greetings to all of the prisoners of the Front, led by Comrade Ahmad Sa'adat and praised the Front's commitment to national unity, liberation and return. Comrade Abdul Salam Salameh of the Front's media committee als addressed the rally, speaking of the martyrs of the Front and the continuing dedication of the PFLP to their path. Comrade Salameh praised the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades and pledged to uphold and continue the resistance.

The festival concluded with cultural performances, poetry and debkeh and honoring four children who share their birthday with the Front, December 11.

The PFLP in Rafah governorate also held a series of visits with the parents and families of martyrs and prisoners to mark both Eid al-Adha and the 41st anniversary of the Front on December 8, 2008, led by Comrade Imad Abu Rahma, member of the Central Committee of the PFLP. The delegation stressed that the Front will remain loyal to these families, who have paid the most dear of costs on the road to freedom and independence for Palestine and in defense of the national cause.

Gaza City

The PFLP in Gaza City organized a car caravan on December 11 and march throughout the streets of the city, bringing a large number of PFLP cadres and members waving Palestinian flags and PFLP banners, chanting slogans and demanding an end to the siege on Gaa. The caravan gathered from all regions of Gaza City, and stopped at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, playing songs calling for national unity and demanding the release of Comrade General Secretary Ahmad Sa'adat and all of the prisoners of the occupation.

Comrade Dr. Maryam Abu Daqqa, member of the Political Bureau of the PFLP, said these events come to mark the 41st anniversary of the Front and to challenge the siege upon our people in Gaza. Comrade Osama Ahmad Haj, member of the Central Committee of the Front, welcomed people, stating that this annniversary comes in the absence of the founder Dr. George Habash, of the steadfast leader Comrade Abu Ali Mustafa, of the thinker and writer Comrade Ghassan Kanafani, of the leader Comrade Mohammad al-Aswad o the bride of Palestine, Comrade Maha Nassar and the countless parade of martyrs who have died for the freedom and independence of our people.

He called upon the people in these difficult times to confront the occupation, stressing that this is the key issue, and stated that the Front will remain firmly in the trench of resistance against the occupier to achieve our national objectives of return, self-determination and liberation. Comrade Dr. Zulfiqar Swairjo spoke, calling for national unity to defend our people, confront the occupier and break the siege.

The event concluded with a parade of children carrying candles and flowers, protesting the siege upon our people that is robbing our children of their childhood.

The Progressive Student Action Front, the student arm of the PFLP, organized a reception at its headquarters in Gaza City, marking the 41st anniversary of the Front, on December 10, 2008, attended by many leaders and members of the Front and student organizers.

Comrade Abu Numan Jiab, a leader of the PSAF in the Gaza Strip, said that this ceremony is held in honor of the sacrifices and history of the Front, which have not deviated over 41 years. Comrade Jiab said that students will mark the anniversary through events and activities, focusing on students' and workers' rights. Comrade Mohammed al-Ghoul, responsible for the PFLP's youth activities, spoke of the importance of cooperation between youth and students and the plan for youth and student led events marking the anniversary. The event also sent a message to comrade leader Ahmad Sa'adat and all of the prisoners of the Front struggling in the Zionist prisons. Hassan Shaheen of the Palestinian Progressive Youth Union also spoke at the reception, praising the PFLP and its history.

Also in Gaza City, the organization of the martyr Abu Ihab held an event marking the 41st anniversary of the PFLP on Wednesday, December 10. The rally was attended by a large number of leaders, cadres and members of the Front, national figures and many people.

Comrade Mohammed Daoud opened the event with a moment of silence in memory of the martyrs. Comrade Marwan abu Nasr (Abu Wadi), spoke on behalf of the Front, congratulating the PFLP and the people on the 41st anniversary. He spoke about the history of the Front, paying tribute to Dr. George Habash and Comrade martyr Abu Ali Mustafa, and sent greetings and tribute to Comrade General Secretary Ahmad Sa'adat and all of the prisoners in the jails of the enemy.

Comrade Abu Saleh al-Jedian (Abu Zaher), spoke about the history of the front in the Palestinian national movement. The rally concluded with literary and artistic performances and a poem by Rola Abed, in addition to musical performances.

A welcoming ceremony was held in Gaza City on December 9, 2008, to begin the celebrations of the anniversary of the PFLP in Gaza. Comrade Dr. Rabah Muhanna, member of the Political Bureau of the PFLP, spoke, calling for an end to the "Calm" and to negotiations as harmful to the Palestinian cause, particularly in the face of the crimes of the Israeli enemy.

Comrade Muhanna said that negotiations with the enemy are futile and indeed harmful to the Palestinian cause, and spoke instead of the need for a united resistance front to continue resistance and confront the occupier and demand full implementation of all of the rights of our people, including the right to return and self-determination.

Comrade Muhanna demanded an end to the siege upon the Gaza Strip as an attempt by the occupation to further Palestinian division and attempt to force concessions upon our people. He called for action to end Palestinian division, saying it is deeply harmful to our people and our cause, and called instead for national unity to defend democratic freedoms and preserve our society and institutions in the face of attacks by the occupier.

Comrade Muhanna said that the struggle for national liberation needs all of our energy in the service of the Palestinian cause. He spoke about international changes and the current situation, speaking of the need to struggle against U.S. imperialism and the attempts of the U.S. to impose its globalized world order, and highlighting positive signs of crumbling U.S. hegemony that are new in the era following the collapse of the socialist block. He pointed to Russia's breaking free of U.S. control, the financial crisis facing the U.S. and the globalized capitalist system, and the important victories for the Left in the world, particularly in Latin America, and the international popular movements growing in the face of injustice, poverty and unemployment resulting from U.S. policies and globalization. Comrade Muhanna pointed to the importance of forging ties with Arab resistance forces as well, pointing to the resistance in Iraq and Lebanon confronting U.S. and Zionist imperialism.

Comrade Muhanna concluded by pledging that the Front would continue on its path of struggle for return and liberation and to defend the interests of the people, the working class, and struggle for national unity, democracy and progress.

Khan Younis

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, martyr Samir Salama organization, held a rally marking the 41st anniversary of the founding of the PFLP on December 12, 2008 in the central province of Khan Younis. The event was attended by many national leaders and representatives of Palestinian factions as well as masses of supporters, cadres and members of the Front.

The event began with the playing of the Palestinian national anthem and a tribute to the memory of the martyrs and to the courage of the freedom fighters. The families of the martyrs were welcomed and saluted, and the prisoners, particularly Comrade Leader Ahmad Sa'adat, as well as Marwan Barghouthi, Abdelaziz Dweik and others, were saluted amid calls for their freedom.

Comrade Abdel Raouf al-Farra spoke on behalf of the PFLP, recalling its history and commitment to struggle, and in particular highlighting the heroic operation of October 17, following in the historic footsteps of Comrade Wadi' Haddad and Comrade Mohammad al-Aswad, Guevara Gaza.

Comrade al-Farra highlighted the importance of national unity of the Palestinian people, not only in the West Bank and Gaza, but also in Palestine '48 and in exile, highlighting the importance of unity to confront the attacks on our people and threats to our rights, including the right to return.

He highlighted the danger of the useless and harmful negotiations with the enemy, that only provide cover to the occupier for its crimes and have stopped none of its assaults, including the imprisonment of 11,000 prisoners, the checkpoints in the West Bank, the building of settlements and the siege on Gaza. Comrade Farra said that instead we must demand the implementation of our rights, including the right to independent tate, to return and self-determination.

Comrade Farra called for an end to the so-called "calm" or "truce" with the enemy, and an end to all negotiations sponsored by the United States, saying that the Zionist enemy is a strategic partner of U.S. imperialism and that we must return to the framework of international legitimacy and the steadfastness and resistance of our people.

He highlighted the role of the PFLP and its responsibility to oppose Zionism and U.S. imperialism, saying that its outlook and clear vision make it the basis for the continuation of the revolution until victory. The event closed with the singing of national songs.

A rally marking the 41st anniversary of the PFLP took place on December 11, 2008 in Khan Younis, starting from the Grand Mosque, with the participation of national leaders and various factions, in addition to civil society organizations and institutions and thousands of cadres, members and supporters of the Front, led by Comrade Dr. Rabah Muhanna, member of the Political Bureau of the Front and its leader in the Gaza Strip.

The march roamed the city, condemning the crimes of the occupier and demanding an end to the siege on Gaza, calling for national unity, led by Palstinian flags and the banners of the Popular Front. Comrade Essam Shaath greeted the crowd, paying tribute to the martyrs of the Front and their leadership in armed struggle and revolution, greeting al-Hakim, Ghassan Kanafani, Guevara Gaza, Abu Ali Mustafa, and many more martyrs, saying that "Today we celebrate their will of steel and their unrelenting confidence and courage to see victory, on this 41st anniversary of the launch of the Popular Front."

Comrade Ghalban, member of the Central Committee of the Popular Front, spoke on behalf of the Front, stating that its history was written in the blood of martyrs and part of the liberation movement, achieving many accomplishments during its history, including upholding the unity of our people above all else. He said that "the side of the PFLP is always the side of the popular classes and the poor, women, workers and students. The PFLP brings up youth on love of the homeland and a culture of tolerance and commitment to resist the occupation until victory."

Comrade Ghalban continued to say that the PFLP is allied with all liberation movements in the world, who stand with us because the question of Palestine is a just cause, and all progressive people and movements in the world are with us. He added that Fateh and Hamas must end the division and uphold their national duty to instead focus on resisting occupation and building a united front against the occupier that can confront all the U.S. and Zionist projects.

He condemned the vicious settler attacks upon our people as well as the annexation wall devouring Palestinian land in the West Bank, and demanded an end to the Zionization of our eternal capital, Jerusalem, and an end to the continuing siege upon our people in Gaza.

Salem Muammar, member of the Central Committee of the Democratic Front, addressed the rally paying tribute to the PFLP and calling for national unity.

The Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, the armed wing of the PFLP, participated in the march, carrying equipment and Sumoud rockets, mortars and other light weapons.

The PFLP also held a reception marking the 41st anniversary of the Front on Wednesday, December 10 at the Union of Agricultural Work Committees in Khan Younis governorate. The event was attended by national figures and leaders, and members and leaders of social organizations in addition to hundreds of cadres, members and leaders of the Front.

The event began with a moment of silence for the martyrs of the Palestinian revolution, before Comrade Basil Al-Seikaly spoke, paying tribute to the imprisoned leader, Comrade General Secretary Ahmad Sa'adat, and recalling 41 years of a glorious and strong history of struggle of our people.

Comrade Ibrahim Shahin (Abu Jihad), member of the Central Committee, spoke on behalf of the PFLP, saying that "in the name of our homeland, for which our people have sacrificed blood and lives, we greet the Palestinian revolution and pledge to continue until victory, as our people deserve a party capable of matching their steadfastness in all circumstances."

He emphasized the role of the PLO, calling for Palestinian national unity that puts the interests of the Palestinian people first, and preserves the cause of our martyrs and prisoners.

Talal al Zarifa, member of the Central Committee of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, spoke at the event on behalf of the Palestinian Left Front, paying tribute to the Front's 41st anniversary and sending greetings to Comrade Sa'adat and all of the comrades of the PFLP. Iyad Nasser spoke on behalf of the Fateh movement, stressing the need for national unity and an end to the siege upon Gaza.

Jabalya camp

The PFLP in Jabalya camp organized a car caravan on December 11, 2008, that later traveled to Beit Lahiya, marking the 41st anniversary of the Front. Cadres, members and supporters of the front traveled throughout the camp, waving Palestinian flags and PFLP banners, and chanting for Palestine, the PFLP, and the martyrs and prisoners of the Front and the Palestinian revolution.

In honor of the 41st anniversary of the launch of the Popular Front, the PFLP in Jabalya camp organized a visit to the martyrs' cemetery, with a group of members, cadres and supporters of the Front on December 7, 2008. The group laid wreaths on the graves of the martyrs, and stood in silence in memory of their lives. Comrade Abu Saleh al-Jedian spoke on behalf of the PFLP, hailing the sacrifices of the martyrs and greeting our people on Eid al-Adha and the 41st anniversary of the Front. He pledged that the Front will continue in the path of the martyrs who died for the homeland.

The PFLP in Jabalya camp also organized a soccer tournament to mark the 41st anniversary of the Front on December 5, 2008. 8 teams competed in the tournament, held at the Jabalya Youth Club among a large number of fans. The Martyr Mohammad Abul-Nasr Team took home the gold medal, and team captain Majid Gharabawi was also honored. The organizers also plan a series of sporting events including a tennis tournament, chess and a bicycle ride, to mark the anniversary.

Jabalya

In Jabalya, on December 11, 2008, the PFLP organized a rally and march to commemorate the 41st anniversary of the founding of the Front. Comrade Mohammad Touman and Comrade Abu Sulaiman Yahya, members of the Central committee of the PFLP, led the march, which was joined by many leaders, members and supporters of the PFLP, community elders, village leaders and people, and representatives of Palestinian factions.

Marchers rode on motorcycles and cars, carrying red flags and banners, chanting for national unity and against occupation, Zionism and U.S. imperialism. The marchers displayed photos of Comrade martyr Abu Ali Mustafa, the assassinated General Secretary of the PFLP, waved Palestinian flags and red banners, and chanted for Abu Ali, all of the martyrs, and the resistance fighters. The song "October 17" was played as youth participants danced debkeh.

The march traveled through the main streets of Jabalya, and concluded with a rally, where Comrade Abu Suleiman Yahya spoke, congratulating the people and the Front on the 41st anniversary and paying tribute to the martyrs and the prisoners of the Front, including Comrade Dr. George Habash, Comrade Abu Ali Mustafa, and Comrade Ahmad Sa'adat, the imprisoned General Secretary of the PFLP. He called for national unity and breaking the siege of Gaza, saying its objective is to force Palestinians from their land.

Northern Gaza

A massive festival and rally was held in northern Gaza on Friday, December 12, 2008, marking the 41st anniversary of the founding of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Comrade Jamil Majdalawi, member of the Political Bureau of the PFLP, presented the main speech at the event, which was attended by thousands of members, supporters, cadres and friends of the PFLP, civil society institutions, popular committees, unions, women's and student organizations, and political factions.

Comrade Majdalawi called for national unity, an end to negotiations with the occupier, breaking the siege and the continuation of resistance. The crowd waved Palestinian flags and PFLP banners, chanting for the freedom of the prisoners and the liberation of Palestine. Participants carried signs and pictures of Comrade Leader Ahmad Sa'adat, General Secretary of the PFLP, calling for his freedom and the freedom of all of the prisoners held in Zionist jails, and pledged to continue the struggle of the Front on the road to victory, return and liberation.

In addition, marking the anniversary of the Intifada and the 41st anniversary of the PFLP, a delegation visited farmers near the edge of Gaza on December 5, 2008, bordering the 1948 occupied homeland, to support the farmers and learn about the attacks of the occupation forces, including bulldozing of land and destruction of crops, in addition to the already devastating siege. The farmers stated that their farms previously employed about 4,000 people farming berries, but the siege has led to a significant decrease, and this number has become no more than 1,000, leading to significant unemployment. Furthermore, the farmers noted, the price per kilo of their berries was previously 22-25 shekels, but now is sold for 3 shekels per kilo.

The PFLP called upon all parties to open the crossings and enable farmers to export their products, noting that the European Union had agreed to import Gaza agricultural products, but that this export is now on hold and blockaded due to the siege.

Comrade Mohammad Sultan greeted the steadfast farmers and demanded action to end the siege and protect Palestinian agriculture and Palestinian production.

Central Gaza

The PFLP in the central governorate of Gaza held a march and demonstration marking the 41st anniversary of the founding of the Front on December 11, 2008. The march roamed throughout the main streets, chanting slogans calling for national unity and continuation of resistance.

Comrades Jamil Mezher and Kayed al-Ghoul, members of the Central Committee of the PFLP, participated in the march, alongside many cadres and members of the Front and a numer of fighters of the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades.

The march participants paid tribute to the lives of the martyrs and leaders of the Palestinian revolution, including Comrade Dr. George Habash, Comrade martyr Abu Ali Mustafa, Comrade Ahmad Sa'adat, the General Secretary of the PFLP, and the heroes of October 17, the comrades who carried out the successful operation against the criminal racist tourism minister Rehavam Ze'evi, and all the prisoners in the Zionist jails.

The march announced a series of events to coordinate the 41st anniversary aimed at community service, including a free medical day and a community soccer tournament.

Beit Lahiya

As part of the ongoing events marking the 41st anniversary of the PFLP, the Front and the Democatic Medical Assembly in Beit Lahiya conducted various activities, including a visit to the martyrs' cemetery in Beit Lahiya on December 12, 2008 and meetings with the families of the martyrs. Comrade Abu Sultan spoke, congratulating the families of the martyrs and the historical struggles of the PFLP, speaking of the importance of remaining on the road forged by the martyrs of struggle until liberation.

He called for Palestinian unity and an end to the harmful environment of division, and paying tribute to the leaders and martyrs who always marched along that path, including Dr. George Habash, comrade martyr Abu Ali Mustafa, Wadi Haddad, Abu Nidal Mesalami, Hassan Yousef Alayan, Tarek el-Shafei Jafaar el-Masri, Fadi Sultan Ali Omari, Hani Said al-Attar and thousands of other martyrs. The group placed wreaths on the graves of the martyrs.

The group also visited the families of martyrs and patients and hospital workers at Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals, distributing flowers. Comrade Mohammad Allan said that these events will continue, with the purpose and the goal of serving our people in light of the crisis caused by siege. Further plans include participation in olive agriculture and solidarity actions with berry farmers facing a crisis due to the siege imposed upon the Palestinian people.

Also in Beit Lahiya on December 12, a reception was held to mark the annivesary of the PFLP. Comrade Wael Neirab spoke at the event, reviewing the history of the Front, its founding, its operations and its leaders, recalling the leadership of Al-Hakim, Dt. George Habash and his revolutionary school and fellow leaders, including Comrades Leila Khaled, Wadi Haddad and Mohammad al-Aswad (Guevara Gaza), and those who have continued on their path, having grown up on the principles of those who have sacrificed and continue to sacrifice. The event sent a message to the prisoners, headed by Comrade General Secretary Ahmad Sa'adat, of solidarity and continued dedication to struggle along their path. Comrade Neirab pledged to struggle for national unity and that the Front would remain true to the martyrs and the prisoners and the sacrifices of the bereaved and injured to establish a socialist, democratic Palestinian state.

A documentary film presenting the history of the PFLP through its 41 years of struggle was screened, followed by a mass march through the streets of the town.

The Walid Al-Ghoul organization of the PFLP held a series of events in Beit Lahiya in celebration of the 41st anniversary of the PFLP. A car and motorcycle caravan was held on Thursday, December 11, 2008, and the caravan went throughout the main streets of the town. In the evening, a mass rally and march was held, attended by massive crowds, marking the 41st anniversary.

Comrade Dr. Tayseer al-Sultan greeted the attendees on behalf of the PFLP, providing an overview of the 4 decades of struggle of the PFLP and calling for national unity in order to confront the occupier. A documentary film about the PFLP history, present and future was screened before a fireworks display.

Beit Hanoun

The Al Fayez Zaanin organization of the PFLP in Beit Hanoun area organized a series of events and volunteer activities in honor of the 41st anniversary of the launch of the PFLP. On December 6 and 7, 2008, the organization held two days of visits to the families of martyrs and prisoners in which a large number of cadres, members and supporters of the PFLP participated. On December 9, 2008, the organization distributed aid and goods to the poor and needy of the region, and organized a volunteer action in which a large number of comrades of the PFLP cleaned and tended the cemetery in the city of Beit Hanoun.

On Thursday, December 11, the PFLP in Beit Hanoun organized a public festival, opened by Comrade Marcel Lidawi. Comrade Nasser Shabat spoke on behalf of the Front, recalling the martyrs and prisoners of the PFLP and the struggle over 41 years that continues toward victory. Comrade Shabat stressed the need for national unity as an irreplaceable strategic path, calling for comprehensive national dialogue, and of the importance of rebuilding and reestablishing a democratic and inclusive PLO as our sole legitimate national representative. The event also screened a documentary on the PFLP marking its 41st anniversary. Comrade Khalida Jarrar, member of the Political Bureau of the PFLP, addressed the audience by telephone, paying tribute to the 41st anniversary and calling for national unity. She pledged that the Front would remain faithful to the Palestinian cause and our national rights, including the right to return, self-determination, freedom of the prisoners, and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

Bethlehem

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Deheisheh refugee camp held a march through the camp on December 11, 2008, marking the 41st anniversary of the launch of the PFLP, including large numbers of members and supporters of the Front. The march ended in a rally held at the entrance of the camp, where a number of speakers commended the historical and present role of the PFLP in resisting the occupation and building national unity. The speakers emphasized the importance of national dialogue, an end to political detentions, and ending the absurd negotiations with Israel.

A march after the rally went through the roads near the camp, led by Palestinian flags and banners of the PFLP, chanting slogans against the occupation and its crimes.In the evening, cars went through the streets of Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Beit Sahour, carrying Palestinian flags, PFLP banners, and pictures of PFLP leaders and martyrs, including Comrade Dr. George Habash, Comrade martyr Abu Ali Mustafa, Comrade martyr Ghassan Kanafani and Comrade Ahmad Sa'adat.

Awarta

The PFLP in the village of Awarta south of Nablus held a rally to commemorate the 41st anniversary of the Front on December 11, 2008, attended by many leaders, cadres, members and supporters of the Front in the area.

Comade Kamal Abu Zarifa spoke, stressing that the PFLP would continue in the struggle until liberation, calling at the same time for an end to internal division and for the prioritization of national interests and national unity. He condemned both the so-called "calm" in Gaza and "security cooperation" with the occupier in the West Bank.

A speech was also made on behalf of the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, pledging to continue the struggle until the liberation of the land and calling for a united resistance front to confront the occupier.

The rally concluded with salutes to the leaders, prisoners and martyrs of the Front and of the Palestinian revolution, and debkeh performances and the reading of folkloric poems.

Arraba

Several events were held marking the 41st anniversary of the Popular Front in the towns of Arraba, Ya'abut, Fahma and Kafr Ra'aid, near Jenin, where thousands attended a mass rally and evening festival which marched through the streets of Arraba. The streets were decorated with red banners and Palestinian flags, and public statements calling for national unity and the continuation of intifada and resistance were broadcast from mosque loudspeakers.

Participants carried flags and photos of the General Secretaries of the Front, Comrade Dr. George Habash, Comrade martyr Abu Ali Mustafa, and Comrade leader Ahmad Sa'adat inside the Zionist jails. A delegation visited the homes of martyrs of the Popular Front and distributed winter clothing to the families.

Comrade Salah Abu Jaafar saluted Al-Hakim, Abu Ali Mustafa, and the martyrs and leaders of the Palestinian revolution, stating that the PFLP "will continue on this path until we ahieve the dreams of our martyrs, our independence and our liberation." He called for an end to negotiations with the occupier and a focus on national unity, calling to close ranks in the face of the vicious settler attacks.

Ein el-Helweh Camp

The PFLP in Ein el-Helweh refugee camp in Lebanon organized a march and rally on December 9, 2008, marking the 41st anniversary of the Front. The march began at the center of the Palestinian Youth Organization in the camp, and was led by Palestinian flags and PFLP banners with the participation of delegations replresenting the Palestinian factions, unions, women's and youth organizations, institutions and civil society organizations, as well as the leadership, members, supporters and cadres of the Front in the camp and Sidon as well as the members of the Palestinian Youth Organization.

The PFLP in Sidon region laid a wreath at the memorial to resistance fighters at the tomb of the unknown soldier at the martyrs' cemetery, and marched, while chanting the slogans of the Front.

Comrade Zafer al-Khatib, member of the Central Committee of the PFLP spoke on behalf of the Front's branch in Lebanon, paying tribute to the founders of the PFLP, including Comrade Dr. George Habash, Comrade martyr Abu Ali Mustafa, Comrade martyr Ghassan Kanafani and paid tribute to all of the martyrs of the Palestinian resistance and the martyrs of the resistance in Lebanon, Palestine and around the world. Comrade Khatib said, "We stand today to celebrate the anniversary of the launch of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in the presence of the martyrs, the conscience of our revolutionary struggle throughout history. We have identified from the outset our compass - towards Palestine - and continue our march toward Palestine, throughout history. We continue to stand against any abandonment or deviation from our cause, to reach our historic homeland." He called for an end to the dangerous and futile negotiations, as well as the "calm," calling for a united resistance force to confron the occupation and break the siege upon Gaza. He also spoke of the importance of continuing struggle for Palestinians in Lebanon, on the basis of the right of return to our homeland, Palestine.

He concluded by paying tribute to our besieged people in Gaza and our steadfast people in Al-Khalil facing down settler terror and all of the prisoners and martyrs, pledging to continue the struggle until victory and liberation.

The Front in Ein el-Helweh also held a ceremony to mark the 41st anniversary by kindling a torch marking the anniversary at a large public event, with lit candles and national songs played over loudspeakers, adorned with Palestinian flags and PFLP banners. The fighters of the PFLP paid tribute to the Palestinian flag, and all observed a moment of silence in memory of the martyrs of the PFLP, the Palestinian revolution and the Arab liberation movements.

The event was attended by representatives of all Palestinian political forces, civil society organizations and institutions, and popular committees and organization. Comrade Talal abu Jannous paid tribute to the heroism and resistance of the martyrs of our revolution, led by Dr. George Habash and comrade Abu Ali Mustafa, and called for the freedom of the prisoners held in the jails of the occupation, led by Comrade General Secretary Ahmad Sa'adat. He paid tribute to the heroes of October 17, Comrades Ahed Abu Ghulmeh, Basil al-Asmar, Majdi Rimawi and Hamdi Qur'an and all of the Paestinian and Arab prisoners. He pledged that the Front will continue to remain faithful to the martyrs and to the commitment of our people to liberation and return.

Rashidiyeh Camp

In honor of the 41st anniversary of the launch of the Front, a celebration was held in the Rashidiyeh refugee camp in South Lebanon, in the presence of representative of Palestinian and Lebanese parties, national forces, civil society organizations and institutions, popular committees and a large crowd of members and supporters of the PFLP and people of the camp.

The celebration was led by Palestinian flags and pictures of the martyrs of the Front, the leaders Dr. George Habash and Abu Ali Mustafa, and the imprisoned Comrade General Secretary Ahmad Sa'adat.

Comrade Ahmad Murad, member of the Central Committee of the Front in Lebanon, spoke, saying that the anniversary is an occasion for the renewal of our pledge to raise the banner of struggle and resistance until we achieve the national objectives for all of our people, stressing that the enemy's brutality only intensifies our will and determination for victory.

He called for solid national unity on the basis of the Palestinian cause in order to confront the occupier, and for building the widest campaign to break the siege and blockade upon our steadfast people in the Gaza Strip.

Speaking of the Palestinian situation in Lebanon, he called for an end to any so-called security repression upon the Palestinian people and emphasized the importance of the rights of the Palestinian people in Lebanon, stressing absolute adherence to our right of return and total rejection of all projects of resettlement.

Representatives of Palestinian and Lebanese parties spoke before the event concluded with a torch-lighting ceremony and the singing of national songs.

Bourj al-Barajneh Camp

The PFLP in Bourj el-Barajneh camp held a ceremony to mark the 41st anniversary of the Front honoring the families of the martyrs of the Front, attended by the families of the martyrs as well as many PFLP cadres, members, and supporters in the camp. Comrade Samih spoke on behalf of the Front in the Beirut area, stressing the values of respect for the martyrs and the principles of the martyrs for which they gave their lives. He stressed the importance of national unity and breaking the blockade of Gaza, pointing also to the settler assault on Al-Khalil and the continued settlement project. He called for action from the Arab, Muslim and international community, condemning the shameful silence. The event closed with debkeh and songs of the Popular Front and the Palestinian revolution.

Change We Need: An Anarchist Perspective on the 2008 Election

2008-12-15T16:15:00.002-04:00

While this is coming a little later than other analysis of the November election in the United States that I posted, I would still like to put up this response to the election by the revolutionary anarchist group the North Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists (NEFAC). While I do not totally agree with their anarchist politics (especially their stance on national liberation), I do think that NEFAC is definitely one of the better anarchist groupings in North America today, and I do generally support most of the work they do and I think that those of us in the non-Stalinist Marxist camp need to work to hook up, organize and theorize with non-Marxist revolutionaries like them.

-------

The election is over. Barack Obama will become the next president of The United States. The news of Obama's victory resulted in spontaneous celebrations across the country. The energy was infectious and everywhere conversations seemed to contain a positive outlook that people in the U.S. have not known for many long years. Words like change and hope are being used, and it seems widely assumed that the election of Obama will herald a new age of social justice, an end to the wars, and significant reduction in the racism the plagues U.S. society. But as the energy and media spectacle dies down, we would like for you to consider the election from a different perspective. It is our belief as Class Struggle Anarchists that elections in a capitalist society in fact can never bring true justice and security to the average working person. We do not believe that such elections can with any degree of permanence prevent wars, or deal effectively with racism, sexism or environmental degradation.

We stand in solidarity with the hopes for profound change of the millions of people who voted for Obama. However, we also recognize that the capitalist system is in a serious crisis which is dragging down all working class and oppressed people and which even the best-intentioned high office-holder is incapable of solving. The aim of this piece is to provide a perspective on the crisis and an outline for solutions.

The presidency of George W. Bush has been by almost any reasonable standard a complete disaster. Lies, wars, a financial crisis and deep recession, and the building up of a police state are just a few of Bush's dubious legacies. Some of these were already obvious two years ago as the electoral season opened and the liberals and reformists began their campaign against these issues. However, glaringly missing from their attacks was why these problems existed in the first place.

It is our belief that economic inequality, war, racism, sexism and environmental destruction are inherent in any capitalist society. Consider for a moment the vast wealth that our society creates,everything from crops to advanced medicines. However, the access to this wealth is unequally divided, determined by supposedly free markets. It is assumed by the politicians and corporate media that these supposedly free markets are a natural part of life. Markets, however, are set up by people; they can also be modified or undone by people. As anarchists, we believe that the production and distribution of society's wealth should be decided democratically, by people, and not by a market mechanism which in fact is controlled by a few.

Democracy:

Anarchists are absolutely for democracy. The concept that people should come together and make decisions is the backbone of our ideology. However, we do not view the U.S. system of democracy as being representative of those ideals. The Republicans and Democrats exist as two rival factions battling over our consent to be ruled. Both promote rhetoric of common interest with ordinary people, but we feel this is an illusion. The politicians in this nation exist to provide a stable platform for the rule and exploitation of the majority of working people in America by the minority of capitalists; that is, the owners of the property on which we produce the wealth. We build, guard,clean and work in the offices and plants , we transport the goods, and we sell them, but the capitalists own them them and pocket the profits. The interests of these two groups are not the same. The boss class wants to get as much from the workers as it can. They want to pay us as little as possible and sell us everything they own as dearly as they can. Unchecked these conditions have led to uprisings. Don't believe it? Look at our own history! The abolition of slavery, 8-hour day, the right to form unions, overtime pay, child labor laws, the end to legal segregation, the right of women to vote and to choose, and the right of gay and transgender people to be themselves was won not at the ballot box, but by people organizing, striking, boycotting and taking to the streets. The liberals in elective office passed the laws in response to the movements and to head off what could become a revolutionary upsurge.

Implications of the Election

Without a doubt this election has been historic. We see two reasons. A Black man has been elected to the highest office in the U.S., a country founded on the mass kidnapping of Africans and the theft of land from the Indigenous people who already lived here. Second, Obama's campaign was marked by some of the most widespread mass organizing in years.

The US is a nation deeply scarred by racism, and despite what some pundits might believe, it is clear to any working person that racism is nowhere near dead. Racial oppression is a complicated issue, and we do not mean to simplify it. However, a discussion of why racism and white supremacy have been so intractable in US society would have to consider how race has consistently been used as a wedge by the ruling class in its rhetoric and its policy decisions to keep the working class divided along racial lines, and so prevent the class from realizing its full potential as a force capable of self-organizing and overcoming its oppression. The election of a Black man to the presidency of the US represents a real shift in the attitudes of Americans, and we applaud this. However, racism is not just about attitudes. It is integral to
the system of exploitation of working people. This systemic racism is what leverages the advantage of the ruling class, and with the increasingly evident magnitude of the economic collapse we are heading into, the ruling class will be aggressively seeking opportunities to defend its advantages. The way forward is for working-class people to organize in their own interests and to champion the aspirations of those who are oppressed by racism. We see social justice movements, neighborhood associations and cop-watch as examples. These sorts of bottom-up movements stand in complete contrast to what will be the top-down efforts of even an Obama administration to address social problems. Such efforts may alleviate some of the symptoms but they will leave the root causes of the problems untouched.

The other significant element of the election was the unprecedented grassroots mobilization that supported Obama's campaign. Under a banner of change and social justice many thousands of people volunteered,donated money, and did the labor of making the campaign run. We view this trend with great excitement. Imagine what could be gained if that focus on grassroots organizing was taken into the communities we lived in, into direct action on our on behalf instead of appeals to power.

We urge for this energy and creativity to go into movements independent of politicians. We encourage the support of unions, neighborhood democracy, resistance to police brutality, support for political prisoners, models for mass education, and also a movement with teeth. Above all, we must struggle for what we need, not what the system is willing to give us.

In addition, we must all be on the watch for expressions of racist hatred and organized fascist movements in the months and years following the election. The truth is that many white Americans are still openly racist, and there are groups that will exploit this, and real anger of social issues, to create violent movements. The news of a Black church burned in Springfield, MA just hours after the election was not surprising, and we must use all means necessary to stop such movements.

US NEFAC
November 2008

Selecting and Using a Weapon for the Revolution

2008-12-14T23:27:00.000-04:00

Note: I posted this article back at the beginning of my tenure on this blog but recently reviewed it, only to discover that not only did it not really discuss what the original title (Picking a Weapon for the Revolution) claimed, it did not go into great enough depth.
Now firearms and related matters are huge topics that I could not possibly do justice in a blog post. But there are some very basic guidelines that all revolutionaries who hope to be prepared should follow.

•Guns are only useful is you have ammo to put into them, otherwise you are just carrying around dead weight. This presents something of a problem for the guerrilla, as military caliber ammo cannot simply be bought under dictatorship. For this reason the enemy is the guerrillas sources of weapons, ammo and other supplies. If purchasing firearm(s) and you have a choice, pick a weapon in the same caliber as your enemy so that you may either launch raids against their munitions depots or pick ammo up from your fallen enemies. This problem can be avoided is you have sufficient amounts of your own ammo stockpiled or if you have benefactors supplying you and your organization. Most likely you will have to equip yourself and your comrade with the best weapons at hand, which at the beginning of insurgency may be less than ideal. The best advice that I can give is to shoot what you like and what you shoot well.

Standard military and police calibers vary greatly depending on location. The West typically uses rifles chambered in 5.56 NATO such as the M-16, Steyr Aug, the FAMAS, etc. or .308/7.62x51mm NATO such as the FN FAL. For sidearms, these Western forces of repression typically use pistols chambered in 9mm Parabellum, .45 ACP, or .38 Special if they carry revolvers, more common with small town cops. Additionally, urban police and military forces are going to be equipped with submachine guns in 9mm, although the FBI packs H&K MP5s in 10mm. Allies of the West and countries to which the West has provided military equipment will also use these calibers. Throughout Mexico, any type of hired gun from mall security to cops to soldiers were packing at least a .38 on their belt and anything from an Uzis to M-16s and FALs.
Outside of the west and it's sphere of influence, in former Warsaw Pact countries and in countries who received aid from the Soviets you are likely to encounter a entirely different set of calibers. Traditional AK-47s, with more than 10 million in circulation worldwide and SKSs are two weapons that you are most likely to run across in these part of the world, chambered in 7.62x39mm. Newer Kalashnikovs such as the AK-74 and its carbine/submachine gun version the AK-74u aka the Krinkov, with which the Russian Army is equiped will shoot the faster 5.45 Heavier machine guns, Moisin-Nagants and Dragonovs will shoot the powerful 7.62x54r. In terms of pistols, 9mm is still common in these areas but you may also encounter combloc pistols chambered in rarer caliber such as the devastating 9x19mm or 7.62x25mm. It should be noted that the Global South weapons from all sides and periods of history are available as these countries were used as proxies for Cold War struggles.
If military caliber rifles are not available, either legally or on the black market, shotguns might be your best bet as they are much less restricted in most circumstances.
• Carry a rugged and reliable weapon. The life of a guerrilla is rough and tumble and you don't want your gun to break, jam, or otherwise cease functioning, leaving you high and dry and maybe even dead.

• Carry a gun that you can shoot well and are familiar with. That means don't buy/use a gun because you think it looks cool, even if you don't shoot well with it, know how to clean it or clear jams. If you don't the steadiest hand when shooting at long distances, don't carry a scoped rifle, try a shotgun. If you are not that strong, not have a belt-fed machine gun, remember you have to carry hundreds of rounds of ammo too.

• If all else fails, even very simple non-military guns and other weapons can be used to acquire a weapon from an enemy. Point-blank or close range head shot with almost any caliber are fatal.

• Keep your weapon clean. A dirty weapon is much more likely to jam in battle, which needless to say is bad news. You should be able to disassemble, thoroughly clean and reassemble your weapons quickly and efficiently

• Practice your marksmanship. Even if you have a gun and ammo to put it in, it still won't do you any good if you can't hit what your aiming at. Hold the rifles snugly to your shoulder in a position where it can easily bring the rifle down. Focus on the top the front sight and line it up with the rear sight. DON'T SHOOT FROM THE HIP OR SHOOT HANDGUNS SIDEWAYS! You won't hit anything and you will just waste ammo.

• Read The Revolution Script!

Some New Songs by The Nightwatchman

2008-12-14T20:53:00.002-04:00

The Fabled City

Me and Javi
Shouted slogans in Spanish
Like it was our world to win
Then they moved the plant
Down to Ojeda
Time to bite your tongue again

I've seen the fabled city
And its streets are paved with gold
But an iron fence runs 'round it
And its iron gate is closed

What ain't right ain't right
He told me
But something else passed behind his eyes
Now he's downtown on his knees
Washing floors for somebody
And quietly biding his time

I've seen the fabled city
And its streets are paved with gold
But an iron fence runs round it
And its iron gate is closed

At the gas station
On Sunset and Crescent
I met an angel sad and old
She lived in the alley
Behind the market
In the shadows maybe hidden from the Lord
And for a dollar
She sang a song
That sounded more like a prayer
A wish that her dead mother and father
Couldn't look down and see her there

I've seen the fabled city
And its streets are paved with gold
But an iron fence runs round it
And its iron gate is closed

On the wire outside my window
There sit 100 swallows
And I suspect that if one flew
Then 99 would follow

Rise to Power

I counted to one hundred
I kept losin' track
I wrote one hundred letters
No one wrote back
I told one hundred stories
But all of them got twisted
I sang one hundred songs
But nobody listened

You've got to rise to power
Rise to power
Baby, you've got to rise to power
Rise to power
Rise to power
Ain't a shade of difference
'Tween the heroes and the cowards
Baby, you've got to rise to power

Forced confessions
And coming attractions
Delusions of grandeur
Split into factions
A silent dark Camelot
A kingdom grey and bland
A dull empty heaven
A strong leader's hand

You've got to rise to power
Rise to power
Baby, you've got to rise to power
Rise to power
Rise to power
You're down on your knees
Pullin' up the flowers
Baby, you've got to rise to power

No holy water
Can wash me clean
No angel of mercy
To hear my screams
Into your embrace
I'm ever driven
And in your arms
Unforgiven

You've got to rise to power
Rise to power
Baby, you've got to rise to power
Rise to power
Rise to power
The whole world's watchin'
There's a gunman in the tower
Baby, you've got to rise to power

The Iron Wheel ft. Shooter Jennings

Sometimes they'll tell you to just sit still
When you know that it's time to run
Sometimes they'll tell you it's all over
When you’re sure that it’s just begun

Sometimes they'll tell you to move along
When you're sure you should stand and fight
Sometimes they'll tell you you're a lucky man
But the numbers they don't add up right

Sometimes they'll tell you to just let go
When you're sure you should hold on tight
Sometimes they'll tell you your time
Will never come
When you're sure that your time's come tonight

Quebec Elections 2008: Right-Populists Destroyed, Breakthrough For New Left Party by Issa Al-Jaza'ir

2008-12-14T12:55:00.003-04:00

Issa Al-Jaza'ir writes for Fightback, the Canadian affiliate of the International Marxist Tendency.

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The elections held in Québec, on Monday December 8th, finally returned Liberal Premier Jean Charest to majority government - though without the stability he was hoping for. The sovereigntist Parti Québécois (PQ), which had been reduced to third party in the last election, is once again second-place. The partial victory for the right is tempered by the destruction of the right-wing Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ), and the historic election of the first deputy for the left party, Québec solidaire (QS). This vindicates our analysis that the ADQ’s massive jump in 2007 was a symptom of the working masses’ desperate search for an alternative, and not a general turn to the right, as that party and some on the left claimed. This chauvinist party has now been reduced to a mere 7 seats, losing their status as an official party. The crater in the pavement left by right-populist ADQ leader Mario Dumont, along with the resounding victory of QS’s Amir Khadir, are two important wins for the working class, despite Jean Charest’s success in gaining a thin majority.

Party	Seats (Seats in 2007)	%
Parti libéral du Québec	66 (48)	42%
Parti Québécois	51 (36)	35%
Action démocratique du Québec	7 (41)	16%
Québec Solidaire	1 (0)	4%

Shadow of Duplessis

Mario Dumont imagined himself the reincarnation of Québec’s bonapartist Union National (UN) former Premier, Maurice Duplessis. Duplessis ruled Québec much like a banana republic, gaining himself a certain independence from the classes by imposing himself as supreme arbiter and problem-solver for the capitalist class as a whole. He introduced the much hated pad-lock law. Under this law communists (or militant trade unionists labeled communist) could come home to find their door had been padlocked, and they were left on the street. Duplessis did not hesitate to resort to force to break picket lines, as in the historic asbestos strike in 1949. He also leaned heavily on the Catholic Church, promoting its strong role in return for very vocal support. His election slogan even reflected this relationship: “Le ciel est bleu; l'enfer est rouge”, “The sky is Blue (UN), Hell is red (PLQ)”. Duplessis (“Le Chef”, as he liked to be known) was able to rule on this basis, by manoeuvering and playing one section of society against another, promoting the interests of the church and the bosses in order to guarantee his position.

Dumont, however, relied on a social layer made of hot air. He had no real basis in Québécois society, except a momentary feeling. Elections are a snapshot, and Dumont for a historical split second found himself the accidental focus of the attention of hundreds of thousands of Québécois, especially in the regions, who were revolting against the conditions of life and the traditional parties that ruled over them. His demagogic rhetoric, capitalizing on the racist accommodation debate, found a public looking for a scapegoat and massive change, any change, as long as it’s not the intolerable status-quo. The ADQ rode that accidental wave, and what a wave it was, from 5 seats to 41 seats. 1,224,412 voted for Dumont’s party in the 2007 election, up from 694,122 in 2003. It was a flash flood in Québec society, a misguided, vile and collective outcry that could be felt pouring out of every headline, leaving a big mark on the National Assembly’s composition.

A mere 7 seats away from power, Dumont - had he represented a deep and irreversible shift to the right as some claimed - should today be Premier. It didn’t take long for Québec to find out that Dumont was just an adventurer and opportunist: just another bourgeois politician, but even more fake. His posturing was pointless, his parliamentary games aimless, and his popularity was over before it started. Monday’s election showed that Dumont never actually won over any base, merely disillusioned and desperate voters who were repelled by him fairly soon after. This man, who advocated the privatization of healthcare and Hydro-Québec, saw his entourage collapse to 7 seats. He’s resigned as leader of the party. All talk of a replacement is meaningless at the moment: this little “chef” didn’t surround himself with a single independent personality, and the party is no longer recognized as an official party in the Assembly. It’s never easy to build a party out of an egoist’s entourage, let alone when the little Napoleon doesn’t even have any statues for years of strike-breaking government service. This shadow of Duplessis has turned out to be exactly that, nothing more than a shadow. The lack of an alternative precisely at the moment when hundreds of thousands were searching out for a radical break with the reality bearing down on them: this is the phenomena that led to its rise in the first place. If that alternative is built, then this shell of a party is dead for the foreseeable future.

Charest prepares for the financial crisis

Jean Charest called this election for a reason: he needed a strong mandate to institute deep cuts, privatizations and wage restraints to deal with the financial crisis. He had to seize the opportunity to get that majority before the crisis hit. A minority government would have been fragile, and a crisis this deep would have brought the government down at a certain point.

No, if Charest’s going to go to war, he’s going to need a National Assembly that isn’t going to play political games and chicanery at the expense of his ability to win it. He needs a government which isn’t beholden to opposition parties which may support a movement against him in the hopes of gaining seats - the way that Dumont gave his very much unwelcome support to striking students in 2005.

He’s got a majority, though it’s not the majority he was looking for. He needed 62 seats: the Liberals returned 66 seats, a bare majority of 4 seats. It will have to do, he has no choice. The battle must be fought, even with the threat of only 4 deserters bringing the government down. The bosses will be demanding a general freeze on public sector pay rises, which set the example for private sector workers. They will also be demanding large corporate tax cuts, increasing transport fares, hydro rates, and tuition fees. As this general program of attacks on the living standards of working people unfolds, it will become increasingly clear that this is the real reason Charest wanted his majority, to be immune to the opposition of the working class to his brutal attacks on behalf of the capitalist class.

Jean Charest has been here before, in 2003, his first mandate. Back then, he came in and immediately opened confrontations with organized labour. Soon, he had managed to unite the FTQ and the CSN against him, with 90% of the locals of the more conservative FTQ returning a mandate for a general strike. The CSN received a mandate as well, and for the first time since the 1972 Common Front, it seemed like a united general strike was on the way. The labour leaders however, delayed and maneuvered to avoid action. The opportunity was lost and the strike was quashed by the bureaucracy. He didn’t stop there: he then attacked the students, who defeated him in 2005, with 244,000 students on strike in a wild 5 week campaign with universities and colleges occupied across the province. It is on the shoulders of the labour bureaucrats that the blame must be put for the lack of a generalized opposition movement, drawing in all of Quebec society against the attacks of the bosses and their parties. It was this lack of a common fight back, the betrayed hopes of the workers, that Mario Dumont played on.

Today, Jean Charest has come full circle. He’s again beginning a majority government, and preparing attacks on the social services and the concessions workers fought so hard to win from the capitalist class. But things are also different. Québec is facing what could be a very deep recession, and even a short one will mean crisis for Québec’s industries, and the capitalists who own them. The attacks will need to be harder, more all-embracing. In the long run, his actions will prepare even more explosive conflicts with the unions. The counter attack avoided in 2003 will be back as workers learn the lesson that Charest does not wish to negotiate, only to break their backs. In other words, Charest’s fragile majority will not take long before facing big tests.

The PQ, very loyal opposition

In June, 2007, Mario Dumont huffed and puffed about bringing down Charest’s government over his unpopular $950 million tax cut. Dumont hoped the Lieutenant-Governor would then appoint him Premier. Sound familiar? In a poll, 75% said they thought the money would be better spent on social services. The PQ had the cards in its hand: support the government’s budget and its unpopular tax cut, or vote with Dumont to bring Charest down. In typical fashion for a party in a historical dead alley and increasingly out of touch with their base, they did neither. They made a deal with the liberals: they would vote to bring the government down, but only send 3 deputies to the National Assembly to do it, guaranteeing a government majority of 2 on the motion.

This week’s results are a picture of stagnation for this party, despite the increased percentage. This is no victory for them, no matter what their spinsters say. They received 1,139,185, up from 1,125,546 in 2007. They attracted 13,639 more voters, across the province. Effectively, they have not moved from 2007. Much in the same way as Dumont was propelled forward through an accidental intersection of conditions; Pauline Marois’s PQ has now found itself filling the vacuum left in the wake of the ADQ’s disappearance. A giant sucking sound was heard, and the party was pulled in to fill the space left behind. They are now where they would have been had hundreds of thousands of voters not desperately reached for Mario Dumont as a response to the intolerable pressures they faced.

The “to hell with them all” party

Significantly, these elections had a turnout of 56.5%, the lowest since 1927. The Director General of Elections Québec called it a catastrophe, and it was. The turnout in 2007 was 71.2%, 70.4% in 2003 and 78.3% in 1998. This is a deafening blow to the legitimacy of all three bourgeois parties. Much noise is being made about “apathy”, and how this is a sad day for democracy even though they spent so much money on fancy ads: “by voting… I express myself”. The reality is that working people look at the ADQ, the PQ, and the PLQ and see that they all have the same platform: cuts, restraint and austerity for the workers – tax breaks and special treatment for the bosses. And that was in the boom time, now there are billion dollar bailouts too. This is the real source of abstention. It is not apathy; it is revulsion at the lack of an alternative. If all three parties are presenting nothing but further attacks on workers and students, why should we bother to vote?

Conversely, under different conditions, the same logic can lead to radically different results. If there were a real alternative present, with a radical program to solve the problems of every day working people and fight back against the attacks of the bosses, workers who normally abstain would enter the electoral plane in mass numbers.

Left-wing breakthrough in Mercier

Results in Mercier:
QS, Amir Khadir: 8861, 38.06%
PQ, Daniel Turp: 7989, 34.32%
PLQ, Catherine Emond: 4940, 21.22%

That alternative made a huge step forward this election. QS, the left party formed only a few years ago, has elected Amir Khadir in the riding of Mercier. This is a historic breakthrough, in a riding that has mythical meaning for the PQ. Amir’s victory was a decisive one, 8861 against Daniel Turp’s 7989. He ran on an honest platform, with the slogans:

For a public health system, against profiting off of illness
Against abusive profits, for decent incomes
Against the casino economy, for sovereignty in solidarity
For a green and local economy, against the abandonment of the regions
For Wind-Québec, against dependence on oil

Wind-Québec is a play on the state-run Hydro-Québec power utility, and refers to the nationalization of the wind energy industry. As opposed to the separatism of the PQ, QS has been putting forward the Québécois people’s sovereignty over natural resources and control of their economy. This is a significant step forward. With a program of meaningful reforms, Amir Khadir actually presented voters with something they had never seen before: a platform that spoke to their aspirations and their problems, without compromise, and without skirting the issues. Deceit, and a refusal to act on the issues affecting workers and their families, packaged as “realism”, is how the parties of the bosses usually operate. Under Charest, we have seen the private sector health clinics bloom, while the hospitals stagnate. With Amir, QS has shown itself to be a real alternative for workers and students looking for a way out of the crisis of Capitalism.

For a labour party in Québec

This is a historic opening for Québec solidaire. It can not be squandered. An immediate campaign needs to be begun to put the last nail in the coffin of the PQ. QS, its supporters in the Montréal Central Council of the CSN and sympathizers across the labour movement should demand that the labour leaders break their ties with the PQ once and for all and link up with QS. QS should offer spots for voting representatives from every union that affiliates to it, on all of its leading bodies, including the national executive. It should extend voting rights on the congress floor to unions that link up with the party. These are the links necessary to guarantee the future of the party as the representative of the working class in the National Assembly. Whatever political positions this or that union leader may have, we must insist on these links first and foremost, providing us with an opportunity to campaign to pressure or replace them when the time comes.

QS must show the way forward by providing the unity and foresight in the coming struggles that these leaders have so far lacked. By being at every picket line, every labour dispute, every major union congress, and putting forward a bold socialist program. It is not enough to stand for redistributing the wealth, as Amir said in his victory speech. It is not enough to be against the rule of the private sector, as he put it. It is not enough to be for sovereignty over our resources and our economy. As Charest begins his attacks on the labour movement, Québec solidaire needs to provide a clear, socialist solution:

Save public healthcare – nationalize all private clinics and incorporate them into the public system
Ensure decent salaries – link all wages to the rate of inflation to ensure an ailing economy does not mean a pay cut for millions of workers
End the casino of the market – nationalize the major industries under democratic workers’ control and integrate them into a rational, socialist plan of production

Only a party built by fighting in the factories, schools and the National Assembly to push back the capitalist class can truly represent the workers of Quebec, fighting for the overthrow of the bosses and their parties, the end of capitalism, and the establishment of socialism in Quebec.

We leave you with the poem Amir quoted in the closing of his speech:

Comme un million de gens, Qui pourraient se rassembler, Pour être beaucoup moins exploités
Like a million people, Who were able to unite, To be much less exploited

The Economic Crisis and the U.S. Left

2008-12-13T10:58:00.003-04:00

From the National Executive Committee of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization/Organizacion Socialista del Camino para Libertad

“Money makes a good servant, but a bad master.”
— Sir Francis Bacon

1. Thinking about the current crisis by way of an analogy with a pyramid scheme is helpful on two levels:

• Much like a pyramid scheme, the financial crisis we are experiencing was built on greed, illusions and magic. In pyramid schemes there is the assumption that someone who is convinced to invest in a ‘deal’ will get a return on their investment when they are able to get other people to also invest. Thus, the people who initiate a pyramid scheme almost always walk away winners. The problem is that as the pyramid spreads down, the risks increase. And, when there are no longer investors, the pyramid begins to collapse.

• The current financial crisis operated similarly. The capital that existed in financial centers was lent on the subprime market. These (ultimately bad) investments were bundled and sold internationally. In some ways it was like a football game with the ball being handed off from one player to another with the hope of reaching the goal line. In this case, one of the players was tackled and the ball was fumbled... and then proceeded to unravel on the field. Specifically, banks got to a point where they stopped trading with one other because no one was sure any more whether each other’s investments were solid or quicksand-like.

• The current crisis—both financial and ‘real’ economy crisis—also resembles a pyramid scheme in that, as with all pyramid schemes, when they collapse there is broad and angry blame, but ultimately there is yet another pyramid scheme because the dynamics of pyramids are never fully debunked. To put it another way, people believe not that pyramid schemes are bad, but that a particular pyramid scheme was bad. So, too, with most crises within capitalism. The assumption is not that the crises have something to do with capitalism, but rather that they have to do with a glitch in the system.

2. It is now clear that the current economic crisis is not simply a financial crisis, but a broader crisis within the system. Statistics recently revealed indicate that the USA entered a recession in December 2007, months before the financial meltdown. The financial crisis has certainly worsened the situation but was not the cause of the overall crisis. The fundamental cause rests with the crisis of overproduction which is built into the capitalist system. The conjunctural cause rests with a crisis within the system of neo-liberalism.

3. Capitalism as a system faces periodic crises of overproduction. Overproduction has two meanings. One—the most commonly understood—is the overproduction of goods. More specifically, too many products are produced that cannot be consumed in the market. Another name for this is “under-consumption.” An example of this which is very timely is the automobile. Leaving aside the ecological impact of cars for a moment, the reality is that the world has too many cars. At a certain point this results in a crisis for particular manufacturers and, later, retailers.

4. Yet overproduction is not only about consumption. There is the overproduction of capital. Specifically, capitalism produces more capital than can be invested in such a way to bring forth the profits that the capitalists seek. This capital can be money capital but it can also be in the form of instruments of production, e.g., machinery and technology in manufacturing centers. Thus, a corporation, or a financial center (linked with a manufacturer in some respect) may have significant funds that it can no longer invest profitably, funds that are the results of years of profit accumulation. It is not that there is a lack of things to be built or produced, but given the nature of capitalism and its drive for profit accumulation, there may be fewer things from which a particular profit rate or level can be gained. At such moments there are two things that may unfold. One, the destruction of capital, whether in the form of downsizing or closing of facilities. Two, frivolous investment. For years we have witnessed the second. We are now witnessing on a dramatic scale the first. (This is not to say that there have not been other periods of the destruction of capital. Recessions are about the destruction of capital in order to begin a new wave of accumulation.)

5. The conjunctural crisis, that is the crisis of the moment, while having its foundations in the crisis of overproduction, is also a crisis of the particular form of accumulation we have been subject to since the late 1970s: neo-liberalism. Neo-liberalism speaks to a specific approach arrived at through experimentation to address the stagnation of the Western capitalist system that appeared in the late 1960s-early 1970s. A process of the reorganization of global capitalism unfolded, assisted by significant technological changes (e.g., the electronics revolution), but guided by a very particular ideological view. This view repudiated all forms of Keynesian economics (theories that emphasized the role of the State in promoting demand), and instead emphasized the role of the State as more actively assisting in putting down progressive social movements, including but not limited to the working class, and eliminating all obstacles to the accumulation of profit. In this sense, the State was not in any way eliminated from the scene, but its role changed as a direct outgrowth of the class struggle that resulted in the rise of neo-liberalism.

6. Neo-liberalism, among other things, promoted an ideology of the elimination of the State. This was an illusion. Neo-liberalism needed and needs the State in order to accomplish its objectives. Whether it is in the form of free trade zones or the restrictions on the rights of workers to join or organize labor unions, the State is essential. Yet what neo-liberalism did advance was an active process of deregulation. Deregulation was able to take place because neo-liberalism joined with a mass-based right-wing movement that saw in government nothing more than increased taxes and bureaucratic regulations (and restrictions). In the USA, using libertarian rhetoric, neo-liberalism was able to go forth and multiply.

7. Deregulation contributed, therefore, to the current financial crisis. The elimination of proper oversight on financial institutions and efforts, such as those advanced by Senator Phil (“nation of whiners”) Gramm, to break down barriers between commercial banks and investment banks, laid the foundation for the current disarray.

8. What is further noteworthy about the current crisis is that it is global. This and the rapidity with which it spread shocked nearly everyone, including the capitalists. It speaks to the extent to which the internationalization of capitalism has progressed. It also speaks to evidence—which we cannot explore here—of the development of a transnational capitalist class which, as of yet, has no transnational/global state apparatus with which to manage transnational capitalist crises. As a result, there have been summits and promises, but for the most part efforts at addressing the crisis have been advanced at the national level. This will probably change over the coming months, particularly with the ascension of President-elect Obama.

9. A further note on the particular nature of the crisis is that it demonstrates that the older notions of imperialist contention are today far more complicated than in the pre-World War 2 era. In other words, what we do not see today is evidence that economically developed nation-states or nation-state blocs are actively attempting to undermine the USA. If anything the opposite is the case. The nations of the G-8 in particular are attempting to neutralize the crisis and hope and pray that the USA can once again become the world’s consumer of last resort.

10. This crisis has also demonstrated that there exists significant contention within capital between the manufacturing and financial sides. The struggle around the auto bailout/loan involves an effort by the political Right to crush the United Auto Workers and create a PATCO-like environment with regard to labor relations, but is also a battle over control of manufacturing itself. Finance capital looks at the State as its servant and savior but wishes to ensure that it sets the pace for economic development. In this sense they are attempting to discipline the manufacturing side of the economy.

11. The response to this crisis by the Bush administration has, as pointed out by numerous liberal and progressive economists, been Hoover-ian, for lack of a better term. Much as Herbert Hoover responded to the 1929 Wall Street crisis and economic downturn, so too has Bush. The focus has been on securing Wall Street and finance capital rather than examining the deeper aspects of the crisis. As of this writing Bush remains an obstacle when it comes to both the auto bailout and foreclosure assistance, and is largely acting like a deer in a headlight.

12. What can we expect from President-elect Obama? Obama has made promises to invest in infrastructure and to focus more on the demand side of the economy. Microsoft’s Bill Gates is the most recent capitalist to push Obama to spend funds rather than worry about balancing budgets (budget balancing being the defining feature of the so-called monetarists who pray at the altar of Milton Friedman). This advice is correct. In the face of this crisis, concern should not be on budgets but on guarding against full collapse. As it is, state governments are suffering immensely and are in need of assistance. And with more than 500,000 jobs cut in November 2008 alone, the concern needs to be on putting people back to work. Obama has also discussed so-called “green jobs.” It is not entirely clear what this will mean in the real world, but an argument can be made for what some have called a “green New Deal,” i.e., a long-term reinvestment in the economy that focuses on infrastructure that addresses the environmental crisis. In a worse case scenario, there will be green projects but no major investment.

13. What should this mean for the Left?

• Marxism has proven, once again, to be essentially correct in its analysis of the capitalist system. This may sound over the top but it is an important point to make, particularly after years of the neo-liberal and post-Cold War assault on the basic notions of the Marxist critique of capitalism. It is also important to emphasize this point because there are regularly attempts to treat each economic crisis—as we mentioned earlier—as unique and largely driven by human failings.

• Nationalization and public control: A peculiar situation has emerged with the bailout of the financial sector. In effect, the financial sector is being nationalized or at least partially nationalized. The far Right recognizes this which is why they have been attacking Bush for introducing “socialism.” Bush is doing nothing of the sort. What they have been conducting has been a de facto nationalization process that is entirely consistent with neo-liberalism. As Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin and others have pointed out, neo-liberalism does not mean that the State abandons the economy. Rather, there is a different manner for State involvement with the economy. This has been true throughout the life of capitalism. What we should do is to fight for expanded nationalization with real public oversight. This is directly relevant to the current crisis in auto. It is not enough to demand nationalization, but we should fight for public oversight and for “economic conversion.” In the case of the auto industry this would mean government money to the auto industry based on a plan and accountability, but also tied to altering the nature of the products of the auto industry, e.g., start producing other materials and not just cars.

• Resistance is essential: Although it is already evident that masses of people are increasingly open to suggestions regarding alternative economic approaches, we are far from being in a revolutionary situation. Yet in the immediate situation there must be massive resistance to the economic crisis. This can take many forms, including but not limited to:

- A fight within our mass organizations for popular mobilizations: This means that we need to work within unions and community-based organizations to develop new strategies. One specific project to undertake would be pushing for working people’s assemblies in cities and counties that bring together working class-based organizations to develop a collective working people’s agenda. Our aim should be to identify 10 or so objectives or demands that can address the living standard decline of the average working person and the current crisis. Such assemblies can then discuss or entertain organizational possibilities for implementation.

- Mass actions: In the immediate aftermath of the release of the first financial bailout, organized labor did little to mobilize, by way of example. While the New York City Central Labor Council called a mass rally, they were one of the few labor bodies to do such. There were also rallies called by the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA) addressing the foreclosures. But mass anger with the bailout did not translate into mass mobilizations. Organizations that should have been leading such actions were caught flat-footed.

- Demands for structural reforms: The Left needs to involve itself in real politics. This means taking advantage of networks like Progressives for Obama, Progressive Democrats of America, etc., to engage in struggles regarding specific pieces of legislation. Particular pressure should be put on the Congressional Progressive Caucus to demand sweeping changes and to compel Obama to be focused on the needs of those suffering most in this maelstrom. With the incoming Administration this is a key time to push a set of demands for the first 100 days such as the article in the New Labor Forum on that topic. These demands need to be along the lines of the “green New Deal” mentioned earlier that address infrastructure, social safety net, etc. They also need to include other priorities, such as ending the wars, closing Guantanamo, labor law reform, etc.

- Crisis centers: Suggested elsewhere, this idea involves setting up centers for assistance and resistance. These centers can be used to inform the public of what is going on as well as what they can do to resist. Crisis centers, along with mass organizations, can also be vehicles for promoting what the Black Panther Party once called “Survival Programs.” As the crisis deepens, there will be a dire need for everything from free breakfast programs to housing assistance. Crisis centers could incorporate a 501(c) (3) component or they could be housed within an existing non-profit organization (including within labor unions).

- Build the radical Left: The circumstances we face are such that there is an openness to ideas that as recently as a year ago would have been considered over the top, e.g., nationalizing the auto industry. This sympathy for alternative ideas needs to be translated into building organization. This means that we need to develop study groups/circles that focus on gaining a better understanding of the economic crisis and what needs to be done. We should also aim to build alliances within the Left among organizations and individuals to conduct joint strategy in response to the crisis. Such alliances can be both national and local.

1. It is critical that we understand that these investments were bad largely because the people that were receiving them were doing so based on a steadily declining living standard. Working people were using credit, whether home equity or credit cards, as a means of trying to sustain their living standard. As their living standards further declined it became more and more difficult to repay various loans. Additionally, as has been demonstrated, avaricious financial institutions took advantage of working people in order to convince them to take out loans that would ultimately undo them.

2. In the current situation this was exemplified by McCain and Palin focusing on greedy individuals on Wall Street rather than recognizing that while there are many greedy people on Wall Street, the crisis was driven by the system. This is also important because right-wing populism, often a major beneficiary from economic downturns, emphasizes individuals and social groups as the enemies, e.g., Jews and minorities; and when using certain terms from the Left, it can be appealing, particularly to those who believe that the empire has betrayed them and their dreams.

The Revolt in Greece

2008-12-13T10:25:00.000-04:00

As some of you may be aware, the ancient European nation-state of Greece has been in a state of near revolt since the the murder of a teenager 7 days ago today, by a police special guard. The collective response of a wide swath of the Greek population has been to rise up and take to the streets of Athens and other major Greek cities in order to show their anger and frustration with the government. Increasingly it seems that the major anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist forces in Greece are playing a leading role in the the organization and execution of the mass street level actions. And now it also seems that the rage that is being exhibited by the Greek people is flowing over into the rest of the European mainland, with riots and protest actions taking place as far afield as Madrid, Barcelona, Copenhagen and even good ol' Moscow. But as the people's anger against the state explodes into the streets, what is the next step for this? The question for me is can the collective of leftist forces in Greece transform this relatively spontaneous event into a revolutionary movement. This is an attempt to answer that question in a way from the organizations of the Greek anticapitalist Left. Some may question their desire to take the rage of the steet movement into the workplace, which, as one comrade of mine said in his experience, normaly means transforming it into something "tame and tired." I would normally agree, but I would also agree that simple street fighting will likely not bring about a real revolution. For that we need real militant organization and action, at both the economic and political levels. My hope is that the movement in Greece will grow into this, but that it will not become tame and tired, but will retain its revolutionary nature.

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Our answer will be to resist and to keep fighting to overthrow the policy of police oppression, austerity and racism

We, the organizations of the anticapitalist Left that sign this text, want to condemn the murder, in cold blood, of 16 year old Alexis Grigoropoulos by a police special guard in the evening of December 6th. We salute the demonstrations against the government of murderers all over Greece.

In our opinion the reason for what happened is not the “extreme zeal”, or the “loss of temper” or the “lack of training” of a police special guard but the whole policy of the New Democracy government. It is a policy that not only reinforces police oppression and legitimizes the use of lethal weapons against demonstrators, but also privatizes the Ports and Olympic Airlines, attacks social security and the rights of students. It is the policy of police beatings of students, of the kidnappings of immigrants from Pakistan, of illegal interceptions of phone communications and of racist attacks that lead to the death of refugees that came here looking for asylum and a better future.

It is the policy of special “antiterrorist” legislation, of full compliance to the measures adopted by the EU against democratic liberties and against immigrants. It is the policy of the new legal framework for the Universities, of legalizing Private Universities. It is the policy of lower wages and rising taxes.

Amidst an economic crisis the government is trying on the one hand to offer billions of Euros to the Banks and on the other to find scapegoats either in radical youth or in immigrants.

After the brutal murder the government has chosen the path of police repression. That is why police anti-riot squads attacked those who were demonstrating. The Socialist Party, PASOK, has offered his consent to this policy. The message is simple: the government will enforce its policy at any cost, a policy that will make the workers pay for the economic crisis, by means of austerity, flexible work, privatizations, implementation of the EU policies.

The anger of the demonstrators is fuelled by the policies of the government, of the forces of capital, of the EU. That is why the protest must grow stronger. We must meet in the streets with the struggling workers, farmers and students. We will not pay for their crisis.

Today anger is not enough. What is needed is collective and militant struggle in every workplace, every neighborhood, in order to transform them into places of resistance and overthrow the government and its policy.

Down with the New Democracy government of murderers and its policy!
Capital must pay for its crisis, not the workers and youth!
Let’s escalate the struggle for our rights!
The ministers that are responsible must resign!
The police must be disarmed, police forces must keep away from demonstrations, and Police Special Forces must be disbanded!
Release all people arrested during the demonstrations!
Repeal ‘antiterrorist’ and authoritarian laws!

The organizations of the Greek anticapitalist Left.

ARAN (Left Recomposition), ARAS (Left Anticapitalist Group), EKKE (Revolutionary Communist Movement of Greece), EEK (Workers Revolutionary Party), OKDE, OKDE-Spartacus (4thInternational), SEK (Socialist Workers Party), NAR-N.K.A. (New Left Current-Youth Communist Liberation), K.O. Anasyntaxi (Communist Organization Regroupment), K.A. (Communist Renewal), EN.ANTI.A (United Anticapitalist Left), ME.R.A. (Front of Radical Left)

Victory at Republic! by Lee Sustar

2008-12-11T12:01:00.000-04:00

WITH A unanimous vote, workers at the Republic Windows & Doors plant in Chicago ended their six-day factory occupation late on December 10 after Bank of America and other lenders agreed to fund about $2 million in severance and vacation pay as well as health insurance.

“Everybody feels great,” said a tired but beaming Armando Robles, president of United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (UE) Local 1110.

Melvin Maclin, the local’s vice president, agreed. “I feel wonderful,” he said. “I feel validated as a human being. Everybody is so overjoyed. This is significant because it shows workers everywhere that we do have a voice in this economy. Because we’re the backbone of this country. It’s not the CEOs. It’s the working people.”

Pointing, he continued, “See that sign up there? Without us, it would just say ‘Republic,’ because we make the windows and doors. This shows that you can fight—and that you have to fight.”

The settlement was a resounding victory for union members who were told a little more than a week earlier that the factory would be closed in less than three day’s time—and that, contrary to federal law, they would get no severance pay.

So to pressure the company to make good on what it owed them, the workers voted to stay put after the plant ceased production on December 5.

By deciding to occupy their factory—a tactic used by labor in the 1930s, but virtually unknown in this country since—the Republic workers sparked a solidarity movement that forced one of the biggest banks in the U.S. to pay two months of wages and health care, even though the bank had no legal obligation to do so.

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WHAT BEGAN as a resolute act of some 250 workers quickly became a national symbol of working-class resistance in a crisis-bound economy. Hundreds upon hundreds of union members and officials—not only from Chicago, but around the Midwest—came to the Republic factory to express their solidarity and bring donations of food and badly needed funds.

But support for the Republic struggle went beyond the ranks of organized labor. The fightback crystallized mass anger about the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. Even though Bank of America—Republic’ s main creditor—is in line receive $25 billion in taxpayer money, the bank refused to finance the 60 days’ pay due to workers under the WARN Act if a plant closes without the two-month notice required under the law.

Democratic politicians, from President-elect Barack Obama down to Chicago aldermen, felt the pressure to declare their support for the struggle.

Press coverage was affected as well. For once, the media not only highlighted the issues in a labor struggle, but also used its resources to investigate the em ployer. The Chicago Tribune reported that Republic’s main owner, Rich Gillman, was involved in the purchase of a nonunion window factory in Iowa to move to. Journalists also uncovered evidence that Bank of America refused repeated requests to extend more credit to Republic, despite its infusion of bailout money.

Thus, when UE decided to make Bank of America the target of a December 10 rally, there was a ready response—about 1,000 people turned out on short notice.

“Since we’re down here in the financial district, let’s do a little mathematics, “ said Rev. Gregory Livingston of Rainbow/PUSH. “Bank of America got $25 billion. Citibank got $25 billion. Republic workers got how much? Zero.

“That’s why we’re here in the financial district. It’s where the money is. The people work, and guess whose money is in these banks? Guess whose money is in the market? Guess whose money is in their pockets? It’s our money.”

But what was noteworthy about the picket wasn’t the anger against the banks, but a palpable sense of workers’ power. Members of a dozen different unions were on hand, as were student groups, socialists and community groups, all inspired by the Republic workers’ bold stand.

Larry Spivack, regional director of AFSCME Council 31, summed up the mood in his speech. “Look around you,” he told the crowd, naming the main financial institutions nearby. “Who created all their wealth?” he asked—and was answered by the chant, “We did!” “Who has the power?” “We do!”

Spivack continued: “This is a beginning, like when the Haymarket struggle took place in 1886,” a reference to the Chicago martyrs in the struggle for the eight-hour workday. He concluded with a shout, “Power to the workers!”

A few hours later, back at the Republic plant, after workers heard the terms of the agreement and voted, Bob Kingsley, the national director of organization for UE, made a similar point in assessing the victory:

“The significance of this struggle for the labor movement is that at a time when millions of American workers are facing greater and greater economic turmoil, and with it more and more instances of unfairness, there needed to be a clear symbol of resistance.

What the workers at Republic are is the face of that resistance. They personify the challenge that the working class faces in today’s economy, but they also symbolize the hope that if we, as workers, stick together, if we fight together, and if we’re willing to push the limits, we can achieve incredible things. And their victory comes at a time when the labor movement needs it.”

This article is reproduced from socialistworker.org

Economic Crisis and the Poor: Probable Impacts, Prospects for Resistance by John Clarke

2008-12-10T13:31:00.000-04:00

Now that the crisis of the financial markets has become a crisis of the ‘real’ economy, it is obvious that those who already face poverty (or live on the edge of it) will be hit extraordinarily hard in the days ahead. Over the last three decades, social programs that served to partially redistribute wealth or limit the disciplinary power of unemployment on the working class were massively reduced. With this ‘social safety net’ seriously compromised, we can expect a rapid and deep process of impoverishment to take effect as the downturn unfolds. The scale and severity of this will pose major challenges but open up huge possibilities in terms of mobilizing poor communities.

In the last weeks since the crisis came to head on Wall Street and scandalous bailouts for the rich ensued, a question has been lurking in the background: who will pay for this crisis of capitalism? That the capitalists and bankers do not intend to pay is more than obvious. That workers and the poor face massive austerity is also very clear. However, in order for this to happen, those in power are going to have to impose their harsh ‘solutions’ and that will produce suffering and an anger that forms the basis for fighting back. I would like to look at how poor communities may be attacked and at some of the forms that resistance could take. I speak from the standpoint of someone who is active in anti poverty struggles in Toronto. In some smaller and more heavily industrialized cities, the situation is already further advanced but we may expect a deepening downturn to affect Toronto very seriously. In many smaller centres, systems of social provision are even more inadequate than in Toronto and many people facing conditions of poverty and destitution will be forced to head for the major centre out of necessity.

The Shredded ‘Safety Net’

In assessing the likely impacts of the downturn, the first important question to consider is the fact that ‘employment insurance’ (EI) has been so drastically undermined. If all that people have to turn to is the welfare system, they will face a devastating shock. EI, while it has highly restrictive rules, considers eligibility from the standpoint of unemployed status. Welfare, in contrast, is a system of last resort that can only be accessed by those on the very edge of destitution. Those with any other sources of income are ineligible by reason of the welfare means test. In conditions of rapid economic downturn, that will translate into a whole mass of people who are without work but who cannot even apply for income support until they have exhausted their savings. Once they have reached the required level of poverty, those who were previously working for living wages will be expected to make do with the degrading pittance that welfare provides. I spoke recently to a man who had just lost his job and wanted to know about accessing welfare if he could not collect EI. He was truly devastated to learn that his very modest bank account would have to be almost emptied before he could go to Social Services. As this kind of thing happens on a major scale, it will send a shock wave of indignation through whole communities.

However, even the miserably low income provided by welfare is not something we can assume will be available. The social assistance system is massively arbitrary in its actual implementation and municipalities have to foot the bill for part of it. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has already made clear that local governments will face cost cutting measures in the months ahead and, in such a situation, it is to be expected that local welfare offices will engage in an intensified drive to deny entitlements by way of a covert process of improper denial. If the crisis becomes deep enough and caseloads reach a high enough level, the very viability of welfare provision will be called into question.

In fact, Toronto’s City Council has already set the stage for a disastrous situation to develop in the near future. Under Mayor David Miller and his progressive allies on Council, the City’s welfare reserve fund has been depleted to pay for day-to-day operating expenses. From a high point of $94.4 million in 2003, it has been taken down to a mere $8.3 million. This means that we are going into a major international economic downturn with the income support system of the largest city in the country ready to collapse at the first test. Aside from generalized demands for increases in welfare rates, we will have to be ready to fight for the very right of people to obtain even a minimum level of income support.

Nor can we forget that, for hundreds of thousands of low-income people, the undermining of social programs has meant that they must frequently access private charity in order to survive. If food banks and other such services face a big increase in demand, while finding it harder to bring in donations, the costs in terms of hunger and illness will be very great indeed. Food banks have become a de facto second layer of welfare provision that until now has partly concealed the gross inadequacy of social assistance payments and limited the spread of hunger. If they are overwhelmed, the resulting situation will be tragic.

We can expect other impacts in the area of municipal services. 180,000 public housing tenants in Toronto are living in buildings and units that are in a state of massive disrepair. Infusions of cash from Queen’s Park have been well short of the hundreds of millions needed to bring this huge quantity of public housing stock up to a standard that even meets legal requirements. In conditions of funding cutbacks, this process can only intensify. Already, despite a waiting list for social housing of some 70,000, City owned buildings are left vacant for want of resources to restore them to a level where they can be occupied. There are not a few buildings that have been neglected to the point where action must be taken soon if they are to continue to house people. The loss of public housing in conditions where growing numbers of people lack the means to pay rent in the private market would be a disastrous addition to the overall crisis.

Even before this downturn really takes hold, hundreds of thousands of low-income tenants in Toronto barely keep themselves housed and pay the rent only by going short on decent food. There are already more evictions taking place under McGuinty than during the Harris years. If jobless rates shoot up and income support systems are further restricted, an epidemic of economic evictions will ensue. Then, as the loss of housing drives people to seek emergency shelter, we see another situation where the course charted before the downturn has horrible implications. Toronto has taken up a relentless drive to remove shelters and services for the homeless from the central part of the city. At present, finding a bed for the night in the overcrowded shelters is a challenge for the homeless. An upsurge in destitution will mean more people trying to access a system that is already inadequate. There will be a great political reluctance to respond to this need. Not only will Toronto City Council want to minimize expenditures but it will also be loath to open facilities in areas it has recently worked to clear of the homeless in the interests of upscale redevelopment. Some of the fights we face ahead will be for the very right to find shelter and stay alive.

Marginalized Communities and the Crisis

It would be hard to overestimate the degree to which this crisis will intensify the abuses faced by precarious workers in the most exploitative and low paying sectors of the job market. The level of enforcement of the most basic legal rights for such workers has already sunk to the level of tokenism. A worker who actually receives the protections of the Employment Standards Act enjoys little enough but these protections are a dead letter in many workplaces. The payment of wages below the level of the minimum wage, failure to provide overtime pay, the disregarding of statutory holidays, blatant safety violations – all these things are widespread now. In conditions of rising unemployment, we may expect employers to intensify the abuses very considerably.

There is one ‘service’ that has been exempt from austerity and, indeed, has had money thrown at it to the point where its budget has swollen to unheard of proportions. That exception to the rule is, of course, policing. This institution and its repressive role will be preserved and pampered no matter how dire the fiscal situation in the period ahead. The role of the police in poor communities will be stepped up in conditions of worsening poverty and destitution. If we look at the history of the Great Depression, we can see how local authorities responded in that period to the explosion of homelessness that took place. The police were used to ensure that those without work and housing received a very clear message that they were unwelcome and should move on.

Over the last few years, the drive to clear the central part of the city of poor and homeless people in order to make way for the process of gentrification, has given the Toronto cops extensive experience in harassing and terrorizing people the merchants, developers and politicians would rather not have around. Toronto’s drive to remove panhandlers has been stepped up greatly in the last couple of years and it has provided the police with a huge training exercise in criminalizing a population and disregarding its most basic legal rights. As pressure on services and the level of visible homelessness increases, we can count on intensified police repression to be a key element of the attack that poor communities will have to respond to.

In every aspect of the unfolding crisis that I have pointed to, it is, very sadly, a given that immigrant communities will face a massively disproportionate level of attack. A few days ago, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) office took a call from a Central American family who had applied to their local welfare office for a health related benefit. An official informed them that she did not believe they needed the benefit and threatened to make sure they were deported for making false claims. A Somali woman applying for the same benefit was told by another office that she should not expect such assistance because she was already better off in Canada than she had been in Africa. The impending drive to restrict social provision will have a racist, anti immigrant element that will shape and define it. With immigrant communities already disadvantaged and vulnerable, any movement of resistance to poverty will need to confront racism whether it is sanctioned officially and hides its face or it begins to come out in the open as expressions of political backwardness.

New Resistance, Broad Alliances, Major Demands

There is a danger that this crisis is going to unfold with such speed and severity that it will create, for a period of time, a numbed passivity in communities under attack. The most effective counter measure to this will be to establish, as rapidly as possible, practical models of effective resistance. Over the last years, OCAP has established a method of work that we have sometimes referred to as ‘direct action casework.’ This uses collective action to resolve the grievances of individuals and families who face the denial of social entitlements and other injustices. It was established with the methods of the unemployed in the 1930s in mind. Such forms of mobilizing could be developed on a very wide scale in response to the crisis.

If the welfare system tries to cut costs by denying assistance to people in need, then ‘mass delegations’ of the poor and their allies can be used to challenge such abuses. If emergency shelters offer less space than is needed to deal with the growth in homelessness, appropriate locations can be taken over to press demands and ensure people are not left on the streets. OCAP, on a couple of occasions, invaded the Provincial Housing Tribunal to temporarily prevent it from ordering evictions. These actions were modest political statements that only prevented a few evictions from taking place but, in a worsened situation with a rising capacity for mobilization, more serious forms of challenge to eviction procedures could be organized. A veteran of 1930s organizing in Toronto once told me that the movement of those days could pull out large crowds at very short notice to block the efforts of the authorities to put families out of their homes. Such actions, linked to a demand for a moratorium on evictions, might well be possible in the not too distant future. Locally based committees, mandated to mobilize in the defence of people in their communities could crystallize and develop a very dynamic life if a lead were given.

There is no doubt that, beyond defensive local community action, the period ahead will call for broad alliances and for major demands to be placed before those in political power. If measures of ‘economic stimulation’ are to be adopted, we must be fighting for these to be allocated in ways that meet the needs of communities. Not the least of these is the construction of truly affordable housing on a massive scale. The degraded system of federal unemployment insurance must be restored to a level that meets the needs of the unemployed. The undermining of social assistance systems by the Chretien Government in the early 1990s has left communities desperately vulnerable and federal resources must be used to reverse this situation. The Ontario legacy of Mike Harris, especially the 40% cut in the spending power of welfare income, is another area where movements must go on the offensive. It will take very much more than the McGuinty Government’s timid and dishonest measures of ‘poverty reduction’ to meet the need this crisis will create. At the municipal level, a fight will have to be mounted to ensure that access to vital income support and shelter services is not compromised by cost containment initiatives.

Stabilizing Capitalism or Anti-Capitalism?

During this crisis, the priority of governments will be to stabilize capitalism at the expense of poor and working class people. Banks and auto manufacturers may be ‘too big to fail’ but laid-off workers and the communities they live in will be considered highly expendable. Measures of social provision will be freed up, not in any direct proportion to the amount of suffering that occurs but to the extent that a resistance is mobilized that poses enough of threat to force concessions from governments. In this regard, we go into this situation with a major problem on our hands. There is no generalized movement of social resistance in place and the potential components of such a movement, especially the trade unions, are in a severe state of demobilized passivity.

Nor is there any immediate sign that the impact of this crisis is changing that situation. As I write this, the Harper Government is successfully staving off defeat at the hands of a Liberal/NDP alliance, supported by the votes of the Bloc Quebecois for a period. Labour leaders are calling for this Coalition to form a Government and have been organizing rallies to press for this. If the Coalition does, indeed, take power next year and the impact of the crisis goes beyond its readiness to respond, the leaders of the very organizations that could lead a fight back may well be entirely opposed to mounting one. Instead, they will be focused on deal-making with ‘their’ Government and blocking the independent working class action that must be set in motion in the face of this crisis.

Still, the key to moving forward is precisely a working class movement that rediscovers what it is to fight back. Low-income communities and homeless people will play a very important role in such a movement and they may even give an initial lead as the crisis forces them to act out of a sheer need to survive. However, it is hard to see how a movement of social resistance can be strong enough without the labour movement, with its organizational resources and power in the workplace, coming into action. If union leaderships are not willing or able to respond effectively in the face of an attack of staggering proportions, a rank and file challenge is the only possible response. Individual locals with militant leaderships and oppositional groupings of trade unionists must link up with initiatives emerging from communities under attack. It is true that we are starting with very little that is organized on the ground but a period like this can create prospects very rapidly that might take years to generate in more normal times. Unless such an initiative emerges that can begin to organize resistance and to restore the capacity of our movements to fight back, we will be staring at the most shattering defeats imaginable. If we can offer no solutions to this crisis, the capitalists will solve it in ways we have reason to dread.

Finally, let me return to my initial point about determining who will pay for this crisis. This speaks not just to resistance in the poorest communities but to the situation of the broader working class as well. For decades now, our generally retreating movements have faced representatives of capitalism who have exuded great confidence. They felt that capitalism had won over those who might challenge it and that its victory was so complete as to represent the ‘end of history.’ Now, suddenly, we are seeing a system that is in profound crisis and whose political and ideological mouthpieces are much less self-assured. This crisis of legitimacy is an important element in the situation. Not only will it be possible to mobilize on the basis of demanding that the cost of this downturn not be paid by poor communities and the broader working class but growing numbers of people will be drawn to question the very system that has so obviously failed to meet their needs and offer them a future.

In poor communities, this crisis comes after a long process of pushing them down during the decades of neoliberalism. There is already anger and the realization that bad is going to get much worse will make large numbers of people look for answers. The issue is to demonstrate in practical forms of organized resistance that these worsening conditions are not unstoppable and inevitable. That is the starting point for a movement that can respond to this crisis and pose a bold anti-capitalist vision of what it is fighting for. •

John Clarke is an activist with OCAP in Toronto.

This article was originally published as an issue of The Bullet

Chicago Factory Occupied by Lee Sustar

2008-12-10T13:27:00.001-04:00

WORKERS OCCUPYING the Republic Windows & Doors factory slated for closure are vowing to remain in the Chicago plant until they win the $1.5 million in severance and vacation pay owed them by management.

In a tactic rarely used in the U.S. since the labor struggles of the 1930s, the workers, members of United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) Local 1110, refused to leave the plant on December 5, its last scheduled day of operation.

“We decided to do it because this is money that belongs to us,” said Maria Roman, who’s worked at the plant for eight years. “These are our rights.”

Word of the occupation spread quickly both among labor and immigrant rights activists—the overwhelming majority of the workers are Latinos. Seven local TV news stations showed up to do interviews and live reports, and a steady stream of activists arrived to bring donations of food and money and to plan solidarity actions.

Management claims that it can’t continue operations because its main
creditor, Bank of America (BoA), refuses to make any more loans to the
company. After workers picketed BoA headquarters December 3, bank officials agreed to sit down with Republic management and UE to discuss the matter at a December 5 meeting arranged by U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill), said UE organizer Leah Fried.

BoA had said that it couldn’t discuss the matter with the union directly without written approval from Republic’s management. But Republic representatives failed to show up at the meeting, and plant managers prepared to close the doors for good—violating the federal WARN Act that requires 60 days notice of a plant closure.

The workers decided this couldn’t go unchallenged. “The company and Bank of America are throwing the ball to one another, and we’re in the middle,” said Vicente Rangel, a shop steward and former vice president of Local 1110.

Many workers had suspected the company was planning to go out of
business—and perhaps restart operations elsewhere. Several said managers had removed both production and office equipment in recent days.

Furthermore, while inventory records indicated there were plenty of parts in the plant, workers on the production line found shortages. And the order books, while certainly down from the peak years of the housing boom, didn’t square with management’s claims of a total collapse. “Where did all those windows go?” one worker asked.

Workers were especially outraged that Bank of America, which recently
received a bailout in taxpayer money, won’t provide credit to Republic.
“They get $25 billion from the government, and won’t loan a few million to this company so workers can keep their jobs?” said Ricardo Caceres, who has worked at the plant for six years.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - –

THE MEMBERS of Local 1110 have a history of struggle. In 2004, they
decertified the Central States Joint Board—a union notorious for corruption and sweetheart contracts with management—and brought in UE, a far more democratic organization.

In May of this year, Local 1110 mobilized for a contract by organizing a “practice” picket, and 70 workers used their lunch break to confront the boss with a petition listing their demands. The workers were able to turn back company’s effort to win major concessions and won solid pay increases. Now, management is trying to get revenge by pocketing money that belongs to the workers.

UE officials and workers acknowledge that it will be difficult to stop the plant from closing. But they’re determined to get the money owed to
them—and they believe that by fighting, they can set an example for other workers facing layoffs and plant closures as the recession deepens.

Negotiations are set for Monday, December 8. Whatever happens, however, the workers have already sent a message to employers that if they violate workers rights and the law, they can expect a fight.

“This is a message to the workers of America,” said Vicente Rangel, the shop steward. “If we stand together, we will prevail until justice is done, and we get what we’re due.”

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Members of Local 1110 need your support. Make checks payable to the UE Local 1110 Solidarity Fund, and mail to: 37 S. Ashland, Chicago, IL 60607. Messages of support can be sent to leahfried@gmail.com. For more
information, call UE at 312-829-8300.

At the Jobs with Justice Web site, you can send a message of protest to Bank of America. Click here

This article is reproduced from the US Socialist Worker

Walter Rodney: Revolutionary Thinker and Fighter by Chris Gonsalves

2008-12-05T00:37:00.003-04:00

Throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s, a wave of revolutionary fervor swept through much of the oppressed world. In the Caribbean, street rebellions and strikes characterized widespread popular resistance to the established power structure.

Initially targeting British and French colonial regimes, the people’s struggle for freedom took on new forms following independence. With many of the newly independent governments taking a neocolonial form by preserving the economic domination of the former colonial powers, many of these movements began to struggle for self-determination free from all forms of exploitation.

Guyanese activist and Marxist scholar Walter Rodney emerged from these post-colonial struggles. Rodney advocated a class analysis based on multinational workers’ unity. Although he faced threats and repression throughout his life, Rodney fought for socialism as a respected historian, professor and most importantly, a dedicated political organizer.

It was his work as a political organizer that led to his assassination in his native Guyana on June 13, 1980.

Colonial Guyana

Born in Georgetown, Guyana on March 23, 1942, Walter Rodney began his political formation at an early age. Guyana was at that time a British colony. His father, a tailor, and his mother, a seamstress, were both active in the formation of Guyana’s anti-colonial People’s Progressive Party. At age 11, Rodney remembers attending organizational meetings and passing out party literature. In his collection of essays, “Walter Rodney Speaks,” he described learning where to and where not to pass out leaflets. “You could tell from the kind of house or the shade or complexion of the lady reclining, sipping her tea,” he wrote. In this way, Rodney first experienced the racial and class divisions of Guyanese society that were systematically fostered during British colonial rule.

The Guyanese working class was divided between Afro-Guyanese, descendants of slaves, and Indo-Guyanese, whose ancestors had been brought to Guyana in large numbers from India after the abolition of slavery in 1823. Afro-Guyanese were more concentrated in the urban areas around the capital city of Georgetown and in the mining industry, while Indo-Guyanese were mainly agricultural workers in the sugar fields.

Education for liberation

As a youth, Rodney was an excellent student. He received scholarships throughout his entire schooling. While these scholarships were used as a means of co-option by the colonial government, Rodney grew to become an outspoken critic of European capitalist and imperialist expansion.

When he was 24, Rodney earned his Ph.D. in African History in 1966 from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. His doctoral thesis, titled “A History of the Upper Guinea Coast 1545-1800,” critically examined the West African slave trade and its development of the capitalist system.

In addition to his formal education, Rodney carried out extensive independent studies. He also became a student activist. At the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, where he received a bachelor’s degree in history, Rodney had campaigned for Jamaica’s withdrawal from the West Indies Federation, a post-colonial alliance run by Great Britain.

In London, Rodney held street meetings in the famous Hyde Park. He participated in a study group led by the Trinidadian Marxist C.L.R. James. It was in the course of these discussions that Rodney developed his understanding of the dialectical materialist approach to history.

‘Grounding with my brothers’

After receiving his doctorate, Rodney traveled to Tanzania to teach at University College in Dar es Salaam. For two years, he taught African history and continued his research on the West African slave trade—learning Portuguese and Spanish along the way. In 1968, he was invited back to Jamaica to teach African History at his alma mater, UWI.

Rather than confine himself to the classroom, Rodney broke out of the isolated academic atmosphere and traveled to the “gullies”—the sprawling poor neighborhoods—of Jamaica. Speaking in the poor, working-class neighborhoods of Kingston as well as to Rastafarian communities throughout the island, Rodney sought to make a genuine connection with the poorest masses and their struggle against oppression. “The system says they are nothing, they are illiterates,” Rodney wrote in his book, “Grounding With My Brothers.” “But with the Black brothers you learn humility because they are teaching you.”

The Jamaican government, closely tied to British imperialism, viewed Rodney’s efforts to organize the country’s most marginalized and impoverished communities as a “threat to national security.” Declassified documents from the Jamaican government reveal extensive state surveillance on Rodney throughout this period of his life.

In October 1968, Rodney traveled to Montreal, Canada, to participate in the Congress of Black Writers. Thousands attended this conference, which featured speakers like U.S. Black liberation leader Stokely Carmichael. Speaking on topics like “African History in the Service of Black Revolution” and “Statement on the Jamaican Situation,” Rodney stood out for his sound arguments and unique perspective. He sharply criticized the neo-colonial regimes in the Caribbean, noting for example, “Since ‘Independence’, the Black police forces of Jamaica have demonstrated that they can be as savage in their approach to Black brothers as the white police in New York, for ultimately they serve the same masters.”

The ‘Rodney riots’

Immediately following this conference, Rodney was denied re-entry into Jamaica. Parliamentary hearings were held, with then-prime minister Hugh Shearer denouncing Rodney as “an undesirable alien” who represented a communist threat. Pro-government legislators cited Rodney’s travels to Cuba and the Soviet Union.

Word quickly spread of Rodney’s expulsion. Protests and street battles broke out across the country the following day. At the UWI campus in Mona, student demonstrations shut down the university. Students and Kingston youth united in a militant march to the offices of the prime minister in defense of Rodney. The widespread resistance and the police violence to repress it caused millions of dollars in property damage.

From Montreal, Rodney told the Congress of Black Writers how “certain known enemies of the people were spat upon, dragged out of their cars and beaten.” There were 14 major fires throughout the city. Over 50 buses were overturned.

As the world looked on, the ruling-class media tried to downplay the significance of this uprising by claiming that they only involved disgruntled students. Rodney, however, demanded: “Let us stop calling it student riots. What has happened … is that the Black people of the city of Kingston have seized upon this opportunity to begin their indictment against the Government of Jamaica.”

The “Rodney riots,” as they later became known, were the largest people’s uprising in Jamaica since a mass rebellion initiated by sugar and dockworkers in 1938.

‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’

Following his expulsion, Rodney returned to Africa. He took up his prior teaching position and dived back into Tanzanian political life. In 1972, during this period, Rodney completed his most influential work, “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.”

Applying historical materialism to African history, Rodney systemically destroyed the myth that prior to European intervention Africa was a “backward” continent characterized by its own local form of slavery. He explained that while Africa is extremely rich in minerals, fertile soil and raw resources, its people became impoverished due to the systematic exploitation by the European capitalist powers. The Europeans imposed an export-driven economy on the continent, exporting raw materials and slaves and then importing finished products. Instead of investing locally in schools, hospitals and roads, profits were expropriated into colonial coffers.

On a social level, colonial institutions used culture and language to “divide and conquer” Africa, while restricting access to opportunities such as higher education. Rodney asserted that it was within this context of enforced capitalist underdevelopment that the neocolonial struggle must be understood.

“How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” became a standard in studying African history. It influenced not only intellectuals but the political leaders of the African anti-colonial and independence struggles. “The purpose,” Rodney said of the book, “has been to try and reach Africans who wish to explore further the nature of their exploitation, rather than to satisfy the standards set by our oppressors and their spokesmen in the academic world.”

The challenges of liberation

Believing that “a revolution has to be made by the people who are going to be grounded in that situation,” Rodney returned to his native Guyana in 1974. Despite a government block on his invitation to teach at the University of Guyana, Rodney was determined to take part in the struggles taking place among the Guyanese working class.

Guyana had achieved self-rule in 1961 and nominal independence in 1968. The most prominent political parties that emerged from the independence struggle were the PPP, at that time headed by Cheddi Jagan, and the People’s National Congress headed by Forbes Burnham. Both of those parties were influenced by the growing strength of the socialist camp throughout the world, especially the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China and the recently victorious Cuban revolution.

Despite those socialist influences, the problems facing independent Guyana were severe. Guyana was one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. Its population of only around 500,000 was overwhelmingly still agricultural and subject to the world capitalist market.

These difficulties were exacerbated by continued British intervention and, increasingly U.S. intervention. U.S. imperialism was on a continental crusade against any movement or government that sought to replicate the success of the Cuban socialist revolution.

One primary tactic used by the imperialists to weaken an independent Guyana was a divide-and-conquer approach to the Afro-Guyanese and Indo-Guyanese populations. British agents used this policy in every one of their colonial holdings—from Ireland to Palestine to India.

The PNC and the PPP both professed socialist goals. But increasingly in the period leading up to independence they became rooted in different ethnic populations, with the former based in the Afro-Guyanese communities and the latter in the Indo-Guyanese.

In 1964, the PNC’s Forbes Burnham became president—an office he held until his death in 1985. Burnham declared the government to be a “cooperative socialist republic.”

Throughout the 1970s, Burnham received support from the Soviet Union and its allies, especially after he nationalized the bauxite industry and seized the assets of large sugar plantation owners. However, this support was undermined by government corruption, continued ethnic division—and the continued existence of a small Guyanese bourgeoisie with interests opposed to those of the Guyanese working class, whether Indo- or Afro-Guyanese.

The Working People’s Alliance

This was the political context that Walter Rodney entered when he returned to Guyana. He quickly joined the newly formed Working People’s Alliance, becoming one of its leading members.

The WPA had emerged as an alliance of several Indo- and Afro-Guyanese organizations, emphasizing the need for working-class unity. One of its early documents, “Towards a Revolutionary Socialist Guyana,” describes the WPA as a Marxist-Leninist organization.

The WPA set up educational classes, held community meetings and supported trade unions throughout Guyana. Rodney and the Working People’s Alliance developed a program of “critical exposure” and sought to unite the Guyanese working class. Its organ Dayclean criticized Burnham as a dictator of the bourgeoisie. After becoming an official party in 1979, the WPA entered the electoral arena.

Declining living conditions in 1978 and 1979, combined with increasing political instability, contributed to a wave of strikes and protests by the Guyanese working class. The WPA tried to intervene in these protests to give them a political character. In the 1979 pamphlet, “People’s Power, No Dictator,” Rodney described the power that the people demonstrated, saying, “The entire nation got a feel of what united working-class action could mean.”

In response to widespread resistance, the Burnham government imprisoned WPA activists and suppressed protests. At a public meeting in Georgetown in 1980, Rodney defiantly stated, “We are reaffirming our commitment to struggle … we recognize the pressures, but are far from bending under those pressures.” A week later, amid a WPA electoral campaign, Rodney was assassinated. An explosive device destroyed his car while he was driving with his brother, Donald. To this day, no one has been held officially responsible for his death.

Despite his short life, Walter Rodney is remembered around the world as a man dedicated to working-class struggle and to the Pan-African movement. As a scholar, Rodney showed the relevance of the Marxist tradition of historical materialist analysis to the problems facing African liberation.

Over 25 years later, Rodney remains an example to progressives and revolutionaries around the world. The struggle for socialism—which Rodney believed would inevitably succeed—gained an example of an intellectual devoted to the struggle of the working class and to the struggles of Black people for liberation.

This article originally appeared in Socialism and Liberation, magazine of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, in the June 2007 issue.

John Bellamy Foster on Capitalism and Climate Change

2008-12-04T11:09:00.003-04:00

This courtesy of Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal (who posted these videos) and Green Left Weekly who organized the Conference on “Capitalism and Climate Change”, Sydney, April 11, 2008.

John Bellamy Foster is Marxist ecologist and editor of Monthly Review. His works have included:

In Defense of History: Marxism and the Postmodern Agenda (co-edited with Ellen Meiksins Wood)
The Vulnerable Planet: A Short Economic History of the Environment
Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature
Ecology Against Capitalism
Naked Imperialism: The U.S. Pursuit of Global Dominance
Critique of Intelligent Design: Materialism versus Creationism from Antiquity to the Present (with Brett Clark and Richard York)

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