People Before Profit blog

Community self-defense groups confront Mexico’s drug cartels

Mon, 03 Feb 2014 11:23:00 +0000

MEXICO CITY - An armed insurgency is emerging across Mexico. However, rather than being a movement to overthrow a government, it aims to defend communities and combat drug cartels that have pillaged and terrorized much of Mexico.

Neo-conservative reforms, promoted by the dominant parties PRI and PAN since the 1980s, such as free trade and privatization, undermined Mexico's economy and agriculture, lowered wages and created mass unemployment. And they helped foster the growth of drug cartels.

The drug cartels, which sell an estimated $18 billion-$32 billion in illegal drugs to the U.S. each year, provide one of Mexico's top exports. In recent years, they have diversified and enhanced their economic might, investing in industry, mining and agriculture. Hundreds of thousands of men and women are forced to work for the cartels to survive.

Worse, Mexican TV networks and street markets are flooded with Mexican, U.S. and Colombian soap operas glorifying the drug cartels.

Over the past several years, self-defense forces and policia communitaria (community police) have emerged in the Mexican states of Michoacan, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Morelos and Veracruz. These self-defense forces, consisting of thousands of armed men and women, differ from past and current guerilla groups in Mexico and Latin America because their intended goal is not revolutionary change but protecting local communities from the numerous drug cartels which prey on the poor and powerless.

Nor are self-defense forces equivalent to paramilitary forces such as those found in Colombia, as some have critics have suggested. In Colombia, big cattle ranchers, the army, and businessmen formed the paramilitaries in the 1960s to combat guerillas and enhance their economic interests, but self-defense forces in Mexico are a grassroots movement of men and women committed to defending their communities.

Given that most police in Mexico are corrupt, inept, or work for the drug cartels, many who support the self-defense forces and policia communitaria here believe the only way to protect their communities from the drug cartels is for people to arm themselves.

The latest hotspot is Michoacan, a sun-drenched state of 4.5 million people, where until recently a drug cartel called the Templarios Cabelleros (Knights Templars) ran the state like its own private fiefdom. It forced farmers, agricultural laborers and businesses at gunpoint to pay protection money, and taxed agricultural products. It also began expropriating farm lands used to grow avocados and lemons, either stealing farmers' lands or buying the land at low prices. Those who refused to leave or sell were killed along with their families.

Like other cartels, the Templarios kidnapped, raped or enslaved young women, forcing them to work in the sex trade or to serve cartel leaders.

Michoacan's corrupt ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) government and police force, infiltrated by the cartels, did nothing to protect the population. Fed up with living in fear, people began forming self-defense forces in early 2013, organizing patrols and erecting roadblocks to fend off narcos.

In January, a convoy of heavily armed men began rolling through the countryside liberating towns and villages from the Templarios. Fierce fighting ensued between the self-defense forces and Templarios in some towns. The Templarios unsuccessfully tried to halt the armed convoy with burning buses and sniper fire. The self-defense forces, which began their fight with old hunting rifles, replenished their weaponry with modern automatic weapons, grenade launchers and machine guns abandoned by fleeing Templarios.

However, the response of the country's right-wing PRI government of Enrique Pena Nieto exposed a darker truth about Mexican politics. Instead of helping the self-defense forces, the national government sent federal police and soldiers to disarm them, leaving them defenseless against the Templarios. A source in the Mexican military intelligence services told the People's World in an interview that the federal government sent in forces to disarm the self-defense forces because the Templarios helped finance Pena Nieto's 2012 election campaign.

The source said that neither the right-wing National Action Party (PAN) or PRI have any serious interest in eliminating the drug cartels because the cartels are now an important source of campaign funds for candidates. The federal government has tied the hands of the armed forces in their battle against the cartels. "The war against the cartels is now more of a farce," lamented the source.

Self-defense forces, claiming to have 25,000 armed men and able to mobilize another 140,000, threatened to resist federal efforts to disarm them. "If they disarm the self-defense forces, they [the Templarios] will kill us," Commandante Patacha told the Mexican newspaper La Jornada. "The self-defense forces are necessary until we finish the fight that we have undertaken [along] with the Federales and soldiers." Patacha's self-defense group also stated its suspicions that the government, in wanting to disarm the self-defense forces, "is looking to to protect the Templarios."

After the government's failed attempt to disarm self-defense forces in one small town - leading to the death of three protesters when soldiers fired on a crowd that tried to prevent the military from disarming the armed group - the Pena government switched to a strategy of trying to co-opt self-defense forces. On Jan. 27, it legalized the self-defense forces and began stressing the goal of recruiting members for a new state police force that would restore law and order. However, already the federal government and state PRI Governor Fausto Vallejo Figueroa are trying to discredit the self-defense forces by alleging that they are being armed by the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion.

Self-defense forces continue to liberate towns and villages in Michoacan and vow to free the state from the Templarios. "The war is not with the government, it is with the Caballeros Templarios or whichever cartel that wants to come and take us prisoners or enslave us," Michoacan's General Council of Self Defense said. One of the first acts they undertook was to return stolen farm lands to their previous owners.

In the states of Guerrero and Oaxaca, policia communitaria are elected by popular assemblies in indigenous and non-indigenous communities. Unlike many in the self-defense forces, policia communitaria do not cover their faces, wearing uniforms that visibly identify them. They have also created their own parallel justice system that punishes and re-educates offenders. Human rights organizations in Guerrero complain that the military and federal and state police are harassing the policia communitaria instead of helping them.

Self-defense forces and policia communitaria throughout the country will likely continue to grow as Mexico fragments and descends into lawlessness and chaos.

Photo: Hundreds of Mexican journalists silently march in downtown Mexico City in 2010 to demand justice and protection for journalists against drug cartel violence. Knight Foundation CC 2.0

Infant mortality in Cuba hits new low

Fri, 31 Jan 2014 14:50:00 +0000

On January 3, the Cuban ministry of health released new statistics that show that the country's infant mortality rate has hit a record low, which places it far ahead of the United States in this important health indicator.

The infant mortality rate expresses the number of babies per thousand live births who die before reaching their first birthday.

The Cuban rate for 2013 is 4.2 per thousand live births. This is down from 4.6 in 2012. The rate does not vary hugely for Cuba's 16 provinces, though some of them - Pinar del Rio, Havana Province, Villa Clara, Sancti Spiritis, Ciego de Avila, Las Tunas, Holguin, Granma, Isla de Juventud - have lower rates than average. A number of towns had no infant deaths in 2013, according to the Cuban Ministry of Health.

Infant mortality rates have been dropping in most of the world since the Second World War, due to better sanitation, nutrition and health care standards (especially maternal and child health, and preventive health care), but also due to factors like urbanization. However, in Cuba they have dropped farther and faster than in other poorer countries.

Cuba does not have the lowest infant mortality rate in the world. That distinction belongs to countries which are both wealthy and have highly developed infrastructures and social welfare systems, such as Japan, Finland and Luxembourg, all of whom registered 2 infant deaths per 1000 live births. But Cuba has the lowest infant mortality rate in the Americas, and is far ahead of countries with similar per capita Gross Domestic Product levels.

Cuba's per capita Gross Domestic Product calculated by the Purchasing Power Parity method is about $10,200 per year; that of the United States is about $51,000 per year, nearly five times as much.

The latest infant mortality rate for the U.S. is listed as 5.9 infant deaths per 1,000 live births. If anybody has an excuse for the United States being in worse shape than Cuba on this wrenchingly important statistic, that represents so much horrific suffering for families, we have not heard it.

Besides taking care of its own babies and families better than our own country does, Cuba provides help to dozens of other poor countries by lending them doctors, nurses and other specialists, and by providing free training to their medical students. Socialism, it would appear, works.

Audio: Debates in the world communist movement

Wed, 29 Jan 2014 11:55:00 +0000

On Jan. 21, another exciting People's World teleconference took place. This time, listeners heard Susan Webb talk about her experience representing the Communist Party USA at the 15th Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties, which was held during Nov. 2013 in Lisbon, Portugal.

Communist and workers' parties worldwide have had varying experiences, and are employing various strategies and tactics and drawing different conclusions about how to advance the struggle for social justice and socialism. What's it all about? What can we learn? What is the position of the CPUSA?

Listen to a recording of our latest teleconference below and find out!

Pope demands accountability from corporate leaders meeting in Davos

Mon, 27 Jan 2014 13:32:00 +0000

DAVOS, Switzerland (PAI)-- As corporate and government leaders gathered in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual World Economic Forum in mid-January, a new poll showed that workers around the globe are struggling to survive on low wages.

And those same leaders got a notable message from Pope Francis I, who has already made news for strongly supporting workers. He told the leaders they have a responsibility to actively improve the lives of the world's workers and poor.

"The growth of equality demands something more than economic growth, even though it presupposes it," the Pope's message said. "It also calls for decisions, mechanisms and processes directed to a better distribution of wealth, the creation of sources of employment and an integral promotion of the poor which goes beyond a simple welfare mentality."

In its first years, union leaders participated in the World Economic Forum, but recently, they've been staying away. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, for example, was not on its list of speakers this year.

And as the business and government leaders met, an International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) global poll of 13 countries found 87 percent of people say their wages are falling behind the cost of living or stagnant. One out of eight respondents said they are struggling financially and can no longer pay for basic living expenses.

John Evans, chief economist for the confederation, said financial forecasts point to stagnation - not recovery - with nearly 200 million people unemployed.

"The World Economic Forum's own Global Risks Report identifies widening income disparities and structural unemployment as the most serious problems confronting the global economy this year, yet government policies are worsening these trends; we need a change in policy direction," Evans explained.

The new ITUC Economic Briefing released ahead of the Davos meeting pointed to high unemployment, wage cuts and high levels of household debt, all of which have kept demand in key economies in the doldrums, while growth strategies are still most focused on exports, specifically in Europe.

"In a stagnant global economy, it is investment that will kick start jobs and demand. We cannot assume that growth alone will create jobs. The global economy cannot recover on export-led growth if wages don't rise. There must be an expansion of demand - particularly from working households," warned Sharan Burrow, the ITUC's general secretary.

The past year has seen growing inequality and a widening gap between leaders and citizens. Only 13 percent of people in the ITUC global poll think governments are acting in their interests. Some 28 percent of people are disenchanted or worse, disengaged, believing governments are acting in the interest of neither people nor business.

"There is profound mistrust of governments and institutions. Leaders must stand by their promises to end speculative behavior, stand up to the banks and end tax avoidance to demonstrate to working people they are acting in their interests," said Burrow.

The Davos 2014 plan set out by labor leaders for investment and jobs, wages and social protection includes:

Targeted investments in infrastructure to improve long-term productive potential and move to a low-carbon economy;
Raising the purchasing power of low- and middle-income households by reducing inequality and strengthening collective bargaining and minimum wages;
Investing in active labor market policies to raise skill levels and reduce youth unemployment; and
Reducing informality and creating decent work in emerging and developing countries.

The Pope had his own message for the business leaders: Take responsibility not just for economic success, but for improving the lot of all.

"The successes which have been achieved, even if they have reduced poverty for a great number of people, often have led to a widespread social exclusion," he said. "Indeed, the majority of the men and women of our time still continue to experience daily insecurity, often with dramatic consequences.

"In the context of your meeting, I wish to emphasize the importance the various political and economic sectors have in promoting an inclusive approach which takes into consideration the dignity of every human person and the common good. I am referring to a concern that ought to shape every political and economic decision, but which at times seems to be little more than an afterthought. Those working in these sectors have a precise responsibility towards others, particularly those who are most frail, weak and vulnerable," the Pope declared.

Photo: Felipe Dana/AP

In Okinawa, anti-base mayor's re-election sends a message

Fri, 24 Jan 2014 14:52:00 +0000

NAGO CITY, Japan - In Okinawa's Nago City mayoral election which centered on the plan to construct a new U.S. military base in the city, anti-base incumbent Inamine Susumu won with a wide margin over a pro-base candidate backed by the ruling Liberal Democratic (LDP) and Komei parties. This marks Okinawan people's historic victory.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide during the election campaign said, "The planned construction of a new base will not be affected by the election results." After the election, he also expressed his intention to push forward with the plan. Carrying out procedures for the base construction in defiance of Okinawan people's will undermines the principle of democracy. The national government should take this election result seriously and give up the construction plan.

Inamine obtained 4,000 more votes than his rival. Nago mayoral elections were held five times after the Japanese and U.S. governments announced the plan in 1996 to relocate the U.S. Futenma base in Ginowan City to the sea area off Nago's Henoko district. This was the first election in which a conservative candidate clearly called for the promotion of the construction plan and challenged the opponent rival to a one-on-one fight. In this election, Inamine successfully secured his second term by increasing the number of votes from the previous election.

The Abe administration repressed the LDP prefectural federation, which called for the relocation of the Futenma base to outside Okinawa, and put pressure on Okinawa Governor Nakaima to approve the reclamation work of the Henoko district by using state subsidies as bait. During the election campaign, Prime Minister Abe and the ruling LDP pushed Okinawa to accept the construction plan using a carrot and stick approach. LDP Secretary General Ishiba Shigeru, who says the government will decide where to build a new U.S. base, visited Nago City to announce that the government will provide the city with 50 billion yen in special subsidies. This remark provoked fierce anger from local citizens.

Okinawans are opposing the new base construction based on their bitter experience in the Battle of Okinawa at the end of the Asia-Pacific War when many residents were killed. Okinawa was kept under U.S. occupation for 26 years after the end of the war and is still experiencing hardships due to the concentrated presence of U.S. military bases. It is impossible for them to accept the plan to construct a new base in the prefecture as it will increase the sufferings of local people. The Abe administration should listen to the residents and give up the construction plan.

Photo: Photo: Nago City Mayor Susumu Inamine, third from right in front, celebrates after he was re-elected in the mayoral election in Nago, on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, Jan. 19, 2014. The election was being closely watched from Washington to Tokyo as a referendum on the plan to move the U.S. Futenma air base to this community of 62,000 people. AP/Kyodo News

South Africa hits “genocidal” plan of pharmaceutical industry

Tue, 21 Jan 2014 11:40:00 +0000

Two leaked memos, revealed to the press and public on January 10, have created a major blowup in South Africa, where the government is accusing the international pharmaceutical industry of plotting to interfere in upcoming elections so as to derail a government initiative to control the prices of vital medications.

South Africa has had a rather easygoing system of policing claims of patent coverage by pharmaceutical importers, and the proposed new "National Intellectual Property Policy," which is to be incorporated into proposed legislation, has the purpose of tightening this up as a means of controlling costs.

One issue is what is called "evergreening": In many cases, the lives of patents are artificially extended when pharma companies make minor or even cosmetic changes to the product, and then take out a completely new patent on it, making it impossible for cheaper generic versions of the basic medication to be produced and distributed. Among other things, the proposed South African bill will crack down on this and make it easier for government regulators to deny recognition of such new patents when the product is essentially the same as the one already patented.

South Africa is also working to create its own generic pharmaceuticals industry, whose success partly depends on being able to become independent of transnational pharma companies. Predictably, organizations working for the rights of patients as well as companies wanting to develop generics have praised the new plan.

This is a vital issue for South Africa because it pays a lot for drugs such as antiretrovirals to combat the country's very high HIV levels, as well as others to control tuberculosis, an old scourge. Since the apartheid days, South Africa has greatly increased access to health care for its poor majority, but having to pay top prices for imported medicines is a strain on the health care system. Various organizations in South Africa have been pushing the government to be more pro-active in controlling the costs of, and increasing access to, medications.

The leaked memo, from the Innovative Pharmaceutical Industry Association of South Africa (IPASA), a trade group that includes both South African companies and pharmaceutical transnationals, including major pharma transnationals such as Abbott, Baxter, Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GE Health Care, Merck, Pfizer, Lilly and others, hints at plans for a negative public relations campaign in which it would be claimed that the passage of the law would discourage investment in South Africa by transnational pharmaceutical companies and other potential foreign investors. This in turn would supposedly exacerbate the high unemployment rate of the country, a red hot issue in national elections in May.

The plan as outlined in the leaked memos involved paying $450,000 to a politically wired Washington, D.C. company, Public Affairs Engagement (PAE) to work with IPASA to develop a public propaganda and pressure campaign to block changes in the patent regime. PAE is headed by James K. Glassman, who is associated with the Heritage Foundation and with U.S. government media operations under George W. Bush . Others in the firm have Democratic Party connections.

South African Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi reacted angrily to the news of the maneuvering by IPASA, calling it "satanic" and potentially "genocidal" because it would severely impact access to needed medications by South Africa's poor. The main labor federation in South Africa, COSATU (Congress of South African Trade Unions) also denounced the plan and expressed its support for the government's projected new policy. The intensity of the reaction to the leaked plans caused both IPASA and PAE to issue statements claiming that the agreement between them was only tentative and will not proceed.

This is not the first time that the pharmaceutical companies have crossed swords with the South African government on the issue of patents and the cost of medications. At the beginning of the 2000s, a similar fight over the substitution of generic drugs for much more expensive brand names controlled by transnational corporations took place, and the corporations came out of it bloodied.

Nor is the issue confined to South Africa. India and Brazil also have ongoing fights to develop their own generics in the face of protests by transnational corporations that their intellectual property rights are being violated, and threatened action through the World Trade Organization.

Sick people in the United States are also threatened by this kind of activity by the big transnational pharmaceutical industry. In the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), there is a plan to greatly strengthen corporate ability to use patent law to block cheaper generic drugs. Labor and other sectors in the United States and beyond are working hard to stop this new plan.

Photo: AIDS drugs are among those South Africa says it is being overcharged for by the big pharmaceutical companies. AP

Poverty fuels the Dominican-Haitian conflict

Tue, 21 Jan 2014 11:00:00 +0000

The dispute about the status of descendants of Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic is now the subject of negotiations hosted by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. However, the basic problem is one of the poverty of both nations, which has been exacerbated over two centuries by the actions of the United States, France and other wealthy countries.

In September, the Supreme Court of the Dominican Republic ruled that Dominican-born children and even grandchildren of undocumented immigrants have no right to Dominican citizenship. This was based on a 2010 law which denies such citizenship to the descendants of undocumented immigrants going back to 1929. Affected people got redefined as being "in transit, even if they had never left the Dominican Republic. Suddenly at least 200,000 people, overwhelmingly of Haitian origin, find themselves unable to exercise the rights of citizens, including access to basic health and education services.

The court's decision has been met with international indignation. The CARICOM trade group, to which Haiti belongs, has suspended consideration of the Dominican Republic's membership. In the United States, there are threats of a trade and travel boycott.

Dominican President Danilo Medina has promised to create a mechanism to regularize the status of the Haitian descendants, but details are still lacking. On the left, the court's decision has been widely denounced, by the Fuerza de la Revolucion (the Dominican Republic's communist party) and others.

On the right, Haiti and people of Haitian descent are demonized in racist terms. The same rhetoric that the right wing in the United States uses against undocumented immigrants is employed: Coming to take our jobs, lawbreakers, thieves, invading to take over. Mass deportation is being demanded and a number of Haitian descendants have been forced across the border, with several deaths.

Haiti got its independence From France in 1804, after a bloody war. But it shared the island of Hispaniola with the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo, now the Dominican Republic. Haiti feared that Santo Domingo could be the staging ground for further European invasions, and so invaded it in 1821. At first, many poor Dominicans welcomed this, since the Haitian regime abolished slavery and undertook steps toward land reform. But the welcome wore out, partly because from 1825 on, Haiti was forced at gunpoint to pay a huge indemnity to France for loss of French property (the former slaves). Taxes to pay this indemnity were imposed on the whole island. There were also efforts to suppress the use of Spanish, and other irritations. So in 1844, Dominicans declared independence from Haiti. Haiti made several attempts to recapture the Dominican Republic, which in turn found itself back under Spanish rule for a while- supposedly to protect the country from Haitian aggression.

The United States occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934 and the Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924. The U.S. occupation, which had the purpose of advancing U.S. business interests (especially in sugar production in the Dominican Republic) was brutal and deeply resented. A rebellion was led by Charlemagne Peralte, an army officer born in Haiti but of Afro-Dominican ancestry . Peralte, who was murdered by two U.S. noncommissioned officers in 1919, became a national hero of both countries. Had he triumphed, might he not have been a force for unity?

In the 1920s and 30s, many Haitian migrants were brought into the Dominican Republic as cheap labor for the expanding sugar industry. Though this brought great profits to landowners (many U.S. citizens), it also gave the Dominican right another pretext to agitate against the Haitian "menace".

In 1937, the U.S. backed right wing Dominican dictator, Rafael Trujillo, ordered the massacre of up to 20,000 of Haitian migrants. The reactionary Haitian government of President Stenio Vincent meekly accepted a small compensation, and the U.S. continued to back Trujillo and right wing despots in both countries.

In the early 1990s President Joaquin Balaguer, Trujillo's protégé and a particularly virulent anti-Haitian ideologue, carried out anti-Haitian expulsions, partly in reaction to the growing movement behind radical Haitian priest Jean Bertrande Aristide. When Aristide was overthrown by the military, Balaguer connived to undermine international sanctions.

Today the Dominican Republic has a population of nine and a half million and a per capita gross domestic product of $9800 (PPP). Haiti has a population of 10 million and a per capita gross domestic product of only $1,300, the poorest country in the hemisphere-but the Dominican Republic is poor too. The 2010 earthquake destroyed the livelihoods of thousands of Haitians (and most of the promised aid never materialized), but so did the dumping of U.S. agricultural products in Haiti beginning in the 1990s, foisted on Haitian President Aristide by the Clinton administration as a condition for helping to restore his presidency. Under these conditions, Haitian emigration is inevitable, but the United States does not accept poor Haitians, so they go to the Dominican Republic.

Neither country can rely on the United States, France, or other wealthy nations to give them disinterested help, so reconciliation is essential for them to get out of their present straights.

Photo: Topography map of Hispaniola, with Dominican Republic on the right and Haiti on the left. Wikipedia (CC)

Correction: In a previous version of this story, the caption identifying Haiti and the Dominican Republic was incorrect. Haiti is located on the left in this image of the island of Hispaniola and not the right as previously stated. Thank you to our reader who brought this to our attention.

“GroKo” Politics - No real change for Germany

Wed, 15 Jan 2014 14:20:00 +0000

BERLIN - Some have suggested the German "Word of the Year" should be "whistleblower" - in the escalating Denglish language here breezily called "Neu-Deutsch" ("New German").

Chosen instead, however, is the word "GroKo", shorthand for "Grosse Koalition," a term used constantly during three months of wrangling between Germany's two biggest parties, once seen as "irreconcilable foes," but now together in a new government. (NB: in German, gross or grosse does not mean gross, it means big or grand!)

The wrangling between the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) with its sister party in Bavaria, the even more rightwing Christian Social Union (CSU), had two main goals.

In its election campaign, the SPD had tried to sound leftish so as to keep or win back the votes of union members and at least some progressive voters. But now, to become part of a GroKo government, it had to tone down such sounds and soothe the fears of big biz bosses and their adherents in the CDU and in Bavaria, while trying not to let it look like collapse or capitulation.

Its second goal turned out to be easier: Who would get which Cabinet posts and rule the country for the next four years - unless or until GroKo splits apart sometime before 2017.

The Cabinet spoils were decided in an amicable way. Although the two Merkel parties had received 41.5 percent of the vote, the SPD only 25.7 percent, they agreed on six Social Democratic ministers, Chancellor Merkel and five others from the CDU and three from its allied CSU-Bavarians. (Nine are men, six are women.) The year began with the big question: how would these erstwhile foes get along (as they managed to do in two such GroKos in past decades)?

The SPD, in its election campaign, stressed two demands. One was to raise taxes on filthily wealthy individuals and companies and huge inheritance sums (which it and the Greens had themselves lowered some years ago when they led the government - but now said should be reversed.)

But alas, during the wrangling the SPD admitted, oh so reluctantly, that it must now make sacrifices for the sake of the GroKo - and agreed to forego any and all such tax increases on the wealthy.

It remained steadfast on its other demand however, sticking valiantly to a measure long overdue in Germany, a minimum wage - of 8.50 euro an hour ($ 11.65). In the final coalition agreement the Merkel side conceded the point, and those trying to subsist on 5, 6 or 7 euros - or even less - often only with second jobs or relief aid from the government - gained new hope.

No laws have been passed as yet; it seems that the minimum will only gradually go into effect until the final date of January 1, 2017. But even before a law is passed some loud voices, especially in Bavaria, are demanding exceptions - for new employees, for working pensioners, students, seasonal workers, even for the long-time jobless. As yet, the SPD leaders are rejecting such exceptions as wedges aimed at weakening the whole measure. We must wait and see, pressuring them to stick to their guns. Of course, some cynics point out that 8.50 euro is not enough to live on decently even now and, since retirement pensions are based on earnings, it means a poverty-stricken retirement.

There was one interesting sideline. Manuela Schwesig, 39 (SPD), a relatively young lawmaker with the impressive title of Minister of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth - but new to national level politics - proposed that young parents should work only 32 hours a week and have more time with their children. The difference in pay could be compensated by taxes. It took only a few hours for her fellow East German (they are the only two in the Cabinet) to quash such an idea, calling it only "her personal vision" for the future. Parents were already getting compensation for lost time with babies; there was no money for any such dreams!

Few changes were visible in public policies. The head of the SPD, stout, friendly Sigmar Gabriel (not quite as stout but seemingly more friendly than New Jersey's Christie), now Minister for the Economy and Electric Power, made no new promises and looked less friendly outside Germany when he visited Athens and continued the same Merkel "austerity" policy imposed by powerful, wealthy Germany on the hard-hit countries of southern Europe.

Ignored weapons scandal

He fully ignored a concurrent scandal in Athens exposing both German weapons salesmen and Greek politicians who had illegally lined their very deep pockets while pushing wildly expensive armament sales, totally unnecessary and damaging for that unhappy, debt-ridden country but highly remunerative for a couple of German weapons-makers.

Armaments remained a key word for the GroKo New Year in the Ministry of Defense. But just imagine - a woman as Defense Minister! Ursula von der Leyen is the opposite of Sigmar Gabriel, not only because she is from the CDU but in appearance as well. Slender, blonde, soft-spoken and attractive, she was very popular as Family Minister in the last government and there are whispers that she might even succeed Merkel.

Almost immediately after her inauguration we were treated to skillful TV shots of her speaking in sincere, heart-warming tones to the German troops in Afghanistan. But it soon became very apparent: her policy was not a bit more attractive than that of her predecessor: a flexible, mobile volunteer army, with the most modern weapons, ready to fly at short notice to any corner of the globe "where German interests were threatened." And, like her predecessor, she wanted drones! German troops, after all, must have the very best. She also promised that military service would be made more palatable. At least in the homeland it must be easier for the families of service members to be close and comfy, especially for the sake of the children! (Some critical voices were heard murmuring about children in less comfy countries, terrified - or killed - by German troops and circling drones! )

The GroKo parties dominate the German Bundestag with its 631 seats; in opposition are the Greens with 63 and the Left with 64 seats. Since debating time on bills and resolutions is determined by the number of seats held, the government parties can talk their heads off while deputies from the two small parties must talk quickly just to get a few words in edgewise. And even if they join together they don't have the 25 percent of the seats needed to set up investigative committees or exercise other rights. They are busy contesting this arithmetical disadvantage - and the result is still open.

A key current theme is the European Union, whose parliament is up for election in late May in all 28 member countries. The left-wing parties' caucus, ranging in a wide variety from the German Left (till now its largest member) from Communist parties in France or the Czech Republic to Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland, hopes to increase in number, now only 35 out of 736, worse even than the ratio in the Bundestag, especially with many more leftist delegates from Greece.

But in few countries is there much enthusiasm; skepticism abounds, about the European Parliament Union and the whole EU, so no voting turn-out can break only negative records. But the German Left party hopes to win more seats all the same and to strengthen the left-wing caucus, especially because extreme right wing parties, often dangerously close to fascist positions, plan on unity among Islamophobes, anti-Semites and Romany-killers from France, Hungary, Britain, Germany and others - all itching to flex their growing muscles and get out their bludgeons.

But there is disagreement within the German Left party on this question. The proposed election program for the May vote criticizes the EU as "neo-liberal, militarist and largely undemocratic." This militant language, often coupled with a call for Germany to quit the NATO, has some Left party leaders worried, including Gregor Gysi, its best-known leader and top man of the party in the Bundestag.

There may be a quarrel on this issue at the February congress of the party in Hamburg, which will decide on the program and choose candidates for the May vote - on who to send to the European Parliament meeting alternately in Brussels, Belgium, and Strasbourg, France.

The wording may well be toned down. But the disagreement again reflects the chronic rift within the party between those who want to tone down some demands in hopes of joining with the SPD and the Greens and replacing the GroKo in 2017 (or earlier if it should sooner implode) and others who say that the Left should make no compromises on a basic issue: no sending German troops anywhere abroad, for this would sacrifice its basic position as the only true "party for peace" and dilute it into an only slightly more leftish version of the SPD - hence basically superfluous. It could well suffocate in such a three-way coalition!

Photo: Die Linke (the Left Party) has 64 seats in the German Bundestag, making it the next largest party behind the Gro Ko coalition parties (the Christian and Social Democrats). The Greens have 63 seats.

Political jailings, killings mount in Colombia

Wed, 15 Jan 2014 13:11:00 +0000

The year 2014 had barely begun and already assassins had killed activist rapper Gerson Martínez, community leader Giovanny Leiton, Leiton's life partner, and unionist Ever Luis Marin Rolong. A police projectile thrown at Sintraelecol union president Óscar Arturo Orozco gravely injured his left eye. He had been speaking at a union rally in Manizales, Caldas,

On Jan. 4 in Cucuta, the Catatumbo epicenter of a June 2013 agrarian revolt, authorities detained university professor Francisco Toloza. Leiton and Toloza are leaders of the two-year-old Patriotic March grouping of social movements. Patriotic March is spearheading revived agitation for agrarian rights.

War in Colombia has long reflected opposed views of control and use of land. Land use was the first agenda item in peace talks under way in Cuba between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

The killers of 25 Patriotic March activists murdered in 2013 are still at large. Assassins that year also took the lives of 26 unionists associated with the CUT labor federation. Over 90 percent of those targeted were union leaders. The National Labor School reports that paramilitary groups accounted for 92 percent of the violations, with the police or military responsible for 19 percent.

News of deadly assaults against Colombian advocates for change is not new. Over the course of decades, tens of thousands of poor farmers, marginalized city dwellers, teachers, unionists, and political activists were murdered. The toll of murdered unionists since 1984 is estimated at 3,000.

What may be new is the turn to filling jails with political adversaries, especially with leaders like Francisco Toloza. Jail time for him and detained counterparts may be advantageous for those in charge. They gain credit for using courts rather than killing. And hoopla surrounding such cases bolsters the image of the FARC as the enemy and of opposition figures as loyal to the FARC.

The government alleges that Toloza and many others belong to the FARC and are guilty of "aggravated rebellion." Supposed evidence comes from computers retrieved, as the story goes, from sites ravaged by bombs that killed FARC leaders.

Toloza is a sociology professor and researcher at Colombia's National University who, encouraged by peace negotiators in Havana, organized national forums allowing the public to discuss issues covered in the talks. Olga Quintero, collaborator of Toloza in agrarian organizing in Catatumbo, describes him as "more than a leader, he has great intellectual capabilities and is committed to contributing to the social process and change the country requires."

Fellow Patriotic March leader Lilia Solano said, "The persecution of dissident thought is not only a problem for Patriotic March, but is also one for thousands of Colombians who don't accept the politics of hate and plunder they [the authorities] have imposed."

Toloza's persecution follows the imprisonment earlier of similarly charged Huber Bellesteros, another Patriotic March member. The CUT unionist and vice president of the Fensuagro agricultural workers' union was spokesperson for the MIA collective that in August 2013 organized a nationwide strike for agrarian rights and against Colombia's "free trade" agreement with the United States. Authorities jailed Bellesteros at the strike's onset.

After almost three years of incarceration, Fensuagro human rights director Liliany Obando is at conditional liberty as she awaits a Supreme Judicial Court ruling on her appeal. Convicted of rebellion, she was sentenced to house arrest for five years and fined the equivalent of $368,347.

Political prisoner David Ravelo is serving an 18-year prison term because he publicized ex-President Alvaro Uribe's close ties with paramilitary chieftains who then and now were terrorizing Ravelo's native Barrancabermeja. Their false accusation that Ravelo helped out with a 1991 murder led to his conviction in December 2012. Ravelo is a Colombian Communist Party leader, an educator, a union organizer, and an award-winning human rights human rights activist.

Such prisoners join 9,500 other Colombians incarcerated for politics of resistance. The political prisoner population is rising along with a 70.4 percent increase in the overall prison population between 1998 and 2009. Prisons are overfilled: 17.2 percent over capacity in 2007, 25.5 percent in 2008; 35.8 percent in 2009, and 41.7 percent in 2010.

The Jan. 4 jailing of the two Patriotic March leaders has evoked outpourings of support and condemnation of governmental repression. Left political parties worldwide, unions, and human rights groups have come to Toloza's defense. "We demand immediate freedom for Francisco Tolozo and end of persecution of Patriotic March," wrote Carlos Lozano, editor of Colombia's Voz weekly newspaper. "Huber Ballesteros and now Francisco Toloza: those are not gestures of peace."

Surely commentator Sara Leukos' concerns are widely shared: "Inside Colombia the peace talks express one reality and [President] Juan Manuel Santos' constitutional powers establish another. Are they different languages?" She adds: "Incarceration of Professor Francisco Javier Toloza, just like the assassinations, political prisoners, persecution, and threats ... generate open debate over the importance of real, structural changes required of the Colombian state. The people have called for popular rebellion, and necessarily so."

Photo: Colombian Army Blackhawks transporting troops to an area of combat with FARC guerrillas, in an undated photo. Wikipedia Commons

New left-wing party forms in Mexico

Wed, 15 Jan 2014 11:42:00 +0000

MEXICO CITY - A new left-wing party led by former presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will soon appear on the ballot in Mexico. The Movement for National Regeneration (MORENA) is transforming itself into a political party and has already met federal requirements to obtain its electoral registration.

Formed last year by Lopez Obrador and other former members of the center-left Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), MORENA later in the year decided to become a political party that would contest the 2015 elections. The organization has so far exceeded requirements demanded by electoral authorities, holding 25 state assemblies with 3,000 people when only 20 are required, and signing up 500,000 members, when only 250,000 are needed. Seven more state assemblies will be held shortly.

MORENA wants to build a broad front of workers, farmers and small and medium-sized business people who will fight to reverse the neoliberal reforms implemented by right-wing National Action Party (PAN) and Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) governments since the 1980s. The organization, a broad coalition that includes communists, advocates, among other things, getting rid of NAFTA and the energy reform bill passed in December 2012 that will require Mexico to share oil profits with foreign oil companies and reduce government revenues. MORENA argues that neoliberal measures have destroyed agriculture and national industry and impoverished the nation. The organization wants to rebuild the economy and increase social spending to combat poverty.

PAN and PRI governments have returned Mexico to the days of 19th century dictator Porfirio Diaz when the lands were in few hands and water, railroads, mines, oil, and the electrical industry were privatized, resulting in a revolution in 1910, Lopez Obrador charged at a recent rally in Sonara. "We have to hurry to remove the PRIAN (PRI and PAN) from government," he said. "it is necessary to defeat the PRIAN, as happened with Porfirio Diaz, but now it is necessary to do it without violence or confrontation."

Lopez Obrador, who was the PRD candidate for president and received 17 million votes in the July 2012 elections, has built a huge base of support among the poor. As governor of the Federal District - the large metropolitan state that includes Mexico City - from 2000 to 2006, he introduced a broad range of social programs to help the poor as well as measures to fight corruption and crime.

Already, PRD senators and former Federal District Gov. Marcelo Ebrard have made overtures to MORENA for an electoral alliance. The appearance of MORENA on the ballot in the 2015 elections risks fragmenting the left vote. Three current registered parties claim to be parties of the left or center left: the PRD, Labor Party (PT) and, curiously, the ruling PRI.

Lopez Obrador and others left the PRD in 2012 to form MORENA because of the PRD s shift to the right. After losing the July 2012 elections to the PRI, which won through a massive vote-buying scheme and ballot-box rigging, the PRD leadership entered into a national alliance with the PRI and PAN called "the Pact for Mexico." The PRI, under current President Enrique Pena Nieto, set up the Pact for Mexico to gain support from the PRD and PAN for its legislative initiatives. The PRD left the pact last November as a result of the energy legislation championed by the PRI and PAN to open the oil sector to foreign companies. Lopez Obrador alleged that the PRD leadership, by joining the Pact for Mexico, opened the door for the PRI and PAN to undertake right-wing structural changes such as the recent energy reforms. He also accused the PRD of helping to approve the energy reform bill.

The PRD and the Labor Party have formed electoral coalitions with the PAN in different state elections.

In the Federal District, where the PRD still governs, the party has also shifted to the right. Gov. Miguel Angel Mancera, who replaced Marcelo Ebrard last year, sent in police to brutally break up trade union demonstrations several times last year. On Jan. 5 this year, Mancera sent police to remove a group of protesting teachers who had set up a camp around the Monument for the Revolution in downtown Mexico City. The governor is currently championing legislation to restrict demonstrations in the district.

Mancera has also doubled Metro fees from 3 to 5 pesos to raise new funds to carry out needed maintenance work. MORENA charges that the increase will hurt the poorest segments of the population, and is organizing against the increase.

Photo: Andres Lopez Obrador at a MORENA rally in defense of Mexico's nationalized oil and opposing the energy "reform" bill, Sept. 23, 2013, in Mexico City. Wikimedia Commons

Quito youth meet continues world festival tradition

Tue, 14 Jan 2014 15:32:00 +0000

QUITO, Ecuador - Just hours after the passing of Nelson Mandela in December, over 8,000 youth from around the globe began gathering at the 18^th World Festival of Youth and Students in Quito, Ecuador.

During the Quito festival's opening days, beautiful music, banners, and singing filled the air as young people entered the festival's main venue, Quito's Parque Bicentenario. There were samba drummers, Andean flutists, Ecuadorian punk bands, and dancing to accompany all as the festival began.

In the opening ceremonies, the young people from each country gathered to march with their delegations. The groups from Cuba, Colombia, Russia, and Ecuador stood out as particularly large and well coordinated. At the opening ceremony stage, nearly every speaker made reference to the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela, and made calls to the youth movement to continue the struggles for equality and peace in his name.

President Rafael Correa came to address the gathering at the end of the ceremony. In a passionate speech, the president repeated multiple times that there can be no peace in the world without justice. He welcomed the youth of the world to Ecuador, and encouraged them to exchange with each other and push for equality in their communities. Correa's speech was all the more dramatic because the rain that began falling at the beginning of his talk became heavier and heavier, until the president and everyone in his company on the stage were completely drenched. However, Correa carried on as if it were the sunniest day in June.

In the days that followed, the festival delegates attended workshops on a broad variety of topics, and exchanged ideas and gifts with each other at the festival's "Friendship Fair".

Discussion sessions were held on youth unemployment, sexual and reproductive rights, ending the U.S. blockade against Cuba, access to higher education, racism and xenophobia, and more.

In a special session called the "Anti-Imperialist Tribunal", delegates offered testimony describing the ways in which corporate and political imperialism are destroying their local communities.

Student organizations from a variety of countries exchanged strategies to preserve quality, public higher education in this age of aggressive privatization.

In addition to the workshops, there were a number of other resources available to the festival delegates. One tent offered free dental examinations and cleanings. Another shared family planning information and a demonstration on how it feels to be pregnant and how to care for young babies.

Still another hosted displays of Ecuador's new social programs under the national "Buen Vivir" plan which expands public health services, education, transportation access, and other services.

The Ecuadorian hosts issued a special call to action regarding Chevron's disgraceful treatment of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Chevron-Texaco dumped billions of gallons of toxic wastewater into rivers and streams, and left over 1,000 large pools of crude oil unmanaged throughout the region.

The result is devastation of the Amazon's ecosystem, and widespread health tragedies among local indigenous communities, including birth defects and cancers. To learn more about or join the campaign to hold Chevron accountable, click here.

Thirty-four delegates from the U.S. participated. The youth festival movement began in the wake of World War II, when young people across the globe chose to declare international solidarity and peace as the way forward out of the war's misery.

Mandela himself attended one of the world youth festivals.

Photo: Lisa Bergman/PW

Butcher or hero? Ariel Sharon leaves harsh legacy

Tue, 14 Jan 2014 13:49:00 +0000

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a polarizing figure, died Saturday at age 85 after eight years in a coma. Hailed as a hero by much of Israel's political establishment, Sharon is perhaps best known internationally for two things: encouraging and abetting the massacre of an estimated 2,000 Palestinian refugees in the Sabra neighborhood and adjoining Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon in 1982, and unilaterally pulling Israel out of occupied Palestinian Gaza in 2005.

Sharon's long career as an officer in Israel's armed forces was characterized by strong-arm policies and brutality against Palestinians and other Arab people, earning him the nickname "The Bulldozer" or "Butcher" among Palestinians. It included, in reprisal for a grenade attack that killed an Israeli woman and her two children, a massacre of 69 civilians, mostly women and children, in the West Bank (then under Jordanian control) town of Qibya in 1953. In Egypt during the 1963 Sinai war, one of his officers later charged, Sharon was responsible for the slaughter of 49 Egyptian quarry workers who were prisoners of war.

In 1982, during Israel's invasion of Lebanon, Sharon, at the time the Israeli defense minister, inflamed the already toxic situation by ordering the occupation of Beirut. He then had Israeli forces surround and seal off Sabra and Shatila, and gave a green light to far-right Lebanese Phalangist forces to enter and carry out the massacre. Journalist Max Blumenthal provides more details here. The horrifying events are portrayed in a powerful award-winning 2008 Israeli film, "Waltz with Bashir."

In 1983 an Israeli investigating commission concluded that Sharon "bears personal responsibility" for the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Although Sharon rejected this, he eventually resigned as defense minister, only to return to even greater power eight years later, in 2001, when he was elected prime minister.

In 2000, as leader of Israel's rightist Likud Party, Sharon staged a highly provocative action, going with hundreds of Israeli security officers into Palestinian East Jerusalem to Al-Aqsa/Temple Mount, considered one of Islam's holiest sites. His inflammatory visit helped trigger the second Palestinian intifada (uprising).

Over his decades in high positions, Sharon was a key architect of the settler movement that has made a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict much more difficult. In a generally favorable assessment of Sharon's legacy, Alon Ben-Meir, an Israeli history professor at New York University, writes that Sharon "openly advocated grabbing every inch of Palestinian land to realize the Jews' historic right" to "reside in their ancient homeland."

Sharon's unilateral pullout from Gaza in 2005, bypassing any negotiations with the Palestinians, surprised many. It was praised by some peace advocates and assailed by settler activists, but it was condemned by others for undermining the Palestinian Authority and the peace process itself. His action is seen by some as having led to the split in the Palestinian movement and the Hamas takeover in Gaza. Sharon's own senior adviser Dov Weisglass was blunt about the aim, saying in 2004, "The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process." It was intended to ensure that peace issues "will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns," he said.

Ironically, however, the pullout and dismantlement of Israeli settlements in Gaza set a precedent, showing that it is possible for Israel to remove settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Some commentators believe Sharon late in life began to recognize the futility of military action and the need to negotiate with the Palestinians. In 2005 he broke with the rightist Likud Party, which he founded, and formed the more centrist Kadima. In Israel the current far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is being compared unfavorably to Sharon, who is praised by some for acknowledging today's realities and showing courage in the face of extremist settler opposition.

It is a reflection of how far to the right Israeli politics has moved that Sharon, widely condemned - even in his own country - as a war criminal, now is seen by some as a moderate.

Nevertheless, as a Palestinian Ma'an News Agency commentary notes, "Sharon is remembered by Palestinians and many other Arabs for his involvement in and leadership over massacres in several countries and his role in repressing the Palestinian national movement over the course of decades."

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

South Sudan: Communists speak out on crisis

Thu, 09 Jan 2014 13:36:00 +0000

Things have been going downhill fast in South Sudan, Africa's newest country. In spite of efforts to get talks going, and attempts at mediation by South Sudan's neighbors, fighting continues between factions aligned with President Salva Kiir and former Vice President Riek Machar. Up to 200,000 have fled within South Sudan or across the border to neighboring states. Many civilians have died.

The conflict is a power struggle among different factions within the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), the revolutionary force which, having fought against the Sudanese Dictator Omar Hassan al Bashir, ended up ruling South Sudan when it got its independence in 2011.

In June 2013, the President, Salva Kiir, fired several members of the government, including Vice President Machar. This led to frictions between military units allied with Kiir and those aligned with Machar. The actual fighting began in the capital, Juba, on Dec. 15, between soldiers from the Machar's Nuer ethnic group and others from Mr. Kiir's Dinka ethnic group. Some soldiers began to hunt down Nuers, both soldiers and civilians, and kill them. Kiir arrested important Machar supporters, leading to between loyalists of Kiir and followers of Machar all over the country. The conflict has taken on an ethnic overtone, even though there are also some Nuer supporters of Kiir and some Dinkas aligned with Machar.

Now fighting is threatening Unity Province, a center for production of oil which constitutes 98 percent of South Sudan's exports.

The Communist Party, an important force in Sudan, opposed the division of the country in 2011, calling rather for the overthrow of the al Bashir regime and its replacement by a democratic and secular state. However, when South Sudan seceded, the Communist Party also divided into separate Sudanese and South Sudanese organizations.

The Communist Party of South Sudan has issued a public appeal:

"In July 2013, when the President of the Republic [Salva Kiir] dissolved his entire cabinet and removed his vice-president [Mr. Macher], we in the Communist Party described this, in a public statement, as a further step in a series of power struggle moves within the ruling party, and pointed out that this struggle was far removed from solving the post-independence problems like poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, disease and the degradation of living standards. It is focused on who should rule the country and for how long. The appointments to positions of authority have become the main source of quick accumulation of wealth and high salaries and unlimited privileges and services. The interests of the [sic] parasitic capitalism and the bureaucracy in government have joined hands in robbing the state... We stressed that the power struggle opened the way for all probabilities, including the resort to violence, and pointed out that the solution was in the formation of a national government with the participation of all parties agreeing on a minimal plan of action. The political differences would be left to the public to settle in forthcoming elections.....

"This time, the struggle takes place against the background of a ruling party, the SPLM, that has failed to run the affairs of the country....both wings of the SPLM have failed and its warring factions bear the responsibility for the crisis and the deterioration of the situation..."

"The ethnic background and the formation of the SPLA [Sudan People's Liberation Army] from the two major ethnicities and especially within the Republican Guards and not on a national basis, is one of the reasons behind the current crisis in the country. In spite of the absorption of most of the militias in the SPLA, each militia retained its former structure and its leadership within the SPLA. Every side in the conflict resorted first to its militias and the sons of its own ethnicities....the conflict has descended into a sharp ethnic conflict...The repercussions of the current war will lead to dangerous events threatening the social fabric and creating a spirit of enmity among the main ethnicities in the country. Its continuation could lead to the cessation of petroleum production and the prolongation of austerity measures...."

"We therefore condemn, in the sharpest tone, the current bloody events and condemn all who directly or indirectly planned the turmoil, and call for all who committed crimes against humanity to appear before international justice".

The statement thanks the United Nations Security Council for reinforcing UN military forces in the country and also the Intergovernmental Authority for Development (a grouping of East African states) for their its mediation efforts. It called for Mr. Kiir's government to create the atmosphere for negotiations by releasing all detainees, and for both sides to call a cease-fire without preconditions.

"We in the Communist Party reject the reinstitution of SPLM hegemony over national issues....It is imperative that the SPLM ...admit the grievous mistakes and apologize to the people of South Sudan". The new government should be democratic and representative, and the army should be restructured with recruitment done nationally and not by ethnic group.

Photo: Civilians in South Sudan take refuge at a compound. Rolla Hinedi/AP

Agrarian-based oligarchy exerts control over post-coup Paraguay

Tue, 07 Jan 2014 11:26:00 +0000

The so-called "legal" coup that removed progressive Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo from power on June 25, 2012 set the stage for large agricultural corporations, particularly soybean producers, to establish control over Paraguay's government. The wealthy Horacio Cartes' election to the presidency in April, 2013 restored dictator Alfredo Stroessner's Colorado party to power. Yet opposition forces remain active.

In a radio address on Dec 30 labor leader Bernardo Rojas declared that 2013 was a "hard, difficult" year because of persecution and austerity policies. He condemned "criminalization of social struggle" and announced a general strike set for March 26, 2014. Hundreds had rallied in front of the National Congress in Asuncion to mark four months of the Cartes presidency which began on Aug 1. The demonstration's theme was "100 days that shouldn't have been, of militarization and surrender, militarization and accusations." In November, street demonstrations continued in San Pedro department a day after the police shot and wounded two of some 200 activists protesting displacement of small farmers from land lost to private interests.

The crisis in Paraguay began on June 15, 2012 when 300 police forcibly removed 50 would-be occupiers from land without clear title in Curuguaty district. President Lugo's political opponents exploited the violent fallout - 17 were killed and 20 wounded including police - to accuse the Lugo government of incompetence and engineer Lugo's removal through parliamentary action. Plotters raised the specter of terrorism by identifying the Paraguayan People's Army, leftist insurgents, as backing small farmer agitation. The Lugo government may have forced the hand of coup perpetrators by seeking to block agribusiness plans to import genetically modified seed corn.

Pos - coup governments first headed by former Vice President Frederico Franco and Cartes later on went to work. The executive branch gained new powers under a modified Law 1337/99 to deploy the military and police for internal security purposes. Expanded police and military capabilities are being "financed by the landholding class and foreign capitalists," one observer claimed. Agrarian rights activists confront security forces equipped with high- technology weapons and tools and advised by Israeli and US operatives.

Commentator Jose Carlos Lezcano points also to new "fiscal responsibility" legislation; Law 5.098/13 prescribes budgetary cuts and structural adjustment policies. A novel "law of public-private alliance" authorizes privatization of "strategic resources," including state owned enterprises.

The police assassinated eight agrarian rights leaders, supposedly for the purpose of "decapitating" opposition leadership. The fear-laden atmosphere and Colorado Party control of electoral processes resulted in the victorious Cartes gaining 45 percent of the presidential votes cast in April. The candidate of the left-leaning Guasú Front coalition took a mere 3.5 percent of the votes. Now, says Lezcano, power brokers have "surrendered the country to transnational gangsters."

That would be Monsanto, Dow, Agrotec, and Syngent corporations. Within months of the coup, the Agricultural Ministry approved their use of transgenic corn blocked under the Lugo government. Lezcano claims Paraguay has suffered a "major loss of sovereignty and effective loss of civil rights," along with diminishing state-sponsored social services.

The stage is thus set for Paraguay, the world's sixth largest soybean producer, to maintain its role, along with Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, as a soy juggernaut providing industrialized societies with the prime raw material for bio-diesel fuel and animal feeds. Current political arrangements, a legacy of the 35- year long Stroessner dictatorship, favor skewed land-owning patterns. Currently two percent of owners control 85 percent of Paraguayan farmland there; four percent of soybean growers control 60 percent of soy growing land. Foreigners, often Brazilians, own almost 20 percent of such land. .

Foreign sales of soybeans and beef yield sales worth $10 billion, yet producers and processors pay only two percent of the government's revenue requirements.

Excluded from regular participation in governmental processes, agrarian rights activists point to harm done to natural and human environments. Accounts surface, for example, of poisoned rivers, soil and human beings through the extravagant use of pesticides and herbicides. Conversion of land for large scale agricultural use has led to tens of thousands of small-farmer families being displaced. They often end up living precariously on the edges of cities.

Deforestation in Paraguay is extreme. During the last half of the 20^th century, 75 percent of the original forest cover disappeared. The trend has accentuated: In 2010 in western Paraguay forests of 580,000 acres were cut down. During the following year, the total mounted to 618,000 acres.

And irony of all ironies: despite annual soy exports amounting to 300,000 tons, and of meat products to 200,000 tons, one fourth of Paraguayans are hungry, according to the United Nations Food Program. Some 20 percent of rural inhabitants live in extreme poverty.

Photo: Horacio Cartes. Jorge Saenz/AP

Cuba – 55 years of ideas and truth

Mon, 06 Jan 2014 15:35:00 +0000

On January 1, Cubans 2014 marked the 55^th anniversary of their revolution's victory. Fidel Castro's words spoken May 1, 2000 cropped up in President Raul Castro's speech in Santiago de Cuba. Revolution, they said, is "to believe deeply there's no force in the world capable of crushing the force of truth and ideas."

Commentator Ángel Guerra Cabrera recalls one idea: "To understand the conflict between Cuba and the United States it's necessary to study Latin American history. It shows the superpower has never tolerated our countries developing internal or external politics separate from its dictates."

Raul Castro articulated another: "[N]ew generations of leaders ... never will be able to forget that this is the socialist Revolution of the humble, by the humble, and for the humble. This is the essential premise and effective antidote for not falling for the siren songs of the enemy."

Political talkers sometimes label ideas as utopian, among them that of ending the anti-Cuban U.S. blockade now. "Cuba [however] is still embracing utopia in year 55 of the triumph of its revolution," affirms Guerra Cabrera.

U. S. defenders of Cuban independence could do with truth and ideas, or at least new ones. On their watch, "Cuba has suffered under the longest blockade in history." Objective realities in the two countries may vary enough for Cuba's U. S. friends to accept what they see as truth as allowing for small gains only, and waiting. By contrast, Cubans seem to take the realities they live with as encouragement for keeping on. Indeed, there are "55 reasons for a new anniversary," says one observer. They would fit within Fidel Castro's notion of the "truth." A listing follows:

Cuba's infant mortality rate is at a new low: 4.2 babies died during 2013 out of every 1000 births. Average rates for the region remain at around 30. Maternal mortality has dropped, and life expectancy at 77.9 years matches that of industrialized nations. Physician density in Cuba is one physician for 197 persons, one of the world's top rates. That doesn't include 40,000 Cuban physicians serving abroad in 70 countries.

Universal education and health care are intact; 1,993,300 students from preschool through university level will be enrolled in 2014, and eighty million physician consultations are anticipated, plus 22 million visits to dentists and 1.140.000 hospital admissions.

The United Nations Program in Human Development ranked Cuba 59th overall out of 187 countries. UNESCO's 2011 Education for All Global Monitoring Report had Cuba as 14th in the world. Health care expenses consumed 22 percent of Cuba's 2013 state budget, education 27 percent. Cuba's 54 percent current budgetary allowance for social services is among the world's highest. Only 30 countries share Cuba's below-five percent unemployment rate.

Cuba maintains its outsized role in international solidarity. Two thousand teachers work abroad. Cuba's "Yo sí puedo" literacy program has benefited eight million learners in 29 countries. "Operation Miracle" has restored sight for two million people worldwide. By 2011, the Latin American School of Medicine had graduated 9,960 new doctors from 58 countries. Tens of thousands of other medical students and graduate physicians study in Cuba.

Economic readjustment is proceeding. A new Labor Code became law following discussions among almost three million workers. State businesses, newly autonomous, are on track to increase exports and reduce imports. Mariel is the site of a new "Special Development Zone" directed at promoting foreign investment, exports, jobs, and fostering modern business technologies. New patterns of land use and agricultural marketing prevail.

Some 400,000 Cubans are recently self-employed without loss of social services. Over 250 new cooperatives are functioning. Cuba's economy maintains a three percent rate of growth. Russia recently agreed to forgive 90 percent of Cuba's $29 billion debt incurred during the Soviet era. Provision of electricity has improved through the use of new generator facilities.

Cuban diplomats joined the United Nations Council on Human Rights in 2013. Cuba that year served as president pro tem of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States that includes all Western Hemisphere nations save Canada and the United States. During 2013, Cuba hosted peace talks between the Colombian government and the insurgent Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

These facts - these truths - suggest Cuba's revolution is established and continuing. In Santiago, President Raul Castro once more called for "respectful dialogue" with the United States. "We don't claim the United States has to change its political and social system, [but] we have to learn mutual respect for our differences, only that. [Otherwise] we are disposed to endure another 55 years in the same situation."

Cuba's real experiences and achievements demonstrate that big, utopian ideas can materialize. New realities add substance and serve to motivate. Fidel Castro's must have presumed listeners on May 1, 2000 were ready "to challenge powerful forces dominating inside and outside boundaries of society and the nation ... defend values in which we believe at the price of any sacrifice."

That kind of commitment exercised within U.S. society could help convert utopian longings into existing facts. One would be the unrealized dream of U.S. acceptance of Cuba as a regular nation. To actually fight to change existing U. S. realities would move that dream, and others, along.

Photo: Cuban medical schools are thought of as being among the best in the world. Javier Gerleano/AP

Mexico after 20 years of NAFTA: poor and getting poorer

Mon, 06 Jan 2014 12:24:00 +0000

On Jan. 1, 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, came into force. On that day, 3,000 armed indigenous people from Mexico's southernmost state, Chiapas, seized San Cristobal de las Casas and other towns, and fought a brief conflict with the Mexican Army which left at least 145 dead.

The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) rebelled because they saw NAFTA as a "death sentence" for indigenous farming communities, who could not compete with imports of cheap grain from the U.S. and Canada. Mass national protests prevented President Carlos Salinas de Gortari from crushing these Zapatistas. But important sectors of international monopoly capital called for them to be exterminated so that transnational corporations could get their hands on the oil and other rich resources of southern Mexico.

NAFTA was negotiated among the United States, Canada and Mexico as a so-called free trade agreement whereby all three countries would phase out their protective tariffs and change their legal systems to make cross-border trade easier. U.S. and Canadian unions objected because they predicted it would result in the loss of manufacturing jobs as companies moved production to low-wage Mexico. Mexico's chief negotiator, Trade Minister Jaime Serra Puche, predicted that while massive imports of U.S. and Canadian wheat, maize and other farm products would indeed drive millions of Mexican farmers off their land, this would create a source of cheap labor which would attract foreign manufacturers. Mexico would also be compensated by allowing sales of Mexican fruits and vegetables in U.S. markets, and by allowing Mexican truckers to operate within the United States. Mexico changed its laws accordingly, modifying Article 27 of its constitution which had forbidden the alienation of peasant communities' farmland.

Now, 20 years on...

* The U.S. working class lost perhaps a million manufacturing jobs, net, and Canada saw similar results.

* Two million Mexican farmers were driven off the land by sharp drops in the prices they were able to get for their crops when U.S. taxpayer-subsidized grain flooded in.

* Insufficient foreign investment came in to employ the millions displaced from the Mexican countryside. It paid its workers so poorly that there was little contribution to the overall economy. Eventually, many plants moved to even lower-wage countries in Asia.

* Foreign corporations contributed as little as possible to communities in Mexico. Many have done huge damage to the environment. Fights between farmers and foreign mining corporations, over alienation of land and depletion and contamination of water sources, are ongoing.

* Export of vegetables and fruits from Mexico to the United States has been impeded by U.S. farm interests.

* Mexican businesses found they could not compete against U.S. transnational corporations, and many shut down. Hundreds of Walmart stores have replaced Mexican-owned retailers.

* Pushed off the land and out of their jobs, millions have had no choice but to leave Mexico to seek work, causing a huge leap in the number of undocumented immigrants from Mexico in the United States.

* When grain prices collapsed, some desperate Mexican farmers turned to cultivating marijuana. The unemployed became the target of recruitment by drug cartels and other criminal enterprises. The ensuing drug war killed tens of thousands.

* Mexican workers and farmers are still poor and getting poorer. The rich in all three countries have gotten richer.

Former Mexican Commerce Minister Serra Puche now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he runs a firm which advises foreign companies on how to invest in Mexico. Interviewed by La Jornada, Serra said criticisms of NAFTA are "just a little unfair": The purpose of NAFTA, he said, was to increase cross-border trade and investment, not to end poverty. Mexican companies that could not compete with U.S. imports have only themselves to blame, he said. Nothing was said about workers and small farmers.

Throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, countries are building regional trade ties not subordinated to major transnational corporations, the IMF and World Bank or the will of Uncle Sam. These trade arrangements do not force the participating countries to take up policies of austerity, privatization and deregulation. Almost all are doing better than Mexico. Many Mexicans admire these results.

Mexico is so entangled with the United States economy that it would be very hard to disengage. Seventy-eight percent of Mexican exports now go to the United States, and 50 percent of imports come from the U.S. Twelve million people born in Mexico live in the United States, and the remittances which they send back amount to around $24 billion annually.

Much of Mexican labor is under the thumb of the dominant party, PRI. The head of the Petroleum Workers Union, Carlos Romero Deschamps, not only signed off on the "energy reform" seen by the left as an opening to the privatization of oil , but agreed to the replacement of members of his union by employees from foreign corporations.

A few unions, including the Mexican Electricians Union (SME) and the Mine and Metal Workers Union, have bucked the tide, but have been subjected to ferocious government union-busting efforts.

Nevertheless there are struggles everywhere in Mexico against the neoliberal policies imposed under NAFTA.

Photo: A farmer plows in Oaxaca, Mexico. OneWorld Nederland CC 2.0

Turkey's crisis: more than meets the eye

Mon, 06 Jan 2014 12:06:00 +0000

The current corruption crisis zeroing in on Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyio Erdogan has all the elements of one of his country's famous soap operas that tens of millions of people all over the Middle East tune in to each day: Bribes, shoe boxes filled with millions in cash, and dark whispers of foreign conspiracies.

As prosecutors began arresting leading government officials and businessmen, the Prime Minister claims that some foreign "ambassadors are engaging in provocative actions," singling out U.S. Ambassador Frank Ricciardone. The international press has largely dismissed Erdogan's charges as a combination of paranoia and desperation, but might the man have a point?

The corruption story is generally being portrayed as a result of a falling out between Erdogan's conservative brand of Islam and the Gulen Community, a more moderate version championed by the Islamic spiritual leader Fethullah Gulen, who currently resides in Pennsylvania. Both are Sunnis. More than a decade ago the two men formed a united front against the Turkish military that eventually drove the generals back to the barracks and elected Erdogan's Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2002.

There are differences between the two currents of Turkish political Islam. Erdogan's brand comes out the "National Outlook" tradition that tends to be suspicious of the West and democracy, cool to wide-open free market capitalism, and more socially conservative. Erdogan has recently told Turkish women how many children they should have-three-and railed against abortion, adultery, coed housing, public kissing, and alcohol. The AKP is also closely allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, and Erdogan was a strong supporter of the Brotherhood government in Egypt that was overthrown by a military coup this past July.

In contrast, Gulen's brand of Islam is pro-West, strongly in favor of a free market, and socially flexible. Gulen supporters were active in last summer's demonstrations against Erdogan, although their commitment to democracy is suspect. For instance, Gulen has a more hard-line nationalist approach to the Kurds, Turkey's largest ethnic minority, and only recently began challenging the AKP's authoritarian streak.

Gulen was also critical of Erdogan for breaking relations with Israel following the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, when Israeli commandos killed eight Turks and a Turkish-American trying to deliver aid to the Palestinians in Gaza. Gulen accused Erdogan of provoking the clash.

The current falling out came to a head when Erdogan proposed closing down one of the Gulen Community's major sources of financing, the "dershanes" or tutorial schools that prepare Turkish students to take exams. The Community has expanded such schools to over 140 countries, including the U.S. The schools also serve as effective recruiting conduits for his movement. The Russians recently closed down the schools, accusing them of being fronts for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Gulen called the move against the dershanes a "dagger stabbed in our hearts."

But the timing of the corruption investigations suggests this is more about regional politics-with global ramifications-than a spat over influential schools and interpretations of Islam.

Erdogan's supporters charge that the investigation is coming from Gulen-dominated prosecutors and judges, and that it is little more than a power play aimed at bringing down the Prime Minister and damaging the AKP on the eve of local elections scheduled for March. "It is clear that I am the real target," Erdogan told the media.

Gulen supporters counter that corruption is widespread, and that the Erdogan government has alienated former allies throughout the region.

There is certainly truth in that charge. From a former policy of "zero problems with the neighbors" Turkey finds itself embroiled in the Syrian civil war, and feuding with Israel, Egypt, Iraq, and Iran. Even what looked like a breakthrough peace accord with the Kurds appears to be turning sour.

But this past fall, the Erdogan government began reversing course and patching up relations with the locals.

Turkey and Iran jointly agreed that there was "no military solution" to the war in Syria, and Ankara expelled Saudi Arabian intelligence agents, who it had accused of aiding the more extremist elements fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad.

Turkey also buried the hatchet with Iraq. Instead of setting up a separate oil and gas deal with the Kurds in Northern Iraq, Ankara has agreed to work through the central government in Baghdad and is pushing to increase cross border trade between the two countries. Of course much of this is practical: Turkey needs energy and Iran and Iraq can provide it more cheaply than anyone else.

These recent policy turnarounds make the timing of the corruption charges suspicious. For two years Erdogan's government has played spear-carrier for the U.S. and its allies in Syria and courted the reactionary Gulf Cooperation Council. The latter consists of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and newcomers Jordan and Morocco.

But the Syrian civil war has not gone as planned, and, despite predictions that Assad would quickly fall, his government is hanging on. It is the forces fighting him that are spinning out of control. Ankara's allies in the Gulf-in particular Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates-are funding Islamic extremists fighting in Syria, who are turning the war into Sunnis Vs. Shiites. The Assad government is dominated by the Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Those groups are now also destabilizing Lebanon and Iraq by attacking Shiite communities in both countries. Most these extremists are contemptuous of Turkey's Islamic government.

From the U.S. point of view, Turkey is no longer a completely reliable ally. It is quarreling with Israel, Washington's number one friend in the region. It has fallen out with Saudi Arabia and most of the GCC-the new government in Qatar is an exception-and has essentially broken off relations with the U.S.-supported military government in Egypt. Most of all, it is developing ties with Iran, and both countries are suddenly issuing joint communiqués calling for a diplomatic resolution to the Syrian civil war.

Rather than joining in the newly forged Saudi-Israeli-Egypt alliance against Iran, Turkey is feuding with all three countries and breaking bread with Shiia-dominated governments in Teheran and Damascus.

In short, from Washington's point of view, Erdogan has gone off the reservation.

Seen from this perspective, Erdogan's suspicions do not seem all that bizarre. Despite denials that the U.S. and its allies are not involved, and that the corruption issues is entirely an internal Turkish affair, Washington and its allies do have a dog in this fight.

For instance, one target of the corruption probe is Halkbank, which does business with Iran. "We asked Halkbank to cut its links with Iran," U.S. Ambassador Ricciardone reportedly told European Union (EU) ambassadors. "They did not listen to us." Did the U.S. influence Turkish prosecutors to single out Halkbank?

If Erdogan falls and the Gulen forces take over, it is almost certain that Turkey will re-align itself in the region. If that happens, expect Ankara to patch up its fight with Tel Aviv and Cairo, chill relations with Iran, and maybe even go silent on a diplomatic solution in Syria. The free market section of the Turkish economy will expand, and western investments will increase. And the current roadblocks in the way of Turkey's membership in the EU may vanish.

Whether this will be good for Turkey or the region is another matter. The Gulf monarchies are not nearly as stable as they look. The military government in Egypt will always be haunted by the ghost of the Arab Spring. Israel's continued settlement building is gradually turning it into an international pariah. And, in the end, the West does not really care about democracy, as the U.S.'s endorsement of the military coup in Egypt made clear.

Erdogan's political instincts seem to have deserted him. His brutal suppression of last summer's demonstrations polarized the country, and his response to the corruption investigations has been to fire or reassign hundreds of police and prosecutors. He has also gone after the media. Turkey has jailed more journalists than Iran and China combined.

There is little doubt but that the Prime Minister has played fast and loose with zoning laws and environmental regulations in order to allow his allies in the construction industry to go on a tear. But Erdogan hardly invented corruption, and the question about the investigations is, why now?

Maybe the charge that this Turkish corruption scandal is orchestrated is just paranoia, but, then, paranoids do have enemies.

This article originally appeared in Conn Hallinan's blog Dispatches From The Edge.

Photo: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan speaks at Turkish think tank USAK (International Strategic Research Organization) in 2010. Wikimedia Commons

Richard Hart, Jamaican Marxist and historian, dies

Mon, 06 Jan 2014 11:44:00 +0000

Richard Hart, a towering figure of the Jamaican and Caribbean left, died in Bristol, England, of natural causes on Dec. 21, 2013, at 96 years of age.

Hart was born in Kingston, the son of an attorney, and he himself began to practice as a solicitor after an education in Jamaica and the United Kingdom. His immersion in Jamaican labor and political struggles, in which he took a Marxist and anti-colonial stance in spite of his own elite background, began in the late 1930s with labor activism.

Active with railway workers, Hart was a founder and leader of the Trade Union Council, the Caribbean Labour Congress, and the People's National Party. His first arrest by the colonial authorities was in 1940, for organizing a demonstration calling for the release of Alexander Bustamante, a fiery labor leader, who, ironically, became a vocal anti-communist during the cold war as head of the Jamaica Labour Party and Jamaica's first chief minister (1953-1955) and prime minister (1962-1967).

Hart, along with other Marxists, affiliated himself with the People's National Party (PNP) headed by Norman Manley. But the cold war of the 1950s intimidated Manley and his party also, and in the early 1950s, Hart and other leftists were expelled from the PNP for communism. Manley's government eventually revoked Hart's passport (Ironically, Bustamante, as prime minister, eventually returned it).

After a brief effort to set up an openly socialist party in Jamaica, Hart moved to Guyana, where fellow leftist Cheddi Jagan, an anti-colonialist leftist who served as Prime Minister of that Country from 1961 to 1964, made use of his skills. Among other things, Hart edited the Mirror, a newspaper aligned with Jagan and his allies. However, Jagan lost power in the 1964 elections, whereupon Hart moved to Britain, but continued to be involved with Caribbean labor and political struggles.

When Maurice Bishop of the New Jewel Movement ousted Prime Minister Eric Gairy of Granada in 1979, Hart became attorney general in the new left-wing government. But when Bishop was overthrown and killed in 1983, leading to a U.S. invasion, Hart again went to the United Kingdom, where he remained until his death.

Hart's interest in historical scholarship grew naturally out of his activist involvement on behalf of the oppressed Black workers of Jamaica and of the Caribbean. From the 1970s to the 2000s, he brought out a series of supremely important historical works, including the two volume "Slaves Who Abolished Slavery: Blacks in Rebellion" (2002, University of the West Indies Press), "The End of Empire: Transition to Independence in Jamaica and other Caribbean Region Colonies" (2006, Arawak Press) and many other books and articles.

It was Hart's view, meticulously documented in his historical writings, that the end of slavery in the British Empire was not brought about by a magnanimous gesture "from above" inspired by Christian charity, but by the realization of the British ruling class and government that if they did not take the initiative to emancipate the slaves, they would be faced with increasing, and increasingly successful, slave rebellions which would eventually lead to the loss of their colonies. Nor was slavery in the British West Indies somehow benign; it was an outrageously cruel and oppressive system.

At the beginning of the 19^th century, a number of powerful slave uprisings took place in Jamaica. According to Hart, one of the most important was the "Emancipation Rebellion" of 1831, in Western Jamaica, in which 20,000 slaves participated. The rebellion, led by a literate Baptist slave named Sam Sharpe, was put down with extreme cruelty, and Sharpe and hundreds of others were executed. The planter-slave owner elite on the island angrily defended their brutal slave system, but the government in London decided to cut its losses, and, after a failed effort to turn slaves into "apprentices," all the slaves in the British Empire became free on August 1, 1838. However, the racist attitudes, practices and institutions built up under slavery continued after emancipation.

In 2001, Hart's membership in the People's National Party, under the leadership of Prime Minister P. J. Patterson, was restored to him, without his having to repudiate one iota of his Marxist principles.

Photo: Richard Hart in 2006 via University of the West Indies.

Germany: Fireworks past, present and future

Fri, 03 Jan 2014 15:40:00 +0000

BERLIN - New Year's Eve in Germany means fireworks! Near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, after pop stars softened up a crowd so tightly packed that cops waved away late-comers well before midnight, the city offered Europe's biggest midnight fireworks display.

Unusual for many American visitors, however, is the amazing amount of family fireworks in almost every city street.

For 30 or 40 minutes, countless thousands of rockets whiz skywards (almost always!) and burst up there loud enough to panic any dog, cat or pigeon in the neighborhood - and any innocent pedestrian daring to walk past the celebrants.

Many save for months to buy those loud, brightly flying explosives. The churches call annually for a more charitable use of the money, but only the worst recession years saw any let-up.

"Aren't they dangerous?" inquired an American visitor. "Sure!" was the retort. "Every year some get burned, lose a finger, even an eye. But nowhere so dangerous as all your pistols and assault rifles!"

Didn't wait for New Year's Eve

In Hamburg they didn't wait for New Year's Eve with the fireworks. Since 1989 a former vaudeville theater re-named Rote (Red) Flora has been occupied by squatters. It became a cultural and political center for meetings, concerts and rallying center for groups ranging from ultra-anarchists to some very dubious "left-wing" groups supporting neo-con positions in Palestine and Iran.

Despite sharp differences, they were a hippy, then a hip-hop bunch opposing rapid gentrification in an area once resembling Greenwich Village in its more rebellious, innovative days.

The city-state governments, whether Social Democrats or Christian Democrats, ruled the roost and tolerated Rote Flora even after the city sold the theater to a wealthy realtor in 2001. But then, after a successful solidarity concert supporting "Lampedusa" survivors of deathly Mediterranean boat trips who yearn to settle in Hamburg, the realtor suddenly decided to raze the building and build a big new center there, allegedly cultural but very commercial and very profitable.

Rote Flora people of all persuasions rebelled against their building - and two relics in Hamburg's famous Reeperbahn red light and entertainment area - suffering the same fate as Germany's traditional Christmas geese.

Quite properly they registered the time, route and expected size of a protest march on December 21 with the authorities. But like at an anti-bank protest march in Frankfurt last June, the cops had other plans. After a very few minutes and not many meters they blocked the march of about 8,000 people and ordered it to disband.

First they claimed that cobblestones and fireworks had been thrown at them. This was vigorously denied, with video proof, so police switched to a strange new excuse: the parade had started before the officially agreed time. As expected, the demonstrators got mad and some really began to throw things (in the past, the first hurlers were often suspected and sometimes detected agent provocateurs).

The police, obviously well prepared, immediately offered the usual response: water cannon, pepper spray and batons. The ensuing battle, which spread during the night to the Reeperbahn area, had bitter results; the police claimed injuries to 120 in uniform, with 19 sent to the hospital, while the demonstrators said over 500 of their number were badly hurt.

As for the Lampedusa refugees - they had luckily held a meeting far from the action, saying they did not want to be held responsible for actions in their name but also accusing the police of provoking trouble: "We will not permit our protest to be misused in such a fashion." The fate of Rote Flora is still uncertain. Was this pre-Christmas episode an omen for 2014?

Another confrontation looming?

Indeed, another confrontation may be in the offing for Berlin in mid-January. Over a year ago a group of refugees, including families, mostly from Africa or the Middle East, walked 300 miles from Wurzburg in Bavaria to protest miserable conditions during the often-yearlong periods when their applications for asylum await decisions.

Shoved into out-of-the way camps, often run-down former military barracks, cut off from towns or cities, with minimum rations, not allowed to work, not allowed to leave the county they are assigned to, even to visit relatives, in the end they are often locked up like criminals and deported, sometimes by brutal force. The protesters camped near the Brandenburg Gate at first, and then were forced to leave but permitted to camp in a public square in the internationally mixed borough of Kreuzberg, where Berlin's only Green mayor presided, a rare left-wing Greener.

They spent a winter and a summer there, while about twenty returned to the Brandenburg Gate for a desperate hunger strike. In icy weather the police permitted their presence but neither tents nor sleeping mats or chairs.

No political concessions have yet been offered, but many were given dry winter quarters on a temporary basis in church facilities. But some decided to remain in their tents on Oranienplatz (Square) in order to continue their public campaign for their rights, including an information tent for passers-by and joint cooking and meeting space.

Now Interior Senator Frank Henkel (in Berlin cabinet ministers are called senators) is insisting that they leave the square by Jan. 16 or else! Monika Herrmann, the new, also progressive Green borough mayor, is trying to mediate.

After long defending their right to remain, she now says: "I want the tents removed, just like the Interior Senator, but I warn against using force which could lead to total escalation. And of course I am afraid that here in Berlin's Kreuzberg borough we could see things happening like in Hamburg... The presence of a few tents isn't worth a situation where people get injured, either police officers or demonstrators."

But the decision by Henkel, who is also Berlin's deputy mayor in the city-state coalition of Social Democrats and his own Christian Democrats, has led to plans for big demonstrations by opposition groups, extending from moderate Greens halfway around the political compass to ultra-left wingers, including the stone-throwing, shop-window smashing bunch - probably with provocateurs to spice things up again. Anything can happen!

Immigration a major issue

Henkel is typical for many in his party and, even worse, in its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), who have been revving up fears and hatred against Rumanians and Bulgarians who, as European Union members, will be permitted to move to western Europe after Jan. 1.

Germany expects 100,000 or 200,000 temporary or permanent immigrants. While many are doctors, engineers and professionals, the majority are not. But while the statistics prove that the immigrants, their labor, their taxes and their children are actually a boon to the economy, those on the right only increase their ranting about the "continuing misuse of European travel freedom for poverty migration," helped by all those in the media who stoke fears of "free loaders and criminals."

As in times past, the immigrants are useful scapegoats - like the Turks here, the Algerians in France, Moroccans in the Netherlands, and the Roma ("Gypsies") and Jews in Hungary. Such hate propaganda is great breeding ground for menacing fascistic groups - from Saxony to Slovakia, from Athens to Arizona.

Such matters were very relevant for delegates to the Fourth Congress, in Madrid, of the Party of European Leftists, a rather remarkable mix of over 30 very different parties. Some still use the name Communist Party - in France, Spain, Belgium and the Czech Republic, the German party is named The Left (but the small German Communist Party - DKP - is also a member).

Some, as in Switzerland and Hungary, are called the Workers' Party. Relatively strong are the parties in Greece, Cyprus, Portugal and Germany; others are tiny grouplets, "tried and true" remnants of past years in East and West. Many complain of the ineffectiveness thus far of the organization, which was founded in 2004, and the need to join against the disastrous austerity strategy of the Merkel government and the bankers.

As always on the left side of the political spectrum, there is a split: some more "orthodox" left-wing parties in Europe (also with ties to other continents) reject this outfit entirely and meet separately and, they would say, far more purely.

A main difference between the groupings: one is critical of the European Union but wants to remain within it, while pushing on social issues, for more democracy, against further militarization. The other group rejects the European Union completely as a device to block progress towards socialism.

In some countries, where there are parties belonging to both groups, they both try to send delegates to the European Parliament meeting alternately in Strasbourg and Brussels, whether they oppose it or not. Of the 751 delegates 35 belong to its left-wing caucus, where they try somehow to cooperate in opposing the stronger caucuses to the right.

In all 28 member countries elections are due at the end of May and the European Left hopes to increase its size to about 50 - thanks to the growth in strength of the Syriza Party of Greece, whose head, Alexis Tsipras, 39, will lead its international campaign. This will be no easy task. Aside from the differences among those on the left, there is sharp rejection of the European Union in the poorer countries (and in Britain) and prevailing disinterest in economically luckier ones like Germany, often goosed - in all of them - by sarcastic media jabs.

The Left Party of Germany, a key member thanks to its size and its connections in both East and West Europe, will be fighting an uphill battle to get out the vote. It hopes to keep or even raise the number of its European delegates, now standing at eight.

While trying to inspire often reluctant voters to go to the polls in May, it is also more than occupied working out its own positions, with differences possibly re-emerging after a relative armistice leading up to the September elections.

It has become the main opposition party in the Bundestag, beating out the Greens by just one seat. But even together they have only a measly 20 percent of the seats, overwhelmed in votes by the Christian Democratic-Social Democratic ruling coalition.

Will the two work together or squabble in the fight to get heard? Should they work together - now that the politically drifting Greens have joined right-wing Christian Democrats in the state of Hesse in an unholy alliance? Will some Social Democrats rebel at nasty compromises made by their leaders in their comfy government cabinet armchairs?

There are plenty of questions open in 2014 - with hopefully some wins - in the street and shops if not in the Bundestag - plus few losses - and no fireworks of a military or otherwise bloody nature. Happy New Year!

Photo: Hamburg's former vaudeville theater re-named Rote (Red) Flora, occupied by squatters. Wikipedia CC 3.0.

After 55 years, time to end embargo against Cuba

Thu, 02 Jan 2014 16:46:00 +0000

In late 1958, things were not going well for Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Cuba's economy was on the ropes, with thousands of rural and urban poor people idled and destitute through much of the year. Three quarters of agricultural land was controlled by big landowners. In some rural areas, only half the adult population was literate. U.S. conglomerates dominated the economy. Batista's gangsterish regime had opened up Cuba to U.S. organized crime, turning Havana into a center of gambling, drugs and prostitution. But the Cuban people would no longer tolerate this state of affairs, and the combination of repression and bribery could no longer hold things together. The revolutionaries of the 26^th of July Movement headed by Fidel Castro were defeating Batista's army in every battle. The Eisenhower administration in the United States ditched Batista and tried to find a pliant leader who could fend off Castro. They could not. As a general strike swept Cuba, Batista fled.

On January 1 1959, revolutionary forces headed by Fidel and Raul Castro, Ernesto "Che" Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos took full control, and began a process which transformed Cuba into a socialist state and a bulwark of solidarity for people's struggles all over the world.

For 55 years, successive U.S. administrations and their allies in other countries have done everything humanly possible to reverse the consequences of that historic day. Terrorism, sabotage and the Bay of Pigs invasion did not work. Economic strangulation has not worked. Lies have not worked. Cuba was battered by the collapse of Soviet and Eastern European socialism, but did not go under. Each year, claims that Cuba is "isolated' ring hollow when the U.N. General Assembly votes, by increasingly lopsided margins, to denounce the U.S. policy of the economic blockade of Cuba. In November 2013, it was 188 to 2 with 3 abstentions. The nay votes were those of the United States and Israel only. It is the United States that has isolated itself from the world family of nations with its policy toward Cuba.

The blockade has inflicted billions of dollars on the Cuban economy and denied Cubans access to medical and technical supplies. It has also cost workers and farmers in the United States thousands of lost jobs as opportunities for the export of agricultural and manufactured goods have been denied.

In spite of this, the socialist government in Cuba has made enormous progress in meeting the needs of all of its people. Cuba has the highest standards in Latin America and the Caribbean in educational achievement, health care and infant and child welfare. It has more doctors proportional to its population than does the United States, and Cuba's infant mortality rate is lower than that of the United States (4 infant deaths per 1000 live births per year as opposed to 6 in the United States).

Cuba is a founding member of the nine-nation Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA). Within that organization, Cuba works to create models of trade and development that will allow the poorest countries of the hemisphere to serve the needs of their peoples without having to bow down to the richer countries or to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Cuban military aid missions helped to end the apartheid system in South Africa. Today, Cuban non-military aid is providing vital help to poor countries all over the world in the fields of education, health care and science. To the poorest countries, this aid is provided free of charge.

Under President Raul Castro, socialist Cuba continues on its revolutionary course.

We in the United States have a responsibility to do more than just praise and admire the Cuban Revolution. We have a responsibility to change our own country's policies toward Cuba, and we can make that change it if we enlist the support of the American people. Let us resolve that in the year 2014, we join with our coworkers, neighbors, friends and relatives to pressure the U.S. government to:

*Talk to the Cuban government about freeing the four remaining members of the Cuban 5 group, who were given draconian prison sentences for their work against terrorist groups in the U.S. These groups have caused death and destruction in Cuba. The door is wide open for this: The Cuban government has stated that it is always ready to talk, and imprisoned U.S. subcontractor Alan Gross and his family are also demanding the U.S. negotiate with Cuba.

*End the restrictions on the right of U.S. citizens to visit Cuba. These restrictions are a violation of our own rights.

*End the blockade of Cuba, a sovereign country that has never done anything to harm the people of the U.S.A., and restore normal diplomatic and trade relations between our two countries.

To accomplish this will entail visiting members of Congress, contacting the White House and the State Department, circulating petitions, passing resolutions in labor unions, faith based organizations and other groups, writing letters to the editor and op eds in the press, organizing and participating in demonstrations and other events and taking advantage of every opportunity and using every available platform to patiently explain the real issues to our friends, family, co-workers and neighbors. All is worthwhile if it is done with perseverance and is addressed to the whole of the U.S. people.

We can do it! Let's get this done this year!

¡Viva la Revolución Cubana! ¡Viva Cuba Socialista!

Photo: Prensa Latina