People Before Profit blog

Syriza and the Greek earthquake: a deeper look

Fri, 30 Jan 2015 11:23:00 +0000

Almost before the votes were counted in the recent Greek elections, battle lines were being drawn all over Europe. While Alexis Tsipras, the newly elected Prime Minister from Greece's victorious Syriza Party, was telling voters, "Greece is leaving behind catastrophic austerity, fear and autocratic government," Jens Weidmann, president of the German Bundesbank, was warning the new government not to "make promises it cannot keep and the country cannot afford."

On Feb. 12 those two points of view will collide when European Union (EU) heads of state gather in Brussels. Whether the storm blowing out of Southern Europe proves an irresistible force, or the European Council an immovable object, is not clear, but whatever the outcome, the continent is not likely to be the same after that meeting.

The Jan 25 victory of Greece's leftwing Syriza Party was, on one hand, a beacon for indebted countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland. On the other, it is a gauntlet for Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, and the "troika"-the European Central bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)-the designers and enforcers of loans and austerity policies that have inflicted a catastrophic economic and social crisis on tens of millions of Europeans.

The troika's policies were billed as "bailouts" for countries mired in debt-one largely caused by the 2008 financial speculation bubble over which indebted countries had little control-and as a way to restart economic growth. In return for the loans, the EU and the troika demanded massive cutbacks in social services, huge layoffs, privatization of pubic resources, and higher taxes.

However, the "bailouts" did not go toward stimulating economies, but rather to repay creditors, mostly large European banks. Out of the $266 billion loaned to Greece, 89 percent went to investors. After five years under the troika formula, Greece was the most indebted country in Europe. Gross national product dropped 26 percent, unemployment topped 27 percent (and over 50 percent for young people), and one-third of the population lost their health care coverage.

Given a chance to finally vote on the austerity strategy, Greeks overwhelmingly rejected the parties that went along with the troika and elected Syriza.

Now it gets tricky, starting with the internal situation within Greece.

Because Syriza fell two seats short of controlling the Greek parliament, it has gone into coalition with the small, right wing Independent Greeks party. While initially it seems an odd choice-the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) and the Greek Communist Party also have deputies, and Syriza is only two seats short of a majority-Greek politics are, if nothing else, complex.

The Independent Greek party-a split from the former ruling conservative New Democracy Party-is an odd duck by any measure. It has a streak of racism and xenophobia, and its leader, Panos Kammenos, believes that jet contrails are chemicals used to control people's minds. But it is staunchly anti-austerity and will not likely waver in the face of the troika or German Chancellor Andrea Merkel.

What would seem like a more compatible alliance with PASOK, however, is precluded by that fact that the Socialists supported the austerity package. There is a new party, To Potami, but it has yet to publish its program, and it is unclear exactly what it stands for. As for the Communists, the Party's leadership says they have no intention of working with the "false hope" of Syriza.

As convoluted as Greek politics are, the main obstacle for Syriza will come from other EU members and the Troika.

Finnish Prime Minister Alex Stubb made it clear "that we would say a resounding 'no' to forgive loans." Merkel's chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, says, "We have pursued a policy which works in many European countries, and we will stick to in the future." IMF head Christine Lagarde chimed in that "there are rules that must be met in the euro zone," and that "we cannot make special exceptions for specific countries."

But Tsipras will, to paraphrase the poet Swinburne, not go entirely naked into Brussels, but "trailing clouds of glory." Besides the solid support in Greece, a number of other countries and movements will be in the Belgian capital as well.

Syriza is closely aligned in Spain with Podemos, now polling ahead of the ruling conservative People's Party. "2015 will be the year of change in Spain and Europe," tweeted Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias in the aftermath of the election, "let's go Alexis, let's go!" Unemployment in Spain is 24 percent, and over 50 percent for young people.

Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein-now the third largest party in the Irish Republic-hailed the vote as opening "up the real prospect of democratic change, not just for the people of Greece, but for citizens right across the EU." Unemployment in Ireland is 10.7 percent, and tens of thousands of jobless young people have been forced to emigrate.

The German Social Democrats are generally supportive of the troika, but the Green Party hailed the Syriza victory and Die Linke Party members marched with signs reading, "We start with Greece. We change Europe."

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi-who has his own issues with the EU's rigid approach to debt-hailed the Greek elections, and top aide Sandro Gozi said that Rome was ready to work with Syriza. The jobless rate in Italy is 13.4 percent, but 40 percent among youth.

The French Communist Party hailed the Greek elections as "Good news for the French people," and Jean-Luc Melenchon of the Parti de Gauche called for a left-wing alliance similar to Syriza. French President Francois Hollande made a careful statement about "growth and stability," but the Socialist leader is trying to quell a revolt by the left flank of his own party over austerity, and Paris is closer to Rome than it is to Berlin on the debt issue.

While the conservative government of Portugal was largely silent, Left Bloc Member of Parliament Marisa Matias told a rally, "A victory for Syriza is a victory for all of Europe."

In short, there are a number of currents in the EU and a growing recognition even among supporters of the troika that prevailing approach to debt is not sustainable.

One should have no illusions that Syriza will easily sweep the policies of austerity aside, but there is a palpable feeling on the continent that a tide is turning. It did not start with the Greek elections, but with last May's European Parliament elections, where anti-austerity parties made solid gains. While some right-wing parties that opportunistically donned a populist mantle also increased their vote, they could not do so where they were challenged by left anti-austerity parties. For instance, the right did well in Denmark, France, and Britain, but largely because there were no anti-austerity voices on the left in those races. Elsewhere the left generally defeated their rightist opponents.

If Syriza is to survive, however, it must deliver, and that will be a tall order given the power of its opponents.

At home, the Party will have to take on Greece's wealthy tax-dodging oligarchs if it hopes to extend democracy and start refilling the coffers drained by the troika's policies. It will also need to get a short-term cash infusion to meet its immediate obligations, but without giving in to yet more austerity demands by the troika.

For all the talk about Syriza being "extreme"-it stands for Coalition of the Radical Left- its program, as Greek journalist Kia Mistilis points, is "classic 70's social democracy": an enhanced safety net, debt moratorium, minimum wage raise, and economic stimulus.

Syriza is pushing for a European conference modeled on the 1953 London Debt Agreement that pulled Germany out of debt after World War II and launched the "wirtschaftswunder,"or economic miracle that created modern Germany. The Agreement waved more than 50 percent of Germany's debt, stretched out payments over 50 years, and made repayment of loans dependent on the country running a trade surplus.

The centerpiece of Syriza's Thessaloniki program is its "four pillars of national reconstruction," which include "confronting the humanitarian crisis," "restarting the economy and promoting tax justice," "regaining employment," and "transforming the political system to deepen democracy."

Each of the "pillars" is spelled out in detail, including costs, income and savings, and, while it is certainly a major break with the EU's current model, it is hardly the October Revolution.

The troika's austerity model has been quite efficient at smashing trade unions, selling off public resources at fire sale prices, lowering wages and starving social services. As a statement by the International Union of Food Workers argues, "Austerity is not the produce of a deficient grasp of macroeconomics or a failure of 'social dialogue,' it is a conscious blueprint for expanding corporate power."

Under an austerity regime, the elites do quite well, and they are not likely to yield without a fight.

But Syriza is poised to give them one, and "the little party that could" is hardly alone. Plus a number of important elections are looming in Estonia, Finland, and Spain that will give anti-austerity forces more opportunities to challenge the policies of Merkel and the troika.

The spectre haunting Europe may not be the one that Karl Marx envisioned, but it is putting a scare into the halls of the rich and powerful.

Photo: "Cut the debt, IMF go home": Anti-austerity graffiti in front of Athens Academy, Jan. 29 | Thanassis Stavrakis/AP

Left victory in Greece breaks new ground

Wed, 28 Jan 2015 12:55:00 +0000

All eyes are on Greece, where left-wing Alexis Tsipras became the new prime minister on Monday, Jan. 26. An open secularist, he took the oath of office without wearing a tie, and declined the blessing of the Greek Orthodox Church. Tsipras is the leader of Syriza, or Coalition of the Radical Left, a loose alliance of left-wing groups, including some who formerly split from the Greek Communist Party (KKE).

A triumphant Alexis Tsipras told Greeks that Syriza's win in Sunday's early general election meant an end to austerity and humiliation, and that the country's regular and often fraught debt inspections were a thing of the past. "Today the Greek people have made history. Hope has made history," Tsipras said in his victory speech at a conference hall in central Athens. A new epoch in Greek, and European, history has broken forth.

As expected, Syriza won Sunday's elections in Greece with 149 of the 300 seats in the parliament. But that left Syriza two seats short of a majority, which obliged them to find a coalition partner.

Only two parties were potential partners, the centrist To Potami (the River) and the rightist anti-austerity ANEL (Independent Greeks). The KKE had said that it would not enter a coalition government with Syriza. Some have suggested that Syriza could have formed a minority government and then forged temporary alliances on the floor of parliament, issue by issue, but the Syriza leadership did not want that and chose the ANEL alliance route. What commitments Syriza made to ANEL to get it into the new government remain to be seen.

Tsipras has put together a cabinet that is in line with the more left-wing positions his party articulated during the campaign. His finance minister, the economist Yanis Varoufakis, has blogged scathingly about the austerity measures imposed on Greece by the "Troika" of the European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund as conditions for the 2011 financial bailout, calling them "fiscal waterboarding."

The head of a new super-ministry in charge of negotiating with the Troika, Deputy Prime Minister Yanis Dragasakis, is a former member of the Central Committee of the KKE. The new minister of interior, in charge of police, Nikos Voutsis, was prominently involved in anti-austerity demonstrations in the past. His appointment is important because under the old regime the police were accused not only of brutality but of links to the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn Party.

The new foreign minister, Nikolaos Kotzias, is also a vocal opponent of the austerity measures. Minister of Productive Reconstruction Panagiotis Lafazanis is another former KKE member. Aside from the defense portfolio which went to ANEL leader, Panos Kammenos, ANEL got only minor cabinet posts.

Initial policy announcements by Tsipras are strikingly radical. On domestic policy, he immediately stopped further privatizations, including of port facilities, and doubled the minimum wage. He announced free electrical service for 300,000 of the country's poorest families. There will be food aid and efforts to create jobs in a country where a quarter of the workforce is unemployed. Unpopular property taxes will be cut, but will be more than made up for by a crackdown on Greece's notorious practice of tax evasion by the rich, and higher taxes on the wealthy. In the past Syriza has promised to tax the country's wealthy shipping industry, which currently pays no income tax.

The new government plans to go to the Troika, not hat in hand, but with new demands, including the repayment by Germany of a "loan" that Greece was forced to hand over to the Nazis when they occupied the country during World War II. Greece will ask for new conditions for the repayment of its current bailout loans, amounting to a renegotiation and a moratorium on current payments.

On foreign policy, Tsipras repudiated a European Union statement blaming Russia for the recent bombing of a streetcar in Mariupol, Ukraine, which happened in the context of the ongoing fighting between the right-wing Ukrainian government in Kiev and dissident forces in Eastern Ukraine. In the past, Tsipras has denounced the Kiev regime as including "neo-Nazis." However, for now there is no talk of pulling Greece out of NATO, nor out of the European Union and the euro.

Some European communist parties and others were elated by the Syriza victory. Pierre Laurent, national secretary of the French Communist Party, said, "With the victory of Syriza, the Greek people move to restore their dignity and write a new page in history ... In France, it is possible also." A similarly congratulatory message came from the United Left (Izquierda Unida) in Spain, an alliance which includes the Communist Party. But others were more cautious and critical, expressing worry about the appointment of Kammenos as defense minister, the lack of women in Tsipras' cabinet, and the NATO question.

Among the Greek and European ruling classes, reactions to the election mix panic and rage. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble declared that the Troika and Germany would not budge from their harsh position toward Greece: that the Greeks have only themselves to blame for their current sufferings caused by irresponsible and dishonest management of their economy by past governments. The fact that Syriza has raised the issue of Nazi German despoiling of Greece during World War II, for which Greece was never compensated, did not improve the mood in Berlin. Other ruling-class figures threaten to push Greece out of the European Union.

If Tsipras sticks to his guns, there will be a mobilization of right-wing forces in Europe and beyond. The European ruling class does not just fear what might happen in Greece, it fears the example Greece might give to other poor nations such as Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland, which might throw over the Troika regime of austerity and privatization and demand that the crisis of capitalism not be balanced on the backs of workers and the poor.

Calls are coming in from organized labor to rally support for Greece against the threat of retaliation. The International Union of Food Workers issued a statement calling the Syriza election "a potential breakthrough." But, the union said, "to carry out their program a government of the Left will need massive understanding and support abroad. Unions should be in the forefront of building that support."

Photo: Supporters of Alexis Tsipras, leader of left-wing Syriza party, gather during a rally outside Athens University headquarters, Sunday, Jan. 25. | AP/Lefteris Pitarakis

Inside the Auschwitz death camp on Holocaust Remembrance Day

Tue, 27 Jan 2015 12:03:00 +0000

Today, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a commemoration is taking place at Auschwitz, which was liberated exactly 70 years ago.

Many countries will be represented by their highest-ranking politicians - in the case of France and Germany by Presidents Francois Hollande and Joachim Gauk respectively. The U.S. sent a delegation led by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.

Britain will be represented by Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. Last week I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau as part of a study tour, and arrangements for the commemoration event were well-advanced. A massive marquee has been erected incorporating the "death gate" at Birkenau, where world leaders will be joined by 300 Auschwitz survivors and a high level of security in place.

The scale of the camp - chosen because of its location at the centre of German-occupied Europe - is breathtaking, and the inhumanity of the conditions in which prisoners were detained is palpable when visiting the preserved camp buildings.

I was profoundly moved by the conditions of the brick barracks in which children and women were incarcerated. Built on swampy ground without foundations, women slept on overcrowded three-tier berths spread over with rotting straw. Sanitary conditions were unspeakable.

It is estimated that 1.3 million people were killed at the Auschwitz extermination camp, of which 90 per cent were Jews.

The belongings, biographies and photographs of victims displayed at the museums across the site are profound reminders of the inhumanity of the Nazi Holocaust and the ideology which underpins it.

The ruins of the crematoria and gas chambers are reminders of its depravity.

The camp's international monument to the victims of fascism reminds us that citizens of many countries were deported to Auschwitz. Initially in 1940 prisoners came from Poland but over time people from all over Europe were imprisoned - mainly Hungarian and Polish Jews, but also Soviet prisoners of war, political prisoners, Roma, gay people and Jehovah's Witnesses.

The camps were built using the slave labor of prisoners who were also deployed to work in nearby factories and mines for 12-hour shifts before returning each day through the iconic "Arbeit Macht Frei" (work sets you free) gates to sleep in appalling surroundings.

This was my second visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

My previous visit was in 2003 and I couldn't help but notice the increased commercialism and tourism related to the Holocaust era in the Krakow region.

Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory has been developed beyond recognition into a permanent exhibition of Krakow under Nazi occupation and its high-tech displays contrast with the under-maintained monument site of the nearby Plaszow concentration camp.

On the main Auschwitz site, new permanent exhibitions have been installed by the Russian Federation (Tragedy. Bravery. Liberation) and Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial (Shoah).

The recent controversies surrounding the 70^th anniversary, particularly the remark of the Polish Foreign Minister that it was "Ukrainians and not Russians" which liberated Auschwitz, demonstrate the pervasive impact of contemporary politics on historical narratives.

As Norman G. Finkelstein writes in his seminal book The Holocaust Industry, it is important to fight for and preserve the integrity of the historical record.

There is no better way to understand the true nature of the Nazi genocide than to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau, and no better way to honor its victims, at a time when the far right is a growing political force across Europe, than stepping up our fight against fascism and racism in all of its forms.

The above article is reprinted from the Morning Star.

Photo: Two Auschwitz prisoners with Soviet soldiers smile after the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, Poland was liberated by the Red army, January 1945. (AP Photo)

Celebrating Syriza victory, Greeks “finally feel some hope”

Mon, 26 Jan 2015 17:56:00 +0000

ATHENS, Greece (AP) - Tieless and eschewing the traditional religious swearing-in ceremony, but with a surprise coalition deal in the bag and a sanguine international reception, radical left leader Alexis Tsipras took over Monday as austerity-wracked Greece's new prime minister.

Hours earlier, the 40-year-old's Syriza party trounced the outgoing, conservative government in Sunday's national elections, on a platform of easing social pain and securing massive debt forgiveness.

Although Syriza fell tantalizingly short of a governing majority in the 300-seat parliament, Tsipras moved quickly Monday to secure the support of 13 lawmakers from the small, right-wing populist Independent Greeks party, raising his total to 162.

"We have the required majority," Tsipras told Greek President Karolos Papoulias, shortly before being sworn in as prime minister, the youngest Greece has seen in 150 years and the first incumbent to take a secular oath rather than the religious one customarily administered by a Greek Orthodox official.

Thousands of supporters turned out to watch Tsipras speak in central Athens after his opponents conceded.

"The Greek people have written history," he said, to cheers. "Greece is leaving behind the destructive austerity, fear and authoritarianism, it is leaving behind five years of humiliation and pain."

Outside the party's campaign tent in central Athens, supporters hugged each other and danced in celebration.

"It's like we've been born again and finally feel some hope," said Litsa Zarkada, a former government cleaning worker. "We were thrown into the street just before we could take our pension. We have been through so much."

Initial reactions from international markets and officials from Greece's bailout creditors were markedly unflustered.

"We stand ready to continue supporting Greece, and look forward to discussions with the new government," International Monetary Fund director Christine Lagarde said.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutchman who chairs eurozone finance ministers' meetings, said that even though "there is very little support for debt write-offs," there is room to "come back to debt sustainability issues" in the future- if necessary.

His views were echoed by the prime minister of Finland, a country that has long been among the most unmovable on austerity issues. Alexander Stubb said that even if he opposes forgiving Greece's debts outright, he would be prepared to discuss extending loan repayments.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki congratulated Syriza and Tsipras, and said the U.S. looked forward to working with the new government on "domestic reforms and international efforts to foster Greece's economic recovery."

"There's no question, Greece has made significant progress on a very difficult economic adjustment and reform program," Psaki said. "There are indications that the economy is poised for renewed growth, but many challenges remain."

The alliance between Syriza and the Independent Greeks - two ideologically opposed parties who share only their opposition to the bailout - boosted stock markets across Europe that had fallen on news of the uncertain election results and fear of a second election. After a topsy-turvy session in Athens, stocks closed 3.2 percent down.

Syriza won 36.3 percent of the vote in Sunday's early general elections, 8.5 percentage points ahead of former Prime Minister Antonis Samaras' conservatives. Nazi-rooted Golden Dawn, whose leadership is in prison awaiting trial for allegedly running a criminal organization, came third at 6.3 percent.

The Independent Greeks have pledged to support Syriza in Parliament with its 13 lawmakers, party leader Panos Kamenos said. Syriza officials said the Independent Greeks would take certain cabinet positions, although no details have been revealed so far.

Tsipras has promised to renegotiate Greece's massive bailout agreements, but insists he will not take any unilateral action against lenders from other eurozone countries and the IMF.

Tsipras' choice to deal with the nationalist Independent Greeks - a party aligned in Europe with the UK Independence Party - rather than the centrist Potami caused concern that he could take a tough line in negotiations with rescue lenders.

Potami leader Stavros Theodorakis described the Independent Greeks as "far right and anti-European."

Syriza's financial planning official, Giorgos Stathakis, confirmed Monday that the new government had no plans to meet with negotiators from the "troika" of the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund and would instead seek talks directly with governments.

Greek voters swung to the once-marginal left-wing party after five years of punishing austerity measures demanded under 240 billion euro ($268 billions) bailout deals threw hundreds of thousands of people out of work and left nearly a third of the country without state health insurance.

Photo: Alexis Tsipras | Joanna/Flickr/CC

An open letter to the leaders of the world

Fri, 23 Jan 2015 11:14:00 +0000

There are moments in history that become turning points. In our view, 2015 will be such a moment. It is the most important year for global decision-making since the start of the new millennium.

We believe it's just possible that we could end 2015 with a new global compact -- an agreed pathway to a better, safer future for people and planet that will inspire all the citizens of the world. We can choose the path of sustainable development. Or we might not -- and regret it for generations to come. Which side of history will you be on?

There are millions of voices you can't afford to ignore -- the voices of the people you represent. They are voices of all ages from every corner of the planet - the voice of a young girl currently deprived of an education... of a pregnant mother deprived of healthcare... of young people deprived of decent work... of a family from a minority group fearful of discrimination from corrupt officials... of farmers forced to migrate to cities as climate refugees... and of billions of other people. Their voices will roar ever louder against the inequality and injustice that keep people poor. They -- and all who stand with them -- are calling on you to come up with a grand new global contract for our one human family -- and then deliver on it together. The great news is that in 2015 you have a historic chance to do just that.

Two critical United Nations summits will take place this year. The first in September, where the world must agree on new goals to eradicate extreme poverty, tackle inequality and ensure a more sustainable planet. The second is the climate summit in December where we must ensure the wellbeing of people today doesn't come at the expense of our children's futures.

Together with critical discussions on financing, these opportunities are the biggest of our lifetime. We know from past efforts against AIDS, malaria, preventable diseases, and saving the ozone layer that when we come together, so much can be achieved. Yet, with just months to go before these summits, few leaders are playing the leadership roles we need. We see climate progress but not yet of the scale that is needed, and a set of goals that are hugely ambitious but will be meaningless without brave financing and implementation agreements led from the very top.

If this does not change, we fear you and your fellow leaders could be sleepwalking the world towards one of the greatest failures of recent history. It's not too late to rise to the occasion. We're asking you to help lead that change.

Let's be clear: the actions we take in 2015 will decide which way the world turns for decades to come. Please take the right path.

Yours,

Aamir Khan, Actor & campaigner
Angelique Kidjo, Singer songwriter & activist
Annie Lennox, OBE, musician & activist
Ben Affleck, Actor, Filmmaker & Founder of Eastern Congo Initiative
Bill Gates, Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Bono, Lead singer of U2 & cofounder of ONE and (RED)
Dbanj, Musician & activist
Emeritus Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Gro Harlem Brundtland, Former Prime Minister, Norway
Hugh Jackman, Actor
Kid President - Brad Montague & Robby Novak
Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, Dir., Earth Institute & author of The Age of Sustainable Development
Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia
Jody Williams, 1997 Nobel Peace Laureate & Chair of Nobel Women's Initiative
José Padilha, Film Director
Leymah Gbowee, 2011 Nobel Peace Laureate
Malala Yousafzai, Co-Founder of the Malala Fund & 2014 Nobel Peace Laureate
Mary Robinson, President, Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice
Matt Damon, Actor & Founder of Water.org
Melinda Gates, Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Mia Farrow, Actor & activist
Mo Ibrahim, Philanthropist & campaigner
Muhammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Peace Laureate
Queen Rania Al Abdullah
Richard Branson, Founder of the Virgin Group
Ricken Patel, President and Executive Director of Avaaz
Shakira, Singer, songwriter, dancer
Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation
Sting, Musician, singer, songwriter, and activist
Ted Turner, Chairman, United Nations Foundation
Wagner Moura, Actor
Yvonne Chaka Chaka, President of the Princess of Africa Foundation

cc: Everyone Else!

Photo: Malala Yousafzai (pictured) is co-founder of the Malala Fund and 2014 Nobel Peace Laureate. | Anders Wiklund/AP

Germany today: People challenging new right extremists

Thu, 22 Jan 2015 13:18:00 +0000

BERLIN -- Recent events here in Germany remind me of a playground see-saw, with constant ups and downs of one side and the other.

All autumn we watched the upward swing of PEGIDA, "Patriotic Europeans against Islamization of the West," most rapidly but not only in Saxony's capital Dresden. Its main features were a fast-talking, shady leader with some eerie charisma, plus foggy dissatisfaction with just about everyone and everything: most politicians, the media, but especially poor job, rent and pension situations and fears for the future, plus, most dangerously, the channeling of such fears and worries into a dull hatred of anything and anyone "foreign," especially the often arbitrary placement of newly-arrived Syrian and Iraqi refugees into their hitherto close communities. PEGIDA's Monday "walks," though ambling and non-violent, recalled disturbingly the murderous stamp of booted, brown-shirted marchers of a previous generation. And some gimlet-eyed neo-Nazis reinforced such recollections.

But soon, all over Germany, the other end of the seesaw swung upward. More and more thousands demonstrated against the hatred crowd, welcoming asylum-seekers and reassuring peaceful Muslim families long resident in Germany. They greatly outnumbered and at times blocked the path of the PEGIDA people - everywhere but in Dresden. In Leipzig, Dresden's rival in Saxony and with a very different heritage, never a royal court but open trade fairs since 1165 and book fairs since the 17th century, PEGIDA rallied 4,800 marchers in early January - but its opponents 30,000.

What is terrorism? Who are the terrorists?

Then came the "Charlie Hebdo" murders. Would narrow, blind distrust of "those Muslims," dormant but present among about half the population, witness a new, upward PEGIDA thrust? It did - but, happily, only in Dresden. Five days after the murders in the rue Nicolas-Appert 25,000 marched in the city on the Elbe but everywhere else they were a small minority; at the far-off mouth of the Elbe, in Hamburg, only opponents of racism demonstrated. Leaders from almost all parties joined at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate with organizations of Turks in Germany to oppose both bloody violence and murder but also Muslimophobia. Even Angela Merkel spoke up, stating surprisingly that "Islam belongs to Germany" - almost a heresy only a few years earlier.

Not everyone sang so happily in this new choir. Surface unity about Charlie Hebdo began to unravel, with some approving, some objecting to the provocative nature of its caricatures. Others noted that many presidents who lined up in Paris sinned against press freedom in their own countries, and that Netanyahu's triumphant waving was aimed not at mourners or freedom lovers but at voters back home. Some in Merkel's party broke ranks and voiced well-worn reservations: "Yes, maybe Muslims are okay, but certainly not Islam" and "Now we must tighten surveillance of just about everybody to save ourselves from all those fanatical terrorists." These over-simplified old tunes caused some early hopes to sink again. It was back to Bush again - terrorists were the big enemy.

Though my optimism was reduced, I was inspired once again by Oskar Lafontaine, a key founder of the Die Linke (Left) party, largely in the background now, but as good a speaker as ever. At the annual Rosa Luxemburg Conference in Berlin, attended by leftists from all Germany and beyond (and always featuring Mumia Abu-Jamal in a taped message), old Oskar hit out again:

"Unless we ask whether our allegedly so good West also bears responsibility for terrorist attacks... then we cannot conduct a meaningful debate or achieve any results. For years I asked the chancellor in the Bundestag what terrorism was. 'Unless you tell us what it is how can we really fight it?' She never answered, for good reason. But some official framed a so-called 'Anti-Terror Law' which stated - now listen carefully - 'Terrorism is the unlawful use of violence to achieve political goals.' ...I read that aloud in the Bundestag and said, 'Do you know what you have just agreed on? You have just decided... that Bush, Blair and all the others who supported the Iraq War are terrorists.' ...Until we grasp that, in the Arab world at least, Bush is viewed as a major terrorist because hundreds of thousands were killed due to his wrong decision, we in the West will never be able to conduct a genuine discussion on how to fight terrorism in the world."

The murder of Khaled Idris Bahray

On Jan. 13, terror did hit again. Not the kind loudly denounced in Paris, Brussels, Berlin or Washington, but in Dresden. Khaled Idris Bahray, only 20, was found dead near the door to the building where he and other Eritrean asylum-seekers had been given a few rooms. For thirty long hours, crucial in finding clues and a murderer, the police called it "an accident," somehow failing to notice the bloody gashes in his chest and neck. Nor had they been worried about swastikas painted on the building, even on the victim's door, nor the fears of his dark-skinned group to even go outdoors. It seems that some policemen can suffer under disturbing eye-sight problems (not only in Dresden). Khaled had simply gone shopping; on a PEGIDA Monday that was evidently a fatal mistake!

That day the marchers reached a strength of 25,000, while 8,000 courageous opponents used big brooms to "clear their streets of racist garbage." Elsewhere the reaction to the murder was very strong; tensions heightened. Then on Monday, Jan. 19, the Dresden authorities reported a mysterious, very peculiar Jihadist threat to kill PEGIDA leader Lutz Bachmann and decided to forbid not only his "walk" but all demonstrations in that city for a day, unleashing hefty debates across party lines on whether this might lead to more limitations on the constitutional right to demonstrate. Debates also multiplied on whether to talk with the reticent PEGIDA marchers or with their hardly reticent leaders. A coy flirtation developed between them and the new, "respectable" right-wing party, Alternative for Germany (AfD) and grew cozier. Some right-wing "Christian" leaders called for a "dialogue" and a talk-show host invited a PEGIDA leader to voice her carefully-tailored "moderate" views on prime time TV. She and top boss Bachmann interrupted their shrill attacks on the "liar press" to hold an equally moderate-sounding, eagerly attended press conference.

Such PR opportunities seemed to pay off. For Wednesday, Jan. 21, PEGIDA called for 60,000 supporters to gather in hitherto unfriendly Leipzig (there to be called LEGIDA). They later scaled that down to 40,000 but a police force of visored 4000 police still moved in from all over Germany.

Lutz Bachmann's "joke"

A day before the big event a Facebook "selfie" of Bachman was unearthed showing him mustached, combed and leering uncannily like Hitler. "Only a joke," he explained. Even less a joke were his Facebook references to refugees as "a dirty mob," "trash," and "animals." Due in part to these discoveries, but also because his numbers were an empty boast, an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 bigots and unhappy fools showed up in Leipzig. Though protected by the police they were met at every turn by at least 20,000 counter-demonstrators. Then, in the evening of the eventful day, Bachmann found it necessary to quit his leadership job. The problems and the poison were not gone, but the future of PEGIDA, LEGIDA and its offshoots (even some in Denmark) remained very uncertain.

Thus 2015 began in Germany with many protests and counter-protests, often centering on the fates of a flow of war-weary refugees, few of whom could understand the language, nasty or friendly, which circled over their heads and the provisional housing where they were lodged.

"Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership" or TTIP

A very different protest, this time larger than expected, moved through central Berlin on Jan. 17. Organized by over 120 environmental, consumer and political groups, it denounced the planned giant trade agreements European Union, CETA with Canada and, with the USA, the "Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership" or TTIP. The police counted 25,000, the organizers 50,000, but either way it was impressive, and 80 farm tractors rolling through town were loud and more easily counted. Scheduled during the annual Food and Agriculture Week, the protesters rejected everything from cruel stock-farm practices to American-style genetic modification, frequent antibiotic injections for animals, and chemical meat treatment. A main organizer, Jochen Fritz, said: "The TTIP serves only the global concerns and will take away the means of existence from many farms here and across the world." Countless signs and big puppets said, "We are sick of agribusiness," others lambasted Monsanto or demanded a global right to food and bans on genetic engineering.

U.S. and European politicians and big-business big shots have been secretly negotiating for over two years but as more facts leaked out, growing pressure from an angry public was finally forcing Sigmar Gabriel, Economics Minister and Social Democratic Party head, to waver a bit in his all-out pro-TTIP stance, at least in public. Even Merkel became slightly defensive. An online petition against TTIP in the European Union now has over a million signatures, a large number from Germany. "This is especially embarrassing for the European Commission," said John Hilary, a member of the anti-TTIP coalition," since it has repeatedly tried to block any citizen's involvement."

Both PEDIGA and TTIP are very important. But the most basic question is war or peace. Sending first weapons, then military advisers to "aid Iraq," billed as humanitarian aid, reminded older critics of a similar escalation in Vietnam. Even more worrisome is the escalation in the Ukraine and support for the unsavory government in Kiev, with the incessant media beating of Germany's belligerent anti-Russian drums containing as many echoes of past tragedy as the marching racists. While Foreign Minister Steinmeier vainly bargains about a cease-fire, Merkel and her crew, disregarding both the profit interests of companies dealing with Russia and widespread, majority hopes for peace, slide ever more to the other side of this menacing see-saw, joining bellicose flag-wavers like President Gauck and Defense Minister von der Leyen. Last fall Germany sent Phantoms and other fighter planes with the traditional "iron cross" markings to Baltic countries adjacent to Russia - for the sixth time since 2004. A government bulletin proudly headlined its note on these incendiary actions with the all-too-true words: "Long-standing German experience."

Frightening candidness, happier thoughts

Such experience was also recalled in naïve but frightening candidness by Ukrainian premier Yatsenyuk. During a warmly smiling visit to Merkel to beg money, weapons or both, he said, "All of us clearly remember the Soviet invasion of Ukraine and Germany. That has to be avoided. Nobody has the right to rewrite the results of the Second World War. And that is exactly what Russia's President Putin is trying to do." His words leave few doubts as to which side Yatsenyuk would have chosen in during that war - and still seems attached to. Neither Merkel nor the mass media took exception to his historic analysis and he will indeed receive more assistance from Berlin. The peace movement against the resulting menace is active but, sadly, still far from being united or powerful.

There were also some happier thoughts - or wishes at least. Despite great pressure, largely from German bankers and their elected friends, Sunday's election in Greece could represent a badly-needed upward turn in Europe. If the long-suffering people of that noble but oppressed country vote in the left-wing Syriza party, and even though such a government would face giant odds against domestic and foreign foes, the victory for working people could respond to a threat already voiced in an old rhyme which, rarely noted, reflected fears and hopes of "the 99 percent" through the centuries.

"See-saw, Margery Daw, Jacky shall have a new master. Jacky shall earn but a penny a day because he can't work any faster." (No one knows today who Margery Daw was - but I can think of several modern candidates.)

One answer to many present problems - of Jacky, refugees, farmers and all of us - was offered by Oskar Lafontaine:

"I am deeply convinced that peace in the world can only be fully achieved when a truly democratic society is constructed. That would be a social order in which the interests of the majority of the people are realized... Democratic societies are inseparably connected with an economic order where human beings are in a central position, where the exploitation of the people is no more, where the wealth of the country, cooperatively achieved, is returned to the people who create it - and not with a social order where a minority becomes wealthy by making the vast majority work for it..."

Photo: People write messages on the AVAAZ "Wall of Love" reading "with you - wall of boundless friendship" in front of the Church of Our Lady, on Jan. 10, in Dresden, Saxony, eastern Germany. Thousands of people came together expressing hope and unity during a massive anti-PEGIDA gathering in the city center of Dresden. | Gero Breloer/AP Images for AVAAZ

Report: Indigenous women in Canada face high murder rate

Thu, 22 Jan 2015 11:51:00 +0000

A new report exposes how indigenous women in Canada are being murdered and are disappearing at alarming rates.

The document, entitled Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in Canada, was issued Jan. 12 by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. In addition to stating the problem and identifying contributing factors it criticizes the lack of action on the part of the Canadian government.

The report comes at a time when indigenous people, women in particular, continue to express little confidence that the government will act to protect them. The Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, himself did little to change that assessment when he responded to press questions last December about the murders and disappearances. He was reported at that time to have said: "Um it, it isn't really high on our radar, to be honest ... Our ministers will continue to dialogue with those who are concerned about this."

The study reveals, in stark language, the extent of the murders and disappearances of the women: "Indigenous women are going missing. Indigenous women and girls in Canada have been murdered or have gone missing at a rate four times higher than the rate of representation of indigenous women in the Canadian population which is 4.3 percent."

The figures were collected by the non-profit organization Native Women's Association of Canada (NWAC) through an initiative financed by the governmental entity, Status of Women.

The report points out the failure of the Canadian police and government to seriously address the issue of missing and murdered women saying that most of the cases that the police have on file of the missing and murdered indigenous women go unsolved. "In May 2014 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police released a report in which they documented that police-recorded incidents of homicides of indigenous females and unresolved missing indigenous females amounted to 1,181.

The report indicated that there are 181 missing and murdered indigenous women in Canadian police databases: 164 missing (dating back to 1952) and 1,017 murdered from 1980 to 2012. Of these there are 225 unsolved cases of either missing or murdered Indigenous women.

The report also talks about violence and racism that indigenous people face.

This is an improvement over many previous reports that have overlooked some of the root causes underlying the high rates of murder and disappearance: "As a consequence of this historical discrimination, the IACHR understands that indigenous women and girls constitute one of the most disadvantaged groups in Canada. Poverty, inadequate housing, economic and social relegation, among other factors, contribute to their increased vulnerability to violence. In addition, prevalent attitudes of discrimination - mainly relating to gender and race - and the longstanding stereotypes to which to they have been subjected, exacerbate their vulnerability....

"A comprehensive holistic approach applied to violence against indigenous women means addressing the past and present institutional and structural inequalities confronted by these women. Elements that must be addressed include the dispossession of their land, as well as historical laws and policies that have negatively affected indigenous women, put them in an unequal situation, and prevented their full enjoyment of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights"

Even though this report was done in Canada indegenous people and their advocates say that the same issues are affecting indigenous women all across the Americas.

There will be an annual march on Feb. 14 for missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada.

To build support for the event Sing Our Rivers Red (SORR) is asking indigenous women and their allies to send in a single earring to represent the missing and murdered women. Events will take place in the Fargo/Moorhead area, of North Dakota which the Red River Valley runs through. The Red River runs down from Winnipeg, Canada where volunteers have led an effort to search for missing indigenous women on its riverbed, an effort dubbed Drag the Red.

The effort was started by the family of an indigenous woman who has been missing since 2008, after the body of an indigenous 15-year-old girl was found there in August, 2014. Sing Our Rivers Red events emphasize that supporters have a voice to not only speak out against injustices but to begin the process of healing.

Water, they note, is the source of life and, women too, they say, are the source of life. The idea is to "Sing Our Rivers Red" to remember the missing and the murdered and those who are metaphorically "drowning" in injustices. A concert will be included in the event.

Photo: Amnesty International Canada

Cuba-U.S. normalization negotiations begin

Thu, 22 Jan 2015 11:16:00 +0000

The dramatic Dec. 17 joint announcement by Cuban President Raul Castro and U.S. President Barack Obama on the normalization of relations between the two countries has already borne fruit: The last three members of the Cuban Five are free and home with their families, U.S. contractor Alan Gross is also back with his family in the United States; a Cuban who was doing a 25-year jail sentence for carrying out U.S. espionage on the island is also free, and prisoners that the United States asked to be freed have been or are in the process of being freed.

But this is only the start, and the U.S. blockade of Cuba -called a "blockade" and not merely an embargo by the Cubans because it is used to prevent other countries from trading with Cuba-- is a long way from being lifted. President Obama urged the Congress in his State of the Union Message last Tuesday to do just that.

Meanwhile, talks between the United States and Cuba on the topic of migration began Jan. 21 in Havana. These are routine talks that had been scheduled before the Dec. 17 announcement, but Cuba does have a larger agenda on the migration issue.

The Cubans want to resolve the issue of the "Cuban Adjustment Act," which allows virtually all Cuban, and only Cuban, migrants to become permanent residents of the U.S. a year and a day after coming here, and especially the "wet foot/dry foot" policy according to which rafters who reach U.S. soil are automatically allowed to stay here, but those who are stopped at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard are turned back. The Cuban authorities complain that this policy encourages people to take risky trips in unseaworthy craft in the hope that they can get ashore and be given almost automatic legal residency in the United States.

Cuba wants migrants to be channeled through normal emigration procedures, for which the cooperation of the United States would be needed.

Another grievance that Cuba has is the Cuban Medical Professionals Parole Program whereby Cuban medical personnel serving in overseas solidarity missions are induced to defect to the United States. Cuba provides free medical education for all its doctors, nurses and other medical personnel, and is also very proud of its role as a provider of medical aid to dozens of countries, many of them very poor and suffering from a drastic lack of their own medical human resources.

This Cuban medical solidarity has been going on for many years, but the world's attention was drawn to it last year when Cuba provided a record number of doctors and nurses to help fight the Ebola epidemic in the West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. The salaries of Cuban health care workers are nowhere near those of their colleagues in the United States, for the simple reason that Cuba is much poorer.

Cuba's per-capital gross domestic product, calculated by the PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) method is about $10,000 per year, while in the United States it is about $53,000. Despite being much poorer and not being able to pay its doctors s well as U.S. doctors are paid, on a number of health measures, including infant mortality, Cuba does better than the United States.

Initial reports are that the United States is not budging on these two issues; nor will the Cubans relent.

The U.S. delegation, headed by Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson, will stay in Havana to begin further negotiations toward the implementation of the changes President Obama has proposed, including the opening of a U.S. embassy in Havana and a Cuban embassy in Washington D.C. Currently the affairs of the two countries are handled by "Interests Sections" that deal with routine matters such as visas, but are not able to perform other tasks normally carried out by full -fledged embassies.

This should not be too difficult on the face of it: The buildings already exist and are furnished and staffed and all that should be needed is to change the titles of the functionaries and the signs on the gates. However, the anti-Cuba lobby in Congress is threatening to somehow block the creation of the U.S. Embassy in Havana through legislation whose nature is not yet clear.

Congressional opponents of the rapprochement with Cuba threaten to raise the issue of compensation for properties nationalized by the Cuban government after the January 1, 1959 Revolution. These include former possessions not only of people who were U.S. citizens at the time, but of Cuban citizens who subsequently came to the United States and were naturalized here. At the time Cuba offered all foreign owners of nationalized property compensation in the form of bonds, and every other country accepted this-but the United States government, bent on overthrowing the Cuban government, did not. In the interim, the unrelenting U.S. sabotage campaign against the Cuban economy, which has included violent sabotage operations that Cubans say have cost more than 3,000 Cuban lives and billions in economic losses, has created a large demand for payment from the Cuban side.

Nevertheless, the issue of compensation for nationalized property is central to the most heavy-duty legislative component of the blockade, the 1996 Helms-Burton Act.

To undo that act will involve a terrific struggle.

Photo: Students and teachers celebrate after listening to a live, nationally broadcast speech by Cuba's President Raul Castro about the country's restoration of relations with the United States, at a school in Havana. | Ramon Espinosa/AP

Venezuela reaching overseas to help build stronger domestic economy

Wed, 21 Jan 2015 12:35:00 +0000

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was touring the world in January as troubles mounted at home. His political opposition was protesting inflation and shortages. Foreign experts were predicting imminent financial collapse. Maduro's leadership of Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution and its socialist agenda appeared shaky.

The U.S government finances Maduro's political opposition just as it did that of his predecessor, the charismatic Hugo Chavez. U.S. and European media have regularly denounced Venezuelan governments as repressive. U.S. intrusions accentuated after Maduro's narrow electoral victory of April 2013. The United States instituted sanctions in late December, 2014. Alleged police violence in subduing anti-Maduro street protests earlier in the year became the pretext. U.S. media said nothing about demonstrations having taken place mostly in well-to-do urban neighborhoods or about the responsibility of rioters for most of the killings that occurred.

The nation's economy is in trouble. In December, Venezuela's Central Bank declared a recession and indicated inflation had been 63.6 percent over the previous 12 months. High demand for dollars, removal of which from the country is restricted, fuels a black market. Oil prices have fallen enough to cause difficulties in covering costs of production. With crude oil sales accounting for 95 percent of Venezuela's export income, foreign exchange revenues are down 30 percent. Blackouts and shortages of basic consumer goods are common.

Maduro spokespersons blame private distributors for shortages, claiming they disrupt supply channels and hoard food and supplies. On Jan. 12, authorities seized a warehouse in Zulia state and found "[o]ver 1.5 million diapers; 360,000 kilos of detergent, 277 thousand units of soap, and 14,000 units of baby formula; [also] corn flour, black beans, rice, shampoo, and other items." Outside stores with empty shelves, opposition protests were being prepared.

Yet President Maduro was away and traveling. In early January he traveled from China to Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Algeria, and Russia - all oil-producing countries.

Maduro and his key ministers attended a meeting in Beijing attended by Chinese government leaders and representatives of almost all the CELAC nations (the Community of Latin American and Caribbean Nations, a grouping of all Western Hemisphere countries except the U.S and Canadza). Prior to Maduro's arrival, his deputies had conferred with Chinese officials. Before leaving, Maduro was able to announce that China would be providing Venezuela with $20 billion in new investments, this after loaning $45 billion over the previous ten years. And, oil exports to China, presently half a million barrels of crude per day, would double over the next year.

So Venezuela, contending with the world's dominant military and economic power, seems not to be isolated. After visits to Iran and Qatar, Maduro told a TeleSur reporter that, "We [of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC] will be taking corrective measures so that the petroleum market returns to the level where it should be." He insisted, "We must not utilize petroleum as a cover for forcing countries to submit. That would be to return to wars and barbarism, and cannot be." Maduro also obtained a new credit line from banks in Qatar.

The drama of this story is noteworthy. Venezuelan analyst Jesús Rafael Gamarra Luna suggests it's about history. Venezuela is dealing "the last political blow that ... defines in a pristine and clear way the beginning of a new epoch for humanity." Specifically, "a strategic alliance was made with China that assures development of the Plan for the Homeland. A major international rearguard is being built for the development of socialism, of a world at peace. It gives Latin America and the Caribbean the best prospect for sustainable human development." Not only is "the beginning of the end of Yankee imperialism" at hand, but we "are fashioning a new geometry of power, a new multipolar world [and] Commander Chavez planned it that way."

Cuban journalist Hedelberto López Blanch adds that, "The times are past where a single country can promulgate international decisions unilaterally. [Alliances] have appeared that make this world more multi-polar," among them "UNASUR, MERCOSUR, ALBA, CELAC, CARICOM, ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), G-77, and the Euro-Asiatic Economic Union."

International friends are useful. Revolutionary Cuba, for example, stays on course due in part to help over the years from the Soviet Union, Latin American countries, and nations voting in the UN General Assembly. Cautionary tales from Guatemala (1954), the Dominican Republic (1965), Chile (1973), and Haiti (2004) are relevant. Presidents Jacobo Arbenz, Salvador Allende, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and Dominican "Constitutionalist" rebel Francisco Caamaño were unprotected. Alone, none could fend off U.S. intervention. Now, however, with linkages on the way, Venezuela's emancipatory project has a chance of surviving.

Photo: President Maduro (right) meets with Chinese president Xi Jin-ping. | Andy Wong/AP

Nigeria elections approach amid economic distress and terror attacks

Fri, 16 Jan 2015 11:02:00 +0000

Nigeria is in the news again because of vicious attacks by the extremist jihadi group Boko Haram ("The Book is Sinful") in the country's Northeastern state of Borno. Various reports give disputed accounts of the number of persons killed as high as 2,000. In addition, there have been suicide bombings which have killed many, with small girls as young as 10 acting as the perpetrators. Some speculate that the girls used in these bombings may come from last year's mass kidnapping in Chibok, also in Borno.

And into this mix now comes a national election, on Feb. 14.

Nigeria, with its population of 184 million, is the seventh largest country in the world. It is the 13th largest oil producer, pumping two and a half billion barrels per day, with proven reserves of 37 billion barrels and substantial production and reserves of natural gas also. The vast majority of Nigeria's other exports are products of mining, agriculture, and fisheries.

An economic system that disproportionately emphasizes this kind of export puts a country at the mercy of fluctuating world commodity prices. And that is happening to Nigeria and other oil-producing countries right now. The worldwide tumble of oil prices may delight people in the United States who find that it now costs only half as much to fill up the family car as it did two years ago, but it represents very bad news to those oil producing countries that are poor overall, such as Nigeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, and Venezuela. It also divides OPEC, the international association of oil-producing countries to which Nigeria belongs. Saudi Arabia, in particular, has refused to cut back oil production, the standard OPEC method of stabilizing prices. This has left countries like Nigeria and Venezuela in a difficult situation.

In 2012 there were massive protests by students and labor union members when the Nigerian government eliminated subsidies on fuel. The government of President Goodluck Jonathan had to back off and partially rescind the cuts. There is still widespread dissatisfaction with corruption, which among other things is blamed for the fact that, in spite of the immense oil wealth, Nigeria's refineries are in such a terrible state that it has to import fuel. The electrical grid is so unreliable that many enterprises have to rely on their own crude generators. And the inability of the government to put an end to the Boko Haram rebellion has many worried.

This year's presidential election is shaping up to be a contest between the incumbent president, Goodluck Jonathan of the People's Democratic Party, and former military dictator (from 1983 to 1985) Muhammadu Buhari, running as the candidate of the five-party All Progressives Congress coalition. Several other parties are not seen as having any chance of victory. One left-wing party, the Socialist Party of Nigeria, wants to run a candidate but was blocked by a ruling of the Independent National Electoral Commission. The Socialists have appealed.

Nigeria was created as a consolidated British colony in 1914. The British interest in the territory was originally commercial, but also included a desire to block French colonial expansion. The colony incorporated great diversity: In the north, a number of Muslim emirs were enlisted to continue ruling their formerly independent states as vassals of the British Empire, while in the South Christian missions made headway against existing religious systems, and commercial activity became more developed . When Nigeria achieved independence in 1960, the first government was dominated by conservative northerners allied with British imperialism. In 1966, junior army officers from the South overthrew and killed Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and several other northern leaders. Reprisals ensued and the situation developed into the unsuccessful effort to turn Southeastern Nigeria into the independent country of Biafra. After the defeat of the Biafra secession, weak civilian governments alternated with military dictatorships, with the North-South divide never being overcome.

The All Progressives Congress presidential candidate in this year's election, Buhari, was a major general and the governor of the Northeastern State, where the Boko Haram insurgency is now centered, when he took national power in a military coup in 1983. His government was characterized by a push for austerity but also an import substitution model of economic development. Buhari's presidency lasted less than two years when he was overthrown by another military coup. In 2011 he ran for president against Goodluck Jonathan but was heavily defeated.

But this year, Johathan carries much baggage, so many see Buhari as having a chance of ousting him. Jonathan's People's Democratic Party had previously observed the practice of alternating its candidates between people from the Muslim North and people from the Christian South, but Jonathan's re-election quest breaks with this and may antagonize northern voters. The failure of the Jonathan government to deal with either corruption or Boko Haram may lead some to seek, in a military man such as Buhari, a president willing and able to crush the revolt. Buhari has spoken in favor of the Sharia law which is used in all of Northern Nigeria, but promises not to impose it nationwide.

There is some doubt as to whether a proper election can be carried out in the disturbed state of the country at present.

Photo: Children displaced by Boko Haram attacks line up at a camp of internal displaced people in Yola, Nigeria. | AP

Opposition to militarism spurs big win for Japan’s communists

Wed, 14 Jan 2015 15:50:00 +0000

The Japanese Communist Party scored historic gains in December's parliamentary elections, and most strikingly in Okinawa. That was no accident. Okinawans have waged a decades-long struggle against the outsize presence of U.S. military bases. It ratcheted up last year over U.S. moves, backed by conservative Japanese politicians, to build a massive new base on Okinawa's environmentally sensitive Henoko Bay.

The Asahi Shimbun (Morning Sun Newspaper), one of Japan's leading daily papers, headlined its report this way: "LDP [the ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party] suffers crushing defeat in Okinawa, a blow to base relocation". It went on to say:

"Opposition candidates won in all of Okinawa's four single-seat constituencies in the Dec. 14 Lower House election, a sign of growing frustration among voters over the planned relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma within the prefecture.

Seiken Akamine, 66, of the Japanese Communist Party, was one of the winning candidates, along with three other opponents of the base from a variety of political parties.

Japan has a complicated voting system for its House of Representatives that combines proportional representation, which is widely seen as more democratic, and single-seat constituencies, which give the ruling party an advantage. But this time, the Communist Party said, it had "more than doubled its seats" in the House, from eight to 21. Of the 21 successful candidates, 20 were elected from proportional representation blocs, obtaining 6.06 million votes (11.37% of total votes cast), and Akamine was elected from the single-seat Okinawa No. 1 district. The Asahi Shimbun noted that this was "the first seat the Japanese Communist Party has won in a single-seat constituency since 1996," and the party itself called the results "the first major victory of the JCP in general elections since 1996."

Last fall, Okinawans registered their opposition to the mammoth U.S. base at Henoko by elected an anti-base governor, Takeshi Onaga. Okinawa's biggest newspaper, Ryuku Shimpo, reported that Akamine, the Communist candidate, "received the support from the bipartisan forces that promoted Onaga to the post of governor. With the help of Governor Onaga, the candidate for the communist party gained a wide-range of support from other opposition parties and independents. He succeeded in gaining the votes of conservative and centrist parties."

Earlier, in January last year, voters in Okinawa's Nago City, which includes the site of the new U.S. base, solidly re-elected its anti-base mayor, Inamine Susumu, a career public administrator who is not affiliated with any political party. While on a trip to the U.S. last May to make his case to Americans to stop the base construction, Susumu said in an interview that the new base "is pushed strongly by the [Japanese] government against the wishes of the people." He commented that "Okinawans are not only controlled by U.S. military forces, they are also unfairly treated by the Japanese government. People strongly feel that Okinawa is being colonized by Japan."

The Japanese Communist Party made "a base-free Okinawa" and opposition to conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's re-militarization drive centerpieces of its election campaign, together with countering pro-big-business "Abenomics" and opposing nuclear energy in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

The conservative LDP was able to retain control of the House and claimed the election represented a mandate for Abe's policies. The Communist Party disputed this, pointing out that Abe's LDP lost seats in the House and got only 33 percent of the vote. However, the prime minister is pressing ahead with his pro-military, anti-social-welfare austerity program.

This week, Abe's Cabinet approved a record $814 billion budget that, according to a Council on Foreign Relations newsletter, "increases defense spending to an all-time high of $42 billion, including purchases of U.S.-made stealth fighters, as Japan seeks a larger role in regional security." Meanwhile it cuts social spending and raises the regressive "consumption tax."

Photo: Kazuo Shii, head of the Japanese Communist Party, waves during the last day of campaigning for parliamentary elections in Tokyo, Dec. 13, 2014. | Eugene Hoshiko/AP

Five years after Haiti quake, workers still struggle

Tue, 13 Jan 2015 14:11:00 +0000

Five years after the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti, workers are still struggling to pay for transportation, food and housing, as the cost of living rises exponentially while wages fail to keep pace.

In recent discussions with export apparel workers in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center found that workers may pay nearly half their daily wage on two daily meals. Sending a child to school can absorb most of their monthly pay.

Elmerome, who makes T-shirts and is paid 225 Haitian gourdes ($4.81) per eight-hour day, says even though his wages have risen from 125 gourdes per day before the earthquake, food for himself and his child every day costs 500 gourdes, or more than twice his daily income. In 2013, he spent about 400 gourdes a day on food. Meanwhile, his child's education costs run about 5,000 gourdes a month.

Like all workers whom the Solidarity Center interviewed, Elmerome is a member of a union, a factor he attributes to improving his working conditions. He says the Centrale National des Ouvriers Haïtiens (CNOHA) union has "helped fight against discrimination, suspensions and dismissals, and "gives workers a voice." He sees freedom of association as the most important element for Haitian workers seeking to improve their working conditions. And echoing other factory workers interviewed, he says many workers fear joining a union because of employer harassment, including the threat of being fired.

The Solidarity Center held these recent informal discussions as a follow-up to a study it conducted in 2014 to reassess the cost of living for export apparel workers in Port-au-Prince. "The High Cost of Low Wages in Haiti" concluded that, based on a standard 48-hour work week, Haitian workers should be paid at least 1,006 gourdes per day to adequately provide for themselves and their families. But like Elmerome, workers are generally paid between 225 gourdes (the minimum wage for export factories) and 300 gourdes a day or more if they are piece-rate workers. Further, the report says,

"Despite growth at the industry level, export apparel workers remain impoverished .... Companies that source from Haiti benefit from inexpensive labor costs, as well as lax enforcement of labor laws in an industry that is rife with worker rights abuses."

Another factory worker, Widnise, told the Solidarity Center that she makes 225 gourdes a day and spends nearly half of that-110 gourdes each day-on food and transportation. Even with two people working in her household, she says, it is difficult to survive. Her rent is 20,000 gourdes a year.

In 2013, Haitian workers and their unions rallied and protested to demand that the daily minimum wage be increased to 500 gourdes for export apparel workers, but the government raised it to only 225 gourdes, effective last June.

Since then, Haitian unions have sought to secure improvements for workers through labor-employer discussions with the government on reforming the current labor code, boosting social protections and reviewing wage levels. The current labor code has not been updated in more than 28 years, and union leaders say stronger labor laws and improved social protections could go a long way to address many of the problems facing Haitian workers and their families.

In the apparel sector, Haitian unions are actively participating with employers in the Social Dialogue Table launched in early 2014. Haitian government representatives from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor Ministry participate as observers, along with other national and international organizations, including the Solidarity Center, the CTMO-HOPE Commission and the nonprofit, Better Work-Haiti. Union leaders say this process can potentially pave the way for improved workplace conditions, especially respect for worker rights.

"Our discussions with Haitian workers underscore a critical truth about the recovery effort: Subsistence wages have not helped workers surmount this disaster, much less allowed them to prepare for the next environmental or economic shock," said Shawna Bader-Blau, Solidarity Center executive director. "For hardworking Haitians to live with dignity-and for Haiti to develop an economy that works for its people-fair wages are essential."

The January 12, 2010, earthquake killed more than 200,000 Haitians and left another 1.5 million homeless. The disaster was followed by a string of tropical storms and a cholera epidemic that killed at least 8,000 people. Within days of the earthquake, the Solidarity Center dispatched regular truckloads of lifesaving emergency aid to Haiti from its field office in the neighboring Dominican Republic and carried out numerous aid and relief projects, together with allies like the American Federation of Teachers and TransAfrica. The report, "Workers Helping Workers Recover and Rebuild," details the full range of the Solidarity Center's multiyear relief and rebuilding effort in Haiti.

This article appeared on the website of the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center.

Photo: Garment workers carrying tree branches as a symbol of grassroots solidarity protest a proposed wage increase they say is too little, at an industrial park in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Dec. 11, 2013. A government-created council's approved a recommendation to raise minimum wage from $4.54 to $5.11 per eight-hour work day. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

Mexico’s federal police responsible for slaughter of student teachers?

Mon, 12 Jan 2015 15:09:00 +0000

The story is well known. According to Federal prosecutors in Mexico, the local Mayor of Iguala, Jose Luis Abarca, affiliated to the center left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and his wife Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa, ordered the police on Sept. 27 to arrest the native teaching students and then hand them over to the local drug cartel, Guerreros Unidos. The narcos, on Abarca's orders, then killed the student activists, enrolled at the Ayotzinapa native teaching academy, and burnt their bodies to dispose of the evidence.

However, a report in Mexico's weekly newsmagazine el Proceso last month, supported by the investigative journalism program of the University of California at Berkeley, suggests that the Federal Police and army, and not Abarca and Guerreros Unidos, were responsible for the disappearance of the 43 students.

According to reporters Anable Hernandez and Steve Fisher in the "La historia no oficial " (the Unofficial story, Dec. 14/14), who based their investigation on leaked documents from the state government, interviews with local witnesses, and videos taken by the disappeared students with their cell phones, the students were being tracked from Mexico City's Center of Control, Command, Communications and Computation - a communications structure used by federal and local police and the army - as soon as they departed from their school in Ayotzinapa on Sept. 26.

Heavily armed security forces attacked the students when they arrived in Iguala aboard three buses at 9:40 p.m., on their way to Mexico city to participate in a demonstration to remember the hundreds of students massacred by the army and police there in 1968. The massacre was ordered by the same political party that governs the country today, the Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI).

Federal Police informed the 27th Infantry Battalion, which is stationed in Iguala, of the attack and the unit's commandos were in the zone when the attack was launched. A compiled video taken from the footage the students took with their cellphones, posted on the El Proceso website, shows the unarmed students under attack by Federal Police. Comments such as "don't shoot", "get down", "they already killed one" can be heard amid gunfire. Another student remarks, "the police are leaving, the federal [police] are going to stay. They're going to hassle us."

Hernandez and Fisher also discovered that the five narcos who had implicated Abarca and his wife, had been tortured prior to giving testimony. Witnesses had black eyes, mark's on the neck, and bruising on the ribs and there were signs that authorities had used electric shock to one witness's testicles.

While the PRI government of Enrique Pena Nieto has so far refused to comment on the El Proceso story, the federal Attorney General told the parents of the disappeared students last week that they have no evidence that either the Federal Police or army were involved in the crime.

The El Proceso story confirms what many Mexicans already believe, that the Federal Police and army were likely involved in the disappearance of the students. One of the demands of protestors in Guerrero is access to thebase of the 27th Infantry Battalion in Iguala to search for the 43 students or their remains. Despite initial denials from the Ministry of Defense, the base is equipped with large ovens capable of cremating human bodies, according to a document from the Ministry posted on the internet.

At the request of the parents of the disappeared students, the National Human Rights Commission announced Dec. 29 that it will be investigating the 27th Infantry Battalion for possible violation of human rights. The parents also asked the Commission to ask Pena to withdraw the army from Guerrero because they are committing human rights abuses.

Retired General Jose Fransisco Gallardo Rodriquez told La Jornada (Jan. 11/15) that army bases have ovens as well as detention facilities for political prisoners. Rodriquez was imprisoned for nine years (1993-2002) at the Number One Military base in the Federal District for demanding the creation of a military ombudsman. "In the Number One Military base there are basements with prisoners. There they placed in them naked, and there were civilians. I saw cables, buckets of water, everything they use for torture. I thought they were going to kill me."

Rodriguez believes that the army disappeared the students: "On the first day of the facts about Iguala l said it was the army. They are the only ones responsible because they have militarized the entire state. Who is responsible? The supreme commander of the armed forces, Enrique Pena Nieto. The government has catalogued the rural teacher schools as focuses of dissidence."

It is not only in Iguala where security forces are accused of killing unarmed civilians, but elsewhere in Mexico. "Mexico is facing its worse human rights crisis in years, with security forces committing horrific abuses that are rarely punished," said Daniel Wilkinson, America's managing director at Human Rights Watch (HRW). "The Pena Nieto administration has so far failed to take this crisis seriously, and President Obama has been unwilling to call them on it. Since former President Calderon began 'a war on drugs' in 2007, Mexican security forces have engaged in egregious violations, including torture, extra judicial executions and enforced disappearances. HRW has documented such abuses by security forces throughout the country, including 149 cases of extra judicial executions. United Nations human rights monitors have found that torture is a generalized practice in the country and that extra judicial executions by security forces have been widespread."

HRW is calling on the Obama administration to halt aid to Mexican security forces until human rights violations are investigated and prosecuted.

If the El Proceso report is correct that the federal police and army were responsible for disappearing the 43 students, the Iguala massacre allowed the rightwing PRI government of Pena Nieto to kill two birds with one stone: eliminate the pesky activist students and discredit the PRD, one of the main center left opposition parties in Mexico.

Photo: Marco Ugarte/AP

“Je suis Charlie” - but I have other names as well!

Mon, 12 Jan 2015 11:31:00 +0000

BERLIN-Monday evening I had planned to write about the PEGIDA movement in Germany. But then came Wednesday and Paris, with its atrocious murders at Charlie Hebdo. Like so many millions I was shocked and horror-stricken. But I was also frightened. Now the PEGIDA crowd would shout, "You see! We told you so!" Even before Wednesday polls showed 57 percent of non-immigrant Germans mistrustful of Muslims. But only small numbers had gone on the virulent marches. How many would now join in with flags, crosses and slogans? How many right-leaning leaders would once again find their raucous voices? And how could they now be counteracted? Would the tragic shots fired in the rue Nicolas Appert echo menacingly down the Alleen and Strassen of Germany? Where could we now put brakes to the locomotive of hatred, already rushing dangerously from one end of Europe to the other, spewing sparks for new conflagrations which could burn us all?

Should satire be unfettered?

With so many people understandably stricken and determined to oppose murderous Islamists and defend freedom of a critical press, why am I stricken by so many doubts? Must sharp, iconoclastic satire, bravely spiting the powers-that-be with sharp pens and sharp words, purposely insult deeply-felt religious beliefs? A convinced atheist all my life, I have no sympathy whatsoever for religious fanatics, be they Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, or Buddhist. Many of Charlie's foes were my foes; I enjoy attacks on fanatics, whether in Teheran, Riyadh, West Jerusalem, or West Virginia. For centuries they have caused far too much misery in our world.

But that bothersome little voice whispers that, as a journalist, I might not have caricatured Christians while they faced lions in Rome's old coliseum, or even the most backward-looking Jewish daveners (prayer leaders) during Hitler's reign. Attacking ISIS is good. But lampooning the beliefs of so many Muslims in Europe who face daily discrimination in schools and jobs, with mosques and minarets often attacked - and often peaceful Muslims, too? Should satire be unfettered? Almost always, yes! But perhaps not always libel - or ridiculing prophets and beliefs which still provide solace to many? Bloody fanatics must be opposed. But Moses, Jesus, Buddha, and Muhammad are long dead. Attacking them may sometimes be courageous, but is it wise or good?

No such worries justify assault rifle attacks and cold-blooded murder - here of artists, writers, satirists. And the world has certainly seen far too many limitations on freedom! But why, again, must my memory, so weak on recent names, faces or events, remain so strong on things long past? And repeatedly insist that not only Muslims or Islamists can be bloody?

Madagascar in 1947

Must I recall the uprising in France's colony of Madagascar in 1947, whose people, dreaming of independence, naively hoping for U.S. assistance, began their fight, armed mostly with spears? A well-armed French army of 30,000 men adopted "a strategy of terror and psychological warfare involving torture, collective punishment, the burning of villages, mass arrests, executions and rape... In Mananjary, hundreds were killed, among them 18 women and a group of prisoners thrown alive out of an airplane." An official estimate of the number killed was 89,000, but if one counts those who fled into the forest and were believed dead, it was more likely over 100,000. And press freedom? "The French media reported little on the event and few details of the rising and subsequent repression were reported ... outside France." On the 65th anniversary of the uprising in 2012, Madagascar's prime minister requested that the French government declassify archival materials on the uprising. The request was not approved.

Why must I recall the French war in Indochina, soon thereafter? And what about Algeria? In 1841, eleven years after its conquest, the visiting historian Alexis de Tocqueville commented: "Whatever the case, we may say in a general manner that all political freedoms must be suspended in Algeria."

Algeria after World War II

His advice was followed. After World War II Algeria also wanted independence - and had to fight for it. In the Battle of Algiers in 1957 General Massu's paratroop division made use of its methods in Madagascar and Indochina, also against civilians, with illegal executions and forced disappearances, in particular through what would later become known as "death flights". "Viewing Algerians as a sub-human race made the use of torture more agreeable if not enjoyable for the torturer. General Paul Aussaresses "referred to Algerian fighters and sympathizers as rats, criminals, rebels, militants, and bandits." In his memoir he wrote of the "disappearances" of many prisoners: "Only rarely were the prisoners we had questioned during the night still alive the next morning."

"First, the officer questions the prisoner in the 'traditional' manner, hitting him with fists and kicking him. Then follows torture: hanging..., water torture..., electricity..., burning (using cigarettes, etc.)... Cases of prisoners who were driven insane were frequent... Between interrogation sessions, the suspects are imprisoned without food in cells, some of which were small enough to impede lying down...some of them were very young teenagers and others old men of 75, 80 years or more."

Henri Alleg, a Communist journalist and writer, disclosed that the French military, besides torturing actual suspects, even buried old men alive. He was himself tortured and described in horrifying detail the method now known as waterboarding and also electrical torture with hand generators.

And press freedom? With the French state denying its employment of torture, more than 250 books, newspapers and films in metropolitan France and 586 in Algeria were censored; Alleg's factual book, "La Question" and Jean-Luc Godard's film "Le Petit Soldat" were forbidden by a Socialist government headed by Guy Mollet. No, then and now, press freedom can never be taken for granted.

The war with Algeria still raged in October 1961 during the "Paris massacre". Under orders from Chief Maurice Papon, later convicted as a war criminal, French police attacked a demonstration of 30,000 Algerians. The results were horrifying: many died when they were violently herded by police into the river Seine, with some thrown from bridges after being beaten unconscious. Others were killed in the courtyard of police headquarters while senior officers ignored pleas by other policemen shocked at the brutality. 10,000 were arrested, estimates on those killed range from 70 to 200.

CIA torture

No, brutality is not somehow restricted to Islam or Muslims. Even my short-term memory and U.S. nationality force me to remember Abu Zubaydah, father of four daughters, arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and in US custody for over twelve years, During that time he was water-boarded 83 times, subjected to forced nudity, sleep deprivation, confinement in small dark boxes, stress positions. After physical assaults he lost his left eye. Videotapes were destroyed, but we know that the waterboarding sessions 'resulted in immediate fluid intake and involuntary leg, chest and arm spasms' and 'hysterical pleas'. In at least one such session, he "became completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth'. After medical intervention he regained consciousness and 'expelled copious amounts of liquid.' "

In 2006 he was transferred to Guantanamo's Camp 7, where conditions were especially miserable. In 2007 the Review Tribunal told Zubaydah that he was "not significant...They told me, 'Sorry, we discover that you are not Number 3, not a partner, not even a fighter'."

Gul Rahman was arrested at his doctor's home after traveling to Islamabad for a medical checkup. He, too, was subjected to "48 hours of sleep deprivation, auditory overload, total darkness, isolation, a cold shower and rough treatment". Gul Rahman died on 20 November 2002, reportedly after being stripped naked from the waist down and shackled to a cold cement wall in the "Salt Pit" with 36° F/2° C temperatures.

As one CIA interrogator reported, "a detainee could go for days or weeks without anyone looking at him'... His team found one detainee who 'as far as we could determine', had been chained to a wall in a standing position for 17 days'.' Some prisoners were said to be like dogs in kennels. In 2006, during a CIA briefing, President George W. Bush expressed discomfort at the "image of a detainee, chained to the ceiling, clothed in a diaper, and forced to go to the bathroom on himself". This man was chained with one or both wrists to an overhead bar for 22 hours on two consecutive days. His imprisonment was concealed from the Red Cross International Committee.

British attorney Clive Stafford Smith reported on as many as twenty teenagers imprisoned at Guantanamo, some in long-term, solitary confinement. One Afghan human rights worker asserted that one lad was only 12 or 13 when he was captured.

Bombing Libyan and Serbian TV stations

Such victims' names are rarely known or quickly forgotten. But Freedom of the Press was also involved sometimes. Again, must I recall how in July 2011, NATO planes (35 percent of them French) bombed the Libyan state TV station, killing three journalists and injuring 15? The International Federation of Journalists stated: "We utterly condemn this action, which targeted journalists and threatened their lives in violation of international law...Our concern is that when one side decides to take out a media organization because they regard its message as propaganda, then all media are at risk." For some the action recalled April 1999 when NATO planes destroyed the TV and radio station of Belgrade, killing sixteen Radio-TV of Serbia employees with a single well-aimed rocket and calling it "a legitimate target" because it was a "propaganda mouthpiece."

But the men of Charlie Hebdo were writers and creators, unique and irreplaceable. True without a doubt. Does that not apply to Charles Horman, U.S. journalist and filmmaker, killed during a U.S.A.-supported putsch in Chile in 1973 (and famous after the film "Missing")? Or, on the same occasion, to the wonderful singer-songwriter Victor Jara? Or the Belgian-organized, U.S.A.-supported torture and murder of the Congolese poet and political leader, Patrice Lumumba? Or in Nigeria to novelist and filmmaker Ken Saro-Wiwa, hanged with the connivance of Shell Oil? Or the Palestinian Ghassan Kanafani, considered one of the greatest modern Arabic authors, whose car was booby trapped by the Mossad in July, 1972?

I cannot help thinking that there are far more too many bloody criminals still at large in the world, of many beliefs and nationalities, even though most media, so defensive of freedom of the press, keep such names from the people, or distort their contributions and fates. Nor do their ideas of a free press always extend to a Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden - or Mumia Abu-Jamal!

The true perpetrators

What I now fear is a renewed misuse of the latest assassinations, encouraging mass feelings of revenge not just toward a few fanatic assassins or often twisted religious beliefs, but toward anyone with a darker skin color and differences in language or clothing - and thus away from the true perpetrators, those worsening the very social conditions which breed fanaticism, and their marionettes, who have career goals but no consciences and are already spouting their now hardly muted poison, cashing in on renewed hatred. The Monday marchers in Germany will now wear mourning arm-bands for Charlie - and get belated applause from leaders of major parties.

We need the very opposite! We must work to close the gaps, to clasp hands and work together for a better world. We dare not forget all the countless bloody deeds preceding the horror of Paris. This is what makes me join in saying: "Je suis Charlie!" but then adding: "I am Gul Rahman! I am Abu Zubaydah! I am Charles Horman and Ken Saro-Wiwa! I am Ghassan Kanafani and Victor Jara!"

With this broader view we must call to people in Dresden and other German cities. They have not been guilty of any crimes or real violence. But my own background makes me remind them that one or the other of their grandfathers may have joined in shooting down the great Yiddish poet Mordecai Gebirtig in Krakow on "Bloody Thursday," June 4, 1942. Today's generation bears no blame for such deeds. But they will bear blame if Gebirtig's great poem needs to be shouted once again as a new warning and alarm: "Es brennt! Brothers, our town is burning!"

Photo: The International Federation of Journalists and its regional group, the European Federation of Journalists, joined the million-strong march in Paris protesting against the terrorist attack against the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The IFJ and EFJ marched with their three member unions in France -- Syndicat national des journalistes (SNJ), Syndicat national des journalistes-confédération générale du travail (SNJ-CGT) and CFDT -- at the head of the demontration, behind the families of the killed journalists.

IFJ website.

Latin American, Caribbean nations bolster economic ties with China

Mon, 12 Jan 2015 10:59:00 +0000

Latin American and Caribbean cooperation with China serves economic needs on both sides. Tightening of those nations' relations with China also serves a political goal long articulated by the left-leaning Venezuelan, Ecuadorian, and Bolivian governments. Their spokespersons have frequently called for a mufti-polar international order to replace U.S. ascendency prevailing since the fall of the Soviet Bloc.

Strengthened economic ties between nations of the region and China were on display at the inaugural meeting of the ministerial forum of CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) taking place in Beijing, China on Jan. 8-9. Chinese President Xi Jinping, present on both days, predicted trade volume would double over the coming decade and annual bilateral trade with the region would rise by $500 billion. Chinese investment, he said, would reach $250,000 billion. China now is the largest foreign buyer of Venezuelan oil, Chilean copper and Argentinian soybeans.

Xi Jinping anticipates "a shared Chinese - CELAC destiny for the consolidation, development, and transformation of peoples." All but three of the alliance's 33- member states were present.

Prior to the CELAC meeting, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro conferred with President Xi Jinping. Maduro announced on Jan. 7 that China would be adding $20 billion in new investments to $45 billion already invested over the past 10 years. He indicated the money would go toward "social, developmental and industrial projects including the building of 1,500 new schools in Venezuela and the expansion of operations in the Orinoco oil belt." Venezuela's current rate of crude oil exports to China - 524,000 barrels per day - will double by 2016. Almost half of that amount goes toward repayment of previous loans.

According to Venezuelan Vice president Jorge Arreaza, who accompanied Maduro, "China is a great potential, and it is not imperialist. It ... wants for all of us to have respectable and dignified living standards."

Venezuela will be using the loans to build capacity to accommodate consumer spending that is growing. Rising demand there for food, for example, has outstripped a threefold increase over 15 years in agricultural production. Venezuela's budget for 2015 promises expanded tourist and transportation services and "vast sums" for higher education and pensions.

Bolivian Foreign minister David Choquehuanca, interviewed in Beijing, indicated Chinese companies are already involved in highway construction, oil and gas production, and sugar cane processing in Bolivia. China will be investing an additional $500 million in his country, the minister reported. As reported by Prensa Latina, He commended China for "establishing respectful relations, but without conditions, sincere, that allow us to grow, but also enables us to take certain common positions of a multilateral nature." Bolivia, he said, has eased entry requirements for Chinese visitors, and increased the number of Bolivian students studying in China.

Ecuador, in turn, reported on agreements for $7.5 billion in new loans from China. After its default on $3.2 billion in foreign debt in 2008, Ecuador was able to borrow over $11 billion from China, applying some of it to servicing other Ecuadorian debts. Ecuador exports up to 90 percent of its oil to China, which is Ecuador's top investment source. Much of the funding supports extraction of natural resources.

Yet China's burgeoning economic ties with Brazil overshadow Chinese trade and investments in the other three countries, expanding though they may be. Bilateral trade in 2013 exceeded $80 billion. Importing Brazilian iron ore, agricultural commodities, and hydrocarbon resources, China replaced the United States as Brazil's leading trade partner in 2009. China depends on Brazil for 22.1 percent of the steel it consumes. Having loaned $20 billion in 2010, China is now Brazil's leading foreign investor.

In April, 1948, the United States assembled Latin American and Caribbean nations in Bogotá, Colombia to establish the Organization of American States (OAS). The U.S. purpose was to line them up to fight cold war against the Soviet Union. In April, 2015, the OAS holds its Summit of the Americas in Panama. Surely the region's now firm ties with China, founded on interdependence and multilateralism, will go a long way this time toward immunizing member states against dictates from their northern neighbor.

Photo: Chinese President Xi Jinping, right walks with Costa Rica's President Luis Guillermo Solis as they arrive at the opening ceremony to a two-day meeting between China and Latin American and Caribbean countries held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2015. Chinese President Xi Jinping hailed burgeoning ties Thursday with Latin America, pledging to use his country's economic clout to support billions of dollars in regional projects and almost double two-way trade to $500 billion over the next 10 years. | Ng Han Guan/AP

Tragedy and crime in Paris: the Charlie Hebdo attack

Fri, 09 Jan 2015 11:01:00 +0000

The attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Jan. 7 cannot be condoned. The persons responsible must suffer the full consequences for their actions.

The attack came at 11 a.m. during an editorial staff meeting, and was carried out by three persons using assault rifles. Killed were Charlie Hebdo's editor, Stéphan Charbonniere, several members of the staff and two police officers (one of them a Muslim) assigned to the magazine's premises, which had been the target of threats, and at least one attack, before. A number of other people were injured. The attackers fled in a hijacked car, but later one turned himself in and the other two are said to be hiding in a forested area in the North of the country.

The full motives for the attack are as yet unclear, as is the question of organizational responsibility. Witnesses claimed that the attackers mentioned an affiliation with Al Qaeda in Yemen, but this has not been confirmed. If there was a larger terrorist organization behind the attack, it did not do a very good job of training its bloodthirsty minions: At first, they burst into a building which turned out to be the wrong address; then one of them left his ID card behind in the abandoned getaway car. All three assailants have been identified as French citizens of Algerian extraction from very poor immigrant communities.

Charlie Hebdo (Charlie Weekly) is an irreverent satirical magazine which has attacked and ridiculed everybody and everything, including the Prophet Mohammed, the Koran, the Roman Catholic Church, Orthodox Judaism, political leaders and a wide range of other targets. Its cartoons often would appear obscene to some.

It is within the anti-clerical tradition of the French left, but is also applauded by the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant right because of its attacks on Muslim targets. The last item Charlie Hebdo sent out on its Twitter account before the attack was a tongue in cheek holiday greeting purported to be from Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the head of the bloodthirsty Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant organization which has been tearing a swath through Iraq and Syria with thousands of casualties. The tweet shows al Baghdadi wishing everybody "above all, good health."

The attack on Charlie Hebdo elicited an indignant response clean across the political spectrum. The French Communist Party issued a message denouncing the attack: "This morning the terrorists tried to shut the mouth world of carcicaturists, humorists, of those who are in love with like." But the French CP also warned against any backlash against France's approximately 4.7 million citizens and residents (about seven percent of the population) who are either practicing Muslims or of Muslim background, calling on the French people to "reject all the appeals to hatred and racism."

Muslim organizations in France were no less emphatic in denouncing the attack, and organized a large sympathy rally in front of the magazine's offices.

Many governments of Muslim majority countries sent messages of sympathy to the French government, including those of Algeria, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Iraqi Kurdistan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, Syria, and Turkey.

Messages of sympathy came from other countries which do not always see eye to eye. President Obama observed, in part, "Time and time again, the French people have stood up for the universal values that generations of our people have defended." President Nicolas Madero of Venezuela tweeted, "The government and people of Venezuela repudiate the terrorist attack against France, and we stand by them with all our solidarity and love."

However, there was a predictable response from another quarter of French public opinion, namely the surging anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant far right. Marine LePen, whose proto-fascist National Front won 25 percent of the French vote in last year's elections to the European Parliament, looked positively radiant as she issued a call for a return to the death penalty in France.

An explosive mixture has been created in France. Dismal slum communities are full of frustrated and angry young Muslims whose parents came from former French colonies either as refugees or labor migrants, and who suffer from discrimination and police abuse. On the other, you have the growth of a chauvinistic and reactionary nationalism like that of Ms. LePen which scapegoats immigrants and foreigners for the whole country's economic and social problems.

Former President Sarkozy did less than nothing to calm the situation, and in fact contributed to polarization by his own anti-immigrant demagogy. The current government of the so called "Socialist Party", headed by President Francois Hollande, has done little to deal with the situation other than to make concessions to the right. His prime minister, Manuel Valls, has been all too eager to push the "national pride" button of French public opinion, in attacks also on the Roma (Gypsy) migrants in France.

France, like the U.S. , has played a dubious role in Muslim countries, with policies that tend to strengthen Islamic extremism, such as the effort to overthrow the government of Syria which has contributed to the growth of violent movements which threaten Syria, Iraq, and beyond.

Photo: AP

Socialist-minded people still need to discuss implosion of Soviet socialism

Fri, 09 Jan 2015 10:37:00 +0000

All socialist-minded people should be encouraged to discuss Sam Webb's "Season's Reflections on Socialism." It is a rich and provocative outline of ideas that need to be elaborated and fleshed out. In particular, I wish to comment on reflection #1 concerning the "implosion of the Soviet Union," where I believe too much was left unsaid and the door was left open to one-sided, idealist interpretations.

The overthrow of Soviet socialism, the destruction of the USSR and the establishment of a kleptocratic group of exploiters as the new ruling class cannot be consigned simply to the realm of an abstract discussion of socialist theory. These were the result of real historical events involving clashes of real social forces and direction from real historical figures.

No serious assessment can exclude discussion of the role of Mikhail Gorbachev and his group. The fact that Gorbachev went from head of the CPSU to being a sycophant for the most right-wing extremist forces in the capitalist world, including Margaret Thatcher, Jesse Helms and the Republican National Committee, cannot just be ignored by partisans of the working class and socialism. While his role should not be exaggerated, it cannot be minimized either. The widespread view of Gorbachev among Communists that he was an "opportunist," "traitor" or "defector" cannot be dismissed without discussion.

Similarly, the overthrow of one social class by another cannot be seriously discussed without recognizing the role that those classes and their representatives played. In particular, the role of the criminal elements of the underground capitalist economy in the Soviet Union cannot be left unmentioned. It's absurd to imagine they just woke up one day to read a telegram from the Kremlin congratulating them for being selected to take over the means of production and inviting them to come down, choose an industry, and sign the necessary property transfer documents. Power and wealth have to be fought for, and anyone who denies that this group played a important role has to explain how they ended up in charge. The fact is, they had a political representative, Boris Yeltsin, who led a core of corrupted officials of the CPSU to privatize the economy and impose capitalism.

But, it is argued, even if the changes were engineered from the top and the Soviet people weren't actively involved, they didn't complain or resist the overthrow of their socialist system and the leadership of the CPSU, and that means this is what they wanted all along.

There is little evidence to support this view. Aside from sections of the intelligentsia and the criminal underground, there is no evidence of any deep disaffection among the masses of the Soviet people. Like everyone else in the world Communist and progressive movements, they responded positively to claims that the intentions of the Soviet leaders were to strengthen, improve and reform socialism. "Who could oppose that?" Fidel Castro asked. Thousands of tourists, including many Communists, repeatedly visited the USSR prior to 1991 and never returned with reports of seething discontent among the Soviet people, that they were clamoring to dump socialism and join the capitalist free-for-all. On the contrary, they reported that people were leading rather tranquil, secure lives, seemed optimistic about their futures and fervently supported their government's efforts for peaceful coexistence. The Soviet people were never seriously engaged in any discussion about overthrowing their socialist system, and when Gorbachev's opponents in the CPSU realized what was afoot, they were forcibly denied access to the media to voice their concerns by the "democratic reformers."

Contrast that with the several years-long discussions held in every publication, every trade union and civic group of the Soviet Union to discuss the new Constitution adopted in 1977. Tens of thousands of meetings were held, involving the majority of the citizens and the original draft was drastically revised.

In hindsight, it is clear that better democratic reforms should have been enacted, but no one, not even the CIA, imagined what was coming and, in any case, that was for the Soviet people to decide, not outsiders, even foreign proponents of socialist theory.

Major reforms have been enacted in other socialist countries, including Cuba, Vietnam, and China, without overthrowing the leading role of the ruling Communist parties or discarding the ultimate goals of socialism and communism. There is no reason to believe that, with better and more honest leadership, this could not have happened in the USSR. The fact is, the destruction of the Soviet Union was primarily the handiwork of opportunist and corrupt top-level forces hostile to socialism, which were able to exploit inadequacies in the institutions of popular democracy to promote their anti-working class aims.

A disaster for humanity

Finally, no criticism of Soviet socialism can be seriously presented by Communists that does not explicitly recognize that the destruction of the USSR has been an unmitigated disaster for humanity. Not only was socialism uprooted in Eastern Europe with the establishment of right-wing capitalist governments, but millions of lives have been lost, far more than ever killed by Stalin, in the horrific mass slaughters and ethnic genocide, committed with the support and instigation of western imperialism, in the dismemberment and destruction of Yugoslavia and several former Soviet republics, and in the never-ending neocon wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which continue to spread throughout the Middle East. None of this would have occurred if the Soviet Union had not been destroyed.

Similarly for the genocidal conflicts in many African countries and the massive assault by Israel on the Palestinian people. The destruction of Soviet socialism has given a huge boost to right-wing extremism in Europe, where harsh austerity measures have been imposed on the people, as well as in the U.S., where basic democratic rights and living standards are under unprecedented siege. Capitalist ruling classes kept these forces in the closet and had to make significant social and economic concessions to the people so long as free education and health care, low-cost housing, utilities and food, and full employment were provided to the residents of Eastern Europe and the USSR. Now the demons have been freed. The exploiters, polluters, racists, torturers, and war mongers are on the loose.

The U.S. recently established a far-reaching agreement with China to control climate change. How much more would have been achieved if the USSR had been involved!

I am not trying to idealize Soviet socialism, engage in nostalgia, or deny any lessons and shortcomings that should be recognized in building a future society. But things must be put in their actual historical context; there's little value in utopian thinking. It is certainly worthwhile to formulate our values and long-range vision, but we are obviously far from constructing or designing a new humanistic democratic socialist society. We have to acknowledge that the destruction of the USSR fundamentally changed the ground on which we fight. We are now struggling not, as we did in the past, for the overthrow of corporate monopoly power, but for the survival of elementary bourgeois democracy and to defend the basic living standards of the people. Our strategic goal and immediate challenge is to help build a broad democratic coalition to rout right-wing extremism. It is only out of this real process that a better future can and must be built.

Photo: Mikhail Gorbachev, former head of the CPSU. | Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

Cuba’s infant mortality rate at its lowest level ever

Fri, 09 Jan 2015 09:49:00 +0000

Cuba's infant mortality rate (IMR) for 2014 was 4.2, unchanged from the previous year and again the lowest in Cuban history. The IMR reflects the number of babies dying during their first year for each set of 1,000 births.

The IMR tells about babies, but is a measure too of the wellbeing of everybody in a society. It's "the most sensitive indicator of overall societal health," says the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A low IMR "is associated with a variety of factors such as maternal health, quality and access to medical care, socioeconomic conditions, and public health practices," says another U.S. public health authority.

An infant's chances for survival are much improved if its mother enjoys competent, readily available prenatal health care; possesses personal confidence through education and integration within the larger society; has eaten well during her pregnancy; has not smoked, and, if need be, has access - and her baby too - to intensive hospital-based care.

In announcing the data on Jan. 4, Roberto Álvarez, head of the Program for Maternal Infant Health in Cuba's health ministry, pointed to steps taken to reduce premature births as crucial for Cuba having been able to reduce infant deaths. Cuba still makes use of maternity homes for providing expectant mothers with nutritional support, education, and early identification of potential health risks to mothers and babies. The homes were introduced during the 1990s as one way to protect mothers from rampant shortages in Cuba after the Soviet Bloc disappeared.

Álvarez also noted remarkable uniformity of IMR's among particular regions and municipalities, thus suggesting equitable distribution of health and social services throughout the island. In the United States, by contrast, infant mortality rates vary markedly according to geographical regions, income levels, and racial identity. Mississippi's IMR of 9.6, for example, was the nation's highest in 2011; Alaska's 3.8 figure was the lowest. Mississippi's Blacks make up 55 percent of the population there; there are very few in Alaska.

The IMR for African-American babies in the United States overall was 11.5 in 2011; that for all U.S. babies was 6.1, which internationally ranks 55 points down from the most favorable IMR. (Cuba is in 38th place). Presumably variations in living conditions and availability of services in the United States contribute to its relatively high IMR.

Indeed, researchers taking socioeconomic status into account found that "children of poor minority women in the U.S. were much more likely to die within their first year than children born to similar mothers in other countries." The implication is that in those other countries, Cuba among them, support mechanisms are available that save babies' lives. Yet those countries are not alike. Most of them, mainly in Europe, have applied plentiful economic resources - which Cuba lacks - to democratic socialist imperatives; that is to say, the welfare state.

The difference is that of a socialist revolution. And the one in Cuba sticks to its job description. Reshaping health care for the good of all was part of that.

As 3,000 physicians left for abroad during its first two years, the new government looked to the future and made sure that teachers among the 3,000 remaining physicians became the island's highest paid employees. Cuba's IMR, over 50 during the 1950s, began descending to the 30s within a decade and thence down to its present low level.

By 1985 Cuba was a specialty referral center for Latin America and socialist countries. Health care officials were refurbishing primary care to establish the current family doctor system, notable for accessibility, emphasis on prevention, and community immersion. In doing so, they abandoned big changes two decades earlier that weren't working. Cuba advanced from one medical school to 24, teaching medical students from dozens of other countries, and sending doctors throughout the world.

A personal note: At the beginning of each year, the present writer, a former child health worker, has eagerly gone to Cuban news sources to learn about Cuba's IMR for the previous year. It's always a news story and always at hand. But to find out comparable U.S. data takes work. The government's own source, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, provides IMR figures on its website that at best are two to three years old. One teases them out from complicated listings and graphs. So speculation arises that if news tends toward embarrassment, handlers might prefer, even unthinkingly, to let it lie. In Cuba the IMR is a matter of pride, is broadcast widely, and with good reason.

Photo: Danny Lawson/AP

Trade (and geopolitical) wars cut oil prices

Thu, 08 Jan 2015 14:28:00 +0000

There is a trade war in oil and fossil fuels. It has four causes I can identify:

1. The slowdown in economic growth worldwide, especially China, EU and India. Even the shocks in supply coming from wars and boycotts against Syria and Iran, and collapse in Libya, have not counteracted the price plunge from slack in demand.

2. Competition from new sources of oil and natural gas arising from hydraulic fracturing technology (fracking) is weakening OPEC price leverage.

3. Smaller, but significant, moves to alternative non-carbon-based energy sources: Solar, wind, and others degraded fossil fuel market share.

4. Geopolitical effort by U.S. and UK oil-backed interests to punish Putin and Russia, with attractive (to them) destructive side effects in Venezuela (and thus Cuba), Nigeria, Iran, Syria, and other resource-income dependent U.S. states such as West Virginia, North Dakota and Wyoming; not to mention negating recent cost improvements in renewable technologies which make them more competitive in some state energy markets.

It is difficult to know precisely how to weight some of these factors. For example, anti-Russian geopolitical moves may be more important than competition from alternative energy sources. However, of the four, number one is clearly the most worrisome, and the one that most concerned scholars on energy panels and workshops at the American Economics Association national meeting this past weekend in Boston. The global Great Recession is not over. Indeed, it shows signs of renewed weakness in many areas.

Here are some short term effects:

1. More disposable income for most consumers, meaning most Americans. Easier winter heating costs. Lower production costs for manufacturers and other high-energy consumers. Tougher time for migratory workers following the shale drilling boom across the country, and chasing work in the only middle-income growth industry in recent times for workers outside of the high-tech and financial services industries.

2. Declining stock prices as oil and energy assets are revalued. More oil was produced than sold in the U.S. for the past four consecutive quarters. The rate of production growth nonetheless is still positive, and still ahead of demand, though slowing down recently. The dollar will be weaker if decline persists. A weaker dollar improves exports but puts the U.S. financial system on weaker ground as capital moves to other currencies. There will be deflationary pressures.

3. Big shakeout of smaller or over-indebted operators in the shale (fracking) industry which can only break even at $70 a barrel, according to industry data. The Federal government's Energy Information site (EIA) puts Brent crude currently at under $60 a barrel. Jobs are declining in all power-related fields except solar generation. The latter is still a small sector, however, relative to oil, natural gas, nuclear and electrical generation-related employment. Sustained low oil prices will reduce the renewables share of energy markets - a result that fuels numerous conspiracy theories populated with climate change-denying corporate feudalist villains.

4. The price of energy is an important foundational index of economic growth. There should be some uptick in both income and growth. As long as cheap energy is maintained, it will have a multiplier effect potentially as strong as lowering interest rates, or raising public investment in job creation. At the same time, it will act as a drag on energy conservation and efficiency regulation, and environmental protection efforts aimed at reducing fossil fuel consumption. Maybe Hummers and an aged "Ahhnald" will come back! Eeek!

Protection against volatility

For the longer run, it is important to remember that higher standards of living require widening rivers of energy to sustain. According to the EIA, even under optimistic political and economic assumptions about efforts to improve conservation and efficiency per capita, and expand reliance on renewable resources, fossil fuels will remain a strategic and growing energy source, providing over half of energy consumption for decades to come. Further, fossil fuel markets are inherently volatile, subject to seasonal spikes and other shocks in supply and demand due to external factors: geology, weather, war, depression, etc. The volatility has an immediate impact on industry, agriculture and consumer pocketbooks. This is one reason for strong incentives to invest in "hedge" funds sold as a "protection" against volatility in very energy-sensitive sectors.

Do the giant energy corporations and their billionaire owners - now enshrined by our Supreme Court as "super-persons" - manipulate this volatility, along with their ability to consume politicians virtually at will, to punish (or reward) us all, according to their private pleasure? Hard not to be suspicious. Is there any thought that the energy sector will relinquish the grip it has maintained on foreign and energy policy for half a century or more before resorting to every vile or coercive weapon at their disposal?

A better "protection" against volatility would be a direct public and worker-controlled "hedge, risk-bearing" fund with a direct voice in the leadership of any too-big-too-fail enterprise. That would have to be preceded by a radical "personhood-ectomy" of all corporations, and their reconstitution as entities entitled to limited liability in exchange for a duty to pursue a public good as well as private profit.

Happy New Year! More socialism - the only hedge against capitalism!

Photo: Making a heating oil delivery to a home in Jenner Crossroads, Pa. Lower oil prices for many U.S. residents translate to lower winter heating costs. (AP Photo/Tribune-Democrat, John Rucosky, File)

In Dresden, PEGIDA meets opposition

Wed, 07 Jan 2015 14:41:00 +0000

BERLIN - On Dec. 22,2014, the Dresden opera house turned off its outdoor lighting in disapproval and the square around the golden equestrian statue of August the Strong was largely in darkness when an estimated 17,500 people demonstrated their views by singing - no arias or operatic choruses but rather - Christmas carols! At least one of them, "Silent Night", was most especially inappropriate!

The big crowd was the tenth gathering of a movement called PEGIDA, short for "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident". They had been gathering every Monday evening since October, first with 350 marchers, soon 5000, by December 7^th 10,000, then 15,000 on December 15^th- and now 17,500, with lesser offshoots in other cities, east and west.

Its twelve leaders hoped to repeat the rapid growth of Monday protest meetings in Leipzig in 1989, a key factor in bringing down the GDR. They took up the same chant: "We are the people". But the main thrust of PEGIDA, as its name indicates, was now against refugees, immigrants and foreigners. Its banners call self-righteously "For the Preservation of Our Culture" and "Against Religious Fanaticism" or "Against Religious Wars on German Soil". It is aimed primarily against Muslims; many German flags and crosses make clear who is meant by "the people"! In rare statements it tries to sound a little less chauvinist, averring that it not against "refugees from military conflicts", not against Islam or foreigners but only against "criminal asylum seekers" or "economic refugees who misuse Germany's welfare system" and who, they insist, "live in luxurious housing while poor old-age pensioners freeze in unheated homes and can't even afford a piece of Christmas cake".

Why PEGIDA's quick growth?

PEGIDA's quick growth derives largely from the many fears, especially in eastern Germany, about the scarcity of decent, steady jobs, about constant rent hikes and dwindling hopes about having enough to live on when they retire. Echoing past fascists, today's "pied pipers" try to deflect such fears and resentment against refugees from wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, destitute Africans who survived stormy Mediterranean crossings, or mostly legal immigrants from the Balkans, often Roma and Sinti ("Gypsies") escaping discrimination and misery. And this has worked all too well, even though Saxony has one of the smallest immigrant counts in all Germany, less than 2 percent of the population, who have taken no one's jobs or benefits. Many, highly-skilled, face the same tax burdens as most Germans (except the very wealthy, who somehow dodge such burdens). As for the disdained Rumanians and Bulgarians, it was found that 25 percent of these immigrants have college degrees, as against 19 percent of Germans. Eighty-five years ago economic fears and worries were misused to impel hatred of the Jews; today's targets, for the same purpose, are the Rumanians and Bulgarians, Roma people and always the Turks, Kurds, Arabs and other Muslims.

Who is Lutz Bachmann?

PEGIDA'S leaders like to denounce "the German press - always full of lies". It's hard to deny this description, but the lies are hardly the kind PEGIDA complains about; unfair treatment of itself and imagined over-indulgency towards "foreigners". But while PEGIDA toughies physically attack journalists (including my granddaughter, a photojournalist), an ironic angle has turned up involving their top rabble-rouser, Lutz Bachmann. A mysterious figure, he has been variously arrested for cocaine possession, drunken driving, assault, burglary and incitement to perjury; he fled to South Africa but was extradited, locked up for two years, then paroled, after which he started a photo and PR agency suggestively named "Hot Pepper Pix". A Bundestag deputy from the LINKE (Left) party has now discovered that his website boasts of close ties with the press, especially the powerful Axel Springer empire, whose illustrated daily "BILD" is less known for fair reporting about "those foreigners" than for subtle or less subtle attempts to set working people against one another.

Who counters PEGIDA?

Happily, there has been an active rejection of the marches, not only the opera house blackout. Thousands have taken part in counter-demonstrations from the start. In fact, in most cities they out-numbered the racists, as in Munich one Monday with 15,000 counter-demonstrators. But in Dresden PEGIDA remains stronger, perhaps because of continued worse conditions in eastern Germany, even in major centers like Dresden, or in part, some maintain, due to a relative lack of closer contact with other nationalities, now and in GDR days.

Basic to the PEGIDA marches are growing convictions that no mainline political parties represent the people's interests. While the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD) sends its thuggish vultures circling in on the marches to look for prey, the young Alternative for Germany (AfD), leaning in the same direction but preferring a respectable "suit and tie" image, "considers most positions of PEGIDA to be legitimate... because people taking part in these demonstrations do not feel their worries are being understood by politicians."

What about those politicians? None dare to approve of a movement which is fascist-tainted, if not worse, and currently by no means chic. Chancellor Merkel said that while everyone had the right to voice their opinion freely, there was no place in Germany for agitation against immigrants. All major churches have spoken sharply against it - and some take part in counter-demonstrations. The new chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, called the possibility of an Islamic conquest of Germany "absurd". And even President Gauck tried to soften his recent calls for German military expansion with mellow tones about welcoming asylum-seekers. While both Greens and Social Democrats sharply reject this new movement, some critics recalled that Thilo Sarrazin, once Finance Minister in Berlin, never lost his Social Democratic Party membership despite viciously racist views on immigrants and minorities, expressed in a top best-seller and endless talk shows.

Few dare to support PEGIDA but few want to alienate the many voters who think along similar lines. The Christian Social Union, Bavarian sister party of Merkel's CDU, attacked PEGIDA's critics, including a Social Democratic cabinet minister: his "outrageous vilification of people peacefully expressing their worries was 'shameful for Germany'". It was his party which recently demanded that immigrant families speak only German, even in their homes. This made it a national laughing stock, not only because of the obvious impossibility of enforcing such a rule but because a genuine Bavarian dialect is considered to be almost incomprehensible for many Germans.

As for the LINKE (Left) party, its members were often active in the counter-demonstrations, carrying signs saying things like "We Welcome Immigrants" (or Refugees). In an interview, the new LINKE minister-president in Thuringia, Bodo Ramelow, said: "We want just the opposite of PEGIDA. We need more cultural knowledge, cultural familiarity. That is why we should not talk with PEGIDA organizers. But we should talk with those joining them largely to articulate their worries, and we must tell them clearly that their worries are important to us. We should also tell them to think about the doctor from Syria who wishes to work here. And we should see to it that he is able to work here."

Then he added: "In 2010 thousands of Dresdeners showed with their solidarity that they would not let Nazis take over Dresden. But the city's thanks were to indict many of those opposing the Nazis. I am not too surprised therefore at Dresden's strange habit of saying: Those taking to the streets to oppose Nazis will get into more trouble with the law than those shouting cheap, stupid slogans...That does not mean that everyone marching with PEGIDA is a Nazi. Definitely not. But I think its organizers are stirring up that same old fascist pot. The citizens must be given a signal that we take their worries seriously but will not bow to those trying to shift the blame onto our minorities."

If it continues its rapid growth, PEGIDA could become extremely dangerous. I do not wish to minimize this danger when I mention a new ally of the anti-fascists: a heavy snowfall suddenly covering most of Germany including Dresden. This not only stopped plans for the next Monday march but led to a remarkably broad wave of tweet and Facebook comments, mocking and parodying PEGIDA. Americans (and others) will hardly fail to recognize behind this witty yet bitter, hard-hitting sarcasm more than a few of the familiar racist slogans which are ridiculed here.

"Yesterday it was just a few flakes. Today the whole town is full of them!"

"How much snow will be coming before we begin to get rid of it?"

"This snow is taking jobs away from German drizzle!"

"In some places old age pensioners don't even dare to leave their homes!"

"All this lazy snow does is lie around all day doing nothing!"

"I have nothing against snow. Some snowmen are my good friends. But must they be in my neighborhood?"

"They're filling up our whole cities by the billions. But at least they're white!"

Racism and fascism are real dangers here and elsewhere. One can hope that this weapon of biting sarcasm, also a petition which already has 500,000 signatures, plus thousands of courageous counter-demonstrators, will at least rein in the PEGIDA danger.

Dresden history

Dresden, Saxony's beautiful capital, has a distinguished history. One ruler, August the Strong, could bend horseshoes with his bare hands and, so legend has it, sired 354 children. In 1697 he pushed and bribed his way onto the royal throne of neighboring Poland, made possible by his quick conversion to Catholicism. (His wife, refusing the switch, broke ranks, which is why only one of his children was with her). His expansion brought no good to Poland but did attract top baroque or rococo architects and artists to Dresden from very Catholic Italy. This, plus rich silver mines and the first fine chinaware not from China (Meissen porcelain) gave the city its proud nickname, "Florence on the Elbe". Great composers increased its fame: Heinrich Schütz, Johann Sebastian Bach, Carl Maria von Weber, the early Richard Wagner (in 1848, a young revolutionary, he had to flee the city). Also Richard Strauss and artists like Otto Dix and Oskar Kokoschka. Most of the beauty and grandeur was lost in the devastating UK-USA bombing and resulting fire storm on Feb. 13th 1945, but in the years since 1945 the city has been able to recreate many of its most beautiful structures.

Among them was the magnificent Semper Opera House, the site of world premieres like Wagner's "Tannhäuser" and "Flying Dutchman" (based on a text by Heinrich Heine, Wagner's friend before he gave up revolution and became an anti-Semite). Or, much later, "Salome" and "Rosenkavalier" by Richard Strauss. The demolished building was beautifully reconstructed in GDR days as one of the most modern opera houses in all Europe.

Photo: Members of Die LINKE at NO PEGIDA counter demonstration, Facebook.