People Before Profit blog

Spaniards in mega-strike over labor reforms

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 15:48:00 +0000

Two months ago almost to the day Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy was caught telling other EU leaders that his labour reform plan "is going to cost me a general strike." Well, if he's been wrong on most things since being elected in a landslide victory over the Socialists in November last year, he's right on this one.

Industrial action on Thursday March 29 was a massive show of resistance to his moves to slash employment rights, and a more general rejection of austerity policies that even mainstream supporters of neo-liberal ideas think are half mad.

Earlier on Thursday the Comisiones Obreras trade union central, which together with the UGT called the general strike, reckoned on an 85% turnout among Spain's 10 million or so permanent workforce, once emergency cover agreed by unions is factored into the equation. For the UGT, commenting at midday, the figures were about 77 percent, with as high as 95 percent participation in construction and manufacturing. Another measure of success was a 20% fall in electricity consumption to levels typical of a non-working day, a sure sign that the economy had stopped. And it hasn't only been workers taking part.

Students have been blockading roads and universities since the early hours. The indignados or 15-M movement, meanwhile, has been engaging in a 'consumer strike' against the few shops that have remained open, joining pickets and generally adding a carnival atmosphere to the day. An assembly was planned at 9pm in the symbolic centre of the movement, Puerta del Sol.

The central trigger for the strike action is Rajoy's legislation that makes it easier for firms to lay off workers, cut their wages, or change their working conditions, if they can claim they need to boost their productivity.

Unions argue that this will simply result in more job losses, with estimates, one issued by a think-tank close to the Socialists earlier this week, of an additional 170,000 more unemployed this year alone.

And longer term, the reforms will mean the next generation of Spaniards will be completely deprived of permanent work - a throw-back to the 19th century. Women will be badly hit as too, as advances in rights linked to maternity and caring for dependants are rolled back with flexibility becoming a tool uniquely at the disposal of employers.

Under the right-wing leader of the Popular Party, Spain is heading into a perfect storm that many commentators reckon will result in a 'lost decade' of stagnation akin to that experienced by Japan in the 1990s.

Cuts demanded for the next two years by the EU and accepted by Rajoy are deeper than those being pushed through in Greece, Ireland and Portugal, the countries that had to be 'bailed out' by the EU-IMF-ECM Troika and which are now under foreign 'surveillance' by technocrats.

Portugal and Ireland had to cut their deficits by three (GDP) percentage points over the past two years. Greece, less than five percent. Spain has to cut the deficit by 5.5 points over the next two years. That's apparently the biggest cuts any rich country has made in recent history . In money terms the figures are huge - a cut in spending up up to €64 billion euros. An 'impossible' task Luis Garicano of Fedea, a Spanish, think tank has said.

And it will be regional health and education budgets, already under massive pressure, that will bear the brunt of these cuts, with devastating short and longer term effects on the population, especially vulnerable children and the elderly.

Spain is already in a massive mess, economically-speaking. It ended 2011 with a shrinking economy. GDP fell by 0.3% in the final three months of the year, and it is forecast to drop by another 1.7 percent during 2012.

The country now has one of the weakest employment markets in the eurozone. Unemployment broke through the 5 million mark in January, putting the jobless rate at almost 23 percent. More than half of all young people are out of work.

Fundamental to the country's problems now is a collapse in domestic demand caused by spending cuts, unemployment and reductions in wages. At the end of last year, the newly installed Spanish government announced that public sector workers, who took a five per cent pay cut in 2010 and a pay freeze in 2011, would have their wages frozen again in 2012. The labour reforms, by giving employers carte-blanche over their workers, will only accelerate the downward push on wages.

The general strike on Thursday follows a rising tide of protests in Spain against the economically suicidal policies of Mariano Rajoy. Most recently as many as 1.5 million marched on February 29. And on February 25 in the Valencia region alone 300,000 took to the streets.

For the Government there's no turning back. For the millions who oppose Rajoy, there is. It's not just about slowing down and writing off some of Spain's debts and refocusing on policies that provide growth and employment, including quality public services.

It's also about reversing years of pandering to corporations, especially finance. While its been austerity for the majority, the banks have received €110 billion from the government since 2008. And they are about to get another €50 billion plus bail-out from European citizens via the European Stability Mechanism, if reports in recent days are confirmed.

The fact is, it was the bankers and their gambling on the housing market that caused Spain's crisis in the first place, when the bubble burst in 2007. It's time to end the billions for the banks and to listen to the millions on the streets.

Spanish speakers can watch the strike live here.

This article originally appeared in the Revolting Europe blog.

Photo: Creative Commons 3.0

Iraqi Communist Party attacked

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 11:29:00 +0000

The central headquarters of the Iraqi Communist Party's newspaper, Tareeq Al-Shaab (People's Path), was raided Mar. 26 and searched by Iraq's federal police force under what the Communists say was a "shoddy pretext."

The government police entered the building in central Baghdad to conduct what they called a "search operation," claiming that it was part of general security measures being taken in order to prepare for the Arab Summit.

Their actual target, however, was basically a piece of old scrap metal - the remains of an old weapon left behind during the regime of Saddam Hussein. The federal police described it as a "dangerous weapon" and proceeded to arrest 12 workers who were in charge of security at the newspaper's headquarters.

Following the arrests, a second group of police rushed into the building and ransacked offices of party leaders. Police held detained workers blindfolded overnight and did not release them until the following day.

The attack on the Communist newspaper office occurred just before the eve of the Iraqi Communist Party's 78th anniversary, which is on Mar. 31.

The party, which has a long history of fighting for a secular Iraq, in which the rights of all groups would be respected, has expressed its outrage and has openly condemned the raid.

The party asks that those responsible for the attack be brought to justice, and said, in ta statement, that "the police will not stop Tareeq Al-Shaab from defending the rights of the Iraqi people and workers, nor will it stop those people from fighting for a free, democratic Iraq."

This is not the first time the Iraqi Communist Party has been targeted by the U.S.-backed government that replaced the old dictatorship. In 2007, Najim Abed Jassem, the party workers' trade union leader and member of the executive committee of the Mechanics Union, was abducted and tortured by militias in Baghdad, and subsequently murdered.

According to U.S. Labor Against the War, that attack also occurred just before an anniversary of the founding of the party.

Tareeq Al-Shaab called it, at the time, "an abhorrent crime" and noted Jassem's "passion for his people, homeland, and working class, for which he struggled to achieve their just rights and a better life."

A book titled Hadi Never Died: Hadi Saleh and the Iraqi Trade Unions, written by Abdullah Muhsin and Alan Johnson, focuses on the fact that Iraqi workers and their struggles are rarely discussed - and often ignored in Western circles. The book adds that few outside the Arab world know that the Iraqi working class is well organized and highly politically engaged.

The book focuses on the life of Iraqi trade union and Communist Party leader Hadi Saleh, who was tortured and sentenced to death during the time Saddam Hussein rose to power in the late 70s, whereupon the trade unions were abused as a means for the government to spy on workers.

Saleh was murdered in his Baghdad home in 2005, by someone his fellow communists believed to be Hussein supporters. His murder prompted a large outcry by trade union leaders around the world.

John Sweeney, then-president of the AFL-CIO, celebrated Saleh's dedication to the movement, and remarked, "He will be sorely missed by all of us who have met him, and by the workers for whom he valiantly fought."

Pope visits Cuba

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:21:00 +0000

Pope Benedict XVI recently made an "Apostolic Journey" to Mexico and the Republic of Cuba. According to news reports, the Pope visited Cuba in the hopes of reviving the Catholic faith there and to press for greater freedoms for his church.

On Tuesday the Pope visited the Basílica Santuario Nacional de Nuestra Señora de la Caridad del Cobre (National Shrine of Our Lady of Charity) in El Cobre. At the church is a statue of Mary holding a baby Jesus in a depiction called Our Lady of Charity also known as Our Lady of Cobre. The statue was found by two men and their slave around 1612 and is elaborately adorned in gold cloth and jewels.

In 1998, Pope John Paul II, on his visit to Cuba, crowned the small statue and named Our Lady of Cobre as the patroness and "Queen of Cuba" during a papal Mass.

The current Pope's visit takes place as part of the Jubilee Year to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the statue. During the Pope's Tuesday visit to the statue he prayed:

"I have entrusted to the Mother of God the future of your country, advancing along the ways of renewal and hope, for the greater good of all Cubans," the Pope said. "I have also prayed to the Virgin for the needs of those who suffer, of those who are deprived of freedom, those who are separated from their loved ones or who are undergoing times of difficulty."

Cuban President Raul Castro attended the two masses offered by the Pope.

In an Associated Press article on the Pope's visit, some Cuban's are quoted as expressing dissatisfaction on the hoopla surrounding the visit and their being encouraged to participate. "I'm here to support the leaders of our government, to support our revolution," said Dioleisis Fontela, a university professor.

Fidel Castro met with the Pope in Havana on Wednesday. He said he decided on the meeting after hearing from Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez about the Pope's willingness to meet.

In his recent reflection entitled "The Hard Times of Humanity" the leader of the Cuban Revolution talked about the meeting with the head of State of the Vatican.

"I will happily greet His Excellency Pope Benedict XVI, as I did with Pope John Paul II in 1998, a man for whom contact with children and the humble raised feelings of affection."

Before arriving on his trip to Mexico and Cuba, the Pope said that Marxism as it was originally conceived is irrelevant for today's reality.

Photo: Our Lady of Charity in the Sanctuary dedicated to her in El Cobre, Cuba, photographed by Francisco Javier Arbolí in December of 1992. Wikipedia CC 2.0

What's behind the coup in Mali?

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:48:00 +0000

On March 22, soldiers of the Republic of Mali in West Africa, led by junior officers, carried out a coup d'état against the elected president, Amadou Toumani Touré, seizing the presidential palace and radio and TV transmitters, declaring a curfew and closing the country's borders. Though several cabinet ministers and other government leaders have been arrested, the latest information is that President Touré may be holding out along with loyal members of his presidential guard. There was some looting by soldiers, but no reports of casualties.

Captain Amadou Sanogo appeared to the press and nation as leader of the coup. He stated that the reason for the uprising was the "incompetence" of the government and the military command in dealing with Tuareg and Islamist rebellions in the Northeast of the country. He said that he and his men had no intention of staying in power, but wanted "new elections". But an election was scheduled for April 29, and President Touré, near the end of his constitutionally final second term, had made no move to stay in power.

Sanogo also stated that he had undergone several military training programs in the United States, which was confirmed by the U.S. government. The United States has an increasingly large military presence in Mali and its neighbors, which is explained as necessary to fight Islamist forces sometimes called AQIM, or "Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb". (The Maghreb is the Mediterranean coastal region of North Africa).

The main immediate factor that brought on the coup was the return to Mali of thousands of Malian Tuaregs who had been working in Libya or serving in the army of the late Libyan strongman Muammar Gadaffi. When Gadaffi fell, many Africans from South of the Sahara, as well as darker skinned Libyans, found themselves unemployed and targeted for reprisals by the Libyan rebels, and cleared out, flooding neighboring and other countries with returnees and refugees.

The Libya war has had an impact in a number of African countries, not the least because these countries lost revenue from the remittances that their citizens working in oil-rich Libya had been sending home, and, in some cases, Libyan development aid. But in the case of the Tuaregs who returned all the way to Mali, they brought with them the weapons that they had got access to in the Libyan armed forces.

The Tuaregs, originally nomadic dwellers in the vast Saharan area, are Muslims and speakers of a Berber language. About a million live in Mali. They have complained that past Malian governments have neglected the northern areas in which they dwell. There have been periodic rebellions in Mali's vast northern triangle that is part of the original Tuareg homeland.

Now the largest rebel group, the MLNA (Movement for the Liberation of Azawad), is aiming at an independent Tuareg state, though there are other groups focused more on imposing Sharia law while remaining within Mali. Reinforced by the people from Libya and armed to the teeth with Libyan advanced weaponry, the rebellion that began this January was something the Malian armed forces found they could not handle. The small Malian army found itself outgunned, and took serious casualties, with stories circulating about massacred prisoners and civilians. Rebels seized a number of towns and displaced almost 100,000 people in this country of 15 million.

The soldiers who overthrew President Touré stated their main complaint to be that the government had failed to arm and supply them properly to deal with this new revolt, leading to unnecessary deaths and the potential loss of more than half of the national territory.

Mali is a poor and mostly agricultural and pastoral country, but it does have significant gold mining (in the Southwest, the opposite end of the country from where the Tuareg rebellion is happening). There is also current exploration for oil reserves to the North of the Tuareg area, but no substantial proven reserves yet.

The site of ancient African kingdoms and empires, Mali was taken over by France in the late 19^th Century "Scramble for Africa" as part of that country's rivalry with the British over control of the navigable upper reaches of the immense Niger River.

The French, trying to make their colony pay, promoted the cultivation of cotton. This was initially a great commercial success, though it displaced and pauperized many African growers of food crops. But by the 1990s, West African cotton prices were declining sharply, undercut in the world market by government subsidized exports from other countries, especially the United States. After years of wrangling, the subsidies are now supposed to be in the process of phase-out. However, control of the purchasing and marketing of the West African cotton crops by consortia of multinational corporations, working in collusion with local governments, is now keeping down the prices received by farmers.

In addition, the whole Sahel region, including Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, the Sudan and Niger, has been suffering from drought, which has killed many livestock and displaced many thousands of people.

President Touré himself carried out a military coup in 1991 against the former dictator Moussa Traoré. Touré was first elected president in 2002 and re-elected in 2007. Although some have extolled him as a paragon of democracy, there have also been accusations of corruption in his administration, including collusion with the trans-Saharan narcotics trade.

Several Malian political factions denounced the recent coup, and were joined in this by the African Union (which has suspended Mali's membership), the UN Secretariat, the European Union, the ECOWAS group of West African States and the U.S. State Department, which announced a cutoff of non-humanitarian aid.

But the main Marxist left-wing political party in Mali, SADI (African Solidarity for Democracy and Independence) hailed the coup as necessary to stop a military collapse which could leave Mali permanently broken in half. SADI and others on the left denounced President Touré for having sent Malian soldiers to their deaths without providing them with sufficient equipment and supplies to withstand the onslaught of Tuareg and Islamist rebels, and for possible collusion with Islamists and drug dealers.

As for the elections, SADI and others say that Touré's government had not updated electoral registries and that the fact that nearly half the country, geographically, is under the control of the Tuareg and Islamist rebels indicates that fair elections could not be held in such circumstances.

The Malian left also blames French imperialism for the situation in which the NATO attack on Libya unleashed a torrent of powerful armaments, and people who know how to use them, into the whole Sahel area.

Captain Sanogo held out an offer to talk to the Tuareg rebels. But they immediately took advantage of the confusion caused by the coup to advance briskly against army garrisons in the North .

Image: Map of the Tuareg rebellion in Azawad, Northern Mali showing rebel attacks as of March 15. By Orionist, CC 3.0.

Vote suppression takes place in Canada too

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 10:34:00 +0000

VANCOUVER, B.C. - The United States and Mexico have not been the only places where the right wing has committed electoral fraud to win recent elections.

There is evidence to suggest the Conservative Party of Canada used voter suppression schemes to help it win the 2011 elections.

While ballot boxes didn't actually go missing, the Conservatives may have flooded ridings (electoral districts) with automated, pre-recorded phone messages designed to disfranchise supporters of rival candidates.

In the Ontario riding of Guelph, it is alleged by Elections Canada, the country's election authority, that a Conservative operative using the alias "Pierre Poutine" made automated calls to suppress votes.

During the 2011 elections, there was a tight race between the leading Conservative and Liberal Party candidates. False messages, supposedly from Elections Canada, sent hundreds of rival non-Conservative voters chasing non-existent polling stations on Election Day.The theory behind the automated calls was that voters who ended up in the wrong place were usually unlikely to persist in finding another polling station and gave up trying to cast a ballot.

Despite the false phone calls, however, Liberal candidate Frank Valeriote beat Conservative challenger Marty Burke by a comfortable margin.

Now opposition parties and the media allege, based on a deluge of complaints from voters, that phony automated messages supposedly from Elections Canada were also aimed at voters in 70 other ridings (out of 308).

Some of the phone calls were sending voters to non-existent polling stations while others were of a harassing nature. In the Toronto riding of Eglinton-Lawrence last year, the Liberal Party alleges that hundreds of its supporters were called at inconvenient hours -- late night, supper time or on the Sabbath for Jewish voters by people representing themselves as Liberal Party workers.

Long-time Liberal MP Joe Volpe, who was defeated in the closely fought Toronto riding, complained that voters were inundated with harassing and repetitive phone calls falsely made in his campaign's name. His call display indicated the calls originated from North Dakota. Volpe wonders if the harassing phone calls cost him his seat in Parliament.

The Liberals are conducting their own investigation into what has been dubbed "the robo-calling scandal", finding witnesses and gathering evidence. Party leader Bob Rae claims that some of his party's candidates lost the election because of the automated phone calls. The New Democrat Party (NDP) and the Liberals have compiled examples from about 30 ridings where the automated message was identical: a call purporting to be from Elections Canada falsely informing the listener that their polling station was changed due to high voter turnout.

Elections Canada has traced the misleading phone calls in Guelph to Racknine, an Edmonton-based call center that worked for the Conservative Party's national campaign during the 2011 elections. While the company's owner said he was unaware that his business was used for fake calls, he said they sent out 10 million or more calls for the Conservatives during the last elections.

Elections Canada received over 700 complaints from voters across the country regarding the use of fraudulent, misleading or harassing phone calls during the 2011 election campaign. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are assisting the Agency in their investigation and have already approached Conservative party officials.

Since a good portion of the 70 ridings saw narrow Conservative victories, the misleading automated phone messages may have given or at least helped them win a majority government in Parliament with only 39.6 percent of voter support.

Prior to the elections, the Conservative Party had a minority government and was forced to make compromises with other parties in Parliament. The Conservatives are widely acknowledged to have the largest and most developed data base on voters in Canada, identifying not only it's own supporters but those of rival parties.

Ian Brodie, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's former Chief of Staff from 2006-2008, told the Globe and Mail (March 17) that the Ontario riding of Guelph indicates "a very devious local effort that could well lead to charges against several campaign volunteers." But he did not deny the possibility "of a national effort at subterfuge. Something seems to have gone on, on a scale l've never seen before."

Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin suggests that fraudulent phone calls may have also been used in the 2008 federal elections. During a closely contested battle between the Liberal and Conservative candidates in the Saanich-Gulf Island riding, an automated message flooded the riding urging people to vote for the NDP candidate who had already dropped out of the race, but his name remained on the ballot.

On Election Day, the NDP received 3,667 votes, or 6 percent of the vote. "This was good news for Mr. Lunn (the Conservative candidate). The bulk of those votes might otherwise have gone to the Liberal candidate, who lost to Mr. Lunn by 2,625," writes Martin in his Mar. 1 column. According to Martin, the automated phone calls were traced to the U.S.

Opposition parties, inside and outside Parliament, have condemned the robo-calling and are calling for an independent inquiry into the issue. "It is no exaggeration to state that 2011 election was stolen from Canadian voters, a vote fatally tainted by criminal tactics, " charges Communist Party of Canada (CPC) leader Miguel Figueroa. "Voter suppression has since become a key weapon in the arsenal of right-wing political forces in North America, including the Conservative Party, which has close links with the Republicans. The aim is to discourage as many people as possible from casting a ballot, making it easier for the wealthy and for highly-committed far-right groups to exercise political influence far beyond their actual level of public support. Right-wing parties like the Tories understand that victory requires mobilizing their own pro-corporate and far-right base while demobilizing the majority of the population. They want lower voter turnouts on election day, not higher." As well as supporting calls for an independent inquiry, the CPC is demanding new federal elections.

NDP Member of Parliament (MP) Pat Martin is critical of Conservative speaker Andrew Scheer's decision to limit discussion on the robo calling scandal in Parliament, blocking certain critical questions from being asked.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has denied his party's involvement behind the misleading phone messages that sent rival voters to false polling stations. Harper's Conservatives have also lashed out at opposition parties, accusing them of using similar tactics against some Conservative candidates during the 2011 elections. However, Conservative MPs supported an NDP motion to strengthen Election Canada's investigative powers to find the guilty party.

The latest scandal puts the Conservatives again at loggerheads with Elections Canada which alleges that the Conservatives have broken other election laws, such as ignoring spending caps on election spending in the 2006 federal elections that saw them come to power. Last year, the Conservatives pleaded guilty in court to overspending on advertising.

The automated, misleading phone calls are seen by critics as only part of a continued effort by Conservatives Party to suppress the vote of rival parties and maintain and strengthen their control over Parliament.

Last year, the Conservatives introduced identification requirements that are not easily met by low income people who are more likely to vote for left wing parties.

Those not on the voters list need to show one document with their name and address, such as a phone bill or driver's license or have a family member or neighbor vouch for them.

The Conservatives claimed they increased ID requirements to guard against voter fraud. Critics allege that these new requirements barred tens of thousands of low-income voters from casting a ballot in 2011. Low-income voters, some of whom move around more often and may not have a phone or a car, have a harder time obtaining documents with their name and address or a witness.

Tens of thousands of students and homeless people lack necessary ID with a street address. Most people living in rural areas and aboriginals living on reserves only have a postal box. Post election surveys have revealed that 5 percent of registered voters do not vote because they lack proper identification.

A former Elections Canada employee, who wished to remain anonymous, and who worked in a Vancouver riding polling station during the October 2008 elections, told this reporter of witnessing top officials actively discouraging poor voters from casting a ballot.

"People with no fixed address were not properly informed of what ID they needed to be eligible to vote."

The source said that people with no fixed address just need a family member or neighbor to vouch for them but they were not informed of this option. "They were sent home to retrieve documents that were not needed to frustrate their intent to vote. They targeted voters who looked poor because theses voters are more likely to vote for the left instead of the Conservatives", said the source. "In the advance polls, l witnessed top officials preventing at least 35 voters from voting a day over 3 days."

Photo: Grant Neufeld // CC 2.0

Europe and Africa: a genocidal history

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 13:09:00 +0000

This week, the German parliament will debate a motion presented by the opposition Social Democratic, Left and Green parties calling for Germany to formally apologize for its massacre of thousands of inhabitants of its former colony of South West Africa, now the Republic of Namibia, between 1904 and 1907. German behavior in Namibia was in fact genocidal, and an apology - and material restitution - is long overdue. But it was far from unique in Europe's colonial domination of virtually the whole of Africa.

During the "scramble for Africa" at the end of the 19th century, Germany had entered the game partly for economic and partly for geopolitical reasons, namely to counter the roles that France and Britain were already playing on that continent. The founder of modern Germany, Prince Otto von Bismarck, originally did not envision creating a large overseas colonial empire, but changed his mind and set in motion actions which led Germany to control all or part of modern Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Togo, Cameroon and Namibia.

In all of these places, European explorers, settlers, merchants and soldiers engaged in war crimes and crimes against humanity. In the case of Germany, a bad precedent was set by pioneering "explorer" Karl Peters, who outdid his very brutal Anglo-American rival, Henry Morton Stanley ("Dr. Livingstone, I presume?") in cheating and murdering Africans. Others followed in Peters' footsteps. Jesco von Puttkamer, Bismarck's nephew by marriage, was appointed German governor of the Cameroons. British historian Thomas Packenham, in his comprehensive 1991 book The Scramble for Africa, White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912, gives examples of the horrors perpetrated under the watch of Puttkamer and other German colonial officials:

...a Lieutenant Dominik was sent on an expedition to negotiate a treaty with the Bahoro. Instead, he shot down all the men and women in the village, and the fifty-four children that survived were put in baskets and drowned like kittens" (Packenham, "The Scramble for Africa", page 623)

The specific matter for which an apology is being demanded is the genocide directed against the people of Namibia by the German General Lothar von Trotha between 1904 and 1907. German settlers had been encroaching on the lands of the cattle raising Herero people. The Hereros rebelled in 1904, and General von Trotha not only mowed them down with modern weapons but also drove them in their thousands into the Kalahari Desert, where the vast majority starved or died of thirst. He meted out similar treatment to the Nama people in Southern Namibia. The end result of Trotha's effort was the extermination of three quarters of the Herero people and half of the Namas.

But why stop with Germany? No European colonial power in Africa, not the Dutch, the British, the French, the Belgians, the Germans, the Spanish nor the Italians has clean hands. The genocidal champion of the scramble for Africa was, without a doubt, Leopold II, King of the Belgians. He convinced the major powers to agree to let him have his way with the Congo (his personal project) with the pretext that he was engaged in a civilizing mission, for the benefit of the Congolese people. In fact his plan was to bleed them dry, murdering them if they resisted. All the other major countries agreed to support his "Congo Free State" project, U.S. President Chester Arthur being the first to sign on the dotted line. Belgian administrators, soldiers and merchants set up a system of exploitation, concentrating on wild rubber harvesting, so horrible that its like was not seen on earth until Hitler invaded Poland. The Congo Free State's "Force Publique", tortured or murdered villagers who did not cooperate. Troops had to account for ammunition they expended; to do so they had to cut off the hands of people they shot, to prove that they had not been using the bullets for hunting animals instead of humans. Frequently, Leopold's men cut off the hands of living people, including small children. Leopold had promised to fight against slavery; in fact he enslaved the Congolese to amass vast fortunes that he spent in adorning Belgium with pretentious monumental architecture. This was all kept hush-hush until a few outsiders ferreted out the information as to what was going on. They concluded that half of the Congo's population, or up to 10 million people, had been killed by Leopold's regime, and of course putting a money figure on the looting of the Congo was as difficult then as it would be now. Eventually, Leopold was forced to surrender the Congo to the Belgian government, which improved matters only slightly, and left the colony in a very poor state when they finally departed in 1960.

After the First World War, Germany was stripped of its African colonies, which were handed over to other European colonial powers whose behavior toward the indigenous people was sometimes almost as brutal. And the economic looting never stopped.

Many will applaud if the motion in the German parliament leads to a formal apology to Namibia's people. We also hear that Germany has been providing financial aid to Namibia. That's nice. But perhaps quite a bit more than apology and a few crumbs of foreign aid, and not just to Namibia, is in order.

U.S. and Korea implement free trade agreement

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 11:17:00 +0000

A long-awaited and controversial trade pact between the U.S. and the Republic of Korea came into effect on March 15. The deal was signed by President Obama last year as part of a series of jobs measures after passing both chambers of Congress with bipartisan support. Obama spoke to President Lee Myung-bak to welcome the landmark deal.

Lee was quoted as saying that he expects that "implementation of the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement will contribute to advancing economic development and strengthening relations of the two countries."

The agreement, which is expected to increase trade among the two countries by up to $6.9 billion annually, is the biggest since President Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994.

It also opens South Korea to two of the world's largest economies after a trade agreement with the European Union came into effect last July.

Lee said in a statement that he hopes the agreement will serve as a model for global free trade, while Obama said he anticipates a boost in trade, exports, investment and jobs as a result of removing trade barriers.

Tariffs will be eliminated for more than 7,000 South Korean products and 62,000 American products and services. Eighty percent of all goods traded between the two countries are covered under the deal, with 95 percent being covered over five years. Analysts in Seoul estimated that 300,000 jobs would be created over the next ten years.

Opponents of the agreement on both sides of the Pacific spoke out against the pact this week. Twelve hundred Koreans demonstrated in Seoul on March 14, saying that the deal will only benefit corporate interests at the expense of small businesses, workers and farmers.

Critics in Korea say only certain sectors of the economy, such as automobile and electronics, will reap the benefits of open trade with America. Weaker sectors such as agriculture and small businesses will be at a disadvantage due to increased competition with U.S. imports.

South Korea's export-oriented economy competes with other nations in the region for trade with the US. Taiwan's government is opposed to the deal, which will cost its economy $3 billion in exports, with the textile industry being hit hardest.

In the United States, Democrats and union groups initially opposed the plan, delaying its implementation for five years. The free trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Colombia received criticism over the lack of provisions protecting labor rights in those countries and domestic industries here at home.

President Leo Gerard of the United Steelworkers led the efforts against the trade deals when Obama sent the legislation to Congress last fall. He predicted that the Korean pact alone would cost 159,000 American jobs.

Human rights activists have pointed out that there is nothing preventing South Korean companies from performing manufacturing operations across the DMZ. There are currently 120 South Korean firms that employ 47,000 workers in North Korea.

Hyundai, for example, operates in the Kaesong Industrial Complex where it pays its workers less than half of what it paid Chinese workers.

Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont addressed this issue on the floor of the Senate prior to the vote in October saying that it would "force American workers to compete against North Korean workers who make as little as $8 a month." He criticized the president for urging lawmakers to support the agreement after opposing unfettered free trade as a candidate.

Obama told the AFL-CIO in Philadelphia on April 2, 2008, that he refused to accept "that we have to sign trade deals like the South Korea Agreement that are bad for American workers. What I oppose - and what I have always opposed - are trade deals that put the interests of multinational corporations ahead of the interests of Americans workers."

President Obama is set to visit his South Korean counterpart in Seoul for the second Nuclear Security Summit on March 26.

Photo: Obama and Lee Myung-bak shake hands. Andres Leighton/AP

All hail the (German) chief

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 10:27:00 +0000

BERLIN - It's hard to decide: which article on Germany's new president, East Germany's (the former German Democratic Republic's) pastor Joachim Gauck, was more misleading - the one in the New York Times, or in its European subsidiary, The International Herald-Tribune.

The latter, under the headline "A leader in touch with his people," described stirringly "his integrity and moral leadership," called him (and the country's Chancellor Angela Merkel) "former victims of Communist oppression," and recalled that "three of his four children fled to West Germany."

The New York Times, in a similar vein, told how, when gaining fame as head of the state archive on the East German State Security Office (Stasi - the national security organization of the former German Democratic Republic), "instead of using his position to wreak vengeance, he ran his organization with such fairness that it was informally named for him: the Gauck Authority." It also discovered that he had "long given voice to the concerns of ordinary people."

All of this is total nonsense; the work of spin-doctors and of his own rhetoric, very effective unless you are allergic to ham-acting and monotonous repetition of one theme.

His unceasing subject is his bitter condemnation not only of communism, but also of anything leaning leftward. It was inherited from his parents, both enthusiastic Nazis, and understandably magnified when his father, in 1951, was imprisoned for five years by the Soviets.

The attacks on Communists, garnished with emotional praise of newly won freedom and democracy in every second or third sentence, plus adulation for him in the mass media, won him the approval of all major parties in Germany, except the Left. The right-wing government parties are not alone in supporting him, and were late in doing so. Surprisingly, it was the traditionally left-of-center opposition parties, the Social Democrats and the Greens, which initiated and continued his relentless drive for the presidency, even after losing a first attempt two years ago. This agreement among all four made the very expensive election procedure a virtual farce. The only opposition came from the Left Party, whose candidate was hopelessly outnumbered. Gauck received 991 votes of the special Election Parliament, the Left candidate got 126, while 16 voted for minor candidates and 108 abstained.

What about the hype for Reverend Gauck? He was never a "courageous freedom fighter" in those bad old East German years, and never a victim. Indeed, though a bitter anti-Communist, he believed in getting along, and was treated more than favorably. He even met State Security officers (the "Stasi" he later attacked so mercilessly) and, while evidently keeping his meetings secret from his church superiors, won rare privileges: his three sons did not "flee" to the West as reported but were officially permitted to move there with their possessions and to return for visits when they pleased.

When socialism collapsed in the German Democratic Republic in 1990, the Federal Republic of Germany, the West German capitalist state, essentially annexed the entire country.

Gauck discovered his crusading spirit only when it became perfectly clear that the German Democratic Republic was doomed.

He acquired a reputation not of fairness but as vengeful destroyer of thousands of careers and lives. Of course Stasi nastiness was exposed, but so were very many guilty only of inevitable contacts with the authorities, including the Stasi. Like Nero in old Rome, his thumb, raised or lowered, decided many people's fate, sometimes their lives. Though praised by active dissidents, he was feared by many and despised by far more, including academicians from all.

For countless East Germans, Gauck's name inspired feelings like those inspired in the U.S. by J. Edgar Hoover or Joseph McCarthy. Sixty percent opposed him in a recent poll in his hometown of Rostock, and in a radio poll in a large part of East Germany, the disapproval rate had reached 80 percent when it was called off "because of technical problems!"

But after ten years, Gauck passed his job as modern Nero to successors. What about his own political views? He is not only a flowery, eloquent speaker, but a careful one, and usually speaks in terms vague enough to prevent clear conclusions. Few if any are presented in the two articles. But certain views have become apparent.

He opposed Occupy Wall Street; like any demands for restrictions on banks or financiers, it was "absurd." Freedom meant individual responsibility as opposed to a social state - more or less the same views as those of the Tea Party.

As for sending German troops and planes in Afghanistan, he said: "I find their deployment not good but acceptable and justified."

He denounced the German-Polish border established in 1945 as Stalinist injustice, although it had been decided upon by all the major powers at the time. The claims to lost regions were official by all West German governments Willy Brandt recognized the borders in 1970 (20 years later than East Germany). Such claims are still a basic demand of extreme nationalists.

Gauck's constant attacks on Communism are a key part of today's media propaganda. Their purpose and effect are to minimize the horrors of Auschwitz by equating them to "Communist dictatorship," and thus negate any dreams of a future socialist nation or world as "totalitarian."

When Gauck signed the "Prague Declaration" on June 3, 2008, stressing substantial similarities "between Nazism and Communism because of their crimes against humanity," it was the Jerusalem director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centers, Efraim Zuroff, who cautioned that "certain Eastern European circles like to see communist crimes condemned as sharply as the crimes of the Nazis." By creating completely inappropriate parallels, this removes blame from the Germans.

The editor of the far-right magazine "Junge Freiheit" wrote: Gauck's "plea for love of the fatherland and a will for freedom, this exemplary patriotism, can further the normalization of our country."

The head of the extremist group 'Die Freiheit' said that Gauck's election will "again provide tangible hope for our country." They just love his brand of "new patriotism."

They also like his views on immigrants. When the highly-touted book by the prominent Muslim-hater, Thilo Sarrazin, called Turks and Arabs less intelligent and a danger to the German nationality, Gauck carefully avoided open praise but said in easily understood code language that Sarrazin had "courage" to raise these issues - as if they had not been raised by hate-artists for the past thirty years!

So why in the world did the Social Democrats and Greens propose him, push him in 2010 and, in alliance with the viciously rightist, muslimophobic BILD newspaper help boot out Christian Wulff and open the door to Gauck?

It is truly hard to comprehend, but two reasons seem clear. First, they wanted to embarrass and weaken Angela Merkel and her Christian Democratic Party, to which the deposed Wulff belonged - but which was finally forced into approving Gauck. More decisive, it seems clear, was their attempt to split or weaken their main rival, the Left party. This party gained strength in 2009 because Greens and Social Democrats, when in the government, took sharply anti-social courses on many key issues, taxing the poor and middle classes, not the wealthy; delaying retirement age, charging more for medical expenses, and hitting the jobless.

After being forced into opposition they became socially conscious again, often commandeering the very demands of the Left they had opposed when in office. They have made gains with many forgetful voters but the threat of people moving leftwards is always present, especially in Eastern Germany where the Left is strongest. And with Gauck they have a symbol with which to label all rivals who oppose him as pro-GDR, pro-Stasi, pro-Stalinist.

But a few courageous observers, not only left-wingers, now warn that they may well have created a Frankenstein monster, a forceful, ambitious and eloquent force who is one of the most right-wing presidents since 1945. His position in very powerful but economically imperiled Germany opens up an almost frightening perspective.

One last note: In their last articles, neither the NYT nor the IHT even mentioned Beate Klarsfeld, the candidate of the Left. True, she was chanceless against all four other parties. But her record as a famous, active, life-long anti-Fascist did not merit the crude snub by both Social Democrats and Greens, who carefully avoided even a short meeting with her. She was largely ignored or primitively maligned in most of the press, falsely pictured as a friend of East Germany and the Stasi because they helped her a few times in hunting out Nazi war criminals. She is an elderly, not too strong person and had no chance, but she represented a true moral alternative. It would have been correct to treat her at least politely, for she, and she alone, offered a moral alternative to Gauck. But she received few votes aside from those of the Left party. One slim consolation: 108 delegates evidently held their noses and abstained.

One must hope that the Greens and the Social Democrats will not come to regret their so clever if unprincipled maneuver, and that Germany and all Europe may not suffer from it.

Photo: Joachim Gauck and partner Daniela Schadt attend Germany's Federal Assembly in Berlin. Markus Schreiber/AP

U.S. and Korea implement free trade agreement

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 16:36:00 +0000

A long-awaited and controversial trade pact between the United States and the Republic of Korea came into effect on March 15. The deal was signed by President Barack Obama last year as part of a series of jobs measures after passing both chambers of Congress with bipartisan support.

President Obama spoke to President Lee Myung-bak to welcome the landmark deal.

It also opens South Korea to two of the world's largest economies after a trade agreement with the European Union came into effect last July.

South Korea's export-oriented economy competes with other nations in the region for trade with the United States. Taiwan's government is opposed to the deal, which will cost its economy $3 billion in exports, with the textile industry being hit hardest.

In the U.S., Democrats and union groups initially opposed the plan, delaying its implementation for five years. The free trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Colombia received criticism over the lack of provisions protecting labor rights in those countries and domestic industries here at home.

Hyundai, for example, operates in the Kaesong Industrial Complex where it pays its workers less than half of what it paid Chinese workers.

President Obama is set to visit his South Korean counterpart in Seoul for the second Nuclear Security Summit on March 26.

Photo: Wisconsin retirees and workers protest free trade agreements. (Jenissee Volpintesta/wisaflcio)

Saving African children

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 16:23:00 +0000

Much interest has been aroused in the United States and beyond by the new video "Kony 2012", produced by the organization "Invisible Children."

Do the children of the countries in which Joseph Kony's ultra-violent Lord's Resistance Army has been on a decades-long rampage need saving, and if so, from what and how?

In fact, millions of children in those four countries (Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic and South Sudan) are in terrible straights.

The majority of the people in the countries in question, as in most African countries, are poor indeed, in spite of the fact that Africa is extremely rich, especially in mineral resources.

Let us look at one measure of poverty, namely Purchasing Power Parity. As compared to "nominal" Per Capita Gross Domestic Product, the PPP figure is different because it attempts an adjustment for differences in cost of living from one country to another.

According to World Bank figures for 2010, here is how three of these countries stack up. (South Sudan only just became independent from Sudan, so has no separate figures yet.) I include figures from the United States and Cuba for comparison. The Cuba figure is from other sources as Cuba is not listed in World Bank statistics.

Democratic Republic of the Congo, at $345 per year, is dead last-the poorest country in the world by this measure. Central African Republic is $783 per year. Uganda is $1,263.

The United States of America is $47,184.

Socialist Cuba is about $9,900 - far from rich, yet somehow children seem to survive better there.

How does that translate into public health statistics, as published by the United Nations World Health Organization? Again, these are 2010 statistics. And infant mortality means the number of children under one year old per thousand who die every year before their first birthday.

The infant mortality rate for the Democratic Republic of the Congo is 112. For the Central African Republic it is 106, and for Uganda it is 63. By comparison, the figure for the United States is 7. For Cuba it is 5.

Under-five mortality is a projection of the number of children under five years old who will die per year. This measure for the Democratic Republic of the Congo is 170, for the Central African Republic 159 and for Uganda 99. For the United States the figure is 8, and for Cuba it is 6.

These shocking statistics show us a holocaust of African children in the countries where Kony and his crew have operated.

However, they are similar to statistics for other African countries where Kony never set foot. African children are dying by the millions before their time.

They are dying from preventable diseases, because public health related infrastructure (safe food and water, for example) and basic health services (such as perinatal care) are inadequate to nonexistent.

They are dying because civil wars have displaced large numbers of people who then are at extra risk from disease while they are stuck for years in squalid refugee camps. They are dying of hunger and malnutrition.

The civil wars and foreign interventions (including Ugandan) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo alone have cost at least 5 million lives, including many children.

Kony, who now has at most 300 followers, is the tip of the iceberg.

One danger of focusing excessively on Kony is that it may cause us to ignore all the other factors, which cause the deaths of millions of African children, and thus the responsibility of our own society.

African peoples moved from colonialism to their current position of economic dependency on wealthy industrialized countries without being allowed to choose other routes to development.

Although Africa has much potential wealth, this has served to enrich multinational corporations based elsewhere, and a handful of African collaborators, rather than to develop African countries to the point that they could save these millions of children.

Where African leaders tried a different path, they were deposed and sometimes murdered.

Patrice Lumumba in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was killed in 1961 by agents of Belgian imperialism after being sentenced to death by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

So also was murdered Thomas Sankara, president of Burkina Faso in West Africa, often called the Che Guevara of Africa, in 1987.

The list of murdered progressive African leaders is long; so is the list of puppet rulers in the pocket of wealthy foreign interests.

French, British, Belgian, U.S. and other interests have made sure that the only African leaders who survive and prosper are the ones to dance to the tune of international monopoly capital. These receive economic and military aid, part of which lines their pockets and part of which is used to repress their own people. Those who diverge from this plan are lucky to escape with their lives.

And U.S. interests are smack in the middle of this. That is why channeling U.S. funds to people like Ugandan President Museveni is a dubious idea, and why sending U.S. troops to battle Kony is a bad one.

For Americans, the battle to save African children begins at home.

People who have been galvanized by the oversimplified story in "Kony 2012" should educate themselves as to this bigger picture, and then turn their energy against the entire system that causes this holocaust of African children.

Photo: One of the many Congolese children affected by foreign intervention and civil war. (Julien Harneis/CC)

Ending the horrors of the Afghan war

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 11:54:00 +0000

Now in its eleventh year, the United States' longest-ever war has been the scene of many horrendous crimes against innocent Afghan people. Among them, the mass killings of civilians during bombing and drone raids, home invasions and more.

But never a crime like the one committed March 11, allegedly by a staff sergeant who left his base in the middle of the night to force his way into homes in nearby villages in southern Afghanistan's Panjwai district, near Kandahar, slaughtering 16 Afghan civilians. Eleven were members of one family and nine were children. Some eyewitnesses said more than one gunman was involved. Ironically, the accused gunman was assigned to a unit engaged in a "village stability" operation.

Adding to concerns about multiple deployments of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the accused sergeant -- a trained sniper -- had served three deployments in Iraq, suffering a traumatic brain injury there, before being sent to Afghanistan.

Just days earlier, four villagers were killed and three others wounded when helicopters said to be hunting armed insurgents fired on them in eastern Afghanistan. Other widely-publicized occurrences this year included a video showing soldiers urinating on corpses of dead insurgents, and the "accidental" burning of Korans. In 2010, a group of U.S. soldiers purposely killed three Afghan civilians.

In their early responses and apologies to the Afghan people for the Panjwai killing spree, President Obama and other administration leaders pledged a full investigation. At the same time, the president emphasized that the incident underscores the need for a "responsible" withdrawal of U.S. forces in accord with the administration's already-announced plans for Afghans to be in control of security by the end of 2014.

Over 1,900 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, and over 14,000 wounded. More than 91,000 U.S. troops are still there. The administration has promised to withdraw another 23,000 by the end of summer, and to remove most combat troops by the end of 2014. At a time when federal spending on human services is being drastically cut, the war is costing an estimated $10 billion a month, and total spending is on track to reach at least $650 billion.

Many thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed by U.S. and NATO forces, and thousands more have died after being driven from their homes during the fighting.

If any good can emerge from the latest tragedy in Panjwai, it will be because the resulting waves of shock and grief among the American people will galvanize millions of us to demand speedy and complete withdrawal of all forces and contractors from Afghanistan.

The framework to express that demand exists. Public opinion has long favored withdrawal; polls have repeatedly shown large majorities of Americans believing the war isn't worth fighting.

Just last week a bipartisan group of 24 senators led by Senators Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Jeff Merkley, R-Ore., sent a letter to President Obama, saying "It is time to bring our troops home from Afghanistan." The Friends Committee on National Legislation (a Quaker lobby in the public interest) asks that we press our senators to sign on.

Early in 2011, Representative Barbara Lee, D-Calif., introduced H.R. 780, to limit funding for U.S. troops in Afghanistan to that which is needed for the "safe and orderly withdrawal" of all troops and contractors. The measure now has 67 co-sponsors.

In the wake of the latest tragedy, Afghanistan Veterans against the War and Iraq Veterans against the War are calling on us to urge our representatives in Congress to sign onto H.R. 780, and to take other actions for U.S. withdrawal.

Also early last year, U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., introduced S. 186, calling on the president to submit a plan for "phased redeployment of U.S. combat forces" starting July 1, 2011, with an end date for withdrawal.

And Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., introduced H.R. 651, to ban "permanent basing or military presence" of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, with a date for "complete, safe and orderly" withdrawal of all troops, contractors and Defense Department employees. That bill now has 69 co-sponsors.

The finest memorial to the victims of the Panjwai massacre and the thousands of Afghan civilians who preceded them, and to the U.S. and NATO troops who have died or been wounded in Afghanistan, will be the speedy withdrawal of all foreign troops and contractors from the country, and the Obama administration's commitment to a policy of peaceful resolution of conflicts, not only in south Asia and the Middle East but around the world as well.

Photo: At a March 12 vigil in Oakland, Calif. Marilyn Bechtel/PW

Kony 2012 explodes on world stage, leaves questions in wake

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 11:38:00 +0000

Kony2012 exploded onto the world stage last week with a savvy, social media-based campaign that is reaching tens of millions of people with its simple message: Stop Joseph Kony, child abductor.

It's a message with which no one could possibly disagree. Kony kidnaps children, makes them soldiers and forces them to commit atrocities. Let's stop him.

Yet, by making complex situations simple, it means leaving out crucial information. (See UNICEF video below.)

For example, in 2008, Ugandan armed forces with U.S. military support tried to stop Kony. Called Operation Lightening Thunder, the intervention was supposed to end the reign of terror by Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army.

It failed miserably. Kony and the LRA got away and retaliated, killing nearly 1,000 Congolese people, displacing 180,000 and hundreds more children were abducted for forced conscription. The military operation further regionalized the conflict, sending the LRA into Central African Republic.

The LRA hasn't been active in Uganda since 2005, the same year the International Criminal Court indicted Kony and his lieutenants for war crimes, including sexual enslavement and forced enlistment of children. The LRA has moved its criminal operation to neighboring countries, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the newly-formed South Sudan, and now, since the military fiasco, the CAR.

When the court issued its arrest warrants for Kony, Ugandans and others asked why didn't the court also indict Ugandan troops?

During current President Yewari Museveni's regime, Ugandan troops forced thousands of people in northern Uganda, mainly Achioli people, into displacement camps, reportedly forcing them to live - and die - in horrendous conditions.

Professor Tim Allen of the London School of Economics went to northern Uganda in 2004 to research the work of the ICC in relation to the conflict on behalf of the charity, Save the Children and saw the internment camps. He was among those who met with the international court's prosecutor about the LRA-only indictment. Allen co-edited "The Lord's Resistance Army: Myth and Reality."

Allen told an audience at a talk in London that the prosecutor was pointedly asked why warrants had not been issued for those Ugandan officials responsible for the "mass forced displacement," which according to the ICC is a form of genocide. This uneven application of international law begged the question: were politics at work.

Uganda's Museveni enjoys support in American ruling circles, in particular among the Christian rightwing. Evangelical churches in Uganda get support from their U.S. counterparts and influence Ugandan politics.

In 2005, the Museveni government changed its reportedly effective HIV/AIDS prevention strategy and adopted a U.S. funded abstinence-only program pushed during George W. Bush's years.

A few years later, U.S. evangelicals helped craft anti-gay legislation in Uganda that included the death penalty and forcing citizens to report any homosexual activity or face imprisonment.

Other connections between Uganda and U.S. far-right Christian groups include the initiator of Kony 2012, Invisible Children. According to Alternet, the group receives sizable sums from groups with an anti-gay agenda and finds common cause with the Ugandan government.

This may explain the selectivity of Invisible Children's campaign, says the author, ignoring "their provisional partner, the government of Uganda - whose president shot his way into power using child soldiers, before Joseph Kony began using child soldiers."

Uganda is strategically located in Africa's natural resource-rich Great Lakes region. Oil reserves on the scale of Mexico's were recently discovered in northern Uganda.

Africa is a battleground for corporations and states to get access and control of natural resources. U.S. corporate and military interests, worried about the rise of China - including its influence in Africa, are sure to see "vital" U.S. interests in the region.

Despite the wealth of the region, more children die of poverty, hunger and preventable diseases than any other reason.

Responding to both lobbying pressures and U.S. "interests," President Barack Obama ordered last year some 100 U.S. military troops to Uganda to assist in capturing Kony.

The move drew praise from both sides of the aisle, most notably from Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma who travels to Uganda regularly. Inhofe is featured in Invisible Children's Kony 2012 video. He is a well-known far-right politician and reportedly a member of a secretive fundamentalist group called The Family that has influence in the United States and Uganda.

No matter what the motivations, many people say capturing and trying Kony would be a positive step for justice.

Allen appreciates that Kony 2012 has placed an "emphasis on capturing him and prosecuting him by the ICC" as opposed to killing him, he said in a recent email interview.

However, there are powerful forces that do not want a trial.

"President Museveni does not want a trial in The Hague - which would implicate him and the Ugandan army. He would rather Kony was killed," he said. "It could prove embarrassing for U.S. allies."

Noting that the U.S. never ratified the treaty recognizing the ICC, Allen said if the campaign "pushes the U.S. towards ratification that would be great."

In the end, Allen says, Kony 2012 may be helpful in shedding light on a complicated area of the world.

"If Kony is captured it would not resolve the problems of the region. But it would be a positive step. The publicity would be useful."

Photo: From Invisible Children's Kony 2012 campaign.

Appeals urged to release Iranian teacher sentenced to death

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 11:04:00 +0000

The Committee for the Defence of the Iranian People's Rights (CODIR) is calling for pressure to be placed upon the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the case of Abdolreza Ghanbari, a school teacher and university professor of Persian literature, who has been sentenced to death.

Mr. Ghanbari was arrested on the 27th December 2009 following demonstrations against the regime in which he did not even take part. His wife, daughter and witnesses have made it clear that Mr. Ghanbari was at home during the time of the demonstrations but they have been denied the chance to present their evidence, as Mr. Ghanbari was sentenced by Tehran's revolutionary court charged with "waging war against God."

A request for pardon made to the Commission of Justice in Tehran was rejected this week meaning that the path is now clear for the state to proceed with Abdolreza Ghanbari's execution.

Mr. Ghanbari has been incarcerated in the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran where he was beaten, interrogated and forcibly made to confess to unproven charges against himself. The Iranian regime has accused Mr. Ghanbari of possessing suspicious e-mail, having had contacts with outside TV stations, and colluding with forces hostile to the regime.

Abdolreza Ghanbari has no known political connections. He was previously involved in teachers' trade union activities until the union was eventually dissolved in 2007. Other than this, Mr. Ghanbari is known only for his teaching and cultural activities, trying not to do anything that may warrant the attention of the authorities.

The case of Abdolreza Ghanbari is one of many that particularly involve teachers in Iran.

Just recently, in an open letter to the Tehran Attorney on March the 2nd, the Teachers Trade Association of Iran described the situation of one of its incarcerated members, Rasoul Bodaghi, pointed out the conditions of other imprisoned teachers, and demanded their temporary release in time for the Iranian New Year (March 21st).

Rasoul Bodaghi, is an Education Management professional, a Social Sciences teacher, and a board member of the Teachers Trade Association. He was arrested on 1st of September, 2009, and after 10 months was finally tried, charged with action against the national security. On August 3rd of 2010 he was sentenced to 6 years imprisonment and banned for five years from social and cultural activities. He has been in prison now for two and a half years without even some time off to attend his mother's funeral. Mr. Bodaghi is married with three daughters, two of them under 6 years old. After his detention, his pay was also stopped and later he was fired from his job.

In May of 2011, Mr. Bodaghi went on hunger strike, during which he was transferred to solitary confinement in Gohardasht prison. His demands were:

* Full implementation of prisons' statute, including visits, access to phone and the right to furlough

* Ending any and all forms of pressure on the families of political prisoners

* Immediate improvement of prisoners' welfare and conditions

The Teachers Trade Association has also drawn attention to the cases of other teachers including Ali Pour-Soleymani, Mohamad Davari and Abdullah Momeni all of whom are serving time in prison under harsh conditions.

Assistant General Secretary of CODIR Jamshid Ahmadi has said that the solidarity organisation is appalled at the treatment of detained teachers in Iran.

"The cases of Abdolreza Ghanbari and Rasoul Bodaghi in particular are a clear example of the Iranian regime's lack of tolerance of the intellectuals in its society and its failure to address even basic human rights. These cases once again show the Islamic Republic's contempt for the Universal Declaration for Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

We urge human rights, labour and trade union organisations around the world to write to the Iranian government expressing their outrage at these arrests and the demand to stop the execution of Mr. Ghanbari."

Alex Gordon, national president of the UK's National Union of Rail, Maritime & Transport Workers (RMT) and honorary president of CODIR, said:

"We demand the immediate release of Mr. Abdolreza Ghanbari into the safety of his family. Yet again the Iranian regime has demonstrated its contempt for the rights of workers to organise freely and independently in trade unions and its appalling record of victimising innocent trade unionists in violation of International Labour Organisation conventions and internationally recognised standards. Abdolreza Ghanbari and Rasoul Bodaghi will not be forgotten victims of a vicious, anti-worker regime. Their names and the struggle for their freedom will be an inspiration to those who support the rights and freedoms of Iranian workers all over the world."

PLEASE SEND APPEALS immediately and before 15th March 2012 to:

Leader of the Islamic Republic
Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei
The Office of the Supreme Leader
Islamic Republic Street - End of Shahid Keshvar-Doust Street,
Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran

Email: info_leader@leader.ir
Twitter: "Call on #Iran leader @khamenei_ir to halt the execution of Abdolreza Ghanbari" Salutation: Your Excellency

For further places to direct appeals, see CODIR's website.

Alberta oil sands: bear death toll rises, Lakotas protest

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:09:00 +0000

Black bears are frequently wandering into the oil sands of Alberta, Canada in search of food. And they are being shot on site, by the hundreds, by conservation officers. As the dirty fuel known as 'tar sands' is being mined, the local wildlife is being subjected to the consequences.

The National Wildlife Federation has stated that the senseless killing of these bears (and other animals, including wolves and caribou) can be avoided, but the Canadian oil industry and government are putting profits before responsible environmental welfare and management.

Alberta Sustainable Resource Development noted that Fish and Wildlife conservation officers slaughtered 145 black bears in 2011, after the animals were drawn to garbage in the oil sands region. That was nearly three times the number of bears killed the year before, and the highest in recent history, said spokesman Darcy Whiteside.

NWF scientist Doug Inkley commented, "The [oil industry's] approach seems to be 'if it becomes a problem, kill it,' rather than prevent the problem in the first place. Humans are destroying bear habitat and not disposing of garbage properly. So, we kill the bears.

"This is 'death by a thousand cuts.' It may seem like there are plenty of black bears now, but look at what's happening: the tar sands area that could be developed is the size of Florida, and this is going to be repeated over and over and over if we keep encroaching on their habitat."

David Mizejewski, also with the NWF, added, "We make the choice about whether these bears are a problem or not. We've chosen to destroy their habitat and turn it into a garbage dump. We can make smarter choices and avoid conflicts with bears."

He explained that a short-term precautionary measure might be to have bear-proof trashcans, as the animals can quickly become urban scavengers when given an incentive. The only long-term answer, however, that would really solve the problem would be to cease oil sands development altogether, to prevent outright decimation of the bears' environment.

"These animals don't have to die," Mizejewski concluded. "They're being slaughtered in part due to America's addiction to dirty oil."

That growing addiction - demonstrated recently by Republicans pushing strongly for the Keystone XL pipeline (and attacking President Obama for turning down the project) - is posing a threat not only to animals and the environment, but Native Americans as well:

On Mar. 5, five Lakotas on Pine Ridge Indian land in South Dakota were arrested after blocking two tar sands pipeline trucks from entering their territory, in what played out as a six-hour standoff. The trucks, emblazoned with the words, 'Calgary, Alberta, Canada,' refused to turn around, the drivers claiming they "had corporate rights that supersede any other law."

Debra White Plume, one of the activists arrested, remarked, "We formed a blockade to stop tar sands oil mine equipment from entering our lands. We oppose the tar sands oil mine in solidarity with Mother Earth and our First Nation allies."

Photo: Clifford Skarstedt/ Peterborough Examiner/AP

Syria: a way out

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 09:58:00 +0000

There are two tales about the crisis in Syria.

In one, the vast majority of Syrians have risen up against the brutality of a criminal dictatorship. The government of Bashar al Assad is on the ropes, isolated regionally and internationally, and only holding on because Russia and China vetoed United Nations intervention. U.S. Secretary to State Hillary Clinton describes Assad as "a war criminal," and President Barak Obama called him a "dead man walking."

In the other, a sinister alliance of feudal Arab monarchies, the U.S. and its European allies, and al-Qaeda mujahedeen are cynically using the issue of democracy to overthrow a government most Syrians support, turn secular Syria into an Islamic stronghold, and transform Damascus into a loyal ally of Washington and Saudi Arabia against Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

Like most stories, there is truth and fiction in both versions, but separating myth from reality is desperately important, because Syria sits at the strategic heart of the Middle East. Getting it wrong could topple dominoes from Cairo to Ankara, from Beirut to Teheran.

There is no question but that last March's demonstrations were a spontaneous reaction to the Syrian government's arrest and torture of some school children in Deraa. What is more, that the corruption of the Assad family-they dominate the army, the security forces, and much of the telecommunications, banking and construction industry, coupled with the suffocating and brutal security forces, underlies the anger that fuels the uprising.

But is also true that outside players-specifically the monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the U.S., as well as Sunni extremist organizations-all have irons in the fire. Indeed, there is the profound irony that, while the GCC condemns Syria for oppressing its citizens, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are crushing homegrown democratic movements in their own countries. Or that Washington should be on the same page as Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current leader of al-Qaeda.

And while there is no denying the brutality of the Assad regime, or that some 7,500 to 8,000 Syrians have died over the past year, Israel's 2008-09 invasion of Gaza-Operation Cast Lead-killed a greater percentage of Palestinians per capita. When countries in the region tried to stop the Gaza War, it was the U.S. who blocked any UN action. In the Middle East, double standards and hypocrisy are par for the course.

The Syrian crisis is not a simple "good guys vs. bad guys," democrats vs. a dictator, with the overwhelming majority confronting an entrenched, thuggish elite.

First, while the current uprising represents a substantial number of Syrians, the Assad regime has domestic support. As Jonathan Steele of the Guardian (UK) points out, a recent You Gov Siraj poll on Syria commissioned by The Doha Debates and funded by Qatar found that, while a majority of non-Syrian Arabs wanted Assad to resign, 55 percent of Syrians wanted him to remain.

The poll was hardly a ringing endorsement of Assad-half of that 55 percent wanted free elections-but it reflects the fact that most Syrians fear a civil war. That is hardly a surprise. The U.S. invasion and subsequent civil war in Iraq flooded Syria with millions of refugees and terrible tales of murder, torture, and sectarian bloodshed. And Syrians had a front row seat for Lebanon's 15-year civil war.

A Syrian dissident, Salim Kheirbek, told the New Yorker "No more than thirty percent of the people are involved in the resistance. The other 70 percent, if not actually with the regime, are silent, because it is not convincing to them, and especially after what happened in Iraq and Libya. These people want reforms, but not at any price."

While the recent referendum on reforming the Syrian constitution was widely dismissed by the U.S., Europe and the GCC, it appears that close to 60 percent of the voters turned out to overwhelmingly endorse the proposals.

Part of the Assad regime's support comes from minority communities, in particular Christians and Alawites, who, make up 10 percent and 12 percent respectively, of Syria's 24 million people. Alawites are a variety of Shiite, and the sect dominates the government. Sunnis make up the majority. Syria also has Kurdish, Druze, Armenian, Bedouin, and Turkomen communities. It is estimated that the country has 47 different religious and ethnic groups.

Alawites and Christians have reason for concern. As a recent New York Times story reported, demonstrators in Hom, one of the centers of the uprising, chanted "Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the grave." Al-Qaeda routinely describes Shiites as "a bone in Islam's throat" and targets Shiite communities in Iraq and Pakistan.

Nor is Syria isolated regionally or internationally. While the Arab League has condemned the Assad government, not everyone in the organization is on board. Damascus has support in Lebanon and Iraq, and neutrality from Jordan (Amman also remembers the chaos of the Iraq war). Algeria-North Africa's big dog on the block-has been sharply critical of the League.

"The Arab League is no longer a league and it's far from Arab," Algerian State Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadam told Agence France Presse, "since it asks the Security Council to intervene against one of the [the League's] founding members, and calls upon NATO to destroy the resources of Arab countries."

On Feb. 15, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly for Assad to step down, but countries like Brazil and India, while deploring the violence, have made it clear they oppose anything involving military intervention or arming the main opposition force, the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Even Turkey, while calling for Assad's resignation, has begun hedging its bets, and dropped any talk of creating "safe zones" along its border with Syria.

Most countries fear that a Syrian civil war would spread to Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, and maybe into the Gulf states.

While the situation on the ground in Syria is hardly clear, the Syrian Army and security services appear to be sticking with Assad for now. If that continues, the rebels may keep the pot boiling, but, without outside intervention by NATO, it is unlikely they can overthrow the regime. On the other hand, after a year of fighting, Damascus has not succeeded in ending the rebellion.

It short, it looks like a stalemate, in which case the current campaign to aid the rebels and force Syria's president out is exactly the wrong strategy and one guaranteed to prolong the bloodshed.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and several U.S. senators have called for arming the FSA, a particularly bad idea because it is not at all clear who they are. There are persistent reports that the organization includes a goodly number of jihadists from Iraq, Libya, and Saudi Arabia. In any case, handing out weapons to people you don't know, to fight people you don't like is a formula for repeating the Afghanistan disaster.

Second, the demand for regime change-and threats to charge Assad and those around him with war crimes-makes this a war to the death. Why would the Damascus government compromise if the end game is exile and prison?

The only solution to a stalemate is negotiations. The Russians have offered to host such talks, but so far the fractious Syrian National Council says it won't talk until Assad resigns. The U.S. and the GCC have similar positions. However, talks will only work if both sides have an incentive to enter them, which means dropping the regime change demand, ending the sanctions, and shelving any talk of aiding the FSA.

Maybe events have gone too far, but at this point that doesn't appear to be the case. Instead of condemning them, the Russians and the Chinese should be encouraged to negotiate a ceasefire and the opposition should take up the Russian's offer to host talks with the Assad government. The recent referendum can serve as a jumping off point for re-writing the constitution.

For this to happen, however, the regional players, the U.S., and the European Union will have to stop using Syria as a proxy battleground. As Dan Meridor, Israel's intelligence Minister, told the New York Times, supporting the Syrian uprising was important because, "If the unholy alliance of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah can be broken, that is very positive."

For whom? Is this about freedom and democracy, or a calculated move on a regional chessboard?

This article originally appeared in Dispatches from the Edge. Photo: Freedom House // CC 2.0

French presidential front-runner proposes sharp tax hike for the rich

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 16:06:00 +0000

In an attempt to mobilize his base, Socialist Party presidential candidate François Hollande proposed a sharp tax hike for high-income earners. The move came as a surprise to some in his own party and is seen as an effort to unite the French left ahead of the April 22 presidential elections.

Hollande replaced the initial primary front-runner, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who has been hit with much-publicized allegations of sexual assault. Hollande was widely expected to run a campaign geared towards capturing centrist voters. His tax proposal calls for an increase in the top tax bracket from 48 percent to 75 percent for people earning over €1 million ($1.3 million).

Current President Nicolas Sarkozy scoffed at the plan, calling it an improvisation, which showed "dismaying amateurism." But French voters responded positively to the proposal, with recent polls showing a slight uptick in support for Hollande.

Hollande's proposal sparked claims among some economists that high wage earners, including sports figures, would rather depart the country than pay more in taxes. The tax increase is expected to affect between 7,000 and 30,000 people (in a country of over 65 million).

When France's football association criticized the plan, Hollande responded on Sunday by questioning whether the players' performance justified their astronomical salaries. Athletes are among the most well-paid workers in France, although their European counterparts earn much more.

"This measure is not about bringing a single euro into state coffers, it is motivated by a form of patriotism that the country needs," Holland told a group of supporters in Lyon. "My campaign is one for the middle class, not the privileged."

The Socialist candidate is in a stronger position to defeat first-term President Sarkozy, who trails behind Hollande in issues pertaining to jobs and the economy. Hollande's message capitalizes on Sarkozy's perceived affinity towards the affluent, and is considered likely to resonate with workers who see rising executive salaries and bonuses in the face of stagnant wages.

Last year, a group of 16 of France's wealthiest citizens signed a petition asking the government to raise taxes. "We are conscious of having benefited from a French system and a European environment that we are attached to and which we hope to help maintain," they said in a statement. Among the signatories were billionaire heiress Lilaine Bettencourt of L'Oreal and Jean-Cyril Spinetta, president of Air France.

French voters have become increasingly frustrated with the slow pace of economic growth, a 9.8 percent unemployment rate, the fiscal crisis haunting the eurozone, and the prospects of more austerity measures. Opinion polls show Hollande with a double-digit lead in a hypothetical run-off election, to be held May 6.

Hollande, who supports a financial transaction tax popularly known as the Robin Hood tax and who once claimed to be the "enemy of finance," is also facing criticism from the left. He came under fire last month for telling foreign journalists that, "Today, there are no communists in France, or not many," before quickly backpedaling.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the candidate of the Left Front, which includes the Communist Party of France, says he is "convinced that the more François Hollande plays the anti-capitalist violin, the more he validates the words I use. It enlarges our scope." If Mélenchon does not come out on top in the first round, his supporters are expected to coalesce behind Hollande.

Mélenchon, as well as Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front, and François Bayrou of the centrist Democratic Movement, have each failed to receive more than 20 percent support from voters when asked about their preference in the first round.

Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement suffered a crushing defeat when it lost control of the Senate last fall. It was the first time the Socialists gained a majority of seats in the Senate in the Fifth Republic (1958-present), and the third consecutive senatorial election in which left-wing parties gained new seats.

The prospects of passing such tax-the-rich legislation will depend on parliamentary elections, which will be held one month after the presidential run-off. If enacted, France would have one of the highest top tax rates in Europe, surpassing that of Sweden (56.6 percent), Denmark (55.4 percent) and the Netherlands (52 percent).

Photo: Hollande shakes hands with supporters as he arrives at a campaign meeting in eastern France. Mathieu Cugnot/AP

India’s general strike shows unprecedented working-class unity and anger

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:33:00 +0000

In the largest general strike since India's independence, millions of workers went on strike Feb. 28 for stronger labor laws and to protest the rising cost of living. All 11 national labor federations plus 5,000 unaffiliated unions participated. This included labor federations associated with the ruling Congress party.

"This a historic occasion as for the first time all the major trade unions irrespective of political affiliations are coming together to protest anti-labor polices of the government," said Gurudas Dasgupta, president of AITUC, the largest of the left-affiliated trade unions and a member of Parliament.

The novelty of the situation is that ruling party's trade union federation, INTUC, and the main opposition rightist party's union affiliate, BMS, jointly served a strike notice in December to the government for a joint action with left-led unions. Some estimated the total number at 100 million workers who went on strike.

Inflation in India is sky high. Unemployment is widespread. Employers violate at will labor laws. The income level of working families is declining.

At the same time, industrialists' private profits are growing and this is touted as the economic growth of India.

The other side of that "growth" is the working class bears the pinch. So in an unprecedented display of working-class unity, workers demanded job security, tougher labor laws, price control and a robust role of the public sector in employment and social security.

Public sector employees are represented by unions in sectors such as banking, insurance, defense, telecommunications, electricity and power utilities, along with teachers.

In India, as in many other countries, unions are affiliated with political parties. There is a large chunk of the working class that is unaffiliated and unorganized. But even nonunion workers joined their brethren in joint picketing actions, mass rallies and street marches in every state of India.

In the state of West Bengal, where Communists lost the elections last year to a rightist party, the new chief minister of the state vowed to crush the strike, despite her using strikes against the former left-led government. She threatened government workers with a "break in service," which would mean their seniority would be wiped out along with their pensions and other benefits.

However the union associated with her party's main ally was a leading segment of the strikers.

Bank employees evoked a total response. All India Bank Employees Union General Secretary Vishwas Tyagi said even private sector bank employees, where the union has no membership, went on strike. The country's financial center, Bombay, was affected even after warnings from the chamber of commerce to keep away from "this political agenda."

It is estimated that the strike cost industrialists the equivalent of $2 billion.

In a last ditch effort to avoid the strike, India's prime minister made an appeal to the unions to desist from the industrial action just two days before the strike date. Unions responded that they gave notice of the action two months before and they could get a response only two days before was much too late.

Along with the economic impact is the political one. The Congress-led government is in real difficulty. Currently elections in five states assemblies are being held, where the ruling party is likely to loose.

In a joint press statement, the unions' leadership warned the federal and state governments that the strike is a " signal that the working people and their trade unions would no way accept such indifference and neglect and carry forward the struggle to a higher pitch if their basic demands are not addressed by the government through concrete remedial action."

Photo: Strikers protest high prices and violations of labor laws in New Delhi. (AP/Saurabh Das)

Cuba reaffirms ties with China

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 09:50:00 +0000

In line with half a century of firm ties between Cuba and the People's Republic of China, and strengthened relations recently, Cuban Council of State Vice President Marino Murillo Jorge journeyed to Beijing in late February for a "working visit."

Cuba became the first West Hemisphere nation to recognize the government of revolutionary China in 1960 when Cuban leader Fidel Castro interrupted a speech to ask whether or not diplomatic relations should be opened with the People's Republic. A million hands went up. In a reciprocal token of well-timed outreach, former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, alone among foreign leaders, visited beleaguered Cuba in 1993 following the Soviet Bloc collapse.

Murillo's weeklong discussions this time involved Chinese Vice-Prime Minister Hui Liangyu. They included a report on the Cuban Communist Party's recent party conference and proposals for new collaborative agricultural, scientific, commercial, and economic projects. Murillo, member of the Cuban party's Political Bureau and coordinator of Cuba's current economic reforms, met with top economic planners representing China's National Commission of Reform and Development.

The present era of cooperation began in Nov. 2004, when Chinese President Hu Jintao brought 200 businesspersons and investors to Cuba. He ended up signing a 16-point bi-national agreement covering bio-technical, higher education, telecommunications, nickel extraction initiatives, and more, with China providing favorable credit terms.

Follow-up took place in Havana in 2009, as national assembly presidents of the two nations agreed on new financial and commercial arrangements, and prepared for Cuban port, radio and television, and bulk transport modernization. In Dec. 2011, Cuban Council of State Vice-Minister Ricardo Cabrisas, meeting in China with the inter-governmental Cuba-China Commission, signed updates and reported on the 6th Cuban Communist Party Congress of that year.

Bilateral trade rose from $590 million in 2004 to $1.8 billion in 2010. China became Cuba's second largest trading partner, exceeded only by Venezuela. Chinese trade with Latin America overall has increased 42 percent over five years.

China has supplied Cuba with domestic electrical appliances, medical and electronic equipment, buses (8000 so far), locomotives, and bicycle-making machines. Cuba provides sugar, rum, cigars, high technology medications and vaccines, and 14 percent of the nickel China needs for steel production. China's Sinopec oil corporation has assumed a lead role in exploring underwater oil deposits off Cuba's northern coast. Sinopec's massive Scarabeo 9 drilling platform arrived recently from China.

Chinese specialists have upgraded Cuba's meteorological and earthquake-detection capabilities. Cuba's Molecular Immunology Center (MIC) recently announced that the anti-lung cancer vaccine CimaVax-EGF, made by the Cuban-Chinese Biotech Pharmaceutical Ltd (BPL) Company, would undergo trials in China. MIC head Augustin Lage visited China in February to assess use of Nimotuzumab monoclonal antibody, a BPL product directed at several human several cancers.

Offering Spanish language courses to Chinese students, the University of Havana recently awarded 49 diplomas in China, where students were taught by Cuban professors, while 71 others graduated in Havana. Altogether since 2004, 3,497 Chinese students have qualified at Cuban universities in medicine, nursing, humanities, tourism, and Spanish language and culture.

Cuba and China maintained ties over decades despite Cuban reliance economically and politically upon the Soviet Union, China's ideological rival. Asked by interviewer Ignacio Ramonet about socialism's future, Fidel Castro held up China as an example, as "a great power that did not destroy its history, a great power that held to certain fundamental principles, that sought unity, that didn't fragment its forces."("Fidel Castro, My Life," Scribner, 2006, p.623.)

An analyst cited by Inter Press Service in 2006 explained that Cuba views China as "a trustworthy, stable partner not imposing political conditions." These are qualifications that Cuba, dealing with post-Soviet economic crisis, European hostility, and U.S. economic blockade, would have found useful.

Chinese citizen Zhao Xiokai has his own reasons to value tight Cuban - Chinese relations. He had persuaded 10,000 Cubans to testify to peace by putting signatures on a replica of the 2008 Beijing Olympics torch, which would eventually be displayed in an Olympics museum in Beijing. But after failing to obtain Fidel Castro's signature on another replica to be signed by 100 world leaders, he returned to China.

There, he learned Castro would sign. In Feb. 2012, Zhao Xiokai returned to Cuba so Fidel Castro could be the first to sign the special replica. He did so, and also wrote: "To struggle for peace is to struggle for the life of our species." As Zhao Xiokai told a reporter, "Fidel is the one who speaks out most against nuclear war and is the one most concerned about these things in the world. Cuba is a country with great development in health care and education, and doesn't have anything to do with nuclear arms."

Photo: "Cuba's president Raul Castro speaks during the Communist Party Conference in Havana, Cuba." Ismael Francisco, Prensa Latina/AP

Iranian people confront regime plus war threat

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 10:30:00 +0000

The parliamentary election in Iran, scheduled for March 2, has got precious little to do with a genuine exercise in democracy or with offering an opportunity for a popular alternative to emerge. The political opposition is completely barred from the election. Almost all political groupings of reformist, democratic and left orientation have called for a boycott of the sham.

Friday's parliamentary election will be followed by a presidential election planned for June 2013. The one is in many respects a rehearsal for the other, with many observers seeing the March elections as a showdown between supporters of President Ahmadinejad on one side and conservative clergy close to Ayatollah Khamenei on the other. Much of Ahmadinejad's rhetoric of late has been aimed as much at positioning his supporters in the internal power struggle in Iran, as it has been about the international situation.

Khamenei himself has acknowledged the sensitivity of the poll this week, stating that, "To some extent, elections have always been a challenging issue for our country," going on to ask people "to be careful that this challenge does not hurt the country's security."

This is clearly a coded warning to any reformist and opposition groups not to "rock the boat" especially in the face of the external threat from the U.S., EU and Israel. According to confirmed reports from Iran, nearly 600 candidates for Friday's election, including a group of current MPs in the outgoing parliament, have been barred from running. They are deemed to be either "non-conformist," "not reliable" or "too independent and outspoken"!

The leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran have just marked the 33rd anniversary of the February 1979 revolution, with all of the contradictions that brings. Contrary to what it would have the world believe, the anniversary is a difficult time for the leadership of the Islamic Republic. On the one hand it gives them the opportunity to position themselves as the inheritors of the mantle of 1979, a genuinely popular uprising against the oppressive Shah and his Western backers, who had drained the economy of Iran to line their own pockets.

The present rulers of the Islamic Republic know that the rhetoric of anti-imperialism and a strong independent Iran still has resonance. This sense of purpose was fired in the U.S. hostage debacle of 1980 and the ill-judged fratricidal Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, in which the then-Western-backed Saddam Hussein attempted to stop the Iranian revolution in its infancy. Saddam failed but the hardline religious elements in Iran, originally part of the broad-based coalition for change, were able to exploit the situation created by the war to consolidate their position around a distorted fundamentalist interpretation of the goals of the revolution.

Those who argued the case for secularism and democracy in Iran found themselves imprisoned, executed or forced into exile. It is this aspect of the revolution which gives the current Iranian leadership problems. The desire for democracy is one which has never left the Iranian people but found little means of expression until the "stolen" presidential election, in June 2009, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was returned to office amidst widespread allegations of vote rigging.

Since then the tensions, which had previously simmered beneath the surface of Iranian society, have come into the open and onto the streets, in the form of the Green Movement, trade union, youth and peace activists, all of whom call for a return to the true ideals of the Iranian revolution, of peace, justice and democracy.

In order to counter this groundswell the leadership of the Islamic Republic is prepared to engage in a dangerous game of cat and mouse with the West over its nuclear program, access to the straits of Hormuz and its human rights record.

In his address to a rally in Tehran to mark the anniversary of the revolution recently, President Ahmadinejad stated,

"God willing, the world will witness the inauguration of great achievements in the nuclear sphere in a few days,"

He went on to state that Western powers were using the nuclear issue as a "pretext" to work "against the development of the Iranian nation."

"They say that they want to talk to us. We have always been ready for talks. Well, they should be within the framework of justice and respect. I clearly declare that if you (the West) use the language of force and insult, the Iranian nation will never yield to you," he said.

Ahmadinejad's remarks must be seen in the context of recent action on both sides which has escalated the tensions in a delicately balanced exchange.

President Barack Obama recently said that the United States would work in "lockstep" with Israel to prevent Iran developing nuclear weapons, going on to state that Israel's government was "rightly" very concerned about Iran's nuclear program. No comment was forthcoming on the widely acknowledged "secret" of Israel's nuclear capability, a significant factor in sustaining instability in the Middle East.

While the U.S. and EU believe tough action is needed in the dispute over Iran's nuclear program there is nevertheless a risk of damage to the shaky economies of the developed world. Iran is an important oil producer and exports around 2.3 million barrels a day. Even though there are guarantees in place from Saudi Arabia to make up any shortfall in Iranian oil supply, this would use up virtually all of the spare capacity from the world's biggest producer. The last time that happened, in 2008, oil prices climbed to almost $150 a barrel. Prices are currently running at around $110 a barrel. A leap to $150 a barrel would, without question, lead to a deep global recession in 2012.

It is clear then that the stakes are high for all sides in the dispute. The threat of loss of supply may be enough to trigger recession in the West, while the reality of choking off the Gulf certainly would result in recession.

The possibility of an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear installations, making it one step removed from a direct U.S. intervention, has long been considered a tactical option. Many observers in the U.S. think that such an attack is now more likely.

Solidarity organizations have pledged to continue to do all they can to support the people of Iran and work is ongoing to link the peace movements across the globe to do everything they can to avert a conflict. The ordinary people of Iran would certainly be the first victims of sanctions, or a war, but many others may follow.

Photo: Police detain a man in front of Tehran University during 2009 election riots. AP Photo

Senegal presidential election goes to runoff

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 12:27:00 +0000

On Feb. 26, Senegal held presidential elections. According to election results published yesterday, the incumbent, Abdoulaye Wade, will be forced into a runoff. But what exactly is being decided in terms of this African country's future is hard to say.

Senegal, population about 13 million, got its independence from France in 1960. Leopold Senghor, its first president, was an outstanding figure of African culture and letters, and defined himself as a socialist; his 'African socialism' de-emphasized class struggle in favor of African communalist traditions. Senghor was deeply attached to France, where he ultimately retired to die.

Senghor's first Prime Minister, on the other hand, the fiery leftist Mamadou Dia, strongly condemned French control over independent Senegal and imperialism in general. Senghor, accusing Dia of coup plotting, eventually managed to marginalize him. Senghor retired in 1980 and was succeeded by Abdou Diof, also of the not-very-socialist Socialist Party.

Abdoulaye Wade, of the Senegalese Democratic Party, defeated Diof in the presidential elections of 2000, running on a platform of opening up the political system. He was supported in this by, among others, the main party of the left, the Party of Independence and Labor. However, it soon became clear that Wade, although he also opened up trade with China, was going to go even further than Diop in implementing neo-liberal policies, and the left broke with him. Wade, who was re-elected in 2007, engineered a change in the Constitution, which limited presidents to two terms.

But subsequently, he thought better of this and decided to go ahead and run again in 2012. Ignoring public outrage, he got the Supreme Court, all of whose members he had appointed, to agree, on the theory that, as the term limits were imposed when he was already president, they would not apply to him. The determination of Wade to run in spite of the term limits, plus the suspicion that he his planning to have his son, Karim, succeed him, explains part of the anger against him, but not all.

Food prices have been rising recently. Although not the poorest among the former French colonies in Africa, Senegal is poor, with a per capita Gross Domestic Product adjusted for "Purchasing Power Parity" (GDP-PPP) of about $1,700 per year. Senegal's exports include peanuts, fish, cotton, and phosphates, and it gets considerable income from tourism. But industry and agriculture are underdeveloped and Senegal has to import many things, including much of its food.

Senegal is one of the countries of Africa that does not control its own currency. The CFA Franc is basically controlled by France, a fact which set off a panic in late 2011 when it was rumored that the currency would be devalued by Paris, which would also have made imports much more expensive. So far, however, the rumored devaluation has not happened.

Corruption is another problem. There is anger with Wade because of the construction of a gigantic statue, at 164 feet tall larger than the Statue of Liberty in New York, called "African Renaissance." Senegal is mostly Muslim and the statue offended Islamic sensibilities but was also seen as a "monumental" waste of resources and a sign of Wade's increasing megalomania. Wade's age itself - he is officially 86 but may be considerably older - is another complaint. And there is a long simmering revolt in the southern Casamance region.

Going into the elections, a demand that Wade withdraw his candidacy came up against a stone wall. The best known anti-Wade presidential candidate, popular singer Youssou N'Dour, was disqualified on technicalities, leaving 13 other candidates plus Wade. No fewer than four of the other candidates had held the post of prime minister under Wade! The opposition alliance, called M23, includes the left but also people whose goals seem to be personal rather than ideological.

There were protests, leading to at least six deaths, in the weeks leading to the election. An effort by former Nigerian President Olugesun Obasanjo to mediate the dispute was shot down by both sides.

According to election officials, Wade, with 34.82 percent of the vote fell far short of the 50 percent he needed, and will have to go to a runoff. He even lost heavily in his middle class home district in Dakar, the capital. The runner up, with 26.57 percent, who will face Wade in a runoff, is Macky Sall, of the Alliance for the Republic, who used to be Wade's prime minister and then president of the parliament until they had a falling out in 2007 when Sall tried to organize an investigation of Karim Wade.

Speaking to the press on Monday, Macky Sall emphasized that Wade's failure to avoid a runoff is a vindication of the opposition slogans "touche pas a ma constitucion" ("don't touch my constitution") and "pas de troisieme mandat pour Wade" ("no third term for Wade"), rather than anything having to do with improving the lives of the Senegalese, except for a vague promise to bring food prices down.

Sall may well win, because he will have most other forces that ran in the election behind him. What this bodes for the people of Senegal is another matter.