People Before Profit blog

Blockupy movement blossoms in Frankfurt

Tue, 31 Mar 2015 14:40:00 +0000

BERLIN -- I defied my advanced age last week to board a special train, with a thousand mostly young people, and join in the big "Blockupy" demonstration in Frankfurt, Germany's big banking city. The trip, though not the usual 4 ½ but seven hours, retained till well into the night a spirit of happy anticipation.

A protest against the new European Central Bank

The occasion was the opening of a giant new European Central Bank building, over four years and $1.4 billion in the making, one more modernistic banking skyscraper to reshape the city's skyline, with two adjacent towers reaching up 201 meters (660 ft.).

Our aim was to protest and disrupt the ceremonies, the role of the bank and the entire policy of the European Union of forcing austerity policies on its members and especially trying to compel Greece's new Syriza government to further bankrupt itself by paying excessive foreign bank debts and thus abandoning its goal of relieving the misery of countless jobless, hungry citizens, their loss of even basic medical care and often enough of any livelihood whatsoever.

Our slow train's midnight arrival caused my little group to miss the early hours of protest the next day, March 18^th - which had in part been violent hours. The Blockupy organizers, from a wide variety of organizations, had planned to prevent normal ceremonies by means of non-violent actions, sitting or standing to blockade the entranceways to the bank, with street theater and waves of umbrellas with painted slogans.

About 6000 people did just that - and certainly spoiled the ceremonial show. Hardly more than a handful of prominent guests had been invited, with police escort, to slip past the demonstrators for a very subdued event - and only six journalists, not even one from Frankfurt's main newspapers (to their great indignation). This was a big success - for Blockupy.

But, even earlier, about a thousand demonstrators, apparently from the masked "black bloc", had come hunting for greater trouble. Ten thousand police, detachments from all over Germany, having prepared for months for an expected remmi-demmi (the German word sounds wilder and apter than hubbub or tumult), confronted them with water cannon and tear gas. Who started things off is in dispute, but the free-for-all battle erupted into hails of plaster stones and other hard objects, burning cars and emptied, burnt out dumpsters, clouds of various chemicals, many injuries on both sides, countless arrests and huge pillars of smoke darkening the sky.

Since our slow train from Berlin had arrived after midnight, my small group slept to long and didn't get to the fenced-off area near the skyscraper until nearly 9 a.m. The police units and water cannon vehicles, some resembling tanks, seemed now at rest. Our march though a downtown area moved along peacefully, with many at the windows in this largely Turkish neighborhood answering our waves with V signs. All of a sudden, who knows why, we were halted by a tight police cordon. After a menacingly close face-off they came at us in a brief attack (and I nearly got knocked over by tough, visored, protectively-covered cops). Thanks perhaps to constant, clear appeals for calm by the loud-speaker voices on our side, the attack ended and the police withdrew - to great cheers.

After that I saw nothing but great enthusiasm - and determination. In the afternoon, on Frankfurt's historic Roemer square where German kings and Holy Roman Emperors were once elected, we heard speeches by representatives of organizations backing the Blockupy movement - and it is indeed a movement, three years old, inspired by Occupy in the USA. One spoke for the Greek Syriza Party; the Canadian Naomi Klein, in dramatic words, made it trans-Atlantic. Then the big parade started off. And it was big, seeming almost endless, with over 20,000 people, some from Spain, Italy and Greece but mostly from German peace groups, anti-imperialist and leftist groups of various persuasions, the Attac organization, which has long demanded taxes on financial speculation, and large numbers from the co-sponsoring Linke (Left) party. Also, quite significantly, the Hesse state section of Germany's often stand-offish union federation, the DGB, whose originally separate parade then merged symbolically with the main group.

European austerity

Countless signs aimed at the main proponents of European austerity, Angela Merkel and her foxy, arrogant and merciless Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. Others denounced the anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner, Muslimophobic actions of PEGIDA and openly neo-Nazi or hooligan groups, stating instead, "We welcome asylum seekers". Many were witty, like: "Not Austerity but Oysters" (both words are spelled very similarly in German) and "Caviar for Everybody". The so-called "Troika" group was often lambasted. Its members, the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank (now with a new skyscraper), had attained notoriety by dictating to the former Greek government what austerity measures it must adopt. Currently, with a new name, it was trying to compel the Syriza government to buckle under in the same way, and many signs read "Hands off Greece". One longer text said: "Stop Troika Austerity - It's All for the Banks and the Top 1 Percent". Others attacked the banks on ecology issues, opposing the planned transatlantic version of NAFTA, gene-altered vegetables, antibiotics-stuffed meat (and on a few signs, meat at all).

Some slogans which reacted to the stern, unbending resolution of European leaders like Merkel never to let any member country ever move even inches towards socialism or any truly progressive policies, for fear that this could become infectious - in Spain, Portugal, even Italy or Ireland. Not a few signs called for just such socialist solutions to systemic downfall.

The masked "black bloc" marched along too, though in a leaflet I was given, after a page full of super-rrrrevolutionary clichés, they ended with the call: "Let Us Cease Protesting, Let Us Begin Destroying". Who knows, their morning attacks (and a few in the evening after most people had left) would not be the first ones involving masked agents provocateurs from the powers-that-be? But perhaps they were not necessary for these plate-glass-smashing lovers of such remmi-demmis. Some of the sponsoring groups apologized for their actions, others answered that there seemed to be more anger over two hours of damage done here than over years of evictions, hungry children and suicides in Greece - or drone killings in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Yemen. Most agreed, however, that these methods - and groups - should be kept out of further actions if at all possible.

Of course the media rejoiced in the battle scenes and featured that cloud over Frankfurt, playing down the message of a truly great event. But its message was clear. The Merkel government had led the European Union in pressuring Greece, disregarding the terrible hardships there. For some years most of the media, led as always by the mass newspaper, BILD, had denounced the Greek people as lazy, pampered, neglectful of repaying their debts at the cost of German taxpayers. This pure chauvinism had been far too successful, in part because the unions had hardly opposed it and the left was not strong enough to have much influence in the matter. This Blockupy demonstration was an attempt to break through the fog - and point out that crushing the Greek people was one step towards crushing working people elsewhere, also in Germany, and that they needed not disdain or worse but rather solidarity from Germans.

Blockupy was an attempt to gather disparate groups, despite their differences, into a solid force, not only on the question of Greece but against the highway robbery tactics of the powerful private German banks as well. Perhaps, hopefully, it might be the germ of a stronger, combined movement in relatively docile Germany against two menacing dangers. One was the PEGIDA movement and its allies, like the growing new party Alternate for Germany (AfD), which was steering dissatisfaction, distrust of politicians and worries about an uncertain economic future away from those really responsible forces but instead against the poorest, most disadvantaged group in Germany (and elsewhere), the immigrants and asylum-seekers, mostly Muslim, from the Near East or Africa. And too many from the governing parties had begun to dilute their abhorrence of this nasty bunch.

Danger of war over the Ukraine

The other danger, also constantly stirred up by most of the media, was the "Hate Russia, Hate Putin" campaign, which could only increase the terrible danger of war over the Ukraine. Germany was leading the attacks against Greece. But in the question of Russia and the Ukraine it was still teetering between US pressure to build up NATO armaments and test them in insane maneuvers right along the Russian border and in the Black Sea, a policy with powerful supporters in Germany and other EU members or, instead, saner attempts, supported by other business interests, to help cool the scene and try to make the Minsk peace efforts succeed. Most Germans wanted urgently to maintain peace, but their voices were not easily audible. To alter this imbalance and help avoid the worst required giant efforts by many in Germany, most importantly the Linke party - not only with its 64 members in the Bundestag but far more importantly in the streets - as in Frankfurt. Would the Blockupy movement fade away - or grow to meet these needs, joining sister groups on a European level? The answer could be very crucial!

Photo: People gather at the Roemerberg Square to march to the new headquarters of the European Central Bank, to protest against government austerity and capitalism, March 18, in Frankfurt, Germany. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

Fascists at the gate in Greece

Mon, 30 Mar 2015 15:35:00 +0000

When some 70 members of the neo-Nazi organization Golden Dawn go on trial sometime this spring, there will be more than street thugs and fascist ideologues in the docket: a tangled web of influence that is likely to engulf Greece's police, national security agency, wealthy oligarchs, and mainstream political parties. While Golden Dawn - with its Holocaust denial, its swastikas, and Hitler salutes - makes it look like it inhabits the fringe, in fact the organization has roots deep in the heart of Greece's political culture.

Which is precisely what makes it so dangerous.

Golden Dawn's penchant for violence is what led to the charge that it is a criminal organization. It is accused of several murders, as well as attacks on immigrants, leftists, and trade unionists. Raids have uncovered weapons caches. Investigators have also turned up information suggesting that the organization is closely tied to wealthy shipping owners, as well as the National Intelligence Service (EYP) and municipal police departments.

Several lawyers associated with two victims of violence by party members - a 27-year-old Pakistani immigrant stabbed to death last year, and an Afghan immigrant stabbed in 2011- charge that a high level EYP official responsible for surveillance of Golden Dawn has links to the organization. The revelations forced Dimos Kouzilos, director of EYP's third counter-intelligence division, to resign last September.

There were several warning flags about Kouzilos when he was appointed to head the intelligence division by right-wing New Democracy Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. Kouzilos is a relative of a Golden Dawn Parliament member, who is the party's connection to the shipping industry. Kouzilos is also close to a group of police officers in Nikea who are currently under investigation for ties to Golden Dawn. Investigators charge that the Nikea police refused to take complaints from refugees and immigrants beaten by party members, and the police chief, Dimitris Giovandis, tipped off Golden Dawn about surveillance of the party.

In handing over the results of their investigation, the lawyers said, "We believe that this information provides an overview of the long-term penetration ands activities of the Nazi criminal gang with the EYP and the police." A report by the Office of Internal Investigation documents 130 cases where Golden Dawn worked with police.

It should hardly come as a surprise that there are close ties between the extreme right and Greek security forces. The current left-right split goes back to 1944 when the British tried to drive out the Communist Party - the backbone of the Greek resistance movement against the Nazi occupation. The split eventually led to the 1946-49 civil war when Communists and leftists fought royalists and former German collaborationists for power. However, the West saw the civil war through the eyes of the then budding Cold War, and, at Britain's request, the U.S. pitched in on the side of the right to defeat the left. In the process of that intervention - then called the Truman Doctrine - U.S. intelligence services established close ties with the Greek military.

Those ties continued over the years that followed and were tightened once Greece joined NATO in 1952. The charge that the U.S. encouraged the 1967 fascist coup against the Greek government has never been proven, but many of the "colonels" that initiated the overthrow had close ties to the CIA and the U.S. military.

Golden Dawn was founded by some of the key people who ruled during the 1967-74 junta, and Greek dictator Georgios Papadopoulos, the leader of the "colonels" who led the 1967 coup, groomed the party's founder and current leader, Nikos Michaloliakos. Papadopoulos was a Nazi collaborator and served with the German "security battalions" that executed 130,000 Greek civilians during World War II. Papadopoulos was trained by the U.S. Army and recruited by the CIA. Indeed, he was the first CIA employee to govern a European country.

Golden Dawn's adherence to Hitler, the symbols of Nazism, and the "Fuehrer principle" - investing the party's leader with absolute authority - is, in part, what has gotten the organization into trouble. According to an investigation by Greek Supreme Court Deputy Prosecutor Haralambos Vourliotis, Golden Dawn is split into two wings, a political wing responsible for the party's legal face and an operational wing for "carrying out attacks on those deemed enemies of the party." Michaloliakos oversees both wings.

Prosecutors will try to demonstrate that attacks and murders are not the actions of individuals who happen to be members of Golden Dawn, because independent actions are a contradiction to the "Fuehrer principle." Many of the attacks have featured leading members of Golden Dawn and, on occasion, members of Parliament. Indeed, since the leadership and core of the party were jailed last September, attacks on non-Greeks and leftists have fallen off.

There is a cozy relationship between Golden Dawn and some business people as well, with the party serving as sort of "Thugs-R-Us" organization. Investigators charge that shortly after two party MPs visited the shipyards at Piraeus, a Golden Dawn gang attacked Communists who were supporting union workers. Golden Dawn also tried to set up a company union that would have resulted in lower pay and fewer benefits for shipyard workers. In return, shipping owners donated 240,000 Euros to Golden Dawn.

Investigators charge that the party also raises funds through protection rackets, money laundering and blackmail.

Journalist Dimitris Psarras, who has researched and written about Golden Dawn for decades, argues that the party is successful not because it plays on the economic crisis, but because for years the government - both socialists and conservatives, mainstream parties, and the justice system have turned a blind eye to Golden Dawn's growing use of force. It was the murder of Greek anti-fascist rapper/poet Pavlos Fyssas that forced the authorities to finally move on the organization. Killing North Africans was one thing, killing a Greek quite another.

Instead of challenging Golden Dawn in the last election, the New Democracy Party railed against "Marxists," "communists" and - pulling a page from the 1946-49 civil war - "bandits." Even the center parties, like the Greek Socialist Party (PASOK) and the new Potami Party, condemned both "left and right" as though the two were equivalent.

Golden Dawn did see its voter base shrink from the 426,025 it won in 2012, to 388,000 in the January election that brought left party Syriza to power. But then Golden Dawn is less interested in numbers than it is in wielding violence. According to Psarras, the party's agenda is "to create a climate of civil war, a divide where people have to choose between leftists and rightists."

Some of the mainstream parties have eased Golden Dawn's path by adopting the party's attacks on Middle East and African immigrants and Muslims, albeit at a less incendiary level. But, as Psarras points out, "Research in political science has long since showed that wherever conservative European parties adopt elements of far-right rhetoric and policy during pre-election periods, the upshot is the strengthening of the extreme far-right parties."

That certainly was the case in last year's European Parliamentary elections, when center and right parties in France and Great Britain refused to challenge the racism and Islamophobia of right-wing parties, only to see the latter make strong showings.

According to the Supreme Court's Vourliotis, Golden Dawn believes that "Those who do not belong to the popular community of the race are subhuman. In this category belong foreign immigrants, Roma, those who disagree with their ideas and even people with mental problems." The party dismisses the Holocaust: "There were no crematoria, it's a lie. Or gas chambers," Michaloliakos said in a 2012 national TV interview. Some 60,000 members of Greece's Jewish population were transported and murdered in the death camps during World War II.

The trial is scheduled for April 20 but might be delayed. Golden Dawn members, including Michaloliakos and many members of Parliament, were released March 18 because they can only be held for 18 months in pre-trial detention. The party, with its ties in the business community and its "wink of the eye" relationship to New Democracy - that mainstream center-right party apparently printed Golden Dawn's election brochures - has considerable resources to fight the charges. Golden Dawn has hired more than 100 attorneys.

If convicted, Golden Dawn members could face up to 20 years in prison, but there is not a great deal of faith among the anti-fascist forces in the justice system. The courts have remained mute in the face of Golden Dawn's increasing use of violence, and some magistrates have been accused of being sympathetic to the organization. Golden Dawn is charged with being a criminal organization, murder, assault, and illegal weapons possession under Article 187.

Thanasis Kampagiannis of "Jail Golden Dawn" warns that the party will not vanish on its own. "Many are under the impression that if we stop talking about Golden Dawn the problem will somehow disappear. That is not the case. The economic crisis has burnished the organization, but there are other causes that have contributed to its existence and prominence, such as the intensification of state repression and the institutionalization of racism by the dominant parties."

But courts are political entities and respond to popular movements. Anti-fascists are calling on the Greeks and the international community to stay in the streets and demand that Golden Dawn be brought to justice. Germans missed that opportunity with the Nazi Party and paid a terrible price for it.

Thanks to Kia Mistilis, journalist, photographer and editor, for providing material for this column.

This article originally appeared at Conn Hallinan's blog, Dispatches From the Edge.

Photo: Members of Parliament from the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party use their own religious oath as they are sworn in at the first meeting of the Greek Parliament since the Jan. 25 elections, in Athens on Feb. 5, 2015. Yannis Kolesidis, Pool/AP

Why is U.S. media silent on Colombia's child rape report?

Fri, 27 Mar 2015 13:36:00 +0000

An 800-page independent report commissioned by the U.S.-friendly Colombian government and the radical left rebel group FARC found that U.S. military soldiers and contractors had sexually abused at least 54 children in Colombia between 2003 and 2007 and, in all cases, the rapists were never punished-either in Colombia or stateside-due to American military personnel being immune from prosecution under diplomatic immunity agreements between the two countries.

The report was part of a broader historical analysis meant to establish the "causes and violence aggravators" of the 50-year-long conflict between the government and rebels that's presently being negotiated to an end. As Colombia Reports (3/23/15) would spell out:

"In his report, the historian [Renan Vega] cited one 2004 case in the central Colombian town of Melgar where 53 underage girls were sexually abused by nearby stationed military contractors 'who moreover filmed [the abuse] and sold the films as pornographic material.'

"According to Colombia's leading newspaper, El Tiempo, the victims of the sexual abuse practices were forced to flee the region after their families received death threats.

RT report on accusations of child rape in Colombia by US military personnel.

"Other Americans stationed at the Tolemaida Air Base allegedly committed similar crimes, but possibly also never saw a day in court due to an immunity arrangement for American soldiers and military contractors agreed by Washington and Bogota.

One case that has called most attention in Colombian media was that of a 12-year-old who in 2007 was raped by a US Army sergeant and a former US military officer working in Melgar as a military contractor.

"Colombian prosecutors established that the girl had been drugged and subsequently raped inside the military base by US sergeant Michael J. Coen and defense contractor Cesar Ruiz.

However, prosecution officials were not allowed to arrest the suspected child rapists who were subsequently flown out of the country."

Thus far, however, these explosive claims seem to have received zero coverage in the general US press, despite having been reported on Venezuela's Telesur (3/23/15), the British tabloid Daily Mail (3/24/15) and Russian RT (3/25/15).

But why? These aren't fringe claims, nor can the government of American ally Colombia be dismissed as a peddler of Bolivarian propaganda. Indeed, the Miami Herald (9/3/09) documented the case of US Sgt. Michael Coen and contractor César Ruiz in 2009:

"The US government has made little effort to investigate a US Army sergeant and a Mexican civil contractor implicated in Colombia in the raping of a 12-year-old girl in August 2007, according to an El Nuevo Herald investigation.

"The suspects, Sgt. Michael Coen and contractor César Ruiz, were taken out of Colombia under diplomatic immunity, and do not face criminal charges in the United States in the rape in a room at Colombia's Germán Olano Air Force Base in Melgar, 62 miles west of Bogotá."

So why no coverage? Certainly one of Washington's staunchest Latin American allies co-authoring a blistering report about systemic US military child rape of a civilian population should be of note-if for no other reason than, as the report lays out, it undermined American military efforts to stop drug trafficking and fight leftist rebels:

"However, prosecution officials were not allowed to arrest the suspected child rapists who were subsequently flown out of the country.

"The case has caused major indignation among Colombians for years....

"The special envoy will possibly have to deal with the role of the US military and its members in the alleged victimization of Colombians."

Yet here we are, over 72 hours since the Colombian and foreign press first reported on the allegations, and there's a virtual media blackout in America over the case. Nothing on CNN, nothing on MSNBC, nothing in the New York Times or Miami Herald. Nothing in Huffington Post. Nothing in Fusion or Vice. Why?

As UK authorities and NATO officials stress the importance of clamping down on "false Russian" narratives in the media, perhaps our own media could stop providing a shining example as to why such anti-Western narratives are so often the only outlet for certain ugly truths.

This blog was published at FAIR, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.

Image: SOA Watch

Mixed results in Salvador vote: Big win for FMLN in capital

Thu, 26 Mar 2015 13:42:00 +0000

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador - Despite Herculean efforts by election officials, more than three weeks after Salvadorans went to the polls on March 1, results are almost, but still not, final.

Opposition parties are demanding recounts, while observers from the Organization of American States (OAS) have called upon the nation's Supreme Electoral Tribunal (Tribunal Supremo Electoral or TSE) "to take the necessary measures to ensure that the will of the voters will be reflected in the final outcome."

Those familiar with the process attribute delays to the complexity of the ballots - there were three, one each for the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN), national assembly, and municipal councils, and a new system of voting and weighing votes.

The political parties actually have a good sense of their wins and losses: Workers at each of country's 10,621 polling stations hand-count ballots under the watchful eyes of party observers and complete detailed reports that are immediately transmitted to the TSE in the capital city of San Salvador. The TSE posts the hand-written tallies online the same night, but in the weeks following, reviews and certifies the counts.

This year, however, local election officials were stymied by cumbersome new procedures that kept them at their stations until the early hours of the morning. For the first time, voters could choose a straight party ticket, mark preferences for candidates within that party or, due to a Constitutional Court ruling barely three months before the election, split their vote across party lines. Previously, only party logos, not individual candidates, appeared on ballots.

Additionally, nine parties fielded candidates, sometimes in coalition. To select 20 deputies for PARLACEN required a ballot the size of a New York Times front page. Populous Salvadoran counties with large numbers of national assembly deputies - San Salvador residents elected 24 - had similarly complex ballots.

Affirming the Constitutional Court's decision regarding cross-over voting, David Morales, El Salvador's independent human rights procurator, said in a pre-election briefing that the ability to vote for individuals was a basic right. He acknowledged, however, that the last-minute ruling created logistical problems. "In the past, the court delayed implementation of rulings, but not this time," he said, noting that judicial rulings are also political decisions.

Underlying these events are historical tensions that date back to El Salvador's 12-year civil war. With right-wing military-aligned governments bankrolled by the United States to the tune of $1 million a day, the war claimed 70,000 lives before combatants agreed to a permanent truce in 1992.

The current president, Salvador Sánchez Ceren, was comandante of a constituent group of the left-wing guerrilla coalition, Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN). With the 1992 peace accords, the FMLN became a political party. Until 2009, however, Salvadoran voters consistently backed right-wing presidential candidates from the Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA). FMLN won the presidency in 2009, and in 2014, with the barest of margins, voters elected Sánchez Ceren.

Preliminary results in this most recent election suggest that ARENA holds the greater number of National Assembly seats - 36 to FMLN's 31, out of 84. But if past events are any indication, FMLN will negotiate with smaller parties to earn the necessary 43 votes for assembly presidency. There is also talk of the parties ceding the position to a deputy of the center-right Partido de Conciliación Nacional (PCN).

Biggest win for FMLN was mayor of the country's economic and political power center, San Salvador. Youthful, dynamic Nayib Bukele trounced the sitting mayor, Norman Quijano, last year's divisive ARENA presidential candidate.

After last-year's white-knuckle final vote count, when the TSE declared Sánchez Ceren victorious, Quijano used the F-word - "fraud" - and called upon the military to rise up and nullify the election. Military leaders took the extraordinary step of holding a press conference to announce they would respect the TSE's authority.

This year, as the TSE's review dragged on, complicated by inconsistencies in tally sheets from a single municipality, ARENA officials again cried fraud, took to the airwaves to denounce the TSE, and organized demonstrations outside the review site. As during the presidential election, ARENA also demanded that sealed boxes of election materials be opened and ballots recounted.

Salvadoran electoral code, however, does not allow for general recounts, recognizing the integrity of in situ counts at the 10,621 sites, witnessed and attested to by observers from all the parties. Recount of a specific set of ballots may occur if discrepancies are significant enough to determine the outcome of a race.

FMLN officials and Salvadoran political analysts noted that opening the ballot boxes would create the impression that the problem is not solved and would increase people's distrust in the TSE, undermining its authority, which is perhaps ARENA's goal.

TSE announcement of final results are expected within the week.

Photo: An exhausted team of Salvadoran poll workers and party observers count municipal election ballots after 18 hours on the job.

Ayotzinapa Caravana 43: Families call for missing students to be returned

Wed, 25 Mar 2015 15:48:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES - Families and friends from Ayotzinapa in the state of Guerrero, Mexico, have expanded their call to the Mexican government to return their sons and fellow students to them, who have been missing since September 26, 2014, by participating in a 43-city "Caravana 43" across the U.S.

Blanca Luz Vélez Nava, mother of missing student Jorge Alvarez Nava, commented, "As I saw the students returning that day I sat by the curb waiting for my son to return, but he was not among them. I feel like I am dying a slow death not knowing where my son is."

Fifteen family members and students arrived in the U.S. to inform its citizens of the situation in Mexico and ask for their support. They have divided into three groups of five, covering the Pacific, Central and Eastern regions of the U.S., culminating in Washington, D.C.

The students from the Normal de Ayotzinapa, a teachers college, have been missing for nearly six months. As they were traveling by bus to Iguala, Mexico, the police shot at them, killing three and arresting 43. The police claimed they then handed them over to a group calling themselves Guerreros Unidos, who are known members of a cartel known for killing anyone the police hand over.

"Our government has attempted to close the case of the missing students, but due to the support we have received nationally and internationally they have not been able to and they won't be able to until our classmates are found," said Angel Neri de la Cruz, a student survivor of the police attack.

De la Cruz said, "We here because the Mexican government's response to our demand for answers is to continue threatening us, by sending the police to repress any form of actions we take." He also called for those who have suffered under police repression in the U.S., and throughout the world, to unite with them to stop such inhumane treatment and find the missing 43 students. "All of you who have suffered injustice by police brutality, where police shoot unarmed citizens, we invite you to join us," stated de la Cruz.

"We are asking for President Obama's full support to stop Plan Mérida, which is funding and supplying arms to the police that are oppressing and killing us. They are not being used to protect us but to repress us," said de la Cruz.

All the Caravana 43 participants put out a clear message: Help them by writing letters to your legislative bodies demanding an end to these funds.

"It does not matter the color of your skin. We are all human beings and we need to unite over this injustice," said the father of Miguel Angel Mendoza Zacarías, one of the missing students.

Angel Neri de la Cruz recounted how his classmate was shot right next to him. He described it as the most traumatic experience of his life, one that he does not wish on anyone.

A resident of Los Angeles, and passerby at the press conference at La Placita Olvera, spoke with tears running down her face, asking everyone to be sensitive to the plea of these family members: "I do not know the whereabouts of my own grandchildren and it tears me apart."

In response to ex-president Vicente Fox's comment that "the disappearance of the students was a tragedy the families need to accept," family members said Fox too has a family and should realize what an inhuman comment this was.

Photo: Caravana 43 Facebook page

Greece: debt and memory of war

Mon, 23 Mar 2015 14:18:00 +0000

Memory is selective and therein lies an explanation for some of the deep animosity between Berlin and Athens in the current debt crisis that has shaken the European Union (EU) to its foundations.

For German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble, "memory" goes back to 2007 when Greece was caught up in the worldwide financial conflagration touched off by American and European speculators. Berlin was a major donor in the 240 billion euro "bailout" - 89 percent of which went to pay off the gambling debts of German, French, Dutch and British banks. Schauble wants that debt repaid.

Millions of Greeks are concerned about unpaid debts as well, although their memories stretch back a little further.

In July 1943 Wehrmacht General Hubert Lanz, commander of the First Mountain Division, was annoyed because two of his officers had been threatened by civilians in the western Greek town of Kommeno. It was dangerous to irritate a German commander during the 1941-45 occupation of Greece.

Lanz first murdered 153 men, women and children - ages one to 75 - in Mousiotitsas, then surrounded Kommeno, where his troops systematically killed 317 people, including 172 women. Thirteen were one year old, and 38 people were burned alive in their houses. After the massacre, the soldiers ate their lunch in the village square, surrounded by the bodies of the dead, and then pushed on to other villages, killing more than 200 civilians.

It was not the first, nor the last massacre of Greeks, and most people in that country can recite them like the beads on a rosary: Kondomari (60 killed); Kardanos (180 killed); Alikianos (118 killed); Viannos (over 500 killed); Amari (164 killed); Kalavryta (over 700 killed); Distomo (214 killed). All in all, the Germans destroyed more than 460 villages, executed 130,000 civilians, and murdered virtually the entire Jewish population - 60,000 - during the occupation.

On top of that, Athens was forced to "lend" Germany 475 million reichsmarks - estimated today at 14 billion euros - to pay for the occupation. Adding interest to the loan makes that figure somewhere around 95 billion euros.

Greece's public debt is currently 315 billion euros.

The Greeks "remember" a few other things about those massacres. Gen. Kurtl Student, the butcher of Kondomari, Kardanos, and Alikianos, was sentenced to five years after the war, but got out early on medical grounds. The beast of Mousiotitsas and Kommeno, Gen. Lanz, was sentenced to 12 years, served three, and became a major military and security advisor to the German Free Democratic Party. In 1954 he wrote a book about his exploits and died in bed in 1982. Gen. Karl von Le Suire of Kalavryta fame was not so lucky. Captured by the Soviets, he died in a Stalingrad POW camp in 1954. Lt. Gen. Friedrich-Wilhelm Muller, who ordered the Viannos massacre, was tried and executed by the Greeks in 1947.

It is not hard to see why many Greeks see a certain relationship between what the Germans did to Greece during the occupation and what is being done to it today. There are no massacres - although suicide rates are through the ceiling - and no mass starvation, but 44 percent of the Greek people are now below the poverty line, the economy is shattered, and Greeks feel they no longer control their country. Up until the last election, they didn't. The Troika - the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund - dictated the price of the loan: layoffs, wage and pension reductions, and huge cutbacks in health care. True, their occupiers did not wear the double thunderbolts of the SS or the field green of the Wehrmacht, but armies in pinstripes and silk ties can inflict a lot of damage.

Germany dismisses the Greek demand for reparations - estimated at anywhere from some 160 billion euros to over 677 billion euros - as a long-dead issue that was decided back in 1960 when the Greek government signed a Bilateral Agreement with Berlin and accepted 115 million deutschmarks in compensation.

"It is our firm belief that questions or reparations and compensation have been legally and politically resolved," said Steffen Seibert, a spokesperson for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "We should concentrate on current issues and, hopefully what will be a good future."

But that is a selective reading of history. There was never any "resolution" of Nazi Germany's post-war debts because the country was divided between East and West. The 1953 Treaty of London cut Germany's obligations in half and stretched out debt payments, but the treaty did not address reparations because they were supposed to be resolved in the final peace treaty. However, with Germany divided, there was no such agreement.

When Germany was unified in 1990, the Greeks raised the issue of reparations, but the Germans dismissed the issue as resolved by the combination of the London Treaty and the 1960 payoff. But not according to historian Hagen Fleischer, who has studied the reparations issue and the original loan documents. Fleischer says that Germany first argued that as long as the country was divided, Berlin could not consider repaying any debts. "Then after German reunification Helmut Kohl [then chancellor] and Hans-Dietrich Genscher [then foreign minister] said that it was now much too late. The matter was ancient history."

According to the Syriza government, the 115 million marks Germany paid in 1960 were only in compensation for Greek victims of Nazism, not the physical damage to the country, the destruction of the economy, or the forced loans.

"Germany has never properly paid reparations for the damage done to Greece," argues Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. "After the reunification of Germany in 1990 the legal and political conditions were created for this issue to be solved. But since then, German governments chose silence, legal tricks and delay."

Many Greeks refuse to accept what they consider a paltry sum for the vast crimes of the occupation. Four descendents of the 214 civilians massacred by the 4th SS Panzergrenadier Division at Distomo sued and, in 1997, were awarded 37.5 million euros, a ruling upheld by the Greek Supreme Court in 2000. When Germany refused to recognize the verdict, the defendants took their case to Italy, and in 2008 an Italian court ruled that the plaintiffs had the right to seize German-owned property in compensation for the Greek award, including a villa on Lake Como.

Germany appealed the Italian decision to the International Court at Hague, which found in favor of Berlin on a principle of international law that countries are immune from the jurisdiction of other states.

However, Germany has assets in Greece, including property and the Goethe Institute, a leading cultural center in Athens. Justice Minister Nikos Paraskevopoulos says he is ready to begin seizing German assets in Greece.

Tsipras says Germany has a "moral obligation" to pay reparations, a sentiment that some on the German left agree with. "From a moral point of view, Germany ought to pay off these old compensations and the 'war loan' that they got during the Occupation," says Gabriele Zimmer of Die Linke, a party closely allied to Syriza in the European Parliament.

Addressing the Greek Parliamentary Committee for Claiming the German Reparations on March 10, Tsipras asked, "Why do we tackle the past" instead of focusing on the future? "But what country, what people can have a future if it does not honor its history and its struggles?"

Dismissing the argument that reparations are ancient history - "The generation of the Occupation and the National Resistance is still living" - Tsipras warned about the consequences of amnesia: "The crimes and destruction caused by the troops of the Third Reich, across the Greek territory, but also across the entire Europe" are memories "that must be preserved in the younger generations. We have a duty - historical, political, ethical - to preserve, remember forever what Nazism means, what fascism means."

Nazism is not a memory that needs a lot of refreshing in Greece. Sometime this spring some 70 members of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn Party, including 16 current and former Parliament members, will go on trial for being members of a "criminal organization." The anti-Semitic and racist Golden Dawn Party has been associated with several murders, attacks on leftists, trade unionists, and immigrants, and has close ties with the police and several of the billionaire oligarchs who dominate Greek politics and the economy.

Indeed, its profile is eerily similar to that of the German National Socialist (Nazi) Party in its early years. Golden Dawn has 17 members of Parliament and is the third highest vote getter in the country, though its support has recently dipped.

Old memories certainly fuel Greek anger at Germany, but so do the current policies of enforced austerity that Berlin has played a pivotal role in inflicting on debt-ravaged Greece. "Germany's Europe has finished," says Greek Social Security Minister Dimitris Statoulis, the Europe "where Germany forbids and all other countries execute orders."

Thanks to Kia Mistilis, journalist, photographer and editor, for providing material for this column.

This article originally appeared at Conn Hallinan's blog, Dispatches From the Edge.

Photo: Damage from the German bombing of Piraeus, Greece, on April 6, 1941. Australian War Memorial Image/Wikimedia

In Israeli elections Arab citizens emerge as key to future

Fri, 20 Mar 2015 11:54:00 +0000

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pulled out a victory in Israel's national elections Tuesday by rounding up right-wing voters with a last-minute appeal to anti-Arab racism. Yet the most striking feature of the elections was the emergence of the Arab-Jewish Joint List, which became Israel's third largest party.

The new Joint List is now being hailed from the center to the left as the bright spot in the Israeli political scene.

The Joint List is composed of four parties: the Arab-Jewish Hadash (acronym for the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality), founded by the Communist Party of Israel, and three Israeli Arab parties, two secular and one Islamist. The head of the list, Ayman Odeh, is the leader of Hadash. A soft-spoken and charismatic 40-year-old lawyer and city councilmember from Haifa, Odeh has emerged as a national political figure.

The Arab-Jewish Joint List won 13 seats on Tuesday, more than 10 percent of the 120-member Knesset (parliament). This is a gain of two seats from the 11 the four parties had separately in the previous Knesset.

Netanyahu's Likud party won 30 seats - 25 percent of the total - with 24 for its main opponent, the centrist Zionist Union, based in the long-existing Labor party.

In Israel's electoral system, the slate with the best chance of forming a 61-seat majority coalition is given the first shot at leading the new government. The voting results indicate a divided Israeli populace, almost evenly split between center-right and center-left.

The Labor/Zionist Union made gains over 2013, but was unable to come out on top. Netanyahu himself got no more than one-fourth of the total, and the overall vote for the right-wing bloc that was the core of Netanyahu's outgoing government was in fact little changed from the previous elections in 2013 - 44 seats this time versus 43 in 2013. However there are several other rightist parties that will likely enter a coalition with Netanyahu, putting him over the 61-seat hurdle, and leading to a government even more to the right than the previous one.

Netanyahu has been a divisive figure in Israel, and polls have indicated that much of the public is "sick of him." Economic inequality, insecurity and racism have mounted, the 2014 Gaza war was costly and controversial, Israeli settlement construction in the Palestinian West Bank has escalated, relations with the U.S. have gone downhill, and peace and security seem more distant than ever. Most recently, Netanyahu's intervention in U.S. politics and open rupture with the Obama administration aroused considerable concern among the Israeli public. Polls leading up to the March 17 vote showed the Likud party slipping and the Zionist Union leading.

So at the last minute Netanyahu launched a far-right offensive to grab votes from other parties on the right.

The day before the elections he declared that there would be no Palestinian state under his government, contradicting his previous claim to support a two-state solution. (Two days after the election, he again contradicted himself, claiming he actually favors the two-state solution. This was seen as an effort to keep the Obama administration from supporting, or at least not vetoing, a renewed Palestinian statehood move in the United Nations.)

On Election Day, even as voting was under way, he made an openly racist appeal for votes, warning on Facebook that "Arab voters are going en masse to the polls" (to vote for the Joint List). Widely condemned as incitement of anti-Arab racism, Netanyahu's move won his party votes at the expense of his right-wing allies, and put Likud out in front.

It is an indication of the rightward tilt of Israeli politics in recent years that the Labor Party-based Zionist Union slate, which would be considered centrist in the U.S., is labeled "left." Leading up to Tuesday's election, Zionist Union leaders Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni shied away from taking a stance on ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, focusing instead on economic issues. A Reuters report noted that in an eight-party pre-election debate, the word "peace" was mentioned only three times, and those three were all by Joint List leader Ayman Odeh, head of the Arab-Jewish Hadash.

J.J. Goldberg of the Jewish Daily Forward, a U.S. publication, commented: "The center-left opposition had a stronger argument on security and peace than Netanyahu did, but it was afraid to make its case. Despite the unprecedented outpouring of anti-Netanyahu protest from retired defense and intelligence chiefs - including nearly every former head of the Mossad and Shin Bet and one-third of all living ex-generals - Herzog and his allies steered clear of them." Thus Netanyahu's leading opponent gave him a chance to portray himself as the leader of Israel's security and statehood.

With the right wing ascendant and the center struggling, Israel's Arab citizens, making up about 20 percent of the electorate, have until now been largely ignored by the country's political establishment and major media. And the Jewish-Arab alliance, Hadash, and its leading component, the Israeli Communist Party, have typically been labeled dismissively an "Arab party." And much of the Jewish Israeli left has shied away from associating with Hadash, the Communists and Arab parties. Now a stunning shift has taken place.

"The growing unity in the Arab community, reflected in their turnout and support for the Joint List, is a positive sign of change," the liberal New Israel Fund said in a post-election email.

"The politeness and restraint Herzog [the Zionist Union/Labor Party leader] displayed in the election campaign are inappropriate to this time of emergency," the leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz editorialized. "He will have to cooperate with Ayman Odeh, head of the Joint List, who made an impressive achievement in the elections, and promises to fight for the Arab minority's equal rights."

"The Joint List is the one truly refreshing thing to emerge from this election," well-known reporter Amira Hass wrote on Wednesday. Hass cited "the many and weighty tasks awaiting the Joint List, with all its progressive potential as a representative of the oppressed." These include, she said, "waging a battle over the allocation of resources and budgets to Israel's Arab population; giving a presence to all the weakened members of Israeli society - Mizrahim (Jews of Middle Eastern origin), women and the disabled - without regard to their national or ethnic origins; and making the eminently logical linkage between social justice and the demand that Israel withdraw from the territories and dismantle the settlements."

"One additional task - perhaps by the very fact of its existence," she said, "is to provide inspiration for the Palestinian political system in the West Bank and Gaza."

Israeli security analyst and former intelligence officer Yossi Alpher noted that along with Israeli Arabs, some Jews voted for the Joint List. "They did so," Alpher told a post-election briefing hosted by American for Peace Now, "because they saw in this - correctly, I think - an important opportunity to move the Arab community into the mainstream of Israeli politics."

"In order to advance Jewish-Arab relations," he said, "I would certainly like to see this party succeed at the parliamentary level."

Photo: American Friends of Hadash Facebook page

Brazil: Amid coup talk, massive demonstrations for and against Dilma

Wed, 18 Mar 2015 15:52:00 +0000

Mass demonstrations took place Mar. 14 in a number of Brazilian cities in support of President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, or PT). This was a preemptive action against very large demonstrations the following day against Rousseff, in which her impeachment was demanded by the right. By some estimates over a million marched on Sunday.

Rousseff squeaked through to reelection late last year in the context of an economic slump and a corruption scandal involving kickback schemes at Petrólio Brasileiro or Petrobras, Brazil's huge public petroleum company, which are said to have siphoned off $3.8 billion. The scheme, which seems to have gotten underway before the first Workers' Party president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, took power, involves a "pay to play" arrangement whereby companies bidding for contracts with Petrobras slipped money to officials of the state enterprise to get ahead of their competitors. Also there are accusations that some Petrobras officials siphoned money to the Workers' Party. Several people in Petrobras, in the contracting companies and in government are probably headed for prison, including the speakers of both houses of Congress. During part of this time, and before she was elected president for the first time in 2011, Rousseff had been chair of the board of Petrobras, though she is not accused of complicity.

Nobody but the grafters is in favor of corruption, an endemic problem in Brazilian government for many years. But the right wing, losers of the 2014 presidential election, who have a strong presence in the legislature, seem to think that they can use the economic travails and the Petrobras scandal to remove Rousseff from the presidency by unconstitutional means. The working class and the left, and especially the poor and former poor who have greatly benefited from the Lula-Dilma presidencies, fear that the agenda of the right is to impose a full blast neo-liberal program of austerity and privatizations. Things the right has said and written create a worry that if Dilma goes, Brazil might pull out of the Bolivarian system of alliances and find itself once again under U.S. domination. Rousseff herself has proposed some austerity measures to deal with the current crisis, and has been criticized for this by some working-class and labor circles, but the right would go much farther.

Recent new arrests for corruption related to Petrobras have added fuel to the fire. Hauled in this time are the presidents of the Senate, Renan Calheiras, and of the Chamber of Deputies, Eduardo Cunha. These two and some others are not members of Rousseff's Workers' Party but of the Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), with which Rousseff has had to work because the Workers' Party and its ideological allies (such as the Communist Party of Brasil, the PC do B) do not have a majority in either house, a situation that was exacerbated in the 2014 legislative election results. But some Workers' Party officials have also been implicated.

This is why the right, and chiefly the so-called Social Democratic Party of Brazil went all out on Sunday to bring out its base behind a slogan of impeaching President Rousseff (an action not contemplated in the Brazilian constitution) and fighting corruption. But among the banners and slogans carried by the almost entirely white and economically upscale protestors were some that raise eyebrows:

"Less state, less taxes."

"Military intervention NOW!"

"The communist idealism took our money, health, education and our respect! Get out Dilma, get out PT" (this and several other signs were in English).

"We won't be another Venezuela" (also in English).

"My country is Brazil, not Cuba or Venezuela."

And "enough with Paulo Freire!" (Paulo Freire wrote the well-known 1968 book Pedagogy of the Oppressed as part of the Latin American liberation movement.)

These slogans are the more shocking because they did not fall from the sky. They are inspired by declarations by some military people and others on the right. Highest ranking is General Paulo Chagas of the Brazilian Army Reserve, who issued a call last year for a military takeover to save Brazil from "communism." Similar slogans were used by the military in the 1964 coup, abetted by the U.S., which set up a dictatorship that lasted decades. Both Rousseff and Lula cut their political teeth as opponents of military rule, which may have left some residual resentment among the officer corps.

Although Brazil's government is one of the least left-wing of the "Bolivarian" group, Brazil is, with its 200 million inhabitants, by far the largest and the most industrialized. Currently there are destabilization efforts going on in Venezuela and Argentina, the second and third largest of the "Bolivarian" countries. So if someone wanted to destroy the whole "pink tide" of governments moving away from U.S. domination in Latin America, Brazil would certainly be a target. Brazil also plays a major role in the BRICS group of countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) which have been instrumental in creating a multipolar world power framework.

President Rousseff took a conciliatory line with the demonstrators and promised dialogue. The Communist Party of Brazil warned of the coup danger as very real and called for greater unity and action among the left-wing sector in the ruling coalition, as well as support for the elected government.

Photo: "Serenity and firmness in the face of street battle." PCdoB - Partido Comunista do Brasil Facebook.

Support builds for Peace and Planet mobilization

Tue, 17 Mar 2015 14:24:00 +0000

With the Doomsday Clock moved forward to three minutes before midnight, peace, faith, environment and labor organizations across the country and around the world are busily mobilizing for the Peace and Planet conference and march at the United Nations April 24-26 as 175 nations assemble for the five year review of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).

A 'Global Wave' of symbolic public actions in cities around the world to 'Wave Goodbye to Nuclear Weapons' is also being organized with photos and videos to be shared on-line and at the conference.

Over 1,000 delegates from Japan are planning to attend, including some who survived the horrific U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki seventy years ago when those cities were obliterated by use of nuclear weapons against civilian populations. The Japanese delegation will also include union members and elected officials who will present over five million signatures to the United Nations calling for nuclear abolition.

The mobilization comes in the midst of new nuclear threats, as 47 Republican Senators shamefully attempt to dismantle negotiations and push for a confrontation with Iran, while in the Ukraine which is on the border between nuclear-armed NATO and Russia, U.S. intervention provokes a dangerous confrontation with Russia.

In Connecticut, plans are underway for a peace train with reserved cars on MetroNorth to participate in the international rally, march to the United Nations and peace festival scheduled for Sunday, April 26 at 1 pm.

Peace mobilizations have been held each five years during the NPT review. This year for the first time all social movements are urged to participate. Organizers have linked the threats to civilization from nuclear war and climate scorching with the global crisis of wars and violence, the urgency of cutting military budgets and funding human needs, and ending militarization of the police and racist police practices.

Conferences plenaries and workshops will share information and analysis, build and further integrate movements for the longer term and to have an increased impact on the NPT review process.

In January the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock forward to three minutes before midnight, the first adjustment since 2012, citing "unchecked climate change and global nuclear weapons modernization," with a call to "dramatically reduce proposed spending on nuclear weapons modernization programs, and re-energize the disarmament process."

The NPT was signed in 1970 to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and ensure their abolition. At that time the five countries with nuclear-weapons were the United States, the Soviet Union (now Russia), Britain, France and China. Since then four more nations have developed nuclear weapons: Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.

In Article 6, the NPT calls for swift negotiations among the nuclear weapons-holding states to disarm and rid themselves and the world of the nuclear arms. For seven decades they have completely avoided carrying out this requirement.

Petitions calling for nuclear abolition are being circulated in every country as part of the effort to build turnout for the Peace and Planet mobilization. Organizations from 17 states have endorsed to date including New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Maine, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Texas, California and Washington. The full list, the petition and further information is available at peaceandplanet.org.

Photo: Peace marchers at United Nations five years ago during the last NPT review. Peace and Planet

South American nations to Obama: Revoke sanctions against Venezuela!

Tue, 17 Mar 2015 12:41:00 +0000

The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) has called on President Obama to revoke sanctions he imposed by executive order March 9 against Venezuela.

The group, which represents every single country in South America, said the president's order constitutes a "threat of interference" against Venezuela's sovereignty and that it violates the principle of non-interference in the affairs of other states.

President Obama, earlier this month, announced a "national emergency" because of a supposed danger to "U.S. interests and foreign policy" posed by Venezuela. His executive order imposes harsh sanctions against seven citizens of that country.

The call for revocation by UNASUR is seen as important because the organization is much more than just a trade bloc or customs union. This body, which includes Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela, is a vital building block in attempts to improve the well-being of the peoples of the South American continent. Its aim is to increase trade and mutual solidarity among the twelve independent member states.

UNASUR partners with several other international organizations, including MERCOSUR (Market of the South), CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, which includes every independent country in the Western Hemisphere except the United States and Canada) and ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the People of our Americas), among others. Together, the UNASUR states have about 390 million inhabitants.

UNASUR projects currently include the Bank of the South, which participating countries hope will eventually provide an alternative to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank for countries seeking development aid without "neo-liberal" strings attached in the form of requirements for austerity, privatization and "free" trade. Also there are efforts to create a single South American citizenship so that people who need to move to find work will not even need passports or visas to do so.

The prospects of UNASUR and the other multinational "Bolivarian" groups are so enticing that even countries with right-wing governments allied with the United States participate in the grouping. So alongside the radical governments of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, UNASUR includes left-center governments such as those of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, and right-wing regimes allied to the United States, namely Colombia, Peru and Paraguay.

There are some conflicts within UNASUR. There are territorial disputes between Bolivia and Chile over access to the Pacific Ocean, taken away from Bolivia at the end of the "War of the Pacific" (1879-1883), and a long running one over border territories between Venezuela and Guyana. But UNASUR has developed such authority that it has been able to play a valuable mediating role in disputes between South American countries.

Now UNASUR has raised its voice about the issue of Venezuela. At the request of the Venezuelan government, UNASUR has helped with that country's current difficulty in three ways: It has laid plans for new trade initiatives to help Venezuela overcome some shortages of food staples, it has offered to help mediate friction between the government of Nicolas Maduro of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and his right-wing opponents, and now it is stepping into the dispute between Venezuela and the United States.

UNASUR has instructed its Secretary General, Ernesto Samper, a former president of Colombia, to go to Venezuela and start talking to both the Maduro government and the major oppositional forces. The urgency of Samper's mission was heightened on February 12, when the Venezuelan government announced the nipping in the bud of a plot to overthrow it with foreign, probably U.S. and British support, and the arrest of a number of people for their involvement, including Antonio Ledezma, the right-wing mayor of metropolitan Caracas.

Given the history of coups and destabilization which has characterized the relationship of the United States to the countries of Latin America, many immediately asked themselves if Obama's action might portend something more drastic, up to and including armed intervention.

For this reason, the Venezuelan government asked for a special UNASUR meeting in Quito, Ecuador. This meeting took place on March 15, with all 12 UNASUR member states present.

The meeting voted unanimously, without even the pro-US countries dissenting, to denounce the March 9 statement from President Obama and ask for its retraction.

UNASUR Statement (Unofficial translation):

"The member States of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) manifest their rejection of the Executive Order issued on March 9, 2015 by the government of the United States of America, for it constitutes a threat of interference against sovereignty and the principle of non-intervention in other States' affairs.

"The UNASUR Member States ratify their commitment with the application of International Law, Peaceful Resolution of Disputes and the principle of Non-Intervention, and calls upon governments to withhold the use of coercive unilateral measures that violate international law.

"UNASUR reiterates its request to the United States' government to evaluate and implement dialogue with Venezuela as an alternative, under the basis of respecting sovereignty and self-determination of the people. Consequently, we request the derogation of the Executive Order."

Samper made it clear that in his view the peace of the South American continent is endangered when the sovereignty and constitutionally established institutions of any country are interfered with from outside. Previously, the governments of Argentina, Bolivia and Ecuador had spoken out strongly against the U.S. policy, as did the governments of the People's Republic of China, Cuba and the Russian Federation. Demonstrations against the U.S. policy were carried out in several countries.

Photo: UNASUR, March 15, Flickr.

Rise of Joint List's Ayman Odeh shakes up Israeli politics

Mon, 16 Mar 2015 10:49:00 +0000

JERUSALEM (AP) - A charismatic Arab politician, who confidently jousts with Jewish rivals on TV and wants to build a broad Arab-Jewish "alliance of the disadvantaged," has emerged as one of the biggest surprises of Israel's election campaign.

Ayman Odeh, a 40-year-old lawyer, heads the Joint List, a recently established alliance of four small, largely Arab-backed parties. He believes the unprecedented union could dramatically increase Arab turnout at the polls and clout in Israel's parliament, transforming national politics.

Odeh's inclusive leadership style also signals a new confidence among younger Arabs, less conflicted than their parents and grandparents about their place in Israel, analysts say.

Odeh burst onto the national scene last week in a TV debate ahead of Mar. 17 parliament elections. Ultra-nationalist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman repeatedly tried to provoke Odeh, the only Arab at the table, claiming Arab politicians "represent terror groups" seeking to destroy Israel from within and berating him as a "fifth column."

Odeh didn't take the bait. Smiling, he noted that his alliance is running well ahead of Lieberman's struggling faction, with polls predicting it could emerge as the third largest group in parliament.

Debating in fluent if accented Hebrew, Odeh said he is deeply rooted in the region and casually underscored his ties to the Holy Land by citing from the Old Testament's Book of Proverbs: "He who digs a pit (for others) will fall into it."

That was also a dig at Lieberman who had successfully pushed legislation last year to raise the threshold for entry to parliament - a move Arab politicians suspect was meant to keep their small parties out of parliament. It seems to have backfired, instead prompting Odeh's Arab-Jewish Hadash party and the three Arab parties to band together into something that may be greater than the sum of its parts.

The alliance has galvanized Arab voters, with polls saying turnout could be several percentage points higher than in 2013, when just 56 percent of eligible Arabs voters cast ballots, about 10 points below the national average.

The Joint List, latest polls say, seems set to win 13 seats in the fractured 120-member Knesset, coming in third behind the center-left Zionist Union and the rightist Likud Party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Odeh has said his goal is 15 seats.

A strong showing of the Joint List would make it harder for Netanyahu to build a ruling coalition - and bringing down the premier is one of Odeh's main goals. However, he says the Joint List would also not formally join a coalition with the Zionist Union, led by Netanyahu's two main challengers, Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni.

"The agenda of any government will be a Zionist agenda. It will continue with the occupation, it will continue with the settlements," Odeh told The Associated Press. "We can't be part of such a government."

Indeed, no Arab party has ever been formally in an Israeli coalition - although they have been critical to propping up center-left governments of the past. This time, with a perhaps bigger bloc in parliament, the Arabs' tacit backing would be especially crucial for the center-left to be able to unseat Netanyahu.

For now, Odeh hopes the Joint List could lead the parliamentary opposition and that its legislators would be able to demand membership in important committees.

Mainly, Odeh wants to build an "alliance of the disadvantaged" among Arabs and Jews. He said arguments about Israel's nature - a Jewish state or a state for all its citizens - fail to recognize the more meaningful division, between rich and poor.

"This is a state of the tycoons against all the disadvantaged in the country," he said.

In the TV debate, he urged Arieh Deri, head of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Shas Party, to join forces on shared concerns.

Shas supporters, many low-income, are typically hard-line on Palestinian statehood, but Odeh argued that such differences shouldn't prevent ad hoc alliances. Deri said he is open to the idea.

Such pragmatism appeals to many Arab voters, seemingly more concerned about winning equal rights in Israel than seeing a Palestinian state established next door.

Israel's Arab citizens, who make up about 20 percent of a population of 8.2 million, are descendants of Palestinians who remained in their homes during the Mideast war over Israel's 1948 creation, when many others fled or were expelled. They retain ties with Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in 1967, and strongly identify with dreams to set up a Palestinian state in those territories.

But domestic concerns are often more powerful, with Arabs in Israel complaining of long-standing official discrimination.

"We want the Joint List to work on all our problems, to represent our issues in the Knesset," said Dina Mahameed, a 32-year-old nurse from the town of Umm al-Fahm, citing better job opportunities as one of her priorities.

The Joint List, established in January, has cobbled together a shared platform, despite deep differences between socialists, Palestinian nationalists and traditional Islamists on issues such as the role of women and religion in society.

Odeh's Hadash is a veteran socialist party in Israel that emphasizes Arab-Jewish cooperation.

Odeh grew up in a Muslim family but describes himself as someone who has transcended the narrow confines of ethnicity and religion that still loom large in the region. The only Muslim in a Christian school, he proudly notes he got an A in New Testament studies on his high school final exams.

At age 23, he was elected to the municipal council of the Arab-Jewish port city of Haifa. In 2006, he became secretary-general of Hadash.

Meeting with Jewish activists from Hadash this week, he tried to allay concerns that the new alliance would dilute the party's principles, such as gender equality.

Avraham Burg, a former parliament speaker from the center-left Labor Party who endorsed Hadash this year, said he was initially skeptical about the Joint List but is now keeping an open mind, based on assurances from Odeh.

Danny Danon, a senior member of Netanyahu's Likud Party, is waiting to see what policies the Joint List pursues.

He noted that one of the Joint List's leading members is Haneen Zoabi who has expressed understanding for Palestinian militants who kidnapped and killed three Israeli teens last year, comments that outraged many Israelis. If Odeh follows "the path of Zoabi, you will find us fighting his platform," Danon said.

Burg said the Joint List can transform politics, provided it doesn't fall apart after the elections.

"We will witness a new landscape for the entire democratic camp in Israel in which Israeli Arabs are no longer excluded as pariahs," he predicted.

Photo: Mahmoud Illean/AP

U.S. sanctions against Venezuela draw objections worldwide

Fri, 13 Mar 2015 14:35:00 +0000

On Monday, President Obama announced a "special state of emergency," saying that the situation in Venezuela is one that represents an extraordinary danger to U.S. interests and foreign policy. He also imposed sanctions on seven Venezuelan officials, claiming that they were complicit in repressing Venezuelan civil society and freedom of the press.

Worldwide, and within the United States also, this set off an epidemic of head scratching, as people tried to figure out how internal developments in Venezuela somehow represent a danger for the United States. In Latin America, the reaction was more intense, as leaders and ordinary citizens recalled past instances in which U.S. interventions have led to "regime change" involving the deaths of thousands.

In the 19th century, the United States seized more than half of Mexico and all of Puerto Rico, plus the Guantanamo Bay area in Cuba. In the first half of the twentieth century, U.S. troops directly intervened in all of the countries of Central America, plus Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic and some South American countries. In these interventions peoples' movements for democracy were crushed, dictators put in and propped up in power, and dissident leaders murdered, such as Augusto Cesar Sandino in Nicaragua and Charlemagne Peralte in Haiti.

The CIA-engineered overthrow of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954, set off decades of civil war in which at least 200,000 people, mostly poor indigenous farmers, died. Multiple projects to destabilize Cuba began with the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, including the disastrous Bay of Pigs adventure.

In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson ordered the invasion of the Dominican Republic to prevent a dictator from being overthrown by pro-democracy forces. In 1973 the U.S., after having done everything possible to destabilize the Chilean economy, backed a military coup against Socialist Party President Salvador Allende which led to the death of at least 3,000 and the imprisonment or exile of tens of thousands.

In the 1970s, the U.S. government collaborated in "Operation Condor" in which South American dictatorships carried out mass killings of dissidents. In the 1980s, U.S. interventions in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras created more bloodbaths. The United States was complicit in coups in Venezuela (2002), Haiti (2004) and Honduras (2009).

In all of these interventions the purpose was to protect U.S. corporations' ability to exploit local populations and get hold of poor countries' national resources. But always a pretext was proclaimed that the United States was defending human rights, democracy and good government. Today it's "humanitarian intervention."

So when this past week U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki faced a press conference and claimed that the United States does not interfere in other countries' internal affairs, she was met with incredulous responses from the reporters.

Reminded of past interventions, Psaki said it would be better not to get into history. But history happened and cannot be wished away. People in the United States are often unaware of this history, while people in Latin America are very acutely aware of it.

An appeal for support from Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro got an immediate positive response. Governments of Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador and Nicaragua, all linked to Venezuela through the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) issued support statements denouncing Obama's announcement and especially the sanctions, as did Argentina and the People's Republic of China, a major rival of the United States in South American trade.

Bolivian President Evo Morales expressed the views of the region when he said "We condemn, we repudiate, in the 21st Century we will not accept this kind of intervention by the United States....All of our solidarity, all of our support goes to President Maduro, and the revolutionary Bolivarian government and people of Venezuela."

President Rafael Correa of Ecuador said, "It must be a bad joke, which reminds us of the darkest hours of our America, when we received [sic] invasions and dictatorships imposed by imperialism."

UNASUR (The Union of South American Nations), which includes every independent country in South America, had already moved to help Venezuela by organizing trade support to remedy some of the food scarcities which, along with inflation and dropping oil prices, are currently a source of disquiet. Also, UNASUR had assigned its Secretary General, former Colombian President Ernesto Samper, to talk to the Venezuelan government and its opponents for purposes of tension reduction. After Obama's action on Monday, UNASUR passed a resolution condemning any outside intervention in Venezuela's internal affairs. UNASUR will have a special emergency meeting on Mar. 14.

Protests against Obama's statement occurred in Venezuela and elsewhere, at a point at which the new U.S. approach to Cuba had created some goodwill for a change. The Venezuelan government asked for, and got, passage of an enabling law to allow it to deal with any new security threat. At least part of the opposition in Venezuela hurriedly distanced itself from Obama's proclamation. On Apr. 10 -12, Obama will have to face the hostility that this incident has created at the Summit of the Americas in Panama.

Some U.S. officials are now seeming to say that they did not really mean that Venezuela represents and extraordinary threat to the United States, that this was legalistic language to make possible the imposition of sanctions on the Venezuelan officials-leading to more head scratching and quizzical looks.

Photo: Demonstrators in Canada demand that the U.S. respect Venezuela and their government. | FDPHC Twitter via TeleSUR

U.S. escalates tensions with Venezuela

Thu, 12 Mar 2015 15:03:00 +0000

President Obama activated sanctions against Venezuela last Monday, which had been approved by Congress and signed by himself.

The president said that Venezuela, under its current leadership, represents an "unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States," and, as a result, he was imposing sanctions against seven officials of Venezuelan President Madurto's government.

These sanctions prevent the seven leaders from traveling to the U.S. Their assets in the U.S. can be seized and American citizens are forbidden from having dealings with them. All the individuals sanctioned are accused of suppressing riots in Venezuela in the first months of 2014, or of prosecuting people that Mr. Maduro's government has accused of fomenting the rioting or planning a coup that was nipped in the bud on Feb. 12.

In particular, the U.S. is angry that the Venezuelan authorities have taken action against the mayor of metropolitan Caracas, Antonio Ledezma and activist and wealthy businessman Leopoldo Lopez, both of whom have been arrested and await trial, as well as Maria Corina Machado, a former member of the Venezuelan congress.

Venezuela is also holding for trial Lorent Saleh, who is accused of plotting armed violence against Maduro supporters in conjunction with Colombian right wing paramilitary groups. One of the people on a list he had created of potential people to be assassinated, pro-government legislator Robert Serra, was in fact assassinated.

Saleh was extradited to Venezuela by the conservative government of Colombia last year.

Major U.S. media, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, have intimated that the whole idea of a coup was invented by Maduro and his government to provide a pretext for cracking down on dissent.

But people in Latin America are always on the alert for coup plots involving complicity by the CIA or other U.S. agencies.

In Venezuela there was an aborted coup, supported by the U.S., in 2002. President Hugo Chavez was arrested but rescued after a mass uprising. Several people accused in the recent plot, including Lopez and Ledezma, were involved. There was a coup in Honduras, also abetted from the U.S., in 2009. In Haiti, there was a coup in 2004, supported by the U.S. U.S. intervention in Central America was a bloody constant in the 1980s and into the 1990s. In the 1970s, the United States connived with extremely repressive, antidemocratic governments in "Operation Condor," in the course of which ex President Juan Jose Torres of Bolivia was murdered, along with thousands of others. In 1973, the Nixon administration abetted the bloody overthrow of socialist President Salvador Allende of Chile. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson invaded the Dominican Republic to thwart the will of that country's people and install a dictator. In 1954, the C.I.A. engineered the overthrow of reform-minded President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala.

In each case, the deciding factor behind intervention was a threat to U.S. corporate interests by the Latin American government's reforming policies. In each case, the United States allied itself with right-wing members of the traditional economic elites and the military brass.

In the case of Venezuela, the two socialist-led governments of Hugo Chavez (1999-2013) and Nicolas Maduro (2013 to present) have done much to improve the living standards of their people, greatly increasing the school achievement levels and drastically reducing poverty levels. Chavez built alliances with other Latin American and Caribbean states which have killed off the United States' former pet project, the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Instead, through mechanisms such as UNASUR, MERCOSUR, ALBA AND CELAC, Venezuela and its allies have managed to sharply increase mutual cooperation and horizontal integration of their economies, as well as increasing trade with China and other countries outside the region.

This is a potential problem for the imposition of the Transpacific Trade Partnership (TPP) which the U.S. administration and ruling class are pushing in Congress.

The accusations being made against the Venezuelan government by the opposition, by the U.S. media and by the Obama administration are demonstrably false. In last year's riots, 43 people were killed but the majority of them were government supporters, security personnel or bystanders. Security agents who employed excessive violence are being prosecuted by the Maduro government itself.

Venezuela has severe economic problems, including inflation and scarcity of some items, as well as a loss of revenues due to falling world oil prices, but the advances in fighting poverty achieved over the last 14 years are far from being erased. The government is tackling these problems with the help of its regional and worldwide allies. It is cracking down on smuggling, hoarding and the black market, but also changing its currency exchange regime to fight inflation.

President Maduro denounced Obama's announcement as the first step in an intensified campaign of destabilization and regime change. He announced that the number of diplomats accredited to the U.S. embassy in Caracas would be reduced from 100 to 17. Henceforth U.S. citizens will need visas to travel to Venezuela. And in response to the sanctions against Venezuelan officials, Maduro responded by promoting one of them, chief of national intelligence Gustavo Gonzalez Lopez, as Interior Minister. Venezuela has also created its own list of U.S. officials sanctioned for violating human rights, including ex President George W. Bush, ex Vice President Dick Cheney, and Senator Robert Menendez, D-N.J., one of the biggest Venezuela and Cuba bashers in Congress.

Photo: Venezuela says the U.S. supported a recent coup attempt there. For many decades the U.S. has indeed interfered in the internal affairs of Latin American countries. The above military assault on the Presidential Palace in Santiago de Chile in 1973, resulting in the overthrow of democratically- aeected President Salvador Allende and the installation of a military dictatorship,was backed by the U.S. | AP

Today in women’s history: Church of England ordains women priests

Thu, 12 Mar 2015 10:53:00 +0000

On March 12, 1994, the Church of England for the first time ordained 32 women at Bristol Cathedral. As the women were ordained in alphabetical order, Angela Berners-Wilson is considered the first woman to be ordained in England.

Ordination of women marked a momentous passage out of the exclusive male domination of the church, although other denominations within Christianity and in other faith traditions had already begun the process of opening up to women. In part this movement was a response to the growing worldwide feminist movement, and also to the increasing secularization of the population in advanced industrial nations. Church attendance in England is presently at an all-time low. Many churches have all but closed down for lack of interest and support.

About 700 male clergy members and unknown thousands of parishioners indicated they would leave the Church of England and join the Roman Catholic Church over this issue. The Catholic Church responded to the ordination by saying that it "constitutes a profound obstacle to every hope of reunion between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion." Other critical issues would also have had to be resolved for that to happen, of course, including recognition of the Pope as head of a reunited Church.

Some provinces within the Anglican Communion ordain women to the three traditional holy orders of bishop, priest and deacon. Other provinces ordain women as deacons and priests but not as bishops; others still as deacons only; and seven provinces do not approve the ordination of women to any order of ministry.

This day's ordinations were not the first in the global Anglican Communion. In early 1994 about 1300 women priests were ordained in Anglican or Episcopal churches outside of Great Britain. But there are still earlier forerunners:

Technically, the first woman ordained to the priesthood in the Anglican Communion was Florence Li Tim-Oi, who was ordained on January 25, 1944 by the bishop of Victoria, Hong Kong, in response to the crisis among Anglican Christians in China caused by the Japanese invasion. To avoid controversy, she resigned her license, though not her priestly orders, after the end of the war.

In 1971, the Synod of Hong Kong and Macao became the first Anglican province to officially permit the ordination of women to the priesthood. Jane Hwang and Joyce Bennett were ordained as priests and at the same time, Li Tim-Oi was officially recognized again as a priest.

In 1974, in the United States, 11 women (known as the "Philadelphia Eleven") were controversially ordained to the priesthood by three retired Episcopal Church bishops. Four more women (the "Washington Four") were ordained in 1975 in Washington, D.C. All of these ordinations were ruled "irregular" because they had been done without the authorization of the Episcopal Church's General Convention. The ordinations were regularized in 1976 following the approval by the General Convention of measures to provide for the ordination of women to the priesthood and the episcopate. The first regular ordination occurred on January 1, 1977, when the Rev Jacqueline Means was ordained in Indianapolis.

The first woman bishop in the Anglican Communion was Barbara Harris, who was ordained suffragan bishop (a bishop under the authority of another bishop or archbishop) of Massachusetts in February 1989. Approximately 20 women have since been elected to the episcopate across the church. The election in December 2009 and consecration on May 15, 2010 of the Right Reverend (Rt Rev) Mary Douglas Glasspool, who is openly gay and lives with her partner of 20 years, as a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Los Angeles attracted worldwide attention owing to the continued controversy over gay bishops in Anglicanism.

The Episcopal Church in the United States has also elected the first woman primate (or senior bishop of a national church), the Most Rev Katharine Jefferts Schori, who was elected as Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church at the 2006 General Convention. She began her nine-year term on November 3, 2006. In 2014 she announced that she would not seek a further term when her appointment ends in 2015.

In addition to the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion, there are six extra-provincial Anglican churches which function semi-autonomously and are largely self-determining when it comes to the ordained ministry. Several have provided for the ordination of women as priests for some years.

To date, the Episcopal Church of Cuba is the only extra-provincial church to ordain women as bishops, the first of whom was the Rt Rev Nerva Cot Aguilera, who was appointed as a bishop suffragan in 2007. Bishop Aguilera was appointed by the Metropolitan Council, the ecclesiastical authority for the Episcopal Church of Cuba. In January 2010 the church appointed the Rt Rev Griselda Delgato del Carpio as bishop coadjutor (assistant bishop with the right of succession). Along with Bishop Aguilera, del Carpio was one of the first two women priests ordained in Cuba in 1986. She was ordained to the episcopate on February 7, 2010, and installed as diocesan on November 28, 2010, following the retirement of the Rt Rev Miguel Tamayo-Zaldívar.

The appointment of women as religious leaders carries far deeper implications than the democratization of the church alone: It has far-reaching theological impact. Believers are open to seeing the role of women in the Bible and throughout history in a fresh light. The expanding participation of women forms an integral part of liberation theology. Women in positions of leadership in the faith community have contributed profoundly to the breakdown of patriarchal rule in the family and generally in society. Male chauvinist ideas that once seemed essential to the turning of the Earth are now seen as factors in human history that we are now able to supersede, even going so far as to challenge the notion of God the Father. Needless to say, however, progress does not always move in a straight forward line.

Sources: Chase's Calendar of Events, Wikipedia

Photo: Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori was elected in 2006 as the first female Presiding Bishop in the history of the Episcopal Church and also the first female primate in the Anglican Communion. | Wikipedia (CC)

Canada conservatives push to curb civil liberties

Wed, 11 Mar 2015 15:36:00 +0000

VANCOUVER, Canada - Canadian conservatives aren't slowing down their steamroller attempt to impose legislation criminalizing dissidents.

The right-wing conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper used its majority in Parliament to end debate on Bill C-51 and pass it Feb. 23, a little more than three weeks after it was introduced on Jan. 30. The Conservatives and Liberals voted in favor of Bill C-51 while the center left New Democratic Party (NDP) opposition and the lone Green Member of Parliament (MP) voted against it.

The bill is now before the public safety committee where MPs are listening to public comments on Bill C-51 until the end of March. The NDP MPs have filibustered the committee to extend hearings on the legislation. The Conservatives want to limit hearings so it can be sent to the Senate where a Conservative majority will likely assure it's passage. "This really is a reckless pace for such a sweeping piece of legislation, that will drastically undermine age-old civil liberties. It's clear the Conservatives are moving at such breakneck speed in order to ram this through before opposition can make itself felt," Open Media's David Christopher told the Peoples World in an interview. Open Media is a coalition of 60 groups, ranging from the National Firearm's association to major unions, fighting against evasive legislation that undermines privacy rights and civil liberties.

The Conservatives have also started running TV ads to build public support for Bill C-51.

A wide range of organizations and parties inside and outside of Parliament have opposed the legislation: the Greens, Communists, NDP, trade union and environmental movements, civil liberties associations, Open Media, the Federal Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien as well as groups on the right such as the Libertarian Party.

Bill C-51 defines terrorism as "interference with the capability of the government of Canada in relation to intelligence, defense, border operations, public safety, administration of justice, diplomatic or consular relations, or the economic or financial stability of Canada; changing or unduly influencing a government in Canada by force or unlawful means; inference with critical infrastructure; interference with global information infrastructure; an activity that causes serious harm to a person or their property ...; an activity that takes place in Canada and undermines the security of another state."

The legislation will give spy agencies new powers to, among other things, override privacy protections to increase information sharing between government agencies and security agencies. It would expand the Canadian Service Intelligence Service's (CSIS) -Canada's version of the CIA - powers to include placing Canadians on a no-fly list. It criminalizes advocating, promoting and supporting terrorism online - even when the person has no intention of carrying out a terrorist act - and will allow the CSIS to apply for court orders to remove websites. The bill also allows police to arrest suspects and detain them for one week without charges based on mere suspicion they might carry out a terrorist act.

Critics fear that Bill C-51's broad new definition of terrorism will allow the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and CSIS to clamp down on the environmental and labor movements, for example, if they interfere with critical infrastructure or economic and financial stability. It will also allow security agencies to go after supporters and organizers of the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions movement against Israeli apartheid policies as potential terrorists because it is "activity that takes place in Canada and undermines the security of another state." Critics assert that the police already have enough power to deal with domestic terrorists with existing Canadian law.

Even exiled US whistleblower Edward Snowden weighed in against Bill C-51 recently. In video clip from Russia, he warned that the legislation threatens civil liberties and political freedoms in Canada.

The Conservatives counter that the legislation has built in safeguards because judges will have to approve intelligence operations and that it excludes legitimate dissidents from being targeted.

Meanwhile, an open letter signed by 100 academics and law professors opposing Bill C-51 has been sent to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The letter, among other things, criticizes the legislation because:

-- The law defines 'activities that undermine the security of Canada' in such an exceptionally broad way that 'terrorism' is simply one of nine examples, and only 'lawful advocacy, protest, dissent and artistic expression' is excluded. Apart from all the civil-disobedience activities and illegal protests or strikes that will be covered (e.g. in relation to "interference with critical infrastructure"), this deep and broad intrusion into privacy is made worse by the fact there are no corresponding oversight or review mechanisms adequate to this expansion of the state's new levels of information awareness. Concerns have already been expressed by the Privacy Commissioner, an officer of Parliament, who has insufficient powers and resources to even begin to oversee, let alone correct abuses within, this expanded information-sharing system.

-- Making it criminal to advocate or encourage terrorism could affect people advocating armed revolution or rebellion abroad. If Bill C-51 had been in effect during the apartheid period, it would have affected thousands of Canadians who supported the African National Congress's efforts to overthrow the apartheid government.

-- Allowing the CSIS - which can currently only collect information - to intervene and disrupt activities is dangerous because the organization defines the threat to the security of Canada "so broadly that CSIS already considers various environmental and aboriginal movements to be subject to their scrutiny."

-- It also highlights that Bill C-51 will subvert the role of judges who are there to assess whether legal measures violate laws and instead turn them into agents for security agencies to pre-authorize violations of Canadian law. "Now a judge can be asked to (indeed, required) to say yes in advance to measures that could range from wiping a target's computer clear of all info to fabricating materials (or playing agent provocateur roles) that discredits a target..."

-- The letter criticizes the lowering of the threshold for preventive detention and allowing the CSIS to place people on no fly lists. It concludes by criticizing the conservatives for limiting debate on bill C-51: "It is sadly ironic that democratic debate is being curtailed on a bill that vastly expands the scope of covert state activity when that activity will be subject to poor even non-existent democratic oversight or review."

Leadnow, Open Media, BC Government Employees Union, and others are planning to stage joint demonstrations across Canada on Mar. 14 to oppose Bill C-51.

Photo: Parliament - Ottawa. | Wikipedia (CC)

American people key to normalization of U.S.-Cuba ties

Wed, 11 Mar 2015 15:05:00 +0000

The historic Dec. 17 announcement by President Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro to reestablish diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba and begin the process toward full normalization of relations, was greeted with excitement across the Americas and around the world.

Having just returned from a brief visit to Cuba, it's clear the Cuban people share the jubilation and a sense of optimism that resuming relations will change their lives for the better. But the announcement was also tempered by a sober recognition that this is just the beginning of a long, difficult process.

The agreement, including release of the remaining Cuban 5 prisoners, would not have been possible without the heroic resistance of the Cuban people to U.S. efforts to destroy their revolution. This includes the 56-year-old economic blockade whose purpose was to isolate and economically strangle Cuba. This was especially so following the collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, a time of desperate shortages known as the "special period."

Nor would this moment have been possible without global solidarity with the Cuban people, especially the peoples and governments of South and Central America and the Caribbean who insisted unanimously that Cuba's exclusion from the Organization of American States be ended. The solidarity extends to thousands of U.S. citizens who fought the blockade, and openly defied the travel ban for decades.

And finally, it wouldn't have been possible without the courageous action of President Obama, who made the bold announcement in the wake of the 2014 election defeats when the GOP and right wing strengthened their hold on Congress. Once again it underscores, that elections and who is elected, have consequences.

By seeking normalization, U.S. ruling circles are acknowledging the current policy failed in its mission to overthrow the Cuban government. They realized it was an obstacle to gaining access to Cuban markets, putting them at a competitive disadvantage to global rivals. It was also an obstacle to their strategic plans for reasserting economic domination over South America, who have strengthened trade relations with China and other Asian countries. The U.S. was becoming increasingly isolated throughout the hemisphere.

President Obama's action coincided with a broad shift in U.S. public opinion including among Cuban Americans to change policy. In a Washington Post - ABC poll in December shortly after President Obama's announcement, 64 percent of Americans supported reestablishing relations with Cuba and 68 percent supported ending the blockade.

Support for change has grown across the political spectrum. 57 percent of Republicans support opening trade between the U.S. and Cuba, and 64 percent support ending restrictions on travel. But only 49 percent support reestablishing diplomatic relations.

The reestablishment of diplomatic relations is only a start. The process to fully normalize relations and engage in cooperation on a broad range of issues will be longer and more complex, fraught with potential for stalemate and setback. At each point in the process there are major challenges to overcome: taking Cuba off the state sponsored terror list, establishment and funding of embassies, ending travel and trade restrictions, closing the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, etc.

In the end, guaranteeing normalization rests on the American people. It requires heightened mobilization to counter Republican Party leadership and an ultra right determined to block every step forward. It means greater involvement in the political, legislative and electoral arenas.

Even though the blockade of Cuba, which has been in existence since 1962, is codified in law, President Obama has broad authority through executive action to modify the vast majority of provisions known as licensing procedures that make up the lion's share of the blockade. His actions can essentially hollow out much of the blockade including restrictions on commerce, services and transportation. He has already taken action to alter licensing procedures in travel, remittances, some commercial operations and transactions.

President Obama even has authority to implement the Cuban Adjustment Act governing immigration, in a discretionary manner.

But full normalization of relations including the right of American citizens to travel freely to Cuba and to allow Cuba to buy U.S. agricultural goods on credit or from foreign subsidiaries of US corporations requires legislative action. The Helms-Burton Law and Torricelli Act must be repealed. Such action will be obstructed by the current Republican right-wing Congress and underscores the importance of electing a president and Congress in the 2016 elections that will continue the process.

A Republican victory in the presidency and Congress will either make the process harder, scuttle it all together or even lead to heightened tensions, renewed threats of military intervention and overthrow. So far every Republican presidential candidate is hostile to the agreement. Hillary Clinton, who is expected to announce her candidacy soon, is seen continuing the process of normalization if elected.

Other factors could affect the process including Obama administration policy in South and Central America and what appear efforts to destabilize progressive and socialist oriented governments including Venezuela, Argentina, and Brazil. This reflects a broader strategic policy of reversing the independent economic integration of South and Central America and the Caribbean.

However, there are also tremendous new possibilities to build a broad and diverse alliance for normalization including a significant section of the corporate ruling class, most of the Democratic Party, a section of Republicans, and ordinary Americans, including the labor movement, farmers, people of faith, academics, students, cultural workers and others who want peace and good neighborly relations, and who want to travel, vacation, study, make music, and do business in Cuba.

There are some who fear the normalization process endangers Cuban socialism and is even a "sellout" of the revolution. But this is strange logic and faulty from a number perspectives.

First, such a view has no real appreciation of the damaging effects of the blockade on the social and economic life of the Cuban people. Economic development and improved living standards in Cuba depends on foreign investment and trade.

Secondly, it shows ignorance about how deeply the roots of the revolution have grown, its consolidation and the dynamic process of updating the social and economic model of socialism currently underway. The Cuban people, who have been through far more difficult challenges, are not about to give that up.

President Castro has repeatedly stated that one of the conditions for a successful normalization is respect by the U.S. for the sovereignty of the Cuban people and their right to choose their own path of economic and social development. This is also a warning against efforts to destabilize, infiltrate and influence the political process.

Those who care deeply about peace and friendship between peoples, sovereign rights of nations and the democratic rights of the U.S. people to travel should be part of every key battle ahead. It means enlarging and broadening the movement, shifting public opinion further, encouraging people to people, economic, and cultural exchanges and cooperation of the broadest nature.

Photo: Ramon Espinosa/AP

Syriza’s Greece: whispers of battles past

Wed, 11 Mar 2015 14:50:00 +0000

The recent negotiations between Greece and the European Union (EU) bring to mind Themistocles, a man who knew when to retreat and when to fight. The year was 480 BC and Xerxes I - "the king with half the east at heel" - was marching on Greece with a massive army accompanied by an enormous fleet. Against the invasion stood a small Greek army, led by Leonidas of Sparta, and an equally outnumbered navy, commanded by the Athenian Themistocles.

It didn't look good for the Greeks in August 480 BC. The Persian army was at least 10 times the size of the Greek force, and Themistocles was outnumbered almost three to one. It didn't look good for Syriza in 2015: not a single EU member supported the Greek call for easing the debt crisis and ending the punishing austerity regime that has shattered the country's economy and impoverished many of its people.

The Greek army and Leonidas were destroyed at Thermopylae, but the wily Themistocles first bloodied the Persians at Artemisium, then retreated, buying time to lay a trap at Salamis. With a little deception and a wind at his back - always a plus when you are ramming other people's ships - the Greeks annihilated the Persian fleet and defeated the invasion.

Can Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his finance minister Yanis Varoufakis pull off a Salamis and best what looks like another unbeatable foe? It is too soon to tell, but the deal they cut in Brussels bears a resemblance to that long ago battle in the Straits of Artemisium: both sides took losses, but the Greeks bought themselves valuable time.

And as Varoufakis recently remarked, "Time is our most precious commodity."

There are a couple of things to keep in mind about the Feb. 20 agreement approved by the 19 European finance ministers.

First, Syriza did not have a mandate from the electorate to play one of its most powerful cards: "Give us a deal or we leave the Eurozone and maybe tank the Euro."

Second, Greece had a gun to its head: a Feb. 28 deadline, after which its banks would have lost support from the European Central Bank (ECB), one of the "Troika" members that include the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Commission. Without ECB support, Greek banks might have gone under, forcing Athens to default on the debt and to exit from the Eurozone.

In the long run the Greeks may decide to default or drop the Euro, but that is not a decision that a freshly elected government that relies on a coalition to stay in power can make in a few weeks.

Third, as attractive as it is to think of scrappy little Greece defeating the mighty Troika and the EU, let's be serious. Greece represents about 2 percent of the EU's GDP. Its foes would have made Xerxes tremble: Germany, France, Italy, Finland, and the Netherlands, and even the debt-strapped governments of Spain, Portugal, and Ireland.

Syriza's critics charge that the party folded in Brussels, getting little more than a few cosmetic word changes in the Memorandum of Understanding that the Troika forced on Greece back in 2010. But language, as economist James Galbraith points out, has power. In "Reading the Greek Deal Correctly," the University of Texas professor argues that substituting words like "the current programme" for "Master Financial Assistance Facility Agreement" means the agreement is extended "but the commitments are to be reviewed."

Analyzing the centerpiece of the agreement, Galbraith concludes that there is no "unwavering commitment to the exact terms and conditions" of the 2010 Memorandum. "So," he writes, "No, the Troika cannot come to Athens and complain about the rehiring of cleaning ladies."

Georgos Katroughalos, a Syriza minister, called the Feb. 20 agreement a study in "constructive ambiguity" that "allows different readings. Our reading is that we are not applying the Memorandum program. We are applying our agenda."

What Syriza accepted were those sections of the Memorandum that mirrored its own program: running down tax evaders - unpaid taxes are estimated at 76 billion Euros, ending corruption, targeting fuel and tobacco smuggling, modernizing public administration, and tackling the "humanitarian crisis" with programs for food stamps, free medical care, and electricity for the poor. There will also be a pilot program for a minimum income for those under the poverty line - Brazil has had much success with this - and mortgage relief.

Which is not to say there were no casualties.

Syriza backed away from its pledge to end privatizations, although it added a caveat that the sale of public property must actually bring in significant amounts of cash. To date, many privatizations have been inside deals at fire sale prices. The privatization part of the agreement could be a retreat, or a loophole to put the brakes on the process. People will just have to wait and see what Syriza does.

"Labor reform" is another area where sparks are certain to fly. By "reform" the Troika means cutting back minimum wages, abolishing collective bargaining, increasing the retirement age, and laying off workers. In theory this is supposed to make Greek workers more "productive" and more like German workers. In fact, Greeks work longer hours than German workers, but Greece does not possess Germany's modernized infrastructure, including computers, high-speed rail, and autobahns.

Much of the German "modernization" was paid for by the U.S. to serve as a bulwark against the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc countries. The 1953 London Agreement that canceled much of Germany's World War II debts and stretched out payments - Syriza is asking for something very similar - was not done out of kindness, but as a critical ingredient in the Cold War. Germany would be part of the "west wall" against the Russians.

Syriza has agreed to "phase in" raising the minimum wage but is vague about implementing the rest of the "reform" package. Again, this could be seen as capitulation or as a temporary retreat. The measure of that will be what the Greek government actually does.

Greece is facing some deadlines this summer, and there is pressure from the EU for yet another bailout deal. But if Athens gets its anti-corruption program up and running, throttles gas and tobacco smuggling, and successfully collects taxes, Greece will have cash on hand to fulfill some of its election promises to restore jobs and pensions, and fund health care. The agreement recognizes that Greece is facing a "humanitarian crisis," wording that might give Syriza more space to maneuver.

Greece is not alone in this fight. While it received no support from other Eurozone countries, most of those countries have growing anti-austerity movements that back Syriza. The Greek party's close ally in the European Parliament, Podemos, is now the second largest party in Spain. And while governments in Portugal and Ireland have demanded that Greece stick with its austerity program, those governments are under siege at home for their own austerity regimes.

Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelhois is one of Syriza's sharpest critics, dismissing the Greek party's position as a "children's fairytale," but his center-right Social Democrats are running behind the Socialist Party (SP). While the Socialists negotiated the original austerity agreement with the Troika, they have since turned against it. Antonio Costa, the recently elected mayor of Lisbon and leader of the SP, says austerity has brought nothing to Portugal but poverty and unemployment. On Feb. 12 a multi-party group of 32 leading politicians, economists and scientists urged Coelho to end his "punitive" approach to Greece and instead declare "solidarity" with Athens.

Even the Germans are not all on the same page. While Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble - sounding more like a Wehrmacht commander than a European politician - snarled that Syriza "would have a difficult time to explain the deal to their voters," Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel was far more conciliatory.

What about just dumping the Euro and declaring bankruptcy? Argentina did that and its economy grew for several years straight. But Argentina still cannot borrow money without paying onerous interest rates, and the IMF's blockade of international finances has hurt Buenos Aires. In any case, Argentina has a much bigger economy than Greece and close ties with other South American countries through the trade bloc Mercosur. In short, it has far greater resources than Athens.

The Euro has not been good for Greece, or for most of Southern European members of the Eurozone. A common currency doesn't work when some economies are big, industrial and strong, while others are smaller and, like Greece, rely on business like tourism. Indeed, Greece has lost some of its industrial base since joining the Eurozone. When the playing field is uneven, the big dogs take over, which is why Germany dominates the EU.

The consequences of withdrawing from the Euro are uncertain, and not something a newly elected government can responsibly take. In any case, the vast majority of Greeks have yet to have that conversation.

In the coming months it will be obvious whether the latest agreement was a defeat or a tactical maneuver by Syriza. If the new government is to successfully resist the Troika, however, it will need support, not only within Greece, but from Europe and beyond. As UK political activist and journalist Tom Walker put it, "This battle is a long way from over," and "the future of austerity across Europe now rests on what happens in Greece. If we give up on them we are giving up on our own struggles too."

In 480 BC the Spartans held the Persians for three days, and poems were written about their courage, but they all died. It was Themistocles, who knew when to retreat and when to fight, who saved Greece.

This article originally appeared at Conn Hallinan's blog, Dispatches From the Edge.

Photo: Syriza's Yanis Varoufakis, now the Greek foreign minister, at the Subversive Festival in Zagreb, Croatia, May 2013. Wikimedia Commons

Claudia Jones Communist, anti-racist and feminist

Tue, 10 Mar 2015 16:19:00 +0000

It is surprising that not more has been written about Claudia Jones given her stunning achievements as an activist, freedom fighter ideologist and theoretician.

The fact that she is buried next to Karl Marx is an appropriate but not an adequate epitaph.

The bare bones of her all too short life - she died at the age of 49 - is relatively well known.

She was born in 1915 in Trinidad and emigrated with her parents, an aunt and three sisters to the U.S. where they settled in Harlem; and where she and her family, like most of the black population, experienced appalling racism and great poverty.

These experiences, together with the trumped-up case against the Scottsboro "boys" (1935-6), led Claudia, aged 18, to join the Young Communist League (YCL).

This is how she put it: "It was out of my Jim Crow experiences as a young negro woman, experiences likewise born of working-class poverty that led me to join the Young Communist League and to choose the philosophy of my life, the science of Marxism-Leninism - that philosophy not only rejects racist ideas, but is the antithesis of them."

This quote indicates that very early on in her life she understood the relationship between exploitation and oppression and in particular the connection between class, race and gender.

This was something that informed her politics throughout her life both in the US and later when she was deported to England.

Although she rose swiftly through the ranks of the YCL and the party this did not stop her retaining a critical view of what she perceived as a gender-blind and colour-blind approach to women's and negro oppression (she always used the term "negro" as it was in common parlance at the time).

She was supported on the issue of oppression, however, by William Z Foster, who served as general secretary of the CPUSA from 1945-57 after the expulsion of the former general secretary Earl Browder.

In the bitter struggle against Browderism, Jones supported the party's rejection of the "revisionist position on the national character of the negro question."

In a long discussion article entitled On the Right to Self-Determination for the Negro People in the Black Belt, she argued that the CPUSA had always understood that the negro question was a special question taking on the character of a national question.

She made a distinction between the position of negros in the north and in the Black Belt where they constituted a majority of the population.

She argued that self-determination was not the same as separation and argued that the former had to be seen as a "programmatic demand" and a "guiding principle."

She quoted Lenin, who argued that the negro people in the US constituted an "oppressed nation." She was informed by his teachings, which is why she opposed Browder from 1944.

The latter by now envisaged a rosy future for "peaceful capitalism" which would end racism, imperialism and exploitation.

Jones was imprisoned for writing and delivering an International Women's Day address in which she strongly supported the fight for peace against imperialist aggression.

Furthermore she castigated the left and the party for failing to uproot male supremacist ideas.

Such ideas ensured that the stated aim of building a mass party was unlikely to be achieved given that women constitute half the population and that while working-class women are doubly oppressed, black women are triply oppressed.

Further, echoing Clara Zetkin, she criticised bourgeois feminism, which instead of seeing women's oppression as founded on class exploitation, viewed it as stemming solely from men, substituting "the battle of the sexes" for the class struggle.

Jones quotes Engels, citing his work on The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, in which he said that within the family the man is the bourgeois and the woman the proletarian.

Thus: "Marxist-Leninists fight to free women from household drudgery, they fight to win equality for women in all spheres, they recognise that one cannot adequately deal with the woman question or win women for progressive participation unless one takes up the special problems, needs and aspirations of women as women" (from We seek Full Equality for Women, 1949).

In the same article she wrote that the CPUSA was the first party to demonstrate to white women and to the working class "that the triply oppressed status of negro women is a barometer of the status of all women."

After several periods of imprisonment under the viciously anti-communist Smith and McCarran Acts, she was eventually deported.

She suffered bouts of serious ill health as a result of her prison experiences, in particular, a heart problem which was untreated.

Because she was not a US citizen she was eventually deported to England because Trinidad was still a British colony.

In Britain she continued her activism. She founded the West Indian Gazette and the Notting Hill Carnival and remained a communist until her dying day.

Mary Davis is a visiting professor at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Reposted from Morning Star.

Photo: Claudia Jones stamp

Women fight an uphill battle in El Salvador

Mon, 09 Mar 2015 14:56:00 +0000

SAN PABLO TACACHICO, El Salvador - A delegation of North American women recently paid a visit to El Salvador to see what women are doing there to better their lives, what resources are available for them, what impediments to progress exist, and how people outside the country can help.

"Nada."

One of our group had just asked María Julia Portillo, leader of a women's cooperative, what government initiatives there were to help them fulfill their ambitious agenda of economic empowerment for women.

We weren't surprised that "nothing" was her answer.

"You have to look at a problem and work to find a way out of it yourself," she said.

And that's what a group of women in San Pablo Tacachico, 60 km northwest of San Salvador, have done, with the help of El Centro de Intercambio y Solidaridad (CIS).

ADEMGUAPE - Asociación Municipal de Mujeres Guardalupano - has three money-making projects.

From their cinderblock community center painted in bright colors, we walked 50 yards to a tennis court-sized, covered enclosure filled with 500 clucking chickens. ADEMGUAPE's egg-laying business is run by six women who work two days a week caring for the chickens and guarding the henhouse at night. Their hens lay 19 cartons of eggs a day - that's 3,990 a week. They deliver to retail outlets twice a week. Another team of women raise chickens for meat.

At present, the egg-laying business's financial profile is not good: It costs 11 cents to produce an egg that sells for 12 cents. Which is why 200 baby chicks were cooing in a protective temporary shelter. The women are expanding, hoping to bring down costs. Their business plan includes opening additional retail outlets and finding better transportation for deliveries.

ADEMGUAPE opened their third business in November: a "market basket" shop. Last year we saw workmen digging foundations for the store. Now we could walk through the new, spacious addition housing the store, an office or two, and storage.

The tiendita sells staples - rice, beans, oil, sugar, macaroni, detergent, locally made cheeses, and of course eggs - to the public at reasonable prices. As with the egg-laying business, there are growing pains. A small shop doesn't have much buying power and they need access to better wholesale prices.

ADEMGUAPE has accomplished much in its eight years of existence. They pushed the municipality to adopt policies supportive of gender equality and against domestic violence. Mini-stores have been established in ten women's homes. They "bank" livestock: One family cares for a cow owned by the cooperative, and calves, when they are born, go to other members.

All of this takes money. Not much - a mini-store needs only a $500 investment - but in El Salvador capital is hard to come by. CIS has funneled money from other NGOs into ADEMGUAPE's projects, but it's never enough.

The women want to improve members' housing. They need a revolving loan fund. They're not afraid to march in the streets to draw attention to the problems they identify.

Such is a glimpse into women's lives in today's El Salvador.

Photo: Women's rights have a way to go in El Salvador. | Dennis Tang/Flickr

Today in women’s history: Rosa Luxemburg born in 1871

Thu, 05 Mar 2015 14:03:00 +0000

Rosa Luxemburg, born on March 5, 1871, in Zamość, Poland, was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and revolutionary socialist of Polish-Jewish descent. Active in political life in Germany, she became a naturalized German citizen.

Luxemburg was, successively, a member of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the Independent Social Democratic Party, and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).

In 1915, after the SPD supported German involvement in World War I, she and Karl Liebknecht co-founded the anti-war Spartacus League (Spartakusbund), which eventually became the KPD. During the German Revolution that immediately followed WWI, she co-founded the newspaper Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag), as the central organ of the Spartacist movement.

The emergence of a communist movement truly dedicated to the principle of "Workers of the world, unite!" was a historical inevitability in the wake of what many committed socialists considered a colossal betrayal when, in one country after another, the existing socialist parties supported their own bourgeois governments in war - against socialists and workers of other countries! The 1917 Russian Revolution broke that paradigm, and led to the foundation of numerous communist parties around the world in the immediate post-WWI years.

Luxemburg considered the Spartacist uprising of January 1919 a blunder, but supported it as events unfolded. Friedrich Ebert's social democratic government used the Freikorps (World War I veterans who banded together into right-wing paramilitary groups) to crush the revolt. Freikorps troops captured Luxemburg, Liebknecht and others of their supporters. Luxemburg was shot and her body thrown in the Landwehr Canal in Berlin. She died on January 15, 1919.

Stemming from the ferocity of the social democratic repression of the left, the communists maintained little faith in any political alliances with social democrats. The failure of these two divisions of the left to reconcile in the 1920s and early 1930s split the resistance to the Nazis, a historical miscalculation which belatedly led, after the rise of fascism, to the global strategy of the united front.

Due to her pointed criticism of both the Marxist-Leninist and the social democratic schools of socialism, Luxemburg has had an ambivalent reception among scholars and theorists of the left, although most Marxists came to regard Luxemburg and Liebknecht as martyrs. Their reputation has only grown over time. Commemoration of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht continues to play an important role among the German political left.

Perhaps the most famous quote from Luxemburg's writings is: "Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently."

"The more that social democracy develops, grows, and becomes stronger," she wrote, "the more the enlightened masses of workers will take their own destinies, the leadership of their movement, and the determination of its direction into their own hands."

In 1928, the year that saw the premiere of the powerful Threepenny Opera by composer Kurt Weill and librettist Bertolt Brecht, the two collaborators were commissioned to write The Berlin Requiem, a cantata for tenor, baritone, male chorus and wind orchestra. Two of Brecht's poems in the work, the "Ballad of the Drowned Girl" and "The Red Rosa," pay tribute to Luxemburg and the circumstances of her death.

For more information, see here.

Photo: Wikipedia (CC)