People Before Profit blog

Amid political storm, will Brazil drift into oligarchy?

Mon, 28 Mar 2016 15:04:00 +0000

On March 18, supporters of the center-left government of President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers' Party (PT, or Partido dos Trabalhadores) marched in a score of Brazilian cities to oppose a coup which they say is under way against the embattled leader.

This came after similar numbers of opposing demonstrators came out March 13, demanding the impeachment of Rousseff. Another anti-impeachment rally is scheduled for March 31. Anti-impeachment activists have accused the pro-impeachment faction of attempting to carry out a coup to reverse the results of the elections of 2014 by undemocratic means. The fact that the pro-impeachment marchers have been overwhelmingly white in this multi racial country has not escaped mention by defenders of the government.

The street action is likely to advance as the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Brazilian Congress, moves to act on impeachment perhaps as early as the second week of April.

A crisis rooted in inequality

Brazil, with a population of 200 million-- the fifth most populous country in the world-- is more industrialized than most poor countries. It has also bet on international commodities sales from vast offshore oil deposits being exploited by the national petroleum company, Petrobras, as well as from the country's vast agricultural exports and other things.

The sharp drop in oil prices over the past year and a half, along with slowdowns in production in China(which was buying much of Brazil's commodities exports), has put the economy into deep recession. The resulting slowdown in improvements of poor people's living standards has undercut President Rousseff's popularity. Brazil's economy shrank 3.8 percent in 2015; domestic demand (i.e. not originating in China) was down 6.8 percent. Unemployment was 4.8 percent in 2014, and was up to 6.8 percent by 2015.

But these events represent a sharp reversal of the fortunes of ordinary Brazilians, which until very recently were on the rise.

The improvements in Brazilians' standard of living, since the election of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva(known as "Lula") in 2002, were immense and very popular. According to 2014 analysis by Mark Weisbrot, Jake Johnston and Stephan Lefebre of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the economy doubled in size, while poverty was reduced by 55 percent (and extreme poverty by 65 percent). Informal employment went down, the real minimum wage sharply up, and coverage of workers by social security also increased greatly. More resources went into health care, housing and schools, and an affirmative action program was established in all universities for people of Afro-Brazilian descent.

Moreover, Brazil has become a major player in international politics, especially concerning trade, as part of BRICS, the group of emerging economic powerhouses that include also Russia, India, China and South Africa. Although BRICS is by no means a socialist-oriented bloc, it represents a challenge to the power of international monopoly capital based in the United States and the European union, as it is seen as an alternate source of trade and development financing for poor countries trying to get out from under the control of Washington, Wall Street and Brussels.

All this was accomplished in the context of a balance of political power that favors the elite. The wealthiest families have highly concentrated power in the media, in the Congress and other institutions. Furthermore, neither Lula nor Rousseff have ever been able to count on unqualified support in Congress for their measures. After being elected twice, first in 2002 and then in 2006, Lula was term-limited out in 2011 and was replaced by Rousseff, also of the Workers' Party. It was Rousseff's misfortune to be president when the recession began, but she also has been the target of a re-energized national and international right wing.

The Workers' Parties and close left wing allies, such as the Communist Party of Brazil (Partido Comunista do Brasil) have never had a majority in the crucial lower house of Congress, the Chamber of Deputies, and thus both Lula and Rousseff have had to govern through coalitions with parties well to the right of them. (Included in this coalition is the large Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), of which Rousseff's vice president, Michel Temer, who would replace her if she were successfully impeached, is a member.) The 2014 general elections, in which Rousseff barely eked out a win, complicated the situation even more. No fewer than 25 parties won seats, some of them brand new.

The economy, now, has gone into a severe slump. This is caused in part by the economic retrenchment in China, which had been buying huge amounts of Brazilian commodities. But Weisbrot, Johnston and Lefebre, in the study previously cited, point also to mistakes by the Rousseff administration, including trying to fight the recession via austerity measures, and allowing the Brazilian Central Bank to maintain sky-high interest rates which have harmed the economic recovery. The result is that although the net impact of the Lula-Rousseff governments on the interests of workers and the poor is still positive, the economic difficulties of the country are bad indeed, and this is reflected in popular dissatisfaction.

Late last year, Rousseff replaced her pro-austerity finance minister, Joaquim Levy, with an anti-austerity official, Nelson Barbosa. Former President Lula has also been arguing for a move away from austerity. This has alarmed both Brazilian elites and international finance capital.

The Petrobras scandal

Into this tumultuous political climate came the Lava Jato corruption scandal. Brazil has always had a huge public corruption problem, but in this case corruption scandals coincide with economic downturn. Lava Jato, meaning "jet (car) wash", refers to a scheme, which started over a decade ago, whereby crooked construction companies would sign contracts with inflated price tags with Petrobras, and then kick back part of the extra money to politicians and officials who helped to set up the arrangement for them. Several construction companies are involved, the most notorious being Odebrecht, the largest such firm in Brazil. Hundreds of politicians, officials and business executives have been implicated, and many have now been arrested and jailed.

Though a number of high ranking members of the Workers' Party have been arrested and jailed, even more members of opposition parties, including the ones that are pushing hardest for Rousseff's fall, have met this fate. Severely implicated is Eduardo Cunha, the Speaker of the Lower House of the Brazilian Congress, who is from the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, the PMDB, formally a member of the government's coalition in Congress. Cunha is an extreme right wing evangelical Christian, and he has been prosecuted for allegedly stealing $40 million from PETROBRAS and laundering the funds "through an evangelical megachurch" (Cunha denies the accusations). Aceio Neves, of the opposition Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), whom Rousseff narrowly defeated in the presidential runoff election in 2014, has been accused in an earlier bribery matter. Currently, the PMDB is debating whether to withdraw its support for the Rousseff government.

The next presidential election in Brazil happens in 2018, and the Workers' Party and its allies were hoping to run former President Lula Silva again. Lula's popularity is still high, much higher than that of any other Brazilian politician including Rousseff and any in the opposition. So it is perhaps not surprising that efforts are now underway to prosecute him also in the "Lava Jato" matter. Rousseff has been attempting to appoint Lula as her chief of staff, but this has been blocked by the courts, and the opposition accuses Rousseff of appointing Lula to the cabinet level position so as to make it harder, though not impossible, to prosecute him. The police have searched his house and obliged him to give testimony about properties which he denies belong to him, but which prosecutors say they think might have been placed at his disposal as part of Lava Jato. The evidence against Lula seems thin, however.

Nobody has accused President Rousseff of personal involvement in the corruption, or of benefiting from it, in spite of the fact that she was chairperson of the Petrobras board during part of the period when this was going on. She is, however, threatened with impeachment in another matter: Her enemies accuse her of using state funds to cover up a budget gap which developed when the economy began to go into recession. But opponents of impeachment question whether it is legal to use this mechanism to remove the president from power, absent a clearly proved case of violation of the law on her part.

Furthermore, as Olivia Santana the head of the anti-racism commission of the Communist Party of Brazil points out, of the 61 members of committee in the Chamber of Deputies that is to decide on impeachment, 36 individuals are themselves seriously compromised in the scandal. Santana and many others suspect that the impeachment effort is a ploy to distract attention from opposition politicians and others who are culpable in Lava Jato, as well as to reverse the economic and social gains that poor, working class and minority Brazilians have made under Lula and Rousseff.

How would impeachment work? First, the lower house of Congress must vote with a two-thirds majority to impeach, and then the Senate must follow suit. If Rousseff is impeached and removed from office she would be succeeded by Vice President Michel Temer.

Can Brazil weather the storm?

But at this point the Brazilian drama has moved from the realm of Byzantine politics to that of surrealism. It turns out that the judge who has been supervising the whole mess, Sergio Moro, is hardly impartial. Moro has been shown to be actively promoting the pro-impeachment demonstrations. Furthermore, he released to the press, it would appear illegally, the results of a wiretap of a conversation between Lula and Rousseff on the subject of Lula's proposed appointment as Rousseff's chief of staff. Finally, Judge Moro is refusing to investigate a list of 200 people who appear to have got kickbacks from the construction firm Odebrecht, which leads to the suspicion that he is protecting members of opposition parties whose names are on the list.

Moro is now being built up as a Messiah or savior of the Brazilian people by the oligarchy-controlled Globo media empire. But neither Rousseff nor Lula nor the labor movement and other opponents of impeachment are ready to throw in the towel. Millions of Brazilians fear that the purpose of the impeachment move is to erase the progress that ordinary people have made since 2002, by imposing radical austerity measures, and they are not going to stand for it.

Photo: Eraldo Peres/AP

China’s new five-year plan could leave workers behind

Mon, 28 Mar 2016 10:45:00 +0000

At the debt-laden Longmay coal company in China's northeastern Heilongjiang province, thousands of workers hit the streets last week demanding back pay and to protest against wage cuts and the possibility that many of them will soon be out of a job.

Last fall, this state-owned firm announced that up to 100,000 workers out of a staff of 240,000 may face the ax. That was bad enough. But when the local governor brazenly told the national media that no unpaid wages were owed at Longmay, the same company where 21 miners lost their lives in a fire in the pits last November, workers and their families refused to go quietly to the unemployment lines. Photos circulating from the Hong Kong press showed thousands marching through the city of Shuangyashan, some of them carrying banners reading, "We want to live, we want to eat!"

The situation in Heilongjiang is not a unique one. Some officials are telling reporters off the record that as many 5-6 million state workers may lose their jobs in the near future as the government scales back so-called "zombie" industries, like coal and steel, which have been on life support for years. The trouble at Longmay is just one example of the problems confronting the Chinese government as it begins the transition away from a low-value manufacturing and export-led model toward a more diversified and consumer-driven economy.

Labor retrenchment and industrial restructuring are always difficult processes in any country, but in China, the prospect of putting millions out of work - especially at state-owned firms - takes on added gravity.

The Communist Party of China (CPC) continues to proclaim its status as the "vanguard" of the Chinese working class and the guarantor of the socialist system, but as the ruling party, it also carries responsibility for laying off these millions of workers. As the country approaches the 40th anniversary of its move toward a market economy, the CPC now has the delicate task of forging a more sustainable model without leaving millions behind.

The legislature, the National People's Congress, just voted last week to approve a new five-year plan covering the period 2016 to 2020. With the country facing its slowest growth rate in 25 years, however, the plan is unveiled at a time when many around the world are wondering if the Chinese economic miracle is in trouble.

Much fretting has gone on in recent months over the country's slowdown and its flirtation with the so-called "middle income trap," whereby reduced injections of cheap labor from the countryside combine with urban workers' demands for higher living standards to put a squeeze on rapid economic expansion. Credible rumors of a real estate bubble and last year's stock market instability have only added to concerns that China may be losing steam.

There are good reasons to worry. Given the central place China occupies in the world economy (the IMF estimates the country will account for 18 percent of global economic activity within four years' time), what happens there has the potential to impact the whole world.

However, it is also important to remember that while the current economic headwinds facing China may be nerve-racking for market watchers, it is not as if they were totally unforeseen. Deng Xiaoping, who pioneered the turn away from Maoism and the centrally-planned economy in the late 1970s, advised policymakers that it would take 30 to 50 years for the country to approach the level of the developed countries. When that happened, new challenges distinct from the early days of reform would emerge.

While the threat of the middle income trap may be exaggerated in the Chinese case, given the huge reserves of rural labor still to be tapped, it would appear the country is indeed reaching the point where its leaders have to start thinking about what the next phase of economic reform will look like.

What's in the new five-year plan

First off, it's important to keep in mind that contemporary five-year plans are not the same micromanaged blueprints of production quotas and resource allocations that they were in the past. As Yan Yilong, a professor at Tsinghua University has said, today's plans focus on formulating broad macroeconomic targets and forecasts "concerning people's livelihoods and public affairs." They play a supplementary role to the market in determining production and guiding social development.

Aiming for "medium-high growth," the plan sets a target of 6.5 percent annually from now through 2020. According to Chinese President Xi Jinping, this will be achieved through a process of reducing industrial overcapacity, restructuring legacy industries, and shifting firmly in the direction of an innovation-driven economy.

The contribution of scientific and technological advances to growth is expected to top 60 percent, with major gains in areas including semiconductors, chip materials, robotics, aviation, and satellite communications. Financial markets will see further opening to the outside world, though full liberalization is not yet being pursued. Planners expect all of these, along with improvements to the public health and social services systems, to be the main drivers of new job creation.

In the area of environmental protection, strict water management and real-time pollution monitoring systems are in development, electric vehicle production is slated for promotion, and a new forest protection plan will ban commercial deforestation and increase land conservation.

The government forecasts the final elimination of poverty by 2020 with the lifting of the last 70 million people who still live below the poverty line of 2,300 yuan, or $376 USD per year. A host of rural infrastructure projects are in the works, as is a stronger social safety net for the elderly, women, and children left behind in the villages when breadwinners seek work in the city.

Reflecting this need for less labor in rural areas, further urbanization is encouraged, and officials are instructed to graft the millions of migrant laborers already living illegally in cities into the official residential registration system, or "hukou."

And finally on the social front, with an aging population, the controversial one-child policy is being eliminated in favor of a new two-child allowance, and a progressive raising of the retirement age is set to begin.

Unexpected weakness, planned transition, or somewhere in-between?

The realization of all these targets depends, of course, on the maintenance of a strong economic base. And with growth rates retreating, it is reasonable to ask whether such lofty ambitions are realistic. The whole concept of economic planning itself comes into question, for instance, if it was unable to foresee current challenges like the mass layoffs in Heilongjiang.

The transition toward greater reliance on the service and high-tech sectors and the reduced importance of natural resource extraction and low-value manufacturing, however, is not being forced on China unexpectedly. Indeed, while much of the world has been content to continue seeing China as its workshop, it has long been part of the CPC's overall plan to move up the technology and income ladder.

As for the slower growth rates, they should really come as no surprise. First, there is the issue of scale. When the economic foundation you start with is as underdeveloped as China's was in 1978, there is a lot of room for growth. The bigger an economy becomes, though, the harder it is to maintain rapid expansion. The same thing has happened historically to all countries at a certain point in their development.

Nevertheless, it is undeniable that China's growth deceleration has outpaced expectations. Excess capacity in traditional sectors such as coal, aluminum, steel, and glass has been one of the main drags. The 10 percent average growth rate that held for more than 30 years was not expected to last forever, but the IMF still predicted only a short time ago that China's growth would clock in at 8 percent at least through 2017. The Chinese government says the number for this year will actually be closer to 6.3 percent. (Keeping this in perspective, though, as The Economist noted a year ago, 7 percent growth in 2015 still equaled more output than did a 14 percent rate in 2007.)

A second way of comprehending the growth challenge in China can be found by turning to a 19th-century European critic, Karl Marx, who had insights into the way capitalist economies function - and for all intents and purposes, that's exactly what we have in China today. One of the key concepts in Marx's analysis of capitalism was something he called the organic composition of capital, or OCC. What he meant by this rather opaque phrase is the relationship between the value contributed to a commodity by dead labor (i.e., fixed, or constant, capital such as machinery, materials, and other equipment) and living labor (i.e., current workers' labor power).

As the amount of dead labor in a particular commodity increases, the rate of profit generated in its production will move in the opposite direction over time. This is because it is living labor - the application of human labor power - that creates new value. Thus, as industries become more capital intensive and the amount of new labor being applied drops, there is a corresponding slowdown in the rate at which profit is created.

In what seems like a paradox, it is competition among capitalists - and China has plenty of them these days - that inevitably pushes this cycle of capital investment forward, even though it results in the shrinking of their profit rates.

In the case of China, Australian political economist Phillip Anthony O'Hara noted several years ago that increased competition since the start of reform has been reducing margins and trimming profit rates across the board. The continual investment in capital raises labor productivity in China, but this in turn means a smaller and smaller proportion of new value is created over time. The resulting productivity gains also tend to drive down prices, meaning less and less surplus value is realized on the market. The increases in production volume made possible by these productivity gains, however, mean it was still possible for China's GDP to make huge leaps.

This process can only carry on for so long, though. Faced with sagging global demand and tapped-out productivity gains, the rationale for further investment in traditional industrial sectors in China is reaching its horizon. Whether private or state-owned, a drawdown of such firms is to be expected. New opportunities for profit-making are now to be found in services, high-tech, and the manufacturing of higher value chain goods such as those mentioned in the new five-year plan.

So it is not only the well-crafted targets of planners in the CPC that is driving the process of change in China's economy - it is also the logic of capitalist development itself.

Retrenchment in a "workers' state"

As the case of the Longmay miners illustrates, the other side to this whole program of technological innovation, of course, is the situation facing workers in the industries being restructured. With redundancies forecast in the millions, the state faces the task of compensating and relocating a labor force bigger than the population of some small countries. $23 billion USD has been allocated to cover these costs over the next few years, but it is expected that even more will be needed.

While such payouts perhaps demonstrate the central government's commitment to supporting workers through the transition, ongoing corruption at the regional and local levels threatens compensation programs and undermines the credibility of both the party and the state. As the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper said in a recent editorial, "If China witnesses another wave of layoffs [like the 1990s] and authorities fail to provide full support for those affected, economic reforms can hardly be implemented."

As the country becomes ever more enmeshed in the world capitalist economy, the coming period promises to be a test of the CPC's continued declarations of fidelity to Marxism and its determination to build what it calls a "socialist market economy." For a government that still claims to rule on behalf of the working class while also forced to cater to foreign investors, the transition toward a more sustainable economic model is fraught with dangers and contradictions.

How the CPC manages industrial restructuring and the move to a higher value, medium-growth system - or the "new normal" as the party calls it - will greatly impact its legitimacy in the eyes of Chinese workers.

Given the centrality of China to global production and investment, Chinese workers aren't the only ones who need to be paying attention.

Photo: Brookings.edu

Cubans look to U.S. example to fix racism? Not so fast

Fri, 25 Mar 2016 12:58:00 +0000

In his March 24 report on racial discrimination in Cuba, New York Times reporter Damien Cave suggests the visit of an African-descended U.S. president to the island could help end silence on an issue which persists, he claims, despite Cuba's pretensions of equality. Cave was reporting in Cuba when Obama was visiting.

The reporter heard from a black academician in the United States who complained that Cuban leaders meeting with the President and audiences who heard him "were nearly all white," as were Cuban - Americans accompanying Obama to Cuba.

Cave cites the Afro-Cuban economist and author Esteban Morales, a lead authority in Cuba on race relations, who indicated that as of 2007 Cuban political leaders were 70 percent white and that "most scientists, technicians and university professors ... were white." From interviews Cave learned that blacks were underrepresented in Cuba's tourism industry and as owners of new small businesses in Cuba.

Professor Morales, who as a youth fought in Cuba's revolution, has more to say, however. In his "Race in Cuba," (Monthly Review Press, 2013), the author admits that, "it's true that there's racism, racial profiling, and discrimination nowadays, but [it's] a phenomenon that Cuban society, flawed as it is, has made great strides in addressing."

Slavery in Cuba was "a wound impossible to heal in 50 years of revolution." He adds that racism thrived during the terminal years of Spanish colonialism and in 1902 - 1959, the years of the U. S.- dominated republic. The Revolution erred, because "the goal was to fight a status of poverty that was deemed to equal at all social levels;" specific anti-racist policies weren't prioritized.

Fidel Castro in March 1959 proclaimed racism to be a "social scourge that we had to cure." After that, official silence prevailed. Protests against racism were viewed as violating the unity that had become crucial in confronting counterrevolutionary violence, sabotage, and economic blockade. That was another mistake, Morales writes.

He adds that institutional racism and legal tolerance of racism are absent in Cuba. And besides, "We criticize as revolutionaries who take these things almost as self-criticism, aware that ... we blacks would have never come such a long way without a revolution in Cuba." There's no need, he insists, to follow the U.S. line and "use terms such as totalitarian dictatorship, lack of democracy, or violation of black people's civil rights." In fact, Afro-Cuban people enjoy health care outcomes, educational access, security from police assaults, and access to the polls that in the United States now are faltering.

In 2009, President Raúl Castro put new energy into efforts to undo racial discrimination. Figures reported in 2014 by Rafael Hernández, editor of the Cuban journal "Temas" ("Themes"), documented progress in the area of political leadership. He provided census data indicating that "Cuba's whole population, as defined by color, consists of 65 percent whites, 10 percent blacks, and 25 percent mulattos."

Against that background, Afro-Cubans make up 35 percent of Communist Party members and 42 percent of Young Communist League members, respectively. Nearly 29 percent of Communist Party leaders in Cuba's provinces are Afro-Cuban. Of 14 members of the Party's Political Bureau, four are black. Over 35 percent of the delegates to Cuba's National Assembly are of African descent. The 31 members of the Council of State include 12 Afro-Cubans.

Obama "urged Cubans to respect the power of protest to bring about equality," according to Cave. The president's "comments, and sincerity, instilled in many Cubans a new hope and offered a knowing vote of confidence."

In the United States, however, such confidence and hope in achieving equality may be in short supply among Black Lives Matter protesters and advocates for reform of the U. S. justice system. The same may be true also for critics pointing to a childhood poverty rate among black children in the United States hovering around 40 percent and black infant death rates there that are twice those of white babies.

Reporter Cave mentions that, "Socialized medicine and education also helped create a society more deeply shaped by interracial interactions and marriages than the United States." But on that point socialism is off the hook: Morales attributes Cuba's large population of mixed-race people to easier black-white social relations during Cuba's slavery era and afterwards as compared with those periods in the United States. Interracial parenting was rampant of course during U.S. slavery.

Mr. Cave approvingly records Obama's statement that, "We want our engagement to help lift up Cubans who are of African descent." In his book Esteban Morales describes U.S. concern about racism that under the auspices of Cuban exile scholar Carlos Moore in 2009 morphed into an interventionist anti-Cuban declaration from U.S. intellectuals. Moore has received U.S. government funding. His critique, said Morales, was "about stereotyping and other long neglected issues we have to solve here in Cuba [on our own]."

Morales objects to the tendency of "social struggle against racism in Cuba to quickly become part of the political confrontation between Cuba and the United States. It requires taking a position separating [Cubans] from the fight for socialism, a system that has allowed blacks and mestizos in Cuba to have a position within society unlike any non-white groups in other societies of the Western Hemisphere."

Reporter Cave echoes this tendency in his article. He makes sure to note: "Some Afro-Cubans, like the hip-hop artist known as Soandry, linked the president [Obama] to 'what can be achieved in a capitalist system.'"

Thus the New York Times returns to instinctive behavior. The remarkable phenomena of a U.S. African-descended president and a U.S. presidential visit to Cuba end up as context for casting Cuban socialism in a bad light.

Photo: AP

A terrible beauty: Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rising

Fri, 25 Mar 2016 10:33:00 +0000

"Poblacht na héireann."

The speaker of these words, standing on the front steps of Dublin's General Post Office and reading from a proclamation (the ink barely dry) of the "provisional government of the Irish Republic," was the poet, Pádraig Pearse. It was just after noon on April 24, 1916, the opening scene in a drama that would mix tragedy and triumph, the twin heralds of Irish history.

It is a hundred years since some 750 men and women threw up barricades and seized strong points in downtown Dublin. They would be joined by maybe a thousand more. In six days, it would be over: the post office in flames, the streets blackened by shell fire, and the rebellion's leaders on their way to face firing squads against the walls of Kilmainham Jail.

And yet, the failure of the Easter Rebellion would eventually become one of the most important events in Irish history, a "failure" that would reverberate worldwide and be mirrored by colonial uprisings almost a half-century later.

Anniversaries - particularly centennials - are equal parts myth and memory, and drawing lessons from them is always a tricky business. And, while 1916 is not 2016, there are parallels, pieces of the story that overlap and dovetail from the Europe of then with the Europe of today.

Europe in 1916 was a world at war. The "lamps," as the expression goes, had gone out in August 1914, and the continent was wrapped in barbed wire and steeped in almost inconceivable death. Shortly after the last Irish rebel was shot, the British launched the Battle of the Somme. More than 20,000 would die in the first hour of that fight, and by the end, there would be more than a million casualties on both sides.

Europe today is still at war. In some ways, it continues to be influenced by a colonial world supposedly long gone. Britain is fighting its fourth war in Afghanistan. Italian Special Forces are stalking Islamists in Libya. French warplanes are bombing their old stomping grounds in Syria and chasing down Tuaregs in Mali.

And Europe is also at war with itself. Barbed wire is once again being unrolled, not to make killing zones out of the no-man's land between trenches, but to block the floods of refugees generated by European - and American - armies and proxies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and Syria.

In many ways, the colonial chickens are coming home to roost. The British and French between them secretly sliced up the Middle East in 1916, using religion and ethnicity to divide and conquer the region. Instability was built in. Indeed, that was the whole idea.

There would never be enough Frenchmen or Englishmen to rule the Levant, but with Shiites, Sunnis and Christians busily trying to tear out one another's throats, they wouldn't notice the well-dressed bankers on the sidelines "tut-tutting" the lack of civilized behavior and counting their money.

The Irish of 1916 understood that gambit. After all, they were its first victims.

Ireland was a colony long before the great powers divided up the world in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the strategies that kept the island poor, backward, and profitable were transplanted elsewhere. Religious divisions kept India largely docile. Tribal and religious splits made it possible to rule Nigeria. Ethnic conflict short-circuited resistance in Kenya and South Africa. Division by sect worked well in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.

Ireland was the great laboratory of colonialism where the English experimented with ways to keep a grip over the population. Culture, religion, language, and kinship were all grist for the mill. And when all else failed, Ireland just a short sail across the Irish Sea: kill all the lab rats and go home to start anew.

The fact that the English had been in Ireland for 747 years by 1916 was of course relevant. The Irish call the occupation "the long sorrow," and it had made them a bit bonkers. Picking a fight in the middle of a war with one of the most powerful empires in human history doesn't seem like a terribly rational thing to do (and, in truth, there were many Irish who agreed that it was a doomed endeavor).

The European left denounced the Easter Rising, mostly because they couldn't make much sense of it. What was a disciplined Marxist intellectual and trade union leader like James Connolly doing taking up arms with mystic nationalists like Pádraig Pearse and Joseph Mary Plunkett? One of the few radicals to get it was V.I. Lenin, who called criticism of the rebellion "monstrously pedantic."

What both Connolly and Lenin understood was that the uprising reflected a society profoundly distorted by colonialism. Unlike in the rest of Europe, in Ireland different classes and viewpoints could find common ground precisely because they had one similar experience: no matter what their education, no matter what their resources, in the end they were Irish, and treated in every way as inferior by their overlords.

Most of the European left was suspicious of nationalism in general because it blurred the lines between oppressed and oppressors and undermined the analysis that class was the great fault line. But as the world would discover a half-century later, nationalism was an ideology that united the many against the few. In the end, it would create its own problems and raise up its own monsters, but for the vast majority of the colonial world, it was an essential ingredient of national liberation.

The Easter rebellion was not the first anti-colonial uprising. The Americans threw off the English in 1783; the Greeks drove out the Turks in 1832. India's great Sepoy rebellion almost succeeded in driving the British out of the sub-continent in 1857. There were others as well.

But there was a special drama to the idea of a revolution in the heart of an empire, and it was the drama more than the act that drew the world's attention. The Times of London blamed the Easter Rising for the 1919 unrest in India, where the British Army massacred 380 Sikh civilians at Amritsar. How the Irish were responsible for this, the paper never bothered to explain.

But the Irish saw the connection, if somewhat differently than did the Times. Roger Casement, a leader of the 1916 rebellion who was executed for treason in August of that year, said that the cause of Ireland was also the cause of India, because the Easter rebels were fighting "to join again the free civilizations of the earth."

As a rising, it was a failure - in part, because the entire affair was carried out in secret. Probably no more than a dozen or so people knew that it was going to happen. When the Irish Volunteer Force and the Irish Citizens Army marched up to the Post Office, most of the passersby - including the English ones - thought it was just the "boys" out having a little fun by provoking the authorities again.

But secrets don't make for successful revolutions. The plotters imagined that their example would fire the whole of Ireland, but by the time most Irish found out about it, it was over.

It was not even an overly bloody affair. There were about 3,000 casualties and 485 deaths, many of them civilians. Of the combatants, the British lost 151, the rebels 83, including the 16 executed in the coming weeks. It devastated a square mile of downtown Dublin, and, when the British troops marched the rebels through the streets after their surrender, crowds spit on the rebels.

But as the firing squads did their work day after day, sentiment began to shift. Connolly was so badly wounded he could not stand, so they tied him to a chair and shot him. The authorities also refused to release the executed leaders to their families, burying them in quicklime instead. Some 3,439 men and 79 women were arrested and imprisoned. Almost 2,000 were sent to internment camps, and 98 were given death sentences. Another 100 received long terms behind bars.

All of this did not go down well with the public, and the authorities were forced to call off further executions. Plus, the idea of an "Irish Republic" was not going to go away, no matter how many people were shot, hanged, or imprisoned.

The Easter Rising was certainly an awkward affair. Pearse called it a "blood sacrifice," which makes the rebellion sound uncomfortably close to the Catholic Church's motto that "the blood of the martyrs is the seat of the church." And, yet, that is the nature of things like the Easter Rising.

1916 churned up all of the ideologies, divisions, and prejudices that colonialism had crafted over hundreds of years, making for some very odd bedfellows. Those who dreamed of re-constituting the ancient Kingdom of Meath manned barricades alongside students of Karl Marx. Illiterate tenant farmers took up arms with Countess Markievicz, who counseled women to "leave your jewels in the bank and buy a revolver."

Some of those divisions have not gone away. There will be at least two celebrations of the Easter Rising. The establishment parties - Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, and the Labour Party - have organized events leading up to the main commemoration on March 27. Sinn Féin, representing the bulk of the Irish left, will have its own celebration. There are several small splinter groups that will present their own particular story of the Easter Rising.

And if you want to be part of it, you can go on the internet and buy a "genuine" Easter Rebellion T-shirt from Eire Apparent. Everything is for sale, even revolution.

In some ways, 1916 was about Ireland and its long, strange history. But 1916 is also about the willingness of human beings to resist, sometimes against almost hopeless odds. There is nothing special or uniquely Irish about that.

In the short run, the British executed the people who might have prevented the 1922-23 civil war between republicans and nationalists that followed the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1921. The Free State was independent and self-governing, but still part of the empire, while the British had lopped off Northern Ireland to keep as its own. Ireland did not become truly independent until 1937.

In the long run, however, the Easter Rising made continued British rule in Ireland impossible. In that sense, Pearse was right: the blood sacrifice had worked.

Does the centennial mean anything for today's Europe? It may. Like the Europe of 1916, the Europe of 2016 is dominated by a few at the expense of the many. The colonialism of empires has been replaced by the colonialism of banks and finance.

The British occupation impoverished the Irish, but they were not so very different than today's Greeks, Spanish and Portuguese - and yes, Irish - who have seen their living standards degraded and their young exported. All this to "repay" banks from which they never borrowed anything. Do most Europeans really control their lives today any more than the Irish did in 1916?

How different is today's "Troika" - the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund - from Whitehall in 1916? The latter came unasked into Ireland, the former dominates the economic and political life of the European Union.

In his poem, "Easter 1916," the poet William Butler Yeats called the Rising the birth of "a terrible beauty." And so it was.

But Pearse's oration at the graveside of the old Fenian warrior Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa may be more relevant: "I say to the masters of my people, beware. Beware of the thing that is coming. Beware of the risen people who shall take what ye would not give."

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

Photo: Courtesy of International Policy Digest

Action demanded as another environmental activist murdered in Honduras

Thu, 24 Mar 2016 14:45:00 +0000

The AFL-CIO, members of the United States Congress and many other organizations and individuals are raising their voices to demand an end to the murders of indigenous, working class and environmental activists in Honduras.

On March 3, Lenca indigenous activist Berta Caceres, an internationally recognized environmentalist leader, was murdered in her house in La Esperanza, Honduras. Caceras had been leading protests against the Agua Zarca dam project when she was slain.

Another indigenous environmental activist, Nelson Garcia, was killed in Honduras on March 15. He was also a member of Berta Caceres' organization, the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations, or COPINH. Garcia was part of a peaceful civic protest against efforts by powerful interests to force farmers off their land. He was shot four times in the face while returning from a protest action to his home in Rio Lindo, about 100 kilometers from la Esperanza where Caceres was killed. (story continues after video)

A report by Global Witness indicates that between the coup of June 2009, which overthrew the progressive government of President Manuel Zelaya, and the end of 2014, 101 Hondurans have been murdered for their opposition to various schemes by wealthy developers and their allies that would alienate the lands of agricultural communities as well as harming the natural environment. This represents a tenfold increase since the period between 2003 and 2009, which saw ten such murders.

The 2009 coup opened the door to aggressive penetration by foreign corporations which, allied with local private and government elites, have seen Honduras as "open for business". Workers, indigenous people and poor communities suppressed by violence. Laws are modified or simply ignored to permit destructive mining, dam building and agribusiness practices that displace farmers and wreck the environment. Special "Economic Development Zones", initiated by the current Honduran government in late 2014, are seen by many as threatening not only labor and environmental protections but Honduras' sovereignty as a nation, all for the benefit of rapacious multinational corporations.

Next year, there are presidential elections in Honduras. President Juan Orlando Hernandez engineered a constitutional change to allow himself to run for re-election, while packing the judiciary with his supporters so that this could not be challenged. (Some readers may recall that one of the pretexts for the 2009 coup which overthrew President Zelaya was the claim that he was secretly plotting to run for re-election.)

Besides the issue of the murders, Honduras is roiled by massive scandals involving theft of public funds that were intended to provide health care services for the poor, but some of which ended up in the coffers of Hernandez's National Party. Unspecified numbers of sick Hondurans may have died as a result, because they could not get needed health care. Ex- President Zelaya, his LIBRE Party, and other members of the opposition make the accusation that these purloined funds were used to steal the January 2014 presidential election. Pre-election polls had shown LIBRE's candidate, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, Manuel Zelaya's wife, as the probable winner.

But Hernandez and his clique do not have everything going their way. Before the murder of Berta Caceres, a major Chinese contractor and the World Bank pulled out of the Agua Zarca project because of the COPINH protests, and last week Finnish and Netherlands banks also pulled out, citing apparent violations of law and human rights by their Honduran partners.

Not for the first time, members of the U.S. Congress are also speaking up. On March 17, U.S. Representatives Hank Johnson (D-Georgia) and Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota), as well as 58 other members of the House of Representatives, sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry with a list of demands that adhere closely to demands that Berta Caceres' family and friends have been demanding. The House letter also closely follows the outline of a statement made by U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy (D Vermont)

These include putting pressure on the Honduran government to:

*Accept an international investigation into the murder of Berta Caceres.

*Allow Berta Caceres' family to have access to the investigation, including to propose independent experts.

*Genuinely protect Berta Caceres' family from further violence.

*Likewise, commit to protections for other members of COPINH and other activists.

*Review the scheduled U.S. funding for Honduran security forces. "We believe that the U.S. government should immediately stop all assistance to Honduran security forces, including training and equipment, given the implication of the Honduran military and police in extrajudicial killings, illegal detentions, torture and other violations of human rights."

*Make sure that banks in which the U.S. has a role, including the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund cease to fund projects which threaten the rights of indigenous communities and small farmers.

*Pressure the Honduran government to immediately cancel the Agua Zarca dam project.

If this pressure on the Honduran government is not sharply increased, there will certainly be more murders as next year's elections approach. One person whose life is in immediate danger is Mexican environmentalist Gustavo Castro Soto, who was the only witness to the attack on Caceres, during which he was also wounded. Castro says that the Honduran government has tried to pressure him to testify that the murder was the result of an internal dispute in COPINH, and he now fears they will actually try to frame him. The Honduran government has not allowed him to leave the country. He is now ensconced in the Mexican embassy in Tegucigalpa, but still has reason to fear for his life. His immediate return to Mexico is another demand that must be made against the Honduran government.

The United States bears a great deal of responsibility for the situation in Honduras, and for what is likely to happen in the future there. Though ex-President Zelaya says he thinks the coup plotting took place with the participation of the Republican ultra-right in the United States, it is also the case that the Clinton State Department blocked efforts by other Latin American countries to reverse the coup.

U.S. citizens and voters, therefore, should pressure our own government so that it will use its influence to put an end to the scandalous situation in Honduras. At the moment, the best way to do this is to contact our Congressional representatives and ask them to add their support to the initiative of Congresspersons Johnson and Ellison and Senator Leahy. Concerned readers may wish to ask their Congresspersons to make sure:

That the deaths of Berta Caceres and Nelson Garcia are fully investigated by an independent, international group;
That Caceres' family and friends and all fighters for social and environmental justice in Honduras are protected from harm;
That Gustavo Castro Soto is allowed to return unharmed to Mexico;
That U.S. funding for Honduran security forces is cut off; and
That the U.S. act to block funding for the Agua Zarca dam and similar abusive projects that harm the Honduran people and environment.

Readers can contact their representatives and senators here. House members should be asked to add their support to the Johnson-Ellison letter; Senate members should be asked to express their adherence to the position taken by Senator Leahy. Readers can also contact Secretary of State John Kerry here.

Photo: A woman spray paints the phrase "Always Alive" below a stenciled image of the recently-murdered Berta Cáceres. | NPR.org

Murder epidemic halts Colombia’s peace process

Wed, 23 Mar 2016 14:14:00 +0000

Paramilitaries and armed thugs have long sullied politics in Latin America, most notably in Colombia and recently in Honduras. A recent increase in politically motivated killings in Colombia coincided with final preparations for signing a peace agreement between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government, at war for 50 years. The much anticipated accord never materialized.

In Honduras the murder of longtime environmental and indigenous rights activist Berta Cáceres caps a wave of killings there of journalists, teachers, women, and especially of agrarian and environmental rights activists.

Governments and private parties serving predatory interests evidently regard terror at the hands of thugs or paramilitary forces as useful for maintaining dominion. Colombia's paramilitary phenomenon warrants a look now because paramilitary attacks have brought Colombia's peace process to a halt. Fortunately documentation of paramilitary offenses in Colombia provides much by way of details and particulars, more so than in Honduras, for instance. That's because Colombian paramilitaries have long met resistance and gained special notoriety.

On March 23, after 40 months of talks in Havana, negotiators on both sides in the Colombian peace talks were to have announced a "Final Agreement," one covering five agenda items they had set out to discuss. But an impasse developed over the last one, designated as "end of conflict." It entails a "bilateral and definitive cease of fire and hostilities" and laying down of arms.

FARC negotiators held back; an epidemic of killings during March revived long-held FARC concerns about the safety of ex-guerrillas in a time of peace. Others worry too.

The Executive Committee of the Patriotic Union (UP), a leftist political party, reported March 18 that in the previous three weeks "unknown armed men," presumably paramilitaries, had carried out 11 politically motivated killings and "disappeared" three other people - whose bodies were found later.

Speaking to reporters, Aída Avella, the UP president, accused business leaders of financing the resurgence of paramilitaries. She also accused military leaders of being "immersed" in paramilitary operations. Avella herself went into foreign exile for 17 years in 1996 after a rocket destroyed the car in which she was a passenger.

In an open letter to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, Andrés Gil, a leader of the Patriotic March, condemned the assassinations. "[I]f we continue to be killed," he wrote, "then the conclusion will be that really there's no room for anyone on the left.... You will pass into history not as the president for peace but as the one who didn't take the fight against paramilitaries seriously."

Referring to the flood of paramilitary victims, the FARC peace delegation released a statement asking, "How can this be in the midst of a peace process now approaching the signing of a final accord?" Colombian authorities, the FARC said, "can no longer delay clearing away the phenomenon of paramilitarism."

The FARC has reason to be alarmed. Many FARC guerrillas left the insurgency in 1985 in accordance with an agreement signed with President Belisario Betancur. They then engaged in electoral politics as candidates for the UP party. That provoked a massacre; some say almost 5000 UP activists have since been murdered.

FARC negotiator Carlos Antonio Lozada may have been thinking of that experience when he told reporters March14 that, "[W]e have to take measures to avoid being betrayed and attacked as happened in the past." He noted that the government recently dismissed a technical sub-commission report, already agreed upon, calling for "a bilateral and definitive ceasefire."

The FARC negotiating team used the occasion of Secretary of State John Kerry's visit with them on March 21 to seek help in regard to the paramilitary problem. Kerry had accompanied President Obama on his historic visit to Cuba. The negotiators released a communication saying, "Mr. Kerry, we ask through you that the United States help curb paramilitary violence, which in the midst of the peace process keeps mowing down the lives of defenders of human rights and social leaders."

The request is not without irony. The United States provides funds for the Colombian army, which is known to facilitate paramilitary operations. And in the early 1960s U.S. military experts advised the Colombian government to utilize paramilitaries to augment its campaign then of pushing back against leftist guerrillas.

In a joint press conference February 4 with President Santos in Washington, President Obama introduced a U.S. plan called "Peace Colombia." The two leaders had met to celebrate the upcoming peace accord and the end after 15 years of Plan Colombia, that U.S. mechanism for supporting counterinsurgency and drug-war efforts in Colombia.

For Voz newspaper editor Carlos Lozano, the name of the new venture signifies a "Pax Romana, or peace of the graveyard." He lamented that "within Peace Colombia there's not one entry for combating paramilitarism, which is the principal obstacle to peace in Colombia."

Trivializing the FARC and thereby perhaps signaling the guerrillas' irrelevance in a Colombia at peace, the New York Times recently headlined a reporter's story thus: "Inside a Rebel Camp in Colombia, Marx and Free Love Reign." It celebrated the collapse of communism by likening the supposed decline of the FARC to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

To the extent that such triumphalism extends to official U.S. attitudes, prospects for peace in Colombia are diminished.

Nevertheless, neither Colombia's government nor the United States will likely have the final say in regard to disruptions at the hands of paramilitaries. Other forces, powerful and based on realities, are in play, and have been. A voice on their behalf is heard from, of all places, inside prison.

Political prisoner Húbert Ballesteros joined the Communist Party and Patriotic Union in 1986. More recently he's been a leader of both the Fensuagro agricultural workers' union and the Unitary Workers' Center (CUT) labor federation. Writing on March 12, he reflects upon "the killings in Antioquia, Sur de Bolívar, Arauca, Bogotá, and Cauca; the jailing of social leaders in Cauca, and the spread of paramilitary bands the length and breadth of the country." According to Ballesteros, "We can no longer continue assuming that this oligarchy wants peace [other than] a cheap peace, a silencing of the guns."

He knows what to do: "[W]hile we are building scenarios of peace, we must organize the people for resistance, and do so massively and convincingly so that this government understands that people are no longer content to live under its domination." He added that the issues involved are "the true problems of the country, which are unemployment, poverty, corruption, and social and political marginalization."

Photo: This photo, posted on Twitter by a member of the FARC delegation in Cuba, shows US Secretary of State John Kerry meeting with FARC peace negotiators. | Pastor Alape/FARC

Hilarity and tragedy: The Jewish holiday of Purim 5776/2016

Wed, 23 Mar 2016 11:37:00 +0000

Purim is celebrated as one of the most joyous and fun holidays on the Jewish calendar, the closest Jewish equivalent to Halloween. It commemorates a time in the year 357 BCE when the Jewish people living in Persia were saved from extermination. This year, the Jewish year 5776, it falls on the night of Wednesday, March 23 and the following day (the Jewish day begins at sundown).

The story of Purim is told in the Biblical book of Esther. The heroes of the story are Esther, a beautiful young Jewish woman living in Persia (just in time for Women's History Month!), and her cousin (or uncle) Mordechai, who raised her. Esther was taken to the house of Ahasuerus, King of Persia, to become part of his harem. King Ahasuerus loved Esther more than his other women and made Esther queen, but the king did not know that Esther was a Jew, because Mordechai told her not to reveal her identity.

The villain of the story is Haman, an arrogant, egotistical advisor to the king. Haman hated Mordechai because Mordechai refused to bow down to Haman, so Haman plotted to destroy the Jewish people. In a speech that is all too familiar to Jews, Haman told the king, "There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your realm. Their laws are different from those of every other people's, and they do not observe the king's laws; therefore it is not befitting the king to tolerate them" (Esther 3:8). The king gave the fate of the Jewish people to Haman, to do as he pleased to them. Haman planned to exterminate all of the Jews.

Mordechai persuaded Esther to speak to the king on behalf of the Jewish people. This was dangerous, because anyone who came into the king's presence without being summoned could be put to death, and she had not been summoned. Esther fasted for three days to prepare herself, then went to the king. He welcomed her. She told him of Haman's plot against her people, the Jewish people were saved, and Haman and his ten sons were hanged on the gallows that had been prepared for Mordechai.

The book of Esther is unusual in that it is the only book of the Bible that does not contain the name of God. Secular Jews embrace Purim believing it to be proof that deliverance is not the work of a supernatural being, but of earthbound human effort. God-fearing Jews of course interpret the message of the story to be that God often works in ways that are not apparent, that appear to be chance, coincidence or ordinary good luck.

And then there's the dark side...

But the story continues with a final coda: The Jews of Persia were issued a decree by Queen Esther and Mordechai, with King Ahasuerus' approval, giving them permission to rise up against the forces that Haman had mustered to destroy them. According to the Book of Esther, seventy-five thousand souls were killed by the Jews:

"The Jews gathered themselves together in their cities throughout all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus, to lay hand on such as sought their hurt, and no man could withstand them; for the fear of them fell upon all people.... And all the rulers of the provinces, and the lieutenants, and the deputies, and officers of the king, helped the Jews; because the fear of Mordechai fell upon them.... Thus the Jews smote all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, and slaughter, and destruction, and did what they would unto those that hated them" (Esther, 9:2-9:5).

The mass killings of Haman's followers by Jews are almost never focused on. "We don't talk about that," observes Peter Beinart, former editor of the New Republic, in his forthright book, The Crisis of Zionism, "because we begin our stories with victimhood and end them with survival." The key question facing Jews today, however, is how we contend not with victimhood but with power, says Beinart. "The shift from Jewish powerlessness to Jewish power has been so profound, and in historical terms so rapid, that it has outpaced the way many Jews think about themselves."

Yet "perpetual victimhood is not a narrative that can...sustain Judaism in America, a country that makes it easy for Jews to stop being Jews," nor can it "sustain democracy in Israel, a country that for two-thirds of its existence has held the West Bank, a territory where its democratic ideals do not apply."

In a horrific intentional echo of the dark side of the Purim tale, Baruch Goldstein, a Brooklyn-born Orthodox Jewish physician, murdered 29 Palestinians and wounded 125 others by opening fire in a mosque in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, a city in the West Bank, on the Purim holiday in 1994. Goldstein was attacked and killed by survivors of the massacre. His grave in Meir Kahane Memorial Park in Hebron has become a site of veneration for extremist nationalist settlers, with a plaque praising "the holy Baruch Goldstein, who gave his life for the Jewish people, the Torah and the nation of Israel." Goldstein was a charter member of the Jewish Defense League and a dyed-in-the-wool racist; four years before the massacre, an Israeli intelligence agent who had infiltrated Kahane's Kach movement had warned his superiors about Goldstein.

As with all fundamentalist and fanatical believers, it depends which passages of the Bible you interpret to support your ideology. The Baruch Goldstein forces are still very much among us.

Traditional Purim festivities emphasize the historic struggle of a people for survival and pride, and this takeaway from the holiday can certainly not be forgotten. Young children dress up as characters in the Esther story, and both children and adults participate in "Purimshpils," original topical skits that act out the story but with contemporary references, such as to the death penalty. This electoral year the opportunities for parody are rich: Surely someone somewhere this year will include a song adaptation, "Trump, Trump, Trump, the boys are marching."

Adapted from Jewish Currents, Judaism 101, and other sources.

Sanders to Israeli lobby: Peace means security for Palestinians

Wed, 23 Mar 2016 11:29:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - In a speech for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders said Monday that "peace [between Israel and Palestine] will mean ending what amounts to the occupation of Palestinian territory, establishing mutually agreed upon borders, and pulling back settlements in the West Bank."

AIPAC is not used to hearing such messages from political candidates.

It is the world's premier pro-Israel lobbying group. It supports and helps direct Israeli policy. It insists that Israeli control of Palestinian lands is a "peace keeping" measure, not an occupation. And, most important, most AIPAC participants tacitly support encroaching on Palestinian territory with more and more anti-Palestinian settlements.

Every four years, AIPAC invites all U.S. presidential candidates to speak at its annual policy conference, which is being held here this week. Conference participants expect the candidates to outdo each other in blind support of the policies of Israel's right wing premier, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Except for Sanders, this year's crop of candidates did not disappoint the AIPAC audience.

Hillary Clinton pointed to her long record of unwavering support for Israel and promised that as president she would be a "steady hand" in continuing the pro-Israel policies of the U.S.

Donald Trump was, of course, the most bellicose candidate. He pledged that "we will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem."

This would be seen as an act of war and would be in violation of a long-standing United Nations resolution. Both Israel and Palestine consider Jerusalem to be its "eternal capital." To keep the peace, the U.S. embassy is currently located in Tel Aviv and the Palestinian Authority maintains its offices in Ramallah.

However, Trump implied that as president he would not necessarily honor any UN measure.

"The United Nations," he said, "is not a friend of democracy. It's not a friend to freedom. It's not a friend even to the United States of America, where as all know, it has its home. And it surely isn't a friend to Israel."

After Trump, Ted Cruz implied that Palestine had no right to exist and "didn't exist until 1948."

Cruz believes that the Second Coming will take place only when an apoplectic war takes place after Jews gather in "Armageddon," which he believes is located in Israel.

Not to be outdone, John Kasich reversed his position on the multi-national, anti-nuclear arms deal with Iran. Unlike every other Republican presidential hopeful, Kasich had not pledged to "rip up" the agreement on his "first day in office." But at the AIPAC event he called for suspending it in response to what he calls Iran's "violations."

On the other hand, Sanders said "I do not accept the idea that the 'pro-Israel' position is to oppose the [Iran] deal.

"If successfully implemented -- and I think it can be -- the nuclear deal will prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And preventing Iran from getting the bomb makes the world a safer place."

Sanders is the only presidential nominee candidate to have actually lived in Israel.

He could not attend the AIPAC conference because his priority was to campaign in Arizona, Utah and Idaho in advance of the primaries taking place there Tuesday, March 22.

AIPAC rejected his offer to address the conference through a remote hook-up, but Sanders delivered his speech anyway - in Arizona. It was widely carried by the press.

He said, "It is absurd for elements within the Netanyahu government to suggest that building more settlements in the West Bank is the appropriate response to the most recent violence. It is also not acceptable that the Netanyahu government decided to withhold hundreds of millions of shekels in tax revenue from the Palestinians, which it is supposed to collect on their behalf."

Sanders continued, "When we talk about Israel and Palestinian areas, it is important to understand that today there is a whole lot of suffering among Palestinians ... Gaza unemployment today is 44 percent and we have there a poverty rate which is almost as high."

He called upon Israel to end its economic blockade of Gaza and to institute "a sustainable and equitable distribution of precious water resources so that Israel and Palestine can both thrive as neighbors."

Sanders stressed that peace "...will require compromises on both sides."

He said "I believe it can be done. I believe that Israel, the Palestinians and the international community can, must and will rise to the occasion and do what needs to be done to achieve a lasting peace in a region of the world that has seen so much war, so much conflict and so much suffering."

A sustainable peace, Sanders concluded, must include "security for every Palestinian. It means achieving self-determination, civil rights, and economic well-being for the Palestinian people."

Photo: Smoke rises in an explosion from an Israeli strike in Gaza City. Bernie Sanders took issue Monday with what he described as Israel's "overreaction" with its attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. | Hatem Moussa/AP

Iranian regime keeps progressive women off the ballot

Fri, 18 Mar 2016 10:32:00 +0000

Media coverage of the parliamentary elections in the Islamic Republic of Iran over the last few weeks has been remarkable for the absence of criticism of the theocratic regime, its human rights record, and its role as one of the world's leaders in terms of capital punishment.

The casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that the reports were covering the electoral contest of a parliamentary democracy, where the usual rules of free speech, freedom of association, and freedom of assembly would apply. Such an observer could also be fooled into believing that the characterization of the division between liberals and hardline conservatives would bear some resemblance to the everyday use of such terms in Western democracies.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

As has been reported previously in this publication, all elections in Iran are severely restricted. Thousands had their candidacy rejected out-of-hand. No leading politician with a progressive or known pro-reform stance was allowed to contest the elections. Those members of the outgoing parliament who were deemed as too troublesome and critical also found themselves disqualified from running again.

Media reports have made much of the fact that 14 members of the 290 strong parliament will be women. Originally 1400 women had registered to run in the elections. However, the restrictions in the selection process mean that, in spite of a small percentage of women being elected, they will not be in a position to make significant changes. Forty percent of women, the most able and active campaigners among the pro-reform candidates, were disqualified and didn't make it onto the ballot.

Those women who have been in parliament over the past three decades have either confined their contributions to 'female' family issues or, where they have been more outspoken, they have been batting for the fundamentalist faction against women's rights and gender equality.

Despite the campaign promises of President Rouhani to eliminate gender discrimination, the current government has not established a ministry for women's affairs. Within the cabinet, all key ministerial positions are filled by men, while women hold subordinate roles as deputies or advisors and as heads of governors' offices.

The limitations of 'opposition' within the elections have been made clear, with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei stating categorically "those who are not for the Islamic Republic can vote, but they cannot be a candidate." For all intents and purposes, all candidates are, in effect, supporters of the regime. There is no parliamentary opposition.

Evidence from opposition forces in Iran, forced to operate underground, suggests that turnout in the capital, Tehran, was only 50 percent of those eligible to vote, with this pattern being repeated across key areas such as the restive Western province of Kurdestan. Sources also suggest that those from working class areas such as the province of Alborz, in central Iran, and young people did not vote in significant numbers. The result of the election appears to be one that reflects the desires of the relatively safe, relatively conservative middle classes of the Islamic Republic, who have no interest in radical change from the current established order.

Since his election in 2013, Rouhani has claimed that he wanted to put in place reforms regarding fundamental freedoms, the release of political prisoners, and end the house arrest of two presidential candidates who ran in 2009, Mehdi Karroubi and Hossein Mousavi. However, there has been no positive change concerning these issues.

The solidarity organisation, the Committee for the Defence of the Iranian People's Rights (CODIR), has consistently suggested that if Iran is willing to negotiate with world powers and make concessions such as freeing foreign prisoners, it should make similar concessions in the domestic arena.

The smoke and mirrors employed by the Western media regarding elections in Iran must not be allowed to divert labor and human rights activists from the reality of life in the Islamic Republic. For those struggling to establish basic democratic rights in Iran, solidarity action to expose their plight is now needed more than ever.

Photo: An Iranian woman walks past electoral posters of parliamentary election candidates on a sidewalk in downtown Tehran, Iran. | Ebrahim Noroozi/AP

Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, remembering Kevin Barry

Thu, 17 Mar 2016 13:47:00 +0000

On St. Patrick's Day, devoted to honoring the Irish heritage and its worldwide influence, we pause to remember Kevin Gerard Barry (Jan. 20, 1902 - Nov. 1, 1920), the first Irish republican to be executed by the British since the leaders of the Easter Rising, whose centennial is next month. Barry was sentenced to death for his part in an Irish Volunteers operation which resulted in the deaths of three British soldiers.

Barry's execution outraged nationalist public opinion in Ireland and its diaspora, largely because of his age. The timing of the execution, only days after the death by hunger strike of Terence MacSwiney, the republican Lord Mayor of Cork, brought public opinion to fever pitch. His treatment and death attracted great international attention, and attempts were made by U.S. and Vatican officials to secure a reprieve. His execution and MacSwiney's death precipitated a dramatic escalation in violence as the Irish War of Independence entered its most bloody phase. Due to his refusal to inform, Barry became one of the most celebrated Irish republicans.

A ballad bearing Barry's name was penned shortly after his death by an author of unknown identity. It is sung to the melody of "Rolling Home to Dear Old Ireland." Relating the story of his execution, it has been sung by artists as diverse as Leonard Cohen, Lonnie Donegan, The Wolfe Tones, the Clancy Brothers, and The Dubliners. At the exact place where Kevin Barry was captured (North King Street/Church Street) there are 2 blocks of apartments named after him.

The American singer Paul Robeson included it in this album Songs of Struggle, although this version tones down the anti-British sentiment of the original.

As the author is anonymous, there is no definitive version. Here is one:

In Mountjoy jail one Monday morning

High upon the gallows tree,
Kevin Barry gave his young life
For the cause of liberty.
Just a lad of eighteen summers,Still there's no one can deny,
As he walked to death that morning,
He proudly held his head on high.

Chorus
Shoot me like an Irish soldier.
Do not hang me like a dog,
For I fought to free old Ireland
On that still September morn.

All around the little bakery
Where we fought them hand to hand,
Shoot me like an Irish soldier,
For I fought to free Ireland.
Just before he faced the hangman,
In his dreary prison cell,
British soldiers tortured Barry,
Just because he would not tell

The names of his brave comrades,
And other things they wished to know.
Turn informer or we'll kill you
Kevin Barry answered "No."
Proudly standing to attention
While he bade his last farewell
To his broken hearted mother
Whose grief no one can tell.

For the cause he proudly cherished
This sad parting had to be
Then to death walked softly smiling
That old Ireland might be free.
Another martyr for old Ireland,
Another murder for the crown,
Whose brutal laws may kill the Irish,
But can't keep their spirit down.

Lads like Barry are no cowards.
From the foe they will not fly.
Lads like Barry will free Ireland,
For her sake they'll live and die.

Sources: Wikipedia, Kevin Barry song

European Union, Cuba reach “landmark” agreement

Thu, 17 Mar 2016 10:12:00 +0000

Federica Mogherini, Vice President of the European Commission and the EU's High Representative for External Affairs and Security Policy, recently brought a delegation from the European Union (EU) to Cuba. She announced March 11 in Havana that the EU and Cuba would soon be signing a "Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement." Officials on both sides initialed the agreement to a bilateral negotiating process, which will be finalized after both sides complete internal review processes.

Mogherini met with Cuban President Raul Castro for three hours and joined Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez at a press conference. She described the agreement as a "landmark demonstration of the improved mutual trust and understanding between us. It creates a clear framework for intensified political dialogue, and a platform for developing joint action and cooperation on global matters." There will be "new opportunities for bilateral cooperation, both technical and financial, and policy dialogues in many sectors."

Foreign Minister Rodriguez described the agreement to reporters as an "unprecedented step," adding that "differences in some areas still exist, but we can manage them in an appropriate way."

According to a joint statement, the "parties attest the conclusion of the negotiations ... which will enable [them] to consolidate relations between Cuba and the European Union in the medium and long-term, a relation based on reciprocity, respect and mutual benefit"

The EU delegation in Cuba included Neven Mimica, European Commissioner for International Development and Cooperation, who met with Cuban government ministers responsible for foreign commerce and investment, natural resources, agriculture, and economic planning. He also conferred with ambassadors of EU countries represented in Havana. Other experts on the EU team visited projects already receiving EU funding, among them "sustainable agricultural initiatives and activities relating to the social and economic integration of Cuban young people."

From one-sided to two-sided negotiations

In her remarks, the EU foreign affairs head mentioned that, "the end of negotiations and upcoming signature of the Agreement mark the end of the EU's 1996 Common Position as the Union's instrument defining its external relations with Cuba."

The "Common Position" took shape in 1996, partly as the result of pressure from Spain. An observer describes it as having been a unilateral process requiring the EU periodically to monitor Cuba's attention to human rights and then to decide on trade and cooperation matters based on whether rights were honored, or not. NGOs, not the Cuban government, received any humanitarian aid from the EU.

Nevertheless, trade and other contacts expanded until 2003. That year the Cuban government jailed 73 so-called dissidents, many of them funded by the U. S. government, and EU countries cut back on relations. After a while, again influenced by Spain, the EU eased its sanctions, and in April 2008 announced its decision to pursue a process leading to rapprochement.

Over the next six years the EU provided Cuba with support for post - hurricane reconstruction, agricultural initiatives, education services, and more - all together worth 140 million euros. Since April 2014 seven rounds of formal talks have taken place. Later that year the EU announced a six-year program of grants totaling 50 million euros directed at modernization of Cuba's economy and programs on food security and environmental sustainability. The pace quickened in recent months as the presidents of Austria and France and the prime minister of Italy visited the island. President Raul Castro made a state visit to France in February 2016.

The U. K. Guardian attributes the EU shift and the recent agreement to "interest by European countries in maintaining their position as trading partners with Cuba." Data suggest that's a status quo well worth preserving, and for both sides. A recent report identifies the EU as the top recipient of Cuba's exports, absorbing 27 percent of them. The EU is Cuba's biggest foreign investor and accounts for one third of tourists to Cuba. And, "The EU is Cuba's second most important trading partner, (accounting for 22% of total Cuban trade) and the second biggest source of Cuban imports (21%)."

Ultimately, says Reuters, "Cuba wants capital, and the European Union wants influence." Another analyst, Sarah Stephens of Americas Quarterly, thinks the EU may have pursued negotiations after first concluding that "Raúl Castro's leadership has changed in some fundamental ways the circumstances in which Cuban citizens live and work." She suggests also that the EU, long having acquiesced to U. S. pressure for a hard line on Cuba, now is enjoying some autonomy, which exists because the United States itself is opening up to Cuba.

"We agree that the U.S. embargo is completely obsolete and outdated," Federica Mogherini announced at the press conference. She denounced extraterritorial effects of the U. S. blockade as illegal. "The EU position is clear," she declared: "we don't accept that EU companies are penalized." She promised that "both Cuba and EU will work with the U.S. to push for an end of these measures, which cause undue harm to Cuban people and society."

Photo: Raul Castro. | AP

U. S. intervention in Venezuela: Cuba responds

Tue, 15 Mar 2016 16:38:00 +0000

Heads of state gathered in Caracas March 5 for the "Chávez Forum: 21^st Century leader of Latin American and Caribbean Unity." They were honoring former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who died on March 5, 2013. Miguel Díaz-Canel represented Cuba; as first vice president of Cuba's Council of State, he is in line to succeed Raul Castro as Cuba's president.

Speaking to the gathering, Díaz-Canel recalled that Chávez had "enabled millions of Venezuelans to escape extreme poverty and hunger, and gain health services, education, culture, jobs, and housing." Díaz-Canel added that Chávez was "Cuba's best friend."

He spoke of problems facing Venezuela: "[R]evolutionaries are never alone, and the Cuban Revolution was not alone. Nor at this crucial time will it be that way for the Bolivarian Revolution." The term refers to Venezuela's process of social and political change led by President Chávez.

"Don't worry about announcements of funerals," Díaz-Canel advised; "already you've shown that while there's one Chavista alive and fighting, the revolution will be standing firm. And you are millions!"

The mood is dark in part because voting on December 6, 2015 led to the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, the political party founded by Chávez in 2007, losing majority control of Venezuela's National Assembly. Nicolas Maduro, Chávez' successor as president, took office in April 2013 after a slim electoral victory. By contrast, the Bolivarian Revolution earlier had won one decisive electoral victory after another.

Díaz-Canel brought up other bad news: "The President of the United States [has] decided to extend for one more year the unjustified, disproportionate, and dangerous Executive Order that declares a 'national emergency' [regarding Venezuela.]"

President Obama on March 3 renewed the state of national emergency he declared one year earlier. Explaining his action to Congress, he mentioned "erosion of human rights and guarantees [in Venezuela], persecution of political opponents, curtailment of press freedoms, use of violence, human rights violations and ... significant government corruption."

The National Emergencies Act of 1976 provides for presidential use of such declarations for initiating U. S. economic sanctions against objectionable countries.

U. S. intervention is not new. The United States supported the failed anti-Chávez coup in 2002 and since then has funneled millions of dollars to hundreds of Venezuelan opposition groups. Annually the Obama administration adds "a special fund of $5 million in [its] budget to support anti-government groups in Venezuela." The National Endowment for Democracy "continues to fund anti-government groups in Venezuela with about $2 million annually."

Venezuelan society now is vulnerable to outside manipulation because of economic turmoil manifested as shortages and inflation. Causes include falling oil prices and destabilization through currency manipulation and hoarding by business interests.

Additionally, Díaz-Canel's call for solidarity with Venezuela closely followed an announcement by the right wing "Table for Democratic Unity" (MUD by its Spanish initials) of a "road map" for overthrowing the Maduro government. Until now the MUD coalition has performed as the Maduro government's electoral opposition.

On March 1 spokesperson Jesús Torrealba told reporters that MUD will pressure the Maduro government to "resign," agitate for passage of a constitutional amendment allowing presidential elections in 2016, and organize for a referendum vote on shortening Maduro's presidential term.

Torrealba spoke of "activating all mechanisms for change" and promised nationwide street demonstrations beginning March 12. The government accused "MUD of being the agent for implementing Obama's sanctions in Venezuela."

Now regional alliances and governments are coming to Venezuela's defense. The roll call includes ALBA (The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America), UNASUR (Union of South American Nations), CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States), Nicaragua, and Ecuador.

Meanwhile Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel offered Venezuela advice and encouragement. He did so presumably on the strength of Cubans being the first people in the region to break free of U. S. dominion and successfully resisting U. S. aggression later on.

"[F]rom our own experience," he observed, "we know that success depends on four factors: unbounded faithfulness to ideas and a just cause - which in this case are those of Bolivar and Chávez - indestructible unity of all revolutionaries, everyone working together and tirelessly, and infinite faith in victory."

And, "We don't want wars. We don't want blockades. We don't want interference. We don't want subversion. We don't want sabotage. We don't want models of egoistic accumulation of wealth imposed on us for the sake of a few. We want peace. We want social justice and equity. We want sustainable development. We want security and respect for our sovereignty and independence. We want to share what we have. We want happiness and prosperity for everyone. And we want full integration in Our America!"

In highlighting the tie between Cuba and Venezuela, Díaz-Canel seemed to be telling the U. S. government that that relationship must be respected in order for the project of normalizing U.S. - Cuban relations to advance.

Photo: Miguel Díaz-Canel. Juventud Rebelde, April 27, 2013, public domain.

Inuit, Indigenous women face Third World conditions in Quebec jails

Thu, 10 Mar 2016 16:13:00 +0000

In April 2015, Quebec's Protecteur du Citoyen, or Ombudsperson, took a tour of detention cells in northern Quebec. Among other things, what Raymonde Saint-Germain found was seven Inuit women locked up in a tiny cell originally intended for one or two people. None of the women had slept all night; there was not enough room for them to lie on the floor even if they had wanted to. In some detention centers, she found suicidal detainees held right alongside those who were booked for intoxication.

Saint-Germain's special report, released in February this year, has put the media spotlight on a bitter social contradiction in Canadian society. Billions of dollars flow out of Quebec's north through natural resource exports like mining. A massive scheme for further exploitation of the region involving new railways, ports, and energy lines is just starting, called Plan Nord (Plan North). And yet social conditions faced by Indigenous communities are comparable to the Third World.

As Indigenous activists and allies across the country celebrate the promised federal inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls by the newly-elected Liberal government of Justin Trudeau, this reality will likely continue to come forward, weaving together more threads in the story of genocide already exposed by the recent Truth and Reconciliation Commission into Residential Schools.

Nunavik is the homeland of the Inuit peoples who live in what is now Quebec and, like vast regions of Canada, has never been covered by any Treaty. The Inuit (who have long rejected the label "Eskimo") are recognized in Canada's Constitution as an Indigenous people distinct from the First Nations and Metis. Located north of the 55th parallel, and bordered by Labrador in the east and Hudson's Bay to the west, their homeland is larger than the state of California.

Nunavik also includes several villages and hamlets which were subject to the forced High Arctic Relocation during the 1950s, when the Canadian government asserted sovereignty over the Arctic during the Cold War by moving entire Inuit families to artificially create the most northernmost communities in Canada - Resolute and Grise Fiord.

Saint-Germain's report on Nunavik describes a judicial system which shows no respect for the fundamental rights of the accused - particularly their right to dignity. Cells are dirty and overcrowded with limited access to water, clean laundry, janitorial services, or even fresh air. Seven to twenty-five detainees are often packed into cells intended for two. In Puvirnituq police station, the stench can apparently be smelled when you walk in, with traces of blood and excrement staining the walls.

Saint-Germain said it reminded her of the worst jails she had visited in Africa. The Quebec government has known about this probably for at least ten years, according to the report, yet appears to have refused any action. (Two years ago, a similar report on Nunavut detention centers on Baffin Island suggested they were also likely non-compliant with the Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.)

The justice system currently shuttles Inuit from Nunavik detention centers down to Montreal for court - a distance greater than that between New York and Miami. It then ships them back to the community, or to jail. As no roads enter the region, travel is by plane via Iqaluit on Baffin Island, which is actually even further north.

According to the newspaper Le Devoir, Inuit represent 7.6 per cent of the First Nation population in Quebec, but 43 per cent of incarcerated Indigenous people. And that number is rising. Total Inuit in Quebec jails increased by 64 percent in the last five years.

Quebec is not alone, however. Canada's violent crime rates are falling, yet prison populations are at an all-time high as jails become what some call "the new residential schools." In the Prairies, the overwhelming majority of people in the criminal justice system are First Nations. And to top it off, Indigenous people in jail spend more time in segregation and isolation than prisoners of other backgrounds.

An extension of this prison crisis is the incarceration rate of Indigenous women, in particular. Overall, while Indigenous people represent less than 4 per cent of the Canadian population, 36 per cent of female inmates are Indigenous - up 109 per cent in recent years.

These numbers are just part of the context of the gendered colonial legacy of oppression against Indigenous peoples which recent events in the Quebec city of Val-d'Or have again exposed. Last fall, a group of Indigenous women told Radio-Canada's investigative program, Enquête [also available in English from CBC], that provincial police officers in Val-d'Or routinely picked up women who appeared to be intoxicated, drove them out of town, and left them to walk home in the cold. Some allege they were physically and sexually assaulted.

Quebec First Nations leaders have rallied behind the women who have come forward, and support demonstrations were held in Val-d'Or as well as Montreal. Indigenous activists have condemned the lack of support received by Indigenous people in the region, which is in the north-east of Quebec (and many kilometers to the south of Nunavik).

An open letter to the Premier signed by the Quebec Native Women's Federation, as well as twelve other groups including the main Quebec labor union federation, CSN, called the investigation now taking place into the allegations at Val-d'Or by the Montreal Police "fundamentally flawed". Citing strong skepticism towards "police investigating police" inquires, the group is calling for an independent investigation.

The Quebec Federation of Women (FFQ) has also expressed support for the women's demands, calling them "whistleblowers" for a more systemic problem. Their statement echoed the message at the annual march for Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women in Montreal last month.

As the federal inquiry comes into shape, it will no doubt be an immensely painful yet important development, worthy of close attention by all democratic-minded people - both inside and outside Canada, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, women and men alike.

A shorter version of this article appeared in the March edition of People's Voice newspaper. It is reprinted here with permission of the author.

Photo: Genderadvocacy.org

Spain’s election stalemate continues; social democrats refuse compromise

Wed, 09 Mar 2016 10:26:00 +0000

The effort by Pedro Sánchez, leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, to form a government on March 2 brings to mind the story of the hunter who goes into the forest with one bullet in his rifle. Seeing a deer on his right and a boar on his left, he shoots in the middle.

Sánchez's search for a viable coalition partner began when the ruling right-wing Popular Party (PP) took a pounding in Spain's December 20 election, dropping 63 seats and losing its majority. Voters, angered by years of savage austerity that drove poverty and unemployment rates to among the highest in Europe, voted PP Prime Minster Mariano Rajoy out and anti-austerity parties in, although leaving the PP as the largest single party in the parliament.

The only real winner in election was the left-wing Podemos Party, which took 20.6 percent of the vote. The Socialist Party actually lost 20 seats, its worst showing ever, and at 22 percent, barely edged out Podemos. And if the Spanish political system were not rigged to give rural voters more power than urban ones, Podemos would have done much better. The Socialists and the PP are particularly strong in rural areas, while Podemos is strong in the cities.

While a candidate in Madrid needs 128,000 votes to be elected, in rural areas as few as 38,000 votes will get you into the parliament. Podemos and the Socialists both won over five million votes, with of only 341,000 between them. But the Socialists took 89 seats to Podemos's 65.

Spaniards voted for change, but the Socialists, who ran an anti-austerity campaign, chose to form an alliance with the conservative Ciudadanos or Citizens Party, which refuses to have anything to do with Podemos - a feeling that is mutual. Ciudadanos also underperformed at the polls. It was predicted to get as much as 25 percent of the vote and surpass Podemos, but instead came in under 14 percent with only 40 seats.

On the surface, the only thing the Socialists and Ciudadanos have in common is their adamant opposition to Catalonia's push for a referendum on independence. Podemos is also opposed to a Catalan breakaway, but supports the right of the region to vote on the matter.

Catalonia's drive for independence is certainly controversial and would have a major impact on Spain's economy, but exactly how the Spanish government thinks it can block a referendum is not clear. And if Catalans did vote for independence, how would Madrid stop it? One doubts that the government would send in the army or that such an intervention would be successful.

Indeed, the fierceness with which the PP, Socialist Party, and Ciudadanos oppose the right of Catalans to vote is more likely to drive the province toward independence, rather than discourage it. At this point Catalonia's voters are split slightly in favor of remaining in Spain, although young voters favor independence, a demographic factor that will loom larger in the future. In provincial elections last September, candidates who supported independence took 47.7 percent of the vote.

The Socialists had a path to form a government, but one that would have required the party to modify its position on a Catalan referendum. If it had done so, it could have formed a government with Podemos, the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), the Basque Nationalist Party, (EJA-PNV), Canary Islanders, and a mix of independents. Had the Socialists compromised on Catalonia, they might even have picked up the votes from the center-right Democracy and Freedom Party (DIL).

Left parties in the Parliament can put together 162 votes on their own, which is short of the 176 needed to form a government. But it would not have been impossible to pick up 13 more votes from the mix of 14 independents and eight seats controlled by the Catalan DIL.

Choosing Ciudadanos as a partner makes little sense. Podemos immediately dropped cooperation talks with the Socialists and sharply criticized Sánchez for not building a genuine left government. Ciudadanos' economic policies are not much different than the PP's, plus it opposes abortion, and is hawkish on immigration. In any case the party did poorly in the national elections. The merger "prevents the possibility of forming a pluralistic government of change," according to the parliamentary deputy and Podemos spokesperson, Íñigo Errejón.

"Negotiate with us," Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias told Sánchez, "stop obeying the oligarchs." The Socialist Party leader pleaded with Podemos to vote for him so that the Socialist-Ciudadanos alliance could pass "progressive" legislation like raising the minimum wage and addressing the gender wage gap. The Socialists also presented a plan to tax the wealthy, improve health care, and try to stop the growth of "temporary" worker contracts that have reduced benefits and job security.

But those issues do not really address the underlying humanitarian crisis most Spaniards are experiencing, like poverty and growing homelessness, and the damage austerity has inflicted on education and social services. And Ciudadanos' views on abortion, immigration, and privatizing public services are repugnant to Podemos.

Spain's unemployment rate is still over 20 percent - far more among the youth in the country's south - and many of the jobless will soon run out of government aid. While the economy grew 3.1 percent in 2015 and is projected to grow 2.7 percent in 2016, it is not nearly where it was before the great 2008 financial crisis and the implosion of Spain's enormous real estate bubble. On top of which, that growth rate had nothing to do with the austerity policies, but instead was the result of a declining euro, low interest rates, and cheap oil.

If the Socialists have no success in forming a government, there will be new elections, probably in late June. Polls show the outcome of such a vote would be similar to the last election, but Spanish polls are notoriously inaccurate. In the last election they predicted Ciudadanos would eclipse Podemos. The opposite was the case.

The right-wing Popular Party is likely to do worse, because it is mired in a series of corruption scandals over bid-rigging and illegal commissions. In Valencia, nine out of the 10 PP councilors are considered formal suspects in the case. Indeed, the Party's reputation for corruption makes it difficult for any other grouping in the parliament to make common cause with it. And even if Ciudadanos dumped its anti-corruption plank and broke its promise never to cooperate with the PP, such a government would still fall short of the 176 votes needed, for the PP controls just 119 seats.

In part, the Socialists are frightened by the growth of Podemos and the fact that it might replace them as the number two party in the parliament. The Socialists tend to run from the left and govern from the center, or even the center-right, and that is a formula that will simply not work anymore in Spain. The domination of the Spanish government by the two major parties since 1977 is a thing of the past, having been replaced by regional and anti-austerity parties like Podemos.

Before the recent election, the two major parties controlled between 75 and 85 percent of the voters. In the December election, they fell to just over 50 percent.

A more successful model is being built next door in Portugal, where the Socialists united with two left-wing parties to form a government. All the parties involved had to compromise to make it work, and the alliance might come apart in the long run. But for now it is working, and the government is dismantling the more egregious austerity measures and has put a halt to the privatization of public services like transportation.

Spain's Socialist Party is riven with factions, some more conservative than others. Sánchez - whose nickname is "El Guapo" (handsome) - has so far outmaneuvered his party opponents, but this latest debacle will do him little good. He did receive support from the party's rank and file for the Ciudadanos move, but that led nowhere in the end. Sánchez got 130 votes in the first round and only picked up one more vote in the second round.

Another election will probably not produce a sea change in terms of party support, but voters may punish the Socialists for their unwillingness to compromise. Those votes are unlikely to go to Ciudadanos, and the PP is so mired in corruption that it will struggle to keep its current status as the largest party in the parliament. A recent poll taken after Prime Minster Rajoy passed on trying to form a government found that 71 percent of the voters felt that the PP did not have the best interests of Spain in mind. That refusal may come to haunt the party in June.

Podemos will undoubtedly pick up some Socialist Party voters, but probably not enough to form a government. That will only happen if Socialists put aside their stubborn opposition to a Catalan referendum and help build what Podemos calls a "genuine" leftist government.

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

Photo: AP

Berta Cáceres, Indigenous environmental leader, murdered in Honduras

Tue, 08 Mar 2016 14:51:00 +0000

Early Thursday morning, March 3rd, at least two men in ski masks broke into the home in La Esperanza, in the Department of Intibucá in Western Honduras, where the internationally-known Indigenous and environmental rights leader Berta Cáceres was staying. They fractured her arm and leg, and then shot her at least eight times, killing her. She was 44 years of age. A Mexican environmentalist activist, Gustavo Castro Soto, who was staying at the house, was injured in the attack, but survived. Honduran authorities say they have arrested two people for the crime, for which a motive is not stated. Many Hondurans will greet these arrests with skepticism.

Berta Cáceres was a daughter of the indigenous Lenca people. Since the 1990s and until her death, she had struggled against abuses by a series of right-wing governments in her country and also against large-scale mining and dam-building projects carried out by Honduran and foreign companies. She and her neighbors denounced these projects as threatening both the physical environment and the livelihood of the Lenca and other poor rural people. To this end, she co-founded and led the Council of People's and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas de Honduras - COPINH) in 1993. At that time, she was 23 years old.

Crusader for environmental justice

Cáceres, COPINH, and the Lenca people kept up their struggle and seemed to be on the verge of some success when the government of President Manuel Zelaya, elected in 2005, began to enact policies of land and labor reform as well as other progressive measures. However, Zelaya was overthrown by a military coup on June 28, 2009. Under the interim president installed by the coup, Roberto Micheletti, protests demanding the restoration of Zelaya were repressed.

Repression continued under President Porfirio Lobo, elected in a dubious vote on November 29, 2009. Murders of government opponents and human rights activists continued at a high level, and corruption took off as Zelaya's progressive measures were repealed. Lobo's successor, Juan Orlando Hernández, has presided over continuing violence and repression, as an orgy of corruption so outrageous that it has brought Hondurans into the streets to protest in numbers not seen since the days of the 2009 coup. Hernández has also tried to pack the judiciary with his political supporters.

Under Lobo and Hernández, Honduras has been thrown wide open for the activities of rapacious foreign extractive corporations, irrespective of the interests of people affected by their operations and the damage done to the environment. Berta Cáceres and COPINH have played a leading role in opposing these abusive operations. In particular, they have been fighting, often with direct action, to stop the Agua Zarca dam on the Gualcarque River, at Río Blanco in the north of the province of Intibucá.

The dam, whose construction was authorized mere months after the 2009 coup, will destroy the livelihood of the agricultural Lenca people as well as sites sacred to their culture. Moreover, the authorization for the dam and the acquisition of land titles for its construction appear to have involved massive fraud, including the forging of the signatures of Lenca leaders. This means that the dam project violates Convention 169 of the United Nations International Labor Organization, which requires that Indigenous and tribal people must give informed consent before such projects can proceed.

Honduran Company DESA (Desarrollos Económicos S.A.) and a Chinese company, Sinohydro, (which now says it has withdrawn) have secured funding for the project from European sources, including banks in the Netherlands, Finland, and Germany, plus the U.S. Agency for International Development. COPINH has accused DESA of hiring goon squads, who often wear ski masks like those worn by the people who murdered Cáceres, to intimidate and attack opponents of Agua Zarca. Indeed, there have been at least two other murders related to the project, part of a national pattern of physical attacks against opponents of the regime and of foreign corporate projects. The Honduran army has been known to work closely with DESA security.

For her struggle, Berta Cáceres received worldwide recognition. Last year she was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, whose website specifically mentions Cáceres' success in pressuring Sinohydro, the Chinese consortium partner of DESA, to abandon the Agua Zarca dam project.

On Saturday, March 5th, a huge throng of people attended her funeral in La Esperanza. A courageous presence was her daughter, Olivia Zúñiga Cáceres, who laid the blame for her mother's death squarely at the doors of DESA, the European financial companies which are bankrolling it, and the government of President Juan Orlando Hernández. She called Hernández a "participant, accomplice and culprit in this political crime." Furthermore, she said, "President Juan Orlando Hernández, let me tell you: They killed Berta Cáceres, but your government is dying."

Ms. Zúñiga Cáceres demanded that the murder of her mother be investigated by a body that includes international observers and not just Honduran officials, who she feels would be subject to pressure and bribery. Berta Cáceres was supposedly under police protection at the time she was killed, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights had demanded that she be protected.

A strong message from the United States

A message was also sent by U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who, besides angrily denouncing the murder and the treatment to which the Lenca and other defenders of the people's rights in Honduras have been subjected, strongly supported the demand for an international investigation of the murder. Leahy's message read in part:

"First, the investigation of this crime must be independent and comprehensive, including the participation of international experts. Those responsible for ordering and carrying it out must be brought to justice.

"Second, the Río Blanco and the territory that Berta devoted her life to defend, should be protected. The Agua Zarca dam project should be abandoned.

"And third, all Hondurans, and most importantly its leaders, should publicly dedicate themselves to defending the legitimate role of activists like Berta, of civil society organizations like COPINH, of independent journalists, and others who peacefully exercise their rights to expose the truth and to demand a more just society. It is the responsibility of the government to protect them, not to treat them as legitimate targets of intimidation and arrest."

Senator Leahy stopped short of adding that the United States government bears a heavy responsibility for the death of Berta Cáceres and many other Honduran defenders of justice. Not only did the U.S. State Department, under Hillary Clinton, help to consolidate the coup of June 2009 (a fact long suspected by many in Latin America and since confirmed by some of Clinton's e-mails), but the U.S. government has continued to channel funds to the Honduran security forces which are implicated in much of the violence.

Action urged to protect witness and stop interference

There are some immediate priority tasks for people in the U.S. who care about this situation. One is to make sure that the Mexican witness to the murder, Gustavo Castro Soto, is not also murdered. He attempted to return to Mexico on Sunday morning but was detained at the airport by Honduran authorities who are currently holding him.

Many progressive organizations and individuals in the U.S. have been denouncing the Honduras situation since the 2009 coup, including the AFL-CIO in a recent report dealing with the repressive, violent situation in the country. Environmental defense groups in the U.S. have also denounced the murder of Berta Cáceres and called for an accounting.

Persons of goodwill are being asked to demand that he be allowed to leave Honduras as soon as possible, as his life is in serious danger. There is an urgent need to contact the Embassy of Honduras in Washington, D.C., to demand from Ambassador Jorge Alberto Milla Reyes that Castro Soto be allowed to return to Mexico immediately and that the lives of Berta Cáceres' family, friends, and colleagues, and of all human rights defenders and others active in the struggle for social justice in Honduras, be protected.

Copies of communications should be sent to the U.S. Ambassador in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, James D. Nealon. In addition, messages should be sent to the U.S. State Department and the White House demanding an end to funding the repressive Honduran military and security services.

Finally, all of us should contact our representatives in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives to insist that they support Sen. Leahy's demands, as well as a cutoff of U.S. funds for the Honduran military and security forces.

Photo: Honduran Indian leader and environmentalist Berta Caceres. | AP

Irish voters reject austerity, realign political system

Tue, 08 Mar 2016 12:44:00 +0000

If there is one thing clear after Ireland's recent election, it is that people no longer buy the myth that austerity is the path to economic salvation. It is the same message that Greeks, Portuguese, and Spaniards delivered to their elites over the past year: the prophets of tough love, regressive taxes, and massive social services cutbacks should update their resumes and consider a different profession than politics.

Ireland is a small country but the February 26 election drove a big spike into the policies of the "troika" - the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund - hat have blitzed economies across the continent and made chronic unemployment and growing economic inequality a continuing source of malaise.

The governing center-right Fine Gael lost 16 seats, and its partner, the center-left Labour Party, was virtually wiped out, dropping from the 37 seats it controlled after the 2011 election to only six. The two parties had overseen an economic program that almost doubled child poverty rates, drove some 500,000 young people to emigrate, reduced wages by 15 percent, and sharply raised the jobless rate.

Ireland's economic difficulties had nothing to do with public spending; they were the fallout from private speculators and banks caught in the great 2008 financial meltdown. Rather than making the speculators pay, the then-government of Fianna Fail shifted the bank debts to taxpayers. The troika agreed to a $67 billion bailout of the banks, but only if major bondholders were exempted and the government would institute a draconian austerity program. Most Irish voters were unaware of this "trade off" until just before the election.

The Fine Gael/Labour government has long claimed that it had no choice but to apply the austerity formulas and that, in any case, the policies worked, because the economy was recovering. Voters didn't buy it. The "recovery" has largely been restricted to Dublin - where homelessness in January reached a record high - and the growth was largely a product of falling oil prices and a decline in the value of the euro, rather than the result of austerity.

As Fintan O'Toole of the Irish Times put it, "What voters said on Friday is in some ways highly complex, but in relation to the dominant narrative [that austerity is the path to recovery], it is very simple: 'We don't believe you.'" The Fine Gael-Labour campaign slogans of "stability" and "all is well" fell flat. The government, O'Toole said, "imagined that it would ride back to power on a feel-good factor, as if people who had been repeatedly beaten should feel good that the beating has stopped."

At first glance, the Irish election looked like a shootout between the two center-right parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, that have taken turns governing Ireland for more than eight decades. But this time around Fianna Fail ran from the left - mild left, as it were - promising greater fairness and more public services. The party, which was crushed in the 2011 election, bounced back from 21 seats to 44 and is now the second largest party in the 158-seat Dail after Fine Gael.

Another winner was the unabashedly leftist Sinn Fein Party, which picked up nine seats for a total of 23 and is now the third largest force in the Dail. The People Before Profits/Anti-Austerity Party gained two seats, and the independent bloc picked up a seat. In contrast, the rightwing Renua Party lost its three seats.

Irish elections are complex affairs, employing a proportional representation system that provides a path for small parties to gain a foothold in the Dail, but makes campaigning complicated.

What emerged from the February 26 vote was a hung parliament: Fine Gael/Labour did not win enough seats for a majority, but neither did anyone else. There is talk of a "grand coalition" between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, but both parties would have to renege on pre-election promises that they wouldn't consider such a move, and it would automatically make Sinn Fein the leader of the opposition. The latter possibility scares both center-right parties.

Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, and Labour refuse to consider a coalition with Sinn Fein because of the Party's links to the Irish Republican Army and violence. It is an odd rationale, considering that all three parties have roots in the sometimes quite violent struggle for Irish independence and the bloody 1922-23 civil war over the Anglo-Irish Treaty that freed the Republic from Great Britain.

In any case, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams made it clear that his party has no interest in being a minority member of any combination that Fine Gael or Fianna Fail put together. And there is no way that Sinn Fein can construct a majority coalition. At most, the left and center-left parties could muster 60 votes, and that would include the Labour Party, a dubious possibility. Indeed, one Labour Party leader, Alan Kelly, has already called for a Fine Gael-Fianna Fail unity government.

It is possible that Fine Gael will try to rule as a minority government, but that would require Fianna Fail to abstain when it comes time to elect a Prime Minister, or Taoiseach. And it would also mean that Fianna Fail might have to choose between swallowing some of Fine Gael's austerity policies that it ran against in the election, or bringing down the government. Since any minority government will be extremely fragile, another round of elections is a real possibility. During the campaign, Fianna Fail leader Michael Martin said he would not go into a coalition with Fine Gael, and Irish voters in a re-match might punish any party that broke its promises.

Irish voters essentially gave two messages in the last election, one directed at Europe and the other at its own political structure.

About Europe, the voters firmly rejected the increasingly discredited policies of the troika, joining Greek, Spanish, and Portuguese voters in saying "enough." Austerity as a cure for economic crisis, as O'Toole points out, "was not just an Irish story - it was a European narrative." That narrative is under siege.

About Ireland, voters turned their own political structure upside down. The two parties that have dominated Ireland since the end of the 1922-23 civil war can now claim the allegiance of slightly less than 50 percent of the electorate. This election, as Sinn Fein's Adams argues, represents "a fundamental realignment of Irish politics."

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

Photo: Prime Minister Enda Kenny. | Brian Lawless/AP

Iranian union leader talks sanctions, war, and struggle

Mon, 07 Mar 2016 12:57:00 +0000

Maziyar Gilaninejhad is a leader of the Union of Metalworkers and Mechanics of Iran (UMMI). In this interview, he talks about the challenges and struggles of Iranian workers and the likely effects of the nuclear deal on the economy.

Q: The economic situation in Iran is dire. The rate of unemployment and inflation is high, and the price of basic food and rent is breaking people's backs. From the point of view of the union, what is the cause of this situation?

MG: Since Iran's economic approach turned to unrestrained financial capitalism, prices and unemployment have increased rapidly. Under President Rafsanjani, executing the directives of the World Bank and the IMF became a major factor in government policy. Recently, the economy has opened even further to finance capital.

Twenty-five years after the end of the Iran-Iraq war, our largest key industries, like steel mills, power generation, water, petrochemicals and so on are in crisis, and the uncontrolled imports have plunged domestic industries into stagnation. We now import products that we once exported.

Today, more than 40 percent of the labor force is either unemployed or works in precarious pseudo-jobs. At least three million people are living on unemployment insurance. While we previously had plants that were unparalleled in the Middle East, these industries are in crisis today.

Finance capital has infiltrated government, promoting large-scale asset stripping. Manufacturing plants are driven to bankruptcy and privatized at below-market value. Undoubtedly, these are IMF prescriptions that have been implemented in our country at the behest of global capital. The policy prescribed by IMF for countries like ours is to produce oil and nothing else.

Q: How do workers deal with these issues?

MG: When working people see that the industries they work in cannot sell their products and cannot pay their wages - and see that their purchasing power decreases daily - they raise their voice and protest. They write letters to the authorities, stage protests, and eventually, to have their voices heard, have no choice but to walk out and stop production. Finance capital cannot stand protest action.

Currently, several labor activists and teachers are in prison. Davoud Razavi and Ebrahim Madadi of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company Trade Union have been summoned to the Revolutionary Court instead of the civil court. This is used to try cases of sedition.

Q: After negotiations about Iran's nuclear programme, the country signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Many hope that the lifting of sanctions will improve the economic situation. What is your opinion?

MG: There is no doubt that the lifting of sanctions is a positive accomplishment. However, what are we going to do with it? Keep importing and shutting down industries? No worker in the world beats the drums of war, ever. There is no doubt that working people are happy with the lifting of the sanctions. But as long as the economic policy of the government stays the same, nothing will change.

Q: Can we expect that the relations between Iran and the West, and the U.S. and EU in particular, will enter a phase of friendly relations after the JCPOA? Would this be a long-term situation?

MG: Currently the neighboring countries of Iran on three sides are engaged in wars: Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Turkey, which has gotten involved in the war in Syria. There have been attempts for a long time to pull Iran into another war. Extremists in Iran wouldn't mind a clash with the U.S., and elements of global capital are trying to pull Iran into a war in order to change the geopolitical map of the region and do the same thing to Iran as they did to Libya and Iraq. We need to counteract this ploy. The working people of Iran oppose and object to the increase of tensions in foreign policy.

Q: What do the trade unions, and particularly the UMMI, think about the influx of foreign investors in Iran?

MG: If the government keeps conceding to finance capital, we will not benefit from foreign investment. The IMF wants Iran to provide cheap and deregulated labor for foreign investors. Since the presidency of Mr. Khatami in 1997, Iran's government has done this. It created special trade and commerce zones that are excluded from coverage by the Labor Law.

The government aims to remove any legal restrictions for wages, retirement, health, and unemployment benefits in its development plan. This is akin to saying to Mr. Foreign Investor, "Come in and do whatever you like with our workers."

Will the influx of foreign investment lead to the import of modern technology into the country, or will we continue fastening nuts and bolts only? We see Brazil and China as examples. Utilizing foreign investments in their countries, they were able to create jobs and reduce unemployment, and achieve the development and growth that they planned for. Will this happen here? We have to wait and see.

This interview is an abridged version of a longer conversation with Mr. Gilaninejhad that is available here.

Photo: Hra-news.org

Jamaica government ousted in election; Austerity policies blamed

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 09:55:00 +0000

On Thursday, February 26, Jamaican voters turned the government of Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller, of the People's National Party (PNP), out of office. She will be replaced as PM by Andrew Holness of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP).

Simpson-Miller's PNP won only 30 of the 63 seats in the lower house of the Jamaican Parliament, while the JLP won 33. Voter turnout was only 47.5 percent, the lowest in the country's electoral history. (Jamaica gained independence in 1962; the head of state is still Queen Elizabeth II, and the country still belongs to the Commonwealth of Nations, formerly the British Commonwealth). The margin of victory for JLP was only about 4,000 votes out of 870,663 cast in this country of 2,800,000 inhabitants - hardly an overwhelming victory for Holness.

Jamaica has been experiencing economic decline, sky-high unemployment, and a seemingly intractable crime rate for years, but some of these problems have been getting worse since the world financial crisis began in 2007-08. Jamaica has a particularly horrific burden of debt to the International Monetary Fund and private lenders, payments of which severely cripple the ability of the government to deal with the people's needs. Jamaica is one of the worst examples of the "debt trap" that bedevils so many poor countries around the world.

Both PNP and JLP governments have felt obliged to go along with the neoliberal program of imposing austerity in exchange for loans. Neither party presented any way of getting out of this situation in its election manifesto this year. JLP promised a big tax cut but it is far from clear how this would be accomplished. The JLP has the reputation of being the more conservative of the two major parties (there are some smaller ones also), while the PNP has moved far from the leftist positions espoused by its PM Michael Manley in the 1970s.

In his first term in office, 1972-80, Manley carried out a radical left-wing program of reforms which greatly improved the lives of poor rural and urban Jamaicans. However, the country was plagued by a campaign of violent destabilization. The United States government put heavy pressure on Jamaica to back off from its friendly overtures to Cuba and the Soviet Union, which Manley was relying on to help get his country out from under economic dependence on the U.S. and Great Britain. A vicious press smear campaign against Jamaica got underway in the United States.

Manley's second term in power, 1989-92, coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist states and the triumph of what became known as neoliberal capitalism. Possible help from the Soviets dried up, and friendly Cuba also found itself in difficult straits. So any hope that Jamaica could, in the short run, create an alternative route to development disappeared. Manley's second term was therefore characterized by a much slowed-down reform program and a much higher reliance on aid from the International Monetary Fund and foreign private investment. The bright promise of the first Manley term in office disappeared, and Jamaica set out on a course of chronic indebtedness.

A punishing loan is forced on Jamaica

Jamaica suffered other blows after Manley left office. It had a medium-sized banana industry, but in the late 1990s the U.S. began to hack away at one of the supports of that industry, namely the Lomé Convention, whereby France and Britain, working through the European Union, had committed to preferential purchasing of bananas from their former colonies in the Caribbean and Africa. The U.S. went to the World Trade Organization (WTO) to complain that this was a violation of the rules of free trade. The U.S. is not a major producer of bananas itself, but U.S. companies like Chiquita and Dole produce huge amounts of the crop, and profits for themselves, in South and Central American countries, including the infamous, despotically ruled "banana republics" where wages are lower and working conditions worse than in the Afro-Caribbean countries. The WTO, established in 1994, ruled in favor of the U.S. in this dispute. This was a big blow to all the countries covered by the Lome convention. Jamaica now does not produce bananas for export.

The mining and processing of bauxite (aluminum ore) was once seen as Jamaica's royal road to prosperity, but in recent decades this hope has faded as other low-wage countries have edged out Jamaica in the competition, and a number of mines have closed. To some extent, tourism has filled the gap, but the astronomical crime rate in Jamaica is seen as dampening the potential of tourism also. As in other poor countries, foreign investment is only attracted while wages remain low and regulation weak.

So Jamaica has ended up depending on one international loan after another, with more and more draconian conditions attached to each one. The latest one, which Jamaica negotiated in 2013 to replace an earlier one on which the country had defaulted, is particularly shocking. Jake Johnston of the Center for Economic Policy and Research has done a detailed analysis of this piece of usury, highlighting the fact, for example, that in exchange for the loan, Jamaica must run a budgetary surplus of 7.5 percent per year, far more than the surplus imposed by lenders on the distressed economies of the poorer Western European countries.

As a result, Jamaica is the only nation in the Caribbean whose per capita Gross Domestic Product has actually been declining over a 20-year period (Haiti's is stalled at zero growth). According to Johnston, much of the failure of the Jamaican per capita GDP's failure to advance can be attributed to the stringent governmental austerity measures imposed on Jamaica as a condition for the 2013 loan. Johnston writes: "The IMF program required a large, up-front adjustment, which resulted in the government cutting spending by over 2 percentage points of GDP in 2012/13 and by 2.7 percentage points in 2013/14." This in a country whose social safety net was inadequate to begin with!

Jamaica has benefited from the PETROCARIBE program of discounted Venezuelan oil sales, and other aid coming from the countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for Our America (ALBA). It is yet to be seen how long such aid can be sustained, given Venezuela's current economic troubles and the threat from the newly elected right-wing legislature there to withdraw Venezuela from ALBA.

Photo: Andrew Holness. | Collin Reid/AP

Iran elections: disqualifying candidates, arresting unionists

Tue, 01 Mar 2016 13:08:00 +0000

Though a coalition of moderate conservatives and reformists allied with President Hassan Rouhani is on track to prevail in the parliamentary election held February 26, progressive Iranians and trade unionists got little reprieve from the repressive theocratic state in the run-up to the vote. In a move aimed at giving the upper hand to clerical forces, more than half of all nominated candidates were barred from running even before the first vote was cast. Trade union activists, meanwhile, experienced increased attacks in the weeks prior to balloting, with dozens arrested or sentenced on trumped-up national security and public order charges.

The most conservative religious elements backed by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, do not appear to have fared well in the elections. Their poor performance reflects the public's dissatisfaction with the clerics' efforts to sabotage recent progress made in easing international sanctions related to the country's nuclear program. Though they rejected many of the candidates endorsed by the Ayatollah, Iranians were forced to choose from a radically pared down ballot. Mass disqualifications greatly narrowed the range of political options presented, leaving only a choice between Khamenei's reactionary picks and moderate elements.

Limited choices

Of the 12,000 candidates who came forward to run for Iran's parliament, the Majlis, it is reported that about 60 per cent were disqualified by the Council of Guardians, a constitutional panel made up of members selected by the Ayatollah. This stunningly high rejection rate was more than twice the average in previous elections, signaling the determination of the regime's leaders to prevent dissident voices from making gains.

Before the vote, Khamenei had declared, "Those who are not for the Islamic Republic can vote, but they cannot be a candidate," meaning that only those deemed loyal to the existing political system would be allowed to run. His declaration hit those affiliated with the loosely-termed "reformist" trend hardest, of course, with only 30 out of 3,000 candidates from the group being allowed to appear on the ballot.

Navid Shomali, the international secretary of the left-wing Tudeh Party of Iran, characterized the election as a battle between government factions. "The pre-requisite for candidacy was to express full loyalty to the current political regime," he said. "The real struggle was between President Hassan Rouhani and his ally, parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani on the one hand, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the other."

"The fundamental rights of the people," Shomali added, "cannot be realized in the frameworks set by the despotic regime and the absolute rule of the Supreme Leader."

Unions squeezed

At the same time that the Guardian Council was putting the squeeze on candidate lists, the police and the courts were doing the same to the trade union movement. On the eve of the election, the International Trade Union Confederation and the International Transport Workers' Federation issued protests against what they characterized as a wave of increased arrests of union leaders and activists. Coming so soon after the lifting of international sanctions and the exchange of prisoners with the United States, the new arrests and sentencing of domestic union leaders undermines the reformist image that the Iranian state has tried to present to the world.

Workers affiliated with the Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company (SWTSBC), a union long-known for its opposition to the government's suppression of independent labor organizing, came under renewed attacks in recent weeks. Dahoud Razavi, a member of the SWTSBC board of directors, was sentenced on February 17 to five years' imprisonment. He had been charged with "activities against national security and disturbing public peace and order by participating in an illegal gathering." The vice-chairman of the union, Ebrahim Madadi, is currently on trial for similar charges.

Earlier in February, 28 workers at the Khatoon Abad Copper Mine were also arrested. Though they were subsequently released on bail, the solidarity organization, Committee for the Defense of the Iranian People's Rights (CODIR), said in a statement that their arrests only added to "the air of intimidation and persecution which the Iranian government has created for trade unionists in the country."

Need for unity underscored

Despite the imposition of an "engineered election" by the Guardian Council and the justice system's offensive against the trade union movement, the left-wing Tudeh Party says that the economic situation in Iran will continue to drive forward the forces opposed to the clerical state.

"The future of our country is pregnant with major developments because the theocratic regime goes from one crisis to another," the party stated on election day, "and its only means to deal with crises, i.e. suppression, can no longer be dressed as anything else but dictatorship."

The party made clear that moving the country in a progressive direction will depend on the ability of social movements and political organizations to establish broad unity among all the forces - inside and outside the Majlis - that are committed to democracy and social justice.

Photo: Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei casts his ballot during parliamentary elections in Tehran. AP