People Before Profit blog

Where is U.S. Cuba policy going?

Mon, 02 Dec 2013 15:42:00 +0000

Speaking to an event organized by the anti-Castro Cuban-American Foundation in Miami on Nov. 9, President Obama got the attention of both supporters and opponents of U.S. Cuba policy by saying:

"[W]e've started to see changes in [Cuba]. Now, I think that we all understand that, ultimately, freedom in Cuba will come because of the extraordinary activists and the incredible courage of folks like we see here today. But the United States can help. And we have to be creative. And we have to be thoughtful. And we have to continue to update our policies. Keep in mind that when Castro came to power, I was just born. So the notion that the same policies that we put in place in 1961 would somehow still be as effective as they are today in the age of the Internet and Google and world travel doesn't make sense."

On Nov. 18, Secretary of State Kerry made similarly intriguing but vague statements at a meeting of the Organization of American States.

Both sets of comments should be interpreted with caution. The group to which Obama spoke included extremely intransigent anti-Castro elements. Both Obama and Vice President Biden have been meeting over the last month with several key anti-Castro dissidents. So it is not surprising that the anti-Castro Cuban-Americans are extolling his statement as vindicating their position demanding tightened sanctions against Cuba, while those who want a change in Cuba policy see the Obama administration as warning the anti-Castro forces that the U.S. may be about to move in a more conciliatory direction which they are not going to like, but will have to accept. We shall soon see.

Meanwhile, the negative U.S. policies toward Cuba keep causing problems. On November 26, the Cuban government announced that for the time being, its diplomats in the United States will suspend consular activities except for emergency and humanitarian cases. This is because the bank that Cuba was using, M&T Bank in Baltimore, had warned them on July 12 that it was going to cancel their accounts. The Cubans have not been able to find a U.S. or international bank that will open new accounts for them. Most observers agree that this is happening because banks fear that if they do business with the Cuban government, they run the risk of prosecution and huge fines imposed by the United States Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), as has happened on a huge scale before.

No bank wants to undertake such a risk. This will cost Cuba lots of tourism money and be very unpleasant for Cuban-Americans and others who want to go and visit their relatives in Cuba, because they will not be able to get their visas from the Cuban Interests Section in Washington D.C. They will certainly raise a political stink about this, aimed at the U.S. government and not the Cuban one. The current policy authorizing extensive visits by Cuban Americans to the island was introduced by Obama at the beginning of his term, and was justified by the administration as a means for changing things in Cuba by allowing more people-to-people contact. That policy is now threatening to unravel because of harsh anti-Cuba measures which remain in force, especially the continued listing, against all objective information and common sense, of Cuba as a "state sponsor of terrorism." The Obama administration says it is working with Cuba to find another bank to handle their diplomatic transactions, but no results are reported yet. Stopping diplomatic missions from having access to routine banking services is a violation of the Vienna Convention on consular relations.

Over the years, the original attempt to overthrow Cuba's revolution and its socialist government, by strangling the Cuban economy and thus creating a popular uprising, has failed. But so far, this has only led U.S. policy makers to heap more stupidities on top of the original arrogant mistake: The Torricelli Act in 1992, the Helms-Burton Act in 1996, the placement of Cuba on the state sponsors of terrorism list in 1982: each hostile step has encouraged a fanatically anti-Cuba faction within the Cuban exile community, within the Republican Party and even within the Democratic Party. These people fight tenaciously to prevent the U.S. government from even taking baby steps toward a more intelligent policy. OFAC does its bit by blindly implementing failed policies "efficiently," leading to a substantial tightening of the U.S. economic blockade over the past several years.

Some of the legal structure of the U.S. blockade against Cuba can't be changed at the initiative of the president, but require repeal by Congress. But the president still can, by executive action, take Cuba off the list of state sponsors of terrorism. This, and dealing with the issue of the Cuban 5, would be important first steps. To get them to happen, public pressure is essential.

Photo: The Obama administration has encouraged people-to-people exchanges with Cuba. In this photo, long distance swimmer Diana Nyad readies for her successful swim from Cuba to Florida on Aug. 31.(diananyad.com)

Pope calls church to action to liberate poor

Mon, 02 Dec 2013 15:05:00 +0000

The capitalist media have been all atwitter (pun intended) over Pope Francis ever since he took leadership of the world's one billion Roman Catholics, but perhaps never so intensely as when he released a document recently excoriating the destructiveness of contemporary capitalism.

In reality, the document contains little that is entirely new; its denunciation of the anti-human effects of the "idolatry" of the market and the radical inequality resulting from it could already be found in statements by Francis' two predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, which in turn were rooted in a tradition of Catholic social doctrine that goes back at least to the 1890 encyclical Rerum Novarum and beyond that to the teachings of Jesus and the Hebrew prophets. What is new in Francis' document, however, is his insistence on the centrality of this issue for the mission of the Catholic Church.

The document in question, titled Evangelii Gaudium, "The Joy of the Gospel," does not set itself up as primarily concerned with social justice; its theme is "evangelization," a Christian term meaning sharing the "good news" of God's love for humanity shown in Jesus Christ, which in turn must lead to active love of human beings for one another. (Francis carefully distinguishes this from "proselytizing," trying to "sell" people on becoming Christians and joining the church.) It is a very rich text of over 200 pages.

The pope situates his denunciation of capitalism squarely in the context of Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life (the same principle that right-wing Catholics appeal to in trying to make issues like abortion, contraception, and same-sex marriage the center of Catholic concern): "Just as the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say 'thou shalt not' to an economy of exclusion and inequality."

Pointing out that "such an economy kills," Francis asks, "How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?" He laments that "today everything comes under the laws of competition and survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless."

The pope is not content, however, merely to utter moralizing denunciations. He attacks the prevailing capitalist economic ideology that "justifies" these evils and even dares to take on "those wielding economic power" - that is, what Marxists term "the ruling class" - and the "prevailing economic system" itself: "Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system."

It's not hard to recognize in what the Pope here denounces precisely the ideology of the Republican Party and other leading capitalist circles.

As I pointed out above, most of these ideas can be found in previous papal documents devoted to social justice. But what is remarkable here is that Evangelii Guudium is not, on the face of it, centered on social issues; it is devoted to the "churchly" subject of "evangelization." Francis devotes a lengthy chapter of Evangelii Gaudium to what he insists is the essential social element of the church's mission.

Evangelii Gaudium is labeled an "apostolic exhortation"-that is, not a mere exposition of doctrine but a call to action. And that action must include struggle for the needs of the poor and against the radical and growing inequality in today's world: "Both Christian preaching and life...are meant to have an impact on society." Nor does Francis see it sufficient simply to make moral pronouncements; regarding the church's social teaching, he insists "we cannot help but be concrete - without presuming to enter into details - lest the great social principles remain mere generalities which challenge no one." The pope is calling for a church of action: "Each individual Christian and every community is called to be an instrument of God for the liberation and promotion of the poor."

Nor does Francis believe that the church should "go it alone" in this effort, setting itself up as the sole arbiter of social justice. He admits that "neither the pope nor the church have a monopoly on the interpretation of social realities or the proposal of solutions to contemporary problems" - a clear call to what we would call a broad-based coalition to attack the injustices of our current system.

This can be taken as an invitation to people of various worldviews and socio-political ideologies and theories to join together with the church in struggling for social justice - an invitation well worth accepting.

Photo: Pope Francis (Catholic Church -England and Wales/CC)

Francis does it again: Attacking the "tyranny" of unfettered capitalism

Wed, 27 Nov 2013 14:56:00 +0000

ROME (PAI) - Building on statements he has made before - and this time, making it clear it's his official position - Francis I is blasting the "tyranny" of unfettered capitalism, plus economic inequity and financial finagling. He demands that politicians guarantee their citizens "dignified work, education and health care."

And in a 224-page Apostolic Exhortation (Evangelii Gaudium, translated into English as The Joy of the Gospel) to Catholic bishops, priests, workers and the laity, issued Nov. 25, Francis compares "the idolatry of money" to idolatry of the golden calf recounted in the Book of Exodus, Chapter 32. He calls it a "new tyranny," and declares "Money must serve, not rule."

"Just as the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill,' sets a limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say 'Thou shalt not,' to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills," the Pope says.

The exhortation makes it clear that Francis expects Catholic officials and laity to follow its principles. The document is not the first time Francis I denounced economic inequality and spoken up for workers, the jobless and the poor, but it is the strongest and most comprehensive statement on the issue during his papacy.

Several months ago in Sardinia, Francis threw away his prepared sermon - which was already critical of economic trends - and slammed the chasm between the rich and the rest of us. This exhortation goes far beyond that sermon.

Catholic Social Thought

Francis' statement is also squarely in one church tradition, of Catholic Social Thought, the tradition that backs workers and unions and denounces the impact of unfettered industrialization and capitalism.

The publication of Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891 is considered the beginning of the development of a recognizable body of social teaching in the Catholic Church. Then on May 15, 1961, Pope John XXIII released Mater et Magistra, subtitled "Christianity and Social Progress." This encyclical expanded the Church's social doctrine to cover the obligation of rich countries to assist poor countries. On April 11, 1963, Pope John XXIII expanded further on this in Pacem in Terris, Peace on Earth, the first encyclical addressed to both Catholics and non-Catholics.

But over the years, many Catholics, including lay leaders, politicians, industrialists and even clergy, have ignored or defied Catholic Social Thought's precepts. In this document, Francis wants them - and the world's 1 billion Catholics-to follow those precepts.

No to an economy of exclusion

Francis exhortation, which covers issues besides economics, (peace, social justice, the family, faith and politics, ecumenism, interreligious dialogue, and the role of women and of the laity in the Church) is more detailed and grounds his words in both the Old Testament, including the Torah and the Hebrew prophets, and in the New Testament and the Gospels. And Francis pulls no punches.

He also made it clear he seeks results. "We cannot passively and calmly wait in our church buildings," he says, citing Latin American bishops. "We need to move from a pastoral ministry of mere conservation to a decidedly missionary pastoral ministry.

"For example, if in the course of the liturgical year a parish priest speaks about temperance 10 times but only mentions charity or justice two or three times, an imbalance results, and precisely those virtues which ought to be most present in preaching and catechesis are overlooked," Francis warns later.

Labeling his section on wealth and inequality "No to an economy of exclusion," Francis started with his 'Thou shalt not,' comment and went on from there.

"How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?" Francis asks. "This is a case of exclusion.

"Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized, without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape."

The Pope also criticizes corporate attitudes that "human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a 'throw away' culture that is now spreading.

"It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new," Francis continues. "Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society's underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised - they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the 'exploited' but the outcast, the 'leftovers,'" he states.

Crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power

Politics, businesses and economics that serve only the rich are the Pope's next target, in the next paragraph: "In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world.

"This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.

"To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed," he adds. People reject a need to help others, "as though all this were someone else's responsibility and not our own." Francis blames that on a deadening "culture of prosperity" which "thrills" consumers with new possessions. "In the meantime, all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us."

"Idolatry of money" and "dictatorship of an impersonal economy," Francis says, comes from accepting "its domination" of people and societies. "The current financial crisis can make us overlook the fact that it originated in a profound human crisis: The denial of the primacy of the human person!" (His emphasis) Francis then compares that current financial idolatry to worship of the Golden Calf.

"The worldwide crisis affecting finance and the economy lays bare their imbalances and above all their lack of real concern for human beings. Man is reduced to one of his needs alone: Consumption. While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few.

Not to share one's wealth with the poor is to steal from them

"This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control. A new tyranny is thus born." All this, plus "widespread corruption, self-serving tax evasion" and a "system which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits and...a deified market" is "a rejection of God," Francis says.

"With this in mind, I encourage financial experts and political leaders to ponder the words of one of the sages of antiquity: 'Not to share one's wealth with the poor is to steal from them and to take away their livelihood. It is not our own goods which we hold, but theirs.' A financial reform open to such ethical considerations would require a vigorous change of approach" by political leaders, he adds. The politicians should "face this challenge with determination and an eye to the future."

The full text of the new Apostolic Exhortation can be found on the Vatican website.

Photo: On his visit to Sardinia, Pope Francis wears a helmet given him by a local coal miner. AP

Right-wing candidate declared winner in Honduras vote

Wed, 27 Nov 2013 13:03:00 +0000

Almost two days after polls closed in Nov. 24 voting for Honduras' next president, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) gave 774,757 votes to National Party presidential candidate Juan Orlando Hernandez and 623, 080 votes to Libre party candidate Xiomara Castro de Zelaya. The two candidates had taken 34.08 percent and 28.92 percent, respectively, of votes cast by more than 5 million Hondurans. The count representing 67.72 percent of the total constituted an "irreversible" trend, insisted the TSE. Results of parliamentary and municipal elections were unavailable. Turnout in voting for eight presidential candidates was a record high 61 percent.

These elections were remarkable as the first in decades involving political parties other than the National and Liberal parties, each notable for serving Honduras' wealthy and powerful elite. The voting served as the electoral début of the Liberty and Refoundation, or Libre, Party, offspring of the National Front for Popular Resistance (FNRP). Manuel Zelaya, the former president and Xiomara Castro's husband, is the FNRP head. That organization emerged from street demonstrations following a U.S.-backed military coup that removed Zelaya on June 28, 2009. His government had pursued land reform, a minimum wage, and a constituent assembly aimed at shaping a new constitution. The program of the social democratic Libre Party continues that agenda.

Honduras is notable currently for its 70 percent poverty rate, the world's highest murder rate, free rein for drug traffickers and other criminal elements, deadly repression of agrarian rights activists, police corruption, a formidable U.S. military presence, and overflowing military and police power. Candidate Juan Orlando Hernandez called for expanding the military's power and presence. Incumbent President Porfirio Lobo, likewise of the National Party, has promoted the interests of transnational corporations. Low turnout and delayed vote counting marked his election in 2009 amidst a repressive post-coup atmosphere.

Irregularities were not lacking this time. Unidentified assailants had killed a reported 18 Libre Party activists in the year prior to voting. On Election Day, gunmen killed five persons near a voting location in La Mosquitia in violence-ridden Gracias a Dios department. In the hours before polls opened, Globo TV and Radio and other news outlets reported on mounting abuses including relocation of voting centers and bribes handed out in the streets. Some voting centers remained closed after voting began.

Soldiers occupied not only Globo transmission facilities but also those of other news sources. According to one report, "This military occupation affects only the media that maintained a critical posture of the military coup of 2009 and the dictatorship that followed. These same transmitters were destroyed in 2009." As voting proceeded, the police arrested 40 individuals and seized 22 vehicles and 55 firearms - 19 of them at voting centers.

Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon spoke on behalf of hundreds of other international observers on hand, saying they had sees problems "related to change of credentials, possible buying of favors, and mechanisms for forcing votes that we are going to point to in a report." In 1998 Garzon sought the arrest of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, then visiting in England to obtain medical treatment.

Speaking to the press early on Nov. 25, Manuel Zelaya affirmed, "We do not accept this result, we protest against this result and reject it, because our exit polls and our counts of certified votes confirm that Xiomara won the presidency by more than 3 percent." Rixi Moncada, Libre Party representative to the TSE consultative council, spoke of data manipulation and "barefaced fraud." Moncada said, "There are more than 1,900 certified voting documents from departments where Libre won overwhelmingly that haven't been incorporated into the counting system." Instead, he alleged, they were diverted for the purpose of scanning.

Likewise Libre vice presidential candidate Enrique Reyna Tanto denounced "fraud against the popular will [carried out through] irregular transmission of results." He accused election officials of manipulating the scanning procedure "in order to hide their number. " At a later press conference, Zelaya asked, "How can they give results while hiding 20 percent of the ballot boxes'? Salvador Nasralla, candidate of the Anti·Corruption Party, joined in denouncing flawed vote counting.

As reported by the FNRP website, Zelaya called upon the TSE to demonstrate transparency. Otherwise, he warned, the Libre Party and the FNRC "will defend the [true] results in the street." FNRC leader Juan Barahona reinforced that message: "We are not going to stand around with our arms crossed , and if they steal our victory, we will go back to what we have always done, resist, resist, resist in the Honduras streets."

Designated winner Hernandez, who declared electoral victory at an early stage of vote counting, indicated the National Party will not negotiate: "The people have chosen; now we get to work." He has begun to form his cabinet. With the first announcement of' election results, Hernandez received congratulation from right-wing heads of state including Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli, Colombia's Juan Manuel Santos, and Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina.

U.S. Ambassador Lisa Kubiske told reporters, "The will of the voters must be respected."

Photo: The Honduran flag. J. Stephen Conn CC 2.0

Forming a German government: Bumper cars for the Bundestag?

Tue, 26 Nov 2013 15:40:00 +0000

BERLIN -If you've ever been on a bumper car at an amusement park, you can get an idea of current German politics. Here, too, the noise is terrific and everyone zooms back and forth, round and round, clashing with everybody else. And, similarly, there may be no real winner -- except perhaps the man at the cash register.

Christian Democrats (CDU)

The main car to watch is steered by Angela Merkel. Her Christian Democrats (CDU) barely missed out on the expected majority in the Bundestag, so a partner is needed in order to rule. Its former partner, the right-wing Free Democratic Party, was pushed off the floor, and a possible replacement, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), even further right, didn't quite make it past the entrance. After a failed attempt with the Greens, the CDU must now share the driving wheel with its rivals, the Social Democrats (SPD). The bargaining, after seemingly endless agreements and disagreements, is supposed to be concluded this week.

A main CDU problem is that, despite all instincts to drive to the right, if it is to preserve popular admiration for Merkel it must remain nationalistically tough towards less prosperous European neighbors to the South yet sound moderate and not too anti-social domestically. But it is being shoved rightward by its increasingly independent sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) of wealthy, reactionary Bavaria, whose leader, Horst Seehofer, a smiling giant of a man, recently won huge support in his state elections and within his party -- and is using this to gain a stronger grip on the coalition drivers' wheel. The issues he stresses, pensions for mothers and toll charges for non-German drivers on the autobahn, are less important than the pressure on the larger sister to buck any wishes of the SPD to head a bit leftward.

The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)

The other key participant in the tangle is the SPD, still mildly celebrating its hundred and fifty year history as "workers' party" (or more recently "people's party") but rubbing the wounds from measly 25.7 percent returns in the September elections. Stout chairman Sigmar Gabriel and secretary-general Andrea Nahles, both seen as left-wingers in an almost forgotten past, were punished at the recent party congress; Nahles got only two-thirds of the vote, the worst result of her career.

The leaders are currently working almost around the clock in their overriding hope for an agreement with Merkel and the Bavarian Seehofer. For them a great deal is at stake. If a new "grand coalition" government is formed they will get fine cabinet posts, in Gabriel's case the job of vice-chancellor next to Merkel. But if the attempt breaks down they might end up in the party dustbin. And a very worrisome short circuit still threatens. Due to grass roots opposition, the party agreed to have a mail-in referendum of all its 473,000 party members on the coalition, pro or con, and to abide by its decision. And there have been many skeptical voices, despite all of Gabriel's passionate appeals, some stormy, some almost tearful.

To gain approval from the membership, the SPD cannot seem to be giving up principles it has been espousing, at least in words, since it became part of the opposition in 2009, after an earlier, truly disastrous four-year attempt at a Grand Coalition. Why, many are asking, should a similar attempt be any better for the party this time?

The leaders insist that many principles have been maintained. The CDU seems to have agreed, though vaguely, to the SPD demand (swiped originally from the LEFT) for a minimum wage of 8.50 euro per hour in all Germany, even in the eastern states where wages average 80 percent or less of those in west Germany.

They may also have achieved their goal of permitting immigrants, especially from Turkey, to maintain their original citizenship when becoming German citizens, in other words to have two passports, an issue close to the hearts of most Turkish voters. They claim that the CDU has agreed to allot more money to education, to bridges, roads and public buildings, although this will depend on key budget decisions, very much up in the air.

But they gave up on a key election campaign demand for higher taxes on millionaires, billionaires and the wealthiest corporations. And they OK'd the fuzziest of wording on the immensely unpopular drone weapons. "The matter must be investigated during the next four years," they say, while the CDU Defense Ministry presses eagerly ahead and hopes to use the unmanned killer planes both abroad and, as indicated by a few menacing words, domestically as well.

Indeed, while up to the last moment there are squabbles on various domestic policy items, there seems to be full agreement on military policy, which means specialized military units on a German, European Union and NATO basis for deployment anywhere in the world.

The SPD membership, strongest among union members, is less interested in (or disturbed by) foreign policy matters but rather worried about jobs and social matters. It is a very open question whether they will obey their leaders and approve the coalition.

There are only two real alternatives.

The idea of a coalition of the CDU-CSU with the Greens was given up weeks ago as non-negotiable. But now the important state of Hesse is upsetting the apple cart -- or bumper car, if I stay with my metaphor. It also had a state election, also with a shaky conclusion. It seemed that there, too, a grand coalition - CDU-SPD - would emerge. But all of a sudden directions changed. The Christian Democrats of Hesse, furthest right in Germany (aside from the separate Bavarian sister party), decided on a deal with the Greens. Except for a few feeble, failed efforts in the past, this was something new. It meant that the Greens, once seen as a left-wing party, have abandoned most of their former principles and veered sharply to the right, at least in Hesse (where they gained their first political status in 1985 as partners of the SPD). More important, it is a hint that if the SPD membership does vote against the coalition plans, the CDU and the Greens might try again, copying Hesse, and join together on a national basis.

The other alternative is for the bargainers to call it quits and have a new election. But this is feared by most parties, not only because of the bother and expense but because the SPD might cut an even more dismal figure than before. And who can tell anyway how the voters will respond?

There is one other alternative, theoretically.

If the SPD and the Greens broke their long-standing taboo on a three-way coalition with the LEFT party they would also achieve - barely - the required Bundestag majority. For the first time there have been calls to reconsider the taboo, but most refer only to 2017. The reasons given for such caveats? The refusal of the LEFT party to change its stand on two issues: It must reject everything the East German GDR stood for (basically a socialist take-over of big banks and concerns) and it must drop objections to sending German soldiers into battle around the world.

Some in the LEFT party insist that this would mean giving up all principles, hopes and dreams, and lead it down the same sad ramp of compromise (or betrayal, some say) taken over the years by the SPD and the Greens. Others in the party say that compromises must be made if the party is to achieve importance nationally. As it is, this little party, with somewhat over 20 percent approval in the east and about 6 percent in the West, adding up to 9 percent in all, is now the leading opposition party in a Bundestag that, if the grand coalition succeeds, will be dominated by 80 percent on the government side. Like the other parties, it is subject to pushes in more than one direction. It remains to be seen how it fights back - and holds together.

Following the money

Ah yes, the cash register. A news item tells us "In the middle of the coalition negotiations the CDU and the SPD received financial gifts from the chemical concern Evonik... Last Friday the SPD received 90,000 euro, the CDU 70,000. ...The organization Lobby Control criticized the gifts, given at a crucial moment, when coalition negotiations are making key decisions about energy policy..." Lobby Control called on the SPD and CDU to demonstrate "their independence regarding the lobby of energy-intensive and coal-driven energy industrialists."

An Evonik spokesperson rejected the question. "There is no reason to criticize companies for assuming their social responsibility and supporting democratic parties. In any case, we do this every year for the CDU, CSU, SPD, FDP and Greens.... We do not believe that politicians now negotiating -- like Chancellor Merkel or SPD-Chairman Gabriel -- can be bought."

Once again, it seems, the poor LEFT party has been kept out of the playing. Is that bumpy game really being played on a level field?

Image: Deutscher Bundestag

El Salvador prepares for elections: Will the U.S. intervene?

Mon, 25 Nov 2013 14:35:00 +0000

On February 2, there will be a presidential election in El Salvador, to replace outgoing left-center President Mauricio Funes of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). Candidates include the current vice president and minister of education, Salvador Sanchez Ceren (FMLN), Norman Quijano for the right-wing ARENA Party, and former President Antonio Saca of a right-wing coalition composed of GANA (Grand Alliance for National Unity), PCN (Party of National Conciliation) and PDC (Christian Democratic Party). Polls show Sanchez Ceren slightly ahead, but a lot can happen between now and the election. If nobody gets a majority, there will be a runoff in March.

These elections are haunted by the ghosts of the 80,000 and more people killed under previous right-wing regimes and in the Salvadoran civil war of 1979 to 1992. Sanchez Ceren was a Marxist FMLN comandante during the war. ARENA was founded by the extreme right politician Roberto D'Aubuisson, believed to have ordered the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980, among many bloody crimes. The coalition backing Saca is composed of defectors from ARENA.

The civil war was ended by a negotiated agreement in 1992 but the issues that underlay it have not vanished. In spite of partly successful efforts by Mr. Funes and his government to fight poverty and illiteracy through funding schools, clinics and other social programs, problems are immense. On top of the inherited social and economic inequity, El Salvador has become a battleground for Mexican drug gangs and their local allies. This has made security a major issue. A gang truce supported by the government now seems to have fallen apart.

Sanchez Ceran is calling for intensified social reform, and closer relations with the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA). He would join PETROCARIBE, an ALBA sponsored program that will save El Salvador huge amounts of money on fuel costs. Such a proposal sets alarm bells ringing in Washington D.C. and in the mansions of the Salvadoran ruling class. To allay fears that Sanchez Ceren might be too far left, the FMLN has chosen the popular mayor of Santa Tecla, Oscar Ortiz, as its vice presidential candidate.

Pressure is being put on El Salvador to get in line with the U.S. sponsored neo liberal program of "free" trade, privatization and austerity. All the Salvadoran political parties except the FMLN have signed an agreement to support such policies. Both Quijano and Saca have made clear that, though they may continue some of Funes' popular social programs, their main strategy will be to make concessions to "attract more foreign investment."

Under pressure, and in spite of objections from labor and the FMLN base, the Funes administration previously agreed to a bill (P-3) allowing more public-private partnerships. It had excepted from privatization, however, education, health care, water and national security. There is now pressure from the right and the U.S. to expand the range of activities in which private, including foreign, capital can participate.

There are big fights going on between small farmers and foreign, especially Canadian and U.S., mining corporations. The Funes administration has imposed a moratorium on new mining projects which either Saca or Quijano would surely reverse.

Hundreds of thousands of Salvadoran citizens live in the United States, many undocumented. More than 200,000 are allowed to live and work here under "Temporary Protected Status." Salvadoran citizens living abroad can vote in the Feb. 2 election, and they contribute $3.9 billion in remittances to the Salvadoran economy yearly. Some Salvadorans accuse the United States of using the vulnerable position of these immigrants to pressure their government. El Salvador sent a small contingent of troops to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq, as a gesture of submission. There is a worry that if El Salvador antagonizes the U.S., Salvadoran immigrants in the United States could pay a high price.

During the 2009 election, the Obama administration promised, and observed, strict neutrality. However, this time, there are complaints about possible interference. The U.S. ambassador, Mari Carmen Aponte, has warned that if the Salvadoran legislature does not approve more legislation favoring private investment, the country could lose $300,000,000 in U.S. administered Millennium Challenge money.

Congressmen Matt Salmon (R-NJ) and Albio Sires (D-NJ), and right-wing figures connected to previous Republican administrations, such as lobbyist Otto Riech, are pushing hard for a U.S. intervention against the FMLN.

There is an effort to undo, through litigation, an 1993 amnesty for people who committed atrocities during the civil war. But on November 14, armed men broke into the offices of Pro-Busqueda, an organization which has been tracing the fate of children separated from their parents during the war, and destroyed 80 percent of its records.

Shortly before, the Roman Catholic Church abruptly closed Tutela Legal, its own archives of war crimes. Many see these things as tending to protect war criminals should the amnesty be revoked.

Sudan Communists call for push against Al Bashir

Fri, 22 Nov 2013 12:40:00 +0000

As the grassroots protests against the despotic regime of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al Bashir continue, the Sudanese Communist Party is calling for unity behind a program of removing the government to replace it with a democratic and secularist regime that works for the wellbeing of the working class and masses, and for national unity.

Al Bashir, who took power in 1989 through a military coup and declared his government to be Islamic, attempted to subdue the mostly non-Muslim southern part of the country by brutal force. The result was a bloody civil war and the achievement of independence of the Southern region in 2011, with the creation of the new Republic of South Sudan. The Sudanese Communist Party (SCP), with members and activists in both countries, had agitated for a solution to the conflict through a return to democracy and the end of efforts to repress and Islamize the South. It did not support the breakup of the country.

After the secession of South Sudan, Sudan found itself in a dilemma because more than two thirds of the country's most important asset, its oil reserves, ended up in South Sudan. Friction over how much Sudan could charge South Sudan to transship oil through a long pipeline that takes the product through Sudan to Port Sudan on the Red Sea led to armed conflict earlier this year.

Moreover, the agreement to let South Sudan go its own way has not left either country conflict-free. Rebel forces remain North of the South Sudan-Sudan border, in the oil-rich Abyei region of South Kordofan and in Blue Nile Province. There is also a long-running armed conflict in the huge Darfur area in the West.

All this has put Al Bashir's government and the Sudanese economy under strain. In the spring, the government decided to increase oil and food prices, claiming that it was necessary to sharply reduce government subsidies because of the loss of oil revenues. Many, including the SCP, do not buy that, and instead point to corruption, pressure from international creditors and especially a bloated military and police budget caused by al Bashir's repressive policies as being the real cause.

The increased prices led to demonstrations, which spread to all major cities in the Sudan. Al Bashir's regime used brutal repression to try to stop the protests, resulting in the deaths of hundreds, the wounding of many others, and the jailing of opposition leaders including a number of communists. The opposition press was muzzled, including the SCP's daily newspaper, Al Midan.

An important sector of the organized opposition to Al Bashir is grouped in the National Consensus Forces (NCF), formed in 2010, in which the SCP participates. In the NCF also are two groups headed by venerable Islamic politicians: Hassan Al-Turabi's Popular Congress Party (PCP), and Sadiq al Mahdi's National Umma Party (NUP). In addition, there are unions, student groups and civil rights organizations. The protests brought into the street many people without party or other organizational affiliation. In 2012, these and others signed the Democratic Alternative Charter (DAC), which requires them to work together to oust the Al Bashir government and replace it with a unified democratic and secular regime.

The government is feeling its hold slipping. A number of key ruling National Congress Party figures and retired military officers have broken with precedent by calling for policy changes, including a roll back of the food and fuel price increases and an end to repression. There is also dissention within the Consensus Forces. The National Umma Party, as well as the Democratic Unionist Party (which is not in the National Consensus Forces but signed the DAC) are showing signs of wanting to break away from the untied position and toward some sort of negotiated compromise.

The SCP has criticized the latter moves. In a party meeting on November 8, it characterized the Al Bashir regime as "an expression of the parasitic Islamic capitalists" whose policies have led to the splitting of the country, massive repression and an economic disaster. The SCP also denounced chronic corruption, and the privatization of key national enterprises and services. "Because of the inability of [the] parasitic class to change its self-interest[ed] policies, and unwillingness to relinquish its monopoly over power, they have formed allegiances with the petro dollar regimes in the Arab and Islamic countries..." The Al Bashir regime has played the role of imperialist agent in the interventions in Libya and Syria, and has become subordinate to the dictates of the International Monetary Fund.

Therefore the SCP is opposed to temporizing with the regime or its dissident elements, and calls for maximum unity in pressing for it to be removed from power. This will be done by the establishment of "a broad front" uniting all aspects and goals of the struggle. Mass demonstrations and political general strikes should be supported.

Photo: Workers at the inauguration of an oil facility in South Kordofan, Sudan, Dec. 20, 2012. Abd Raouf/AP

Environmental groups walk out of Warsaw talks

Fri, 22 Nov 2013 11:27:00 +0000

Major environmental groups including Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund walked out of the UN climate talks in Warsaw in protest at a lack of progress towards a deal to curb rising global greenhouse gas emissions.

More than 9,000 representatives from about 195 countries were gathered in the Polish capital for a two-week conference working towards a treaty to be signed in 2015 to fight climate change.

But the talks, which ended Nov. 21, have stuttered over several issues, particularly whether rich nations should pay developing countries for losses suffered due to the effects of climate change and a lack of pledges to cut emissions.

"The lack of meaningful leadership from governments here has delivered a slap in the face to those suffering as a result of dangerous climate change," said Greenpeace International executive director Kumi Naidoo.

Marcin Korolec, who is chairing the talks, was sacked as Polish environment minister Nov. 20.

He remained in charge of the talks but the green groups damned the timing of the cabinet reshuffle.

They and many conference delegates said it showed that coal-dependent Poland, which is often reluctant to go along with EU plans for emissions cuts, had little interest in the UN talks.

Poland's decision to host a coal industry summit alongside the climate talks Nov. 18 - 19 also angered the groups.

"This is one of the most captured summits ever - captured by corporates and the coal industry with support of the Polish government," said Dipti Bhatnagar of Friends of the Earth International.

"We are walking out to send a strong message due to the total inaction at the talks, due to lack of ambition and finance, at a time when we need the most action."

Meanwhile, UN secretary-general Ban Ki Moon implored world leaders to make "bold pledges" for cuts in greenhouse gases by next September, but acknowledged that many nations would be late.

Mr. Ban said that rich nations' promises for new funds to help the poor tackle heat waves, floods and rising sea levels caused by global warming were "insufficient."

Reposted from Morning Star

Photo: One day before the planned conclusion of the Warsaw UN climate talks, hundreds of individuals from all continents representing social movements, trade unions and non-governmental organizations - including Friends of the Earth International - walked out of the UN climate conference in protest.

On eve of local elections, U.S. undermines Venezuela

Thu, 21 Nov 2013 13:31:00 +0000

Nicolas Maduro won Venezuela's presidential election in April by a slim margin, a result still unrecognized by the U.S. government. Opposition demonstrations quickly spread, killing 13 people. Now his government faces municipal elections on December 8, and engineered social turmoil has returned. Although polls have been favorable, the confidence marking election campaigns under predecessor Hugo Chavez, is gone.

Opposition forces have used destabilization to cast both the Chavez and Maduro governments as dysfunctional. Powerful forces inside and outside Venezuela targeted the Chavez-led Bolivarian movement because of its decisive role in promoting continent-wide unity and social justice. The U.S. government is widely believed to have encouraged the unsuccessful right-wing coup of 2002 and subsequent disruption of Venezuela's oil industry.

Venezuelan-U.S. lawyer Eva Golinger has discovered a script for what's happening now. Golinger, well known for her reporting on U.S. payments to Venezuelan opposition groups, recently arranged for publication of a document outlining opposition preparations in advance of the municipal elections. Entitled "Venezuelan Strategic Plan, it appeared in the Russian Times. The Plan's 15 "action points" cover sabotage, "massive mobilizations," food shortages, "insurrection inside the army," and control of publicity. The authors anticipate "crisis in the streets that facilitate the intervention of North America and the forces of NATO, with support of the government of Colombia." The resulting "violence should cause deaths and injuries."

According to Golinger, the plan emerged from a meeting on June 13, 2013 attended by Mark Feierstein, regional head of the US Agency for International Development and by representatives of three other organizations: Florida - based FTI Consulting; Colombia's "Center for Thought Foundation," linked to former president Alvaro Uribe; and the U.S. Democratic Internationalism Foundation, promoted by Uribe.

U. S. funded opposition groups are currently demonstrating in Venezuelan streets and forcing shortages of consumer goods. For Jose Vicente Rangel, vice president under Chavez, their attacks on electric power plants, city transportation services, and oil refineries are terrorist in nature. Stores are running short of milk, textiles, sugar, shoes, electronic equipment, and more. The government accuses importers and retail distributors of hoarding. Retail prices have skyrocketed.

The government sells dollars gained from oil sales at a fixed rate to importing companies. Importers sell goods they purchase with dollars to retailers who charge exorbitant prices payable in undervalued bolivars, the national currency. Inflation is up 54 percent in 2013. Movement of dollars out of the country and dollars sales on the black market contribute to inflation.

Venezuelan, European, and U.S. mass media feature stories of popular frustration, even anger. Worried Maduro partisans recall Chilean distress prior to the U. S. supported coup that removed President Salvador Allende in 1973. The Nixon administration wanted then to "make Chile's economy scream." A statement from 45 high-level retired Venezuelan military officers calling for military intervention testifies to high stakes in play now.

Maduro announced the creation of a National Center of Exterior Commerce that would regulate foreign exchange and control acquisition and distribution of foreign currency. As of November 19, his government had secured passage of a temporary enabling law that would authorize limits placed on profit-taking and speculation. Because the Daka electric appliance chain was selling goods at a 1200 percent markup over import costs, the government occupied its stores on November 8 to ensure a "fair price." Maduro asks consumers to show "consciousness, patience, and peacefulness in anticipation of prices being stabilized." The government is expanding its popular Mercal grocery system that markets subsidized food products.

Venezuela's Communist Party is not satisfied. Secretary General Oscar Figuera called for "complete nationalization" of overseas commerce so "the state can centralize national purchases of essential items based on national development priorities and on the private sector using bolivars to import goods."

Economist Mark Weisbrot is optimistic. In 2012, oil revenues totaled $93.6 billion while $59.3 billion were spent on imports. Interest payments on foreign debt were relatively low. Currency reserves now approach $37 billion. So, "This government is not going to run out of dollars." The fact that inflation fell in 2012 coincident with the economy expanding by 5.7 percent is a favorable sign, he suggests. And, "the poverty rate dropped by 20% in Venezuela last year.

NSA documents appearing recently in the New York Times courtesy of Edward Snowden identified Venezuela as one of six "enduring targets" for electronic eavesdropping in 2007. (Others were China, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and Russia.) The strategic goal then - and probably now - was to prevent Venezuela "from achieving its regional leadership objective and pursuing policies that negatively impact US global interests."

Ángel Guerra Cabrera is betting on President Maduro. The Cuban journalist, a correspondent for La Jornada, claims Maduro has "ruined the dreams of imperialists and the right who were counting on his inability to maintain unity and the revolutionary direction of 'Chavismo.' We have seen a leader fortify himself with his own profile...With the cadres formed by commander [Chavez] , he has consolidated a cohesive and efficient political/military leadership."

Maduro's government recently expelled three U.S. diplomats on charges they conspired with opposition groups with intent to destabilize. Neither country has posted an ambassador to its counterpart nation for three years.

Photo: Nicolas Maduro. Ariana Cubillos/AP

Iraq: The struggle for new labor and trade union laws

Thu, 21 Nov 2013 13:03:00 +0000

BAGHDAD, Iraq (PAI) - Though an Iraqi judge has tossed out trumped-up charges against a leading Iraqi union leader, progress on enacting a new trade union law there is still stalled, a top trade union confederation reports.

The deadlock has led IndustriALL, the international confederation that includes several U.S. unions, to call for a worldwide e-mail campaign to Iraqi leaders demanding passage of a new, more-liberal law to replace the Saddam Hussein-era statute.

The state of Iraqi unionists' freedom, including their right to organize, is important as part of the overall mosaic of reasons the U.S. says it wants as a result of George W. Bush's Iraq War. But neither the post-war U.S.-run administration there nor the subsequent Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has changed the current 26-year-old repressive law.

Keeping Hussein's law was a direct decision by al-Maliki himself, says Iraqi oil workers union leader Hassan Juma'a, who spoke to unionists during the AFL-CIO convention in Los Angeles in September. Blogger Owen Tudor reported the charges against Juma'a, after pending for three months, were dropped on Nov. 10.

"The Second Criminal Court in Basra confirmed that, without evidence, the Iraqi government couldn't keep dragging Hassan to court, and threw the charges out again," Owen told LaborStart. "Hassan sent a message of thanks to his supporters in the trade union movement globally and in particular in the U.S., where he attended the AFL-CIO convention. The campaign goes on to get the charges against his fellow trade unionists discharged as well."

But Hussein's labor law survives, and it bans unions from state-run enterprises, which are 80 percent of Iraq's economy.

"It is appalling that Saddam was brought down but his notorious Public Law 150, banning all trade union activity in the public sector, remains in force and Iraq is still without a legal framework for industrial relations that meets ILO standards. Iraqi Labour legislation, as presently enforced, denies unions and their members basic rights," IndustriALL said.

IndustriALL Assistant General Secretary Kemal Ozkan recently discussed the proposed union law with Iraqi Parliament Speaker Osama Al-Nujaifi, Labor Minister Nassar Al-Rubuiee, and parliamentary Labor Committee Chairman Kanna Yonadam.

Ozkan "made it clear the new law must cover the public sector," IndustriALL said. "Legislation should also make it easier to form a union by ensuring that requirements follow International Labour Organization norms and standards - trade unions must be allowed to determine and establish their own democratic structures, and the law must provide effective guarantees against interference in the trade union movement's activities by government and employers."

IndustriALL also posted a letter on its website to be emailed to Al-Nujaifi and Al-Rubuiee, demanding passage of the new trade union law to replace Hussein's law.

"We strongly urge parliament to move forward on the basis of the input from the trade unions, as well as the ILO, to ensure that any new legal framework affords workers their rights under international law," it says.

The letter adds that IndustriALL fears Iraq's parliament could enact a labor law, but not a parallel trade union law, leaving the 1987 trade union law in force. Doing that would mean, "divesting the majority of Iraqi workers of their fundamental rights. Finally, we would urge that any final draft of either law be made available to the trade unions for a final review and comments before any action," the letter concludes.

Landmark presidential election approaches in Honduras

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 16:04:00 +0000

Democracy and justice are very much at stake Nov. 24 when Hondurans choose a new president for a four-year term. Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, presidential candidate of the new LIBRE party, has led in opinion polls for nine months. LIBRE is a self-described social democratic party that is agitating for a new constitution and is kin to progressive political movements active throughout Latin America. Some polling results a week ahead of the voting, however, were giving the edge to Castro's main rival, National Party candidate Juan Orlando Hernández.

Four years ago incumbent President Porfirio Lobo ran as candidate of the same party, winning in elections marked by strikingly low voter turnout. Lobo's government opened the door to extraction of natural resources by transnational corporations and approved "economic development zones" where governance would be handed over to corporations. During his tenure public debt, drug trafficking, and police corruption have mounted. U.S. military bases expanded. Overwhelming violence has extended to 300 political murders, most of them uninvestigated. Victims include 100 agrarian rights activists and 29 journalists. Honduras' poverty rate is 70 percent.

Lobo succeeded Roberto Micheletti, assigned to Honduras' presidency following the U.S.-approved military coup that removed President Manuel Zelaya on June 28, 2009. Zaleya is Xiomara Castro's husband. As president, he enraged Honduras' rich and powerful by aligning Honduras with solidarity alliances inspired by Venezuela and Cuba, reinstituting mild land reform, advocating for a minimum wage, and initiating plans for a new constitution.

The LIBRE Party - the Party of Liberty and Refoundation - is the electioneering arm of the National Front for Popular Resistance. That group emerged as the organizer for nationwide protests immediately following the coup. Campaigning, candidate Castro has condemned "savage capitalism that is against to what peoples need - justice, peace, and fairness." "We are going to reconstruct a different Honduras for everybody, with reconciliation," she said. Castro frequently refers to a constituent assembly and promises food sovereignty, anti-poverty measures, and health care and education reforms. She speaks of defending national sovereignty and steering clear of northern power brokers.

As a congressional leader, National Party candidate Hernández, a supporter of the 2009 military coup, illegally engineered the removal and replacement of four Supreme Court justices and appointment of a right-wing attorney general. Acknowledging police ties with organized crime and drug trafficking, Hernández has centered his campaign on militarization of police work. He wants "a soldier on every corner." Honduras' military is implicated in violent political repression and corruption.

According to U.S. Honduras watcher Dana Frank, writing in the Nation, "prospects for a free and fair contest are grim." She notes that "at least eighteen LIBRE activists and candidates have been killed since May 2012." With the approach of the elections, the government criminalized political protests. Irregularities are cropping up in election arrangements. Prensa Latina noted recently that the names of 15 dead people showed up on voting rolls. And photos of the same individual appearing on identification cards and on election registry documents occasionally don't match.

Electioneering stopped on Nov. 18, a week ahead of voting, to allow time for the 5.3 million Hondurans registered to vote to reflect and decide. Apart from the two leading presidential candidates, there are six others competing on behalf of seven political parties. Hondurans will also be voting for a vice president, 128 deputies to the national Congress and 20 deputies to the Central American Parliament. They will choose mayors and municipal councilors for 298 municipalities.

The upcoming elections have long-term significance, says Dana Frank, not least because they "will test whether Latin America's transition to democracy and social justice will be permitted to advance - in what Secretary of State John Kerry still refers to as 'our backyard.'"

Photo: An election rally in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Xiomara Castro de Zelaya Facebook page.

Chile: Left surges in elections

Tue, 19 Nov 2013 15:35:00 +0000

On Sunday, Nov.17, Chileans voted for president, both houses of Congress and some local offices. To nobody's surprise, the left "New Majority" coalition and the Socialist and Communist parties made significant advances. With 46.67 percent of the vote, the New Majority presidential candidate, Michelle Bachelet, of the Socialist Party, will have a runoff against right wing candidate Evelyn Matthei, who got 25.01 percent of the vote, on December 15. The electoral result is a clear repudiation of the right wing policies of outgoing president Sebastian Piñera, a close U.S. ally.

This was the first time in recent years that Chilean citizens were not required by law to vote (although now all eligible voters are automatically registered), which may be why turnout was relatively low, at 49.3 percent of the approximately 13 million registered.

Socialist Michelle Bachelet was president from 2006 to 2010, elected then as the candidate of the Concertacion, a left-center coalition formed after the end of the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. This time Bachelet ran as the candidate of the New Majority coalition, which, for the first time, included the Chilean Communist Party (CPC).

Bachelet is the daughter of a Chilean Air Force general who had refused to support the Sept. 11 1973 military coup d'état that overthrew the socialist government of President Salvador Allende Gossens. The dictatorship killed at least 3,000 supporters of democracy, including Bachelet's father, and tortured and exiled tens of thousands more, including Michelle Bachelet and her mother.

The candidate of the right wing Alliance for Chile coalition was Evelyn Matthei, also the daughter of a general, but one who supported the Pinochet coup. Mrs. Matthei herself also had made statements in favor of the Pinochet dictatorship, albeit some years ago. She was saddled with Chileans" bitter memories of the dictatorship, and also with the history of Piñera's administration that had been confronted by mass demonstrations on a number of issues, including labor rights, an archaic privatized educational system, mistreatment of the Mapuche indigenous people, and environmental worries.

The seven other presidential candidates, whose voting support Bachelet must now pick up to win the runoff, are mostly left and left-center figures. They include Marco Enriquez-Ominami, of the PRO/If You Want it, Chile Changes party, who got 10.98 percent; independent candidate Franco Parisi, who got 10.11 percent, and five others. This makes it highly likely that Bachelet will win the runoff; she can tap into these votes whereas Matthei does not have a big extra fund of right wing votes at her disposal.

In the Congress, the left also advanced to a 55.3 percent majority in the Senate and 56.6 percent in the Chamber of Deputies (the lower house). To pass her promised educational reform, Bachelet will need to pick up votes from some independents, but this is seen as feasible. It will be harder to pass constitutional reform and some other measures because of required supermajorities, but many on the left are calling for a grassroots Constituent Assembly to push this objective.

The Communist Party, which held 3 seats in the outgoing lower house, has evidently doubled its representation with the election of six deputies. One of the newly elected deputies is Camila Vallejo, the former student leader and head of the Young Communist Chile, who played a major leadership role in the street protests demanding educational reform. Another Communist elected on Sunday is Vallejo's successor as head of the Chilean Communist youth, Karol Cariola. The president of the Communist Party, Guillermo Tellier, also won a seat.

Communist support for Bachelet was given on the basis of her agreement to work harder for educational and labor law reform.

The election of Bachelet with a cooperative legislature and a left-center program will not bring about socialism, but will nevertheless have profound implications not only for the Chilean working class, but for Western Hemisphere politics and beyond. Under Piñera, Chile became involved in two groupings of nations seen by the leaders of the "Bolivarian" countries in South and Central America as dangerous to their progressive political project.

The Pacific Alliance groups Chile, Peru, Colombia, Costa Rica and Mexico in a free trade agreement which is in turn linked to similar arrangements with the United States. This is seen by the left-wing governments of countries such as Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela as an attempt to revive the U.S. dominated FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas).

The Transpacific Partnership (TPP) is a monster free trade pact being negotiated among a dozen nations on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. China is excluded as part of the U.S. governments "Asian Pivot" which seeks to limit Chinese influence in trade and diplomacy. The countries of the "Bolivarian" Alliance and their allies have a reason to worry that they will either be pressured to join in the TPP or find themselves excluded from important trade avenues.

Both of these arrangements will force participating nations to accept the neo-liberal program of so-called free trade, deregulation in favor of corporate interests, privatization and austerity, precisely the things Bachelet campaigned against.

As president, Bachelet will be under pressure from her social base to distance Chile from these developments.

Photo: Michelle Bachelet shakes hands with supporters one day after general elections in Santiago, Chile, Nov. 18. Bachelet, Chile's first female president from 2006 to 2010, is widely expected to win a Dec. 15 runoff. Luis Hidalgo/AP

Correction: An earlier posting gave the Chilean president's name as Rafael Piñera. The correct name is Sebastian Piñera.

South African unions stage huge marches against road tolls

Fri, 15 Nov 2013 14:07:00 +0000

South Africans marched across the country in support of a trade union campaign against electronic tolling on motorways and privatizing roads.

Cosatu supporters flocked to marches in Mpumalanga, Limpopo and Gauteng provinces yesterday in the climax of a three-day campaign against the tolls.

The union federation has launched a drive-slow campaign against the e-tolling.

Gauteng Cosatu secretary Dumisani Dakile said the campaign has received public support.

Drive-slows "are effective in relation to raising the message and the awareness to the public," he said. "It also irritates a number of politicians and we are quite happy with the irritation that we are causing."

Mr Dakile said workers would launch a deregistering campaign for those who had signed up to electronic tags.

Cosatu said it was wrong to make road users pay twice for improvements to infrastructure - once through taxation and then again through e-tolling.

"Tolls will impose a direct burden on the poor of Gauteng, who are already struggling with a rising cost of living and personal debt at an all-time high, and will now be forced to pay to travel on previously free highways," it said.

Workers were also marching for better public transport.

Health and education union NEHAWU deputy president Thozama Mantashe said: "Our union demands a decent national public transport system and an end to the apartheid spatial planning that keeps the poor and black majority on the periphery of the cities and far away from their places of work."

South Africa has largely failed to overcome apartheid-era settlement patterns that saw black communities shunted into townships away from economic centres.

Marchers demanded "effective, accessible, reliable, affordable and safe public transport, not punitive e-tolls."

Cosatu also pointed out that bus subsidies had not kept pace with inflation, resulting in a deterioration of services.

The day of action also saw calls for the banning of labour brokers - "who get rich by exploiting workers and undermining their job security."

The union federation described labour brokers as "modern-day slave owners."

This article was originally in Morning Star.

Photo: e-Toll demonstration in South Africa.

Madagascar to hold runoff election in December

Tue, 12 Nov 2013 16:59:00 +0000

There was a presidential election in Madagascar on Oct. 25. Thirty-three candidates were on the ballot, and nobody got a majority. According to the Malagasy constitution, the top two vote getters must go to a runoff on Dec. 20. The biggest vote went to Jean Louis Robinson, with 21.1 percent, with Hery Rajaonarimampianina second, at 15.9 percent.

Madagascar is a huge island off the East Coast of Africa, with a population of 22 million. It was first settled two thousand years ago or more by travelers from Borneo, with later additions from the African continent. Madagascar has unique flora and fauna, much of which is now threatened by expanding human economic activities.

For a long time an independent kingdom, Madagascar was seized by France in 1896, and exploited as a colony. When the French empire was fatally weakened by World War II and defeats in Vietnam and Algeria, and after a large-scale mass rebellion, Madagascar got its independence in 1960.

The first highly authoritarian government, headed by Philibert Tsirinana, was little more than a continuation of French colonial rule by another name, but that government was overthrown and subsequent ones tried, like other African countries, to disentangle themselves from European control by bidding for support from the Soviet Union and its allies, as well as China.

After the fall of Soviet and Eastern European socialism, Madagascar's trade relations have followed the same pattern as those of most other African countries; that is, the country is stuck in a pattern of having to lure "foreign direct investment" focused on tapping the subsoil wealth, by accepting trade agreements favorable to its trading partners (of which France is still the largest), and unfavorable to ordinary Malagasy citizens. The country also depends on foreign aid from international donors.

Thus, Madagascar today is one of the richest nations in the region, and one of the poorest. It has vast natural resources (gold, nickel, cobalt, petroleum), but 92 percent of its people live on $2.00 per day or less. Like other nations in Africa, vast profits are obtained by foreign corporations through the exploitation of the subsoil wealth, while ordinary Malagasy citizens eke out a living through hardscrabble farming. Weather fluctuations cause frequent famines.

Dissatisfaction about this state of affairs has led to periodic grassroots protest movements, sometimes ending in the ouster of the government in power. During the presidency of Marc Ravalomanana (2002-2009), Madagascar made some economic progress; however the wealth brought in by foreign investment and trade was not seen as benefiting ordinary people. Ravalomanana was also criticized for his authoritarianism. The last straw was the revelation that his government had signed an agreement with the South Korean Daewoo Logistics Corporation whereby about half of the arable farmland in Madagascar would be transferred, by a long-term lease, to Daewoo's control, to be developed into industrial farming production for the Korean market.

Comments by Daewoo executives created extreme fear that the farm plan might leave millions destitute. Daewoo said the plan would create 45,000 jobs for Malagasy citizens, but the people feared many more would be displaced.

This led to protests in 2009 in which Andry Rajoelina, the young mayor of the capital, Antananarivo, and a successful former disk jockey and media entrepreneur, played a leading role. President Ravalomanana responded by closing Rajoelina's TV station and dismissing him as mayor. Violent conflicts between the supporters of Ravalomanana and Rajoelina left more than a hundred dead. Sections of the armed forces intervened on Rajoelina's side, and Ravalomanana went into exile. Rajoelina ended up as interim president of Madagascar. One of his first acts was to cancel the Daewoo deal.

The "international community," meaning the European Union, the United States, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the African Union and others reacted angrily to punish Madagascar for "breaching constitutional norms." Foreign investment has dropped from $1.36 billion in 2009 to $.46 billion this year. Most foreign assistance disappeared. Living conditions in Madagascar have plummeted. The environment is being trashed (for example, the great forests are being cut down to supply foreign purchasers of high quality wood). And the Daewoo deal may be revived.

Long negotiations preceded last month's elections. It was agreed that neither Rajoelina nor Ravalomanana could run. Ravalomanana and his allies support Robinson, while Rajoelina and his followers will back Rajaonarimampianina. The two candidates are now vying for the support of the other 31 candidates.

Whoever wins will find himself faced with the same dilemma that Madagascar and other poor countries have faced for decades. The country's great natural wealth can only be tapped for balanced national development, of a kind that would improve the living standards of the people, via the activities of foreign companies that are looking out for their own profits, and foreign governments with their own economic and geopolitical agendas. So things stay the same, states are weak and political instability is endemic. Getting out of this bind will require the kind of political realignments that have occurred in much of Latin America over the past decade, at the very least.

Photo: People wait to vote at a polling station in Antananarivo, Madagascar. (Schalk van Zuydam/AP)

Typhoon ravages Philippines

Tue, 12 Nov 2013 16:41:00 +0000

Typhoon Haiyan, known in the Philippines as Yolanda, was the strongest-ever tropical cyclone to make landfall, and in its wake, an estimated 10,000 people may have died. Officially, 1,744 are confirmed dead so far. The "super-typhoon" developed on November 3, and proceeded to devastate the country with wind speeds up to 195 mph before making its way to Vietnam, Taiwan, and parts of China.

Decimated infrastructure has hampered rescue efforts, and many survivors do not have access to food, water, or medicine. Philippines president Benigno Aquino deployed soldiers to the city of Tacloban, and has declared a state of national calamity. He stated that he may also impose martial law to stop the looting and chaos that is currently taking place there.

To say that Tacloban was one of the hardest-hit areas would be to put it softly. According to the United Nations' Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, local officials observed a mass grave of 300-500 bodies there; people have described a stink in the air caused by the rotting. They are all victims of a storm so powerful some people thought it was a tsunami. Indeed, much of Tacloban was all but buried beneath water during the height of the typhoon's destruction.

Vietnam, Taiwan, and several areas in China were hit by the storm after it had weakened significantly, though they certainly endured devastation as well. Fourteen were killed and at least 81 injured in Vietnam. Sixteen people were swept out to sea in Taiwan; eight were rescued, but the other eight drowned. And there are six confirmed deaths in China.

An international effort

Groups are currently collaborating in an international effort to help victims. American forces were dispatched to the Philippines on November 10 - the first wave consisting of 90 marines, as well as U.S. surveillance aircraft to help with search and rescue efforts. The U.N. World Food Program, meanwhile, flew 40 tons of High Energy Biscuits (HEBs) to the country. And the country's own Red Cross deployed teams to distribute meals, blankets, and medical supplies.

The United Kingdom has donated $15 million in national aid; Australia has pledged $10 million; the European Commission has provided $4 million; New Zealand has given $2.15 million; and China has donated $200,000.

Chicago is home to over 100,000 Filipinos. Philippines-born Rev. Primo Racimo, a pastor at St. Margaret's Episcopal Church and activist in the city's large Filipino community, is currently helping with relief efforts there. People can go to the church on Sunday, November 24 for the 10:30 a.m. service to contribute, or send money to Filipino Relief Efforts, c/o St. Margaret's, 2555 East 73 St. Chicago, I.L., 60649.

But despite all these spirited efforts, people are still suffering.

"Our home was destroyed"

One victim, Miriam Refugio, 60, and her teen granddaughter, waited at the airport in a desperate attempt to get from Tacloban to the city of Manila. "Our home was destroyed," she said, "and there is no food in this town, so we have to flee." Their only drinking water was reportedly a barely-filled plastic bottle. Though they contemplated drinking water from a nearby dirty pump, the granddaughter suggested they might become very sick of they took the risk.

That is the gist of what the average Filipino is currently facing and dealing with.

"It is difficult for me to even talk or think about this," Rev. Racimo told the People's World. "I know of a father in Tacloban who walked around for days in the ruins, holding his dead child. In that same hour, a little girl wandered alone - hungry and sick - looking for her family.

"The storm, of course, was unprecedented. The winds exceeded anything that ever was experienced before. The areas hardest hit were the 15 provinces in the Central Philippines; the most poverty-stricken part of the country. Some of the area took a double-hit. In Bohal province, they had a strong earthquake just a month ago. They did not even have their electricity back from after that quake yet."

Culpability on the part of the government

"Record storm or not," Racimo declared, "there is culpability on the part of the government. Lawmakers in the 15 worst-hit provinces have this year taken $1 billion in money for pork barrel projects in their districts. This money should be going to typhoon relief, yet it is not.

"There have been disasters going on for years now. Where is the planning by the government? Over in Vietnam, the government evacuated [thousands] before the storm hit. The Philippines government, meanwhile, is beholden too much to multinational corporations that are destroying mountainsides and virgin forests. They did not conduct adequate mass evacuations and pre-planning.

"Just like in Louisiana, where oil drilling has helped destroy the bayou, the natural protection around New Orleans, we have [something similar] happening in the Philippines. We have almost no virgin forests left; they were all destroyed by the logging industry. In Mindanao, a southern province, the mining companies tore up the mountains. Any strong rain or typhoon will make landslides so much worse [as a result]. And if the area is poor, they don't care. But they sure went to work quickly last year when the surge in a storm sent water through downtown Manila streets up to the U.S. embassy."

"Get off your ivory tower"

Obviously, the storm was one of the focal points of the 2013 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Warsaw, Poland. There, Philippines lead negotiator Yeb Sano drew a connection between the typhoon and climate change. "To anyone who continues to deny the reality of climate change," he said, "I dare you to get off your ivory tower and away from the comfort of your armchair. I dare you to go the islands of the Pacific, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean and see the impacts of rising sea levels. ... And you may want to pay a visit to the Philippines right now.

"What my country is going through as a result of this extreme climate event is madness. We [must] take drastic action now to ensure that we prevent a future where super typhoons are a way of life." Sano then declared he would begin fasting during the conference "until a meaningful outcome is in sight." Such an outcome would, according to him, consist of allocating more financial resources to help deal with global warming, and "real ambition on stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations."

"Yeb Sano is right," Rev. Racimo agreed, noting with approval how Sano also spoke of how multi-national mining companies are making things worse. "But there is a lot of talk. What is needed is funding. The Filipino budget is being swallowed up for military defense. Defense against what? We need to defend against typhoons, not imaginary enemies. Like in America, in the Philippines we need to take the money from the one percent and put it in the hands of the people."

Photo: A survivor walks through the rubble in Tacloban. Aaron Favila/AP

The New York Times describes an East German model city -- and is fair!

Wed, 06 Nov 2013 12:47:00 +0000

BERLIN -- The New York Times printed a long article about a small city in East Germany, Eisenhüttenstadt (Iron Mill City), which was founded around a new iron and steel strip mill in 1950 and originally called Stalinstadt. As with my own avenue in Berlin, Stalinallee, now Karl Marx Allee, the name was finally changed in 1961. I had visited Eisenhüttenstadt a number of times, and had read more than a few articles in the New York Times about life in the one-time German Democratic Republic, or GDR, so, when I started to read the article, I expected to get angry, bitter, sad -- or all three.

But to my great surprise, this article, by some miracle, turned out to be quite honest. The author, Melissa Eddy, did not embroider what she saw or heard. The result did indeed tend to make me angry, sad and bitter. But this time it was not because of prejudice or dishonesty but because of the story she told.

She writes that the city enjoyed special privileges: "It was favored with hard-to-get goods and cultural offerings like a new theater and commissioned artworks that graced courtyards." This is indeed true -- yet is only part of the story. Eisenhüttenstadt was only the first one of five or ten such big urban districts constructed in GDR days near mostly new or greatly enlarged industrial plants where thousands of people then worked, shopped and spent their leisure hours.

And they too were similarly favored. There were large housing projects centered on industries like urgently needed coal, gas and power plants, shipyards, chemical factories, a cotton spinning mill, or older centers like the famous Zeiss glass and optics plant in Jena. Like Eisenhüttenstadt they attracted young people from surrounding rural areas, and they were indeed all favored with first chance at goods in scarce supply - like the most fashionable apparel, new cars, and fruit from tropical countries. Most if not all had big, elaborate cultural centers with concerts, instrumental, hobby and sports groups; many had theaters - though here Eisenhüttenstadt was perhaps especially favored. I recall translating in that big theater for the touring American composer and singer Earl Robinson and his two accompanying musicians - introducing people there to songs like his own Joe Hill, The House I Live In, The Ink is Black and other folk and protest songs. But almost every GDR city of even medium size had a theater, usually with opera, operetta, drama, children's drama and frequently ballet.

As Eddy mentions, many prominent sculptors created statues for Eisenhüttenstadt. But then, for many years, a certain percentage of building costs had to be spent on statues, gardens, murals and other art works at all major construction sites, not only there. Some of them still remain.

Eisenhüttenstadt was the first of many such sites. Many or most were built in backward areas struggling with a long history of underdevelopment, often worsened by ravages of the war. They represented new hopes, and were all characterized by a feeling of security; no one feared a loss of a job (or problems in finding a new one if dissatisfied); although rent usually amounted to about a tenth of income, evictions were forbidden by law.

Nor were there any financial worries about health treatment or medicine, education (up to graduate level), childcare, or even abortions. Eddy is quite correct when she writes that "the city was created around a newly established iron works as a showcase for the Marxist principles promoted by the East German authorities". Perhaps Eisenhüttenstadt was treated a little better than some, yet basically it was a model that became typical and was found in varied forms all around the country.

But over the decades the pressures from without continued to increase in agonizing strength - economic, military, but especially clever propaganda. There were many blunders, too, idiocies and occasional brutality as well - most often in a vain effort to ward off those pressures but also rooted in human frailties; the debate is still heated here as to why and how. It is impossible to call back the GDR, and very few would like it just the way it was, with its maze of problems, internal and external. But some see its final, fatal crisis as less grave than today's crises in many countries and continents.

Melissa Eddy also describes the present -- again quite fairly, I find. The once publicly-owned iron and steel mill now belongs to Arcor-Mittal, formed when the Mittal Company of India took over steelworks owned by investors in France, Belgium and Luxembourg -- and now the largest steel company in the world.

But unemployment in Eisenhüttenstadt, as Eddy reports, "has stabilized at 8.6 percent, higher than the 6.5 percent across all of Germany... Like so many smaller and midsize cities in the former East German regions, the city has seen its population plummet" from 53,000 at the end of the GDR in 1989 to its current stand at less than 30,000.

Painfully, it is the young people who leave after finishing school -- and rarely return. The idea of attracting tourists with a museum showing GDR products, successful (though painfully one-sided) in Berlin, has failed here 75 miles to the east, on the Oder River boundary to Poland. Eddy writes: "...as Germany prepares to mark 24 years since the collapse of Communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall on Saturday, the dwindling number of people who call Eisenhüttenstadt home seem condemned to confront a depressingly persistent question: What becomes of a model city once the model goes bust?" She quotes a local historian: "It's complicated, it's complex, and it's fraught in every sense of the word... We're looking at almost 25 years since the fall of the wall, and it's more emotional and dangerous than it has ever been."

My feelings of sadness, bitterness and anger -- not at the article but at the downfall of the GDR, whose good elements were so much more important than its bad ones --give way to questions regarding my own native land, the USA. If little war-wrecked, embargoed GDR, the size of Ohio or Virginia, could after all solve so many problems, couldn't we, despite its faults, learn important lessons from what was truly a noble experiment?

Couldn't "model cities" be made out of run-down areas like Detroit, Cleveland, Camden? Couldn't good, inexpensive homes be made available to everyone? Couldn't evictions be forbidden? In the wealthy USA, blessed with natural resources (unlike the GDR), couldn't all worries also be banished about paying for medical care and medicines, about child care, a college education, and abortions?

Most important, is there no way to provide security for all who can and want to work for a living, and for those who retire as well -- while using higher productivity and cut working hours and years to reach this goal?

Yes, some sadness and bitterness remain when I read such an article and recall my many, many basically happy years in the GDR. But a more important emotion, I sense, even in my very ripe old age, is rather a feeling of determination -- determination to make this a better world!

Photo: When the socialist GDR built new cities around industrial sites in the 1950s, plans always included cultural sites like the Friedrich-Wolf-Theater, opened in 1955 in Eisenhüttenstadt. Wikipedia Commons.

Nowadays it doesn't take tanks to overrun Europe

Tue, 05 Nov 2013 14:57:00 +0000

SOFIA, Bulgaria -- The military museum in this sprawling capitol city consists of a tiny building and a huge outdoor display of weapons that look as if they had been wheeled in fresh from the battlefields and parked, higgledy-piggledy: mountain howitzers that shelled Turks in 1912 rub hubs with Cold War era Russian artillery. MIGs, dusty and weather beaten, crowd a sinister looking Luna-M "Frog" tactical nuclear missile. Two old enemies, a sleek German Mark IV Panzer and its dumpy, but more lethal adversary, a Russian T-34, squat shoulder to shoulder.

Poor Bulgaria. The Russians won't be back, but once again the Germans are headed their way, only this time armed with nothing more than a change of currency and the policies of austerity that go along with it. The devastation those will inflict, however, is likely to be considerable.

The Euro

Bulgaria is preparing to jettison its own currency, the lev, and adopt the Euro, the currency of the European Union (EU), although the country has dragged its heels about actually making the switch. With good reason. Currency control is a practical and commonsense way for countries to deal with interest rates, debt, and inflation, as well as to stimulate economic activity. The U.S. Federal Reserve constantly manipulates the dollar to accomplish these goals.

But the Euro is controlled by the European Central Bank based in Frankfort, Germany. Because Germany has the biggest economy in the EU, and is at the center of a "core" of wealthy nations that also use the Euro - France, Austria, and the Netherlands - Berlin largely calls the shots. That has translated into a tight-fisted control of the money supply, an aversion to economic stimulation, and years of enforced austerity for countries trying to recover from the 2007 economic crisis sparked by the U.S.

Britain and Germany

The result, according to Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, is that in addition to Mercedes and BMWs, Germany "exports bankruptcy and unemployment."

Hardest hit by these policies are the "distressed six": Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Cyprus, where draconian austerity policies have created soaring unemployment, devastating social services cutbacks, and widespread misery.

Led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Conservative British Prime Minister David Cameron - Britain retains its own currency, but has been an enthusiastic supporter of Germany, and has applied austerity to its own economy - the strategy has been an unmitigated disaster.

While supporters of this "slash and cut" approach to reviving the European economy claim their policies are a success - German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble says the world should "rejoice" at recent economic figures, and British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne crows that critics of the strategy have been proven wrong - figures show a very different picture.

The overall EU jobless rate is 12 percent, although that figure is misleading because it varies so much by country, region, and cohort. Unemployment is 12 percent in Italy, 13.8 percent in Ireland, 16.5 percent in Portugal, 26.3 percent in Spain, and 27.9 percent in Greece. And even these figures make the jobless rate look sunnier than it is. Unemployment among Greek youth is 60 percent, and areas of southern Spain post numbers in excess of 70 percent. Indeed, an entire generation of young people across the continent is being cut out of the economic pie.

"It is true that unemployment figures have improved in recent times, but it is equally true that unemployment is at such a high level that any marginal improvement is irrelevant," a Madrid-based economist for Exane BNP Paribas told the Financial Times. "Many people are no longer actively looking for jobs and long term unemployment already affects more than 50 percent of the total unemployed population."

Figures also show that EU growth rates are essentially dead in the water, which means that it will be years before there is any real fall in the jobless rate. EU gross domestic product is 3 percent below pre-crisis levels and those figures go sharply south for the distressed six: down 7.5 percent for Spain, 7.6 percent for Portugal, 8.4 percent for Ireland, 8.8 percent for Italy, and 23.4 percent for Greece.

It is true that growth in Britain is up 2.2 percent, but that figure is over three years and remains 3.3 percent below pre-crisis levels. Moreover, the Office of Budget Responsibility projected back in 2010 that the economy would expand by 8.2 percent by 2013. Economists Oscar Jorda and Alan Taylor of the University of California at Davis estimate that austerity probably knocked about 3 percent off of the British growth rate.

The EU is turning into a house divided. A wealthy core that keep their economies on an even keel and unemployment rates relatively low - Austria and Germany have the lowest jobless rates in the EU at 5.2 and 5.3 percent, respectively - while the south and the periphery turn into low wage, high unemployment labor reservoirs. If "core" workers grumble at stagnant wages and reduced benefits, there are always Spaniards, Italians, Greeks and Portuguese willing to take their places.

Serious stimulus needed

What the distressed countries really need is a serious stimulus program to jump-start their economies by putting people back to work. But that is not something they are likely to get, especially given the outcome of the recent German elections, where Merkel's Christian Democrats and her allies in the Bavarian Christian Social Union retained power. Merkel told a rally in Berlin, "Our European course will not change," and the Greek newspaper Ta Nea glumly called it a victory for the "Queen of austerity."

In reality, the German election was less a vote for more austerity than a reflection of domestic concerns about stability. And, in any case, Merkel's opponents actually won the election. Merkel and her allies control 311 seats in the Parliament, but the Greens, Social Democratic Party and Left Party won 329 seats. While the Greens and Social Democrats have acquiesced to some austerity policies, they are not as hard line as Merkel. If the Greens and the SDP could overcome their hostility to the Left Party - which took 64 seats, one more than the Greens - the center-left could form a government that could potentially alter the economic chemistry of the EU.

In the meantime, Bulgaria awaits its fate with an odd combination of clear sightedness and illusion.

Surveys show that most people think the Euro will cut their living standards and have a negative impact on the economy. Bulgaria is already in difficult straits, partly because when it joined the EU it lost its biggest customer, Russia, partly because it is small, and partly because it still suffers from a post-communist hangover. It is the poorest country in the EU.

Privatization

Like many former communist bloc countries, when Bulgaria broke loose from the domination of Soviet Union in 1990, it went on a privatization tear that ended up largely gutting its industrial and agricultural base. It is now trying to claw back by reviving agriculture and building up the tourist industry.

But tourism is volatile, and Bulgaria appears to have over expanded, much as Spain did. The Black Sea coast south of Burgas is lined with high rises and gated communities, but many of them are dark when the sun goes down. There is a distinct feel of a real estate bubble.

The illusion is that Bulgarians support EU membership because they think it means the Union will bail them out of any future trouble, as it did Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland. In fact, the Union did not bail out any of those countries; it rescued failed banks and financial institutions that had recklessly gambled away their assets on real estate speculations. These "loans" also required huge cutbacks in social services and massive layoffs of public workers.

When the bubble popped, it was taxpayers in those countries who ended up picking up the bill, including those incurred by "core" French, German, Dutch, Austrian and British banks.

In the coming war over "stimulus vs. austerity" Bulgaria is unlikely to play a pivotal role, though conquerors have underestimated her in the past. The question is, will the country resign itself to second tier status in the EU, or will Bulgarians join with increasing numbers of Greeks, Spaniards and Portuguese who are saying "enough"?

A good start toward turning things around would be to take up a call by Greece's Syriza Party for a European debt summit similar to the 1953 London Debt Agreement, That pact allowed Germany to recover from World War II by cutting its debt by 50 percent and spreading payments out over 30 years.

The Mark IVs Panzers are museum pieces. These days the power to wreak destruction doesn't depend on commanding armored divisions. All one needs to overrun Europe now are currency control, banks and obsequious politicians.

Originally posted at Conn Hallinan's blog, Dispatches From the Edge

Photo: German Chancellor Angela Merkel shakes hands with Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, at the forum's Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 30, 2009. World Economic Forum CC 2.0

Visitors to Snowden and visitors to Berlin

Tue, 05 Nov 2013 11:39:00 +0000

BERLIN - It was a good try, anyway -- and an adventurous one. Three men flew from Berlin to Moscow, were taken in a car with tinted glass windows to a secret location - where they met Edward Snowden and his partner-in- (alleged)-crime, Sarah Harrison.

The meeting was very interesting. So were the three visitors.

The Green man

Trio leader was Hans-Christian Stroebele, 74, Bundestag representative from a mixed East-West Berlin electoral district, the only Green Party delegate directly elected (four times); the other 62 got in thanks to Germany's proportional representation system. Anyone joining in anti-war rallies recognizes the rather haggard-looking man who - until recently - always arrived pedaling a bike. He was always (or almost always) the Green deputy opposing wars in Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Patriot missiles for Israel, who fought hardest against anti-foreigner discrimination (even supporting the right of immigrant-rooted police officers to wear turbans or head cloths and a Turkish version of Germany's national anthem. A constant thorn in the side of war-happy Green Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer (1998-2005), he has (almost) always been a maverick, well to the left of other Green leaders. And as a maverick he flew to Moscow.

Two investigative journalists

But Stroebele's English is not too good. So, sharing the fruit, fish and other Russian delicacies - and the scoop - was Georg Mascolo, 50, Italian-German journalist, a former correspondent in the USA and editor of Der Spiegel (before getting fired after two years), and also the American journalist John Goetz, 52, born in New York, a TV-journalist in Berlin since 1989 and also writing for a leading Munich newspaper.

Goetz's big scoop in 1993 revealed that the German government was still paying pensions to Latvia's Nazi SS veterans, who held militant marches in Riga every year while veterans of the Red Army and the few Jewish survivors in Latvia were cruelly ignored or short-changed. As a result, the pensions were finally halted (unfortunately not the parades).

He later exposed the financial shenanigans of a slippery arms dealer profiting from deals between manufacturers in Canada and rightwing Bavarian politicians, did a series on Germany's secret assistance to the US war in Iraq (despite official abstention) and helped expose "extraordinary renditions" by US planes across Germany to secret torture locations. His first impression of Snowden: "A slight fellow, short, quite thin, black suit, blue shirt, with angular glasses too large for his face." But then came the questions and frank, honest, impressive answers. And an offer of assistance.

Why Snowden won't be visiting

Stroebele passed on Snowden's letter to the German government, expressing willingness to testify as an expert witness on NSA spying directed against Germany - and Chancellor Angela Merkel. The one stipulation about coming to Germany was that he be guaranteed freedom from extradition to the USA and, since Russia might then rescind his current status, a right of asylum.

But the chances of such a visit soon dropped to near zero. When it was revealed that Merkel's mobile phone was tapped by NSA -- like those of millions of other Germans - she had spoken out far more angrily than is customary for the usually mild-toned German "Mutti" (Mama). But, very predictably, while still mumbling that "Such practices must be altered" she had her office explain that, after all, "the transatlantic alliance is of overwhelming importance to us Germans" and it was soon announced that a delegation of US Congress members would fly over to voice their regrets and try to repair damaged fences. In such a romantic, Atlantic relationship Snowden would only be in the way.

The fight for public power

As that greatest of Scottish poets Bobbie Burns wrote: "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain." The past two years witnessed a scheme or plan, this time not by three but by thousands of Berlin citizens. In late October 2010 a group decided on an initiative to communalize the city's power supply, which meant buying it back from the giant Swedish enterprise Vattenfall. Their slogan: "Democratic (city-owned), ecological and social (lower prices)". The group, which eventually included fifty organizations, received the backing of all three opposition parties in the Berlin House of Representatives, the LINKE (Left) party, the Greens and the Pirates and, after some negotiation, also the Social Democrats, the leading party in the ruling Senate (the name of the city government). Only the Christian Democrats, also in the governing coalition, rejected the idea. It looked as if the law repossessing the power supply of the city could easily pass a vote.

But then the Social Democrats, bowing to their right wing coalition partners, turned tail and reneged on the plan. This meant that far more signatures were required in a new campaign to obtain a referendum of all Berliners. A powerful campaign was initiated, obtaining between February and June 2013 over 271,000 signatures; 228,000 were ruled valid, a huge triumph, which meant that a referendum of Berlin voters must now take place.

It was planned for September 22^nd, the day when the whole country elected a new Bundestag - and about 70 percent go to the polls. But the ruling duo, Social Democrats and Christian Democrats, put a spiteful spoke in this wheel. They moved the date for the referendum to November 3^rd - when far fewer voters could be attracted to polling booths for a single Yes or No vote so soon after the earlier elections. But the two parties had the majority of representatives - and ruled the roost.

All the same, enthusiasm was maintained, if far more worried. The city was filed with posters and a ray of hope came from distant Hamburg where a similar referendum scraped though with 51 percent. But that was on the all-German Election Day, when so many voted.

The big problem was not getting a majority to approve the new law; that was quite certain. But the vote would only be successful if 25 percent of all Berlin voters approved - and how many would go to the polls?

The result was bitter. Less than 30 percent voted. A very big majority voted Yes, but even after the last mail-in votes had been counted they tallied up to only 24.1 percent, just 0.9 percent short of the mark. Or, in absolute terms, 620,000 Yes votes were required, but the final count was 599,565! One thought again of Burns' sad mouse and sad plowman!

Meanwhile, also in Berlin, but now occupied with all-German themes, those two obstructive parties, the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats - plus the Bavarian sister party of the latter, the Christian Social Union (CSU) - continued negotiations on their "grand coalition", which hopes to agree on all points, compromises and cabinet assignments before Christmas. Not all too many holiday gift presents can be expected, either for Germany's southern neighbors in the European Union or for many working people in Germany, or those who work only part-time or not at all through no fault of their own. The current dispute, however, centers on whether autos on the famous Autobahn highways, favored by no speed limits on many stretches, should also have to pay tolls - hitherto required only from truckers. The Bavarian party wants to charge only foreign drivers, Merkel and the Social Democrats have been against all tolls, but Angela seems to be weakening on this point. We do not yet know how many how points the Social Democrats have been weakening on.

In big, important Hesse, where Frankfurt (Main) is located, there was also a tight vote in September, and it is still uncertain whether a similar "grand coalition" will be arranged here, as on the national level and in the city-state Berlin. Still a slight possibility is a Social Democrat-Green plus Left coalition which would defy deep-seated prejudices against the LINKE and set a new precedent. Another stumbling block: The LINKE wants to close down the extremely noisy fourth runway at Frankfurt's giant airport; the noise has been catastrophic and almost life-threatening to thousands of citizens down below the aerial rush hour traffic. The Greens want to restrict night traffic (as a high court has ruled). The Social Democrats want no bars; like Lufthansa they say, "The flights are needed". There are other disagreements in a highly delicate situation. If a three-way coalition includes the LINKE, some will paraphrase words from that old American Revolution, either as a warning, or as a joyful chant: "The Hessians are coming!"

One thing seems quite certain. If not the Hessians then at least Mercedes is still coming along, at least in government circles. In an earlier commentary, I noted that BMW had given the Christian Democrats a large financial present - at just about the same time the restrictions on CO-2 emission were postponed by the European Union, under Merkel's pressure. It has now been revealed that a major official in Merkel's office, Eckart von Klaeden, stayed at his comfy government job until the elections and has now quit for a far comfier job as head lobbyist for that other heavy carmaker giant, Daimler-Benz. His switch was already known in May but von Klaeden kept his patriotic and noble nose to the government grindstone until September. He had "no influence on policy" it was hastily stated by government spokesmen - but had every opportunity to learn Merkel's plans to put off carbon CO-2 limits - and perhaps just possibly to help frame them? Now he will do that openly (and, as we now know, few secrets are really secret anyway). Yet, despite all the dirt, the Social Democrats also "want in". And close to half of all voters supported "Mutti" Merkel.

I introduced a tiny zoological note in quoting Burns about a mouse. I will end with a zoological note connected with my bird-watching hobby. Every November I rejoice when thousands of black northern rooks visit the city, engaging in marvelous maneuvers in the evening (and probably early morning) sky. Joining them is a smaller number of black-and-gray jackdaws - for whom arrival here also represents "going south for the winter". They strut fearlessly on lawns and sidewalks, arrogantly staring us humans down as if to say, "What are you doing here on my territory?" Both are members of the crow family, said to be the cleverest of birds. I enjoy their visit, and say to myself, "Better rooks and jackdaws than crooks and jackasses!"

Photo: In Moscow, Hans-Christian Stroebele handed Edward Snowden the Honorary Diploma of the Whistleblower Award 2013, which had been awarded to him in absentia. Irina Oho. Hans Christian Ströbele's Facebook page.

Around world, migrants demand right to stay home

Mon, 04 Nov 2013 16:00:00 +0000

The United States has become home to a large number of people born outside its borders-there were some 40 million as of 2010, according to various estimates. That was up from approximately 20 million in 1990.

The immigration debate in the United States usually treats the migration of people into this country as something unique. But it is not. The United Nations estimates that 232 million people worldwide live outside the countries where they were born-3.2 percent of the world's population. In 2000 it was 175 million, and in 1990, 154 million. The number of cross-border migrants has grown by 78 million people in just over 20 years-enough to fill 20 cities the size of Los Angeles.

U.S. exceptionalism-the idea that this country is somehow unique and different-has no basis in fact when it comes to migration, which is a global phenomenon. And the big questions are why are the number of migrants increasing so rapidly and what should be done about it.

As people around the world try to come to terms with this reality it is clear that Congress and the Obama administration are at one pole of an international debate. At this pole the tea party and Democrats find common ground. They may disagree on legalization for the undocumented, but they agree on the other basic elements of what is called "comprehensive immigration reform." Both support trade policies benefiting corporations, while turning a blind eye to the havoc and displacement they cause. And their shared "solution" is to channel displaced people into labor programs, while coming down hard on those who migrate outside the approved framework.

The European Union also calls for preventing the employment of undocumented people, and "a humane and effective return [deportation] policy," in the European Council's "Return Directive" of 2008. It does, however, emphasize the rights of migrants more than U.S. policies.

There is another pole, however. In New York in early October, organizations from countries producing the world's migrants, as well as from communities of migrants in their destination countries, shared a very different vision, at the civil society meetings surrounding the U.N. High Level Dialogue on Migration and Development. "A comprehensive migration policy must have at its core the protection of the full extent and range of migrant rights," says the IBON Foundation in Manila, in an October report, Migration and Development - A Matter of Seeking Justice. "Labour export policies must be replaced by a rights-based approach to migration."

The U.S. "solution," however, is not just a proposal debated in Congress, but a reality on the ground, implementing long-standing policies.

Last year 409,849 people were deported from the United States, bringing the total to about 2 million for the first five years of the Obama administration. According to the Department of Homeland Security, current deportations average 30,791 per month, including more than 8,500 parents of U.S. citizen children. The government spends more today on border and immigration enforcement than on all other Federal law enforcement agencies combined.

In addition, authorities annually audit the records of more than 2,000 employers, ordering them to fire hundreds of thousands of workers who lack legal immigration status. And while firings of those without papers increase, so does the number of workers brought to the United States by employers with visas that tie their ability to stay to their jobs-"guest workers." A recent report by the Global Workers Justice Alliance, Visas Inc., says between 700,000 and 900,000 migrants are working in the United States on temporary work visas. The most notorious of these visa programs, H2A and H2B, are called "close to slavery" by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Michael Chertoff, President Bush's Secretary of Homeland Security, explained the apparent contradiction between mass deportations and importing guest workers as "closing the back door and opening the front door." Heavy enforcement would deter undocumented migration, he said, and would force migrants into contract labor programs.

Less discussed, but just as much a part of migration policy, is the impact of global economic policies in developing countries that are the source of the migration. When the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was enacted in 1993, 4.6 million Mexicans lived in the United States. By 2008, 11 percent of Mexico's population lived here-12.7 million people.

Again, the United States is not alone. France today, with about 66 million inhabitants, has 8.3 million migrants, up from 5.9 million 20 years ago. Italy went from 1.4 to 4.5 million in the same period. In the United States, France, Italy and other developed countries, migrant workers are an essential part of the economy, laboring in the lowest-paid and least secure jobs.

Despite this growth in migration, however, there is almost no discussion in developed countries of the reasons for it, and the high cost of migration to migrants' countries of origin. At the other end of the migrant stream, trade agreements like NAFTA and structural adjustment policies require countries like Mexico and the Philippines to cut the social budget for education, healthcare and other services in order to make debt payments, while opening their economies to foreign corporations. Those countries then become increasingly dependent on the money sent home by migrants working abroad.

In 2012 worldwide remittances reached $401 billion, 5.3 percent higher than 2011. Top recipients include India ($69 billion), China ($60 billion), the Philippines ($24 billion) and Mexico ($23 billion). They are rising even during a worldwide recession.

Countries dependent on remittances become labor reserves, exporting people to make up for the lack of sustainable economic development that could give them a future at home. This is called "circular" migration, since migrants aren't supposed to settle in their destination countries-just work there, send money home and eventually return.

Periodically, under the aegis of the UN diplomats and government representatives meet to discuss migration and development at what is known as the High-level Dialogue on Migration and Development. In a contribution to the UN publication for this year's meeting, Douglas Massey, professor of Sociology at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University writes that "international migrants are not desperately seeking to escape abject poverty but are purposeful actors acting strategically to improve their lives and adapt to change using one of the most accessible tools at their disposal." Instead of trying to restrict "circularity," he says, policy should "manage the ... flows that follow from each country's particular pattern of integration within the global economy."

Similar arguments have increasingly dominated the international debate over migration in organizations like the UN and the International Organization on Migration. In July the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon reported on previous sessions of the High-Level Dialogue. His report reflects the desire by many countries to treat remittances as a source of economic development, and assumes that migrants should serve as an international labor supply. In other words, poor countries should send people to rich ones in organized labor (guest worker) schemes, and then use the money earned by those workers to alleviate poverty or develop economically. "Member States should mainstream migration into national development plans [and] poverty reduction strategies," he writes. These are euphemistic arguments for a labor export policy in developing countries, and guest worker programs in developed ones.

But Ban Ki-moon cautions against some of the most extreme anti-immigrant provisions being considered by Congress, and by rightwing parties in Europe. "Migrant workers, irrespective of their status, should be protected from abuse and exploitation," he writes, with steps that include "enforcing child labour laws, enabling migrant workers to change their employers after arrival in the destination country, [and] ensuring equal treatment in terms of wages and working conditions."

While diplomats engaged in gentlemanly exchanges at this October's High-Level Dialogue, however, migrant organizations, unions and other grassroots groups marched across the Brooklyn Bridge and through the streets of Manhattan, criticizing this global perspective.

The Peoples' Global Action on Migration (PGA), a coalition of civil society groups from different countries advocating for migrant rights, broke with the view of migrants as a labor supply, shared by the High-Level Dialogue and the U.S. Congress. Instead, in its "Declaration and Recommendations" given to the High Level Dialogue, it put forward a "critique of the circular migration/temporary labour model, which includes guest-worker and labour export programmes as an economic development model, reliance on remittances and models that treat workers as commodities."

According to Monami Maulik, Executive director of New York City's DRUM-South Asian Workers Center and the Global South Asian Migrant Workers Alliance, "We challenge the focus on remittances within this neo-liberal model of managed, circular migration. We call for people over profits and a focus on human rights."

DRUM became one of the most active organizations in the United States during the "war on terror," opposing the wholesale detention of people from South Asia and the Middle East and the treatment of migrants as security threats. "Criminalization," Maulik says, "is the other side of the coin of neo-liberalism-a tool for repression and control to force migrant labor to accept abysmal conditions." She and other PGA organizations campaign against "the migration-criminalization industrial complex, to end privatized, multinational profiteering from migrant labor."

Another grassroots gathering that took place simultaneously in New York City, the International Migrants Alliance (IMA), also opposed the policy of the export of labor through guest worker programs, often called "managed migration." With member organization in many of the developing countries that send migrants to developed ones, the IMA declaration emphasized that "Poverty, unemployment, political conflict and general displacement of peoples, including displacement due to environmental factors, are the major causes of migration."

Most migration, in other words, is fueled by the need to survive. The alternative, asserted by groups like the U.S./Mexico Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations is the "right to stay home"-that is, to economic development that can make migration a voluntary option instead. In Oaxaca, in southern Mexico, for instance, it calls for the government to subsidize farm prices, to produce jobs and protect labor rights, and to provide better social services. This would give young people especially an alternative to leaving home to seek work in the United States.

In its "Submission to the General Assembly High Level Dialogue," the IMA warned against "the further systematization of labor export programs that violate the most fundamental of human rights of migrants, that is, to be treated as human beings.". Governments in migrants' countries of origin "must include industrialization that generates enough jobs, where labor rights are respected, and which will foster sustainable development ... The achievement of these goals will create an environment that shall realize migration as a right and not a necessity."

Concrete recommendations shared by the PGA and IMA include human rights enforcement for migrants, labor rights, full employment and decent work, environmental sustainability, democracy and implementation of the 1990 United Nations International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.

Some organizations in the PGA, like the Global Workers Justice Alliance, advocate reforming the existing guest worker system, "combating worker exploitation by promoting portable justice for transnational migrants through a cross-border network of worker advocates and resources." Others, however, call guest worker programs inherently exploitative and say they should be abolished.

Majid (Majeed) Al Alawi, Bahrain's former minister for employment, lost his job when he began to question the "temporary" status of his country's migrant guest workers. "We must start to ask ourselves whether these are really temporary contracted workers," he says. "These young people are spending the best years of their life here, continually renewing short-term contracts and putting up with terrible conditions. How can a situation of this kind really be considered temporary?"

Al Alawi's observations are far in advance of those voiced in the current U.S. congressional debate over immigration reform. Instead of considering his question-how to integrate migrants into the communities where they live and provide them a decent long-term future, Congress is moving in the opposite direction. Even its more "liberal" proposals would erode the priority on permanent residence and the reunification of families-a hallmark of the way the U.S. civil rights movement reformed immigration policy in 1965. Instead, Congress is crafting an immigration system oriented towards providing a labor supply for employers, at wages they want to pay, while raising the budget for immigration enforcement by $47 billion.

The United States has not signed the UN Convention on the Rights of Migrants and Their Families. The attitude of successive administrations, and even more so Congress, is that international agreements should not bind the government, especially if they are intended to enforce migrants' and workers' rights.

The world, however, is moving in a different direction. The UN General Assembly agreed in 2006 that "A major principle of migration policy is that everyone should have the option of staying and prospering in her or his own country. To that end, all countries should strive to create more jobs and decent jobs for their people."

Cathi Tactaquin, executive director of the Oakland-based National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, told the High Level Dialogue that hundreds of civil society organizations worldwide want to "make migration more genuinely a choice and not a necessity. "We support the right to migrate, and the right to remain at home, with decent work and human security," she says.

Many progressive immigrant rights groups in the United States have made common cause with the global movements of migrants. Challenging the "solutions" pushed by Congress, they call for ending guest worker programs entirely, giving all migrants residence visas and protecting their ability to bring their families to the United States. These groups, which include the American Friends Service Committee, the Dignity Campaign and others, also advocate renegotiating the trade agreements that lead to the displacement of communities and the forcible migration of their inhabitants.

Such voices here in the U.S. and abroad deserve a greater audience. If there is no effort to examine the impact of trade agreements, or to look at the danger of the growth of new international guest worker programs, a decade from now, the world we live in will be one we will hardly recognize. Poverty will deepen in developing countries, the gulf between migrants and residents will widen in developed ones, and hundreds of millions of people will be trapped in a global labor system in which migration as low-paid labor is the only way to survive.

This article also appears at In These Times.

Photo: David Bacon