Thought folks might find this interesting if you haven't already seen it. There are perhaps more mass murderers living in our midst, walking free and having great wealth here in the US than any other nation.
When you think of the young US lives lost through their actions that's bad enough. In addition, do not let the name Pat Tillman disappear from memory. He was all over their mass media when they thought he was going to be a poster boy for their wars and encourage young working class men and women to sign up to defend the nation. Tillman was a genuine person, not like Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Obama, the Clinton's and others who amass great wealth through war and plunder. Tillman did not like what he saw, he was not going to do their bidding and, in this writer's view, was killed by them for it. He was going to come back with a different story and they weren't going to allow that.
See: The Tillman Story There's also a good documentary about Tillman's death and cover up here
Here's a trailer to the movie.
Friday, October 30, 2015
World and US Economy: The next recession
by Michael Roberts
Back last summer, there was growing concern that the world economy, already making the weakest recovery from the deepest slump in production and investment since 1945, was slowing down.
Indeed, it now seemed that the ugly thought of another recession, as economists call a contraction in production, incomes and spending, was a serious possibility within a few years or less. The IMF raised the probability of recession in the so-called ‘emerging economies’ of Latin America, ex-China Asia and the rest of the world to near 50%.
The slowdown in emerging economies has been led by the significant slowdown in China’s powerhouse economy, from double-digit real GDP growth just a few years ago to less than 7% now on the official figures (many ‘experts’ reckon real GDP growth is much lower than that). As China slowed, its inexorable demand for energy and other raw materials and other export goods from elsewhere dropped. Other large emerging economies plummeted into recession (Brazil, Russia, South Africa).
Indeed, as I have previously pointed out, before the crisis, world trade tended to grow around twice as quickly as world GDP, but since 2012 trade growth has simply matched that of GDP.
“The global economy is uncomfortably close to the edge,” said David Stockton, senior fellow at the right-wing mainstream Peterson Institute for International Economics. “Economics isn’t rocket science, and even rockets frequently land in the wrong place or explode in mid-air,” wrote Willem Buiter, chief global economist at Citigroup, who has assigned a 55% chance of a moderate to severe global contraction next year.
This worry even led the US Federal Reserve to delay its planned and much anticipated hike in its base interest rate that affects the cost of borrowing dollars in the US and globally. If the emerging economies were slumping, it would be the wrong time to dampen household spending and business investment.
However, the optimists among mainstream economics have dismissed these prognoses. Emerging economies may be slowing down and some may have contracted outright, but the major advanced economies were doing okay and Europe was actually picking up a little from its depression of 2010-13. So the global economic recession was not going to happen.
Well, now we are getting data for real economic growth for the third quarter of 2015 (June to September) from the major advanced economies – and it is not great news for the optimistic scenario. The slowdown in economic activity experienced in China and in most emerging economies is now being repeated in the advanced economies.
The US economy is the largest in the world and up to now has been recovering relatively better than the other major economies within Europe and Japan. In Q3, the US economy did expand but only at a 1.5% annualised pace, down from 3.9% in the second quarter. That meant that the US economy expanded in real terms over the last 12 months by just 2%, down from 2.7% in Q2.
This 2% growth rate has become the norm for the US since the end of Great Recession. There seems no prospect of a return to previous trend growth and that means there has been a permanent loss of value for the American people from the Great Recession.
In Q3, US business investment slowed to its lowest yoy rate for over two years. Business investment grew more slowly, up only at an annual rate of 2.1% compared with 4.1% in Q2. Investment in new plant actually dropped 4% while investment in software and such rose at the slowest pace since 2013. And, as a share of GDP, investment remains below pre-crash levels.
Now, some have been arguing that business investment in things like plant, machinery and equipment is less necessary given the new ‘disruptive technologies’ of the internet of things, software, algorithms etc that do not require tangible structures. So investment is taking place but it now costs way less and is not really captured in the data.
For example, McKinsey argues that the “the US economy has shifted toward intellectual property–based businesses. Medical-device, pharmaceutical, and technology companies increased their share of corporate profits to 32 percent in 2014, from 13 percent in 1989. Since a company’s rate of growth and returns on capital determine how much it needs to invest, these and other high-return enterprises can invest less capital and still achieve the same profit growth as companies with lower returns”. McKinsey- US – Are share buybacks jeopardizing future growth
Or put it another way: “while capital spending has outpaced GDP growth by a small amount, investments in intellectual property— research and development—have increased much faster. In inflation-adjusted terms, investments in intellectual property have grown at more than double the rate of GDP growth, 5.4 percent year versus 2.4 percent. In 2014, these investments amounted to $690 billion.” So McKinsey concludes: “Certainly, some individual companies are probably spending too little on growth—just as others spend too much. But in aggregate, it’s hard to make a broad case for underinvestment”.
No doubt there is some truth in this. But even if investment is increasingly in ‘intellectual property’ and not in factories and robots (really?), even in the former, there appears to have been a slowdown in the US. Software investment is no longer outstripping investment in hardware.
US household spending did rise 3.2% in the quarter. The tax intake for personal incomes fell, so disposable personal income increased 4.8% compared with 3.4% in Q2. And with headline inflation near zero, real disposable personal income rose. That’s why household spending was up. But while it’s true that the US unemployment rate continues to fall, the pace of that improvement is waning.
The slowdown in US economic growth was also repeated in the UK, the only other major advanced economy that has experienced 2%-plus real GDP growth in the last year or so. Real GDP rose just 0.5% in the third quarter of 2015, so that real GDP is now 2.3% higher than this time last year, down from a growth rate of 2.4% yoy in Q2. Although UK real GDP is now 6.4% higher than its peak at the beginning of 2008 (before the Great Recession), nearly seven years ago, once the population increase (up 3m, partly from net immigration) is taken into account, real GDP per head has only just reached the 2008 level.
As in the US, UK growth was almost totally confined to ‘services’. Manufacturing and construction actually contracted. Within services, the main contribution came from property and finance, the ‘unproductive’ sectors of the economy.
Back in 2008, manufacturing was nearly 10% of GDP and real estate was 8.5%. Now manufacturing is 8.6% and real estate is 10.4%. Real estate has jumped over 20% since 2008 while manufacturing has contracted nearly 7%. Indeed, UK heavy industry like steel is being crushed by falling commodity prices, weak economic growth in Europe and the dumping of Chinese steel in world markets . That’s the nature of UK economic growth: unproductive and credit-fuelled.
As for the other G7 economies, the slowdown is even worse. Canada is in a ‘technical recession’, two consecutive quarters of contraction in real GDP.
Japan is teetering on a recession. And just today, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) lowered its forecast for real economic growth out to 2018. The BoJ now sees growth in the year to April 2016 at just 1.2%, down from 1.7%. For the year to March 2017, the BoJ now expects growth of 1.4% down from a 1.5% forecast in July. And for the year to March 2018, the BoJ forecasts growth of only 0.3%!
The other G7 economies are in the Eurozone. Germany has sustained a very modest growth rate in the last few years of about 1.0-1.5%; France has growth even less each year; and Italy has been stagnant (although it appears to be finally making a mild recovery in the couple of quarters). We shall know more when the Q3 GDP figures come out next week. But Germany is likely to record slower growth as exports to Asia and China have taken a tumble.
Spain has been the fastest-growing of the Eurozone economies in the last year or so, having suffered badly in the Great Recession with a housing collapse and a massive increase in unemployment. But the ‘boom’ since 2013 appears to be over. Today, the figures released for Q3 2015 real GDP growth showed a slowdown to 0.8% on the quarter compared with 1% in the previous quarter. The year on year rate was up to 3.4% though compared to 3.1% in Q2. But that could be it.
So expansion in the major advanced economies is slowing alongside the sharp drop in GDP growth in the emerging economies. Indeed, Taiwan, a key Asian industrial economy, has just announced that its real GDP in Q3 fell by 1% from a year earlier, the first contraction in six years.
Since World War II, recessions have occurred at regular intervals, between 6-10 years. The current expansion is more than six years old, beginning in July 2009. Mainstream economics has signally failed to predict them. For example, in the spring of 2001, the US economy faced weak growth abroad and the fallout of the dot-com bubble, but only 15% of economists surveyed that summer believed a downturn had begun. Yet the economy was in the midst of a recession that lasted nine months. As for the Great Recession, the failure of nearly all mainstream economists and major international institutions like the IMF and the OECD to see this major slump coming is well recorded. (The causes of the Great Recession).
The next recession will pose big problems for the economic policy makers of the major countries. Easy monetary policy (zero interest rates, quantitative easing) has been virtually exhausted (apart from being pretty ineffective anyway in boosting the ‘real economy’ rather than stock markets and banks). Keynesian-style government spending has been rejected or curbed up to now because public sector debt levels have been so high and corporate profitability has been so low.
There are those like Ben Bernanke, former Fed chief or Andy Haldane, current chief economist at the Bank of England, who argue that central banks saved the major economies from a Great Depression and there is even more that can be done in printing money for direct handouts to households or having negative interest rates to avoid a new slump.
And the Keynesians like Paul Krugman, Larry Summers, Simon Wren-Lewis and a host of others continue to push for more government spending and budget deficits to ‘pump-prime’ the economy. But this is more likely to reduce profitability and investment of the capitalist sector than save it.
The next recession cannot be avoided and it is not far away.
Back last summer, there was growing concern that the world economy, already making the weakest recovery from the deepest slump in production and investment since 1945, was slowing down.
Indeed, it now seemed that the ugly thought of another recession, as economists call a contraction in production, incomes and spending, was a serious possibility within a few years or less. The IMF raised the probability of recession in the so-called ‘emerging economies’ of Latin America, ex-China Asia and the rest of the world to near 50%.
The slowdown in emerging economies has been led by the significant slowdown in China’s powerhouse economy, from double-digit real GDP growth just a few years ago to less than 7% now on the official figures (many ‘experts’ reckon real GDP growth is much lower than that). As China slowed, its inexorable demand for energy and other raw materials and other export goods from elsewhere dropped. Other large emerging economies plummeted into recession (Brazil, Russia, South Africa).
Indeed, as I have previously pointed out, before the crisis, world trade tended to grow around twice as quickly as world GDP, but since 2012 trade growth has simply matched that of GDP.
“The global economy is uncomfortably close to the edge,” said David Stockton, senior fellow at the right-wing mainstream Peterson Institute for International Economics. “Economics isn’t rocket science, and even rockets frequently land in the wrong place or explode in mid-air,” wrote Willem Buiter, chief global economist at Citigroup, who has assigned a 55% chance of a moderate to severe global contraction next year.
This worry even led the US Federal Reserve to delay its planned and much anticipated hike in its base interest rate that affects the cost of borrowing dollars in the US and globally. If the emerging economies were slumping, it would be the wrong time to dampen household spending and business investment.
However, the optimists among mainstream economics have dismissed these prognoses. Emerging economies may be slowing down and some may have contracted outright, but the major advanced economies were doing okay and Europe was actually picking up a little from its depression of 2010-13. So the global economic recession was not going to happen.
Well, now we are getting data for real economic growth for the third quarter of 2015 (June to September) from the major advanced economies – and it is not great news for the optimistic scenario. The slowdown in economic activity experienced in China and in most emerging economies is now being repeated in the advanced economies.
The US economy is the largest in the world and up to now has been recovering relatively better than the other major economies within Europe and Japan. In Q3, the US economy did expand but only at a 1.5% annualised pace, down from 3.9% in the second quarter. That meant that the US economy expanded in real terms over the last 12 months by just 2%, down from 2.7% in Q2.
This 2% growth rate has become the norm for the US since the end of Great Recession. There seems no prospect of a return to previous trend growth and that means there has been a permanent loss of value for the American people from the Great Recession.
In Q3, US business investment slowed to its lowest yoy rate for over two years. Business investment grew more slowly, up only at an annual rate of 2.1% compared with 4.1% in Q2. Investment in new plant actually dropped 4% while investment in software and such rose at the slowest pace since 2013. And, as a share of GDP, investment remains below pre-crash levels.
Now, some have been arguing that business investment in things like plant, machinery and equipment is less necessary given the new ‘disruptive technologies’ of the internet of things, software, algorithms etc that do not require tangible structures. So investment is taking place but it now costs way less and is not really captured in the data.
For example, McKinsey argues that the “the US economy has shifted toward intellectual property–based businesses. Medical-device, pharmaceutical, and technology companies increased their share of corporate profits to 32 percent in 2014, from 13 percent in 1989. Since a company’s rate of growth and returns on capital determine how much it needs to invest, these and other high-return enterprises can invest less capital and still achieve the same profit growth as companies with lower returns”. McKinsey- US – Are share buybacks jeopardizing future growth
Or put it another way: “while capital spending has outpaced GDP growth by a small amount, investments in intellectual property— research and development—have increased much faster. In inflation-adjusted terms, investments in intellectual property have grown at more than double the rate of GDP growth, 5.4 percent year versus 2.4 percent. In 2014, these investments amounted to $690 billion.” So McKinsey concludes: “Certainly, some individual companies are probably spending too little on growth—just as others spend too much. But in aggregate, it’s hard to make a broad case for underinvestment”.
No doubt there is some truth in this. But even if investment is increasingly in ‘intellectual property’ and not in factories and robots (really?), even in the former, there appears to have been a slowdown in the US. Software investment is no longer outstripping investment in hardware.
US household spending did rise 3.2% in the quarter. The tax intake for personal incomes fell, so disposable personal income increased 4.8% compared with 3.4% in Q2. And with headline inflation near zero, real disposable personal income rose. That’s why household spending was up. But while it’s true that the US unemployment rate continues to fall, the pace of that improvement is waning.
The slowdown in US economic growth was also repeated in the UK, the only other major advanced economy that has experienced 2%-plus real GDP growth in the last year or so. Real GDP rose just 0.5% in the third quarter of 2015, so that real GDP is now 2.3% higher than this time last year, down from a growth rate of 2.4% yoy in Q2. Although UK real GDP is now 6.4% higher than its peak at the beginning of 2008 (before the Great Recession), nearly seven years ago, once the population increase (up 3m, partly from net immigration) is taken into account, real GDP per head has only just reached the 2008 level.
As in the US, UK growth was almost totally confined to ‘services’. Manufacturing and construction actually contracted. Within services, the main contribution came from property and finance, the ‘unproductive’ sectors of the economy.
Back in 2008, manufacturing was nearly 10% of GDP and real estate was 8.5%. Now manufacturing is 8.6% and real estate is 10.4%. Real estate has jumped over 20% since 2008 while manufacturing has contracted nearly 7%. Indeed, UK heavy industry like steel is being crushed by falling commodity prices, weak economic growth in Europe and the dumping of Chinese steel in world markets . That’s the nature of UK economic growth: unproductive and credit-fuelled.
As for the other G7 economies, the slowdown is even worse. Canada is in a ‘technical recession’, two consecutive quarters of contraction in real GDP.
Japan is teetering on a recession. And just today, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) lowered its forecast for real economic growth out to 2018. The BoJ now sees growth in the year to April 2016 at just 1.2%, down from 1.7%. For the year to March 2017, the BoJ now expects growth of 1.4% down from a 1.5% forecast in July. And for the year to March 2018, the BoJ forecasts growth of only 0.3%!
The other G7 economies are in the Eurozone. Germany has sustained a very modest growth rate in the last few years of about 1.0-1.5%; France has growth even less each year; and Italy has been stagnant (although it appears to be finally making a mild recovery in the couple of quarters). We shall know more when the Q3 GDP figures come out next week. But Germany is likely to record slower growth as exports to Asia and China have taken a tumble.
Spain has been the fastest-growing of the Eurozone economies in the last year or so, having suffered badly in the Great Recession with a housing collapse and a massive increase in unemployment. But the ‘boom’ since 2013 appears to be over. Today, the figures released for Q3 2015 real GDP growth showed a slowdown to 0.8% on the quarter compared with 1% in the previous quarter. The year on year rate was up to 3.4% though compared to 3.1% in Q2. But that could be it.
So expansion in the major advanced economies is slowing alongside the sharp drop in GDP growth in the emerging economies. Indeed, Taiwan, a key Asian industrial economy, has just announced that its real GDP in Q3 fell by 1% from a year earlier, the first contraction in six years.
Since World War II, recessions have occurred at regular intervals, between 6-10 years. The current expansion is more than six years old, beginning in July 2009. Mainstream economics has signally failed to predict them. For example, in the spring of 2001, the US economy faced weak growth abroad and the fallout of the dot-com bubble, but only 15% of economists surveyed that summer believed a downturn had begun. Yet the economy was in the midst of a recession that lasted nine months. As for the Great Recession, the failure of nearly all mainstream economists and major international institutions like the IMF and the OECD to see this major slump coming is well recorded. (The causes of the Great Recession).
The next recession will pose big problems for the economic policy makers of the major countries. Easy monetary policy (zero interest rates, quantitative easing) has been virtually exhausted (apart from being pretty ineffective anyway in boosting the ‘real economy’ rather than stock markets and banks). Keynesian-style government spending has been rejected or curbed up to now because public sector debt levels have been so high and corporate profitability has been so low.
There are those like Ben Bernanke, former Fed chief or Andy Haldane, current chief economist at the Bank of England, who argue that central banks saved the major economies from a Great Depression and there is even more that can be done in printing money for direct handouts to households or having negative interest rates to avoid a new slump.
And the Keynesians like Paul Krugman, Larry Summers, Simon Wren-Lewis and a host of others continue to push for more government spending and budget deficits to ‘pump-prime’ the economy. But this is more likely to reduce profitability and investment of the capitalist sector than save it.
The next recession cannot be avoided and it is not far away.
Thursday, October 29, 2015
CNN - Drop Harry Houck
From Color of Change. Go to link below to sign
Harry Houck has a long record of victim blaming young Black people like Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, and now the young Black girl at Spring Valley High School who was assaulted by officer Ben Fields, all while blindly supporting their assailants.
We are sick of CNN contributor and former NYPD detective Harry Houck’s one-man crusade against Black victims of law enforcement violence. Houck’s blind support of police abuse and injustice is dangerous. It drives the attitudes and stereotypes that lead police officers to regularly commit brutal acts of violence directed towards Black folks.
Demand CNN replace Harry Houck with someone capable of discussing the state of racism and over-policing.
Dear Ken Jautz – Executive Vice President of CNN,
We are sick of CNN contributor and former NYPD detective Harry Houck’s one-man crusade against Black victims of law enforcement violence. Houck’s blind support of police abuse and injustice is dangerous. It drives the attitudes and stereotypes that lead police officers to regularly commit brutal acts of violence directed towards Black folks.
Houck's latest attacks on Black victims - insinuating that Sandra Bland is responsible for her own assault and death at the hands of the police, and stating that the Spring Valley High School student assaulted by Officer Ben Fields "had it coming" - are unacceptable.
Houck has been readily granted a national platform on CNN and has used it to deflect attention away from the crimes committed by police. Often times, his outrageous rhetoric goes unchecked by the hosts of the shows he appears on. Meanwhile the voices of families and experts on the history of racist policing are consistently dismissed, challenged by commentators or left out of the mainstream media narrative.
Houck is a key part of a media ecosystem that refuses to examine police abuse and the publicly condoned use of illegal force against Black people. The stakes are way too high to tolerate Harry Houck’s dangerous message any longer. This country has a racially discriminatory policing epidemic, and we need media contributors who can speak to that injustice, not peddle racist narratives and criminalize Black lives.
We demand CNN replace Harry Houck with someone capable of discussing the state of racism and prejudiced policing.
Sincerely,
Go here to sign: http://act.colorofchange.org/sign/CNNDropHarryHouck/?t=1&akid=4952.2161540.u07tcB
Harry Houck has a long record of victim blaming young Black people like Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, and now the young Black girl at Spring Valley High School who was assaulted by officer Ben Fields, all while blindly supporting their assailants.
We are sick of CNN contributor and former NYPD detective Harry Houck’s one-man crusade against Black victims of law enforcement violence. Houck’s blind support of police abuse and injustice is dangerous. It drives the attitudes and stereotypes that lead police officers to regularly commit brutal acts of violence directed towards Black folks.
Demand CNN replace Harry Houck with someone capable of discussing the state of racism and over-policing.
Dear Ken Jautz – Executive Vice President of CNN,
We are sick of CNN contributor and former NYPD detective Harry Houck’s one-man crusade against Black victims of law enforcement violence. Houck’s blind support of police abuse and injustice is dangerous. It drives the attitudes and stereotypes that lead police officers to regularly commit brutal acts of violence directed towards Black folks.
Houck's latest attacks on Black victims - insinuating that Sandra Bland is responsible for her own assault and death at the hands of the police, and stating that the Spring Valley High School student assaulted by Officer Ben Fields "had it coming" - are unacceptable.
Houck has been readily granted a national platform on CNN and has used it to deflect attention away from the crimes committed by police. Often times, his outrageous rhetoric goes unchecked by the hosts of the shows he appears on. Meanwhile the voices of families and experts on the history of racist policing are consistently dismissed, challenged by commentators or left out of the mainstream media narrative.
Houck is a key part of a media ecosystem that refuses to examine police abuse and the publicly condoned use of illegal force against Black people. The stakes are way too high to tolerate Harry Houck’s dangerous message any longer. This country has a racially discriminatory policing epidemic, and we need media contributors who can speak to that injustice, not peddle racist narratives and criminalize Black lives.
We demand CNN replace Harry Houck with someone capable of discussing the state of racism and prejudiced policing.
Sincerely,
Go here to sign: http://act.colorofchange.org/sign/CNNDropHarryHouck/?t=1&akid=4952.2161540.u07tcB
``
Resist the Coup in Portugal!
by Stephen Morgan
Mobilize workers and youth to defend democracy! For a one-day general strike and a million-strong demonstration now!
Portugal may be headed for a political crisis of massive
proportions. Following elections at the beginning of the month, President
Aníbal Cavaco Silva, has taken the unprecedented step of refusing to allow a
democratically-elected left alliance to form a government. Instead, he has
installed a center-right, pro-austerity administration, which commands only a
minority of the votes.
The left alliance, which includes the Socialist Party (PS),
the Left Block (BE) and the Communist -dominated Unitary Democratic Coalition
(CDU) won more than 50% of the vote. The PS gained 32% of the vote, the BE 10%
and the CDU 8%. The left coalition now has 122 MPs in the 230-member
parliament, compared to 102 for Passos Coelho’s center-right Portugal Ahead
(PàF) coalition.
Silva's argument for blocking the formation of a left
government is that the BE and CDU are anti-EU, anti-NATO parties, who wish to leave the Euro currency
and oppose the EU's fiscal policies of austerity and budget deficit cuts. By
saying they have no right to be part of a government, Silva is, in effect,
introducing a ban on left-wing parties. This amounts to nothing less than a
constitutional coup.
In doing so, President Silva is not only brazenly defending
the interests of the Portuguese ruling class, he is acting as a puppet of the
European capitalists. Like in Greece, where an elected government has
effectively been replaced with the administration of its economic affairs by
ruling class bureaucrats in Brussels, Portugal has now also come under the
thumb of the EU dictators, reducing it to just another political and economic
colony with the German bourgeoisie at its head.
There is no doubt that President Silva's refusal to approve
a left government was made under the direct command of the Berlin government.
Indeed, not wishing for another Syriza-crisis, German Chancellor Merkel visited
Portugal last week to give instructions to the ruling class on how to deal with
the left and it was Merkel who actually organized this coup from behind the
scenes.
The European and German ruling class, in particular, have
become arrogant and imperious as a result of the fall of Stalinism, combined
with the apparent victory of capitalism during the past economic boom and the
decrease in class consciousness and combativity among workers which followed.
Tragically, their recent victory in crushing the left-wing Syriza government
has made them even more cocky and self-confident.
But they are playing with fire. Regardless of set backs, the
tide is turning as workers have woken up to the rottenness of capitalism
following the 2007-9 recession and the avalanche of attacks on them in the name
of austerity. The swaggering way in which the EU and German capitalists are
trampling on democratic rights throughout Europe is undermining illusions in
capitalist democracy and the very foundations of the European Union.
With regards to Portugal they have failed to take into
account the revolutionary traditions of the Portuguese working class, which in
1974 overthrew the dictatorship that had ruled Portugal for 50 years and
virtually eradicated capitalism. The steps taken by President Silva will invoke
memories of Portugal's fascist past and will enrage workers and youth, who want
no return to the black reaction they fought so heroically to overturn. In this
context, there is every possibility that the economic woes suffered by the
Portuguese workers and the constitutional coup could combine to create a
revolutionary situation in Portuguese society.
As it stands now, the crisis is likely to intensify in the
next week with the Socialists promising to vote down the center-right austerity
programme in parliament and to move a motion of no-confidence to bring the
government down.
But according to the constitution, there can't be new
elections until March next year, and if President Silva doesn't back down and
allow the left to form a government, Portugal will be virtually ungovernable. A
right-wing caretaker government would lack any legitimacy or popular support
for its reactionary policies. Unless, the EU and Portuguese bourgeoisie
backtrack and allow the left alliance to take power, Portugal will be thrown
into a period of extreme instability.
During the 1974 Revolution, the British Observer newspaper
described Portugal as "a state with a head but no body.” And so it is
today – Silva's actions have decapitated democracy in Portugal. Even if events
wont be a re-run of 1974, there is definitely the potential for revolutionary
crisis in this situation.
The background to the crisis
The center-right government of the Forward Portugal Alliance
(PàF) has been carrying through a fierce austerity programme over the past four
years with swinging cuts in pay, pension and public spending, plus massive tax
hikes as part of Portugal’s €78bn bailout agreement with the EU-IMF Troika.
This has seen unemployment rise to 14.%, with 31% of youth without jobs and 1
in 5 people on the poverty line. Those figures would be even worse were it not
for a massive wave of emigration by workers and youth struggling to survive.
The consequent pain and suffering of the working class,
youth and poor farmers has resulted in a backlash which has caused a huge rise
in support for the PS, the Podemos-style BE Left Block and the Communist Party
(PCP). The vote for Left Block (BE) has risen from 2.4% in 20058 to 10.2% today
and the CP has grown to around 8%.
The Left Block (BE) is a coalition of left groups, similar
to those which originally made up Syriza in Greece; while the CDU is made up of
the Portuguese Communist Party and the Ecologist Party "The Greens"
(PEV).
While the vote of the Portuguese CP has not risen above 10%,
it still holds onto a huge amount of grassroots support. It controls more than
30 urban municipalities and many more local governments, as well as having
great popularity in poor rural areas. The funeral of its long-time leader,
Álvaro Cunhal, attracted a quarter of a million people in Lisbon in 2005, and
each September its national feast day attracts some 200,000 people - that's in
a country with a population of only 10 million. But, more importantly the PCP
still retains control of the largest trade union federation in Portugal, the
CGTP.
The character of this shift to the left in Portugal is part
of the overall trend to the left across much of Europe, beginning with the 99%
movement, the Indignados and then Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece. In
other European countries, like France and Germany, this has also led to a rise
in support for left blocs like Die Linke and Front de Gauche. More recently, in
the UK, this same wave has found its expression in the election of the
left-winger Jeremy Corbyn to leader of the Labour Party and a huge influx of
workers and youth into its ranks.
As Portugal shows, this left shift in Europe manifests
itself differently in different countries and with a different momentum. Unlike
Greece, where Pasok, was devastated by its participation in carrying through
vicious austerity measures – seeing its vote fall from 44% to 4% – the traditional socialist parties in Portugal
and Spain have retained mass support, although suffering a temporary set back.
Because of its governmental participation in austerity
measures, the PS has seen its share of the vote fall from 45% in 2005 to 28% in
2011,. But in the recent elections its support has started to rise back up to
32%, showing it is far from a spent force.
The PS was born out of the 1974 Revolution in Portugal and
has taken on the character of the mass political organ of the working class.
Although, it has a history of supporting capitalism and carrying out attacks on
the working class, the majority of workers still look to it as their main
political weapon against capitalism. Now, the extreme economic crisis and the
austerity attacks have enraged workers and pushed the PS to the left.
The fact that its leader, Antonio Costa has come out for an
anti-austerity programme, gone into alliance with the leftist BE, Greens and
Communist Party, and has vowed to vote down the center-right's economic
programme and topple the government, shows how the pressure of the working
class can push its traditional party back to the left. He has even threatened
to expel any socialist MPs who don't vote with him to bring down the
government.
The Lessons of the 1974 Revolution for today
When the dictatorships fell in Southern Europe in the
mid-70s, it was in Portugal that the revolution went furthest. While the ruling
class was able to organize a relatively soft transition to democracy in Spain
and Greece, in Portugal the working class and poor peasants took the bourgeoisie
by the throat.
Such was the force of the movement that the army collapsed
and the young officer corps and rank and file soldiers initially spearheaded
the destruction of the dictatorship. Then, at each repeated attempt to
reinstall the dictatorship by the forces of reaction, the working class rallied
to answer every blow with a double blow.
Workers took over the factories and the poor peasants
occupied the land. More than 50% of the economy was nationalized and the
majority of the land transformed into peasants collectives.
The leaders of the PS were pushed so far to the left that
they were forced to defend Marxist ideas and the Times of London wailed on its
front page headline, “Capitalism is dead in Portugal!”
50 years of fascist dictatorship crumbled under the might
force of the working class.
But socialism was not consolidated following the 1974
Revolution. The socialists and communists came to power but allowed capitalism
to gradually claw its way back from the dead.
And therein lies the lesson of the 1974 Revolution - that
the revolution needed to go one step further. Nationalization was not enough in
itself. Workers control over industries, services and the land had to be one of
direct democracy with the election of management from the shopfloor, together
with selected technicians and experts under the strict control of the
employees, and expanded into a system of rule on a national scale.
Similarly, the workers' parties in power should have been
under the direct control of the rank and file membership with the immediate
right of recall over all its leaders, so they should be sure they would carry
out the programme demanded by the workers. That is what real democracy would
look like.
Without such checks on the activities its leaders, the PS
and CP crumbled in the face of the pressures of national and international
capitalism. Consequently, the bourgeoisie was able to slowly and stealthily
retake control of the factories and lands as the revolutionary tide ebbed, and
then re-exert their monopoly of the political process.
1974, and events in Portugal today, show that so long as
total democratic workers' control over the state and industry is not
introduced, then the ruling class will use its power over the state and the
economy to shift back to a dictatorship, when it feels necessary.
The need for a fighting Socialist Programme
The current Left coalition will face exactly the same
pressures of capitalism as in the past and it will need to decide how it will
stand up to the attacks of the Portuguese and EU ruling classes.
The PS and the left have correctly called for an end to
austerity measures and for an expansion of public spending to create jobs and
improve living standards.
They have proposed canceling cuts in the social security contributions
and company tax rates to pay for increased expenditure on pensions and wages
and they want to end the freeze on pensions, while also revoking salary cuts
for government employees.
The Left Bloc and Communists have also called for stricter
rules on sacking workers and are proposing the minimum wage be increased to 600
euros which the PS looks to accept.
However, not only is the Portuguese ruling class opposed to
this, but it runs contrary to entire the policy of the EU’s Fiscal Compact,
under which Portugal has agreed to a 20 year austerity programme. Therefore, to
implement their reformist programme, the Left must be prepared to stand up to
the IMF-EU Troika and not buckle to their threats as Syriza did in Greece.
In order to be successful, the left will have to mobilize
the mass of the working class and youth for a revolutionary confrontation with
the European and Portuguese ruling classes. A left government could only
effectively pursue an anti-austerity and pro-reform programme if it is ready to
nationalize the banks and the top monopolies and introduce workers' democratic
control and management of the economy and the state, as they should have in
1974. Then they will have to spearhead an-all European-wide movement against
capitalism and for a democratic socialist Europe to defeat the international
bourgeoisie.
Unfortunately, there are already bad signs of a possible
“repeat-Syriza” in the making. The CP and BE have already dropped their demands
for withdrawal from the Euro and Nato, as well as their programme for the
nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy, in order to enter the
coalition with the PS.
To its utter disgrace, the leaders of the UGT (Portugal's
second largest union, aligned to the PS) has gone as far as to call on the PS
leaders to break with the Left and go into a coalition government with the
center-right parties - a coalition for the purpose of reigning down more
ruthless attacks on the working class! Such fat-cat, privileged bureaucrats,
who are nothing but stooges of capitalism, must be removed immediately.
Workers and youth must now flood into the PS, BE and CP, as
well as the unions, to stop the Left coalition from buckling to bourgeois
pressure and to ensure they have fighting, committed socialist leaders who
really represent them.
What is needed now?
Democracy was only achieved in Portugal by revolution and it
will only be defended by revolution.
Silva's ban on left parties in government is a direct attack
on the fundamental democratic right of workers to organize. If he is allowed to
get away with this, Portugal is on the slippery slope back to dictatorship.
The leaders of the left and the labour movement in Portugal
must now respond with a mass mobilization of the workers, the youth and the
rural poor.
* Rank and file fighting groups for the defense of democracy
should be organized in trade union branches, local left party cells, factories,
workplaces, villages, colleges, schools, and in the armed forces. These groups
should be linked up from the grassroots level to a nationwide “United Left
Front for the Defense of Democracy” – and a national rank and file conference
should be convened from elected local delegates to discuss further actions and
the need to transform society..
* Workers and youth should hold meetings across the country
about the current crisis, about the lessons of the 1974 Revolution, and what
democratic socialism should really mean.
* Workers, peasants and youth should pour into the PS, CP,
Greens and the Left Block to push the organizations to the left and replace
those leaders who waver with trusted, intransigent defenders of the working
class.
* Left controlled local governments must refuse to carry out
any austerity measures demanded by the central government.
* A one-day general strike in defense of democracy should be
the first step in a mass campaign of direct action and a national demonstration
of millions should be organized in Lisbon immediately.
* Occupy the workplaces, the banks and Parliament!
* For an end to capitalist dictatorship, for a working
people's democracy in Portugal and internationally!
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Socialist Alternative's Article on Sanders
 |
| Sanders supported the Zionist slaughter in Gaza |
By Sean
O'Torain.
I was
a leading member of the Committee for a Workers International for 25 years
until I was expelled in 1996. Socialist Alternative is affiliated to this
International. I continue to read the material of both the CWI and SA. I
believe that they both have strengths relative to most other self styled revolutionary
left groups. The main strength of the CWI and SA is their struggle to maintain
an orientation to and a dialogue with the working class. However in their
effort to do this, the CWI and SA have and continue to make opportunist errors.
They did this in the Labor Party Advocates when they made unprincipled
concessions to the left union bureaucracy. They presently do this in the $15.00
minimum wage campaign where again they make unprincipled concessions to the
left, and not even left, trade union bureaucracy.
However, they have sunk to a new low in their work around the campaign of Sanders. Sanders is a leading member of the capitalist Democratic Party. He is not a socialist. He believes in leaving the economy in private capitalist hands and allowing the laws of the market, of capitalism to dictate. His only little squeak of protest is that the billionaires should pay a little more tax. But it is in foreign policy that Sanders most exposes himself as a capitalist representative and where the CWI and SA, drawn in by the large crowds at Sanders’ rallies, most expose themselves and their opportunism.
However, they have sunk to a new low in their work around the campaign of Sanders. Sanders is a leading member of the capitalist Democratic Party. He is not a socialist. He believes in leaving the economy in private capitalist hands and allowing the laws of the market, of capitalism to dictate. His only little squeak of protest is that the billionaires should pay a little more tax. But it is in foreign policy that Sanders most exposes himself as a capitalist representative and where the CWI and SA, drawn in by the large crowds at Sanders’ rallies, most expose themselves and their opportunism.
The foreign policy
of the US is based on the needs of the US based international corporations. It
is based on the US economy's need for oil and its dependence on the Middle East
and access to Central Asia. Part of this US foreign policy is its support
for Zionist regimes in Israel.
It subsidizes and arms them to the teeth. These regimes, one after
another, represent US imperialism's interests in the area. As part of this,
Zionism seeks to crush the Palestinian people and their wish and right to have
a state of their own. Armed with massive amounts of US supplied weaponry
and with its own nuclear weapons, Zionism feels strong enough to slaughter and
starve the people of Gaza and the Palestinian people on the West Bank and others
who are spread throughout the area in refugee camps. Any decent person has
to openly oppose Zionism.
Sanders does not. He
repeatedly claims he makes the "tough
calls." How he has, unlike Clinton, voted the right way on the "tough votes." This claim was
noticeable in the Democratic Party debate, this claim to make the tough calls
and make the tough votes. However, what was not noticeable was any
mention about making the "tough calls"
and taking the "tough
votes" in relation to Zionism and the oppression of the Palestinian
people. He had nothing to say on these tough calls. Not a word. He was
aided and is aided in avoiding these issues in interview after interview by the
voices of the US capitalist media. They never ask him about Zionism, about the
slaughter in Gaza and of the Palestinian people, they do not do so because
Sanders, and they in turn, are on the same side on these issues. No
socialist should support Sanders.
But back again to
the CWI and the SA. Here is what the SA wrote about Sanders in their recent
paper.
Weaknesses
There were also clear weaknesses
in Sanders’ presentation, (at the Democratic Party debate) for
example on foreign policy. He correctly stressed his opposition to the Iraq
War, unlike Clinton and the leadership of the Democratic Party who willingly
went along with Bush’s lies about “weapons of mass destruction”, but he also
reiterated his support of the United States’ disastrous military campaign in Afghanistan
(now heading into its 15th year) as well as the bombing of Serbia in the
1990s. He tried to present himself as fit to be “commander in chief” by saying
that he would be prepared to lead the US to war.
Of course some of the US’
military adventures have been waged under a humanitarian guise. Many ordinary
people, for example, understandably want to see the brutal reactionaries of
ISIS defeated. But it is precisely the imperialist intervention in Iraq that
created the conditions for ISIS’s emergence and Obama’s bombing campaign has
been a complete failure even on its own terms. At every point US military power
has been used – whatever the rationale presented to the public – to serve the
interests of big business not those of ordinary people. We argue that a
pro-working class policy at home should be linked to a truly pro-working class
policy abroad.
But these weaknesses do not alter the enormously positive effect the Sanders campaign is having in politicizing and radicalizing hundreds of thousands and, potentially, millions of people."
After praising him
and the "great contribution"
he was making in raising consciousness about socialism, (last I heard he
was claiming the cops were an example of socialism, does this include the cop
who beat up the young African American woman in her class room in South
Carolina.) they had the above to say about his "weaknesses."
It is almost unbelievable to read this. Not one single mention of Sanders’ support for Zionism and the repression of the Palestinian people is included in what the SA thinks are Sander's weaknesses. Not a single mention. And not only that, where this article does get the temerity to actually hint at something even the slightest bit critical of Sanders on foreign policy it is just because this foreign policy does not work.
It is almost unbelievable to read this. Not one single mention of Sanders’ support for Zionism and the repression of the Palestinian people is included in what the SA thinks are Sander's weaknesses. Not a single mention. And not only that, where this article does get the temerity to actually hint at something even the slightest bit critical of Sanders on foreign policy it is just because this foreign policy does not work.
There
must be discontent within Socialist Alternative and the CWI over these concessions
that are being made to the Sander's campaign. Hopefully those SA members who
find themselves in disagreement with the author of SA’s article on Sanders will
come together to form an open principled faction to raise their ideas.. If they
do not, the SA will go into another crisis much like it did when it made the
concessions to the union leadership in the LPA and as it will do as it seeks to
negotiate its way in the present $15.00 minimum wage campaign. This would not
be positive.
Cops claim they are intimidated by protests against their violence shattered by videos from South Carolina school.
Sean O'Torain.
The cops were on a major propaganda offensive these past days to say that they were intimidated from doing their job by protests against their violence and brutality. This has been a spectacular failure. It has blown up in their face. And all because of the video from the South Carolina school which shows the armed brute of a white cop physically attacking the heroic young African American female student. Not much signs that this cop is in any way intimidated. He throws the young female student round the class room, howling at her, twisting her arms behind her back, kneeling on her. As I hear again and again. If that were my daughter I would tear that cops arms out. He is a savage bully.But now we have the fightback from the cops and the state. And of course they have their whining supporters and their racists chiming in to back them up. Well what was the young female student doing before the cop attacked her they ask? As if this made any difference. There was no way there could be any justification for that cops attack.
Now there is the claim they have a third video which shows the young woman striking the cop. But what does it show? Even the pro cop capitalist media have to admit the weakness of their third video defense. This third video, one media outlet says shows the young female "punching the deputy during the confrontation." Another says it "shows the girl flailing at the officer as he is already in the middle of flipping her chair over." They are trying desperately to cloud the issue with this third video but they cannot. This brutal cop attacked this young woman. If she "punched him during the confrontation" if she "flailed at him as he was already in the middle of flipping over her chair," good for her. He had already attacked her. If she did these things she was acting in self defense. She is a heroine. She exposed the whole cop claim that they are intimidated because a lot of people are demanding they act properly. This young woman is a heroine.
And now it is coming out that this cop was up twice before for violence. One African American man tried to take legal action against him for beating him up. This African American man also says that this cop called him the N word and laughed at how good it was that Johnny Cochran was dead. And with all this that cop was kept on the force and even given an award.
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Psychopathic cop terrorizes young black girl at school.
by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
I only just saw this and perhaps many of our readers have already seen it, but it's incredible. And I say one thing with regards to the comments I read on You Tube; it's pointless responding to the racists that support this and justify it for whatever reason. They are pathetic cowards who have found a secure little niche for themselves in front of a computer screen. As I watched this I could barely control my anger. If it was my daughter I'd want to kill him. At school, we were beaten with sticks. But it was the norm. If I complained, my dad would add another beating. But this is a man, a white man in the South and he is armed. Any person and especially a white person, with a grain of decency should condemn him.
As it happened I am in the middle of reading about Reconstruction as I was informed of this event. I happened to be reading about the resistance of the now freed black population in the South to signing contracts and going to work for the same people who owned them as slaves, their land had been returned to them. I do not have time to go into it here but there was resistance to this in many forms throughout the South. The now free or so-called free black population was in a war to get what they fought for, and thousands of them fought for the Union Army. There were also heroic Union officers that supported the freedmen, officers who were removed from their posts.
Newly freed slaves refused to comply with eviction orders to leave land they'd settled. They were asked to "forgive" their former masters. here is one response to that:
"You ask us
to forgive the landowner of our island. You
only lost your right arm in a war and might forgive them. The man who tied
me to a tree and gave me 39 lashes and stripped and flogged my mother and my
sister and will not let me stay in his empty hut except I will do his planting
and be satisfied with his price and who combines with others to keep away land
from me well knowing I would not have anything to do with him if I had land of
my own------that man, I cannot well forgive. Does it look as if he has forgiven
me, seeing how he tries to keep me in a condition of helplessness."
And when we witness the same institutionalized racism being carried out today in "peacetime" 150 years later these comments from that past seem almost prophetic.
“No land, no house, not so much as a place to lay our head…..Despised by the world, hated by the country that gives us birth, denied all our writs as a people, we were friends on the march….brothers on the battlefield, but in the peaceful pursuits of life it seems that we are strangers.”
I read one nasty comment on You Tube about "black aggression". What gall, what sheer hypocrisy. One wants to invoke a little "aggression" on the author of that statement I have to say. It's like when workers are forced out on strike and defend ourselves against police violence used to break it that we are accused of being violent as if taking away ones livelihood isn't itself an act of violence.
What we see in the protests against police brutality, racism, discrimination in all aspects of society, housing, employment, etc is black people, mostly workers, acting in self defense against a society in which racial discrimination and violence is endemic. We are all victims of it, but not all in equal doses.
I read that this young girl struck out at this psychopath. Good for her. It is yet another example of black self defense, it's as old as history here. As Emiliano Zapata once said, "Better to die on my feet than live on my knees."
Monday, October 26, 2015
Are humans inherently selfish? No.
Afscme Local 444, retired
I have been involved in a friendly discussion on FB about human behavior and why people do what they do, vote against their own self interest for example. I think this is important for activists to consider and I thought I'd write down a few of my thoughts on the subject and they were motivated as well by this posting. They are below. It's not a treatise.
I have been involved in a friendly discussion on FB about human behavior and why people do what they do, vote against their own self interest for example. I think this is important for activists to consider and I thought I'd write down a few of my thoughts on the subject and they were motivated as well by this posting. They are below. It's not a treatise.
It would seem to me natural that people would always avoid
being on the bottom in a class based society. It means less food, worse living
conditions, less chance for advancement, poorer health etc. It means an even
higher climb up.
But is this an innate human trait? I think that there is no such thing as human nature as it changes depending on conditions. But if there is a strong thread running through it, I believe that we are collective creatures and basically see solidarity and cooperation as human and would agree that everyone deserves not to be on the bottom in the sense of their material well being. We have free will as someone famous once said but not within conditions of our own choosing.
But is this an innate human trait? I think that there is no such thing as human nature as it changes depending on conditions. But if there is a strong thread running through it, I believe that we are collective creatures and basically see solidarity and cooperation as human and would agree that everyone deserves not to be on the bottom in the sense of their material well being. We have free will as someone famous once said but not within conditions of our own choosing.
Where I worked was one of four corporation yards for a
public utility. Our yard was the strongest union yard before I got there
and myself and two other workers, one black, one Latino kept it that way.
The yard was going to have a plaque outside it facing the street with the
yard’s name on it. Beneath the name was to be a slogan of some sorts. As
the union reps in the yard we put forward “An Injury to One is and Injury to
All.”. This slogan was chosen overwhelmingly by the 90 workers that worked
there. Yet the slogan that ended up on the plaque was “Can’t Touch Us”
from the song by an early rapper whose name escapes me at the moment. He made
lots of money, ended up in bankruptcy and I think raps Christian rhyme now. The slogan they put up, throws us in to competition with each other which makes unity and solidarity harder. It benefits the employer over workers.
So in the struggle between class interests over the name of
the place we spend most of our waking lives it was won by the forces that own
the workplace, not those that work in it. From the employer’s point of
view, unity between the workforce is not a profitable enterprise.
So when I read about studies done in universities about
human behavior, especially if the study implies that there is something innate
about the its findings, I am quite skeptical. Human behavior is determined by
the objective conditions, change the conditions and you can change behavior.
Some time ago, there was a global study that asked women what they desired most
in a partner. The overwhelming result was kindness.
This is despite that we are constantly bombarded with ads on
TV and in the print media and movies with the idea that if we own this car or
dressed this way, or looked like this film star and all this nonsense we would
“get the girl” or be successful and content Despite the massive
ideological warfare that encourages us to glorify individualism and
narcissistic behavior. Despite success being described day in day out as
having money and material things and ruthless, selfish individuals like Steve
Jobs and coupon clippers like Warren Buffet and others who do no socially
productive labor being held up as icons of social respectability.
Despite this, what the majority of people chose was
kindness.
Where are the magazines promoting this? They’re not at the Safeway
checkout counter. There’s nothing there but propaganda aimed at convincing us
of the degenerate nature and pathetic quality of humanity. Look at Hollywood.
It’s almost guaranteed that if a man and a woman are working closely together
in a Hollywood movie that they sleep together at least once. Well, we don’t
screw everyone we work with or are even attracted to physically, that’s more
like real life.
There are no magazines about kindness because one step from
kindness is solidarity and class solidarity is the strongest kind.
I was reading some history about the origins of class
struggle in Louisiana recently and the author was referencing the poor white
yeomen who either had no slaves or maybe one or two working for them.
Every time the class hatred of the white poor against the rich began to raise
its head, the white owned racist papers, owned by capitalists, merchants or
slave owners, would inflame racial hatred, blame the slaves; blame the black
people.
When we talk of the pay gap between men and women. From what
source does this originate? It’s not the male worker. It’s the capitalist. They
openly at one time and more subtly now as the women’s movement has fought back,
put the fear of god in to the male worker that women will either drag down
their wages, take their jobs or both. This was their argument all the time that
we would be paid less so women could earn a wage. Same with immigrants, other
nationalities, religious minorities etc.
So our struggle is for the consciousness of the working
class as, yes, it is the worker that exhibits the prejudice, but it is the
class in power that creates it.
I always argued at work that I’ll fight for the unemployed,
the poor, the disadvantaged and specially oppressed to get a job, but not
mine.
Bill Gates. Zionism. Intoxicated Honey Badgers.
 |
| Looks like a member of the Republican Party "Freedom Caucus." |
Bill Gates says the private sector cannot deal with climate change. Two top Zionist intellectuals come out for divestment from Israel. The Washington Post prints
their article and it is the most widely read article in that right wing paper today.
What is going on?
Sections of capitalism are getting extremely worried: that is what is going on. Worried that their system will destroy itself. That is what is going on. Along with that, what was the main capitalist Party of the most powerful capitalist country in the world, the US Republican Party, is dominated by what resembles a heard of scratching honey badgers unable to recover from an overdose of snake venom. Things are bad. And on top of that, the present front runner of that US capitalist Republican Party is an idiot who believes in creationism. It is not that this moron says he does not believe in evolution to get votes in the primaries. This moron actually does not believe in evolution.
Capitalism is in a bad way. But so is the working class if we cannot build a mass revolutionary force to overthrow it. Sean.
Sunday, October 25, 2015
Portugal:Left majority wins but stopped from forming government.
\
Sean O'Torain.
Extremely important events are taking place in Portugal. The recent elections gave the combined left a majority. The President I think it was then refused to allow this left majority to form a government.
This capitalist politician representing the Portuguese and EU capitalist class and its so-called austerity program has refused to accept the results of the capitalist's own election results. What should be the response of the working class?
I think it should be to demand the mobilization of the working class, the formation of workers committees and a general strike to force a workers government based on these workers committees and this workers government to take over the dominant sections of the economy and move to a democratic socialist planned economy and spread this internationally.
We have a situation where the European capitalists are setting aside bourgeois democracy. It is not the working class which is setting aside bourgeois democracy. We have a situation here similar to Greece where the European capitalist class refused to accept the referendum result.
In Portugal the European capitalist class has refused to allow the majority in the election to form a government. In Greece the European capitalist class refused to accept the two to one referendum vote against austerity. In both cases they enforced their will with the threat of a strike of capital. It is time that the working class moved to a strike of labor.
I think the socialist movement and the working class should be raising revolutionary demands, ones that raise the issue of power. The European capitalist class have already put the issue of power on to the table.
I am not there and do not know the mood. But I feel that if the left parties do not raise revolutionary demands, face up to the reality that the issue of power is what is posed and mobilize the working class to take the power then the mood will fall back. At least for a temporary period. I hope I am wrong on this. But I think I am not. In raising these ideas I am keeping in mind the explosive movement of the Portuguese working class in the early 1970's when the working class took over the banks and sections of industries and the armed forces cracked after the defeats in the Portuguese African colonies.
I think such demands should at least be discussed. But as I say I am not in Portugal and do not know the mood and the balance of forces there.
 |
| Portuguese workers on the move. |
Extremely important events are taking place in Portugal. The recent elections gave the combined left a majority. The President I think it was then refused to allow this left majority to form a government.
This capitalist politician representing the Portuguese and EU capitalist class and its so-called austerity program has refused to accept the results of the capitalist's own election results. What should be the response of the working class?
I think it should be to demand the mobilization of the working class, the formation of workers committees and a general strike to force a workers government based on these workers committees and this workers government to take over the dominant sections of the economy and move to a democratic socialist planned economy and spread this internationally.
We have a situation where the European capitalists are setting aside bourgeois democracy. It is not the working class which is setting aside bourgeois democracy. We have a situation here similar to Greece where the European capitalist class refused to accept the referendum result.
In Portugal the European capitalist class has refused to allow the majority in the election to form a government. In Greece the European capitalist class refused to accept the two to one referendum vote against austerity. In both cases they enforced their will with the threat of a strike of capital. It is time that the working class moved to a strike of labor.
I think the socialist movement and the working class should be raising revolutionary demands, ones that raise the issue of power. The European capitalist class have already put the issue of power on to the table.
I am not there and do not know the mood. But I feel that if the left parties do not raise revolutionary demands, face up to the reality that the issue of power is what is posed and mobilize the working class to take the power then the mood will fall back. At least for a temporary period. I hope I am wrong on this. But I think I am not. In raising these ideas I am keeping in mind the explosive movement of the Portuguese working class in the early 1970's when the working class took over the banks and sections of industries and the armed forces cracked after the defeats in the Portuguese African colonies.
I think such demands should at least be discussed. But as I say I am not in Portugal and do not know the mood and the balance of forces there.
Poetry: Kevin Higgins and the Carrickmines Tragedy
 |
| Irish Gypsy/Traveler family of the 1950's |
When I was young and living in rural England I remember
these people coming round in these innately covered wagons drawn by horses.
There were different people. One guy I remember had a donkey and cart and he
used to sharpen knives and fix your bicycle chain and stuff like that. We
called them Tinkers, Gypsies, or travelers. Readers will recall them as "Pikeys" in the movie "Snatch" with Brad Pitt.
They were considered outcasts in many ways and thieves. They
were not to be trusted and no one wanted to live near them. There was often
controversy as they would set up camps and stay for long periods with their
caravans resulting in forced evictions or removals from land.
I have been gone a long time but they are still in Britain
and Ireland. These travelers are recognized in British law as an ethnic group
but in Ireland they are classified as a social group. "Some 10% of Traveller children die before
their second birthday, compared to just 1% of the general population. In
Ireland, 2.6% of all deaths in the total population were for people
aged under 25, versus 32% for the Travellers. In addition, 80% of Travellers die before the age of 65. According to the National Traveller Suicide Awareness Project,
Traveller men are over six times more likely to commit suicide than the
general population." You can read more about
them at Wikipedia
There
was a tragic fire at a traveler community in Ireland on October 10th
that took the lives of ten people. The incident has rocked Ireland and will no
doubt raise again the issue of this minority. Read more about this
particular incident at the Irish
Journal. Richard Mellor
The poem below is Irish poet Kevin Higgins’ response to this tragedy.
After the Barbecue
People like us,always been here
and always will,
until we bequeath this land
to the bacteria.
We were fine with
the War of the Spanish Succession,
only thought it not quite long enough.
When the day gets here we’ll happily
bless our great-grand-children as they go guffawing
off to the next officially sanctioned
bloodbath of the nations. But have agreed,
by unanimous vote at tonight’s meeting,
we must build a barricade against this.
Those people’s demise –
Thomas and Sylvia, their children Jim, aged 5;
Christy, aged 2 and Mary, five-months-old.
Willie Lynch and his partner Tara,
their Kelsey aged 4, Jodie aged 9.
And Jimmy Lynch, 39 –
in the Carrickmines
barbecue is a tragedy
made all the worse by how
it contented itself
with half-measures.
We won’t have the gypsy leftovers put
in the field across from us,
to mar our hard earned view
of the surrounding countryside.
We are not the Ku Klux Klan,
in fact are profoundly jealous
of their much better outfits
and all the great movies
they, without fail, get to turn up in.
We but dream of riding horses
sharp as theirs, as we make our stand
in defence of what we see out the window
when we alight of a morning
on our genetically superior
polished, wooden floors.
These people’s Kentucky Fried
relatives are not our issue to solve.
We have scribbled our names
in their book of condolences.
but you, me, and The Evening Herald know
we are what most of the country thinks
when it draws its floral curtains,
shuts its eyelids and tells itself
truths it will never utter in polite company,
or in front of nuns who do great work
in the third world and other parts
of Africa. We realise
we’ll be vilified by people
the majority of whom wouldn’t have them either.
We just don’t want them here,
or, if possible, anywhere else.
After The Barbecue is © KEVIN HIGGINS
Kevin Higgins is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway City. He has published four collections of poems: Kevin’s most recent collection of poetry, The Ghost In The Lobby, was launched at this year’s Cúirt Festival by Mick Wallace TD. His poems also features in the anthology Identity Parade – New British and Irish Poets (Bloodaxe, 2010) and one of his poems is included in the anthology The Hundred Years’ War: modern war poems (Ed Neil Astley, Bloodaxe May 2014).
Higgins’ poetry was recently the subject of a paper titled ‘The Case of Kevin Higgins: Or The Present State of Irish Poetic Satire’ given by David Wheatley at a symposium on satire at the University of Aberdeen; David Wheatley’s paper can be read in full here. Mentioning The War, a collection of his essays and reviews, was published by Salmon in April, 2012. Kevin’s blog is http://mentioningthewar.blogspot.ie/ and has been described by Dave Lordan as “one of the funniest around” who has also called Kevin “Ireland’s sharpest satirist.”
Big landords terrorize tenants. Housing is a human right.
“No sooner is the
exploitation of the laborer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he
receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the
bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.” Marx
by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
The word “terrorism” is thrown about a lot lately. The US ruling class likes it as any individual or group of people that opposes their economic interests is called such and actually receives the official title of terrorist from the appropriate department of state.
The word “terrorism” is thrown about a lot lately. The US ruling class likes it as any individual or group of people that opposes their economic interests is called such and actually receives the official title of terrorist from the appropriate department of state.
When I was young and the IRA was blowing up things here and
there, we suddenly found ourselves absent any garbage cans at the railway
stations as the IRA might put a bomb in them.
After some nasty attacks people were quite willing to forgo some civil
rights in order to deal with terrorists. After all, they don’t fight fair. They
have no recognizable insignia on their uniforms. Terrorists have no nation
state with planes and ships and such, that’s why the American revolutionists
were terrorists according to the established power at the time.
The problem with this word is the person or persons using
it. To an employer, a strike is mass terrorism as it disrupts, or brings to a
halt, the labor process which is the source of their profits. The problem with
laws imposed as a means of countering terrorism, laws that undermine civil
liberties, is that they apply to everyone. After 911 there were a number of
strikes or labor disputes that took place here in the US and the bosses’ were
not shy about tossing the T word around. As the saying goes, one person’s
terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.
So I use terrorism the way I want to use it. I was once threatened with a lawsuit by a boss
at work as I referred to his treatment of his subordinates at a meeting of the
board that governed the water agency I worked for, as “workplace terrorism.” He
was not amused. When someone has the social power to deprive one of one’s
income as retribution for speaking one’s mind or defending one’s rights--------that
is a form of terrorism. Constant
harassment and bullying from someone with that power over another is terrorism.
There’s another very common form of it, police terror.
We witness terrorism in all aspects of life on a daily
basis. There is no place where it is more prevalent than in the landlord/tenant
relationship. I was involved in a direct
action renter’s rights group for a while and we had numerous successes with a
self-organizing strategy and direct action tactics. But it was generally very hard to organize the
tenants in a privately owned building because of terrorism. The tenants were afraid of being thrown out
on to the street. Many of them were single mothers, immigrants or seniors and
were very vulnerable. At that time in Oakland CA, a landlord could evict a
tenant without having to explain why. Another form of terrorism in these cases is sexual harassment.
With most of the multi occupancy buildings the landlords, (slumlords
is what they are really no matter what) collect their money through an
intermediary they call building management or property management companies. I met with some tenants in my town this
weekend as the landlords are whining about how difficult it is for them and
they want to eliminate or raise, through various shenanigans, their ability to
increase rents. We have no rent control here and as far as I know, there is
nothing that bars a landlord for evicting someone without explaining why.
Rent boards, just like other municipal bodies are dominated
by landlords and moneyed interests, and the elected officials that appealed to
the electorate to vote for them on the basis that they would represent their
interests, turn quickly in to agents for these moneyed interests implementing
their policies.
One landlord I know of is a real
estate speculator and investor. His company owns another 2500 units or so in
Chicago and properties elsewhere, his only association with where I live is to
use it as a source of profit. These
speculators that profit from a human being’s need for housing or what amounts
to shelter, have above all economic power.
We often read of “big labor ”in
reference to unions but different sections of the capitalist class all have
organizations that lobby and bribe and threaten the body politic to ensure laws
that defend their interests. The East
Bay Rental Housing Association, a relatively small example of this in the East
Bay and represents members owning 18,500 units. It’s head at the moment I believe
is a landlord in my town.
One of the largest private owners of rental housing in the Bay Area, Russell Flynn, has more
than 3,600 rental properties and is trying to force some tenants out of a
building he bought in a lucrative location in Oakland, a few miles north of
here. One of the tactics these
terrorists use is to drive out existing tenants if there are caps on raises so
that they can impose higher rents on new tenants. In this case tenants received
a threatening letter announcing that, “The
rental of said premises will be the sum of $3,870 per month instead of $1,080
per month as heretofore payable,” If receiving a letter like that is not
terrorism I don’t know what is. Read
more here.
This
sort of terrorism occurs on a daily basis and for the most part it’s
legal. If the average person challenges this
moneyed power we are told that we can sue. But we all know that money wins in
the courts. You can literally get away with rape and murder if you have the
money.
The strongest defense in these situations is to self-organize and use direct action tactics to fight back. These slumlords live somewhere, their kids go to school somewhere, they attend church somewhere and they shop somewhere. Sometimes they have other businesses that can be picketed. The point is to take the world they are imposing on you to them. The more organized tenants are the less chance of retribution. The union leadership could take up this issue in our communities and use the power of organized labor to defend workers, union or not, who are exploited by ruthless landlords; but their narrow, pro business view of the world prevents this.
The strongest defense in these situations is to self-organize and use direct action tactics to fight back. These slumlords live somewhere, their kids go to school somewhere, they attend church somewhere and they shop somewhere. Sometimes they have other businesses that can be picketed. The point is to take the world they are imposing on you to them. The more organized tenants are the less chance of retribution. The union leadership could take up this issue in our communities and use the power of organized labor to defend workers, union or not, who are exploited by ruthless landlords; but their narrow, pro business view of the world prevents this.
Through
self organization and relying on our own strength we do not remain victims,
relying on the courts or lawyers to defend our rights. In 1999, a group of Section 8 tenants in
Alameda California, with the help of the Campaign For Renter’s Rights, a direct
action renters group, waged a successful struggle against evictions. To
read about this, download a PDF of the
action here.
But
in the last analysis, housing is a human right. Human shelter should not be a
commodity any more than food, health care, education or transportation. A civilized society provides housing for its
members, such an important social necessity should not be in the hands of
private individuals whose sole purpose is to attain great wealth at the expense
of others. Affordable housing must be
fought for and provided for those who need it. What these speculators do is not
only artificially drive up the price of homes for those that actually want to
live in them, they are detrimental to the community in that they deprive
workers and middle class people of disposable income they would spend on other things
which also hurts local community businesses. They force young adults to live with their parents. They do not live in the community
that is the source of their wealth and they care less about it.
Housing
is a human right and a civilized society should provide it.
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