Aint’the internet a wonderful thing.
No longer do we have to passively wait for theose predictable poster roll-outs that dominate the election media coverage. Now we can create our own.
Favourite site for the thinking voter is www.MyDavidCameron.com created by Clifford Singer.
Skip through dozens of witty pisstakes and add your own.
Have fun!
by John Foster
1931 saw what was called the Bankers Ramp destroying the Ramsay MacDonald government. We see it in full cry today across whole of EU.” In Ireland, Spain and Greece the EU Commission is intervening directly in domestic policy. Greek government officials described EU intervention in early January, which required ‘reforms’ in labour contracts and pensions, as a gross infringement of sovereignty. Everywhere the EU Commission has laid down targets by which deficits must be cut. Their motivation is the traditional monopoly capital response to crisis: solve it by reducing working class incomes and the social wage. For Britain the target is a cumulative 10 per cent cut in public spending over four years. The people of Iceland are subject to similar blackmail without even being members of the EU and we should offer them all support to their rejection of these demands in their referendum next month.
In face of all this clamour it is important to stress:
• Britain’s national debt is historically low. It was 180 per cent when the Labour Government decided to fund the welfare state in 1946-7. It was over 100 per cent through the 1960s – a period of fast economic growth. Today, even after the banking crisis, it is less than 80 per cent. Japan’s is 187 per cent.
• The increase in the deficit is the direct result of the banking crisis. It has nothing to do with spending on services. It was only 2.7 per cent before the crisis in 2006 when more money was spent on services. The projected 12 per cent deficit is solely a result of the economic crisis triggered by the banks (rise in unemployment and benefit payments and the fall in tax income) and the money paid to the banks themselves.
• If cuts of this magnitude are imposed across EU, they will kill the recovery stone dead and precipitated a further banking crisis
So the call for drastic cuts in public expenditure ahead of the general election is not just, as Andrew Murray rightly calls it, a gigantic fraud. It is an incredibly dangerous one, one which the trade union and labour movement must resist.
Every day sees fresh closures involving key strategic elements of British industry, Corus in the North East, Bosch in South Wales. Unlike the US, Germany and France no steps have been taken to sustain productive industry. No limits whatsoever have been imposed on banking speculation which continues to suck in capital that should be productively invested.
Why ? Because of the degree to which British finance capital is now interpenetrated with, and dominated by, external investment banking. Britain is the world venue for unregulated, tax free speculation. Foreign banks and hedge funds don’t want this changed. British banks depend on them and together they have largely co-opted the government to do their bidding.
At same time it is important to notice the unease within the financial civil service: the Bank of England, the Financial Services Authority and even the Treasury. They know the risks being run by not controlling speculative investment. Increasingly sharp warnings are being given about scale of the new speculative bubble.
It is also important to note emerging divisions within government between the hedge fund wing under Mandelson and the financial establishment led by Brown. We should not exaggerate. But we should take it into account. It is notable that it was Brown who was pushing the Tobin tax and opposing drastic deflationary cuts. Mandelson has been leading the hedge fund lobby against French and German attempts at regulating investment banking.
The Treasury paper outlining the case for the Tobin Tax, which would exact a charge for every financial transaction, was published on the same day as the Pre Budget Report. It could be dismissed as electoral window dressing – as meaningless to British politics because it is based on world-wide adoption. But it is important nonetheless. It demonstrates that capital can be controlled by state power and states are not powerless in face of ‘global capital’. It shows that every transaction can be tracked. That it is why it should be taken up by the Labour Movement. If transactions can be taxed, so also can capital be directed into productive industry.
It was this conflict within the government that provided the context for the botched Miliband-Hewitt coup two weeks ago. Though it failed, it succeeded in what was probably its real objective: to reinforce Mandelson’s grip on the Prime Minister and Labour policy ahead of the election. The establishment press coverage is clearly deeply worried that the Labour Party could slip to the Left and pose major problems for enforcing the kind of cuts envisaged under a Tory government.
| Hey, Democrats, Remember Us? |  |
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| Written by Jeff Crosby | |
| “Jeff, you guys at the Union Hall aren’t listening to us! You’re talking out of both sides of your mouth. We’re fighting the benefits tax, and now you’re telling us to vote for someone who will tax our benefits! The guys here are voting for Scotty Brown.”
That was just one of the calls and e-mails that I received during the week before the Senate vote in Massachusetts. An AFSCME delegate to our labor council calculated the impact of the Obama tax on union plans and e-mailed us all to “Vote Brown!” Conservative members of my local Executive Board were adamant in saying the outcome of our health care campaign would be a tax on working people to extend coverage to poor people. Recognizing a classic Republican “wedge issue,” we argued that those without insurance include our own children. We could win a plan to tax the wealthiest and cut into the blood money of the health care profiteers. Ultimately, we were wrong. In the last week of the Coakley campaign, the papers were full of the story: “Obama Supports “Cadillac Tax.” Sen. John Kerry cited an MIT economist who said the tax would increase wages for grateful working stiffs. I can usually figure out which chalkboard equation the classical economists are fondling: Absent merely life itself, they present a circular logic that proves itself. But the MIT argument escaped me. We fought back hard. Coakley opposed the tax, but everyone figured she’d vote for it. The exemptions and improvements negotiated by AFL-CIO President Trumka and others were heroic-and they helped. We heard the outcome of the negotiations Thursday night. My local had a flier in the shop Friday afternoon, the last workday before the Tuesday election because of the King Holiday. Hardcore union activists gritted their teeth and hit the phones for 1,500 labor council calls. Too late. Coakley won Lynn and Boston, but lost the union vote by 3 percent. At the polls, I ran into Tommy, a legendary IUE-CWA Local 201 activist who had been peeled off a scab’s windshield and arrested during a strike at the G.E. plant. Tommy’s retired. He told me: I voted Republican once in my life, for Reagan the first time. He taxed my unemployment benefits and workers comp. Never again! But I ain’t voting for Coakley. I don’t want them to tax our benefits, and I don’t know about that government running my health care. I’m voting for the Libertarian. There were other failures. A lousy campaign, a good candidate who lacked charisma. Everyman Scott Brown never mentioned he was a Republican. Arrogance from the Democratic Party, and we were asleep at the wheel, too. I didn’t even get the labor phone lists until Saturday. Six weeks earlier would have made a difference. A year ago, the Democrats crowed that the Republicans were “irrelevant.” Today, the Republicans think the Democrats are mortally wounded. Both are wrong. In our non-ideological party landscape, in hard times whoever strikes the best pose of wounded underdog wins. The same anger that elected Obama was hijacked to elect Scott Brown: “We want change!” This was a bread and butter election, not a “What’s the Matter With Kansas” election where social issues tipped working class voters against their economic interests. Only the right-wing fringe voted because Brown was against gay marriage and Coakley for it. Many working- class people who voted for Brown were voting for the blue-collar underdog against the Washington elite. Obama’s support for the benefits tax exploded among union members just as our campaign against the tax was breaking through. The Boston Globe covered the union agreement on the tax-and on the same page carried a long article explaining that the excise tax would affect millions and was exactly the kind of “middle- class” tax that Obama had promised not to implement. This was the first time the health care campaign touched every union member personally, despite our previous efforts. And with so little time to explain it, it looked like the unions had left others to foot the bill; the improvements for all workers were lost in the final three-day push. The tax wasn’t the only issue that demobilized Democratic support. A shrinking health care plan, Obama’s support for charter schools, the Afghanistan escalation, the Honduras coup, massive E-Verify firings of undocumented workers, the disappearance of the Employee Free Choice Act, criticisms from the black caucus for ignoring economic issues-all contributed. An angry black minister in Boston’s Mattapan neighborhood told Coakley campaigners: “We don’t know who she is. She never came here.” The weak stimulus was defended by the Goldman Sachs economic advisers who helped design the financialization fraud that brought us to the brink of a depression. How long can you live off the Lily Ledbetter Bill and the appointment of Labor Secretary Solis? The “Kumbaya” of the Democrats wins them nothing. Months of touchy-feely from Democratic Sen. Max Baucus compromised away most of the health care reform features we wanted. Yet Democrats received further attacks from Republicans for their “partisanship”-and not a single Republican vote. If Obama supported waterboarding, the Republicans would attack him as “weak on terrorism” since he doesn’t support pulling the toenails of a suspect’s first born. It’s as though Obama advisers crafted a systematic plan to unravel the president’s coalition. They succeeded. There was no outpouring for a right-wing agenda in Massachusetts. Brown only received 50,000 votes more than McCain. But Coakley received 850,000 fewer votes than Obama. The Republican based remained energized. The Democratic base and independent supporters stayed home. There are more difficult truths to consider. We need self-reflection, which is not our strength. Many local unions still can’t reach their members with a rapid, credible program. Public-sector workers are being stripped of benefits because we have been utterly unable to convince the citizenry that public-sector workers represent the public good. We are so happy to have a seat at the table that we ignore the meal being served. Coakley spent time raising money from insurance lobbyists in Washington instead of campaigning in Mattapan because that’s the way the system works. Obama listened to an MIT economist instead of us-about our own benefit plans-because that’s often the way the Democratic Party works. Neo-liberalism reigns, money Would an aggressive labor-populist campaign have won this election? I think so. Of course, it’s hard to say. One thing is certain-you don’t build the kind of country we want by putting lipstick on a pig or by reconciling the irreconcilable. Whether the road ahead is hard or easy, we need to be blunt about the circumstances we face here in these United States, and let the chips fall where they may. Jeff Crosby is the president of IUE-CWA Local 201, the union of the General Electric workers in Lynn, Mass. Jeff is also president of the Massachusetts North Shore Central Labor Council. January 22, 2010 http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/01/22/hey-democrats-remember-us/#more-24871 |
by Natasha Hickman
Haiti and Cuba are separated by just 50 miles of Caribbean Sea, yet even before the earthquake the contrasts for people born in the two countries could not be starker.
For many in Latin America, Cuba is a beacon to what human beings can achieve when they have opportunities for health care and education and a say in their future. Haiti, meanwhile, is a harrowing picture of the human suffering caused by years of economic policies moulded to benefit elites, multinationals and foreign economic interests and imposed on a people from the outside.
The deaths of so many people in Port-au-Prince on January 12 cannot solely be attributed to aching poverty. Blame also lies squarely at the feet of the international community – especially the US.
While press reports focus on the humanitarian disaster caused by the quake, they do a disservice to the Haitian people by not exposing the policies that caused the poverty and exacerbated their suffering in the first place.
Thirty years ago, the country was self-sufficient in rice. But the International Monetary Fund bullied the government into accepting loans which slashed import duties on the crop. Local agriculture and livelihoods were decimated as the island became a dumping ground for heavily subsidised US rice. Haiti’s Arbonite valley, once home to thriving communities of farmers, now has one of the highest child malnutrition rates in the country.
Impoverished families have had little choice but to leave their homes and move en masse to the overcrowded capital. Here they live cheek by jowl in makeshift dwellings, trying to eke out a living in a country where 50 per cent of the population earn less than two dollars a day. Port-au-Prince’s population has mushroomed, exacerbating the scale of the current disaster.
Haiti has never been forgiven for the 1804 slave rebellion that won it independence from French rule. Debt, US-backed dictators, coups and military intervention have been a constant in the last 200 years.
The country’s first democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was twice removed by US-backed coups and troops, most recently in 2004.
Today the role of US troops on the island is again under scrutiny. Aid agencies have complained that precious hours were wasted in the wake of the quake while the airport was closed to allow US forces to land more troops, evacuate US citizens and prepare for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit. There is no doubt that people died as a result.
There are now 13,000 US troops in Haiti. Quenching their needs will no doubt be the prime concern for the US air operation. And it is not paranoia to view this militarisation cynically.
Last year Colombia handed over seven military bases to the US and president Zelaya of Honduras was removed in a US-supported coup. It may come as no surprise to hear that oil reserves have been found in Haitian waters.
Haiti undoubtedly needs immediate aid and long-term support to rebuild itself, but the Haitian people should control it. Aid should come without soldiers or strings attached.
Cuba began supporting public health initiatives in Haiti in 1998. Over the last 12 years, 6,094 Cuban doctors have volunteered in the country, treating 14 million people and saving 230,000 lives.
Four hundred Cuban doctors working in Haiti lived through the terror of the quake and emerged from the ruins within hours to set up field hospitals in the rubble, treating more than 2,000 people a day.
They are now administering 400,000 tetanus jab vaccines donated by the Cuban government. A further 60 specialists with experience in similar international catastrophes arrived within 24 hours carrying drugs, medical supplies, food, serum and plasma. Today they are working to save lives alongside 400 Haitian doctors – all graduates of Cuba’s Latin America Medical School (ELAM).
This support will continue long after the TV crews have moved on. In Cuba today, 640 Haitian students are on scholarships, 570 training to be doctors at ELAM.
With the exception of excellent early video reports on CNN, Cuba’s support has been at best ignored and at worst distorted by the media. Fox News ran an early story chastising Cuba for doing nothing to help, while the Evening Standard ran a scurrilous story suggesting that Cuban medical brigades were needlessly amputating the limbs of survivors.
Those with the facts, like Pan American Health Organisation director Dr Mirta Roses, tell a different story. “It was an enormous advantage that they were already here before the quake. They know the situation, the Health Ministry, the Haitian people … theirs is an enormous contribution.”
Just as Cuba is supporting Haiti, the Cuba Solidarity Campaign is supporting British efforts with a Concert for Haiti tomorrow to raise funds for the TUC Aid Earthquake Appeal at Congress House.
Aid is needed in the short term but we must also call for an end to the US military occupation, for the country’s debt to be dropped and for respect for Haiti’s sovereignty.
Visit www.concertforhaiti.co.uk for details of Wednesday’s Concert for Haiti, which takes place at 7pm at TUC Congress House. Featuring Billy Bragg, Cuban band Son Mas, Benjamin Zephaniah, Omar Puente and award-winning British actors Alan Rickman and Tom Wilkinson plus special guests. Entrance by advance ticket only – available on (020) 8800-0155.
Direct donations to Cuba’s Haiti Medical Brigades can be made via the Cuba Solidarity Campaign at www.cuba-solidarity.org.uk or on (020) 8800-0155.
John Foster writes on the failure of the Copenhagen Summit and what can be done now.
The Copenhagen Summit saw a complex clash of positions. As a summit, it failed and therefore represents a serious crisis for efforts to halt climate change. But the summit also marked a turning point and one which represents challenge for Communists and the Left in Britain.
The mass media presented the summit as a struggle for dominance between the G7 countries and the new economies of the south and east. They portrayed China, Venezuela and Sudan as those responsible for the breakdown and as playing politics with the future of the planet. There is no doubt that that the US and its allies did not get what they wanted. They failed in their bid to use the UN bureaucracy to impose their own settlement as they have done in the past. Hence a turning point.
But the dispute was not about power and status. It was about economic systems and control. In essence it was about imperialism. It represented a conflict between the big business-run economies of the West and the ability of state-led developing economies to tackle carbon emissions on their own terms. The West, especially the EU, wanted legally binding targets with legal penalties linked into a market-based carbon trading system. In theory this system forces polluters to pay steeply increasing prices for permits and hence compels them to install carbon reducing technologies. In reality this has not happened – at least in any proportionate way. Instead of rising, the price of permits has been falling as the recession cuts the level of industrial activity. And their price has fallen even further as a result of the failure of Copenhagen: by 8 per cent to just 12 euro per unit. It is estimated that it requires a price of 40 euro per unit to trigger significant private sector investment in clean technologies. So although ostensibly dealing with the issue, it does not. It evades the need for governments in EU countries to directly invest in clean technologies. At the same time the market system is productive of massive distortions (as polluting processes are moved to the Third World) and also allows big business to claim massive subsidies from the EU. The objective of EU big business at Copenhagen was to extend the system across the world – turning it into a giant new market for their.
technologies. Big business did not get it.
The issue for countries like Venezuela, Brazil and China is that the process of reducing emissions must be primarily state-led. Their demand was for technology transfer and finance to allow them to invest in ways that would allow them to continue with their own economic development on a low carbon basis. They also wanted real cuts in emissions, well above the ‘hold temperatures at 2C above pre-industrial’ offered and they wanted this because it will be their countries that will suffer most from climate change. They don’t want climate change to be used to refasten market-based big business dominance over their economies. The $100b over ten years offered to developing countries was derisory. In Britain alone more than ten times this sum was used to rescue the banks in one year. In return for this paltry sum developing countries would be tied into a market system dominated by the big Western monopolies.
This was the issue: an exercise in soft imperialism.
This is also the challenge. We as Communists have to explain. The outcome was a failure. Neither the EU nor the US was willing to move beyond the market system. The eventual accord was merely noted. There is a further meeting in Bonn this month – and a conference to draft a legally binding agreement in Mexico by December.
It is therefore urgent that the Left counterattacks against the dominant big business interpretation – especially in and through the trade union movement. In practice market-led approaches have not worked anywhere. The European countries that have done most to reduce carbon emissions (Germany, Scandinavia) have done so through state expenditure. Cuba (picture above shows the continuing use of oxen) is a prime example of a country where state and popular intervention have transformed the economy into a low carbon one. Britain today will not get anywhere near its own targets unless the government spends on housing, transport and renewable energy – as noted last week by the House of Commons Select Committee report. This estimated that the current rate of reducing emissions was only one third of that required
John Foster is the Communist Party’s international secretary
