Chronicling the Crisis of the Working Class http://mrzine.org Wed, 16 May 2012 10:49:01 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/sablowski160512.html Their goal is not only to reduce state expenditures or to increase tax revenue. It is also a matter of reducing wage levels in the private sector and of increasing working hours, in short, of increasing the overall exploitation of labor. Austerity policies don't resolve the crisis, but they help to realize traditional demands of capitalists that up to now had not been achievable due to the relation of forces. Austerity measures serve not only the bank rescues (which could also be carried out by the ECB buying out the banks' government bonds), but serve above all industrial capital, in particular export-oriented industrial capital, whose profitability can be increased in this way. To add to this: it is not just about defending the euro but, above all, its international role. The common currency functions not only as a means of circulation and payment within the Eurozone, but also has a global function, even if as an international reserve currency it takes second place behind the American dollar. The importance and prominence of the euro would be endangered if international investors lost confidence in the government bonds of Eurozone countries and withdrew their capital. The euro would hence lose value against the currencies of other capitalist centers. It is precisely in the competition between currencies that the stability of the euro -- as a measure of value and as a means of circulation and payment, as well as a medium of accumulation -- is of importance. Internationally active banks and transnational corporations, which are based in the Eurozone, profit in particular when they can offer credit in their own currency and when their business partners can pay in euros. This reduces their currency risks. In this regard it is of interest to these banks and corporations the extent to which actors outside of the Eurozone are prepared to use the euro as a currency. This becomes of even greater importance the more financial linkages with actors outside of the Eurozone increase. For Germany, exports to nations outside of the Eurozone in recent years increased faster than exports to those within the Eurozone. The defense of the euro through policies of austerity is not simply the result of the European strategies of German capital but above all of its globalization strategies. Nevertheless, the German government does not the play the role of Europe's disciplinarian solely in the interests of German capital but also in the interests of dominant fractions of capital in other Eurozone countries. Only this convergence of interests can explain why Sarkozy largely swung into line behind Merkel and why the Greek government under no circumstances considered exiting the Eurozone although austerity policies were and are wrecking the internal market and are damaging the fraction of capital dependent on this market. Wed, 16 May 2012 10:47:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/grossman150512.html The good news: the Christian Democratic Union of Angela Merkel took a real whipping in the election in North Rhine-Westphalia (usually abbreviated to NRW), the largest German state in terms of population. . . . But alas, there was a far more serious bad news item, though all too few realized its significance. The aforementioned election in NRW, which scratched Merkel, seriously wounded its other main loser, the Left Party. It was no surprise in view of recent polls, but a shock all the same! It not only failed to reach the five percent needed to keep any of its seats in the state legislature (it won 11 in the last election) but lost severely, getting only about 2.5 percent! This was the second West German state in a week, after Schleswig-Holstein, where it lost its representation by missing the hurdle, and this state, due to its size, is especially important. It is hard hit by an economic crisis worsened by constant shutdowns of coal mines and steelworks in its Ruhr Valley, a real German Rust Belt. Why did these troubles, with severe cutbacks in the budgets of nearly all towns and cities, not work to the advantage of the Left? And why is this important, even to people in other countries? Tue, 15 May 2012 12:29:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/mosireen120512.html "What were the reasons for this revolution if not for us to have a voice, to establish our worth, our dignity, to feel like we're humans, with the right to say yes or no?" Sat, 12 May 2012 17:13:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/castro110512.html This extremely important anniversary of the victory could not be comprehensible except under the banner and name that inspired the heroism of the fighters of the Great Patriotic War. There was something undoubtedly inviolable and indelible: the anthem under whose unforgettable notes millions of men and women defied death and crushed the invaders who sought to impose a thousand years of Nazism and Holocaust on the whole humanity. With these ideas in mind, I enjoyed the hours I spent watching the parade, more martial and organized than I could ever imagine, led by men educated in Russia's military academies. The Yankees and the bloody armies of the NATO certainly didn't have the license to imagine that they could get away with the crimes committed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, the attacks on Pakistan and Syria, the threats against Iran and other countries in the Middle East, the military bases in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, with absolute impunity, without the world becoming aware of the unprecedented and outrageous threat. How soon the empires forget the lessons of history! The military technology displayed in Moscow on the 9th of May demonstrated the impressive capacity of the Russian Federation to make a calibrated response commensurate to the most sophisticated conventional and nuclear arms of imperialism. It was an event that we expected for the glorious anniversary of the Soviet victory over fascism. Fri, 11 May 2012 12:43:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/venezuela100512.html The Bolivarian government sends its most heartfelt condolences to the brave Syrian people, particularly the families and friends of the victims of this crime, at the same time reiterating its denunciation of the policy of interference and destabilization aimed to thwart the initiatives for dialogue and negotiated solution to the conflict that have been promoted by the government of the Syrian Arab Republic. Thu, 10 May 2012 21:30:00 EST http://bit.ly/IGZL3Z "People sometimes ask us to work on their farms, and we do for a few months. But then we are taken back to the detention centre," Hassan, an Egyptian migrant told IRIN. "I was taken to work as an agricultural labourer for about 300 dinars a month ($240). If we go out to work, why can't we just be released? Why do we have to come back here again to the centre?" A Somali migrant, Abdul Mahmoud, also said he had been taken out to work on a construction site and then brought back to the centre. Another said he had worked on a farm and was paid 200 dinars a month ($160). "We are certainly concerned about labour exploitation, and abuse," said [Samuel] Cheung [Senior Protection Officer for UNHCR]. "There are some unconfirmed reports of migrants not receiving their wages, or their wages used for the upkeep of the centre. But then at times, detention centres also do release people to work and give them the chance to get regularized." Wed, 09 May 2012 20:30:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/botenga080512.html Maryam al-Khawaja: Bahrain had the largest protests in the so-called Arab Spring. According to the opposition, the largest protest in Bahrain was around 400,000 people. Bahrain's population [migrant workers excluded] is around 600-700,000 people. That would be like 40 million Egyptians turning out to protest on the same day and at the same place! That hasn't happened in any other country. Also, if you look at the numbers per capita, around 80 people have been killed in Bahrain since the beginning of the protests. If Bahrain had the same population as Egypt, today we would have more than 11,000 people killed in Bahrain. . . . The West in general was not the issue. The issue was obtaining their rights from the government. However, because of the way the West has reacted to the situation so far, people are becoming a lot more anti-West. The fact that the West has not done anything about it, that there have been absolutely no international consequences for the Bahraini royal family, is why human rights abuses continue. They have absolutely no incentive to stop human rights violations. This makes the West to a certain extent complicit in what is going on in Bahrain -- especially since they are still selling arms! I think if this situation goes on this way, we will get to a situation in which people are going to say very openly and very strongly: "Once the decision is ours, we will not want the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain." Tue, 08 May 2012 20:30:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/fanelli050512.html In The Invisible Handcuffs, I tried to show how economists tried to frame capitalism as a system of voluntary transactions, as I mentioned in my previous answer. One can understand how the economists could have gotten away with this evasion of reality in a world when literacy was limited and communications, expensive. In a modern world, to be able to get away with such nonsense is an audacious act of genius. Economic theory also abstracts from virtually anything having to do with time. For example, business is assumed to invest efficiently when it purchases durable equipment. How is that possible when business has no knowledge about future demand conditions, technology, or competition? Considerations of such matters would make mathematical models impossible. How is it possible to efficiently value the existing stock of resource, such as petroleum, when nobody knows precisely how much petroleum there is, or whether alternative sources of energy will appear, or whether creating even more carbon dioxide would be too dangerous to contemplate? What economics does do very well is to create an effective ideological system that pretends to prove that whatever business wants to do is good. Within this framework of voluntary transactions, workers agree to a wage bargain in which they give up their leisure time in return for wages, which more than compensate for their lost leisure. No thought is given to the context in which the transaction is made. From this perspective, the conditions of workers who accept the lethal consequences of accepting a job at the Fukushima nuclear plant are no different from a high-priced athlete playing an enjoyable game. Also missing from this picture is anything having to do with work, workers, and working conditions. The only relevant action is the wage bargain. Just as an individual consumer tries to buy commodities at the cheapest possible price, employers want to buy their workers for as little as they can. Unions become framed as a monopoly that interferes with the transactions. At the same time, in this transaction-based perspective, neither employers nor society have any reason to nurture the skills or the creativity of the working class. Why not break the unions and defund education? Not surprisingly, productivity suffers. Sat, 05 May 2012 18:02:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/weisbrot040512.html Thus, as a matter of accounting, we could look at real GDP growth for 2002-2010 and ask, how much of this real (inflation-adjusted) growth is due to exports of commodities? It turns out that only 12 percent of Argentina's real GDP growth during this period was due to any kind of exports at all. And just a fraction of this 12 percent was due to commodity exports, including soybeans. So Argentina's economic growth from 2002-2010 wasn't an export-led growth experience, by any stretch of the imagination; still less a "commodities boom." . . . The value of agricultural exports (including of course soybeans) as a percent of Argentina's GDP didn't rise during the expansion. It was about 5 percent of GDP when the economy started growing in 2002, and 3.7 percent of GDP in 2010. In other words, there's no plausible story that anyone can tell from the data to support the idea that Argentina's growth over the past nine years was driven by a "commodities boom." Why does this matter? Fri, 04 May 2012 22:22:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/streamas030512.html In our current Punishment Culture, institutional white America is sending assault after assault against communities of color, on as many fronts as there are communities. In different times, this might be a flexing of racial muscle, an exercise in power, the Great White Father knowing best. But in a time of a global economic instability that at least wobbles the nominally lone superpower, of a rising class consciousness awakened at least partly by the Occupy movement, of severe cuts to services such as education that even working-class whites have come to regard as rights rather than privileges, and especially of demographics changing surely enough to assert that whites will themselves become a racial minority in only three decades -- in such times as these, the Punishment Culture seems like overstretch, even like paranoid desperation. Lest this claim itself seem like overstretch, consider the message that Punishment Culture sends to the punished . . . . Thu, 03 May 2012 13:41:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/ajl020512.html Max Ajl: Why was the occupation so difficult to raise at the protests? Matan Kaminer: I think precisely because what you had there was people rising up for themselves. This is very easy to sneeze at, particularly because the "activist" point of view always equates between the oppressed and the (racialized) "other." But last summer people who had always seen themselves as the "salt of the earth," that is, the ones who own the system and whom it was built for, began seeing themselves as oppressed. This is a very important moment. For me too: for many years I have theoretically understood the importance of seeing my problems as social and not individual. But I never actually did it until last summer: I never conceptualized myself as oppressed. Even telling you this I feel a resistance -- what, upper-middle-class, educated me, on my way to a doctorate and (God willing) a living in academia -- oppressed? Exploited? But indeed I am, as all 99% of us are, and last summer was the moment when we realized this. Of course this is not the whole story. People are racist, and most people definitely do not identify with the Palestinians or understand the necessity of making common cause with them. So raising the occupation at protests was something that would marginalize you, and most people don't enjoy that. Nevertheless there were some attempts, the most important of which was "Tent #1948" at the Rothschild encampment, where Palestinian activists raised consciousness about the issue. There was a telling incident there: they had a Palestinian flag flying, and someone came and took it down. One of the activists talked to him, and when he realized she was Palestinian he apologized and put it back. It wasn't legitimate for a "leftist" to put it up, but it was for her, because it was her own oppression she was protesting, not somebody else's. I think you see where I'm going with this. Wed, 02 May 2012 21:41:00 EST http://bit.ly/KPXeaA What follows is a preliminary attempt to map the changing shape of Russian society in the last two decades, the better to understand its present condition, and its likely future trajectories. One of the fundamental enigmas this essay will seek to explain is why a society that has suffered so dramatic a series of reversals has nonetheless remained relatively stable. It will be argued that, although the fall of the USSR brought profound dislocations, many aspects of the country’s previous social structures are still in place, resulting in a form of 'uneven development' in which two social orders co-exist. Moreover, contrary to the conventional wisdom of liberal 'transitology', which blames Soviet legacies for the deformities of Russian capitalism today, it is precisely the persistence of the old that has underwritten the stability of the new. In order to obtain a clearer picture of the ways in which Russia has been remade since 1991, however, we will need to begin by sketching out the main lines of its development in the Soviet era. Wed, 02 May 2012 21:39:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/millar010512.html Well, what I try to do in The Faith of the Faithless, what I try and show, is the way in which the logic of contemporary insurrectionism feeds off deeper traditions of heresy, deeper traditions of secession. It seems to me that the Invisible Committee have a completely Catharistic idea of the world or a gnostical idea of the world: the world is a wicked, corrupt, poisoned place. And while they're not planning to go off in a spaceship and make a new civilization, there's a side to it that is like that; there's the twin prongs of sabotage and secession. We need to withdraw from a civilization that's falling off a cliff, that is no longer credible, and then sabotage it. So what you have with them is a deeply aestheticized critique of society that isn't really even Marxist in the way in which the Situationists were. It's more the idea that the world is a concentration camp, the world is a dark place, and we need to get off. It's a powerful temptation because it makes intuitive sense. I've just written a piece on Philip K. Dick's new book, Exegesis, which is his magnum opus, eight thousand pages of scribblings, the ravings of a mad man, a work of genius for some, it's viewed in different ways, but the core vision is a gnostical one. The world is a dark place, it's a place of illusion run by corporations and secretive powers, and we need to break through that matrix and see it for what it is, take the red pill as it were, and then the scales will fall from our eyes and we'll begin to be able to resist it. There is some of that fantasy at work in the work of some of the contemporary insurrectionist groups, and I understand it and I applaud it up to a point, but I guess I've always been keener on less dramatic, local, more modest forms of political engagement. I like the anarchist tradition because it's about urban gardens, and allotments, and free schools, and little local medical clinics. Whereas the ski-masked, black-clad insurrectionist I think is a boring figure of a virile politics that we need to leave behind. I think that was one of the things that was playing out in the Occupy movement, a tension between those different aspects. . . . Gramsci, for example, is hugely important for me, the way in which debates after Lenin were transformed by Gramsci. He places such an emphasis on politics, ideology, and what he called a historical bloc; given that the revolution is not going to happen through the contradictions of capitalism, we need therefore to form a front, form a collective will, what he called the activity of hegemony. It seems to me that that is a much more realistic understanding of politics than many others on the Left where there is either this ridiculous, quasi-religious eschatology that ends in revolution or in the utter resignation that you find in the Frankfurt School of Adorno and Horkheimer. Tue, 01 May 2012 13:45:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/amin280412.html You see, the US establishment -- and behind the US establishment its allies, the Europeans and others, Turkey as a member of NATO -- derived their lesson from their having been surprised in Tunisia and Egypt: prevent similar movements elsewhere in the Arab countries, preempt them by taking the initiative of, initiating, the movements. They have tested their experience in Libya, and they have tested it in Libya with success, in the sense that, in Libya, at the start we had no [broad popular] movement . . . against Gaddafi. We had small armed groups, and one has to question immediately . . . where those arms were coming from. They were -- we know it -- from the beginning, from the Gulf, with the support of Western powers, and the US. And attacking the army, police, and so on. And the same day, not even the next day, those very people who qualified themselves as "liberation forces," "democratic liberation forces," called upon NATO -- the French and then NATO -- to come to the rescue, and that allowed for the intervention. . . . I'll come back to this main question, because they tried to implement the same strategy immediately afterward on Syria -- that is, introducing armed groups from the very beginning. From the north through Turkey, Hatay particularly. The so-called "refugee camps" in Hatay are not refugee camps -- there are very few refugees -- they are camps for training mercenaries to intervene in Syria. This is well documented by our Turkish friends. And Turkey as a NATO power is part of the conspiracy in that case. And similarly with Jordan, introducing from the south, with the support -- not only neutrality but, I think, active support -- of Israel, through Daraa, armed groups in the south. Facing that in Syria we have objectively a situation similar to the one of Egypt: that is, a regime which a long, long time ago had legitimacy, for the same reasons, when it was a national-popular regime but lost it in the time of Hafez Assad already -- it moved to align itself with neoliberalism, privatization, etc., leading to the same social disaster. So, there is an objective ground for a wide, popular, social-oriented uprising. But by preempting this movement, through the military intervention of armed groups, the Western imperialist powers have created a situation where the popular democratic movement is . . . hesitating. They don't want to join the so-called "resistance" against Bashar Assad; but they don't want to support the regime of Bashar Assad either. That has allowed Bashar Assad to successfully put an end, or limits, to external intervention, in Homs and on the boundary of Turkey in the north. But opposing state terror to the real terrorism of armed groups supported by foreign powers is not the answer to the question. The answer to the question is really changing the system to the benefit of, through negotiations with, the real popular democratic movement. This is the challenge. And this is the question which is raised. We don't know, I don't know, I think nobody knows how things will move on: whether the regime, or people within the regime, will understand that and move towards real reform by opening, more than negotiations, a re-distribution of the power system with the popular democratic movement, or will stick to the way of meeting explosions just brutally as they have done until today. If they continue in that direction, finally they will be defeated, but they will be defeated to the benefit of imperialist powers. Sat, 28 Apr 2012 22:13:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/moore270412.html Now that Occupy Los Angeles has issued a call, taken up enthusiastically by Occupies around the country, for a nationwide General Strike on May Day, it behooves us to take a look at the history of General Strikes." Fri, 27 Apr 2012 17:13:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/zochrot260412.html Just as Zochrot activists tried to leave their office last night, around 10:30 PM, for a symbolic action to commemorate the Nakba in Rabin Square -- posting the names of Palestinian villages destroyed in 1948, in Arabic, Hebrew, and English -- they were astonished to find the whole building housing the Zochrot office blockaded by police. . . . The arrested activists were all released this afternoon. Nevertheless, Zochrot director Liat Rosenberg is alarmed by the whole idea of preventive lockdown on Zochrot, an example of the Israeli state's attempts at "silencing" of any dissent reaching "new heights." Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:40:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/patnaik250412.html "Marxism shouldn't be reduced to productionism. The goal of socialism has always been human freedom, which is about much more than material wealth." -- Prabhat Patnaik Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:07:00 EST http://bit.ly/JAvbd2 This neoliberal left speaks about the backward masses all the time and how they are not able to follow its lead. Living in times of extreme fanaticism, there is no space for the rationality of this left, in its colonialist version. Day and night, they criticize all those who question the current Arab uprisings, accusing them of being agents of despotism and obscurantism. This neoliberal left speaks all the time of enlightenment, progress, and the need to leave the current stage and jump directly toward change, which has no face or name. On a daily basis, they defend the imbeciles and murderers controlled and funded by the West and their cronies who steal Arab wealth and lead regressive and nihilist bands. Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:05:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/day240412.html NEW YORK, NY -- Millennial Christians and godless communists alike were stunned when nineteenth-century economist and revolutionary Karl Marx suddenly returned from the dead about two hours ago to land, in bodily form, at the corner of Nassau and Wall Streets. His appearance interrupted Occupy Wall Street protesters as they negotiated the preparations for an anticapitalist May 1 General Strike. Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:27:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/jafari240412.html Sajjad Jafari is an Iranian cartoonist. Cf. "The number of [scientific] publications from Iran has grown from just 736 in 1996 to 13,238 in 2008 -- making it the fastest growing country in terms of numbers of scientific publications in the world. In August 2009, Iran announced a 'comprehensive plan for science' focused on higher education and stronger links between industry and academia. The establishment of a US$2.5 million centre for nanotechnology research is one of the products of this plan. Other commitments include boosting R and D investment to 4% of GDP (0.59% of GDP in 2006), and increasing education to 7% of GDP by 2030 (5.49% of GDP in 2007)" (footnotes omitted, Knowledge, Networks and Nations: Global Scientific Collaboration in the 21st Century, London: The Royal Society, 2011). Tue, 24 Apr 2012 09:22:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/bahrain210412.html Tens of thousands of people from across Bahrain are estimated to have taken part in an anti-government demonstration on Budaiya Highway, located to the west of the capital, Manama. The march, organized by the Bahraini opposition bloc, was peaceful, with crowds chanting loudly many slogans like "Down, Down, Government," "No to Dictatorship, Yes to Democracy," "No Surrender," "We Need Elected Government." Protesters also chanted slogans calling for the release of Mr. Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, who has been on hunger strike inside Bahraini prison for over 73 days now, along with other prisoners who were arbitrarily arrested. . . . Other protests took place concurrently with this demo in different parts of the country. The calendar the protesters have set for the coming two days is full of activities despite the regime-led brutality and threats to use birdshots and live ammunition against protesters. Sat, 21 Apr 2012 22:28:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/munk200412.html To the Editor of the New York Times, Your editorial "Speculators and the Gas Pump" urging tighter regulation of the oil market is a fool's errand in these days of legislative gridlock. But contrary to your assertion, there is an "easy fix" available to President Obama, although not the Republican prescription of "more drilling or more pipelines." . . . . Fri, 20 Apr 2012 22:28:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/mclaren190412.html I write from a dark place / where oblivion follows me / like my flickering shadow in the Ensenada sun . . . Thu, 19 Apr 2012 22:28:00 EST http://bit.ly/Hj6lAA The slogans are superb, alluring, intoxicating, but there are no grounds for them; such is the nature of the revolutionary phrase. Thu, 19 Apr 2012 22:26:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/magdoff180412.html Personal del Banco Mundial ha calculado que el 10% más rico de la población usa aproximadamente el 60% de los recursos mundiales y que el 40 % más pobres de la población usa menos del 5 % de estos recursos. Y por ello, dada la estrecha relación que existe entre el uso de recursos y la contaminación, el 10% más rico sería responsable del 60% de la contaminación mundial, con lo que ello significa de calentamiento global, contaminación del agua, etcétera. Wed, 18 Apr 2012 22:26:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/palacios170412.html This feature-length documentary is a comprehensive audio-visual investigation into the events surrounding the 2002 coup d'état in Venezuela. The whole world knew that on the 11th of April, 2002, in Venezuela, there occurred a massacre. The whole world condemned the deaths of so many humans. Several people that were filmed shooting from a bridge in Caracas were shown as the culprits of the massacre that caused 19 fatal deaths. This information went around the world. But together with the deaths and injuries from that day, there was another victim: the truth. This documentary shows images, testimony, and key historical facts hidden by many mainstream media about the massacre at Llaguno Bridge. Tue, 17 Apr 2012 22:26:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/wolff160412.html The solution for capitalist crises like the one plaguing us today is not another President's program of reforms, regulations, economic stimuli, and deficit budgets. We have been there and done that. Mon, 16 Apr 2012 01:26:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/garcia150412.html In Libya after Muammar Gaddafi, the situation of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa is worsening. Most of them had come to this rich African country looking for jobs. Now, thousands of them are arrested and taken to detention centers, where they are targeted for abuse by their captors, most of whom are illegal armed groups. Sun, 15 Apr 2012 22:56:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/annis140412.html Some important lessons flow from these current battles. The main one is the need for mass mobilization of workers if employer attacks are to be turned back. The days of relying on good will or favorable court decisions are long past. The public pension situation is instructive. In 2010, pressure from members was building on Canada's unions and their political party, the NDP, to launch a mass campaign to increase benefits of the Canada Pension Plan. This was fueled, in part, by the growing practice of companies (cf. Air Canada) to underfund their employee pension plans. The federal government deflected the mounting pressure by promising to legislate increases to the CPP. But it set a condition on union and NDP leaders: "Don't pressure us with mass actions on Parliament Hill." Union leaders acquiesced, the informal deal was on. Months later, the government reneged, announcing instead a new plan to give tax breaks to employee/employer-funded pension plans that invest in financial markets. Sat, 14 Apr 2012 22:10:00 EST http://bit.ly/HSyXui As the Economic Policy Institute reports, while there has been an increase of some 2.8 million private sector jobs since June 2009, public sector employment (federal, state, and local governments combined) has actually fallen by approximately 600,000. This is a very unusual development as the figure below reveals. . . . According to the Economic Policy Institute, if the percentage growth of public sector employment in this recovery had followed past recovery trends, we would have an additional 1.2 million public sector jobs and some 500,000 additional private sector jobs. Fri, 13 Apr 2012 22:38:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/aguilar120412.html As the earlier antecedents of intersectionality make perfectly clear, it was the fertile ground of the women's liberation movement that enabled feminists to collectively conceive nothing less than societal transformation as their ultimate goal. With the decline of social movements and the deliberate harnessing of intellectuals in the service of capital, feminists, now tethered to academic concerns, have traded clarity of analysis and purpose for ambivalence, obscurity, and mystification. Thu, 12 Apr 2012 22:38:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/lm100412.html "Russia asked Syria not to withdraw its troops completely but to begin pulling out as an example for other sides of the conflict. Absolute ceasefire should only be carried out under supervision of international observers." -- Sergey Lavrov Tue, 10 Apr 2012 07:55:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/venezuela070412.html Cf. "'The political plans continue to progress and the security situation is getting better. And he [Syrian President Bashar al-Assad] hopes and is confident -- and I hope so too -- that, with the least bloodshed, in the coming days the situation will soon be fully under control and that normality will return to this dear brother Arab country,' President Chávez said about his conversation with the Syrian leader" ("Presidente Chávez conversó con su par sirio Bashar Al-Assad," www.minci.gob.ve, 6 April 2012). Sat, 07 Apr 2012 10:42:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/tihwdi060412.html There are communities around the world that have stopped waiting for the systems around them to change. They are engaged in alternative practices right now -- in economics, safety, media and communications, politics and more. With This Is How We Do It, Foundry Dialogues is bringing together many of the foremost innovators from around the globe -- people who are redefining nothing less than how the world works. We invite you to join the conversation on the poetic and practical experiences of remaking the diverse places in which we live (a kind of 'there-are-other-ways-to-do-things' show and tell) -- from the inside out. Below is schedule of the weekend's events. FRIDAY, APRIL 20 @ 7PM: OPENING PLENARY: MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE (Cooper Union's Great Hall, 7 East 7th Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues): FEATURING Grace Lee Boggs: One of the great philosophers and political visionaries of our time, Boggs has been a part of almost every major movement in the United States over the last 75 years; she's 96, intellectually ageless and still going strong. . . . Fri, 06 Apr 2012 21:42:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/mali050412.html Meanwhile, important independent forces within Mali and in the sub-region are calling for an end to outside pressure and a peaceful resolution to both the coup and the rebellion. . . . What raises concerns about a possible U.S. role are the important geopolitical position that Mali occupies, the fact that the U.S. military is already in the country, and the presence of known oil reserves under the desert sands of northern Mali. . . . Regional economic sanctions will inevitably weaken Mali's government, making it even less able to provide for the needs of the Malian people, including the Tuareg. Inevitably, there will be calls for the U.S. to intervene -- for purely humanitarian reasons, of course. Thu, 05 Apr 2012 17:42:00 EST http://bit.ly/HtHing The implications of this study are that Arab authoritarian regimes are different institutionally despite appearances and theoretical models that suggest otherwise. . . . Contrary to conventional literature on authoritarianism, however, this project explores notions of authoritarian adaptability and persistence. As such, the thesis will revolve around three broad questions that serve as the study's basis: (1) what are the differences in the institutional politicization that effectively define the political boundaries of each system; (2) what impact does the types of institution have in regards to co-opting and shedding elites; and (3) how does this impact system adaptation. The main point is that increased centralization over institutions -- which I am calling depoliticization -- equals a political system's greater ability to adapt. . . . Chapter two serves as a historical overview, which traces and explains the divergence in institution formation strategies after Sadat and Asad assume power in 1970. It looks at the transition of populist to post-populist authoritarianism through diverging institutional politicization, and how these factors set in place a process that would determine how co-optation of elite and non-elite individuals is contemporarily conducted. Consideration is given to the diverging national identity constraints, the amount and type of domestic social opposition, relations to other regional and international powers, and the ways in which these factors influence an individual state's institutional trajectory. More precisely, it explains the origins of Egypt's adoption of depoliticized institutions and Syria's politicized institutions. Institution formation variance is explored as a prelude to understanding differences in co-optation. . . . Chapter four examines the differences between Egypt's depoliticized institutions and Syria's politicized institutions' ability to co-opt unaffiliated non-elites. The purpose is to demonstrate why co-optation is a less concentrated process in Syria's politicized institutions. Conversely, this chapter will show that Egypt displays more governing flexibility than Syria by including and excluding non-elites from the arena largely due to the immense powers of the president and the lack of politicized activity by other state institutions. . . . Lastly, and paradoxically, Syria is more authoritarian than Egypt, where some freedom of press, political parties, and civil society do exist, but power in Syria is less centralized while Egypt is less authoritarian but power is more centralized. This appears counter-intuitive but, as my findings show, a closer representation of reality than the existing academic literature suggests. . . . Egypt's Anwar al-Sadat and Syria's Hafiz al-Asad chose differing institutional types because of the constraints imposed by variance in social make up and the degree of regional fragmentation. Although the leaders made choices regarding institution formation, Sadat and Asad selected from different pools of available social and ideological options. Similarly, given that the 1970s represent a critical juncture in institutional formation in each system, it is also important to examine the role of the region's hegemon -- the U.S. -- and its treatment of Egypt and Syria, as well as domestic opposition system challenges. These factors accelerated existing divergences in institutional formation in each political system. Although foreign policy alignment and opposition challenges cannot be viewed as the primary causes for divergence, they nevertheless played a supporting role in making existing divergences more irretractable. Depoliticized and politicized institutional types in Egypt and Syria are the product of multiple causal variables. The varying institutional types, in turn, shape elite and non-elite co-optation. This, in turn, will be used to explain each system's different capacity for system adaptation. . . . After Hafiz al-Asad led his corrective coup d'etat in November 1970 against the ideologically radical wing of the B`ath party, the new president faced numerous constraints that did not apply in the Egyptian experience. Syria remained regionally fragmented. It was also without a Syrian national identity. The new leader was forced to emphasize Syria's Arab identity in an attempt to keep the country stable. The inherited constraints of identity and fragmentation determined Asad's course. Although there are indications that Asad wished to follow a pragmatic path vis-à-vis Israel and liberalize the economy, he was not in position to forge a depoliticized institutional order. Rather, Syria's new president had to build an order that was stable, first and foremost. In the process of building a party of state under the umbrella of pan-Arabism, it was necessary to sustain the politicization of the party in order to build support for the political system. The B`ath party became so crucial to regime stability in Syria because it presented an immediate, and perhaps short-term, solution for resolving the sectarian mosaic identity predicament. The party harnessed a cross-sectarian coalition under a common Arab identity. Hence, Syria's inherited constraints drew Asad in an opposite direction from Sadat, and led him to pursue different institutional formation strategies. The outcome of these strategies was a politicized institutional order. After the Egyptian-Syrian UAR collapsed in 1961, Syrian politics entered a two-year phase of struggle for political control. After two years of attempts to re-establish the domestic political arrangements of 1954, elite-level struggles between vying capitalists, socialists, and large landowners over the political establishment led to the B`athist military coup of 8 March 1963. From 1963 to 1965, the B`athist government, led by Hafiz al-Amin, made significant populist promises to attract members and secure its tenuous base. While the party tried to keep Syria stable immediately upon assuming power in 1963, its small internal ranks were divided into competing factions largely due to a lack of clear leadership and direction. Salah al-Jadid's ideological faction carried out a successful coup in 1966 and launched a political program imbued with radical populism. The ideologues' decision not to purge the party's more pragmatic wing to make-up for the party's lack of numbers was compounded by their failure to close the diametrical gap between the party's wings. The pragmatists led by Asad proved proficient at inserting other pragmatists into the military's highest command and control positions. These trends in military appointments accelerated after the 1967 war, as the factions' divergence widened into the "duality of power" that was recognized at the 1968 B`ath congress. Two years later, following the military's refusal to attack Jordan's Hashemite regime during the Palestinian's Black September uprising, Asad launched a coup that resulted in al-Jadid's and other members' imprisonment. Thus, when Asad became Syria's leader, the B`ath party was neither as institutionalized as the ASU, nor did it have the ability to be an autonomous institutional power center in Syria. Asad needed to build and integrate the party into the weak state. Asad inherited a small but ideologically driven B`ath party. It had been in power for seven years when Asad conducted his coup. Neither as vast in membership nor as encompassing a tool for political organization as the ASU, the B`ath had a long history out of power, with real ideological and procedural traditions that Asad relied on to build a lasting political system. The main difference between the ASU and the B`ath was the latter's strict pan-Arab ideology, which established membership criteria and procedures that prioritized and produced committed members. The ASU, by contrast, was an artificial creation of the regime leadership, based loosely on pan-Arabism, which was quickly discarded in favor of the Egyptian nationalism after the 1967 war. Asad's strengthening of the B`ath party helped to secure and expand regime power. Given Syria's history of elite conflict, introducing an inclusive political center to the system was a necessity. Asad's presidency became synonymous with Syria's domestic political stability. Yet, this stability was grounded in the B`ath party's politicization. The B`ath was useful to Asad because it was a real party with a doctrine, cadres, and organizational procedures. Asad broadened the party's social base by retaining a high percentage of the party's rank and file and vastly expanding recruitment. With the military camp's backing, Asad moderated the party's radical populist ideology to win support from outside the party. Specifically, Asad initiated a limited economic liberalization program by easing restrictions on state control over foreign trade and imports to gain support from the Damascene private sector. This acted as social co-optation because it revitalized Syria's previously well-established bourgeoisie but made them dependent on the president's reform initiative. Maintaining a firm grip on the military and developing the intelligence services helped Asad to protect his regime. Yet, without a centralizing party to channel political activity, Asad's regime would have been more susceptible to external and internal disruptions. The growing number of party members during Asad's first fifteen years in power reflects this strategy of encouraging stability and counterbalancing external and internal challenges through a party. Party membership totaled 35,000 members/candidates under al-Jadid in the late 1960s. By 1977-1978, the party had at least 200,000 full and candidate members. By 1980, although members were declining in "quality," nearly 375,000 members had joined the B`ath. Four years on, B`ath membership and candidates accounted for 8.36 percent of the age-eligible population and numbered 537,864. The increase in figures during the 1970s and early 1980s coincided with the period of greatest turmoil in Asad's Syria. It is, therefore, plausible that Asad built the party as a strong, politicized pillar to stabilize the political system. Choosing to build a politicized B`ath party had consequences -- particularly for its pan-Arab ideology. The party connected and unified Syria's fragmented regions by attaching them to corporatist organizations that mobilized support for the party. As such, the B`ath became the "essential instrument in mobilizing large part of society." Yet, as the B`ath became the central civilian political institution, its pan-Arab ideology not only provided Asad a solution to the lack of a national identity and regional fragmentation, but also became a constraint on the president's subsequent domestic and foreign policy. The party's pan-Arab ideology became part and parcel of Asad's institution formation strategy. Whether this was Asad's choice or not is immaterial. Rather, because of how pan-Arabism was tied to the B`ath party's development it had to play an integral ideological role if Asad wanted the party to stabilize the state. Hence, once pan-Arabism was institutionalized in the party and given a key role in mobilizing popular support for the party, it became inextricably linked to any future diplomacy or conflicts. The B`ath party, although inherited by Asad, was largely his creation, thanks to his expansion of the party and integration of it as a pillar of the regime. This does not imply it did not change qualitatively during his 30-year rule. As Perthes argues: "The Party was transformed. . . . it was de-ideologized; and it was restructured so as to fit into the authoritarian format of Asad's system, losing its avant-garde character and become an instrument for generating mass support and political control. It was also to become the regime's main patronage network. In addition, an institutional frame was built which, if needed, would allow Asad to balance the party against other political forces." Yet, despite this transformation, the B`ath continues to maintain some institutional autonomy. Once the party was constructed as a politicized actor, the only way to change its character was to destroy it. This explicitly implies that Asad (neither Hafiz nor Bashar) could not destroy or dismantle the party as easily as Sadat destroyed the ASU. The B`ath, because of its politicized character, is a repository of autonomous power in Syria. This entails its own sets of constraints because to attack the B`ath is the equivalent to attacking the political system itself. Without either a viable or ready-made institutional replacement, the political establishment would lose its central foundation. Given the B`ath party's politicized and integral history in promoting stability, it is difficult to imagine that it could be eliminated without inviting a return to pre-Hafiz al-Asad era political turmoil in Syria. The limits on eliminating the B`ath are well established in the academic literature on Syria. As Hinnebusch argues, "The . . . party cannot be readily transformed into a party of business such as Egypt's National Democratic party (NDP); it is overwhelmingly a party of those dependent on the state or threatened by liberalization, notably teachers, public employees, public sector workers and peasants, and only two-per cent of its membership can be considered upper or upper-middle class." . . . The B`ath party seems to have experienced a revival following Bashar al-Asad's assumption of power in 2000. Although the B`ath was rendered dormant during the second half of Asad's presidency, its potential to function as an institutional pillar should not have been neglected by analysts of Syrian politics. The B`ath influence decreased but its institutional autonomy could allow its reassertion. As Kienle argues, the Ba`th's role was always a "support of the regime or even . . . one of its seats of power." The party currently exists as one of a handful of autonomous politicized institutions that struggle for control and influence in Syria. The intelligence services, military, and office of the presidency can be considered some of the other politicized institutions involved in redefining post-Hafiz Syrian politics. While the B`ath cannot be argued to be reasserting a particular mentality or ideology, it can be seen as a structural obstacle to system adaptation and a autnomous institutional source of power. The B`ath's strengthening and politicization in the 1970s and early 1980s turned it into a disciplinary force throughout Asad's presidency. It must be noted that the party went through various periods when it was more and less assertive, and its institutionalization permitted it to remobilize as a political force in the post-Hafiz al-Asad era. After all, the party "in spite of its marginalization in the decision-making process, remains the only large-scale political organization with a viable infrastructure and branches all over the country." While the B`ath is without doubt an institution that Asad was able to manipulate, the party's politicized structure proved more durable than is generally given credit. Presently, B`ath party membership stands at nearly two million members, but the nature of membership has changed. While many opportunists now join for an "easier life or better opportunities" or for preferred entrance to a specific university or career, advancement within the party is more managed as it can take decades to become a full member. Scott Wilson reports that "Since the revolution that brought it to power 41 years ago, the nearly 2 million member party has grown into a parallel government, monitoring education, political and economic policy through a network of committees from the national to the village level." The politicized grounding of the B`ath party allows it remain an autonomous repository of state power. The institutional formation strategy that the Syrian leadership chose was primarily shaped by the necessity of constructing politically stable state institutions. Asad's choices were guided by the need to socially and regionally integrate Syria under a overarching ideology. As Syrianism could not serve as a viable ideological banner, Asad was forced to rely on what was available. The party's pan-Arab ideology offered a way out of the instability, and the B`ath was integral for integrating a wide range of sects and regions under cross-sectarian Arabism. Rather than existing as a patronage machine only, the party was politicized to fulfill certain roles in order to serve as a regime pillar, which preserved it in a politicized form and meant that Asad had to share, at least, some power with it. The party needed Asad as much as he needed the party. A politicized party is not necessary a negative trait because the role of a party is precisely to channel political contestation and mobilization. But other institutions Asad created -- including the military/security services establishment -- sought to play a similar consultative role in governing Syria. Asad ably became the chief arbitrator in managing this parthenon-shaped political system. Yet, towards the end of his presidency and particularly when his son assumed power, these politicized institutions reasserted themselves and contributed to governance gridlock. Wed, 04 Apr 2012 22:28:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/rs030412.html This is a 10-minute film dedicated to freedom fighter Louis Reyes Rivera. Rivera was a member of the 1969 occupation of City College, which was led by students of color and won open admissions. He spoke to Students United for a Free CUNY at the AME Church in Harlem on October 27, 2011 before his death on March 3, 2012. We had the honor to film what was to become one of his last public speeches. Tue, 03 Apr 2012 22:28:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/broad020412.html Strikes and other trade union actions are on the rise in Canada, Aboriginal peoples are becoming more vocal, Canadian youth have been participating in the Occupy Movement, and students in Quebec have risen up to oppose postsecondary tuition increases. Conservatives are quick to chant that Quebec has the lowest tuition in Canada, not wanting us to consider that perhaps postsecondary education should be free for all. Mon, 02 Apr 2012 13:12:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/akg300312.html Spring 2012. Merkel and Sarkozy rush from summit meeting to summit meeting, in order to save the euro. The yellow press smears the people of Greece. The struggle over a solution to the crisis is intensifying dramatically: by early 2013, an authoritarian-neoliberal alliance of business lobby groups, the financial industry, the EU Commission, the German government, and other exporting countries, hopes to rush the Fiscal Treaty that has just been concluded in Brussels through the national parliaments. The Fiscal Treaty prescribes an antisocial policy of cuts, and includes penalties for countries that oppose this policy. Thus the Fiscal Treaty restricts democratic self-determination even further. It is the momentary climax of an authoritarian trend in Europe. . . . Throughout the world, people are fighting back against these policies, from the Syntagma Square in Athens, via the Tahrir Square in Cairo and the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, to Zuccotti Park in New York. The movements of refugees and migrant workers across Europe's outer frontiers are part of these struggles for a good life. These struggles must be carried out across borders and in the centres of the authoritarian-neoliberal alliance, in Paris, Brussels, Frankfurt, and Berlin. Therefore, we call on people to join in the coming protests, including the European Day of Action on March 31st, the Global Day of Action on May 12th, and the international mobilization to Frankfurt am Main on May 17th to 19th. We are relying on an alternative solution to the crisis: no ratification of the Fiscal Treaty, and dropping the set of EU laws on "Economic Governance"; cancelling public debts, introducing controls on capital flows, and converting banks into public service providers; redistributing social wealth from the top downwards by a new tax system; expanding the social infrastructure and starting to transform the economy with a programme of social and environmental investment; shortening working hours; democratizing politics and the economy radically at all levels; ending the racist policy of Fortress Europe -- residence permits and legal status for all. Fri, 30 Mar 2012 21:52:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/mansour290312.html In Iran, we have a saying: "Women are like tea . . . the hotter the water, the stronger they get." Thu, 29 Mar 2012 21:52:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/magdoff280312.html There are significant numbers of people in the wealthy countries who believe that the great issues of resource depletion and global environmental pollution are caused primarily by the huge number of people on the globe -- currently about 7 billion -- and that things will only get much worse with the anticipated increase to about 9 billion by mid-century and 10 billion by the end of the 21st century. Their suggested solution (although some say there really isn't any -- we are all doomed to chaos and barbarism) is to rapidly decrease the world's population, mainly through a program to induce people to lower the number of children that they have. . . . Staff at the World Bank1 have estimated the resource use of the world's people by decile -- the poorest 10%, the next 10% . . . up to the wealthiest 10%. They estimate that wealthiest 10% of the people use approximately 60% of the world's resources and that they are, therefore, responsible for about 60% of the world's pollution, contributing to global warming, water pollution, etc. The report also estimates that the poorest 40% of the population use less than 5% of the world's resources. Now let's forget ideology for a minute. If you are very concerned about the issue of global resource use and environmental degradation, as I and so many others are, these numbers lead to an absolutely inescapable conclusion. Trying to reduce the population of poor people will not help deal with this at all. It is the wealthy of the world that are overwhelmingly responsible for the resource/environmental problems we face. Given this reality, here is my Modest Proposal. Wed, 28 Mar 2012 22:14:00 EST http://bit.ly/HoWlRj The distinction I have been trying to draw can be expressed in yet another way. If we take Ragnar Frisch's (1933) distinction between propagation and impulse problems (a distinction drawn in the context of business cycle theory but relevant in the wider context of growth as well), then we can say that exogenous stimuli represent a steady and ever‐increasing impulse, which alone can explain the growth of the system. Once this distinction is clear, the basic argument of the present paper can be expressed as follows: "finance" itself cannot constitute an exogenous stimulus for growth in a capitalist economy. It may influence how powerfully an authentic exogenous stimulus may operate, and it certainly does influence the strength of the Frischian propagation effects, or the Hicksian super‐multiplier effects, i.e. the strength of operation of what I have been calling the "endogenous stimuli". But the exogenous stimuli themselves that underlie sustained growth are something different, something outside of the sphere of finance. And if finance, while strengthening endogenous stimuli, has the effect of choking off the possible exogenous stimuli that capitalism can draw upon for its growth, then, notwithstanding occasional bursts of activity its operation may stimulate (which would be followed by equally severe crises), it will cause secular stagnation. Wed, 28 Mar 2012 22:10:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/whitney270312.html Having recently announced that its last ten prisoners held for ransom would be released, and having signaled its decision no longer to raise money through hostage taking, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has propelled movement toward peace. The insurgent group wants to "humanize the conflict," said Piedad Cordoba, president of Colombians for Peace. The Brazilian government agreed to provide logistical support for any prisoner release. Cordoba proposed "a bilateral truce to open spaces for dialogue." Justice Minister Juan Carlos Esguerra granted Cordoba's request that representatives of her group visit FARC prisoners in state hands. He has since reneged on his promise, however. Peace is also on hold for at least two additional reasons. One, peace proponents insist that war be ended only through negotiations on issues propelling the war, foremost among them skewed division of land. Two, uncertainty prevails as to whether or not negotiations are possible while fighting continues. . . . Whether a military truce should precede peace negotiations, or visa versa, is now under intense discussion in Colombia. In an interview, Carlos Lozano, director of the Communist Party's Voz newspaper, commended the FARC prisoner release plan as "an historic decision." While denouncing government fixation on military victory, Lozano called for government-FARC "pre-dialogue, in secret," to be followed by "national dialogue" centering on outstanding issues. By contrast, MOVICE head and congressperson Iván Cepeda insisted: "We must look for the war to end as soon as possible." Interviewed in early March, Cepeda held up military truce as a first step. During war, there's an "absence of political forces necessary to achieve great structural changes." Cepeda speaks as a victim: state agents in 1994 murdered his father Manuel Cepeda, a former senator and director of Voz. Tue, 27 Mar 2012 20:39:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/wilson240312.html The 66-day hunger strike of Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan brought overdue attention to Israel's practice of detaining Palestinians for lengthy periods without criminal charges. It also brought attention to the same practice in other countries, including the United States, where, as Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald pointed out, indefinite detention is "now firmly in place" for terrorism suspects. It's important to remember that the U.S. government detains people for indefinite periods without bringing charges, but Greenwald misses an equally important point: the United States was doing this long before 9/11 and the "War on Terrorism." On any given day, the Department of Homeland Security is holding some 33,000 non-citizens in federal detention centers, in federal prisons, or in county jails. . . . What happens to other detainees in Abdel-Muhti's position? The government admits that some 2,000 immigration detainees remain in prison for a year or more. How many of these prisoners are trapped like Abdel-Muhti in a "Kafkaesque exchange"? Sat, 24 Mar 2012 00:22:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/blockupy230312.html We are calling for massive protests in Frankfurt this May against the crisis regime of the European Union. We are activists representing a multitude of movements and struggles from different European countries and elsewhere, who have risen up in the past months and years to protest the assaults on our freedoms, jobs, and livelihoods that have become fiercely intensified in the global crisis. We have joined together and shared our struggles and experiences, and we have realized that in a multitude of local forms, we are fighting the same fight. Like never before, our movements are starting to strengthen each other: a truly transnational opposition is beginning to emerge. Directly following the global action days on 12M and 15M, where we will protest in our own cities and regions, our transnational struggles will join together in Frankfurt, the European hub of global capitalism and the place of origin of the distress and misery that dictatorship of the markets has caused for millions of people. We are protesting the widespread impoverishment and denial of democratic rights occurring in the Eurozone as part of a global systemic crisis. In the periphery of the EU we are experiencing the extreme effects of politics pushed for by the governments of Germany and France and enacted by institutions representative of global capitalism: the ECB, IMF, EU, and their imposed technocratic governments. Millions of us have been impoverished and driven to misery by austerity and structural adjustment programs, the denial of labor rights and the slashing and privatization of public services, such as education, healthcare, and welfare. We are experiencing the looting of human and natural resources by supposedly democratic institutions! Fri, 23 Mar 2012 22:15:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/narwani220312.html The clashes between government forces and opposition militias in Baba Amr were a clear tipping point for these players -- much hinged on the outcome of that battle. Today, the retreat of armed groups from the Homs neighborhood means one thing: the strategy of militarizing the conflict from within is no longer a plausible option on which to hang this geopolitical battle. Especially not in an American or French election year, when anything less than regime change in Syria will look like abject failure. . . . Group A is looking for a face-saving exit from the promised escalation in Syria. It consists of the United States, the European Union, and Turkey. Group B, on the other hand, is heavily invested in regime change at any cost and includes Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and some elements of the French, US, British, and Libyan establishments. . . . As Group A moves toward a face-saving exit from the crisis, we are going to witness a re-telling of events in Syria. The Western "mainstream media" and major international NGOs, which have served as little more than propaganda tools for various governments seeking to escalate the Syrian crisis and vilify the Assad government, are suddenly "discovering" dangerous elements in the Syrian opposition. This scene-setting is just as deliberate as the false narratives we have witnessed from Group A since the start of the crisis. Thu, 22 Mar 2012 22:15:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/early220312.html The March 11 elections were disappointing to many in the Salvadoran social movement, but not particularly surprising. ARENA won 33 seats in the 84-seat Legislative Assembly compared to the FMLN's 31 seats. GANA, the Gran Alianza por la Unidad Nacional, a new conservative party led by former president Tony Saca which split off from ARENA after the 2009 elections, won 11 seats, making it the most important swing vote in the Legislative Assembly. Both these results and the low voter turnout (49 percent) reflect discontent with the FMLN leadership, but not necessarily with the Funes administration. The FMLN lost control of several long-standing FMLN municipalities because residents weren't impressed with the mayors' work or because the mayoral candidates imposed by the party higher-ups were not popular with their FMLN base. Even in former guerilla communities, where historic FMLN supporters are loath to vote for ARENA, GANA won a surprising number of votes and voter turnout was low. Many on the left wing hope this vote will serve as a wakeup call for the top-down FMLN leadership and motivate them to implement more democratic systems for choosing candidates and ensuring local governments serve their constituencies. But, for the next three years, the social movement will have to work hard to protect the social programs and progressive legislation passed so far under Funes. Thu, 22 Mar 2012 20:56:00 EST http://bit.ly/GHUDIX As modern Iran's first female novelist, Simin Daneshvar, who has died aged 90, knew a lot about adversity. Professionally, she had to make her way in a literary scene dominated by men; in her best-known work, Savushun (1969), she provided an account of life under occupation that enjoyed international success and still resonates with her compatriots. The novel is set in the southern city of Shiraz, against the backdrop of the historical events of 1946-47, with the buying of grain and livestock by the British forces resulting in widespread famine. The characters include a corrupt governor and officials, tribal chiefs, ambitious dowagers and a communist schoolmaster, plus British missionaries, spies, colonels and merchants. Daneshvar's sympathies lie with the traditional midwives, peasants, shepherds and domestic staff -- ordinary people who, in her words, "have much to offer. They must be able to give freely and with peace of mind. We, too, in return, must give to them to the best of our abilities. We must, with all our heart, try to help them acquire what they truly deserve." The central figures are a traditional but progressive couple, Zari and her landowner husband, Youssef, whose refusal to sell his grain to the British leads ultimately to his death. Zari is an "honourable and educated" woman who loves her husband and her children. But she would like to have been brought up to act more independently: "I wish the world was run by women. Women who have given birth and know the value of their creation. They know the value of endurance, patience and monotony and not being able to do anything for themselves . . . if the world was run by women, there would be no wars." The strength of Savushun -- its title refers to mourning for an unjust killing -- is that it is not a tragedy. Zari snatches her sanity back from the brink of madness and goes out to join demonstrators who want to avenge her husband's death. She has come into her own, a woman set to embark on change. Thu, 22 Mar 2012 16:13:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/latuff210312.html Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. Wed, 21 Mar 2012 22:30:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/sansour200312.html Zahera Shalabi is the sister of Hana Shalabi, a 29-year-old woman from the village of Burqin in the Jenin district in Palestine. On February 16, the Shalabis' home was raided and Hana was arrested. She has since been in Israeli prison under what is called Administrative Detention, held without charge or trial, like over 300 other Palestinians. Zahera speaks about her sister as a young woman who is an artist and dreamer who never hurt anyone. She speaks of the struggles her family has been going through since Hana was arrested. Hana has been on hunger strike since the day of her arrest. Hana and Zahera's parents have both gone on hunger strike in solidarity with Hana. Hana Shalabi may be dying in prison, and her father appeals to the whole world to hear their call and to put pressure on the Israeli government to release his daughter. In his own words, "Hana is not only my daughter, she is the daughter of every Palestinian." Tue, 20 Mar 2012 22:30:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/sreckovic190312.html "Yugoslavia was in debt to the IMF. . . . There was a conflict in the six republics of Yugoslavia: who is going to pay the debt? Who is going to pay the debt was also a conflict between developed parts and undeveloped parts of Yugoslavia. . . . [In] this huge debate about who's going to pay the debt, all this traditional ethnic hatred that had been pushed aside during the Communist period emerged. Many elements . . . in society started to use this traditional hatred amongst the nations. They were talking about what happened during the Second World War, who was fighting whom, and so on. This dilemma -- who's going to pay the debt -- ended in a civil war, a civil war between the nations. . . . [T]he situation about Greece, debt and media stereotypes about lazy Greeks and PIIGS countries, [is similar to what happened in] Yugoslavia. . . . The Serbian economy survived the international sanctions during the 1990s. It survived the three months of the NATO bombing campaign. NATO didn't bomb only military targets. It also bombed hospitals, refugees, distribution systems. They were bombing many civilian targets, for example the national media, like they did it in Libya. . . . [T]he cost of the NATO bombing . . . was something like 30 billion dollars. [Still] the economy survived, and people were still employed. It was not a prosperous economy, but it had the potential to . . . keep all these people employed. But, unfortunately, after the fall of Milošević, after the overthrow of the government, this neoliberal Democratic Party came into power. They started with the privatization process. It was [made] mandatory by the World Bank. Actually it's that privatization that completely ruined the economy." -- Milenko Srečković Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:30:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/mora160312.html Juan Ramón Mora is a cartoonist in Barcelona. Fri, 16 Mar 2012 22:58:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/bujes150312.html Michelle Rhee is the public face of a counter-revolution in education that promises better outcomes without additional resources. . . . A constant refrain -- explicit or implicit -- in all of Rhee's talk of education turns on the notion that the interests of children and those of adults are diametrically opposed and that educational policy is needed to reconcile them. According to this view, teachers care about benefits, retirement, and protection against their own incompetence, and therefore they do not care about children. As a corollary, teachers' unions exist specifically to protect teachers' interests and therefore, necessarily, to undermine the education of children. This is why high-stakes testing and merit pay are needed: a stick and a carrot for teachers who would otherwise neglect or underserve their charges. The notion that a teacher's working environment is a student's learning environment would be incomprehensible to Rhee. Or, rather, it would be comprehensible only to the extent that keeping the teacher in a state of constant terror would be the most effective way of making sure that the job is done right. . . . We can offer facts and figures about Rhee herself and her failure in DC (re-hired teachers, cheating, destruction of community schools). But this would still not defeat the framing itself -- discrediting Rhee is trivial in the bigger game, since there are plenty of others ready to replace her. No, the way forward is to reframe the debate, insisting upon the following principles: a. The interests of students and teachers are not opposed. b. Learning results from the relationship of student to teacher. c. Education is not a race; it is the foundation of the common good. d. Experience matters. e. Education is not a scarce good. Thu, 15 Mar 2012 22:58:00 EST http://bit.ly/ylpmlF In 2004, Aristide was whisked away in one of those planes that the US government has used for "extraordinary rendition", and taken involuntarily to the Central African Republic. Eight years later, the US government is still not ready for democracy in Haiti. On 3 March, the Miami Herald reported that "Former Haiti President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is once again in the cross-hairs of the US government, this time for allegedly pocketing millions of dollars in bribes from Miami businesses . . . " Everything about these latest allegations smells foul, like the outhouses that haven't been cleaned for months in some of the camps where hundreds of thousands of Haitians displaced by the earthquake still languish. First, the source: Patrick Joseph was the head of Haiti's national telecommunications company (Teleco) until he was fired by then President Aristide for corruption in 2003. Fast forward nine years: last month, Joseph negotiates a guilty plea with US federal prosecutors for accepting $2.3m in bribes from US companies. As part of his co-operation deal, he agrees to testify and tells them that about half the money was for President Aristide. How convenient. That should knock a few years off his prison time. Then, there is the timing of the new charges. The first indictment in this case, in 2009, doesn't mention Aristide or anyone who could be him. The same is true for the second indictment, in July 2011, which added Patrick Joseph. But the January 2012 indictment mentions an unidentified "Official B" of the Haitian government; and now, we are told that "Official B", according to one of the defense attorneys in the case, is Aristide. How would he know? Officially, the US Justice Department has no comment on the matter, but seems the likely source for reports identifying Aristide. Why now? Aristide has been very quiet and has stayed out of politics since his return to Haiti, a year ago. He has focused on the University of the Aristide Foundation; closed since the 2004 coup, the medical school was able to reopen this past fall. But he still has the biggest base of any political figure in the country, and remains the only really popular, democratically elected leader Haiti has ever had. His party, Fanmi Lavalas, is still the most popular political party. Although it was wracked by political divisions while Aristide was in exile, it has reportedly become more unified since he has returned. Demonstrations on the eight-year anniversary of the 2004 coup -- two weeks ago -- drew thousands into the streets. "The display of popular support for Aristide is very worrisome to the US, so indicting Titid [Aristide] before a potential comeback makes perfect sense," Robert Fatton, a Haiti expert at the University of Virginia, told the Miami Herald. Wed, 14 Mar 2012 22:58:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/milligan130312.html It has been increasingly obvious to independent publishers for the last two years that Amazon intends to put all independents out of business -- publishers, distributors, and bookstores. Under the guise of providing greater access, Amazon seemingly wants to kill off the distributors, then kill off the independent publishers and bookstores, and become the only link between the reader and the author. The attack on distributors like IPG and on some larger independent presses is only part of the plan. Amazon has also been going after the ultimate source of literature, the authors. Tue, 13 Mar 2012 16:58:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/latuff120312.html Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. Mon, 12 Mar 2012 16:58:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/mosireen090312.html After 37 days of the strike, the Bticino-Legrand workers' demands were partially met and they returned to work. But Islam and his co-workers still haven't received fixed contracts. And the management remains the same. And the laws remain the same -- in favor of investors. . . . (Mosireen is an independent media collective in Cairo, dedicated to creating works that reflect the reality of lives of people in Egypt and that support the Egyptian revolutionaries.) Fri, 09 Mar 2012 22:22:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/mistahfab080312.html "I'm digging this freestyle frm @MistahFAB at Invisible Children, #Kony and US media Hype designed to steal nat resources." -- Davey D Thu, 08 Mar 2012 19:51:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/weiner070312.html A shameful witch hunt against teachers is underway, a full-blown hysteria being fanned by the media working hand in hand with politicians. In one of the crudest efforts to manipulate public opinion, as Juan Gonzalez reported, Mayor Bloomberg solicited local media to obtain the teachers' ratings under Freedom of Information laws and publicize them. . . . Teachers have been an easy target, and so, alas, have been the teachers' unions. . . . But how should we deal with this hysteria being stirred up? The New York City teachers' union, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), decried the ratings and attempted to suppress their publication. Instead, it should have launched a public campaign to discredit the tests. But UFT officials couldn't do this because . . . the state union, which UFT officials control, signed off on allowing 40% of teachers' evaluations to be based on their students' progress on standardized tests and applauded it as a national model. The union's own poll, however, showed that a vast majority of parents believe there is too much emphasis on state testing in public schools. Wed, 07 Mar 2012 22:25:00 EST http://bit.ly/yPxMbu Growing numbers of Chinese workers and farmers have been engaged in workplace and community struggles in opposition to corporate and government policies, especially those designed to intensify the privatization, deregulation, and liberalization of the Chinese economy. The number and determination of participants in these struggles has forced business and government leaders on the defensive. Recently, the People's Daily ran an editorial calling for renewed commitment to "reform" in an attempt to shore up support for the government's neoliberal policies. The editorial appears to have triggered growing discussions and debates on and off the internet among academics and activists about alternatives. One concrete outcome from these discussions and debates is a 16 point proposal which was developed collectively and recently published on the Red China website; it has gained significant support. The following is an English translation of the proposal by the China Study Club at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Reading it provides a window into political developments in China and also highlights the similarity of struggles in China and the United States. Wed, 07 Mar 2012 12:45:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/syria060312.html I spent most of the afternoon at the Pentagon with the USAF strategic studies group -- guys who spend their time trying to understand and explain to the USAF chief the big picture in areas where they're operating in. It was just myself and four other guys at the Lieutenant Colonel level, including one French and one British representative who are liaising with the US currently out of DC. They wanted to grill me on the strategic picture on Syria, so after that I got to grill them on the military picture. There is still a very low level of understanding of what is actually at stake in Syria, what's the strategic interest there, the Turkish role, the Iranian role, etc. After a couple hours of talking, they said without saying that SOF teams (presumably from US, UK, France, Jordan, Turkey) are already on the ground focused on recce missions and training opposition forces. One Air Force intel guy (US) said very carefully that there isn't much of a Free Syrian Army to train right now anyway, but all the operations being done now are being done out of 'prudence.' The way it was put to me was, 'look at this way -- the level of information known on Syrian OrBat this month is the best it's been since 2001.' Tue, 06 Mar 2012 13:45:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/russia050312.html Alexey Sidorenko: "Ok, they brought gastarbaiters and poor people to vote, but you can't hide it -- the city is anti-Putin"; Anatoly Karlin: "Apparently, Prokhorov got more than 50% at Moscow State University. Those student hipsters are crazy"; Chto Delat: "Demos don't work. Strikes are still a pipe dream"; nⒶy: "'Russian elections are fraud! Why? Because I hate Putin, that's why, DUH!' -- Obama, soon (if not already)"; Sean Guillory: "I think the rallies have hit a dead end. Time to start real organizing -- parties, affinity groups, media, platform, agitation." Mon, 05 Mar 2012 16:00:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/parenti020312.html I recently wrote an article about my personal experiences in dealing with the medical system while undergoing surgery ("Free Market Medicine: A Personal Account"). In response, a number of readers sent me accounts of their own experiences trying to get well in America. Health care in this country is hailed by conservative boosters as "the best medical system in the world." It certainly is themost expensive, most profitable, and most complicated system in the world, leaving millions of Americans in shock. None of the people who wrote to me had anything positive to say about the U.S. health system. Below are some of the responses to my article. (Several of the senders requested that their real names not be used). Fri, 02 Mar 2012 22:15:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/ahmad010312.html "No genuine democratic nationalist movement in the world has ever asked for any imperialist intervention." -- Aijaz Ahmad Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:15:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/eneko290212.html Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain. Wed, 29 Feb 2012 22:48:00 EST http://bit.ly/AycpGD Living wage activists have accomplished a lot since then, winning more than 125 living wage ordinances in cities and counties, three city minimum wages, and state and federal minimum wage increases. Eight states have indexed their minimum wage to inflation because of activist pressure, and campaigns to raise and index state minimums are underway in 10 more states. Activists also created coalitions that have helped unions organize and win better contracts. They've supported city and state campaigns for paid sick days and influenced the debate about who should benefit from economic development. Yet the number of workers earning poverty wages remains as high as ever. A quarter of all workers in 2009 -- about 35 million people -- earned less than the hourly wage needed to bring a full-time worker to the federal poverty line for a family of four. The problem has many roots. Living wage ordinances cover a relatively small number of workers, because a typical ordinance applies only to firms that receive contracts or economic development assistance from a city government. And even the "living wages" the movement has won are not enough to bring a worker out of poverty, especially since many low-wage workers are involuntarily part-time. To meet the federal poverty line for a four-person family, a worker would need to earn $10.63 an hour and work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year. But this official poverty line -- $22,113 a year for a family of four -- grossly underestimates the real cost of living. The living wages won in the last 20 years vary from $9.50 to $17.78 (if health benefits are not provided) and include no guarantee of hours. Despite the weaknesses, the wages won have been significant for those affected, who've seen raises during a time when wages were mostly stagnant. But more important than dollars gained have been the new coalitions and strengthened alliances built in many cities, building a foundation for future social movements. Tue, 28 Feb 2012 22:48:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/narwani280212.html There are many competing Syrian casualty lists with different counts -- how does one, for instance gauge if X is an accurate number of deaths? How have the deaths been verified? Who verifies them and do they have a vested interest? Are the dead all civilians? Are they pro-regime or anti-regime civilians? Do these lists include the approximately 2,000 dead Syrian security forces? Do they include members of armed groups? How does the list-aggregator tell the difference between a civilian and a plain-clothes militia member? . . . I had come across my first list of Syrians killed in the crisis, reportedly compiled in coordination with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, that contained the names of Palestinian refugees killed by Israeli fire on the Golan Heights on 15 May 2011 and 5 June 2011 when protesters congregated on Syria's armistice line with Israel. So my first check was to see if that kind of glaring error appears in the SOHR list I investigate in this piece. To my amazement, the entire list of victims from those two days were included in the SOHR casualty count -- four from May 15 (#5160 to #5163) and 25 victims of Israeli fire from June 5 (#4629 to #4653). The list even identifies the deaths as taking place in Quneitra, which is in the Golan Heights. It also didn't take long to find the names of well-publicized pro-regime Syrians on the SOHR list and match them with YouTube footage of their funerals. The reason behind searching for funeral links is that pro-regime and anti-regime funerals differ quite starkly in the slogans they chant and the posters/signs/flags on display. Below is a list of eight of these individuals, including their number, name, date and place of death on the casualty list -- followed by our video link and further details if available. . . . Tue, 28 Feb 2012 21:24:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/ga280212.html Attempting to latch onto the just, vital, and growing movement in support of the Palestinian national liberation struggle, Gilad Atzmon is one of a very small and unrepresentative group of writers who have argued (in agreement with many Zionists) that there is no meaningful distinction to be made between Jews in general and Israeli atrocities. According to Atzmon, the latter are simply a manifestation of Jews' historic relationship to gentiles, an authentic expression of an essentially racist, immoral, and anti-human "Jewish ideology." Atzmon's statements, besides distorting the history of Jews and constituting a brazen justification for centuries of anti-Jewish behavior and beliefs, also downgrade anti-Zionism to a mere front in the broader (anti-Jewish) struggle. Atzmon has specifically described Zionism not as a form of colonialism or settlerism, but as a uniquely evil ideology unlike anything else in human history. In addition to any ethical problems, this line of argumentation actually strengthens Zionism's grip and claim to be the authentic representative of Jews. It obscures the reality that Zionism is an imperialist and colonialist enemy of Jewish people and Palestinians, as well as the Arab people generally and all those oppressed and exploited by imperialism. . . . It is more surprising and disappointing, then, that a small section of the left has opted to promote Atzmon and his works. Tue, 28 Feb 2012 15:47:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/libya260212.html The first video was uploaded, by a Gaddafi sympathizer, onto YouTube on 23 February 2012. The video description on YouTube says that the caged men are men of Tawergha and that their tormenters are Misrata "revolutionaries." The description of the second video, also uploaded onto YouTube on 23 February 2012, this time by a "Libyan Revolution" sympathizer, claims that the detainees shown in the video, shot in Kufra, are "infiltrators" of "various nationalities," which likely means that they are migrant workers. Sun, 26 Feb 2012 04:30:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/iran250212.html On January 9, several thousand contracting workers at Bandar Imam Petrochemical Complex and other nearby facilities in the sprawling Mahshahr economic zone, close to the Persian Gulf, forced the state-appointed management team to grant them a number of key concessions. While the actual concessions -- limited pay increases -- seem modest by most standards, it is the symbolic significance of the victory which is of importance. First, the victory came as a result of mass action involving several thousand industrial workers. The fact that the regime tolerated such large-scale collective effort by workers is in and of itself of major significance. It shows that in a few strategic sectors like oil and gas, petrochemicals, and even munitions, it might be possible to organize on an ad hoc basis as long as it is done peacefully and within the confines of the legal system. What's more, this victory has been closely watched by many other workers across the country for possible lessons in their own fights. Second, the victory came about because of the main demand of the workers' leaders/representatives: namely, an end to the abhorrent temporary contracts. Sat, 25 Feb 2012 19:25:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/tunisia240212.html See, also, the Communist Workers' Party, et al.'s joint statement against foreign interventions in Syria: www.albadil.org/spip.php?article4078 Fri, 24 Feb 2012 22:30:00 EST