Hugo Chavez Threatens US Oil Supply

In response to Exxon's aggressive tactics of "judicial terrorism", President Chavez of Venezuela has threatened an oil embargo against the United States.

Meanwhile, the US and international media circus is using this scenario in their continued "Howard Dean Howl" campaign against Chavez.

Most recently the (CIA) coordinated ¿Por qué no te callas? smear campaign gained a lot of traction in the Spanish speaking world. Ironically, Chavez was correct in saying that Spain's King Juan Carlos is a fascist collaborator- it is historical fact ("The king, who spent much of his early life in exile and was groomed by Gen Francisco Franco, the fascist dictator [of Spain], as his successor" - and he's still at it!). What kind of world do we live in where fascists are made out to be heroes whereas socialists and idealists are made out to be fools? Who actually won WWII?

The goal of these campaigns is to discredit and undermine Chavez, make him out to be a fool, and thereby undermine the entire socialist project in Venezuela.

Venezuela's Energy Minister, Rafael Ramirez, characterised a series of court orders obtained by Exxon Mobil Corp. in Britain, the Netherlands, and the Dutch Antilles, freezing up to $12 billion in assets of Venezuelan state oil firm PDVSA, as "judicial terrorism," in a statement today.

The injunctions were solicited by Exxon in anticipation of an arbitration ruling by the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes over a compensation claim. As part of a drive to recover the nation's oil sovereignty the Venezuelan government nationalized Exxon's 41.7 percent stake in the Cerro Negro project in May last year with an offer for compensation. However, Exxon not satisfied, demanded arbitration. Although the U.S. oil giant has not specified how much it wants in compensation it said its investment in the project was valued at $750 million at the time the assets were expropriated.

Note that the judicial process has threatened to freeze between 12-43 billion in PDVSA assets, whereas Venezuela has been in ongoing negotiations with Exxon regarding only $750 million in compensation.

continued...

"This is pure judicial terrorism," Ramirez told reporters in Caracas. "If they think that with this they will get us to backtrack on our nationalization policies, well, gentleman from Exxon Mobil, you are dead wrong again."

Exxon presented the documents to the Federal Court in Manhattan on Thursday and is petitioning the court to ratify the injunctions in a hearing scheduled for February 13. However, Ramirez said the injunctions are temporary as all the court orders are subject to appeal.

"We don't have any decision in any court that is definitive. We have a temporary measure in a court in New York and we have the right to respond, that is to say a transitory measure and we are sure that we are going to defeat this measure," he assured.

The London High Court order was granted on Jan. 24 without any prior notice to the Venezuelan oil company. The next hearing on the matter is scheduled for Feb. 22.

Until then, PDVSA is barred from removing any assets in England or Wales up to a value of $12 billion. While attachment orders from courts in the Netherlands and Netherlands Antilles also grant injunctions up to $12 billion against PDVSA in these jurisdictions, Margaret Ross, an Exxon spokesperson in Houston, said the sum total that could be frozen worldwide was $12 billion.

It is interesting the way that Exxon is promoting this court ruling. It seems to be part of an integrated media campaign designed less to cripple PDVSA or recoup the $750 million, and more to continue the cycle of discrediting Chavez while attempting to create a crisis on the ground in Venezuela. A recent CIA report characterized Venezuela as a regional threat to US interests. One of the challenges they highlighted was that the ruling classes of Venezuela were being co-opted by the socialist reforms because they were in fact very good for the economy and creating profits. These types of smear tactics are designed to get those people to feel uncomfortable with Chavez and to join the opposition.

continued...

Ramirez said that PDVSA's assets in the jurisdictions covered by those countries are valued at significantly less than $12 billion and emphasised that the decision would not affect the company's cash flow and operational capacity. PDVSA's global assets are valued at $107 billion, he added.

However, the injunction could affect PDVSA's European refining assets, particularly a 50% share in German joint venture Ruhr Oel, which according to filings PDVSA made with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2006, were held through a Netherlands Company PDV Europa BV.

In the context of soaring energy prices, the move by Exxon is a particularly aggressive challenge to governments around the world who are trying to recuperate soveriegnty over their natural resources.
"To me it sounds like a very aggressive tactic," said Stephen Zamora, professor of international law at the University of Houston Law Center.

"I can't really say that I'm aware this has been used in other investment disputes. They may be trying to get the government to settle."

What? A new tool being used by international capital to undermine socialist revolution? They are changing the rules? They are making a small country that is trying to travel a different path play by different rules than they play by? Golly that just ain't fair!

continued...

Patrick Esteruelas, of the Eurasia Group in New York commented, "Although Exxon is within their rights to persue a temporary embargo of PDVSA assets they will probably have to prove that PDVSA has no intention of compensating them."

"However, PDVSA has been very careful to insist that they will still negotiate with Exxon to achieve an acceptable compromise," he added.

Ramirez said the media publicity was a result of Exxon trying to "scratch a figure into the negotiating table" to affect compensation talks and said the world's largest oil company's compensation demands were "ridiculous."

He also accused the US company of using the legal case to destabilize Venezuela, by creating panic over its finances, as the country's dollar denominated bonds experienced their sharpest drop in six months on fears the government could face a protracted legal battle with the oil giant.

PDVSA, which supplies about 10% of the U.S's oil, is a crucial source of funds for the Venezuelan government's social programs that provide free education and healthcare to the poor. In 2006, the company spent $13.3 billion on such programs, up from $6.9 billion in 2005 and more than double the $5.8 billion it invested in new domestic gas and oil projects.

Fox News hates this. The neo-fascists (and neo-liberals for that matter) continually claim that PDVSA is wrong to use its profits to rebuild Venezuela.

continued...

Ramirez said that the interests of the Venezuelan nation were more important than any corporation and assured that Venezuela would not back down from its policy of full oil sovereignty. We are "being attacked by a transnational corporation," but, "we are not going to back down, we are going to beat them in this battle," he said.

Caracas, February 8, 2008 (venezuelanalysis.com)

See also:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aCQq4aSyDsI4&refer=latin_america

Union Membership Rises in 2007!

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the largest rise in the number of U.S. workers belonging to labor unions in the last quarter-century. In 2007 the rolls increased by 311,000 for a total of 15.7 million workers, despite a decline in manufacturing jobs, particularly in auto.

The overall percentage of organized workers rose to 12.1 percent of the workforce, including 7.5 percent of private-sector workers and 35.9 percent of public-sector workers. Membership grew most in construction and health services, with a higher rate of 14.7 percent in Western states compared to 13.8 percent in Midwestern states.

Labor leaders hailed the turnaround. Stewart Acuff, AFL-CIO organizing director, cited organizing drives of 40,000 child care workers in Michigan and New York. (New York Times, Jan. 26)

IWW On The Picket Line. 6-Feb-08.

Western Media Propaganda Arm of Empire

The evidence should be clear more now than ever. News organizations are tools of specific segments of ruling class political opinion. The only reason to "read" them is to understand what agendas are being advanced and foisted upon the general public.

It is here that the truest form of democracy we have access to in late capitalist society exists - the "democracy" of the commodity purchase, in this case the purchase of propaganda. The news we buy and read tilts the economic landscape this way and that. So it seems that all we have left is to "vote with our dollars."

That, or reject the entire corrupt edifice wholesale.

From an excellent article by Toni Solo:

The main reason now to read most Western Bloc corporate media is to discover what lies they are spreading on behalf of their countries’ governments and corporations. In the case of Venezuela, Carlin’s piece indicates that one can expect a ratcheting up of the propaganda war against Venezuela over the next year or so.

[...]

But perhaps the most relevant point about Carlin’s particular brand of misreporting is that it confirms the intimate links between European mainstream media and European country governments and security services. Carlin’s piece is very much in the style of an older UK anti-journalist called Chapman Pincher. Pincher used to make a comfortable career writing screeds just like Carlin’s, based on unattributable sources, smear and guilt by association, regurgitating whatever the official propaganda line of the day may happen to have been.

Solo, Toni. The Observer Exclusive: Hugo Chavez is President of Venezuela. Venezuela Analysis. 03-Feb-2008.

From the Project for Excellence in Journalism:

Journalists are unhappy with the way things are going in their profession these days. Many give poor grades to the coverage offered by the types of media that serve most Americans: daily newspapers, local TV, network TV news and cable news outlets. In fact, despite recent scandals at the New York Times and USA Today, only national newspapers ­ and the websites of national news organizations ­ receive good performance grades from the journalistic ranks.

Roughly half of journalists at national media outlets (51%), and about as many from local media (46%), believe that journalism is going in the wrong direction, as significant majorities of journalists have come to believe that increased bottom line pressure is "seriously hurting" the quality of news coverage. This is the view of 66% of national news people and 57% of the local journalists questioned in this survey.

Journalists at national news organizations generally take a dimmer view of state of the profession than do local journalists. But both groups express considerably more concern over the deleterious impact of bottom-line pressures than they did in polls taken by the Center in 1995 and 1999. Further, both print and broadcast journalists voice high levels of concern about this problem, as do majorities working at nearly all levels of news organizations.

The notable dissent from this opinion comes from those at the top of national news organizations. Most executives at national news organizations (57%) feel increased business pressures are "mostly just changing the way news organizations do things" rather than seriously undermining quality.

Bottom-Line Pressures Now Hurting Coverage, Say Journalists. The Pew Research Center. 23-May-2004.

Of course the executives don't feel quality has gone down. Quite the contrary, from their perspective, quality has gone UP. Because the product they wish to generate has nothing to do with a free press, but with satisfying their class interest in order to secure their continued advancement upward in bourgeois society. Nevermind those pesky journalistic ideals. From a capitalist perspective, these are nothing more than product defects. The removal of which need not even be (consciously) poltically motivated.

Edwards on Hardball - Wal-Mart and unions

What Have the Unions Ever Done for Us?

Kucinich, Ron Paul Censored by US Media

Is this what neo-liberalism means by "democracy?" Or perhaps the ruins of Iraq are democracy? It is ironic (in so many bloody ways) that the CIA has cited Venezuela for "anti-democratic" tendencies on their "World Factbook" - Big Brother is watching, are you? I suppose the good news is that these tactics build consciousness in the popular classes who support "fringe" candidates like Paul and Kucinich. They see that despite their democratic, grass-roots organizing efforts, there is no level playing field and the upper echelons of the ruling classes are playing for all the marbles, and wining...

First it was News Corps FOX Republican forum in New Hampshire in which Ron Paul was snubbed, now it's Dennis Kucinich who was censored by Disneys ABC. Do I have to say much more, well sure I will. FOX claimed the omission of Paul was due to lack of his support even though Paul took 10% in Iowa , . The co-sponsor of the NH Democratic debate Facebook recently polled Kucinich at over 5%, the criteria to appear on the debate, the command from Disney came down that he was not to appear anyway. What are they scared of? These men chose to be on the ballot, met the so-called criteria and the media should allow them to express and debate their opinions with their fellow candidates on the nationwide scale. What is happening? Where is our Freedom of Information? Even the Republican Party of New Hampshire cried foul, after trying their hardest to get Paul and Hunter onto the Debate, the GOP party of NH withdrew as a partner in the Forum and their chairman stated:

"The first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary serves a national purpose by giving all candidates an equal opportunity on a level playing field. Only in New Hampshire do lesser known, lesser funded underdogs have a fighting chance to establish themselves as national figures,” and "(NH GOP Party)..believes Congressmen Ron Paul and Duncan Hunter should be included in the FOX forum on Sunday evening. Our mutual efforts to resolve this difference have failed."

Kucinich joins Paul - Censored by Big Media from national debates. Union Review. 08-Jan-2008.

Imperial Decline?

I've been writing about economic decline and the credit burst for several years now. The majority of the ruling classes have finally moved the majority of their profits into save harbors like bonds and gold (what about you?) - so the signal was given to officially announce the specter of recession. Another world is possible and in fact being built in Venezuela. Unfortunately, many will suffer in the coming downturn.

"from 1920 to 1960, Venezuela was the leading world exporter of oil and here, through our Caribbean sea passed thousands of boats loaded with oil: but they left nothing to benefit the peoples of the Caribbean, the sister peoples of Latin America. Today revolutionary Venezuela places this wealth, above all, at the disposal of our sister peoples of the Caribbean and of Latin America: not for the North American empire." Hugo Chavez Frias, from closing words at Fourth Petrocaribe Summit.

Returning to Europe after some time away is like visiting an unloved relative falling into dementia. It may be unwelcome, but one sheds no tears. The persistent optimism of Western Bloc political and financial leaders is bizarre. For example Brian Cowen, Ireland's Finance Minister presented a budget recently based on projected inflation through 2008 of a little over 2% and growth in gross domestic product at 3%. Subsequently, Ireland's Economic and Social Research Institute's latest quarterly economic commentary reckoned growth at nearer 2% and inflation at over 3%.

But as this decade's credit boom slumps into bust, service-skewed economies like those in the US, Britain and Ireland are likely to be hit much harder than these forecasts suppose. Most people, businesses and households, more or less heavily in debt, will cut back hard on non-essential spending. That will probably create a vicious downward spiral as increasing numbers of people are made unemployed and overall consumer demand drops correspondingly. At the same time, creeping inflation will make everything dearer for people to buy. The full effects of all these processes are unlikely to work themselves out until late 2009 at the earliest.

Rich-country economists read their tarot card statistics blinkered by arrays of crystal-ball maybe-maybe-not data. But for millions of households in Asia, Africa and Latin America facing significant drops in family remittances as rich country economies go belly-up through 2008, real life stares them brutally in the face. For low-income families and communities in Africa, Asia or Latin America the effects of the coming recession will be far more devastating than for people in Europe and the US. Countries bullied into US-style trade-in-your-sovereignty pacts or EU-style Europeans-only-let's Party Agreements with the globalization devil will find their souls quickly ripped apart as the funny-money credit boom collapses into dwarf-star stagflation or a recessionary black hole.

[Full article linked below]

Solo, Toni. Varieties of Imperial Decline: Rearguard Success, Strategic Defeat. ZNet. 03-Jan-2008.

Striking MTV workers workers win partial victory

It is great news that the striking workers were able to force some concessions from the bosses. It is encouraging to see that workers' consciousness is being raised as well. The risk of the partial victory is that many workers will likely feel like they pushed the bosses and got lucky that they "let them stay on the insurance" - which is likely what management wants. Workers conscious of the fact that it is their right to be treated fairly in the workplace is far more dangerous for the bosses, and the longer the strike lasts, the more people will wake up to this fact.

MTV Networks on Wednesday reversed some of the cuts it had intended to make to benefits packages.

Workers said they would continue to challenge the remaining proposed changes, and nearly 100 of them protested for a third day outside the headquarters in Times Square of Viacom, MTV’s parent, amid throngs of holiday tourists.

Stetler, Brian. MTV to Let Freelancers Stay on Its Insurance. New York Times. 13-Dec-2007.

Survival of the fittest: will Cuba outlast US?

Thanks to blog Darwiana for pointing me to this article and for the excellent title:

The American dream is dead, said famed Nobel Prize laureate in Economics Joseph Stiglitz a few days ago. The passing of that dream is seen not only by him, but also by many Americans.

What some forward-thinking social scientists and certain visionaries once predicted —which is not as a prophecy to be fulfilled over the course of centuries, such as the prophecies of Nostradamus— but in the short-term, in the times in which we are now living.

If the idea is still not palpable to millions of those Americans who still live atop the bubble of hedonism and consumerism, it will become more so to the degree that this illusion is inevitably punctured by the heat generated by domestic policies. This also points to the contradiction of a régime that flaunts the well-being of its population and to high consumption as its principal badge of honor.

A system based on voracity and destruction will have no safe harbour, not even for its own people, to continually employ methods that harm people. Not only the war, with its blood-soaked dead and wounded soldiers; or the price of food, which has already become a concern for very low-income people—especially in this era of the ethanol— and other well-known actions are de-legitimizing and tossing the “American dream” overboard.

[...]

Martínez Molina, Julio. The Death of the American Dream. 02-Nov-2007.

Crisis of the transient workforce deepens

Corporations have been on the offensive against workers rights for years now. One key example is in the United States the incredible shift over the past 25 years from full-time, union jobs being dominant, to the current scenario of a transient workforce, whereby most workers are contractors with transient status.

This tactic has been very common throughout the history of capitalism (e.g. Bracero Program), but the current period is unique insofar as the practice cuts across all categories of workers including high-paying jobs such as computer programmers, and it is wide spread, being the dominant form of wage labor.

HR gurus and others have catchy phrases attached to the theory of the transient workforce, such as "right to work", "free agency" and "continuous rightsizing."

Workers, on the other hand, know its wrong, and they call it like they see it:

Scores of workers from MTV Networks walked off the job yesterday afternoon, filling the sidewalk outside the headquarters of its corporate parent, Viacom, to protest recent changes in benefits.

Freelance workers from MTV Networks outside the headquarters of the company’s corporate parent, Viacom, on Monday.

The walkout highlighted the concerns of a category of workers who are sometimes called permalancers: permanent freelancers who work like full-time employees but do not receive the same benefits.

Waving signs that read “Shame on Viacom,” the workers, most of them in their 20s, demanded that MTV Networks reverse a plan to reduce health and dental benefits for freelancers beginning Jan. 1.

In a statement, MTV Networks noted that its benefits program for full-time employees had also undergone changes, and it emphasized that the plan for freelancers was still highly competitive within the industry. Many freelancers receive no corporate benefits.

But some of the protesters asserted that corporations were competing to see which could provide the most mediocre health care coverage. Matthew Yonda, who works at Nickelodeon, held a sign that labeled the network “Sick-elodeon.”

“I’ve worked here every day for three years — I’m not a freelancer,” Mr. Yonda said. “They just call us freelancers in order to bar us from getting the same benefits as employees.”

Stetler, Brian. Freelancers walk out at MTV Networks. 11-Dec-2007.

Primative accumulation in contemporary China

Pictured right is Chinese labor activist, Huang Qingnan. He lies injured after he was attacked with a machete for helping workers fight for their rights. These types of attacks were very common in the US well into the 20th century. Workers were beaten and lynched on a regular basis by paid thugs and police. One of the most famous incidents was the Ludlow Massacre, perpetrated in the name of John D Rockerfeller.

Chinese activists have been concentrating on publicising the contents of the new Labour Contract Law that will come into force on 1 January next year. One of its positive features is that it will make it more difficult for employers to dismiss workers.

The law was passed despite fierce and sustained opposition from multinationals led by the American Chamber of Commerce, who threatened capital flight.

A compromise draft was eventually approved by the National People’s Congress – China’s non-elected parliament – with the bosses reassured by the certainty that implementation will be lax, not least because China’s only legal trade union is constitutionally and legally bound to uphold the leadership of the Communist Party of China.

While this link gives the organisation considerable leverage in law drafting, the union has barely any influence on the shop floor. Local government officials frequently find common interest with capitalists and ensure that enterprise-level trade unions are run by management or their stooges.

The rare instances of union officials speaking out on behalf of workers usually leads to their being sacked or transferred. Workers who organise outside the traditional union structures face arrest and imprisonment.

Although there is no protection of the right to strike in China and freedom of association is banned, there has been a marked increase in strike activity, as workers have made good use of recent labour shortages and a growing awareness of workers’ rights to demand a living wage paid on time.

Independent unions are banned, but workers often form hometown associations that are sometimes capable of organising strikes. Occasions where these associations unite in strike action are increasing.

The fight for labour rights in China’s cities. Socialist Worker. 11-Dec-2007.

Greek strike brings country to a halt

A general strike in Greece has shut down the country's public services, hospitals and public transport system. The labour action has hit Athens International Airport, where all flights into and out of the city have been cancelled. Ferries and boats also remain in docks across the country, paralysing transport to and from Greece's hundreds of islands. Only a handful of trains and trams in Athens ran for five hours on Wednesday morning, mainly so that strikers could travel to the capital for a rally. Greek labour unions have called the 24-hour strike in opposition to government pension reform plans.

Greek strike brings country to a halt. Deutche Welle. 12-Dec-2007.

Chavez can turn defeat into victory

Excellent op-ed piece:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez may yet salvage a victory from the defeat he just suffered. He won't be able to overturn the results of the referendum on his constitutional reforms. And that's as it should be. A majority of Venezuelan voters told him to change course.

But contrary to the heated rhetoric of the campaign, the aftermath of the referendum seems to be bringing both sides closer together.

Chavez promptly congratulated the opposition for its victory and acknowledged that low voter turnout may have been the ultimate cause of the constitutional reform defeat.

For their part, opposition leaders acknowledged the fairness of the process and offered to meet with the president to "initiate the process of reconciliation." They are even suggesting that they will now work with the president to implement some of his proposals, such as extending social security benefits to workers in the informal sector, or the reduction of the workday to six hours.

Except for a few die-hards, the new opposition leaders are not using their victory to push for the unconstitutional removal of Chavez from office, as the previous opposition leadership did for seven long years.

In accepting defeat, Chavez has also burnished his democratic credentials. He has proven that he can win nine consecutive elections, but he can also lose one. Chavez's previous electoral victories, although internationally recognized as clean and fair, were nevertheless rejected by the opposition under various pretexts. Sunday's defeat creates a sense of democratic normalcy that will make it much harder for the extremist opposition to find any traction with their claims of Chavez's authoritarian bias.

The defeat provides Chavez and his supporters with an opportunity to redirect their efforts to bread-and-butter issues that affect the majority of Venezuelans, instead of the more arcane and theoretical realm of creating the "socialism of the XXI Century."

Since his resounding victory last year, Chavez has increasingly moved his focus away from the kind of policies that gained him the support of a vast majority of Venezuelans, such as the massive creation of housing, the eradication of illiteracy or the implementation of a Cuban-modeled health care system.

Although Chavez has an impressive economic record that combines fast growth with the deepest reduction of poverty rates in South America, Venezuelans had come to resent the fact that he seemed to be more interested in building international alliances to counterbalance American power than he was in dealing with domestic corruption and crime.

Perhaps the only true loser of the election is the Bush administration, which until the very last minute continued to meddle in the internal affairs of Venezuela by working with the extremist wing of the opposition to reject the results of the election if Chavez won and to help plan a series of actions meant to destabilize the country.

The surprising result of this referendum has lessons for all the parties involved.

For Chavez, it is an opportunity to adjust course and regain the full support of the Venezuelan people.

For the opposition, it proved that Chavez can be defeated by constitutional means.

For the White House, it shows that the best way of protecting democracy in Venezuela is to allow Venezuelans to choose on their own how and by whom to be governed.

Prada, Juan Blanco. Chavez can turn defeat into victory. Courant.com. 10-Dec-2007.

Venezuelan democracy

I heard someone comment recently that Venezuela is not a democracy. The evidence is to the contrary:

With the defeat of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's proposed constitutional reforms, aimed at "opening the path to socialism," in the referendum on December 2, by a tiny margin of 50.7% to 49.3%, many Venezuelans are asking ‘what happened?' why, when approximately 7.1 million people voted for Chavez in the presidential elections in December 2006, did nearly 3 million of them abstain in the constitutional reform referendum a year later?

[...]

Contrary to international media portrayals of the Chavez government as restricting free speech, the rightwing opposition controls the majority of media outlets in Venezuela and they used them to spread lies and rumours aimed at instilling fears about the proposed constitutional reforms. It was said, for example, that if the reforms were passed the state would be able to take your children away and that people's personal property, houses, cars and small businesses would be expropriated by the state. They also presented a proposed change which would have removed presidential term limits allowing Chavez to stand for reelection, such as is the law in France, Australia, the UK and around 170 other countries around the world, as a vote on whether Chavez would be "president for life." The opposition also carried out illegal anonymous advertising campaigns and distributed fake copies of the constitutional reforms with falsified articles.

[...]

Janicke, Kiraz. Why The Constitutional Reform In Venezuela Went Down And Where To Next!. 10-Dec-2007.

The power of international capital is immense, its shocking how often they portray themselves as victims of bogeymen, as they do with Chavez, Castro and others. The defeat of the reforms is ominous and disappointing, but not surprising.

The ongoing crisis in capital with its upheavals and contradictions cannot counter the truth that a humane, rational system to replace capital, that is a socialist system, is required for the betterment of all mankind.

The choice is between socialism or barbarism

On Uzbekistan cotton:

[A recent BBC video showing children in] Uzbekistan working in the fields picking cotton was incredibly shocking. You can watch it here.

Secretly filming, the BBC reporters showed the schools closed for the duration of the harvest, and the police herding children as young as nine years old onto buses. The video shows Lorry loads of mattresses being taken to the farms, as the children are expected to sleep in the fields after working for hours in the baking sun. The cotton picked by forced child labour then appears in clothes sold in ASDA and Primark in the UK.

The film also showed film of the mechanised cotton harvest in the days when Uzbekistan used to be part of the USSR. Contrast the picture here from the Uzbek cotton harvest in 1977 with the BBC film of children picking the cotton by hand today.

Tony Cliff always used to criticise those who fell for the lie that the Soviet economy was intrinsically more backwards than the West by pointing out the implicit chauvinism of those who compared Russia with Germany in terms of living standards, but did not compare Uzbekistan with Pakistan.

In the days of the USSR, Soviet republics of Central Asia had higher living standards than other countries in the region.

Many socialists in the West still do not appreciate what a disaster the collapse of the Soviet Union has been.

Using as sources [...] Unicef, the World Bank and the BBC, we find that the world bank reported in 2000 that in the USSR overall incomes have dropped by 50%. In some regions, such as the Caucasus and central Asia, over half the population now live in absolute poverty - defined as living on an income of $2 per day or less.

Unicef report 18 million children on less than $2 per day, 60 million children in poverty.

Unicef reports; “In Central Asian countries less than half of 15-to-18-year-olds now attend secondary school. Ten years ago more than two-thirds attended. ” There were also at least one million displaced as refugees by war within the borders of the former USSR.

[...]

Back in the USSR. Socialist Unity. 31-Oct-2007.

How has capitalism helped?

[...]

Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s last president, had based his policies on the premise that the USSR’s economic difficulties – which he referred to as ‘stagnation’ – were caused by the Soviet Union’s socialist economic model: universal public ownership and the central planning of production. But as this system was dismantled and replaced by privatisation and the dominance of market forces, Russia and the other republics of the former USSR went into catastrophic industrial and social decline, which continued throughout the 1990s.

The failure of the capitalist reforms to deliver on the promises of economic dynamism and higher living standards (except for an elite minority) was not an experience confined to the former USSR and other ex-socialist states. The majority of South American countries, for example, underwent a process of de-industrialisation and mass impoverishment during the neo-liberal 1980s and 1990s, an experience which is fueling the current movements on that continent for a turn towards socialism.

[...]

Mulholland, Marcus. The Soviet model and economic cold war. 21st Century Socialism. 31-Dec-2006.

Work Choice Howard's achilles heel

The working people of Australia, spearheaded by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), have been fighting a bitter battle with the John Howard's hard-line neo-liberal government for years. Howard, cut from the same cloth as George Bush in the US, has been anti-labor, pro-war, pro-deregulation and pro-tax-cut.

These policies have created the same conditions in Australia as they have everywhere else, namely increased wealth polarization, reduced workers rights and a destruction of civil society.

But now it looks like people are finally waking up to the truth. The ACTU and many others have been campaigning to stop Howard and remove him from office. Their Your Rights at Work campaign (YRAW or YR@W) has, through a massive grassroots effort, put the Howard administration on its heels.

[...]

The Howard government won a legal bid yesterday to suppress secret Work Choices documents, saying the release of the papers would lead to speculation that the coalition planned a new wave of workplace changes.

A spokesman for the prime minister told News Ltd last night that the documents could not be released because "the majority of them were cabinet documents".

[...]

Rudd can't fathom why Work Choices documents suppressed. Sydney Morning Herald. 20-Nov-2007.

And more on the ACTU campaign:

Grassroots activism has sullied the Work Choices brand; now it stands to topple the Government.

[...]

In marginal seats around Australia, the Your Rights At Work logo, YR@W, is more conspicuous than the Labor Party banner. It appears on so many T-shirts and placards that it threatens to depose Che Guevara as the new emblem of activism and resistance. There are 46 groups around NSW and John Robertson, the secretary of Unions NSW who devised the blueprint for the grassroots campaign, believes they will revive the labour movement.

"They're the future of unions," Robertson says. "Over the past 20 years we got very complacent and lost members. But these groups are made up of locals, not blow-ins. They're the same people you see running chocolate wheels at school fetes.

"Even if Rudd gets in and overturns Work Choices, these groups won't disappear. I don't know, or even care, if they get involved in party politics, but we will have trained future community leaders, who will be able to fight on issues like transport, infrastructure, schools and housing."

[...]

West, Andrew. Peoples front is in full swing. Sydney Morning Herald. 17-Nov-2007.

Historic strikes in France, Korea

From LabourStart on Friday:

The last few days have seen extraordinary struggles taking place in Korea and in France.

Those struggles have also illustrated the need for the trade union movement to have its own independent media. Let me explain what I mean.

France saw a huge wave of strikes this week. This gigantic struggle is the long-awaited counter-attack by unions to a right-wing government with an explicitly anti-union agenda.

I've been able to follow the coverage a bit in the British media, and was not surprised to hear a discussion yesterday on the radio about whether French President Nicolas Sarkozy would be "tough enough" to resist the unions. As one reporter put it, would he be as strong a leader as Margaret Thatcher was back in the 1980s?

That's an extreme example, but the more common coverage has focussed entirely on the difficulties faced by commuters, with photos illustrating empty Metro stations in Paris to make the point.

In other words, the news story for most mainstream media has been about Sarkozy's toughness and the suffering of commuters -- and not about the actual workers on strike and what they are calling for.

Korea this week provided us with what I think was an even more extraordinary example of how mainstream media covers labour disputes.

Every November, tens of thousands of trade unionists rally in the capital, Seoul. I know because I was there ten years ago. This year's national workers' rally was used by Korean unions to focus attention on the free trade agreement between Korea and the USA, and thousands of farmers and students joined in the protest.

According to one eyewitness account, their protest was blocked by some 25,000 baton-wielding riot police, who proceeded to attack them with water cannon in an attempt to disperse the demonstration.

The main foreign news agencies such as Reuters and AFP reported this as an "anti-FTA" protest, without mentioning that it was actually an annual trade union event. Normally reliable news sources like the BBC didn't even bother to report the event at all. As a friend of mine in Paris put it, local coverage in France of the Korean rally described it as "a bunch of rebellious farmers going wild about a trade agreement with the USA which they mistakenly believe will deprive them of income."

What we have here are gigantic protests by national trade unions in two of the world's most important industrialized countries, which are either being under-reported or mis-reported.

[...]

Lee, Eric. LabourStart. 16-Nov-2007.

Ellen DeGeneres is a Scab!

From Union Review:

A press release from the Writers Guild of America, East is circulating this evening about Ellen DeGeneres, which the union is very disappointed with and Union Review is outraged at.

The talk-show host comedianne, whom I have been a big fan of for many years, respected the picketing writers for one day and then went back to work with her own material -- and that stinks (not her material, the fact that her going back to work disrespects the strike). Her performances this week is no different than a scab laborer breaking the strikers backs.

This is explained fairly well in the release (below), however, it is important to note that when a star like Ellen does this, she is only raking in the revenues for the companies that won't fairly negotiate with us -- it prolongs everything.

Ellen DeGeneres is a Scab! Union Review. 09-Nov-2007.

The Credit Bubble and the Crisis of Capital

Today in the WSJ:

California, Ohio and Florida had more than two-thirds of the 25 cities with the nation's highest foreclosure rates during the third quarter, as the credit crunch and falling home values hit homeowners, a foreclosure-listing service said.

James J. Saccacio, chief executive of RealtyTrac Inc., said the number of filings at 77 of the 100 largest metro areas rose from the second quarter. There continue, however, to be "pockets of the country -- most noticeably metro areas in the Carolinas, Virginia and Texas -- that have thus far dodged the foreclosure bullet," the CEO noted.

Higher interest rates and weaker home values have hit many homeowners hard, especially those with higher-risk subprime mortgages. Lenders, in turn, have tightened standards, making it tougher for individuals and companies to obtain credit.

Early this month, RealtyTrac of Irvine, Calif., said third-quarter foreclosure filings surged 30% nationally from the second quarter and nearly doubled from a year earlier, with one foreclosure filing for every 196 U.S. households. Third-quarter filings were up from a year ago in 45 states. Mr. Saccacio said at the time that "given the number of loans due to reset through the middle of 2008, and the continuing weakness in home sales, we would expect foreclosure activity to remain high and even increase over the next year in many markets."

[...]

Barris, Mike. California, Ohio, Florida Lead in Foreclosure Rates. Wall Street Journal. 14-Nov-2007.

And from Justice:

[...]

It wasn’t too long ago that capitalist pundits proclaimed the end of sharp economic crises. The reality, however, is that capitalism is a crisis-ridden system. At the end of the ‘90s, the Federal Reserve moved to contain the collapse of the dot-com boom by lowering interest rates, which combined with an abundant supply of cheap credit and rising home values to trigger the housing bubble.

This led to a feeling of invincibility and incredibly risky investments for casino financial capitalism, which further detached it from the real economy. The current crisis shows that it can only remain suspended in air for a while before the “reality-based” economic laws have an effect.

The current boom has been defined by the increasing chasm between the ultra-rich and the rest of the population. While a few roll in money, wages for the majority have stagnated. Wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of gross domestic product in the U.S. since 1947. Ultimately the falling share of wages in national income is restricting the market for capitalism and increasing the tendency towards crisis.

Enormous anger has built up during the boom years at the unequal nature of society. A job (albeit often low paid and insecure) and the availability of relatively cheap credit, have softened the blows that have rained down on working-class people.

However, the onset of a world recession, when it comes, will profoundly alter the political situation as billions of working-class people will be expected to pay for the crisis. There is not a mechanical connection between economic developments and the consciousness and combativity of the working class, but, whether sooner or later, the coming economic upheavals will lay the basis for a massive increase in radicalization in the U.S. and internationally.

Shibabaw, Theodros. The Credit Bubble Bursts. Justice. 08-Sep-2007.

Our 21st Century Zimmerwald

In September 1915 two coach loads of outstanding socialist leaders from the antiwar left wing of Socialist (2^nd) International affiliated parties, including two future leaders of the October Soviet Revolution - Lenin and Trotsky -- met at Zimmerwald (in neutral Switzerland) to unite those revolutionary socialists prepared to carry out serious and consequent opposition to the imperialist world war. They issued a manifesto calling on soldiers, workers and oppressed peoples and nationalities of Europe to lay down their arms; and to refuse to continue to slaughter one another in the interests of capital; to struggle to defend their own class interests against those who had sent them to the trenches. In today's jargon we might say that the group was small enough to meet in a rented Tim Horton's, but too big to meet in a telephone booth (as do quite a number of ultraleft groups today when they congregate to cross more t's and dot more i's on their manifestos denouncing Chávez and Morales as a mealy-mouthed "populists").

The solid core of the Zimmerwald group, despite its small size, went on to lead the Russian October revolution. Under the impact of Soviet power in the former Tsarist Empire, the capacity of the German and other ruling classes in Europe to continue their carnage and slaughter dissipated. Kings, Kaisers, and Tsars were toppled as the "war to end all wars" collapsed amidst mutinies, rebellions, civil wars, and insurrectionary commotion across the "Old Continent." The rebellious mood even spread to North America as the Winnipeg General strike of 1919 showed.

From Santa Clara (Cuba) -- today's 21^st Century Zimmerwald -- tested Cuban and Venezuelan leaderships wielding government and state power set forth a clear orientation to millions of anti-imperialist, anti colonialist, and anti-capitalist fighters across the continent. Hugo Chávez made it clear that they and their allies will not back down in the face of imperialist threats. And they will not stand idly by - Chávez iterated this with utter clarity - and allow imperialist inspired forces to overthrow the Bolivian government and/or assassinate Bolivian President Evo Morales. The great moral authority of el Che - Ernesto Che Guevara - accompanied that of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez to add force and depth to the message.

Our 21st Century Zimmerwald. VenezuelaAnalysis.com. 14-Oct-2007.