tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-323890112024-03-13T17:21:53.955+00:00A World to WinFor revolutionary solutions to create a sustainable, not-for-profit economy in place of global capital alongside a real democracy based on People’s Assemblies. Visit our web site at www.aworldtowin.netA World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.comBlogger1798125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-50818211731536806802014-04-10T11:23:00.002+01:002014-04-10T11:23:48.420+01:00Big Pharma makes you sick<div class="MsoNormal">
The fact that the UK government alone wasted £473m on a drug
for flu that works no better than paracetamol is an expensive example of how
Big Pharma can actually harm your health at the taxpayer’s expense rather than
improve it. </div>
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A lack of expertise at government level, corporate secrecy
and media scaremongering combined to induce panic-buying of the drug Tamiflu by
the state from 2006 onwards. At the time, some were predicting that a pandemic
of bird flu could kill up to 750,000 people in Britain. </div>
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The drug was widely prescribed during the swine flu outbreak
in 2009. Tamiflu was stocked by 96 countries and got on to the World Health
Organisation’s list of essential medicines. Manufacturer Roche were laughing
all the way to the bank. Last year the world’s third largest drugs company with
revenues last year of over $52 billion.</div>
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At most, a dozen pharmaceutical corporations control the
research, manufacture and sales of drugs. Naturally, they keep their drug trials
secret and secure. Some are tested on unsuspecting, desperate people in
developing countries.</div>
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Scientists at the Cochrane Collaboration had to fight
long and hard to get their hands on the Roche research data. In November 2012, a
researcher suggested that European governments sue Roche and that doctors and
others boycott the company’s products until it published all its data on
oseltamivir (Tamiflu). </div>
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Finally, have wrenched the data out of the reluctant Roche,
the Cochrane Foundation scientists now <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD008965.pub4/abstract;jsessionid=4B3F682BBD35116434D466F6D7298BFC.f02t04">say</a>
that the drug did not prevent the spread of flu or reduce dangerous
complications, and only slightly helped symptoms. As to the claim that Tamiflu
could slow the spread of the disease to give time for a vaccine to be
developed, the report's authors said "the case for this is simply
unproven" and "there is no credible way these drugs could prevent a
pandemic". </div>
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Worse than that, Tamiflu could have actually made people sicker.
Carl Heneghan, Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford
and one of the report's authors, told the BBC: "I think the whole £500m
has not benefited human health in any way and we may have harmed people. The
system that exists for producing evidence on drugs is so flawed and open to
misuse that the public has been misled."</div>
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Oseltamivir was first produced towards the end of the last
century and had little success at first. So Roche’s public relations team went
to work to stoke media interest and create political pressure to buy the drug. The corporation’s PR adviser Edelman worked
with the company to create “a hybrid network of twelve local public relations
agencies to take advantage of flu as a breaking news story and launch Tamiflu
in the top 100 local markets when flu was in the area”. </div>
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In September 2009, the <a href="http://www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b3811">BMJ reported</a> that doctors
were raising concerns about side-effects and that it was clear that Tamiflu
could not contain a local outbreak within a defined area. The report added: “Yet
orders continue to grow. In the UK, oseltamivir has practically become an over
the counter drug, with one distinction: it is handed out free after callers
provide a simple description of their flu symptoms by telephone, bypassing the
need to see a doctor.”</div>
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The Tamiflu scandal is just one of many that beset the
industry. For example, Big Pharma – the handful of corporations that control
the global industry – haven’t produced a new range of antibiotics for 20 years
because there’s little profit in selling this type of drug.</div>
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During that time, the over-prescription of antibiotics by
health practitioners and their intensive use in livestock farming to make meat
cheaper has spawned new bacterial strains that are immune to existing drugs.
Others have become so difficult to treat that they kill some 25,000
Europeans yearly.</div>
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In 2013, the top 10 pharmaceuticals had <a href="http://www.worldpharmaceuticals.net/editorials/21/Top%20ten%20global%20pharma.pdf">astronomical
revenues</a> totalling over $300 billion. Much of it comes from drugs we
don’t need and from denying developing countries the right to sell generic
equivalents at lower prices.</div>
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When it comes to holding on to patents to enforce
monopolies, Big Pharma has an appalling record. Dylan Gray’s film “<a href="http://fireintheblood.com/">Fire In the Blood</a>” documents how the
corporations and governments blocked access to low-cost AIDS drugs – causing
millions of unnecessary deaths.</div>
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<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/22/hiv-aids-deaths-pharmaceutical-industry">He
says</a>: “At the industry's behest, governments in the US and Europe use a
dizzying variety of trade mechanisms, threats of sanctions and so on to curtail
supplies of affordable medicine in the global south. The potential impact of
these measures in human terms is nothing less than cataclysmic.”</div>
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There are solutions we could pursue if the profit motive was
not the main driver. First, over-prescribing has to stop. Doctors have to put
patients first instead and abandon the quick-fix approach as well as misplaced
loyalties to drug firms.</div>
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Secondly, we should note that 84% of worldwide funding
for drug discovery research comes from government and public sources, against
just 12% from drug companies. Apparently, researchers have already discovered
new antibiotics but haven’t got the funds to develop them. So the science is
there. However, the technology and capacity to turn knowledge into products is
in the hands of Big Pharma. </div>
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This is a cash rich industry – the top 20 corporations have
an estimated $150 billion in resources – that is now more interested in
protecting patents than developing new drugs against common diseases, or in
persuading people to buy “lifestyle” drugs they don’t really need. Big Pharma
has an unhealthy grip on society’s collective throats that requires a strong
dose of revolutionary medicine to loosen.</div>
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Paul Feldman<br />
Communications editor</div>
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A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-31476470588298971152014-03-07T10:41:00.003+00:002014-03-07T10:41:22.574+00:00People's Inquiry into 'Our future beyond capitalism' <div class="MsoNormal">
The Ukraine-Russia crisis is just one expression of dramatic
changes that are taking diverse forms in different countries. Nevertheless, there
is an essential unity to a fast-moving global crisis that embraces economy and
finance, ecosystems, democracy and politics, culture and ideology.</div>
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There is undoubtedly an eco-social impasse on a global
scale. The old order cannot manage the contradictions within the existing
system or meet the aspirations of countless millions in countries from Brazil
to Ukraine, from the UK to the United States, from France to Greece.</div>
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Hierarchical political-state systems which are superficially
democratic are compromised by their collusion with corporate and financial
power and their subordination to market forces. Climate change is one
consequence. So too is resurgent nationalism, creeping authoritarianism and
mass state surveillance.</div>
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There is worldwide opposition and resistance, but as yet no
shared strategy for getting beyond capitalism socially, politically and
economically. That should surely be our goal and we assert that another world
is not only possible but entirely necessarily for all our futures!</div>
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So after more than six years and 1,700 blogs, usually at the
rate of five a week, A World to Win is proposing a switch of emphasis. There is
a genuine need to deeper our understanding of the connected parts of the
dramatically altered world and to use this knowledge to change what goes on in
favour of the 99%.</div>
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We’re suggesting that this takes the form of a People’s
Inquiry, with “Our Future beyond Capitalism” as the subject to be investigated.
It will be open to individuals, campaign groups, trade unions, academics and
students and anyone interested in working on solutions in a collaborative way.
We have suggested six areas for the inquiry:</div>
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<ol start="1" style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="1">
<li class="MsoNormal">The
ecosystem, including climate change and species loss</li>
<li class="MsoNormal">Global
economy and finance, where the 1% rule over the 99%</li>
<li class="MsoNormal">The
state, democracy and social rights (like health and housing)</li>
<li class="MsoNormal">Ideology
and philosophy – dialectics of liberation </li>
<li class="MsoNormal">Culture,
education and sport – how they can help set us free</li>
<li class="MsoNormal">Networks/organisations/strategies
for revolutionary change</li>
</ol>
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When the People’s Inquiry is launched next week, you will
find links from this site to these different areas. In each area, we have
suggested some questions to focus our initial work. A World to Win is proposing
a three-stage process:</div>
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1. Gathering evidence through papers, web references and
contributions from individuals and groups. People can bear witness about their
own situation or campaign, through text or by sending video or audio
files. </div>
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2. Face-to-face meetings in different locations, and on-line
meetings, to assess and discuss the evidence, draw conclusions and make
proposals.</div>
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3. A working group, which contributors will be invited to
join, will discuss the results and collaborate on the contents of a draft final
report that maps out a way forward.</div>
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This will be a simple registration process that will enable
you to post to the inquiry, which is hosted on our <a href="http://aworldtowin.ning.com/">network platform</a>. This is your invite
to take part. Please accept and use it.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Paul Feldman</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Communications editor</div>
A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-86057259541264499712014-03-06T11:26:00.001+00:002014-03-06T11:26:45.752+00:00Get fracking - corporate plans for Ukraine's future<div class="MsoNormal">
An independent, modern, prosperous Ukraine was the vision of
the young people that took to the streets to get rid of the Yanukovych regime
and many think there is a better chance of that in partnership with the European
Union than under Russian influence. But the fact is that the EU, US and their
transnational corporate partners (and the home-grown oligarchs) have very
different plans</div>
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And these do not hinge upon the prosperity and wellbeing of
Ukrainian citizens and their environment. Fracking on a massive scale will be a
prime focus for EU and IMF "loans", and Shell and Chevron, who signed
deals with ousted president Yanukovych in 2013, will be joined by all the usual
suspects.</div>
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Ukraine has an estimated 42 trillion cubic feet of technically
recoverable shale gas reserves, the fourth largest deposits in Europe behind
Poland, France and Norway. Since France is so far not in the market, Ukraine's
deposits are even more attractive. The US Energy Administration suggests Ukraine could be exporting shale gas
by 2020. With almost every Russian gas pipeline running through Ukraine, it
would be possible to create parallel infrastructure exporting shale gas. </div>
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The Russian government says it <a href="http://www.mining.com/russia-is-getting-queasy-about-ukraines-shale-plans-42366/">objects
to fracking</a> in Eastern Ukraine because of fears about water pollution when
its actual fear is competition. That is not to say water pollution won't
happen, but it isn't stopping <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/18/siberian-shale-find-fuels-russias-fracking-future/?page=all">Russia's
own fracking</a> plans for large areas of Siberia. </div>
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The corporations are moving into other areas of Ukraine’s
economy too. Ukraine's former collective farms were seized by oligarchs like
Oleg Bakhmatyuk and grown to the point where his <a href="http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23018-cargill-acquires-stake-in-ukraine-s-ukrlandfarming">agricultural
business</a> UkrLandFarming is the worlds second biggest egg producer, and the
eighth largest grain exporter.</div>
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UkrLandFarming recently sold a 5% share to multinational
agri-chemical giant Cargill for £200m. Cargill already have a big operation in
Ukraine, with feed mills, oil production and grain silos.</div>
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Ukraine is poised to become the world's third biggest grain
exporter in 2014 overtaking Russia and Argentina, another blow to Russian
hegemony. But all this wealth will not be produced to benefit ordinary
Ukrainians. It will enrich the oligarchs and their global partners whilst it further
destroys Ukraine's land and ecology.</div>
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There is terrible air pollution throughout Ukraine, because
of the coal-burning industries of eastern Ukraine and poor regulation of
transport. The rich dark soil of the steppes is already suffering from erosion
and land slips due to over farming. Grain production is being sustained by the
application of huge quantities of chemicals and recent low rainfall has led to a
need for more irrigation.</div>
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The great rivers –
the Dnieper, Dniester, and Donets – are seriously polluted with chemical runoff.
The diversion of fresh water has made the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea more
saline, damaging marine wildlife and reducing fish stocks.</div>
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Ukraine must also go on coping with the aftermath of the Chernobyl
nuclear power plant explosion. Vast areas of farmland and forest are
contaminated with radioactivity including Strontium 90, but small farmers are
still working it.</div>
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Ukrainians just have to look across the border to Poland to
see that EU membership is not necessarily a route to modernity. Poland is still
a focus for dirty industries with low levels of regulation that EU giants
France and Germany would never permit on their own soil.</div>
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And the Polish government has put thousands of hectares of
prime agricultural land on the market in recent years – multinational purchasers
are accused of planning to exploit a legal loophole to start growing GM crops.
Polish farmers have been <a href="http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/2280842/polish_farmers_grassroots_rebellion.html">blockading
the land sales</a> agency with tractors continuously for a year.</div>
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Millions of Ukrainians are now set to join the economic and
environmental struggles facing all of us on the planet - they are more than
welcome!</div>
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Penny Cole</div>
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Environment editor</div>
A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-88998726274363143142014-03-05T10:56:00.000+00:002014-03-05T10:56:03.564+00:00Welsh co-ops report points the way forward<div class="MsoNormal">
Parallel announcements of job cuts across the UK underline the price of
the so-called “recovery” as it affects the lives of the majority of ordinary
people caught up in the global economic crisis. <a href="http://wales.gov.uk/docs/det/publications/140221coopreporten.pdf?lang=en">A
timely report</a> from the Welsh Co-operative and Mutuals Commission sets out a
new path. </div>
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Steelmaker Tata, part of an India-based transnational conglomerate
comprising over 100 operating companies in seven business sectors, is reducing
its workforce by 123 in Newport, South Wales in response to reduced demand for
its electrical steels. </div>
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This is much more than ironic because coal, iron, steel and
even railways were exported from Newport and Cardiff to India and other parts
of the then British empire at the height of the industrial revolution.</div>
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Shared Services Connected Ltd (SSCL) is a little-known joint
venture formed last November between the Cabinet Office and the UK arm of
French IT services group Steria with the aim of cutting the costs of the
government's back office functions. </div>
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The Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) expects its members’
new employer to close offices in Cardiff, Sheffield and Leeds with additional
losses in Blackpool, Newcastle, Peterborough and York, amounting to 500 jobs,
many being transferred to cheaper sources of labour overseas. </div>
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A cynic might say that this is just business as usual, the
unfortunate consequences of the operation of the global “free market” in
commodities produced by the application of capital and labour. And to some
extent – stripped out of the immediate historic context - they’d be right. </div>
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But the crash of 20007-8 showed that the credit-induced
period of globalisation of that system had reached its limit. The recession that
followed has resulted in huge over-capacity in many countries, including in
China, the world’s second largest economy.</div>
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This new round of job cuts and capacity reduction comes
after five years of ultra-low interest rates set by central banks around the world,
the lowest in their history, have failed to bring about a real recovery. Manufacturing
production in the Chinese powerhouse of globalisation is not slowing but
shrinking, and it’s not being replaced elsewhere. </div>
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So it is high time to think about and begin the process of
bringing an embryonic new system fully into existence, taking the place of the
one which has burnt out. And we can look to South Wales for that, too. As
Professor Andrew Davies Chair of the Welsh Co-operative and Mutuals Commission,
writes in the report</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Many have argued that we are faced with an extensive and
systemic breakdown of trust in our society: between citizens and many of the
major institutions in civil society and between the individual, the state and
the political process. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Much of this suggested breakdown derives from the global
banking and economic crisis in 2007 and the continued world economic down-turn
and the anaemic recovery in the UK, triggered by scandals in the banking sector
and recent corporate failures in other sectors which has led to extensive
questioning of the ways in which our economy and society is run….<br /> <o:p> </o:p>The orthodoxy of the neo-liberal, free market philosophy
which has dominated governmental, political and economic thinking over the last
forty years is now being widely challenged for the first time in many years.
This widespread disillusionment has led many people to look for alternative,
more ethical and socially responsible ways of organising businesses and
services, particularly those run on a co-operative, mutual or not-for-profit
basis. </blockquote>
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The report “aims to create a culture and policy environment
in which co-operative ways of doing business are the norm, not the exception”. It’s
easy to argue that the report doesn’t go far enough. But it’s a great place to
start.</div>
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Gerry Gold</div>
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Economics editor</div>
A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-87656181792403386102014-03-03T12:01:00.001+00:002014-03-03T12:31:10.501+00:00Defend Ukraine's right to self-determination<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Russia’s
occupation of Crimea and the threat to invade other parts of Ukraine on a
trumped up pretext, is a reactionary response to a popular uprising for
democracy in Kiev and a diversion from serious economic problems confronting
the Putin regime.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">As leaders
East and West seek to blame one another, the key issue – Ukraine’s right to
self-determination is being swept under the carpet. The excuse for the invasion
of Crimea – that the Russian-speaking majority had to be saved from “fascists”
– is part of a fake narrative dreamt up in Moscow and one used down the ages.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Moscow
claims that the Maidan uprising in Kiev has been run and financed by Western reactionary
forces and is aimed at suppressing Ukraine’s Russian speakers. Yet the Maidan
uprising which began in November 2013 was first and foremost a popular
revolution, which included many elements in Ukrainian society, amongst them –
but not led by – right wing nationalists against a corrupt, autocratic regime. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Many
Jews took part in the uprising, for example. An <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/world/1.577114">ex-Israeli special forces soldier</a>
led a Kiev fighting unit against the Yanukovych government. </span>Volodymyr
Groysman, a former mayor of the city of Vinnytsia and the newly appointed
deputy prime minister for regional policy, is a Jew.<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 7.5pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></span><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<h1 style="background: white; line-height: 17.85pt; margin-bottom: 2.9pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15pt; font-weight: normal;"> </span></h1>
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<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A
language law introduced last week by <st1:city w:st="on">Kiev</st1:city>’s
parliament to reverse a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18725849">provocative act</a> by ex-president
Yanukovych was yesterday vetoed by <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ukraine</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s caretaker president
Turchynov. He acknowledged it had been a mistake.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">While
Putin’s provocative actions are a blatant infringement of Ukrainian
sovereignty, the Russian bear has found some allies in strange places. British
media commentators including Jonathan Steele and former British ambassador
Rodric Braithwaite are calling for NATO and John Kerry to “back off”. As
Timothy Snyder <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/mar/01/ukraine-haze-propaganda/">writes</a>
in the <i>New York Review of Books</i>: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">"Interestingly,
the message from authoritarian regimes in <st1:city w:st="on">Moscow</st1:city>
and <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Kiev</st1:place></st1:city> was
not so different from some of what was written during the uprising in the
English-speaking world, especially in publications of the far left and the far
right. From Lyndon LaRouche’s <i>Executive
Intelligence Review</i> through Ron Paul’s newsletter through <i>The Nation</i> and <i>The Guardian</i>, the story was essentially the same: little of the
factual history of the protests, but instead a play on the idea of a
nationalist, fascist, or even Nazi coup d’état.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The
first time <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ukraine</st1:place></st1:country-region>
saw even a glimpse of nationhood in modern times was in 1919 when the Zluty
unity agreement was signed and the Ukrainian People’s Republic came into
existence. Areas of the country were, however, ceded to Poland.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Early
Bolshevik policy strongly asserted the right of all nations to
self-determination in the former Tsarist empire and elsewhere. During the
1920s, under Mykola Skrypnyk’s Ukrainization policy, the Soviet leadership
encouraged a national renaissance in the Ukrainian language, literature and the
arts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Crimea
became an autonomous part of Ukraine in 1954 after being gifted by Nikita
Khrushchev. It was his effort to make up for Stalinist oppression, when 7.5
million people – mostly Ukrainians – died in the Holodomar, a terror-famine
deliberately imposed by Stalin in the early 1930s. Since 2006, the Holodomor
has been recognized by <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ukraine</st1:place></st1:country-region>
and several other countries as an act of genocide.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The
Stalinist policy of starvation and repression was followed up from 1944 by ethnic cleansing with the forcible
deportation of over 200,000 Crimean Tartars. Even Tartars fighting in the ranks
of the Red Army were demobilised and sent to labour camps. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Not
too surprisingly, Stalinist repression had led some Ukrainians to welcome German
forces after the invasion of the USSR in 1941. Nonetheless, the vast majority of
Ukrainians fought with the Soviet Red Army and Moscow named <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Kiev</st1:place></st1:city> as a hero city. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<st1:country-region w:st="on"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Ukraine</span></st1:country-region><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">’s longing for nationhood re-emerged
as a powerful force encouraged by Mikhail Gorbachev’s <i>glasnost</i> policy and, finally, the 1991 break-up of the <st1:place w:st="on">Soviet Union</st1:place>. It inspired the human chain of 300,000
Ukrainians which led to independence of today’s <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ukraine</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">After
<st1:country-region w:st="on">Ukraine</st1:country-region> declared its state
sovereignty in 1990 and its independence in August 1991, a dispute flared up
over the status of the <st1:place w:st="on">Crimea</st1:place>. It was settled
by an agreement in 1992, by which Crimea was granted autonomous status within <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ukraine</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">But
Vladimir Putin – following in Stalin’s footsteps, has never accepted <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ukraine</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s right
to exist. In 2008, he <a href="http://korrespondent.net/ukraine/politics/426945">said
to George Bush</a> that if <st1:country-region w:st="on">Ukraine</st1:country-region>
joined NATO, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Russia</st1:country-region> would
annex Crimea and eastern <st1:country-region w:st="on">Ukraine</st1:country-region>:
“Don’t you understand, George — <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ukraine</st1:place></st1:country-region>
is not even a nation! What is <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ukraine</st1:place></st1:country-region>?
Part of her territory is <st1:place w:st="on">Eastern Europe</st1:place>, and
part, a considerable part, was given by us!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A
succession of leaders representing either a Western-leaning bourgeois or
oligarchs looking to Russia have failed to develop Ukraine and played one
community off against another. Corruption became endemic with Tymoshenko and
then Yanukovych enriching themselves. Now Ukraine is bankrupt. The European
Union, for all its mouthing about democracy, has no intention of bailing out
any leader in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Kiev</st1:place></st1:city>.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Underlying
Putin’s aggressive nationalism is his deep fear of a people’s uprising within <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Russia</st1:place></st1:country-region> itself.
The superficial success of the <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Sochi</st1:place></st1:city>
games was accompanied by a contempt for the corrupt abuse of public funds,
disdain for local people’s rights and ecological devastation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Russia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> of course has huge oil and other natural resources. But the recent growth of some sectors, which saw
the enrichment of oligarchs and parts of the middle classes in the 1990s and
noughties, is in crisis. Interest rates have shot up, the stock market fell 9%
this morning and the rouble is at an all-time low. A <a href="http://www.dailyrecord.com/article/20140302/NJOPINION03/303020003/Putin-s-Russia-culture-corruption?nclick_check=1">massive
capital flight</a> has been under way for years. Much of it has ended up in
luxury homes in Knightsbridge, laundered by Western banks or in the shape of
football clubs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Putin
has quickly reversed the pre-Sochi cosmetic release of opponents, like Pussy
Riot. He closed down one of the few remaining television stations that
criticised the monstrous Sochi Olympics. Protests by anti-invasion activists in
<st1:city w:st="on">St Petersburg</st1:city> and <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Moscow</st1:place></st1:city> were quickly suppressed by riot
police. He remains what he has always
been: an autocrat presiding over a corrupt capitalist oligarchy who brutally
suppresses and kills his opponents. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">It
is indeed rich of Kerry, Hague and other Western leaders to mouth criticisms of
<st1:country-region w:st="on">Russia</st1:country-region>’s military
intervention – bearing in mind the US-UK-NATO invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq
and bombing of Libya along with remote killing by drones in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Pakistan</st1:place></st1:country-region>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Opposing
Putin’s act of aggression in no way, therefore, implies support for NATO and
the EU. They can no more represent the aspirations of Ukrainians than
Yanukovych or Putin can, while the new government in Kiev has no solutions
either. All the people of Ukraine, whatever their mother tongue, have the right
decide their own future free of interference from outside forces. That
principle is an absolute.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A
World to Win editors<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-11774741437557367992014-02-28T10:54:00.002+00:002014-02-28T10:54:13.587+00:00How Miliband called McCluskey's bluff<div class="MsoNormal">
If Len McCluskey were an investment banker, he surely would
have been fired a long time ago. Instead, his position as general secretary of
the Unite union is secure even though the return on capital invested in Labour
leader Ed Miliband is beyond measurement because it’s so low.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Tomorrow, McCluskey and fellow union bureaucrats from
affiliated unions will, not unlike turkeys at Christmas, vote for their own
slaughter at the hands of Miliband and his party leadership.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Miliband will formally complete a process of “reform” – was
ever a word so misused – in party structures that began in the early 1990s, and
carried on by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown when they got the unions to vote to
abandon the socialist Clause 4 of the constitution.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This time Miliband has gone when even Blair feared to tread.
Out goes the historic links by which members of affiliated unions had a portion
of their subs handed over to Labour. Out goes the way Labour leaders are
elected, with the unions having a substantial say through a ballot of members.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Out goes the collective and in comes individualism. Margaret
Thatcher would be the first to applaud, especially as Miliband gave her a
glowing reference recently.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Labour’s national executive confirmed the plans earlier this
month with only two votes against. Tomorrow, a special half-day conference will
rubber stamp the proposals. After the Nec, one shadow cabinet member is <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/feb/04/ed-miliband-labour-party-union-funding-plan?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487">reported
as saying</a>:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
"At the start, the unions were shocked, but in the end
the unions had no option. Ed Miliband was their choice for leader and he wanted
these reforms and, 18 months out from an election, they could not defeat him. Unite
may be in a different place, but Falkirk [the constituency troubled by a
selection row] meant it was impossible for them to lead a rebellion. They feel
they have done nothing and are badly bruised.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
McCluskey, in particular, has egg all over his face.
Miliband was his choice as leader and in return he has been humiliated. In a
belated attempt to recover some poise, McCluskey is now <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/feb/27/unite-labour-possible-funding-cut">threatening</a>
to cut his union’s affiliation fees by £1.5 million because a poll shows that
only 40% of Unite’s members vote Labour.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He said: "I know there are some people internally in
the Labour party that are beginning to panic because of what we are
considering. I am not sure why because it was self-evident from last summer
when Ed Miliband made his proposals that there would be consequences. I said
that having been challenged by Ed to consider the status quo, I suddenly felt
it was untenable. We have one million members paying into the political fund
and affiliate the full one million members to the party…. Looking at it, I
thought it was difficult to justify even from a moral standpoint".</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Last October, the company that owns the Grangemouth
petrochemical plant threatened to pull out unless the union agreed to new harsh
terms and conditions. McCluskey’s bluff was called and he rushed up to Scotland
to overrule local officials and <a href="http://www.aworldtowin.net/blog/grangemouth-workers-hung-out-to-dry.html">impose
a shocking deal</a> on his members.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So perhaps Miliband knows that the Unite union leader is
mostly bluster and that when push comes to shove, McCluskey will not rock the
boat with just over a year to the general election. In any case, McCluskey has
said: “Even if we reduce our affiliations we can still give direct donations to
the national Labour Party".</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The truth is that investment in Miliband has produced
precious little for Unite and its members. One Nation Labour as it prefers to
be called as it careers further and further into naked populism, is pledged to
uphold austerity and ConDem spending cuts, a public sector wage freeze and to
retain markets in the NHS and other services. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Vote for that? You have to be joking!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Paul Feldman</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Communications editor</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-33432463493629012362014-02-27T11:18:00.001+00:002014-02-27T11:18:19.712+00:00Standard Life threat shows where power really lies<div class="MsoNormal">
Standard Life's statement that in the event of a “Yes"
vote in the Scottish referendum they would leave Edinburgh, forcing 5,000
employees to choose unemployment or emigration, shows up the narrowness of the
independence debate so far.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The insurance company said it would have no choice because
Westminster has ruled out a currency union with an independent Scotland which
would be denied the possibility of retaining the pound.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Edinburgh-headquartered company’s statement serves as a
reminder of where power really lies, and the reality that political power,
whether located at Westminster or Holyrood, means nothing without economic and
financial authority.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Just as Standard Life was putting the boot, the Royal Bank
of Scotland posted massive losses for the sixth year running. The essentially
bankrupt bank announced that it has decided to pull out of some of their
riskier activities and focus on "bread and butter banking". </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Is that the right or wrong thing to do? One thing is for
sure, we were not asked though we as taxpayers nominally own the bank. RBS CEO
Ross McEwan declines to say if the bank will leave Edinburgh if there's a vote
for independence in September’s referendum.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But no way can a few million Scottish taxpayers bail out
that behemoth when the next crisis strikes. They would just have to crash,
taking thousands of jobs and millions in savings with them. The same goes for the
Bank of Scotland.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The problem is there is no real transfer of power on offer
as a result of the referendum. Alex Salmond's business-loving, oil-addicted
party do not present a materially different future as a result of independence.
So the SNP has a very narrow platform. In effect all they can offer is
"Scotland ruled by Scots" and "no more Tory governments". </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Given that the SNP and One Nation Labour are equally willing
to kow-tow to ruthless corporations (remember the shocking betrayal at Grangemouth
last year), that's pretty uninspiring.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The SNP had no answer to the question, what will happen if
Scotland is excluded from a shared currency? They simply called
Osborne-Alexander-Balls "bullies" and said they would never carry
through the threat. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They didn't point out the obvious, that this shows that the
three main parties are entirely in agreement on economic and financial issues, with
absolutely no difference between them. That's because the SNP share the same
ideology!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It couldn't have been clearer this week, when the ConDem
Cabinet met in Aberdeen and the SNP Cabinet met just down the road at
Portlethen. They may have been separated by a few miles, but they
simultaneously presented the same fawning, acquiescent policies to the giant
oil corporations.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This independence referendum is certainly putting questions
of democracy and the realities of state and economic power into sharp relief.
It is a disruption of the status quo that is causing huge distress,
particularly for Labour.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If the SNP cannot give any powerful reason why people should
vote for independence, nor can Labour give any meaningful reason why they
should not. A <a href="http://www.newsnetscotland.com/index.php/scottish-politics/8796-shock-as-labour-mp-launches-foul-mouthed-tirade-in-house-of-commons">strange
scene</a> yesterday at Westminster underlines this. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
SNP MP Pete Wishart went into the voting lobby to see which
Scottish MPs had turned up to vote in a motion on the bedroom tax. Scottish
Labour MPs failed to even turn up last time, to their eternal shame.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
East Renfrewshire MP Jim Murphy rushed up to Wishart
screaming "fuck off, fuck off, fuck off....." over and over again. It
was a bizarre scene by all accounts, but I would argue this unbearable tension
felt by Scottish Labour is about more than loss of seats and personal incomes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As Labour cannot advance either a socialist case, a working
class solidarity case for the continued union of Scotland and England or
principled support for self-determination, then what have they become?
Demonstrably, undeniably, another party of big business, a process that began
with the Blair governments. Neverthless, Labour’s crisis over Scotland is an historic moment for the party of Keir Hardie.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Penny Cole</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-13602809978180366032014-02-26T10:47:00.001+00:002014-02-26T10:47:23.464+00:00Vultures circle Ukraine as economy collapses<div class="MsoNormal">
The formation of an acceptable new government in Ukraine
reflecting the multi-dimensional aspirations of the popular uprising that saw
off the Yanukovych kleptocracy is proving difficult enough. Dealing with its
collapsing economy is an even bigger problem. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ukraine’s economy is relatively small – at around $7,000,
its annual gross domestic product for each of its 45 million people is around
one fifth of the UK’s – but the country’s potential is being sized up by
external forces.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All the actors on the global political and economic stage –
including the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, Russia, China and
not least the global corporations are eying up the prospects for collapse. They
are weighing the advantages that can be gained from an intervention and
studying the likely impact on themselves.
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the 20 years or so following the break up of the Soviet
Union, most of the former state industries were “privatised”, or rather handed over
to oligarchs, including Yanukovych’s family members. After years of their self-enrichment, and recent
economic decline intensified by the effects of the global crash, the country is
now dangerously close to bankrupt. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
World prices for steel, Ukraine’s biggest export, have
fallen by half since the Chinese economy began to slow in 2011. At the same
time the country’s cash balance has been declining and its external debt –
including overdue payments due to the IMF and Russia’s Gazprom - soaring. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As is well-known, due to its geographical location Ukraine
plays host to a network of pipelines that carry gas and oil from Russia, and a
number of the other former Soviet states to Western Europe. But the global oil corporations are
eager for action. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Shell and Chevron signed agreements last year to drill
unexplored shale formations in Ukraine, offering the chance to upgrade the
country’s energy infrastructure and boost domestic production, thus reducing
the amount of gas imported from Russia. Before the crisis erupted last
year, Exxon, the largest US oil company, was also close to signing a pact to
explore the Black Sea.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The country is the fourth largest of the world’s arms
exporters, and has become increasingly dependent on sales to China’s rapid
build-up of military equipment. Last year, Ukraine agreed to lease 5% of its
extremely fertile, but relatively undeveloped land to China to grow crops and
raise pigs for sale to Chinese state-owned companies. As part of that deal
China promised to build highways and bridges in the country.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A new report from the <a href="http://www.iif.com/emr/resources+3373.php">Institute of International
Finance</a> sets the immediate context. It says that budget financing “has become
virtually unavailable”. The acting president, it noted, says that Ukraine’s
pension fund does not have enough money to meet pension obligations. The report
warns:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“On the other hand, tax revenues appear to have collapsed
along with economic activity during the weeks of the political standoff. With
no access to foreign markets, and domestic banks under intense liquidity
pressure, the central bank has become the sole financier of the government.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Estimates of Ukraine’s’ need for emergency funding vary from
$12- $30 billion this year. On the world scale these are relatively small sums
– the bailout for Greece amounts to 237 billion euros - and small change in
relation to the trillions pumped into the financial system in the wake of the 2007-8
crash. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some have even suggested that the emerging Ukrainian
government should approach former citizen Jan Koum for help. He has just sold
his instant mobile messaging application WhatsApp to <st1:personname w:st="on">Facebook</st1:personname>
for $19bn. More seriously, the IMF will only lend to a stable government, one
that is prepared to impose a severe programme of austerity on its restive population.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That is certain to lead to further social upheaval.
Ukraine’s struggle for political and economic self-determination has only just
begun. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Gerry Gold</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Economics editor</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-30467636264338564962014-02-25T10:29:00.000+00:002014-02-25T10:29:43.616+00:00In case you missed it, here's hot news from the TUC<div class="MsoNormal">
As tumultuous world events like the uprising in Ukraine, the
direct democracy movement sweeping Bosnia, the Syrian civil war etc etc grab
your attention, you may have missed a momentous announcement by the Trades
Union Congress here in Britain. There is to be a mass demonstration in – wait
for it – October!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yes, in eight months’ time we are being invited to march
through London to a rally in Hyde Park.
Not on a weekday because that might involve people going on strike (God
forbid) to take part. No, as usual, we will all walk calmly through the centre
of the city on a Saturday afternoon.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There, if you care to stay for the rally, you will hear
speeches from TUC luminaries and probably Labour leader Ed Miliband. They will
be standing under the banner of “Britain Needs a Pay Rise”. Not workers, you
notice, but “Britain”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Stirring stuff, eh? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It wouldn’t be so bad if it was billed as an anti-government
action, to condemn the ConDems for slaughtering living standards in the wake of
a capitalist crisis workers are not responsible for. But no, <a href="http://www.tuc.org.uk/about-tuc/britain-needs-pay-rise-%E2%80%93-tuc-mass-demonstration-autumn">“Britain
Needs a Pay Rise”</a> is actually demanding that everyone gets a share “in the
recovery”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Far from opposing the wretched Coalition, this is actually
buying into their claims that a “recovery” is taking place. In fact, as even
George Osborne has had to acknowledge, any “growth” is driven by debt and the
housing market. In fact it resembles a new bubble waiting to burst along the
lines of the 2008 calamity. As the 1930s song goes:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.05pt; margin-bottom: 1.2pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<i>I'm
forever blowing bubbles</i>,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.05pt; margin-bottom: 1.2pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<i>Pretty
bubbles in the air</i>,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.05pt; margin-bottom: 1.2pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<i>They
fly so high</i>,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.05pt; margin-bottom: 1.2pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<i>Nearly
reach the sky</i>,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.05pt; margin-bottom: 1.2pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<i>Then
like my dreams</i>,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.05pt; margin-bottom: 1.2pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<i>They
fade and die</i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 8.5pt;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Back to the TUC on October 18 and its general secretary Frances
O’Grady. She says in the call-out for the demo that “hard-pressed families
across the UK must be beginning to wonder when the tough times they are
experiencing will ever end.” Actually, just as many are wondering whether the
TUC will ever get off its bureaucratic backside and lead some real resistance.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The real value of average wages was falling before the
recession and they have declined more rapidly since 2010. Pay-day loans have
soared and many people have loaded up their credit cards to pay for essentials
like shopping and housing costs. And where was the TUC (and Labour) while all
this was happening?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
O’Grady rewrites the history of the last four years when she
claims that “during the dark days of recession, workers accepted that their pay
might have to be frozen or even cut to save jobs”. No! The TUC alone accepted
that terrible position, even though member unions opposed the government’s
policies.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the TUC Congress in 2012, for example, the leaders of
Unison and Unite threatened a general strike against the public sector pay
freeze. TUC leaders killed that proposal stone dead. As hundreds of thousands
of jobs were culled by local councils and other public bodies, the TUC sat on
its hands.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Instead, we have the ritual of the annual demo. This year’s
will be the fourth in a row. A chance to let off steam by marching around town
and then going home. No wonder the turnout has declined year-on-year.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meanwhile, Miliband is pledged to continue ConDem austerity
should his One Nation Labour win the 2015 election. This includes retaining the
present public sector pay freeze. His latest wheeze is a plan to give employers
a taxpayer subsidy to pay the “living wage” (which is actually a subsistence
wage).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So when O’Grady tell us that “the time has come for Britain
to get a pay rise” she reduces a pressing need to a fatuous slogan. For
her information, countries don’t get pay increases, workers do. That’s why
people formed unions in the first place and in 1868 came together to launch the
TUC. For the present leadership at Congress House, all this history is
bunk. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Paul Feldman</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Communications editor</div>
A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-74835118104973247362014-02-24T10:18:00.002+00:002014-02-24T11:34:52.542+00:00Penguin capitulates to book banning in India<div class="MsoNormal">
Penguin India is now in the business of banning books, in an
action that has shocked writers and free speech campaigners inside and outside
the country. The publisher is recalling all copies of <i>The Hindus: An Alternative History</i>, will
pulp them and ensure their withdrawal “from the Bharat” (Indian territory)
within a period “not exceeding six (6) months”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That pledge is revealed in an <a href="http://sacw.net/IMG/pdf/Agreement%20-SBA-Penguin-2014%5B*%5D.pdf">extract
from the minutes</a> of an agreement between Penguin and an 84-year-old school
principal, Dinanath Batra. Penguin’s capitulation before Batra’s offensive is
shocking. Batra has denounced Wendy Doniger’s book as “malicious”, “dirty” and
“perverse”. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He is a cat’s paw for the Save Education Movement (Shiksha Andolan
Bachao), a Hindu fundamentalist group. It wants to purge India’s education and
bookshops of all texts that it believes threaten Hindu culture. There is a
wider political context as India prepares for general elections in three months
time. The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is expected to score
a major victory over the secular Congress Party.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The ban and pulping has aroused a <a href="http://www.sacw.net/article7642.html#Penguin's">torrent of anger and
protest</a> from scores of Indian writers, film makers, journalists, historians,
novelist Arundhati Roy and many in the <a href="file:///C:/Users/Paul/Documents/Documents/AWTW/AWTWwebsite/Blogs/ehindu.com/opinion/lead/changing-contours-of-censorship/article5719569.ece?homepage=true">Hindu
press</a>. Roy has challenging the Indian state over many issues, including its
repression in Kashmir and has courageously denounced BJP leader Narendra Modi.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Business interests have succeeded in suppressing
investigative books and art. One of India’s most celebrated painters, the late
Maqbool Fida Husain, was forced to flee the country in 2006 after attacks on
his paintings.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mukul Kesavan, a distinguished historian and cricket writer,
has documented the retreat before the nationalists not only by Penguin India,
but other publishers including Bloomsbury India and Oxford University Press which
have recently withdrawn titles.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Kesavan writes: “Penguin’s response to
intimidation-by-litigation is even more dismaying. First, the case against the
book seems borderline farcical. Doniger’s sins of commission include allegedly
erroneous dates, inaccurate maps, her use of psychoanalytic categories and offensive
metaphors as well as ‘Christian missionary zeal’. Wendy Doniger is Jewish. If
there ever was a test case that a publisher stood to win, it was this one.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The assault on writers runs far deeper than an attack on
freedom of speech in India. It is an expression of a deep and growing political
and cultural crisis as globalisation has failed to deliver for the mass of
Indians. The long-term inability of the Congress Party to fulfil the
aspirations of its supporters as it seeks to cling on to power is self-evident.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As the <a href="http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/editorial-dna-edit-illiberal-india-1961643">DNA
website</a> notes: “The best that can be
said for the [Indian] state is that it is equal opportunity in its cravenness,
willing to back obscurantists of all stripes. If it quailed at the prospect of
angering hard line Muslim elements with Rushdie, Nasreen and R V Bhasin, it has
accommodated Christian outrage when it comes to the <i>Da Vinci Code</i> and the self-appointed guardians of Hinduism who took
outrage at Ramanujan and Doniger.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
India is part of the “Fragile Five”, as the market economies
of Brazil, South Africa, Turkey and Indonesia
have become known. Their rampant growth rates have slowed down. The
modernisation wrought by India’s entry into the global economy has been
accompanied by a shocking crisis amongst its small farmers, once the country’s
economic backbone. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, for example, more
than 290,000 farmers have committed suicide since 1995. In India, as in the
other Fragile Fives and Brics, like Russia, China, Brazil and Turkey – not to
mention Ukraine - the heavy hand of
censorship and repression of journalist countries poses the question of who
holds power.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In India, “no one in
the country or outside it quite knows how the country is run”, according to one
political commentator, Annika Neujahr. This does indeed raise fundamental constitutional
and philosophical questions in a country that claims to be the world’s largest
democracy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Corinna Lotz</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
A World to Win secretary</div>
A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-73688609319943772572014-02-21T10:48:00.001+00:002014-02-21T10:48:57.882+00:00Ukrainians die for themselves, not East or West<div class="MsoNormal">
The portrayal of the uprising against Ukraine’s government
in Kiev and other cites as simply an East-West tug-of-war is a superficial
viewpoint that insults those slaughtered by snipers on the streets of the
country’s capital yesterday. Ukrainians are actually dying to remove a corrupt
regime that represents only the oligarchs.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Neither should anyone be fooled by the crocodile tears shed
by the White House and the EU for the dead of Kiev. Safe to say that if
protests against governments in any of these capitals reach the fever pitch
shown in Kiev, troops and armed para-militaries would quickly be on the streets
and a state of emergency declared. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While it is true that far right forces around Svoboda are
prominent in the fighting, there is no clear, unifying agenda in Maidan Square.
People of all classes have rallied to an anti-government movement but without a
perspective of what happens next. This is characteristic of global uprisings
that began with the Arab Spring and that have spread to many countries since,
taking different forms each time.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In Ukraine, opposition political parties, who play with
populism just as much as Victor Yanukovych’s Party of the Regions, do not
control the crowds that have taken the square. The direct action Common Cause
group has seized many buildings and is for the dissolution of the state while
the fascists draw their support from disenchanted workers in western cities and
the middle-class in Kiev.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But as <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2013/12/08/what-the-new-ukrainian-revolution-is-really-about/">one
observer</a> put it: “Yet they do not go there [Maidan Square] for the West or against the
East. They go for themselves and against the regime that victimises them… not
in the name of a political system or even a particular politician, but for the
rule of law and open borders.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The fact that the fighting has spread to the mainly-Russian
speaking city of Kharkiv in the east adds substance to this point. "The
price of freedom is too high. But Ukrainians are paying it," Viktor Danilyuk,
a 30-year-old protester, said in Kiev yesterday. "We have no choice. The
government isn't hearing us.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They may not seem revolutionary enough for some people but
these demands, as modest as they appear, are sufficient to produce a violent
confrontation with a government and state that cannot rule for Ukrainians as a
whole. Where that leads depends on other factors, including the crucial
question of leadership and organisations that can transcend nationalism and the
rule of the oligarchs.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ukrainian oligarchs control large parts of the country's
economy and are prominent in the ruling Party of the Regions, and control over
80 MPs. Orysia Lutsevych, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26277970By">researcher</a> for the
Chatham House think tank, notes: “In Ukraine, the fusion of business and
politics is more the rule than the exception. Holding high legislative and
executive office provides access to a patronage system, protection for
business, access to public finance, and immunity from prosecution."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The businesses of Ukraine's richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, the
main financial backer of the regime, obtained 31% of all state tenders in
January 2014. The president’s son Oleksandr tops even this, having
"won" 50% of state contracts in the same period. Father and son have <a href="http://yanukovich.info/victor-yanukovych-assets/">stashed away</a> vast
sums of wealth in Western Europe.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ukraine’s economy has been badly affected by the global
crisis, particularly since the middle of 2012. Borrowing heavily both from
Russia and the International Monetary Fund has left the Yanukovych government
caught in the middle. Russia wants Ukraine drawn into a customs union of its
own while the European Union sees 50 million potential new consumers. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Either way, the prospect for Ukraine’s workers is lower
living standards either within an authoritarian, Russian sphere whose capitalist
economy is badly affected by falling oil prices and an EU dominated by
austerity and mass unemployment. Not so much an East-West tug-of-war as an
East-West nightmare. Other, revolutionary solutions that rise above borders,
beckon.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Paul Feldman</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Communications editor</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-11782348589950679872014-02-19T11:16:00.000+00:002014-02-19T11:16:33.790+00:00Co-op has totally lost its way<div class="MsoNormal">
Admitting that it has lost touch with “its customers and
members and with the communities in which it operates”, the Co-op is at a
crossroads. After the near collapse of its bank, the Co-op is asking anyone and
everyone to help determine the organisation’s future direction.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Crucial to its history and current identity, the Co-op makes
a big contribution, via its own political party, to the Labour Party. The two
parties maintain an electoral alliance – candidates who want to stand on the
Co-op ticket have to be members of the Labour Party and appear on ballot papers
as Labour Co-operative. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Co-operative Party is completely dependent on its income
from the group’s trading activities. In 2012 the group donated a total of
£805,000 to the party and its councillors. This included donations to 32 Labour
and Co-operative MPs, as well as a one-off £50,000 grant to the office of the
shadow cabinet.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At first sight, consulting widely by opening up a
questionnaire to whoever wants to spend 20 minutes answering the questions
might seem like a democratic move, but:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Q. where does it leave the more than 6 million members
who’ve loyally stood by the organisation, liking and respecting its principles
for decades? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A. Left by the wayside.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Euan Sutherland became group chief executive last May, from
a career in for-profit companies including Coca-Cola, Curry’s and Superdrug.
Peter Hunt, the former general secretary of the Co-operative Party, accuses him
of threatening the abolition of the party.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The question that’s worrying the Co-operative and Labour
parties is this one: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Q. To what extent do you think it is appropriate or
inappropriate for big businesses to donate money to political parties?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A. It won’t stop huge donations to the Tories from the oil
and banking industries. But it does
attempt to bury the Co-op’s ethos by equating it with all other businesses. According
to the answers to the wide-open questionnaire, it could lead to the end of the
Co-operative and Labour parties. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Over the years, the democratic process has been largely
reduced to becoming part of the corporate branding, giving its members a sense
of belonging. You won’t find many
members even knowing how they could attempt to influence the big, or even small
decisions. Those that have tried, for example, to get the Co-op to source some
of its food offering locally have been disappointed, despite its claims to be
in favour of a sustainable society and economy. So questions on that issue
don’t impress.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Q. Is this questionnaire a return to democracy, or a threat
to it?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A. A threat.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The co-operative movement came to prominence as an attempt
to defend the livelihoods of workers being wrecked by the industrial revolution
in the 19th century. Today, around the world co-operatives are being widely
promoted as the antidote to the effects of the global crisis. Millions of
people are once again coming to the conclusion that the unsustainable
for-profit chase after growth is a dead-end and has to be replaced. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But that isn’t an option offered in the questionnaire. You
can agree or disagree with the idea that the Co-op “is not just for profit”,
but not whether it should be not for profit at all. You can agree or disagree
with statement that “the Co-op supports and drives growth in the local economy”,
but not whether this kind of growth is a bad or a good thing. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But there is an open-ended question you can answer:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Q. What, if anything, should The Co-operative do to
encourage more people to shop with it? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A. become a not-for-profit enterprise run by its members
through a participative democratic process. Campaign to ensure that all
enterprises follow a similar model, ending the for-profit exploitation of
people and planet. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Gerry Gold</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Economics editor</div>
A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-63681481440471274832014-02-18T11:32:00.002+00:002014-02-18T11:32:58.039+00:00Housing misery built into the system<div class="MsoNormal">
Soaring house prices, a frenzied housing market,
unaffordable rents and massive overcrowding. Welcome to ConDem Britain 2014,
where only the wealthy can get a decent roof over their heads while those in
genuine need can only stand and watch.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The average asking price on the Rightmove property website
jumped by £8,103 in January and a typical property is now costing £252,000. But
that’s a national average. Live in London and you can expect to pay around
£500,000 to get on to the bottom of the “housing ladder”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
House prices soared by over 11% in the capital last year and
the pace of increase is continuing. Bubble-like conditions are making
first-time buyers stretch themselves too far, says the Money Advice Service. It
researched 1,000 first-timers who had bought over the past two years, and found
that one in five wished they had bought somewhere cheaper.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
More than half admitted that the running cost of their first
home was also more than expected, prompting the service to warn buyers:
"You can afford your mortgage, but can you afford your home?"
Affordability is most stretched in London and the south-east. One estate agent
said that over the past year, the average property it sold in London went up by
18.4% to £448,800, a rise of £69,784 over the year, double the average salary
of a Londoner.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Private renting is the only option as local councils and
housing associations have few properties available for households without
children. But it’s not a cheap alternative to a mortgage. Official figures show
that average weekly rents are more than 50% of average local wages in more than
half of London’s boroughs. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In Kensington and Chelsea, average weekly rents were a
staggering 73% of local wages, and 71% per cent in Westminster. Even in poorer
areas like Hackney and Southwark, the ratio was still over 50%. No wonder
reports are growing of young people
actually moving back in with their parents to save on housing costs. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Adding to the pressure in London are cash-rich buyers from
the Middle East, Russia and other areas who can plonk down ill-gotten gains at
the estate agents. They are completely indifferent to the prices being paid. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Labour leader Ed Miliband’s call to make these homes
available to London residents first is no solution. Firstly, they are out of
the reach of most people who are not already home owners. Secondly, it would be
a nightmare to enforce. Building more new towns is just another way of saying
London is a rich man’s playground and that’s how it’s going to stay.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For a long post-war period, local authorities built millions
of homes for rent, enabling most new households to find somewhere to live.
Rents in the private sector were controlled. Since the early 1980s, a housing
market driven primarily by the obsession with owner-occupation has replaced state
intervention. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It coincided with the deregulation of the financial system
that provided anyone who wanted it with endless amounts of credit. Not enough
money to pay your mortgage? Don’t worry, just borrow five, six or seven times
your annual income.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the ten years to 2007, real average house prices doubled
while disposable income only rose by 15% in the same period. In London, prices
soared by over 350% over the first decade of the Blair government. It couldn’t
last and it didn’t. Come the 2008 meltdown, mortgages dried up while the house
price bubble was maintained by a shortage of supply. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the 19th century, Frederick Engels wrote about the
“so-called housing shortage, which plays such a great role in the press
nowadays” and asked rhetorically: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
How is the housing question to be
solved then? In present-day society just as any other social question is
solved: by the gradual economic adjustment of supply and demand, a solution
which ever reproduces the question itself anew and therefore is no solution.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Capitalism actually recreates shortages in housing and other
areas over and over again because that’s the way it works. A system that feeds
on human misery is immoral and unacceptable. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Paul Feldman</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Communications editor</div>
A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-34486779669011105122014-02-17T11:29:00.001+00:002014-02-17T11:41:51.962+00:00'Death to nationalism' is message of Bosnia uprising<div class="MsoNormal">
A feature of revolutionary times is when people’s movements
decide to take matters into their own hands and throw up new forms of
democracy. That’s what we are witnessing in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where people of
all ages – from teenagers to the very old – are engaging in an experiment in self-government.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first people’s uprising of 2014 began in <st1:city w:st="on">Tuzla</st1:city>, north-east <st1:country-region w:st="on">Bosnia</st1:country-region>, an impoverished industrial
city of 200,000 on February 4. The town has an unemployment rate of 55%, the
highest in the country, while youth unemployment runs at 63%.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As the city administration handed in its resignation, a
revolutionary organisational body called the “<a href="http://bhprotestfiles.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/frequently-asked-questions-about-the-tuzla-plenum-translated-but-needs-a-reviewer/"><i>plenum</i></a>” made its appearance. The
idea of plenums <a href="http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/blog/plenums-are-teaching-bosnians-real-democracy-at-last"><i>quickly spread</i></a> around the country,
as one website explained: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“All over Bosnia, protesters are organising ‘plenums’,
places where people can gather and try to formulate their demands. The
participants are defining their rules, moderating the plenums by themselves,
and, after summing up, sending their demands to cantonal assembles.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In doing so they are shattering the clichéd image of a
former <st1:country-region w:st="on">Yugoslavia</st1:country-region>
entirely riven by ethnic and religious conflicts. And the plenums revive a
hidden but powerful aspect of former <st1:country-region w:st="on">Yugoslavia</st1:country-region>’s history, hitherto buried under nationalist
propaganda and image-making. As <a href="http://roarmag.org/2014/02/bosnia-protests-nationalism-workers/">Mate
Kapović writes</a>:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The most impressive and symbolic picture of the first few
days of the rebellion was the one depicting a burning government building in
Tuzla, the city where it all began, with the graffiti ‘death to nationalism’
written on it. Since nationalism has long been a favourite refuge of the
country’s political elites, who used it to justify their political and economic
oppression, this was indeed a powerful message.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The legacy of the Dayton Agreement, imposed by Nato and <st1:country-region w:st="on">Bosnia</st1:country-region>’s
presidents in December 1995, were, as the campaigning movement Bosanski Kongres
says, “enormous labyrinths of government bureaucracy, with parliaments, prime ministers
and presidents for each and every entity, canton and district”. Consequently,
an impoverished population of under four million people was burdened by
taxation to support a bloated bureaucracy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Following the February 4 street protests, this dysfunctional
state has gone into meltdown. Prime ministers in the cantons of <st1:country-region w:st="on">Bosnia and Herzegovina</st1:country-region>
handed in their resignations, but not before sending out security forces to
brutally beat up demonstrators. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Given the historic former ties with neighbouring <st1:country-region w:st="on">Croatia</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region w:st="on">Serbia</st1:country-region>,
corrupt political elites throughout former <st1:country-region w:st="on">Yugoslavia</st1:country-region>
are terrified that the “<st1:country-region w:st="on">Bosnia</st1:country-region>
revolution” could spread. Solidarity
demonstrations were held in Serbia, for example. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Balkan spring was heralded three years ago, at the
height of the Arab spring and global occupy movements by Facebook protests. What
has made <st1:country-region w:st="on">Bosnia</st1:country-region>
special– then and now - is that, as Kapović notes, “it was the first time that
openly anti-capitalist messages were displayed in any of the post-Yugoslav
countries”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Until now, the image projected by the media about
Bosnia-Herzogovina has been dominated by cruel ethnic and religious conflicts
which have undoubtedly shaped its history. It was in <span style="background: white;">Srebrenica that
some 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were murdered by Serb forces in July 1995, despite
being under UN protection. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white;">It was the assassination of
Habsburg scion Archduke Franz Ferdinand in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Sarajevo</st1:place></st1:city> that sparked the outbreak of World
War I a century ago. Today, the same area of the world can send a different
kind of signal. Plenums of the kind being developed in Tuzla and elsewhere look
back to the experiences of soviets in pre and post-1917 revolutionary Russia, the
post-war Yugoslav and Hungarian workers’ councils, and more recently, the Occupy movements that
swept the world in 2011-2012.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white;">Plenums, like people’s
assemblies, offer democratic forms of decision-making, ownership and control in
place of top-down, capitalist state bureaucracy. Thus the people of this small
but crucial state can be a real inspiration everywhere. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Corinna Lotz</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A World to Win secretary</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-84910473455075047162014-02-13T12:03:00.001+00:002014-02-13T12:03:13.517+00:00Response to flooding shows the system isn't working<div class="MsoNormal">
The current weather crisis has shown up the illegitimacy of
politicians in charge of a system that is unable and unwilling to act for the
common good. They greatly fear this exposure – it's the reason for the tide of
government rhetoric about "money no object" and promises of future
help.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In 2010, government chief scientist Sir David King warned of
the need to plan for increased floods resulting from climate change. He
proposed pulling flood defences inland, sacrificing some areas to the sea,
establishing flood plains at the heads of rivers, modernising weirs, widening
bridges and replacing sewers to separate sewage and floodwater.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is the current policy of the Environment Agency and it
has a backlog of hundreds of measures based on this approach. It can't complete
them because of cuts and a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/09/floods-environment-agency-chris-smith-hits-back">Treasury
rule</a> that they can't invest more than £400,000 in any one project. The
government's fantasy was that business and the insurance industry would step up
as co-funders. As a result, of course, nothing happened.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Met Office explains that the storms have their source in
south-east Asia, where warming seas are evaporating huge quantities of water
into the atmosphere. This caused a weather "chain reaction" which
disrupted the Pacific jet stream, diverting it over north America and causing
the extremely cold conditions there. This in turn affected the Atlantic jet
stream, which moved more and more rapidly, bringing storm after storm to
Britain and Ireland.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But Lord Lawson, former Tory Chancellor, knows better. He
berated the Met Office for suggesting climate change could be involved.
Instead, the floods should spur the government to stop spending untold millions
littering the countryside with pylons and solar panels. This at a time when
80,000 homes are without power and probably the only people with electricity are those with their
own solar panels or turbines!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But it isn't just the Tory fringe who deny climate change as
energy and climate change Secretary Ed Davey suggests <a href="http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2014/02/daily-climate-and-energy-links-13th-february-2014/">in
a speech today</a>. Cabinet member and environment secretary Owen Paterson
thinks climate change has been happening for centuries and is great because
farmers will get longer growing seasons! Transport secretary Philip Hammond
yesterday blamed "natural solar rhythms” for the weather. Help, we’ve been
transported back to the Middle Ages!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
David Cameron only “very much suspects” that the flooding is
linked to climate change. He is running scared of the lunatics in his own party
and Ukip (remember the Ukip councillor who said the floods were God’s
retribution after the passing of the gay marriage law?) His chancellor is not a
denier, he's a couldn't-care-lesser, a fossil-fuel profit freak, whose response
to soaring energy costs was to let the Big Six drop spending on energy saving
or renewables. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The ConDems want the UK fracked to bits and Somerset – which
is largely under water - is one of the areas earmarked. You don't have to
imagine the effect on water quality of flooded wells and waste water ponds. It
happened in Colorado last year – <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/flooding-and-fracking-in-colorado-double-disaster-20130919">as
the headline</a> here says: "Flooding and Fracking - a double
disaster".</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When King published his report he thought the floods would
come in the 2030s at the earliest, and yet here's the wild weather, two decades
early, and not only in Britain but across the world. Capitalist states thought
they could treat climate change like they do the electorate – blandish, fool
and bully people, whilst permitting corporate business as usual. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The only issue now is whether we are prepared to permit them
to go on down this road. There is nothing in it for us to maintain the status
quo. Politicians of any political stripe wading about flooded towns won't help
us.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We are on our own here, and so we should put all the
resources at our disposal under democratic local control and start acting
co-operatively to prepare for what is ahead, including halting any plans to
increase fossil fuel burning.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Penny Cole</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Environment editor</div>
A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-58231235905894026152014-02-12T09:00:00.000+00:002014-02-12T09:00:50.191+00:00New banking crisis looms as credit crunch returns<div class="MsoNormal">
Around the world’s biggest economies, gears are being thrown
into reverse as credit, liquidity, broad money, leverage – whatever name you
give it – turns from the antidote to recession to the source of volatility and
a potent systemic threat.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Behind the optimistic PR spin of recovery, signs of growth,
falling unemployment, etc., can be heard the unmistakeable beat of very different
drums. Joining the credit squeeze by the financial big-shots – the central banks of the USA and China – comes
Danièle Nouy, the eurozone’s new chief banking regulator. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He is warning that
some of the region’s lenders should be allowed to collapse. “We have to accept
that some banks have no future,” she said, anticipating imminent “stress tests”
of the sector by the European Central Bank. “We have to let some disappear in
an orderly fashion, and not necessarily try to merge them with other
institutions.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As the credit noose is tightened, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/06/business/international/economists-sound-the-alarm-on-deflation-in-europe.html">warnings
of debt-deflation</a> grow louder. In contrast to inflation, which erodes the
real value of loans, making it easier for borrowers to repay, deflation does
the opposite. It makes money dearer, raising the burden of repaying existing
loans — and it adds to the stress on fragile banks that hold the loans when
borrowers cannot repay. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Just imagine what must be under discussion behind closed
doors as inflation slows throughout Europe, and prices fall in Greece, Italy, Spain,
Portugal, whilst those in Japan look like heading back in the same direction.
What can be going through the heads of the ministers of finance in the heavily-indebted
countries – like the UK, United States, Japan? Let alone those in the IMF’s list of 39
heavily- indebted poor countries.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These are among the contradictory pressures that prompted
Christine Lagarde’s plea for a new Bretton Woods post-war type meeting. The
head of the International Monetary Fund is clearly concerned that unless
concerted action is taken, the present stagnation will turn into a full-blown
slump.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Her plan is a non-starter. The co-ordinated action that took
place to rescue the banks in 2007-8 has given way to every capitalist for
themselves. And tensions are growing between economies over scarce resources.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Spratlys are a group of islands in the South
China Sea, in a region hosting estimated oil and gas reserves which place it
fourth in the world. The region is also one of the world's most productive
areas for commercial fishing, accounting for 35% of the world’s catch in
2010. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And it is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.
More than half of the world's sea-going traffic, by tonnage, passes through the
region's waters every year. Tanker traffic is three times greater than through
the Suez Canal and five times more than through the Panama Canal.
A quarter of the world's crude oil passes through.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
No wonder that disputes have simmered since the first oil
discoveries were made there in the late 1960s. Until recently, six countries –
China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam and Brunei – were contesting
rights over parts of the territory. Now the USA is making threatening noises in
response to new claims by China. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
US assistant secretary of State for East Asian Danny Russel
told Congress that China's vague territorial claims had "created
uncertainty, insecurity and instability" among its
neighbours. "There are growing concerns that this pattern of behaviour
in the South China Sea reflects incremental effort by China to assert control
over the area.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Relations between China and Japan have deteriorated over a separate
territorial row involving islands in the East China Sea known as the Senkaku
islands in Japan and the Diaoyu islands in China. Last year, China announced an
air defence zone in the East China Sea, and said that aircraft flying through
the zone must follow its rules.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The United States, Japan and South Korea have ignored this
declaration and flown military aircraft through the zone. Politics,
nationalism, economic resources and territorial claims mixed with military
aggression are, as always, a heady brew. Welcome to the global economy 2014. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Gerry Gold</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Economics Editor</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-14371804847591098702014-02-11T10:36:00.000+00:002014-02-11T10:40:13.221+00:00Miliband's praise for Thatcher says it all<div class="MsoNormal">
Following Ed Miliband’s speeches is a thankless task for a
number of reasons. They are more often than not vague and full of phrases
devoid of any obvious content. But dig a little deeper and you will find an
agenda that promises a reactionary continuity in British politics.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The assault on British society that began under the Margaret
Thatcher governments was carried further by New Labour from 1997-2010 and has subsequently
been deepened by the ConDems. Miliband has signalled he will continue that work
should next year’s election send him to Downing Street. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Last night’s lecture at <i>The
Guardian</i> positioned the Labour leader in a line stretching all the way back
to Thatcher’s governments. He praised the most destructive of prime ministers
for her “sense of purpose” in driving through change, although he declined to
spell out what that meant for communities all over Britain.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Miliband then outlined a programme of “public service
reform” that the Blairites will be cheering. Their “reform” consisted largely
of outsourcing vast areas of public spending and decision-making to the private
sector in a one-sided “partnership” with the state, where the corporations
always win out. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In education, this took the malign form of “academies”. These
schools are essentially run by private companies outside of local authority
control and are but one step away from being driven by profit making. So
Miliband’s promise to give parents power to call poor-performing schools to
account is nonsense because the academy system will be left in place under a
future Labour government.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So too will the wrecking policies of the ConDems with regard
to the National Health Service. Instead of reversing them, a future Miliband
government would simply add local people to the commissioning groups of GPs
that now hold the purse strings and are busily handing out contracts to the
private sector.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And so it goes on. As for the surveillance state developed
by New Labour and finessed by the ConDems, Miliband simply wants a “US-style
debate” – whatever that is – on the gathering of personal data by the security
agencies. Well, they’ve had the debate in the US and the official line is that
Edward Snowden is a traitor who has betrayed his country through his whistle
blowing while Chelsea Manning is locked up in prison.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lest anyone thinks that Miliband is a threat to the state
with his call to make it “accountable”, his remarks about the role of the
British intelligence agencies will clear that up. He said: “My starting point
in this is the intelligence services do an important job. As somebody who wants
to be the prime minister of this country I know that they do an important job
in seeking to keep us safe.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s alright then. A little more “oversight” and we’ll all
feel happier while safe in our beds at night. Meanwhile, the surveillance will
continue to target legitimate protests and actions against government policies.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Only last week, Miliband won support for changes to the
party’s relations with the trade unions that were a deepening of the project
launched by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown back in the early 1990s. The collective
approach has given way to the individualism first championed in a serious way
by Thatcher.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
This week he has pledged political and financial continuity, reaffirming last night that a future Labour government would make sharp spending cuts in line with ConDem budget plans. So when it comes to next year’s general election, an
application of the “consumer choice” approach will invite us to hang on to our
votes rather than wasting them on any of the mainstream parties. The argument
that One Nation Labour will be better than the Tories is shallow and totally
unconvincing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Paul Feldman</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Communications editor</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-9490748042929062982014-02-10T11:44:00.000+00:002014-02-10T11:44:19.766+00:00Palestinian kids given electric shock torture<div class="MsoNormal">
You have to hand it to US secretary of state John Kerry. In
his dream of entering the history books, he has taken on mission impossible. He
is fighting tooth and nail for his version of the two-state peace plan between
Israel and the Palestinians.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So much so that his relentless diplomacy has lead to an
outburst by the Israeli minister of defence, Moshe Yaalon, who reportedly
described Kerry as “obsessive and messianic in his quest for Mideast peace”. Kerry
has also suggested that failure by the Israelis to compromise could lead to
growing support for a boycott of the country, a campaign which has now
established roots in the United States as well as Europe.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This led to some members of the governing coalition to
accuse Kerry of anti-Semitism, which then compelled ultra-Zionist foreign
minister Avigdor Lieberman to defend Obama’s foreign policy chief, describing
him as a “true friend of Israel”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators
have now been going on for over six months, including at the Munich Security
Conference a couple of weeks ago. There Henry Kissinger quipped that “nobody
ever lost money betting against a Middle East peace.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But Obama’s administration is desperate for a “legacy”. With
Kerry leading the charge, it is hoping to pressurise Israel into conceding some
territory in exchange for the Palestinians recognising Israel as a Jewish
state. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
According to prominent US writer, Thomas Friedman, Palestinian
president Mahmoud Abbas has suggested that Israeli troops could remain in the
West Bank for a transitional five-year-period. And then they should be replaced
by NATO forces. This is something Israel is hardly likely to agree to. Indeed,
Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu wants Israeli troops in the Jordan Valley for
up to 40 years.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But however much the Palestinian Authority may compromise,
and however much the US may hope that it can get concessions out of the Zionist
state, any agreement is likely to be blown out of the water by the sheer brutality
of continued Israeli occupation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The PA has lost considerable authority amongst its
constituents. While it engages in meaningless negotiations, Israeli forces have
resumed assassinations of key figures in the resistance, known officially as
“targeted killings”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Leading defence correspondent Amos Harel admitted today in
Haaretz, that Israel had “quietly revived” its previous policy of murdering
resistance leaders. Only yesterday a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/10/world/middleeast/2-are-wounded-in-israeli-airstrike-in-gaza.html?hpw&rref=world&_r=0">targeted
killing</a> in Gaza was aimed at Abdallah Kharti, a senior member of the
Popular Resistance Committees.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Today, Australian television’s <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-10/israeli-security-forces-accused-of-using-palestinian-children-/5248378">ABC
Four Corners programme</a> will broadcast the findings of lawyers who say that
Palestinian children are being used to gather intelligence, thus destroying
their childhood innocence forever.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One 14-year-old boy was taken from his bed “during a night
raid on his family home in a Palestinian village”, according to the report.
Qsai Zamara said he “was whipped and threatened” into falsely confessing that
he threw stones at the army. "There was this big machine with all the
electric wires in it, connected to the electricity. He wanted to give me
electric shock with it," he said.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fathi Mahfouz, 15, was given electric shocks and when he
didn't confess: “I was sent to a room that has a cross in it, and hung me on
it. I was hung and he kept hitting me," he said. Barrister Gerard Horton
has documented rape threats against young children after interviewing hundreds
of them through his organisation Military Court.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lawyer Gaby Lasky, who represents Palestinian children
before Israel’s military courts, said on the BBC’s World Service this morning,
that the army aimed to use children as informants. Horton backed her up account,
saying children were offered a combination of money and threats to give
information.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While the United Nations children’s organisation UNICEF has <a href="http://www.mecaforpeace.org/news/intentional-under-exposure-unicef-report-children-israeli-detention">deliberately
played</a> down Israel’s abuse of children, it is so bad that a group of 850
serving and former Israeli soldiers, speaking through <a href="http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/">Breaking the Silence</a>, have
also been highlighting the issue.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is a policy of terror by a state that has no intention
of giving up any territory or removing any of the 250,000 settlers from the
West Bank. For the Zionists, the demonisation of Palestinians is crucial to
their own raison d’être and rule. Whatever deal Kerry brokers, it won’t be
worth the paper it’s written on. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Corinna Lotz<br />
A World to Win secretary </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-12920570824649024692014-02-07T11:10:00.001+00:002014-02-07T11:10:40.341+00:00It's kick-off time in Brazil<div class="MsoNormal">
When protesters seize a transport hub in a protest against
fare increases, allowing passengers to travel free for a short time, you can
understand why Brazil’s authorities are preparing to establish an armed camp
for this year’s World Cup.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Brazil is a social tinder pot, a county where endemic
corruption and decaying public services constantly drive people on to the
streets. Spending billions on a football tournament has proved the last straw
for many.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As the comparative stately 48-hour Tube strike drew to a
close in London, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-26077374">a march in Rio</a>
was heading for the city’s Central Station in protest against fare rises of
nearly 10%."We want Fifa-standard hospitals too," marchers shouted,
making reference to the high standards demanded by the World Cup organisers for
the event's venues.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As they reached their destination, some activists leaped
over the barriers and before long a crowd had taken control of the station. The
riot police showed up and in the clashes that followed, many were injured. They
included a cameraman who was apparently the victim of a police tear gas
grenade. He suffered terrible head injuries.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Last year, similar protests that began in Sao Paulo grew
into a nationwide movement against corruption and excessive spending ahead of
the tournament, which begins in June. Local authorities were forced to withdraw
fare rises. Since then, the state has created a mass surveillance programme, no
doubt with a little help from the United States.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
According to a <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/02/05/us-brazil-protests-insight-idUKBREA141JO20140205">Reuters
news agency report</a>, the security forces are using undercover agents,
intercepting e-mails, and monitoring social media to try and keep one step
ahead of the protests. President Dilma Rousseff's government is terrified that
actions could severely disrupt the tournament. Protests are being planned in
all 12 cities that will host matches.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The state is ostensibly targeting the anarchist-inspired Black
Bloc members, but the surveillance is taking in all anti-government protesters.
Agents are said to have infiltrated the movement and are no doubt acting as provocateurs
with the intention of getting activists arrested before the World Cup kicks
off.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ironically, Rousseff herself was the target of the military
government that ruled Brazil from 1964-85. A genuine case of poacher turned
gamekeeper. She is also mobilising at least 100,000 security personnel across
Brazil for the World Cup itself. That’s twice as many as were deployed for the
2013 Confederations Cup which drew mass protests. As well as police and
military, members of the elite National Force unit will be “ready to intervene
where necessary”, according to Andrei Rodrigues, special secretary for security
and safety at major events.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Rafael Alcadipani, a professor at the Getulio Vargas
Foundation business school who has researched the group and interviewed its
members, says the Black Blocs "believe that the Brazilian political system
is broken and that it doesn't represent them". said. "As long as the government doesn't address the main
issues, people are going to keep protesting," said Alcadipani.
"Nothing has changed since last June."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Actually what has changed is the Brazilian economy. A
slowing growth rate – the economy shrank in the third quarter of last year for
the first time since 2009 - has prompted global investors to pull out their
cash, causing the real to depreciate by nearly 20% against the dollar in the last
year. That makes imports much dearer for ordinary Brazilians. Abnormally dry
weather could threaten agricultural produce and exports, deepening the crisis.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Brazil may be one of the favourites for the tournament but,
to coin a phrase, it’s kicking off all over the country and football is likely
to take second place to a continuing social upheaval in the world’s fifth
largest country. The system is not only broken – it can’t be fixed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Paul Feldman</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Communications editor</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-45062913541393978812014-02-06T09:35:00.002+00:002014-02-06T09:35:19.446+00:00Memo to Cameron: Floods are actually in charge of us<div class="MsoNormal">
There had to be a moment when a changed climate resulting
from global warming caused persistent extreme weather. With horrific storms and
floods in Britain and France, the worst drought in California since records
began and temperatures over 40º in Australia, that moment has arrived.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
David Cameron is now "in charge of the floods" – but
in reality the floods are in charge of us. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thousands of people are without power, roads are impassable,
the sea is encroaching into town centres and breaking down sea walls. Some
villages have been cut off for weeks, all normal life put on hold. Yesterday
police helicopters cruised the Somerset levels, warning people to leave their
homes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Cameron announced the ConDem government will contribute an
extra £100m (literally a drop in the ocean) and stated "there is no limit
to what this government will do - whether it is dredging the rivers Tone and
Parrett (on the Somerset levels), whether it is support for our emergency
services, whether it is fresh money for flood defences, whether it is action
across the board, this Government will help those families and get this issue
sorted".</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But it can't be "sorted" in that sense. Quick
fixes are of no use here. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the medium term, Devon and Cornwall are going to be cut
out of the rail network for as long as six months and probably longer if it
proves unrealistic to rebuild along the coastal route. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the longer term, there will be a massive speed up of
coastal erosion. We have seen the beginnings of that this month. Villages that
have existed since medieval times may become uninhabitable.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dredging the Somerset levels is a disastrous idea. It will
force streams and rivers into unnatural gorges, where water will rush towards
the sea, spilling over every time it hits a pinch point - say a bridge.
Villages and farms on the levels will see a slight diminution of floods but the
water will burst river banks in towns like Taunton.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There is another way, which is to accept that during winter
storms some farm land will be flooded. Adding huge quantities of organic matter
to the fields - that is compost - would ensure they hold the water and drain
well when the storms end. This would mean turning away from chemical farming.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We need to create open space in towns and cities. We need to
stop building on flood plains and where have already done it, take urgent
measures to improve drainage. The environment agency wants to regulate so new
housing developments must be built with a soak-away - open land to hold excess
water when rainfall is too much for sewer drains. But the construction industry
opposes this simple measure, because they would not be able to crush quite so
many homes on to every site.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The system of capitalist economy privileges private
ownership and profit above all other considerations, and our market state
governments have become simply another facet of this whole. The idea the state
should pay for infrastructure has been rubbished for decades. The days when
they could act in opposition to business interests in the public interest have long
gone.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Climate change will increasingly create chaotic social
conditions and we know that governments' first response to disorder is
generally to crack down on the population. But they can't crack down on the
weather - it's bigger than all of us.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It has become clear during the floods that people have had
to rely on their own resilience and social solidarity to get through. A
hands-off state has proved incompetent and unable to prepare for what was on
the cards. This is true on a regional, national and global scale as well. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The lessons are pretty stark. Society’s resources have to be
marshalled in a co-operative and democratic way so we can decide how best to
respond to extreme weather, which is here to stay. Weather is now first and
foremost a political question of power. At the moment, it’s in the hands of incompetent politicians and their developer friends. That's what has to change.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Penny Cole</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Environment editor</div>
A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-35192935274793777562014-02-05T10:09:00.000+00:002014-02-05T10:09:10.694+00:00Sick global economy hit by new contagion<div class="MsoNormal">
The list of countries hit by the wave of withdrawal of
speculative investment capital lengthens by the day. Countries amounting to
half the global economy are being forced to spend currency reserves, raise
interest rates and consider controls over the movement of capital. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A contagion of capital flight is hitting Argentina, India,
Indonesia, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, Hungary and Turkey. A dramatic
reversal in the global marketplace, which began in May and is accelerating with
every new shock statistic, is forcing the governments of “emerging” economies
to savage the living standards for their already low-income populations. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Each country has a different story to tell: worse or better
attempts at managing their economies; higher or lower levels of foreign
currency reserves; more or less extremes of corruption of government ministers;
levels of civil unrest ranging from the benign to insurrectionary. But the
source of the crisis invading their borders lies elsewhere, beyond their
control. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Investors on the global financial markets – better known as
speculators, or gamblers – were spooked last May by the US Federal Reserve’s
announcement of its intentions to begin reducing its $85 billion per month
programme of credit creation. The withdrawal of funds – known by the jargon
quantitative easing – began soon after and has recently been accelerated. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Fed will have taken many factors into account in the
central bank’s decision to reverse the programme of credit creation which –
together with the sharp reduction in take-home pay – has been a key factor in
the jobless economic “recovery” following the 2007-8 crash. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ballooning levels of “margin debt” figured high among the
triggers for the decision. These are investments
made with money borrowed on the expectation that the Fed would continue pumping
credit into the economy. Indicators suggested that these investments had
reached danger levels, threatening another financial collapse. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
China’s central bank is also being obliged to follow a
similar path. Having fought the global recession with a huge programme of
credit-financed construction of cities, roads and railways it recently made
tentative steps in opening its borders to volatile international investors. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some analysts estimate that foreign financial institutions
now have almost $1 trillion tied up in the Chinese economy, either as
investment in or loans to corporations. George Magnus, senior independent
economist at UBS, says that the Chinese banking system resembles that of Japan
during the 1980s in the years leading up to that country’s financial crash.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“If the dollar were to appreciate it could cause problems
for those banks that have borrowed in dollars. Anywhere you have a banking
system that uses a non-domestic currency, there is a possibility of a mismatch
that could cause issues when the value of your liabilities runs away from you,”
said Magnus.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In China, which became the manufacturing powerhouse for the
global corporations in the last century, growth has slowed for 11 of the last
14 quarters. The Markit/HSBC manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index fell to a
six-month low of 49.5 in January, suggesting the overall factory sector
contracted again from December. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With 50 being the dividing line between growth and
contraction, the omens are very bad indeed for a global economy depending on
China sucking in raw materials and components and assembling them for sale back
to the richer half of the world.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the US, manufacturing grew at a substantially slower pace
last month as new order growth plunged the most in 33 years. Some blamed the
severe weather, as if things will improve along with the seasons. So the
world’s two biggest economies are in deepening trouble.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Assessing the long-term prospects for humanity including the
impact of environmental degradation and climate change, Christine Lagarde,
managing director of the International Monetary Fund, is calling for a new
Bretton Woods arrangement.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She said in a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03ttn4b/The_Richard_Dimbleby_Lecture_04_02_2014/">BBC
lecture</a> that such a meeting was needed to restore economic sustainability
and reduce global tensions. She was invoking the spirit of multilateralism and
a return to the “brotherhood of man” philosophy promoted by economist John
Maynard Keynes at the 1944 meeting in the United States.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To this listener her lecture invoked only the spirit of
Humpty Dumpty. She would be better off getting ready for global Meltdown II.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Gerry Gold</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Economics editor</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-40416549961238595912014-02-04T10:04:00.000+00:002014-02-04T10:04:39.424+00:00Miliband marches in Blair's footsteps<div class="MsoNormal">
When Labour’s national executive committee today
rubber-stamps plans to “reform” the party’s historic relations with the trade
unions, it will put the finishing touches to a long-term project to bring the
party’s organisation into line with what it actually stands for.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Many sins have been committed in the name of
“modernisation”, not least the creation of New Labour as a party wholeheartedly
committed to corporate globalisation and an economy pretty much dominated by
market forces. Add a little “light-touch” regulation and you could be looking
at any of the mainstream political parties.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For New Labour – now rebranded as One Nation Labour – this
has been a project that began with Neil Kinnock in the late 1980s and was
carried on by his successor, John Smith. Ed Miliband, the current leader, is
proud to march in their footsteps. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jan/31/ed-miliband-labour-trade-union-reforms?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487">He
said last week</a>:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
"The first time I met Tony Blair was in 1993
and at the time he was on a group helping John Smith bring in one member, one
vote for the selection of parliamentary candidates. I remember him looking at
me and saying how difficult change was proving to be. At the very first party
conference I attended, Smith – with the help of a speech by John Prescott –
got those reforms through.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
"Smith, Blair and Neil Kinnock have all embarked on
these kinds of reforms over the past 30 years and I see this as completing that
work. They are significantly bigger than anyone expected we would be proposing,
and some are the biggest to the party since its formation."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course, Blair and Gordon Brown famously persuaded the
trade unions to vote in 1995 for the abolition of Clause 4 of the party’s
constitution that set out common ownership of the means of production as an
aim. Union leaders did so in the hope that an incoming New Labour government
would deliver policies to benefit their members. How wrong they were!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Today’s generation of union leaders are just as pathetic.
With a few moans and groans here and there, the big three – Unite, Unison and
the GMB – will back Miliband’s plans. They will be told, as they were in 1995,
that the election of Labour in next year’s general election depends on it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Miliband has to persuade the middle-class that One Nation
Labour has broken free from union influence. So the way the party leader is
elected will change to one member, one vote. At union level, individual members
of affiliated unions will in future have to “opt in” to become associate
members of the Labour Party. The last time that happened was in 1927, when in
the wake of the General Strike, the Tories passed opt-in legislation (which
Labour repealed after 1945).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The aim then was to weaken the collective in favour of the
individual. And so it is with Miliband, whatever he says about “letting people
back into our politics”. Miliband used the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/feb/03/labour-falkirk-karie-murphy-voting-investigation">Falkirk
selection farrago</a> – which is par for the course in Labour constituencies –
as the pretext for the changes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In a wider context, Labour is part of the process of the end
of the old politics and these changes won’t alter that fact. The mainstream
parties are no more than state managers rather than independent actors, there
to facilitate for powerful forces rather than respond to electors. This
corporatocracy is so unattractive that millions have switched off party
politics and the electoral fraud that goes under the name of a general
election.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One Nation Labour is for continuing ConDem austerity and
giving tax subsidies to companies to pay better wages. Miliband wants to
“improve” the way markets work (as if he could!) and show that his party is for
nothing less than “responsible capitalism”. I’d have to be dragged to a polling
station to vote for that. And if I’d got that far, I’d spoil my ballot.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Paul Feldman</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Communications editor </div>
A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-60563777225760051152014-02-03T11:35:00.000+00:002014-02-03T11:35:29.989+00:00Ukraine insurrection against brutality and state corruption<div class="MsoNormal">
As the anti-government movement in Maidan Square hunkers
down for its tenth week of occupation in sub-zero temperatures, the
battle-lines have changed. Starting as a largely pro-European Union movement
last November, the remarkable courage and determination of Kiev’s people has
changed the stakes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The massive reaction of the authorities produced a defiant opposition
to the brutality of the notorious security forces and to widespread state
corruption. That’s why what is effectively an insurrection has spread to the
eastern parts of Ukraine, despite the area’s historic ties to neighbouring Russia.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The centre of Kiev has become a charred and frozen war-zone
with some of the <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304851104579358773435642010?mod=WSJEurope_hpp_LEFTTopStories&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304851104579358773435642010.html%3Fmod%3DWSJEurope_hpp_LEFTTopStories">thousands
of occupiers</a> sheltering in occupied buildings and others behind barricades
made of ice. They are sustained by well-organised support from both locals and
those further away. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.dw.de/the-women-of-kyivs-independence-square/a-17387387">Hundreds
of women</a> ferry food, hot drinks, blankets and medication, braving not only
freezing temperatures, smoke from burning tyres, but also live bullets from
plainclothes snipers, not to mention batons, tear gas, water cannon and rubber
bullets.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At least two of the movement’s leaders have had to flee Ukraine
and take refuge in neighbouring countries. There is evidence of death squads
and that snipers surrounding Maidan Square are deliberately targeting
protesters’ eyes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Over <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a09e2716-8a69-11e3-ba54-00144feab7de.html#axzz2sFlRa3gS">40
journalists are reported injured</a> and there is video evidence of police
beating and stripping a Cossack protester in a freezing street. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dmytro Bulatov, the founder of Auto Maidan – which organises
car owners in support of the occupation – disappeared on January 22. Two days
before, Bulatov had urged opposition leaders to settle on a single protest
leadership. He was only found eight days later, having been tortured by the
police. Only the vigilance of his supporters prevented further beatings while
he was in hospital. He has apparently now left the country. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Oleksandre Danylyuk, leader of the anti-government group
Spilna Sprava which organised the occupation of three strategic buildings, fled
to London last week after the police issued a <a href="http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/anti-government-ngo-leader-danylyuk-says-he-is-in-london-336123.html">warrant</a>
for his arrest. He is wanted on suspicion of !organising riots that caused the
death of people or serious harm to them," according to the Interior
Ministry's database of wanted people. The offense carries up to 15 years behind
bars, says the Kyiv Post.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Danylyuk and Bulatov have been luckier than 50-year-old Yuri
Verbizky, who was beaten and <a href="http://www.dw.de/ukrainian-activists-fear-kidnapping-beatings-and-death/a-17388514">left
to die of the cold</a> in a forest near Kiev. His colleague, Ihor Lutsenko
managed to escape with a concussion and missing teeth. He was rescued by a
passing motorist.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meanwhile, the website for Berkut, the state’s special
police force, has been flooded with anti-Semitic materials alleging that the
Jews are to blame for organising at Maidan. Berkut proudly publishes photos of
its brutality to protesters.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As poet Yuri Andrukhovych has written, the state repression
and collusion with autocrats like Putin has hardened the resolve of the
movement. They are fired up, he says “by
an exceptionally hot mix of despair, hope, self-sacrifice and hatred”. He adds:
“”Yes, hatred. Morality does not forbid hating murderers. Especially if the
murderers are in power or in direct service of those in power.”</div>
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Ukraine became an independent state in 1991 for the first
time in its long history, apart from a brief moment around 1918-1919. For most
of the 20<sup>th</sup> century it was part of the Soviet Union. During the
Stalinist period, Ukraine experienced famine during which millions died as a
result of forced collectivisation. </div>
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Political independence following the break-up of the USSR did
not mean economic independence from the greedy tentacles of Putin’s state in
Russia, nor from their Ukraine’s own oligarchs. The transition to a full-blown
capitalist economy meant poverty for the majority of Ukraine’s workers and its
women in particular. After the 2008 global crash, Ukraine’s economy staggered
deeper and deeper into debt.</div>
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Ukraine’s embattled president Viktor Yanukovych, who has
just returned from a few days’ “rest” signed an economic pact with Russia in
December rather than the EU. But the anti-government protesters are wise to the
fact that there are sinister strings attached to any deal with Putin even if
they don’t yet appreciate that the EU sees Ukraine as another pool of cheap
labour to exploit. </div>
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There is a wide spectrum of f<a href="http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/news/featured-news/the-euromaidan-revolution-of-ukraine-s-political-right-and-the-left-field-notes-from-downtown-kyiv">orces
at work</a> in the Ukrainian movement, including the “Right Sector”. This has
been seized up by Putin’s propaganda machine to discredit the movement. But
there are also others, amongst them Narodniy Nabat (People’s Bell) and Avtonomniy Opir (Autonomous Resistance) and Volna
Zemlya (Free Land). They recognise the state as their enemy even if there
is no clear view yet about what to replace it with.</div>
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Corinna Lotz</div>
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A World to Win secretary</div>
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A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-20593729202798367142014-01-30T08:39:00.006+00:002014-01-30T08:59:22.689+00:00Plan A or Plan B spell misery for Scots<div class="MsoNormal">
Currency unions between sovereign states are a dangerous
business for ordinary people as Greeks under the hammer of Troika-imposed
austerity will confirm. Or Italians, whose grand coalition of all the parties is
systematically destroying living standards and pensions in the name of the euro.
Or Spanish people living in poverty as unemployment climbs above 26%.</div>
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So when Bank of England governor Mark Carney, addressing business
people in Edinburgh yesterday, stressed the dangers of a currency union that
doesn't impose shared fiscal policies on all its members he was only stating
the obvious. But at least he was bluntly honest.</div>
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"The euro area
is now beginning to rectify its institutional shortcomings, but further, very
significant steps must be taken to expand the sharing of risks and pooling of
fiscal resources. In short, a durable, successful currency union requires some
ceding of national sovereignty," he said before delivering his real
message.</div>
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Carney then confirmed that if this year's referendum vote
goes in favour of independence, the Treasury in London will want a major say in
Scotland's tax and spend plans before it agrees to any sterling currency union.
</div>
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As a Treasury spokesman explained: "Governor Carney
today highlights the principled difficulties of entering a currency union:
losing national sovereignty, practical risks of financial instability and
having to provide fiscal support to bail out another country. This is why the
UK government have consistently said that, in the event of independence, a
currency union is highly unlikely to be agreed. The Scottish government needs a
Plan B."</div>
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Scotland’s first minister Alex Salmond’s response is that he
does indeed have a plan B. It is to simply go on using the pound without any
currency union agreement – a kind of self-supporting Scottish pound. So we are
talking about a globally tradable currency, with no reserves behind it, in a
country where the banks are amongst the ropiest on earth - what a recipe for
disaster!</div>
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The 2008 bailout of RBS cost the taxpayers £45.2 billion. Scotland's
annual output is just £216bn. At present, RBS has loans and investments of £1.3
trillion, equivalent to more than six times that. It also has £36bn of toxic
loans in its “bad bank account” and faces fines for wrongdoing that could be as
much as £1 trillion. And we haven't even mentioned the Bank of Scotland, which
posted an £8bn loss last year. What price would Scotland's population have to
pay to bail that lot out?</div>
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The economic choices for ordinary Scots are not looking good,
either way. Inside the union it's austerity for generations and misery for the
poorest. In an independent capitalist Scotland the choice is either a currency
union where key decisions on spending are still imposed by the Treasury or a level of fiscal uncertainty as a
new currency tries to find its feet in a market that is descending into turmoil.
Just look at what happened to the Turkish, South African and other currencies
this week.</div>
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But there is another way to resolve the currency question
and the political and economic issues too. We need to move away from a
nationalist agenda for a capitalist Scotland to one where we have a say on what
kind democracy, what kind of constitution, what kind of economy, what kind of
currency ordinary people want.</div>
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With that as the focus of a campaign for a “Yes” vote, we could
turn the referendum away from narrow nationalism into a debate about what real
self-determination means. The message should go out loud and clear: we don’t
want the rule of the banks and corporations wherever we live or a political
system that leaves the elites firmly in control. </div>
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And that would undoubtedly inspire people in England, Wales
and the north of Ireland to find their own route to challenging and defeating
the power of the common enemy. </div>
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Penny Cole</div>
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A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-86823440361258368782014-01-29T10:48:00.002+00:002014-01-29T11:02:14.785+00:00Osborne's 'recovery' built on sand<div class="MsoNormal">
Just as the ConDem coalition is trumpeting a “return to
growth” – one that is more apparent than real – their hopes for a sustained economic
recovery have been shattered by the eruption of new phase of the global crisis.
</div>
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Late last night Turkey’s central bank joined India’s in
emergency measures designed to stem the flight of capital from their countries
as investors continue to withdraw funds from “emerging” economies around the
world.</div>
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In attempting to reverse the collapse of its currency, the
lira, and against opposition from prime minister Tayyip Erdogan, who is in the
midst of a corruption scandal and desperate to maintain growth in the run-up to
an election, Turkey’s central bank raised interest rates to levels which
shocked economists, more than doubling its overnight borrowing rate from 3.5
percent to 8 percent. </div>
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The Reserve Bank of India’s rate rise of 0.25%, small by
comparison, is the third since September. But the country is struggling with
10% inflation, a halving of its projected growth rate to 5% and the value of
the rupee falling 11% last year as investors moved their money out of the
country. The Congress party government of Manmohan Singh, also battered by a
corruption scandal, faces an uphill battle in elections due by May.</div>
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These are just two of the countries whose problems were
dramatically accentuated by the US Federal Reserve’s decision last month to
slow the creation of credit by way of “quantitative easing”, aka printing of
money.</div>
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The flight of capital was already underway long before the
Fed’s decision. Just suggesting the possibility of reducing the $75 billion <b>a month </b>programme of money creation in
June 2013 was enough to start the ball rolling. Now it shows all the signs of
turning into a rout, a panic.</div>
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So-called “emerging” countries are those willing and able to
provide global investment funds with favourable high-profit conditions –
including cheap labour, low taxes, and government-funded infrastructure. They
became the home for trillions of dollars of the new credit, invented in the
desperate attempts to resuscitate the world economy following the 2007-8 crash.
</div>
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Ironically, throughout the half-century leading up to the
crash, global corporations had taken advantage of cheap labour by the transfer
of manufacturing from the relatively high-wage, richer, “developed” economies
to the ultra-low wage economies. In doing so they reversed the competitive
drive for productivity which tends to increase the ratio of fixed capital
investment to the quantity of labour. The rate of growth of productivity – the
quantity of value produced per hour of labour – slowed as a result.</div>
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So, globalisation of manufacturing and finance led to two
significant results – a slowing in the rate of productivity growth, and far
more volatile markets for finance capital, which was invested in easily
tradable emerging countries’ bonds and currencies rather than in factories,
roads and other infrastructure. </div>
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In the wake of the crash, capital investment to replace ageing
facilities, let alone new manufacturing, came to a virtual standstill. As a
result, in 2009, productivity growth turned negative. The emergency rescue
measures managed a reversal. A temporary reversal. The trend has continued downward ever since.</div>
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That, in brief is the back-story to the <i>Financial Times’</i> warning for the ConDem’s absurdly euphoric
chancellor Osborne. “Scratch beneath the surface, however,” says the FT’s
economics editor “and Britain’s deepest economic challenge just got deeper.</div>
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“The problem is that the trend the Bank of England, the
Treasury and economists want to see most – an end to productivity stagnation –
appears to be absent. In the latest labour market figures… total hours worked grew
1.1%, indicating that output per hour worked fell again in the final quarter.</div>
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“Unless Britain’s productivity performance improves, the
economy can catch up its lost ground with people working longer and
unemployment falling. But once this is done, prosperity will stagnate, as it
has for the past six years.”</div>
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To say that the dynamism of capital is waning is to put it
mildly. Add in the flight of capital from India et al and you have the recipe
for another global crash. Whatever the ConDems’ fantasies, capitalism isn’t
working and the so-called upturn is built on sand.</div>
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Gerry Gold</div>
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Economics editor</div>
A World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.com0