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Category: Neoliberalism

  • Greater of Two Evils

    I’m reposting this article about the Democratic Party five years after it was published because after re-reading it, I wouldn’t change a thing. In addition, the Democratic Party has become even more right-wing since it gained power in 2020. At the end of the article I will name the many ways it has gotten still worse.

    How to Conceive of the Two-party System

    Lesser of two evils

    Among liberals and all the different types of socialists, when the subject of the Democratic Party comes up, there are at least two variations. One is the familiar liberal argument that the Democratic Party is the “lesser of two evils”. For them, the Republican Party is the source of most, if not all, problems while the Democratic Party is presented as shortsighted, weak and/or incompetent bumblers. Among some of the more compromising members of the Green Party, the lesser of two evils manifests itself when it implores its voters to “vote in safe states”

    There are a number of reasons why I will claim that the Democratic Party is not the lesser of two evils. But for now, I want to point out that the lesser of two evils has at its foundation a political spectrum which is organized linearly with conservatives and fascists on the right. Along the left there are liberals, followed by social democrats, state socialists, and anarchists on the extreme left. All the forces moving from liberals leftward are broadly categorized as “progressive.” What this implies is that there are only quantitative differences between being a liberal and being any kind of socialist. In this scenario, being a liberal is somehow closer to being a socialist than being a liberal is to a being a conservative. However, there is an elephant in the room, and the elephant is capitalism.

    What unites all socialists – social democrats, Maoists, Trotskyists, council communists and anarchists – is opposition to capitalism? What divides us from liberals, whether they are inside or outside the Democratic Party, is that liberals are for capitalism. In relation to the economic system, liberals are closer to conservatives than they are to socialists of any kind. So, the “lesser of two evils “argument is based on the expectation that socialists will ignore the capitalist economic system and make believe that capitalism is somehow progressive. It might have been possible to argue this case 60 years ago, but today capitalism makes its profits on war, slave prison labor and fictitious capital. Characterizing this as “progress” is ludicrous.

    The parties are interchangeable

    Most anarchists and various varieties of Leninists claim there is no difference between the parties. They say that capitalists control both parties and it is fruitless to make any distinctions. I agree they are both capitalist parties, but what most socialists fail to do is point out that, in addition to protecting the interests of capitalists as Republicans do, the Democratic Party: a) presents itself as representing the middle and lower classes; and (b)  stands in the way of the formation of a real opposition to the elites.

    The second reason I disagree with the idea that the two parties are simply interchangeable is that it fails to make a distinction between the interests of the ruling and upper classes (Republicans) on the one hand, and the upper middle class (mostly Democrats) on the other. There are real class differences between elites that should not be dissolved.

    The Democrats are the greater of two evils

    The argument I will make in this article is that the Democratic Party is worse than the Republican Party for about 85% of the population. I make this argument as a Council Communist, and my argument in no way implies voting for Republicans, Greens or even voting at all. Before giving you my reasons for why the Democratic Party is worse for most people I want to give you a sense of how I came up with the figure of 85% .

    Old money vs new money and the class composition in the United States

    Sociologists have some disagreements over how many classes there are in the United States and what occupations cover what social classes. While some might have a bone to pick about my percentages, I am confident that I am at least in the ballpark. The ruling class constitutes the 1% (or less) of the population and the upper class another 5%. What these classes have in common is that they all live off finance capital and do not have to work. This is what has been called “old money”. This old money had its investments in extractive industries like oil, mining and the war industry. This is the stronghold of the Republican Party.

    The upper middle classes consist of doctors, lawyers, architects, and senior managers who make a lot of money, but have to work long hours. It also includes scientists, engineers as well as media professionals such as news commentators, magazine and newspaper editors, college administrators and religious authorities Yet there are tensions between the elites and the upper middle class. The upper middle class represents “new money” and makes their profits from scientific innovation, the electronics industry, including computers and the Internet, among other avenues. This class constitutes roughly 10% of the population. The upper middle class is the stronghold of the Democratic Party.

    A number of economists from Thomas Piketty to Richard Wolff have argued that for these social classes there has been an “economic recovery” since the crash of 2008. For all other classes there has been decline. The role of the Democratic Party is

    1. To represent the actual interests of the upper middle class
    2. To make believe it is a spokesperson for the other 85%

    Far be it for me to say that the Republicans and Democrats represent the same thing. There is real class struggle between the interests of the ruling class and the upper class on the one hand and the upper middle class on the other. My point is that for 85% of the population these differences between elites are irrelevant. What the top three classes have in common is a life and death commitment to capitalism – and this commitment is vastly more important than where the sources of their profits come from.

    Who are these remaining 85%? Poor people, whether they are employed or not, constitute about 20% of the population. When they are working this includes unskilled work which simply means no previous training is required. Working class people – blue and white collar – represent about 40% of the population. This includes carpenters, welders, electricians, technical workers, secretaries, computer programmers, and X-ray technicians. Middle class people – high school, grammar school teachers, registered nurses, librarians, corporate middle management, and small mom-and-pop storeowners – are about 25% of the population. Most poor people don’t vote and in a way, they are smart because they understand that the Democratic Party can do nothing for them. While many working-class people don’t vote, highly skilled working class people do vote, and many will vote Democrat. Middle classes are also more likely to vote Democrat with the exception of small business owners. In fact, research by labor theorist Kim Moody into the voting patterns of the last election showed that a high percentage of this petty bourgeois voted for Trump.

    The Democratic Party has nothing to offer the middle class

    When I was growing up in the 1950’s and 1960’s, my father worked as a free-lance commercial artist about 40 hours per week. My mother stayed home and raised my sister and I. One income could cover all of us. My parents sent me to Catholic grammar schools and high schools, which were not very expensive, but they had to save their money to do it. They helped pay for part of my college education after I dropped out and then came back. They helped my partner and I with a down payment on a house in Oakland, CA. Today both parents in a middle-class family need to work and the work-week for middle class workers is at least 10 hours longer. As for savings, if a middle-class family buys a home, it is much more difficult to save for their children’s education.

    In 1970 I was living in Denver, Colorado and had my own studio apartment for $70/month. I worked 20 hours a week at the library as a page and could afford to go to community college part-time. Twenty years later I tried to communicate this to my stepdaughter who was 20 years old and then compared it to her experience. She was working full-time as a waitress, had to live with two other people and could only afford to take a couple of classes without going into debt. Reluctantly and seemingly defeated she had to return home to live if she were to ever graduate from a community college. The Democrats did nothing to stem the tide of the decline of the middle class. Working class and middle class people may continue to vote for Democrats, but that doesn’t mean Democrats are delivering the goods. It just means these classes don’t want to face that:

    1. a) They have no representation;
    2. b) There is no alternative party and they do not live in a democracy.

    Now on to why I believe the Democratic Party is worse that the Republican party for this 85% of the population.

    The Democratic Party has nothing to do with being liberal

    Most people who support the Democratic Party don’t really consider the party as it actually is, but how they imagine it should be according either to political science classes they’ve picked up in high school or college or from what they have picked up unconsciously through conversations. They have also gotten this from Democratic Party members themselves who talk about liberal values while in practice acting like conservatives. These voters think the Democratic Party is liberal. What do I mean by liberal? The term liberal has a long political history which I have traced elsewhere (Counterpunch, Left Liberals Have No Party) but let’s limit the term to what I call “New Deal Liberals”.

    These New Deal liberals think that the state should provide essential services like pensions, food stamps, natural disaster relief as well as road and bridge construction. They also think the state should intervene to minimize some of the worst aspects of capitalism such as child wage work or sex slavery. These liberals think that Democrats should support the development of unions to protect the working class. This class deserves an adequate wage and decent working conditions. They also think – as it is in the American dream – that in order to justify their existence, capitalists should make profit from the production of real goods and services. These liberals think that the Democratic Party should support the development of science and research to create an easier life so that the standard of living for the American population should go up from generation to generation. These are the values of New Deal liberals. If the Democratic Party acted as if it supported these things, I could understand why liberals would say voting for the Democratic Party is the lesser of two evils. The problem is that these New Deal liberals are trapped in a 50-year time warp when the last real liberal Democratic president was Lyndon Johnson. The Democratic Party hasn’t been liberal in 50 years. This is one reason why the program of New Deal liberal Bernie Sanders had been so popular.

    It does not take a Marxist to argue that the United States has been in economic decline since the mid 1970’s. It won’t do to blame the Republicans alone for this 50-year degeneration. The Democratic Party has had presidents between 1976 and 1980, in addition to eight years of Clinton, as well as eight years of Obama. They have had twenty years’ worth of chances to put into practice liberal values and they have failed miserably. Under the Democratic Party:

    • The standard of living is considerably below the standard of living 50 years ago.
    • The minimum wage bought more in 1967 than it does today.
    • The standard of living for all racial minorities has declined since the 1970’s.
    • Unions, which protected the working class, have dwindled to barely 10%.
    • With the possible exception of Dennis Kucinich, no Democrat is prepared to commit to building infrastructure as a foundation for a modern civilization.
    • The proportion of wealth claimed by finance capital has dwarfed investment in industrial capital compared to fifty years ago.
    • The Democrats have signed off on all imperialist wars for the last 50 years.
    • Science has lost respectably in the United States as it fights a battle against fundamentalism. Do Democrats come out unapologetically for science and challenge the fundamentalists and the New Agers? There are more people in the US who believe in astrology than they did in the Middle Ages. Does the Democratic Party, in the name of its claimed roots in the Enlightenment, rescue the public from these follies? Hardly.

    Please tell me in what sense is this party liberal?

    The Democratic Party is not an oppositional party: the Republicans play hardball; the Democrats play badminton

    It is right about this time that a liberal defending the Democratic Party would chime in and say something about the Supreme Court. The line is “If we don’t get so and so elected, then the evil right-wing judge will get appointed and Roe vs Wade will be threatened.” This line has been trotted out for the last 45 years. What it conveniently ignores is that the Democratic Party has been in power for at least 40% of the time, whether in the executive or any other branch. It has had forty years to load the Supreme Court with rabid liberals so as to bury the right-to-lifers when they had the chance. An oppositional party would have done this. The Democratic Party has not.

    Trump has been on a tear destroying what was left of US international diplomatic relations put into place by Kissinger and Brzezinski. His “policies” are consistently right wing “interventions”, whether they succeed or not. At the same time, domestically Trump has been consistently right wing on every issue from public schools, to immigrants to social programs. What he has done has destabilized international and domestic relations. Conservatives have been doing this kind of thing for 50 years, but with more diplomacy. If the Democratic Party were really an oppositional party, I would expect to find liberal interventions that are roughly the reverse of what Trump and the conservatives have done. There have been no such interventions.

    Examples of what an oppositional party would look like

    Under an oppositional Democratic regime we would have found a normalization of trade relations with Cuba. There would be scientists and engineers sent to Haiti to build and repair roads and bridges destroyed by natural disasters. There would be normalization of relations with Venezuela and bonds built with the social democratic parties of the Latin American left. Domestically the minimum wage would be restored to at least the standard of 50 years ago. After all, statistics show “productivity” has gone up in the late 50 years. Why wouldn’t the standard of living improve? Social Security and pensions would be regularly upgraded to keep up with the cost of inflation. Bridge and road repair would have been undertaken and low-cost housing would be built. A real liberal president might be so bold as to deploy US soldiers to build them since most of them would no longer be employed overseas. They might also have put forward bills implementing a mass transit system, one that is as good as those of Europe or Japan. Has the Democratic Party done any of these things?

    This is “opposition”?

    Internationally the Democratic Party’s policies have been indistinguishable from the Republicans. Obama did try to normalize relations with Cuba but that was in the service of the potential for foreign investment, not out of any respect for the social project of building the socialism Cuba was engaged in. The US Democratic regimes have done nothing for Haiti. Its attitude towards the Latin American “pink tide” has been hostile while supporting neoliberal restoration whenever and wherever possible.

    Domestic Democratic regimes have done nothing to stem the tide of longer work hours and marginalization of workers as well as the temporary and part-time nature of work. Social Security and pensions have not kept up with the cost of inflation. The Democratic Party has had 20 years to repair the bridges, the roads and the sewer systems and what has it done? The Democrats had 20 years to build low-cost housing and get most, if not all, the homeless off the streets. What have Democrats done? Like the Republicans, the Democrats have professed to have no money for infrastructure, low cost housing or improving mass transit. Like the Republicans they have gone along in blocking Universal Health Care that virtually every other industrialized country possesses. But just like the Republicans they suddenly have plenty of money when it comes to funding seven wars and building the prison industrial complex. Time and again Democratic politicians have ratified increasing the military budget despite the fact that it has no state enemies like the Soviet Union.

    In 2008 capitalism had another one of its crisis moments. Marxists and non-Marxist economists agree that the banks were the problem. The Democrats, with that classy “first African American president” did not implement a single Keynesian intervention to reign in the banks. No banker has even gone to jail. What a real Democratic opposition would have done is to tell the banks something like, “look, the public has bailed you out this time, but in return for this collective generosity, we require that you make your profits from undertaking all the infrastructural work that needs to be done, like building a 21st century mass transit system and investing some of your profits in low cost housing.” This is what an oppositional party would do. Notice none of this has anything to do with socialism. It’s straight New Deal liberalism.

    In sum, the last 45 years have you ever seen a consistent left liberal intervention by Democrats that would be the equivalent of what Trump is doing now or any conservative regime has done in the last 50 years in any of these areas? Has Carter, Clinton I or Obama done anything equivalent in their 20 years of formal power that Republicans have done in their 30 years? No, because if they ever dreamed of doing such a thing the Republicans would have them driven from office as communists. When was the last time a Democratic candidate drove a Republican from office by calling them a fascist? The truth of the matter is that the Republicans play hardball while the Democrats play badminton.

    The second reason the Democratic Party is not an oppositional party is because “opposition” is a relative term. The lesser of two evils scenario works with the assumption that parties are partisan: all Republicans vote in block and all Democrats vote in block. This, however, is more the exception than the rule. Most times some Republicans support Democratic policies and most times some Democrats support Republican measures. Many Republican policies would not have been passed had the Democrats really been an oppositional party. In 2004, when Ralph Nader ran for president, he was raked over the coals for “spoiling” the elections. Yet as later research proves, more people who were registered Democrat voted for Republicans than the total number of people who voted for the Green Party.

    The Democratic Party is a party of the elites

    Those politicians and media critics who inhabit the nether worlds between left liberal and social democracy such as Robert Reich, Bernie Sanders, Cornell West are tenacious in their search for the “soul” of the Democratic Party. They insist on dividing Democrats into conservative and liberals. The latest version is to call right-wing Democrats “corporate” Democrats as compared to some other kind of Democrat labelled “progressive”. The implication is that it is possible not to be bought hook line and sinker by corporations if you are in the Democratic Party. I am skeptical that any person can run as a Democrat candidate win an election and not make some compromises with corporations even at a local level, I am cynical this can be done at a state or national level. Corporations are ruling class organizations and they own both parties. There is a reason why Martin Luther King, Malcolm X never joined the Democratic Party.

    If the last Democratic primaries in which Clinton II was handed the nomination over Bernie Sanders was not enough to make you leave the party, the World Socialist Website published two major articles on how the CIA is running its own candidates as Democrats this year. When a world terrorist organization runs candidates under a liberal banner, isn’t that enough to convince you that the Democratic Party is a party of the elites?

    Earlier I stated that the upper middle class represents the Democratic Party and the upper class and the ruling class represent the Republican Party. While each may have interclass differences it is essential for all three social classes that their struggle be seen by the 85% as something this 85% has a stake in. It is important for the ruling class and the upper class that there is a party that appears to represent the unwashed masses (the Democrats). The ruling class and the upper class need the Democratic Party even if they have differences with the upper middle class, whom the Democrats represent. They need the Democratic Party to help create the illusion that voting is an expression of democracy. But the Democratic Party has as much to do with democracy as the Republican Party has to do with republicanism.

    The Democratic Party’s presence is an obstacle to building a real opposition to elites

    By far the greatest reason the Democratic Party is worse than the Republican Party is the way in which the presence of the Democratic Party drains energy from developing a real opposition to the elites and the upper middle class.

    The Democratic Party attacks the Green Party far more than it attacks Republicans

    While the Democratic Party plays badminton with Republicans, it plays hardball with third parties, specifically the Green Party. It does everything it can to keep the Greens off the stage during the debates and makes things difficult when the Greens try to get on the ballot. After the last election, Jill Stein was accused of conspiring with the Russians to undermine the Democrats.

    If the Democratic Party was a real liberal party, if it was a real opposition party, if it was a party of the “working people” rather than the elites, it would welcome the Green Party into the debates. With magnanimously liberal self-confidence it would say “the more the merrier. May all parties of the left debate.” It would welcome the Greens or any other left party to register in all 50 states and simply prove its program superior.

    The wasted time, energy and loss of collective creativity of non-elites

    About 10% of the 40% of working class people are in unions. Think of how much in the way of union dues, energy and time was lost over the last 50 years trying to elect Democratic candidates who did little or nothing for those same unions. All that money, energy and time could have been spent in either deepening the militancy of existing unions or organizing the other 30% of workers into unions.

    Think of all untapped creative political activity of working class people who are not in unions that was wasted in being enthusiastic and fanatical about sports teams because they see no hope or interest in being part of a political community. Instead of being on talk show discussion groups on Monday morning talking about what the Broncos should have done or could have done on Sunday, think of the power they could have if instead they spent their time strategizing about how to coordinate their strike efforts.

    Think of all the immigrants and refugees in this country working at skilled and semi-skilled jobs that have wasted what little time they had standing in line trying to get Democratic Party politicians elected. That time could have been spent on more “May Days Without An Immigrant” as happened thirteen years ago

    Think of all the middle class African Americans whose standards of living has declined over the last 45 years who wasted their vote on Democrats and put their faith in the Black Caucus. Think of the wasted time, effort and energy of all middle class people who often actively campaign and contribute money to the Democratic Party that could have been spent on either building a real liberal party or better yet, a mass socialist party.

    For many years, the false promise that the Democratic Party just might be a party of the working people has stood in the way of the largest socialist organization in the United States from building a mass working class party. Social Democrats in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) who should have known better continue to blur the line between a real socialist like Eugene Debs and left liberals like Bernie Sanders. With 33,000 members there are still factions of DSA that will not break with the Democrats.

    Are there real differences between the neoliberal Democrats and the neoconservative Republicans? Are there differences between Soros and the Koch brothers? Yes, but these differences are not, as Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Claire have said, “a dimes worth of difference”, especially compared to what the presence of the Democratic party has done for 50 years to 85% of the population. Their fake opposition has stood in the way of building a mass left political party.

    The Democratic Party is a parasite on social movements

    Can you remember a time when the Democratic Party had an innovative program of their own that was clearly separate from the Republicans yet distinct from any left wing social movements?

    I can’t. What I have seen is a Democratic party that does nothing but sniff out the flesh and blood of social movements and vampirize them. I have no use for identity politics, but I can remember a time when the Democratic Party wanted nothing to do with it. Now it runs candidates based on identity politics. Black Lives Matter is now part of the Ford Foundation, a Democratic Party think tank. The Occupy Movement term “occupy” was taken as a name for a Facebook page sympathetic to the Democrats, Occupy Democrats, as if the Democratic Party could be occupied. The Democratic Party, which did nothing for feminism while it was attacked and marginalized by the right wing since the 1980’s, has suddenly “discovered” feminism in the Pink Pussy cats. This is an upper middle class party that sings “We Shall Overcome” fifty years too late.

    What should be done?

    Rather than focusing on the evil Republican Party, which makes the Democrats seem merely wishy- washy or inept, the policies of the Democratic Party should be attacked relentlessly while paying little attention to Republicans. In the election years, the Green Party should abandon its strategy of soliciting votes in “safe states”. Instead, the Greens should challenge those who claim to be “left-wing” Democrats to get out of the party as a condition for being voted for. In my opinion, there needs to be an all-out war on the Democratic Party as a necessary step to building a mass party. The goal of such a party should not be to win elections, but to use public opportunities as a platform for deepening, spreading and coordinating the commonalities of the interests of the poor, working class and middle class people.

    How the Democratic Party Has Gotten Worse in the Last Five Years

    • It has surrendered its foreign policy maneuvers to neocons Victoria Nuland and Robert Kagan.
    • It has aided, trained and supplied military supplies of fascist forces in Ukraine
    • It has blown billions of dollars on the war in Ukraine (I thought the Republicans were the “War party”).
    • It cannot compete with China or Russia in building infrastructure, providing raw material and goods so its solution is to make war on them.
    • It failed to replace a head of state who is incompetent, incoherent and is incapable of any rhetorical debate while lacking in any power and backbone.
    • Its profits are made on either destroying the productive forces (wars) or the creation of fictitious capital.
    • It has exerted no control over the financial, insurance or real-estate sector while the manufacturing sector of the economy declines (this is Build Back Better?).
    • The Fed solution to debt is to print more money not backed by gold.
    • The Democrats have done nothing to stabilize the manic-depressive stock market.
    • It has failed miserably to reform its domestic terrorist organizations, euphemistically referred to as “police departments”, where killing civilians has become normalized.
    • It has failed miserably to attack the NRA and intervene effectively in regular mass shootings all over the country.
    • It has done nothing to raise the minimum wage. People can work-full time and be homeless because their rent is higher than their income.
    • It is does nothing to end the slave labor in prisons or reduce the numbers of people in prison.
    • It has done nothing about the housing crisis where the number of vacant houses in this country are five times that of the homeless population.
    • High school and grammar school education is in shambles. Yankee students cannot compete internationally.
    • Primary and secondary educators are leaving the field. The Yankee state is hiring teachers at that level with no teaching experience or formal training.
    • After all its promises it has failed to do anything to relieve student debt.
    • It has failed to protect the Roe vs Wade decision making abortions legal.
    • The party has a paranoid, conspiratorial explanations for its failures, beginning with the loss of Clinton to Trump in 2016. It used to be the Democratic Party made fun of conspiratorial people like Alex Jones. Today its conspiracies are its stock and trade explanation for its failure.

    On the other hand the Democratic Party has embraced New Deal liberalism in the following ways….ummm…it’s okay, I’ll wait.

    • First published in Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism

    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bruce Lerro.

  • Meet the New Normal, Same as the Old Normal: You Are Still the Enemy Within   

    Today, we are witnessing the nudging (manipulation) of the population to accept a ‘new normal’ based on a climate emergency narrative, restrictions on movement and travel, programmable digital money, ‘pandemic preparedness’ courtesy of the World Health Organization’s tyrannical pandemic treaty, unaccountable AI and synthetic ‘food’.

    Whether it involves a ‘food transition’, an ‘energy transition’, 15-minute cities or some other benign-sounding term, all this is to be determined by a supranational ‘stakeholder’ elite with ordinary people sidelined in the process. An undemocratic agenda designed to place restrictions on individual liberty, marking a dramatic shift towards authoritarianism.

    In the 1980s, to help legitimise the deregulation-privatisation neoliberal globalisation agenda, government and media instigated an ideological onslaught, driving home the primacy of ‘free enterprise’, individual rights and responsibility and emphasising a shift away from the role of the state, trade unions and the collective in society.

    We are currently seeing another ideological shift: individual rights and freedoms are said to undermine the wider needs of society and the planet – in a stark turnaround – personal freedom is now said to pose a threat to national security, public health or the climate.

    As in the 1980s, this messaging is being driven by an economic impulse. This time, the collapsing neoliberal project.

    In the UK, poverty is increasing in two-thirds of communities, food banks are now a necessary part of life for millions of people and living standards are plummeting. Indeed, the poorest families are enduring a ‘frightening’ collapse in living standards, resulting in life-changing and life-limiting poverty).

    In the US, around 30 million low-income people are on the edge of a ‘hunger cliff’ as a portion of their federal food assistance is taken away. In 2021, it was estimated that one in eight children were going hungry in the US. Small businesses are filing for bankruptcy in the US at a record rate.

    The Bank of England’s chief economist, Huw Pill, says that people should ‘accept’ being poorer. This is similar to the response of Rob Kapito, co-founder of the world’s biggest asset management firm, BlackRock. In 2022, the unimaginably rich and entitled Kapito said that a “very entitled” generation of (ordinary working) people who have never had to sacrifice would soon have to face shortages for the first time in their lives.

    While business as usual prevails in Kapito’s world of privilege and that of major arms, energy, pharmaceuticals and food companies, whose megarich owners continue to rake in massive profits, Kapito and Pill tell ordinary people to get used to poverty and the ‘new normal’ as if we are ‘all in it together’ – billionaires and working class alike. They conveniently use COVID and the situation in Ukraine as cover for the collapsing neoliberalism.

    But this is part of the hegemonic agenda that seeks to ensure that the establishment’s world view is the accepted cultural norm. And anyone who challenges this world view – whether it involves, for instance, questioning climate alarmism, the ‘new normal’, the nature of the economic crisis, the mainstream COVID narrative or the official stance on Ukraine and Russia – is regarded as a spreader of misinformation and the ‘enemy within’.

    Although the term ‘enemy within’ was popularised by Margaret Thatcher during the miners’ strike in 1984-85 to describe the striking miners, it is a notion with which that Britain’s rulers have regarded protest movements and uprisings down the centuries. From the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 to the Levellers and Diggers in the 17th century, it is a concept associated with anyone or any group that challenges the existing social order and the interests of the ruling class.

    John Ball, a radical priest, addressed the Peasants’ Revolt rebels with the following words:

    Good friends, matters cannot go well in England until all things be held in common; when there shall be neither vassals nor lords; when the lords shall be no more masters than ourselves.

    The revolt was suppressed. John Ball was captured and hung, drawn and quartered. Part of the blood-soaked history of the British ruling class.

    Later on, the 17th-century Diggers movement wanted to create small, egalitarian rural communities and farm on common land that had been privatised by enclosures.

    The 1975 song ‘The world Turned Upside Down’ by Leon Rosselson commemorates the Diggers. His lyrics describe the aims and plight of the movement. In Rosselson’s words, the Diggers were dispossessed via theft and murder but reclaimed what was theirs only to be violently put down.

    Little surprise then that, in the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher used the state machinery to defeat the country’s most powerful trade union and the shock troops of the labour movement, the National Union of Mineworkers – ‘the enemy within’. She needed to do this to open the gates for capital to profit from the subsequent deindustrialisation of much of the UK and the dismantling of large parts of the welfare state.

    And the result?

    A hollowed-out, debt-bloated economy, the destruction of the social fabric of entire communities and the great financial Ponzi scheme – the ‘miracle’ of deregulated finance – that now teeters on the brink of collapse, leading the likes of Kapito and Pill to tell the public to get ready to become poor.

    And now, in 2023, the latest version of the ‘enemy within’ disseminates ‘misinformation’ – anything that challenges the official state-corporate narrative. So, this time, one goal is to have a fully controlled (censored) internet.

    For instance, US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) recently awarded Accrete a contract for Argus to detect disinformation threats from social media. Argus is AI software that analyses social media data to predict emergent narratives and generate intelligence reports at a speed and scale to help neutralise viral disinformation threats.

    Accrete AI is a leading dual-use enterprise AI company. It deployed its AI Argus software for open-source threat detection with the US Department of Defense in 2022.

    In a recent press release, Prashant Bhuyan, founder and CEO of Accrete, boasts:

    Social media is widely recognised as an unregulated environment where adversaries routinely exploit reasoning vulnerabilities and manipulate behaviour through the intentional spread of disinformation. USSOCOM is at the tip of the spear in recognising the critical need to identify and analytically predict social media narratives at an embryonic stage before those narratives evolve and gain traction. Accrete is proud to support USSOCOM’s mission.”

    ‍This is about predicting wrong think on social media. But control over the internet is just part of a wider programme of establishment domination, surveillance and dealing with protest and dissent.

    The recent online article ‘How the Government Weaponizes Surveillance to Silence Its Critics’ notes that, on any given day, the average person in the US is monitored, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways.

    The authors of the article ask us to consider some of the ways the US government is weaponizing its surveillance technologies to flag citizens as a threat to national security, whether or not they have done anything wrong – from flagging citizens as a danger based on their feelings, phone and movements to their spending activities, social media activities, political views and correspondence.

    The elite has determined that the existential threat is you. The article ‘Costs of War: Peterloo’, written by UK Veterans for Peace member Aly Renwick, details the history of the brutal suppression of protesters by Britain’s rulers. He also strips away any notion that some may have of a benign, present-day ruling elite with democratic leanings. The leopard has not changed its spots.

    As we saw during COVID, the thinking is that hard-won rights must be curtailed, freedom of association is reckless, free thinking is dangerous, dissent is to be stamped on, impartial science is a threat and free speech is deadly. Government is ‘the truth’, Fauci (or some similar figure) is ‘the science’ and censorship is for your own good.

    None of this was justified. It only begins to make sense if we regard the COVID restrictions in terms of trying to deal with an economic crisis by closing down the global economy under cover of a public health crisis (see the online articles ‘What Was Covid Really About? Triggering a Multi-Trillion Dollar Global Debt Crisis’ and ‘Italy 2020: Inside Covid’s Ground Zero’ which outline how COVID policies can be explained by economic factors not health concerns).

    The economic crisis is making many people poorer, so they must be controlled, monitored and subjugated.

    The transitions mentioned at the start of this article along with the surveillance agenda (together known as the ‘Great Reset’) are being accelerated at this time of economic crisis when countless millions across the West are being impoverished. The collapsing financial system is resulting in an interrelated global debt, inflation and ‘austerity’ crisis and the biggest transfer of wealth to the rich in history.

    As a result, the powers that be fear that the masses might once again pick up their pitchforks and revolt. They are adamant that the peasants must know their place.

    But the flame of protest and dissent from centuries past still inspires and burns bright. So, with that in mind, let’s finish with Leon Rosselson’s lyrics in reference to the Diggers movement (Billy Bragg’s version of the song can be found on YouTube):

    In sixteen forty-nine
    To St. George’s Hill
    A ragged band they called the Diggers
    Came to show the people’s will
    They defied the landlords
    They defied the laws
    They were the dispossessed reclaiming what was theirs

    We come in peace they said
    To dig and sow
    We come to work the lands in common
    And to make the waste grounds grow
    This earth divided
    We will makе whole
    So it will be
    A common treasury for all

    Thе sin of property
    We do disdain
    No man has any right to buy and sell
    The earth for private gain
    By theft and murder
    They took the land
    Now everywhere the walls
    Spring up at their command

    They make the laws
    To chain us well
    The clergy dazzle us with heaven
    Or they damn us into hell
    We will not worship
    The God they serve
    The God of greed who feed the rich
    While poor man starve

    We work we eat together
    We need no swords
    We will not bow to masters
    Or pay rent to the lords
    We are free men
    Though we are poor
    You Diggers all stand up for glory
    Stand up now

    From the men of property
    The orders came
    They sent the hired men and troopers
    To wipe out the Diggers’ claim
    Tear down their cottages
    Destroy their corn
    They were dispersed
    Only the vision lingers on

    You poor take courage
    You rich take care
    The earth was made a common treasury
    For everyone to share
    All things in common
    All people one
    We come in peace
    The order came to cut them down
    We come in peace
    The order came to cut them down

  • Wouldn’t It Be Nice

    Whether or not we’re moving toward a post-neoliberal world, the question that matters is if we’ll make a better one.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • Who Built the Zones?

    Special economic zones are not just a product of the effort to free capitalism from democratic authority. They are a response to a broader anxiety about power imbalance between multinational corporations and national governments.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • The Struggle for Meaningful Work

    Socially necessary labor should entitle us to respect, decent pay, and safe conditions—not a duty to work relentlessly, without complaint.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • Ian Powell: Context of the ‘New Washington Consensus’ and China ‘threat’ for New Zealand

    POLITICAL BYTES: By Ian Powell

    There is a reported apparent rift within cabinet between Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta and Defence Minister Andrew Little over Aotearoa New Zealand’s position in the widening conflict between the United States and China.

    While at its core it is over relative economic power, the conflict is manifested by China’s increased presence in the Pacific Ocean, including military, and over Taiwan. Both countries have long Pacific coastlines.

    However, the United States has a far greater and longstanding economic and military presence (including nuclear weapons in South Korea) in the Pacific.

    Despite this disparity, the focus is on China as being the threat. Minister Mahuta supports continuing the longstanding more independent position of successive Labour and National-led governments.

    This goes back to the adoption of the nuclear-free policy and consequential ending of New Zealand’s military alliance with the United States in the mid-1980s.

    On the other hand, Minister Little’s public utterances veer towards a gradual shift away from this independent position and towards a stronger military alignment with the United States.

    This is not a conflict between socialist and capitalist countries. For various reasons I struggle with the suggestion that China is a socialist nation in spite of the fact that it (and others) say it is and that it is governed by a party calling itself communist. But that is a debate for another occasion.

    Core and peripheral countries
    This conflict is often seen as between the two strongest global economic powers. However, it is not as simple as that.

    Whereas the United States is an imperialist country, China is not. I have discussed this previously in Political Bytes (31 January 2022): Behind the ‘war’ against China.

    In coming to this conclusion I drew upon work by Minqi Li, professor of economics at the University of Utah, who focussed on whether China is an imperialist country or not.

    He is not soft on China, acknowledging that it  ” . . . has developed an exploitative relationship with South Asia, Africa, and other raw material exporters”.

    But his concern is to make an objective assessment of China’s global economic power. He does this by distinguishing between core, semi-periphery, and periphery countries:

    “The ‘core countries’ specialise in quasi-monopolistic, high-profit production processes. This leaves ‘peripheral countries’ to specialise in highly competitive, low-profit production processes.”

    This results in an “…unequal exchange and concentration of world wealth in the core.”

    Minqi Li describes  China’s economy as:

    “. . . the world’s largest when measured by purchasing power parity. Its rapid expansion is reshapes the global geopolitical map leading western mainstream media to begin defining China as a new imperialist power.”

    Consequently he concludes that China is placed as a semi-peripheral county which predominately takes “. . . surplus value from developed economies and giving it to developing economies.”

    In my January 2022 blog, I concluded that:

    “Where does this leave the ‘core countries’, predominately in North America and Europe? They don’t want to wind back capitalism in China. They want to constrain it to ensure that while it continues to be an attractive market for them, China does not destablise them by progressing to a ‘core country’.”

    Why the widening conflict now?
    Nevertheless, while neither socialist nor imperialist, China does see the state playing a much greater role in the country’s economy, including increasing its international influence. This may well explain at least some of its success.

    So why the widening conflict now? Why did it not occur between the late 1970s, when China opened up to market forces, and in the 1990s and 2000s as its world economic power increased? Marxist economist and blogger Michael Roberts has provided an interesting insight: The ‘New Washington Consensus’.

    Roberts describes what became known as the “Washington Consensus” in the 1990s. It was a set of economic policy prescriptions considered to constitute the “standard” reform package promoted for economically struggling developing countries.

    The name is because these prescriptions were developed by Washington DC-based institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and the United States Treasury.

    The prescriptions were based on so-called free market policies such as trade and finance liberalisation and privatisation of state assets. They also entailed fiscal and monetary policies intended to minimise fiscal deficits and public spending.

    But now, with the rise of China as a rival economic global power globally and the failure of the neoliberal economic model to deliver economic growth and reduce inequality among nations and within nations, the world has changed.

    The rise of the BRICS
    The rise of the BRICS. Graph: Statista 2023

    What World Bank data reveals
    Roberts draws upon World Bank data to highlight the striking nature of this global change. He uses a “Shares in World Economy” table based on percentages of gross domestic production from 1980 to 2020.

    Whereas the United States was largely unchanged (25.2 percent to 24.7 percent), over the same 40 years, China leapt from 1.7 percent to 17.3 percent. China’s growth is extraordinary. But the data also provides further insights.

    Economic blocs are also compared. The G7 countries declined from 62.5 percent to 47.2 percent while the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) also fell — from 78 percent to 61.7 percent.

    Interestingly while experiencing a minor decline, the United States increased its share within these two blocs — from 40.3 percent to 52.3 percent in G7 and from 32.3 percent to 40 percent in OECD. This suggests that while both the G7 and OECD have seen their economic power decline, the power of the United States has increased within the blocs.

    Roberts use of this data also makes another pertinent observation. Rather than a bloc there is a grouping of “developing nations” which includes China. Over the 40 year period its percentage increased from 21.5 percent to 36.4 percent.

    But when China is excluded from the data there is a small decline from 19.9 percent to 19.1 percent. In other words, the sizeable percentage of growth of developing countries is solely due to China, the other developing countries have had a small fall.

    In this context Roberts describes a “New Washington Consensus” aimed at sustaining the “. . . hegemony of US capital and its junior allies with a new approach”.

    In his words:

    “But what is this new consensus? Free trade and capital flows and no government intervention is to be replaced with an ‘industrial strategy’ where governments intervene to subsidise and tax capitalist companies so that national objectives are met.

    “There will be more trade and capital controls, more public investment and more taxation of the rich. Underneath these themes is that, in 2020s and beyond, it will be every nation for itself — no global pacts, but regional and bilateral agreements; no free movement, but nationally controlled capital and labour.

    “And around that, new military alliances to impose this new consensus.”

    Understanding BRICS
    This is the context that makes the widening hostility of the United States towards China highly relevant. There is now an emerging potential counterweight of “developing countries” to the United States’ overlapping hegemons of G7 and the OECD.

    This is BRICS. Each letter is from the first in the names of its current (and founding) members — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Around 40 countries have expressed interest in joining this new trade bloc.

    These countries broadly correspond with the semi-periphery countries of Minqi Li and the developing countries of Roberts. Predominantly they are from Africa, Asia, Middle East, and Central and South America.

    Geoffrey Miller of the Democracy Project has recently published (August 21) an interesting column discussing whether New Zealand should develop a relationship with BRICS: Should New Zealand build bridges with BRICS?

    Journalist Julian Borger, writing for The Guardian (August 22), highlights the significant commonalities and differences of the BRICS nations at its recent trade summit: Critical BRICS trade summit in South Africa.

    Al Jazeera (August 24)has updated the trade summit with the decision to invite Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to join BRICS next January: The significance of BRICS adding six new members .

    Which way New Zealand?
    This is the context in which the apparent rift between Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta and Defence Minister Andrew Little should be seen.

    It is to be hoped that that whatever government comes into office after October’s election, it does not allow the widening conflict between the United States and China to water down Aotearoa’s independent position.

    The dynamics of the G7/OECD and BRICS relationship are ongoing and uncertainty characterises how they might play out. It may mean a gradual changing of domination or equalisation of economic power.

    After all, the longstanding British Empire was replaced by a different kind of United States empire. It is also possible that the existing United States hegemony continues albeit weakened.

    Regardless, it is important politically and economically for New Zealand to have trading relations with both G7 and developing countries (including the expanding BRICS).

    Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.

  • Will WVU’s Draconian Cuts Become a Blueprint for Austerity Across Higher Ed?

    Hundreds of West Virginia University (WVU) students staged a class walkout outside the school’s student union in Morgantown, West Virginia, on August 21 to protest an administration proposal to cut 32 academic programs and 169 faculty positions. The students, wearing red T-shirts and bandanas as a nod to the West Virginia coal miners who famously went on strike a century ago, chanted “Stop! The!

    Source

  • Up From Neoliberalism

    A preview of our Fall 2023 issue.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • “Barbie” Lets Us Laugh at the Patriarchy, But Not at the Expense of Corporations

    As of this week, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie has broken several records and earned a stunning $1 billion in global ticket sales. There is no question that people, women and girls in particular, in many parts of the world, are going to the theater to see a white, blonde, telegenic Barbie muse about death and patriarchy. And why not? The last few pandemic years have been miserable for most people…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Resisting the Shock Doctrine: A Conversation on Ukraine, Debt and Reconstruction

    In this discussion, Yuliya Yurchenko, Eric Toussaint, and Sushovan Dhar contextualize Ukraine’s struggle as part of the global movement against neoliberalism and debt. This public forum was organized by the Ukraine Solidarity Network (U.S.) on May 12, 2023 and was co-hosted by Haymarket Books. Each speaker made opening comments, with a discussion. Special thanks to Nate Moore for assistance with…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Bolsonaro Is Barred From Public Office — But That Doesn’t Mean He’ll Disappear

    Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former president, has been barred from seeking public office until 2030. The country’s Superior Electoral Court ruled that Bolsonaro violated election laws when he called diplomats from several countries to the presidential palace a few months ahead of last year’s vote and made baseless claims about Brazil’s voting systems — the voting machines, Bolsonaro said…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Geopolitics of Industrial Policy

    A discussion featuring Yakov Feygin, Daniela Gabor, Ho-fung Hung, Thea Riofrancos, and Quinn Slobodian.

  • Real Peace in Ukraine Means Ending Russian Invasion and US-EU Neocolonial Debt

    In the midst of Russia’s imperialist war, Ukraine’s unions and popular movements have carried out a double struggle: they have actively engaged in resistance against the invasion while also having to oppose Volodymyr Zelensky’s neoliberal policies and the growing indebtedness of the country fostered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union. In a recent forum sponsored by…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Neoliberalism Sucked Senegal Dry. Now Its Democracy Is at Stake.

    After the arrest of the progressive-leaning opposition leader Ousmane Sonko in Senegal, protesters and dissatisfied segments of the political left have taken to the streets. In this exclusive Truthout interview, James Genova discusses the history and political culture of Senegal and talks about the root causes of the ongoing protests and the current crises unfolding in the country.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Coming Public Education Crisis

    A fiscal calamity awaits public schools once pandemic-related federal assistance ends.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • India: Modi govt’s criminal neglect of railway safety

    By all indications, Balasore will be remembered as one of India’s worst rail disasters in years with the scale of trauma and devastation still unfolding, writes CPIML (Liberation).

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Neoliberalism Kills (Part 2)

    Its influence is felt even in liberal or progressive organizations, and among progressive commentators and writers, who all share ideas like fiscal policy discipline and tax reform.

    This post was originally published on Real Progressives.

  • Neoliberalism Kills (Part 1)

    We have reached the point, now, where it is neoliberalism or American Democracy, or, if you like neoliberalism or us. There is no alternative!

    This post was originally published on Real Progressives.

  • ‘Either Trade Unions Win This, or It Will Be the Far Right’: Labor Sees High Stakes in French Pension Fight



    As French workers intensify their fight against President Emmanuel Macron’s deeply unpopular plan to raise the nation’s retirement age from 62 to 64, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

    A poll released Wednesday shows that reactionary lawmaker Marine Le Pen—leader of the far-right National Rally party, the largest opposition force in Parliament—would beat Macron by a margin of 55% to 45% in a head-to-head rematch. The neoliberal incumbent defeated Le Pen in a runoff election last April, but the openly xenophobic and Islamophobic challenger has gained significant ground since their first matchup in 2017.

    The new survey was conducted after Macron advanced his planned retirement age hike through executive order on March 16. The president bypassed the National Assembly once it became clear that his legislative proposal did not have enough support to pass France’s lower house.

    “We’re in the middle of a social crisis, a democratic crisis.”

    Macron’s blatantly anti-democratic move provoked an uproar. The labor movement had already been staging weekly nationwide strikes and peaceful marches since mid-January. But the president’s decision to circumvent a vote last month has brought more people to the streets, with heightened participation from high school and university students, some of whom have set up barricades on campus.

    Progressive lawmakers and union leaders have urged the working class to keep up the pressure, portraying the left’s struggle against Macron’s pension attack as a struggle for democracy in France.

    “Either trade unions win this, or it will be the far right,” Fabien Villedieu, a representative of a railway trade union, told France Info radio on Thursday. “If you sicken people—and that is what’s happening—the danger is the arrival of the far right.”

    Laurent Berger, head of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor, told RTL radio that “we’re still asking for the reform to be revoked.”

    “We’re in the middle of a social crisis, a democratic crisis,” he added.

    Macron has so far refused to withdraw his proposed pension overhaul, which includes raising the minimum eligible retirement age and increasing the number of years one must work to qualify for full benefits. France’s constitutional council is evaluating the legality of the government’s plans and is set to issue a decision next Friday.

    According to The Guardian:

    The constitutional council, which has the power to strike out some or even all of the legislation, will assess the pension changes based on a strict interpretation of the law. Constitutional experts say the council is unlikely to strike the legislation down fully.

    The government is playing for time, hoping protests and strikes will fizzle out. Unions want to show that the protest movement still has momentum, whatever the council’s decision.

    Hundreds of thousands of people have continued to rally across France in recent weeks. The government has responded with an increasingly repressive crackdown.

    An 11th round of strikes on Thursday caused further disruption to schools, public transit, and energy production. In addition, clashes broke out “between demonstrators and police on the edges of protests in cities including Lyon, Nantes, and Paris,” The Guardian reported.

    Workers’ anger is palpable and mounting.

    “In the capital, protesters briefly set fire to the awning of the Left Bank brasserie La Rotonde, well known for hosting Macron’s controversial evening of celebrations when he led the first-round vote in the 2017 presidential election,” The Guardian noted.

    Meanwhile, rat catchers threw dead vermin at city hall.

    Also on Thursday, striking workers “forced their way into the building that houses BlackRock’s office in Paris Thursday, taking their protest against the government’s pension reforms to the world’s biggest money manager,” CNN reported. “About 100 people, including representatives of several labor unions, were on the ground floor of the building for about 10 minutes, chanting anti-reform slogans. BlackRock’s office is located on the third floor.”

    Jerome Schmitt, a spokesperson for the French labor confederation SUD, told reporters: “The meaning of this action is quite simple. We went to the headquarters of BlackRock to tell them: the money of workers, for our pensions, they are taking it.”

    BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager with a nearly $9 trillion portfolio, has not been involved in Macron’s assault on France’s public pension system. But workers targeted the financial institution due to its role in overseeing the private pension funds that they may be forced to rely on.

    “The government wants to throw away pensions, it wants to force people to fund their own retirement with private pension funds,” one teacher told Reuters. “But what we know is that only the rich will be able to benefit from such a setup.”

    Le Pen, for her part, “has kept a low profile, hoping to increase her support among low-income workers, many of whom began their careers earlier and will be more greatly affected by the pension changes,” The Guardian reported.

    Earlier this week, left-wing luminaries alarmed by France’s escalating repression of pension defenders as well as environmentalists campaigning against water privatization signed a Progressive International petition.

    “We stand with the French people in the face of violent crackdowns on popular protest and the criminalization of dissent by Emmanuel Macron’s government,” it states. “The extreme violence of the police and the criminalization by the interior minister are clearly aimed at suppressing the movement against the pension cuts. This is an unacceptable attack on the democratic freedoms and human rights of French citizens.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Biden Embraces Autocracies and Deteriorating Democracies to Challenge China

    The Biden administration
    opened its second Summit for Democracy this week with a panel featuring India’s Narendra Modi and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. As the leaders of their countries, both have pursued similar forms of exclusionary nationalism.

    Indeed, both
    Modi and Netanyahu were—as they spoke—facing political crises at home in response to their attempts to permanently sideline democratic opposition.

    This was a seemingly discordant note with which to begin a democracy conference. Even so, it is very much in keeping with what the Biden administration means when it says that the United States is fighting a global battle for democracy against autocracy. Understanding the counterintuitive meaning of Biden’s slogan is important both to see why this framing is so powerful among American leaders and why it is so dangerous to the health of global democracy.

    The administration’s interpretation is best captured in its
    2022 National Security Strategy:

    The most pressing strategic challenge facing our vision [of a free, open, prosperous, and secure world] is from powers that layer authoritarian governance with a revisionist foreign policy. It is their behavior that poses a challenge to international peace and stability—especially waging or preparing for wars of aggression, actively undermining the democratic political processes of other countries, leveraging technology and supply chains for coercion and repression, and exporting an illiberal model of international order. Many non-democracies join the world’s democracies in forswearing these behaviors. Unfortunately, Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) do not.

    The salient division in the world, then, is not between democracies and autocracies but between countries that support the existing international order and the two autocracies—China and Russia—that are seeking to reshape it in illiberal ways.

    But this raises some awkward questions:

    One: Which side are autocratic U.S. allies on if, like Saudi Arabia and UAE, they wage wars of aggression, undermine the democratic political processes of other countries, and use technology for repression?

    Two: Which side are democratic countries on if they support China’s efforts to reshape the international order? This is quite common, because many of the things that China does to “tilt the global playing field to its benefit” are things that poor countries—democratic or not—must do
    if they are to achieve economic development.

    Three: Which side is the U.S. on? Because the U.S. violates the rules-based order and engages in coercion on a regular basis. Leaving aside a long list of examples under earlier presidents and looking only at the Biden administration, the U.S. is currently
    incapacitating the world trade dispute resolution system; supporting Russia’s argument that it can exempt itself from any economic agreement (in this case, throttling Ukraine’s trade) merely by invoking national security; building a comprehensive blockade on Chinese businesses’ access to certain advanced technologies; seeking to destroy China’s most successful private multinational company, Huawei; and maintaining an extraterritorial sanctions regime that has done terrible damage to Iran’s economy.

    The United States welcomes as client states outright autocracies like Saudi Arabia or Egypt and deteriorating democracies like India, Israel, and Italy in order to turn back the huge threat that administration officials think a powerful China poses to the principle of democracy itself.

    So the particular list of allegations against Russia and China, which
    does not apply equally to both countries, also fails to clearly distinguish the “democracy” team from the “autocracy” team. But the Biden administration has a deeper rationale in mind. As Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it.” Ultimately the United States welcomes as client states outright autocracies like Saudi Arabia or Egypt and deteriorating democracies like India, Israel, and Italy in order to turn back the huge threat that administration officials think a powerful China poses to the principle of democracy itself.

    What is the nature of that threat? Often the administration accuses China of exporting its authoritarian model in the form of surveillance technology—technology that companies in the U.S. and allied states
    also sell. Or they highlight China’s campaign to change “democratic norms” at the United Nations. For example, China has sought to elevate collective rights, such as the right to economic development, to the same level as individual rights.

    Members of the Biden administration have
    argued that such a goal would dilute individual rights and empower autocratic states to speak in the name of their people. This perspective, however, is not shared by the overwhelming majority of democratic developing countries. They stand on this issue and many others alongside their authoritarian counterparts, against the opposition of the rich democratic countries. In U.S. political culture, the interests of wealthy countries are often represented as the interests of democratic countries.

    Beijing also rejects the “universal values” that the U.S. champions and seeks
    respect for “the diversity of civilizations,” including those that do not recognize liberal democratic rights and freedoms. The Biden administration has a point here—China does seek to overturn the rhetorical dominance that liberal values have enjoyed in recent decades—but the presence of numerous autocrats and aspiring autocrats in U.S.-led coalitions is eloquent proof that liberal rhetoric does little to restrain authoritarians.

    Finally, Biden has
    made the point that if Chinese authoritarianism is stable and prosperous while U.S. democracy is dysfunctional and stagnant, democracy will lose its appeal around the world. But it is hard to find examples of this happening in practice. China’s recent history of Party-state rule sets it apart from most other countries, making it unpersuasive as a model. And third countries are perfectly capable of valuing partnership with China without losing faith in democracy. In a 2022 survey of African leaders, China was preferred over the United States (46% to 9%) as a partner on infrastructure development; yet the U.S. was chosen over China (32% to 1%) when it comes to cooperation around governance and the rule of law.

    The idea that a popularity contest between two powerful countries is what determines the choice of political regime in other countries is, in any case, both implausible and insulting.

    Why, then, is the idea that China poses a potentially existential threat to democracy so widespread in Washington? Because over the last two decades, the ideological hegemony of neoliberalism (“free markets and free individuals”)—which underwrote the narrow concept of democracy that drove the Third Wave of democratization and supplied the intellectual foundations for the U.S. political elite in recent decades—has disintegrated at home and abroad.

    This ideology’s loss of legitimacy is a global phenomenon, but in Washington it was experienced as the outcome of a series of increasingly disastrous setbacks for U.S. economic and military aspirations, starting with the dotcom crash and 9/11, ramifying through the failures of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, the Iraq War, and the Doha Round of WTO negotiations, and culminating in the 2008 global financial crisis and the Great Recession.

    The sense of crisis only grew over the following decade as previously marginalized political currents represented by Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders suddenly posed a serious challenge to the political status quo in the United States.

    For mainstream American political leaders, the three essential parts of the post-Cold War global system—U.S. military hegemony, free market globalization, and a specifically neoliberal vision of democracy and human rights—were inseparably interwoven

    For mainstream American political leaders, the three essential parts of the post-Cold War global system—U.S. military hegemony, free market globalization, and a specifically neoliberal vision of democracy and human rights—were
    inseparably interwoven. Now referred to in Washington as the “rules-based international order,” a challenge to any part of the package is considered an attack on the whole, and American leaders are particularly sensitive to such challenges given the fragility of the whole system.

    Today’s China,
    though a product of that very system, was also the most prominent country to reject liberal democracy and U.S. hegemony. And in the years since 2008, it has been a step or two ahead of other countries—in some ways constructive and in some horrifying—as every country moves beyond the system. So even though China has been little involved in the specific U.S. failures of the last two decades, it nonetheless stands in as a symbol of all the setbacks that U.S. power and ideology have faced.

    Though China’s success within the “rules-based international order” has
    given it a major stake in sustaining and shoring up significant parts of the system, that success has also made China far more powerful than more antagonistic countries like Russia or North Korea. Because Washington sees China as both hostile and powerful, the image of a menacing China offers a shared focus for U.S. leaders that could overcome the debilitating partisan divisions afflicting the country’s governance—a point that Biden has made many times.

    So it’s true that the Biden administration does not see the world as divided between democracies and autocracies. But it
    does see the world as divided between democracy in the abstract—understood to be the same as U.S. military and economic power and the alliances supporting it—and autocracy in the abstract, represented by the only peer competitor facing the United States, China.

    This emerging consensus in Washington is driven by insecurity and defensiveness rather than a serious analysis of the
    real forces endangering democracy around the world. As such, U.S. leaders have neglected the single most important question: is international conflict and geopolitical bloc formation likely to nourish democracy—or will it strengthen in every country the most threatening authoritarian political currents, namely militarism, nationalism, and nativism?

  • It Almost Happened Here: The Business Plot, Money Creation, And The Capital Order

    What power actually fears is that their carefully crafted illusions will go up in smoke.

    This post was originally published on Real Progressives.

  • The World Needs Just Green Trade, Not ‘Free Trade’



    The global economy hit a new milestone in 2022 by surpassing $100 trillion. This expansion, which has experienced only the occasional setback such as the 2020 Covid shutdowns, has been accelerated by trade. The world trade volume experienced 4,300% growth from 1950 to 2021, an average 4% increase every year. This linked growth of the global economy and international trade took off in the 1980s as governments embraced the project of globalization, which prioritized the reduction of barriers to trade such as tariffs.

    The mechanism by which globalization spread throughout the world, the key strand of its DNA, has been the “free trade” treaty.

    “We’ve had 30 years of free trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties,” points out Luciana Ghiotto, a researcher at CONICET-Argentina and associate researcher with the Transnational Institute. “They’ve created this enormous legal architecture, what one friend of ours calls the ‘corporate architecture of impunity,’ which has spread like grass and gives legal security and certainty to capital. It has nothing to do with the protection of human rights or environmental rights.”

    Indeed, among the many problems associated with the expansion of world trade has been environmental degradation in the form of land, air, and water pollution. More recently, however, attention has turned to the more specific problem of carbon emissions, which are largely responsible for climate change. According to the World Trade Organization, the production and transport of goods for export and import account for 20-30% of global carbon emissions.

    Embedded in many of the treaties governing trade and investment are clauses that give corporations the right to sue governments over regulations, particularly those addressing the environment and climate change, that adversely affect the expected profit margins of those businesses. These investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions have a “chilling effect on the regulatory system because governments, worried that they will be sued, decide to delay reforms related to climate change,” points out Manuel Perez Rocha, an associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. “There have been several cases around the world where companies were able to defeat regulatory changes that favor the climate.”

    Trade rules that privilege corporations over the environment are particularly influential in the realm of agriculture, which is an extractive industry no less powerful than mining.

    “The global system of trade and investment contributes to the monopoly control by just a few transnational corporations over fossil fuel-guzzling agribusiness, whose products are often transported thousands of miles before they reach a dinner table,” relates Jen Moore, an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. “At the same time. the system has been decisive in making the lives of millions of small-scale farmers more precarious, undermining their role as a better alternative to mass monoculture operations.”

    Carbon emissions are not the only byproduct of the agribusiness that global trade sustains. “There’s also methane emissions,” adds Karen Hansen-Kuhn, program director at the Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy. “A lot of methane comes from meat production. Nitrous oxide, which is 265 times more potent than carbon and stays in the atmosphere over 100 years, results from chemical fertilizers.”

    These perspectives on global trade—and more environmentally sound alternatives to the “free trade” model—were presented at a December 2022 webinar sponsored by Global Just Transition project of the Institute for Policy Studies and the Ecosocial and Intercultural Pact of the South.

    The Rise of “Free Trade”

    Throughout the modern era, states throughout the world protected their domestic economies through tariffs on foreign goods and restrictions on foreign investment. Behind these protective walls, states helped local farmers and businesses compete against cheaper imports and deep-pocketed investors.

    But states that depended increasingly on exports of cheap industrial goods and surplus food—aided by transnational companies eager to boost their profits—lobbied for the reduction of these barriers. Arguments for “free trade,” traditionally linked to the presumed benefits of globalization, emerged within the most powerful economies in the nineteenth century, but it was more recently, in the 1970s, that states and international institutions dramatically revived this discourse under the banner of “neoliberalism.”

    “When we talk about the circulation of capital, we’re talking about trade,” explains Luciana Ghiotto. “That is, import and export for states and the circulation of thousands of vessels and planes for the transport of commodities all around the world. One of the aims of capital is to make that circulation faster, simpler, and easier. Who would not want to make trade easier or faster? Well, the state.”

    Faster and more efficient trade, while more profitable for corporations, also has meant a number of negative consequences for states such as job loss among domestic producers. Because of the wide array of free trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties now in force—and the power invested in international bodies to enforce these agreements—states have lost many of the tools they once used to protect or develop national industries.

    The spread of the free-trade orthodoxy has had a major impact on the energy industry, which has in turn pushed up carbon emissions. Ghiotto points to the efforts of fossil-fuel corporations to protect their investments in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union as a primary motivation to negotiate an Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) in the early 1990s, which guaranteed a free trade in global energy markets. The ECT was originally signed by 53 European and Central Asian countries. Today, another 30 countries from Burundi to Pakistan are in the queue for membership.

    “The ECT is actually a treaty made specially to protect fossil fuel Industries,” Ghiotto continues. “It’s already been used by investors to protect their investments in the face of state policies. But that was 30 years ago. Now, because of the global climate crisis, states are pushing for other kinds of regulations that are jeopardizing the investments of these corporations.”

    Energy companies have taken states to dispute settlement in 124 cases, with around 50 against Spain alone because of its reforms in the renewable energy sector. Companies “have used the ECT as a legal umbrella in order to increase business and profits, or simply to protect their investments against state regulation,” Ghiotto adds. Italy, for instance, instituted a ban on offshore drilling only to be hit by a suit from the U.K. energy company Rockhopper. In November 2022, the ECT arbitration panel ordered the Italian government to pay the company 190 million Euros plus interest.

    “Investors in the mining and oil sector have launched 22% of the claims against Latin American states,” she reports. “There was the big case of Chevron against Ecuador. But there have been others. For instance, Ecuador had to pay a $374 million penalty to the French oil company Parenco after the state changed some clauses regarding the amount of taxes the company had to pay in order to give back some of the revenues to the Ecuadorian people.”

    Agriculture and Climate Change

    Global food production generates 17 billion tons of greenhouse gasses every year. That’s about a third of the 50 billion tons of such gasses emitted annually. The production of beef and cow milk are the worst offenders, largely because of the methane that’s released by the animals themselves. But other major contributors include soil tillage, manure management, transportation, and fertilizer.

    “Along with Greenpeace and Grain, our institute has been working with scientists to think about how increased fertilizer use is affecting climate change,” Karen Hansen-Kuhn reports. “Fertilizer use has been increasing all over the world. It’s a key part of Green Revolution practices. The scientists we worked with found that the use of nitrogen fertilizer, bringing together the natural gas and the energy used in production along with transportation and the impacts in the field, amounts to more than 21% of emissions from agriculture, and it’s been growing.”

    According to a map of excess nitrogen per hectare of cropland, countries like China, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, and Venezuela are using more nitrogen for fertilizers than the crops can even absorb. “This excess contributes to more emissions and causes other problems, for instance with run-off into waterways,” she continues. “The incentives right now in the agricultural system are for extreme overproduction, especially around commodity crops, like corn, soybeans, and wheat, which require these cheap chemical inputs.”

    Many of these commodity crops are produced for export. Netherlands is the world’s second-largest exporter of food; China is the second-largest importer of food but also the sixth larger exporter. The challenge is to continue to feed the world while reducing the use of so much fertilizer. “Many countries are advancing important agroecological solutions like crop rotation, using plants that fix nitrogen in the soil, and doing more composting,” Hansen-Kuhn adds. “These techniques are under the control of farmers, so they don’t rely on imports or trade in these chemical inputs.”

    Another strategy, embraced by the European Union, has been to use trade rules to reduce the carbon content of imports and exports. “In Europe, they are currently in the process of finalizing a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism,” she reports. “The CBAM mostly applies to things like aluminum, steel, and cement, but fertilizer is part of it as well. A lot of firms in Europe are modernizing their plants so they’ll be more energy efficient. And they say they need protection in order to do that. Under this plan, fertilizer imports coming from other countries that don’t have the same environmental standards would be subject to a fee tied to the price of carbon.”

    In theory, the CBAM would push exporting countries to raise their environmental standards and/or make their fertilizer production more efficient. “Maybe these plants will become more efficient,” she adds. “But maybe some firms will just decide to produce fertilizer in other countries. Or maybe in cases where a country has two factories, it will just export from the efficient factory, and there’s no change in emissions.”

    On top of that, the CBAM will affect countries very differently. “Most of the fertilizer imports into the E.U. come from nearby countries like Russia or Egypt,” she continues. “But some imports come from countries like Senegal, where the fertilizer exports to Europe amount to 2-5% of their entire GDP. So, the CBAM would be a huge problem for such countries. And there’s nothing in this initiative that would give countries the technology they need to make changes. In fact, there are strong incentives against that in the trade deals. The CBAM provision specifically says that all of the resources generated by the carbon fee will be kept internally to foster the transition within Europe.”

    Although CBAM may make European trade greener, it may also widen the “green gap” between Europe and the rest of the world. “We need a transition to agroecology, but what we’re getting in the trade deals lock in new incentives to continue with business as usual,” Hansen-Kuhn concludes. “If we look at the renegotiated NAFTA, there’s a new chapter on agricultural biotechnology that streamlines the process for approving both GMOs and products of gene editing. There are also restrictions on seed saving and sharing. And this new NAFTA will probably be the model for other agreements like the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework.”

    Action at the Global Level

    Civil society organizations have been pushing for a legally binding treaty at the U.N. level to make business responsible for human rights violations and environmental crimes connected to their operations.

    “Since the U.N. is made up of states, the more industrialized countries who can invest in the world are opposed to such a binding treaty,” Luciana Ghiotto points out. “In the United States, Canada, and Japan, we’ve seen debates about holding companies responsible for human rights violations throughout the production chain. It’s a relatively new political process. But it’s an example of civil society organizations putting a question of human rights and environmental rights at the center of discussion.”

    Efforts at the international level are very complicated, Manuel Perez Rocha concedes: “For instance, the World Bank has the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) through which corporations can sue states.” He recommends a more regional approach. “We have proposed a dispute resolution center for Latin America that countries could use after pulling out of ICSID. “Unfortunately, most progressive countries have not embraced this,” he reports.

    One of the challenges to persuading governments to embrace these alternatives is corruption. “There’s a tremendous circle of corruption,” he adds. “We’re talking here about the revolving door where public officials who negotiate these treaties then become private lawyers or counselors or board members of the corporations who are lobbying for their adoption. This corruption helps explain why governments sign these treaties even if they’re going to be sued.”

    He points as well to the issue of access to critical minerals needed in the green energy transition. “The Biden administration is trying to combat fossil fuels at the cost of communities that live around the deposits of critical minerals like lithium and cobalt,” Perez Rocha explains. “There are a lot of concerns among native populations about how to make this transition to a so-called clean economy without violating human rights and destroying the environment.”

    Trade has been a mechanism to make deals around these minerals. “These efforts at near-shoring and friend-shoring have been ways to control the supply chains around minerals and metals,” notes Jen Moore. “The United States in particular but also Canada have made themselves clear: to be identified as a ‘friend’ is to have an FTA or a bilateral investment treaty.”

    There have been other actions at the global level related to climate issues and jobs. For instance, the United States brought action against India in the WTO in 2014 over domestic content provisions in its effort to boost solar energy. India returned the favor two years later over similar domestic content provisions in state-level solar policy. “The WTO deemed both rules illegal,” Karen Hansen-Kuhn recalls. “In the United States, the programs continued, I don’t think any changes were made. But when we think of a just transition, it has to be about not just reducing emissions but about creating jobs.”

    Resistance to Business as Usual

    Resistance to the corporate-friendly trade architecture has come from many corners of the globe. “From the perspective of my work with mining-affected people,” Jen Moore reports, “there’s been a rise in resistance from farmers, indigenous peoples, and other communities facing the detrimental Impacts of this highly destructive model of capitalist development that’s been accompanied by violent repression and militarization and often targeted violence against land and environment defenders.”

    For example, after buttressing the fossil fuel status quo for three decades, the Energy Charter Treaty is no longer unassailable. In November, the German cabinet announced that the country would withdraw from the ECT. It joins a number of European countries—Italy, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Slovenia, and Luxembourg—that have made similar announcements. “In times of climate crisis, it is absurd that companies can sue for lost profits from fossil investments and compensation for coal and nuclear phase-outs,” points out the deputy leader of the parliamentary group of the Greens in the German parliament.

    The treaty has a surprise for countries that want out: signatories withdrawing from the ECT are still bound by the treaty for 20 years. There’s also a related problem involving the provisions of other trade treaties.

    “European countries are pushing to update treaties with Mexico, Chile, and others to include clauses like the investor-state dispute mechanism, which also allow energy corporations to sue governments,” notes Manuel Perez Rocha. “This is nothing short of neocolonialism being exercised against countries on the periphery.” In response, he urges the “strengthening of national judicial systems so that companies will feel more protected by national systems and not pursue options at the supranational level.”

    The backlash to the ECT is nothing new. “The system has created a lot of resistance and critiques since practically day one,” Luciana Ghiotto adds. “I was raised in the spotlight of the battle of Seattle in 1999 against the WTO and the struggles against the Free Trade Area of the Americas.”

    Karen Hansen-Kuhn agrees that it’s necessary to claim victories. “Civil society helped weaken the ISDS system,” she notes. “With the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, massive opposition to ISDS was a major reason it fell apart..”

    Another form of pushback comes from the field itself. “On our website, we’ve started tracking the adoption of agroecological approaches, which are not just about the inputs but instead look at the fuller picture including food sovereignty, namely each community’s right to choose the food systems it wants,” Hansen-Kuhn continues. She points to Mexico phasing out GMO corn, which relies heavily on the pesticide glyphosate. The government made that decision because of input from civic movements. After objections from the U.S. government, Mexico backtracked somewhat on that commitment by applying the phase-out only to corn for human consumption.

    “Mexico is making some concessions, for example allowing GMO for animal feed, but otherwise it’s standing firm despite enormous pressure,” she concludes. “That’s not a complete transition to agroecology, but here’s a country deciding that it will make a change in a food system regardless of what the trade deals say.”

    “It’s important to recall the totality of the system supporting corporate control around the world,” Jen Moore says. “Sometimes it feels like we make only piecemeal attempts to go after it.”

    Manuel Perez Rocha agrees. “We need to discuss alternatives from different perspectives, which would put an end to the patriarchal, neocolonial capitalist system,” he suggests. “But while we strive for a utopian vision, we also should discuss more realistic, more feasible, and more concrete alternatives. For instance, companies can sue states. Why shouldn’t states have the right to sue companies? Affected communities should also have access to dispute resolutions. We should eliminate the privileges of foreign investors, like the ‘national treatment’ clause, that tie governments down in their efforts to promote local, regional, and national development.”

    The Global South has begun to develop a unified voice in the debate on a just energy transition. “In Latin America, we have said that there is no new green deal with FTAs and bilateral investment treaties,” Luciana Ghiotto reports. The region has seen the rise of a number of dynamic organizations from the rural activists in Via Campesina to various indigenous movements and feminist movements articulating a feminist economy. Meanwhile, certain countries have taken the lead. “In its constitution, Ecuador prohibited entry into any international agreements that include international arbitration that compromises the country’s sovereignty,” she adds. “The new neoliberal government is struggling with dozens of lawyers to find a way around it, but they still can’t.”

    Another example of successful resistance is the growth of the climate justice movement, which goes well beyond environmental protection and has linked activists across struggles from economic justice and human rights to agroecology and post-growth economics.

    “After the disruptions of the last couple years, we can come together more in person,” Karen Hansen-Kuhn notes. “Movements require building relationships in person. We need to come together to build these alternatives.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Enraging Workers, Macron Bypasses Parliament With ‘Nuclear Option’ on Retirement Age Hike



    Amid protests against French President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular plan to overhaul the country’s pension system, his government on Thursday chose the “nuclear option,” opting to use a constitutional procedure to force through reforms, including raising the retirement age from 62 to 64, without a vote in the lower house of Parliament.

    While the proposal passed the Senate, the upper chamber of Parliament, 193-114 Thursday morning, “reports indicated that the ruling party, which lost its overall majority in elections last year, was a handful of votes short” in the National Assembly, which led to an emergency Council of Ministers meeting about triggering the Article 49.3, Le Monde explained.

    After announcing the government was invoking executive privilege, French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne “faced scenes of anger and unrest in the National Assembly,” reported Politico. “Far-left lawmakers belonging to the France Unbowed party booed and chanted the national hymn the Marseillaise as far-right National Rally MPs shouted ‘Resign! Resign!’”

    Using the controversial procedure to push through the plan is risky for Macron—founder of the Renaissance party—because it allows members of Parliament “to submit motions of no-confidence within 24 hours,” Politico added. “While the government has survived motions of no-confidence in recent months, the stakes are much higher this time around. If a majority of MPs vote in favor of a motion, Borne’s government would be forced to resign.”

    While multiple opposition groups in Parliament may respond with no-confidence motions, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party has already pledged to do so.

    “It’s a total failure for the government,” Le Pen told reporters of the Article 49.3 decision, calling for Borne’s resignation. “From the beginning, the government fooled itself into thinking it had a majority.”

    Socialist Party chief Olivier Faure also criticized the approach, saying that “when a president has no majority in the country, no majority in the National Assembly, he must withdraw his bill.”

    Fabien Roussel, head of the French Communist Party, declared that “this government is not worthy of our Fifth Republic, of French democracy. Until the very end, Parliament has been ridiculed, humiliated.”

    MP Rachel Keke of the leftist party La France Insoumise stressed that “what the government is doing makes people sick of politics. It should improve people’s lives, not destroy them.”

    Former French presidential candidate and MP Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who launched La France Insoumise, tweeted: “It is a spectacular failure and a collapse of the presidential minority. United unions call for continued action. This is what we are going to focus on.”

    French trade unions have led national demonstrations and strikes against the overhaul since January. While protesters were oscillating “between rage and resignation” earlier this week, they filled the streets of Paris on Thursday, and “the leader of the CFDT labor union, Laurent Berger, announced there would be new protest dates,” according to Le Monde.

    The General Confederation of Labor (CGT) said in a statement that “this reform is unfair, unjustified, and unjustifiable, this is what millions of people have been asserting forcefully for weeks in the demonstrations, with the strike, and in all the initiatives. These massive mobilizations are supported by a very large majority of the population and almost all workers.”

    “The only response from the government and employers is repression: requisitions, police interventions on workplace occupations, arrests, intimidation, questioning of the right to strike,” the confederation added. “We won’t let it happen! What the CGT denounced as unfair yesterday is even more so today! This can only encourage us to step up mobilizations and strikes, the fight continues!”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Public Universities Run on Underpaid Labor. Now Grad Workers Are Fighting Back.

    The public university is at a tipping point, says Manasa Gopakumar, a fifth-year graduate worker in the Philosophy Department at Temple University in Philadelphia. Since last January, Gopakumar and other graduate workers in the Temple University Graduate Students’ Association (TUGSA) have organized around significant issues affecting them, including pay, health care, paid parental leave…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • ‘It’s Not an Accident, It’s a Crime’: Thousands March for Justice After Greek Train Disaster



    Tens of thousands of people marched throughout Greece on Wednesday—amid a nationwide walkout organized by labor unions and student associations—to demand accountability and reforms in the wake of the country’s deadliest train disaster, which has been attributed to austerity imposed from abroad.

    The February 28 crash that killed 57 people and injured another 72 has sparked public outrage over the deteriorating quality of the rail network. As Reuters reported, “Striking workers say years of neglect, underinvestment, and understaffing—a legacy of Greece’s decade-long debt crisis—are to blame.”

    “Greece sold its state-owned railway operator, now called Hellenic Train, to Italy’s state-owned Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane in 2017 during its debt crisis,” the news outlet noted. “The sale was a term in the country’s bailout agreements with the European Union and the Washington-based International Monetary Fund.”

    More than 40,000 workers and students hit the streets of Athens, where they chanted “murderers!” and “we are all in the same carriage.” Demonstrators in Greece’s capital and largest city also waved signs reading, It’s not an accident, it’s a crime” and, “It could have been any of us on that train.”

    Another 20,000-plus people rallied in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city. Meanwhile, near the scene of the train collision in Larrisa, protesters declared, “No to profits over our lives!”

    The demonstrations coincided with a daylong strike called by trade unionists. Greece’s largest public sector union participated in the work stoppage, disrupting a wide range of transit services, while a teachers’ union made clear that “it’s not the time to fall silent.”

    Rail workers, for their part, “have staged rolling, 24-hour strikes since Thursday, bringing the network to a halt,” Reuters reported. “The workers say their demands for improvement in safety protocols have gone unheard for years.”

    Police have responded to protests held across Greece since the disaster occurred with violent repression.

    Many of the roughly 350 passengers aboard an intercity train that collided with a freight train while traveling on the same track—including 12 victims—were university students returning to Thessaloniki from Athens.

    The stationmaster was arrested hours after the crash and is facing felony charges for disrupting transport and endangering lives.

    “You feel angry because the government did nothing for all of those kids,” 19-year-old Nikomathi Vathi told Reuters. “The public transport is a mess.”

    The main rail workers’ union has vowed to “impose safe railways so that no one will ever experience the tragic accident at Tempi ever again,” adding that “we have an obligation toward our fellow humans and our colleagues who were lost in the tragic accident.”

    Leftist former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis this week accused the Greek government of trying to “cover-up the real causes of our railway tragedy… by bypassing parliamentary scrutiny and appointing arbitrarily its own three-member investigative committee—on which, remarkably, they included a gentleman who oversaw the botched privatization of our railways—not to mention the prime minister’s pronouncement that the cause was human error.”

    Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the leader of Greece’s conservative government who is up for re-election this year, orginally blamed the crash on human error before apologizing Sunday and “acknowledging that decades of neglect could have contributed to the disaster,” Al Jazeera reported.

    Hours after the collision, former Transport Minister Kostas Karamanlis resigned. Mitsotakis appointed one of his closest allies, George Gerapetritis, to replace him.

    At a Wednesday morning press conference, Gerapetritis said that he understands why people are angry, apologized for the crash and promised to identify its causes, and announced that rail services are being suspended until at least the end of March while the government conducts a safety review.

    “No train will set off again if we have not secured safety at the maximum possible level,” said Gerapetritis. Greece’s new transport minister said the government plans to invest in upgrading infrastructure and hiring more staff.

    According to Al Jazeera correspondent John Psaropoulos, the press conference raised “more questions than answers” and is likely to make “the families of the victims even angrier.”

    As the news outlet reported:

    “First of all, we’ve learned that some of the automated systems that should have been in place throughout the Greek network, were in fact operational on the night of the accident in Larissa station,” said Psaropoulos.

    He explained that an automated optimal route selection for the train would have been possible, but was not used.

    “Secondly, it also doesn’t answer why two additional station masters who should have been on duty until 11:00 pm took off at 10:00 pm without permission. Thirdly, it does not answer why the train was about 15 minutes late in leaving,” he added, explaining how all these things contributed to the collision.

    “It suggests enormous problems in the operation and training of personnel,” said Psaropoulos.

    E.U. Railway Agency executive director Josef Doppelbauer told Euronews on Wednesday that his organization repeatedly warned Greek authorities of the need to shore up rail safety prior to the deadly crash.

    Despite years of warnings from regulators and the provision of funding to modernize the country’s railway network, Doppelbauer said, Greek officials failed to fully implement an automated rail traffic management system and other recommended changes. If they had, he added, the disaster likely would have been averted.

    European Commission (EC) President Ursula von der Leyen has pledged to provide technical support. Gerapetritis was set to meet with Doppelbauer and other transportation experts from the bloc later on Wednesday.

    Varoufakis, who served as Greece’s finance minister in 2015 when the “troika”—the EC, the European Central Bank, and the IMF—rammed through a devastating “structural adjustment” program, balked at Leyen’s offer, arguing that she helped bring about the crisis in the first place.

    The EC was part of the unelected troika that “railroaded the Greek government into the botched privatization that caused the tragedy,” he noted. “Keep your assistance dear Ursula. We have had enough.”

    Last week, the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25), which was co-founded by Varoufakis, argued that “the E.U. has blood on its hands.”

    The deadly collision “has further brought the negligence and corruption of the Greek government under scrutiny, and rightly so,” the group said. “However, the role of the European Union in the tragedy cannot go unmentioned either, as it was the E.U. and its institutions who forced Greece to sell off public utilities for a pittance to private—and in the case of the railways, bankrupt and incompetent—companies.”

    Erik Edman, spokesperson of the European Realistic Disobedience Front (MeRA25), a left-wing Greek political party founded by Varoufakis, denounced the E.U.’s posturing after it lowered its flags to half-mast on Friday to symbolically pay tribute to the victims of the crash.

    “The architects of the permanent impoverishment of the Greek state and the disastrous privatization of its public property are lowering their flags today,” said Edman. “The EC were the brains behind the haphazard privatization that forced the Greek state to sell the entirety of its national railways to the bankrupt (!) Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane for—I kid you not—a measly 45 million euros.”

    “They view demonstrations, such as those by Greek rail workers, as backward unionists opposing the efficiency of privatization,” Edman continued. “People who had been warning of an inevitable accident as a result of underinvestment. Their colleagues had been injured in past years, and now.”

    “They constantly praise the corrupt government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis as a ‘success story,’” he added. “So, they should either stand by the policies they’ve been supporting and keep the flags up, or take them down and put them away in shame. Anything else is hypocrisy of the worst kind.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • ‘The Movement Has Spread’: Strikes Across France Aim to Block Macron Attack on Pensions



    Hundreds of thousands of French workers walked off the job Tuesday and marched against the government’s effort, led by neoliberal President Emmanuel Macron, to raise the nation’s retirement age from 62 to 64.

    For the sixth time this year, French unions organized strikes and rallies to protest Macron and his legislative allies’ deeply unpopular attack on pension benefits. Police anticipated between 1.1 million and 1.4 million participants at more than 260 demonstrations nationwide. Laurent Berger, secretary-general of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor, estimated, based on initial figures, that Tuesday’s protests were the biggest since mobilizations started in mid-January.

    “The strike has begun everywhere,” said Eric Sellini of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), which urged people to “bring France to a halt.”

    “If Emmanuel Macron doesn’t want France to come to a standstill and a dark week for the energy industry, it would be better for him to withdraw his reforms.”

    Energy workers impeded fuel deliveries, transit workers shut down most services, teacher walkouts prompted the closure of many schools, and garbage collectors’ ongoing work stoppage has led to a build-up of trash. Meanwhile, BBC News reported that “there will be calls to extend the strikes to include power generation” in the coming days.

    Thirty-eight-year-old activist Sarah Durieux, part of a massive, largely family-friendly crowd in Paris, told The Associated Press, “To see so many people today gives me hope.”

    “The movement has spread because to defend workers’ rights means defending a social model based on solidarity,” she added.

    Unionized workers blocked the exits to all eight oil refineries in mainland France on Tuesday, striking fear in Thierry Cotillard, president of Les Mousquetaires retail chain, who warned that “if the refineries are blocked we could run out of petrol by the end of the week.”

    It is unclear how long the blockades will last. But Emmanuel Lépine, leader of a trade union representing refinery workers, said last week that the aim is to “bring the French economy to its knees.”

    Prior to Tuesday’s actions, labor leader Sébastien Ménesplier declared that “if Emmanuel Macron doesn’t want France to come to a standstill and a dark week for the energy industry, it would be better for him to withdraw his reforms.”

    As BBC News noted Tuesday, the campaign so far “has caused little damage to the economy, and the bill is proceeding through parliament.”

    The legislation, discussed last month in the National Assembly—where members of the New Ecological and Social People’s Union, a leftist opposition coalition, tried to derail debate by proposing thousands of amendments—is being considered in the Senate this week. A vote on the final version is expected later this month.

    “Unions and the left know time is running out before the reform becomes a reality—which is all the more reason for them to up the pressure now,” BBC News observed.

    Macron and his supporters have called the proposed changes “essential,” citing projected budget deficits. But union leaders and left-wing lawmakers have stressed that parliament could bolster France’s pension system—without raising the retirement age or increasing the number of years workers must contribute before qualifying for full benefits—by hiking taxes on the wealthy.

    “The mobilizations will continue and grow until the government listens to workers.”

    “The job of a garbage collector is painful. We usually work very early or late… 365 days per year,” Regis Viecili, a 56-year-old garbage worker, told AP. “We usually have to carry heavy weight or stand up for hours to sweep.”

    Trash collectors’ early retirement age would be raised from 57 to 59 if the reform proposal is enacted.

    “A lot of garbage workers die before the retirement age,” said Viecili.

    A record 1.3 million people took part in mass demonstrations against the legislation on January 31. At subsequent protests, the number of people hitting the streets—while still in the hundreds of thousands—began to decrease.

    According to BBC News, “Union leaders now believe rolling strikes are their best hope of success.”

    Citing CGT secretary-general Philippe Martinez, AP reported that unionized workers “will decide locally” on Tuesday night whether to engage in open-ended strikes.

    A majority of French citizens support the ongoing strikes. According to an opinion poll conducted recently by the French survey group Elabe, two-thirds of the public supports the movement against the government’s planned pension changes in general, 59% back efforts to bring the country “to a standstill,” and 56% support rolling strikes.

    Martinez said in an interview Sunday that unions “are moving up a gear.”

    “The mobilizations,” he predicted, “will continue and grow until the government listens to workers.”

    Xavier Bregail, a 40-year-old train driver in northern Paris, told AP on Tuesday that “the government will step back only if we block the economy.”

    “The subject behind this is inflation, soaring food and energy prices,” he added. “I just want to live decently from my work.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Standing Together: Resisting the New Normal

    The US wanted Russia to attack Ukraine. So says Robert H Wade, professor of Global Political Economy at the London School of Economics. And then it brought in its wide-ranging sanctions regime in response. According to renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersch, the US subsequently blew up the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.  

    The result is that Europeans are experiencing an energy crisis, and Germany in particular faces deindustrialisation. The Ukraine situation is not just a NATO proxy war with Russia. It is also a trade and energy war inflicted by the US on Europe.  

    Although the impact of the war is acutely felt by Europe, inflation continues to increase across the Western countries, including the US, and their economies are in crisis. 

    While the sanctions and war are having an inflationary impact, they serve as convenient cover for the effects of a massive increase in ‘quantitative easing’ that occurred in late 2019 and in 2020. The US Federal Reserve created almost a fifth of all US dollars ever created in 2020. According to economist Professor Richard Werner, central banks around the world also pumped more money into their economies during this period. He concludes that central banks are largely responsible for the inflation we now see. 

    Financial markets were collapsing in October 2019, and the crisis reached a head in February 2020 with a massive crash. Prior to COVID and then under cover of this bogus public health crisis, trillions of dollars were pumped into the economy and lockdowns were imposed to prevent an immediate hyperinflation shock. The global economy was shut down.  

    Much of the inflation currently being experienced is a result of this. COVID lockdowns were not a cause of economic collapse. They were a symptom of it. A temporary band aid for an imploding neoliberalism that now requires a radical restructuring of economies and societies. 

    And that restructuring is brutal. Neoliberalism has been on life support for some time and has resorted to various strategies (expansion consumer credit, speculative finance, debt, etc) to keep it alive. But these strategies have to a large extent run their course.   

    In response, we are witnessing a controlled demolition of large parts of the economy and a shift towards authoritarian governance to deal with the growing resentment and dissent that governments fully expect. While lockdowns can be regarded as extraordinary monetary policy measures for addressing short-term inflation risk, they also did much to accelerate the restructuring of economies, not least by closing down small independent businesses.  

    The effects of the current sanctions regime on Russia may be regarded as an extension of this restructuring. We must not assume that the people implementing the sanction policies were too ignorant to see what the outcome would be for the Western economies.  

    So, for ordinary people, what’s the end game? 

    Soaring inflation means your money will lose value. Your savings could evaporate. And rising interest rates will intensify hardship – both for ordinary people and for businesses. Increased interest rates in a debt-ridden economy could well precipitate economic collapse.  

    Enter central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). It seems likely that these will eventually be brought in as part of a new monetary system. When people have lost almost everything (the WEF mantra – own nothing and be happy), many might well be desperate enough to want a (programmable) digital universal basic income from the government.  

    But this – in the longer term – would lead to a digital prison: your carbon credit score and social credit score linked to your ability to use your digital currency, your freedom of movement and so on. 

    The fiat currency system is dying. De-dollarisation is now underway and the US’s longstanding partner – Saudi Arabia – is turning to China and accepting non-dollar payment for oil. 

    The world is increasingly trading in currencies other than the US dollar. Global US hegemony rests on the dollar being the world reserve currency. This is coming to an end.   

    What CBDCs will base their value on remains to be seen. A return to a gold standard perhaps. But the strategy appears to involve a process of economic restructuring (or demolition) leading to the impoverishment of populations then the rollout of CBDCs.  

    COVID was an accelerator that saw entire populations cajoled into submission thanks to a crisis narrative. Integral to the plan is the eventual imposition of digital IDs. 

    Whether it is immigration, war, food shortages, fear of pandemics, potential cyberattacks, climate emergency or some other crisis narrative, one way or another, circumstances will be manipulated to engineer the introduction of digital IDs – precursors to CBDC servitude. A servitude linked to ‘smart’ city surveillance technology, net zero ideology and 15-minute de facto lockdown cities. 

    Can this be prevented? What can ordinary people do? 

    We can, for instance, grow our own food (if we have access to land), use farmer markets, boycott the retail giants and cashless stores, use cash whenever possible, create our own credit unions and so on. But to act in unison, it is essential that we come together and do not feel isolated in a world in which division is encouraged.

    Many instinctively knew from the start that there was something seriously amiss with the COVID narrative and the lockdowns. But the vast majority of people – at least at the beginning of the COVID exercise – went along with the narrative. Dissenters tended to feel isolated and came together online. As the weeks passed, they began to attend protests in person. 

    At these gatherings – the speeches aside – it felt uplifting simply to be in the company of like-minded people. But after the protests, many returned home and were again surrounded by friends, family and colleagues who still kept faith in the narrative and the relentless media propaganda.  

    COVID might have receded into the background at this point, but the end goal is clear. That’s why it remains important to continue to stand together – in person, in solidarity. From small acorns, movements grow.  

    With this in mind, Fifi Rose, who helped initiate the A Stand In The Park movement in the UK, describes as a non-hierarchal people’s collective of autonomous groups, tells an inspiring story on a recent edition of the Locked & Loaded podcast with Rick Munn on TNT radio.  

    The podcast shows how one man’s resistance – which involved standing alone in a Sydney park for weeks on end – helped create a growing global movement based on face-to-face interaction. 

    The post Standing Together: Resisting the New Normal first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Three Women Discover the Americas’ Best Kept Secret: Nicaragua!

    The Alliance for Global Justice sent out an invitation to apply for “Women In Nicaragua: Power & Protagonism” Jan. 7-16, 2023.  How did this nation close the gender gap by 80% in just 15 years? Three women who had met in the Green Party decided to find out. We were accepted as delegates on the brigade and flew in from California, Florida, and Virginia.

    From the Sandino International Airport, it’s a short ride to Casa Benjamin Linder, a charming retreat graced with hammocks, a hot tub, and inspiring murals. Linder was a young engineer and activist, the first US citizen killed by US funded Contras in 1987 while bringing electricity to mountain villages. We stayed in the Rita Clark room, named for the mother of Jill Clark-Gollub who volunteered expert simultaneous translation.

    Our first briefing began with BREAKING NEWS. According to a Gallup Poll, Nicaraguans are among the happiest people on earth! Despite being in the second poorest nation in the hemisphere, 73% always feel at peace, nearly twice the global average and first worldwide. Why? Read on!

    Nicaragua has 6,733,761 people on 130,373 sq km with 153 cities/towns.

    Becca Renk, our gracious tour guide, is from the US and has lived in Nicaragua for 20+ years, raising her children there while working with the Jubilee House Community and Center for Development in Central America. Our packed agenda went without a hitch thanks to her skills and the spirited cooperation of 19 fellow delegates, aged 10 to 80 from diverse walks of life.

    Day 1: San Pablo Apostle Community Church. We attended a service and lunch with parishioners. Adjacent to the church is their school, and the Hugo Chavez soccer fields.

    We saw churches everywhere. There are frequent religious processions. Freedom of religion is alive and well in Nicaragua. Liberation Theology was a crucial ally in the 1979 Sandinista Popular Revolution. However, in allying with elites and US capitalists, some traditional, dogmatic Catholic leaders brutally persecuted those who helped the poor and bucked the system. Their corruption surfaced again in the failed coup of 2018.  222 lawbreakers (including some former Sandinistas who were proven to have sabotaged the government via roadblocks, murder and even torture) were tried, convicted, imprisoned, and recently released to the US.

    Historic National Park. We took in spectacular views of the city from the foot of a giant metal silhouette of Augusto Sandino, Managua’s most famous landmark, atop a volcanic hill so high that it’s visible from all over the city. This was once the site of the Casa Presidencial where Sandino was lured for a peace conference, a ruse. Shortly after he drove out the occupying US Marines, Somoza (trained in the US) had him killed in 1934. The Somozas then ruled brutally for 42 years. The Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (FSLN) inherited a broken nation in 1979, yet accomplished much when in office, but Ronald Reagan’s Contra War killed ~50,000 people. Contras committed far more than 1300 terrorist acts (with CIA help) so, in desperation, voters elected right-wingers in 1990 who falsely promised peace. Before departing, Sandinistas erected the towering silhouette. (Sixteen years of neoliberalism then ravaged the nation, so the FSLN was re-elected in 2006.)

    National Museum & Park. Sunshine! Becca made a cart vendor’s day by treating us all to ice cream. Many historical displays, statues of heroes, and amazing art. Sandino is the national hero, father of the Revolution. Nicaragua also honors many other brave martyrs including FSLN co-founder Carlos Fonseca and poet Ruben Dario.

    Day 2: Ciudad Sandino. Still one of the poorest communities, it’s a far cry from the cow pasture where over 12,000 Hurricane Mitch survivors were dumped, each family allotted a sliver of land and a big plastic sheet. The neoliberal government provided no other aid and stole donations. Thirty people shared a latrine. (Becca’s first foray in Nica was building tents there.) Thanks to the FSLN, they now own small homes with plumbing, electricity, and paved streets, like other Nicaraguans.

    Nueva Vida Clinic. Neighborhood clinics are Nicaragua’s first level for basic care. This clinic also provides dentistry and pre-teen/teen counseling with info on reproductive and other care.

    Hospitalito & Casa Materna Ciudad Sandino. The maternity wing houses pregnant people in their final pre-delivery weeks. They’re given nutritious meals, prenatal care, training opportunities, and safe delivery as they’re adjacent to the hospital. A midwife or family member may accompany them. A Casa Materna is popping up in nearly every town, so maternal and newborn fatality rates have plummeted. Between 2006 and 2021 there was a 55% reduction in infant mortality, 61% reduction in early childhood deaths, and 66% reduction in maternal mortality. US mortality is much higher, the highest of rich nations and worsening! Misplaced priorities?

    Maternity leave is 90 days, plus any accumulated vacation time and 28 days pre-delivery. Two hours/day is allotted for breast feeding on the job. Children getting free lunch and, if needed, breakfast helps working parents as well as the kids, yet some elites complain of “entitlements.” Family Code 870 requires each parent to do their share at home, but property is generally in women’s names because women are still usually in charge of child rearing.

    Almost all paid work is unionized in Nicaragua. Over lunch, healthcare workers described their union, proudly passing around a big book, their signed collective bargaining agreement delineating details such as vacation and how raises are determined. Patient satisfaction counts! Motto: Hospitality & Warmth. They put the hospitality back in “hospital!” Nurses and doctors take ample time to listen, sometimes making house calls on motorcycles.

    CTCP Union Hall. We met with leaders of the largest union in Central America. The National Workers Front consists of nine federations. Union leaders are 60% female. Most trained at the Trade Union Institute of Cuba. They network with unions all over Central America.

    Poets, artists, and crafts makers join the Union of Self-Employed Workers as well as lottery ticket sellers, motorcycle taxi drivers, childcare providers, money changers, market and street vendors, and domestic (aka neighborhood) workers who proudly call themselves “peasant revolutionaries.” Ignored by governments worldwide, their hard work is respected and protected here. Flor Avellan, union leader, said, “This union is an example for the world. We’re forging our own destiny. Tell US workers we’re proud of our good government. Go back and inform your people, so the Revolution can continue despite media lies!”

    A union leader poet added, “We’ve won people’s hearts. Nicaragua has a plan to end poverty and develop human potential. Our most important resource is humans with open hearts who transform consciousness. You’ll find peace, love and solidarity here. Welcome!” Unions adopted a Zulu motto: UBUNTU (All of us or none.) Dues are 1%.

    Strengthening Nicaragua via unions is enshrined in the constitution. The right to be in a union, collective bargaining, and participation in upper government are guaranteed. A union rep said they are mostly Marxist Leninist “not theoretically but forged in the struggle” because many who sought rights under neoliberalism were fined, imprisoned, or worse.

    Human rights are a wise investment. $2 billion, 57% of the national budget, funds forty social programs for poverty reduction, free healthcare, and education.

    Day 3: Velez Paiz Hospital, a huge ultra modern facility. We met the Minister of Health (a woman), a top doctor and Director of the hospital (also a woman. 39 but looks 20!) It has everything that US hospitals have, and garden views from patients’ rooms. No one is turned away (even foreigners) but folks are encouraged to try local clinics first.

    Minister of Health. An annual census identifies malnourished kids who are visited to ensure healthy diets. Parents are taught to discourage junk food. There are health fairs in every community, 1000 weekly! We turned confiscated drug trafficking vehicles into 67 mobile clinics!

    For vaccination we are #1 in Central America, #4 in the Americas, using primarily vaccines from Cuba or China. Palestinian doctors taught us cleft palate surgery. Cubans taught eye surgery.

    US sanctions do hurt. “We may not have a lot, but we do a lot with what we have.” Now, we must do more with less. But we planned ahead and got technology and other help from Japan and China. Medical workers use boats and/or horses to serve remote communities, with ethnic respect (e.g. squatting for childbirth.) Neoliberals banned indigenous medicines, now supported.

    In 2021, Nicaragua’s economy actually grew by 10+%! Nicaragua weathered the pandemic admirably with far fewer deaths per capita than in the US and without locking down but taking common sense measures. One of our delegates got Covid on the flight over. She moved to a hotel to quarantine. We had dined and bussed together, so we were exposed. The Ministry of Health recommended that we each take 18 mg ivermectin that day and the next for prevention, prescriptions not needed. (Ridiculed in the US, ivermectin won a 2015 Nobel as an anti-parasite for humans. It’s also an effective anti-viral.)

    After the delegation, several delegates stayed to further explore. On a tiny island (pop. 750), one fell and broke her wrist. Clinic staff bound it and gave pain meds. The next day, on a larger island (pop. 5000), a hospital had an x-ray machine and a doctor recast it. Cost? Free! Paperwork? She just showed her passport. Now, back to Day 6…

    Parliament. The National Assembly is in the former Bank of America skyscraper. Six female Assembly members spoke of being empowered by their “good government.” The Representative of a remote Caribbean area, whose motto is “Love for Mother Earth,” gave a moving speech. Her district now has highways and a bridge to connect this formerly neglected region.She never dreamed it would take hours, instead of days, to reach Managua.

    Interest free loans – no usury! Equal starting salaries for equal qualifications regardless of gender. Raises depend on punctuality, effectiveness, continuing ed, seniority, etc.

    Denise Aragon (Education and Environment sectors) mused, “Overseas, they call us lawbreakers but we adhere to our constitution. It protects natural resources and Mother Earth which must not be seen as a source for profit. Take this message home -There’s life in Nicaragua! We love the Earth. Our government works day and night for peace, women beside men, not ahead or behind. Empire cannot succeed against us!”

    Additional Gleanings

    The current coalition and reconciliation government is primarily Sandinista but includes several parties. FSLN holds 70% of 91 seats. 4 branches: Executive, Legislative, Judicial, Electoral. By law, 50% of political candidates are female. No corporate campaign funds!

    Their Direct Presence Model means Representatives must go out and engage the citizens. A priority this year is education re the constitution.

    “We’ve been attacked throughout history by imperialism. For sustainable prosperity despite interventions, we emphasize the legal framework for national protection, understanding, and dialogue for peace and development. We assert our right to independence and self-governance against foreign infiltration or technical disturbance that would infringe on the People’s right to self-determination.”

    Progress on many fronts is on-going. Protagonism of the People is official policy. 94% of economic entities are in the “popular economy,” micro to medium sized family biz and co-ops, with free training, so the nation isn’t dependent on transnational corporations. Hunger was eradicated. Nicaragua is 90% food self-sufficient. That’s resilience!

    174 new fire stations! Clinics and pharmacies abound. Pharmacies don’t sell make-up, candy or junk food. Many prescription drugs that are unaffordable here are OTC there. Illiteracy was 53% in 1979, 10% by 1990, and rose again during neolib years, now it is just 4%. “Fists raised, books open!”

    Multilateralism. Peanuts, sesame, and coffee are exported. International treaties are negotiated with mutual respect. “We trade north and south, with Asia and Africa, so we have economic resilience.” Another motto: Prosperity through Peace.

    The Secretary of Climate organizes Angels of Peace Who Love Our Earth! No privatization of water, a fundamental right. Smoking, plastic bags and single use ware are discouraged. Hot showers aren’t needed in this tropical heat. Conserve electricity and paper! They pull recyclables from trash after collection, pending further development.

    The goal is 100% clean energy by 2030. Already, in the 98+% of homes that have electricity, 70+% is renewable: geo-thermal from volcanoes, hydro-power, solar, wind, biomass.

    Minister of Women. A brilliant young woman, Jessica Leiva, is leading her nation. Her office publishes many pamphlets to empower/educate re legal rights. Topics include zero tolerance of abuse and climate change. This government foresees climate crisis misery and plans mitigation, particularly for rural women who’ll be disproportionately harmed. Coffee was served in ceramic mugs. On the walls were dynamic political posters and photographs of sheroes.

    Rural women lead the way in the agricultural sector and in learning technology. A Childcare With Tenderness program helps prevent violence at home. Only Nicaragua and Argentina offer a class in Gender Rights & Equity.

    Most women now delay motherhood. They love being #1 in Central America for women’s equality (#7 worldwide, per the WEF, above the US.) Initially, some men were resentful, but as consciousness was raised, resistance became cooperation.

    Vice President Rosario Murillo, the Attorney General and the head of the Supreme Court are women. Women are a majority on the Executive Committee. They have an equal voice and do assert themselves. Law #648 gives women absolute equality so they can develop in social, economic and political arenas. Law #779 bans violence against women which can lead to prison, even life for hate crimes.

    All levels of government being 50% female is only fair. Of course, some women have been corrupt historically including Pres. Chamorro. The Chamorro clan are heartless mercenaries, convicted of misappropriation of funds and conspiracy to undermine national integrity. Former guerrilla Dora Tellez allied with them in recent years. With a long, documented history of US collaboration, she organized violent roadblocks in 2018 and was convicted of inciting foreign interference after breaking the terms of amnesty.

    Salvador Allende Pier. What a sunset! Restaurants, lovers strolling on paths or snuggling under cozy cabana palm frond umbrellas, kids’ playgrounds, and in bright lights across a hill: NICARAGUA AMA LA PAZ (Nicaragua Loves Peace.)

    With its many trees, Managua is Central America’s greenest capital. Rosario added brightly colored towering tree sculptures, illuminated at night via LED’s, “Trees of Life.”

    Day 4: Gloria Quintanilla Cooperative, Carazo. Illiterate, abused women who “had nothing” organized to acquire land formerly stolen by Somoza. They grow most of their organic food and fed us while describing paths from despair to empowerment. “Baby after baby after baby, we felt like animals before. Now, we often know more than the engineers who advise us. We are community leaders, health brigadistas! We don’t take vacation, but our work is therapeutic. Agroecology is a lifestyle.” They create unique seed jewelry to sell. We toured their coffee, vegetable and spice gardens in the forest. We hiked to their new school and well. As the sun set over the mountains, neighborhood youth played futbol.

    Day 5: Skills to Save Lives, Matagalpa. We spent the morning and lunched with women/girls in the organization. Teens rescued from abuse sold jewelry they had made. A 90 year old Chicana nurse, Dorothy, came in 1985 and knew she was “in the right place. After the dictator’s defeat, the soul of Nicaragua came alive!… The Revolution begun forty years ago is not over. This is the Promised Land. Anything is possible here. I hope you’ll take home a bit of Nicaragua’s spirit, which joins the spirit of Black and Latinx liberation movements in the US. We are all one!”

    Matagalpa police station. Officers don’t carry guns on beats. 40% of police are women. Law #510: you can get a gun if you adequately explain why you need it. Annual gun violence deaths are 7/100,000. (12.2/100,000 in the US.) Nicaraguans don’t fear police but appreciate them. No blue code! Corruption (rare) is prosecuted. Police motto: Proactive Protection.

    A women’s police force works with the national police and Ministry of Women to protect women. This Province has 18 women’s police stations. Prioritized crimes under law #779 (protection of women), including intimidation and failure to pay child support, get immediate responses and expedited trials. Complaints may be made via phone or online.

    The success of their “Break the Silence to Stop the Violence” is becoming known internationally. Imprisoning violent people sends a clear message. Violence isn’t tolerated. Police or doctors who tended to a victim often testify in court, which suffices, so a victim need not relive the crime. This government is sensitive to victim trauma.

    “We favor conflict resolution and mediation when possible, rather than time-consuming trials. There are rehabilitative practices and education in prison. We have the smallest economy in Central America, with the lowest police and military budgets. There have been no mass shootings here. Under the FSLN, there’s been only one kidnapping, and the culprit is in prison.” (Not counting 2018 kidnappings by CIA supported coup perpetrators, who failed due to people’s heroism and police taking to the streets with the people.)

    The FSNL honors international human rights treaties including CEDAW. “Our revolutionary institutions were based on those rights. So we have real democracy, not fake democracy like in so many nations.”

    Day 6: FEM Fundacion Entre Mujeres, Esteli. We met with proud women, comfortable being productive/self-sufficient. Newbies join self-help groups, learn skills, and take on projects such as bee-keeping, viniculture, creation of jewelry and piñatas. “Gender is a cultural construct.”

    FEM headquarters has a lovely courtyard. Walls are adorned with gorgeous paintings. The hall boasts an altar to Mother Nature and a panoramic view. After dinner and discussion, Becca’s daughter treated us to Nicaraguan folk dancing.

    Las Diosas (The Goddesses.) We visited the FEM processing compound in the countryside. “Solidarity groups that visit us strengthen us – collaboration for the world we know is possible! Rather than the capitalist model of exploitation, our products are ‘life giving.’ We want to contribute richness in the world, not take to get rich. Our goal? Restore life! A collective, non-competitive approach is needed.” They grow/process coffee for export on their permaculture farm. They make fertilizer, selling what they don’t use. At the end of our visit, we reveled in toasts with hibiscus flower wine. FSLN has their backs and these women have the backs of more women (and now some men, too) – 2,000 and growing!

    Day 7: Esteli Museum. Prehistoric fossils, petroglyphs, pre-Columbian art, and displays re the Revolution and s/heroes. Somoza bombed Esteli, a Sandinista base, three times.

    On our way back to Managua we saw many road projects. Building highways and paving dirt roads truly improves quality of life.

    Associacion de Trabajadores del Campo (Association of Rural Workers) School. Panel discussion with an international law expert, Sofia Clark (experience in Rwanda, South Africa, Haiti, Latin America), Camilo Mejia, and a union leader.

    Clark spoke of her work in Haiti. She listens to Democracy Now to know what US progressives are hearing. She keeps hoping Amy Goodman will awaken and tell the truth re imperialism. “New forms of fascism are spreading around the world. There’s a blurring between private and public entities.

    “Nicaragua has often been a test case. Nicaragua used UN regulations to defend itself in 1984. It’s different now. MRS, a right-wing group that split from the FSNL, had US help for the 2018 coup attempt. Earlier, MRS had published a full page ad for a new FSNL platform, which seemed ok except for its ulterior, hypocritical motive of funding opposition/destruction. We’re dedicated to the ‘have nots,’ which makes the ‘haves’ uncomfortable.”

    Why do so few confront the US and call out its illegal actions? The peace dividend was lost. By the 1990s, the US was inventing media. (Information war!) “Gorbachev wanted to join NATO. The world changed with the war in Yugoslavia when NATO was not used defensively but offensively to expand eastward. The Ukraine war is no surprise. Fake news? What about news that’s never reported!”

    Mejia is a Nicaraguan whose family moved to the US, whereupon he joined the military due to the economic draft. He was imprisoned for going awol when he “saw the horrors inflicted in Iraq, like horrors the same aggressor inflicted on the Nicaragua of my childhood… Most of the world now opposes imperialism. Almost every nation is rising up against neoliberal control. But left-wing friends from the 80s now often fall for the State Dept narrative and are no longer allies.” He suggested we learn to identify fake color revolutions. “Targeted governments tend to support the people, like Venezuela providing millions of homes for the poor. Is there land reform? Free healthcare and education? If there are drugs/crime, were they brought there by the CIA?”

    Afterwards, buffet with fab revolutionary music and dancing!

    Day 8: Play day! San Juan de Oriente, a town famous for its artisans. A renowned potter, Pedro Guerrero, enthralled us with a demonstration in his studio.

    Laguna de Apoyo, Resort on a crater lake. Food, drinks, music, sun, swimming! After relaxing, we went to a big market that was bombed in the 80s. Jen’s quest for a FSLN t-shirt was a success. And it’s green!

    Masaya Volcano National Park & Museum. We met unionized park rangers, officials, and office personnel, all enchanted by the FSLN. After dark, they took us to the rim. We peered into the crater to see red bubbling lava rising from Pacha Mama’s core.

    Late night dinner. The workers presented each of us with a big bag of goodies: postcards, calendar, map, edible treats, hand painted wooden bird, corny straw hat which they INSISTED we wear for a photo.

    Day 9: Adios! Hugs for our amazing comrades. As Delegate Mukasa, who had coined the term “Black Power” decades ago, often says: Ni se rinde; ni se vende! Hamas! Never surrender or sell out!

    CONCLUSION 

    After decades defending themselves from three evils – capitalism, colonialism, paternalism – no wonder a verse in the FSLN theme song refers to the US government as “enemy of humanity.” With the FSLN prevailing since 2006 and surviving the 2018 coup attempt, people’s well-being steadily improved. Still poor by bourgeois standards, cost of living is 48% less than in the US. Rent is 83% less. No one is destitute, hungry, or homeless. Healthcare and education are free.

    How DID they achieve so much so fast? First, they elected “good government” that puts people first. Laws were changed so that women and other formerly marginalized people are empowered and lead. Education and well-being are prioritized at every level. The Caribbean legislator had told us she never dreamed she’d be in the federal government. “We’re building Paradise!” The Declaration of Mother Earth and Declaration of Human Rights are in the Constitution. The Sandinista government is enacting the US Green Party’s Ten Key Values. We three Green women feel renewed hope for the world, as do working class and other caring Nicaraguans who are proud of progress. That’s why they’re among the world’s happiest people. Adelante!

    What are they up against? “The US appears to be destined by Providence to plague the Americas with misery in the name of freedom,” Simón Bolivar in 1829, nine years before Nicaragua became the first Central American nation to declare independence. In 1912, the US sent 2500 Marines and has continued attempts to dominate even via terrorism. The US has overtly invaded Nica 14 times. (Goddess and the CIA only know how many covert actions.)

    The financial, military, “intelligence,” media and political power of US hegemony is unprecedented. Recall the Iran-Contra debacle? Congress cut funding for such foreign meddling, so Oliver North arranged illegal weapons sales to Iran to fund Contra brutality against Sandinistas and allies who fought for self determination. They even killed teens who were merely suspected of dissidence. Exhausted by atrocities, fearing a US invasion like in Panama, and falling for campaign promises of peace, voters elected neoliberals in 1990.

    Daniel Ortega stepped down, but not away. Neoliberalism was clearly a disaster so he was re-elected in 2006, again in 2011 by 63%, and by a landslide in 2016. After the delegation, Phoebe traveled another week and asked all kinds of Nicaraguans what they think. Freedom of speech is alive and well! People didn’t hesitate to tell a stranger that they dislike Daniel and Rosario. Phoebe agrees that having his wife as VP seems like nepotism, but even those who dislike the couple admitted to liking the progress the FSNL has accomplished. Election protectors had assured us that the elections were fair. When asked what they voted for, people said “peace, our country, the people.” Viva Nica!

    Addendum 1: WHAT TO DO

    1. Endorse this statement affirming Nica’s sovereignty & achievements by emailing: NicaraguaAdvocacymoc.liamgnull@krowteN, providing full name, organization (if any), & whether you’re signing as an individual or for an org.
    2. Travel! Witness! Report! Staying with people who’ve lived there for decades provides a clearer picture and credibility. The US State Dept discourages travel there, implying it’s not worth seeing and dangerous. But Nica simply poses the “threat of a good example.” It’s the safest country in Central America. We return here to tent cities, hunger, exorbitant healthcare, mass shootings and frequent violence. Food, lodging, massages, zip lining, medicines etc. are inexpensive in Nica. Medical care is free. Upcoming tours.
    3. Educate via letters to editors, podcasts, radio call-ins, panel discussions. Wear buttons etc. to spark questions/discussion. Present to clubs and faith congregations. Keep abreast by subscribing to Nica Notes.
    4. Organize events re the 200th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine in December 2023.
    5. Lobby and protest. Remind Representatives and friends that the International Court of Justice ordered the US to pay reparations to Nica (which Reagan refused) due to a CIA scheme to mine its harbors in 1984. Remind them that the NY Times and WaPo exposed a CIA training manual for Contras promoting crimes against humanity and assassination of elected officials. Defense of sovereignty is ongoing. Capitol Hill: 800-826-3688

    Addendum 2: MORE INFO because “If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcom X

    1. The Delegation report has hyperlinked stats and photos of delegates.

    2. Margaret Flowers‘ interviewed our translator Jill Clarke: Nicaragua is Run by Women with a Revolutionary Feminism

    3. Jennifer, Phoebe, & Delegate Erica Caines, report via zoom for Alameda County (Oakland/Berkeley) Green Sunday 5 PM PST March 12, recorded, eventually posted on You Tube. Meeting ID: 895 5984 4652. Find your local number.

    4. Our tour guide Becca’s article on the people’s church in Nicaragua.

    5. Why 222 Nicaraguan Criminals Were Deported & Why They & Others Lost Their Citizenship

    6. Reconciliation Does Not Mean Forgetting in Nica by our translator, Jill

    7. Nicaragua’s ‘Political Prisoners’ Would Be Criminals by US Standards

    8. From Nicaraguan revolutionaries to US embassy informants: How Washington recruited ex-Sandinistas like Dora María Téllez and her MRS party

    9. U.S. takes its employees home. Jill discusses the latest in Nicaragua which made headlines re transfer of a plane full of convicts who participated in criminal acts during the US-backed 2018 failed coup

    10. Why I Had to Go There by Erica Ryan

    11. Video – Calls grow for cessation of hostility against Nicaragua

    12. The heinous instrumentalization of human rights against Nicaragua 

    The post Three Women Discover the Americas’ Best Kept Secret: Nicaragua! first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • US and EU Groups Call for ‘Ceasefire’ on Trade Challenges to Climate Policies



    A coalition of more than three dozen progressive advocacy groups based in the United States and the European Union on Monday implored E.U. policymakers to stop pursuing challenges to the Inflation Reduction Act and urged governments on both sides of the Atlantic to start prioritizing decarbonization over corporate-friendly trade rules.

    “As part of any E.U.-U.S. transatlantic sustainable trade initiative, we urge the E.U. to refrain from challenging the IRA with trade instruments. And we call on the U.S. and E.U. to commit to a Climate Peace Clause to protect climate policies around the world from trade disputes, as well as to make good on climate financing and green technology transfer to countries in the Global South,” says a letter sent to the U.S.-E.U. Trade and Technology Council.

    The letter comes as European Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis travels to Washington, D.C. for meetings this week with top U.S. officials, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai.

    Amid an ongoing disagreement over North American electric vehicle manufacturing incentives, renewable energy tax credits, and other green provisions in the IRA, Dombrovskis plans to “negotiate better outcomes for the E.U.,” according to Politico, just as the U.S. Treasury Department prepares to release “a list of criteria for what qualifies as a free trade agreement, potentially making more countries eligible to receive tax credits under the IRA,” which was passed by congressional Democrats and signed into law by President Joe Biden last August.

    “Countries desperately need to enact bold climate measures and cannot allow outdated trade rules to get in the way.”

    The letter’s 41 signatories—including the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, the Transnational Institute, and other civil society organizations representing millions of people—noted that “at the most recent meeting of the U.S.-E.U. Trade and Technology Council, the Global Trade Working Group announced its intent to embark on a transatlantic sustainable trade initiative.”

    Melinda St. Louis, the director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, said Monday in a statement that if the U.S. and the E.U. are serious about this, “they first need to commit to ‘do no harm’ by refraining from attacking one another’s climate legislation.”

    While the IRA “was far from the comprehensive legislation needed to address the urgent climate crisis,” states the letter, “it was the result of a difficult compromise negotiated in a narrow but historic window of political opportunity and is a critical step that the U.S. has taken to meet its climate commitments.”

    Despite this, the E.U. “claims that the structure and the domestic content requirements of tax incentives for electric vehicle, electric battery, and renewable energy production offered through the IRA violate World Trade Organization (WTO) rules,” the letter continues. “And it has repeatedly threatened to refer the matter to the WTO Dispute Settlement Body, attempting to force the U.S. to change this law. The E.U. even publicly complained about the incentives before the bill had passed, potentially threatening passage of the important legislation, which passed by the narrowest of margins.”

    “Time is running out to meet our climate commitments,” it adds. “Investments in green jobs and production of green products will be needed to usher in the clean energy transition the world needs,” and that requires “adapt[ing] the rules to accelerate a just transition.”

    “Will the Biden administration stand up to these trade threats and implement the law as intended to create green jobs and boost manufacturing in the clean energy economy?” asked St. Louis. “And will they commit to supporting other countries as they enact their own bold climate policies?”

    Fabian Flues, a trade campaigner with PowerShift Germany, insisted that there is no other reasonable choice.

    “This is simple: climate action has to take precedence over trade rules,” said Flues. “The E.U. would do the fight against climate change a huge disservice if it challenged the Inflation Reduction Act in trade tribunals. Instead, the E.U. should increase its efforts to pursue a genuine ecological and fair industrial policy. Such efforts must be accompanied by increased climate financing and green technology transfer so that countries in the Global South don’t lose out from increased climate action in the U.S. and E.U.”

    According to the coalition:

    As advanced economies and major current and historic emitters of greenhouse gases, it would be a powerful step for the U.S. and E.U. to agree to a Climate Peace Clause—a binding commitment by these governments to refrain from using dispute settlement mechanisms in the WTO or other trade and investment agreements to challenge each other’s climate policies. Not only should the E.U. refrain from using trade rules to challenge the IRA, but both should commit to refraining from challenging other countries’ policies meant to hasten the green transition. This would set an example and create the much-needed space for governments to adopt and maintain the climate policies needed to create green jobs and meet their commitments under the Paris climate agreement.

    Such an agreement between these two powers must also include climate financing for countries in the Global South and the sharing of green technologies, as outlined in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris agreement, to support/contribute to climate solutions that are truly sustainable and equitable for all. This will be necessary to support the clean energy transition in countries that cannot afford similar subsidy-based incentives. A true transatlantic collaboration to address catastrophic climate change, and related global social, health, and biodiversity crises, will entail supporting—rather than undermining—green industrial policies on both sides of the Atlantic. Further, we must work together to meet commitments for financial support and technological transfer to developing countries and to transform inequitable global structures in order to facilitate a just transition for all.

    This is not the first time labor and environmental groups have demanded that policymakers stop impeding sorely needed climate action by weaponizing global trade rules. As Biden hosted French President Emmanuel Macron just before a December meeting of the U.S.-E.U. Trade and Technology Council, activists held a protest outside the White House to denounce the leading role that Macron has played in fostering E.U. opposition to the IRA.

    On the same day, the Sierra Club and the Trade Justice Education Fund published an analysis outlining the need for a Climate Peace Clause.

    As the groups’ research explained, North American production requirements were key to securing the political support needed to enact the IRA, but progress on creating green jobs and slashing planet-heating pollution remains at risk of being derailed by Investor-State Dispute Settlement complaints and other objections filed at neoliberal trade institutions.

    As Trade Justice Education Fund executive director Arthur Stamoulis said Monday, “Countries desperately need to enact bold climate measures and cannot allow outdated trade rules to get in the way.”

    “By committing to not challenge other nations’ climate initiatives as violations of old trade rules,” Stamoulis added, “the United States can simultaneously encourage countries to take more ambitious climate action and better defend its own climate-focused industrial policy.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • The Dawn of Austerity

    An interview with Clara E. Mattei, the author of The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.