By Jim Smith

Capitalism is doomed. The aged system has been increasingly unable to maintain people’s living standards since the 1970s. And now, everyone knows it.

Thanks to the Occupy movement, the viability of an economic system based on greed and survival of the fittest has been called into question. And found wanting.

We can thank the Occupy movement for two innovations in the art of political protest. The concept of the 99 percent versus the 1 percent has united everyone, no matter what their beef with capitalism, aka Wall Street. The other innovation from Occupy can be stated simply as, “don’t be distracted by specific issues,”  which can divide us by substituting “effects” (issues) for “causes” (capitalism).

The problem is capitalism, not high tuition, lack of medical care, foreclosures, homelessness, and the myriad other issues that confront most of us day by day. These are the effects of a system that serves the interests of a decreasing minority of the population (actually, far less than 1 percent). The time has passed for piecemeal solutions to these various issues. We must go to the heart of the problem, the system itself.

It is true that a once vibrant capitalism built the economic powerhouse known as the USA. It did this at the direction of a group of ruthless entrepreneurs, beginning in the 19th century, who ran roughshod over their workers, their competitors and the environment. Decade after decade, they accumulated more wealth, more capital and more power.

American literature is full of Horatio Alger rags-to-riches stories, and reverence for robber barons with good PR, like Andrew Carnegie, who hired slave drivers like Henry Frick to build Carnegie Steel, which J.P. Morgan later bought for $480 million in 1901 and renamed US Steel. Then there’s railroad magnate Jay Gould, who famously said: “I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half.”

The problem with revolting against these “industrialists” was that they only controlled one corporation each, albeit some very large corporations. People not directly connected with the company as workers or consumers could only express solidarity at the latest outrage committed by the owner.

The Free Venice Beachhead is the community newspaper of Venice California. http://www.freevenice.org

The “mission” of this journal is to promote left and socialist unity, create a stronger challenge to the two monopoly parties, and educate our readers on the realities of capitalism, and its alternatives. Please send your submission to Journal@freevenice.org

About the Peace and Freedom Party: The California Peace and Freedom Party has approximately 60,000 registered members. It is active in both every day struggles of working people and in contending with corporate-dominated parties at the ballot box.

The Peace & Freedom Party is an open, multi-tendency, movement-oriented socialist party. We are united in our common commitment to socialism, democracy, feminism and unionism and our common opposition to capitalism, imperialism, racism, sexism and elitism. We recognize that we do not all agree on what we mean by “socialism” or on the strategies and tactics of how to get it. We do agree that it means we can have a world where we can all be part of the democratic decision-making on how the wealth of the economy will be used because we will be owners of it, as well as the cooperative self-managing co-participants in producing it.

By Karl Abrams

High in the skies of Libya, NATO jets, equipped with uranium bullets and uranium-tipped missiles, are probably being used to assist Libyan rebels in toppling the regime of Muammar Gaddafy.

France, Great Britain and the US regularly employ concrete bunker-busting uranium weapons and have consistently blocked UN proposals to ban them. They won’t admit they’re using them, but they do acknowledge the use of jets that always seem to carry them. When used in jet machine guns, high-density uranium bullets as large as 30 mm (and 70% more dense than lead) can be shot at an astounding rate of 70 bullets per second. This often cuts an armored vehicle or tank in two.

It’s no wonder that such kinetic energy penetrators are called “Armor Piercing Incendiary.” Upon incandescent penetration, such bullets and missiles ignite ordinance stored in the armored vehicle. The resulting toxic explosion decomposes the uranium into a white oxide powder that quickly moves across the wind-swept desert terrain into cities and lungs of the Libyan people.

The dust is uranium dioxide. The uranium in it ultimately comes from uranium ore that is unusable by nuclear reactors. Such uranium is considered unusable or “depleted” because it is not radioactive enough to drive a nuclear power plant. For this reason, it is called “depleted uranium” or DU, and is primarily made up of U-238, a form of uranium that’s heavier but less radioactive than the more radioactive U-235 that is used in nuclear reactors.

But its DU name is conveniently misleading. According to the military, DU is a “mild health risk” outside of the human body. And this is what soldiers and pilots are told. What is generally ignored, however, is what happens when the dust enters the body. By drinking, eating or breathing it in, DU radiation severely damages bone marrow and cellular chromosomes by internally emitting sub-atomic “bullets” known as alpha particles. This causes lung, lymph and brain cancers as well as mutagenic effects such as unusually high rates of leukemia and fetal radiation damage that cause grotesque birth defects. Uranium contamination also permanently impairs kidney, heart and liver function.

Ever since the 1960s, the corporations that own nuclear power plants safely stored tremendous amounts of DU, on average 20 tons/yr. Surely, their CEOs must have wondered more than once if this DU could turn a profit by selling it as a high-density armor-piercing bullet or missile. After all, production cost of DU is cheap – only $2 per kilogram.

Their chance came in the 1970s when the Soviet Union developed tanks with armor that could not be penetrated by ordinary weapons. The Pentagon then developed and perfected DU weapons. The price of DU increased 10-fold, creating a multi-billion dollar industry.

Fortunate for corporate profit motives, first-world war-makers – be they French, British or American – apparently have no problem using DU weapons and spreading poisonous uranium oxide dust into the environment. After all, it does the job nicely and doesn’t hurt the soldiers or pilots who use it, provided they are a “safe” distance away from the DU dust.

While the World Health Organization is vehemently against it, NATO’s war makers are not. They know but don’t seem to care that the half-life of DU is over 4 billion years. This means that half of the DU released into Libya’s environment will, by definition, linger for that same incredible amount of time. In other words, the DU will contaminate the people of Libya forever, or 4 billion years, whichever comes first. How does NATO pretend to help the Libyan people by permanently poisoning them and their precious water supply and farmland?

DU is considered a long-term poison because it is both a heavy metal contaminant and a radioactive alpha-particle emitter. This creates a deadly “cocktail effect”. Both are deadly to combatants and civilians alike, and both should be viewed as a crime against humanity. According to the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW), DU needs to be immediately and internationally outlawed along with dum-dum bullets, poison gas, and cluster bombs.

Developed by the Pentagon in the 1980s at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, it was first used in the Iraq invasions of 1991 and 2003 and probably used in the Balkans and Afghanistan. According to conservative estimates, about 1 in 8 soldiers who served in Iraq have been poisoned by DU, which manifests as Gulf War Syndrome. That’s about 100,000 soldiers who may need life-long medical care.

The UN has dramatically called for a ban on the use of such nefarious military DU weapons because it violates the Geneva Convention. Germany, Belgium, Italy and all Latin American countries refuse to use it. The French, British and US militaries still refuse to ban it. What do we tell the Libyan people when the DU dust settles?

By Jim Smith

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.  ~Aldous Huxley

Silly Hillary. Did she really think the internet was a safe place for her deepest, darkest secrets? She’s not alone. The geniuses of the military end of the Empire also put its secrets – massacres in Iraq and Afghanstan – on the net. Private First Class Bradley Manning probably wasn’t the only one to read, and enjoy, other people’s mail. But he was the only one to download the dirty deeds and send them off to Julian Assange at Wikileaks.

For his efforts at letting us know what these fools are doing in our name Manning has been cast into a dank dungeon and will be lucky to survive with his head intact. When it comes to military justice, there isn’t any.

Once it became known that the word was out and that the New York Times and the UK Guardian were actually reprinting the Empire’s secrets, a meeting was called to discuss damage control. A motion by Dr. Stangelove to nuke the headquarters of Wikileaks was passed unanimously. However, it was soon discovered that Wikileaks only had a virtual headquarters, which was immune to thermonuclear attack. A second motion was passed to kill the messenger, Julian Assange. Changing the subject has always been a good defense. U.S. officials caught with their pants down are now threatening to charge Assange with espionage, even though he is Australian and committed no crimes in this country.

Meanwhile, Assange was quickly charged with ‘sex by surprise.” No matter that no one had ever heard of this crime, he was quickly brought to account in London. At this writing, his extradition to Sweden to stand accused of this heinous crime is still in doubt. The Americans are slobbering to take him into custody. If the past is any indication, waterboarding no doubt awaits.

According to Beachhead correspondent and investigative reporter Ron Ridenour (our man in Copenhagen), ‘the accusing women are: Social Democrat party organizer of Assange’s speaking tour last August, 31-year-old Sophia Wilén; and Anna Ardin, a 27-year-old anti-Cuba activist allied with US-paid so-called “dissidents” in Cuba. Ardin was, reportedly, kicked out of Cuba for subversive activities with right-wing groups there. Her brother purportedly worked for the Swedish Secret Service/SEPO, which works with the CIA.”

In spite of having Assange in a British prison, secret messages from the Empire continue to be released at countless internet sites around the world. The machinations of the Empire in the four corners of the world continue to be revealed. It should be no secret that the bloodthirsty king of the Saudis – a staunch U.S. ally – wants the Empire to invade Iran should come as no surprise. But to see it is print is delightful.

Who are these people running rampant over the globe? They are our public servants. And yes, we had a right to know what they are doing in our name. If Cablegate reveals anything, it is that our public servants have gone seriously off the track. Now that we know what they are doing, thanks to Wikileaks, they need to be reined in. If we allow them to continue on their merry way, we will have done a disservice to ourselves and to them. While we can’t say that their souls will burn in hell for their misdeeds, we can say that what they are doing is not in our interest, and they should resign forthwith, after apologies all around.

The Wikileaks disclosures and the official reaction to them are a classic battle between free speech and government secrecy. Lately, secrecy has been gaining ground with illegal spying and wiretapping of millions of people, the accumulation of “data” on all of us from the internet, credit reports, Facebook and countless other sources. Wikileaks should be welcome by everyone who values the Constitutional “guarantees” of free speech, a free press and privacy. A few governments, including Brazil, Russia, Ecuador, Venezuela and the United Nations, have applauded Wikileaks, but not Uncle Sam.

Unfortunately, the U.S. government is attempting to bluster through this debacle. The attacks on Bradley Manning and Jason Assange are misplaced. Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev was correct in recommending the Noble Peace Prize for Assange. There should be ticker-tape parades in every American city for Assange and Manning. For they have stolen the fire of the gods and brought it to earth. Prometheus lives.

But will Assange and Manning’s deeds have a lasting effect among the less-than-heroic American populace? The Pentagon Papers, stolen and released in 1971 by Daniel Ellsberg and Tony Russo certainly helped bring some sanity to the U.S. cruel invasion and bombing of a third world country, Vietnam. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post printed extracts of the Pentagon Papers. Alaskan Senator Mike Gravel read it into the Congressional Record (where is a Senator or Representative today with the courage to do that?). Yet, by 1971 the Vietnam War had largely been decided in Vietnam’s favor by a combination of worldwide support, a powerful U.S. peace movement, an army that would no longer fight, and more importantly, by a determination of the Vietnamese to win freedom and independence in their land no matter the cost.

Closer to home, official secrets of Los Angeles city officials were disclosed in February, 2005, thanks to the investigative work of Beachhead reporter John Davis. The documents showed how city officials including Arturo Pena (now Venice deputy to Councilmember Bill Rosendahl) LAPD Capt. Bill Williams and officers Gerry Smedley and Theresa Skinner; Sandy Kievman (aide to Councilmember Cindy Miscikowski); city attorneys Mary Molidor, Gita Isagholian, Aaron Gross and Susan Wagner; mediator Gary De La Rosa and one Venice resident, Rick Feibusch, conspired to destroy the Grass Roots Venice Neighborhood Council (GRVNC). One of those, de La Rosa, was supposed to be a neutral arbitrator ruling on an election challenge, which he used to bring down the Council.

While none of the conspirators were fired, or even disciplined, for subverting democracy, the revelations did create a healthy skepticism among Venetians which exists to this day.

Likewise, the Wikileaks revelations should create a healthy skepticism about U.S. government pronouncements, which may or may not be the truth.

Because of aggressive efforts by government hackers to bring down Wikileaks websites, no web address can be considered permanent. To read the documents, and see the videos, on Iraq, Afghanistan and diplomatic cables, search the web for “Wikileaks” or “Cablegate.” To read L.A.’s secrets described above, go to:www.freevenice.org/Secrets/andemails.html

Oh Arizona, where the elderly go to die
a Death’s Head has gripped your state.
Immigrants raise their eyes and ask why
they must suffer such a criminal’s fate.

Sunstroke has come early to Arizona this year, or so it would seem. The Anglo majority in the Arizona government has tyrannized the Latino minority in ways that would not be expected in an American state.

Not since the “good” German Christians decided in the 1930s to declare German Jews to be unwanted aliens without rights has a group of people, defined by their ethnicity, been subject to automatic police harassment and ostracism.

How did the federal government respond to this civil rights atrocity? By sending in the troops – 12,000 national guard to be exact. This should be no surprise since the feds responded to the earthquake in Haiti by sending in the troops. At least, Latinos will have some protection like Blacks did in the South. Wrong. The troops are there to seal up the border, not protect anyone’s rights.

Meanwhile, sources tell the Beachhead that commercial areas of Phoenix are like a ghost town since Latinos – both documented and undocumented – are afraid they will be seized if they leave home.

The word Arizona became a source of derision around the world with the passage of SB1070 and its signing into law by Gov. Jan Brewer on April 23. The bill is euphemistically titled, “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act.” Now South Carolina, the birthplace of the Confederacy, has a copy cat bill pending in its legislature.

Cutting through its 16 pages of legal BS, the Arizona law permits police to determine who looks like an “alien” and to arrest them. It penalizes anyone who attempts to hire them for day labor, but goes easy on big employers who “unknowingly” employ aliens. It makes it a crime for a church or an individual to give sanctuary to immigrants. It is a crime to befriend an immigrant by giving he/she a ride or other aid and comfort. Law 1070 also allows any person to sue a police officer, city, county or state agency for not being zealous enough in enforcing its draconian provision.

But wait. We’re not done yet. How can you top SB1070? With HB2281, the so-called Ethnic Studies ban which Gov. Brewer signed May 11. Education will now be controlled by the state legislature. No classes will be allowed that are designed for one particularly ethnic group or that advocate ethnic solidarity (James Brown’s song, I’m Black and I’m Proud, will no doubt be prohibited in a music class).

It also becomes illegal to “promote resentment toward a race or class of people.” Obviously, teaching about the Holocaust would be illegal since it might create resentment toward Germans.

But it should be clear that the real target is Latinos. Any Latino reading Howard Zinn’s “Peoples History,” or numerous books by Latinos about the history of unfair treatment of immigrants, workers and U.S. citizens of Latino heritage would certainly cause resentment against those who perpetrated and continue to perpetrate discriminatory acts in Arizona.

Most Venetians know Arizona, if at all, as a long yawn out the car window, or a moon-like landscape from an airplane window, on their way east. Arizona (arid zone) is a 310-mile-wide desert that must be gotten through to get anywhere interesting. There are two large oases in this desert – Phoenix and Tucson – and several smaller ones. Arizona is also home to one of the world’s biggest holes in the ground, the Grand Canyon.

There would be few people living in Arizona today if not for a modern technological invention – air conditioning. If the power ever goes out, or the water runs dry, the anglo “civilization” of Arizona will go the way of the Native American and Mexican cultures that they trampled on, and are still trampling on. Earlier civilizations in the Arizona area like the Pueblo culture, the Hohokam and the Sinagua peoples were more advanced that the current residents in that they lived in harmony with nature and were not particularly warlike.

The territory of Arizona was originally proclaimed by that great President, Jefferson Davis. Oops. Yes, in 1861 the good people of Arizona seceded from New Mexico so they could enjoy being slave owners along with the rest of the Confederacy. The leaders who had performed this coup had come to power after the United States declared war on Mexico in 1846 and seized two-thirds of its territory, including what is now Arizona. Taking land by aggressive war is hardly a legal basis to impose draconian measures against those Mexicans who would be able to travel freely throughout their land had it not been violently seized from them.

Nineteenth Century immigrants from the United States spread a frontier mentality into Arizona. Towns like Tombstone were admired for their lawlessness. In some ways, Arizona was America’s last frontier. It did not become a state until 1912 and America’s “Indian Wars” only ended in 1918 with a battle against the Yaquis near Nogales, Arizona. Part of the frontier culture in Arizona and elsewhere was a deep seated racism against Native Americans and Mexicans. This long tradition of racism plus “white flight” from parts of Southern California are the ideological foundations of the extreme racial laws now emanating from the state government.

In May 1980, I attended an immigration conference held at El Mirage, near Phoenix. After it was over I visited with immigrant farmworkers in the area. They lived in the fields where they harvested crops. Their living conditions were worse than those of slaves in the antebellum South. Some lived in the open, under trees. Others had built lean-tos out of packing crates and covered them with plastic tarpaulins.

At another ranch a few miles away, the Arizona Farm Workers Union had just won a contract which provided for spartan, but clean, rooms for farm workers. It contained an innovative provision that called for a fund to be used to create jobs in those Mexican states where the farm workers resided. Unfortunately, most growers couldn’t care less about solving immigration problems, let alone improving conditions in the fields, and the union withered and died.

Immigration to Arizona and other U.S. states was spurred by the North America Free Trade Agreement beginning in 1994. It allowed mass produced U.S. goods to undercut Mexican products, thereby causing massive job losses and a constant stream of job seekers to “El Norte.” Mexican farms cannot even grow and sell corn, a staple of their diets, competitively. U.S. corn is now dumped, thanks to NAFTA, at 30 percent below its cost of production. The difference is made up by government subsides to U.S. corn farmers. NAFTA and other freely trade agreements allow capital and products to free cross national boundaries, while workers are either left holding the bag or forced to violate immigration laws in search of a livelihood for themselves and their families. In Arizona, bad politics has placed U.S. workers against Mexican workers instead of uniting them to fight for fair trade agreements and job creation projects in Mexico.

Events may move swiftly in Arizona. After this article is published on June 1, we may hear of other measures by that state to finally solve the “Immigrant Question.” Perhaps they will reactivate the numerous concentration camps in Arizona that were used during World War II to incarcerate Japanese-Americans, who were mostly U.S. citizens, and for housing German and Italian prisoners of war. Or they may repeal the Martin Luther King holiday, that they so begrudgingly accepted after a boycott of the state proved successful. Worst of all, state sponsored persecution of an easily recognizable group can embolden otherwise cowardly racists to engage in violent vigilante acts against immigrants.

How should we respond to Arizona’s assault on human rights? The Los Angeles City Council has voted to boycott Arizona. The Venice Neighborhood Council, other Venice organizations and individuals should likewise commit to boycott travel and goods from Arizona. And let’s urge President Obama to get off his executive seat and tell Arizona that immigration is a federal responsibility and that they have no business getting involved.

In addition, we should see what has happened as an object lesson of where hatred or disrespect for others, particularly the vulnerable, can lead. Let’s ask the L.A. City Council to reign in their harassment and roundup of our own vulnerable group, homeless people.

Meanwhile, Arizona racists – in uniform and out – are chomping at the bit to become latter-day storm troopers when SB1070 goes into effect on July 28. But what will suburban Arizonians do, when Maria the Maid, Rosa the Nanny, and Pedro the Gardener no long come to work, and Manuel the Laborer no longer builds houses and José no longer harvests their vegetables and fruits?

Presenting the People’s Agreement—“mother earth does not belong to us, we belong to it”—worldwide was the first act of the Global People’s Movement for Mother Earth. This was carried out in May by Bolivia’s President Evo Morales and representative activists from five continents.

Representing 35,000 people from 147 countries, they presented the conclusions of 17 workshops—held April 19-21 at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (WPCCC)—to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, to the Non-Alignment Movement (now 130 Third World countries) plus China (the world’s second greatest polluter), and then to leaders of the European Union.

President Morales initiated the people’s conference as a response to the failed COP15 held in Copenhagen, Denmark last December. The so-called “Copenhagen Accord” was strongly biased in favor of the rich governments and transnational capitalist corporations that continue business as usual: extracting unlimited profits from human labor and natural resources while contaminating Mother Earth with its gaseous emissions and devastating wars.

Although conference delegates decided to take their analysis and proposals to COP16 to be held   November-December in Cancun, Mexico, President Morales warned, at a May 6 news conference in New York, that there are only two choices: “Either save capitalism, or save Mother Earth. If Cancun is the same as Copenhagen, then unfortunately the United Nations will lose its authority among people in the world.”  He implied that peoples’ movements might replace the UN.

Key points of the final document arrived at in 17 workshops include:

¤ “Live well” (indigenous philosophy), not “live better” (capitalism’s creed). This enhances the environment holistically and encourages meeting everyone’s basic needs while the latter requires greed and destruction of the planet, and war amongst men and between nations over the earth’s natural resources.

¤ Demand the United Nations force the rich nations (capitalist west) to reduce their CO2 emissions 50% of 1990 levels by 2017, the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.

¤ These nations must use at least 6% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP), much less than they use for wars, for mitigation of and adaptation to climate changes in the developing world.

¤ Recognize the Universal rights of Mother Earth—the right to life, clean water and air, free from contamination; every human being is responsible for respecting and living in harmony with her; guarantee peace and eliminate nuclear, chemical and biological weapons; decolonization of the atmospheric space.

¤ Conduct a worldwide referendum of five points concerning how to protect nature: agree or not to eliminating the capitalist economy; transfer all financing for wars to finance the defense of mother earth; our territories be freed of troops and military bases; create an International Climate and Environmental Justice Tribunal to judge and sanction contaminating nations and firms.

¤ “Capitalism as a patriarchal system of endless growth is incompatible with life on this finite planet…the alternatives [to both capitalism and the Soviet experience with a predatory production system] must lead to a profound transformation of civilization.” Workshop 01 structural causes.

Unique climate conference amidst tumultuous transition

Mother Earth angrily erupted just as the first world conference seeking to protect her was about to begin. Iceland’s volcanic ash darkened European skies and prevented the arrival of hundreds of would-be delegates to the world’s first celebration of mother earth. 17,000 flights were cancelled in the first days and in some countries there were no flights for a week. In the same period, BP, a major contaminator, could not control an oil drill in the Gulf of Mexico, one of many which the US president had allowed against his campaign promises, and the greatest ecological catastrophe in US history was underway. Even with one million liters of oil daily spreading over an area that quickly grew to the size of Puerto Rico, Obama continued to issue executive exceptions to the freeze on oil well drilling in the seas to his buddies in the oil business. As Morales told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, the only difference between oil millionaire Bush and Obama is the color of skin.

The people’s conference was held in Bolivia’s central Cochabamba department at Tiquipaya (place of flowers). And as it was being prepared and then underway, the revolutionary transition clashed with reactionary intransigence emboldened by the ubiquitous Yankee Empire. However, the Empire’s Enjoy Coca-Cola warring falsetto is now challenged by the descendent of Inca Empire President Evo Morales with his Coca-Colla natural coca energy drink.

From early April to early May, the time of my stay, I witnessed regional elections in which President Morales party, Movement towards Socialism (MAS), won overwhelmingly in more areas than ever before. However, MAS was accused to have engaged in fraud in some electoral districts of La Paz by other left-wing political parties, whose members are largely the same ethnic people as Morales, Aymaras. In Ancoraimes for instance, the province where Eugenio Poma was born and raised, four left-wing parties contest for city power. Poma is Bolivia’s ambassador to Denmark, a man I work with. When I visited his hometown, I discovered Aymara against Aymara within the left. Besides MAS, there is the social-democratic MSM (Movement Without Fear), MACA (Ancoraimes Movement for Community Action), and the current mayoral party SFCATK (Your Ancoraimes Peasant Tupak Katari Federation). SFCATK is just a local party and shares power almost equally with MAS yet the former accused the latter of electoral fraud, and there was serious anger between the two Evo-supporting parties.

In the richest eastern department of Santa Cruz and in adjoining Beni and Pando departments, the right-wing parties favoring secession were found culpable of stacking fictitious votes in several municipalities hoping to diminish the fast encroaching MAS party. This led to daily protests and calls for new elections.

Upon the day of my arrival in La Paz, I witnessed a long march protesting vote counts pass in front of the Methodist John Wesley guest house where I stayed. Down the street in the very center of the city stood the departmental electoral court, and before it groups of indigenous inhabitants in La Paz and upper El Alto shouted against the court’s decision not to allow reelections in their particular voting district. The doors were guarded by heavily-armed riot police, who were of the same people.

The departmental electoral courts did decide to have new elections in 154 voting districts in 45 municipalities of four of the nine departments. This would affect 52,000 voters. New elections were held within the month and did not affect the original outcome.

MAS took six of the nine governorships, with 2/3 majority in five of them. In the other three departments, right-wing opposition parties won, yet in all departments the voters for MAS greatly increased over 2005 elections. In the former, MAS had 33% of the regional vote, nearly one million, while in this one they nearly doubled to 1.83 million or 50.4%. They also won the majority of council seats in 229—up from 101—of the country’s 337 municipalities.

MSM took second place, with 14%, a significant increase, and it won key mayor spots including La Paz and Oruro, Morales hometown. The rightist Verde party took Santa Cruz. Its new governor, Rubén Costas, is under investigation by the attorney general for possible conspiracy to secede. He is one of 300 members of the secret Caballero (Gentlemen’s League of the East) club, some of whose members allegedly stood behind an attempt to murder President Morales, in April 2009. Three of the conspirators were killed in a battle with police. Among them was Eduardo Rózsa, a former mercenary with Croatians in the Yugoslav war. Two witnesses to the conspiracy, which would have included other mercenaries in Argentina, the Painted Faces, spoke before the Senate at the same time as the outcry about the elections. They named names and linked leading capitalists and politicians to the conspiracy. The state investigation continues with probable charges to be forthcoming in some months.

Amidst elections and re-elections, assassination and coup d´ètat plans, a dispute broke out in the western province of Caranvá over where a citrus-fruit plant should be located. For some unknown reason to me, inhabitants were quite violent about the authorities’ decision and began smashing things, including using dynamite and refusing trash collection. Two people died violently. 30 were arrested in these days. At the same time, in eastern Santa Cruz, a large group of People Without   Land seized parts of a sugar plantation where 800 workers earn a decent living. Many of the hard laborers were attacked by the “homeless”, or peasants without land. Suffering some injuries, the workers then defended the owners’ land, because this gave them a stabile income. Marginals pitted against Workers!

If that wasn’t enough for the country to bear at once, at the end of April, the public workers unions, along with the important and powerful miners union, called for spot strikes against the government’s proposal for a meager 5% increase in wages. And its offer for pensions and changes in the labor code were far less than the workers expected and demanded.

Public workers unions, under the umbrella of the overall Bolivian Workers Center (COB), challenged the Morales government for the first time since coming to office in 2006. Hundreds of thousands marched and more went on strike for greater wage increases, for greater and equal pensions and an improved labor code. Some workers even conducted hunger strikes and a few threw dynamite at government offices. Factory workers in La Paz attempted to takeover the Labor Ministry. The government threatened striking teachers with docking them their salaries. Policemen’s wives went on a hunger strike protesting an offer for 3% increase. The minimum wage was raised by 5% to the sum of $96 (679 bolivianos) per month. Many civilian workers were upset that not long ago the government gave a 36% increase to the army across the board. Did Evo need soldier backing more than that of workers, asked some workers, and not only anarchists and antagonistic Trotskyists? In Bolivia, there are many adherents to all shades of red.

COB leader Pedro Montes is considered a moderate, even a traitor, by not a few workers and local and regional union leaders, because he sought to appease the workers. He is known to be close—too close, say many—to Morales. But the mounting pressure from below forced his hand and he stood for the strikes and an indefinite one begun nationally on May 10—(still in effect as of this writing)

By Jim Smith

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men (and women) do nothing.” –Edmund Burke

Alarm bells are sounding throughout the country over the widespread disruptions of congressional town halls on health care. Is it possible that we are seeing the beginnings of a mass fascist movement in this country?

By Jim Smith

No matter what happens in Congress this year, the fight for real health care reform is just beginning. This year we are likely to see a bill that only the health insurance corporations can love. It will give them windfall profits by creating a true monopoly where everyone in the country is forced to become their victim. It doesn’t really matter which insurance giant carries your health care insurance. They are all owned by the same ultra-wealthy crooks on Wall Street. At the very least, this has been a lesson for the public of the vast power the corporations have over our elected representatives.

If a public option is included in the bill, it will likely be a watered-down version that takes the corporations off the hook for insuring the ill. When Wall Street crapped-out in its high-stakes gambling, Congress was there to reimburse them for their losses. Why should they be an less benevolent to the health care corporations who give them millions for their votes.

But health care reform means a lot more than who is going to carry the insurance. If those are correct who say America has the best health care in the world, if you are insured, then pity the rest of the world. Anyone who has been hospitalized or know some one who has been caught up in the health care system would not agree. In some ways the health care system is so bad, it is scarcely better than the criminal justice system (don’t go there, either).

Rosa’s strange adventure in a sick health care system

Here’s one example. A friend, who is a senior – we’ll call her Rosa – fell off a ladder on Sept. 5. She knew she had probably broken some bones. She crawled the length of her house into her bedroom where she called 911. The Fire Department paramedics promptly picked her up and took her to the hospital. This being Venice, the nearest hospital is in Marina del Rey. Rosa doesn’t recall being asked if she wanted to go to any other hospital.

After some time in the emergency room, where she was given morphine, she was taken to a hospital room. X-Rays and an MRI showed that she had a broken heel and fractured vertebraes in her back. A doctor told her that the heel could not be set until the swelling went down. She was given a body brace for her back. Rosa was unable to see her regular doctor since he works out of Cedar-Sinai Hospital, and the Marina hospital is off limits.

For the next few days, Rosa lay in her hospital bed, often in excruciating pain. She had a call button for the nurses by her bed, but most of the time when she would press it to ask for medication, no one would answer. Once, when I visited Rosa, her roommate, who had also buzzed for a nurse in vain, asked me if I would go to the nurses station, which was about 20 feet away, and ask someone to come to help her. I walked up to the station were an assorted crew of RNs, LVNs, secretaries, lab techs, etc. all seemed to be doing their best to ignore me. Finally, I said in a loud voice, “A patient in room so and so has been calling for assistance.” One of the nurses looked up from her pile of paperwork and told me, “We’re aware of it.” I tried to explain nicely that being aware of something and actually doing something were two different things.

I don’t believe the nurses and other health care personnel are the evil ones. In most cases, they are understaffed, and overwhelmed with paperwork. The hospital is owned by Doctor-Investors who are looking for a profit. How do you make a profit in health care – cut staff and raise fees.

The on-line ratings website, Yelp, gives MdR hospital two stars out of five. Here is one of the comments on Yelp, from Gail: “The people are very nice — but the bill you get later will make you feel like they had a gun to your head the whole time!!!  Buyer beware!!  I’m up to almost $2000 for a tiny cut that required 2 drops of superglue and one band-aid.  The band-aid alone was $90.  This is what’s wrong with America’s current medical system — too much unethical profit taking.”

Needless to say, Rosa was not happy with the care at the hospital. Little did she know that there are worse places than a hospital. They are called nursing homes, and sometimes they are called rehab centers/nursing homes. Rosa was shipped out to the Playa Del Rey Care and Rehabilitation Center, also known as Sunbridge Care & Rehabilitation, which is owned by the SunBridge Healthcare Corporation, a Wall Street firm. Well, Rosa took one look around the facility and promptly wheeled herself out to the street and caught a taxi home.

The next morning, she pressed the reset button and started over by having her son drive her to the Cedars-Sinai emergency room. After a few hours of extensive tests, she was assigned a nice room with nurses who came when they were buzzed. It should be pointed out that Rosa was still in a great deal of pain since she hadn’t yet had any treatment of her broken heel and back. The good times at Cedars only lasted two days. She was again sent to a rehab/convalescent facility. This one, The Rehabilitation Centre of Beverly Hills (in Los Angeles) is a much more impressive building inside and out. Its claim to fame is as the place where actress Shelley Winters died (see www.rehabcenter.com).

Curiously, integration seems to have failed in our schools and in convalescent homes. Nearly the entire staff were Filipinos and the doctors were Russians. A cynical mind might think that immigrants are hired because they can be paid less. This is one of the dirty secrets of the health care “industry.” It could not run without immigrants. A Filipina friend, who regularly visits the Philippines, tells me that health care in that former U.S. colony is declining due to lack of medical personnel. Many nurses receive their training there, and then immigrate to the U.S. where they gain employment through referrals by friends or relatives already working at health care facilities. The pay is much better than in the Philippines even if it is substandard by U.S. measures.

Despite its highfalutin name, the Beverly Hills facility is not accredited and it received the worst possible rating – one star out of five – in a U.S. News & World Report survey. Of course, it is another for profit operation. So far in her adventure, Rosa has encountered only one nonprofit facility, Cedars-Sinai, which is undoubtedly the best of the bunch.

At the Rehab Center, the staff naturally wanted to do rehab on Rosa. When a doctor forbid rehab on Rosa’s injuries until she had her operation, the staff protested. Apparently rehab treatments are a lucrative business. When the staff was frustrated in their attempts to rehabilitate a broken foot, they began working on Rosa’s arm, which had not been injured in her fall.

A Russian doctor gave Rosa a referral, at last, to an Orthopedic Surgeon at Cedars. Unfortunately, he was a hip specialist and didn’t do heels. But he knew someone who was a heel doctor. A week later, Rosa had her consultation and arranged for an operation two weeks later. By now, Rosa had had enough of institutionalized life, and again headed for home. But she had to go back again for the operation and a couple of days recuperating in a hospital room at Cedars. Then it was back home again. Rosa’s bandage around her foot cast is coming loose, and she still hasn’t had a consultation on her cracked vertebrae, but Rosa is happy to be out of the clutches of the health care facilities. She hasn’t seen the bill yet, which she hopes will be covered by Medicare and Medical, and she is in a three week waiting period to receive authorization for a homecare worker who can help her in and out of bed and wheel chair. Meanwhile, Rosa has to pay for a home care worker out of her own meager pension.

What can be done to cure our health care system?

In 2007, I worked with a statewide group of doctors, nurses and health care advocates to draft a ballot initiative called the Health Security Act. This proposed California constitutional amendment would have gotten rid of the big corporate insurers, in favor of a state government billing and payroll system, the so-called single payer, which could have saved Californians billions of dollars while improving health care.

The single payer initiative would have provided for medical care for all California residents without premiums, co-pays and deductible. In other words, free health care. What’s more it would have fully paid for all treatments, prescription drugs, devices, emergency care, preventive measures, rehabilitative care, longterm care, mental healthcare, dental care, vision care, women’s healthcare, and work-related injuries.

Like the Baucus bill in Congress, the state legislature wanted to know how much it would cost. The Attorney General’s office did an analysis and reported that this initiative, which provided for free health care in California would cost “the low tens of billions of dollars.” If it cost $20 billion, this could have easily been raised by taxes on the filthy rich, on food and drink that are unhealthy, and on big corporate landholdings in the state.

Unfortunately, the state Democratic Party machine would have nothing to do with the initiative, preferring to back the doomed Sheila Kuehl bill in the State Senate (doomed because they knew Gov. Schwarzenegger would never sign it). And the labor unions that had previously supported single payer bills and initiatives were involved in internecine battles. As a result we didn’t get enough signatures to put it on the 2008 ballot. Maybe next year.

In any case, the ultimate solution to what to do when people get sick is to remove the profit motive from health care. Why should anyone make a profit from your illness or injury? A single payer system works well in most civilized countries. In addition, no one should be allowed to warehouse our elders just because they can make a profit. If there is ever a time when love and caring is needed,  it is with those who cannot help themselves because they are too sick, too injured, or just to befuddled.

Don’t let anyone tell you that the giant corporations make health care better. They virtually steal new drugs, equipment and procedures from the universities, including our own public University of California. And then they sell these innovations back to us, even though they were paid for by taxpayer money. It is time for not just change, but a revolution in health care where we focus on making people well, not on making billions for corporations.

Interviewed by Luisa Maria Gonzalez Garcia
March 18, 2009

2009 started off badly. The international economic crisis is top priority of governments, companies, international organizations and individuals whose worries have become having a roof to sleep under and food on the table.

The situation has taken by surprise many nations, but not so much Cuba. Almost a decade ago, Commander Fidel Castro warned that the conditions existed for the outbreak of a crisis of enormous dimensions. Osvaldo Martinez, director of the Research Centre for World Economy and president of the Cuban National Assembly’s Economic Affairs Commission, had also mentioned the subject in several occasions. Looking back, the Economics PhD says: “they criticised us heavily, they called us catastrophists, but finally the crisis is here”.

Mass lay-offs all around the world, rise in unemployment rates and poverty indexes, bankruptcy of companies and banks are some of the most obvious effects of the crisis. At which stage of the crisis are we in?

The crisis is just beginning, and no one can predict with certainty how long will it last nor its intensity. We are facing something more than a mere financial crisis: it is a global economic crisis that affects not only international finances but also the real economy. Due to the high degree of development achieved by speculation and financial capital in recent years, due to the extent of the breakdown in the financial sector and due to being in a highly globalised economy, we can deduct that the present crisis will be, with certainty, worse than the Great Depression that occurred in the 30’s.

What has been happening since August 2008 is the explosion of the speculative financial bubble, caused particularly by neoliberal policies. Right now the crisis is beginning to affect the real economy, that is, the economy that produces real goods and services, development of technology, and values that can be used to satisfy needs. How much more will it affect the real economy? It is hard to say. There are many opinions on this subject. Some suggest that the crisis may last between two and five years. If we use historical references, we see that the crisis of the 30’s started in October 1929, developed at full speed until 1933, and the economies had not fully recovered their previous levels of activity when the Second World War started in 1939.

What finally solved that crisis, and I say “solve” in inverted commas because this is only the solution that capitalism gave to the crisis, was precisely the Second World War; it was the destruction of productive forces caused by the war what allowed post -1945 capitalism to initiate a new growth stage based on the reconstruction of everything that had been destroyed by the war. Every crisis, linked or not to a war, is above all a process of destruction of the productive forces.

Back to the current situation, I do not dare to make a precise forecast on the duration of the crisis, however what I do dare affirm is that it is far from having hit bottom.

Which are the sectors that have been worst affected?

The explosion of the financial bubble has caused the collapse of stock markets and the bankruptcy of important corporate speculators (the so called investment banks, which in fact are not productive investors but speculative investors). Large banks have become bankrupt, credit has been affected at a global level, since it has become scarce and expensive. There has been a decrease in the prices of raw materials and oil. Sectors of the real economy commence to be affected by the crisis, as it is the case of the motor industry in the USA: the three largest companies, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are receiving support from the government to avoid bankruptcy. Several airlines have closed down, flights have been reduced. Unemployment is on the rise, tourism is also affected. It is a snowball effect, which can lead to the deepening of the crisis during 2009.

To some specialists, this is one more cyclic crisis of the capitalist system, one of those described by Marx in the 19th century. But it has also been said that it is not just “one more” but, given the huge dimensions it has reached, it is the expression of the internal destruction of capitalism. What is your opinion on this matter?

I think that the current crisis is, without doubt, another cyclic crisis of capitalism. It is one more in the sense that the system that has been in place since 1825, when Marx noted the first crisis, has suffered hundreds of similar crisis. A crisis is not an anomaly of capitalism, rather, it is a regular feature of it, to the point that it is even necessary to the system. Capitalism follows a particular logic, since it needs to destroy productive forces in order to pave the way for another stage of economic growth. However, the current crisis is undoubtedly the mark of a deep deterioration within the capitalist system.

I believe the crisis can reach serious dimensions, but I do not think that, on its own, represents the end of the capitalist system or its definitive destruction. One of the things that Marx argued with great lucidity was that capitalism does not collapse due an economic crisis. Capitalism has to be brought down through political actions.

So do you agree with what Marx said, and later supported Vladimir Lenin and Rosa Luxembourg, that despite the self destructive nature of capitalism, there has to be a revolution to bring it down?

Of course I do. To think that capitalism will collapse on its own, due to a spontaneous force like an economic crisis, is to believe in utopia. The crisis may create conditions that favour anti-capitalism political movements. As long as politics are tactfully handled and as long as there is a leadership that takes advantage of the situation, the crisis creates favourable conditions because it generates more poverty, unemployment, large scale bankruptcy and the desperation of the masses.

Throughout history, large scale economic crisis have been linked t o revolutionary movements. For example, during the First World War there was a profound capitalist crisis, and the success of the first socialist revolution in Russia was linked to this. The crisis of the 1930s however, was linked to the appearance of fascism. The desperation of the masses in Germany and Italy provoked a crisis that was used by the right wing to create extremist right wing, fascist, chauvinist and nationalist governments.

What I want to stress is that nothing is inevitably written in history. It all depends on the expertise and the handling of the political forces that are in competition. In the present situation, I think that it is possible to think about change: we are in a situation that may have us seeing a surge in the radicalization of anti-capitalist movements as a response to the crisis.

If it is just another cyclical crisis, but at the same is different, what factors characterize it?

I think that the differences are down to the context. The present crisis is especially complicated because the global economy is also complicated, much more than the economy of 1929. Firstly, the level of economic globalization is vastly superior. The degree of interconnection that national economies had back in 1929 was incipient, and the same could be said of the technology available back then, transport or communications. In 1929 there was no internet, no email, no aviation; they depended on telegraphic communications, telephones had not been perfected, and planes were just starting to cross the skies.

Today the situation is very different. Due to the degree of globalization, every event that happens in a powerful economy has an impact, in a matter of minutes, on the rest of the world. Markets are greatly interconnected, especially financial markets at global scale, and that means that the world economy is like a spider web in which we are all trapped. A movement in any part of the spider web if felt everywhere else. Because of al l this, the capacity for this crisis to spread is larger than in 1929. This is the first difference.

Secondly, the level of financing in the global economy is also vastly superior. The amount of speculative capital and the nature of the actions that occur are much more intense than in 1929. Back then there were stock markets, but their functioning was simple. Today, financial speculation has reached an immense sophistication, which is in turn one of its weakest points. The speculative operations are so sophisticated, risky, loaded with fraud and unreal that they have constituted the basis of the global financial breakdown.

Up until now there have been no radical measures put in place to stop the crisis, however we are seeing how the estate, especially the United States, intervenes more and more to avoid the bankruptcy of companies…and by doing this it is taking on a prominent position which reminds us of the keynesian methods used by Franklin Rooselvelt to come out of the 1930’s crisis. Toda y many claim that neo-keynesianism will be the alternative…

In essence that is what they are trying to do: to apply neo-keynesian methods in a diffuse manner. We can see evidence of this in what Barack Obama has announced regarding a large scale reconstruction of the road network (including roads, bridges etc). That is a typical keynesian resource to generate employment and income, and to stimulate demand. But at the same time, measures like this are being combined with others that are contradictory, such as rescuing bankrupt companies and giving out large amounts of funds to put back together the speculative structure which failed and collapsed.

This is a contradiction of keynesianism, and a clear expression that the neoliberals continue to hold positions of power. We are witnessing a battle between a neo-liberalism that refuses to dissappear and a neo-keynesianism that wants to become established.

I doubt that neo-keynesianism can turn out to be the solution to this crisis, even if it is strictly applied. This is because the current crisis has new components. The crisis combines elements of over and underproduction; it is a crisis that has attacked the environment, it is not only economic but also environmental, and with this human survival and the conditions of human survival are at risk.

Do you mean that, as it has already happened, keynesianism will only be a temporary solution that will deal with the problems without getting to the roots?

Of course. We cannot consider keynesianism and neo-keynesianism as the infallible recipes that will solve the economic probl ems of capitalism. Capitalism has suffered crisis with both neoliberal and keynesian policies. Between 1973 and 1975 there was a severe capitalist crisis that occured under keynesian policies, and that was a factor that provoked the substitution of keynesian ideas by neoliberal policies.

We should not believe in the false dichotomy that affirms that neoliberalism provokes the crisis and keynesianism resolves it. Simply put, the system is contradictory and has a tendency to develop periodic economic crisis. Whether they are neoliberal or keynesian, economic policies can facilitate, estimulate or postpone the situation, but they are not able to eliminate capitalist crisis.

Then there is one solution left: socialism…

Without a doubt. I’am more convinced than ever before and I believe that the dilemma presented by Rosa Luxembourg is in evidence: “socialism or barbarism”. I do not believe that mankind will go back to barbarism, simply because our survival instinct is the strongest of all.

I believe rational conditions will prevail, and rational conditions imply a sense of social justice. I think we will overcome capitalism, and the practice of creative socialism will prevail. This means socialism being a continuous search, without forgetting its basic principles; however from these basic principles stem the possibilities for experimentation, polemic and creativity.

And that would be the socialism of the XXIst century?

I believe so.

President Rafael Correa, during the conference given at Havana University in January this year, explained that one of the problems of socialism is that it has followed a development model similar to that of capitalism; that is, a different and fairer way to achieve the same thing: GDP, industrialization and accumulation. What do you think?

Correa raised a good point. The socialism practiced by some socialist countries did no more than repeat the development model of capitalism, in the sense that the objective was the growth of productive forces. By doing this it constituted itself in quantitative competence with capitalism, and ignored that the capitalist model of development is a social structure unable to provide for the whole mankind.

The planet would not survive otherwise. It is impossible to fall again into concepts like one car for each family, the model of north american idyllic society, Hollywood etc. It is also impossible that a sector of the 250 million inhabitants of that country continues to consider that as a reality that is also responsible for much of world poverty. It is therefore necessary to conceive another model of development which is compatible with the environment and which has a more collective way of functioning.

Although Correa was right in many things, I do not agree with him in one thing. In one of his TV interviews he mentions the socialism of the XXIst century, with which I agree, but then claims that several things would become obsolete. Amongst them, he mentioned class struggle, when that is one of the political struggles of his country, Ecuador, which is now immerse in an episode of class struggle that he is trying to resolve with his project.

Who opposes his project? It is undoubtedly the oligarchy and the bourgeoi sie. Who can he rely on to support him against the enemy? The workers, the peasants, the indigenous peoples. I am not thinking in the classic definition of “class”, but in the undeniable existence of social classes, and the struggle between them is undeniable and evident. If we renounce to class struggle, what would be left? cooperation between classes? I don not think Ecuador can complete its project of XXIst century socialism with the cooperation of people like Gustavo Novoa, the catholic church or those who try to overthrow Correa.

The world has built many expectations around the figure of Barack Obama in the United States. What role can he play with regards to solving the crisis?

I do not have high hopes of change. I believe that Obama’s government can represent a cosmetic change rather than a profound structural change in north american policies. I think he represents the position of a certain political sector in the United States which und erstood that it was impossible to continue a regime so unpopular, worn out and unpleasant such as that of George Bush. However, there is something we must take into account, and at least give him the benefit of doubt: Obama’s ideas are one thing, and where the deepening economic crisis may take him is another thing. And once again I have to use the 30’s as an example.

In 1932, when the crisis was full-blown, Franklin Roosevelt took over as president. His ideas were nothing extraordinary, there was nothing that could have had people guessing what would happen next: his policy of active estate intervention, support by trade unions or the regulation of private economies.

All those measures were taken more as the result of what the crisis forced him to do, than as a result of a pre-existing political philosophy. Something similar could happen with Obama, but we must give him the benefit of doubt to see where the crisis will take him.

In the past few weeks there has been a lot on talk on the role of Latin American integration to face the crisis. Although this process is only starting, there have been changes at structural level that point towards integration. How can integration help us face the crisis as a region and as a country?

I think that the integration of Latin America and the Caribbean will be a key strategic factor in the future of the region, and I do not mean integration as an appendage of the United States. For decades, Latin American integration has been nothing else but rhetoric, never practice. But we have seen the beginning of a new space, marked by the Summit of Salvador de Bahia, which took place in December last year, where Cuba joined the Rio Group. We also have the ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas), a model of integration based on solidarity and cooperation, not on the market.

This situation coincides with a crisis that is forcing Latin America to rethink her position in the global economy. This also coincides with a profound crisis in the neoliberal policies that governed the region during the last 30 years. It is a great moment, and I think that there is a real possibility that true Latin American and Caribbean integration becomes a reality.

Some authors point at the idea that following the current crisis, the world economy will be structured in large regional blocks: one in Asia, another one in North America and a new one established by Latin American countries. The possibility is very interesting.

Traducción para Cubadebate de Damaris Garzãn.