from Climate and Capitalism
May 14 2008
Friends of the Earth exposes the lies of the oil giants' attack on European emission reduction plans
Oil companies have the potential to achieve more than 10 per cent cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 without using agrofuels, reveals a report launched today by Friends of the Earth Europe.
Released on the day Shell and BP announced combined quarterly profits of 14.4 billion US dollars, 'Extracting the truth: Oil industry efforts to undermine the Fuel Quality Directive' uses industry's own data to show how oil companies are falsely claiming that the target proposed by the European Commission in revisions to the Fuel Quality Directive is unachievable.
It shows that at least 10 per cent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions could be realised through reduced gas flaring, improved energy efficiency and fuel switching at refineries, and without the need for agrofuels which can have negative environmental and socials impacts and have not been proven to reduce emissions overall.
Darek Urbaniak, extractive industries campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe said:
“The oil industry is saying that it lacks the financial and technological resources to decrease its greenhouse gas emissions, but according to our research it has the potential to meet, and even exceed, the 10 per cent CO2 reduction target of the Directive. And this is without resorting to harmful agrofuels.
“The false statements being made by oil companies are blatant attempts to undermine the legislation. Instead of taking responsibility for its contribution to climate change, the oil industry is trying to wriggle out of its obligations.”
Friends of the Earth Europe’s report calculates that reductions in greenhouse gas emissions of between 10.5 per cent and 15.5 per cent are possible through measures including less flaring and venting, energy efficiency improvements and fuel switching in refineries.
The report comes at a time of record profits for oil companies and increasing attempts to portray themselves as environmentally responsible. In 2007, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, TOTAL, BP and ENI together earned together over 125 billion US dollars.
Paul de Clerck, corporates campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe said:
“Despite their sky-high profits oil companies are not willing to bear the costs of reducing emissions. It seems that since these investments are not profitable, companies will not make them unless they are forced by a regulatory body. The EU has to oblige companies to take the necessary steps. The report shows that it is possible and they have more than enough money to pay for it.”
The analysis released today puts oil industry attempts to obstruct the Fuel Quality Directive in the context of increased “greenwashing.” Behind the scenes oil companies are lobbying against environmental legislation whilst in public they use advertising to suggest that they are reducing emissions. In 2007 Shell was found guilty of misleading advertising for an advert in which it claimed it used waste CO2 to grow flowers.
Darek Urbaniak said:
“Oil companies are not serious about their environmental performance. While they brand themselves as environmentally responsible, their CO2 emissions continue to rise. In reality the emissions of almost all of them are rapidly increasing and they are all investing heavily in energy-dirty tar sands, while their investments in renewable energy remain negligible or decrease.”
How the Oil Industry Sabotages Emission Reductions
Finance minister invited to debate GST on food with RAM outside supermarket
RAM - Residents Action Movement
Media release 16 May 2008
"Labour finance minister Michael Cullen's announcement that he won't remove GST from food reveals a fixed mindset totally out of touch with most New Zealanders," said Grant Morgan, chair of RAM (Residents Action Movement).
"People queuing to sign RAM's GST-off-food petition outside supermarkets are saying things about Labour that couldn't be repeated in polite conversation. They're also saying they don't trust National, whose leader has also opposed taking GST off food."
"Both major parties are out-of-touch with grassroots people, who are saying at RAM petition tables that 'the politicians' from Labour and National are looking after only 'the rich'. These are near-universal sentiments among the vast majority."
"I invite Michael Cullen to come along to one of RAM's GST-off-food petition tables outside an Auckland supermarket to debate the GST on food issue," said Grant Morgan.
"I have emailed my invitation to Mr Cullen at parliament. Will the finance minister take up my offer? I hope so. I invite the media to publicise my invitation to Mr Cullen in order to prod him into facing up to the people," said Grant Morgan.
For more information, contact:
Grant Morgan
Chair of RAM (Residents Action Movement)
021 2544 515
grantmorgan@paradise.net.nz
Generalised failure of the free-market is opening up opportunities for the left
"There is a political swing towards what were once considered the ideas of the political left such as minimum wages, benefits and so on,” said Holgar Schaefer, labour economist at the Cologne Institute of Economics. “It is a tendency that is only likely to become more obvious in coming years.”
Quoted from After the boomers, meet the children dubbed ‘baby losers’ by Graham Keeley for The Observer (10 May 2008).
Low-wage workers face escalating food prices
RAM - Residents Action Movement
Media release 15 May 2008
Federated Farmers president Charlie Pedersen today released figures from the NZ Institute of Economic Research which, he said, showed that local farmers are not "creaming it" as food prices escalate.
"Some people have expressed doubts to me about the credibility of Mr Pedersen's privately-commissioned figures," noted Grant Morgan, chair of RAM (Residents Action Movement).
"I cannot comment on the credibility of these figures, since Federated Farmers ignored my request to release them to RAM under embargo with sufficient notice to check their accuracy."
"However, there can be no doubt about the accuracy of public statistics that reveal a huge slump in NZ workers' slice of national income over the last quarter century."
"According to Statistics NZ, an independent state department, workers' pay in 1983 amounted to 54% of gross domestic product, which by 1992 had slumped to 42%, recovering only slightly by 2007 to 45%."
"So NZ workers have, as a collective body of people, suffered a stunning 9% fall in their slice of the national 'cake' since the start of the Rogernomics era. This fall is entirely due to the more market policies promoted by corporate lobbyists, including Mr Pedersen," said Grant Morgan.
"As a consequence, New Zealand has become a high-skill, low-wage economy. Now workers and other low-to-modest income people are facing extraordinary spikes in their food costs which are pushing so many family incomes into the red."
"Not surprisingly, RAM's petition for GST to be removed from all food is gaining near-universal support from grassroots people in this country. In the month the petition has been running, it's been signed by 10,000 people."
"RAM stalls outside supermarkets are often surrounded by so many people that I have been asked by the media if we are staging 'food demonstrations'. I have to say no, it's just lots of people queuing to sign our GST-off-food petition," said Grant Morgan."Many signatories to our petition go on to join RAM because we're seen as standing up for the 'little people' being ignored by 'the politicians' who only look after 'the rich'. These are the very words being spoken to us by so many petition signatories."
"RAM's nationwide membership has zoomed up to 2,000, and we are on average gaining over 300 new members every week. That makes RAM the fastest growing party in the country," said Grant Morgan.
Here is the Statistics NZ link for workers' share of GDP:
http://www.stats.govt.nz/NR/rdonlyres/61D5633A-FC9C-4794-BFA9-23578BE9EC5A/23053/nayemar07revconsolidatedaccountsfullseries1.xls
For more information, contact:
Grant Morgan
Chair of RAM (Residents Action Movement)
021 2544 515
grantmorgan@paradise.net.nz
VAMOS gets going in Wellington
by Anna, VAMOS Wellington
15 May 2008
VAMOS Wellington kicked off last week with a discussion with film-maker Ricardo Restrepo. Ricardo is the co-director of the film 'Now the People have Awoken' which was filmed during the 2006 Venezuelan election and, in the words of the film makers, tells the story of "people building a new Venezuela".
It was screened as part of the Human Rights Film Festival and afterwards Ricardo answered questions from the audience before moving on to an event at El Horno bar where those interested in showing solidarity with Venezuela were able to meet, ask questions and make connections.
VAMOS stands for Venezuela Aotearoa Movement of Solidarity, and it was established by a group who got together around the tour of Venezuelan charge d'affaires Nelson Davila earlier this year.
The aims of the movement are to:
- share information about the ongoing revolution in Venezuela and counterbiased media reporting.
- mobilise public opinion against attempts by the US state to destabiliseand destroy the popularly elected government of Hugo Chavez.
- connect with communities in Venezuela and around the world supporting Venezuela's hopeful alternative.
To join our mailing list, or for more information, please send an email to VAMOSwellington@randomstatic.net
Great film on Venezuelan Revolution
'Now The People Have Awoken' is a film about the Venezuelan Revolution made by NZ documentary makers.
A website http://www.venezueladoc.com/ is now up and running with more information about the film and the revolution transforming Venezuelan society. The website is another useful resource for countering the biased reporting of the US-led corporate media.
'Now The People Have Awoken' will be screening at Human Rights Film Festivals in New Zealand and internationally in 2008. Contact the film's makers to organise a screening activoproductions@yahoo.com
Copies of the film can be purchased from the website.
Film trailer:
FOOD CRISIS (Part Two): Capitalism, Agribusiness, and the Food Sovereignty Alternative
Editor of Climate and Capitalism
Zimbabwe ISO condemns arrest of union leaders
Zimbabwe congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) President Lovemore Matombo 
ZCTU Secretary General Wellington Chibhebhe
ISO Zimbabwe
Press release, 13 May 2008
The International Socialist Organization (Zimbabwe) condems the arrest and detention of Zimbabwe congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) President Lovemore Matombo and Secretary General Wellington Chibhebhe on the 8th of May 2008. They are being held for stirring people to rise against the government and for allegedly reporting falsehoods on innocent people being killed by ZANU PF supporters across the country.
The arrest of these 2 workers leaders is unlawful as it is one amongst a hodgepodge of other dirty tactics that Zanu PF is blatantly using to intimidate workers and the ordinary people as we wait for the announcement of date for presidential run-off.
Matombo and Chibhebhe did not incite anyone into violence but rather it is Zanu PF, which has unleashed violence and torture on the ordinary citizens of Zimbabwe and some leaders. Since March 29 50 people have so far been killed, more than 4 000 people displaced and some have had their homes burnt to ashes.
On the other hand, the economic situation has steeply deteriorated, hitting alarming levels. The situation promises to be much worse in the near future as the regime has adopted a full fledged neo-liberal economic line.
Mugabe who all along had fervently resisted pressure from the neo-liberal hardliners within ZANU PF to open up the market and remove all restrictions on foreign exchange rates has finally succumbed to pressure and has allowed Gono to do what ever he sees as fit to repair the already patched economy. This has impacted negatively on the livelihoods of the ordinary people as already we have seen prices of commodities skyrocketing beyond what ordinary people who are earning less that $5 billion yet they need $50 billion to survive.
As a gesture to its commitment to paying their odious debts, and against of all this suffering Zimbabwe has paid back US $700 million to the African Development Bank.
As workers and ordinary people we say no to this payment of foreign debits. Instead the money should be used towards health, education and meeting of other basic necessities of ordinary people.
ZCTU leaders should be released now and we call for mass actions to demand:
- The release of detained MDC parliamentarians.
- An end to further politically motivated violence.
- A minimum wage non-taxable that is linked to inflation.
Contact Mike Sambo, National Coordinator, ISO Zimbabwe sambo.mike@gmail.com
The fine art of greenwashing
Helen Clark is backing away from grand pronouncements about “carbon neutrality” as fast as new information emerges showing just how serious and imminent the threat of catastrophic climate change is.
The Labour government’s planned emissions trading scheme is being widely condemned for excluding NZ’s biggest polluters until many years from now. Large industrial emitters until 2018, the farming sector until 2030!
Current evidence emerging from the climate scientists is that tipping points for irreversible and catastrophic climate change may be only 5-10 years away (see Jim Hansen, the Big Ice Melt & the Mainstream Media). What does this say about the government's commitment to cutting greenhouse gas emissions?
But emissions trading was never going to be the answer. It was just one the corporates and their government allies thought they could sell us. It’s been a big con-job from the start.
Like the European scheme, emissions were never going to be "capped" at a level that might actually hurt the profits of polluters. And anyway, the big polluters can just pass on any extra costs resulting from the scheme. The costs are pushed down (once again!) on to ordinary people who are forced to pay more for electricity, petrol, food, etc.
This is one of the points that's made in a new pamphlet by Ian Angus, editor of the Climate and Capitalism website. How to Avoid Action on Climate Change focuses on the Canadian government’s preference for “market mechanisms”.
Ian has collected together nine readable essays on “the fine art of greenwashing as practiced by federal and provincial politicians in Canada”. Something NZ's politicians in parliament have shown a skill for.
Climate change activists need to be armed with the arguments against “market mechanisms” so that we can then start campaigning for urgent public solutions to the crisis. Ian's pamphlet is a very good place to start.
Also read an earlier recently updated pamphlet from Climate and Capitalism, Confronting the Climate Change Crisis: An Ecosocialist Perspective
The global slump of 2008-09 has begun as poison spreads
by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
from www.telegraph.co.uk
12 May 2008
The avalanche of bankruptcies has begun. Six US companies of substance have defaulted on bonds over the past fortnight, against 17 for the whole of last year.
As a "non-believer" in the instant rebound story, I am not easily shocked by gloomy reports. But the latest note by Standard & Poor's - The Bust After The Boom - gave me a fright.
The sick list is varied, though most for now are victims of the housing crash: Linens 'n Things, ($650m), Kimball Hill ($703m), Home Interiors ($310m), French Lick Resorts ($142m), Recycled Paper Greetings ($187m), and Tropicana Entertainment ($2.49bn).
As the Fed's latest loan survey makes clear, lenders have dropped the guillotine. With the usual delay, the poison is spreading from banks to the real world.
Continue
2008 London elections and a broad left alternative to New Labour and the Tories
Below is an analysis of the recent London election results and prospects for building a broad left party in Britain. Both Nick Wrack and Alan Thornett are members of Respect, a broad left party that contested the elections.
Nick and Alan reaffirm in their article the strategy of building broad inclusive parties of the left in response to formerly social democratic parties (like the Labour parties of Britain and NZ) embracing neo-liberalism.
It's important that those forces committed internationally to the broad left project continue to share ideas, experiences, strategies and tactics. It's for that reason UNITYblog is posting Nick and Alan's article. There's certainly plenty in it that's relevant to us here in New Zealand as we strive to build RAM into a credible broad left party.
Of course it's not a case of one size fits all, each broad left formation has to understand its own political environment and what's unique to each country, but there remains much that can be learnt from each other. Particularly as we're all entering new territory, and there's no road map. Some strategies and tactics will work, others will prove to be mistakes, which will be the basis for new learning. If that process happens with an internationalist perspective then a stronger global broad left movement will emerge.
As well as fostering informal ties based on a shared political perspective we must also consider how we can move towards international strategies and organisational forms that can pursue those strategies globally. We need to urgently unite the world's grassroots forces for the massive struggle that's upon us. See SW-NZ's statement Organising to build a global broad left movement (17 November 2007).
Respect and the election results
by Nick Wrack and Alan Thornett
from Socialist Unity
6 May 2008
The New Labour project is falling apart at the seams. Its local elections results were the worst in 40 years, with only 24% of the vote and coming third behind the Liberal Democrats. This is a disastrous result for Brown. In London, the election of Boris Johnson as Mayor and the presence of a BNP member on the Greater London Assembly will disturb and depress all who value the multi-cultural diversity of the city.
The most immediate catalyst for the collapse of the Labour vote was the abolition of the 10% income tax rate (i.e. Labour attacking a large part of its core base), but looming large behind that is the economic crisis the credit crunch, rising fuel and food prices set against continuing low wages for a big section of society. Added to this was Brown's inability to spin the New Labour project in the way Blair could do it. All of this raises the prospect of a further electoral disaster in the European elections in 2009 followed by a drubbing in the general election of 2010 and the possible election of a Tory Government.
Against this background what are the prospects and possibilities for building a left-wing alternative to New Labour's neo-liberal policies. What is the terrain and what can be achieved?
Continue
Ruth Dyson admits beneficiaries worse off under Labour
"Yeah... well... it seems that when it comes to beneficiary bashing we're worse than the Nats. But vote Labour of course."
A government report has revealed that beneficiaries are worse off under Labour than when benefits were slashed by National in 1991. See Sunday Star Times (11 May), 'Beneficiaries worse off under Labour, report reveals:
"The report, titled Pockets of Significant Hardship and Poverty, reveals that many beneficiaries in South and West Auckland and the South Island are living in extreme poverty.Church leaders from the Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Methodist and Presbyterian Churches and the Salvation Army have publicly issued a call for benefit levels to be raised to where they were prior to being slashed in 1991. Churches issue call for action on benefits (NZ Herald, 28 March 2008)
Beneficiaries were being hit by "significant price shocks" in food, housing,power and transport, said the June 2007 report by the Ministry of Social Development. It was released to the Sunday Star-Times under the Official Information Act.
The report shows the value of benefits, relative to average earnings, are now even lower than they were after National slashed benefits in 1991.
For beneficiaries with children and no extra income living in South and West Auckland and most of the South Island, their incomes were between 30% and 40% of median disposable household incomes.
That is well below the widely recognised poverty line of 50 to 60% of median disposable household incomes.
Dyson said she agreed that "comparatively", beneficiaries were now worse off than they were in 1991."In my view the report is factual," she said."
GPJA submission on FTA with China
Submission to the government by Global Peace & Justice Auckland (GPJA) on the Free Trade Agreement between the government of New Zealand and the regime of the People’s Republic of China.
7 May 2008
1. Global Peace and Justice Auckland is a network of Auckland based groups and individuals concerned to promote justice and peace both around the world and within New Zealand.
2. We are strongly opposed to the Free Trade Agreement between New Zealand and the Peoples’ Republic of China because the agreement is bad for New Zealand workers, bad for Chinese workers and is a slap in the face for Tibetans struggling under China’s yoke.
3. We appreciate there will be increases in trade on paper with the result our economy will grow. However as we have seen over the past eight years, growth does not mean those in greatest need will benefit. New Zealand still has 180,000 children locked into poverty despite what the Prime Minister describes as the most sustained period of economic growth for a generation.
4. The economic growth predicted as a result of the FTA will likewise not improve the standard of living for the most vulnerable New Zealanders but it will instead decrease the standard of living for tens of thousands of New Zealand workers.
5. We should remember the trade surplus New Zealand enjoyed with China in the mid 1980s. In other words we exported more to China than we imported. However this reversed dramatically when import tariffs were removed or phased out. There was a flood of cheap imports from China which turned the trade surplus into a billion dollar deficit. When the government began negotiations for the free trade agreement in December 2004 the deficit with China was $1.5 billion. A year later it had grown to over $2 billion. Over 20 years our exports stagnated while China flooded New Zealand with sweated imports.
6. As a direct result tens of thousands of jobs were lost from our manufacturing sector as New Zealand companies went to the wall. Some survived only by shifting their manufacturing base to China. Others transformed into importing companies and helped fill the shelves of the Warehouse with cheap low-quality products. But these bargain goods carry a very high price.
7. The Ministry of Economic Development has estimated 16 jobs are lost for every one million dollars of imported products we could make here. A simple calculation shows about 50,000 jobs lost to Chinese imports alone. As more tariffs are phased out under the free trade agreement we can expect as many as 20,000 more New Zealand workers to lose their jobs with many more families driven below the poverty line.
8. We should also expect many more New Zealand workers to suffer in industries which struggle to compete. We have the example of Air New Zealand (owned by the New Zealand government) which forced New Zealand workers in aircraft maintenance to accept reduced working conditions as the price for retaining the jobs in New Zealand.
9. None of this seems to concern the Labour government. To our Labour politicians this is free trade on one of those fictitious level playing fields.
10. The Chinese economy is built on long hours, child labour, forced labour and poverty wages. Is it free trade when New Zealand workers are expected to compete with workers paid less than $1 an hour for 16-hour days? Is it free trade when China operates prison labour camps where as many as seven million inmates work without pay and nothing in the way of health and safety standards to produce goods to compete with New Zealand products? China has repeatedly refused to sign up to even the most basic of labour standards under the International Labour Organisation such as bans on forced labour and the right to organise independent trade unions. Those Chinese who dare to speak out are silenced.
11. Why would New Zealand give preferential trade status to a brutal, repressive regime like this? The answer is that the FTA with China benefits already wealthy corporate interests.
12. Through the FTA New Zealand increasingly is outsourcing its manufacturing sector to China. This prevents us developing manufacturing here at a time when global warming and high fuel prices will increasingly make international trade (from a country as far away from markets as New Zealand) much more expensive. We are putting too many eggs in one basket through relying more heavily on farming products for future prosperity.
13. Back in 1998 our Prime Minister had a different view. She criticised the then Prime Minister, National leader Jenny Shipley, for putting trade ahead of human rights and said “…we have had this pitiful simpering about there being a distinction between business issues and issues of human rights and democracy. If that value had been applied in 19th century England and North America, then we would still have slavery, because the representatives of those who employed slaves would claim that there was no connection between that issue and their business values.”
14. A year later in the speech from the throne the newly elected Labour government told us “legitimate issues of labour standards and environmental concerns need to be integrated better with trade agreements.”
15. But all this has gone out the window. They are meaningless platitudes. Through this FTA the government is saying it is happy for New Zealand to deal with these 21st century slave-owners, buying their products at reduced rates.
16. There can be no doubt also that the FTA is helping the Chinese regime bolster its stranglehold on democracy and human rights. The FTA legitimises the regime and turns a blind eye to its anti-worker and anti-union policies.
17. And what about the Tibetans? At a time when there have been renewed calls for autonomy from the people of Tibet and greater levels of violence and repression against the people it sends all the wrong messages for New Zealand to sign an FTA with the country.
18. Finally it is a travesty of democracy here in New Zealand for this FTA to have been agreed and signed by the government before New Zealanders (aside from a few in business and compliant trade union leadership) have had the opportunity to see and discuss it and its ramifications.
19. We wish to be heard by the committee in support of this submission.
John Minto
Spokesperson
Ph (09) 8463173 (H)
(09) 8469496 (W)
www.gpja.org.nz
Future of the NZ union movement does not belong with the Labour Party
Matt McCarten's latest article in the NZ Herald titled Junior doctors deserve support from CTU - not back-stabbing (4 May 2008) is well worth reading.
Matt raises the possibility that CTU president Helen Kelly's public attacks on striking junior doctors and the head of their union, Deborah Powell, stems from the fact that the CTU president is more interested in looking after her mates in government than workers.
This cuts to the heart of the crucial political question facing workers and the union movement: to stay with Labour and its ever-so-slim differences from the Nats, or embark on a political journey which has its goal a mass broad left alternative to neo-liberalism?
As long as the Labour Party holds sway over the union movement our political horizons will be cut short. Building a larger and more confident union movement in this country is tightly tied to a wider political struggle, one that involves a new broad left party that can challenge the Labour and National duopoly.
RAM has been holding stalls in working class South Auckland collecting signatures for its GST-off-food petition and signing up new members. At these stalls grassroots people commonly voice their cynicism towards Labour politicians - and this is supposed to be Labour's heartland. People are worried and angry about rising living costs. They believe, quite rightly, that the politicians are more interested in looking after the rich than listening to them.
It's this mood which is fueling RAM's phenomenal membership growth - over 1,600 in less than a month, mostly from South Auckland suburbs like Manurewa. It's early days yet, but these people represent the future.
RAM wants to talk to unionists about building a broad left alternative to the Labour Party. Come out on a RAM stall and hear what the people are saying. Contact RAM chair Grant Morgan grantmorgan@paradise.net.nz
Solidarity with Venezuelan revolution so important as US deploys "Fourth Fleet"
Washington is deeply worried by the grassroots movements for social change in Latin America. The Venezuela revolution is leading a revolt against neo-liberalism and US hegemony that's igniting the whole continent.
But like any imperial overlord the US is not going to simply leave. Wracked by economic problems of 1930s depression era magnitude and fearful of the growing power of its main rivals (China, Europe and Russia), US capitalism doesn't want to lose control over Latin America. It certainly doesn't want a model of open democratic socialism establishing itself permanently and inspiring wider rebellions.
This is the reason Washington has re-established the "Fourth Fleet" to patrol the waters off the South American coast. This is an aggressive deployment with a clear goal - given the right circumstances and pretext - of intervening militarily against countries that don't bow to Washington.
It's because the imperialist beast won't stay in its corner that international solidarity with the Venezuelan revolution and the wider Latin American uprisings are so important.
A solidarity network is in the process of being established in New Zealand. VAMOS stands for Venezuela Aotearoa Movement Of Solidarity (which means “let’s go” in Spanish, the main language of Venezuela). Contact UNITYblog to get in touch with VAMOS activists in your region.
Find out more about the Venezuelan revolution by reading articles included on the UNITYblog sidebar.
US Navy resurrects Fourth Fleet to police Latin America
by Humberto Santana
from World Socialist Web Site
7 May 2008
Washington announced at the end of last month that it is resurrecting the long-ago moth-balled Fourth Fleet to reassert US power in the Caribbean and Latin America. Created at the time of World War II to combat German submarines attacking merchant shipping convoys in the South Atlantic, the Fourth Fleet was seen as no longer necessary after the Second World War and was disbanded in 1950.
The Pentagon's a statement on the revival of the fleet gave a far vaguer indication of its new duties, saying it would "conduct varying missions including a range of contingency operations, counter narco-terrorism, and theater security cooperation activities."
"Rear Admiral James Stevenson, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command, said the re-establishment of the Fourth Fleet will send a message to the entire region, not just Venezuela," AHN news reported.
The "message" began to be transmitted just weeks after Venezuela, Ecuador and Colombia came into sharp conflict over a border provocation caused by the Colombian military's bombardment of an encampment of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrillas inside Ecuadorian territory.
The Fourth Fleet will begin operations on the first day of July out of the Mayport US Naval Station, a nuclear facility in the state of Florida. The fleet, which will operate as part of the Pentagon's Southern Command, will be comprised of various ships, including aircraft carriers and submarines, and will operate from the Caribbean to the southern tip of South America.
Continue
Ticker Tape Ain’t Spaghetti
Food protesters in MexicoFood riots are erupting around the world. Protests have occurred in Egypt, Cameroon, the Philippines, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mauritania and Senegal. Sarata Guisse, a Senegalese demonstrator, told Reuters: “We are holding this demonstration because we are hungry. We need to eat, we need to work, we are hungry. That’s all. We are hungry.”
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has convened a task force to confront the problem, which threatens, he said, “the specter of widespread hunger, malnutrition and social unrest on an unprecedented scale.” The World Food Program has called the food crisis the worst in 45 years, dubbing it a “silent tsunami” that will plunge 100 million more people into hunger.
Behind the hunger, behind the riots, are so-called free-trade agreements, and the brutal emergency-loan agreements imposed on poor countries by financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund. Food riots in Haiti have killed six, injured hundreds and led to the ousting of Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis. The Rev. Jesse Jackson just returned from Haiti and writes that “hunger is on the march here. Garbage is carefully sifted for whatever food might be left. Young babies wail in frustration, seeking milk from a mother too anemic to produce it.” Jackson is calling for debt relief so that Haiti can direct the $70 million per year it spends on interest to the World Bank and other loans into schools, infrastructure and agriculture.
The rise in food prices is generally attributed to a perfect storm caused by increased food demand from India and China, diminished food supplies caused by drought and other climate-change-related problems, increased fuel costs to grow and transport the food, and the increased demand for biofuels, which has diverted food supplies like corn into ethanol production.
This week, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, called for the suspension of biofuels production: “Burning food today so as to serve the mobility of the rich countries is a crime against humanity.” He’s asked the U.N. to impose a five-year ban on food-based biofuels production. The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, a group of 8,000 scientists globally, is also speaking out against biofuels. The scientists are pushing for a plant called switchgrass to be used as the source for biofuels, reserving corn and other food plants to be used solely as food.
In a news conference this week, President Bush defended food-based ethanol production: “The truth of the matter is it’s in our national interests that our farmers grow energy, as opposed to us purchasing energy from parts of the world that are unstable or may not like us.” One part of the world that does like Bush and his policies are the multinational food corporations. International nonprofit group GRAIN has just published a report called “Making a killing from hunger.” In it, GRAIN points out that major multinational corporations are realizing vast, increasing profits amid the rising misery of world hunger. Profits are up for agribusiness giants Cargill (86 percent) and Bunge (77 percent), and Archer Daniels Midland (which dubs itself “the supermarket to the world”) enjoyed a 67 percent increase in profits.
GRAIN writes: “Is this a price blip? No. A food shortage? Not that either. We are in a structural meltdown, the direct result of three decades of neoliberal globalization. We have allowed food to be transformed from something that nourishes people and provides them with secure livelihoods into a commodity for speculation and bargaining.” The report states: “The amount of speculative money in commodities futures was less than $5 billion in 2000. Last year, it ballooned to roughly $175 billion.”
There was a global food crisis in 1946. Then, as now, the U.N. convened a working group to deal with it. At its meeting, the head of the U.N. Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, former New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, said, “Ticker tape ain’t spaghetti.” In other words, the stock market doesn’t feed the hungry. His words remain true today. We in the U.S. aren’t immune to the crisis. Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club and Costco have placed limits on bulk rice purchases. Record numbers of people are on food stamps, and food pantries are seeing an increase in needy people.
Current technology exists to feed the planet in an organic, locally based, sustainable manner. The large corporate food and energy interests, and the U.S. government, need to recognize this and change direction, or the food riots in distant lands will soon be coming to their doors.
Also read:
SUPPORT DAVE KERIN! - Aussie unionist faces prison for supporting striking workers
A call has come from Australian unionists to support Dave Kerin, who’s facing prison for refusing to “rat” on fellow union solidarity campaigners.
Dave is the co-ordinator of Union Solidarity, a network set up to organise solidarity for workers and unionists targeted by the Howard government's "Work Choices" legislation.
In the wake of the recent successful strike action by Boeing workers at Port Melbourne, in which Union Solidarity played an important role, the Australian Workplace Ombudsman has come after Dave Kerin and Union Solidarity.
The ombudsman is demanding all documents relating to Union Solidarity's support for the striking Boeing workers be handed over. Dave is refusing to do so. For breaking the law he could go to jail for 6 months.
These laws are unjust, they're designed to crush workers’ right to organise collectively and give practical solidarity.
We must support Dave and his fellow Union Solidarity campaigners.
You can sign up to an online solidarity list by going to http://www.unionsolidarity.org/irnews/2008/05/defend-dave-kerin.html
Messages of support for Dave Kerin can be sent to: defenddave@unionsolidarity.org
Please spread word of this injustice through union and activist networks in NZ.
Support Dave Kerin!
Union Solidarity coordinator faces six months jail
May 6, 2008
Union Solidarity Coordinator Dave Kerin is now facing up to six months jail for supporting striking workers at Boeing, in Melbourne.
The dispute recently ended in a victory for the workers.
Despite this, the Australian Workplace Ombudsman has issued Dave Kerin with a ‘Notice to produce documents’ in relation to the strike. Dave is being asked to supply a government agency with all information and documents concerning Union Solidarity, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and rank-and-file members by May 8.
Basically Dave Kerin is being asked to “rat”. He won't.
Why is the Workplace Ombudsman pursuing Kerin after the dispute has been settled and Boeing itself has no interest in pursuing him? It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Ombudsman wants to break Union Solidarity, which played an important role in the struggle against the Howard government’s hated Work Choices legislation.
Union Solidarity has said that it will not comply with the laws and those government agencies whose sole purpose is to prevent workers having the ability to organise to defend their interests.In the last election the Australian people voted overwhelming to get rid of anti-union laws – Union Solidarity operates within the spirit of that sentiment.
The Socialist Alliance fully supports Dave Kerin in his stand and is asking workers and unionists to indicate their public support for Dave Kerin and Union Solidarity.
Go the following link: http://www.unionsolidarity.org/irnews/2008/05/defend-dave-kerin.html
Messages of support for Dave Kerin can be sent to: defenddave@unionsolidarity.org
For interviews contact: Margarita Windisch 0438 869 790. Email melbourne@socialist-alliance.org
The people’s struggle made Howard history, the people’s struggle continues
People before profits, planet before profits
www.socialist-alliance.org
Taxing food debate continues in the NZ Herald
RAM chair, Grant Morgan, puts the case for GST off food in a perspectives column in the NZ Herald. This article was written in response to Don Brash's earlier column. See Labour's past and present ally
Grant Morgan: Taxing what we eat set to be big election issue
from NZ Herald May 05, 2008
We certainly live in interesting times, as shown by the new alliances forming in the growing battle over food tax.
Everything is going up in price except wages and super. The life stories I'm hearing every day out on the streets, along with surveys revealing that a large portion of New Zealanders are worried about meeting the next demand for rent or rates, point to the deteriorating state of most family budgets.
When electricity, rent, rates, transport and other inflexible costs for life's necessities have to be funded from an income that buys less with each passing week, the first thing to be trimmed back is the family's food purchases.
That's why escalating food prices have produced such a groundswell of public concern and discontent.
The flashpoint has become the 12.5 per cent GST tax on all food. Let's assume that the (mythical) average family in New Zealand spends $250 per week on food. Over the course of one year that totals $13,000. If GST was removed from all food, the family would save $1,444.
For most people on low-to-modest incomes, an extra $1,444 per year is a substantial amount.
And the more that food prices rose, the more each family would save every time they went to the supermarket. And that benefit would last forever.
So why aren't the parties in Parliament falling over themselves to remove GST from food? At every RAM (Residents Action Movement) stall outside every supermarket across Greater Auckland, I hear variations of the same answer from grassroots people: "The politicians don't care about us. They only look after the rich."
Of course, this is strongly denied by "the politicians". A "grand coalition" of the Labour, National and Act parties, limply supported by the Greens, claim that it's impossible to remove GST because of three core reasons: it would be "too complicated", it would be "too costly" and anyway it's merely a "populist" demand.
Let's quickly rebut these lame excuses. First, if many other countries in the world can exempt GST from food, and sometimes other necessities as well, why is it too complicated to do in New Zealand? It doesn't say much for Labour's "knowledge economy".
Second, if Labour and National can promise multi-billion income tax cuts that in the past have been of most benefit to the rich, why is the abolition of GST on food going to be too costly? It seems policies are only unaffordable when they mostly benefit the grassroots, rather than the elites.
And third, since when has it become "populist" - which is used as a bad word - to heed what the majority of people want? Once upon a time this was called democracy.
Fortunately the GST status quo has been bucked by Grey Power and the Maori Party. These two organisations, which together have a membership of over 100,000, are supporting RAM's GST-off-food petition.
So early moves by the Labour-National-Act-Green grand coalition to isolate RAM in an attempt to de-legitimise our GST-off-food campaign have failed.
As one Maori woman said when signing RAM's petition outside a Mangere supermarket, having GST on food is "like taxing the air we breathe".
With the backing of petition signatories across New Zealand, RAM can make GST a very big issue in this year's parliamentary election.
Dockers shut down US West Coast ports in protest at Iraq War
from Socialist Worker, United States
2 May, 2008
Tens of thousands of West Coast dockworkers protested the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by refusing to work on May Day.
Despite threats from the bosses of the Pacific Maritime Association and a decision by an arbitrator that the union couldn't officially schedule its monthly stop-work meeting (which allows the union to call a meeting during a normal shift), rank-and-file workers didn't show up to work, paralyzing billions of dollars worth of cargo up and down the coast.
"Longshore workers are not slaves," International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 executive board member Clarence Thomas told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! "They can't make us work."
Dockworkers organized actions in almost 30 ports along the coast, from Washington to San Diego, and their protest coincided with demonstrations by tens of thousands of people around the country who marched and rallied on May 1, International Workers' Day, to support immigrant rights.
The ILWU action had solidarity from around the world, including in Iraq itself--dockworkers shut down the crucial port of Basra for several hours in support of the West Coast work stoppage. On the other side of the U.S., in New Jersey, port truckers protested. In Britain, a member of parliament introduced a resolution of support for the ILWU.
"It's really important that the ILWU is showing solidarity with all the working people, workers all over the world know about this," said Allan Bradley, who spoke at the march on behalf of himself and other members of the Freightliner 5, UAW members from Cleveland, N.C., who were unjustly fired from their jobs at their truck plant. "The ILWU stood up today, and I'm glad about it."
The ILWU action got support from local port truckers as well as antiwar activists. According to Robert Irminger, vice chair of the Inland Boatman's Union for the San Francisco Region, "This morning, about 50 of us went down to the docks with Direct Action to Stop the War and picketed the Union Pacific rail yard. We blocked two gates, and the rail workers held up work for about two hours."
ILWU MEMBERS have participated in antiwar protests before, but this was the first large-scale work action by them or any group of union workers in opposition to the war in Iraq. As ILWU Local 34 President Richard Cavalli told a crowd of nearly 1,000 workers and antiwar activists, "George Bush's daughters get married in the White House, and our sons and daughters get buried in Iraq."
The ILWU, a multiracial union with a high percentage of Black workers, has long been the target of right-wing politicians and corporations bent on breaking the power of organized labor on the docks, a chokepoint for the globalized economy.
Recently, the Department of Homeland Security tried to impose new background checks that threaten the jobs of many workers, justifying these moves with rhetoric about fighting the "war on terror." But ILWU members also made a connection between these attacks and the war.
As ILWU Local 10 business agent Trent Willis told the rally, "It doesn't matter if you're a dockworker, a school teacher or a garbage worker--an injury to one is an injury to all. The people who are going to end this war are working people."
The work stoppage was the first of several May Day activities in the Bay Area making the link between workers rights and immigrant rights. Local marches took place later in the day in Oakland, San Francisco, Santa Rosa, San Jose and Santa Cruz.
Antiwar activist and independent congressional candidate Cindy Sheehan, who is challenging Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in November, made the connection, as well. "We have to hurt them in the pocketbooks," Sheehan said, "because they'll never be hurt like my family was, like Iraqi families, like families that have to come across the border."
In New Zealand it's illegal for workers to take strike action for political reasons, as these US workers have done. The Labour government has kept in place the harsh restrictions on the right to strike that were first introduced by a National government in 1991.
Interview with US anti-war unionist
Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! spoke to Jack Heyman of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. This is a transcript of the interview that took place on 2 May.
AMY GOODMAN: International Longshore and Warehouse Union brought the port operations to a halt from Long Beach to Seattle in defiance of their employers and arbitrators. We’re joined on the phone from San Francisco by Jack Heyman, an officer with the International. Welcome to Democracy Now! Jack Heyman. Can you talk about the significance of what happened yesterday?
JACK HEYMAN: Well, yeah. We were really proud here on the West Coast, as far as the longshore union, the ILWU, making this stand, because it’s part of our legacy, really, of standing up on principled issues. And this, I think, is the first strike ever—well, I would call it a stop work, work stoppage, whatever you want—workers withholding their labor in demand—and demanding an end to the war and immediate withdrawal of the troops.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the significance of the arbitrator saying that the longshoremen should not go out on strike?
JACK HEYMAN: Well, you know, the interesting thing about this action is that not only did we defy the arbitrator, but in a certain sense we defied our own union officials. The union officials did not want to have the actions that we organized up and down the coast. And the arbitrator’s decision is simply—we don’t take our orders from the arbitrators. We don’t take it from judges. The rank and file goes out and does what it has to do.
We did that in 1984, when the ship came in from South Africa, the Nedlloyd Kimberley. We refused to work that ship for, I think it was ten or eleven days. And that was in defiance of what an arbitrator said and also against what our union officials were telling us.
So we’ve got a strong tradition in the ILWU of rank-and-file democracy, workers’ democracy, where we implement what we decide in a democratic fashion. And our action took place based on a motion that came out of our caucus, which is like a convention of all longshoremen represented up and down the coast. And we decided to stop work to stop this war, and that’s what was carried out.
AMY GOODMAN: The action within Iraq in solidarity with your strike, can you talk about that?