ZNet Special

ZNet | Mexico

Oaxaca is Not Alone
November 1 Action, November 20 National Strike

by EZLN; Narconews; November 01, 2006

October 30, 2006

Message from the
CLANDESTINE REVOLUTIONARY INDIGENOUS COMMITTEE-GENERAL COMMAND
of the
ZAPATISTA ARMY OF NATIONAL LIBERATION
MEXICO.

October 30, 2006.

To the people of Mexico:
To the people of the world:
To the Other Campaign in Mexico and the other side of the Rio Grande:
To the entire Sixth International:

Compañeros and compañeras:
Brothers and sisters:

It is now known publicly that yesterday, 29th of October 2006, Vicente Fox’s federal forces attacked the people of Oaxaca and its most legitimate representative, the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO).

Today, the federal troops have assassinated at least 3 people, among them a minor, leaving dozens of wounded, including many women from Oaxaca. Dozens of detainees were illegally transported to military prisons. All this comes in addition to the existing total of deaths, detainees and missing persons since the beginning of the mobilization demanding that Ulises Ruiz step down as Oaxaca’s governor.

The sole objective of the federal attack is to maintain Ulises Ruiz in power and to destroy the popular grassroots organization of the people of Oaxaca.

Oaxaca’s people are resisting. Not one single honest person can remain quiet and unmoved while the entire society, of which the majority are indigenous, is murdered, beaten and jailed.

We, the Zapatistas, will not be silent; we will mobilize to support our brothers, sisters and comrades in Oaxaca.

The EZLN’s Sixth Commission has already consulted the Zapatista leadership and the following has been decided:

First: During whole day of November 1, 2006, the major and minor roads that cross Zapatistas territories in the southwestern state of Chiapas will be closed.

Consequently, we ask that everyone avoid traveling by these roads in Chiapas on this day and that one make the necessary arrangements in order to do so.

Second: through the Sixth Commission, the EZLN has begun making contact and consulting other political and social organizations, groups, collectives and individuals in the Other Campaign, in order to coordinate joint solidarity actions across Mexico, leading to a nationwide shut-down on the 20th of November, 2006.

Third: the EZLN calls out to the Other Campaign in Mexico and north of the Rio Grande, so that these November 1st mobilizations happen wherever possible, completely, partially, at intervals or symbolically shutting down the major artery roads, streets, toll booths, stations, airports and commercial media.

Fourth: The central message that the Zapatistas send and will continue sending is that the people of Oaxaca are not alone: They are not alone!

Ulises Ruiz out of Oaxaca!

Immediate withdrawal of the occupying federal forces from Oaxaca!

Immediate and unconditional freedom for all detainees!

Cancel all arrest warrants!

Punish the murderers!

Justice!
Freedom!
Democracy!

From the North of Mexico.
For the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee-General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
For the EZLN Sixth Commission.

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
Mexico, October, 2006.

Translation: Radio Pacheco

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=59&ItemID=11310

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ZNet | Mexico

Earning Millions from the Misery of the Poor Slave Labor in Private Prisons

by John Ross; CounterPunch; November 03, 2006

SAN CRISTOBAL CHIAPAS.

Lazaro Perez (not his real name), a poor Tzotzil Indian farmer from San Juan Chamula Chiapas, caught the old bus out of the state capital Tuxtla Gutierrez for the three-day journey to the northern border. Lazaro was determined to cross the brutal desert that separated him from the American dream - a cousin in Phoenix Arizona where there is a growing Chamulan community had written that there was plenty of work there.

Disembarking in El Altar, Sonora on the lip of the desert, Lazaro and a handful of fellow Chamulans with whom he had hopped the bus in Tuxtla contracted a "guia" (guide) for $1000 a head to get them across the foreboding badlands where more than 200 have perished each year for a decade. But "the corridor of death" as this wedge of the border west of Yuma is called is not such an easy place to die in these days. The beefed-up "Migra" (Border Patrol or Immigration Customs Enforcement as Homeland Security now calls it) aided and abetted by National Guard "scouts" brought in to back up the ICE under Operation Jumpstart as one facet of the Bush administration's politically motivated immigration crackdown, is corralling record numbers of undocumented travelers in this sector and Lazaro and his pals were taken into custody not an hour into their trek across the desert.

Out a $1000 he had borrowed from relatives, penniless, and in detention in a strange land, Lazaro wished he had never left Chiapas. The Chamulan's bad luck is shared by thousands of new would-be "indocumentados" these days all along the 3000-kilometer border between Mexico and Fortress America as immigration detentions skyrocket.

But Lazaro Perez's misfortune is making a fortune for one of the fastest-growing industries in the border region - private immigration detention centers operated by such titans of the euphemistically-named "corrections industry" as GEO (formerly Wackenhut) of Boca Raton, Florida and the billion buck Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) out of Nashville.

Last spring's hopeful outburst of activism for immigration reform that put millions of marchers into the streets of U.S. cities, has soured into a summer and fall of frustration. The more liberal Kennedy-McCain bill on the Senate side that would have provided a difficult path to legalization for millions of undocumented workers (millions more would have been deported) ran into a stone wall over in the House where HR 4437, a bill sponsored by James Sensenbrenner (Republican Wisconsin) and backed up by the usual nativist lynch mob, offered only punitive responses to the plight of the indocumentados streaming in from the south. HB 4437 would criminalize illegal immigration and would even throw in jail those who offer the migrant workers a glass of water, build hundreds of miles of border walls, and grow the Migra by 15,000 troops.

"Citizen" hearings held by Republican House members around the U.S. this summer turned into an anti-immigration circus, converting the misery of millions of migrants into a "National Security" issue, another front in Bush's Terror War - to the delight of private contractors like GEO and CCA.

By Labor Day, immigrant rights group could not muster up 10,000 marchers on the U.S. Capital steps.

Split off from HB 4437, a provision calling for 700 miles of border fencing (really a triple barrier wall) was signed into law by Bush in the run-up to the November mid-term elections.

The big prison privatizers are, of course, gung ho for Sensenbrenner and its various legislative offshoots such as the "Safe Border Act" - if enacted, they are going to get fat on the hapless new arrivals. Whereas Kennedy-McCain does promise 2.2 million deportations of undocumented workers with less than five years U.S. residence, repatriation would be voluntary pending registration in a legal guest worker program and would involve no detention time.

On the other side of the ledger, the private prison czars figure that if the hardnosed provisions of HB 4437 become the law of the land, the federal government is going to need about 27,000 new beds each day over the next 18 months - although at $95 a night in detention costs, Motel Six would seem to be a cheaper fix then private detention centers. Nonetheless, prospects of juicy contracts to come have the industry salivating.

The privatization of the detention side of the prison-industrial complex has been expanding exponentially since the new millennium kicked in - in the past six years, eight out of 16 federal immigration detention facilities have fallen into private hands. Moreover, 57% of all so-called "illegal aliens" are now housed in county jails far away from the border, about a fifth of which are administered by the privatizers.

Although the number of migrant workers on their way to El Norte has declined slightly in recent years, more indocumentados are being captured and the Feds need somewhere to warehouse them - Homeland Security's veto of "catch & release" policies for all but Mexican "illegals" that previously allowed non-Mexican detainees to stay out of detention while their cases were being adjudicated, is further straining the federal system.

For the privatizers, managing the detention centers requires minimal investment compared to criminal incarceration facilities - the no-frills lock-ups do not require legally mandated recreation, educational, or law library components that must be made available to common criminals. Although the U.S. prison population - 1.5 million inmates - remains the most voluminous on Planet Earth, incarceration rates are slowing to a little over 1%a year increase while the detention side is running 21% annual growth.

As the detention market balloons so do the fortunes of the corrections titans - CCA's detention facilities turned a $95 million profit last year and its stock is up to $53 a share according to this morning's Wall Street Journal. Similarly, GEO stock has boomed 68% in the past year. "The detention market should grow by $200 to $250,000 in the next two years" figured Patrick Swindle of Avondale LLC in an instructive July 27th New York Times business page piece. "What's great is that this industry promises steadily growing profits," offered an upbeat Anton High of Jefferies & Company brokers (ibid.)

The detention market needs tough enforcement laws to fly and the corrections industry contracts high-powered Washington lobbyists to grease the wheels of Congress, prison activists like Kansas-based Frank Smith contend - although Smith says the bucks are hard to track. Reluctant to advertise how they profit on the migrants' misery, the big guns sneak in under the radar, masquerading as PACs to bulk up the war chests of such immigration hawks as San Diego's Duncan Hunter, Colorado's Tom Tancredo, and the venerable Sensenbrenner.

The money is easier to follow on the state side. Numero Uno amongst U.S. politicos on the private prison hand outs is New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson who has received nearly $50,000 from the industry since 2004 according to the Montana Open Secrets project - New Mexico has privatized more prisons than any other state in the U.S. union with over half of its lock-ups now being managed by the corrections moguls.

The criminalization of undocumented workers presents a cornucopia of opportunities for private industry. For example, boosting Border Patrol numbers to 15,000 agents boosts the stock price of VF Industries of Nashville which manufactures the Migra's uniforms - although VF can no longer subcontract out to Mexican maquiladoras to assemble Border Patrol outfits for fear that Migra uniforms will fall into the hands of narco-terrorists (federal prison inmates are reported to be the top candidate for the newly-returned jobs.)

Food and health providers are making a bundle contracting with the private detention centers to provide bottom line services and the 700 miles of new border "fence" (read wall) that Bush has just signed off on, will make construction contractors happy - it is suggested that they will employ "illegal aliens" to cut corners.

Transporting the detained indocumentados is also a lucrative outcropping of draconian immigration enforcement policies. Indeed, the Mexican carrier Aeromexico operating on contacts from CSA Aviation grossed $13.5 million in 2005 flying two daily "voluntary return" flights a day from Phoenix-Tucson that carried 20,592 detained Mexicans back into the interior of their country. Among the passengers was Lazaro Perez (not his real name) of San Juan Chamula, Chiapas.


John Ross's ZAPATISTAS! Making Another World Possible-Chronicles of Resistance 2000-2006 will be published by Nation Books in October. Ross will travel the left coast this fall with the new volume and a hot-off-the-press chapbook of poetry Bomba! -all suggestions of venues will be cheerfully entertained -write johnross@igc.org

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=59&ItemID=11324

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ZNet | Africa

“You shouldn’t send in killers to stop the killing”

by Dennis Brutus and Lee Sustar; Socialist Worker; November 01, 2006

DENNIS BRUTUS is a veteran of the South African liberation struggle, a leading figure in the global justice movement and a world-renowned poet. Imprisoned along with Nelson Mandela, Brutus led the movement to isolate racist South Africa from international sports-and since the fall of apartheid, he’s been a prominent opponent of the African National Congress (ANC) government’s neoliberal, pro-market policies.

Brutus spoke with LEE SUSTAR about the political situation in Africa today-focusing especially on the crisis in Darfur, where African Union
(AU) troops are already deployed, and which has prompted calls for U.S. or United Nations (UN) intervention.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
IS THERE A CASE for humanitarian intervention in Darfur?

WELL, there are people dying, and at a very great rate. Some of it is starvation, some of it is a lack of water, but some of it is killing by gangsters on both sides. The question is trying to identify the elements in the struggle, and right now, I don’t think there are any good guys. But the presence of the African Union troops, plus the possibility of the UN troops, is not going to solve the problem.

My position is that you don’t send in the military. You don’t send in killers to stop the killing, when they themselves are, in some ways, implicated in the process.

I keep saying-and I am glad to see it finally beginning to appear as part of the debate-that one of the central issues in the Sudan is that: a) the Chinese are in there; and b) the Chinese have got more franchise rights for oil exploration in the Sudan than any of the Western powers. So, of course, to the West, the government in Khartoum are the bad guys.

Certainly, it appears that the Khartoum military have allowed the development of paramilitary forces, so they can do things and still claim not to be guilty. This is where the Janjaweed militia comes in.

This is the usual trick of the West. You create a monster, whether you call it Vietcong or Mau-Mau, or something else. Once you’ve chosen your side, you start demonizing the other side, particularly if you intend intervention.

I wish I could say there is a just solution in Sudan at this stage. But I think there are very suspect figures on both sides. The problem is very complicated, because it is very old and involves all kinds of tribal loyalties that we don’t even understand.

There are also very ancient conflicts that derive mainly from that fact that some people are pastoral, but other people are nomadic. In the past, these people worked out arrangements among themselves, which were largely territorial, but also seasonal-that is, when you could move your cattle or whatever.

But the modern conflict is about resources, and who is going to be in power to give out the franchises to exploit the oil.

It seems to me that, dominant on the whole agenda, are three elements. One is the notion of the New American Century, in which the U.S. is supposed to dominate the globe and control access to the resources. Point two: Everybody recognizes that China is the next superpower on the horizon. The third, and perhaps most significant point, is that China knows it will have the biggest, most gluttonous appetite for oil the world has ever seen.

Afghanistan is a neighbor of China, and, of course, the U.S. is there.
One of the big fights is access to the energy in the Caspian Sea basin.

Also, the U.S. is nervous that it can’t predict how Saudi Arabia will behave in the future. And there are now reports that oil deposits in the Sudan are even greater than in Saudi Arabia. So clearly there is already competition for resources in the area, however large or small they may be.

Tellingly, one of the strongest voices for intervention, for sending increased UN troops and increased U.S. involvement, has been the pro-Israel lobby.

We have to go back to the Project for a New American Century document, which says that it’s not sufficient for Israel to be sitting on a portion of the land in the Middle East. They see the U.S. dominating a region that includes Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.

As messy and bloody and murderous as the situation is, I don’t believe we should endorse an increased military presence in Sudan if it will have the effect of giving the U.S. an even stronger position there.
Already, the United States is now setting up a military operation for Africa on the scale of what it calls its “Mediterranean operation.”

WHAT ARE the African states doing in regard to Darfur?

AFRICAN UNION troops are functioning as the peacekeepers in Sudan, but they also operate as peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the whole of the African Great Lakes region.

President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa is often seen as the principal negotiator for whatever peace settlement is arranged. So clearly, there is evidence of South Africa having a sub-imperial role.

This may also explain why South Africa has spent billions on arms, when it doesn’t have money for food, housing, water or roads. The priorities are military, but they are not justified by any military threat to South Africa itself. It is as if South Africa is being armed to be the principal military actor on behalf of the U.S. in Africa.

South Africa has a presence in Sudan and the DRC, through the AU, and Mbeki recently had a public intervention in peace negotiations in Côte d’Ivoire. Côte d’Ivoire was the crown jewel of the French empire in Africa. Suddenly, the French are out, trying to get back in, and the old imperial structure is clearly crumbling in that area.

My feeling is that you will have so-called rebel groups challenging legitimate governments. The real question becomes who is empowered to become the one who distributes the franchises which enable Western corporations to come in-whether for cocoa, oil or, in the case of the DRC, uranium.

In all these cases, there are armed groups fighting it out, often armed by Western powers. Britain, Germany and France are involved. Ultimately, these struggles are for Africa’s resources, and who is going to control the disposition of those resources.

In that, Thabo Mbeki and South Africa, via the AU, become a major player in deciding who’s going to win.

HOW DOES THE World Social Forum (WSF) in Nairobi in January fit into this picture?

THE WSF could be an event that will challenge globally the corporate agenda and insert, in a very significant way, a grassroots global agenda.

We don’t have money, and we don’t have resources. But I think we can have 100,000 in Nairobi and 100 countries represented there. And there is quite serious thinking about the WSF going on in Francophone Africa-in Mali, Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire.

My own feeling is that we have an enormous possibility to effect global political thinking the way the Seattle protests of the World Trade Organization and the way Zapatistas contributed to the way we see the world and how we see struggle. Our major problem right now is to make more people globally aware of the WSF.

WHAT ABOUT the left’s political positions at the WSF?

THERE IS a tendency in Europe, South America and, of course, in Africa that instead of being left, you begin to shift toward the center. For me, the most troubling example is not South Africa. I am even more disappointed by [President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva] in Brazil.

Meanwhile, Mbeki is more and more a leader in Africa. Even countries that could be taking an independent position, like Algeria, are happy to let South Africa spell out positions for them.

Most governments in Africa, via South Africa’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), have agreed to take their orders from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. So when grassroots groups are annunciating their positions in Nairobi, they are not only taking on the international financial institutions, they are also taking on their own governments.

NEPAD is supposed to be the backbone of the AU. Unfortunately, my own sense of African organizations-even though they are saying they are against NEPAD-is that they are still rather vague about how to perceive the AU.

At the WSF in Brazil in 2005, there was a program put forward by the Group of 19, called the Porto Alegre Manifesto. At this year’s polycentric WSF in Bamako, Mali, there was the Bamako Appeal. At a recent conference in Durban, South Africa, the main presentation was given by [Egyptian author and activist] Samir Amin, the main spokesperson for the Bamako group.

There is a tendency in the Bamako group to say that you can’t go only with spontaneity, insisting on more centralized organization. My own view is that the success of the WSF has been precisely because it’s a forum, open to many conflicting points of view, rather than having a particular view adopted or imposed.

This doesn’t exclude decision-making. Remember the marvelous action before the war in Iraq, when an estimated 13 million marched around the world? Part of that came out of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=2&ItemID=11306

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ZNet | Race

The Return of the Bell Curve

by Carl Bloice; Black Commentator; November 01, 2006

On more than one occasion over recent months I've heard or read something actually defending inequality. After a lifetime of hearing about the idea of "liberty, equality and fraternity", I was hearing educated people saying inequality is what keeps the system going - a motive force propelling our society to ever new heights. At first, I found it hard to believe what I was hearing. Then, I thought perversely, if a little inequity is good for us, a lot of it must be better.
After all, that seems to be the operating principle of the people currently in power in the nation's capital. They keep pushing in that direction.

"The accepted view in social science is that inequalities are an inevitable condition of economic success," economic professor, Jacques Mistral, a senior fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, commented back in July. He went on to note that the number of people in the U.S. without health insurance is growing and poverty rates here are "the highest among all Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, in particular for children and seniors."

Earlier this summer, belittling those it says "who would discredit American capitalism," the editors of The Economist magazine wrote: "Any system in which the spoils are distributed so unevenly is morally wrong, they say. This newspaper disagrees. Inequality is not inherently wrong." The editors went on to say inequality is not wrong if the society as a whole is getting richer; there is a safety net for the "very poor" and everybody has the chance to climb up through the system. Of course, that's not saying much positive about the economic situation today - at least in this country. The safety net is being shredded, and the most tattered parts are those designed to help the very poor. As far as everybody - "regardless of class, race, creed or sex" - having the ability to move upward, well, there's ample evidence it just ain't happening.

In June, The Economist did a special issue on "Inequality and the American Dream." It described the U.S. as a country "that tolerates inequality" and concluded that "... every measure shows that, over the past quarter century, those at the top have done better that those at the bottom" and "the gains of productivity growth have become increasingly skewed." Simply put, the editors acknowledge that while more and more wealth is being created, those who already have are having more and those who have little are having to make do with less.

But here we are - in the richest country on the planet where one in five children lives in poverty. Where a worker who earns the minimum wage takes in $10,700 which $6,000 below the federal poverty level for a family of three. Sixty-one percent of minimum wage earners are women, many of them single.

While corporate profits have soared, inflation-adjusted wage growth has stagnated and the wages of the lowest paid workers amongst us have not kept up with inflation. From 2001 to 2003, inflation-adjusted income among households in the lowest 20 percent of the population decreased 5.1 percent.

Much is being made by some commentators about the income differences between workers at the lower end of so-called middle class and those employed at the higher level, more-skilled jobs. Much of this is statistical mirage. Income inequality is growing for the 80 percent of American workers who are characterized as "production and non-supervisory." - that is, the working class.

Between 2002 and 2003 the number of Americans in poverty increased by 1.3 million and poverty rates for African American and Latino workers stood at over 20 percent. At the same time, real income for the bottom 40 percent of African-American households fell by nearly 6 percent

The income disparity of African American families as compared to whites actually increased over the past decade.

As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently observed, "economic disparities in New York, as in the United States as a whole, are wider than they have been since the 1920's."

Enter the "Bell Curve." That's the title of the 1994 book by early neo-conservatives Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein's that asserts intelligence is largely a matter of birth, that there is little chance of altering that fact, and that poor people and African Americans in particular, are thus overrepresented among the unintelligent. Their screed was widely denounced for its racism and sloppy scholarship. Reactionary commentator Pat Buchanan, however welcomed it as shooting "a hole straight through the heart of egalitarian socialism which tried to create equality of result by coercive government programs."

Those who would have us believe that inequality is not only inevitable naturally return to this discredited view over and over because its thesis advances their idea of the inevitable rise to dominance of the "cognitive elite" under conditions of advanced technology and globalization. They maintain that the U.S. is becoming a genetic "meritocracy."

On October 5, The Economist returned to the subject of inequality in a special edition titled: "The Search for Talent." In it, the term "Bell Curve" appears twice. In an editorial comment, ominously titled "the Dark Side," the magazine said:

Competition for talent offers many benefits-from boosting productivity to increasing opportunities, from promoting job satisfaction to supercharging scientific advances. The more countries and companies compete for talent, the better the chances that geniuses will be raked up from obscurity.

But the subject is strewn with landmines. Think of the furor that greeted Charles Murray's and Richard Herrnstein's book "The Bell Curve," which argued that there are differences in the average intelligence of different racial groups; or the ejection of Lawrence Summers as president of Harvard University because he had speculated publicly about why there are so few women in the upper ranks of science. It would be wonderful if talent were distributed equally across races, classes and genders. But what if a free market shows it not to be, raising all sorts of political problems? And what happens to talented Western workers when they have to compete with millions of clever Indians who are willing to do the job for a small fraction of the price?

Notice that the Indians are not described as smarter, only more "clever" than the "talented Western workers."

Then, in the main article, titled "The Revenge of the Bell Curve," the magazine continues:

The second factor that links talent and inequality is that members of the talent elite are good at hogging "human capital." They marry people like themselves. In the heyday of "company man," bankers married their secretaries; now they marry other bankers. They work in jobs that add to their intellectual capital. They live in "talent enclaves," away from ordinary middle-class suburbs, let alone inner-city ghettos. Above all, they pass on their advantages to their children. Students from the top income quartile increased their share of places in elite American universities from 39% in 1976 to 50% in 1995.

None of this is peculiar to America or other rich countries; the same thing is happening in the developing world in even starker form. Members of the talent elite there live in gated communities, some of them with American names such as Palm Springs, Napa Valley or Park Avenue, that boast international schools, world-class hospitals, luxury housing and splendid gyms.

"... The talent war is producing a global meritocracy-a group of people nicknamed "Davos men" or "cosmocrats"
who are reaping handsome rewards from globalization.
These people inhabit a socio-cultural bubble full of other super-achievers like themselves. They attend world-class universities and business schools, work for global organizations and speak the global language of business.

Countries that still insist on clinging to egalitarianism are paying a heavy price. Sweden, for instance, finds it hard to attract foreign talent. And across Europe, egalitarian universities are losing out to their more elitist American rivals.

The answer, then, to rising inequality is to cease "clinging to egalitarianism."

Most of the world's main problems today are inseparable from the dynamics of rapacious globalization and the so-called market economy. Without some fundamental changes, the future under this system will see increased poverty, more environmental degradation, and what writer Ronald Aaronson has termed "ever more uneven distribution of resources and the undermining of traditional societies and ways of life, for a culture dominated by marketing, advertising and uneven global development."

The market economy - in all its aspects: production, service, education, housing, etc.) is driven by the pursuit of profit. It is that drive, and not some exorable drive toward a mythical "meritocracy" arising from technological change. One might think that in a world of expanding production and wealth creation there ought to be more not less job security and prosperity. Instead under the present setup, the already well-to-do and their progeny get more security and prosperity and working men and women and their families get less. That may be how the system works but it ain't right and it doesn't have to be.

There is no reason why the United States with its great wealth and resources cannot decide to launch major redevelopment of our crumbling physical infrastructure, rebuild and retrofitting highway bridges and railroads thus providing jobs for the unemployed; come up with a massive plan to overhaul and upgrade the nation's school systems, with emphasis starting with inner-city schools that are failing our young people so miserably today; create a single-payer system. It should be clear that the reasons such projects are not undertaken is because they are not at the service of "market forces,"
that they do not produce vast profits for the profiteers, and that they would spread the wealth around.

We are not faced with scarcity, limited resources and declining production but growing wealth and productivity. Under these circumstances, every working woman and man should earn the right to never be afraid of not having quality medical care, never being afraid of having no security in retirement, never being afraid of being rendered homeless and never being afraid that their children will not have the best education the society is able to provide. Without such pre-conditions, talk of a level playing field or an earth made "flat" by internet technology is just so much foolishness.

Oh, they try to scare us with threats like foreign competition, immigration and an aging population. But that's all so much bunk. Sure, adjustments must be made but they don't have to involve ever-increasing institutionalized economic and social inequality.

The Economist editors concluded their survey speaking of "the risks of a backlash against the talented elite." Yes, there must be, and surely will be, a backlash. It is already underway across the globe. But it is not, nor should it be, against those who have, through their efforts and talents, legitimately reaped success. Simply put: it's the system that's at fault. We should not turn our backs on that idea just because the rich and powerful and their theorists say it is misplaced altruism and that the reality is that inequality is good for us.

Left Margin appears in BC every other week.

BC Editorial Board member Carl Bloice is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked for a healthcare union.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=30&ItemID=11307

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ZNet | Brazil

Lula's Presidential Victory in Brazil Opens up Challenge From Below

by Roger Burbach; November 03, 2006

Luis Inácio "Lula" da Silva's resounding electoral victory with over 60 percent of the vote places Brazilian politics on a new footing. While many on the left remain critical of Lula for the limited reforms of his first term, his very victory has consolidated a shift in the country's possibilities for deeper social transformations. As Francisco Meneses of IBASE, the Brazilian Institute of Social Economic Analysis, says, "The country is more polarized, it can no longer move back to the old order. The economy is different and social expenditures have been augmented to a level that is important for the lower strata of society."

A major reason for Lula's resounding victory is due to the support of the poor and dispossesed who make up the majority of Brazil's population. Even in the first round of the elections on October 8 when Lula fell short of an absolute majority, garnering 48 percent of the vote versus his leading opponent's 41 percent, the poor, particularly in the country's impoverished northeast, provided the decisive margin of support. As Darci Frigo of the Land Rights Center in the state of Paraná states, "Agrarian reform may have been limited in Lula's first term, but thanks to the Zero Hunger program and direct income subsidies many families have more food and are better off."

In its international relations a victory by Lula's opponent, Geraldo Alckmin, would have reversed the increasingly independent stance that Brazil has adopted. Alckmin endorsed the neoliberal free trade position advocated by the Bush administration and would have pursued the policy of privatizing the economy that has favored the multinational corporations. Regarding relations with the South, Alckmin attacked Lula for caving in to Bolivia's nationalization in July of the holdings of Brazil's Petrobras. This semi-autonomous state enterprise owned large natural gas reserves in Bolivia that supplied over half of Brazil's domestic natural gas needs.

Lula responded by insisting that he would look after Brazil's interests while respecting Bolivia's national automony. Just this weekend as Brazilian voters went to the polls, Petrobras concluded a new agreement with Bolivia that cedes formal control over natural gas reserves to Bolivia's state owned company and significantly increases the gas revenues that remain in Bolivian coffers. As Francisco Meneses of Ibase notes, "Brazil under Lula is aligning itself with the Southern bloc of nations, not subverting its interests to the United States."

But many in Brazil remain skeptical of the chances for significant advances in a second Lula administration. Marcos Arruda of PACS, a research center on social and economic alternatives based in Rio de Janeiro, is highly critical of Lula. He notes that "the destruction of the environoment, particularly in the Amazon basin has continued apace," and "the government has practiced irresponsible fiscal policies focus on repaying the international debt and keeping national interest rates high while social spending falls far short of what the county needs."

During Lula's first term, most of the country's social movements felt that their agendas were largely neglected as Lula pursued economic and social stabilization policies. Darci Frigo of the Land Rights Center states, "The demands for a profound agrarian reform program advocated by the MST, the Landless Movement, were ignored. Some limited spending was directed to social and educational programs for the landless, but the large landed estates of the country were barely touched as the government encouraged agro-exports."

While Lula in the final election round did come out for social spending, Brazil's robust social movements are not sitting idly by, waiting on Lula's volition. Seventeen social movements lead by the MST and the Unified Workers Central mobilizied in the major cities of Brazil during the final days of the campaign. They released an action manifesto, titled "Thirteen Points for A Social Policy for Brazil." Commiting themselves to "an intensification of the popular and democratic struggles throughout the country" during Lula's second term, they outlined a program that called for profound changes in education, health, fiscal policies, and agrarian reform, all to be carried out "with the effective participation of the people and their social organizations."

As Friar Betto, a radical Brazilian theologican notes, "Lula owes us much based on the promises he has made during his presidential campaigns." Even more than Lula's first campaign in 2002, this election polarized the country's electorate, laying out two distinct visions. Francisco Meneses says, "Perhaps Lula on his own would not change much, but the reality is that the social movements realize that this election is their victory and they intend to sharpen the agitation for real transformations from below."


- Roger Burbach is director of the Center for the Study of the Americas in Berkeley, California and a Visiting Scholar at the Institue of International Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He has written widely on Latin America, including, The Pinochet Affair: State Terrorism and Global Justice, Zed Books, 2003.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=48&ItemID=11322