Latin America's left turn

For four long decades in Latin America, the Caribbean island of Cuba thread a lonely socialist path through a capitalist quagmire. With the exception of the Sandinistas progressive yet turbulent rule in Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, Communist Cuba was isolated and treated as a pariah state by the rest of Latin American countries. The latter were backed to the hilt by the United States and force fed a strict Washington Consensus diet of privatisation, neo-liberalism and free-market capitalism – euphemisms for greed, exploitation and oppression. North American dollars flowed to prop up right-wing dictators and their paramilitaries to quell popular left wing revolts. Now, with a left-tide engulfing Latin America, the political landscape has been transformed and the future of the continent’s 520 million citizens looks much brighter and full of hope.

The catalyst for Latin America’s recent surge to the left was unquestionably the 1998 election of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Not only has Chávez radically transformed the domestic situation in his own country, by channelling massive profits from the country’s vast oil wealth to education, health and subsidised food programmes, but he has also been instrumental in the whole region. Chávez has injected vibrancy into and brought the concept of “Socialism of the 21st Century” to life. Chávez has introduced a viable and workable alternative to capitalism. With the assistance of Latin American leftist presidents he has boldly stated that “we are creating the axis of good, the new axis of the century”.

From San Salvador down to Buenos Aires, the people have reacted to the rapacious capitalist system that has wreaked havoc in the region and have voted into office one leftist president after another. In 2003 Brazil elected Lula, a founding member of the Brazilian Workers Party. Although he has proven to be one of the more circumspect leaders, he has been re-elected by an electorate who admire his more humane leadership, with his opposition to the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas and his Zero Hunger programme. In 2005 Uruguay elected its first left-wing president in its entire history, Tabaré Vasquez. Although he has moderated his socialism as a member of the centre-left Frente Amplio (Broad Front) he remains committed to social justice, wealth redistribution and against privatisation. The following year in 2006, left-leaning Michelle Bachelet beat her centre-right billionaire businessman opponent in Chile’s Presidential race. The same year also witnessed the election, for the second time, of Sandinista ex-guerrilla Daniel Ortega as President of Nicaragua. Although Ortega receives much criticism from the left over alleged corruption and a watering down of his previous firebrand Marxism, there are still progressive elements in the FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front).

In neighbouring Honduras President Manuel Zelaya, who was recently the victim of a reactionary right-wing coup d’état, sparked an about-turn in his country by shifting it from an unbending pro-US stance towards Latin America’s anti-imperialist crusade headed by Chavismo. Zelaya angered his country’s oligarchs with his social programmes for the poor; by raising the minimum wage by 60 percent; providing free school meals and pensions for the elderly; reducing the cost of public transport and by signing up to an alternative to the Free Trade Agreements.

More significant were the elections of Bolivia’s first indigenous President Evo Morales and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa in 2005 and 2006 respectively. These two Presidents are staunch allies of Chávez and are firmly positioned in his socialist camp. Morales has proven a fearless advocate of “Socialism in the 21st century”. When he took over he pledged that “the looting of our natural resources by foreign enterprises is over” and he has not disappointed. He has given the country’s indigenous minority, for so long trampled on, more power and dignity. He has also carried out land redistribution and renegotiated and nationalised contracts for the country’s vast gas wealth, which he is using to fund social projects for the people. His Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS – Movement towards Socialism) grew out of the highly-organised organic social movements that brought down previous presidents over the highly unpopular and unjust attempts to privatise water in 2000, more commonly referred to as the ‘water wars’.

In Ecuador outspoken Socialist Rafael Correa has also tackled multinationals head on and has kept his promise of ensuring that the country’s natural resources will benefit its citizens. He wants to build a “more just, fair, and dignified country”. Ecuador’s recently approved new constitution is one of the world’s most progressive and Correa, ironically an economist who studied in the United States, has proven another Latin American thorn in the side of the US Imperialist Empire.

In 2008, Fernando Lugo, Paraguay’s “Bishop of the Poor” or “Red Bishop” broke the 60 year presidential stranglehold of the right and emerged victorious. He is renowned within liberation theology circles, believing that capitalism is exploitative and a sin and that through political action social justice can be achieved for the poor and oppressed. Most recently, El Salvador’s Mauricio Funes of the FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front), former left-wing guerrillas, won his country’s presidential race. He has pledged to end the privilege of the few who have amassed their wealth at the expense of the rest and champions social justice and solidarity.

Due to these developments, all democratic and peaceful, Latin America is no longer merely an annex of the United States. The continent has suffered untold poverty, misery and exploitation at the imperialist hands of the US and its bloody military dictators and proxies. Multinational corporations no longer have as free a reign to exploit and plunder natural resources. The Washington Consensus is no longer as prevalent. Privatisations are being reversed on a frequent basis. Dignity is being handed back to citizens. The masses are being politicised and are taking their destiny into their own hands, opting for progressive change through the ballot box. With their numerous referenda, presidential and recall electoral victories, Latin America has never known such democratic Presidents as Chávez, Morales and Correa, much to the chagrin of the capitalist democratic pretenders.

Latin America socialism is not mere rhetoric. ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance for Latin America, is proving a genuine alternative to capitalism. ALBA grew out of an original agreement between Cuba and Venezuela in 2004 and has huge potential. Now it has nine members including Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Honduras. It is a direct opponent of the Free Trade Agreements. ALBA puts people before profit. It is a system of mutual economic aid, akin to a socialist bartering system. The perfect example is in return for daily cheap Venezuelan oil, Cuba provides doctors and health care workers. Operación Milagro (Operation Miracle) is another example of a purely socialist economic exchange at work, and has provided over 1.5 million free eye operations. There is no exploitation, no pillage of natural resources. Citizens from both countries enjoy mutual benefit. Daniel Ortega summed ALBA up stating that it “represents the American peoples’ aspirations for independence and their rejection of the policies promoted by the United States, which have created a social emergency in Latin America”. It is fitting that ALBA translates as ‘dawn’ in Spanish.

Chávez has been pivotal in expanding his 21st century socialism. He is heavily influenced by his hero Simón Bolívar, Latin America’s great revolutionary who fought for Latin American independence and unity. Through new companies and organisations, the level of Latin American integration is unprecedented. Petrosur is attempting to integrate the region’s energy industries while Petrocaribe supplies oil at preferential prices for impoverished Caribbean nations. Codesur promotes regional defence collaboration. Telesur is a network that broadcasts an alternative message to that of the right-wing capitalist dominated media. Bancosur is a creation that could see the replacement of the neo-liberal IMF in the region, by supplying loans to countries for social projects without the stringent privatisation stipulations associated with the IMF.

Unquestionably Latin America is turning red. However there is no room for complacency and the left must remain vigilant. This became all too apparent recently when Honduran troops seized President Manuel Zelaya from his bed and flew him to Costa Rica under arrest. Despite the inauguration of US President Barack Obama initially signalling new hope for the region of Latin America, the US government’s lack of action and condemnation has been striking. Despite Obama’s charm, intellect and sophisticated articulation, the United States remains a capitalist superpower committed to imperialism. They continue to send millions of dollars of aid to Honduras, have not recognised what happened as a coup and continue to maintain diplomatic ties with the illegitimate Honduran government. Evo Morales has directly accused the US of being behind the coup which is certainly not unbelievable. He stated that “the imperial structure remains in force”. Hugo Chávez has blamed the US for “giving oxygen” to the illegitimate Honduran government.

The coup’s organiser was General Vasquez, the head of the Armed Forces and graduate of the infamous School of the Americas, euphemism for the School of death squads and coups. Many former right-wing military dictators and their generals were trained by US personnel here, including Panama’s former corrupt dictator Manuel Noriega, anti-Castro terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, former army officers of Augusto Pincohet and Guatemalan general José Montt who was responsible for the slaughter of thousands of Guatemalans. If the Honduran coup is allowed to succeed then it could prove an inspiration to those who want to return to the dark days of military dictatorships and halt the spread of Latin American socialism.

The right will always react, violently if needs must, to the threat posed from the left. The US attempted to invade Cuba in 1962 at ‘the Bay of Pigs’ because it was fearful of its Socialist revolution and ideals. How dare the Cubans offer healthcare and education free to its citizens, surely these should be commodities available only to those who can afford them? In 1973 Chile’s democratically elected Socialist President Salvador Allende was viciously overthrown, with CIA connivance, by notorious human rights abuser General Augusto Pinochet who went on to rule Chile with an iron fist under a ruthless dictatorship. After the successful Sandinista revolution which overthrew corrupt dictator Anastasio Somosa in 1979, the US backed the Honduran-based ‘contras’ to fight against the Sandinistas in a civil war to prevent the spread of progressive socialist programmes and reforms. The US also funded ruthless right-wing regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s and 1990s to extinguish the threat from left-wing guerrillas in the popular rebellions. In 2002, the CIA was directly involved in the coup d’état that threatened to unseat Hugo Chávez from power.

The right only accept true democracy when it favours them and facilitates them to exploit the masses and hold onto their privileges. A defeat for the left in one country is a defeat for the international left. Solidarity is crucial. Not just words but actions. As the global economic system implodes, Latin American Socialism of the 21st Century provides a shining beacon to progressive people throughout the world and must be protected at all costs. Viva el socialismo del siglo 21!

Shell’s Private Army?

At approximately 4.00am on 16 April this year the Hotel Las Americas in Santa Cruz in eastern Bolivia shook with the sound of machinegun fire. Bolivian armed police stormed five adjoining rooms and shot dead three of the occupants while arresting two others. The Bolivian government subsequently announced that they had foiled a cell of right-wing mercenaries who were plotting to assassinate Bolivia’s Socialist President Evo Morales.

In room 457 lay the slain body of Irishman Michael Dwyer, a 24 year old from Balinderry, Tipperary. According to reports, Dwyer was fascinated by guns, computer war games and was an Airsoft enthusiast; a form of mock combat with replica guns. Several photographs of him brandishing guns in Bolivia have since been published. He was also employed by an Irish company, Integrated Risk Management Security, who are based in Naas, Kildare. I-RMS is owned by former Irish Army Rangers James Farrell and Terry Downes. They confirmed that Dwyer worked for them up until October 2008, and was based guarding the Corrib site in Glengad, County Mayo where Shell are attempting to construct their controversial gas pipeline.

At the end of 2007 I-RMS ‘security operatives’ replaced the majority of security guards employed by Shell. A substantial number of these ‘operatives’ have military backgrounds and dubious far-right political links. I-RMS have faced numerous complaints from protestors, having been accused of assault, heavy handedness and failure to wear or present their Private Security Authority licences. They have also routinely filmed protestors and indeed Dwyer himself was involved in this gathering of intelligence for Shell. On their website, offline and ‘under construction’ in the wake of Dwyer’s death, I-RMS had advertised their services, specialising in “international armed and unarmed security”, “customised security solutions” and “special services”, unquestionably all euphemisms for mercenary work. I-RMS have also been used by Fianna Fáil at their last few ardfheiseanna. So not only does I-RMS protect the nefarious multinational Shell in their robbery of Irish gas, they also defend the politicians who facilitated this grand theft. Who said three’s a crowd? Maura Harrington, the courageous veteran Shell to Sea campaigner, castigated I-RMS as “Shell’s private army in North Mayo”. This hired muscle for capitalism has been doing the state’s dirty work, while Gardaí turn a blind eye. They are no more than a hired gang of thugs and fascists.

Dwyer originally left Ireland in November 2008 on the pretext of doing a three month security course in Bolivia, a course that never was. He originally travelled with two Hungarians and a Pole. It is thought that he met Eduardo Rósza Flores, the leader of the mercenary cell who was also shot dead, through their mutual friend Tibor Révész, who is believed to be still resident in Ireland. Révész is the leader of the Szekler Legion, a Hungarian organisation that openly promotes neo-nazism and race hate. The other members of the Bolivian mercenary cell were Árpád Magyarosi, who was shot dead, and Elod Tóásó, who was arrested. Both were members of Révész’s Legion. On its website it sells patches emblazoned with a skull surrounded by a Celtic design associated with defending the Corrib project relating to Operation Solitaire Shield. The Solitaire is the name of the ship used for pipe-laying at sea. It has also advertised I-RMS courses. I-RMS have refused to comment on whether they had or are employing international right-wing fascists as security guards for Shell. Over a third of the 22,037 people licensed as private security guards have not undergone any form of Garda background checks and Sinn Féin’s Spokesperson on Foreign Affairs, Aengus Ó Snodaigh, has already demanded “an urgent investigation into what these extremists have been doing in Mayo and whether proper security checks have been followed”.

While the general Irish media have portrayed Dwyer as innocent, naïve and non-political, sinister details have been emerging ever since. While the 24 year old was in Glengad he met and befriended eastern Europeans with fascist links. Eventually he met up with Eduardo Rósza Flores in Santa Cruz. 49 year old Flores had a chequered past to say the least. He fought in the Balkan conflict in the 1990s with Croatian paramilitary troops as part of the notorious Zenga unit that took part in the ethnic cleansing of Serbs. He was a fascist mercenary, anti-communist (although he was a former leader of the Hungarian Communist Party’s youth wing), anti-semitic (though part-Jewish), a recent convert to Islam, who mixed left-wing ideals with racial and cultural separation. He seemed as politically indecisive as Senator Eoin Harris. Flores, born in Bolivia but grew up in Hungary, returned to Santa Cruz, (the eastern region in Bolivia rich in natural resources) illegally, in his own words to “organise the defence of the city and province”, and to do it not by marching with flags, but to “do it with arms”. According to Bolivian Vice-President Álvaro García Linera “Rózsa was in the country to recruit and train paramilitaries to destabilise the country”.

Bolivia’s Socialist President Evo Morales has nationalised his country’s abundant natural gas resources much to the consternation of Shell. While the multinational will face imminent court hearings in the US over the deaths of nine Nigerian activists in 1995, their mercenaries and state forces continue to be mired in deep controversy throughout the world. Is Shell’s insatiable avarice to pilfer natural resources at whatever cost the common denominator here?

The rise of the Right must be resisted

LAST WEEKEND, people throughout the 27 EU member states cast their votes to elect 736 Members of the European Parliament.

Turn-out was a paltry 43%, the lowest in the three decades of European voting. Voter apathy was widespread with over half of the electorate choosing to stay at home, politically apathetic due to ubiquitous corruption scandals, democratic deficits and failing to see a real political alternative in their respective countries. In some eastern European countries, turn-out languished around the 20% mark. Despite the fact that the European Union is responsible for 80% of member states’ legislation, to voters the EU seems distant and not worthwhile, a suspicious unelected bureaucratic monster for many with its mysterious yet powerful Commission. There was only one victor in these European elections, and it certainly was not the Left. Conservative and far-right parties enjoyed electoral success and subsequent seat gains.

Martin Schulz, German MEP and leader of the Party of European Socialists group, admitted: “Overall, this is a very bitter evening for us.” The centre-right consolidated its power whilst the xenophobic far-right made worrying forays into the political mainstream. With the scapegoating of immigrants for society’s ills, the far-right appealed to a substantial number of voters, some for different reasons.

The British National Party (BNP), heirs of the neo-nazi National Front, won two European Parliament seats. Veteran racist and former National Socialist Movement and National Front member Andrew Brons was elected for Yorkshire and Humber with the BNP polling nearly 10% there. Their leader, Nick Griffin, pelted by eggs on Tuesday by anti-fascist protesters at an aborted BNP press conference at Westminster, won a North-West seat with 8% of the vote, an increase from last time out. This is a party that refuses membership to black people and has stated that “Britain is full up” and immigrants should be ‘sent back’. The BNP actually secured fewer votes than last time out but gained two seats – its first ever – because of the low turn-out for the other parties, particularly Labour. It is the Labour Party’s worst election since 1918.

FRACTURED LEFT
In France, Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and his conservative UMP convincingly defeated a fractured left that is in disarray. In neighbouring Spain, the ruling socialist PSOE were beaten into second place by the centre-right Partido Popular.
In Italy, although controversial leader Silvio Berlusconi’s Freedom Party support dropped slightly, his far-right coalition partners, the xenophobic Northern League, which prides itself on its anti-immigration stance, rose to 10.6%. Italy’s main opposition, the Democratic Party, an eclectic mix containing Christian Democrats and Socialists, nosedived 7%.

The German Social Democrats suffered electoral ignominy with its worst showing since the Second World War. Even the new left German Party, Die Linke (The Left), failed to fulfil prior expectations, polling only 7.5%. In Poland, the governing pro-capitalist Civic Platform party amassed 25 seats, with the homophobic Law and Justice party scooping 15. In the Czech Republic, the centre-right Civic Democrats were successful despite the appallingly low turn-out of below 30%.

The far-right gained considerably in the Netherlands with a return of four MEPs for Geert Wilder’s Freedom Party, criticised for its anti-Islamic nature. Austria’s Freedom Party polled around 13%. In Hungary, the notorious radical, anti-Semitic and neo-fascist Jobbik Party won three seats, almost beating the ruling Socialists, rocked by corruption scandals, who got one more. Fidesz, the main centre-right opposition won 14 of the available 22 seats.

Romania’s far-right Greater Romania Party also increased its vote and in Denmark, running on a nationalist, anti-immigrant and populist platform, the Danish People’s Party got two seats. Glimmers of hope for the Left surfaced only in Greece, Latvia, Malta, Slovakia and Sweden.

PROTEST VOTE OR SINISTER DEVELOPMENT?
So does one take this electoral advent of the far-right as a consequence of a protest vote or is it a more sinister development with fascism being embraced by some as an alternative? Voter apathy is a major problem. The rise of the Right has been possible due to the crisis on and fragmentation of the Left. There are nominal socialist parties throughout Europe who have failed to articulate an alternative to the current capitalist system that is in crisis.

Instead of moving to the centre, these parties should be forging left links, building a mass movement and tackling xenophobia, racism, and sectarianism head-on. We should be countering the Right’s attempts of dividing the working-class along religious, ethnic, national or whatever lines. The sore of fascism will fester only if the Left continues to be its worst enemy and turn on itself. The collective energy of the Left should be aimed at combating and defeating the Right. The EU is once again in the hands of the Right, though not in the right hands. A ratification of the Lisbon Treaty would have major repercussions which such pro-capitalist parties at the European helm.

Four years after the Wall Street Crash and Great Depression, Hitler came to power in Germany. It is the Left’s role to ensure that such a development is never allowed to happen again.

Thatcher: 30 years on

Marking 30 years since Margaret Thatcher came to power
14 Bealtaine 2009


WITH the possible exception of the genocidal Oliver Cromwell – whose men butchered thousands of Catholics in Ireland in the mid-17th century – nobody provokes such vitriol and anger from Irish republicans as Margaret Thatcher. Just over 30 years ago, on 4 May 1979, Thatcher became Britain’s first female prime minister. She continued at the helm of British politics for over 11 years, leaving in her wake deep social unrest, mass unemployment, poverty and death. She had the audacity to paraphrase St Francis of Assisi as she first arrived at 10 Downing Street, stating: “Where there is despair, may we bring hope.”

Thatcher became notorious for her obduracy and inhumanity with her refusal to negotiate with the 1981 Hunger Strikers, which culminated in the deaths of 10 republican prisoners. These men were fighting for their five demands. Thatcher was adamant that she would not negotiate with “the men of violence”, rather hypocritical in that she befriended and supported US war-monger Ronald Reagan and Chile’s murderous dictator, General Augusto Pinochet.

Even after Bobby Sands secured 30,493 votes and became MP for Fermanagh/South Tyrone, making a mockery of the British Government’s attempts to criminalise the republican struggle, and her insistence that the ‘terrorists have no mandate’, Thatcher remained intransigent, insisting:
“We are not prepared to consider special category status for certain groups of people serving sentences for crime. Crime is crime is crime. It is not political.”
It must be noted that Special Category Status (POW status) was removed in 1976 by a Labour Government but Thatcher was insistent on carrying on. When Bobby Sands MP died on 5 May 1981, after 66 days of a tortuous and selfless brave hunger strike, Thatcher remarked:
“Sands was a convicted criminal. He chose to take his own life.”
Always first to claim that she was protecting democracy against evil, Thatcher’s government hurriedly ratified the Representation of the People Act, which prevented other IRA prisoners from contesting elections. The British criminalisation policy was shown up, with fellow Hunger Striker Kieran Doherty TD for Cavan/Monaghan, blind and on his deathbed, defiantly declaring:
“Thatcher can’t break us; I’m not a criminal.”

FERVENT UNIONIST
Thatcher was a fervent unionist, once proclaiming that “Ulster is as British as Finchley” (her north London constituency which first elected her MP in 1959). She revelled in her nickname ‘The Iron Lady’, given to her by the Soviets.

Her record in the North of Ireland became synonymous with controversial policies.
From 1982, the infamous shoot-to-kill policy was employed by British forces (the SAS being the main culprits) carrying out extra-judicial executions of IRA members and suspected republicans. In tandem with collusion, it was a method of eliminating political opponents without recourse to the law. All of this, obviously sanctioned in the British corridors of power, resulted in many unarmed republicans being executed by British forces. The British Army and RUC were also culpable of deliberately killing suspects without any attempts to arrest them and bring them to trial. This was Thatcherite democracy in action. The ‘supergrass’ (paid perjurer) system was also deployed from this time, rewarding informants with financial gain and immunity from prosecution. Nevertheless, many convictions based on the supergrass testimonies were later overturned.

In the early hours of Friday 12 October 1984, an IRA bomb ripped through Brighton’s Grand Hotel, location of the Tories’ annual conference. Thatcher was extremely fortunate to escape with her life as the explosion destroyed her bathroom. The subsequent IRA statement urged Thatcher to “Give Ireland peace and there will be no more war.”

On 15 November 1985, Thatcher and Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which gave a formal role in relation to the North to elected representatives of the 26 Counties, albeit restricted to matters of security and the treatment of Catholics. Gerry Adams dismissed this as “a powerless consultative role given to Dublin”.

RUTHLESS
Thatcher displayed equal ruthlessness in her own country. Her name is inextricably linked to neo-liberalism, privatisation and free-market capitalism. She became known as ‘Thatcher the Milk Snatcher’ when, as Education Secretary in the mid-1970s she presided over education cuts, including the abolition of free milk provision for schoolchildren. In 1975, she surprisingly became leader of the Tories. In power, she reduced public spending in education and housing. Unemployment rocketed to 3.6 million while manufacturing crumbled.

On 2 April 1982, Argentina attempted to reclaim the Islas Malvinas (Falkland Islands) and Thatcher ordered a military response. The war lasted over two months, claiming 258 British casualties. Thatcher’s domestic popularity rose on a wave of jingoistic nationalism and she cruised to a second electoral victory.

She continued selling most of the large national utilities to private companies. In 1984, she shifted her attention to trade unions, particularly the National Union of Miners. She was adamant and largely successful in neutering the power of British trade unions as she labelled the miners, with their just demands and courageous working-class defiance, as “the enemy within”. It was a calculated attack and an act of class warfare on behalf of the powerful and wealthy.

Thatcher’s rejection of imposing economic sanctions in 1986 on apartheid South Africa further exposed her immorality. Thatcher also caused outrage with her complete support for Pinochet in Chile, who violently ousted the democratically-elected socialist leader, Salvador Allende. She commended the bloodthirsty fascist on “bringing democracy to Chile”.

NO SUCH THING AS SOCIETY
In 1987, Thatcher infamously stated that there is “no such thing as society... only individuals and families”. She signalled it was not the state’s role to provide housing for the homeless or financial assistance to the poor. It was essentially up to individuals to work hard and sort out their own problems. Her beliefs spurred on personal greed. Her introduction of the Poll Tax was instrumental in signalling the beginning of the end for the Iron Lady as thousands took to the streets to protest. According to this highly inequitable tax, she thought it positive that “the duke and the dustbin man” should pay the same amount of local tax despite the differences in their wealth and the value of their property. Protests culminated with 200,000 angry protestors engaging in pitched battles with police in London’s Trafalgar Square.
When she resigned in November 1990, she was driven away from Downing Street in tears. She left behind a quarter of British children in poverty and a country in the depths of recession.

By her own admission her greatest achievement was the creation of ‘New Labour’, a party addicted to privatisation, profit and capitalism. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, who adopted Thatcherite policies, have brought Britain to the brink of economic collapse and social implosion. New Labour’s affair with Thatcher continues with current attempts to privatise the Royal Mail postal service.

At 84, now Baroness Thatcher’s time on earth is coming to a close. A state burial has been mooted but this has been met with murmurs of opposition. The Iron Lady’s reign was too corrosive and divisive for so many people who suffered from it.

Sri Lanka

Brutal Slaughter of Tamil Civilians


A largely defenceless people struggling to survive and hemmed in on a narrow strip of land while facing ruthless indiscriminate airstrikes, assault from gun boats and subjected to cluster bombs by a well equipped government army, conjures up the image of the recent Israeli invasion of Palestine’s Gaza Strip. However, in Sri Lanka, where since the start of this year government forces have stepped up their campaign of wiping out the separatist LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) militant group, which has fought a 25-year war for Tamil independence, the situation has culminated with the brutal slaughter of thousands of Tamil civilians who have literally become trapped in a war zone. The silence in the media in comparison to the daily headlines of Israel’s recent wanton destruction of Gaza has been deafening.

UN figures stated that 2,000 people have died in the fighting in the last month, not including last week; the most brutal. The civilian death toll has eclipsed 6,500 since the end of January and some 200,000 Tamil civilians find themselves trapped amongst the LTTE rebels on a tiny sliver of northern coastline measuring 10 sq km; surrounded by the Sri Lankan army who continue to pound the area with air strikes and heavy artillery fire, intent on exterminating the rebels and apparently unconcerned about the growing civilian death toll.

Sri Lanka is facing a growing humanitarian crisis. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has already accused the Sri Lankan government of “causing untold suffering”. The vast majority of aid workers have been refused access to the euphemistically labelled “no-fire zones”, and journalists have been completely denied entry. Make-shift hospitals are crumbling under the demand, and people are reportedly dying of malnutrition. The Tamil civilians who are “rescued” by Government forces are being rounded into internment camps.

BLOODBATH
The international community has been pathetic in its response. Although on Sunday the LTTE announced a unilateral ceasefire, the government have not reciprocated insisting that they will push on to secure complete rebel surrender, at whatever expense. The International Committee of the Red Cross has described the war zone as a “catastrophic bloodbath”.

Sri Lanka, an idyllic island off the southern tip of India and home to 20 million people, is a tropical paradise boasting golden beaches straddled by palm trees. It is a land of unquestionable beauty, abundant in resources from tea and rubber, to coconuts and diamonds. However the ordinary people of Sri Lanka live in dire poverty and the country has been torn apart by civil war. Those civilians currently trapped inside the “no-fire zone” are being forced to endure hell on earth.

Sri Lanka’s current problems can be traced back to the legacy of British colonialism. It achieved independence in 1948 as Ceylon, changing its name to Sri Lanka in 1972. The ethnic make-up of the country includes 80 per cent Sinhalese, and 10 per cent Tamil (both Indian and Sri Lankan). The Tamils, Sri Lanka’s largest ethnic minority, are mainly concentrated in the north and east of the island. After independence, the Sinhalese government introduced controversial discriminatory policies including: stripping the Tamil plantation workers of their citizenship, unfair education laws; anti-Tamil employment rules and through the ‘Sinhala Only Act’ made Sinhala the only official language of the island. Initial Tamil resistance to these policies were peaceful, but were met with repression. Civil war erupted in 1983. After the LTTE killed 13 Sri Lankan soldiers in an ambush, 3,000 Tamils were slaughtered in government-instigated Sinhalese programs in ‘Black July’. Since then the violence has spiralled out of control, claiming over 70,000 lives.

The LTTE were formed in 1976 by current leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. They seek a separate nation for Tamils, to be called Tamil Eelam, in the north and east of the country. With the failure of politics to achieve any equality for the Tamil population, the LTTE became stronger, more numerous and eventually crushed or consumed other Tamil militant groups. It soon became one of the world’s most feared and best equipped rebel groups. It has a sea and air force, and previously launched attacks on government military airports. It killed former Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993. However, it has also attracted negative attention for deploying suicide bombers and has been lambasted for allegedly recruiting children as young as twelve to engage in armed combat against government troops.

INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaska has been widely accused of presiding over a racist regime, intent on crushing any dissent. The Asian Development Bank named Sri Lanka as one of the “world’s most politically unstable countries”. Human Rights Watch labelled the Sri Lankan government as one of the “world’s worst perpetrators of enforced disappearances”. It is the fourth most dangerous place on earth for journalists to venture.

The international community must act to force the Sri Lankan Government to halt its bloody offensive and Tamil civilians must be granted freedom of movement and provided with sufficient humanitarian aid. The government-run internment camps, housing fleeing civilians, are horribly overcrowded, surrounded by barbed wire and controlled by government troops, and should be shut down. Those civilians escaping the violence deserve access to adequate food, shelter and health care.
All Sri Lankans need an all-inclusive political process, based on equality, inclusion and mutual respect. There can never be peace without social justice, and Tamils should no longer be treated as the inferior race. The International Community, through the UN, should facilitate this process. The root cause of the conflict needs to be addressed, that is the grievances of the Tamil population, those very civilians that have been risking their lives to flee to India in ramshackle boats. Civilians must stop being used as disposable pawns in this bloody political power struggle. The time has come for not only peace, but also prosperity and social justice for this majestic island and all who inhabit it.

G20 London

Report from the frontline of protests at the G20 world leaders' summit in the City of London

‘Conditions ripe for arguing for a socialist economy’

AS the G20 leaders met in London last week to resuscitate capitalism, thousands of protesters took to the streets to voice their objection to the world’s dominant economic system that continues to implode and wreak social and economic havoc. On Saturday 28 March, 35,000 people marched under the slogan of ‘Jobs, Justice and Climate’ in a demonstration organised by Britain’s Trades Union Congress.

On 1 April – labelled ‘Financial Fools Day’ – some 5,000 protesters descended on London’s Bank of England. Peaceful protestsers converged at this bastion of capitalism. Regrettably, the carnival atmosphere later turned sour as a considerable section of those in attendance, masked and intent on causing trouble, hemmed in the crowd and proceeded to engage in indiscriminate and intermittent thuggery. They were the British police.

While a nearby climate camp with 1,500 environmental activists was baton charged, I found myself, along with 5,000 other protesters, hemmed in at Threadneedle Street, home to the Bank of England and nearby RBS bank. For eight hours the police refused to let anyone leave or enter the area, denying access to water, food and sanitation. Parents were even denied the chance to go back to collect their children.

This controversial tactic is known as ‘kettling’, whereby police hold protesters for hours on end against their will. This is clearly illegal detention and inevitably resulted in peaceful protesters becoming frustrated and angry. When we were eventually allowed to leave, one by one, each person was escorted out by a riot police officer, a number photographed, details taken, questioned and then searched. An estimated 122 protesters were arrested... but not a single banker.

Ian Tomlinson, a 47-year old shopworker, died of a suspected heart attack during this protest. The Independent Police Complaints Commission has received numerous corroborating complaints from observers who have stated that Ian Tomlinson was brutally assaulted by police and subsequently denied medical attention. A full public inquiry has been demanded.

‘SOCIALISING BANKS’ LOSSES’
In terms of the economy, US President Barack Obama remarked after the summit that “the patient had stabilised and was in good care”. However, the measures agreed at the G20 summit merely prescribed more neo-liberal medicine to be forced on the reluctant patient without operating on the terminal cancer of capitalism.

The G20 leaders agreed on a $1.1 trillion injection of financial aid into the global economy, trebling the resources of the IMF to $750 billion and promising the naming and shaming of tax havens. However, according to American Nobel prize-winning economist Joesph Stiglitz, throwing billions of public money into bankrupt private banks is tantamount to “the privatising of gains and the socialising of losses”. The avaricious bankers have been bailed out by their political friends while the ordinary working people suffer.

The key challenge for the Left now is to prevent neo-liberalism reasserting itself, which is exactly what the G20 decisions are attempting to facilitate.

NEO-LIBERALISM
Neo-liberalism is the cause of this crisis, the economic ideology largely attributed to Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s, supporting free trade, the free market, privatisation, limits on public spending and lower taxation.

Post-G20 and the architecture of the world’s financial system remains virtually the same. As socialists, we must be adamant that capitalism cannot be reformed to ensure a fairer society. I applaud the direct actions of workers, faced with redundancy, occupying their factories from Waterford to Belfast, and also those French workers who have detained their capitalist bosses and compelled them to agree to justified job and wage demands.

We must resist house repossessions, job losses and welfare cuts. Mere political rhetoric is not enough, nor is resorting to settling for a ‘moral’ capitalism. An economic system that is guided by the principle of production for private profit and not for social need is anathema to any genuine socialist.

As economist John Maynard Keynes said: “Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.” The fact that the task of saving the world economy has been handed over to the IMF is outrageous. This organisation has been notorious in forcing the ‘Washington Consensus’ on poor and developing countries. Through its ‘structural adjustment’ programmes it has forced numerous countries, in return for receiving loans, to radically reduce health, education and welfare spending; to privatise and deregulate state enterprises, and to constrain and even cut wages and roll back worker rights. Even on the day of the G20, the IMF was in Latvia, forcing the government to reduce public spending by 40 per cent in return for a loan.

The IMF is a weapon of mass economic destruction, controlled by the US with its veto power. It is inconceivable that this organisation, with its undemocratic governance and obsession with the economic policies that have propelled the world into the current crisis, has been awarded the task of reviving the world’s economy. The economists in the IMF and World Bank amass more in a day than what the poor earn in a year.

ECONOMIC APARTHEID
We are living in a 21st century apartheid system, created and maintained by capitalism. The capitalist class of bankers and elite politicians are creaming off profits and living luxurious lifestyles on the backs of workers who are now losing their jobs and homes.

The words ‘credit crunch’ sound like a breakfast cereal instead of mass unemployment, homelessness, poverty, inequality, despair and frustration.
We should not be surprised that the G20 agreed to revive capitalism. As James Connolly stated: “Governments in a capitalist society are but committees of the rich to manage the affairs of the capitalist class.” We do not need the reform of the capitalist system, we need it replaced.

Capitalism is unsustainable; financially, socially and environmentally. Politicians have called for measures to ensure financial stability but was the situation so rosy before?

Capitalism has caused 1.5 billion people to struggle to survive on less than $1 a day. It leads to a child dying from hunger every few seconds, while the world’s rich minority live lavish lifestyles of abundance.

The fact that there is world mass unemployment while there are a shortage of doctors, teachers and social workers makes a mockery of capitalism. The vast majority of those in employment work too many hours in monotonous roles.
The conditions are ripe to be arguing for a socialist economy, one that is planned and not subject to the volatile whims of a free market based on greed.
People are citizens, not merely consumers. The crisis in capitalism is not just a crisis in derivatives, toxic assets and the sub-prime mortgage sector; the crisis is the system itself.

One positive to emerge from the crisis is that socialism is more popular. As a saying by North America’s Cree Indians goes:
“Only after the last tree has been cut down and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught, only then will we realise that money cannot be eaten.”

Another left-wing election win in Latin America

El Salvador’s FMLN celebrates capturing presidency


FOR 12 years between, 1980 and 1992, the streets and hills of El Salvador in Central America ran red with blood as it endured a vicious civil war that claimed 75,000 lives and displaced thousands more. On 15 March last, its towns and villages were once again submerged in red, but this time it was the crimson banners, flags and T-shirts of the FMLN that provided the colour.
The FMLN’s popular candidate, Mauricio Funes, a 49-year-old former journalist and broadcaster, emerged victorious from El Salvador’s presidential campaign. He secured 51.3 per cent of the vote compared to 48.7 per cent gained by his opponent from the right-wing ARENA party, Rodrigo Ávila. The latter was a former police chief and protégé of outgoing President Elias Antonio Saca. He was also a former army sniper who killed FMLN Marxist guerrillas during the uprising and is a vocal supporter of the now deceased Roberto D’Aubuisson, the infamous founder of ARENA who commanded death squads responsible for the torture and slaughter of thousands.

GROUND-BREAKING
The election of Funes is ground-breaking in that not only does it end the 20-year dominance of ARENA but it also shatters the 130 years of military and oligarchic rule of El Salvador.
Funes inherits a country virtually bankrupted by the right-wing. ARENA privatised the country’s banks, pension system and telephone and electricity companies. The cost of basic foodstuffs have spiralled out of control and gang violence is a serious problem.
Wealth distribution is shameful with the share of income held by the top 10 per cent more than 57 times higher than the share held by the bottom 10 per cent. The precarious economy relies on the significant remittances sent home by the 2.5m Salvadorans in the US, some $3.7bn last year, the equivalent of one-fifth of the country’s GDP. El Salvador is one of the poorest countries in Latin America with 40 per cent of its population struggling to exist on $2 per day.

SHERATON HOTEL
In 1989, the Sheraton Hotel in the capital, San Salvador, was the venue of one of the most famous battles of the war, where left-wing FMLN guerrillas battled right-wing-controlled soldiers floor by floor. Twenty years on, it was in the same hotel that the FMLN’s Funes delivered his victory speech.
Funes showed caution with a conciliatory oration, emphasising the need for national unity, safe change and stability. He even pledged to keep his country in the Central American Free Trade Agreement and to retain the dollar as their currency. Although the FMLN became El Salvador’s largest political force last January, gaining 35 seats in the legislative election, the right-wing coalition possess 43. As neither grouping has enough to secure a two-thirds majority required to pass important legislation, compromise is a necessity.

BACKGROUND
For those on the right, Funes is no more than a popular figurehead who will be controlled by the communist hardliners in the FMLN. To critics on the left he is a moderate and opportunist. Funes is an open admirer of Brazilian President Lula (his wife Vanda Pignato is a Brazilian who represented Lula’s Workers’ Party in El Salvador).
Funes is the first FMLN candidate with no guerrilla background, although he lost his brother to Government forces and subsequently interviewed FMLN revolutionaries during the war. He stated that he wants to “end privilege for the few” and that “the time has come for the excluded, the opportunity has arrived for genuine democrats, for men and women who believe in social justice and solidarity”.
He also aspires to crack down on tax evasion and corruption and implement policies to help the poor. His right-hand man is new Vice-President Salvador Sánchez Ceren, a former FMLN guerrilla commander, and they will assume presidential office on 1 June for a five-year term.

OBAMA REACTION
In a notable shift in US foreign policy, the Obama administration in the United States promised to work with whoever was elected El Salvador’s new president, in stark contrast to the Reagan government who ploughed $7bn into attempting to crush the FMLN over a ten-year period and prevent the spread of “evil communism”.
Five years ago, former President George W Bush threatened to stop US aid to El Salvador in the advent of a FMLN victory as a continuing show of US support for ARENA, who reciprocated by sending 6,000 Salvadoran troops to Iraq, the last few of whom have just recently returned.

POIGNANT
It is rather poignant that Funes won the presidency by 75,000 votes, the same number of people who lost their lives in El Salvador’s bloody conflict.
With Funes and the FMLN, El Salvador now at last has a definite sense of hope after decades of arduous struggle and sacrifice in its quest for social justice and an end to repression.
The current political context would not have been achieved without the bravery and selflessness of those Salvadoran freedom fighters that died. Let their deaths not be in vain.

Viva el FMLN y el pueblo salvadoreño!

The British Miners' strike, 25 years on

PITTED AGAINST THE STATE

IT IS 25 years ago this month that Arthur Scargill, the leader of Britain’s National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), then Britain’s most powerful union, called a national strike in response to Margaret Thatcher’s government’s plans to implement coal pit closures.

This period pitted a mass working-class movement of striking miners fighting for just demands against a Tory political establishment adamant to crush workers’ rights to usher in their free market policies of privatisation and individual greed. Such a mobilisation of workers was unprecedented in Britain in modern times.

Writing in The Guardian last Saturday, for the first time since the strike, Scargill claimed that the NUM negotiated five separate settlements, four of them “sabotaged or withdrawn following the intervention of Thatcher”. Scargill was later informed by a former member of Thatcher’s Cabinet that the Government had “already agreed to end the strike on the union’s terms” until the pit deputies’ union, NACODS, called off its strike action despite 82 per cent of their national ballot opting in favour.

The strike actually began on 1 November 1983 in response to a leaked National Coal Board document revealing that up to 95 pits were earmarked for closure. The NUM adopted an overtime ban in response to the Coal Board’s refusal to negotiate wage increases for miners unless the union accepted job losses and pit closures as inevitable. Although this partial strike was effective in cutting production, the Coal Board confirmed that 20 pits would close, leading to the loss of 20,000 jobs.
The decision to close three pits in Yorkshire, Kent and Scotland ignited the strike, which ultimately led to the arrest of 11,000 strikers, injuries to 7,000 miners and the deaths of 10 people.

The miners’ strike of 1974 effectively brought down Edward Heath’s Tory Government. Thatcher, adamant that this would not happen again, deployed the full rigour of state forces against the miners, including the parliament, courts, police, and MI5, who were backed by an overtly right-wing media.

DEMONISED
The miners were constantly demonised in the press whilst Scargill was vilified through smear campaigns. Thatcher also wanted to emasculate unions and introduced a raft of anti-union measures. Her government foresaw a national strike and prepared by stockpiling coal beforehand.

The height of the confrontation occurred in Orgreave in June 1984 where 10,000 striking miners were brutally confronted by over 8,000 riot police. In 1984, Thatcher castigated the NUM as “the enemy within” and said in parliament that giving in to the miners would be surrendering the rule of parliamentary democracy to the rule of the mob. In her eyes, ‘the mob’ was the striking miners struggling to keep their jobs and feed their kids by taking a defiant stance, not the baton-wielding police who were drafted in from around the country to boost their overtime pay.

The main criticism levelled at Scargill is the absence of a national ballot by the NUM deciding whether or not to strike. The fact that no national ballot was held has always been used to undermine the miners’ strike. Due to this, the High Court deemed the strike illegal, striking miners were not entitled to state benefits, and their children were refused free school meals and social security. This was a conscious attempt by the ruling capitalist class to starve the miners and their families and compel them back to work. However, the vast majority of miners voted with their feet by striking.

STRUGGLE A VICTORY
Though Scargill was and still is pilloried as a communist upstart and egotistical troublemaker whilst leader, he did not solely define the miners’ strike. He relied on the support of thousands of miners and their families who sacrificed everything in their battle to keep their jobs and improve their conditions. This strike was much more than just one individual. Women Against Pit Closures operated soup kitchens, distributed food parcels, organised fund-raisers and stood on picket lines.
The lack of support from the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party severely dented the miners’ campaign. Steelworkers also failed to show their support. Miners themselves were divided, striking in Yorkshire but working in Nottingham as the latter enjoyed better conditions and wages and did not want to jeopardise those. It was a classic case of divide and conquer.

The miners returned to work in March 1985 after an extremely narrow vote after 12 months on strike. They leave an inspirational legacy and serve as an example of admirable solidarity and unrelenting bravery in the face of adversity. For Scargill, this was “the most courageous and determined stand by trade unionists anywhere in the world, arguing for the right to work”.

The struggle itself was a victory and directly challenged Thatcher’s announcement that there was no such thing as society, only individuals. The miners have not lost because the workers’ battle continues worldwide.

In praise of Maura Harrington

A chara,

I would like to express my outrage and indignation at yesterday’s sentencing to 28 days of Shell to Sea campaigner Maura Harrington. I had the privilege of meeting Maura during her 10-day hunger strike in protest at the construction of the infamous Shell pipeline in Mayo. She has taken a commendable stand against this project on the grounds that it is highly dangerous, will do irreparable environmental damage and will not benefit the Irish people one cent.

Frail Maura was sent to Dublin’s notorious Mountjoy Jail for ‘assaulting a Garda’ and has been ordered to undergo a psychiatric assessment. I myself have witnessed and been on the receiving end of Garda excessive force and thuggish behaviour while protesting peacefully there. Scores of protestors have been injured while not a single member of An Garda Síochána has faced any repercussions.

The gas in the Corrib and associated fields is estimated to be worth up to €50 billion. The Irish government has given our natural resources to Shell and co, and this is what Maura is campaigning against. While the Fianna Fáil/Green Party government bail out their ‘golden circle’ banker friends to the tune of billions, an unprecedented number of people are losing their jobs and their homes. Maura is a brave woman on the side of social justice; it is not her who needs a psychiatric assessment.

Is mise le meas,
Seán Ó Floinn

Peace in pieces?

Firstly, the British Army never had, does not have and never will have any legitimate reason to be in Ireland. The fact that there are still approximately 5,000 British Army personnel in the 6 counties is a major problem and concern. Though critical at times of, I am a supporter of the Peace Process. However with the major announcement of Óglaigh na hEireann (PIRA more commonly to most) in 2005 which stated unequivocally that their military campaign was over and decomissioning since independently and objectively verified, all British troops and military personnel should have been subsequently removed. Four years on and the British Army, although some barracks have been dismantled, still operate in the 6 Counties, using it as a base to send troops into the illegal and bloody occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. This is unacceptable.

I see the shooting dead of the two British soldiers as an attempt by the RIRA to provoke a violent reaction from the British establishment but also as an attempt to highly embarrass Sinn Féin and the Provisional movement. I feel that the killings were unproductive, but when put into the larger context these British soldiers were trained killers stationed on foreign territory. They were hours away from being deployed to Afghanistan, where countless innocent people have already been slaughtered by 'Her Majesty's Armed Forces'. The shooting dead of the PSNI officer was also damaging to the peace process, especially at a time when the vast majority of the republican community are working towards achieving a truly transparent and accountable police service.

Furthermore the recent deployment of the British Special Reconnaissance Regiment, without any consultation or broad agreement, as just recently announced by Hugh Orde, in the 6 Counties was a foolish and ill-advised decision. Their last most notable action was in the killing of innocent Brazilian national Jean Charles de Menezes in July 2005, of which there have never been any repercussions. More than enough innocent Irish people have already been victims of the British establishment's bullets. While there are peaceful and democratic avenues to be explored and utilised in bringing about the re-unification of our country, there is no need for further bloodshed. Unfortunately the British establishment have not fully reciprocated in response to the Provisional Republican movement's concessions.

A British Army return to patrolling the streets of the 6 Counties is in nobody's interest. An escalation of violence by small Republican armed groups without popular support is in nobody's interest. Peace is in everybody's interests, but not just a stagnant peace. All citizens on the island of Ireland deserve a progressive peace, one which will ultimately unite the country and transform the socio-economic conditions of today to ensure an egalitarian republic for all.

In from the wilderness

After 22 tortuous years of being homeless, I've been there for 13, for Shamrock Rovers Football Club (Cumann Peile Ruagairi na Seamróige), this Friday the 13th has all but good omens. They are Ireland's most successful club amassing 15 league titles and 24 cups since their foundation in 1901. For just over six decades, Rovers delighted crowds at Glenmalure Park in Miltown on the southside of Dublin (from 1926 to 1987). In the fateful year of '87, the Club's owners the Kilcoyne family controversially sold off Rovers' spiritual home to property developers and since then the famous green and white hoops have been on the road in adopted 'home' stadiums of the RDS, the 'Santry Siro', Dalymount Park (Bohemians), Richmond Park (St Patrick's Athletic) and Tolka Park (Shelbourne).

During the 1930s Rovers enjoyed crowds of up to 30,000 in Milltown. Now regrettably attendances in the League of Ireland have dramatically fallen off. The advent of Sky and the Premiership has not helped as they continue to suck up the potential Irish fan base and the younger audiences, not to mention the English clubs draining the Irish pool of playing talent. Regrettably the vast majority of Ireland's footballing public seem to have more affinity with Manchester United, Liverpool or Arsenal then with their local club down the road. It's easy to be a 'barstooler' but any footballing fan worth their salt should have no qualms in travelling he 155 miles from Dublin to a blustery Ballybofey to watch their team scrape a draw on a cold Friday night against Finn Harps! This is what real football is about, the highs (Roll on Friday!) and the lows (f**k you Kilcoyne and co). You can't really be a 'fan' if you're just drip fed success on Match of the Day or Sky down the pub. Paying extortionate amounts each year to travel across the pond to a couple of games won't qualify you in my book either.

In 1987, a fateful and emotive year in Rovers' proud history, Louis Kilcoyne, who with his two brothers purchased the club primarily for business purposes seeking personal financial gain, announced that Glenmalure Park was to be sold. This caused outrage among the Rovers faithful and fans called for a boycott of Rover's home games.

With the ground and the club itself sold off, Rover's enjoyed brief success (a league title in 1994) amidst a sea of defeat and misfortune. In the mid-90s nascent plans for a stadium to be built in Tallaght were mooted. Planning permission was indeed granted but what followed were years of local and organisational objections, lack of funds, contractor and chairman corruption, failed promises, legal battles and broken deals. The long suffering Rovers fans were dismayed and their dream of a new stadium in Tallaght seemed unreachable.

In 2005 the club went into examinership facing massive debts. The 400 club, set up and run by loyal Rovers fans bankrolled the club during this period. An incompetent chairman was replaced by true Rovers people but the club suffered further, first points deductions then relegation, the first time in Rovers illustrious history. The 400 club successfully took control of the club and have since radically transformed the Hoops fortunes. In 2006 they came straight back up to the Premier Division after a long season in Division One, winning that league. The 'glamour' trips to Station Road in Kildare really tested the metal of most fans, but true to form the loyal ones stayed.

After a two year dispute with local GAA club Thomas Davis, who wanted use of the Rovers stadium, building finally recommenced and the Tallaght stadium became a reality. Shamrock Rovers are a truly unique club being run by and financed by their fans. This commendable achievement is rare in today's football of commercialism, greed and lack of loyalty. After years of the half-shell of a stadium providing an eyesore in Tallaght, Rovers, so long homeless, but kept going by their truly great fans, now have a place to call home.

Coiméad ag Hoopáil!!

Venezuela’s radical referendum

ON Sunday 15 February, the busy Venezuelan electorate will once again return to the polls to decide whether or not to alter the country’s constitution. The most controversial proposed amendment is that of removing the current two-term limit of the presidency and introducing unlimited terms, subject to electoral success. The fixed-term storm does not surface in Ireland though, despite a Taoiseach being able to serve as many times he or she is elected to. Regrettably, the proposed introduction of a six-hour working day has not made the headlines.

One of the criticisms launched at Venezuela’s President Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías is that he is debasing democracy and attempting to impose a dictatorship on the Venezuelan people. This is despite the fact that Venezuela, under Chávez and his Bolivarian Revolution, has had 13 elections in the past ten years. Chávez is enhancing, not destroying democracy. He is encouraging mass participative democracy and the last election witnessed a record voter turnout of 65 per cent. This has been aided by massive voter registration drives. Bolivarian legislation also ensured that half the candidates were women. According to Chávez himself “I doubt there is any country on this planet with a democracy more alive than the one we enjoy in Venezuela”.

OIL WEALTH
Chávez has used the country’s vast oil wealth, stolen by the previous corrupt rulers and the oligarchs, on addressing the plight of the poor. Under the true nationalisation of the country’s ‘black gold’, Chávez and his PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) have financed ‘Misiones’, which are ‘missions’ in healthcare, education and food provision. The Dublin government could learn a thing or two from this utilisation of natural resources for the welfare of its citizens.

Barrio Adentro, with the help of Cuban doctors, healthcare, including dental treatment, is now provided free to the population, some of whom have never seen a doctor in their lives before. In just four years it has saved an estimated 120,000 lives and has been praised by the World Health Organisation. Infant mortality has been drastically reduced and through a national chain of pharmacies, prescription drugs are being offered significantly cheaper, and free to AIDS and cancer sufferers.

Through Misión Milagro, also in conjunction with the Cubans, approximately 1.4 million people have had their sight restored. With around 20 per cent of Venezuelan children malnourished ten years ago, now more than four million eat three square meals a day courtesy of the Chávez government’s proactive approach to eradicating food poverty.

SUBSIDISED FOOD
Through Misión Mercal, cheap government-subsidised food is made available to the poor. 150,000 people living in extreme poverty are now able to eat at virtually no cost. In education, Misión Robinson has helped achieve full literacy with over 1.5 million Venezuelans learning to read and write.
A decade ago, Chávez inherited a wealthy country that was poor. The small corrupt minority enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle at the expense of the poverty-stricken majority. Chávez has confronted this inequality head-on through his “21st century socialism”. A victory in this referendum would be a victory for socialism.

What now for Guantánamo?

JUST HOURS after taking the presidential reins last week, new United States President Barack Obama ordered a 120-day halt in all pending cases in the highly-controversial war crimes tribunals in the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. This first measure is highly significant and Obama has since confirmed that he intends to fulfill his pre-election promise of closing Guantánamo within the year. During his 2008 presidential campaign, Obama labelled Guantánamo as “a sad chapter in American history” and now he has the power not only to close this tragic chapter but return the whole Guantánamo ‘book’ back to its rightful owner, Cuba.

The orange boiler suits and menacing shackles worn by inmates at Guantánamo have become synonymous with the former Bush administration’s over-the-top ‘War on Terror’.
The detention centre was opened for the purpose of holding suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda members in 2002. Bush and his cronies denied POW status for these ‘enemy combatants’ and stated that they did not deserve protections enshrined in the Geneva Human Rights Conventions. They essentially turned the centre into America’s Long Kesh and employed internment without trial.

MODERN-DAY GULAG
US techniques at the camp have evoked widespread indignation and condemnation throughout the world. They have used sensory and sleep deprivation, beatings, ‘water-boarding’ (a simulated drowning technique), sexual degradation, humiliation, drugging and force-feeding of prisoners on hunger strikes. The United Nations, European Union and a plethora of international NGOs have called for its closure. Amnesty International has called it the “gulag of our times”.

Despite former Vice-President Dick Cheney commenting in 2005 that the prisoners “are living in the tropics” and are “well-fed”, having “everything they could possibly want”, life in Guantánamo for these prisoners, the vast majority there without trial or charge, is a living hell on earth. There have been four reported suicides with numerous other attempts (it’s difficult to say exactly how many as this information has been deemed classified). The Americans have further contravened international law by detaining children at this camp.

Obama’s first move has sown seeds of hope for these prisoners who will unlikely have to face the infamous military commissions that were set up in a 2006 Act.
These ‘trials’ lack adequate legal protections for defendants as evidence can include mere hearsay and information extracted through torture. They are akin to Dublin’s Green Street Special Court in recent decades with their unjust processes. Of the approximately 245 suspects who remain in Guantánamo, less than 20 have been charged. Some have been detained here for up to seven years without ever facing trial. In Guantánamo, you are guilty until proven innocent.




SO WHAT NOW?
Many commentators have pointed to the problem of what to do with the current prisoners there. Of the current remaining prisoner population, around 50 are said to be extremely reluctant to return to their native countries due to fear of persecution or further imprisonment.

Firstly, in my view, they should be given access to legal representation of their choice and if there is any concrete evidence against them, receive a fair trial in the United States.

Secondly, those who are found innocent should be repatriated. If they choose not to be they should have the option of asylum in the United States. Maybe they could even stay with George W Bush in his new $2.1m Dallas home.

There has been much furore over how to send these prisoners to trial but few words have been uttered in relation to demanding the trial of the perpetrators of such vile interrogation techniques against these prisoners, the vast majority who are reportedly innocent.

If Obama is sincere in his words that “America is not for torturing” he should not only fulfill his promised investigation into the torturous atrocities that were committed there but also bring the torturers to justice. In a seismic shift in foreign policy, his promise to close down the numerous similar centres that the United States military and intelligence services have throughout the world (the so-called ‘ghost prisons’) has to be welcomed. An estimated 27,000 prisoners are held from Poland to South Africa, even on 17 floating ‘prison ships’ at sea.

ILLEGAL OCCUPATION
The US has Guantánamo as a result of an imperialist land grab. After the 1898 Spanish-American war, the US simply replaced Spain as the ‘owners’ of Cuba. The Platt Amendment gave the US the right to intervene militarily at any time in Cuban affairs. When US troops were removed from the rest of Cuban soil, they conveniently annexed 115 square kilometers at Guantánamo Bay to be used as a naval station.
In 1934, President FD Roosevelt changed this control to a 99-year lease, due to expire in 2033. However, the devil was in the detail and the lease can only be terminated with the agreement of both Cuba and the US.

The US continues to hang on to Guantánamo Bay despite half a century of pleas and demands from the Cuban Government to return this land to the Cuban people. Cuba’s government repeatedly refuses to collect the $4,000 per annum rent on the Bay as they deem it an illegal occupation.

Guantánamo (or ‘Gitmo’, as the Americans like to refer to it), is home to around 7,000 US personnel. It is cut off from the rest of the tropical island by trenches, barbed-wire fences and watch-towers, and with 75,000 landmines it is the most heavily-mined area on earth.

While Gitmo’s US residents gorge on happy meals in the local McDonalds and sip lattés in the nearby Starbucks, for the last seven years hundreds of detainees have been beaten and tortured in the camps. Not only should President Obama close down these cages of torture, preferably a lot sooner than 12 months, he should seek justice for those wrongly detained and ensure their safety, and also give Guantánamo Bay back to the Cuban people and withdraw all US troops and personnel from the area.

Un otro mundo es posible - Another world is possible

MORE than 100,000 political activists from 150 countries flocked to the Amazonian city of Belém in Brazil in the last couple of weeks for the 9th World Social Forum. Braving torrential downpours and sizzling temperatures, people attended meetings, discussions, workshops and cultural events over a six-day period.

The World Social Forum was set up in 2001 as a huge eclectic gathering of progressive leftists: from socialists, environmentalists, indigenous, anarchists and Amazon tribes to name but a few.

While no binding decisions are made at this event, it is a crucial opportunity for grassroots activists and movements to engage and organise. Although conceived and reared as a purely grassroots, non-governmental movement, this year saw the attendance and participation of five of South America’s – in fact the world’s most progressive and radical – presidents, namely Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay and the host, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who notably shunned by that other gathering in Davos, the World Economic Forum.

This overtly political and governmental participation was criticised by some of those in attendance, however it must be acknowledged that these presidents have come to power due to the very support of grassroots movements. They are simply government manifestations of all those groups gathered in Belém, a political culmination of all their agitation.

ALIVE
Chávez, who delivered a lengthy and powerful speech, praised the World Social Forum as “the most important event of the year”. Whilst the political elite of the wealthy, so-called developed nations were meeting with their capitalist cronies in the exclusive Swiss resort of Davos in Switzerland to attempt to save their beloved capitalism, Belém was alive with those activists and presidents who are proposing and developing a true alternative to the current economic capitalist system, which has gone into freefall.

The over-riding theme of the World Social Forum is that ‘Another World is Possible’; this year’s event focused on ‘Saving the Amazon’. Chávez said:
“In Davos, the world that is dying is meeting; here, the world that is being born is meeting.”

The midwives of this new world, a socialist and environmentally sustainable new order, are everywhere and now is a crucial time for all to act and ensure that this new world not only lives but flourishes to deliver social justice to the masses.

Historical background to Gaza slaughter

Understanding what’s behind Israeli onslaught on Gaza

THE barbaric war being unleashed on the Palestinian people by Israel in Gaza is not, of course, isolated. It should be understood in the larger context of the Zionist regime’s determination in crushing the justified and legitimate struggle of a besieged Palestinian people, who have been forced to endure second-class citizenship on their own land.

Progressive opinions agree with the view that what lies at the root of this conflict is Zionism: the rigid belief that Jews are only secure in a Jewish homeland in Israel and have a divine right to claim this land. It is a myth that Palestine was empty when Jewish settlers came. In 1878, almost 97 per cent of the total population was Muslim and Christian Arabs; a mere 3.2 per cent were Jews. The years between 1882 and1914 saw the immigration of 65,000 European Jews.

Despite mainstream right-wing media and political bias that this is a conflict between warring religious factions, between Muslims and Jews, or one instigated by inherently bellicose Palestinians with a penchant for extreme violence against Jews merely protecting themselves, the fact is that the Jews once flourished in the Arab world while they were being persecuted in Europe. There was no historical enmity between Arabs and Jews.

BALFOUR DECLARATION
Following the First World War, Jewish immigration increased under British rule and Britain implemented the Balfour Declaration, committing to a Jewish homeland in Palestine. However, this proposal contradicted an earlier agreement promising self-rule for Arabs throughout the region, yet another devious about turn from British imperialism, which was extremely supportive of the Zionist cause. In 1922, Jews made up 11 per cent of the total population.

It was not until the 1920s that the first acts of violence erupted between Palestinians and Jews, as a result of the latter forcefully taking over locals’ land. In the early 1930s, over 100,000 Jews fled to Palestine; another approximately 120,000 additional Jewish immigrants arrived between 1937 and 1945 at the time of Hitler’s brutal Nazi policy of Jewish extermination.

In 1947, the conflict spiralled out of all control, which resulted in Britain washing its hands of the region and handing over the problem to the United Nations. The UN drafted a plan to divide the territory into two states. The one that was to be ‘given’ to the Arabs consisted of just 43 per cent of the land despite the fact that they made up 69 per cent of the population and owned 92 per cent of the land. The UN allocated a disproportionate 56 per cent of the region to the Jewish population which, at that time, was just 31 per cent of the total population and owned 8 per cent of the land. The Jewish population was to be given the most fertile land.

At this stage Zionists started to occupy the large Palestinian cities. The 1948 war entailed a planned expulsion and genocide of Palestinians. Some 300,000 Palestinians were expelled while many fled. After Israel declared itself a state, Arab soldiers from neighbouring countries were sent in but were still outnumbered by the 90,000-strong Israeli forces. The new Israeli state encompassed more than 78 per cent of Palestine, with the Gaza Strip coming under Egyptian control and the West Bank under Jordanian control. Over 700,000 Palestinians became refugees overnight. Another war broke out in 1967 in which Israel occupied the remainder of Palestine, most notably the Gaza Strip and West Bank, displacing over 400,000 Palestinians in the process.
The Israeli theft of Palestinian land continued unabated whilst the Arab nations support for Palestinians was merely vocal.

INTIFADA
Palestinians responded with resistance through intifadas, literally ‘shaking offs’. The first intifada took place between December 1987 and December 1993. The initial intifada petered out at the end of 1993. The next seven years witnessed the Oslo Peace Process between Palestinians and Israelis. However, despite these peace efforts, the Palestinian plight deteriorated. The number of Jewish settlers doubled to 400,000.

In 2000, the Israelis ‘offered’ Palestinians 95 per cent of the West Bank, but this has been likened to a prison analogy whereby the prisoners make up 95 per cent of the prison but the real power lies with the prison officers and governor (i.e. the remaining 5 per cent in control), in this case the Israeli Government. In January 2006, Hamas won enough votes to form a majority government but have never been recognised by the two great ‘champions of democracy’, namely the United States and Israel.

Israel enjoys virtual international immunity due to its close relationship with the US. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which is the pro-Israel lobby on Capitol Hill, has donated almost $44m since 1978 to candidates who vote favourably towards them in Congress. The US funds Israel to the tune of $7m per day, with Israel receiving one-third of the total aid the US gives on an annual basis. Although Israel is currently the most persistent and extensive violator of UN Security Council resolutions, the US has used its veto no less than 40 times to defend Israeli breeches of these resolutions. In fact, according to international law, the entire Israeli occupation is illegal, and the Israeli state continues to fly in the face of the Fourth Geneva Convention which stipulates against constructing settlements, building illegal roads and impoverishing people through economic damage. Put simply, Israel could not continue violating human rights and oppressing the Palestinian people without the financial and political support from the US.

ISRAEL’S MILITARY MIGHT
Israel is one of the most militarily powerful and consistent abusers of human rights on the planet. It is the fifth largest nuclear power in the world, possessing around 250 warheads. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have nearly 4,000 Merkava tanks and over 360 F-16 fighter jets, second only to the US, not to mention their Apache attack helicopters, powerful navy fleet and cluster bombs readily at their disposal. With this sheer military might, Israel continues to squeeze the Palestinians on a daily basis, constantly curtailing their freedom of movement through a myriad of IDF checkpoints and indiscriminately murdering them at any given opportunity. One in two Palestinians are unemployed with three quarters living in poverty, according to the World Bank.

Although Israel unilaterally withdrew its 8,500 settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005 under Ariel Sharon’s government, the following year it increased its settlers by 12,000 in the West Bank. Israel further strengthened their illegal stranglehold on the region with the construction of the infamous ‘separation wall’. Standing at twice the height of the Berlin Wall and meandering four times longer, it tears through villages separating people from their farms, children from their schools and patients from hospitals. It was constructed as a part of Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land rather than the pretext of aiding Israeli security. Regrettably, the oppressed have become the oppressors.

For news on activities supporting the people of Gaza and Palestine, log on to the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign website at www.ipsc.ie

Fidel - the defiant survivor

2007 marked the 40th anniversary of the death of Che Guevara, icon of the Cuban revolution and an inspiration to freedom fighters across the globe. The anniversary occurred at a time when Che’s comrade in arms and leader of the Cuban revolution President Fidel Castro, was recovering from illness and had transferred responsibilities to the country’s First Vice-President, younger brother Raúl Castro.

SEÁN Ó FLOINN looks back at the fascinating career of Cuba’s defiant 81-year-old leader who has survived nine US administrations, several of which have attempted to kill him.

Since spearheading the Cuban revolution to triumph in 1959, Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz has become the most controversial political leader of our time. He has remained a constant thorn in the side of the United States and been a champion of the poor and the oppressed throughout the world. He has outlived nine US presidents and though currently ill, the longevity of Fidel’s life has received much attention. When presented with a Galapagos turtle whose average life expectancy was 150 years, Fidel retorted “That is the problem with pets, you become attached to them and then they die”.

Fidel was born on a sugar plantation in the Holguín province in Cuba in 1926 to a servant mother and wealthy father. Rebellious from a young age he helped organise a workers’ strike on his father’s plantation in his early teens. After coming to power he led by example and nationalised his parents’ sizeable plantation as part of agrarian land reform.

A bright student excelling at sports, he became involved in politics in the forties, joining Partido Ortodoxo (the Orthodox Party) aspiring to free Cuba from the imperialist chains of the United States and introduce social reform. Fidel married twice, having six sons and a daughter.

In 1950 he graduated as a lawyer and represented the underprivileged. As most of his clients could not afford to pay him, he was constantly short of money. Fidel’s frustration at the inequalities that existed in Cuban society grew.

In 1952 Fidel decided to contest an upcoming election, which his party were likely to win. However, General Fulgencio Batista had other plans for Cuba and seized power in a coup, subsequently cancelling all elections. Batista, backed by the US, ruthlessly, crushed dissent. Fidel became convinced that armed revolution was the only way to free Cuba. On 26 July 1953 he led over 100 men and women in an attack on the Moncada Army Barracks. The plan to overthrow Batista failed and around half the rebels were killed. Fidel was imprisoned and sentenced to 15 years, by chance avoiding execution. Released two years later as a result of an amnesty, he immediately began to prepare the ground for the Cuban revolution, using Mexico as his base. Movimiento 26 de Julio was born. It was here that Fidel first met Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, who was to have a profound impact on his political views.

Fidel and 82 other revolutionaries set sail for Cuba in 1956. On reaching the Carribean island they were ambushed by Batista’s forces. Only a fraction survived. Taking to the Sierra Maestra mountains, they set about spreading the revolution and redistributed land among the peasants. After three long years of struggle the Cuban revolutionaries overthrew Batista, who fled to the Dominican Republic.

Cuba, for so long a den for the American Mafia and wealthy capitalists, was to change irrevocably. The doors of brothels, casinos and seedy night-clubs were shut and radical new reforms were announced. The socialists implemented land redistributions, nationalised companies, expropriated properties from major US corporations, undertook a massive literacy crusade and abolished separate facilities for Blacks and Whites.

In 1960 Fidel signed an agreement to purchase oil from the Soviet Union. When US-owned refineries refused to process it they were nationalised. Relations between the US and Cuba became frosty. Fidel went on to sign a variety of economic and military agreements with Soviet leader Khrushchev. The new Cuban government was extremely popular with the poor but over one million of the middle-classes and privileged fled to Miami, Florida which is still used as a base in plotting against Fidel.

In April 1961, the US supported a 1,400 strong armed force of Cuban exiles to invade the island. Commonly referred to as the Bay of Pigs, the adventure was a disaster. The invaders proved no match for Fidel’s army.

Some months later Fidel publicly declared his adherence to Marxism-Leninism and stated that Cuba was following a Communist path. In early 1962 the US administration imposed an economic embargo on Cuba, which to this day drastically curtails the rights of American businesses and their subsidiaries from trading with Cuba and means virtual travel ban for Americans wishing to visit the island. That same year the Cold War between the US and USSR nearly exploded in nuclear conflict with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Khruschev, with Fidel’s blessing, placed nuclear missiles on Cuban soil to deter the US from another invasion of the island. The world’s two superpowers were on the brink of a cataclysmic confrontation but after tense negotiations the warheads were eventually removed.

Successive US governments have attempted to remove Castro from power. It is estimated that Fidel has been the subject of 638 assassination attempts. In 1960 the CIA offered the Mafia $150,000 to kill Fidel. There have also been anecdotes of exploding cigars, poisonous food and even a plan to contaminate Fidel’s body to make his beard fall out. Fidel has previously remarked that he would win the gold medal if surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event.

Arguably the toughest challenge Fidel and Cuba have faced came with the destruction of the USSR. By 1991 Cuba’s economy had virtually collapsed, as eighty-five per cent of its trade had been with the USSR. In 1994 the ‘Special Period’ was announced as Cubans had to endure harsh food and medical supply shortages to maintain the socialist revolution. In addition with this economic catastrophe, the US embargo tightened the noose around Cuba’s neck. However Fidel introduced brave measures and the island looked to tourism to survive.

The achievements of the Cuban revolution have been remarkable. Cuba was transformed from a playground for wealthy Americans to exploit to an island that guarantees all its citizens basic requirements of cheap food, the right to employment, social security protections and free comprehensive healthcare and education. There is one doctor per 165 inhabitants, boasting the best doctor-patient ratio in the world. The World Health Organisation recognises the Cuban health care system as one of the best in the world, which is quite an achievement as the whole budget for the system is equal to that of Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital.

On 31 July last year Fidel transferred his responsibilities to his younger brother Raúl, after undergoing intestinal surgery for a problematic digestive disease. Fidel’s once dominant frame may be more frail, his beard may be greyer, his voice may be weaker, but his revolutionary message remains strong. Fidel is akin to a socialist David who has stood up to a capitalist Goliath just 90 miles off his coast.