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In the years leading up to Hurricane Katrina, local officials had become accustomed to seeing their requests for funding for levee and flood control projects routinely slashed. A large-scale flood control study from years ago was never acted upon due to lack of funding. In the year when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, local officials asked for $78 million in funds for drainage and flood control work, only to see President Bush cut that to $30 million. Congress in turn added a mere $6.5 million to that amount. The shortfall was equivalent to about five hours of military occupation in Iraq.
From the excellent ‘Strange Liberators’ by Gregory Elich. I’ve just finished reading it – will do a review here some time soon. In the meantime, I’d recommend picking up a copy (loads of useful research on Iraq, Korea, Zimbabwe, Yugoslavia and the environment).
Amazon UK
Amazon US
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On Saturday 22 November 2008, 1-4.30pm, there will be a study meeting on Mao Zedong’s class works ‘On Practice’ and ‘On Contradiction’. There will be a presentation by Rob Rodgers (CPGB-ML) followed by discussion.
Venue:
Shaheed Udham Singh Welfare Centre
346 Soho Road
Handsworth
Birmingham
B21 9QL
Preparatory reading:
Mao Zedong: On Practice
Mao Zedong: On Contradiction
“The dialectical world outlook emerged in ancient times both in China and in Europe. Ancient dialectics, however, had a somewhat spontaneous and naive character; in the social and historical conditions then prevailing, it was not yet able to form a theoretical system, hence it could not fully explain the world and was supplanted by metaphysics. The famous German philosopher Hegel, who lived in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, made most important contributions to dialectics, but his dialectics was idealist. It was not until Marx and Engels, the great protagonists of the proletarian movement, had synthesized the positive achievements in the history of human knowledge and, in particular, critically absorbed the rational elements of Hegelian dialectics and created the great theory of dialectical and historical materialism that an unprecedented revolution occurred in the history of human knowledge. This theory was further developed by Lenin and Stalin. As soon as it spread to China, it wrought tremendous changes in the world of Chinese thought.” On Contradiction
If you are planning to attend, please contact Paul.
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Congratulations to Venezuela, which yesterday launched its first satellite. The Venezuelan government plans to use satellite technology to improve the standard of living of the working class and peasantry of Venezuela – a stark contrast from the imperialist countries, where scientific research is most often used solely for generating private profit.
Article from Venezuela Analysis
Venezuela’s Satellite Simon Bolivar, also known as Venesat-1, was launched wednesday at 12:25 pm Venezuelan time, from Xichang, China. It will be used to improve telecommunications and facilitate social and education projects.
One of the main aims of the satellite is to bring communication, medicine, and education services to the most isolated communities.
“We want the entire country, the population in its entirety, to have access to communication and Internet,” said Gladys Maggi, vice minister of Development in Science and Technology.
The satellite should broaden the transmission of radio and TV education and cultural channels, support internet connectivity in areas currently without access, bringing it to infocenters (government internet centres), CBIT (Bolivarian centres of computing and telematics), and libraries.
Satellite Education
A project called Cyber Robinson, which aims to extend the National Experimental University Simon Rodriguez, will use the satellite and a national fiber optic grid to “bring education to the roofs and windows of all Venezuelans,” as the director of the University, Manuel Marina, said on Tuesday.
“[The project] will enable us to talk of a university for every Venezuelan.”
It forms part of a bigger project, Simon of the People, which aims to see universities in all community spaces, so that education can be a constant element of growth and individual and community development, he explained.
Medicine will be brought to isolated communities using the satellite for transmitting and receiving radiographs, ultrasounds, mammograms, and so on.
South American Unity
Luis Marcano, vice minister of Planning of Science and Technology said that the satellite is a powerful element that will help strengthen the unity of Latin America.
“Its range will be from the north of the Caribbean down to the south of America, where we will integrate various nations in telecommunications, television images, radio sounds, and transmission of voice and information,” he explained.
Such countries will need receptors and agreements with Venezuela in order to use the satellite.
“We have guaranteed not just internal communication but also between brother peoples in real time and without them having to pay for foreign satellite services,” said Rodolfo Navarro from the Bolivarian Agency for Spatial Activities.
After the successful launch of the satellite, the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, declared that the satellite is a “Socialist satellite, to construct socialism within Venezuela and to cooperate with other peoples, to stimulate our systems of solidarity, cooperation and integration.”
The commander of the Air Base Capitán Manuel Rios, Antonio José Nuñez, emphasized that the satellite won’t be used for military activity.
However, it will be used for territorial observation, in order to plan and make decisions, improve agricultural development, climate management, and for protection of biodiversity.
Technological Achievement
Venezuela will be the fourth Spanish speaking country with its own satellite, which Maggi, said, “brings [Venezuela] closer to technological sovereignty and independence as well as being an unprecedented event in Venezuela’s history.”
Nuris Orihuela, minister for Science and Technology said that imperialist countries believe everyone should conform to their technology, but “We are not accepting the imposition of technology [which would make us] rely on their manufacturers and their knowledge.”
The project has cost over $406 million, which includes the launching rocket, two land stations and the television port, where the stations were constructed by Venezuela with Chinese technology.
The satellite itself has a life of 15 years and was constructed by the Chinese Academy of Spatial Technology and will arrive in its assigned orbit within 5 to 10 days.
Following its arrival in orbit, 36,500 kilometers from earth, there will be a time of testing and on December 20 CANTV (National incorporated telephone company of Venezuela) will receive the satellite services and will be the institution to administer its use.
The satellite is in a geo-stationary orbit, meaning that it orbits at the same speed of earth, therefore always directly above the same point. This orbit originally belonged to Uruguay, and through an agreement, Venezuela has arranged to use it, with Uruguay enjoying up to 10% of the communicational capacity of the satellite.
US Meddling
At the launch, Chavez accused the United States government of trying to thwart the project, explaining that a few hours ago they had requested the Chinese government suspend the launch because it was necessary to check the satellite due to a modification that would generate disturbance.
Chavez called it ridiculous and compared it to the time the US tried to stop an Iranian factory of bicycles in Venezuela, saying it was a uranium exportation project.
The satellite launch is the result of an agreement of Venezuela-China cooperation signed on November 1, 2005, which also included the transfer of knowledge about the operation of the satellite from Chinese to Venezuelan professionals.
China has been doing such launches since 1987 and so far has done 28 for other countries.
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New leaflet from the CPGB-ML. Download PDF.
The convulsions that we are witnessing in the world financial system are the distressing symptoms, the death throes, of the capitalist system of organising human society.
We stand at a veritable milestone in human history because, with the death of capitalism, the whole era in which human society has been divided into exploiters and exploited, with one class owning the important means of production, while another can only live by serving those rulers, will finally end.
Although this division of human society into ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ was always inequitable, nevertheless by freeing up sections of humanity from the daily grind of productive labour, class society historically made possible the development of science, which in turn led to huge technological and cultural advances that would not otherwise have been possible.
In the last 400 years, spurred on by the laws of capitalist competition, capitalists have enabled humanity to make gigantic advances within a very short space of time. These same laws of capitalist competition, however, have a down side that, today, far outweighs any benefits capitalism is still able to confer.
At the heart of the system is the contradiction that, to win the battle of competition, the capitalists need to cut wages and benefits to the working masses as much as possible, while producing and selling ever more goods at ever lower cost.
The relatively impoverished working masses, however, are unable to buy all these goods, resulting in a crisis of overproduction, the bankruptcy and closure of thousands of businesses, massive redundancies and reduced wages for those still in work, all of which aggravate the crisis of overproduction.
The present financial crisis has been triggered by the failure of financial institutions that tried to counter the impoverishment of the masses by lending them money they could never repay. This manoeuvre disguised the crisis of overproduction for many years, but now that the device has failed, the crisis is worse than ever.
Those of us who live in imperialist countries such as Britain have, until now, been relatively sheltered from the effect of the worldwide crisis of overproduction. Through their control of the economies of the oppressed countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America, the imperialists have been able to confine the worst effects of the crisis to those places, so people there have suffered to a far greater extent than those in Britain.
Now, however, our relative immunity is about to end, and it seems probable that the working masses of Britain, Europe, the US and Japan are to be plunged within a few years into third-world misery.
The present crisis is going to wipe out the purchasing power of the working masses in many ways. Many jobs will go (starting with the thousands of banking workers already redundant, which will lead to job losses among people who relied on their business, such as estate agents, solicitors, legal secretaries, coffee-shop workers, etc); the elderly will lose large chunks of their pensions; public spending and public-sector wages will be slashed to provide the funds for bank bailouts, etc, etc.
The result will be more failing capitalist enterprises, more redundancies, lower purchasing power and deeper crisis.
Even before the crisis, world poverty had been causing the untimely deaths of 13 million children aged under 5 every year. Medical advances recently reduced that number to 10 million, but the present financial crisis will see to it that the numbers are pushed up again.
Besides mass poverty and insecurity, capitalism also brings war, as the capitalist powers resort to force to try to resolve their problems. The planet has not been free of war since capitalism developed, and these wars are increasingly all-encompassing and vicious. US and European capitalists need to maintain control over middle eastern oil and supply routes, hence the criminal wars in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan.
It should be obvious, therefore, that capitalism, and, indeed, class society, has outlived its usefulness. The longer working people allow capitalism to linger on, the more we will suffer.
That is why those who profit from the system, in particular the bourgeoisie (those multibillionaires who control the corporations and whose interests the governments of the various western imperialist countries represent), are trying to convince the working masses that there is nothing wrong with capitalism, the only problem being the greed of a few ‘fat cats’.
But this is like trying to blame blowflies and maggots for the rotten flesh off which they are feeding. Our attention, however, needs to be focussed on getting rid of the stinking corpse of the capitalist system itself.
The working masses must take possession of all means of production (factories, machines, raw materials, etc) now owned by the bourgeoisie, in order to be able to produce to meet the needs of the people, replacing the current system, whereby even the most basic necessities of life are only produced and/or distributed if there is a profit to be made.
The working class must smash the bourgeois state machine that is in place to prevent them challenging capitalist relations of production and must substitute its own state that will stifle all attempts to restore the right of the old order to return to continue its spreading of misery, war and destitution. This is the only way out of the mists of darkness.
In this crisis, trade unionists are going to have to battle hard to protect jobs, conditions, pensions and public services. We will be told that there is no money, but this has been shown up for the joke it is in the light of the billions that are so quickly found to save banks and, for that matter, to buy bombs.
While workers are denied pay rises in line with inflation; while corpses lie unburied because the government is too ‘strapped for cash’ to hand over funeral entitlements to bereaved families; while the elderly freeze to death unable to afford fuel even to fill a hot water bottle; while prisons fill up with innocent people because the government has reduced legal aid to such an extent that the poor no longer have in practice the right to a defence, millions are found to pay off the lackeys of the bourgeoisie who are losing their lucrative posts because the banks they were managing have collapsed.
Working people must fight tooth and nail to preserve a decent living for themselves: they have created sufficient wealth for everybody to be able to live well. The financial crisis is nothing to do with them. If capitalism will not produce or distribute because there’s no profit to be made, then the working class and its trade unions must step into the breach to minimise the suffering that the ills of capitalism are able to cause to the working people
By spreading understanding about this crisis among the working masses, the CPGB-ML seeks to assist in the process of empowering them to fulfil their historic task of killing off capitalism for once and for all and building a new socialist society and bright future for future generations, free of war and free of want.
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From Juventud Rebelde
CARACAS.— Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez spoke at the third day of the eighth World Meeting of Intellectuals and Artists in Defense of Humanity, and at the General Assembly of the World Forum for Alternatives, both taking place in Venezuela.
The meetings are dealing with political, economic, social and cultural issues related to the transition to socialism.
“The spectre of socialism,” said Chávez, “haunts Latin America, through our towns, fields and streets. But this ethereal phenomena urgently demands incarnation.” He added, “We are called upon to create those conditions within a process of the comprehensive integration of ideology, culture, society, politics and economy. In that way, socialism will not only become incarnated and grow roots, but also will be able to consolidate and endure.”
Speaking of this phantom, Chávez said that he was confident that “we can impel that incarnation, that revolutionary wave that is arising in the region.”
As an example, he cited three of the region’s new presidents: Ecuadorian head of state Rafael Correa, who is promoting an anti-neo-liberal constitution and a socialist realignment in his country; Bolivian President Evo Morales, who is struggling against imperialism and oligarchy; and Fernando Lugo, who was recently elected as the president of Paraguay.
Chávez said that it was time to realize that socialism is the path to follow. “At a time when humanity is facing a chaotic situation due to the attempts made by Bush and his henchmen to save capitalism from death, we have to take one of the many paths that socialism opens before us, always adapting these choices to our circumstances and the reality of each country and region, so that it is born as our socialism, home-grown socialism.”
Chávez used Cuba as an example, praising its people, its historic leaders and especially Commander-in-chief Fidel Castro. “When the left remained silent,” Chávez noted, “only the Cuban Revolution survived, and it is now the star leading us.”
“In Venezuela,” he said, “we’re constantly experimenting, because there are no formulas, and creating socialism is a heroic deed. We’re living in a period of transition, with strengths and weaknesses. There’s a previous experience, but this is an ongoing process, a process of searching. For socialism to reach the point of no return and to start to consolidate, we must give a boost to politics, economy, culture and society in a comprehensive way.”
In conclusion, Chávez invited the intellectuals and artists gathered at the ALBA Caracas Hotel to support this effort with their thoughts and action. “As Fidel said, there is a financial crisis, an economic, ecological, food and energy crisis. Actually, it is a series of crises, but as (Castro) said, the sharpest of them all is the ideological crisis,” Chavéz said.
“That is the objective of this meeting, to contribute with ideas and suggestions to make the socialist alternative feasible. Let’s fight together for the overthrow of imperialism, the deconstructing the capitalist model. Let’s be the buriers of capitalism and let’s open the path to socialism, for the wellbeing of humanity,” he said.
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A hundred and sixty years ago, Marx and Engels pointed out the seemingly incomprehensible situation whereby phenomenal affluence gives way to insufferable poverty.
“In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity – the epidemic of overproduction. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. And why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce.”
Foward to socialism!
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You will find our main party site at www.cpgb-ml.org.
