IV434 - March 2011

PDF of IV434
PDF of IV434 supplement

The largest political demonstration in Britain in a decade happened in London on March 26th. Estimate range from 250 000 to 400 000 people taking part in the March for the Alternative organised by the national union federation, the Trades Union Congress (TUC). Coming almost a full year after the election of a Conservative Liberal Democrat coalition which has been clear right from the start about its determination to cut public spending by £81bn you can’t accuse the TUC of being hasty.

On Wednesday 23rd March the Portuguese Prime Minister, Socialist Party member Jose Socrates, resigned after opposition parties overwhelmingly rejected his last-ditch round of austerity measures aimed at preventing the Portuguese economy, considered the weakest in the eurozone, from plunging into chaos. All the opposition parties united to defeat the government’s proposals in a parliamentary vote. The question now is what will be proposed on the forthcoming elections, to be held in May or June. A proposal for a broad Socialist Party (PS) -Social Democratic Party (PSD) (centre-right) coalition is being discussed. Francisco Louçã, national spokesperson for the Bloco de Esquerda (Left Bloc) stated “The solution for the country is not to put together the PS and PSD to implement IMF policies and impoverish workers, pensioners and casualised youth," and said that elections in such conditons would "defraud the electors".

The debt in the North, i.e. in the most industrialized countries, [1] began to reach high levels in the 1980s. And with reason. Following the first oil crisis and the 1973-1975 economic crisis, governments tried giving a Keynesian boost to the economy and resorted to borrowing. Debt servicing then soared when the US Federal Reserve suddenly raised interest rates (October 1979) thus marking a break from the past 46 years of Keynesian policy initiated in 1933 during Franklin Roosevelt’s first term.

Unlike France, Japan is not a military nuclear power, and its population suffered the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - the most serious of war crimes. However, in the post-war period, it has been like France the victim of a pro-nuclear consensus among the elites that has marginalized and prohibited any form of democratic choice over the issue. Japan has, like France, been held hostage by the nuclear industry.

Stieg Larsson is world famous as a result of his “Millennium series” of crime novels, all published since his death in 2004. His less known political history is sketched here by HÃ¥kan Blomqvist, editor of the Swedish revolutionary socialist paper Internationalen from 1979-1999.

On March 23, at Shadman Chouck in Lahore, the place where Bhagat Singh was hanged on 23 March 1931, several groups including Labour Party Pakistan organized a vigil. There were a good number of political activists present on the occasion. Lok Rahs organized a street theater on the spot. Later on in the night, we were joined by our Indian friends who drove straight from Islamabad to Shadman Chouck.

Lying as it does at the meeting point of four tectonic plates, the Japanese archipelago is no stranger to natural disasters. Without being able to predict the date, Japanese seismologists knew that a major earthquake threatened the coast of Miyagi and Ibaraki Prefecture. It happened on March 11.

Under the leadership of Sergio Marchionne, the FIAT group has declared war on its workers. They acquired Chrysler in the United States - without spending a penny and benefiting from billions of dollars in subsidies from the Obama government - and obtained the capitulation without a fight of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) union, which undertook not to strike until 2015. The UAW also accepted a reduction of bank holidays, the non-payment of overtime and a decrease in medical assistance for pensioners.

“The only explanation I can offer is that there appears to be a renewed interest in the recent history of the unions in Britain as people grapple with the problem of mobilising the unions against the cuts onslaught which has been launched by today’s coalition government.“