By Gary Tedman
I found this, I think, brilliant term (to 'endarken', implying the opposite to enlighten, to confuse and obfuscate) mentioned by the blogger 'suav' on a BBC blog. The writer says it was from Polish youth.
The principles of 'endarkenment' are working well in the Press these days while they try hard to disassociate the current sovereign debt crisis (Greece and so on) from the earlier banking crisis (Lehman collapse), whilst constantly trying to highlight the 'recovery', but the fact that the latter crisis developed from out of the former will not go away, it is history and it shapes events anyway.
From an article in the Independent online edition "Sean O'Grady: Greece is a problem – but Spain could destroy the euro" Friday, 30 April 2010, a useful timeline of the current shenanigans is given:
See:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/sean-ogrady-greece-is-a-problem-ndash-but-spain-could-destroy-the-euro-1958682.html
"2 May IMF talks in Athens with Greek officials end
3-6 May French parliament expected to approve rescue package
3-10 May IMF board, EU Commission have to formally approve the deal
6-7 May Greek parliament votes on new three-year austerity programme
6-10 May German Bundestag expected to endorse the deal, the last of those required to, the Netherlands and Luxembourg already having given tacit approval
9 May Key elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state
10 May European summit formally endorses the deal
19 May Next repayment of Greek debt; €8.5bn must be in place if Greece wants to avoid default
31 May €355m debt repayment due
Summer/autumn 2010 Threat of widespread strikes and unrest in Greece at harshness of deal; risk of political instability or that the government might fall
29 September Further €180m debt repayment due
2011 Greece needs to refinance the equivalent of 18 per cent of its GDP, or €23bn, with almost €9bn due on 20 March 2011. Annual deficit down to 9 per cent of GDP. Return to world growth should help
2012 Annual deficit down to 3 per cent of GDP by year end"
From http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/sean-ogrady-greece-is-a-problem-ndash-but-spain-could-destroy-the-euro-1958682.html
To illuminate this from NYTimes "As Greek Drama Plays Out, Where Is Europe?", Published: April 29, 2010, Steven Erlanger writes:
from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/world/europe/30europe.html?hp
“The fact that a German regional election can play such a disproportionate role in messing up efforts to contain what was a much smaller crisis several months ago is astonishing,”
Mr. Kirkegaard said. And the fact that there will be no European Union summit meeting until May 10, after the German elections, “is so blatantly political,” he said.
“This is no way for an E.U. that has to contain an accelerating crisis and market panic to behave,” Mr. Kirkegaard said.
"...the Lisbon Treaty that created Mr. Van Rompuy’s position, and which was intended to make the enlarged European Union more agile and coherent, deliberately left out powers for coordinating fiscal policies, which are the fiercely guarded prerogative of the separate nations. Even so, countries like Germany can only blame themselves for not insisting on realistic European oversight of Greek statistics, which were widely believed to be false for two decades."
(…)
“Questions are asked to nations, not to the E.U. — but nations cannot deal with this problem alone,” said Dominique Reynié, director of the Foundation for Political Innovation and a political scientist at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris.
“The silence of the E.U. and its institutions has become deafening. It is incapable of demonstrating that an entity called Europe exists. This is a situation that cannot go on.”
"...The European Union “seems to be in a state of permanent self-promotion,” he said. “But it cannot ask its voters to relinquish part of their nations’ sovereignty and then not answer the call when there’s a problem.”…."
from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/world/europe/30europe.html?hp
Well… it has… so far; Merkel is, or was, trying still to put off any vote to ratify a loan in Germany until May 10 after the elections there, when it 'is expected' to be agreed by the whole Bundestag, all of whom are (weirdly, given they are still 'expected' to agree it) voicing strong anti-bail-out sentiments, and thus making her job rather more difficult. This would, if achieved, exculpate her party from sole responsibility for dumping the crisis onto the backs of German workers again.
Meanwhile neither the Greek nor the German working people want a bail out. They didn't cause the crisis.
Yes, the Greek and German people agree, they don't want a bail out which will just make them suffer more and help make the bankers and bourgeoisie even more wealthy (yet again). But the politicians, they want a bail out and don't want it all at the same time. The one's who stand to lose from a default want the bail out, but the others who want the euro low for exports want the falling euro, they also fear more for their personal political position. If both lots look at the future though, they see whole rounds of bail outs being necessary, including very probably for themselves, but will there be any money left in the kitty after a few have gone to the wall? Unlikely. But they won't worry about the future much.
Thus the current 'solution' is letting things slide, the anarchy of the market. And the longer the politicians dither about the loan the higher its price becomes and the more serious the social consequences of 'contagion', but it doesn't matter to these politicians because they know they won't be paying the price anyway, this will be taken on by the working classes of Europe, who they seek to be elected by (!), thus what matters to them is their own political futures. After all, the founding members of the EU wanted Greece on board for the benefits, to collude and trade with, not for its social problems, not to share responsibility for looking after the people who they are meant to represent, just for swapping them as a cheap labour force.
At the moment the world is being led by credit rating agencies, big investment banks, and big speculators (this is almost always the case in capitalism, but it is now very visible in the crisis). The main credit rating agencies are anointed by the SEC, based in New York they are private financial corporations that wield a lot of power and influence and are a part of the problem, they are not independent and 'objective' as is often made out, but have vested interests. Their judgements are as political as they are economic. The SEC was once run by Bernie Madoff, now in prison, and that just about sums up their approach to regulating finance. Of course they got the ratings wrong in the crisis (giving top ratings to bankers toxic CDSs), but that isn't the point - it just proves the politics of it. Most 'economists' are paid to get it wrong in the 'right way' for the ruling class, they are perhaps one of the last academic professions to still be in this backward condition of anti-science.
The opinions, views, thoughts, and ramblings of editors of PoliticalAffairs.net – and other stuff worth reading or viewing.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Who Needs Lindsey Graham?
Thomas Riggins
Monday’s NEW YORK TIMES reports that democrats have been “galvanized” to do something about immigration reform after Arizona put in place a new racist anti-immmigrant policy that not only profiles Hispanics and other nonwhites but gives a new meaning to the fundamentalist Xtian’s and red blooded American teabager’s notion of “love thy neighbor.” [NYT 2-26-2010 “Democrats Unite on Finance Bill, Pressuring G.O.P. by David M. Herszenhorn].
South Carolina Republican Sen. Graham seems outraged that the Dems want to do something to curb the incipient fascism raging amongst his race hating Republican cohorts in Arizona. So he has dropped out of cosponsoring a bill on climate change. Graham, Lieberman and Kerry were jointly proposing a bill to deal with the fact that global warming is threatening the very existence of life on our planet.
Well, it is a Southern virtue to prefer “Death Before Dishonor” and it is evidently a dishonor to be sympathetic to undocumented workers who have lost their jobs and incomes as a result of NAFTA and are trying to survive by finding work in Arizona and other states stolen from Mexico in a war of aggression. Yes, let the whole. world perish rather than share the sweet land of liberty with too many huddled masses yearning to be free.
Anyway, THE NATION [5-3-2010] says the Kerry-Lieberman-Graham Bill stinks and advocates its defeat. It basically is a bill favoring not the Earth but the coal and gas industries, nuclear power and off shore drilling ( President Obama came out for this but since a big rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico and is spreading oil all over the place he may have come to his senses). The bill would also “gut” the Environmental Protection Agency of regulatory power. In other words it’s a Profits Before People and To Hell With the Planet bill.
So if Graham has abandoned it, good riddance to bag baggage. The people don’t need Graham. They don’t need Liberian either. And, Kerry-- what is he doing teaming up with a couple of Troglodytes? Even so-called “liberals”, when push comes to shove, put their mouths where imperialism’s money is. Come on John, maintain the illusion!
Monday’s NEW YORK TIMES reports that democrats have been “galvanized” to do something about immigration reform after Arizona put in place a new racist anti-immmigrant policy that not only profiles Hispanics and other nonwhites but gives a new meaning to the fundamentalist Xtian’s and red blooded American teabager’s notion of “love thy neighbor.” [NYT 2-26-2010 “Democrats Unite on Finance Bill, Pressuring G.O.P. by David M. Herszenhorn].
South Carolina Republican Sen. Graham seems outraged that the Dems want to do something to curb the incipient fascism raging amongst his race hating Republican cohorts in Arizona. So he has dropped out of cosponsoring a bill on climate change. Graham, Lieberman and Kerry were jointly proposing a bill to deal with the fact that global warming is threatening the very existence of life on our planet.
Well, it is a Southern virtue to prefer “Death Before Dishonor” and it is evidently a dishonor to be sympathetic to undocumented workers who have lost their jobs and incomes as a result of NAFTA and are trying to survive by finding work in Arizona and other states stolen from Mexico in a war of aggression. Yes, let the whole. world perish rather than share the sweet land of liberty with too many huddled masses yearning to be free.
Anyway, THE NATION [5-3-2010] says the Kerry-Lieberman-Graham Bill stinks and advocates its defeat. It basically is a bill favoring not the Earth but the coal and gas industries, nuclear power and off shore drilling ( President Obama came out for this but since a big rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico and is spreading oil all over the place he may have come to his senses). The bill would also “gut” the Environmental Protection Agency of regulatory power. In other words it’s a Profits Before People and To Hell With the Planet bill.
So if Graham has abandoned it, good riddance to bag baggage. The people don’t need Graham. They don’t need Liberian either. And, Kerry-- what is he doing teaming up with a couple of Troglodytes? Even so-called “liberals”, when push comes to shove, put their mouths where imperialism’s money is. Come on John, maintain the illusion!
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
EL MONSTROU
El Monstrou: Dread and Redemption in Mexico City
By John Ross
Nation Books, $28.95
Reviewed by Steve Bennett-- Express-News [reposted from mySA]
The Mexico City of the '50s, a pivotal period in its clamorous history, must have been one of those time-machine moments. Frida Kahlo was dead, and Jack Kerouac was writing verses that would become "Mexico City Blues." While Ernesto P. Uruchurtu, "a racist, xenophobic, puritanical tyrant" ruled as the mayoral "Iron Regent," Che Guevara's path crisscrossed with Fidel Castro's — all to the soundtrack of Perez Prado's infectious "Mambo No. 5."
"As far as I can tell, Uruchurtu was the first to use the term monstruo in connection with Mexico City, although the metaphor was contemplated as far back as Aztec mythology," says journalist John Ross, whose new book titled "El Monstruo: Dread and Redemption in Mexico City" offers a unique "street-level" view of the megalopolis from its primal roots to the present.
"There are references in the literature to the city as a kind of animal. But you really couldn't talk about Mexico City as being a monster until Uruchurtu in the '50s. He was a real right-wing guy, but also a preservationist. And the second world war was instrumental in bringing people in from the countryside, to work in the factories. That period from, really, 1940 to 1960, that's when the city became much more of a monster."
Meticulously researched and imaginatively reported, "El Monstruo" is not your typical history book. No dry, crinkly prose here. As it does in Ross' journalism, Mexico erupts, like PopocatÈpetl, from the page.
Ross, who flew in to cover the 1985 earthquake and has lived in Room 102 of the Hotel Isabel — "my cave . . . in the heart of he old city" — ever since, has scored coups over the years for his work on the 1993 Zapatista rebellion and as a "human shield" early in the Iraq war. A winner of the American Book Award and the Upton Sinclair Prize, he is an old-school journalist for whom the status quo is to be viewed with mistrust, for whom the term "shoe leather" means beating the streets to tell the real story. Among the many voices in "El Monstruo" are cafÈ owners, cops and hotel porters.
"My perspective is from the bottom up, from the street," Ross said in a recent telephone interview. "And that's always been the way I've always written. I worked for years for the Pacific News Service (a nonprofit service known for writing from and about the margins of society), where the rule was you always began the story in the street and then worked it into the larger picture.
"Other books try to give you a picture of the city from the top down," he adds. "There's a lot of flyover."
The 71-year-old Ross has had "the privilege" to witness up close the major political and social upheavals of Mexico City over the past quarter century. He has had a ringside seat at the bar of a cafÈ called La Blanca, just off the ZÛcalo, where, he says, "I've eaten two meals a day for the past 25 years."
"Interspersed throughout the book, there are 15 interviews that I did right around the counter at La Blanca, which is a place where officials from city hall and the federal government intersect with the people from the markets and people that sell in the streets," Ross said. "It's where writers from the local newspapers come to talk with the Chilangos. So there's a lot of interchange there from different strata of society. It's a great cross-section."
Ross says "El Monstruo" has been "percolating for a long time."
"I walked in on the earthquake," he says. "From the earthquake came this kind of incubation of the rebirth of Mexican civil society. And that led to the elections in 1988 when Cardenas actually won Mexico City by, I think, 4-to1, and the left actually never let go. So I was part of that whole process in the city itself."
Mexico, Ross argues, "doesn't really register" in the U.S. media "unless it's drugs and drug violence."
"It's just that that is the story from Mexico," he says. "There's precious little understanding of what the political dynamic is in the country, what the economic situation is in the country or any of the inherent contradictions that are always part of the Mexican dynamic."
Living in a city that is referred to as El Monstruo is not easy, Ross concedes. But he loves it.
"Why do I live there? It's the place where the Aztecs arrived on this desolate island, where the eagle grasped the snake in the thorny arms of a nopal bush. That prophecy really has determined why people have lived in Mexico City down through the years. That's where the prophecy was, and that's what all of Mexico knew — that's where the power emanated from, and that's where tribute was paid.
"So, why do people stay there? Despite the eternal battles with the environment, with the lack of water, with the threat of earthquakes, with the traffic, with the poison air? I think it's because of that sense of power, that sense of being in the center of things."
By John Ross
Nation Books, $28.95
Reviewed by Steve Bennett-- Express-News [reposted from mySA]
The Mexico City of the '50s, a pivotal period in its clamorous history, must have been one of those time-machine moments. Frida Kahlo was dead, and Jack Kerouac was writing verses that would become "Mexico City Blues." While Ernesto P. Uruchurtu, "a racist, xenophobic, puritanical tyrant" ruled as the mayoral "Iron Regent," Che Guevara's path crisscrossed with Fidel Castro's — all to the soundtrack of Perez Prado's infectious "Mambo No. 5."
"As far as I can tell, Uruchurtu was the first to use the term monstruo in connection with Mexico City, although the metaphor was contemplated as far back as Aztec mythology," says journalist John Ross, whose new book titled "El Monstruo: Dread and Redemption in Mexico City" offers a unique "street-level" view of the megalopolis from its primal roots to the present.
"There are references in the literature to the city as a kind of animal. But you really couldn't talk about Mexico City as being a monster until Uruchurtu in the '50s. He was a real right-wing guy, but also a preservationist. And the second world war was instrumental in bringing people in from the countryside, to work in the factories. That period from, really, 1940 to 1960, that's when the city became much more of a monster."
Meticulously researched and imaginatively reported, "El Monstruo" is not your typical history book. No dry, crinkly prose here. As it does in Ross' journalism, Mexico erupts, like PopocatÈpetl, from the page.
Ross, who flew in to cover the 1985 earthquake and has lived in Room 102 of the Hotel Isabel — "my cave . . . in the heart of he old city" — ever since, has scored coups over the years for his work on the 1993 Zapatista rebellion and as a "human shield" early in the Iraq war. A winner of the American Book Award and the Upton Sinclair Prize, he is an old-school journalist for whom the status quo is to be viewed with mistrust, for whom the term "shoe leather" means beating the streets to tell the real story. Among the many voices in "El Monstruo" are cafÈ owners, cops and hotel porters.
"My perspective is from the bottom up, from the street," Ross said in a recent telephone interview. "And that's always been the way I've always written. I worked for years for the Pacific News Service (a nonprofit service known for writing from and about the margins of society), where the rule was you always began the story in the street and then worked it into the larger picture.
"Other books try to give you a picture of the city from the top down," he adds. "There's a lot of flyover."
The 71-year-old Ross has had "the privilege" to witness up close the major political and social upheavals of Mexico City over the past quarter century. He has had a ringside seat at the bar of a cafÈ called La Blanca, just off the ZÛcalo, where, he says, "I've eaten two meals a day for the past 25 years."
"Interspersed throughout the book, there are 15 interviews that I did right around the counter at La Blanca, which is a place where officials from city hall and the federal government intersect with the people from the markets and people that sell in the streets," Ross said. "It's where writers from the local newspapers come to talk with the Chilangos. So there's a lot of interchange there from different strata of society. It's a great cross-section."
Ross says "El Monstruo" has been "percolating for a long time."
"I walked in on the earthquake," he says. "From the earthquake came this kind of incubation of the rebirth of Mexican civil society. And that led to the elections in 1988 when Cardenas actually won Mexico City by, I think, 4-to1, and the left actually never let go. So I was part of that whole process in the city itself."
Mexico, Ross argues, "doesn't really register" in the U.S. media "unless it's drugs and drug violence."
"It's just that that is the story from Mexico," he says. "There's precious little understanding of what the political dynamic is in the country, what the economic situation is in the country or any of the inherent contradictions that are always part of the Mexican dynamic."
Living in a city that is referred to as El Monstruo is not easy, Ross concedes. But he loves it.
"Why do I live there? It's the place where the Aztecs arrived on this desolate island, where the eagle grasped the snake in the thorny arms of a nopal bush. That prophecy really has determined why people have lived in Mexico City down through the years. That's where the prophecy was, and that's what all of Mexico knew — that's where the power emanated from, and that's where tribute was paid.
"So, why do people stay there? Despite the eternal battles with the environment, with the lack of water, with the threat of earthquakes, with the traffic, with the poison air? I think it's because of that sense of power, that sense of being in the center of things."
Monday, April 26, 2010
500 Years On And This War Is Still Going Strong
Bows and arrows vs machine guns, good luck guys-- and Lulu is a progressive"!
ACTION ALERT PLEASE SHARE WIDELY!
Brazil's Proposed Belo Monte Dam Damns Amazonian Rainforests and Peoples
By Rainforest Portal, a project of Ecological Internet
April 25, 2010
TAKE ACTION HERE NOW:
http://www.rainforestportal.org/shared/alerts/send.aspx?id=brazil_xingu
The Brazilian government continues with plans to build the massive Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu River in the Amazon rainforest, despite massive domestic and international opposition. The 11.2 billion dollar dam will flood an estimated 500 square kilometers of the Amazon rainforest and threaten the survival of tens of thousands of indigenous and traditional peoples who depend on the Xingu River for their livelihoods. The Kayapó leader Raoni Metuktire, who gained international exposure touring the world with Sting, said indigenous men from the Xingu were preparing their bows and arrows in order to fight off the dam. "I think that today the war is about to start once more and the Indians will be forced to kill the white men again so they leave our lands alone.”
DISCUSS THIS ALERT:
http://www.rainforestportal.org/issues/
---
Please support Ecological Internet's campaigns to protect and restore old
forests at http://www.rainforestportal.org/shared/donate/
ACTION ALERT PLEASE SHARE WIDELY!
Brazil's Proposed Belo Monte Dam Damns Amazonian Rainforests and Peoples
By Rainforest Portal, a project of Ecological Internet
April 25, 2010
TAKE ACTION HERE NOW:
http://www.rainforestportal.org/shared/alerts/send.aspx?id=brazil_xingu
The Brazilian government continues with plans to build the massive Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu River in the Amazon rainforest, despite massive domestic and international opposition. The 11.2 billion dollar dam will flood an estimated 500 square kilometers of the Amazon rainforest and threaten the survival of tens of thousands of indigenous and traditional peoples who depend on the Xingu River for their livelihoods. The Kayapó leader Raoni Metuktire, who gained international exposure touring the world with Sting, said indigenous men from the Xingu were preparing their bows and arrows in order to fight off the dam. "I think that today the war is about to start once more and the Indians will be forced to kill the white men again so they leave our lands alone.”
DISCUSS THIS ALERT:
http://www.rainforestportal.org/issues/
---
Please support Ecological Internet's campaigns to protect and restore old
forests at http://www.rainforestportal.org/shared/donate/
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Lawmaker calls for Arizona boycott, governor signs draconian immigration bill
President Obama said the controversial anti-immigrant bill that passed Arizona's state legislature last week and is expected to be signed by its governor is "misguided." (The bill was signed by the governor late Friday afternoon, April 23.)
The president's remarks come days after hundreds of immigrant rights activists staged civil disobedience protests and vigils at Arizona's Capitol opposing the measure, which has drawn national attention.
The bill would make it a crime under state law to be in the country illegally and require local police to question people about their immigration status if there is a reason to suspect they are undocumented.
Critics of the measure say it would encourage racial profiling, lead to unwarranted arrests and greater distrust of local police in the Latino community that could translate into fear of reporting crimes.
Speaking at a naturalization ceremony for active duty service members on Friday in Washington, Obama said, "Our failure to act responsibly at the federal level will only open the door to irresponsibility by others."
The president referred to the recent efforts in Arizona, which he says "threaten to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and their communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe."
Obama said he has instructed his administration to examine the Arizona bill to see if it violates people's civil rights.
Friday, April 23, 2010
International Issues & U.S. Foreign Policy
World realignments, shifting balance of forces
Starting in the 1970s, and accelerating in the 1990s after the collapse of the USSR and the Eastern European socialist states, international capital led by U.S. imperialism embarked on a campaign to impose neoliberal policies at home and across the world - “free” trade which is really trade rigged in favor of the transnational corporations, privatization of the public sector to benefit transnational corporations and local oligarchies, slashing public services like education and health care, and deregulation of private sector activity, including banking and finance.
It is important to note that imperialist foreign and military policies are driven by the most powerful sectors of capitalism, including finance capital and the military-industrial-energy complex. These policies are in direct conflict with the interests of the working class worldwide.
This period also saw incredible new levels of global capitalist integration. With the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc no longer a world counterbalance to imperialism, finance capital felt free to roam the earth gobbling up resources and smashing resistance to its neoliberal policies.
In the emerging capitalist economies of Eastern Europe and in the developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, these policies led to massive national debt, denationalization of industries and wholesale elimination of essential social programs. The major exception was China which refused to follow the neoliberal directives of the World Bank etc. China, a socialist state and socialist-oriented economy but still a developing country, not only got through the Asian crisis relatively unharmed but also shows signs of strength in the current crisis. But many developing economies were pushed to the verge of collapse. The neoliberal policies also spurred massive new patterns of labor migration from the poor countries to the rich ones.
In Western Europe as well, leading capitalist countries adopted the same privatization and financialization policies. Now Europe, along with the U.S., is at the center of the global economic crisis, with countries like Iceland narrowly avoiding a complete economic breakdown.
Read the whole document here.
Starting in the 1970s, and accelerating in the 1990s after the collapse of the USSR and the Eastern European socialist states, international capital led by U.S. imperialism embarked on a campaign to impose neoliberal policies at home and across the world - “free” trade which is really trade rigged in favor of the transnational corporations, privatization of the public sector to benefit transnational corporations and local oligarchies, slashing public services like education and health care, and deregulation of private sector activity, including banking and finance.
It is important to note that imperialist foreign and military policies are driven by the most powerful sectors of capitalism, including finance capital and the military-industrial-energy complex. These policies are in direct conflict with the interests of the working class worldwide.
This period also saw incredible new levels of global capitalist integration. With the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc no longer a world counterbalance to imperialism, finance capital felt free to roam the earth gobbling up resources and smashing resistance to its neoliberal policies.
In the emerging capitalist economies of Eastern Europe and in the developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, these policies led to massive national debt, denationalization of industries and wholesale elimination of essential social programs. The major exception was China which refused to follow the neoliberal directives of the World Bank etc. China, a socialist state and socialist-oriented economy but still a developing country, not only got through the Asian crisis relatively unharmed but also shows signs of strength in the current crisis. But many developing economies were pushed to the verge of collapse. The neoliberal policies also spurred massive new patterns of labor migration from the poor countries to the rich ones.
In Western Europe as well, leading capitalist countries adopted the same privatization and financialization policies. Now Europe, along with the U.S., is at the center of the global economic crisis, with countries like Iceland narrowly avoiding a complete economic breakdown.
Read the whole document here.
Special Convention Discussion: Mexican American Equality
All contributions to the discussion should be sent to discussion2010@cpusa.org for selection not to the individual venues.For more information on the convention or the pre-convention discussion period, you can email convention2010@cpusa.org.
The pre-convention call for our 29th convention gives the right lead for our party, class and people and the Mexican American people and their struggles for equality and justice. It stresses:
- "The key is broad united action, overcoming all obstacles that hold the movement back, getting a massive vote against the ultra-right in the primaries and in the midterm general election Nov. 2."
- "The election of President Barack Obama and ending Republican majority rule in the House and Senate has opened many padlocked doors."
- "The challenge now is to consolidate, widen and deepen that victory which can help open an era of progressive change."
- "The ultra-right, bankrolled by Wall Street and the big corporations, will stop at nothing to filibuster meaningful change. We are confident that the democratic, progressive majority can win the day."
And finally, that "A larger Communist Party and YCL and a greatly expanded readership of People's World and Political Affairs on the internet is necessary, and possible, in this period." And I am sure we would add Mundo Popular
Our convention document also is key in pointing out how economic issues are the most basic for the political battles and to begin with the program of labor and peoples forces to extend the lifeline for jobless workers.
- Extend the lifeline for jobless workers.
- Rebuild America's schools, roads and energy systems.
- Increase aid to state and local governments to maintain vital services.
- Fund jobs in our communities.
- Put TARP funds to work for Main Street.
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