Le Brésil, ce géant entravé

Un modèle menacé para la dépendance finacière

English version here

Par Renaud Lambert

En Equateur, grâce à une politique qu’il qualifie de « sociale et solidaire », et qui renforce le rôle de l’Etat, M. Rafael Correa a été réélu dès le premier tour de l’élection présidentielle du 26 avril. Au Panamá, le 3 mai, après le mandat décevant en matière de réduction de la pauvreté du social-démocrate Martín Torrijos, la candidate du Parti révolutionnaire démocratique (PRD), Mme Balbina Herrera, a été battue par M. Ricardo Martinelli, un homme d’affaires au profil berlusconien. Se démarquant de la gauche « radicale » du continent, Mme Herrera se réclamait du Brésilien Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva et de la Chilienne Michelle Bachelet. Ce constat d’ensemble n’a rien d’anodin dans la perspective des scrutins présidentiels de 2010, tant au Chili qu’au Brésil. Dans ce pays, et au-delà de quelques réformes sociales appréciables, la non-remise en cause du legs économique de ses prédécesseurs — même s’il le qualifie d’« héritage maudit » — par le président Lula pourrait bien mettre cette gauche en difficulté.

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On perd à l’entrée, on perd à la sortie

Dans ce domaine, la seule véritable réussite aura été de renforcer le poids relatif des vingt mille familles brésiliennes qui détiennent 80% des titres de la dette, dont la rémunération accapare 30 % du budget fédéral. Un budget dont moins de 5 % vont à la santé et 2,5 % à l’éducation.

(…)

Les rapatriements à l’étranger de profits et de dividendes s’élèvent à près de 34 milliards de dollars en 2008 — environ 3 % du PIB —, une hausse de 50 % par rapport à 2007 et de… 500 % par rapport à 2003. La balance des comptes courants affiche ainsi, en 2008, son déficit le plus important depuis dix ans (28,3 milliards de dollars, soit 2,5 % du PIB).

(…)

Brasília met en avant des réserves internationales d’environ 200 milliards de dollars pour rassurer les investisseurs quant à un éventuel risque de crise de la balance des paiements. Pour l’heure, le Brésil estime disposer d’une marge de manœuvre conséquente — son taux directeur avoisinait 11 % en mars 2009. Toutefois, selon l’économiste Paulo Henrique Costa Mattos, le passif à court terme atteindrait 600 milliards de dollars. Alors que la plupart des pays du monde cherchent à s’endetter massivement, la compétition fait rage sur le marché de l’emprunt d’Etat : les taux finiront par remonter et le poids des dettes contractées d’ici là ne manquera pas de peser, à son tour, sur la balance des paiements et, donc, sur les épaules des Brésiliens.

Le phénomène de « dépendance » n’a rien de nouveau. En 1969, déjà, le ministre chilien des affaires étrangères Gabriel Valdés interpellait le président américain Richard Nixon : « Pour l’Amérique latine, l’investissement privé a toujours signifié, et signifie encore, que les sommes qui sortent de nos pays sont plusieurs fois supérieures à celles qui y sont investies. (…) En un mot, nous savons que l’Amérique latine donne plus qu’elle ne reçoit. »

Dans le passé, certains gouvernements, pas forcément de gauche, ont défendu des programmes de développement plus autonome, basés sur une substitution des importations. De tels projets reçurent les critiques de ceux qui estimaient que, pilotés par des « bourgeoisies nationales », ils étaient voués à l’échec. Pour ceux-là, une seule voie : celle de la révolution sociale. Le sociologue Cardoso était des leurs. Le syndicaliste Lula da Silva aussi.

Si ce dernier avait réellement souhaité, une fois au pouvoir, œuvrer au « découplage » de l’économie brésilienne, peut-être aurait-il dû choisir une autre option que celle d’épouser le programme économique de son prédécesseur. En y renonçant, il allait incarner la mue d’une partie de la gauche latino-américaine, que l’économiste de l’OCDE Santiso — enthousiaste — décrit en ces termes : « Des expressions telles que “lutte de classes”, “planification économique” et “stratégies de substitution des importations” ont été remplacées par d’autres, telles que “consensus démocratique”, “consolidation institutionnelle”, “dérégulation économique” et “ouverture au libre-échange”. »

C’est donc équipé d’une telle boîte à outils que M. Lula da Silva s’attaque aux difficultés économiques du Brésil. Aux Etats-Unis, il demande plus de commerce, aux Brésiliens de se serrer la ceinture. A Dieu, on l’a vu, une « reprise » des économies du « centre ». Aux investisseurs étrangers et aux détenteurs des titres de la dette ? Rien, ou si peu.

Récemment interrogé sur la question des responsabilités face à la crise actuelle, le président brésilien estimait : « Nous n’avons pas créé le problème mais nous faisons partie de la solution.  » Vraiment?

Read it full at Le Monde Diplomatique

Argentine Factory Wins Legal Battle: FASINPAT Zanon Belongs to the People

Written by Marie Trigona
Friday, 14 August 2009

The workers at Argentina’s occupied ceramics factory, FASINPAT (Factory Without a Boss), won a major victory this week: the factory now definitively belongs to the people in legal terms. The provincial legislature voted in favor of expropriating the ceramics factory and handing it over to the workers cooperative to manage legally and indefinitely. Since 2001, the workers at Zanon have fought for legal recognition of worker control at Latin America’s largest ceramics factory which has created jobs, spearheaded community projects, supported social movements world-wide and shown the world that workers don’t need bosses.

“This is incredible, we are happy. The expropriation is an act of justice,” said Alejandro Lopez the General Secretary of the Ceramists Union, overwhelmed by the emotion of the victory. “We don’t forget the people who supported us in our hardest moments, or the 100,000 people who signed the petition supporting our bill.”

Hundreds of workers from the FASINPAT factory waited anxiously until the late hours of the night for the legislature’s decision. The expropriation law passed 26 votes in favor and 9 votes against the bill. Thousands of supporters from other workers’ organizations, human rights groups and social movements, along with entire families and students, joined the workers as they waited outside the provincial legislature in the capital city of Neuquén. Enduring the Patagonian winter weather, activists played drums and shouted: “here they are the workers of Zanon, workers without a boss.”

FASINPAT has operated under worker control since 2001 when Zanon’s owners decided to close its doors and fire the workers without paying months of back pay or severance pay. Leading up to the massive layoffs and plant’s closure, workers went on strike in 2000. The owner, Luis Zanon, with over 75 million dollars in debt to public and private creditors (including the World Bank for over 20 million dollars), fired en masse most of the workers and closed the factory in 2001-a bosses’ lockout. In October 2001, workers declared the plant under worker control. The workers subsequently camped outside the factory for four months, pamphleteering and partially blocking a highway leading to the capital city of Neuquén. While the workers were camping outside the factory, a court ruled that the employees could sell off remaining stock. After the stock ran out, on March 2, 2002, the workers’ assembly voted to start up production without a boss. Since the occupation, the workers renamed the factory FASINPAT (Factory without a Boss).

The workers set up a stage with a giant screen for the thousands of supporters to view the legislative vote. As the decision was read, workers embraced one another in tears in disbelief that after 8 years of struggle they finally won legal control of the factory. “This decision reflects an organized struggle that won the support all of society,” said Veronica Hullipan from the Confederation of Mapuche. She said that the network of Mapuche indigenous communities in the Patagonia have supported the Zanon workers’ struggle and said legal decision is a “political triumph of workers’ organization.”

Zanon workers reminded their supporters that the struggle of Zanon, was also the struggle of Carlos Fuentealba, a public school teacher from the province of Neuquén killed by a police officer during a peaceful protest in defense of public education.  The Zanon workers have not only created jobs, but they have supported workers struggles locally, nationally and internationally. Workers from FASINPAT were present at the protest where Fuentealba was shot point blank in the head with a tear gas canister, in police repression ordered by the conservative ruling coalition of Neuquén MPN, which has ruled the Patagonian province since the 1976-1983 military dictatorship.

“This is an important chapter in the struggle of the Zanon workers, who have been fighting in the streets for more than 9 years. First they tried to evict us in order to auction off the factory, the workers’ struggle and the community pressured the government to expropriate the factory,” Raul Godoy, Zanon worker told the national news daily Página/12.  Today, the plant exports ceramics to 25 countries.

Many legislative representatives wanted to demand that the workers at the self-managed factory “guarantee a pact for social peace.” But for the workers, the pact for social peace is broken when businessmen fraudulently go bankrupt and throw hundreds of workers out into the street. “The capitalists are constantly declaring war with tariff increases, by privatizing public companies and with firings. Before this situation, the workers must defend themselves; and the workers at Zanon commit to defending ourselves, in the street, however we have to.”

According to the legislation passed, the FASINPAT cooperative which employs 470 workers and exports ceramics to more than 25 countries, will remain under the control of the cooperative. The state would pay off 22 million pesos (around $7 million) to the creditors. One of the main creditors is the World Bank – which gave a loan of 20 million dollars to Luis Zanon for the construction of the plant, which he never paid back. The other major creditor is the Italian company SACMY that produces state of the art ceramics manufacturing machinery and is owed over $5 million. However, the workers have resisted the state pay-off, saying that courts have proven that the creditors participated in the fraudulent bankruptcy of the plant in 2001, because the credits went directly to the owner Luis Zanon and not investments into the factory. “If someone should pay, Luis Zanon should pay, who is being charged with tax evasion,” said Omar Villablanca from FASINPAT.

Victory, then an eviction

While the victory of FASINPAT brings hope to many of the 200 occupied factories currently operated under worker self-management in Argentina, many are still facing legal attacks. Early yesterday morning, just hours after the Zanon victory, a police operative evicted the factory Textil Quilmes, a thread factory occupied in the new wave of factory occupations in 2009. The four workers on night guard were evicted violently. The Buenos Aires provincial government is currently debating an expropriation bill for Textil Quilmes and several other new occupations in the Buenos Aires province. The textile workers are resisting the eviction at the factory’s doors, rallying support to re-enter the factory despite police presence.  They also had temporary legal protection, following an expropriation bill that was approved unanimously by the lower house in the provincial legislature.

The workers occupied the plant on February 11, 2009. “We camped outside the plant to avoid the bosses’ liquidation of the machinery. And the workers decided to take a direct action, occupy and form a cooperative,” said Eduardo Santillán, a Quilmes textile worker. With the remaining cotton left in the plant, the workers immediately began to produce cotton thread. At the time of the firing, more than 80 worked at the plant. In a common practice for business owners who file bankruptcy despite an increased demand for their product, the owner Ruben Ballani of Febatex owed the workers months of unpaid salaries, unpaid vacation time and social security. The workers also reported that the owner would force his employees to work 12 hour shifts, a practice outlawed nearly 100 years ago.

Six months after the workers were fired and the union (Sindicato Textil – AOT) failed to intervene, the workers at Textil Quilmes started up production. They claim that the union, who turned their backs on the workers once they were fired, is now negotiating on behalf of the bosses.

The occupations in Argentina continue to rise as the global economic crisis hits the South American nation. The Arrufat chocolate factory, Disco de Oro empanada pastry manufacturer, Indugraf printing press, Febatex thread producer and Lidercar meat packing plant joined the ranks of the worker occupied factory movement from 2008 to 2009. Textil Quilmes has fought along with workers from other factories occupied since the onset of the global economic crisis to demand expropriation laws; none have a definitive legal future.

Many independent analysts expect the global recession to hit Argentina’s real economy. Unemployment rates have gone up and industry growth has halted, while the financial sector remains unaffected because it already took a major blow in 2001. Those who benefited from Argentina’s economic recovery of course are now those who are using this crisis as an excuse to downsize and lay-off workers with the promise of public bailout packages and government credits.

The phenomenon of worker occupations continues to grow as the world falls deeper into the current recession. Nearly 20 new factories in Argentina were occupied since 2008. This may be a sign that workers are confronting the current global financial crisis with lessons and tools from previous worker occupied factories post-2001 economic collapse and popular rebellion. Today, some 250 worker occupied enterprises are up and running, employing more than 13,000. Many of these sites have been producing under worker self-management since 2002, providing nearly a decade of lessons, experiments, strategies and mistakes to learn from.

Zanon and others from the occupied factory movement have proven that they are capable of doing what bosses aren’t interested in doing: creating jobs and work with dignity.  This may be why government representatives, industry leaders and factory owners have remained silent and often times reacted with hostility on this issue; they are afraid of these sites multiplying and the example they have set.

At Zanon, workers constantly use the slogan: “Zanon es del pueblo” or Zanon belongs to the people. The workers have adopted the objective of producing not only to provide jobs and salaries for more than 470 people, but also to create new jobs, make donations in the community and to support other social movements. For many at the recuperated enterprises, the occupation of their workplace meant much more than safe-guarding their jobs, it also became part of a struggle for a world without exploitation. While the Zanon victory is a step in the right direction, many of the occupations are facing eviction orders. FASINPAT can now operate legally and focus their attention to producing ceramics in a faltering economy. The Zanon collective has expressed their continued commitment to defending workers’ rights and self-management, which means defending all worker occupations with slogan: “si nos tocan a uno, nos tocan a todos”: “if they mess with one of us, they mess with all of us.”

Original source: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2052/32/

Patronage Politics and Contentious Collective Action: A Recursive Relationship

By Javier Auyero, Pablo Lapegna and Fernanda Page Poma

“Since the early 1990s, much of Latin America has witnessed the simultaneous growth of both protest and clientelism (Svampa and Pereyra 2003; Giarracca 2001; Giraudy 2007; Levitsky 2003; Stokes 2005; Auyero 2007; Almeida and Johnston 2006; Shefner et al. 2006; López-Maya and Lander 2006), a twin process that most sociological and political science research deems unlikely. Patronage (its vertical networks, opportunities, resources, and ideological frames) tends to counteract the emergence of collective action (its horizontal networks, opportunities, resources, and ideological frames). The joint increase in clientelism and contentious politics is paradoxical only if we fail to pay attention to the zone of mutual influence between both political phenomena. Attention to the area of intersection and interaction uncovers a variety of ways that contentious politics articulate with patronage politics.”

Read full article at LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Vol. 51 Issue 3 – Fall 2009

An evening in Burqin

By Pierre Beaudet (Alternatives)
Published at Rabble

August 5, 2009

The sun is slowly coming down in this northern West Bank village. We are really a few kilometers from Galilee just outside the green line. The sun is slowly coming down in this northern West Bank village. We are really a few kilometers from Galilee just outside the green line. Around the city of Jenin and the nearby villages, a cluster of Israeli settlements remind us of the occupation, as well as numerous checkpoints controlled by Israeli soldiers.

Burqin is an old village. The story is that one day, Jesus stopped here on his way to Jerusalem. He met lepers and told to these wretched of the world that they would be healed and indeed they were, so says Luke in the New Testament . We visit a very antique church in the middle of the village where our Palestinian guide tells us this is precisely where the miracle occurred.

Today, Burqin is part of a densely-populated circle of villages living off what remains of their land. Most people identify themselves first and foremost as farmers even if, in real terms, their income now mostly comes from outside through, now declining, remittances from brothers and fathers that have migrated everywhere in the world.

Indeed, Burqin is in the middle of the storm. It’s been like that for quite some time. So is the whole Jenin district, a green and hilly region inhabited by over 250 000 Palestinians. The villagers revolted against British rule in the 1930s under the leadership of the famous Ezzedeen Al-Qassam. Later, they fought hard in subsequent wars against Israel. Finally in 1967, Jenin and the West Bank were occupied. In 1987 with the first Intifada, the whole district became a burning field of revolt. And despite the ‘interim agreement’ of 1993, it remains so even today. Technically speaking, Jenin is now ‘co-managed’, so to speak, by Israel and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), as part of the ‘deal’ agreed under the Oslo agreement.

This evening, things are pretty quiet. Gathered to enjoy the usual narghile, people chat and share jokes. The weather is cool and pleasant. It seems so far away from any sort of conflict and tension. The ‘mukhtar’ (traditional village head) is happy because he has finished completing his house (after 25 years) where a large part of his extended family resides. When the night falls, we move to a marriage where hundreds of people have come to celebrate. In the center place of the village men gather to cheer the groom. In the surrounding houses, women are looking by as much as they can, but they also are enjoying their own ceremony. Marriage is really a way to assure redistribution. Before the end of the evening, the new family will have gathered enough money to start building their house, most probably over the top or beside the rest of the extended family (‘hamula’) which is at the heart of the Palestinian society.

Later, the loudspeakers call men to dabke, the Palestinian dance. They hold themselves by the shoulder and go around in ardent foot-trumping runs. There is no doubt about the substance of the matter, as songs, symbols and gestures are all about resistance, patriotism and ‘sumud’ (steadfastness). Toddlers run around with elders, with a majority of teens and very young men. It is taken seriously, you can see that in their faces. But it’s neither dramatic nor romantic. It has no other sense than expressing this combative identity which characterizes Palestinians. The party continues until late at night.

Most of the village has now gone to sleep. Arafat, Karim, Jihad, Refaat and many others are moving in and out to engage in the other favorite Palestinian art, politics. All of them, and indeed most of their age group have participated in resistance activities. ‘We are all graduates of the 1987 Intifada’ says Refaat. Most have gone to jail, many were tortured or maimed at one point or the other. This ‘generation’ came hard against the occupation. But it was also a challenge, although implicitly, to the original leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). After a while however, the PLO under Yasser Arafat was able to prevail. Nonetheless even today, the memory of the Intifada is very strong. ‘Israel was on the defensive when we pushed back their tanks with our bare hands’.

After the agreement between the PLO and Israel in 1993, there was hope that some sort of a deal would come true, even if not perfect. But rapidly, the house of cards came down. Successive Israeli administrations accelerated the locking-up of the occupied territories through the expansion of settlements and so-called «by-pass roads’, destroying the idea of a sovereign Palestinian state. Things got sour and very tough, especially when resistance pushed up again. When the second Intifada erupted in 2000, Jenin, as usual, became the epicenter. The whole Northern region became the nightmare for Israel because of the suicide bombers that came from it to blow themselves up in Tel-Aviv and other Israeli cities. In fact, many of these ‘shahid’ were from Burqin. ‘We were really surprised that so many of our neighbors became Martyrs. We understood later how many young men were so angry and determined to use their own body for what they saw as an act of resistance’ says Arafat. Later in 2002, Jenin became famous again when fierce Palestinian resistance caused scores of Israeli soldiers’ casualties. The army came in full force and literally bulldozed the refugee camp, killing 56 Palestinian civilians and fighters in a few hours.

Today apparently at least, Burqin and Jenin are ‘pacified’. The Palestinian authorities are working hand in hand with Israeli security under the guidance of US general Keith Dayton. It’s part of the latest deal which was approved by President Mahmood Abbas and implemented by his Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. The fighters linked with Hamas or Fatah’s dissidents have been arrested or forced into hiding. Over 1000 Palestinians are detained by the PNA, without trial or accusation, just like over 10 000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israel. According to the human rights organizations, torture and maltreatment is abundant in the Palestinian jails.

However in terms of securing Israel, this not enough. Indeed, encirclement of Palestinian cities and lands remains tight. Even if some control points have been closed, there are literally hundreds of Israeli-controlled check-points in the West Bank. Otherwise, the ‘border’ remains closed except for a few dozen Palestinian workers who can work in Israel. Palestinians from inside the green line, who used to come shopping into the district, are not often seen, as they are discouraged by the roadblocks, therefore adding on the economic decline of the Palestinian areas. The destruction of Gaza is used as a terrorist threat: ‘do not dare to resist because we will do with you (in the West Bank) as we have done with them in Gaza’.

Around the table however, people are not here to lament about the occupation which they consider the ‘normality’. They have no illusion about the ‘peace process’ or on the economic benefits that were announced by the PNA and Israel in the last period. ‘The battle early in 2009 in Gaza destroyed any illusion that was left around’ says Refaat, a teacher currently managing a Palestinian NGO in Ramallah. ‘The idea that somehow, a political settlement is about to come is buried’. In the meantime, the economic and social situation remains dreadful, with unemployment rates of 50-80% and a very serious deterioration of living conditions. Before his illness, Ariel Sharon, the then Israeli PM had said it clearly, ‘we are going to put Palestinians on a diet’, meaning the kind of siege that has been imposed on the Palestinian society in the last seven years. Everything is done to weaken, humiliate, destroy the Palestinians except an all-out massacre which would remind the world of the situation. ‘Killing us slowly is more efficient from the official point of view in Israel’ says Refaat.

Ok, this is ‘normal’ from the point of view of people living under the occupation. But what next then? What can happen?

Everyone agrees that the Al-Aqsa Intifada triggered by Yasser Arafat in 2000 failed and in fact was used by the occupiers to strengthen their position. In the meantime, Fatah, the movement that led Palestinian resistance for the last 40 years, is agonizing as a credible and legitimate political force. Military resistance by Hamas also failed and even worst, the Islamist movement has fallen into the same pitfalls that were manifested by Fatah standing in as the ‘PNA’. This became evident with the events in 2007. After a brief fight, Hamas organized a ‘counter-coup’ to the move planned by the Israelis and the US through their Palestinian surrogate, Fatah’s boss in Gaza, Mohamed Dahlan. The problem however is that after this, Hamas became itself very authoritarian, using the ‘good old’ tactics of nepotism and control. ‘The ‘take over’ of the strip by Hamas in 2007, says Refaat, badly damaged the reputation of a movement that was initially seen by many as an alternative to the declining and corrupted post-Arafat Fatah’.

In the meantime under Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli regime seems to be determined to erase once and for all the possibility of ending the occupation. Is that the end of the story I asked my Burqin friends?

Our capacities are presently limited’ says Arafat, the local leader of the Democratic Front, one of the three left Palestinian parties [1]. He explains that the DF that used to have thousands of activists back in the late 1980s has now ‘only’ 100 members in Burqin. He is surprised when I say that very few villages in the world, even in countries with a strong activist tradition, can claim ‘only’ 100 local members (out of a population of 5000). Nonetheless for Arafat, the issue is rather qualitative. As for most of the people around the table, the fact is that currently, the Palestinians have ‘no leadership’. As DF activists, they do not really respect their own leadership although everyone agrees that Abd al-Karîm, otherwise known as Abu Laila (the current DF leader in the occupied territories), is brilliant and honest. ‘Our leaders have been transformed into the ‘loyal opposition’ and are not really opposing the capitulationism of the PNA’. Moreover, the leadership has accepted to play a minor role in the management of an unacceptable regime. ‘They criticized Fatah all the time, but the salaries of the officials is paid by Abu Mazen’ (nom de guerre of Mahmood Abbas).

In fact, even Abu Laila admits himself that his ‘hands are tied’: ‘We have now two police states, one in Gaza and one in the West Bank’. He believes that Abbas is cooking a deal with Hamas to perpetuate the impossible status quo, for ‘each one to have relative control over ‘his’ territory, leaving the occupation in command’. He is hoping to raise the issues of the social and economic dimensions of the present crisis so as to attract angry youth, but that is problematic. Traditionally, the DF as well as groups like the PFLP were perceived by the population as more ‘radical’ nationalists, all geared towards national liberation, rather than left-leaning socialist groups struggling for the social empowerment of the poor.

At another level, leftists factions like the DF are not well positioned to criticize the authoritarianism of the PNA and of Fatah, having themselves shaped by heavily-centralized decision-making. This democratic deficit is coming back to haunt the left. It is now discussed, and there are moves to implant another culture. But there is still a long way to go.

Mustapha Barghouti, now the head of the Palestinian National Initiative (al-Mubadara), was one of the few that saw this problem before others. He defected from the Communist party to promote another political culture, more open and inclusive, focusing on civil non-armed resistance against the occupation as an apartheid society contradicting all provisions of the international human rights convention. But now Mustapha is also pessimistic. Although a fervent supporter of the peace process, he cannot be but very somber: ‘ The Israelis have no incentive to compromise. They are not pressed in any fashion by the Palestinian authorities. They are comforted in their intransigence by the continuous support from the US, despite and beyond Obama’. Despite initial hopes and frequent encounters with the new administration in Washington, Mustapha sees no result to affect the sinister alliance condoning Israeli practices in the occupied territories as well as their aggressive behavior towards the Arab and Muslim countries.

So the spirit is a bit low tonight in Burqin. Nonetheless, I am informed that the activist core of ‘only’ 100 members remains active through social projects of different kinds. The ‘social safety net’ provided by a politicized civil society (closely linked with the left) is crucial for the people, apart from family support. My friends also animate a workers’ coalition against the local (municipal) authorities and UN agencies who, despite the fact that they employ many Palestinians, are not very respected because of inefficient and corrupted practices. The flame is kept alive and like nowhere in the struggling global south, activists remain connected with their people.

Is the solution through civil resistance initiatives like the well-publicized movement in Bil’in (near Ramallah)? It has been much promoted as the way to confront Israeli apartheid practices through peaceful demonstrations and well-planned media events. Around the room, there is a consensus that the tactics used in Bil’in are effective. Moreover, it was the most spectacular aspect of the first Intifada.‘We were able then to paralyze the occupation by confronting, without arms, the Israeli occupation. The non-military component of the struggle became the centerpiece of resistance.

However, it is ‘premature, says Arafat, to abandon altogether the military part of our struggle. This is not India here, and the Israeli occupiers are not like the British, who had no will to fight’. He concedes at the end that traditionally, the Palestinian struggle was ‘overmilitarized’ and did not, except during the first Intifada, build enough strength through mass mobilization. Political discussions carry on over the night. As people slowly retire, I am left with a contradictory impression. I am still struck with the statement about the ‘only’ 100 activists remaining. I keep thinking, ‘wow, if we could have this in my country!’

But the permanence of resistance goes beyond that. I understand that most of the people in Burqin are well aware of what is happening not only locally, but at a larger, even international level. On this of course the impact of Al-Jazeera, in addition to the wide use of the internet and mobile phones, cannot be neglected. ‘People now see and hear directly the voices of the opposition in Palestine and the Arab world’ says Refaat. ‘We have lost our naivety towards our self-proclaimed leaders. We are free thinkers now’.

In this village of 5000, there is no capitulation. ‘We are ready to rise up again, as we have no choice really’. Israeli occupation forces, even supplemented by PNA military and police, do not control the area. ‘This is not Egypt or Jordan, we do not bow down to the Sultan’ say my friends. Even if General Dayton is working hard to develop local repressive capacities, the occupation cannot rule by force only.

From the Palestinian side, resistance is not based on a ‘grand strategy’, therefore the inherent tendency within the movements to reproduce some of the same mistakes and impasses. But because it is a people’s struggle and not a movement of a minority, resistance remains basically uncompromising, so it is quasi impossible to crush it. Is this enough? Certainly not. But one day probably not far ahead, the facades of the occupation will crack again, resulting from the complex fractures that undermine the Israeli society and State (not talking about the declining evolution of the US Empire). Occupation will also crack from the imagination of Palestinians fighting endlessly, generation after generation. For sure, the people of Burqin will continue to be part of this invisible accumulation.

Notes:

[1] The DFLP originally came out of the Popular Front (PFLP), which remains numerically speaking the largest leftist force. There is also the People’s Party (former Communist Party).

Shoreditch and the creative destruction of the inner city

By Benedict Seymour

“Gentrification in London, a city now rated among the most expensive in the world, embodies the drive of a cannibalistic capitalism looking for ways to cut its costs in a period of declining profit rates and deepening national current account deficits: The search for new, cheaper use values (primarily space, but also intangible assets – authenticity, creativity, community) occurs via the alienating logic of exchange value and its necessary supplement, primitive accumulation (or, simply, theft). Out of the middle classes’ need for more room, more time, more congenial cities, emerges simulation, homogenisation, privatisation and the looting of residual commons. An inherently vampiric process which parasitises upon and kills its host, gentrification is a physical symptom of neoliberal economics just as much as generic malls and big box out of town developments are. Where these extrapolate out from modernist industrial economies of scale, gentrification (at first) provides a luxury complement to /compensation for the devastation. Lively, characterful inner city oases, what a relief. The problem is that, as an equally privatised form of development, gentrification is of course only the inner city version of the same process and leads from exclusive art parties to Starbucks and all the rest. The same economic laws force once ‘idiosyncratic’ zones of experimentation and ‘independent shops’ into increasing conformity as the process matures and prices rise.”
(…)
“In world cities like London and the slums of the third world alike, labour, waged and unwaged, is ever more responsible for its own reproduction. The ‘creative entrepreneurialism’ identified by Creative London as the key to revived inner cities is the upscale reflection of a survivalist condition in which insecurity drives the underpaid into overwork. Participation in the valorisation of life/labour – whether helping run your block of flats or talking to a concerned artist about your memories of displacement – is not so much solicited as
compulsory. Consequently, in a regeneration regime it becomes easier to get your experience of urban blight plotted on a psychogeographic map of your area than to obtain hospital treatment, housing or a day off work.”

Read full article at Variant

Let them Eat Social Capital: Socializing the Market versus Marketizing the Social

By Margaret Somers

“We have seen the enemy and it is us. No longer should we blame neoliberalism’s starvation of the public sector and its privatizing restructuring of the economy for escalating rates of poverty, skyrocketing inequality, or the constriction of democracy. No, it is the fault of your and my delinquency in our bowling league attendance, our neglect of neighborhood barbeques, and in our lapsed faith-based church activities. Along with the privatization of citizenship has come the privatization of responsibility – yours and mine, that is – and we are shamed by our loss of moral fortitude.

Clearly, the appeal of the social capital concept for the neoliberal imagination is its dismissal of the usual sociological and institutional suspects as responsible for the current problems of poverty and politics – the decline of the welfare state and its ancillary social supports on the one hand, and the privatizing restructuring of the economy on the other. But what makes the concept so resonant, timely, and appealing to a world-wide audience less interested in pointing fingers at America’s bowling leagues and church barbeques, and more in exploring the dramatic reorganization of global markets and politics, is its apparent convergence with that celebrated source of Eastern Europe’s democratic revolutions, namely civil society – that sphere of social organization made most famous by its pragmatic, explanatory and normative revival in Eastern Europe’s revolutionary era of the 1980s. In that context, civil society was idealized as a space of democratic participatory empowerment, horizontal social ties and rights-oriented social movements. Its most notable feature, indeed its constitutive meaning, was its identity as a ‘third sphere’, independent of both the power of the administrative and coercive state as well as the competitive individualism of capitalist market societies.

In its glorious heydays of the Gdansk-based Solidarity movement, civil society was the nurturing ground for democratic associations of rightsclaiming citizens. More than a decade after the fact, however, and in the larger context of global privatizations, the civil society concept has come to represent less rights-oriented democratic politics than merely an anti-statist appendage for the ‘compassionate’ side of market society. And piggybacking on much-heralded shoulders, the social capital concept has taken the same path. Militant anti-statism, appropriate for Eastern Europe’s repressed trade unions and social movements fighting heroically against Communist Party tyranny, cannot be justified in the case of social capital. The exclusion of power and rights from the social capital agenda should alarm us. Like the golden glitter of the Trojan horse, we have been dazzled by the social in social capital to collude with a tragicomedy of social science: Neoliberalism has turned Gdansk into a Bowling Alley.”

Read it full at Thesis Eleven

ENVIRONMENT-BRAZIL: Red Card for Porto Alegre?

From IPS News

By Clarinha Glock* – IPS/IFEJ

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Jul 18 (IPS) – The southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, a pioneer in participatory budgets and environmental policies, and habitual host of the enormous World Social Forum, has returned to the international stage.

Pontal Project

Chosen as one of the 12 sites for the 2014 football World Cup, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul state, with a population of 1.4 million, faces a dilemma.

In August, local residents will vote on whether to allow the construction of apartment buildings in the Ponta do Melo zone on the banks of the Guaíba River. The referendum will take place in a context of major plans, including sports stadium expansion and road construction, to better receive fans for the football championship.

But some of the projects are facing legal challenges because of their potential for harming the environment. The Porto Alegre Fundamental Law establishes that the areas along the Guaíba River – actually an estuary and also referred to as a lake – are permanent protected zones.

Ponta do Melo, situated between the central and southern parts of Porto Alegre, was at one time a shipping port of national security interest. From 1952 to the early 1990s the shipbuilder Estaleiro Só operated there. In 1976, the city exempted the company from paying for the land it occupied: 60,000 square metres.

Once Estaleiro Só went out of business, the court ordered an auction to pay off its labour debts. In 2005, the land was auctioned by the SVB Participações Empreendimentos company, which transferred it to BMPar Empreendimentos.

At the time, Municipal Statute 470/2002 authorised only construction of commercial buildings, with several urban development restrictions.

In 2008, BMPar interested a group of city councillors in the idea of a major economic project, saying that a mixed commercial and residential site would improve security in the area.

The city council reformed Statute 470 to allow construction of residential buildings at the site, which then took the name Pontal do Estaleiro.

That’s when the protests began. “The project did not respect the participation of society,” argued city councillor Beto Moesch, who had voted against Statute 470 in 2002 and opposed its reform last year.

At several public hearings, company representatives were seen embracing city council members, while residents shouted “sellouts!” The attorney general opened an investigation into charges that councillors were bribed to vote in favour of the reform, but the case was shelved.

The reform of Law 470 was approved in a tense session in February of this year.

Given the public reaction, Mayor José Fogaça vetoed the project and submitted a different one to the city council, which included an amendment stating that citizens should have a say. Meanwhile, another amendment was approved, which expanded the construction-free strip of land between the Guaíba and the buildings from 30 to 60 metres wide.

As a result, BMPar declared that it would not build anything at the Pontal site. Even so, the city council voted to amend Statute 470 and set a 120-day period to convene a referendum.

According to the Movement in Defence of the Guaíba Waterfront, a “yes” at the ballot box for the residential buildings would set a dangerous precedent for the city’s areas along the river.

Ricardo Gothe, head of the Porto Alegre city government’s special office for the 2014 World Cup, responded for this article that “it is already a privately-owned area, and will have appeal, special qualifications and protection.” According to Gothe, if the land is not occupied it will end up destroyed.

Environmentalists point out that originally the Pontal was granted by the city to the shipbuilding company for a specific purpose. Once that ended, it was to return to public use.

Architect and urban planner Nestor Ibrahim Nadruz said in an interview that the project would cause traffic problems in the area and damage the shoreline.

The other lots in the area will lose the breezes and natural light from the waterway, there will be an increase in sewage and garbage, and the population will be deprived of the famous sunset over the Guaíba.

While the future of Ponta do Melo is being decided, there is a citizen effort under way to prevent potential harm to other areas designated for permanent protection.

A petition filed by environmentalists asks for an immediate suspension of the January permits to expand the stadiums of two football clubs, the Sport Club Internacional and the Grêmio Foot-Ball Porto Alegrense.

The petition states that the project calls for construction that is higher than allowed under the city’s codes, as well as a greater concentration of buildings per square metre, which would negatively affect the urban landscape, the environment and air safety.

The Beira-Rio complex of the Internacional club, in addition to a roof for the stadium, includes apartment towers, parking ramps and roads through a park, which are not among the requests of FIFA, the global football governing body, admitted the club’s directors before the Municipal Environment Council.

Gothe said he had not yet received from FIFA the list of city obligations for sports installations, infrastructure and services. But the special office has released some initiatives, presented as essential, for receiving the crowds in 2014.

“They are projects that have been on paper for 30 years and, taking advantage of an event with the magnitude of the World Cup, will obtain the financing they need,” argued Gothe. The waterfront will be revitalised, and will attract tourism and bring progress, he said.

That perspective puts Porto Alegre in the sights of major real estate companies. “It’s possible that Goldsztein Cyrela is going to operate” in Ponta do Melo, stated a lawyer for the construction company that is part of the Cyrela Brazil Realty firm, the largest dedicated to residential real estate.

At the base of the discussions is the Guaíba itself, although it has not been determined if it is to be treated as a river or a lake.

Federal Law 4771/65 establishes that buildings may not be less than 500 metres from riverbanks, to ensure preservation of water resources. But if the Guaíba is declared a lake, the area of protection is reduced to 30 metres.

According to city statute, changes like those planned for the World Cup can only be decided with participation and approval of the citizens.

Local environmentalists have learned from previous experiences. In 2007, at a public hearing to study changes to the city’s codes, the Municipal Environment Council denounced that residents from other towns had been bussed in to fill the hall and prevent participation by local residents and activists.

If not for pressure from the Municipal Environment Council and the non-governmental Fórum de Entidades, say the environmentalists, the changes would have been approved, attending only to the interests of the construction companies.

*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by Inter Press Service (IPS) and the International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ) for the Alliance of Communicators for Sustainable Development (www.complusalliance.org). (END/2009)

Honduras Tries for a PR Coup

From http://www.prwatch.org/node/8466

The negotiating team representing Honduras‘ coup government “rarely made a move without consulting … an American public relations specialist who has done work for former President Bill Clinton,” reports the New York Times. Roberto Micheletti heads the “de facto” government of Honduras, which took power after the military coup against elected president Manuel Zelaya. Micheletti “has embarked on a public relations offensive, with his supporters hiring high-profile lawyers with strong Washington connections” to lobby for recognition and against sanctions. Bennett Ratcliff of the California firm VA/R Partners is the PR advisor who guided Micheletti during negotiations. A “powerful Latin American business council” that supported the coup “hired Lanny J. Davis, who has served as President Clinton’s personal lawyer and who campaigned for Mrs. Clinton for president.” President Obama “said he wants Zelaya restored to office,” but the U.S. has kept its ambassador in Honduras, while all European Union ambassadors have been recalled, reports Bloomberg. While at the Patton Boggs law firm in 1999, Lanny Davis “worked for a Kazakh front group that was acting on behalf of President Nazarbayev … trying to convince the world that Nazarbayev was a democratic reformer,” Ken Silverstein said on Democracy Now! “Davis is working on behalf of some Honduran business groups,” including an “apparel trade group” that counts U.S.-based companies Fruit of the Loom and Hanes among its members.

Inscribing Subjects to Citizenship: Petitions, Literacy Activism, and the Performativity of Signature in Rural Tamil India

By Francis Cody

“But for the women who had come to the office that day from Katrampatti, my sense is that they would only have been satisfied that they had performed the act of petitioning at grievance day if they had been able to see the collector and plead with him orally using generic conventions compelling superiors to act on behalf of the weak, not unlike those found in the praise language that had been erased from their petition. Their ambivalence is a product of having been denied the chance to make an affective claim through eye contact, ensuring that the collector would feel with their suffering. Karuppiah and I had tried to make it up to the petitioners by taking them all out to lunch after submitting the petition, but the bus ride home was certainly marked by disappointment and uncertainty about what had just taken place at the collector’s office. They all knew that it would be very difficult to collectively take yet another day off of work and come back to town.

Any governmental claims to rationalized and disenchanted Weberian bureaucracy remain particularly vexed in this context, because the collector does in fact sit in the erstwhile king’s seat, in his palace. In fact, he collects petitions in the old darbar hall where the king of Pudukkottai would have met with the court and those who had come to plead before royalty. Such a dense semiotic environment does not lend itself easily to a bureaucratic ideology of directness, or “reduced,” “logical” communication in the eyes of petitioners or even petition writers. The collector does appear to act like a king. It took so much pedagogical work just to get the group from Katrampatti to come to the collector’s office and it seemed somehow incomplete, in part because after such effort they simply turned in the sheet of paper at a small office without being able to see and talk to the collector at grievance day. The petitioners’ idea of seeing the collector directly (neratiyaka), a face-to-face encounter with a powerful patron, conflicts with the ideals of directness as the simple transmission of a communication in written form in which a petitioner has no face. Beyond this sense disappointment at not connecting visually or orally with their addressee, these petitioners have repeatedly been deceived or disappointed by the state, as by other higher powers. They know they are dealing with a realm of power that is in some sense beyond their control. This was, after all, an act of faith (oru nampikkaitan) as much as it was an exercise in citizenship.”

Read it at Cutural Anthropology

Honduras: a military coup in the era of governamentality

In Honduras, One-Sided News of Crisis

Critics Cite Slanted Local Coverage, Limits on Pro-Zelaya Outlets

By Juan Forero

“Several countries condemned the events of June 28 as a military coup. But in Honduras, some of the most popular and influential television stations and radio networks blacked out coverage or adhered to the de facto government’s line that Manuel Zelaya’s overthrow was not a coup but a legal “constitutional substitution,” press freedom advocates and Honduran journalists said.

Meanwhile, soldiers raided the offices of radio and TV stations loyal to Zelaya, shutting down their signals. Alejandro Villatoro, 52, the owner of Radio Globo, said soldiers broke down doors and dismantled video surveillance cameras.

“They grabbed me and put me face down and put six rifles on me, with a foot on my back holding me down,” he said. “It was like I was a common criminal.”

Such allegations underscore the one-sided nature of the news that has been served up to Hondurans during the crisis. According to results of a Gallup poll published here Thursday, 41 percent of Hondurans think the ouster was justified, with 28 opposed to it.

The de facto regime headed by Roberto Micheletti cited such support as he began talks Thursday in Costa Rica with that country’s president, Oscar Arias, who has agreed to mediate. Zelaya met separately with Arias, who said representatives of the two men will continue meeting in the days ahead.

In Honduras, though, the country’s new leaders, the security forces and the clergy argue that Zelaya’s removal had legal justification the rest of the world does not understand. Local media largely “slanted coverage” to favor that position, said Carlos Lauría of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

“The de facto government clearly used the security forces to restrict the news,” Lauría said. “Hondurans did not know what was going on. They clearly acted to create an information vacuum to keep people unaware of what was actually happening.”

Micheletti’s spokesman, René Cepeda, and other officials in the de facto government did not return phone calls seeking comment. But Ramón Custodio López, Honduras’s human rights ombudsman, who investigates violations of press freedom, said he has received no official complaints from journalists. “This is the first I have heard about an occupation or military raid of a station,” he said. “I try to do the best job I can, but there are things that escape my knowledge.”

Custodio added that he thought Honduran media coverage of the overthrow and its aftermath has been “very good”. “

Read it full at Washington Post