PaulHampton's blog

An interesting article in yesterday's The Independent on women in Iraq.

Below is the intro:

The women of Basra have disappeared. Three years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, women's secular freedoms - once the envy of women across the Middle East - have been snatched away because militant Islam is rising across the country.

The key test of Castro’s movement was and is its relationship to the working class in Cuba. Farber’s book does not contain much new information on workers struggles during the period, though it clearly identifies the control Castro attained over the labour movement as a crucial turning point on the road to a Stalinist regime.

Farber tries to explain the evolution of the Cuban regime by grounding his interpretation in the context of the period. By the late 1950s, many people had the perception that the USSR was catching up and even surpassing the US – symbolised by the first Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile and the Sputnik launch in 1957.

If US-Cuban relations were neo-colonial in the 1950s, US policy was essentially one of “law and order and business as usual”. In the context of the Cold War, support for any Latin American government professing anti-Communism, whether they had been democratically elected or were military dictatorships. Hence US backing for Batista during the 1950s. (2006 p.73)

Fidel Castro was undoubtedly the central historical figure in the Cuban revolution. Farber locates Castro within the long Cuban and Latin American tradition of populist nationalism - as a caudillo with particular political ideas and organisational practices that “transcended” that tradition.

Any Marxist account of the Cuban revolution has to be rooted in an analysis of Cuba’s political economy, to explain the relative weight of the contending classes and of the existing state, and to understand what drove millions of Cubans to support Batista’s overthrow.

Review of Samuel Farber, The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered (University of North Carolina Press, 2006)

What was the class character of the Cuban revolution of 1959-61? More than any other Marxist over the last forty-five years, Sam Farber has tried to tackle this question from the standpoint of Third Camp working class socialism.

The Venezuelan Unión Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT) congress broke up in acrimony this weekend, with two distinct tendencies holding separate plenaries at the end after bitter disputes.

The congress took place on 25-27 May and was the first conference the confederation has held since it was founded in August 2003.

Galloway in The Independent: 22 May 2006

http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article549806.ece

Question: Why did you salute Saddam Hussein and praise his son on film, knowing they were murderers?

SWP man of letters Keith Flett really surpassed himself in today’s Morning Star (19 May 2006), with an article, Anyone but England: Socialists and the World Cup.

Flett says he won’t be supporting England in the World Cup because:

Three comments from Chávez in London this week that might help some of his cheerleaders sober up:

I put it to Chávez that under him, Venezuela has all the good things about Cuba - the great schools and hospitals - without the revolting things - dictatorship, censorship, repression. "I don't think in Cuba there is a lack of freedom of speech," he says with worrying speed. " If you approach Cuba from the perspective of the Western world, you might think so. But there, you have the people who express themselves on many matters. There is no repression in Cuba."

I went to the Chávez meeting in London today, hosted by Ken Livingstone. I sat through two and half hours of the most turgid, vapid, empty rhetoric interspersed with self-congratulation and pontification.

Socialist Worker editorial this week (13 May 2006 | issue 2000) on Chávez’s visit to London is entirely lacking in criticism.

It says: “Chavez has become a symbol for a revolt across Latin America.”

Mexican Police Kill Two Workers, Injure Dozens at Steel Plant

This appeal came from Labour Start.
There is also detailed background by Dan La Botz on the Mexico Labor News and Analysis website at:

Ken Livingstone in Beijing this week, putting business before workers’ rights:

Touring Tiananmen Square on Sunday, Livingstone said that Trafalgar Square too had seen its share of violence, for example the 1990 poll tax riots.

This was in Andrew Anthony’s column Sunday April 9, 2006 in The Observer

Another imam on a short fuse

A little-commented-upon addendum to the Danish cartoons farrago occurred a couple of weeks ago. Danish cleric Imam Ahmed Akkari, author of the dossier that stirred up global protests, was secretly filmed threatening to blow up the leader of Denmark's Democratic Muslims organisation, Naser Khader.

Venezuela and Revolution in the 21st Century by Joseph Choonara, Socialist Worker pamphlet (February 2006).

The emergence of an independent labour movement in Venezuela has been one of the most exciting developments in Latin America in recent years. The formation of the UNT, whose leadership includes many class struggle militants, is a welcome development after forty years of domination by the bureaucratic and corrupt CTV union federation.

The current edition of the SWP’s journal International Socialism (109) contains an interview with two of its friends, who share its views on Iraq.

Early in the interview, Haifa Zangana says: “This Shia-Sunni division of Iraqi society is a complete fabrication. There is no such thing. There is class struggle, there is the oil, there are many other factors that you can really talk about in Iraq, but definitely not sectarianism. It has totally been manufactured in recent years.”

Ever wondered why the AWL goes on about Stalinism so much? Thought Stalinism was dead?

Guardian columnist Seumas Milne wrote (Feb 16):
“For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, eastern Europe and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialisation, mass education, job security and huge advances in social and gender equality.

Socialist Worker’s editorial in its latest paper (18 February) on the Danish cartoons indicates just how far it has dissolved into two-camp politics. The editorial says:

“Islamophobia is a pillar of George Bush’s “war on terror”. In its wake comes further racism. This is the dividing line - either with those who are demonised or with racism. Those who cross that line can end up in noxious company.

The prize for the worst (or best) rationalisation for Galloway’s appearance on Big Brother goes to SWP man of letters, Keith Flett.

In today’s Morning Star (13 February) he compares Galloway with past “gentleman leaders” of the labour movement. He says that Chartists like Ernest Jones needed “independent means” to be able to tour the country agitating.

Comparisons between Israel and apartheid South Africa are increasingly common, both on the left and in the mainstream press (e.g. the Guardian this week). The AWL has rejected the analogy because of the different class structures in these two states. The article below was written nearly 20 years ago by Clive Bradley, and explains this very well. It obviously doesn't deal with more recent developments like the wall.

Beginning on Friday, 27 January, security forces in Iran began arresting hundreds of striking bus workers in Teheran, including the leadership of the union. Workers are also being intimidated into signing pledges to give up strike and protest actions or risk being fired. The management of the company and the company's Islamic Council worked hand in hand with the security forces to help identify the workers and assist in the arrests. Union officials said the brutality of the security forces was indescribable. The wives and children of some union executive members were also arrested, but later released. They were taken out of bed and beaten up during raids on Friday night. The beatings continued in detention. On Saturday, as the workers arrived at the picket lines, they were rounded up. Many were verbally abused, threatened and beaten up to force them to drive the buses. Those who refused were taken away. The majority of the detainees are now in the high security Evin Prison, which is notorious for the torture and execution of thousands of political prisoners.

My argument with Nick Rogers in the Weekly Worker continues. Here is my latest reply.

*****

Nick Rogers really should stop digging himself into a hole over Venezuela (Weekly Worker, January 26). His differences with the AWL over Chávez are now pretty clear – no doubt reality will decide who is right.

This is a rough transcript of the Galloway tape that's all over the media today. It's apparently from Galloway's Mariam bus tour in late 1999. There are two sentences which surely rank alongside his 1994 "indefatigability" suck up to Saddam:

Anyone wanting an antedote to the Castro-loving nonsense on Cuba peddled by most of the left should go to a new website on Cuban Trotskyism. It is run by Gary Tennant and features his PhD thesis on Cuban Trotskyism from the 1920s until the 1960s, when Castro and Guevara snuffed it out.

This article from Znet sums up the (limited) significance of Bachelet's victory in Chile.

By Roger Burbach

The resounding victory of Michelle Bachelet as Chile’s first woman president represents an important social advance in a country where women are often treated as second-class citizens. But few observers see the Chilean elections as reflective of the leftward trend taking place in much of Latin America.

Another long article in the Weekly Worker last week on the AWL and Venezuela. This is my reply.

*****

Nick Rogers’ latest article on Venezuela (Weekly Worker, January 12) concedes a lot of ground to the AWL view, which he has spent so much effort criticising.

SWP public face John Rees has a statement on Galloway and Big Brother in the new Socialist Worker .

Rees says: “Lots of people feel that it’s not an appropriate way for an MP to spend their time. People in their workplaces and communities say that many Respect supporters don’t think that this was a good idea.”

Long time SWP loyalist John Molyneux has produced a document, Why I am standing for the SWP Central Committee? He supports their major political line on Respect, Stop the War etc and since factions are strictly prohibited after its conferences, it’s unlikely to represent a split.