Civil servants ballot to strike

by Richie Venton

Civil service workers have voted by a resounding 68 per cent majority for further strike action against New Labour’s pay cuts, jobs slaughter, privatisation and decimation of the public services they deliver.
These members of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) have already staged two powerful one-day strikes in January and May, and have now given a huge mandate to their union leadership to step up the action, through both industrial and political pressure on Gordon Brown and his axe-wielders.
As we go to print the PCS national executive committee is meeting to plan what form the immediate revival of industrial action should take - whether one day, two days, and if possible in conjunction with other public sector unions, whose members are equally the targets of New labour’s capitalist fundamentalism.
The anger of civil service workers will have been added to by recent reports that, at a time when the government plans to wipe out 25,000 jobs in Revenue and Customs by 2011, every tax-worker can bring in at least three times their salary in government revenue.
As Gerry McMahon, a Glasgow Department for Work and Pensions worker told me, “It’s not as if we are asking for money to be spent on the civil service by taking it away from health or education. Cuts to our members’ jobs only add to tax evasion by the multi-millionaires, depriving our public services of funding.
“Diabolical pay offers have been handed out in various departments. In the DWP, management have just imposed a pay deal - after the staff rejected it by three to one in a democratic ballot. It means that those long-serving staff on the maximum of pay scales will only get 2 per cent this year, 1 per cent next year and a zero rise the third year.
“That is appalling when you take account of inflation - and it is the result of New Labour’s vicious pay ceiling of 2 per cent for the whole public sector.”
And just to rub salt into these low-paid workers’ wounds, the pay of the top bosses in the FTSE 100 companies has doubled in five years; they now ‘earn’ an average of £3million each!
PCS members will think there is something rotten about a Labour government that wasted £2billion on private consultants last year alone, as part of their drive to privatisation of services.
And they will increasingly see through the pathetic lies of Labour that they only want to cut civil service bureaucracy and improve frontline services - especially with the recent revelation that Citizens Advice Bureaux are issuing food vouchers due to delays in the receipt of benefits - because of staff cuts already carried through.
SSP members in PCS will continue to be at the heart of building united action to halt Labour’s pillage of public services, and when civil service staff take strike action, they deserve the fullest solidarity from other workers.

Government stoking extremism

by Eddie Truman

After a four week trial and a nine hour jury deliberation, Scotland has its first home grown Islamic terrorist plot and plotter.
Mohammed Atif Siddique was sentenced to eight years in prison on three terrorism charges, all of which are related to documents available on the internet.
During the trial there was no evidence produced that Siddique was involved in planning any violence; a spokesman for Central Scotland Police said there was “no evidence that Siddique was involved in an actual terrorist plot”.
In the days after he was found guilty, the Scottish press carried ever more sensational claims about what Siddique was going to do if he had not been arrested and repeatedly referred to him as an “al-Qaeda-linked terrorist”.
The Scotsman suggested he “may” have been planning an attack in Canada while the right wing tabloids were absolutely sure he was going to behead the Canadian Prime Minister.
Lawyer Aamer Anwar said Siddique was doing what millions of people did every day: “looking for answers on the internet”.
He added: “Atif Siddique states that he is not a terrorist and is innocent of the charges and it is not a crime to be a young Muslim angry at global injustice.”
Clearly the British state does regard it as a crime to be an angry young Muslim and the eight year sentence handed to Siddique was undoubtedly intended as a warning to Muslims not to step out of line.
BNP candidate Robert Cottage was recently found guilty of possessing bomb making chemicals and was sentenced to two and a half years.
But there’s a point that needs to be made here about the people of Glasgow’s previous relationship to and support for terrorism.
All through the Irish war, the ‘troubles’ as they are known, every Friday and Saturday night teams of people would methodically move through the bars and clubs of Glasgow frequented by both Catholics and Protestants and collect money for organisations who were actively involved in acts of violence.
In an era before the internet, predominantly young men would obsessively collect information on the activities of both Loyalist and Republican armed groups.
This was something that went on pretty much unhindered by the state and yet, in 21st century Scotland, to have video footage on a computer of insurgents in Iraq is to be guilty of supporting terrorism.
This verdict will do more to push young, disaffected Muslims into the arms of extremist groups than any number of Jihadist DVDs on sale on the internet.
While right wing extremist groups openly use the internet to threaten groups and individuals with violence, publishing home addresses for example, the police and security services are using the draconian powers available to them to target angry young Muslims with footage from Iraq on their computers.
What we don’t get to hear about are the many family, friends and relatives of such people who are also being arrested and held without charge for days on end under the Terrorism Act, people whose only crime is to be a Muslim.
Official government figures covering 2005/6, the first since the 7 July 2005 bombings on London, show a big increase in the use of stop and search powers, with Asian people bearing the brunt. One force, City of London, carried out 6,846 stops of pedestrians and vehicles without finding enough evidence to justify a single arrest.
n Eddie Truman is co-founder of Islamophobia Watch www.islamophobia-watch.com

SALMOND WARNS OF ‘TOUGH’ BUDGET

by Ken Ferguson

Addressing the SNP conference in Aviemore for the first time from a position of power, First Minister Salmond struck a confident note.
In reality it is a stark illustration of how far to the right New Labour has taken Scottish public life that the SNP’s modest social democratic moves are viewed as radical.
However, whatever view you take of the new Scottish Government it is hard to quarrel with the fact that Salmond has played an extremely skilful game with limited cards.
Mind you, he is ably assisted by Labour’s Alexander duo, with Wendy saying sorry for losing the Scottish elections while brother Dougie says sorry for nearly wrecking them.
Even the tame hacks of the Holyrood press corps are looking on in disbelief at the ham-fisted, petulant outbursts which pass for opposition from the depleted Labour benches.
But this is nothing against the brazen cheek of one time Edinburgh MP and Scottish Secretary Malcolm Rifkind as he cranks up a campaign to protect English voters from Scottish votes.
This from the man who imposed the Poll Tax on Scotland through English MPs on behalf of the detested Margaret Thatcher.
Now representing the millionaires of Kensington and Chelseain in the mother of parliaments, Rifkind’s call for English votes for English laws is plunging the traditional Scots Tory unionists into despair.
Meanwhile, with plummeting poll ratings and yet another leadership crisis, the LibDems must now be wistfully rueing their high-handed spurning of government seats in Edinburgh.
The pathetic attempt by Nicol Stephen to smear Salmond’s contacting all nations signing the non-nuclear treaty on the grounds that some aren’t democratic just confirms that their nice guy image is simply a façade.
And then there are the Greens who fared only slightly better than the left in May and who, despite adding limited weight to Salmond’s support, have yet to make much in the way of public impact.
Faced with these conditions Salmond should be looking for plain sailing, discounting the odd slap on the wrist in the Holyrood chamber.
But amidst the back slapping in Aviemore the First Minister was shrewd enough to flag up tough times ahead and, of course, lay the ground for an attack on Westminster for starving Scotland of cash.
There is little doubt that a squeeze is coming and that is before the impact of falling house prices, soaring prices and a falling dollar feeds into consumer spending.
The key question, as always in tough times, is - who pays?
Again Salmond dropped a broad hint when he flagged up plans to cut out quangos and, presumably jobs. In his speech his was building on the line much beloved among supposed ‘thinkers’ that the problem is a ‘bloated’ public sector.
This view has been put by finance minister Swinney and commands enthusiastic support among the economic gurus responsible for the intellectual pages of the Scotsman.
However the early pointers are that this issue could become a flashpoint with union unease spotlighted by the normally consensus inclined Scottish TUC.
During the May elections the SNP made much of the fact that they had been backed by former Royal Bank chief Sir George Mathewson and went on to appoint him to lead its economic advisers after they won.
But Sir George didn’t win any friends at the STUC when he put his free market views to MSPs.
The STUC was scathing:
“The level of ignorance displayed by Sir George is appalling. He describes UK employment law as ‘frightening’ and the associated ‘red-tape’ as ‘horrendous’.
“He therefore wilfully ignores the substantial body of international comparative evidence demonstrating the opposite to be true.
“The STUC hopes that this intervention does not signal that the work of the Committee of Economic Advisors (CoEA) is to be characterised by an approach favouring prejudice and ideology over authoritative academic study.
“The STUC warned that including business representatives on the Council was dreadfully short sighted. The Scottish Government should have stuck to its guns and established a CoEA based on the US model promoted in its manifesto.
“The sort of arrant nonsense spouted by Sir George merely embarrasses the Council and by association the Government. We desperately need to do better than this.”
All that before a job has been cut or a service threatened!
Even assuming that the SNP intends to deliver on its promises it is increasingly clear that the gathering economic storm will be difficult to navigate without confrontation.
Despite losing its MSPs the activist tradition of the SSP has already seen members actively offering solidarity to posties and care workers in struggle and more such work lies ahead.
Following its highly successful Dundee conference the SSP is clearly up for the challenge of the developing political struggle ahead.

Defending the right to choose

A number of pro-choice activists gathered outside the Scottish Parliament on Thursday 25 October to state their support for safe, legal abortion. The event was part of ‘Pro-Choice Week’, marking 40 years since the 1967 Abortion Act.
The assembled group heard from the speaker that Westminster’s Science Committee had rejected calls for a shortening of the time limit for abortion, on the grounds that, despite a lot of noise in the media from anti-abortion groups, there is no real evidence to support the restriction.
In response to whispers that the SNP government plans to call for abortion law to be devolved in order to restrict access in Scotland, demonstrators said that such a move had no place in a modern Scotland.

The people’s revolutionary

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara.
Brian H Pollitt, who spent time with Che in Cuba, looks back at the life of socialism’s most iconic figure.

On 9 October 1967, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara was murdered in the schoolhouse of the Bolivian village of La Higuera.
He had been captured some 24 hours before. Encircled by U.S.-trained Bolivian Rangers, he had tried to fight his way out but was rendered helpless when a bullet disabled his M-2 carbine while another wounded him in the leg. High-level discussions between the C.I.A. and the Bolivian military junta in La Paz concluded with the latter’s decision to execute their prisoner. Sergeant Mario Terán - fortified by alcohol - carried out the task.
Death was not immediate. Terán had been instructed that Che was officially to have ‘died of his wounds’ and while his initial burst of gun fire felled him, it was with multiple wounds to the arms and legs. He was killed with later shots to the chest.

Martyr of the poor
Representatives of the Bolivian High Command then took a decision they were later to regret. When captured, Che had been unkempt and emaciated and in death lay crumpled on a dirt floor. The Junta wished it to be unmistakeably clear that they had in fact killed the legendary Che Guevara.
His body was therefore flown to the neighbouring town of Vallegrande, where he was stripped to the waist and cleaned and his hair was washed and com bed.
When put on display to be photographed by the international media, the corpse - with opened eyes - was thus clearly that of Che Guevara. But for many the image was also evocative of the figure and sacrifice of Jesus Christ and in rural Bolivia and more widely, the dead Guevara came to be seen not as a failed Communist guerrilla leader but as a martyr in the cause of the poor and oppressed.
In future years he was thus more generally revered than reviled - and by some even sanctified.
Rumours of Che’s death spread swiftly within Cuba but were sceptically received.
He had disappeared from public view in 1965 and the international press had already reported him killed more than once in Africa and in the Dominican Republic. Moreover, during Cuba’s revolutionary war, Che had appeared to have a charmed life, acting with great tactical audacity and causing his Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro to reprimand him for his total disregard for his personal safety. He could be - and was - wounded but otherwise he seemed indestructible.  In one famous incident, when commanding the guerilla column that besieged and took the key provincial capital of Santa Clara in December 1958, he had maintained contact with his forces by casually walking around the city’s main square under the eyes (and guns) of a contingent of Batista’s troops corralled on, and firing from, the top floor of the city’s main hotel.
Some days after 9 October, however, in a televised address to the nation, Castro confirmed Che’s death, showing the photographs of his body as it had been displayed by the Bolivian military.
The next day the now-iconic Korda photograph, taken in 1960, was published nationally for the first time as the black-bordered back page of the newspaper Granma.

Memorial in Havana
A few days later, on the evening of Thursday 18 October, Castro addressed a Memorial meeting held in Havana’s Revolution Square.
 In contrast to official celebrations of important anniversaries of the Revolution such as the 26 July, no public holiday was declared and those attending the Memorial Meeting did so after their day’s work. Neither was any additional public transport laid on which - given Havana’s notoriously deficient bus service - meant that many would have to walk several miles to and from the Square.
It was not clear that dark evening just how many attended the Memorial meeting but those assembled numbered at least 400 thousand. Such an impressive manifestation of the esteem in which Che was held by the Cuban populace merited some explanation.
Che had come to Cuba as an unranked member of Castro’s expeditionary force in December 1956 and became recognized as a national figure only after the Revolutionary Government took power in January1959. As both his nickname and accent indicated, he was not Cuban but from Argentina and both then and now nationalist sentiments in Cuba were palpably strong. How then was he so rapidly to command an obvious and widespread popular admiration?
To begin with, it could be noted that Che Guevara was not the only foreigner to achieve prominence in Cuba’s long struggles for independence, firstly from Spain and then from the USA. In the 19th century, for example, General Máximo Gomez - a citizen of the Dominican Republic - had been a key military and political leader of Cuba’s insurrectionary forces. And, as Castro was swiftly to make clear after 1959, a powerful strand in Cuban nationalist thought had always sought not just insular but continental independence.

Personal courage
More important, of course, were particular facets of Che’s character that exercised a strong appeal for ordinary Cubans. His personal courage was evidently one of them.
Another was his physical stamina, particularly as this was demonstrated in unusually taxing circumstances. (That he suffered from crippling asthmatic attacks was well known). He was clearly a man of indomitable personal willpower.
His candour in the public airing of political or administrative problems - which distinguished him from the generality of political or administrative leaders - was also much appreciated.
A trivial anecdote serves to make the point: “How can socialism be respected if all we can make is this kind of rubbish?” he remarked in January 1963, when trying (in the presence of a visiting foreign delegation) to light his cigar with the first of several spluttering matches manufactured by his own Ministry of Industries.
Warming to his theme, he continued by recounting the efforts of fraternal Czechoslovak chemists to devise a formula adequate for Cuba’s production of an equivalent to Coca Cola. He deemed the resultant beverage to taste like “battery acid”.

Plain speaking
His distaste for the diplomatic niceties was displayed on more serious stages and graver issues when he represented the Cuban government on a visit to North Africa.
All of Cuba’s modern armaments had been supplied by the USSR free of charge and, in a widely reported discussion with Egyptian students and others, he criticized Cuba’s most important ally for requiring other anti-imperialist Third World countries to pay for Soviet weaponry.
He was censured for this at the highest political level within Cuba but versions of his tactless conduct were circulated and well-received on the streets.
Che was also recognized both to be an exceptionally hard worker and one who rejected the various perks available to those in high office.
When appointed President of the National Bank, his low opinion of monetary rewards - indeed of money itself - was signalled when Cuba’s newly printed bank notes appeared bearing his deliberately informal signature - Che.
When acting as Minister of Industries, the lights of his office were often seen burning late at night. (This was when he wrote most of the letters and articles that were to be published in nine volumes after his death). Visitors unfamiliar with his work regime could be disconcerted to find him presiding over early morning meetings in fatigues rumpled after a brief night’s sleep on his office couch. 

Respect
But one quality above all commanded the respect of ordinary Cubans: Guevara embodied in signal fashion the unity of words and deeds.
He was a great advocate of the supremacy of moral over material incentives in Cuba’s socialist development and his theoretical zeal in this sparked sharp debate in the country’s ideological journals. (For Marx, after all, the dominant distributive principle in the ‘first stage’ of socialist development had been a different one, namely: “From each according to his ability to each according to his work”).
For Che, the most important expression of moral incentives was unpaid voluntary work, especially in arduous tasks such as the manual cutting of sugar-cane. And in this, as in everything else he advocated, he matched his words with his actions, being found in the forefront of every kind of campaign where voluntary labour was mobilized to cut cane, dig ditches, work in the docks or shift 325lb bags in the warehouses of the sugar mills.

New Man
It was widely known that Che envisaged the creation of a ‘New Man’ as a prerequisite for the development of ‘true’ socialism.
This ‘New Man’ was an austere figure, equally accomplished as a producer or a warrior, and motivated by a passion to abolish poverty and oppression and to create, defend and spread socialist society.
What was recognized and respected within Cuba, of course, was that Che Guevara himself was the embodiment par excellence of all the attributes of that ‘New Man’. Many also realized that it was an idealistic creation. Old and young might be encouraged to ‘be like Che’ but few could actually become like him.
In his address to Cuba’s Memorial meeting of October 1967, Fidel Castro himself seemed to acknowledge this. He remarked, in his eulogy, that Che was “a man from another century”.

Icon
In the years following his death, Che was to become an increasingly familiar figure in a myriad of countries.
Korda’s iconic photograph was reproduced both more and less faithfully on countless banners, posters, walls and leaflets world-wide, spreading the legend of Guevara as a romantic, revolutionary hero whose name could be invoked in the most diverse conditions and for the most diverse causes.
Comparatively few of those embellishing their political actions with his physical image were well-versed in his writings on the theory and practice of socialism or on theories of revolutionary warfare. If they had been, they might have understood more clearly why, on the one hand, Che had reputable critics who dissented from many of his views, while, on the other, the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre could describe him after his death as “the most complete human being of our age”. But in commemorating the 40th anniversary of his death, it seems enough for the moment to remember Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara as a principled internationalist  revolutionary whose courageous example still inspires multitudes in their struggles against poverty and oppression.

Che’s legacy helps his executioner

After his death, Che Guevara’s body was flown to Vallegrande to be photographed in the laundry house of the town’s small hospital.
This currently serves as the base for some 20 Cuban doctors who provide free medical assistance to the local population under Cuba’s programme of medical assistance to Bolivia.
Sergeant Mario Terán, who killed Che, spent the years that followed in hiding, fearful of retaliation.
In 2006, he was found to be virtually blind, having developed cataracts in both eyes.
His sight was restored by Cuban ophthalmic surgeons working in La Paz as part of the joint Cuban-Venezuelan sight-saving programme ‘Operacion Miraglo’.

The last soldier

by Ken Ferguson

Dan Keating, who was the last surviving republican soldier of Ireland’s epic War of Independence of 1919-21, has died aged 105.
Keating, who died in his native Kerry on 3 October, refused to recognise the legitimacy of any Irish government, North or South, maintaining his loyalty to the all Ireland Republic proclaimed on the steps of Dublin’s GPO in Easter Week 1916.
Across the decades Keating watched successive fissures in the republican movement from Michael Collins to Gerry Adams veer from the path set out in 1916, but remained committed to the view that the Easter Week republic existed and continued to need to be defended.
At the time of his death Keating was Patron of Republican Sinn Fein (RSF), the party led by Ruairi O Bradaigh from which the Sinn Fein of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness split in 1986, to take up seats in the Dublin parliament.
Speaking to the BBC last March, he described the Northern peace process as “a joke”, adding:
“All the talk you hear these days is of peace. But there will never be peace until the people of the 32 counties elect one parliament without British interference.”
Keating was born on a small farm near Castlemaine in Kerry in 1902. The family was well respected for its active role in attacking landlords’ agents and defending the rights of tenant farmers.
He joined the youth wing of the IRA at 14 while working a in Tralee, and moved on to the adult movement in 1920 as the War of Independence flared and he took part in a series of fire-fights and ambushes. He always refused to comment on whether he had killed, saying:
“When you are involved in an ambush with a crowd of men, you wouldn’t know who killed who.”
In common with the vast majority of the Kerry IRA, he rejected the partition Treaty of 1921.
The majority of the anti-Treaty forces left, mainly for America, after losing the Civil War. But Keating stayed, found work as a barman in Dublin and became a leader of the Bar Workers’ Union.
He took his first drink at the age of 55 as an expression of disgust at the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association’s “treachery” in refusing to oppose longer hours for pub workers.
Kept under constant surveillance by the Irish Special Branch, he served stretches in prison, and in de Valera’s internment camp at the Curragh, and spent a year in London during World War Two trying to organise a bombing campaign.
He returned to live in Kerry in the 1960s with his late wife Mary, whom he had met in the visiting room of Mountjoy Prison, and remained active in republican politics.
“He had opinions about everything until he drew his last breath,” says one RSF figure, “especially about football and hurling.”
He died in his native county still refusing the pension from the Dublin government which was due to all war of independence veterans on the grounds that the Irish government was not, he still insisted, legitimate.

The Wild Brunch
Keef Tomkinson

Keef casts his eye across life’s more leisurely pursuits in order to put a wee bit of CULTure into our lives.

Ever get that thing when something distracts you and then what you are looking at or thinking of slips into what you’re saying or writing? Well apart from the usual racism of New Labour, opportunism of the SNP and cuddly Etonian-neo-nonsense of David Cameron, I’m distracted.
What on earth could distract me from three such strands of wretchedness? New York City.
I’m off on a fact-finding mission to see how strong the pound is against the dollar. My mission is to buy things, enjoy them, show them off and then see if I still hate that darn capitalism.
So this column will not only be a homage to the city, but a homage to lazy journalists and TV execs who know that the people like lists (they are also really easy to write and hopefully the editor will add some pics to pad it out).

Top Five NYC Movies

5. Taxi Driver - No film has ever quite managed to be so malevolently unsettling yet entrancing. De Niro will never be better than the distant insomniac taxi driver whose internalised fear, loathing and loneliness create a heroic sociopath.

4. Quick Change - All New York’s great landmarks are missing as Bill Murray and his fellow bank robbers desperately try and escape the city’s dysfunctional side streets and suburbs. An unheralded comedy classic.

3. Manhattan - Woody Allen’s career is mostly a love letter to New York. But of them all, Manhattan wins if only for its perfect first five minutes where Allen’s stumbling narration perfectly matches clips of street life.

2. Midnight Cowboy - Jon Voigt is Texan chump Joe Buck who arrives with dreams of being a highly paid male prostitute, adored by the city’s bored housewives. Soon he is giving blow jobs to students in a cinema and living on the streets with a fowl creature called Ratso, played by Dustin Hoffamn.

1. The Taking Of Pelham 123 - Walter Matthau leads the ultimate cast of New York character actors in this thriller with a dark comedic streak. Robert Shaw’s gang hijack a subway train and demand a ransom for the passengers. This is cinema’s perfect ode to 1970s New York.

Top Three NYC Books (or the three NYC books I’ve read)

3. The Rough Guide to New York: invaluable to first time visitors and keeps your excitement bubbling with a fascinating expose of the city.

2. The Catcher In The Rye: The story of a peculiar and unsettling young boy’s few days in the city where his demented delusions of grandness clash with his naivety and innocence.

1. Closing Time: Joseph Heller’s sequel to Catch 22 treats us to the same mocking of American values whilst introducing surrealist otherworldly storylines.

Top Five Songs Talking About NYC

6. Downtown - Petula Clark

5. Rockaway Beach - The Ramones

3. Union City Blue - Blondie (ok, it’s New Jersey, but **** you!)

2. Across 110th St - Bobby Womack

1. New York I love You But You’re Bringing Me Down - LCD Soundsystem

The Best NYC Water Feature Dedicated to the Former Wife of an American President

Just ahead of the Betty Ford Gin Fountain, it’s the Jackie Onassis Reservoir in Central Park. It glitters and is surrounded by a breathtaking skyline.

And that is that. Feel free to use this piece of the Voice to scrape chewing gum off your shoes and scoop up a dead spider from the sink. I promise to be angrier and more vitriolic next time.

India rejects nuclear deal with Bush

Next to China, it is India which generates the biggest volume of ‘golly gee’ footage and air time for its supposed economic miracle powered by the wisdom of Kirkcaldy man Adam Smith.
The script for both countries - faithfully pumped across airwaves and newspaper columns daily - is that the toiling masses of these countries are about to be saved by capitalist economics.
Given that China still has a nominally communist regime, the story that India has apparently been converted to market wonders is a powerful weapon for the globalisers.
Powerful, but not entirely true.
One of the most compelling signals of the importance set on developing this trend came with the visit last year to New Delhi for the beleaguered George Bush.
In a startling announcement Bush unveiled a proposal for a US-India deal to allow access to civil nuclear power, despite the fact that it was only a matter of months after the sub continent’s two powers, Pakistan and India, had squared up in military confrontation.
The soft line was in stark contrast to US sabre rattling about similar developments of civil nukes, using Russian expertise, in Iran which has brought us close to military confrontation.
The reason, as usual with capitalists, is revealed if we follow the money.
India for much of the post independence period was close to the then Soviet Union and was committed to a path of national economic development.
With the post-Soviet collapse and the rise of unchallenged free markets, the world changed and India with it.
It was in the context of the confrontation between the globalisers and the millions of India’s poor who gained little from the ‘modernisation’ that the US nuclear deal became a flashpoint.
Apart from nuclear cooperation, the deal was geared toward partnership between India and the US in democracy promotion, the opening up of the Indian economy to unfettered market capitalism and a strategic military alliance.
The Washington architects of this alliance were particularly keen on the military alliance which has the potential to decisively impact on the strategic balance in Asia.
This was spelt out by US State Department official Christina Rocca, who said:
“Military-to-military cooperation is now producing tangible progress towards the objective of strategic, diplomatic and political cooperation as well as sound economic ties.”

Protests
It was this reality that sparked that a major campaign, led by India’s Communists, to defeat the nuclear deal.
As the battle over the deal gathered pace in India, the navies of the so-called Quad (Australia, India, Japan, and the US) held a war game off the western coast of India.
Communists seized on this to highlight the military and economic implications of the deal.
Protests were organised, one leaving Kolkata and the other from Chennai, to converge on the port city of Vishakapatnam on 8 September for a massive rally.
Back in Delhi a few days later, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s General Secretary, Prakash Karat, led a march to parliament and said, “we demand that the government not proceed with the deal unless it satisfies the people’s objections.”
On 12 October the Congress Party ran up the white flag with India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the leader of the United Progressive Alliance, Sonia Gandhi, telling the press that they would back down from the US-India nuclear deal.
“If the deal does not come through,” Singh said, “that is not the end of life. In politics, we must survive short-term battles to address long-term concerns.”
Despite the hype about the shiny new India there are now more people in extreme poverty than 15 years ago.
The World Health Organisation reported that a single ailment “conspires with the most deadly and painful diseases to bring a wretched existence to all who suffer from it”. This silent ailment is Z59.5, the WHO’s code for “extreme poverty”.
Despite the defeat over the deal we can expect the neo-liberals to continue to push their pro-market prescriptions, but what is equally assured is that the millions who oppose them have also drawn fresh confidence from the event.

UN votes for 16th time to halt US blockade of Cuba

For the 16th year in a row the United Nations general assembly has voted overwhelmingly to demand that the United States ends its 46-year-old illegal blockage of Cuba.
A resolution condemning the blockage was passed by 184 votes to four with one abstention. The four were the US, Israel, Palau and the Marshall Islands.
Cuba’s Foreign Minister, Felipe Perez Roque, accused the US of taking its “brutal economic war” to new heights and vowed to “never surrender”.
“The blockade had never been enforced with such viciousness as over the last year,” Mr Perez told the general assembly, accusing US President George W Bush’s administration of adopting “new measures bordering on madness and fanaticism” that have not only hurt Cuba but interfered with its relations with at least 30 countries.
The annual vote took place a week after Mr Bush had delivered his first major address on Cuban policy in four years, calling for a military coup in Cuba.
In his speech the White House warmonger openly called on Cuban forces to stage a coup promising that there would be “a place for you in a new Cuba”, if they rebelled.
The US has no diplomatic relations with Cuba, lists the country as a state sponsor of terror and has long sought to isolate it through its illegal blockade, which includes travel restrictions.
This year, it stepped up enforcement of financial sanctions aimed at anyone doing business with the socialist island.
US diplomat Ronald Godard claimed that it was “long past time” that the Cuban people enjoy what he called “the blessings of economic and political freedom”.
These will no doubt include US style ‘pay or pray’ health care, replacing the path-breaking socialised health service currently available to Cubans.
Mr Perez charged the US with violating international law, depriving Cuban children of medication and preventing Cuban writers from participating in a book fair in Puerto Rico, which he called “a barbaric act”.
The minister pledged Cuba’s solidarity with US film directors Oliver Stone, who was attacked by the US government for filming in Cuba, and Michael Moore, who is being investigated for visiting Cuba.
“It is McCarthyism of the 21st century,” Mr Perez Roque said of the Bush regime.