Here are some photos of the North Devon Communist Party Britain at the Green Man festival in the UK:

https://picasaweb.google.com/109438333523241042509/23July2012#

By Zoltan Zigedy

Via: http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2012/07/no-time-for-illusions.html

No, I didn’t get it quite right. More than two years ago, I wrote:

Renault, like Peugeot-Citroen, received government bailout money from the French people under the condition that they would maintain employment: “The companies pledged in return to protect French jobs.” The industry minister stressed, “The state will have its say. When a French car is destined to be sold in France, it should be made in France.” This is, of course, in sharp contrast to the US President, allegedly a progressive and friend of labor, whose policies dictated that US auto companies would close plants and lay off workers in exchange for bailout money. The difference, quite clearly, is the militancy and class consciousness of labor. French unions, unlike their US counterparts, have consistently and without relent, refused class collaboration. (“The Class War: Where Things Stand,” 2-14-2010)

Today, it is a bitter mockery that Peugeot announced two days before the French national holiday and only shortly after the Socialist Party sweep of French elections that the company would lay off 8,000 workers. At the bottom of a severe downturn, a virulently conservative president, Sarkozy, and his minions feared that the French labor movement and its friends would pounce if public bailout funds were offered to companies responding to the crisis with layoffs and plant closings. Yet Peugeot now feels confident that it can close a plant and reduce employment at another plant even with a “socialist” government in power. Hollande, the new Socialist President of France pronounces the move “unacceptable;” the French unions are indignant.

What has changed in two years?

In the depths of the crisis, fear gripped Peugeot and most of the rest of the corporate world. The threat of devastated profitability or even insolvency brought them to their knees. Without generous help from outside, from the public trough, and with the public agreement to take on the risk of pending corporate failure, Peugeot and its corporate brethren might have collapsed.

But now the same corporate behemoths exploit the public debt incurred in their rescue. They recognize the vulnerability of the French government to the circling financial buzzards and pick this moment to shed workers, reduce costs, and increase profitability. They are gambling that French unions will place their fate in the hands of the new French government which will not have the resolve to thwart Peugeot’s plans. I suspect they are right.

Surely, some must see a parallel with the Obama Presidential campaign and the accompanying Obama-mania that gripped the US in 2008. Like the US electorate, French citizens were euphoric over the prospects of moving beyond an embarrassingly incompetent, right-wing vulgarian. And like their US counterparts, many French voters invested unjustified hope in a candidate never demonstrating an ability to separate national interests from corporate interests. Once again voters cast aside reality for the thin promise of vague change.

Hollande, like Obama, devoted his first days to assuring business interests and European Union rulers that he had no intention to rock the boat too vigorously — even though the boat is sinking.

When the moment is opportune, French “Socialist” Party leaders, their SYRIZA counterparts in Greece, and social-democratic candidates throughout the world step up to offer voters an easy option: class partisanship with no class struggle. Theirs is a make-believe world of advocacy, communication and compromise, a world where corporations and markets are resolutely tamed in parliamentary chambers through speeches and resolutions. Their history in this regard is hardly encouraging.

Just as European parliamentary elections have taken on more and more of the flavor of US two-party campaigns, the trajectory of European politics takes on more and more of that of the US. Thus, the Obama presidency offers a preview of what to expect from his European counterparts: a refreshed ruling class leadership offering more “progressive” style than substance.

After Obama’s election in the US, the “movement” unleashed for change was quickly dismantled and the new administration asserted continuity with ruling class policies, but served up with better articulation and a friendlier face to liberals and labor. As for the campaign promises of peace, labor law reform, health care reform, tax fairness, etc, they were unfulfilled or compromised.

Europeans who choose the easy detour of social democracy will relive the experience of US workers over the last nearly four years of Democratic Party governance. Wages for production and non-supervisory workers in manufacturing, when adjusted for inflation, are down 3.2% from March of 2009. At the same time, output per worker hour has exploded: where compensation has been essentially flat for the last nine years, output has grown by over 30%, rising most dramatically since 2009. For those of us still embracing the Marxist analytical tools, these facts signal a dramatic increase in the rate of exploitation under the watchful eyes of US social democrats and their liberal friends.

At the same time, wages for Mexican workers are rising. And in the Peoples’ Republic of China, wages rose 5% in 2009, 16% in 2010, and 20% in 2011. Already in the first half of 2012 wages for urban households rose 13% against the same time frame last year. So much credence for the myth of slave-labor conditions in China depressing US standards, a view so dear to backward labor leaders and media commentators. It should be transparently obvious that it is not the PRC government or Chinese workers who threaten US workers’ living standards, but corporations and their own government who both associate worker sacrifice with economic recovery.

And pity US steelworkers. With non-farm productivity growth (growth of exploitation) off for the first quarter of 2012 and threatening profit growth, steel manufacturers are looking to squeeze workers even harder. ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel producer is proposing to cut all wages and benefits by 36% and eliminate retiree health care for anyone hired after the expiration of the old United Steelworkers of America (USWA) contract on August 31. According to the USWA, ArcelorMittal hopes to cut $350 million per year from the labor costs incurred by 12,544 union workers, an amount that would transfer smoothly to share holders and top managers. While there is little indication of a plan to fight these moves, one of the USWA’s lead negotiators was quoted by The Wall Street Journal: “We’re very frustrated with the tone in negotiations.”

With ArcelorMittel enjoying $1.1 billion in profits in 2011, the union should be showing more militancy than a mere concern about the “tone” of negotiations. But don’t look for the “friend of labor” US President to show even a word of sympathy for the workers’ cause. Nonetheless, he and his Democratic Party colleagues will readily welcome the money and support of the USWA. Unlike their corporate counterparts, US unions insist on little in return.

Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

By Prof. James F. Tracy

Global Research, July 20, 2012

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31996

Progressive-left media persist in acting as propaganda outlets for the US-NATO destabilization of Syria, thus placating a politically conscious audience that might otherwise be mobilized against acts of imperialism and violence. The historical record suggests how this is not the first time “Progressive publicists” were used to sell a war.

A recent report in the UK Guardian by Charlie Skelton explains that Western news outlets remain willing victims (or accomplices) in a propaganda campaign for US -NATO led Syrian intervention being carried out by skilled and well-financed public relations practitioners. According to Skelton, “the spokespeople, the ‘experts on Syria’, the ‘democracy activists’ … The people who ‘urge’ and ‘warn’ and ‘call for action’” against the Assad regime are themselves part of a sophisticated and well-heeled public relations effort to allow NATO forces to give Syria the same medicine administered to Libya in 2011. “They’re selling the idea of military intervention and regime change,” Skelton reports,

“and the mainstream news is hungry to buy. Many of the “activists” and spokespeople representing the Syrian opposition are closely (and in many cases financially) interlinked with the US and London – the very people who would be doing the intervening. Which means information and statistics from these sources isn’t necessarily pure news – it’s a sales pitch, a PR campaign.”[1]

If one thinks that a revelation of this magnitude would be cause for other major Western news media to reassess their reportage of the Syrian situation they would be greatly mistaken. Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now is a case in point. Since the beginning of the “Arab Spring” color revolutions the foremost broadcast venue of “independent” progressive-Left journalism in the United States has used its reportage to obfuscate and thereby advance the campaign for regime change in Egypt, Libya, and now Syria. The tactics of disinformation and death squads employed in Libya and Syria should be easily recognizable since they were refined against popular Central American moves toward popular enfranchisement by the Reagan administration during the 1980s.

As Finian Cunningham recently observed [2] Democracy Now’s adherents look to Goodman on a regular basis because of her perceived credibility; she is the self-avowed “ exception to the rulers”—a tireless crusader against the restrictive corporate media where there remains a “deafening silence … around the issues—and people—that matter most.”[3] Today Goodman’s vaunted program is contributing to the very violence being committed by Western-backed mercenaries against the Syrian people.

Goodman and similar Left media are engaging and convincing precisely because of their posturing against corporate media control, economic exploitation and war mongering. Occupying the outer contours of National Public Radio’s milquetoast programming, Democracy Now’s self-described “independent” reportage takes on a certain aura of authenticity among its supporters—mainly progressives with concerns for social justice and human rights.

Such characteristics make Goodman and Democracy Now among the most effective sowers of disinformation. Further, their role in assuaging an educated and otherwise outspoken audience serves only to aid and abet the wanton military aggression Goodman and her cohorts claim to decry. In light of the program’s broader coverage of the “Arab Spring,” such reporting must be recognized and condemned as sheer public relations for NATO and the Obama administration’s campaign of perpetual terrorism and war on humanitarian grounds.[4]

On July 19, shortly after interviewing a mysterious “Syrian activist” who allegedly participated only with the assurance of anonymity, Democracy Now brought on McClatchy’s Beirut correspondent David Enders, who presented the US-NATO-backed mercenary army’s actions that resulted in the deaths of high-level Syrian government officials as part of a spontaneous popular revolution that was gaining momentum.

“We’ve seen the rebellion grow in numbers and as far as its organizational capability. And they’ve attempted to strike at Assad and his inner circle multiple times … I think what we’re seeing is just the government crumbling under the weight of a massive rebellion. It simply can’t put it down.”[5]

Goodman and Democracy Now are in fact upholding progressive journalism’s greatest perversion: consciously using the public’s faith in its performance and moral rectitude to promote the latest war—a tradition that dates back almost one hundred years. At that time journalists with public personae remarkably similar to Goodman’s were employed to persuade the American public on US entry into World War One. This was done with the government’s careful consideration of how ostensibly liberal crusaders were held in high regard by the broader public.

In April 1917, when Democratic President Woodrow Wilson led America into the war that he promised would “make the world safe for democracy,” he called on some of America’s foremost progressive journalists to “sell” the war to a reluctant American population through the greatest propaganda campaign ever put together. Wilson’s anxiety over securing liberal support for the war effort brought him to recognize how well known “Progressive publicists” exercised credibility in the public mind through their previous work in exposing government and corporate corruption. One such journalist was George Creel, who Wilson tapped to lead the newly formed Committee on Public Information (CPI). New Republic editor Walter Lippmann and “father of public relations” Edward Bernays were also brought on board the elaborate domestic and international campaign to “advertise America.”

Because of Creel’s wide-ranging connections to Progressive writers throughout the US, Wilson was confident that Creel would be successful in getting such intellectual workers on board the war effort, “to establish a visible link between liberal ideals and pursuit of the war,” Stuart Ewen observes. “On the whole, Wilson’s assumption was justified. When the war was declared, an impassioned generation of Progressive publicists fell into line, surrounding the war effort with a veil of much-needed liberal-democratic rhetoric.”

Well known for his derisive critiques of big business interests, such as the Rockefellers and their infamous role in the Ludlow massacre, Creel was the perfect candidate to lead a propaganda apparatus at a time when suspicion toward “a ‘capitalists’ war’” was prevalent. “When the moment to lead the public mind into war arrived, the disorder threatened by antiwar sentiments—particularly among the lower classes—was seen as an occasion that demanded what Lippmann would call the ‘manufacture of consent.’” [6]

The sales effort was unparalleled in its scale and sophistication. The CPI was not only able to officially censor news and information, but to manufacture it. Acting in the role of an advanced and multifaceted advertising agency, Creel’s operation “examined the different ways that information flowed to the population and flooded these channels with pro-war material.”

The Committee’s domestic organ was comprised of 19 subdivisions, each devoted to a specific type of propaganda, one of which was a Division of News that distributed over 6,000 press releases and acted as the chief avenue for war-related information. On an average week, more than 20,000 newspaper columns carried data provided through CPI propaganda. The Division of Syndicated Features enlisted the help of popular novelists, short story writers, and essayists. These mainstream American authors presented the official line in a readily accessible form reaching twelve million people every month. Similar endeavors existed for cinema, impromptu soapbox oratory (Four Minute Men), and outright advertising. [7]

Creel himself recalls the unparalleled efforts of the thought control apparatus he oversaw to sell the war to a skeptical American public

.”It is a matter of pride to the Committee on Public Information, as it should be to America, that the directors of English, French, and Italian propaganda were a unit in agreeing that our literature was remarkable above all others for its brilliant and concentrated effectiveness.”[8]

Alongside Creel’s recollections, out of their experiences in the CPI the liberal-minded Lippmann and Bernays wrote of their overall contempt for what they understood as a malleable and hopelessly ill-informed public that could not be trusted with serious decision-making. In their view, public opinion had to be created by an “organized intelligence” of technocrats (Lippmann) or “engineered” by “an invisible government” (Bernays), with the average citizen relegated to the role of idle spectator.[9]

Given the backdrop of progressive-left journalists’ lengthy and ardent opposition to the Bush-Cheney policies of Nazi-like atrocities and plunder, venues such as Democracy Now are poised to serve as platforms for disseminating the necessary disinformation to make the Obama administration’s color revolutions and “humanitarian” policy of military interventions seem palatable to the very audiences whose sensibilities are most opposed to violence and imperialism.

The phenomenon attests to the sophistication and efficiency of modern publicity efforts that genuinely alternative news outlets have long pointed to, the gullibility of many on the Left, and the extent to which vintage propaganda techniques never truly die. Rather, they are consistently refined and expanded in anticipation of shifting public sentiment and rationales for deception.

Notes

[1] Charlie Skelton, “The Syrian Opposition: Who’s Doing the Talking?” Guardian, July 12, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/12/syrian-opposition-doing-the-talking

[2] Finian Cunningham, “’Democracy Now’ and the ‘Progressive’ Alternative Media: Valued Cheerleaders for Imperialism and War,” July 13, 2012, GlobalResearch.ca, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31874

[3] Amy Goodman with David Goodman, The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media that Love Them, New York: Hyperion, 2004, 7.

[4] Fact Sheet: A Comprehensive Strategy and New Tools to Prevent and Respond to Atrocities, White House Press Release, August 4, 2011, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/04/23/fact-sheet-comprehensive-strategy-and-new-tools-prevent-and-respond-atro

[5] Democracy Now! “Back From Syria Reporter David Enders Says Assad Regime Crumbling to ‘Grassroots Rebellion,’” July 19, 2012, http://www.democracynow.org/2012/7/19/back_from_syria_reporter_david_enders. The observation, emblematic of Democracy Now’s overall Libyan and Syrian coverage, stands in stark contrast to the stories from genuine alternative news outlets providing important reports and analyses explaining the root causes of the Syrian unrest. For example, see Thierry Meyssan, “How Al Qaeda Men Came to Power in Libya,” Voltairenet.org, 7 September 2011, http://www.voltairenet.org/How-Al Qaeda-men-came-to-power-in; Tony Cartalucci, A Timeline & History: One Year Into the Engineered ‘Arab Spring,’ One Step Closer to Global Hegemony,” December 24, 2011, Land Destroyer Report, http://landdestroyer.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/2011-year-of-dupe.html; Webster Tarpley, “NATO-Backed Death Squads Basic Cause of Syria Unrest,” PressTV, May 10, 2012, http://www.presstv.com/detail/240482.html; Stephen Lendman, “Syria at the Crossroads: Is US-NATO Contemplating a Plan B? GlobalResearch.ca, April 2, 2012, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30087.

[6] Stuart Ewen, PR! A Social History of Spin, New York: Basic Books, 1996, 109-110.

[7] Aaron Delwiche, Propaganda: Wartime Propaganda: World War I, The Committee on Public Information, Accessed July 20, 2012 at http://www.propagandacritic.com/articles/ww1.cpi.html; George Creel, “How We Advertised America, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1920. Available at http://archive.org/details/howweadvertameri00creerich

[8] Creel, 113.

[9] Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion, New York: Free Press, 1997 (1922); Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda, New York: Ig Publishing, 2005 (1928); See also Lippmann, The Phantom Public, New York: Transaction Publishers, 1927, and Crystallizing Public Opinion, New York: Bonni and Liveright, 1929.

James Tracy is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Florida Atlantic University. He is an associate of Project Censored and blogs at memorygap.org.

Los Angeles Metro Club

2437 Centinela Av., #2

Santa Monica, CA. 90405

lamtrocpusa@hotmail.com

www.cpusalametro.org

___________________________

HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM…

We, the members of the Los Angeles Metro Club of the CPUSA write this appeal to you, the National Board of the CPUSA, in the spirit of party unity, fairness, and comradeship. We understand the complexity and sensitive nature of the issues of the most recent flareup in Houston but we do not consider the matter settled. We believe that there must be a fuller discussion within the party about our role as communists in American society and our relationship to the working class, the class we purport to represent. Censorship and intimidation are not conducive to having this discussion.

We have been told that we can’t struggle in the world as we wish it to be. That we must accept the political terrain as it is and that we must “be realistic.” We ask ourselves what if Marx, Engels, and Lenin had said that? What if they lived in a politically “realistic” world. Marx said in regard to this problem, “philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point, however is to change it.” Theory then evolves into a discussion of how fast or how slow society should move. The Chinese with their ‘cultural revolution’ tried to accelarate the pace of their socialist development. History proved them wrong. At the time, our party, the CPUSA supported the CPSU position and rejected the cultural revolution.

Our party did not support Leon Trotsky or his famous theory of ‘permanent revolution’ either. Lenin spoke against Trotsky and his theory several times. Later it was found that Trotsky was not only a spy for Germany, Poland, and Japan up to the beginning of WWII, but was also a rabid anti-communist that had nothing in common with the Bolsheviks. He later worked for the Hearst capitalist press as an expert on Soviet Russia. Some expert! So why is this ancient history so important? Because now, we understand that Bernard Sampson, the Chair of the newly recognized CPUSA club in Houston is a Trotskyite; an anti-communist! A friend of Bernard in Los Angeles, Mr. Grady Daughtery has told us that he was in the Trotskyite Sparticist League in Los Angeles with Bernard and that the Sparticist League campaigned actively against the United Farm Workers union. Further, Bernard advocated that workers should break strikes of the workers because they were lead by a ‘bourgeois union leader’, Cesar Chavez.

How did the Los Angeles Metro Club get involved in the activities of the Houston CPUSA club? Two ways. We are involved in the U.S. Peace Council and we participate with the Houston Peace Council in activities like the anti-NATO campaign. We know about their fine work with the Cuban 5 case. We learned about their website and put a link on our website and became friends with them on Facebook. Although we were told that the problem in Houston was with one individual, we know that this is untrue because of their relationship with us in the U.S. Peace Council. So, you see, there is always more than one side to every story.

We are very disappointed with the decision of the CPUSA National Board to intervene in the internal affairs of the Houston club. We are more disappointed that they have chosen to intervene in our club’s internal matters. We have done nothing but try to carry on the fight against war, fight imperialism, and build proletarian solidarity. Along the way we have met some great comrades. This all seems legitimate to us; on the up and up. There is no conspiracy as intimated by the comrades investigating the problems in Houston. Although, we do wonder why the comrades on the National Board would accept the version of events of known Trotskyites without interviewing others.

Our club stands firmly against censorship. Censorship is un-American and a return to the McCarthy era. We don’t want to go there and we don’t want our party to go there. We hope that as Marxist-Leninists our party has matured since then. Are we wrong? We hope not, but we are concerned. Since when does the national party tell clubs what groups they can associate with? Since when does the national party tell clubs what links and other information to put on its website and Facebook page? We are a club of communists with a healthy collective leadership, so why not trust us to decide what groups and clubs to associate with and what to put on our website or Facebook page? We don’t post irresponsible or counter-revolutionary articles or information there. We don’t have any relations with right-wing reactionary organizations. We participate fully in the activities of our district, and support its political line. However, when we receive information from other clubs around the country that don’t fully agree with the thought that is disseminated by the national party centre we feel it is our duty as communists to publish it. There are legitimate concerns about the party’s future and the party’s relationship with the working class. We have written previously on this in another letter to Political Affairs.

We do not see how frank, open discussion of communist history hurts our party. Our history is important to us. Our party’s relationship with the USSR and the CPSU is important to remember. It is a part of us. To deny it is to succumb to anti-communism and plays into the hands of the bourgeoisie. To say that America is somehow exceptional to the rest of the world is not communist ideology and those that hold this point of view are not communists. They shouldn’t be in our party. We do not need to pander to elements that are anti-communist to build the party unless our objective is to destroy the CPUSA: the party of a new type envisioned by Lenin. We are not Social-Democrats. We are not populists. We are not progressives. We are communists: builders and leaders of mass movements that fight for a world beyond capitalism. We are not satisfied with our present situation of high unemployment, cuts in our Social Security and our social safety net and pensions, and of endless racism , sexism, and imperialism. As part of our struggle, we include electoral work. We consider this to be one tool in our arsenal of defense of our class interest, but by no means the only one. There are other things that we must do simultaneously to win workers to our side. We must be seen and we must earn the trust and respect of the workers. There is only one way to do that. We feel that the leadership of our party has forgotten this lesson and has embarked on a cynical downward spiral and that our party has ceased to be a revolutionary party. We see liquidation and retirement on the horizon and are reminded of comrade Hall’s words that “communists don’t retire.” Being in the party is not a job. It is a devotion to our class: the working class. It is a devotion to a historical inevitability. As Eugene Debs said, “socialism is as certain as the setting of the sun.”

Where does this cynicism and sense of entitlement come from? Why do comrades in leading positions in our party feel that their personal status is more important than the ideological health of the party? Why does our party editorialize against other communist nations, namely the DPRK? Don’t these nations have a right to defend themselves against imperialist aggression? Perhaps this is what the leaders of the Houston club are concerned about. Is the CPUSA saying that the Houston comrades have no right to be concerned? Are they saying that to point out weaknesses in our leadership contradicts the party line and promotes factionalism? If they are, they are wrong. We happen to believe that some of the criticisms of the Houston club have merit. We believe that the National Board has acted in its own self interest, and not in the best interest of the whole party. We further believe that there needs to be a wider discussion within the party of why people are not joining the party in greater numbers and why many don’t stay after they join. This discussion would lead to a finding that there needs to be change in the thinking at the top. Democratic centralism is a two way street. It also must work from the bottom up. There can be no top down solution.

When our club discussed the report to us by our club chair concerning his meeting with the directors of the California district about Houston, we were immediately insulted when it was reported that the problems in Houston were “just like Evelina.” Evelina Alarcón was replaced in a similar autocratic manner as was the New York Arts & Entertainment club and Houston club. We were promised by Sam Webb and others that things would be different, that there would be a more transparent approach to party problems. So far, this has not been the case. In fact, it is less transparent now than before. There is less communication, not more. Comrades in the Metro club were used in the battle to remove Evelina and now our situation is much worse. People have lost respect for us since Evelina’s arbitrary removal. We never took a vote on whether or not to remove her, and we never elected the leadership of the Southern California collective that has replaced her.Although we have never met the Chair of the Houston club, we can sympathize with him.

Finally, we say that although we disagree with the demand to remove content from our website, we have done so. We will, however, continue to work on the mass activities that we are involved in and we hope to have many more discussions in the party on the topic of party unity and action. We hope that it is not against policy of the National Board to help our comrades in the former Soviet Union and other people fighting to restore socialism in their countries, and to help in building peace organizations. These activities we will never cease. It is our proletarian responsibility to fight for our our class around the world! We hope that we have your blessing as we carry on this important work.

Communist Party,
Los Angeles Metro Club

ALL WORKERS MILITANT FRONT (W.F.T.U. Affiliate)
5b, Ag. Filotheis 10556 Athens, GREECE, Τel. +30210 3305 219,+30210 3301842,+30210 3301847 Fax +30210 3802 864, E-mail : international@pamehellas.gr

http://www.pamehellas.gr

July 20th, Athens, Greece

PRESS RELEASE

ATTEMPTS TO BREAK THE 9MONTH STRIKE OF THE STEEL WORKERS
USING RIOT POLICE

On the early morning of Friday, Riot Police forces, under the instructions of the three-party Greek government (ND neoliberals, PASOK and DHMAR socialdemocrats ) attempted to break the heroic struggle of the steel workers, by arresting the strikers picket line, who have been on strike for 9 months.

The executive secretariat of PAME, responded immediately by calling the workers and the trade unions of the area to go immediately at the factory of the HALIVOURGIA. In very short time, at the gates of HALIVOURGIA gathered hundreds of workers from all over Athens to support the strikers steel workers. The solidarity mobilisation is still in progress.

The board of the steel workers’ trade union met immediately and calls for solidarity the workers of the area to a rally at the gates of the factory in the afternoon. Tomorrow Saturday, will realise General Assembly of the workers of the steel industry in order to decide how to respond to this new attack.

We call all trade unions and workers to condemn the antilabour and terrorizing practices of the Greek government that responds with violence and suppression to the just demands of the workers. The struggle of the steelworkers against wage cuts and lay offs is struggle of all workers.

The Executive Secretaria

________________________________________________________________________________

Please send letters expressing your solidarity with the steelworkers to:

Greek Ambassador: Constantina Zagorianou-Prifti, e-mail: embgr@eircom.net

You have the correct position on this matter. It looks like Webb, etc. may be new communists but they act like the communists of old, for despite the claims of how democratic democratic centralism was, in practice it
was top-down rule almost anywhere Leninists operated. I know his legacy was a mixed one and not all negative, but I think the part of his legacy that lasted was the authoritarian part. Of course, the tendency of those in power
regardless of ideology is to hold on to power and to use whatever means are at hand to stay on top. Greed and selfishness seem ineradicable from the human psyche and soul. Occasionally, a Mikhail Gorbachev pops up or a George Washington.
But they are the exception, not the rule throughout human history. I hope you prevail against all odds.

By James Thompson

U.S. Rep. Al Green marches with the janitors in 2006

HOUSTON – 15 union activists linked arms in downtown Houston and blocked the intersection of Bell and Smith in a sit-down protest demanding higher wages for janitors represented by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The 15 activists were arrested by Houston Police Department officers when they refused to move.

SEIU represents 3200 janitors in Houston who clean office buildings. There have been solidarity pickets in other cities across the U.S.

About 250 protesters were involved. They carried brooms, flags and signs and banged on pails as they marched three blocks. The demonstration was held during the lunch hour and gained the attention of downtown workers during their lunch break.

SEIU is attempting to put pressure on building owners, city officials and property management firms in an effort to raise janitors wages to $10 an hour. The top wage for most janitors is $8.35 an hour.

The Houston Chronicle reports that the janitors’ strike has spread to 43 buildings and about 450 workers are on strike.

SEIU is seeking a new contract with the Houston Area Contractors Association, which includes ABM Janitorial Services, GCA Services and ISS Facility Services as well as other companies.

The Houston Police Department has arrested demonstrators supporting the janitors on two previous occasions already.