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The defeat of the miners’ strike 40 years ago ushered in the era of neoliberalism

21st March 2024Leave a Commenton The defeat of the miners’ strike 40 years ago ushered in the era of neoliberalism

“The success of the neoliberal project is measured by the greatest inequality in Britain since the 1930s.”

Lord John Hendy KC delivered the following speech during the Karl Marx Graveside Oration at Highgate Cemetery on Sunday, on behalf of the Marx Memorial Library

It is one of the greatest honours of my life to be invited to speak by the Marx Memorial Library (of which I have the honour to be a trustee), here, where Fredrick Engels stood on March 17 1883 and gave the first oration at Marx’s graveside.

A week ago, Nature magazine published a report of the finding of the earliest known human manufactured tool – no less than 1.4 million years ago. I say “human” but these were the ancestors of modern humans, Homo erectus. Modern humans did not make their appearance until about 140,000 years ago.

Marx would have been fascinated by the scientific advances that made possible the dating of this remarkable artefact (a method based on cosmogenic nuclides).

This tool from a society of hunters and gatherers gives rise to the question: after hundreds of generations, how did we reach a point, less than 10,000 years ago, where the ownership of the means of production of almost everything which sustains us gradually passed out of the hands of those who made and used the tools and into the hands of those who contribute next to their manufacture or usage?

Marx and Engels laid the basis for the explanation of that historical transition, and the means by which the working class are consequentially kept in a perpetual state of oppression.

The fact of that oppression is self-evident, especially today, as I shall highlight. And the causes of it, usually concealed behind a smokescreen of distraction, distortion, fake idols and false scapegoats is revealed more clearly than ever.

But explanation and understanding is not enough; the point is to change the world — as Marx’s words carved on his grave state. For, as Engels said in that first graveside oration, “Marx was before all else a revolutionary. His real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat…”

Over the 40 years since the commencement of the miners’ strike of 1984-5, it is apposite to reflect on how that goal has receded but how, today, new opportunities present themselves.

From the horrors of the second world war, the so-called post-war consensus based on Keynesianism represented an uneasy accommodation with capitalism which was brought to an abrupt end in the 1970s with the advent of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is no more than a thin veil of apparent respectability to mask the ugly face of 19th-century unbridled capitalism and greed.

The doctrine became influential among those who rejected the moderate restraints of the post-war consensus. It guided Chile after Augusto Pinochet’s CIA-backed coup in 1973; Britain after Margaret Thatcher’s election in 1979; and the US with Ronald Reagan’s election a year later.

The 1970s are highly significant. In Britain they were the most equal decade ever in terms of wealth and income. Income inequality was never smaller than in 1973. The share of GDP going to wages rather than profits was never greater than in 1976.The share of national income taken by the top 0.1 per cent of the population was never lower than in 1978.

All anathema to the neoliberals.

Neoliberalism had a particular view of trade unions, a view precisely echoing that of 19th-century judges. Trade unions are tolerable. But not if they engage in collective bargaining, backed where necessary by strike action because that “distorts” the so-called “labour market.”

The price of labour should, instead, be left to the freedom of individuals to compete against each other to work for the lowest wage each is prepared to accept to sustain life.

The Conservatives developed a plan to end that distortion. Trade unionism was to be emasculated, workers disempowered and managerial prerogative was to be fortified. After 1979 they had their chance.

The plan had many aspects. Globalisation transferred much heavy industry and manufacturing (and some services) to cheap labour economies. Public services were privatised. Parts of both public and private undertakings were outsourced. Deregulation was the order of the day.

Such policies also ended collective agreements and excluded trade unions. The government abandoned the promotion of collective bargaining (policy since 1896). It encouraged derecognition and relished the “monstering” of trade unions and trade unionists by the right-wing press.

Within three years of taking office, the Tories engineered a “reserve army” of three million unemployed to drive the price of labour down. Increasingly harsh conditions for social security were imposed. Thatcher asserted “there is no such thing as society” to counter working-class solidarity and broke up communities by the sale of council housing and the removal of rent controls.

Part of the strategy to emasculate trade unions was by anti-union legislation. They learned from the failure of the 1971 Industrial Relations Act — beaten by working-class power, the shop stewards movement, uncowed union leaders and the freeing of the Pentonville dockers in 1972 (under threat of a general strike).

The government wanted revenge, in particular, for the success of the 1972 miners’ strike. The wrongful prosecution and conviction of the Shrewsbury pickets later that year (finally vindicated in 2021) illustrated their attitude. They became even more incensed about the miners’ strike of 1974, on which Ted Heath staked and lost the general election.

A central cornerstone of their strategy was to break a major union in an engineered major set-piece strike.

This objective was set out in the Ridley report in June 1977. It considered several unions the government might take on but suggested “the most likely area is coal.”

It recommended that:

• Coal should be stockpiled and imported through non-union ports
• Hauliers should recruit non-union lorry drivers
• Power stations should be adapted for burning oil as well as coal
• Strikers’ benefits should be cut and
• A large, mobile squad of police should be equipped.

The Ridley plan was put into effect. In 1983 Ian MacGregor was appointed as chair of the National Coal Board (NCB) from British Steel where he had overseen the loss of 90,000 jobs. The police were equipped and organised on a national basis. Coal stocks were built up, though the NUM instituted an overtime ban in November 1983.

The government chose the date, and on March 5 1984, the NCB announced that five pits would be subject to “accelerated closure” in just five weeks. Miners at the affected pits walked out. To ensure a wider strike, on March 6, the NCB announced that the formal Colliery Review Procedure was obsolete, and that 20 collieries would close with a loss of 20,000 jobs.

The NUM claimed that the government intended to close more than 70 pits. The claim was denied and MacGregor wrote to every NUM member claiming that Arthur Scargill was deceiving them and there were no plans to close any but the pits so far announced. Cabinet papers released in 2014 showed that MacGregor’s plan was, in fact, to close 75 pits.

A tactic devised by MacGregor and chancellor of the exchequer Nigel Lawson was to encourage, and get rich donors to fund, a multitude of civil legal actions by working miners against the unions to drain them of funds and “progressively tie the union up in knots.”

In the civil actions which followed, I (and a superb legal team) had the honour to represent the NUM and Area unions. There is no doubt that the litigation was an inconvenience for the unions, especially when union funds were sequestrated and put into receivership.

But it did not end or weaken the strike. Nor did the arrest of over 11,000 pickets, the police blockade of Nottinghamshire, or the Orgreave police riot.

Nonetheless, after holding out for a year the miners ultimately lost. The consequences have been disastrous both for the mining communities and for the British working class. Retribution followed. Thatcher resumed the neoliberal agenda: more deindustrialisation, privatisation, outsourcing and anti-union legislation. Unabated by Labour, these policies accelerated after 2020 under the name of austerity.

The success of the neoliberal project is measured by the greatest inequality in Britain since the 1930s. The OECD reports that Britain ties with Bulgaria as the most unequal nations in Europe.

The Condition of the Working Class is better, of course, than it was 180 years when Engels wrote his classic. But it is awful. The real value of wages has not risen since 2007. Half the UK workforce now earn less than the median £28,008 a year, gross; £23,685 net.

Sixty per cent of those on benefits are in working families. Some 14.4 million citizens live in poverty and 3.8 million in destitution. In contrast, the corporations which control energy, food and banking make unprecedented billions in profit. Steps to halt global warming are sacrificed in the name of corporate greed. Private equity companies are asset stripping our high streets and way of life. Infant mortality is rising and life expectancy for the worse off is falling.

But these conditions have produced anger. They have revealed to many the true cause of the crisis they face daily: capitalism.

This presents an opportunity.

To follow Marx’s revolutionary lead, the first step must surely be to build a popular front, led by the trade unions and including all the battles and campaigns which mobilise people: the disabled, the renters, the surfers against sewage, those fighting climate change, those battling ethnic and gender discrimination, those against defunding the arts, those outraged by the genocide in Gaza, and so on.

A common front against a common enemy: capitalism.

Our job is to make it happen.

---

• This speech was originally published by The Morning Star on March 19th, 2024.
• You can find out more about the work, events and archive of the Marx Memorial Library here; and follow the library on Facebook and Twitter/X.

A Treaty To Prepare the World for the Next Pandemic Hangs in the Balance

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed deep inequalities between rich and poor countries. The WHO Pandemic Agreement hopes to improve global equity and avoid mistakes made during COVID-19.

By Jon Cohen

March 18, 2024

Z Article




“Me first”—that’s how Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization (WHO), described the wealthy world’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic when he kicked off negotiations for a global “pandemic treaty” in December 2021. Even before vaccines had proved safe and effective, rich countries had purchased enough doses to cover their entire population several times, whereas lower and middle-income countries had little or no vaccine. The pandemic treaty would address that searing inequity, Tedros vowed, along with many other problems identified during the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving the world better prepared for the next one.

That goal is now in jeopardy. After eight rounds of often contentious negotiations in Geneva, the WHO Pandemic Agreement is nearing the finish line. On 7 March, WHO sent member states a draft text that will be subject to one more round of negotiations starting on 18 March. In late May, the final draft heads to the World Health Assembly, the annual gathering of WHO member states, for approval.

But deep divisions remain around the 31-page text, and some wonder whether there is enough time to resolve them properly. Observers from developing nations say the agreement doesn’t give them strong enough assurances that they will fare better during the next pandemic. “There is a systematic marginalization of developing country proposals on equity,” says Nithin Ramakrishnan, an India-based lawyer with the Third World Network, one of more than 100 “stakeholders” that provided input during the negotiations. “The process is being carefully designed to avoid any form of detailed legal obligations.”

Failing to reach an agreement would be a serious blow, says Alexandra Phelan, a global health specialist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, another stakeholder. “This treaty fills a lot of gaps and is really important because it builds trust between countries about setting expectations and norms,” she says. “If it fails, it says we’re going to look at COVID-19 and say that was OK.”

The spark for the treaty was a May 2021 report from an independent panel, convened by Tedros, that issued a scathing critique of the world’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Surveillance did not keep up with the virus, responses lacked a sense of urgency, health systems buckled, and countries hoarded masks, protective suits, and vaccines, the panel wrote, creating “a toxic cocktail which allowed the pandemic to turn into a catastrophic human crisis.”

To avoid a repeat, the pandemic agreement aims to bolster the world’s defenses on many fronts. It seeks to strengthen surveillance for pathogens with “pandemic potential” and reduce the risk they will jump from animals to humans or leak out of a lab. Countries must also commit to better managing antimicrobial resistance, strengthening their health systems and sanitation, and making progress toward universal health coverage. (Separate talks aim to amend the International Health Regulations, which compel countries to report health emergencies within their borders.)

The agreement’s most controversial part is a global system to share pathogens and their genetic codes while ensuring access to “benefits” from the research—including vaccines. Developing countries are loath to share information about how pathogens are spreading and evolving if they can expect little in return, as happened during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Vaccine nationalism” may have cost up to 1.3 million lives in low- and middle-income countries by the end of 2021, one analysis suggests.

The current draft of the pandemic agreement attempts a fix. It proposes a Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) System that compels countries to share sequence information and samples with WHO-coordinated networks and databases. In return for access to these data, manufacturers of diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines will be required to provide 10% of their products free of charge and 10% at not-for-profit prices “during public health emergencies of international concern or pandemics.”

A comment in the 29 February issue of Nature, cosigned by 290 scientists from 36 countries, defended this plan, which, the authors said, “could just as easily be called ‘science for science.’” The PABS system, they argued, “will support more pandemic science, and ensure that scientists’ contributions result in their communities having access to lifesaving advancements.”

Pharmaceutical companies resent such restrictions, however. “Scientists need rapid access to pathogens and data without conditions in order to quickly develop safe and effective countermeasures to save lives,” the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations said in an 11 March statement.

At the same time, many developing countries say the draft doesn’t go far enough, and that details are vague. “While some progress has been made, it is still unclear what incentives the pandemic treaty offers to political leaders that would make them behave differently during the next public health emergency or how industry … would prioritize populations who are thousands of miles away,” says Nelson Aghogho Evaborhene, a vaccine specialist at the University of the Witwatersrand. He points to passages that say states will have to “promote” and “facilitate and incentivize” companies to share know-how as examples of “weaker language [that] would barely alter the status quo.”

Gian Luca Burci, an international law researcher at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva—another stakeholder—says a “front” led by the European Union, the United States, and Switzerland has attempted to “water down” the PABS agreement. “These are countries with big pharmaceutical companies that are lobbying like crazy to save the bottom line,” Burci says. “Of course countries will not make an official statement, ‘We are trying to kill equity.’ But listen to what they say in public meetings and read between the diplomatic lines, as well as what the industry is clearly saying: ‘Don’t touch patents, and please let us have the viruses without all the strings attached.’”

Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand and a co-chair of the panel that produced the critical 2021 report, is disappointed as well. “Member states should now be asking themselves: Are they really working towards an agreement which would ensure that the management of future pandemic threats is more collaborative, faster, smoother, and more equitable—or not,” Clark says.

For the text to be adopted as a classic international treaty, two-thirds of WHO’s member states must approve it at the World Health Assembly. If instead it follows a pathway used for “regulations,” the votes of only half of the member states are needed. Even if the agreement is adopted, countries can still decide not to join. As with other international treaties, a Conference of Parties will be formed to hammer out further details and supervise the treaty’s implementation.

In a talk on 13 March, Tedros urged member states to reach compromises soon. He recalled that in 1946 the WHO Constitution was negotiated in just 6 months—long before email and Zoom calls existed. “Everyone will have to give something, or no one will get anything,” he said.

Evaborhene agrees. “Trade-offs and compromises in the final text must uphold principles on equity,” he says. “Otherwise, we may continue to sow seeds of plagues and count the dead when the next pandemic hits.”

You Flood it, You Pay For It.

States are considering 'climate superfund' laws to hold Big Oil accountable

By Bill McKibben

March 18, 2024

Source: The Crucial Years

Vermont’s capitol city, underwater in epic July flooding that wrecked most of Montpelier’s retail district | Photo via Bill McKibben

One prong of the climate fight involves installing so much renewable energy that fossil fuel use actually declines dramatically—a few places are finally showing that’s possible, like sunny Germany which last week said emissions in 2023 dropped more than ten percent.

But if that’s going to happen everywhere, and fast enough, it’s going to require the other prong: holding back the fossil fuel industry. The problem is that the politics of oil-producing countries don’t allow it—that’s why the Inflation Reduction Act was all carrots/no sticks. And it’s not just DC—in Lula’s progressive Brazil the national oil company, already Exxon-sized, said last week it plans on outproducing all its peers except Saudi Arabia and Iran by 2035.

So you need a mechanism for places where there is no oil in the ground to inflict some hurt on Big Oil—and get some justice at the same time. Like, Vermont. And New York, and Maryland, and Massachusetts.

In a just world, Big Oil would be criminally prosecuted, since investigative reporting has made it abundantly clear that it knew what it was doing (Aaron Regunberg and David Arkush last week laid out an excellent argument as to why these companies could be charged with homicide). In civil court, jurisdictions can simply sue the fossil fuel industry, and that’s actually been happening more and more often (on Wednesday a Belgian farmer sued French energy giant Total for making his life harder). Suits like that—many premised on the fact that Big Oil clearly knew about the dangers they were causing—are wending their way through the American courts, but our justice system is a) slow and b) bent in the direction of the powerful.

So legislators are opening up another front—”climate superfund” laws that treat disasters like Vermont’s summer flooding as if they were a toxic dump whose cleanup can be charged to the corporation that caused them. That would have been hard even a few years ago, but “climate attribution” science is now robust: it’s increasingly easy to prove that absent global warming we wouldn’t have the endless downpours/droughts/fires. If a chemical company pollutes a site, the superfund law has been a way to make it pay for the remediation—so if Vermont’s flooding cost its taxpayers $2.5 billion to repair, why should they be on the hook?

I’m talking about Vermont because it might be the first state to adopt such a law, as it was the first to abolish slavery or allow civil unions—the legislature and the governor will decide in the next few weeks. And I’m talking about it because I live here, in a town that is struggling to pay for the repairs to its roads after last summer’s record flooding. We heard the sobering litany at town meeting earlier this month; every culvert makes it that much harder to keep our school open. New York is also close to passing such a law, and perhaps Maryland and Massachusetts, as Katie Meyers pointed out in Grist recently—all of them states without significant hydrocarbon production, and all of them states with a lot of climate damage.

Campaigners led by the Vermont Public Research Interest Group launched the campaign last summer, accompanied by a twenty-foot-long inflatable pig. VPIRG’s executive director Paul Burns, and Lauren Hierl, a member of the selectboard in flood-devastated Montpelier, explained the logic in an oped:


The biggest oil companies in the world made more than $200 billion in profits last year, while Vermonters were forced to pay record prices at the pump — and got stuck with the costs of climate change cleanup in our communities. That shouldn’t be the case. Big Oil knowingly made a mess of the climate. They should help pay to clean it up.

It’s a lesson we all learned in kindergarten: If you make a mess, you clean it up.

The argument has obviously appealed to legislators. Here’s the state’s news website, VTDigger, describing one of the more conservative Democrats


Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would have “absolutely opposed” such a bill 20 years ago. Chemical contamination in the Bennington area, which has permanently altered the lives of some of his constituents, changed his mind.

“Who’s going to pay for the damage done?” Sears said. “Is it going to be the taxpayer? Is it going to be the homeowner or the small business? Or is it going to be the company that contributed to the problem? I say it should be the company that contributed to the problem.”

It will be fascinating to see what the state’s governor, Phil Scott, does with the bill. He is a Republican, but a remnant one, harkening back to the state’s Yankee past. (For a hundred years until the 1960s Vermont was the most reliably GOP state in America). He brought the state through covid with fewer deaths per capita, and less division, than any other; and since he’s a contractor by profession he understands viscerally how much it costs to repair a road or rebuild a bridge. If he signed this bill, he’d be reflecting the clear consensus of the state’s voters. And the great marker of those Yankee Republicans was frugality—cheapness, but the good kind. It’s hard to imagine that he wants Vermont taxpayers on the hook here.

The oil industry (in between insisting that all of this is a plot by the Rockefellers) has hinted that paying these damages could raise prices for consumers, but that’s silly—the price of oil is set on a world market. And they’ve of course promised to go to court if they are charged for their damage. Vermont’s got good lawyers—it’s got one of the best environmental law schools in the nation. And New York State has lawyers upon lawyers, as Donald Trump is finding out. Massachusetts governor Maura Healy used to be AG, and she’s taken on big oil in the past. It’s a fight, but a winnable one.

Yes, it would be best to do this at the federal level (and Vermont’s Senators Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch have introduced legislation to do just that). But the Senate filibuster means that oil states will have enough clout to block those laws, at least while they could still do some good. So for a while it’s going to be a coalition of the oil-less (you can ask your state to get involved here)

It’s been a great blessing to Vermont that there’s nothing much of value beneath the soil (well, granite, but a few quarries are enough to produce an eternity of tombstones). And now that geological fact may prove to be of great value to the planet.



Bill McKibben  is an author, environmentalist, and activist. In 1988 he wrote The End of Nature, the first book for a common audience about global warming. He is a co-founder and Senior Advisor at 350.org, an international climate campaign that works in 188 countries around the world.

The Ugly Origins of Trump’s “America First” Policy

By Lawrence S. Wittner

March 19, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

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Image by Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons 3.0

People’s choice of words can be revealing. That’s certainly the case with respect to one of Donald Trump’s favorite slogans, “America First.”

In April 2016, Trump initially used the term in a campaign speech, proclaiming that “America First” would be “the major and overriding theme of my administration.” The following year, in his inaugural address, he promised that “a new vision will govern our land.From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first―America first.” Subsequently, he has employed the slogan frequently to describe his approach to foreign and domestic policy.

This approach is remarkable because, over the past century, “America First” has acquired some very unsavory connotations.

Although the seemingly innocent slogan goes back deep in American history, it began to develop a racist, anti-Semitic, and xenophobic tone after World War I. The Ku Klux Klan, which surged to some five million members at that time, employed it frequently for its terrorist mobilizations. Like the Klan, nativist groups took up “America First” as they used racist, eugenicist claims to press, successfully, for U.S. government restrictions on immigration. Appealing to an overheated nationalism, William Randolph Hearst used his newspaper empire to campaign, successfully, against U.S. participation in the League of Nations. Soon thereafter, he became a booster of other nationalist fanatics, the rising fascist powers.

Hearst’s newspapers, with “America First” emblazoned on their masthead, celebrated what they called the “great achievement” of the new Nazi regime in Germany. In 1934, Hearst himself scurried off to Berlin to interview Adolf Hitler. Instructing his reporters in Germany to provide positive coverage of the Nazis, Hearst fired journalists who failed to do so. Meanwhile, the Hearst press ran columns, without rebuttal, by Hitler, Mussolini, and Nazi leader Hermann Göring.

This toxic brew of racism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia increasingly found its way into a growing isolationist movement that crested in 1940 with the establishment of the America First Committee. Bankrolled by several top corporate leaders, the America First Committee was determined to prevent the United States from becoming involved in what it labeled, disparagingly, “Europe’s wars.” And as fascist military forces swept from triumph to triumph, it emerged as America’s largest isolationist organization. Although the 800,000 America First members had a variety of political opinions, many of them held anti-Semitic views and sympathized with the Nazis.

Henry Ford, for example, a member of the America First executive committee, was a major backer of anti-Semitic and racist organizations, including the Ku Klux Klan. Purchasing a Michigan newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, he used it to publish articles promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, such as the idea that Jews controlled the American financial system, that they started World War I, and that they were plotting to rule the world.T he newspaper eventually acquired a circulation of nearly a million thanks to Ford’s requirement that his car dealers distribute it. Ford has the distinction of being the only American Hitler complimented in Mein Kampf.

The most prominent leader of the America First Committee was Charles Lindbergh, who―thanks to his celebrated solo flight over the Atlantic―was also one of the best-known Americans of the era. Hitler, Lindbergh believed, was “a visionary” and “undoubtedly a great man.” Visiting Nazi Germany, Lindbergh liked its professed values―what he called “science and technology harnessed for the preservation of a superior race.” Increasingly, he thought that the “strong central leadership of the Nazi state was the only hope for restoring a moral world order.” Addressing reporters, he said that he was “intensely pleased” by all he had seen while in Germany. By contrast, like other anti-Semites, he fretted over “the Jewish problem,” and blamed Jews for the shattered German economy that followed World War I. In 1938, Field Marshall Göring presented Lindbergh with a medal on behalf of the Führer.

Even after Hitler violated the Munich Pact by dispatching his troops to conquer all of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Lindbergh thought Hitler’s justification plausible, and argued that France and Britain should form an alliance with the Third Reich. “It is time to turn from our quarrels and to build our White ramparts again,” he declared. “Our future depends on . . . a Western Wall of race and arms which can hold back . . . the infiltration of inferior blood.” Returning from his European travels to the United States, Lindbergh argued that it was “imperative” for “the sake of Western civilization that America stay out of Germany’s way as [it] guarded against the West’s true enemies”―the “Asiatic hordes” of Russia, China, and Japan.

That September, with the outbreak of World War II in Europe, Lindbergh became America’s foremost isolationist, telling a radio audience: “Our bond with Europe is a bond of race. . . .It is the European race we must preserve. . . .If the white race is ever . . . threatened, it may then be time for us to take our part in its protection, to fight side by side with the English, French, and Germans, but not with one against the other for our mutual destruction.” Only after Japan’s devastating attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 did Lindbergh and the America First Committee shut down their isolationist campaign.

Given this record, when Trump revived the “America First” slogan, the Anti-Defamation League urged him to reconsider, pointing to the slogan’s bigoted and pro-Nazi history.

But Trump has continued to invoke “America First” in his statements.

Why? It’s clear that he agrees with this slogan’s connotations. After all, Trump’s top emphases have been barring and deporting minority group immigrants from the United States, attacking “migrant crime,”inflaming Christian Nationalism, and ridiculing international cooperation and organizations. When one adds his obsession with genetic superiority and blood purity, plus his admiration for dictators, it’s an all too familiar pattern.

Indeed, Trump is the heir to America First and its fascist proclivities.

Dr. Lawrence Wittner syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).

The Cruel Eijao Trade Kills Millions of Donkeys Every Year

By Joanna Grossman

March 19, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Image in Nasser Halaweh, Creative Commons 4.0

Donkeys have been our steadfast companions for centuries, valued for their strength, hardiness, and work ethic. Yet, for many, a donkey’s value is still only skin deep.

According to a British charity organization, the Donkey Sanctuary, nearly 6 million donkeys are slaughtered each year for their hides to produce a gelatin known as ejiao, used in traditional Chinese medicines, herbal supplements, cosmetics, and aphrodisiacs for its purported—but unproven—benefits. This growing market causes tremendous animal suffering and severely impacts communities that rely on donkeys for their survival.

In China, which once boasted the world’s largest donkey population, donkey numbers have plummeted over the last three decades from an estimated 11 million to fewer than 2 million by 2022—prompting the booming ejiao industry to target other parts of Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

At the conclusion of the African Union Summit in Ethiopia, which took place from January to February 2023, African state leaders took the monumental step of banning the cruel donkey skin trade across the continent for 15 years.

Africa is home to about two-thirds of the world’s donkey population, and more than a dozen African countries previously instituted bans or restrictions on the trade in donkeys for their skins. Nevertheless, soaring demand from China and other countries has fueled an underground market leading to rampant donkey theft, with each hide fetching as much as $1,000.

Donkeys are an integral part of life in Africa and many communities worldwide. They transport people and goods to markets, schools, and health clinics. Women, in particular, rely on working donkeys to reduce the burden of physical labor and support economic independence.

However, in the United States (the world’s third-largest importer of ejiao products, valued at $12 million a year), many Americans have likely never heard of ejiao (pronounced “eh-gee-yow”).

In December 2023, Amazon agreed in a legal settlement to stop selling ejiao, but only in California. The plaintiff in the lawsuit, the nonprofit Center for Contemporary Equine Studies, argued that the e-commerce giant had violated a California law prohibiting the sale of equines for human consumption.

While this settlement could set a precedent for other retailers (eBay already prohibits the sale of ejiao), a national ban is essential to clamp down on this brutal trade. In 2023, U.S. Representative Don Beyer (D-VA) introduced the Ejiao Act (H.R. 6021) to prohibit the transport, sale, and purchase of ejiao products and donkeys and donkey hides for the production of ejiao.

Donkeys who fall victim to this industry experience immense suffering. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association and the American Association of Equine Practitioners, the “inhumane treatment of donkeys affected by the trade in skins” severely compromises their welfare “through poor handling, transportation, and slaughter techniques.” Crammed into trucks without adequate food, water, or rest, many donkeys succumb to illness and infection during transport (and, as their hides are considered their most valuable part, they are often skinned, with their remains being dumped). A grim fate awaits those who make it to the slaughterhouse; eyewitness footage has documented donkeys with gaping wounds, dragged by their ears and tails, and bashed in the head with a sledgehammer.

In 2022, Congress approved a ban on selling and purchasing shark fins in the United States, with the provision subsequently being signed by President Joe Biden. This delivered a clear message that Americans would no longer tolerate the decimation of shark populations worldwide to produce shark fin soup and other delicacies.

Political leaders have an opportunity to end U.S. participation in a cruel and senseless trade. Donkeys deserve better than to suffer and lose their lives to produce a steady supply of gelatin for unproven remedies, cosmetics, and luxury products.

This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute. 

Joanna Grossman, PhD, is the equine program director for the Animal Welfare Institute in Washington, D.C.

Tennessee Volkswagen Workers Have Filed for a Union Election

By Luis Feliz LeónMarch 19, 2024
Source: Jacobin


Image by UAW


Autoworkers will vote on whether to form a union at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the company’s only factory on the planet without a union.

On Monday, the United Auto Workers (UAW) filed for an election to represent all 4,300 of the plant’s hourly employees, after the union said a “supermajority” of workers signed union cards in one hundred days. Unlike in the last three failed drives at this plant, this time, the UAW has publicly laid out its strategy to support worker-led organizing across the nonunion auto and battery plant sector at companies like Toyota, Rivian, Hyundai, Mercedes, and Volkswagen.

The strategy is for workers to announce their organizing drives once they have reached 30 percent on signed union authorization cards, hold rallies with community and labor supporters at the 50 percent mark, and demand voluntary recognition when they reach 70 percent, having grown their organizing committee to include workers from every shift and job classification. If the company refuses, the workers file for an election with the National Labor Relations Board.

Volkswagen is the first nonunion plant to clear that milestone. More than ten thousand workers at thirteen nonunion carmakers and two dozen facilities nationwide have signed union cards since last November, when the UAW announced an ambitious goal to organize one hundred fifty thousand autoworkers.

That’s roughly the same number of workers covered under the Big 3 contracts at Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis. The union captivated the labor movement last fall with a Big 3 strike that won members landmark contracts.

The UAW was circumspect about confirming whether 70 percent of workers in the Chattanooga plant had indeed signed union cards. But the union’s strategy indicates that workers have built enough energy and momentum to file for an election.
Why I’m Voting Yes

In a new video released by the union, Volkswagen workers explain why they’re voting yes: to improve working conditions, to gain representation in management meetings, to fix broken equipment, and to win adequate health care and a better personal leave policy.

“We don’t have much in the way of paid time off,” Isaac Meadows, a production team member in assembly, told me. “Money comes secondary in all our conversations.”

Workers at Volkswagen have no sick time, and annual plant closures eat into their time-off bank. Meadows has ninety-six hours of paid time off. “When we have our scheduled shutdowns in the winter and in the summer, the company takes most of it,” he said. “And then when we do come back to work, we’re required to work a lot of Saturdays.”

Workers want to take back their weekends, or at least receive more notice if they are scheduled to work on the weekend on top of earning time and half. They currently are notified of weekend work on Thursday and earn time and half only if they’ve worked over forty hours during the week.

Zach Costello, a trainer at the plant, said the last union drive in 2019, which the union lost narrowly by fifty-seven votes, outmaneuvered by political and company opposition, was marred because the UAW needed to clean house.

At the time, a Justice Department investigation revealed long-standing corruption in the union, including embezzlement, kickbacks, and collusion with employers. Thirteen union officials went to jail, including two former presidents, after pleading guilty to embezzlement and racketeering charges.

“When you don’t see something good coming from unions, you assume that they have no purpose, because it seems like an extra step that you don’t need,” he said.

With reformers at the helm, the UAW no longer carries the patina of a union mired in corruption and complacency, as do-nothing leaders in the pocket of management settled one subpar contract after another.

Back in 2019, my coworkers “couldn’t point to a time in their lives where they were watching the news and saw, ‘Oh, my God, look what they did,” said Costello in reference to gains of the Big 3 stand-up strike. “That’s amazing. We can do that.”
Breaching Anti-Union Strongholds

The UAW has faced repeated defeats at Volkswagen and other automakers. But while the companies succeeded in routing their workers in forming a union, the defeats were never complete. A nucleus of workplace organizers, a group that refused to accept the bosses’ tyrannical power over them, remained. When the Big 3 autoworkers bested the auto companies in their strike last year and notched landmark contracts, they were ready to stand up and renew their organizing push.

Yolanda Peoples, a third-generation autoworker on the engine assembly line, is one of those worker-leaders who was hired in 2011, when the plant opened, attracting eighty-five thousand applications for two thousand jobs. People said the organizing committee got to 50 percent a lot sooner than in previous drives thanks to the use of electronic cards. While all three shifts are covered by the organizing committee, they are also vocal in their support of the union drive.

In previous drives, “the people that were pushing for the UAW, it was like we were part of a secret society,” she remembered. “We had to be real hush-hush about it because we didn’t want to get in any trouble with HR because we said the word ‘union.’ So it was real hard for us to get the word around to our coworkers.” As they again have entered the organizing arena, worker-leaders have learned from these past defeats.
Diverse Workforce

But the terrain of struggle inside the plant has also changed over the years. That change includes the backgrounds of the plant’s workforce and a broadly representative organizing committee.

In 2014, nine out of ten workers at the plant were white and the majority of them men. Chattanooga’s population is 184,000, with 59 percent of residents white and 29 percent black, according to the latest census estimates. Racist dog whistles were effective at dividing the workforce. The conservative front group Americans for Tax Reform rented billboards around Chattanooga emblazoned with the message: “UNITED AUTO OBAMA WORKERS.”

That divide-and-conquer tactic is less effective now, especially among former union members. Meadows was a union worker in Reno, Nevada. Coming from a union stronghold, he said the biggest obstacle for the campaign was overcoming the South’s deep-seated skepticism and hostility to unions, especially among younger workers who learn anti-unionism from family members. The UAW has been in the crosshairs of the state’s Republican politicians and outside lobbyists from Washington, DC.

But Meadows said that among his Nigerian, Vietnamese, Colombian, and Ukrainian coworkers, there are different sentiments toward unions. “I think because of our great diversity, it’s diluted some of that Southern political mentality. And so it’s making the conversation easier.”

Meadows said Volkswagen prides itself on being a globally progressive company. That has had some impact on its workforce, recently celebrating the contributions of African Americans during Black History Month. The question is whether, should workers win their election, the company will translate those lofty progressive values into bargaining a contract to recognize the contributions of Meadows, Peoples, Costello, and thousands of their coworkers in making it a successful company.

“We take pride in the work we do,” said Victor Vaughn, an assembly worker on the logistics line last month. “We want to be recognized for what we do, not be taken advantage of.”

Today, in a union press release, he said: “We are voting yes for our union because we want Volkswagen to be successful.” But he says that success shouldn’t come at the cost of bodily injury.

“Just the other day, I was almost hit by four five-hundred-plus-pound crates while I was driving to deliver parts,” said Vaughn. “That incident should’ve been followed up within the hour, but even after I clocked out no one asked me about it. Volkswagen has partnered with unionized workforces around the world to make their plants safe and successful. That’s why we’re voting for a voice at Volkswagen here in Chattanooga.”

What The U.S. Media Isn’t Telling You About The Protests In Cuba

By Peoples Dispatch

March 19, 2024

Source: Progressive Hub

Image in public domain

On March 17, people in Santiago, a city in Eastern Cuba, took to the streets to protest the increased blackouts and food shortages they have been experiencing. The protest occurred as shortages generated by the US blockade of Cuba have worsened across the island. Instead of lifting the blockade or taking Cuba off the state sponsors of terrorism list, the US government and corporate media have once again exploited the spontaneous protest to launch “a new counterrevolutionary media offensive”, claim US-based Cuba solidarity activists.

“If Biden really wants to stand by the Cuban people, if the US government were to actually care about the Cuban people, they would immediately end this blockade,” said People’s Forum Executive Director Manolo De Los Santos. “In fact, with the stroke of a pen, they could immediately take Cuba off the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, which prevents Cuba from accessing financial services around the world and be able to trade freely.”

Immediately upon learning of the Santiago protest, the US Embassy in Havana posted on X, “We urge the Cuban government to respect the human rights of the protestors and address the legitimate needs of the Cuban people.”

In fact, the Cuban government immediately responded to the protests. Beatriz Jhonson Urrutia, the highest level authority in Santiago, along with other provincial authorities went to the streets to engage in dialogue with those that had participated in the protest and listened to their concerns.

The response is a stark contrast to the “respect to human rights of…protesters” seen in the United States. For the past six months, hundreds of thousands have been mobilizing in cities and towns across the country to demand a ceasefire in Gaza, and national and local leaders have repressed, ignored, and ridiculed protesters and their demands.

US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Brian Nichols wrote on X, “The Cuban government will not be able to meet the needs of its people until it embraces democracy and the rule of law and respects the rights of Cuban citizens.”

Maria Elvira Salazar, a far-right member of Congress, who in March 2023 attempted to codify Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of terror wrote about the Santiago protest, “It is 65 years of socialism; of repression, prison, death and exile; of blackouts, sicknesses and hunger. Cuba wants freedom!”

Media war

Meanwhile, international corporate media has also been quick to capitalize on the Santiago protest to push their own long standing narrative about Cuba. For example, in its report on the protests, Argentina-based right-wing regional media outlet Infobae referred to Miguel Díaz-Canel as a “dictator”, and called the government a “regime” and “a Castrist dictatorship”. It also heavily quotes a statement from the Madrid-based Cuban Observatory of Human Rights, which is a recipient of funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a US government funded foundation. While the piece is mostly focused on unsubstantiated allegations of repressive actions carried out by Cuban security forces, it reserves one line at the end of the article to mention the real reasons that Cubans are dealing with challenging material conditions: “The pandemic, the toughening of US sanctions, and endogenous errors in the economic and monetary policy have intensified the structural problems of the Cuban system in the last three years.”

This general narrative is repeated in other news outlets across the region like NBC-owned Telemundo  which also referred to the Cuban revolution as when “the Castro brothers took power in 1959”. The Telemundo article stated: ‘The protests, which are a rarity in a Cuba where power usually quickly suffocates any public outcry, are the largest since July 11, 2021 when thousands of Cubans from the island took to the streets to cries of ‘We want freedom!’”

Cuba and Latin America reject US attempts at meddling

For many both on the island and outside, the response by US officials and corporate media to the protest on March 17 represents a clear attempt to weaponize the real material challenges facing Cubans due to the tightening of the blockade in order to push regime change. In fact, as many point out, this is precisely a goal of the blockade.