THE OTHER Ai

Exiled Chinese artist Ai Weiwei: 'Censorship in West exactly the same as Mao's China' 

Western artists have been 'corrupted by capitalism', says Ai. 

Pic: AP

The exiled Chinese artist spoke to Sky's Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips about the cancellation of his exhibition by a gallery in London.


Sunday 4 February 2024 


Political censorship in the West today is "exactly the same" as it was in China under its ruthless communist leader Mao Zedong, exiled artist Ai Weiwei has told Sky News.

The 66-year-old dissident told Sky News' Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips that "society becomes so timid, to really avoid any kind of questioning or argument".

He was responding to a question about the cancellation of his exhibition by the Lisson Gallery in London in November following comments on social media referencing the Israel-Hamas conflict.

His post, which was subsequently deleted, suggested the "sense of guilt around the persecution of the Jewish people" had been transferred and used against the Arab world.

He also argued the Jewish community had a significant influence in the media, finance and culture in the US, and that America's $3bn (£2.45bn) annual military aid to Israel meant the two countries had a "shared destiny".

Ai told Phillips: "You know, society becomes so timid, to really avoid any kind of questioning or argument.

"So basically I was talking on Twitter, just answering someone's question.

"Normally you can talk, or whatever you like.

"You can joke, you can make fun, you can, you know, just give your opinions.

"But today I see so many people by giving their basic opinions, they get fired, they get censored.

"This has become very common."

Referring to his own family's exile when he was one year old, the activist said: "I grew up within this heavy political censorship.

"I realise now, today in the West, you are doing exactly the same."

He drew parallels with the disastrous purge under Mao, which took China to the brink of anarchy.

Criticising the suspension of two New York University professors for comments related to Gaza, Ai said: "This is really like a cultural revolution, which is really trying to destroy anybody who have different attitudes, not even a clear opinion.

"So I think that this is such a pity, that it happened in the West, so broadly in universities, in media, in every location.

"In universities or political sector - everywhere - you cannot talk about the truth."

Ai's art often addresses political issues in China and he has frequently criticised Beijing's record on human rights and democracy.

Asked if he believed Western artists were doing enough to defend freedom of expression, Ai described them as having been "corrupted by capitalism".

"They are just seeking money and also to be famous," he said.

In 2011, Ai was arrested at Beijing Capital International Airport and detained for 81 days. He left China in 2015 and has not returned since.

His main residence is currently in Portugal, but he maintains a studio in Berlin and a property in the UK.

But the artist said he "never regrets" speaking out.

He said: "I'm defending a value which would profit and benefit everybody.

"My little experience does not really matter, but rather I somewhat have to speak out.

"An artist has the responsibility to do that."

Weiwei's graphic memoir, Zodiac, was published by Penguin Random House at the end of January.

Watch Sky News' Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips at 8.30am to see Ai Weiwei's full interview.

Government to Hold Talks On Giving UK Post Office to Workers  

Business minster to discuss matter with unions next week

Mutualization likely to take years and require investment

An employee sorts through post at a sorting office in Chelmsford, UK.

Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg


By Katherine Griffiths

Bloomberg
February 3, 2024 

The government will meet Post Office workers to discuss handing them ownership of the network in a bid to move on from its historic scandals and to set out a firmer footing for the future.

Kevin Hollinrake, the business minister, will meet union representatives and figures from Britain’s co-operative movement on Wednesday, to consider shifting the Post Office from government ownership to control by the service’s branch managers, known as sub-postmasters, who run its 11,500 outlets, several people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. The topic will be one of several issues on the agenda, they added.

The discussion comes as the government is trying to get a closer grip on the protracted fiasco that has led to postmasters being falsely imprisoned due to accounting glitches caused by its Horizon computer system. Last weekend, the Post Office’s chairman, Henry Staunton, departed while Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch told Sky News that its problems extended to other areas.

The department for business and trade, which oversees the Post Office, could now revive an idea it supported in 2012 to turn over the Post Office to its workers when it split off and privatized the mail delivery arm, Royal Mail. It did not go ahead at the time, believing the Post Office needed to be made more commercially viable, but it created the possibility of future mutualization in its 2011 Postal Services Act. The business department for business and trade declined to comment to Bloomberg.

“The current model is broken,” Sean Hudson, the Post Office Branch Secretary of the Communication Workers Union, who will attend the meeting with Hollinrake, said. “Mutualization is a very attractive alternative to the current failed model.” Richard Trinder, chair of the Voice of the Postmaster, set up to lobby for staff, will be present and is calling for mutualization to be considered.


Rose Marley, chief executive of Co-operatives UK, a national body for member-owned organizations, will also be at the gathering.

“It is unfinished business for the government,” Marley said. “If the postmasters and communities had a greater stake and say in the control of the Post Office 10 years ago, would it have taken another decade to get justice?”

As part of the shift, the Post Office’s finances would need to be overhauled, a process that could take several years, people familiar with the matter said. That would likely include reducing reliance on government subsidies - which currently stand at £50 million a year to help pay for rural branches and £185 million for investment in systems.

One possibility could be a deeper partnership with banks that use its branches to serve customers and an expansion of joint ventures with delivery services such as DPD and Evri, several people said. That could lead to the Post Office first agreeing to profit sharing with sub-postmasters before moving to full mutualization, they added.

Another challenge is the ongoing wrangling over compensation for workers for past wrongs. There are currently three compensation schemes and the government has acknowledged the bill could reach £1 billion.

Nick Read, who became the Post Office’s chief executive in 2019, has previously raised the prospect of restructuring the Post Office to give sub-postmasters a bigger slice of earnings once the entity’s finances were stronger. That could help create a “common goal” and to start “afresh,” Read said in 2021.

A Post Office spokesperson said yesterday: “We are focused on assisting in providing compensation and redress to the victims of a shameful period in Post Office’s history. Post Office cannot fully move forwards until the past is addressed.”


— With assistance from Kitty Donaldson

United Auto Workers Call for a General Strike and Endorse Biden

THURSDAY 1 FEBRUARY 2024, 

BY DAN LA BOTZ

INTERNATIONAL VIEWPOINT

The United Auto Work union of today exemplifies labor’s problems and possibilities. Last week its president Shawn Fain both endorsed Democrat Joe Biden for president while also calling for a general strike.

In 2023, following indictment and conviction of the old UAW leadership for corruption, Shawn Fain and a group of reformers were elected to lead the union. Fain and his group then led the union in a remarkable national strike against all three big U.S. auto makers. As I wrote at the time:

The United Auto Workers carried out a 45-day strike against the Big Three U.S. auto companies—Ford, Stellantis, and General Motors—then negotiated a contract in October and won not only large wage increases and the elimination of tiers but also encroached on the corporations’ control over their plants and the industry. The United States has not seen a union lead a strike of industrial workers like this for decades.

Now Fain has called for a general strike by U.S. unions for May 2028. Speaking at the UAW national political conference he said, “We want a general strike. We want everybody walking out just like they do in other countries.” While there have been some big strike waves such as those of in 1919, the 1930s, 1946, and 1970, and a few industry-wide and city general strikes, there has never been a national general strike. To achieve such a strike, Fain has called upon unions to set their contract expiration dates for May 2028, as the UAW has.

Such a call will be difficult to achieve. The Taft-Hartley Law of 1947 outlawed sympathy strikes, solidarity strikes and general strikes, and since the 1970s and until the last few years, strikes in the United States have declined dramatically. Union leaders have been hesitant to challenge the status quo and workers so far have not had the consciousness, organization, and combativity to do so. Clearly Fain’s call for a strike four years from now is an attempt to get workers’ attention and to orient the working class to a policy of class struggle.

At the same time, Fain announced that the UAW, with almost one million members (400,000 active and 500,000 retired) will endorse Biden for president, calling his rival Donald Trump “a scab” opposed to “everything we stand for.” President Joe Biden had joined UAW workers on the picket line last year, a first for any U.S. president. Still, an internal UAW poll conducted last summer showed that 30% of members supported Biden, 30% backed Trump, and 40% were independent. In recent presidential elections about 60% voted Democratic. Fain’s announcement is meant to unify the members behind Biden.

Fain’s two announcements reveal labor’s possibilities and problems. On the one hand, there is now a small but significant part of the UAW and working class more generally prepared to engage in class struggle. But labor’s political direction is more problematic. The UAW endorsed Biden, the candidate of a capitalist party. Some UAW members objected to supporting Biden because of his support for Israel’s genocidal war on Palestine. A more significant number of UAW members support Trump with his racist, misogynist, pro-business, and authoritarian politics. And the working class itself has no independent political arm.

The United States has not had an important working-class party—labor, Socialist, or Communist—since the 1910s. And there hasn’t been much interest in creating one since the 1930s. While not on the agenda at the moment, the need for such a party of working people is clear, but it will have to be done by a fight against the labor bureaucracy and the Democratic Party. So, the obstacles are clear too.


ATTACHED DOCUMENTSunited-auto-workers-call-for-a-general-strike-and-endorse_a8400.pdf (PDF - 905 KIB)


United States (USA)
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Biden and Trump Accuse Each other of Ending American Democracy
Will Trump Be Disqualified from Running for Office?

Dan La Botz was a founding member of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU). He is the author of Rank-and-File Rebellion: Teamsters for a Democratic Union (1991). He is also a co-editor of New Politics and editor of Mexican Labor News and Analysis.

Danish unions grapple with massive increase of migrant workers

In the last decade in Denmark's construction industry alone, the number of migrant workers has leapt from around 9,000 to 25,000. Now a new report has exposed their long-suspected super-exploitation, writes MARTIN MINKA JENSEN

MANY trade unions across Denmark have a great focus on the conditions of migrant workers in the Danish labour market. It has not been an unknown phenomenon that this group often has to work under worse conditions than Danish colleagues.

Often it has not only been about inferior conditions, but downright miserable conditions. It is particularly within the building and construction sector that over time it has been possible to report on deeply objectionable conditions.

The trade unions have shown this for a long time, as they themselves experience it in their daily work and in their movements on construction sites, but now a large-scale report from Aalborg University shows that it is not just plucked out of thin air.

The basis of the report

It is precisely the construction industry that is under scrutiny in a report from Aalborg University that was published earlier this year.

Against the background of an increase in the number of migrant workers in the Danish labour market, a doubling since 2013, as well as the many stories about miserable working conditions, a research team has delved into the matter.

More than 310,000 full-time migrant workers are now part of the Danish labour market. It is therefore no longer a question of a marginal group, but a large proportion of employment.

The report states that the increase in the number of migrant workers is particularly large in the construction industry. Here, in the same period of 10 years, there has been an increase from 8,782 to 25,014 full-time employees.

The majority comes from the newest EU countries, which became part of the EU’s eastern enlargement in 2004. The three largest groups are respectively from Poland, with 11,585 people, Romania with 4,024 people and Lithuania with 2,741 people.

Although the largest part of migrant workers are from EU countries, there is an increase in the number of people coming from so-called third-world countries outside the EU. This group consists of a total of 5,848 people.

Despite this increase in the number of migrant workers, there has not been significantly more research in the area. Six researchers are now making amends for this in this report.

As mentioned before, this is not unknown territory for the trade union movement, but the fact that you now have a thorough research report on the area gives an insight into the mafia methods used by parts of the construction industry, and an insight into the fact that the employers are not driven by charitable ideas, but by ruthless exploitation.

In addition, this report must also be seen as a political and professional tool to strengthen the trade union movement’s fight for orderly conditions and justice on the labour market. The report’s analysis is data-driven and thus based on factual data collected on the subject. It is therefore not an interpretation based on academic theories regarding causation.

Methodologically, the report is based on, among other things, register surveys from the CPR register, interviews with 84 migrant workers from 13 different countries, primarily eastern and southern Europe, interviews with 37 professional informants such as occupational health and safety consultants, representatives from employers and trade union employees.

This article is not intended to explain all aspects of the method, analysis or conclusions, but to give an overall picture of the basis, method and results.

Longer hours and more dangerous work

What is of greatest importance is, of course, what the report has arrived at. It shows that it is not uncommon at all for migrant workers to work more hours than their Danish colleagues, that they have a far worse and more dangerous working environment, which is also shown by an over-representation in work injuries.

There are several examples of reasons for this, but one of the topics the interviewed migrant workers themselves focus on is the high work pace and the employer’s constant pressure on the workers to increase the work pace even higher.

It is interesting that several of the interviewees see a marked difference in the pressure on Danes, who are not put under such pressure and have more breaks. That part of the explanation is also to be found in the uncertainty that migrant workers live under is also repeated.

More often, they are more dependent on the employer who provides accommodation. At the same time, the language barrier is an aspect that means that you do not have the same opportunity to speak up or negotiate about terms and working hours.

A third aspect is that many migrant workers send money home to their families in their home country, which makes the family even more dependent on their relative’s work in Denmark.

The high pace of work, combined with poorer safety advice and equipment, also explains why the number of occupational accidents among migrant workers is higher.

Their work tasks and working environment are simply harder and more dangerous. A high degree of occupational injuries is also not reported, which is why there may actually be hidden figures that show even more unacceptable conditions and accidents.

Better tools for the trade union movement

The fact that the trade union movement and this newspaper’s readers are well aware that the law of the jungle rules in the Danish labour market as well and that all employers are not nice people who intend to do the best for the workers is probably not surprising.

But this report can undeniably make someone’s eyes open to the fact that what it’s all about is conflicting interests. Employers want to make money, lots of money. They do so at the expense of the welfare of the workers.

The fact that many Danish workers, through many years of industrial struggle, have won better conditions means that employers, especially within the construction industry, look for other pastures and use migrant workers.

In principle, they don’t care about skin colour or language, they just want the cheapest and least demanding labour. This is how capitalism is screwed up.

But it is not enough simply to state that capitalism cannot deliver a healthy labour market. Something has to be done here and now.

Therefore, the trade union movement needs better opportunities, in their active fight for better wages and working conditions, also for migrant workers.

Here, it is pointed out, among other things, that the Working Environment Authority must be stronger and trade unions must have better opportunities to investigate the conditions on construction sites.

It is also pointed out that massive pressure must be placed on employers, who must be much more responsible in relation to creating a good working environment.

Martin Minka Jensen is international secretary of the Danish Communist Party.

MEXICO

The Zapatista irruption of 1 January 1994: new internationalism and political redefinitions

WEDNESDAY 31 JANUARY 2024, 

BY JOSE ROSTIER

INTERNATIONAL VIEWPOINT

The state of Chiapas is one of the most landlocked and poor in Mexico. So when, on January 1, 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN, founded in 1983) took control of several towns by force, it was impossible to imagine the impact of this insurrection. However, it would mark the entire second half of the 1990s and largely participate in the redefinition of the radical left on a global scale.

The radical left was then at a critical moment in terms of programme and strategy. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 definitively ended the period of the so-called “real communism” model of the former Soviet bloc. Neo-liberalism seemed to be triumphant and, despite its absurdity, the theory of the “end of history” predicting an omnipresent modern capitalist model under the American banner was invading the intellectual space.

The date chosen by the Zapatistas was directly linked to this neoliberal offensive, since it marked the entry into force of NAFTA, the great common market of North America desired by George Bush, with the anchoring of Mexico to American expansionism. As in Colombia, the last Mexican guerrillas only appeared as instruments of desperate self-defence for overexploited rural populations in the face of authoritarian states and the paramilitary militias linked to them.

Mexico, governed for 65 years by the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) and long considered a “perfect dictatorship”, nevertheless, since the 1985 earthquake, no longer had the stability that had previously characterized it. Traumatized by state inaction during this catastrophe, Mexican civil society had progressed in self-organization and self-confidence, while political alternatives (the PRD, social-democrat, and the PAN, ultra-liberal ) seemed possible.

THE OPENING OF A NEW POLITICAL SPACE

It was this framework, appearing closed to revolutionary alternatives, that the EZLN exploded.

Militarily, however, only a few thousand poorly armed fighters “declared war” on the Mexican head of state and stood up to his army for a few days, before withdrawing into the Chiapas forests. The objective was not a seizure of power by arms, considered by the Zapatistas as both impossible and politically harmful ("We believe that he who conquers power by arms should never govern, because he risks governing by arms and by force" wrote Subcomandante Marcos), but the appeal to Mexican society. They pulled it off: faced with the state’s counter-offensive, it was the massive mobilization of the Mexican social movement and international solidarity that would tip the scales and transform the insurrection into a national movement with global repercussions. A million people demonstrated in Mexico City, imposing a ceasefire on January 12 and forcing the state to abandon any immediate crushing of the rebellion.

The EZLN, through its “Lacandon forest declarations”, proposed forms and slogans of struggle going beyond Chiapas, around the essential demands of “work, land, housing, food, health, education, independence, freedom , democracy, justice and peace.” The EZLN very quickly announced that it would renounce the use of weapons and build a movement of autonomy from the state. This would be reduced to setting up a “low intensity” war with periods of political negotiations (San Andrés Accords of 1996, not respected by the Mexican state). The EZLN took the opportunity to enter into a rich dialogue with the rest of Mexican society, experimenting with various tactics by constantly relying on the always mobilized and extremely politicized Zapatista rural communities.

In 1996, an attempt at a national political front (the FZLN) was made, without much success. Several Zapatista “caravans” crisscrossed the country, relying on civil society and the Mexican indigenous movement, powerfully revived by the San Andrés Accords, of which the recognition of indigenous rights was a key point.

In March 2001, to defend these rights, 23 Zapatista commanders travelled across the country in a “march of the colour of the earth” to go to Mexico City, welcomed by massive popular support. Commander Esther was able to speak at the Mexican Congress, a powerful image of an indigenous woman addressing the entire country, before the government ceased all dialogue and resumed the military offensive .

“FROM THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MEXICAN SOUTH-EAST”, AT THE HEART OF POLITICAL DEBATES

At the same time, the Zapatistas were strengthening the autonomy of communities already living partially in self-sufficiency, over an area the size of Belgium, and bringing together around 200,000 inhabitants in Zapatista “support bases”. State institutions, colonialist, corrupt and of poor quality, were rejected. Education (emancipatory), health (with respect for the traditions of the population), electrification: it was autonomously and with the help of international solidarity that the Zapatista Indian populations would now manage their daily lives while fighting against the paramilitary militias, the oppressive presence of the army, and “major projects” of ecocidal development such as the Puebla Panama Plan aimed at economic “development” of Central America, in particular through the capitalist grabbing of peasant lands.

These autonomous spaces, in permanent exchange with the country’s indigenous and urban activists and the international revolutionary movement, thus became places of politicization and democratic experimentation, enriching through practice the ideological bases of the EZLN. These bases, a mixture of Marxist, libertarian and anti-colonialist Amerindian ideas, would in turn irrigate the global left.

Beyond the media influence of Subcomandante Marcos and his political-poetic texts, the Zapatistas popularized critical examination of ideas and experiences coming from anti-capitalism, political anti-racism, anti-colonialism, ecology, internationalism and feminism. The affirmation of respect for homosexual rights was a striking example of the capacity of this society struggling, although very influenced by Catholicism, to place itself at the forefront of emancipatory thought. Accused of homosexuality by the government in 1996, Marcos responded with a scathing text: “Yes, Marcos is gay. Marcos is a gay man in San Francisco, a black man in South Africa […] a woman alone on the subway at 10 p.m. […] Marcos is all the untolerated, oppressed minorities who resist, explode and say: “Enough is enough !”

The Zapatista experience thus placed itself early on at the heart of the redefinition of an alternative and unifying project in the global left, concretely integrating progressive experiments: revolutionary women’s law, restorative and non-carceral justice, system of emancipatory education...

THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE OF ALTER-GLOBALIZATION

International support for the Zapatista struggle was vital in its confrontation with the Mexican state. But it reciprocally encouraged a new concrete internationalism which would largely fuel the following struggles. Since 1994, peace “observers” have been appearing in Zapatista communities to prevent military and paramilitary interventions. Encouraged by the appeals of the Zapatistas, welcomed by a local associative network and concretely sharing the daily life of indigenous populations in struggle, tens of thousands of activists, often young, discovered international solidarity in concrete terms, the violence of racism and colonialism, the difficulties and the richness of the construction of a democratic and political power, autonomous from the state.

In 1996, the EZLN organized the Intergalactic Meetings for humanity and against neo-liberalism in the middle of the autonomous zone, where 5,000 activists gathered. from 42 countries. This early “world social forum” was followed by other meetings on the scale of the Mexican, indigenous, or international social movement (Meetings of the Zapatista peoples with the peoples of the world in 2006 and 2007). Although the Zapatista call for a new International (the “Sexta”) did not have any convincing results, Chiapas nevertheless became a place of convergence and development for an entire generation of activists: the generation that would later define itself around the internationalist “alter-globalization” wave by opposing the summits of the capitalist powers, sometimes successfully, as during the G7 in Seattle in 1999, and proposing its own counter-summits, the first in Porto Alegre in 2001.

AN EXPERIENCE STILL ALIVE BUT FACING NEW CHALLENGES

The Mexican state has, thirty years after the insurrection, failed to put an end to the autonomy of the Zapatista communities, despite numerous rises in tension and sometimes fatal attacks, often carried out by paramilitaries, as during the assassination of Commander Galeano in 2014. To nourish internationalism, fight against any isolation and strengthen the education of its cadres and their capacity for development, the Zapatistas organized “voyages for life” in 2023. Not hesitating to take a stand in favour of peoples in struggle (recently in support of Gaza), the EZLN nevertheless hammers home to those who wished to support them a simple message: to best support our struggle, mobilize to build revolutionary movements in your own country.

But in a Mexico increasingly plagued by violence and drug cartels, new challenges have arisen for resistance communities in Chiapas, subject to increasingly frequent attacks. After suspending their public activities last November, the Zapatistas are preparing to address their supporters on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of their insurrection. Like our planet in crisis, Zapatism needs new momentum linked to the international dynamics that our struggles must urgently build.

January 23, 2024

Translated by International Viewpoint from l’Anticapitaliste.


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Mexico
Chiapas: thirty years of insurrection!
Chiapas: Blockades and Forced Displacement
AMLO’s Mexico: Fourth Transformation?
Adolfo Gilly, Great Latin American Left Intellectual, Dead at 94
Polarization and protest in Ciudad Juárez
Global Justice
Call for a global counter-summit of social movements to the IMF-WB Annual Meetings
Genoa didn’t last for only 48 hours
Samir Amin, or the raison d’être of a new internationalism
The abuses of the World Social Forum: Towards the end of the process?
Rights to Water and Land, a Common Struggle Movements

NORTH OF IRELAND

Smoke and Mirrors – The Unionist Miracle – What’s really happening in the North of Ireland?

SATURDAY 3 FEBRUARY 2024, 

BY JOSEPH HEALY
INTERNATIONAL VIEWPOINT

For two long years the North of Ireland has been in a state of political paralysis following the elections for the Assembly in 2022 when, for the first time in its history, the “Protestant state for a Protestant People”, produced an election victory for Sinn Fein and Irish nationalism. The hissy fit thrown by the DUP in refusing to return to the Assembly and taking second place as the smaller party with Michelle O’Neill as First Minister was seen as essential by DUP leaders and activists in order to appease the base. However, it would need to be based on some serious political grounds and not just betray the naked sectarian panic in losing control of the political apparatus for the first time in a century. That excuse was the Northern Ireland Protocol.

The DUP, known locally in the North of Ireland as the Dumb Unionist Party, had made strategic error after error. Firstly, in being an enthusiastic supporter of Brexit, when most in the North of Ireland were opposed to it, especially the young. Secondly, in swallowing Johnson’s promise of “no border in the Irish Sea”, which he enthusiastically sold to them as part of his over ready Brexit, which all can now see never defrosted in the middle. Johnson’s deal resulted in the Northern Ireland Protocol, which in order to protect the region’s unique status as having access to both the EU and UK markets, meant that goods coming from Britain needed to be checked to ensure that they were not destined for the Irish Republic and the EU across the guaranteed open border between the two parts of Ireland.

Jeffrey Donaldson, decided to take a stand on this declaring that it was effectively treating the North of Ireland in a different way from the rest of the UK state. No Border in the Irish Sea festooned lampposts in the hard line Unionist areas of Belfast and the old Unionist cry of No Surrender echoed across the Loyalist areas of the North of Ireland.

The Windsor Protocol, negotiated last year between the UK and the EU took the wind out of the DUP’s sails as it demonstrated that the UK government was more interested in a harmonious relationship with the EU than the concerns of the DUP. The British government told the DUP that there would be no further change and that some aspects of the Protocol had been softened with the assent of the EU. This clear sidelining of the DUP further enraged the base but they began to lose more and more support across the region as public services crumbled.

The recent huge public services strike, where DUP negotiators going to meet the NI Secretary of State, were heckled by strikers and told to go back to work, was very bad optics for the party. The result of the two year stalemate has been a lack of funding from Westminster, resulting in a situation in the NHS where it is in far worse state than other regions of the UK state and where public sector salaries lie far behind those of England, Wales and Scotland, resulting in a huge haemorrhaging of NHS staff across the border to the Irish Republic where they are paid far higher wages. For the public in the North of Ireland this has become the dominant political issue and much of their anger is directed at the DUP.

The political fact remained that the DUP, if it returned to the Assembly under Sinn Fein, would have to demonstrate some concrete victory after a two year boycott. This resulted in the current so called deal which is effectively no real change in the Windsor Agreement and was only backed by 53% of the DUP Executive, leaving Donaldson in a very exposed position and there is still talk of a possible split in the party.

Despite Donaldson’s claims, the protocol remains, as streamlined by the Windsor Framework. The Irish Sea border remains. Donaldson is highlighting the issue of checks on goods but there was never a problem with trade between the North of Ireland and GB, because the EU doesn’t care what goes into GB. The EU does care what goes into the single market and that is why the red lane exists under the Windsor Agreement.

As a recent article in The Irish News by Brian Feeney stated: “Speed is of the essence to get the deal over the line before there’s time for the DUP dissidents to see through the smoke and mirrors. Once done, no-one will notice any difference in everyday life. Except for one aspect, and it’s a fairly consequential one: There’ll be a Sinn Fein first minister in the person of Michelle O’Neill.”

The whole thing has been a piece of political theatre to assuage the fears of the Unionist base but essentially it is like Canute trying to hold back the tide as the Unionist tide in the North of Ireland retreats. The Loyalist hard men have threatened to block the roads of the region this Friday but they are a much reduced force compared to their heyday in the 70s when the Loyalist Workers force managed to paralyse the North of Ireland and bring down the Sunningdale Power Sharing Agreement.

For the DUP’s base hearing Mary Lou Mac Donald, President of Sinn Fein, tell the UK media that “Irish unity is within touching distance” is the real gall. With a Sinn Fein woman as First Minister in the North and a potential Sinn Fein government soon in the South, led by another Irish nationalist woman, Donaldson’s band aid on trade is a poor substitute for the loss of power which has over the last decade been the undoing of Unionism as the clock ticks down on the end of the partitionist dream.

1 February 2024

Source: Anti*Capitalist Resistance.

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Analysis

Those who campaigned to 'take back control' did not appreciate Brexit might give more power to those seeking Irish unity

The new first minister represents a party that does not acknowledge Northern Ireland's six counties as separate from the 26 counties in the Republic of Ireland. The historic moment has huge implications, David Blevins writes.

David Blevins
SKY NEWS
Senior Ireland correspondent 

@skydavidblevins
Saturday 3 February 2024 1

Image:Michelle O'Neill. Pic: PA


It was dubbed "a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people" but 90 years later, there is a Catholic in the office of the first minister.

When Sinn Fein's Michelle O'Neill accepted the nomination, in the Irish language, a nationalist held the highest title in devolved government for the first time.


The sense of history was palpable at Stormont as members of the Northern Ireland Assembly filed back into the chamber after two years of stalemate.

She won't have more authority than she had as deputy first minister - the two most senior posts are codependent under power sharing - but it's hugely symbolic.

Parliament Buildings in the Stormont Estate represent decades of Unionist dominance. There are six floors inside and six pillars outside representing Northern Ireland's six counties.


But the new first minister represents a party that does not acknowledge those six counties as separate from the 26 counties in the Republic of Ireland.

Image:Parliament Buildings on the Stormont Estate. Pic: PA

The Irish words 'Sinn Fein' are literally translated as 'ourselves' or 'we ourselves', expressing a desire for the whole island to be separate from the UK.

MORE ON NORTHERN IRELAND

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The party refuses to take its seats at Westminster but regards power sharing at Stormont as a halfway house on the road to a united Ireland.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), with whom it shares power, views it differently - quick to point out Sinn Fein is "administering British rule" at Stormont.

Nevertheless, the party long described as "the political wing of the IRA" has certainly come a long way since its 'Smash Stormont' election campaign in 1982.

Read more:
Why Northern Ireland's new first minister is hugely symbolic

Angry exchanges at Stormont

It was Ms O'Neill's predecessor, the former IRA commander Martin McGuinness, who made the transition from guns to government when he became deputy first minister.

But her elevation will boost the party's hopes of making history in the Republic by having its leader, Mary Lou McDonald, elected taoiseach (prime minister).

Michelle O'Neill (L) and Mary Lou McDonald (R). Pic: PA

The sense of occasion on the hill overlooking Belfast did not prevent angry exchanges, not between power-sharing partners, but between the DUP and hardline Unionists.

The Traditional Unionist Voice party rejects Sir Jeffrey Donaldson's claim his deal with the UK government removes the Brexit border in the Irish Sea.

But those who campaigned to "take back control" did not appreciate that Brexit might give more control to those seeking to get Irish unity done.

In Northern Ireland, ‘a Protestant state’ finally has a Catholic leader

Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill vows to be ‘a first minister for all’ in a divided society where stable government has been a casualty of Brexit

WHITE PROTESTANT MALE BASTION

NO MORE

Michelle O'Neill walks past a portrait of former DUP leader and first minister Ian Paisley (PressEye)

FEBRUARY 3, 2024 4

BY SHAWN POGATCHNIK

POLITICO EU

BELFAST — Northern Ireland was drawn up, a century ago, to create an unassailably secure British Protestant majority within its new borders. So when Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill finally gained the necessary cross-community votes Saturday to become the U.K. region’s leader after a two-year battle, even her most ardent critics recognized the powerful symbolism of the moment.

In a Stormont Parliament Building where Northern Ireland’s founding father and first premier, James Craig, once observed he led “a Protestant parliament and a Protestant state,” the Irish republican O’Neill vowed to be “a first minister for all” as the first leader from the Irish Catholic side of the divide.

“To all of you who are British and unionist, your national identity, your cultures, your traditions are important to me," O'Neill declared to the unionist benches on the far side of the Stormont chamber.

"Let’s walk this two-way street together, let’s meet one another halfway. I will be doing so with an open hand," she said, her voice slightly breaking with emotion, "and also with heart.”

That will prove difficult — even dangerous — to do in a land where, three decades after its rival paramilitary groups ended retaliatory shootings and bombings that claimed thousands of lives, some of those outlawed gangsstill sit like coiled snakes in the darker corners of an unfinished peace process.

The most menacing and criminally active of these groups, the Ulster Defence Association and Ulster Volunteer Force, maintain power bases in east Belfast within a short drive of Stormont. Their militant banners flutter from lampposts alongside the Union Jack — a flag that O’Neill’s Sinn Féin hopes one day to replace with the green, white and orange tricolor of the neighboring Republic of Ireland.

The U.S.-brokered Good Friday peace accord of 1998 envisioned that, by now, a sustained unity government led equally by British unionists and Irish nationalists would have delivered reconciliation and stability for Northern Ireland. A Belfast marked by rival flags and scarred by high “peace walls” of concrete, steel and barbed wire that divide rival communities should have been consigned to history.

It hasn’t yet worked that way in a system that makes it easy — much too easy, its many critics say — for either side to pull the plug on power-sharing in favor of renewed head-butting.

Sabotaging Stormont

Stormont has barely worked at all since the Brexit vote of 2016, which created complex new problems in a land where joint EU membership had blurred the border with the rest of Ireland, and where competing British and Irish identities in the north never stop tussling for the upper hand

Sinn Féin, as it neared overtaking the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), triggered a three-year collapse in 2017. Soon it became the unionists’ turn to sabotage Stormont, when the launch of new post-Brexit trade rules made it easier to trade with Ireland, an EU member, than with the rest of the U.K. — a shock to unionists who had backed Brexit on the risky assumption it would make that land border with the south more real again.

The DUP withdrew its first minister exactly two years ago Saturday, a step that left the rest of the executive limping along until its legally required collapse eight months later. The DUP ensured it couldn’t be saved because, after Sinn Féin achieved its breakthrough victory in the assembly election of May 2022, the DUP used its position as the largest unionist party to stop the new assembly from functioning at all.

That DUP blockade finally was lifted Saturday on the back of two painstakingly negotiated deals: the U.K.-EU Windsor Framework agreement that eliminated many, but not all, of the checks and restrictions on British goods arriving at Northern Ireland ports; and this week’s DUP-U.K. Safeguarding the Union agreement that aims to strengthen Northern Ireland’s economic place in the U.K. and cut Windsor-level checks at Northern Irish ports more quickly. Perhaps critically, unionists at Stormont will gain a new ability to delay or limit, if not prevent, the local rollout of new EU goods laws.

U.S. President Joe Biden, who as a senator helped negotiate the Good Friday Agreement, praised the end of the two-year standoff in Belfast. “I welcome and strongly support the restoration of the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly at Stormont, and I commend the political leaders of Northern Ireland for taking the necessary steps to restore these core institutions,” Biden said in a statement.

On Saturday, when the Northern Ireland Assembly jointly elected O’Neill as first minister and the Democratic Unionists' Emma Little-Pengelly as deputy first minister, the shared sense of relief could be felt in every quarter of the house — except from Jim Allister, the lone unionist die-hard in the 90-member chamber opposed to working with Sinn Féin in any circumstances.

“Smashing Sinn Féin” was the DUP’s policy until 2007, too. But Little-Pengelly stressed her willingness to work with O’Neill now that the DUP — or at least a majority of its members — had accepted the revised Brexit trade deal on offer.

The four-party coalition they now jointly lead — despite the disparity in their titles, O’Neill and Little-Pengelly must reach joint positions to keep the Stormont show on the road — faces a string of immediate crises connected to the long power vacuum and a deepening sea of red ink.

Demands and priorities

Britain is providing the executive an extra £3.3 billion to start patching holes in services and pay long-delayed wage hikes that just triggered the biggest public sector strike in Northern Ireland’s history. The trouble is, the head of Northern Ireland’s civil service, Jayne Brady, has already told the new leaders that these eye-watering sums are still too small to pay the required bills. The U.K. expects Stormont to raise regional taxes, something local leaders have been loath to do.

If anything can unite unionist and republican politicians, it’s their shared demand for the U.K. Treasury to keep sending more moolah — even though the British government already has committed to pay Northern Ireland over the odds into perpetuity at a new rate of £1.24 versus an equivalent £1 spent in England.

Money demands and spending priorities should underpin short-term stability at Stormont. But a U.K. general election looms within months and DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson wants to reverse his party’s losses to Sinn Féin. That could be complicated by the fact that he’s just compromised on Brexit trade rules in a fashion that distresses and confuses many within his own divided party, leaving him vulnerable.

To strengthen his leadership, Donaldson boosted pragmatic allies and sought to neuter less reasonable opponents in Saturday’s DUP moves at Stormont.

The assembly’s new non-partisan speaker will be DUP lawmaker Edwin Poots, who defeated Donaldson for the party leadership in 2021 only to be tossed out almost immediately.

That move puts Poots — who used his previous role as Stormont’s agriculture minister to block essential resources for the required post-Brexit checks at ports — into a new strait-jacket of neutrality.

Little-Pengelly, by contrast, is one of Donaldson’s most trusted lieutenants and a Stormont insider. He put her into his own assembly seat when, shortly after the 2022 election, Donaldson dumped it in favor of staying an MP in London.

While Stormont is never more than one crisis away from another collapse, for Saturday, peace reigned — and an Irish republican, committed to Northern Ireland’s eventual dissolution, is in charge of making the place work.

Is fascism returning? Part One: The previous century

Dr Helmut Hubel, in this first part of his analysis of fascism, charts the rise of fascism in the last century.

By Dr Helmut Hubel
4 February 2024

Heraclitus - Marble at Victoria and Albert Museum - Afshin Taylor Darian - Flickr - CC SA 2 0

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus in the 5th century BC is said to have summarized his teaching with the statement: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, everything flows”, meaning: “History does not repeat itself”.

There are many definitions of fascism. This one is from Oxford Reference on Wikipedia:
“Fascism is a far-right form of government in which most of the country’s power is held by one ruler or a small group, under a single party”.

With respect to Fascism, the question to ask is:


Are the events of the last 16 years following the financial crisis of 2007/08 a repeat of those leading up to and following the crash of 1929?

The financial crisis of 2007/08 was precipitated by the collapse of the housing market in the United States which led to a severe contraction of liquidity. This caused a global crisis, resulting in the collapse of numerous investment and commercial banks worldwide and causing a loss of more than 2 trillion US Dollars from the global economy. Many countries suffered severely from economic depression and rising unemployment. The Greek economy, to give just one dramatic example, virtually collapsed and had to be reanimated with drastic measures by the other Euro member states. Already in those days experts spoke of the “most severe economic crisis” since 1929/30. At the same time we witnessed the rise of right extremist parties and proto-fascist politicians like Trump, Farage, Wilders and Höcke gaining prominence both in Europe and the United States.

So how does this compare with what happened some hundred years ago?
The Rise of Fascism in Germany

A social-political consequence of that 1929 crisis was the rise of right-wing political parties, capitalizing on the tremendous frustrations of the unemployed and offering “easy solutions” by naming scapegoats to be responsible for all the hardships. One country, suffering most drastically, was Germany with a rise of unemployment from 1.9 million in 1929 to 5.6 in 1932.

Historians agree that the financial crisis of 1929 accelerated the Nazi party’s gaining power, first in the Federal State of Thuringia (1930) and then in Berlin (1933). However, it was not the beginning but rather the culmination of the Nazi party’s path to power. In 1923, some three years after its defeat in World War One, Germany was suffering from the Versailles Treaty’s enormous, unbearable war reparations, the French occupation of the industrial Ruhr region and the months-long general strike lead to a hyper-inflation, with one US Dollar rising up to 4.2 billions of Marks in November 1923. Gustav Stresemann, becoming Chancellor on 13 August 1923, managed to stop this crisis by introducing a new currency, the ‘Rentenmark’, and seemed to have stabilized the Weimar Republic in the following years.

Sebastian Haffner (aka Raimund Pretzel), in this memoirs ‘Geschichte eines Deutschen’, written in 1939 but only published in 2000, after his death, states (page 53): “The year 1923 finished off Germany”. Hitler’s coup attempt in November 1923 in Munich quickly collapsed, leading him to pursue a strategy of ‘seeking power by political means’. Haffner describes the years between 1924 and 1929 as a seemingly stable interlude to the catastrophe to come only later.

Haffner, a trained lawyer, emigrated to the UK in 1939 because of his Jewish girlfriend and his distaste of the Nazis. He soon became a popular commentator in ‘The Observer’. He also published a book ‘Germany: Jekyll and Hyde, A Contemporary Account of Nazi Germany’ (1940), which explained Hitler’s rule and discussed options of how to fight him. Even Prime Minister Winston Churchill was impressed by Haffner’s analysis.

It was a combination of tremendous popular frustrations after a lost major war (1918), the almost complete breakdown of civil life (1923) and renewed major socio-economic hardship (post 1929) which led to Hitler’s rise to power.

What makes Haffner’s observations so special is the fact that he stresses the psychological, even spiritual, consequences for many German citizens. In his view, the experience of war and the devastations afterwards destroyed the “souls” of a large segment of the younger generation, which made them “ready” for the “fantastic crimes” the Nazis would commit later.
Fascism in other European countries in the 1920s-30s

Mussolini and Hitler in Munich – Marion Doss on Flickr – CC BY-SA 2 0

Italy’s deep economic, social and political crisis after WWI led to Benito Mussolini’s ‘March on Rome’ in October 1922, which became the blueprint for Hitler’s coup attempt in November 1923. It was the first extreme right-wing movement after the devastations of the ‘Great War’ and its success inspired not only Hitler but later also General Franco in Spain. Right-wing or explicit fascist movements could be traced in many other European countries and the United States as well. Yet, they didn’t succeed, because these political systems proved to be more resilient and were lucky to have better leaders who managed to overcome the most pressing economic problems, like President Roosevelt with his “New Deal” in the United States (1933-38).

Nevertheless, there is good reason to argue that the terrible devastations of WWI and the tremendous socio-economic problems did cause a major crisis in the world’s most developed countries and that this resulted in the rise and growth of extreme right-wing and fascist movements, severely damaging the existing political systems and paving the way for Hitler’s Germany to start WWII.

Ed: Part Two out shortly.

We want to hear your views. Please send any comments to editor@westenglandbylines.co.uk

Dr Helmut Hubel is a retired Professor of International Relations at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena/Germany. He held Visiting Professorships in the USA, Finland and the Ukraine and spent many visits to Russia and Israel. His areas of specialization, documented in numerous books and articles, were the European Union, Soviet Union/Russia, Ukraine, Northern Europe, Israel and the USA. He now lives with his wife in Cheltenham and Stuttgart.

Netherlands police arrest hundreds of climate activists demanding fossil fuel ban

Protesters block A12 road in The Hague, calling for end to subsidies; vow to continue until government takes action

Abdullah Aşıran |04.02.2024 - AA

Police officers take security measures while hundreds of climate activists block the final section of the A12 main road leading to Parliament, staging a sit-in protest and protesting the end of fossil fuel use in The Hague, Netherlands on February 03, 2024


THE HAGUE, Netherlands

Police in the Netherlands arrested hundreds of climate activists in the Hague who were protesting and blocking the main road leading to parliament and demanding an end to fossil fuel use.

Organized by the Extinction Rebellion environmental group, demonstrators gathered despite police barriers, blocking the last section of A12, the entrance to the city, causing traffic disruptions on connecting routes.

Protesters, advocating for the cessation of oil, coal and gas usage, criticized the government's fossil fuel policies. Carrying banners and signs that read: "Stop fossil fuel subsidies", "Climate is full", and "I stand here for my children," demonstrators staged a sit-in on the road.

The activists announced they would continue road closure protests until the government lifts fossil fuel subsidies.

Environmental activist Yolanda Schuur told Anadolu that they demand an end to fossil fuel subsidies.

Schuur pointed out that the cessation of fossil fuel subsidies has not yet occurred. "Fossil fuel subsidies amount to approximately 46.5 billion per year.

“The phased plan to end them should have been presented to the House of Representatives at the end of last year, but we are still waiting for it," she said.

Highlighting the worsening climate crisis, Schuur stated: "We will return to the A12 main road and sit there until fossil fuel subsidies are lifted."​​​​​​​

Greens congress choose veteran duo to take them to EU elections

By Euronews

Published on 03/02/2024 - 


MEPs Terry Reintke and Bas Eickhout received staunch support from the majority of the party.

The European Green Party on Saturday chose two of its most well-known EU lawmakers to take them to the European Parliament elections in June.

German MEP Terry Reintke and Dutch MEP Bas Eickhout were both backed by Green party congress delegates in Lyon — getting 55 percent and 57 percent of the votes, respectively.

The choice is a safe one - both Eickhout and Reintke are senior figures in the Greens' group in the European Parliament.

Speaking to Euronews, Eickhout said Europe had fallen behind the likes of the US and China when it came to green innovation.

"China is doing very clear industrial policies. Look at how they deal with the electric car. America, United States investing a lot of money in green innovation. So the green race is on. And Europe was at the forefront," he said. "If you want a future where you have a future job then you need the Green Deal."

Eickhout spearheaded the group's efforts on the Green Deal legislative package. Reintke, for her part, has been particularly active on issues like the rule of law in Poland and Hungary, as well as the protection of minority rights and gender equality. Reintke became the political group’s co-leader in 2022.

The Greens have been extremely vocal on their desire to strengthen the EU's Green Deal to combat climate change. The deal pledges net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050.

Reintke, 36, is running for her third term in office, while Eickhout, 47, is hoping for his fourth.