White Rose Reader

by LUCA TAVAN

As Greece rapidly disintegrates under the weight of five years of recession, suffering from record-high unemployment, reeling from the harsh measures of austerity, a clear winner is emerging. From the ruins of a decimated society, right-wing extremism once again rears its grotesque head.

The Golden Dawn party, espousing a volatile mix of Greek nationalism, xenophobia, and expansionist rhetoric, has seen an unprecedented surge in popularity since the beginning of economic contraction in 2008. From languishing in relative obscurity with only 0.29% of the Parliamentary vote in 2009, Golden Dawn is now Greece’s third largest political party, with support holding steady between 10-12%.

The party’s ideology is widely defined as Neo-Nazi; as Antonis Ellinas, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Cyprus, explains:  “While GD denies the National Socialist or Nazi label that others use to describe it, party documents make no secret of an ideological lineage from interwar ideologies. Party members are asked to embrace a biological form of nationalism reminiscent of Nazi ideology.”

An article written by party spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris, published in the Golden Dawn magazine on April 20, 2011, praised Adolf Hitler as a “great social reformer and military genius” and posed the ghastly question, “What would the future of Europe and the whole modern world be like if World War II…hadn’t stopped the renewing route of National Socialism?”

Indoctrination of children is a lynchpin of the party’s strategy, with ‘national awakening’ sessions, which include discussions on ‘the birth of the ancient world, the Olympian gods and the Christian faith’.

Racial exclusion is built into Golden Dawn policy, with social programs, like food handouts and security services, reserved for ethnic Greeks.

In understanding how conditions in Greece are fostering the precipitous rise of an ideology so abjectly inhumane and dangerous, it is nearly impossible to avoid drawing comparisons with post-Versailles Germany. Fascism finds itself perfectly tailored to the unique conditions of economic crisis, with its dual approach of expansionism for economic survival and jingoism to diffuse the threat of class conflict.

Bert Cochran’s illustration of the initial rise of Fascism in Europe casts a daunting shadow over the present Greek situation. He writes: “In the period of great social crisis when the capitalist class can no longer rule under traditional, semi-democratic forms, the decisive section of the capitalist class throws its weight behind the Fascist movement… So it was in Italy in 1922. So it was in Germany in 1933.”

In the face of a genuine Neo-Nazi movement, using violence and intimidation to quash opposition, indoctrinating children and adults alike with the myth of Greek cultural and historical superiority, promoting a stifling, authoritarian system of control, it is clear that an orchestrated resistance is becoming a matter of necessity.

Unsurprisingly, the fragile Greek coalition government, headed by Prime Minister Antonis Samaris, has confirmed the worst fears of the left on the issue of stemming the flow of Neo-Nazism: a policy of complete inaction.

This fact, combined with the shamefully widespread infiltration of the Golden Dawn into the police force (serious allegations of collaboration date back at least 15 years) is strong proof that Greece’s existing institutions lack the strength to tackle the very present threat that the party poses.

Where the Samaris government has failed, recent attempts at popular resistance, both organized and spontaneous, provide some hope.

On January 19, the largest Greek anti-Fascist protest in memory took place in Athens. 25,000 marched through the streets, chanting “Athens will be Nazi free.”

Villagers in Potamia have blockaded Golden Dawn members from unloading trucks, hampering their food distribution program, which has proved to be an effective propaganda device.

In reaction to mounting attacks on immigrants from Golden Dawn supporters in the Venetian harbor town of Chania last month, local KKE anarchists engaged the Fascists, throwing Golden Dawn MP Stelios Vlamakis into the sea.

This is a beginning. But at the present time one thing, above all, is certain: Greece’s preeminent Fascist party no longer sits on the margins of politics. The Golden Dawn has ridden a despairing situation to unprecedented success, and the time when it takes the reins of political and economic power may not be far off. That is, of course, if we allow it.

by PAUL GOTTINGER

A crowd of hundreds of supporters of same-sex marriage packed the Minnesota state capitol Thursday May 9^th. The crowd held signs, chanted, and sang “We Shall Overcome” before finally rejoicing in celebration as the state house passed the bill, which the governor signed on May 14^th, making Minnesota the 12^th state to legalize same-sex marriages.

The bills sponsor, Rep. Karen Clark (Dem), received a rock star’s reception with the crowd chanting “thank you” as she addressed them after the bills passage May 9^th.  While the legalization of same-sex marriage is certainly a small, but significant step forward on the path towards a more just society, the grotesque adoration showered on the democrats after the passing of these bills is a clear sign that the mainstream LGBT movement’s power as a progressive social force has been completely lost.  Allow me to explain.

Despite the fact that democrats are more than willing to play the role as heroes when bills like these are passed, an honest look back at the history of the LGBT (lesbians, gay, bisexual, transgender) movement demonstrates who truly disserves to be labeled as heroes.

It’s widely agreed that the spark that lit the modern LGBT movement was the Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village New York City in 1969. The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar run by the mob, which attracted some of the most poor and marginalized members of the LGBT community in New York.

At that time, society and the U.S. legal system were almost completely hostile to LGBT individuals. There were only a few gay bars in the city and the patrons constantly had to worry about being harassed, arrested, and brutalized by the police for violating “public morals”. In the early morning of June 28 the police raided the Stonewall Inn and began arresting the patrons, but for the first time the LGBT community fought back, defending themselves against the police. The patrons shouted, “Gay Power!” and threw coins, bottles, and rocks at the officers and liberated fellow patrons held in police vehicles. The incident sparked continued riots for the next few nights in Greenwich Village making national news. This was the first time the LGBT community forcefully asserted their rights to be treaded with a basic level of decency.

The results of the Stonewall riots are remarkable. At the time of the riots there were very few LGBT rights groups, but a year afterward there was an estimated 1500 groups. One of the most important early LGBT groups, the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), was formed a month after the Stonewall riots.

The GLF advocated direct action against the system to tear down restrictive sex roles and liberate all oppressed people. The GLF understood that LGBT liberation was tied to the liberation of all peoples and as a result, participated in actions against the Vietnam War, actions with the Black Panthers, and actions in the women’s liberation movement. The GLF fell apart after 2 years, but its legacy remains. It was GLF leader, Brenda Howard, who began commemorating the Stonewall riots with annual marches that became known as gay pride parades.

The GLF was replaced by the more reform oriented, but still radical by today’s standards, Gay Activist Alliance (GAA), which also formed in 1969. Unlike the GLF, the GAA was a single-issue organization committed to confronting the system with militant non-violence to make notable changes in the lives of gays. This took the form of confrontational politics where persons of authority were confronted through mass demonstrations, the disruption of meetings, and sit-ins. GAA was already successful by 1970 with many of the candidates it campaigned for, on account of their support for LGBT issues, winning their elections. The group also forced the New York city council to hold a hearing on including sexual orientation into New York’s human rights law, though this was only accomplished after New York police savagely beat GAA demonstrators outside the chairman of the general welfare committee’s home.

From the 1970s until today the level of success that LGBT issues has achieved has been the result of the bravery of individuals coming out in a hostile society and from LGBT activists doing the difficult and at times dangerous work, which has made the U.S. a more civilized country. The political victories of today, like those in Minnesota, are only possible because of actions that seemingly powerless LGBT individuals undertook over the last 40 years.

Today’s democrats who pass laws for marriage equality are only taking minimal steps to ensure equality for LGBT individuals in the single realm of marriage.  However, many other forms of discrimination against LGBT individuals also exist.   For example, under federal law it is still legal to fire someone for being LGBT. Yet the democrats don’t appear to be fearlessly charging into battle to campaign for LGBT equality on this issue.

The truth is that democrats are only as progressive as the population pushes them and marriage equality doesn’t challenge the established power structures in the country, so the powerful have allowed it to move forward. It’s clear that the single-issue approach to LGBT rights has been pushed as far as it can go and a rediscovery of the Gay Liberation Front’s understanding that the LGBT movement is part of the “broader left movement” is needed. This will both strengthen the LGBT movement, as well as the U.S. left in general.

This is because the issues affecting the LGBT community today: youth homelessness [40% of all homeless youth are LGBT], work place discrimination and poverty [higher poverty rate of LGBT individuals], and violent hate crimes [In 2011 there were 30 fatally violent LGBT hate crimes, 20% of all hate crimes are against LGBT] can’t really be solved through the passing of laws and winning elections.

These issues get to the heart of the problems innate in the economic system and society of the country. The social issues affecting the LGBT community, such as violence and youth homelessness, can really only be combated by activists continuing to change people’s attitudes and transform the brutal culture of the country to one which respects basic human rights. The economic issues, like work place discrimination and poverty, are traditional issues of the left and can only be addressed through social pressures, which require the integration of the LGBT movement with the traditional left forces, like the economic justice movement and the labor movement.

Both the accomplishments of the LGBT movement’s past have been, and the accomplishments of the LGBT movement’s future will be determined by the thankless hard work of everyday people and anonymous activists working together to change society. That’s the only way society has ever changed.

If the mainstream LGBT movement is ever to become a serious force to change society for the benefit of the their community, they will have to give up their completely disempowering strategy of working to get democrats elected and then waiting for them to “make history”. They will also have to resist the idea that marriage is the only major form of discrimination against them. A reasonable alternative is to instead, engage in the organizing, direct action, and traditional activism, which has been the heart of the LGBT movement since its inception. It’s the responsibility of the broader left in the U.S. to reach out to the mainstream LGBT movement and radicalize them.  Until this happens there will only be miniature victories disguised as major ones and celebrations for false heroes.

by KEN KLIPPENSTEIN

The first part of 2013 has been something of a confessional period for the economic managerial class. The IMF’s chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, conceded that “forecasters significantly underestimated the increase in unemployment and the decline in domestic demand associated with fiscal consolidation.” (‘Fiscal consolidation’ is a polite way of saying ‘austerity’.) U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew admitted that “there has to be a focus on what the impact on unemployment is” of austerity policies; also, that “you cannot be in the world where austerity just leads to more austerity”; and finally, that “the rush to do all the [austerity] front-end has actually made the problem harder in some countries.” He even suggested that “Europeans need to look as well what they can do to generate more demand in their economy.”

Managing Director of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, confessed that “we don’t see the need to do upfront, heavy duty fiscal consolidation as was initially planned”; and “the best way to create jobs is through growth.” EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said that the IMF and the US’ recent calls for less austerity “are preaching to the converted.”

Meanwhile, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, the Harvard economists responsible for one of the more influential studies used to defend austerity, have admitted that “austerity is not the only answer to a debt problem.” This came after three economists at the University of Massachusetts accused them of “selective exclusion” of data. Reinhart and Rogoff have since admitted that their critics “correctly identified a spreadsheet coding error.” In my view, their most striking error is being ignored: the failure to recognize that austerity didn’t work during the Great Depression and won’t work now, during the Great Recession. Anyone can make a spreadsheet error. It takes a Harvard professor to forget basic history.

It’s not particularly interesting when doctrinal managers like Reinhart and Rogoff change positions. The ability to turn on one’s heel and switch from one ideological conviction to its opposite, like a schoolchild running the pacer test, is probably the ideological manager’s main duty. The ones who collapse from exhaustion are weeded out long before they become IMF chiefs. What’s more interesting is why the coach is having them run in the opposite direction now.

In a correspondence I had with economist Jack Rasmus, he explained the economic managerial class’ reversal:

First, it may signal a future shift to business-investor tax cuts as a preferred ‘stimulus’ (which doesn’t work either). However, since tax cuts will raise the deficit, they have to justify an increase in the deficit if they’re going to move ahead with the tax cuts. Thus, the attack on ‘austerity’ (stimulus in reverse) as not as productive as they thought is first necessary. On the other hand, it’s important to note that the shift to ‘stimulus’ doesn’t mean a shift from social spending cuts; it means a shift to more deficit via corporate tax cuts.

Second, the abandonment of austerity may represent a prelude to a still greater reliance on monetary policy. Let the central bank bear all the burden (and blame) and take the heat off politicians more visibly responsible for spending cut austerity. Monetary policy (i.e. increasing liquidity to banks, investors and businesses) has in turn two prime goals. One: to boost the stock and financial securities markets and ensure more profits for speculators, and, second, to lower their currency’s exchange value to allow competition with other currency centers…A sure sign that capitalist policymakers are getting more desperate and trying to grow  by beggaring their competitors.  It’s competitive devaluations—not by fiat as in the 1930s—but  by liquidity-exchange rate manipulation.

Whatever the case may be, the financial institutions’ current ideological inflection should probably be regarded with suspicion. It is much too sharp an inflection to indicate any sort of honest change in thinking.

The solutions that the economic managers are advocating demonstrate a useful point. They simultaneously demand stimulus and deficit reduction. As Treasury Secretary Jack Lew put it, “We shouldn’t choose between growth and job creation and getting our fiscal house in order.” This is like a child wishing he could stay up all night and get a good night’s sleep: either choice negates the other. These mental exercises in self-contradiction further illustrate the way in which the elite must accept mutually conflicting views. Orwell called this ‘doublethink.’

Today we call it things like ‘nuance.’ Example: Reinhart and Rogoff said that “the recent debate about the global economy has taken a distressingly simplistic turn,” by which they mean austerity is finally being firmly rejected. In elite circles, ‘simplistic’ explanations are any which involve elementary truths: that authentic stimulus increases the deficit, as do corporate tax cuts; that privatization makes things unaccountable to the public; that a middle and under-class recovery requires an upper-class tax. (These simple facts are incomprehensible to the elite because they suggest a world in which extreme wealth causes injustice rather than eradicates it.) Derivatives and credit default swaps, on the other hand, are ‘nuanced’ tools which anyone without an advanced degree in finance shouldn’t comment on.

An outgrowth of this tendency toward ‘nuance’ is the peculiarly mystical tone that the economics profession has taken on. For example, the view that the business cycle will inevitably restore us to prosperity, and that the present downturn is just some sort of random misfortune. I recall a friend in university remarking that he planned to enter a PhD program in hopes of “waiting out the recession,” as though it were a spell of rain or some other act of god. The market giveth and taketh away. To suggest any sort of human agency behind these downturns—namely, a relationship between the wealth and poverty—is to commit the dreaded error of viewing economics as a zero-sum game. This of course is a fallacy, because economics is a magical process by which the concentrated wealth simultaneously diffuses its wealth (i.e. trickle-down theory).

Anna Kruzynski is professor at the School of Community and Public Affairs at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec.  Her research activity aims to help activists and organizations document, analyze and reflect on their activism.  In addition to her academic work, she is also deeply involved in activism and has been involved in a variety of community organizations (la Pointe libertaire, Collectif de recherche sur l’autonomie collective) and social movements.  She co-edited “Nous sommes ingouvernable” (We are ungovernable) about contemporary anarchism in Quebec, which was published in March 2013.  Our conversation focuses on last year’s “Maple Spring” and the history of student activism in Quebec.    

Paul Gottinger: Many people believed when the Quebec Liberal Party lost power in the provincial elections of September of 2012 and the Parti Quebecois (PQ) came to power (the PQ immediately ended the tuition hikes and an emergency law, which essentially criminalized protest) that the students won.  Is this accurate?  What was achieved by the protests that comprised the “Maple Spring”?

Anna Kruzynski: We can break the student movement and what has been called the “Maple Spring” into two phases. The first part is from February/March 2012 to the election of the PQ in September of 2012.  The second part is from September until now.  The balance of power was in favor of the student movements prior to the elections in September.  All of the different student associations, whether they were more radical or more reformist, were all united in favor of a tuition freeze.  Everybody knew that was what was going on. CLASSE was talking about free education as a long-term goal, but their demand was a tuition freeze.  That was clear. [CLASSE was a temporary coalition of student unions created to stop the tuition increases.  Its name stands for Coalition large de l’ASSÉ.  ASSÉ or l’association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante made up the core of CLASSE.  ASSÉ is one of Quebec’s more radical student associations.]

This is one of the factors that contributed to the election of the PQ and to the loss for the Liberals.  The Liberals clearly had an ideological slant towards imposing user fees for public services.  There wasn’t only the issue of tuition fees, but also fees for health, electricity, and public transportation.  There is a general ideological shift that they wanted to impose on Quebec following neoliberal trends.  For this reason they couldn’t really fold on the issue of a tuition freeze because it would have been fundamentally against their ideological position.  I mean they might have folded if there had been a really unbelievably huge uprising, but they were able to kill the uprising, to a certain extent, with Bill 78, which implemented major repression. [This bill suspended the university semester and made protests of larger than 50 people, which were not approved by the police illegal.  Infractions against the bill resulted in large fines for individuals and student unions.]  The Liberal party decided to take a chance and go into elections.  The general population wanted the crisis to be resolved and decided that the PQ was going to be the best government to resolve the crisis.  At that point when the liberals were not re-elected we can say yes, that was a victory for the student movement and the citizen’s movement that emerged from it.

Since the election of the PQ we’re in another phase.  Historically the PQ has had a completely different approach to politics than the Liberal Party.  The PQ uses governance with civil society as a way to impose policies that are unpopular.  They don’t “force” their policies onto people.  Instead they bring all the actors together around the table.  They’ll bring together the business community, unions, the community organizations, and the social movements and they’ll try to come to “consensus” on unpopular policies.  But this process is really just a public relations campaign and not a true consultation process; there’s no real deliberations that result in a collective decision.  The PQ then comes out publicly with the results of the “consensus”.

This process ends up creating a dynamic where some organizations feel that they’re on equal footing with the government.  For example, February 26, 2013 the more reformist student organizations: the FEUQ (Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec) and the FECQ (Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec) ended up taking part in the consultation process (education summit on tuition increases).  But instead of continuing to build a counter-power (students in the streets) as is part of a conflict strategy, they decided to engage in the negotiation.  Of course, it’s the government who decides on the policies and the power dynamic between a government (PQ or otherwise) and a student association is clearly unbalanced.  In order for the power to be more equalized there needs to be some form of action in the streets.

In this second part of the movement the CLASSE coalition disbanded, but ASSÉ, which is the more permanent form of the organization, gave an ultimatum to the government and said ‘if we’re not going to talk about free education we’re not coming to the summit’.  So, they boycotted the summit and called for actions in the street.  The spokesperson from the FEUQ ended up denouncing ASSÉ in the media because ASSÉ didn’t participate in the summit.  This is something that the reformist student organizations like FECQ and FEUQ didn’t do during the “Maple Spring” (first phase of the movement).  The movement during the “Maple Spring” was so large and there were direct actions going on everyday that the more reformist organizations didn’t agree with, but they never denounced the actions publicly and maintained a front of solidarity.

But then in the second phase they criticized the decision of ASSÉ to boycott the summit and that ended up contributing to the marginalization of ASSÉ.  The student federations didn’t call their large number of members to participate in the street demonstrations that were planned during the summit.  There were tons of actions planned, for example there were teach-ins and demonstrations before, during and after the summit.  If they had called for their members to participate in the demonstrations­, so that when FECQ and FEUQ were at the negotiating table they could say, ‘we demand a tuition freeze and look at all the people supporting us’, then they would have been in a much more powerful position.  Instead there were hardly any people in the streets.  There was one demonstration that had 10,000 people, but compared to the hundreds of thousands we saw in the spring it was nothing.  Some demonstrations had to be canceled because there was no one there.

Because of this, the government was able to say, ‘there is no support for the more radical demand to freeze tuition and people want us to solve this crisis at this summit’.  So, the PQ imposed indexation (gradual tuition hike).  In one sense it’s not as bad as what had originally been proposed, but this indexation is an eternal hike (a new slogan is La hausse éternelle).  It’s constant increases, year after year.  So, with the PQ proposal tuition costs are going to increase significantly.  I think that the FEUQ/FECQ misunderstood that in the system that we’re in where social relations are stratified one must always keep in mind that the government in not an ally.  The government is your target, even if they’re pretending to be your friend.   It’s still a conflict in social relations and it’s still about building power.  It’s never going to be possible to sit down and negotiate on equal footing with the government.

Was it a victory?  I think we can look at many of the positive aspects that came out of the “Maple Spring”.  First and foremost, even though the tuition hike was not blocked as was demanded, the increase will be lesser than what was originally set forth by the Liberals.  In addition, there have been improvements to the loans and bursaries program, the creation of a “council on universities” to oversee governance and the government has opened the door to a consultation process on “afferent” fees that have been mushrooming in the past decade or so. But some of the most important gains were made on an organizational level. The movement has contributed to the politicization of youth, but also of the general population. The movement educated people on neoliberalism and public services, but also on democratic processes. Thousands of students had firsthand experience with horizontal, decentralized direct democracy.  It has also enabled a building of power that can now be counted on for future mobilizations.

During the “Maple Spring” there were people taking to the streets in the largest act of civil disobedience in the history of Canada defying Bill 78.  Bill 78 made it so that you could no longer protest in any spontaneous way and that is something that is very foreign to Quebec policy.  We can also mention the creation of the neighborhood popular assemblies.  People started to organize and began talking about how they could organize in their communities.  It went beyond the tuition hike discussion into discussions about gentrification and other kinds of issues, which was quite interesting in terms of impacts.  There’s also the fact that lots people in Quebec have realized that the police force is not there to serve and protect.  Many have realized that the police are part and parcel of the state, which is trying to control social revolt and social upheaval to maintain power even when a significant proportion of the population was supporting the student movement.

PG: If you could talk about the differences between the student unions (ASSÉ and FECQ and FEUQ).  Which has more members and which has more support of the students and the community?

AK: FEUQ and the college equivalent FECQ tend to be lumped together.  I’m not sure how many members each organization has because people can be members of the FEUQ/FECQ, or ASSÉ, or both.  The FEUQ and FECQ are considered more reformist.  Historically they have used a negotiation and conciliation strategy with government and have been much less combative in their tactics.  However, this changed during the “Maple Spring”.  This is why I think its particularly interesting and why the movement really took off.  They seemed to recognize that a combative strategy is necessary to win their demand.  That’s why we saw the potential for a real gain.  ASSÉ is a more combative student union.  Their platform is much more radical.  Their platform calls for free education, and a tuition freeze is one step towards free education.

FEUQ and FECQ are not talking about free education in the way that ASSÉ is.  ASSÉ believes capitalism is a system of oppression and exploitation.  This analysis will influence their actions; they are willing to use stronger tactics.  During the “Maple Spring” there was a proliferation of direct actions that were highly effective in disrupting the city, its economy and therefore in increasing pressure on targets. The decentralized nature of CLASSE (and ASSÉ), coupled with a principled stance in favor of a diversity of tactics, opened up the space for autonomous groups of students to be creative and organize several direct actions per day, at the height of the movement.

So there is distinction between the student federations and CL(ASSE) in terms of demands, tactics, and the third is the organizational structure.  The FEUQ and the FECQ have more of a representative democracy form where people are elected to represent the students.  There are general assemblies of representatives. ASSÉ and CLASSE had more of a direct democracy form.  The assemblies are huge and the individual members can participate at the local level.  Then the people who are elected as delegates will go to an assembly at another level and will debate with delegates from other student associations, but they won’t be able to make decisions unless they have a mandate to do so.  So, they will have to go back to their local association and there is this back and forth process. Within this structure there was also space for autonomous organizing on a local level; because of this, there was an exponential increase in creative and often disruptive tactics happening simultaneously.

PG: Can you place the tuition increase in the context of the rest of the neoliberal attacks that are taking place in Quebec?

AK: In Quebec the social programs are generally paid for through progressive taxation and not through user fees.  This has been the case since the “Quiet Revolution” in the 1960s and 1970s.  During this time a social democratic model emerged.  Since the onset of neoliberalism there has been this pressure, as there has been in all advanced capitalist countries, to privatize social services and to impose user fees for services.  And we have seen this in Quebec regardless of the political formation.  All parties are trying to increase user fees for services, except Quebec Solidaire, which is the left wing political party, and which emerged out of the global justice movement at the turn of the century.

That political party is aligned with the social movements of the “Maple Spring”, however they only have two elected officials in Parliament.  They’re not very powerful, although they are present now in the media.  So, apart from Quebec Solidaire, the other main political parties, the PQ and the Liberals, but also the new center-right-wing party which has emerged over the last couple of years the CAQ (Coalition Avenir Québec, or Coalition for Quebec’s Future) all believe that user fees should be introduced or increased in the case when there are already user fees.  So the tuition hike clearly fits into this neoliberal trend, but there’s also the issue of health care.

All over Canada, but especially in Quebec, people tend to agree that you shouldn’t pay out of pocket for health care, that instead it should be paid for with progressive taxation.  Over the years different health institutions have been defying Canadian health policy and have been  increasing revenue by charging for certain kinds of tests, like CAT scans or ultrasounds.  Desperate to get tested within a reasonable time frame, which is less and less the case within the public system, people have begun paying. This is a slippery slope towards a two-tiered health care system. The Liberals proposed la taxe santé (health tax).  This is a regressive tax; people would have to pay $200 every year for health care, irrespective of income.

When they were in the opposition, the PQ were against it, but when they came to power (elected, amongst other things, on the promise that they would get rid of the health tax) they did not scrap this policy.  Sure they modified who had to pay and how much, but it still exists.  The same for electricity (which is a state-owned institution) and public transportation costs which increase every year.  In Quebec there’s a coalition called La Coalition Opposée à la Tarification et à la Privatisation des Services Publics (Coalition Against User Fees and Privatization of Public Services).  This coalition is very wide.  It includes the major unions, the student movement, the women’s movement, community organizations and it has existed for a few years. This coalition was an important ally during the campaign against the tuition hike.

PG: To what degree was Quebec nationalism an undercurrent of the “Maple Spring” and can you comment on how the history of tension between Anglophones and Francophones, and how that impacted people’s perceptions of the “Maple Spring”?

AK: Well I don’t read the Montreal Gazette (English paper), or listen to English language media.  But from what I heard there was a difference between how the main-stream English language media covered the protest and how the French language media covered the protests.  The alterative media, however were one of the amazing things about the “Maple Spring”.  Had there not been autonomous alternative media out there, I don’t think we would have had a “Maple Spring” like we had.  There was a proliferation of alternative media, mostly francophone, but also Anglophone.  The most important Anglophonic media was CUTV.  CUTV, which is associated with Concordia University, was out there every single time there was a demonstration, or action, or anything going on.  They live streamed everything.  Where there may have been a divide as far as what the Francophones were following compared to Anglophones; that was broken down because everyone was following CUTV.  Even the main-stream media was using CUTV footage.

My impression of the issue of Quebec nationalism is based on what I saw in the streets.  I don’t know what kinds of debates the different groups were having internally, but you would regularly see a person carrying a nationalist flag and then right next to them a person carrying an anarchist flag.   So irrespective of people’s position on nationalism, borders, or federalism there was a united front in the public sphere for a tuition freeze.  I didn’t get the sense that people got into debates about where to go from here at that point.

PG: How has support for the student movement changed since the beginning of the “Maple Spring” until now?  Is there more of a culture of solidarity or has protest fatigue set in?

AK: At the beginning of the movement there was a real effort by the state to marginalize the student movement.  There was a period of time, for about a month, when all you would hear in the mainstream media was that the students were taking the workers hostage by disrupting the everyday functioning of the city.  You would hear things like: ‘the students may be on strike, but they’re actually partying up a storm in Florida’, or ‘the students are complaining about the increase but they all have iphones’.  This was how the government, via the main stream media was portraying the movement.  This is part of the state trying to regulate itself; before using repression, generally the state tries to marginalize protest.

It was hard to gauge what the public was thinking during this time.  But the students kept going and the movement kept getting bigger.  The size of the demonstrations that were held the 22^nd of each month, kept increasing.  On the 22 of March 2012 there were hundreds of thousands in the streets.  It was incredible. It was 30 degrees and the whole downtown was completely blocked.  There was families, elderly people, students, professors, artists, punks, pretty much everybody.  It was amazing.  Clearly there was popular support in March of 2012.

From that point on state actors realized they were going to have trouble marginalizing the movement and you started to see the increasing repression to try to stop the expansion of the movement.  Bill 78 was really the prime example of this.  With that they were really trying to stop the movement from expanding.  But with that bill people became outraged.  Whether or not people agreed with the students and whether or not they agreed with their tactics of disrupting the regular functioning of the economy and the city, they felt that this bill was over the top.  So, support for the student movement increased even more.  That’s when you saw people banging their casseroles on their balconies all over Montreal in solidarity with the students on the streets.  You would see people hanging the red square (symbol of the student movement) out their window everywhere you went.

The bill made it so that you had to be 50 meters from a university building if you wanted to demonstrate on a university campus, and it also became illegal for professors to refuse to teach if there were only 1 or 2 students in their classroom.  Prior to that it was up to the professors to decide whether or not they would teach if only a couple of students showed up.  Our unions had been telling us ‘if there’s less than 10 people in the class don’t teach’.  After the bill it became illegal for the union to tell us that and the fines for an organization violating the law were in the tens of thousands of dollars.  There were heavy fines for teachers who still refused to teach and individuals participating in a picket.  There were different levels of fining depending on if you were an organizer, or had some official position.   This had an impact.  People stopped organizing in a transparent way.  People started becoming more anonymous in what they were doing.  The bill also suspended the semester.  So, there was no more strike because there was no more session.   It was a lockout.

There were a few associations that were still on strike, but over-all the student movement went on break over the summer.  There were still meetings going on all summer organized by the more radical organizations in the movement.  For example, anarchists would organize meetings to talk about the necessity of a social strike.  Some of the other social movements were also talking about a social strike. The CSN (Confédération des syndicats nationaux), which is one of the major unions in Quebec had a one day social strike mandate to use.  It’s not much, but it’s important for a trade union in this context.  They had a mandate voted in assembly, but they didn’t use it.  Had the other social movements joined forces with the students when Bill 78 passed the social upheaval might have gone to another level.

In the spring I was doing workshops about the necessity of the social strike.  People were very interested, but the social forces didn’t seize the moment.  During the summer things fizzled out, then there was an attempt to rekindle the strike movement when school started at the end of August.  But the elections were on September 4.  And after the PQ was elected only a few student associations voted to continue the strike and even some of the most combative ones voted against continuing the strike.  People were tired and some people had faith that the PQ would follow through on their promises.  The current premier, Pauline Marois, who was the opposition at the time, was wearing the red square during the “Maple Spring” in the parliament.  During the election, the PQ said they would: over turn the tuition hike and the health tax, not increase electricity bills, and get rid of Bill 78.  They ended up getting rid of Bill 78, but a few months into their mandate they backed out of the other promises.

It wasn’t surprising to me, an anarchist.  But many people had hope that the Summit on post-secondary education that the PQ organized would result in a tuition freeze, but the PQ just wanted to bring the groups together and calm things down.  In the end the PQ got their way.  After the summit there was even more demobilization.  Associations tried to get strike mandates, but people were not willing to go on strike.  At that point there was some protest fatigue.  But it wasn’t just protest fatigue; it was also demoralization because a lot of people feel like they got screwed over by the PQ.

It’s really unfortunate because the conditions were there for the social movements to win their demands.  And had the more mainstream federations worn their “conflict” lenses, remembering that the PQ is not an ally, but is an adversary; had there been lots of people in the streets during the negotiations, then the demand to freeze tuition could have been won.  The PQ would have seen the risk for upheaval was still there.  Instead the PQ concluded, ‘only the radicals are in the streets’, the population wants the city to return to normal; they took advantage of that to force through their policies

Since the summit, there have been demonstrations every couple of days against the “eternal hike” and every single time there are mass arrests.  On March 15, 2013 there was the police brutality demonstration, but the demonstration didn’t even take off.  There were 300 people at the protest, and 250 were arrested.  Prior to the demonstration the police had announced that they were going to arrest everybody and nothing was going to be tolerated.  So, clearly lots of people, myself included, decided not to go.  Now that the movement is not as broad as it was before, it’s easier for the police to just arrest all the radicals. The police are arresting people under the city bylaw, P-6, that was adopted in the wake of Bill 78. P-6 requires organizers to provide the authorities with the protest route and makes it illegal to demonstrate wearing a mask. During the Maple Spring, the police force used this bylaw with parsimony; now, they are using it every time there is a demonstration. This is a clear attempt to put an end to the movement. Currently, there is a campaign to get rid of P-6 that is building steam.

PG: As you mentioned earlier there were hundreds of thousands of people in the street during the “Maple Spring” and I’m wondering how such powerful organizing was accomplished and how the “Maple Spring” fits into the history of student strikes in Quebec?

AK: In Quebec there’s a history of student strikes that we don’t see elsewhere in Canada and North America.  There have been strikes in Quebec since 1968.  And since then there has been a strike every 5 to 8 years.  Some have been more successful than others.  In Quebec there are two levels of higher education.  The collegial level here is the equivalent of the last few years of high school in other places. It is either preparation for university, or technical studies.  This is called Collège d’ enseignement général et professionel (CÉGEP) and it’s free.  The university level tuition of a few hundred dollars was maintained for long time because of the student strikes that would come up every time the government tried to increase the tuition.  In the wake of these strikes some of the more combative student associations were born.

After the strike of 1974 there was the creation of an organization called ANEQ (L’association des étudiants et étudiantes du Québec).  This was one of the most combative student associations, which lasted until the 1990s.  ASSÉ is of this tradition.  In 1978 there was another strike; students were demanding improved bursaries and free education.  The strike movement was so strong at the time that the government immediately agreed to a drastic improvement in the student bursaries.  In 1986 the Liberal government tried to unfreeze the tuition fees and again there was student strike that was called by ANEQ and again the students managed to prevent an increase in student fees.

In the 1980s the authorities realized it was very difficult to raise tuition fees, so the universities began introducing “afferent” fees for libraries, information technology, and all kinds of other things, which aren’t technically tuition fees.  In 1990 the government decided unilaterally to unfreeze the fees again, however the movement at the time was quite disorganized and ANEQ fell apart at that time and the student strike at that time was not successful.  After ANEQ fell apart it took a few years to re-create a combative wing in the movement.

In 2005 the government wanted to transform the student bursaries into loans.  The student movement won to a certain extent because they managed to stop part of the transformation.  So, if you look at the history there has been a combative wing of the student movement since 1968.  Every time the government tries to unfreeze tuition or modify the loans and bursaries the student movement is ready to go on strike in order to preserve the accessibility of the education system.  Every time there is a strike there isn’t always a full win but the movement is contributing to slowing the march of neoliberalism.  That’s important because in order for other possibilities to emerge, neoliberalism needs to be slowed down.

PG: Why do you think there’s this culture of protest in Quebec that is so different from the rest of Canada?

AK: Here we have the legacy of the Nationalist movement of the 1960s and 1970s.  The more radical elements of the nationalist movement like the FLQ (Front de libération du Québec) are references for some in the current movements.  There’s also the tradition of neighborhood organizing, which is very strong here in Quebec.  All over Quebec, not only in the urban centers, but even in the rural areas you have community organizations that started up in the 1960s and 1970s with the slogan “Power to the People”.  It was about self organization, self determination, direct democracy and direct action.  After the “Quiet Revolution” there was the founding of the welfare state.  This was the result of everyday conflictual social relations between movements in the streets and the State.

There were “welfare mothers” that were occupying the office of the minister of social security for a week at a time.  They were having soup kitchens in there.  This was common practice.  The same thing was happening for social housing.  There were demonstrations, occupations, direct actions, citizens committees.  There was street organizing where each street had a committee and once a month the delegates from each committee would meet to talk about who needs a park, who needs what, how are we going to help each other in terms of urban development.  There was a whole movement around cooperatives where workers were controlling the means of production.

There was also a very strong Marxist-Leninist movement from the early 1970s to 1980, which had an incredible impact in the community organizations and unions in Quebec.  They were organizing reading circles with Marxist analysis, which was extremely interesting.  People were getting explanations for their situations.  The dogmatic organizational form turned out to be part of the demise of the Marxist-Leninist movement.  But irrespective of that it had an impact on the politicization of the people of Quebec.  In the 1980s there was a big empty period, a kind of political vacuum.

In this period the state started co-opting many of the local initiatives.  For example these kinds of initiatives where people were deciding with their neighbors to set up a daycare, a food co-op, a housing co-op, a people’s health clinic and a people’s legal aid center, all of which were self-managed with the members being the users.  But many of these were co-opted by the state. For example the people’s health clinics became CLSCs (centre local de services communautaires), the network of health clinics in Quebec, which is state funded.  There’s only one people’s clinic left in Quebec (in the Pointe-Saint-Charles neighborhood in Montreal), which is funded by the state, but still run by the citizens.  All the rest have become engulfed by the state.  The same is true of the legal aid centers.  The only one run by the citizens and funded by the state is in Pointe-Saint-Charles.  The people’s health clinic and legal aid center in Pointe-Saint-Charles managed to hold onto their autonomy because of the strong activist history of the neighborhood.

So in the 1980s you had an institutionalization of the community sector.  And the same thing happened with the unions that happened everywhere else.  The unions that had been combative in the early years became part and parcel of what we call the “co-management model”.  Many unions worked hand in hand with state actors.  This is especially true when the PQ is in power. The PQ, with its position in favor of sovereignty, is more of an ally to unions that share those politics than the Liberals who take a federalist stance. Overall, from the 1980s to the mid 1990s there was a calming down. Partnership, cooperation and consensus became the norm. Combative street politics and building of counter-power became the exception.

Then at the turn of the century with the anti-capitalist and anti-globalization movement we see a resurgence of combative politics and combative organizations.  In 2001 there was the 3^rd Summit of the Americas in Quebec City with 34 heads of state discussing the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA).  This was a key moment for the resurgence of street politics in Quebec.  At this point there were many huge demonstrations.  There were a hundred thousand people in the street against the FTAA.  Then in 2003 there were hundreds of thousands of people in the street against the war in Iraq.  There were these huge symbolic demonstrations with zero impact.  It was as if the government didn’t even notice what was happening in the street.  People were outraged by the war and the neoliberal measures and when symbolic demonstrations had no effect they felt very demoralized.

Then there was the World March of Women.  In Quebec the women’s movement has played a big role in terms of what is going on now.   La Fédération des femmes du Québec was the initiator of the World March of Women, which was huge in Quebec.  In 1995 you had the Bread and Roses March; where 850 women marched from all over to Quebec City.  This was the precursor to the World March of Women in 2000 when there were actions across the world and especially strong actions in Quebec.  These women were marching against capitalism and patriarchy and they had specific demands.  There was a whole grassroots movement that participated in neighborhoods and mass demonstrations.

I remember on the last day of the march when Françoise David (who is now one of the members of the Quebec national assembly as Québec Solidaire and was president of La Fédération des femmes du Québec at the time) made a speech and there were huge crowds in the streets.  She said, ‘the government is not listening to us and something needs to change.  Either the women’s movement needs to decide to participate in civil disobedience and direct action, or we need to create a feminist political party’.  After that she decided to create the feminist political party.

That’s when Option Citoyenne (Citizen Option) was created, which was the precursor to Québec Solidaire.  Québec solidaire was the fusion between Union des forces progressistes (UFP) and Option Citoyenne.  Option Citoyenne emerged out of contemporary social movements while the UFP was more of an old-style socialist party.  Amir Khadir, the other Québec Solidaire member in Parliament, came from the UFP.  Québec Solidaire came out of the social movements with this idea that we have to break out of the politics of demand to the politics of act.  Their idea of politics of act was to form a political party in an attempt to take power to put into place another vision of society.  The party really took off.  There are feminists , environmentalists, unionists, and even anarchists in the political party.  Also during this time, the contemporary anarchist movement is gaining momentum. People are thinking about and experimenting with alternative political, economic and cultural institutions. To paraphrase the preamble to the constitution of the IWW, we are working to build a better society within the shell of the old.

People are really interested in politics in Quebec now.  Lots of people are talking about politics.  Currently, the Charbonneau Commission is providing us with daily information on corruption and collusion at the municipal level and at the provincial level.  The focus is on corruption in the construction industry and in particular, on the construction of public infrastructure.  The population is discovering that politicians, civil servants, the construction business, and the mafia are all working hand in hand.  The Commission is also shedding light on illegal funding for political parties.  It’s like a reality show.  Each of us tunes in for our daily dose of the life and times of the rich, powerful and corrupt. You watch all these men on TV say, ‘yes, I’m sorry I gave $10,000 to this guy with in the municipal political structure in order to get a contract to build such and such road, or such and such building’.  There’s one highly placed civil servant who has been nicknamed “Mr. three percent”’.  He would get three percent of every contract with the construction industry.

This is also affecting the provincial government: both the Liberals and the PQ; everybody is touched by this.  People are seeing that structural corruption is built into the system.  So, on the one hand you have this, but on the other hand you have the PQ, which got elected on a platform that they’re not putting into practice.  This is not new. But now, in the wake of the “Maple Spring”, more and more people are listening.  They’re paying attention to what the government is saying, doing, or not doing.  For example, within the last couple weeks one of the ministers, Agnès Maltais, announced that there was going to be cuts to welfare in order to “encourage people to reintegrate the workforce”.  The people targeted are families with small children and people that were over 55.  We are talking about cuts to a welfare check that is hardly enough to pay the rent, not to mention food, clothing and transportation.  They also want to cut the funding for treatment for people who are struggling with drug problems.

In the social media you see this very same minister, Agnès Maltais, when she was in the opposition, denouncing very similar policies that the Liberals were trying to pass.  It does not take a rocket scientist to see that politicians get elected on lies and end up passing unpopular policies on the backs of the poor and disenfranchised. People are realizing that something is wrong with our political institutions.  People are hungry for alternatives. There are numerous conferences and meetings on forms of democracy.  People are discussing participatory, direct and representative democracy. What are the differences, what are the options that are out there and what can we do.

A book I co-edited that came out in March on contemporary anarchism in Québec Nous sommes ingouvernable (We are ungovernable) has also captured peoples’ interest; ten days after the book was on bookstore shelves, we had to print a second batch. Mainstream media has also taken an interest. So yes, there is a strong activist tradition in Quebec and people are particularly interested in politics. All this reached a real height with the “Maple Spring” in the world-wide context of the anti-austerity movement.

One of the things that I am personally very excited about is how with the “Maple Spring”, Occupy, and other recent movements there’s the massive street demonstrations and the taking of public space, but then there’s a shift towards the neighborhoods where people are trying engage in alternative political forms in their communities.  What I find the most exciting is that people are putting to practice these principles of self-determination and self-organization in an advanced capitalist context, in the Global North.  This is not Chiapas and this is not Oaxaca.   These attempts at reclaiming space and experimenting with direct democratic forms confirm Bakunin’s claim that human beings have the potential not only for rebellion, but also for self-determination.

PG:  What do you think is the next phase of the Quebec social movements?

AK:  I think that depends on what position you take.  I’m a big partisan of the politics of proximity.  I think in this context there’s something in the idea of reclaiming the commons and reclaiming public space as collective and doing that through direct action and creating alternative political institutions.  This can allow space for people to deliberate and talk to their neighbors, or their coworkers, or their fellow students, or whatever and experiment with different kinds of political forms.  This is in the perspective of the Chiapas Zapatista motto ‘walking: we ask questions’.  Where as we walk together we deliberate and we experiment and we figure things out.  We make mistakes and come up against obstacles, but then we collectively figure out new ways of doing things and as we do that answers to the big problems in our society will emerge.  To me this is one of the most interesting ways to move forward. The logic is that as you try out ideas and practices you will engage those who are searching for alternatives.  And through pollination of ideas more people get involved. As more people invest alternative political, economic, cultural, social institutions they build power.

In Quebec right now there’s a relatively large network of cooperatives; within these people are controlling their means of production.  It’s not a very huge phenomenon, if one compares with places like Latin America, but more importantly, people are not necessarily making the links with the political sphere.  Most people are not talking about how cooperatives are getting at the core of capitalism in terms of wage labor, production for profit, and other things.  Without political intention, cooperatives remain a pimple in the grand scheme of things. And capitalism will move forward regardless of whether or not cooperatives exist.

I’m not saying we need to federate them and create a formal political organization.  One of the strengths of the movements of the last few years is the fluidity of the organizational form.  It’s something that is difficult for some of the older social movements to grapple with.  The refusal to put everything on paper with regards to vision, concrete solutions, and of a formal organizational structure that’s going to take us there.  There’s old movements that are trying to force that on the current movements which are fluid and embody the “walking: we ask questions” mentality, which is very different from the “grand narrative” mentality.  Myself, a community organizer, was more into organization and platformism 5 years ago than I am today because I’ve been studying these contemporary movements and I can see that there’s something very interesting happening.  The movements that aren’t able to adapt to the fluidity of modern movements are actually not moving forward and are stagnating.

Examples of this are the big unions and the big federations of social movements that function with membership cards, recruitment and have a very formal process.  Many of them have not been able to adapt to what’s going on now.  Some have opened up to other forms of organizing and are sharing their resources; this is key for creating alliances across generations and movements, in order to build power. And power we need to counter the austerity measures that will continue to be imposed upon us in the years to come.   Unfortunately, many older organizations are uncomfortable with not knowing exactly what the more fluid movements are going to do and when.  The decentralized and non-hierarchical form of the latter renders them unpredictable. People are regrouping based an affinity and based on community and they’re doing things on an autonomous basis.  In these smaller groups, people engage in conjunctural analysis, identify targets and tactics and take action. They are not asking permission from anybody.  It is difficult for more structured movements that have a tradition of formal campaigning to work with this kind of fluidity.

This being said, there is hope. More and more rank and file organizers, along with movement analysts are calling on unions and other institutionalized movements to take act of the “Maple Spring” and to open up their horizons to other ways of being and doing. It is well documented that the calm between the storms is a time for evaluation, regrouping and rebuilding. If we do that now, when the next Spring comes along, perhaps the rebellion will be even more startling and effective than in 2012.

by DEBANJAN BANERJEE

There exist two prevailing attitudes in West Bengal: one anti-establishment, the other authoritarian. Historically we are able to observe the effects of these two attitudes in the Mughal period. The Baro Bhuiyans (twelve great landlords) were opposed to the Mughal rule in the region; however, they were strictly authoritarian and tyrannical to their respective fiefdoms.

The anti-establishment sentiment was evident during the independence movement period. Many Bengali intellectuals played a prominent role in the development of Indian nationalism and anti-British Raj sentiments. Among the anarchists and nationalists of pre-Independence India, two influential figures, Subhash Chandra Bose and Rashbehari Bose, were both from Bengal.

In keeping with the anti-establishment spirit, the divided Bengal became (after the Eastern part of it became what was then known as East Pakistan) the preeminent stronghold of the otherwise marginal Communist movement in India, whereas the state went on to supply the authoritarian ex-prime minister of India, Indira Gandhi, with two of her most loyal lieutenants: Pranab Mukherjee, the current President of India, and Siddharta Sankar Roy, the authoritarian ex-chief minister of West Bengal during the 1970s.

The Communists came to power in the late 1970s, as a result of strong anti-establishment feelings that had been prevalent in the state after its rule by the Congress party from 1947-1977. The anti-establishment feelings did not subside, even as the Communists started to lose support amongst the urban population in Kolkata due to the popular perception that they had turned authoritarian like their congressional predecessors.

Although the period of the veteran leader Jyoti Basu bode well for the Communists, a different situation began to emerge in the state following Buddhadeb Bhattacharya’s rise to power in the Communist party in 2001. Bhattacharya focused strongly upon industrialization and began a process of purchasing agricultural land and handing it over to industrialists. The policy was attacked by then opposition leader, the charismatic and mercurial Mamata Banerje, who characterized the policy as an attempt to destroy agriculture in the state.

The vehement protests by the main opposition party against industrialization of agricultural land and the anti-establishment sentiment of the Bengalis eroded the support base the Communists enjoyed in the villages. This led to the end of the 34-year old Communist rule in Bengal and coming to power of the current Mamata Banerjee-led TMC government. However, the present government showed signs of the same authoritarian tendencies of which their Communist counterparts had been accused for more than three decades.

Examples of the TMC government’s authoritarianism are numerous. Two name just a couple, in the beginning of 2012 a woman was gang raped in Park Street, one of the most posh areas in Kolkata; however the chief minister largely dismissed the incident and refused to acknowledge any laxity of the police in relation to the incident. A professor of a prominent Kolkata-based engineering college was arrested by the police when he made fun of the chief minister on the Internet some months later.

Finances in the meantime had taken a turn for worse: the state was finding it difficult to provide salaries to its regular employees; the government was accused of incorrect priorities as it showered money on film and media celebrities (most of whom had played an active role for the coming to power of the present government by promoting its cause in the public and thus were heavily patronized by the current chief minister) instead of providing money to the more important needs of agriculture and industry.

Then in the early 2013, a police officer was shot dead in broad daylight by miscreants who were later found to be allied with a local councilor, belonging to the ruling party.

It was amidst this background that the death of Sudipta Gupta, the leader of the student wing of the Communist party, took place under police custody. Although popular feelings are against the government, the chief minister was accused of not taking enough measures to bring the perpetrators of the crime to justice. A few days later when she went to Delhi, the protestors belonging to SFI (the organization of the deceased Sudipta Gupta) were accused of roughing up the chief minister and her finance minister, Amit Mitra.

News of this incident sparked carnage in different parts of the state where offices belonging to the Communist party and its student, worker and peasant wings were attacked and ransacked. Leaders were also attacked and in some cases arrested. Many are anticipating even more carnage in the coming days, as the authoritarian tendencies of the present ruling party clash with the anti-establishment forces, now championed by the Communists in the state.

by KEN KLIPPENSTEIN

The Boston Marathon bombing’s cruel use of a second bomb, designed to harm anyone assisting those injured by the first, reminded me of the “Collateral Murder” video, which depicted U.S. military helicopters first gunning down a group of mostly unarmed men (including two Reuters journalists), then killing a separate pair of unarmed men after they exited their van, attempting to help the wounded. Curiously, I saw nothing in the press about the two men’s act of heroism that cost them their lives. Not so with the heroism on display in Boston. I will leave the reader to speculate as to why.

As politicians commend the angelic conduct evinced by law enforcement, any critical analysis of the police’s response will be studiously avoided by the major press. A fine illustration of this can be seen in the case of a Saudi student who, after having been injured by the bomb, was tackled by a civilian and subsequently arrested for having “acted suspiciously.” This allegation was faithfully reported by CBS, with no elaboration on what this suspicious activity was. The New York Post went further, falsely designating the Saudi student a “suspect.” CNN described a “dark-skinned male” suspect. The Saudi student has since been cleared by the FBI, after the Bureau raided his apartment and interrogated him. Being accused of acting suspiciously is not without its inconveniences.

Obama has described the bombing as “senseless,” for which reason there will be no attempt to make sense of why it may have happened. In the view of people like Obama, such events are ‘black swans,’ to borrow a term from the apologists of financialization—meaning that they are intrinsically unpredictable, so we had best just get used to this kind of thing. Pay no attention to the fact that these black swan financial crashes, which we are urged to accept as inevitable, came largely after the deregulation of the financial sector.

Likewise, one must pay no attention to the fact that terror attacks have increased sevenfold following the invasion of Iraq, which a study cited favorably by the Brookings Institution (hardly a leftist outfit) found. Whether or not the bombing in Boston was carried out by a group originating in the Middle-East, if we are serious about ending attacks like these we must consider their causes, of which U.S. imperialism is certainly one.

It should come as no surprise that power will strongly resist any attempt to critically discuss U.S. imperialism and, as previously mentioned, the conduct of its police; these are, of course, power’s means. When Obama said that “On days like this, there are no Republicans or Democrats,” he was quite right: any analysis of the political dimensions of such crises is off the agenda for both parties.

If any such analysis occurred, the blame would be catastrophic to the political establishment. Suppose the public was permitted to learn about, say, then CIA director George Tenet’s letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee in which he explains that an invasion of Iraq would result in an increased likelihood of terror attacks on the U.S.

Or what if the mainstream discourse shifted to the leading British intelligence agency, MI5, and its director’s retrospective assessment that the invasion of Iraq did indeed ‘significantly increase the terrorist threat to Britain’? People would be out in the streets by the time they got to the part where the MI5 chief said that “we gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad.”

The ramifications of discussion incorporating serious facts such as these (instead of what color of hat the latest suspect was wearing, or how one indomitable runner was undeterred by the attack and went on to finish the race) would be much too threatening to the political establishment to ever be tolerated.

So instead, people desiring a serious discussion about terrorism will be shamed with non sequiturs about how they’re being disrespectful to the victims, and how there’ll be a time for such discussions later—when interest in them is safely dead.

By PAUL GOTTINGER

Things seemed to have calmed on the Korean peninsula for now.  This despite the fact that the U.S. and South Korea are continuing their outrageously provocative Foal Eagle “war games” through April 30.  The Foal Eagle is one of the largest and longest military exercises in the world.  This year’s military exercises brought the peninsula to such a volatile place that even a senior Obama administration official was quoted in the Wall Street Journal admitting the U.S. had pushed things too far. The unnamed official stated, “The concern was that we were heightening the prospect of misperceptions on the part of the North Koreans, and that that could lead to miscalculations”.  Should a “miscalculation” have taken place, it could very well have led to an open conflict with catastrophic results for not only both the Koreas, but also the region.  It’s very possible that a conventional war with North Korea could go nuclear.

In the same Wall Street Journal article several Obama officials confirmed that the most provocative actions taken during the “war games” had been decided upon months ago:

The Obama administration approved [the plan] earlier this year.  Dubbed “the playbook,” it laid out the sequence and publicity plans for U.S. shows of force during annual war games with South Korea. The playbook included well-publicized flights in recent weeks near North Korea by nuclear-capable B-52 and stealth B-2 bombers, as well as advanced F-22 warplanes.

The North Korean government understandably sees these war games as dress rehearsals for an invasion and a simulated nuclear bombing.  Despite the U.S. “dialing back” its most confrontational shows of force, it is keeping a nuclear armed submarine in the area and will continue its “strategic patience” approach which comprises: strangulation through sanctions (similar to what was done to Iraq in the 1990s), unjust applications of international law (international law means punishing those who don’t obey U.S. orders), absence of a good faith effort to negotiate, and implicit threats from the most powerful and savage military in the world.   

North Korea responds to the U.S. provocations in the usual manner with threats that the U.S. media report as the screeching of crazed maniacs.  However, North Korea, a country with an annual GDP of 40 billion dollars (0r 1/750^th of the U.S. GDP) and a military that utilizes antiquated 1970s and 1980s technology and is plagued by shortages of spare parts and fuel, could be wiped off the face of the earth in a war with the U.S./South Korea.

Despite North Korea’s inability to pose a threat beyond its region, the U.S. media uses the North’s over the top rhetoric to portray it as a terrifying military power that could destroy the U.S. at any minute.  This results in Americans believing the U.S.’ incredibly belligerent actions are justified.  In fact, a CNN poll on April 7^th found that 41% of Americans believed North Korea posed an immediate threat to the United States and 51% of Americans polled believed diplomatic and economic means alone would be unable to end the crisis.

But anyone that knows the history of the region is familiar with the well-worn roles the U.S. and North Korea play again and again.  Another escalation on the peninsula is only a matter of time.

These future escalations may be more dangerous than ever because South Korea has relaxed the rules of engagement, which allow front line commanders greater freedom to respond to North Korean attacks without having to ask permission from the army chain of command.  This is especially troubling given that former president Lee Myung-bak (from the same conservative Saenuri Party as current president Park Geun-hye) stated that he wanted to order retaliatory air strikes on the North after the Novermber 2010 North artillery attack on the South island of Yeonpyeong-do, but the rules of engagement and the ROK-US alliance prevented him.  Another unnerving development is the South’s promise of a harsh response to any attack from the North.

Major General Kim Yong-hyun from South Korea’s Office of Joint Chiefs of Staff was quoted in the New York Times saying, “If North Korea attempts a provocation, our military will forcefully and decisively strike not only the origin of provocation and its supporting forces, but also its command leadership”.

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To better understand the Korean crisis and the North’s “insane” threats one should consider a few points:

1) Recall the “lashing out” the U.S. did during the Cuban missile crisis when U.S.S.R.’s nuclear weapons were being brought to within striking distance of the U.S. mainland.  JFK was willing to play Russian roulette with the Northern hemisphere before he would allow the U.S. to be subjected to a tiny fraction of what the USSR was forced to live with daily.

Though the U.S. government found it unacceptable to live under serious USSR threats, North Korea is forced to live under the encroaching dark cloud of the U.S. military.  It goes without saying that since 2003 the U.S. has invaded: Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya (as part of NATO), and is engaged in covert and drone warfare in countless countries.   The U.S. also surrounds the North with enormous military bases in South Korea and Japan.  Despite the North’s threatening rhetoric, it’s the North that has actually had to endure a realistic threat of nuclear attack since the Korean War.  In fact, until 1991 the U.S. kept nuclear weapons in South Korea.

 2) North Korea’s “lashing out” is a long-standing policy and far from insane.  Until the U.S. is willing to make good faith efforts to negotiate, North Korea is forced to play the only card it has—threats.  If the North can create a very tense situation it figures it may be able to get the U.S. to back off a bit and maybe even receive some concessions.  The North takes its cues from an old playbook that goes back to the 1970s.

3) North Korea was very nearly invaded in 1994 by Bill Clinton’s administration.  A war with the North could have ended with millions dead in North and South Korea and fighting in the suburbs of Seoul (a city inhabited by tens of millions at the time).   In fact, the war was only averted because Jimmy Carter went to negotiate with Pyongyang’s leadership in an unofficial mission.  The North understands it is constantly under very real threat.

4) One last point of context for understanding the North’s actions is the unimaginable destruction waged on it by the U.S. during the Korean War.  This is something that is still very much in the consciousness of North Koreans and is something often brought up to foreigners who visit their country.  The U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of bombs during the Korean War (compared to 650,000 tons on Germany in WWII) and most of this was on North Korea where people were forced to live underground in caves, tunnels, and canyons to avoid being killed during the war.  The U.S. bombed North Korea’s dams (bombing dams is now considered a war crime) wiping out villages, destroying their means of irrigation, and washing away rice fields. Hungarian correspondent during the Korean War, Tibor Meray, witnessed the destruction committed by the American forces. “Everything which moved in North Korea was a military target, peasants in the fields were often machine gunned by pilots”.  Meray saw “complete devastation between the Yalu River (river that forms the north border with China) and the capital” of North Korea.  There were “no more cities in North Korea,” he reported.

The U.S. “containment” policy of North Korea uses isolation, sanctions, and threats, which is the same ways other countries in the “axis of evil” have been handled.  A large part of the sanctions and economic strangulation are just punishment for disobeying the U.S., but it’s also likely that Washington believes it can help bring about a collapse of North Korea.  Since Washington has been predicting the collapse of North Korea since the end of the cold war, this seems unlikely.  However, the sanctions will continue to punish a starving and helpless population of North Koreans for their government’s actions, and the U.S. military’s outrageously provocative actions will likely bring the peninsula to the verge of war again before too long.