Indonesia: Workers, poor reject petrol price rises imposed `on behalf of the poor’
May 15, 2008 -- ``Let’s seek the opportunity out of the world's crisis. In responding to the increase in global food prices, let us improve productivity. Amidst the oil crisis and price rises, let's be thrifty. Let's develop the energy resources.'' -- Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudoyono, May 1, 2008.
The poor will benefit from the increase in fuel prices rise, he said on May 7, 2008.
Meanwhile vice-president Yusuf Kalla said that so far the fuel subsidy has been benefiting the rich. He added ``The protesters who oppose this policy mean that they are helping the poor.''
Acting as if they are doing it ``on behalf of the poor'', the Indonesian government plans to impose a 30% rise on petroleum prices. It will be the third oil price rise under the Susilo Bambang Yudoyono government. To help the poor survive this unpopular policy, the government is granting direct cash transfers amounting 100,000 rupiah per month per family. The direct cash transfer ``gift'' was also implemented with the oil price rise in 2005.
Will this price rise benefit the poor?
Our history: John Reed’s `Ten days that shook the world’
Ten Days That Shook The World
By
John Reed
Penguin
Books 351 pages
Paperback
Review by Alex Miller
El movimiento obrero venezolano en la encrucijada
por Kiraz Janicke y Federico Fuentes
Rebelión
Michael A. Lebowitz: Socialism is the future -- Build it now
By Michael A. Lebowitz
Global food crisis: Capitalism, agribusiness and the food sovereignty alternative
By Ian Angus
[Second of two articles. Click here for part one.]
Videos: Cuba's green revolution
A clip from the BBC's Around the World in 80 Gardens (2008) introduces the urban organic food gardening revolution in Havana, Cuba.
Bolivia: Fraud, violence and mass resistance marks right-wing push
By Federico Fuentes
May 9, 2008 -- A day of violence, fraud and a “grand rebellion” against the Santa Cruz oligarchy.
This is how Bolivian president, Evo Morales Ayma, described the result of the unconstitutional May 4 “autonomy” referendum organised by the authorities in Santa Cruz — which many feared was aimed at dividing Bolivia.
* * *
Click here to watch and hear Bolivia expert Forrest Hylton discuss the background to the situation in Bolivia's Santa Cruz province
* * *
Barack Obama, Reverend Wright and Black liberation theology
By Malik Miah
The groundswell of broad support for Barack Obama (both among Blacks and whites) is a phenomenon that deserves a serious analysis and understanding. It cannot be downplayed by passing it through the lens of pure-and-simple lesser-evilism.
Some radicals dismiss the mass phenomenon, because Obama is a candidate of a ruling-class party. That simplistic rejection of Obama's campaign and its mass support is sectarian: The issue isn't whether to vote for a Democrat, but rather our response to a development that is having a wide-scale impact. How many times, in state after state, have we ever seen citizens of all races line up for hours to hear an African-American man talk about “hope'', on a platform that is fundamentally no different than his opponents?
Musical interlude: Post-911 Blues
Hear and watch Riz MC's classic “Post-911 Blues'', click here
Global food crisis: ‘The greatest demonstration of the historical failure of the capitalist model’
By Ian Angus
[First of two articles. Click here for part two.]
“If the government cannot lower the cost of living it simply has to leave. If the police and UN troops want to shoot at us, that's OK, because in the end, if we are not killed by bullets, we’ll die of hunger.” — A demonstrator in Port-au-Prince, Haiti
April 28, 2008 -- In Haiti, where most people get 22% fewer calories than the minimum needed for good health, some are staving off their hunger pangs by eating “mud biscuits” made by mixing clay and water with a bit of vegetable oil and salt.[1]
Meanwhile, in Canada, the federal government is currently paying $225 for each pig killed in a mass cull of breeding swine, as part of a plan to reduce hog production. Hog farmers, squeezed by low hog prices and high feed costs, have responded so enthusiastically that the kill will likely use up all the allocated funds before the program ends in September. Some of the slaughtered hogs may be given to local Food Banks, but most will be destroyed or made into pet food. None will go to Haiti.
This is the brutal world of capitalist agriculture — a world where some people destroy food because prices are too low, and others literally eat dirt because food prices are too high.
Three books on the life and thought of the `red terror doctor’
Reviews by Alex Miller
Karl Marx: A Biography
By
David McLellan, Palgrave Macmillan
4th
Edition 2006
487
pages, paperback
Adding insult to injury: Bush says starving India eats too much
By Kavita Krishnan
May 7, 2008 -- Karl Marx, born on 5 May, 1818, nearly two centuries ago, had in 1867 laid bare the ``intimate connection between the pangs of hunger of the most industrious layers of the working class, and the extravagant consumption, coarse or refined, of the rich, for which capitalist accumulation is the basis'' (Capital Vol. 1, Ch. 25). In May 2008, nearly a century and a half later, as we hear Emperor Bush hold forth on global hunger, we are reminded that capitalism and global wealth remains just as intimately wedded to hunger.
For related Links articles, including a video by Hugo Chavez, click here