Friday, 27 February 2009
Tuesday, 24 February 2009
FREE EDUCATION FOR ALL
NATIONAL DEMONSTRATION FOR FREE EDUCATION - WEDNESDAY 25 FEBRUARY 2009, LONDON
Assembling from 12 noon at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1 (Nearest tubes: Russell Square, Euston, Goodge Street)
* SCRAP ALL FEES - FREE EDUCATION FOR ALL
* A LIVING GRANT FOR EVERY STUDENT
* EDUCATION NOT PROFIT
This academic year could see the lifting of the £3,000 cap on tuition fees in higher education. Meanwhile, student debt and poverty are already spiralling, students face soaring costs of living, and the market dominates our education system from school to college to university.
After years of underfunding for post-16 education, the Government brought in tuition fees and then top-up fees. Worsening the already existing inequalities in higher education, fees are greatly accelerating the development of a competitive market between universities, with a tier of well-funded and prestigious institutions and another of less prestigious, underfunded ones. Along with the absence of decent student grants, they rule out the possibility of seriously expanding access, force most students who do get to university into debt and push many into casualised, low-paid jobs. Lifting the cap will, of course, make all this worse. Meanwhile most further education students have always paid fees and never had grants.
Top-up fees will be in the headlines this year, but fees are not the only issue. Even those who do not have to pay fees, such as Scottish students and FE students under 19, do not receive a living grant and are also forced into poverty and debt. Nursing, midwifery and other students who have to work as a large part of their course receive a bursary as an on-the-cheap substitute for a living wage.
International students are exploited to subsidise higher education institutions through higher and higher fees, while postgraduate study is limited to a small elite through a more and more restrictive funding system.
Women, black, LGBT and disabled students are affected and disadvantaged disproportionately by the growth in student poverty and debt.
As our education is commodified and most institutions are run more and more for profit, the wages, conditions and rights of our teachers and other education workers are also coming under attack.
We also note that, as the economic crisis bites, the Government has announced that it plans to cut student numbers and further limit eligibility for grants.
We believe that NUS is allowing the Government to get away with these deeply unpopular policies. This year, despite the review of the cap on fees, NUS is not organising a national demonstration – not even one for its needlessly bureaucratic “alternative funding model”, let alone the abolition of fees and living grants that students need. Its “day of action” – which took place on 5 November, the day after the US presidential election, hardly the best time to get attention – was a start, but totally inadequate.
That is why we, students’ union officers and student activists, are seeking to organise a national demonstration in the first three months of 2009, around the following demands:
* No raising of the cap on top-up fees; halt and reverse the growth in international students’ fees; abolish all fees in HE and FE – free education for all;
* A living grant for every student over 16 – at least £150 a week; and a living wage for nursing and other students who have to work as part of their course;
* Stop and reverse marketisation in our schools, colleges and universities – tax the rich and corporations to fund education.
We are seeking to organise this demonstration in alliance with trade union activists fighting back against wage freezes, job cuts and privatisation; with other anti-cuts and privatisation campaigns; with young people’s and children’s organisations; and with others who believe that education should be open to all as a human right, not a privilege open to a minority based on wealth.
We call on NUS and autonomous campaigns within NUS to support the demonstration.
Supporters include:
NUS Women’s Campaign
NUS LGBT Campaign
NUS Black Students' Campaign
University of Bradford Union
Union of UEA Students
Birkbeck College Students' Union
Essex University Students' Union
Coventry University Students' Union
University College London Union (indicative vote)
Aston Students' Guild
Staffordshire University Students' Union
Cranfield Students' Association
Wadham College Students' Union
Edinburgh University Students' Association (indicative vote)
Goldsmiths College Students' Union
Dunstable College Students' Union
University of Sussex Students' Union
University of East London Students' Union
Middlesex University Students' Union
Cambridge University Students' Union
SOAS Students' Union
Southampton University Students' Union
Huddersfield University SU LGBT society
Education Not for Sale
Sussex Not for Sale
Another Education is Possible
Campaign to Defeat Fees
Invited speakers at opening rally:
Ed Maltby (Secretary, Education Not for Sale)
Mark Bergfeld (German student activist, Another Education is Possible)
Laura Fitzgerald (Irish student activist, Free Education for Everyone)
Becky Crocker (RMT London Transport young members officer)
Sasha Callaghan (UCU executive)
Baljeet Ghale (NUT executive)
James Greenhalgh (Youth Parliament)
Introduced by Rosie Isaac (Southampton Campaign to Defeat Fees)
Assembling from 12 noon at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1 (Nearest tubes: Russell Square, Euston, Goodge Street)
* SCRAP ALL FEES - FREE EDUCATION FOR ALL
* A LIVING GRANT FOR EVERY STUDENT
* EDUCATION NOT PROFIT
This academic year could see the lifting of the £3,000 cap on tuition fees in higher education. Meanwhile, student debt and poverty are already spiralling, students face soaring costs of living, and the market dominates our education system from school to college to university.
After years of underfunding for post-16 education, the Government brought in tuition fees and then top-up fees. Worsening the already existing inequalities in higher education, fees are greatly accelerating the development of a competitive market between universities, with a tier of well-funded and prestigious institutions and another of less prestigious, underfunded ones. Along with the absence of decent student grants, they rule out the possibility of seriously expanding access, force most students who do get to university into debt and push many into casualised, low-paid jobs. Lifting the cap will, of course, make all this worse. Meanwhile most further education students have always paid fees and never had grants.
Top-up fees will be in the headlines this year, but fees are not the only issue. Even those who do not have to pay fees, such as Scottish students and FE students under 19, do not receive a living grant and are also forced into poverty and debt. Nursing, midwifery and other students who have to work as a large part of their course receive a bursary as an on-the-cheap substitute for a living wage.
International students are exploited to subsidise higher education institutions through higher and higher fees, while postgraduate study is limited to a small elite through a more and more restrictive funding system.
Women, black, LGBT and disabled students are affected and disadvantaged disproportionately by the growth in student poverty and debt.
As our education is commodified and most institutions are run more and more for profit, the wages, conditions and rights of our teachers and other education workers are also coming under attack.
We also note that, as the economic crisis bites, the Government has announced that it plans to cut student numbers and further limit eligibility for grants.
We believe that NUS is allowing the Government to get away with these deeply unpopular policies. This year, despite the review of the cap on fees, NUS is not organising a national demonstration – not even one for its needlessly bureaucratic “alternative funding model”, let alone the abolition of fees and living grants that students need. Its “day of action” – which took place on 5 November, the day after the US presidential election, hardly the best time to get attention – was a start, but totally inadequate.
That is why we, students’ union officers and student activists, are seeking to organise a national demonstration in the first three months of 2009, around the following demands:
* No raising of the cap on top-up fees; halt and reverse the growth in international students’ fees; abolish all fees in HE and FE – free education for all;
* A living grant for every student over 16 – at least £150 a week; and a living wage for nursing and other students who have to work as part of their course;
* Stop and reverse marketisation in our schools, colleges and universities – tax the rich and corporations to fund education.
We are seeking to organise this demonstration in alliance with trade union activists fighting back against wage freezes, job cuts and privatisation; with other anti-cuts and privatisation campaigns; with young people’s and children’s organisations; and with others who believe that education should be open to all as a human right, not a privilege open to a minority based on wealth.
We call on NUS and autonomous campaigns within NUS to support the demonstration.
Supporters include:
NUS Women’s Campaign
NUS LGBT Campaign
NUS Black Students' Campaign
University of Bradford Union
Union of UEA Students
Birkbeck College Students' Union
Essex University Students' Union
Coventry University Students' Union
University College London Union (indicative vote)
Aston Students' Guild
Staffordshire University Students' Union
Cranfield Students' Association
Wadham College Students' Union
Edinburgh University Students' Association (indicative vote)
Goldsmiths College Students' Union
Dunstable College Students' Union
University of Sussex Students' Union
University of East London Students' Union
Middlesex University Students' Union
Cambridge University Students' Union
SOAS Students' Union
Southampton University Students' Union
Huddersfield University SU LGBT society
Education Not for Sale
Sussex Not for Sale
Another Education is Possible
Campaign to Defeat Fees
Invited speakers at opening rally:
Ed Maltby (Secretary, Education Not for Sale)
Mark Bergfeld (German student activist, Another Education is Possible)
Laura Fitzgerald (Irish student activist, Free Education for Everyone)
Becky Crocker (RMT London Transport young members officer)
Sasha Callaghan (UCU executive)
Baljeet Ghale (NUT executive)
James Greenhalgh (Youth Parliament)
Introduced by Rosie Isaac (Southampton Campaign to Defeat Fees)
Friday, 20 February 2009
Still living in the slums
On the surface of it, Slumdog Millionaire seems to bring it all together – a brilliant soundtrack, stunning cinematography and the feel-good storyline of a boy who both makes it out of the slums, and finds love. It has already picked up five Critics’ Choice Awards, four Golden Globes and seven BAFTAs, including best picture, and has been nominated for ten Oscars.
The problem with the film is that while it attempts to illustrate the tragedies of slum life – the horror of being forced into the underworld of gang war, murder, theft and prostitution – it glosses over the reality that for the vast majority of India’s slumdwellers there is no escape. There is no game show that will make everything better.
Indeed not even the chance to be in a film that’s on its way to making hundreds of millions in profits appears to change the lives of slumdwellers. Two children that starred in the film, Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Ismail, are from one of Mumbai’s slums. They have been paid £500 and £1,700 respectively for their work on the film but are still living in the same miserable conditions.
Reports say that Azharuddin is living under a tarpaulin with his father who has tuberculosis, after their hut was demolished during filming, and they have now spent all the money they made from the film on medication. Rubina lives nearby in conditions that are not much better.
Filmmakers Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan, and producer Christian Colson, have defended their treatment of the children. They say they have made arrangements to put them in school, pay the family £20 a month for books and food, and set up a trust fund that will provide a lump sum for the children when they turn 18.
But why have the filmmakers made such elaborate arrangements? Because it serves to cover up the fact that the children have not been paid the equivalent of what the other actors in the film were paid, and the glaring differences in wealth and class. Because the children are from the slums the filmmakers feel they are entitled to pay them a fraction of what they are owed.
The filmmakers argue that throwing a huge sum of money at the children would be destabilising and that “a conscious decision not to shower” the children with money was made because “they would not be able psychologically and practically to handle that.” This hypocritical and patronising attitude can only lead to the conclusion that the poor are stupid, and that when the rich throw them a few crumbs, they should thank them.
At the point in the film when Jamal wins the 20 million rupees, you don’t feel sorry for Jamal; you don’t think that because he’s from the slums he’s not going to know how to spend the money and that he’s going to get screwed over. Rather, you get the feeling that it’s brilliant he got a ticket out of the slums, and that he’s going to be alright. Why doesn’t the same apply in reality? The filmmakers should not be the ones to decide whether or not the children get out of the slums, but they do.
To say that the children are better off than they were before, or that their parents agreed to be paid that amount beforehand, or to make comparisons with the average adult wage in India, is to miss the point entirely. Though they may have a slightly different set of problems, the children are hardly better off than they were before. Their parents could not have known what kind of a contract to negotiate with the filmmakers, nor could they, like anyone else, have known how well the film would do. And to pay somewhat more than the average wage in India, already so low, in a multi-billion pound industry is to be expected. The point is that discrimination, poverty and inequality have not been challenged in reality.
While it’s hard not to like the film, it presents an implausible, distorted vision of the world, allowing the slums to be portrayed as positive. It gives in to the notion that the poor will always be there, so we need to take responsibility for them, and feel good about this. As for the filmmakers, the only responsible thing for them to do would be to pay the children equally; not simply more than they were getting before, or three times the average adult wage, but what they deserve. What is so radical about that?
The problem with the film is that while it attempts to illustrate the tragedies of slum life – the horror of being forced into the underworld of gang war, murder, theft and prostitution – it glosses over the reality that for the vast majority of India’s slumdwellers there is no escape. There is no game show that will make everything better.
Indeed not even the chance to be in a film that’s on its way to making hundreds of millions in profits appears to change the lives of slumdwellers. Two children that starred in the film, Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Ismail, are from one of Mumbai’s slums. They have been paid £500 and £1,700 respectively for their work on the film but are still living in the same miserable conditions.
Reports say that Azharuddin is living under a tarpaulin with his father who has tuberculosis, after their hut was demolished during filming, and they have now spent all the money they made from the film on medication. Rubina lives nearby in conditions that are not much better.
Filmmakers Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan, and producer Christian Colson, have defended their treatment of the children. They say they have made arrangements to put them in school, pay the family £20 a month for books and food, and set up a trust fund that will provide a lump sum for the children when they turn 18.
But why have the filmmakers made such elaborate arrangements? Because it serves to cover up the fact that the children have not been paid the equivalent of what the other actors in the film were paid, and the glaring differences in wealth and class. Because the children are from the slums the filmmakers feel they are entitled to pay them a fraction of what they are owed.
The filmmakers argue that throwing a huge sum of money at the children would be destabilising and that “a conscious decision not to shower” the children with money was made because “they would not be able psychologically and practically to handle that.” This hypocritical and patronising attitude can only lead to the conclusion that the poor are stupid, and that when the rich throw them a few crumbs, they should thank them.
At the point in the film when Jamal wins the 20 million rupees, you don’t feel sorry for Jamal; you don’t think that because he’s from the slums he’s not going to know how to spend the money and that he’s going to get screwed over. Rather, you get the feeling that it’s brilliant he got a ticket out of the slums, and that he’s going to be alright. Why doesn’t the same apply in reality? The filmmakers should not be the ones to decide whether or not the children get out of the slums, but they do.
To say that the children are better off than they were before, or that their parents agreed to be paid that amount beforehand, or to make comparisons with the average adult wage in India, is to miss the point entirely. Though they may have a slightly different set of problems, the children are hardly better off than they were before. Their parents could not have known what kind of a contract to negotiate with the filmmakers, nor could they, like anyone else, have known how well the film would do. And to pay somewhat more than the average wage in India, already so low, in a multi-billion pound industry is to be expected. The point is that discrimination, poverty and inequality have not been challenged in reality.
While it’s hard not to like the film, it presents an implausible, distorted vision of the world, allowing the slums to be portrayed as positive. It gives in to the notion that the poor will always be there, so we need to take responsibility for them, and feel good about this. As for the filmmakers, the only responsible thing for them to do would be to pay the children equally; not simply more than they were getting before, or three times the average adult wage, but what they deserve. What is so radical about that?
Thursday, 19 February 2009
Obama's surge in Afghanistan - 17,000 more troops
Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, Wednesday, 18th February 2009
President Barack Obama's decision to send an extra 17,000 US troops to Afghanistan is in many ways a teaser. His generals wanted a further 30,000 troops, which would have almost doubled the number of American forces already there.
Obama is waiting. He is waiting first for a review of the whole situation in Afghanistan by General David Petraeus, credited with the "surge" in Iraq which brought relative – emphasise relative – stability to that country and a man by whom so many set so much store.
Petraeus has made it abundantly clear that in his view military reinforcements may help in the short term as a temporary sticking plaster, but much more emphasis – and money – must now be devoted to good governance, fighting corruption and the heroin industry, civil society, building up the Afghan military and police forces, and offering the prospect of talks and reconciliation with the Taliban, which is to say the Afghan Taliban, not the new hardline Taliban groups now emerging across the border in north-west Pakistan.
In Washington, and in Nato, this is called the "comprehensive" approach. It has been a long time coming. Some commentators say it is too late. Not Obama, nor the British government.
Both are now waiting to see how other European allies will respond, in terms of troops, equipment such as helicopters, and money. Italy and Germany have indicated they will deploy more forces to southern Afghanistan. Britain, too, is likely to deploy more to join the 8,000 already there when it pulls out most of its 4,000 troops in Basra this summer.
The immediate trouble is that there are simply not enough troops to hold ground taken by troops in any particular operation. Commanders say it is like squashing a balloon. Obama wants decisions in time for Nato's 60th anniversary summit in Strasbourg in early April. The next important date is August, when presidential elections in Afghanistan are scheduled.
President Barack Obama's decision to send an extra 17,000 US troops to Afghanistan is in many ways a teaser. His generals wanted a further 30,000 troops, which would have almost doubled the number of American forces already there.
Obama is waiting. He is waiting first for a review of the whole situation in Afghanistan by General David Petraeus, credited with the "surge" in Iraq which brought relative – emphasise relative – stability to that country and a man by whom so many set so much store.
Petraeus has made it abundantly clear that in his view military reinforcements may help in the short term as a temporary sticking plaster, but much more emphasis – and money – must now be devoted to good governance, fighting corruption and the heroin industry, civil society, building up the Afghan military and police forces, and offering the prospect of talks and reconciliation with the Taliban, which is to say the Afghan Taliban, not the new hardline Taliban groups now emerging across the border in north-west Pakistan.
In Washington, and in Nato, this is called the "comprehensive" approach. It has been a long time coming. Some commentators say it is too late. Not Obama, nor the British government.
Both are now waiting to see how other European allies will respond, in terms of troops, equipment such as helicopters, and money. Italy and Germany have indicated they will deploy more forces to southern Afghanistan. Britain, too, is likely to deploy more to join the 8,000 already there when it pulls out most of its 4,000 troops in Basra this summer.
The immediate trouble is that there are simply not enough troops to hold ground taken by troops in any particular operation. Commanders say it is like squashing a balloon. Obama wants decisions in time for Nato's 60th anniversary summit in Strasbourg in early April. The next important date is August, when presidential elections in Afghanistan are scheduled.
All that is solid melts into air...
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober sense, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
Monday, 16 February 2009
Hugo Chávez wins referendum allowing indefinite re-election
Rory Caroll, The Guardian, Monday, 16th February 2009
Venezuelans yesterday voted to abolish term limits for elected officials, boosting Hugo Chávez's ambition to rule the country for decades.
Electoral authorities said 54% of voters in the referendum backed a constitutional amendment allowing indefinite re-election, with 46% rejecting it – a margin of almost 1 million voters.
An exultant Chávez appeared on the balcony of the presidential palace in Caracas to address cheering supporters after the result was announced. "It is a clear victory for the people," he said. "It is a clear victory for the revolution."
The result will boost his effort to transform the Opec country into a socialist state and burnish his leadership of Latin America's "pink tide" of leftwing governments.
The president's mentor and ally Fidel Castro sent congratulations from his sickbed in Cuba.
The US made no immediate comment, but the Obama administration will be dismayed at the prospect of an emboldened foe in Caracas.
Chávez, a 54-year-old former tank commander, has been in power for a decade and plans to run for election again when his term ends in 2013. He has spoken of ruling beyond 2030.
However, plunging oil revenues are expected to hit the Venezuelan economy and the petro-fuelled Chavez diplomacy soon.
Some analysts predict stagflation and devaluation of the bolivar currency – the kind of grim cycle that undid previous Venezuelan leaders – and there was speculation that Chávez had rushed through the referendum before the crisis hit.
The unexpectedly wide margin of victory prompted rapturous celebrations among "chavistas", who credit their charismatic leader for poverty-alleviating social programmes, notably free health care and discounted food.
"We did it, we won – this is a great night," Freddy Ramirez, a 48-year-old security guard, said.
Fireworks lit up the night sky and cars filled with flag-waving supporters drove around the capital.
However, not everybody celebrated. "Chavez has screwed this country enough already," Ricardo Torres, a 56-year-old courier, said.
He blamed the president for crumbling infrastructure and high crime and inflation.
Voters had narrowly rejected a referendum to abolish presidential term limits in December 2007.
Chávez learned lessons from that defeat, this time widening the terms of the referendum to allow mayors and governors to run indefinitely, giving them an incentive to mobilise support.
The government's "red machine" waged a formidable campaign. Posters urging a "yes" vote saturated the country, state TV networks cheered for the "si" and civil servants were sent out to canvass.
A flyer gave 10 reasons for voting yes. Number one said: "Chávez loves us and love is repaid with love", and the second stated: "Chávez is incapable of doing us harm".
The opposition, a fragmented coalition of small political parties and university students, accepted defeat but complained that the government had hijacked state resources and hobbled the "no" campaign.
"There was an abuse of power," David Smolanksy, a student leader, said.
Analysts said Venezuela's vote could embolden leaders in countries such as Bolivia, Colombia and Ecuador to seek indefinite re-election, a return of the "big man" syndrome of charismatic autocrats that marked much of the region's 20th-century history.
"Many who are worried about unlimited executive power will be dispirited by the results. The record of such indefinite re-election in the region has been very unhappy," Michael Shifter, of the Inter-American Dialogue thinktank, said.
At a news conference on Saturday, Chávez sought to allay such concerns and said staying in office for more than a decade was not unusual. He cited examples including the US president Franklin Roosevelt.
Venezuelans yesterday voted to abolish term limits for elected officials, boosting Hugo Chávez's ambition to rule the country for decades.
Electoral authorities said 54% of voters in the referendum backed a constitutional amendment allowing indefinite re-election, with 46% rejecting it – a margin of almost 1 million voters.
An exultant Chávez appeared on the balcony of the presidential palace in Caracas to address cheering supporters after the result was announced. "It is a clear victory for the people," he said. "It is a clear victory for the revolution."
The result will boost his effort to transform the Opec country into a socialist state and burnish his leadership of Latin America's "pink tide" of leftwing governments.
The president's mentor and ally Fidel Castro sent congratulations from his sickbed in Cuba.
The US made no immediate comment, but the Obama administration will be dismayed at the prospect of an emboldened foe in Caracas.
Chávez, a 54-year-old former tank commander, has been in power for a decade and plans to run for election again when his term ends in 2013. He has spoken of ruling beyond 2030.
However, plunging oil revenues are expected to hit the Venezuelan economy and the petro-fuelled Chavez diplomacy soon.
Some analysts predict stagflation and devaluation of the bolivar currency – the kind of grim cycle that undid previous Venezuelan leaders – and there was speculation that Chávez had rushed through the referendum before the crisis hit.
The unexpectedly wide margin of victory prompted rapturous celebrations among "chavistas", who credit their charismatic leader for poverty-alleviating social programmes, notably free health care and discounted food.
"We did it, we won – this is a great night," Freddy Ramirez, a 48-year-old security guard, said.
Fireworks lit up the night sky and cars filled with flag-waving supporters drove around the capital.
However, not everybody celebrated. "Chavez has screwed this country enough already," Ricardo Torres, a 56-year-old courier, said.
He blamed the president for crumbling infrastructure and high crime and inflation.
Voters had narrowly rejected a referendum to abolish presidential term limits in December 2007.
Chávez learned lessons from that defeat, this time widening the terms of the referendum to allow mayors and governors to run indefinitely, giving them an incentive to mobilise support.
The government's "red machine" waged a formidable campaign. Posters urging a "yes" vote saturated the country, state TV networks cheered for the "si" and civil servants were sent out to canvass.
A flyer gave 10 reasons for voting yes. Number one said: "Chávez loves us and love is repaid with love", and the second stated: "Chávez is incapable of doing us harm".
The opposition, a fragmented coalition of small political parties and university students, accepted defeat but complained that the government had hijacked state resources and hobbled the "no" campaign.
"There was an abuse of power," David Smolanksy, a student leader, said.
Analysts said Venezuela's vote could embolden leaders in countries such as Bolivia, Colombia and Ecuador to seek indefinite re-election, a return of the "big man" syndrome of charismatic autocrats that marked much of the region's 20th-century history.
"Many who are worried about unlimited executive power will be dispirited by the results. The record of such indefinite re-election in the region has been very unhappy," Michael Shifter, of the Inter-American Dialogue thinktank, said.
At a news conference on Saturday, Chávez sought to allay such concerns and said staying in office for more than a decade was not unusual. He cited examples including the US president Franklin Roosevelt.
Giles Ji Ungpakorn’s Red Siam manifesto
This new manifesto has been issued by Thai socialist activist and academic Giles Ji Ungpakorn, who has been forced to flee Thailand under charges of offending royalty.
The enemies of the Thai people and Democracy may have their army, courts and prisons. They may have seized and rigged parliament and established the government through crimes like the blockading of the airports and other undemocratic actions by the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD).
Yet those that love democracy, the Redshirts, have strength in numbers and are waking up to political realities. Disorganised and scattered, this movement of ours will be weak, but a party that is organised and self-led can create a democratic fist to smash the dictatorship.
While world leaders such as Obama struggle to solve the serious economic crisis, the Democrat Government in Thailand is allowing thousands of workers to lose their jobs. The government sees its priority only in cracking down on opposition using les majeste, it has even created a web-site where citizens can inform on each other. Troops have been sent into communities and villages to stifle dissent.
The enemies of democracy have guns, an army and shadowy bosses in high places. But their weakness is that they are united around an absurd and un-scientific ideology: the ideology of the Monarchy. This ideology seeks to make Thais into grovelling serfs. They want us to believe that an ordinary human being, just because of an accident of birth, can be transformed into a God, when the true abilities of the king are no different from millions of ordinary engineers, artists, farmers or skilled workers.
The conservative elites want us to believe that the king loves and takes care of the people. But the Thai population are quite capable of looking after themselves. All that is beautiful and honourable about Thai society has been created by working people.
This king:
* Grew in stature under the corrupt military dictators: Sarit, Tanom and Prapass.
* Allowed innocent people to be executed after they were falsely accused of killing his older brother.
* Supported the blood bath at Thammasart University on 6th October 1976 because he felt that Thailand had "too much democracy". He was also the patron of the violent gang that were called the "village scouts".
* Allowed the army to stage a coup in September 2006. Furthermore he allowed his name to be used by the army, the PAD protestors and the Democrat Party, in the destruction of democracy.
* Has been an advocate of economic views which reveal his opposition to state social welfare for the poor. But what is worse, as one of the richest men in the world, the king has the arrogance to lecture the poor to be sufficient in their poverty (through the notion of the Sufficiency Economy).
Finally, this king allows his supporters to proclaim that he is "the father of the nation," and yet his own son is not respected by anyone in Thai society!
The elites in Thailand, who claim legitimacy from the king, are exploiters and blood-suckers. They are not the real owners of society. They should remember that their wealth and status is as a result of the hard work of those ordinary citizens whom they despise.
For the millions of Thais who know all this to be true, it is only fear and intimidation that stops us all from speaking this truth out loud.
If we are alone, we will be frightened. If we are together we will have courage. It is time to bring into the open our anger, courage and reason in order to destroy the fear in Thai society and to bring light back to our country. We must all ask questions about the present regime, which after all is nothing other than a dictatorship which shrouds us in darkness. When we all stand up and ask questions, they cannot jail us all.
So long as we crawl before the ideology of the Monarchy, we shall remain no better than animals. We must stand up and be humans, citizens in a modern world.
The red, white and blue Thai flag, copied from the West in order to indoctrinate us to be loyal to "Nation Religion and King", the same slogan which was recently last used by the PAD protestors who blocked the airports. Yet during the French revolution, the red white and blue meant "Liberty Equality and Fraternity". This is the slogan we must use to free Thailand from the "New Order" which the PAD and the army have installed.
How can we organise?
Stop dreaming that ex-PM Thaksin will lead the struggle to free society. We cannot rely on the politicians of Pua Thai, either. They will only fight within the confines of present structures of society while thousands of citizens wish to go further. Fighting outside the confines of present day Thai society does not mean taking up arms. It means arming ourselves and the masses of pro-democracy people with ideas that can lead to freedom.
We must set up political education groups and form ourselves into a party. This party must be led from below by people in all communities, workplaces and educational institutions. Yet we must be coordinated. We must be firm and confident that all of us can be empowered take a lead and determine our policies. This will be our strength. Our weapons will be mass demonstrations, strikes and spreading ideas to all sections of society, including the lower ranks of the army.
As a movement for genuine democracy, our party must act openly. But in the face of repression through violence and legal means such as lèse majesté, we shall also have to organise secretly. They must not be able to destroy our movement by arresting top leaders. This is another reason why we want self-leadership from below.
What should our common platform look like?
It is not for one person to determine the common platform, which must of necessity be a collective decision. But as a staring point I offer the following ideas, the ideas of one red-shirted citizen.
1. We must have freedom of expression and the freedom to choose our own government without repression and fear.
2. We must have equality.
* We have to abolish the mentality of "big people\little people".
* We must abolish the practice of crawling to the royal family.
* Politicians must be accountable to the electorate, not to shadowy conniving figures beyond popular control.
* We need to build a culture where citizens respect each other.
* We must have freedom and equality of the sexes and among different ethnicities.
* We must respect women, gays and lesbians.
* We must respect Burmese, Laotians, Cambodians and the Muslim Malay people in the south.
* Women must have the right to chose safe abortions.
* Refugees should be treated with friendship and dignity as any civilised society would do.
3. Our country must be a Welfare State. Taxes must be levied on the rich. The poor are not a burden, but are partners in developing the country. People should have dignity. The present exploitative society stifles individuals and destroys personal creativity.
4. In our country the king should honour his constitutional role and stop intervening in politics. But the ruling class in Thailand gain much from using the Monarchy and they will not easily stop doing this. Therefore the best way to solve this problem is to build a republic where all public positions are elected and accountable.
5. For too long Thai society has been under the iron heels of the generals. We must cut the military budget and abolish the influence of the army in society ensuring that it can no long be an obstacle to democracy.
6. We must have justice. The judges should not claim power from the Crown in order to stop people criticising their decisions. We must change the way that "Contempt of Court" laws are used to prevent accountability. We need to reform the justice system root and branch. We need a jury system. The police must serve the population, not extract bribes from the poor.
7. Citizens in towns and communities must take part in the management of all public institutions such as state enterprises, the media, schools and hospitals.
8. Our country must modernise. We need to develop the education system, transport and housing. We should create energy from wind and solar power to protect the environment.
9. Our country must be peace-loving, not start disputes with neighbouring countries or support wars.
The dinosaurs of Thai society, the Yellow Shirted royalists, will froth at the mouth in anger at this manifesto, but that is merely the symptoms of people who carry superstitious beliefs from the past, seeking to cling to their privileges at all costs. Their time is finished. We, the pro-democracy Redshirts will move forward to build a new society.
The elites have no right to rob the people of their dignity in order to prop up their own statuses. This sacrifice of the poor for the benefit of the elites must stop.
Those that say that Thailand is "a special case because we have a king", are merely confirming that the special status of Thailand, which they want to protect, is barbarism and dictatorship. Statements about "National Security" are only about the security for those who exploit and oppress the rest of us. It is not about peace and security for citizens.
This manifesto is just a proposal for a joint platform among Redshirts. My own view is that our country should move even further to a Socialist society, democratic and without class exploitation. But that is a long term goal.
The ruling class only appears powerful because we are crawling on our knees. What we need to do is to stand up, think and act for ourselves. Then we will see how weak and pathetic they really are!
In the past, whether it was during the 1932 revolution or the 1970s struggles against dictatorship, people dreamt of freedom, democracy and social justice. It is time to turn this dream into reality.
The enemies of the Thai people and Democracy may have their army, courts and prisons. They may have seized and rigged parliament and established the government through crimes like the blockading of the airports and other undemocratic actions by the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD).
Yet those that love democracy, the Redshirts, have strength in numbers and are waking up to political realities. Disorganised and scattered, this movement of ours will be weak, but a party that is organised and self-led can create a democratic fist to smash the dictatorship.
While world leaders such as Obama struggle to solve the serious economic crisis, the Democrat Government in Thailand is allowing thousands of workers to lose their jobs. The government sees its priority only in cracking down on opposition using les majeste, it has even created a web-site where citizens can inform on each other. Troops have been sent into communities and villages to stifle dissent.
The enemies of democracy have guns, an army and shadowy bosses in high places. But their weakness is that they are united around an absurd and un-scientific ideology: the ideology of the Monarchy. This ideology seeks to make Thais into grovelling serfs. They want us to believe that an ordinary human being, just because of an accident of birth, can be transformed into a God, when the true abilities of the king are no different from millions of ordinary engineers, artists, farmers or skilled workers.
The conservative elites want us to believe that the king loves and takes care of the people. But the Thai population are quite capable of looking after themselves. All that is beautiful and honourable about Thai society has been created by working people.
This king:
* Grew in stature under the corrupt military dictators: Sarit, Tanom and Prapass.
* Allowed innocent people to be executed after they were falsely accused of killing his older brother.
* Supported the blood bath at Thammasart University on 6th October 1976 because he felt that Thailand had "too much democracy". He was also the patron of the violent gang that were called the "village scouts".
* Allowed the army to stage a coup in September 2006. Furthermore he allowed his name to be used by the army, the PAD protestors and the Democrat Party, in the destruction of democracy.
* Has been an advocate of economic views which reveal his opposition to state social welfare for the poor. But what is worse, as one of the richest men in the world, the king has the arrogance to lecture the poor to be sufficient in their poverty (through the notion of the Sufficiency Economy).
Finally, this king allows his supporters to proclaim that he is "the father of the nation," and yet his own son is not respected by anyone in Thai society!
The elites in Thailand, who claim legitimacy from the king, are exploiters and blood-suckers. They are not the real owners of society. They should remember that their wealth and status is as a result of the hard work of those ordinary citizens whom they despise.
For the millions of Thais who know all this to be true, it is only fear and intimidation that stops us all from speaking this truth out loud.
If we are alone, we will be frightened. If we are together we will have courage. It is time to bring into the open our anger, courage and reason in order to destroy the fear in Thai society and to bring light back to our country. We must all ask questions about the present regime, which after all is nothing other than a dictatorship which shrouds us in darkness. When we all stand up and ask questions, they cannot jail us all.
So long as we crawl before the ideology of the Monarchy, we shall remain no better than animals. We must stand up and be humans, citizens in a modern world.
The red, white and blue Thai flag, copied from the West in order to indoctrinate us to be loyal to "Nation Religion and King", the same slogan which was recently last used by the PAD protestors who blocked the airports. Yet during the French revolution, the red white and blue meant "Liberty Equality and Fraternity". This is the slogan we must use to free Thailand from the "New Order" which the PAD and the army have installed.
How can we organise?
Stop dreaming that ex-PM Thaksin will lead the struggle to free society. We cannot rely on the politicians of Pua Thai, either. They will only fight within the confines of present structures of society while thousands of citizens wish to go further. Fighting outside the confines of present day Thai society does not mean taking up arms. It means arming ourselves and the masses of pro-democracy people with ideas that can lead to freedom.
We must set up political education groups and form ourselves into a party. This party must be led from below by people in all communities, workplaces and educational institutions. Yet we must be coordinated. We must be firm and confident that all of us can be empowered take a lead and determine our policies. This will be our strength. Our weapons will be mass demonstrations, strikes and spreading ideas to all sections of society, including the lower ranks of the army.
As a movement for genuine democracy, our party must act openly. But in the face of repression through violence and legal means such as lèse majesté, we shall also have to organise secretly. They must not be able to destroy our movement by arresting top leaders. This is another reason why we want self-leadership from below.
What should our common platform look like?
It is not for one person to determine the common platform, which must of necessity be a collective decision. But as a staring point I offer the following ideas, the ideas of one red-shirted citizen.
1. We must have freedom of expression and the freedom to choose our own government without repression and fear.
2. We must have equality.
* We have to abolish the mentality of "big people\little people".
* We must abolish the practice of crawling to the royal family.
* Politicians must be accountable to the electorate, not to shadowy conniving figures beyond popular control.
* We need to build a culture where citizens respect each other.
* We must have freedom and equality of the sexes and among different ethnicities.
* We must respect women, gays and lesbians.
* We must respect Burmese, Laotians, Cambodians and the Muslim Malay people in the south.
* Women must have the right to chose safe abortions.
* Refugees should be treated with friendship and dignity as any civilised society would do.
3. Our country must be a Welfare State. Taxes must be levied on the rich. The poor are not a burden, but are partners in developing the country. People should have dignity. The present exploitative society stifles individuals and destroys personal creativity.
4. In our country the king should honour his constitutional role and stop intervening in politics. But the ruling class in Thailand gain much from using the Monarchy and they will not easily stop doing this. Therefore the best way to solve this problem is to build a republic where all public positions are elected and accountable.
5. For too long Thai society has been under the iron heels of the generals. We must cut the military budget and abolish the influence of the army in society ensuring that it can no long be an obstacle to democracy.
6. We must have justice. The judges should not claim power from the Crown in order to stop people criticising their decisions. We must change the way that "Contempt of Court" laws are used to prevent accountability. We need to reform the justice system root and branch. We need a jury system. The police must serve the population, not extract bribes from the poor.
7. Citizens in towns and communities must take part in the management of all public institutions such as state enterprises, the media, schools and hospitals.
8. Our country must modernise. We need to develop the education system, transport and housing. We should create energy from wind and solar power to protect the environment.
9. Our country must be peace-loving, not start disputes with neighbouring countries or support wars.
The dinosaurs of Thai society, the Yellow Shirted royalists, will froth at the mouth in anger at this manifesto, but that is merely the symptoms of people who carry superstitious beliefs from the past, seeking to cling to their privileges at all costs. Their time is finished. We, the pro-democracy Redshirts will move forward to build a new society.
The elites have no right to rob the people of their dignity in order to prop up their own statuses. This sacrifice of the poor for the benefit of the elites must stop.
Those that say that Thailand is "a special case because we have a king", are merely confirming that the special status of Thailand, which they want to protect, is barbarism and dictatorship. Statements about "National Security" are only about the security for those who exploit and oppress the rest of us. It is not about peace and security for citizens.
This manifesto is just a proposal for a joint platform among Redshirts. My own view is that our country should move even further to a Socialist society, democratic and without class exploitation. But that is a long term goal.
The ruling class only appears powerful because we are crawling on our knees. What we need to do is to stand up, think and act for ourselves. Then we will see how weak and pathetic they really are!
In the past, whether it was during the 1932 revolution or the 1970s struggles against dictatorship, people dreamt of freedom, democracy and social justice. It is time to turn this dream into reality.
A week of fury will greet G20 in London
The leaders of the world’s most powerful nations will meet in London in April.
They come together against a backdrop of world slump, war and rising anger at the nightmare they have created.
The point of the G20 is meant to be to find solutions – but world leaders are running out of ideas. Gordon Brown will want to present himself as the man with an economic plan.
But he can hardly boast of any successes.
There are no signs either of any serious initiatives on Palestine. And the main debate in terms of the “war on terror” is likely to be over the need to escalate the action in Afghanistan.
Given the massive demonstrations over Gaza and the rage people feel as jobs go and banks are bailed out, there will be very big protests at the G20.
The G20 meeting will also be Barack Obama’s first visit to London and many will want to urge him to push for real change.
On Saturday 28 March the TUC has called a “Put People First” demonstration, demanding jobs, public services and an end to global inequality.
The first anti-war event will be a march in central London on 1 April – the day before the G20 begins and the day Barack Obama visits parliament.
The second will be a protest at the G20 itself. These protests have been called by the Stop the War Coalition, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the British Muslim Initiative and CND.
People are already mobilising across the country for the protests.
Many groups are coming down to London and travelling on to the anti-Nato protests in Strasbourg, France, leading up to a mass demonstration and counter conference on 4 and 5 April.
We have the potential for a week of protests our world leaders will never forget.
For more information see www.stopwar.org.uk and www.putpeoplefirst.org.uk
They come together against a backdrop of world slump, war and rising anger at the nightmare they have created.
The point of the G20 is meant to be to find solutions – but world leaders are running out of ideas. Gordon Brown will want to present himself as the man with an economic plan.
But he can hardly boast of any successes.
There are no signs either of any serious initiatives on Palestine. And the main debate in terms of the “war on terror” is likely to be over the need to escalate the action in Afghanistan.
Given the massive demonstrations over Gaza and the rage people feel as jobs go and banks are bailed out, there will be very big protests at the G20.
The G20 meeting will also be Barack Obama’s first visit to London and many will want to urge him to push for real change.
On Saturday 28 March the TUC has called a “Put People First” demonstration, demanding jobs, public services and an end to global inequality.
The first anti-war event will be a march in central London on 1 April – the day before the G20 begins and the day Barack Obama visits parliament.
The second will be a protest at the G20 itself. These protests have been called by the Stop the War Coalition, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the British Muslim Initiative and CND.
People are already mobilising across the country for the protests.
Many groups are coming down to London and travelling on to the anti-Nato protests in Strasbourg, France, leading up to a mass demonstration and counter conference on 4 and 5 April.
We have the potential for a week of protests our world leaders will never forget.
For more information see www.stopwar.org.uk and www.putpeoplefirst.org.uk
Friday, 13 February 2009
The greatest crisis in human history
Brilliant interview with István Mészáros: A structural crisis of the system by Judith Orr and Patrick Ward in the January 2009 edition of Socialist Review - www.socialistreview.org.uk
The ruling class are always surprised by new economic crises and talk about them as aberrations. Why do you believe they are inherent in capitalism?
I recently heard Edmund Phelps, who got the 2006 Nobel Prize in Economics. Phelps is a kind of neo-Keynesian. He was, of course, glorifying capitalism and presenting the current problems as just a little hiccup, saying, "All we have to do now is bring back Keynesian ideas and regulation."
John Maynard Keynes believed that capitalism was ideal, but he wanted regulation. Phelps was churning out the grotesque idea that the system is like a music composer. He may have some off days when he can't produce so well but if you look at his whole life he's wonderful! Just think of Mozart - he must have had the odd bad day. So that's capitalism in trouble, Mozart's bad days. If anyone believes that, he should have his head examined. But instead of having his head examined he is awarded a prize.
If our adversaries have this level of thought - which they have demonstrated now over a 50-year period so it's not just an accidental slip by one award-winning economist - we could say, "Rejoice, this is the low level of our adversary." But with this kind of conception you end up with the disaster we experience every day. We have sunk into astronomic debt. The real liabilities in this country must be counted in trillions.
But the important point is that they have been practising financial profligacy as a result of the structural crisis of the productive system. It is not an accident that money has been flowing in such an adventurist way into the financial sector. The accumulation of capital couldn't function properly in the field of the productive economy.
We are now talking about the structural crisis of the system. It extends everywhere and it even encroaches on our relationship to nature, undermining the fundamental conditions for human survival. For example, from time to time they announce some targets to cut pollution. We even have a ministry of energy and climate change, which is really a ministry of hot air because nothing is done except announcing a target. But the target is never even approached, let alone fulfilled. This is an integral part of the structural crisis of the system and only structural solutions can get us out of this terrible situation.
You have described the US as carrying out credit card imperialism. What do you mean by that?
I quote former US senator George McGovern on the Vietnam War. He said that the US had run the Vietnam War on a credit card. The recent borrowing by the US is going sour now. This kind of economics can go on only as long as the rest of the world can carry the debt.
The US is in a unique position because it has been the dominant country since the Bretton Woods agreement. It is a fantasy that a neo-Keynesian solution and a new Bretton Woods would solve any of today's problems. The US domination which Bretton Woods formalised immediately after the Second World War was economically realistic. The US economy was in a much more powerful position than any other economy in the world. It established all the vital international economic institutions on the basis of US privilege. The privilege of the dollar, the privilege enjoyed through the International Monetary Fund, the trade organisations, the World Bank, all were completely under US domination and still remain so today.
This cannot be wished out of existence. You can't fantasise about reforming and slightly regulating it here and there. To imagine that Barack Obama is going to abandon the dominant position the US enjoys in this way - backed up by military domination - is a mistake.
Karl Marx called the ruling class a "band of warring brothers". Do you think the ruling class internationally will work together to find a solution?
In the past imperialism involved several dominant actors who asserted their interests even at the expense of two horrendous world wars in the 20th century. Partial wars, no matter how horrendous they are, cannot be compared to the economic and power realignment which could be produced by a new world war.
But imagining a new world war is impossible. Of course there are still some lunatics in the military field who would not deny that possibility. But it would mean the total destruction of humanity.
We have to think about the implications of this for the capitalist system. It was a fundamental law of the system that if a force could not be asserted through economic domination you resorted to war.
Global hegemonic imperialism has been achieved and has operated quite successfully since the Second World War. But is that kind of system permanent? Is it conceivable that in the future no contradictions will arise in it?
There have also been some hints from China that this kind of economic domination cannot go on indefinitely. China is not going to be able to go on financing it. The implications and consequences for China are already quite significant. Deng Xiaoping once remarked that the colour of the cat - whether it's capitalist or socialist - doesn't matter so long as it catches the mouse. But what if, instead of happy mouse catching, you end up with a horrendous rat infestation of massive unemployment? This is now emerging in China.
These things are inherent in the contradictions and antagonisms of the capitalist system. Therefore we must think about solving them in a radically different way, and the only way is a genuine socialist transformation of the system.
Is there no decoupling of any part of the world economy from this situation?
Impossible! Globalisation is a necessary condition of human development. Ever since the expansion of the capitalist system was clearly visible, Marx theorised this. Martin Wolf of the Financial Times has complained that there are too many little, insignificant states that cause trouble. He argued that what was needed was "jurisdictional integration", in other words complete imperialist integration - a fantasy concept. This is an expression of the insoluble contradictions and antagonisms of capitalist globalisation. Globalisation is a necessity but the form that is feasible, workable and sustainable is a socialist globalisation on the basis of socialist principles of substantive equality.
Although no decoupling from world history is conceivable it doesn't mean that at every phase, in every part of the world, there is uniformity. Very different things are unfolding in Latin American compared to Europe, not to mention what I have already hinted at in China and the Far East, and Japan, which is in the deepest of trouble.
Just think back a little bit. How many miracles have we had in the post-war period? The German miracle, the Brazilian miracle, the Japanese miracle, the miracle of the five little tigers? How amusing that all these miracles turn into the most awful prosaic reality. The common denominator of all these realities is disastrous indebtedness and fraud.
One hedge fund manager has allegedly been involved in a $50 billion swindle. General Motors and the others were only asking the US government for $14 billion. How modest! They should be given $100 billion. If one hedge fund capitalist can organise an alleged $50 billion fraud, they should get all the funds feasible.
A system that operates in this morally rotten way cannot possibly survive, because it is uncontrollable. People are even admitting that they don't know how it works. The solution is not to despair about it but to control it in the interests of social responsibility and a radical transformation of society.
The drive inherent in capitalism is to squeeze workers as hard as possible, and that's clearly what governments are trying to do in Britain and the US.
The only thing they can do is advocate cutting workers' wages. The principal reason why the Senate refused to pass even the $14 billion injection into the big three US car companies is they could not get agreement on a drastic reduction of workers' wages. Think about the effect of that and the kind of obligations those workers have - for instance repaying massive mortgages. To ask them simply to halve their wages would generate other problems in the economy - again a contradiction.
Capital and contradictions are inseparable. We have to go beyond the superficial manifestations of those contradictions to their roots. You manage to manipulate them here and there but they will come back with a vengeance. Contradictions cannot be shoved under the carpet indefinitely because the carpet is now becoming a mountain.
You studied with Georg Lukács, a Marxist who goes back to the period of the Russian Revolution and beyond.
I worked with Lukács for seven years before I left Hungary in 1956 and we remained very close friends until he died in 1971. We always saw eye to eye - that's why I wanted to study with him. It so happened that when I arrived to work with him he was being attacked very fiercely and openly in public. I could not stomach that and defended him, which led to all sorts of complications. Just as I left Hungary I was his designated successor at the university, teaching aesthetics. The reason I left was precisely because I was convinced that what was going on was a variety of very fundamental problems which that system could not resolve.
I tried to formulate and examine these problems in my books since then, in particular in Marx's Theory of Alienation and Beyond Capital. Lukács used to say, quite rightly, that without strategy you can't have tactics. Without a strategic view of these problems you cannot have the everyday solutions. So I have tried to analyse these problems consistently because they cannot be simply treated at the level of an article that relates only to what is happening today, though there is a big temptation to do that. Instead it has to be done within a historical perspective. I have been publishing since my first fairly substantial essay was published in 1950 in a literary periodical in Hungary and I have been working as hard as I could ever since. In whatever modest way we can, we make our contribution towards change. That's what I have tried to do all my life.
What do you think the possibilities for change are at the moment?
Socialists are the last to minimise the difficulties of the solution. Capital apologists, whether they are neo-Keynesian or whatever else, can produce all kinds of simplistic solutions. I don't think that we can consider the present crisis simply in the way we have in the past. The present crisis is profound. The deputy governor of the Bank of England has admitted that this is the greatest economic crisis in human history. I would only add that it is not the greatest economic crisis in human history but the greatest crisis in all senses. Economic crises cannot be separated from the rest of the system.
The fraudulence and domination of capital and the exploitation of the working class cannot go on forever. The producers cannot be kept constantly and forever under control. Marx argued that capitalists are simply the personifications of capital. They are not free agents; they are executing the imperatives of this system. So the problem for humanity is not simply to sweep away one bunch of capitalists. To simply put one type of personification of capital in the place of another would lead to the same disaster and sooner or later we'd end up with the restoration of capitalism.
The problems society faces have not simply arisen in the past few years. Sooner or later these have to be resolved and not, as the Nobel Prize winning economists might fantasise, within the framework of the system. The only possible solution is to found social reproduction on the basis of the producers being in control. That has always been the idea of socialism.
We have reached the historical limits of capital's ability to control society. I don't mean just banks and building societies, even though they cannot control those, but the rest. When things go wrong nobody's responsible. From time to time politicians say, "I accept full responsibility," and what happens? They are glorified. The only feasible alternative is the working class which is the producer of everything which is necessary in our life. Why should they not be in control of what they produce? I always stress in every book that saying no is relatively easy, but we have to find the positive dimension.
István Mészáros won the 1971 Deutscher Prize for his book Marx's Theory of Alienation and has written on Marxism ever since. He is the author of the recently published The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time.
The ruling class are always surprised by new economic crises and talk about them as aberrations. Why do you believe they are inherent in capitalism?
I recently heard Edmund Phelps, who got the 2006 Nobel Prize in Economics. Phelps is a kind of neo-Keynesian. He was, of course, glorifying capitalism and presenting the current problems as just a little hiccup, saying, "All we have to do now is bring back Keynesian ideas and regulation."
John Maynard Keynes believed that capitalism was ideal, but he wanted regulation. Phelps was churning out the grotesque idea that the system is like a music composer. He may have some off days when he can't produce so well but if you look at his whole life he's wonderful! Just think of Mozart - he must have had the odd bad day. So that's capitalism in trouble, Mozart's bad days. If anyone believes that, he should have his head examined. But instead of having his head examined he is awarded a prize.
If our adversaries have this level of thought - which they have demonstrated now over a 50-year period so it's not just an accidental slip by one award-winning economist - we could say, "Rejoice, this is the low level of our adversary." But with this kind of conception you end up with the disaster we experience every day. We have sunk into astronomic debt. The real liabilities in this country must be counted in trillions.
But the important point is that they have been practising financial profligacy as a result of the structural crisis of the productive system. It is not an accident that money has been flowing in such an adventurist way into the financial sector. The accumulation of capital couldn't function properly in the field of the productive economy.
We are now talking about the structural crisis of the system. It extends everywhere and it even encroaches on our relationship to nature, undermining the fundamental conditions for human survival. For example, from time to time they announce some targets to cut pollution. We even have a ministry of energy and climate change, which is really a ministry of hot air because nothing is done except announcing a target. But the target is never even approached, let alone fulfilled. This is an integral part of the structural crisis of the system and only structural solutions can get us out of this terrible situation.
You have described the US as carrying out credit card imperialism. What do you mean by that?
I quote former US senator George McGovern on the Vietnam War. He said that the US had run the Vietnam War on a credit card. The recent borrowing by the US is going sour now. This kind of economics can go on only as long as the rest of the world can carry the debt.
The US is in a unique position because it has been the dominant country since the Bretton Woods agreement. It is a fantasy that a neo-Keynesian solution and a new Bretton Woods would solve any of today's problems. The US domination which Bretton Woods formalised immediately after the Second World War was economically realistic. The US economy was in a much more powerful position than any other economy in the world. It established all the vital international economic institutions on the basis of US privilege. The privilege of the dollar, the privilege enjoyed through the International Monetary Fund, the trade organisations, the World Bank, all were completely under US domination and still remain so today.
This cannot be wished out of existence. You can't fantasise about reforming and slightly regulating it here and there. To imagine that Barack Obama is going to abandon the dominant position the US enjoys in this way - backed up by military domination - is a mistake.
Karl Marx called the ruling class a "band of warring brothers". Do you think the ruling class internationally will work together to find a solution?
In the past imperialism involved several dominant actors who asserted their interests even at the expense of two horrendous world wars in the 20th century. Partial wars, no matter how horrendous they are, cannot be compared to the economic and power realignment which could be produced by a new world war.
But imagining a new world war is impossible. Of course there are still some lunatics in the military field who would not deny that possibility. But it would mean the total destruction of humanity.
We have to think about the implications of this for the capitalist system. It was a fundamental law of the system that if a force could not be asserted through economic domination you resorted to war.
Global hegemonic imperialism has been achieved and has operated quite successfully since the Second World War. But is that kind of system permanent? Is it conceivable that in the future no contradictions will arise in it?
There have also been some hints from China that this kind of economic domination cannot go on indefinitely. China is not going to be able to go on financing it. The implications and consequences for China are already quite significant. Deng Xiaoping once remarked that the colour of the cat - whether it's capitalist or socialist - doesn't matter so long as it catches the mouse. But what if, instead of happy mouse catching, you end up with a horrendous rat infestation of massive unemployment? This is now emerging in China.
These things are inherent in the contradictions and antagonisms of the capitalist system. Therefore we must think about solving them in a radically different way, and the only way is a genuine socialist transformation of the system.
Is there no decoupling of any part of the world economy from this situation?
Impossible! Globalisation is a necessary condition of human development. Ever since the expansion of the capitalist system was clearly visible, Marx theorised this. Martin Wolf of the Financial Times has complained that there are too many little, insignificant states that cause trouble. He argued that what was needed was "jurisdictional integration", in other words complete imperialist integration - a fantasy concept. This is an expression of the insoluble contradictions and antagonisms of capitalist globalisation. Globalisation is a necessity but the form that is feasible, workable and sustainable is a socialist globalisation on the basis of socialist principles of substantive equality.
Although no decoupling from world history is conceivable it doesn't mean that at every phase, in every part of the world, there is uniformity. Very different things are unfolding in Latin American compared to Europe, not to mention what I have already hinted at in China and the Far East, and Japan, which is in the deepest of trouble.
Just think back a little bit. How many miracles have we had in the post-war period? The German miracle, the Brazilian miracle, the Japanese miracle, the miracle of the five little tigers? How amusing that all these miracles turn into the most awful prosaic reality. The common denominator of all these realities is disastrous indebtedness and fraud.
One hedge fund manager has allegedly been involved in a $50 billion swindle. General Motors and the others were only asking the US government for $14 billion. How modest! They should be given $100 billion. If one hedge fund capitalist can organise an alleged $50 billion fraud, they should get all the funds feasible.
A system that operates in this morally rotten way cannot possibly survive, because it is uncontrollable. People are even admitting that they don't know how it works. The solution is not to despair about it but to control it in the interests of social responsibility and a radical transformation of society.
The drive inherent in capitalism is to squeeze workers as hard as possible, and that's clearly what governments are trying to do in Britain and the US.
The only thing they can do is advocate cutting workers' wages. The principal reason why the Senate refused to pass even the $14 billion injection into the big three US car companies is they could not get agreement on a drastic reduction of workers' wages. Think about the effect of that and the kind of obligations those workers have - for instance repaying massive mortgages. To ask them simply to halve their wages would generate other problems in the economy - again a contradiction.
Capital and contradictions are inseparable. We have to go beyond the superficial manifestations of those contradictions to their roots. You manage to manipulate them here and there but they will come back with a vengeance. Contradictions cannot be shoved under the carpet indefinitely because the carpet is now becoming a mountain.
You studied with Georg Lukács, a Marxist who goes back to the period of the Russian Revolution and beyond.
I worked with Lukács for seven years before I left Hungary in 1956 and we remained very close friends until he died in 1971. We always saw eye to eye - that's why I wanted to study with him. It so happened that when I arrived to work with him he was being attacked very fiercely and openly in public. I could not stomach that and defended him, which led to all sorts of complications. Just as I left Hungary I was his designated successor at the university, teaching aesthetics. The reason I left was precisely because I was convinced that what was going on was a variety of very fundamental problems which that system could not resolve.
I tried to formulate and examine these problems in my books since then, in particular in Marx's Theory of Alienation and Beyond Capital. Lukács used to say, quite rightly, that without strategy you can't have tactics. Without a strategic view of these problems you cannot have the everyday solutions. So I have tried to analyse these problems consistently because they cannot be simply treated at the level of an article that relates only to what is happening today, though there is a big temptation to do that. Instead it has to be done within a historical perspective. I have been publishing since my first fairly substantial essay was published in 1950 in a literary periodical in Hungary and I have been working as hard as I could ever since. In whatever modest way we can, we make our contribution towards change. That's what I have tried to do all my life.
What do you think the possibilities for change are at the moment?
Socialists are the last to minimise the difficulties of the solution. Capital apologists, whether they are neo-Keynesian or whatever else, can produce all kinds of simplistic solutions. I don't think that we can consider the present crisis simply in the way we have in the past. The present crisis is profound. The deputy governor of the Bank of England has admitted that this is the greatest economic crisis in human history. I would only add that it is not the greatest economic crisis in human history but the greatest crisis in all senses. Economic crises cannot be separated from the rest of the system.
The fraudulence and domination of capital and the exploitation of the working class cannot go on forever. The producers cannot be kept constantly and forever under control. Marx argued that capitalists are simply the personifications of capital. They are not free agents; they are executing the imperatives of this system. So the problem for humanity is not simply to sweep away one bunch of capitalists. To simply put one type of personification of capital in the place of another would lead to the same disaster and sooner or later we'd end up with the restoration of capitalism.
The problems society faces have not simply arisen in the past few years. Sooner or later these have to be resolved and not, as the Nobel Prize winning economists might fantasise, within the framework of the system. The only possible solution is to found social reproduction on the basis of the producers being in control. That has always been the idea of socialism.
We have reached the historical limits of capital's ability to control society. I don't mean just banks and building societies, even though they cannot control those, but the rest. When things go wrong nobody's responsible. From time to time politicians say, "I accept full responsibility," and what happens? They are glorified. The only feasible alternative is the working class which is the producer of everything which is necessary in our life. Why should they not be in control of what they produce? I always stress in every book that saying no is relatively easy, but we have to find the positive dimension.
István Mészáros won the 1971 Deutscher Prize for his book Marx's Theory of Alienation and has written on Marxism ever since. He is the author of the recently published The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time.
Wednesday, 11 February 2009
Sending chaddis to the fascists
The Pink Chaddi Campaign kicked off on 5th February 2009 to oppose the Sri Ram Sena, a right-wing group that attacked a group of young women for drinking in a bar last month in the Indian city of Mangalore. The campaign is growing exponentially - over 15,000 members joined A Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women in less than a day, and they now have well over 20,000 members. They are either sending in chaddis or support the campaign.
The initiators of the campaign say that most women in India have enough curbs on their lives without a whole new franchise cashing in with their bully-boy tactics. Of course, a lot of men have joined the group as well.
More on their blog:
http://thepinkchaddicampaign.blogspot.com/
Here is we want to do with the Pink Chaddi Campaign. Join in. Be imaginative, have fun and fight back!
What can you do?
Step 1: It does not matter that many of us have not thought about Valentine's Day since we were 13. If ever. This year let us send the Sri Ram Sena some love. Let us send them some PINK CHADDIS.
Look in your closet or buy them cheap. Dirt-cheap. Make sure they are PINK. Send them off to the Sena.
The address to send the package is:
From: The Pink Chaddi Campaign,
To: Pramod Muthalik,
Sri Rama Sene Office
No. 11, Behind new bus stand, Gokhul road,
Lakshmi park,
Hubli - Karnataka
If you don't want to mail it yourself, you can drop it off at the Chaddi Collection Points. We will be collecting across the country through this week and sending the packages on February 12. More information about Chaddi Collectors in your city soon on our blog: http://thepinkchaddicampaign.blogspot.com/
Step 2: Send the Pink Chaddi Campaign a photograph of the package. Tell us how many chaddis you are sending out and inspire other women in other cities.
Step 3: On Valentine's Day we do a Pub Bharo action. Go to a pub wherever you are. From Kabul to Chennai to Guwahati to Singapore to LA women have signed up. It does not matter if you are actually not a pub-goer or not even much of a drinker. Let us raise a toast (it can be juice) to Indian women. Take a photo or video. We will put it together (more on how later) and send this as well to the Sri Ram Sena.
What happens after Valentine's Day?
After Valentine's Day we should get some of our elected leaders to agree that beating up women is ummm... AGAINST INDIAN CULTURE.
For right now, ask not what Dr VS Acharya, Home Minister of Karnataka can do for you. Ask what you can do for him. Here is his blog. Send him some love.
Nisha Susan
For the Pink Chaddi Campaign
PS. Our good friend L says we should not colour-discriminate. So if you really, really can't send pink chaddis, send those in other colours.
PPS. Both Women and Men are invited to send in their chaddis/ pictures of chaddis.
The initiators of the campaign say that most women in India have enough curbs on their lives without a whole new franchise cashing in with their bully-boy tactics. Of course, a lot of men have joined the group as well.
More on their blog:
http://thepinkchaddicampaign.blogspot.com/
Here is we want to do with the Pink Chaddi Campaign. Join in. Be imaginative, have fun and fight back!
What can you do?
Step 1: It does not matter that many of us have not thought about Valentine's Day since we were 13. If ever. This year let us send the Sri Ram Sena some love. Let us send them some PINK CHADDIS.
Look in your closet or buy them cheap. Dirt-cheap. Make sure they are PINK. Send them off to the Sena.
The address to send the package is:
From: The Pink Chaddi Campaign,
To: Pramod Muthalik,
Sri Rama Sene Office
No. 11, Behind new bus stand, Gokhul road,
Lakshmi park,
Hubli - Karnataka
If you don't want to mail it yourself, you can drop it off at the Chaddi Collection Points. We will be collecting across the country through this week and sending the packages on February 12. More information about Chaddi Collectors in your city soon on our blog: http://thepinkchaddicampaign.blogspot.com/
Step 2: Send the Pink Chaddi Campaign a photograph of the package. Tell us how many chaddis you are sending out and inspire other women in other cities.
Step 3: On Valentine's Day we do a Pub Bharo action. Go to a pub wherever you are. From Kabul to Chennai to Guwahati to Singapore to LA women have signed up. It does not matter if you are actually not a pub-goer or not even much of a drinker. Let us raise a toast (it can be juice) to Indian women. Take a photo or video. We will put it together (more on how later) and send this as well to the Sri Ram Sena.
What happens after Valentine's Day?
After Valentine's Day we should get some of our elected leaders to agree that beating up women is ummm... AGAINST INDIAN CULTURE.
For right now, ask not what Dr VS Acharya, Home Minister of Karnataka can do for you. Ask what you can do for him. Here is his blog. Send him some love.
Nisha Susan
For the Pink Chaddi Campaign
PS. Our good friend L says we should not colour-discriminate. So if you really, really can't send pink chaddis, send those in other colours.
PPS. Both Women and Men are invited to send in their chaddis/ pictures of chaddis.
That's a lot of jobs!
Official figures released today reveal that the total number of unemployed topped two million at the end of last year – the highest figure since Labour came to power in 1997.
The total number of unemployed could rise to three million by next year.
Almost 40 percent of employers have made plans for redundancies over the next year, according a survey of 900 employers. More than one in three are planning to cut jobs in the first three months of the year.
Some 45 per cent of manufacturing bosses say they are set to cut jobs. Thirteen percent of bosses had “no intention of carrying out a pay review this year”. And 18 percent of employers had already introduced short-time working.
The total number of unemployed could rise to three million by next year.
Almost 40 percent of employers have made plans for redundancies over the next year, according a survey of 900 employers. More than one in three are planning to cut jobs in the first three months of the year.
Some 45 per cent of manufacturing bosses say they are set to cut jobs. Thirteen percent of bosses had “no intention of carrying out a pay review this year”. And 18 percent of employers had already introduced short-time working.
Interview with Giles Ji Ungpakorn
Giles Ji Ungpakorn is a refugee from Thailand’s lèse majesté laws. He spoke to Index on Censorship about the government and military’s campaign against dissent.
Academic and journalist Giles Ji Ungpakorn fled Thailand last Friday, shortly before he was due to face charges of lèse majesté. Ungpakorn was one of the latest in a series of writers who found themselves prosecuted under the law, including Australian Harry Nicolaides, who is currently serving a three-year jail sentence after being found guilty of insulting the king.
Ungpakorn says he never expected to face lese majeste charges.
‘I wrote my book [A Coup for the Rich], as an academic text, raising questions about the role of the king in the 2006 coup. Everything in the book was common knowledge and fact, reported at the time’ he told Index on Censorship.
‘But when you put everything together, you get to see the big picture. I examined whether the monarchy had done its duty, as it should in a constitutional monarchy, or whether it had been manipulated in to positions by the military.’
The professor, who holds Thai and British citizenship, is scathing of his employer Chulalongkorn University’s role.
‘The university acted disgracefully in terms of academic freedom,’ he says. First, they refused to sell my book in the university bookshop, and then, when the authorities were seeking to prosecute me, they handed it over without question.’
Ungpakorn sees the charges against him as very much a part of a wider crackdown on dissent, led by the military.
‘The military is using the courts as instruments,’he says. ‘They, along with the People’s Alliance for Democracy, are attempting to create a climate of fear. They have set up a website for people to report suspected lèse majesté. They’re also tracking people down via their IP numbers, and then sending soldiers round to intimidate them.’
The current crackdown is a direct result of last year’s quasi-coup by the People’s Alliance for Democracy and its military backers, says Ungpakorn:
‘The military has no legitimacy except through the monarchy. If the king were to die, and be succeeded by the unpopular crown prince, they would be in crisis.’
Ungpakorn is angry at the obsession with pursuing lèse majesté convictions: ‘Huge amounts of government money is being spent on all this, when Thailand is suffering the same economic crisis as the rest of the world. They are wasting money while the Thai people are losing their jobs and their pensions.’
Academic and journalist Giles Ji Ungpakorn fled Thailand last Friday, shortly before he was due to face charges of lèse majesté. Ungpakorn was one of the latest in a series of writers who found themselves prosecuted under the law, including Australian Harry Nicolaides, who is currently serving a three-year jail sentence after being found guilty of insulting the king.
Ungpakorn says he never expected to face lese majeste charges.
‘I wrote my book [A Coup for the Rich], as an academic text, raising questions about the role of the king in the 2006 coup. Everything in the book was common knowledge and fact, reported at the time’ he told Index on Censorship.
‘But when you put everything together, you get to see the big picture. I examined whether the monarchy had done its duty, as it should in a constitutional monarchy, or whether it had been manipulated in to positions by the military.’
The professor, who holds Thai and British citizenship, is scathing of his employer Chulalongkorn University’s role.
‘The university acted disgracefully in terms of academic freedom,’ he says. First, they refused to sell my book in the university bookshop, and then, when the authorities were seeking to prosecute me, they handed it over without question.’
Ungpakorn sees the charges against him as very much a part of a wider crackdown on dissent, led by the military.
‘The military is using the courts as instruments,’he says. ‘They, along with the People’s Alliance for Democracy, are attempting to create a climate of fear. They have set up a website for people to report suspected lèse majesté. They’re also tracking people down via their IP numbers, and then sending soldiers round to intimidate them.’
The current crackdown is a direct result of last year’s quasi-coup by the People’s Alliance for Democracy and its military backers, says Ungpakorn:
‘The military has no legitimacy except through the monarchy. If the king were to die, and be succeeded by the unpopular crown prince, they would be in crisis.’
Ungpakorn is angry at the obsession with pursuing lèse majesté convictions: ‘Huge amounts of government money is being spent on all this, when Thailand is suffering the same economic crisis as the rest of the world. They are wasting money while the Thai people are losing their jobs and their pensions.’
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
Message of support to student occupations
Amidst all the student occupations across the UK, initiated and supported by Stop the War Coalition, Dr Kamalain Sha'ath, President of the Islamic University of Gaza has sent in the following letter:
Dear Sir or Madam,
We would like to express our sincere thanks and deep appreciation for all your conscious efforts, endeavours and demands to support the right to education, justice and freedom in Palestine.
We wholeheartedly support your peaceful protests against the blanket bombing of Gaza in general and the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG) in particular which suffered extensive destruction and damage to all its buildings, academic facilities. Additionally more than 20,000 students, whose families have been agonizing from the suffocating siege of Gaza, have lost some members of their families and many others have lost their houses.
With great respect and admiration, we have been following all activities taking place in 19 British universities. Your brave campaign has strengthened both our hope and will that we are not alone in this just battle against unprecedented blatant injustices and flagrant violation of human in Palestine.
We are absolutely proud of you all and proud of your solidarity and support campaign for the right to education in Palestine which gives us bright light in the heart of the military occupation darkness.
We wish you full success in your supportive campaign and in achieving all your sensible demands which show a high level of awareness and commitment to defend basic human rights in Gaza at a time of obvious media bias and hypocrisy of many governments.
For more information the university see http://www.iugaza.edu.ps/en/
Dear Sir or Madam,
We would like to express our sincere thanks and deep appreciation for all your conscious efforts, endeavours and demands to support the right to education, justice and freedom in Palestine.
We wholeheartedly support your peaceful protests against the blanket bombing of Gaza in general and the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG) in particular which suffered extensive destruction and damage to all its buildings, academic facilities. Additionally more than 20,000 students, whose families have been agonizing from the suffocating siege of Gaza, have lost some members of their families and many others have lost their houses.
With great respect and admiration, we have been following all activities taking place in 19 British universities. Your brave campaign has strengthened both our hope and will that we are not alone in this just battle against unprecedented blatant injustices and flagrant violation of human in Palestine.
We are absolutely proud of you all and proud of your solidarity and support campaign for the right to education in Palestine which gives us bright light in the heart of the military occupation darkness.
We wish you full success in your supportive campaign and in achieving all your sensible demands which show a high level of awareness and commitment to defend basic human rights in Gaza at a time of obvious media bias and hypocrisy of many governments.
For more information the university see http://www.iugaza.edu.ps/en/
Monday, 9 February 2009
Defend Giles Ji Ungpakorn
This article was published today in the Guardian following a letter by more than 30 academics from all around the world calling for the charges of lese majeste against Giles be dropped.
British professor flees Thailand after charge of insulting king
Duncan Campbell, The Guardian, Monday, 9th February 2009
A leading Bangkok-based professor who has joint British and Thai nationality fled Thailand at the weekend in the face of a lengthy sentence under the country's draconian lese-majesty laws, which forbid criticism of the king.
He is the latest person to face prosecution under the laws, seen as an attempt by the government to stifle dissent.
Giles Ji Ungpakorn, 54, arrived in England at the weekend after being charged under the laws. He had been due to present himself to the police in Bangkok today and could have faced 15 years in jail if found guilty.
"I did not believe I would receive a fair trial," said Ungpakorn, an associate professor of political science at Chulalongkom University and a contributor to the New Statesman and Asian Sentinel."
Ungpakorn, who has an English mother and son, and who studied at Sussex and Durham universities and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, is the author of A Coup for the Rich, in which he criticises the 2006 military coup.
He said that the charges arose out of eight paragraphs in the first chapter deemed insulting to King Bhumibol. He claimed that the director of a university bookshop stocking his book had informed the special branch that it "insulted the monarchy". The offending paragraphs deal with incidents around the coup.
"It is clear that the charge is really about preventing any discussion about the relationship between the military junta and the monarchy," Ungpakorn said. "This is in order to protect the military's sole claim to legitimacy: that it acted in the interests of the monarchy."
He said a website had been set up so people could inform on anyone alleged to have violated the law. "There is a climate of fear," he said.
The English chapter of PEN, the international writers' organisation, has written to Bill Rammell, the Foreign Office minister who is due to visit Thailand, urging him to make representations to the Thai government.
Carole Seymour-Jones of PEN said: "We remain deeply concerned by the increased use of lese-majesty laws in Thailand. Giles is the second New Statesman contributor to have faced such charges in recent months, the first being the Australian writer Harry Nicolaides, sentenced to three years in prison on 19 January."
Academics from the UK, India, South Africa, Turkey, France, Greece, Poland, Canada, Australia and other countries have also protested. A group, including Professor Alex Callinicos, Susan George and Dennis Brutus have signed a petition expressing "deep concern". In a letter to the Guardian recently, more than 30 academics urged that charges be dropped.
British professor flees Thailand after charge of insulting king
Duncan Campbell, The Guardian, Monday, 9th February 2009
A leading Bangkok-based professor who has joint British and Thai nationality fled Thailand at the weekend in the face of a lengthy sentence under the country's draconian lese-majesty laws, which forbid criticism of the king.
He is the latest person to face prosecution under the laws, seen as an attempt by the government to stifle dissent.
Giles Ji Ungpakorn, 54, arrived in England at the weekend after being charged under the laws. He had been due to present himself to the police in Bangkok today and could have faced 15 years in jail if found guilty.
"I did not believe I would receive a fair trial," said Ungpakorn, an associate professor of political science at Chulalongkom University and a contributor to the New Statesman and Asian Sentinel."
Ungpakorn, who has an English mother and son, and who studied at Sussex and Durham universities and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, is the author of A Coup for the Rich, in which he criticises the 2006 military coup.
He said that the charges arose out of eight paragraphs in the first chapter deemed insulting to King Bhumibol. He claimed that the director of a university bookshop stocking his book had informed the special branch that it "insulted the monarchy". The offending paragraphs deal with incidents around the coup.
"It is clear that the charge is really about preventing any discussion about the relationship between the military junta and the monarchy," Ungpakorn said. "This is in order to protect the military's sole claim to legitimacy: that it acted in the interests of the monarchy."
He said a website had been set up so people could inform on anyone alleged to have violated the law. "There is a climate of fear," he said.
The English chapter of PEN, the international writers' organisation, has written to Bill Rammell, the Foreign Office minister who is due to visit Thailand, urging him to make representations to the Thai government.
Carole Seymour-Jones of PEN said: "We remain deeply concerned by the increased use of lese-majesty laws in Thailand. Giles is the second New Statesman contributor to have faced such charges in recent months, the first being the Australian writer Harry Nicolaides, sentenced to three years in prison on 19 January."
Academics from the UK, India, South Africa, Turkey, France, Greece, Poland, Canada, Australia and other countries have also protested. A group, including Professor Alex Callinicos, Susan George and Dennis Brutus have signed a petition expressing "deep concern". In a letter to the Guardian recently, more than 30 academics urged that charges be dropped.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
