Lula - World Financial Crisis caused by "white, blue-eyed people"

[magbana]

Video and article at link below;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7967546.stm

[EFerrari]

1. And Lula is the careful one, isn't he?

lol

[magbana]

2. Yeah, can't wait for the Americas Summit in April . . .

As for Lula, he said out loud what most of the global south has been saying "the white guys did it."

Can I get an amen?

[Judi Lynn]

3. AMEN!

Fernando Gabeira attends his trial in a military tribune in Rio de Janeiro, April 4, 1970.
Nearly 4 decades ago, Fernando Gabeira kidnapped the U.S. ambassador to Brazil in a brazen
protest against the nation's military dictatorship that stunned the world. Today, Gabeira
is running for mayor in Rio de Janeiro.

0fmt45P4YR1R9



Johanna Dohnal and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva,
the later President of Brazil, prize winners 1984.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the later president of Brazil, was honoured for his brave work under the Brazilian military dictatorship.

http://www.kreisky.org/human.rights/englisch/awards3.htm

[AlphaCentauri]

4. Great historic information thanks.

[Judi Lynn]

5. I'm hoping to find out more about this as time goes by.

Here's something which illustrates the conditions Lula was confronting when he took office, the wreckage left over from the previous President:

The Struggle Against Neoliberalism
by Tom Lewis
International Socialist Review, June/July 2001


Crisis hounded Brazil's president Fernando Henrique Cardoso this spring as developments on several fronts threatened to weaken his government. Looming energy shortages, a snowballing corruption scandal, the uncertain slide of the real, a negative human rights report, and new evidence of the massive inequalities in Brazilian society combined to punish Cardoso's public approval ratings.
But Cardoso has only himself to blame. His government's pursuit of neoliberal economic and social policies has caused the problems that Brazilians face today. Beyond drought and low water levels, for example, the power restrictions that are due to hit Brazil in June can be traced directly to the inability of privatized energy companies to meet rising demand. Part of the ongoing corruption scandal involves the private pocketing of public funds, including government insider tips on official currency movements, which allowed a few private bankers to loot millions.

A report released by the Brazilian Institute of Government Statistics in April also shocked the nation when it revealed that, after a decade of neoliberal reforms, the top 10 percent of Brazilian society averaged an income 19 times greater than the lowest 40 percent. A banner headline in a major Sao Paulo daily newspaper proclaimed, "The country ends the 90s as unequal as it began" ('Pais termina anos 90 tao desigual como comecou').

As if all of that wasn't enough, the Cardoso government was forced to admit to charges of widespread police brutality and corruption during a May appearance before the United Nations Committee Against Torture. The government thereby confessed to the world the kind of treatment it metes out to the poverty-stricken offenders who are created by its very own policies of eliminating jobs and reducing social services.

The resurgence of struggle
The public relations disaster for the Cardoso government occurs against the backdrop of a resurgence of popular struggle. Various end-of-year retrospectives identified the distinctive feature of 2000 as "the messages the people sent to those in power in the Republic-messages left in the streets as well as in the ballot box." A Catholic bishop in Rio de Janeiro explained, "Brazilians today are living a feeling of disillusionment with their country. Environmental degradation, globalization of the economy, and social exclusion prove that the model of development needs to be reformed."

In April 2000, hundreds of indigenous people protested their exclusion from the official celebration of the 500th anniversary of the "discovery" of Brazil and were greeted with police violence. That same month, following demonstrations by the trade unions and left political parties, the government agreed to raise the minimum wage. The Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra) launched an occupation of land and buildings in 12 capital cities during May as a protest against the slowdown of land reform and the failure to extend credits to existing settlements.

A wave of protests broke out in June 2000, uniting teachers, health workers, bank workers, and transit workers in huge demonstrations against the Cardoso government's economic and social policies. In July, public opinion pressured Cardoso into meeting with MST representatives in an attempt to find a way to resume expropriating lands and granting credits to the settlements. MST militants staged a new round of land and building occupations in September to protest the government's failure to deliver on the promises Cardoso made in July.

In September 2000, six million Brazilians participated in a national referendum on the external debt. The referendum was organized by the National Council of Brazilian Bishops and supported by numerous nongovernmental organizations and the opposition political parties. Ninety-eight percent of voters called for a national hearing on the debt, while fully 93 percent favored immediately repudiating the debt and severing relations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
In October, the Cardoso government unleashed a ferocious campaign of violent repression against the MST that led to numerous conflicts in the countryside.

~snip~
"Savage capitalism": Neoliberalism's forerunner
Brazil boasts the world's eighth-largest economy today. In 1999, it produced $783 billion in goods and services, placing it between China ($980 billion) and Canada ($591 billion). To put this in perspective, Argentina, the second-largest economy in South America, is two-fifths the size of Brazil's and ranks as the 17th largest economy in the world. Trade between the U.S. and Brazil is modest from the U.S. perspective, accounting for one percent of U.S. imports and exports. The U.S. exported $15 billion of goods to Brazil in 2000, while Brazil exported $14 billion of goods to the United States. From the Brazilian point of view, however, the balance of the period 1994-2000 is exceedingly unfavorable. Brazilian exports to the U.S. grew barely 5.2 percent between 1994 and 1997, while imports of U.S. goods skyrocketed by 116.5 percent.

Despite its economic strength, Brazil has suffered for 30 years under the yoke of the U.S.-dominated international financial system. The military dictatorship that came to power in 1964 and ruled until 1984 repressed workers' organizations, curtailed citizens' rights, criminalized membership in left political parties, purged the public administration, and practiced systematic torture and summary execution. This terror served as the social basis for what became known as Brazil's "economic miracle" of the 1970s. Favorable access to foreign loans, as well as a tripling of foreign direct investment between 1970 and 1973, allowed for the diversification of Brazil's economy, making it less dependent on its main export, coffee. Gross domestic product (GDP) increased at a yearly average of 11.2 percent between 1969 and 1973.

Yet the "miracle" also produced a number of negative effects. Brazil became excessively vulnerable for the first time to the flow of international commerce and the dictates of international bankers. Growth also made Brazil more dependent on certain imported products, especially petroleum. Expansion led to higher prices and so favored high- and middle-income Brazilians while squeezing most urban and rural workers. The result was to widen the already horrendous gap between rich and poor. As one historian illustrates:

If the minimum wage of January 1959 had been 100, that wage would have fallen to 39 in January 1973. This return is especially significant if one considers that in 1972, 52 percent of the working population was making less than one minimum wage, and 22 percent was making between one and two minimum wages.

This harsh reality, along with the flagrant disregard of the environment, is what was meant by the phrase "savage capitalism"-the method by which Brazil entered the modern global economy.

More:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/South_America/Brazil_Neoliberalism.html

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_XFynFBqCznA/R4pVt32WBKI/AAAAAAAAD4A/H5uwuYU3C9M/s400/fhc+exterminador.jpg

[Judi Lynn]

6. For general information, some historical details in case you didn't know, yet.

If you've been in South America as a sober person with a functioning brain, you probably already know all about Brazil's military dictatorship. I didn't find out until the last few years:

This is a not a pleasant exhibition, but it is a very important one.
It consists of photographs and text describing of twenty out of
more than 500 documented cases of torture in Brazil when the
Military ruled the country between 1964 and 1980.

Brazil has punished no one for these crimes and none of the victims
of torture or their families received any compensation from the
government for their losses.

This exhibition keeps alive the memories of these atrocities and alerts
the people of Brazil and other countries that these things continue in
Brazil, in spite of the so-called democratic government in charge now.

We call on International organizations concern with human and civil rights
in underdeveloped countries to look closer at the Brazilian situation.
Brazilian authorities are masters at hiding wrong doings, and this
deception has to stop. Sanctions have to be established, to force
Brazilian leaders to respect the rights and dignity of the Brazilian people.

This exhibition is a work of journalists Amancio Chiodi (photos)
and Mylton Severiano da Silva (text).

Case #1 MILTON SOARES

http://www.brazilianmusic.com.nyud.net:8090/20cases/caso1.gif

WHEN - March 3, 1978. Friday.
Guarulhos DP/SP. (DP=Police
Station. SP - São Paulo)
WHO - Photographer for the
newspaper Folha de São Paulo,
thirty-six years, 6 children.
Police officers Fausto Raineri,
Darcidio Ferreira and Antonio
Carlos Silva.

WHAT - The officers arrested
Milton on charges of "disrespect
of authority" and took him to a cell
with nine prisoners previously
instructed to torture him.

HOW - punches, kicks, head
kicks, electric shock, wood stick
blows, cigarette burns in the
body and psychological torture.

WHY - Milton was writing an
article about police brutality.

~~~~~~~~


THEY SAID:
HERE THERE IS NO GOD OR DEVIL.

___________

" When I came in the bandits were playing cards in the cell.
Previously instructed."
"- Oh, you are the one who fingered us, huh? You are Milton, huh?"
One stood up and punched me in the eyes. It was the start.
I turned into a toy in the hands of the nine men.
They took my clothes off; they were already prepared
with the "PAU DE ARARA" (a common form of torture
where the victim is tied to a stick by their arms and feet
and physically abused). They tied up my arms and legs,
held my arms behind my back and stood in a line;
one kicked me with his head and other with his feet.
hey broke my molar.
This was from midnight until 2:00 in the morning.
I vomited blood for fifteen days.
My insides were like a rotten egg, you know when you make
any movement and everything is loose inside, everything hurts.
Six months later my electrocardiogram detected a disturbance.
Today I am well.
They do not satisfy me with the results of the investigation.
I had to pay $1000 for disrespect and they acquitted the officer.

________________

Exclusive interview by Milton to twenty exemplary cases
on September 1979, one and a half years after being tortured.
Photos: Milton at his trial and as he appeared
in the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo on March 4, 1978.

http://www.brazilianmusic.com/20cases/case1.html

Other cases:
http://www.brazilianmusic.com/20cases/casos.html

~~~~~~~~~~

Human rights came slowly to Latin America

http://www.miradaglobal.com.nyud.net:8090/images/stories/Image/sociedad/1_sociedad_051108.jpg

Long-lasting dictatorships had taken hold in several countries: the Somozas in Nicaragua, the Duvaliers in Haiti, Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay, Rojas Pinilla in Colombia, Batista in Cuba, Perón in Argentina, Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, and Pérez Jiménez in Venezuela. Democracy was still an alien concept in some of these countries, and dissidents were treated harshly. But these were not yet identified as "torture states ", and at that time the church did not routinely invoke the evolving tradition of human rights or the social encyclicals to protest the actions of the reigning caudillos. Several bishops, however, did issue harsh pastoral letters that hastened the downfall of Perón, Pérez Jiménez and Rojas Pinilla.

More recently, Latin dictatorships have taken the form of the "authoritarian" military regimes once favored by Jeane Kirkpatrick, as opposed to the "totalitarian" model. The authoritarian model began with the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, a left-leaning but democratically elected president overthrown by the combined forces of the United Fruit Company and the C.I.A. His was the first of a series of repressive regimes that culminated decades later in the genocidal rule of Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-83). In 1954, however, the Guatemalan church was minimally engaged in the nation’s political struggle.

Three events were to change all that: the Cuban revolution (1959), the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and the Medellín Conference of Latin American bishops (1968). Castro embodied the new challenge; Vatican II and Medellín called on the church to respond to that challenge by defending the dignity and rights of the human person.

BRAZIL

The first South American dictatorship to gain popular notoriety was in Brazil in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It had become a classic "national security state ", in José Comblin’s phrase, a country prepared to use all means necessary to eliminate its perceived enemies, even when these were its own citizens. The enemy within was presumed to be tied to the enemy without: since January 1959, Communist Cuba and its Soviet puppeteer.

The contemporary human rights tradition can trace its origins to the violent overthrow of President Salvador Allende in Chile on Sept. 11, 1973, and the extraordinary response of the Chilean church to that crisis, but these events were presaged by the state’s indiscriminate violence and the church’s courageous response in neighboring Brazil. In 1973, before the Chile coup, bishops in at least three regions in Brazil issued powerful pastoral letters denouncing the oppression and torture that had become the norm in that country. The year 1973 was also the 25th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a date whose symbolism was not lost on leaders in the Latin American churches.

State censorship in Brazil at that time was as stringent as anywhere else in the hemisphere. Newspapers routinely appeared with huge sections of white space where offending articles had been excised. The Archbishop of Recife, Dom Hélder Câmara, was declared a non person and could not be mentioned in the press. His pastoral letters could not be published and had to be passed about from hand to hand. The church then decided to observe the declaration’s anniversary by printing a broadsheet with the entire text. After each of the 30 articles in the declaration, the bishops added quotations from Scripture and citations of Catholic and Protestant statements. The text was then posted on church bulletin boards all over the country, a silent cry of protest against the world’s worst "torture state" and a clearly subversive act that the military censors found difficult to suppress.

http://www.miradaglobal.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=952&Itemid=9&lang=en

That Medellín Conference of Latin American bishops didn't seem to take very well, did it?

[magbana]

7. INCA KOLA NEWS weighs in on Lula and the blue-eyed white guys comment

http://incakolanews.blogspot.com/2009/03/lula.html

"This crisis was caused by the irrational behaviour of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything and now demonstrate that they know nothing."

The bottom line is that he's right. Live with it.

So enjoy your G20 bunfest, begin to think about the fact there's a whole section of the planet you never consider that is really pissed with you guys and owes you nothing. Also reflect what it feels like to be on the receiving end of some racism for a change.

[Bacchus39]

12. yea racism!!!!!!

although he didn't say "white guys", he said white people with blue eyes.

[Idealism]

17. Your knee-jerk reaction is especially comical, given the meaning of this Brazillian phrase.

In Brazil, this is an anti-colonial expression reffering to Norther Europeans. "Lindo, loiro de olhos azuis": Beautiful, blonde, with blue eyes.

It's used when someone who has exhibited arrogance and snobbery makes a mistake, but refuses to admit it. The phrase basically means "you think you are so smart, but look at what you've done."

It is not malicious, nor racist, but thanks for playing.

[Judi Lynn]

18. Thank you so much for this unique information. I've already filed this away

in order to remember it. Very choice. Good for your comment. Completely appropriate.

[Bacchus39]

19. thanks, but that is not what Lula said now was it???

any other justification for Lula's racist remark and those who support him??

[Idealism]

20. In Brazil, the words mean something different than in the US or UK

But I wouldn't expect you to know this, which is why I corrected you. Your ongoing protests about the subject are tiresome at best.

[Bacchus39]

21. did you actually read the article or hear Lula?

"It is a crisis caused and encouraged by the irrational behaviour of white people with blue eyes," the president said, "who before the crisis appeared to know everything, but are now showing that they know nothing."

what do you think the proper translation from Brazilian Portuguese is?

[Idealism]

22. "white people with blue eyes"= loiro de olhos azuis

which is the anti-colonial phrase popular in Brazil. Which is how it was translated for Brazillian news agencies. What about this do you not understand?

[Bacchus39]

23. here is Lula speaking

he says the crisis was caused and fomented by white people with blue eyes. gente branca com olhos azuis. he doesn't use a colloquial expression to mean something else. take it from Lula, not from me.


http://mais.uol.com.br/view/1575mnadmj5c/lula-gente-branca-com-olhos-azuis-gerou-crise-04023268CCC18326?types=A&fullimage=1

[Idealism]

24. Simple-minded much?

http://veja.abril.com.br/noticia/brasil/culpa-loiros-olhos-azuis-430909.shtml

'Culpa é de loiros de olhos azuis', diz o presidente brasileiro

O presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva afirmou nesta quinta-feira, em entrevista coletiva concedida ao lado do premiê britânico Gordon Brown, que a crise financeira internacional foi causada e fomentada por "gente branca, loira, de olhos azuis", numa referência a especuladores estrangeiros, de países do primeiro mundo.

[Bacchus39]

25. nope, he says "gente branca de olhos azuis"

try listening to what he says. you can start at 40 seconds of the video if you like. you speak Portuguese I assume correct?

[Idealism]

27. His exact words:

"gente branca, loira, de olhos azuis"

translation: (white)beautiful people with blue eyes.

[EFerrari]

26. Ah. That makes complete sense.

Interesante.

[EFerrari]

8. The End of Neo-Liberalism and Bush's Last Scam: How Racism Sparked the Financial Crisis

(Note: This is an article from CPUSA and I don't agree at every point, but it's an interesting thesis with respect to this flap, no?)

The End of Neo-Liberalism and Bush's Last Scam: How Racism Sparked the Financial Crisis
1-28-09, 9:13 am
By Joe Sims

With the collapse of several banks and insurance companies, the near bankruptcy of Detroit automakers, a 50 percent drop in world stock exchanges and an almost complete arrest of credit markets, an economic era has ended. It seems almost an understatement to say that capitalism has entered a new stage of a protracted systemic crisis.

The crisis of the economy is at once a crisis in ideology. After 30 years of worship at the shrine of the free market, Reaganomics and other branches of conservative and neo-conservative thought seem bankrupt and thoroughly discredited if not dead – and not only right-wing schools. Deregulation, privatization, intense financial speculation on debt, the scaling back if not elimination of government social spending, in a word, “neo-liberalism” has reached its extreme limit almost bursting state-monopoly capitalism’s seams and triggering a worldwide financial meltdown.

Many causes have been attributed to the turmoil. Among the main contenders: “financialization” or the capitalism-on-crack of the bond markets and banks, a crisis of overproduction (too many goods chasing too few dollars), and a weak “real” economy due to insufficient allocation of surplus capital to productive investment. Some point to objective processes, others stress mistaken policy decisions. Clearly all were to one degree or another at play. Caution is in order, however. Objective economic processes, mistaken fiscal policies or even chance economic accidents, taken together or alone do not sufficiently explain the impetus behind the ongoing calamity. Also at work was the pernicious influence of institutionalized racism. In fact racist lending practices may have triggered the global financial collapse.

Slouching Toward Collapse

The origins of how the unraveling began is to be found in capitalism’s attempt to resolve ongoing crises. In fact, the neo-liberal model itself arose in response to attempts in advanced capitalist countries to maintain profits and find new markets. Faced in the 1970s with a declining rate of profit, a fractured world economy divided into “socialist” and capitalist camps, structural and fiscal crises along with spiraling inflation, capitalism’s generals undertook a re-forging of economic policy in the form of a wholesale assault on the edifice of the New Deal. Keynesianism had run into wall – at least from the point of view of big capital – and policy was now modulated to fit the maximum profit categorical imperatives of the new period. International trade pacts were formed, unions were rolled backed or held in check and fiscal policy was loosened as a new “post-industrial” service-oriented economy emerged.

http://politicalaffairs.net/article/view/8033/1/359/

[EFerrari]

9. How the Rich Invented Racism

By Iggy Kim and Peter Boyle


Racism is often presented as a deep-seated and "ancient" suspicion and hostility between people of different races - a "natural" if mistaken prejudice that is hard to eradicate but will eventually be banished through education. But if this is true, why is racism increasing in wealthy countries, where the public has had greater access to education?

An understanding of racism has to begin by looking at its historical origins.

Racism assumes that separate "races" of people exist with clearly definable sets of social and physical characteristics, and asserts that some of these races are superior to others.

But biology cannot provide coherent definitions of what are usually identified as "races". Isolated genetic pools are rare in reality and don't form the basis for racial categories in practice. Even if some generally consistent physical features are discernible, they bear no real significance, because social traits are not attached to skin or eye colour or the shape of the nose.

Wide cultural and historical variations exist within both "black" and " white" racial groups. For example, many Aborigines have objectively more in common with some "white" Australians than with Melanesians or African- Americans.

Races also cannot be distinguished on the basis of social attributes. It would be clearly unreasonable to categorise people into "races" by musical taste, hairstyle or mode of dress.

In the 19th century, considerable "research" was carried out in the west to give racial theories a pseudo-scientific legitimacy. Foreheads were analysed for shape and slope, noses measured, brains weighed, all in the cause of proving the superiority of the "white races".

Racial categories are socially founded. Arbitrarily selected physical traits are fetishised and artificially injected with social value.

A deeply ingrained eye for "race" has developed in all societies where there is systematic racial oppression, but the social nature of racial categories is starkly exposed when comparing the "white" and "black" racial categories. Those who qualify for the former must have no visible " non-white" features, while a person with visible signs of Aboriginal and European ancestry is still classed as "black".
Origins

Racism has its historical roots in the development of capitalism.

The new capitalist class in medieval Europe had to accumulate the necessary money capital to take over the means of production. Columbus' 1492 invasion of the Americas was decisive in this process. The Spanish and Portuguese aristocracies plundered the gold and silver of the native Americans and used this wealth to buy luxuries manufactured by the emerging bourgeoisies of England, France, Holland and Germany.

In order to plunder the gold and silver of the native Americans, and later to expropriate their tribal lands for plantations, the European colonists exterminated enormous numbers of native Americans.

In a period of 50 years from their arrival, the Spanish conquistadors exterminated 15 million people with the aid of introduced diseases like smallpox. Densely populated areas like Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and the coast of Venezuela were completely depopulated. As a result, the European plantation owners faced an acute shortage of labour.

Some system was necessary to bring workers to the new lands and to force them to work for their masters. At first the landed proprietors relied upon indentured servants or serfs from the mother countries. However, indentured servants proved inadequate: if they ran away, they could not readily be distinguished from free colonists or their masters.

As production on the colonial plantations expanded to meet the needs of growing capitalist industries in Europe, it became increasingly urgent to find new, more abundant and more easily identifiable sources of forced labour.

The African slave trade came to the planters' rescue. Slaves could be purchased cheaply and brought in unlimited numbers from Africa.

Moreover, the colour of their skins made them easily identifiable, stopping them from escaping and merging with the rest of the colonial population. The colour of their skins became the sign of servitude. This was the origin of racism.

The view that those with non-white skins were inferior to those with white skins was gradually elaborated to justify the particular form of slave labour that was introduced in the Americas by a rising capitalism.
Not eternal

Chattel slavery and the slave trade existed long before the European conquest of the Americas. The Spaniards in particular were accustomed to enslaving the peoples they conquered. Indeed, Columbus had African slaves in his crew on his first voyage across the Atlantic.

However, serfdom, not chattel slavery, was the basis of Spanish and Portuguese feudal society. Slavery coexisted in the crevices of feudal life.

Nor was this slavery justified on racial lines. The differences between slaves and slave-owners were, at first, defined by religion - Christians versus "heathens". As late as the middle of the 15th century, when the slave trade to Portugal first began, the ideological rationalisation was not that Africans were dark skinned but that they were not Christians.

But a religious distinction could not be frozen over generations. Moreover, the Portuguese and Spanish feudal rulers' social control of colonised peoples depended on their conversion to Christianity. Many Africans during the early slave trade in Portugal did convert, were subsequently freed and intermarried with the Portuguese.
Justifying oppression

However, once skin colour became a social category implying enslavement, it seemed "natural" for dark-skinned peoples to occupy a subordinate social status. In the racist mode of reasoning, the next logical step was to conclude that, somehow, blacks must have been "naturally" inferior to whites.

Such a view was particularly necessary for justifying slave labour on the capitalist plantations in the southern states of the USA. The existence of white slavery was in contradiction to the bourgeois-democratic ideology enshrined in the US Declaration of Independence ("... all men are created equal ... ").

But the enslavement of blacks could be reconciled with bourgeois- democratic ideology through the racist idea that people of African descent were not "men", but "childlike" sub-humans. (A similar argument was used to deny white women equal rights with white adult males.)

Even after the abolition of slavery, racism served the interests of capitalism by justifying the maintenance of a layer of super-exploited wage labourers. In fact, the propagation of racist ideas became more pronounced after the abolition of slavery. The transformation of blacks into a super-exploited layer of wage workers required a system of legalised subjugation (segregation) that would nullify their status as " free" labourers.

Two other factors assisted the advance of racist ideas in the 19th century: the expansion of European capitalism to include huge colonial empires in Asia and Africa, and the development of early theories of human evolution. Gross manipulation of the latter helped justify the new global oppressive relations of imperialism.

In Australia, racism was also used to justify the expropriation of the land from the indigenous inhabitants and the genocidal attacks on these people. This brutal history has left a horrible social legacy to the surviving indigenous Australians.
Continuing inequality

Today racism lives on as an ideology which justifies continuing racial oppression - institutionalised inequality based on racial categorisation. Some of the contemporary forms of racial oppression are:

* discriminatory employment, channelling certain groups into the lowest paid, least secure jobs;
* scapegoating for the capitalist crisis;
* black deaths in custody;
* ghettoisation in housing, schooling and so on.

National oppression

Racial oppression should be distinguished from national oppression. The latter is not based on the elevation of physical characteristics into social categories, but is institutionalised social inequality based on national origin.

A nation is not a racial group, since it is not formed on the basis of the fetishising of physical features. It is a stable community historically constituted on the basis of a common capitalist economic life, common territory, language and culture.

However, since the rise of western colonialism in the 19th century, the nationalism of imperialist countries has been systematically racialised. Europeans, North Americans or Australians of "British stock" were presented as superior to Africans, Arabs and Asians because this justified colonial rule and exploitation. Racism was and is used to justify colonial wars: during the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese were labelled "gooks" and " slopes".

Racialisation has been applied by reactionaries to a range of groups to justify their persecution. For example, in Europe the persecution of Jews, a religious group, was racialised by falsely identifying European Jews as members of a Semite racial group (with stereotyped physical characteristics).

The propaganda of the white armies in the Russian Civil War attempted to racialise their Communist opponents by portraying the Bolsheviks as members of the Jewish-Semitic "race", and European fascism justified its reactionary rule with racist theories of Aryan superiority.
Combating racism

Because racism has a material base in social relations, it cannot be combated effectively simply through education or appeals for tolerance. Effective anti-racist campaigns must oppose the actual racist policies being carried out: denial of land rights to Aborigines, racist law enforcement, discrimination in employment, restrictions on the rights of migrants, immigration cuts.

Racism is used as a weapon of divide and rule; this can be thwarted by enlisting the broadest forces in independent mass mobilisations against racist policies.

Racism cannot be completely eliminated until the capitalist system is replaced, because capitalism is built on the oppressive social relations that underlie racism. Capitalism is the rule of an ever shrinking but increasingly wealthy minority. It needs to divide the majority in order to continue its rule, and to do this has to perpetuate racism, sexism and national chauvinism.

After more than two centuries of "democratic" capitalism, the USA has not been able to eliminate racism, yet a small and poor Third World country, Cuba, has eliminated racial oppression. The Cuban Revolution got rid of its capitalist ruling class and in a few years abolished racial discrimination.

However, racist ideas and prejudice cannot be totally abolished through changes in a single country. As long as the world is divided into a few wealthy, predominantly white, exploiter nations and a majority of non- white exploited Third World nations, there will remain a material basis for racism.

Until this exploitative world order is replaced by one based on international solidarity and the priority of social needs over private profit, the battle against racism will not be over.

* * *
:evilgrin:

[EFerrari]

10. The Historic Roots of Oligarchic Racism: A Venezuelan View

The Historic Roots of Oligarchic Racism
A Venezuelan View
By Franz J. T. Lee
August 27, 2004

One of the quintessential elements of the capitalist world system -- applied ideologically by the "Opposition" in the national and international mass media, to "divide and rule" the Venezuelan people -- is social discrimination, racism. In fact, racism is the ideological reflection of the world market, of the international division of labour, that is, of globalization, of the vicious global class struggle. In fact, Racism is Ideology par excellence. Its current, concrete reality is global fascism, is globalized Apartheid.

Social discrimination, racism, is an innate characteristic of any capitalist society, just like economic exploitation, political domination, destructive militarization and mortal alienation. All of them are intrinsic elements of our world system, to eradicate them, the whole exploitative labour system has to be annihilated. As ideology, there is no capitalism without racism, and vice versa; no matter what excuse we may have, who favours capitalism, sows racism; to eliminate any one of the two, we have to annihilate both. This also applies to all five capitalist essences.

Long ago, in Venezuela, Andres Eloy Blanco, demanded that somebody must paint "black angels" for him, indicating that the European Conquest, that Christianity, have already painted racism into our very sacred essence, into the very soul of Latin America. Concerning the Bolivarian Revolution, the clarion call, the "Diana" attack, has to be: Do not paint any angels for me, neither black angels nor white devils!

The worst that could have happened in Venezuela was when the oligarchs began to attack the black face - the expression of African slavery - of the Bolivarian Revolution, when they slandered President Chávez with racist, fascist diatribes. However, because of a colonial education for barbarism, although they experience it daily, very few Venezuelans know what is racism, what is social discrimination, and what is its relation to capitalism and imperialism. Thus, we will summarize the historical and social roots of racism here. We will under-line its ideological functions, to indicate that the Bolivarian Revolution does not need any ideology, or ideological education, rather it urgently has to develop its own scientific práxis and philosophic theory, to tell the world what is happening here in Latin America.

http://www.africaspeaks.com/articles/2004/2708.html

[EFerrari]

11. I found this today from MLK Jr. and it seems very like a rephrasing

of what Lula was getting at:

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast between poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just."

It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just."

The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

* * *

Okay, that's my Marxist splurge for the day. :)

[EFerrari]

13. LOL! Gordon Brown: End western control of IMF, World Bank

End western control of IMF, World Bank: Britain
Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 27-Mar-2009 15:51 hrs

The World Bank Group building in Washington, DC. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown signaled he would support ending a six-decade-long gentlemen's agreement under which leadership of the World Bank and IMF has been divided up between Americans and Europeans.


Brown has called for the institutions to be reformed to better deal with global capital flows, reflecting the importance of China and the wealth amassed by Gulf states, whose sovereign wealth funds have pumped billions worth of liquidity into global markets.
.
His comments echo those of Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, who said during a recent visit to Washington that the time was right to reform the IMF.
.
"When I look at the mood and temperament of global leaders in the G20 to wide-scale IMF reform, it's bigger now I think than any time since '44," Rudd said.
ent of global leaders in the G20 to wide-scale IMF reform, it's bigger now I think than any time since '44," Rudd said.

http://www.todayonline.com/articles/310042.asp

[Judi Lynn]

14. He admitted it. What the hell has happened? He has carefully arranged his comments

to make it sound as if he's come to his senses and sees there has been a basic unfairness somewhere in this mess!

Congratulations, EFerrari! This is one spectacular "admission." He's trying to duck the devastating truth of the matter, but he still SAID IT.

Gee, he thinks the time is right for REFORM. However did he arrive at this conclusion? Maybe he's "physic!!!11!!111!1."

EFerrari, whatever you do, don't post this article anywhere where the LBN Lula goblin will see it!

This is sweet. I am so glad to see it, and congratulations to P.M. Brown for his newfound "integrity."

[EFerrari]

15. I did post it to that other thread but more than our little spats here

this shows how much the powers that be understand how quickly they are losing Latin America.

Very good news for the people if something comes of this. :)

[Judi Lynn]

16. I just finished reading the new parts of that thread not long ago, and it's easy to see that

they actually DO understand what Lula meant, but they want to raise hell, anyway. Late in the thread a couple of them who had been screaming their heads off about their perception of Lula's "racism," revealed they understood what he meant, they just weren't going to admit it, because to do that would deny them their chance to rave on against leftists, and people who don't put the U.S. right-wing first, above everything!

The number of people piling on that thread WAS a revelation the fascists are getting nervous. It's amazing how many people there are who are actually here not to participate in anything positive, they don't bring and share any actual news which interests progressives, they come here to disrupt, and to try to shout down the people who come here for meaningful communication.

Well, here's hoping they're going to get a whole lot angrier from this time forward, FOREVER.