Labour unrest in Bangladesh

DHAKA, May 23: A labour unrest in the readymade garments sector that began at Bangladesh’s export processing zone on Monday, spilled into the capital on Tuesday. The paramilitary Bangladesh Rifles were called out as workers went on the rampage for the second straight day, burning down four factories.

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association threatened to shut down factories indefinitely if the government failed to control the situation.

The garment manufacturers accused the government of taking no action against the rioters, warning that the apparel industry would be shut down indefinitely if the government failed to ensure security.

They urged the government to deploy army soldiers to protect the industry from ‘miscreants dictated by a vested quarter waging a war against the economy.

Some leaders claimed that there were hardly any workers involved in the agitation, putting down the trouble to ‘conspirators from home and abroad.

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association said it would hold a meeting of factory owners on Wednesday to decide whether they should shut down factories for an indefinite period.

Conspirators have started a war against the garment industry and economy, Abdul Awal Mintoo, a former president of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry, said.

CMKP Website: http://cmkp.tk

Proceeding with plans to drive Bush out

What is at stake: a series of speakers on the Bush RegimeIn early June, the World Can’t Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime will be holding a series of events delving deeply into different aspects of the Bush Regime’s crimes and the reasons that they must be driven out. The banning of abortion and birth control, the attacks on science, the criminal negligence in the run-up to and aftermath of Katrina, and the role the Democratic Party is playing in relation to this Regime and in relation to the movement to drive it out. These are issues and events that are challenging people’s assumptions and shaking up the national debate.

June 5th·
The Battle over Evolution and the Importance of Critical Thought. Dr. David Kohn, editor of the Darwin Manuscripts.

June 6th
Event- Esther Kaplan, Author of “With God on Their Side: How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy, and Democracy in George W. Bush's White House" speaks on the alarming rise of the Christian Right under the Bush Administration @ 6:30pm; The Church of St. Paul & St. Andrew 263 West 86th Street & West End ave

June 7thEvent- Ted Glick of Climate Crisis Coalition and speaker at the Bush Crimes Commission on Global Warming and the Bush Administration's Destruction of the Environment @ 6:30pm; the Metropolitan Community Church (446 West 36th Street

June 8th
Event- Why the Democrats Won't Stand and Fight: And Why YOU MUST w/ Sunsara Taylor, contributing writer to Revolution Newspaper; Dave Lindorff, author of This Can’t Be Happening, widely published investigative journalist, and regular columnist for Counterpunch; Stanley Rogouski, freelance writer and photographer; and more speakers

June 9th
Event w/ author Cristina Page of "How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics, and the War on Sex" will discuss the Christian fundamentalist attack on contraception and sex education. Introduced by World Can’t Wait student organizer Leah Fishbein.

OK, I don’t live in New York City, but maybe we can do something here in the mid-west (those of us who live here).

Riots at the Guantanamo concentration camp

Guantanamo Riots, last week counter the claim, many conservatives are making that our concentration camps provide humane treatment and that we are not mistreating anyone. Our local newspaper The Wichita Eagle, May 20, reported that some prisoners took tried to overdose on anti-depressant drugs. While supporters have said this is just an attempt at Moslem martyrdom, others have pointed out that these people have been tortured, endured intolerable conditions and many are innocent and cannot get any kind of trial or legally challenge accusations made against them.

According to The Times, May 20, 2006:

“THE largest prisoner uprising yet at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre was reported by the US military yesterday as the UN watchdog on torture called for the camp to be shut down.

The revolt took place when ten terror suspects clashed with ten guards trying to prevent a detainee from hanging himself in a communal living space in a medium security section of the camp on Thursday.”

This camp has, from its beginning, been a human rights violation no different from those concentration camps we’ve seen in Eastern Europe since the fall of the Soviet Union. For the United States to take part in such gross violations of human rights is a disgrace even worse than the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Other human rights groups have called for us to close them.

Let’s do so at once.

Does voting count?

In Kansas we are a “red” state, solidly controlled by the Republican Party. It seems the party in power does what it wants. A recent report in our local newspaper The Wichita Eagle, May. 12, 2006, said:
“Just as Sedgwick County is closing polling places and encouraging people to vote in advance to avoid long lines, the Legislature has passed a bill that could make it more difficult to cast advance ballots.
Republican supporters said requiring the name and address of anyone who delivers another voter's ballot to the election commissioners office would guard against improprieties.
Democrats say it could discourage advance voting.
Sedgwick County plans to eliminate 146 of its 208 polling places.
"It's a bad time to start adding things to the voting envelope when we're shutting down polling places," said Rep. Tom Sawyer, D-Wichita.”
So if the state is 2/3rds Republican and the Democrats have put up no real challenge why do they need to make it harder for the common person to vote? Kansas is tipical of much of today’s country, moving towards a one-party country, were it becomes harder and harder to remove the party in power. The Republicans are loosing popularity, but they want to make sure only their people, wealthy and well educated, vote.
Even before the Democrats began to loose their control we have to wonder how much our vote counted anyway. The candidates were different, the issues were different, but little changes no matter who gets elected. The Democrats had trouble nominating an anti-war candidate, during Vietnam, until George McGovern ran and he was helped by Richard Nixon who wanted an easy candidate to beat.
So why do we vote and why do we need democracy? Are people like Kansas Representative Todd Tiahrt really bad to begin with or do they just give in to the system that encourages them to take large amounts of money, to keep their party going as well as making an easy living off of the taxpayers. They all do it, including many Democrats. So maybe it’s the system and not the people we elect.
In Germany, I was told that it didn’t matter who got elected, because nothing ever seems to change. So this is not just a US problem.
What do we really choose?
Does voting make any difference?
What is democracy? Surely it involves some choices. But if they have no meaning, why bother?
Does democracy really bring us freedom? If so how? The people elected only restrict our lives more, not less, and they always cost us more of our own money then offer us lower taxes in which most people don’t seem to notice any real rise in personal income.
Even in China, during the 1960s, Mao once tried to persuade the party to have contested elections for party leaders. The idea was rejected by the party. So besides the Marxist-Leninist definition of democracy, Mao and others realized there had to be more choices in government.
Today major corporations seem to have all the real power. The real question is how to get that power back to the people?

Is this kind of voting our future?

Pakistani workers rally on May Day, protest price hike

LAHORE, Pakistan (AFP) - Thousands of Pakistani workers held May Day rallies in major cities across the country demanding increased wages in the wake of recent price hikes, witnesses said. The largest rally was in eastern city of Lahore where an estimated 10,000 workers waving red flags marched in the streets shouting slogans against price increases, poor working conditions, low wages and the privatisation of state enterprises, organisers and witnesses said on Monday. The protestors shouted slogans and torched an effigy representing price hikes. Similar rallies were held in the cities of Karachi, Multan and Faisalabad where trade union leaders demanded wage increases and protested price hikes following an increase in the price of petroleum products. Labour leaders in Multan demanded that the minimum monthly wage, currently around 3,500 rupees (around 58 dollars), be linked to price of 10 grams gold (0.3 ounces), around 200 dollars. May Day has come amid spiraling prices of oil, food and other daily items which have increased pressure on the government. President Pervez Musharraf in his May Day message said the government was committed to improving conditions for workers. "I would like to assure the working community that the government is committed to the cause of labour and is taking all possible steps to improve the economic conditions for workers," Musharraf said.

Pakistan has a workforce of more than 45 million people among a population of 150 million, according to government economic reports.
From: YahooForum:- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cmkp_pk.

May Day, Lahore 2006.

There are wild rumours circulating around the left about how

Communist Workers & Peasants Party

Pakistan

(CMKP) leader Taimur Rahman was beaten up in the May Day rally in Lahore. One version has it that Taimur was beaten up by the police, another has it that he was beaten up by the workers of Pakistan Workers Confederation, yet another newspaper report gives a picture of Taimur Rahman being pushed by members of the working women�s organization and reads that there was a fight between male and female workers at the May Day rally. Some of these rumours have circulated all the way from Lahore to London to Karachi and back to Lahore. Fascinating as these stories may be, let me once and for all put all these rumours to rest and give you the real low down on May 1^st 2006.

First, of all, it was never a big secret that Hassan Nasir was an identity not an underground name. I am Taimur Rahman. When we began writing on this forum we all selected an identity. I chose Hassan Nasir because he was a class-traitor (as I consider myself to be) and a symbol of communism in Pakistan (as I aspire to become one day), others chose Bhagat Singh, Vidrohi, I see red, Red Klashnikov, etc. etc. etc. Everyone active on the left knows who we are. My socialist articles appear regularly in main stream papers, interviews and articles by others have been published about my work and the party; my students, fellow faculty members, friends, acquaintances, reactionaries and progressives; from Sussex University to Lahore, the villages of Anjuman Mazareen Punjab to Hashtnagar, who does not know that I am a member of the Communsit Mazdoor Kissan Party and proud to be a die hard communist? I have announced it in no uncertain terms in every single political meeting I have ever attended. To paraphrase Marx from the Communist Manifesto: I disdain to conceal my views. Hassan Nasir is my pen name, not my secret identity or underground name.

For the last several years CMKP-Lahore always participates with the rally of the All Pakistan Trade Union Federation and Working Women�s Organization on May 1^st. This year was no exception and we made preparations for three buses of party workers to join us at Simla Pehari at 10 AM. In addition to CMKP workers we also invited Bhatta Workers, the Anjuman Mazarin Punjab, students, intellectuals and general sympathizers. We prepared 10,000 leaflets entitled �Seven years of Musharraf�s Government�, �Balochistan, we don�t need oppression, we need democratic rights�, a leaflet on the end of the Peshgi system of Bhatta workers, one on the crisis in the Sugar industry and several others. We also published and took along about 300 copies of Surkh Savera, dozens of banners, about a hundred placards of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao.

Last year we made a significant impact on the May Day demonstrations by forming an extremely well organized blocked (with arms linked) in which everyone was wearing the exact same CMKP t-shirt. The sight of a 100 odd people walking in a well organized block with linked arms wearing a huge hammer and sickle on red shirts, distributing more leaflets than the rest of the march put together, had a strong impact on the May Day march which can become quite chaotic from over-enthusiasm.

This year, however, we tried something even better. We rented a massive music system and loaded it on the back of a Shehzore lorry; for power we utilized a generator that was loaded on the passenger seat of the lorry; dressed up the lorry in CMKP colours and posters, and organized a mobile music concert of revolutionary music. The band was led ably by Shahram Azhar on vocals, I was playing the guitar, and two session players were playing a drum machine and a dhol. Aside from the usual Jalib, Faiz, Bhagat, Sufi music and other revolutionary songs, we prepared a new revolutionary version of Abrar ul Haq�s song �Mal o Mal�.
FROM:
CMKP Website:- http://cmkp.tk

New Bolivian president takes back resources

Right after the upset for the US corporate government, in Venezuala where elected President Hugo Chavez has taken back control of the country’s resources, President George Bush must now deal with the same situation in Bolivian with newly elected president Evo Morales.

According to the BBC news, 2 May 2006:

“Brazil and Spain have reacted sharply to a decree from Bolivia's President Evo Morales which asserts state control over the country's energy industry.
Under the May Day decree, private energy companies will have to sell a controlling stake to the Bolivian government and renegotiate contracts.
At the largest gas fields, royalty payments will increase from 50% to 82%.
The fate of Bolivia's gas reserves was at the heart of protests which saw two presidents thrown out of office.
Morales' move is the fulfillment of an election promise to secure better benefits for impoverished ordinary Bolivians from the gas reserves - the second largest in the continent.”

All across South America, left-leaning leaders are getting elected and taking back or protecting their natural resources. The people in that part of the world are sick of the US controlling everything they do and controlling their resources.
That’s another hit in the wallet for those who drive those big gas-guzzling SUVs, mini-vans or pickup trucks (for their looks only).
It looks like the conservatives will have to rely more and more on their Mid-east war to provide for the gas thirsty middle class and petit bourgeois drivers. Oil from Venezuela and the rest of Latin American will no longer be cheap.

"The time has come, the awaited day, a historic day in which Bolivia retakes absolute control of our natural resources. "