Victory for Morales

A concerted effort to destabilise the government of Bolivia's socialist president Evo Morales looks to have failed after the indigenous leader took on opponents in recall referendum. (Read on)

Guardian Clippings

The Guardian has a clippings section which profiles each time a reader makes a comment regarding an article written. Here is my profile which has links to my clippings.

Coverage of the Jamaican Elections 2007

In the coming elections on the 27th of this month the Jamaican people will be deciding on whether to reinstate current Prime Minister Most Hon. Portia Simpson-Miller, Jamaica's first female Prime Minister of the leftist People's National Party (PNP), or whether to elect main opposition leader Dr. Bruce Golding of the Jamaican Labour Party (JLP); 18 years out of office and considered more to the right of its opponent. (Read on)

An Evangelical atheist

Dawkins, in choosing a form of firebrand fundamentalist atheism over the discipline science, is no longer the champion of reason but rather a kind of evangelical against religion. (Read on)

The True Face of Modernisation

Just as the term becomes silently accepted, I am starting to understand the meaning of the words “Conservative” and “Modernised” when they are used together. The true essence of it cannot be found in David Cameron’s new given pledges (which do include maintaining the current tax system, reconnecting politicians to people, fending off rightwingers etc.) but appear, rather less obviously, in the unique means in which he reaches his conclusions.

This is best exemplified in his support for Barack Obama’s comments concerning absent black Father’s (incidentally, if Governments in the UK and the US change, will this expose the inherent differences in Obama’s progressive use of popular rightwing policy and Cameron’s rightwing use of popular progressive policy? Will this stand to be as good a relationship as Blair’s progressive conservatism and Bush’s conservative conservatism?)

“What Obama is doing is very brave. He is saying, yes, of
course black people in America have had appalling
discrimination, economic disadvantage, and deprivation and
all that follows from that. And that needs to change. But at the
same time we will never solve the long-term problems unless people
also take responsibility for their own lives. That is right.”

The first thing to say to this is, we need a clearer explanation of who isn’t taking responsibility of their own lives, to save transmitting a complete unfounded generalisation (for a more in depth analysis of this notion, see Lester Holloway’s comment).

It is much more dubious than so-called Toryism with a conscience, it is more a Liberal means to a Tory ends, in the sense that, yes of course economic inequality is apparent, poverty is a disgraceful reality, but one has to sort ones own home out, a Tory Government cannot help you now, put another way, Cameron cares enough not to care.

So the Liberal progressive bit is the I care way of analysing the problem, the bulk of Cameron’s policy is I care, but this is the extent to my help, best of luck.

Deductively, we can see that the traditional Conservatism which Cameron is the revolutionary guard against is the one which does not care before it pursues its usual Tory, small state initiatives. As Cameron says himself

“The point of modernising the Conservative Party
was not so that we could then, under the cloak of
respectability, introduce even bigger privatisation
programmes. This is not the point. This
modernisation wasn’t just so we could produce
unpalatable rightwing policies and stuff them
down the throats of the unsuspecting British public.”

The key difference, therefore, being that Toryism must produce a minimum of liberal tolerance, a minimum of perception to crime and the causes of crime, to the needs of minority groups, to bettering solutions for poverty which do not simply mask it. All of this before formalising small state, old-Tory solutions, this is otherwise known as a wolf in a sheep’s clothing. My initial response to Cameron’s “point of modernising the Conservative Party” was – Nonsense! – of course it is populism, modernisation’s only change was to force the Tories to care before they did nothing at all about Britain’s problems, at least the old-Tories were honest.

Is this not the task of Boris; to (pretend) respect for minority groups and tackling poverty in spite of his history of careless racial slurs, comparing homosexual marriage to marriage with dogs, and the countless other occasions which should turn the stomach of any non-prejudicial human. It is obviously quite peculiar when lists of Conservative Diary bloggers commented that the sacking of James McGrath was nothing but loony-left-esque PC madness, but this is a means to an end for the nu-Tories. I care, but you’re on your own.

The need for “modernisation” in the Conservative Party is limited to Cameron’s gut feeling that Britain will vote for someone who cares, hugs and so on. Only, we hope that voters will vote for someone who can produce real change, not for someone (like Cameron) who not only expresses the limits of his progressive policies, but also cares not to care, best of luck.

Comment on Morales´article on The Graudian website

I blogged an Evo Morales article on Comment is Free here

The Latest in Bolivia | The rich want it their way

Carl Packman / Beatriz Iglesias Tolosa

Two more Bolivian departments since Santa Cruz have now voted yes in referendums to be autonomous. Beni and Pando voted yes in the illegal referendums by 78% in the former and 83.2 in the latter. Tarija will be the fourth department to hold a referendum on 22nd of June.

Some believe that in 2 months there will be an election by Morales' own decision. Even though his Presidency should last until 2010, by his own admission, with the conflict of opinion in Bolivia, he must let the people decide his fate as President. ''I am not afraid of the people, that they tell the truth and judge us,'' Morales said on hearing the results.

One person we spoke to summerised the yes vote as, not because the rich are rich, but "because Morales is giving too much money to the poor, by those, once poor, who have managed to make something of themselves". This couldn't be more wrong, 2 months ago Santa Cruz, Bolivia's richest district voted yes in a referendum to be autonomous, feeling it wasn't their duty to pay more in tax to bring more people out of marginalisation. But more than this, Santa Cruz, by being autonomous, were allowed to feel distinct from the marginalised districts of Bolivia and drew an affirmative line across solidarity with them. The separatism in the other districts falls in to the same hands. The oligarchs know it simply isn't possible for the people to be free when they hoard a high proportion of the wealth. If the person we spoke to was right, that Morales' policies do not favour those who were once marginalised and find themselves within a higher tax bracket now, then those people should feel some sympathy towards those who are only now being looked out for since Morales' election win in 2005. But he is not right, the rich feel that their wealth does not have a knock on effect on the marginalised, and forget that concentrated wealth is paid for in the marginalised departments, who lack the privileges of the rich. The rich have also managed to use their status as influence on the voters of this referendum.

Another person we spoke to, Waldo, a Tour driver, pointed out the benefits of Morales' policies. The small villiages of the altiplano (South Bolivia) have around 3-4 hours of energy in their town due to solar panel systems. Morales plans to make it possible for 24 hours of energy in these towns, and also to pave their mountainous roads with concrete. "These are happy people" Waldo told us, and so long as Evo Morales remains premier, needn't be felt sorry for anymore. Policies the rich are opposed to are ones like these, 24 hours of energy for the hard working, distant Indiano communities. And if the other person we spoke to realised the hard work that these communities put in, he wouldn't have told us that some people "make something of themselves" deserve not to be taxed fairly, hard work does not obviously mean things pay off, Morales realised this, informing his condemnation of the plans for some districts to be autonomous.

Morales and his team are going to have to work hard to keep their governance, but the President realises that 4 districts cannot remain isolated. Bolivian Socialists are going to have to try their hardest to challenge the influence of the rich on the elections, justifying the rights of communities who have been downtrodden in the past by Governments who don't have their interests at heart. Morales does have their interests at heart and doesn't ask a lot to provide basic needs to his people. It is in the interest of us as Marxists to support Evo Morales as President and endorse his radicalism, discouraging short-term reformism with a complete overhaul of the capitalist system which only aims to curtail the voice of the people.