Back issues
No 1399 14th January 2012
Craven Labour capitulation to slump austerity the foulest betrayal yet. Reformist "democracy" is finished. Ending capitalist rule the only answer to unstoppable slump and world war is. Fake- "lefts" cover-up past failures & avoid immediate revolutionary perspectives
Supine declarations by the Labourites that imposing "austerity" cuts is unavoidable, just like the Tory ruling class, is the most disgusting betrayal yet in the long history of corrupt parliamentary opportunism.
This foul pulling up the ladder, to leave the working class floundering in misery, as the catastrophe of capitalist disintegration begins to bite with ever more savagery on those at the bottom of the heap, the underprivileged, unemployed, low-paid, disabled and increasingly destitute, further confirms the degenerate role played by reformism, which has only ever run capitalism for the capitalists.
It will now loyally run the Depression.
From the days of the "left" Attlee government and its anti-communist wars waged in Kenya, Malaysia, and Greece to the fascist Goebbels Big Lie-justified blitzkriegs set going by fascist Blairism against Sierra Leone, Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq, the dirty complicity of Labourism with imperialist exploitation has been its essence.
Reforms and "improvements" through parliament have always been based on the sweated labour of the Third World, a tiny amount of the super-profits buying off the corrupted top layers of the working class at home.
Reforms as a permanent improvement (rather than helping the working class build its struggle), were a fraud, destined to be slashed once inevitable catastrophic collapse returned.
But unstoppable crisis is an understanding which Labourism not only never warns the working class about but deliberately heads it away from.
But multiple shades of fake - "lefts" are no better, spending the post-war decades ridiculing the idea of a recurring world slump collapse and its interlocked war drive as "old hat" and "out-of-date Victorian Marxism", manoeuvring only to "influence" the parliamentary racket or "pressure it", while using fatuous "peace struggle" to allegedly contain capitalism's war drive through endless ineffectual "No to War" piety, disarming the working class.
Even now as the 2008 credit crunch crisis is more and more clearly the start of total meltdown of the historically-failed capitalist "free world" order, the glaringly obvious need for revolutionary perspectives for the working class are still not put forwards by any of these groups as a real and immediate option even if the reality of the crisis is now so undeniable that to maintain credibility they are forced to make academic statements on the need to "overturn capitalism".
But even the most "revolutionary" fake-"lefts" never make the immediate task the building of revolutionary perspectives declaring all talk of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" to be "not appropriate yet".
But capitalism has run into a brick wall and the working class is confronted everywhere with being driven into the ground.
There is only total revolution as an answer.
Capitalism is abandoning even the pretence of "democracy" nearly everywhere.
The crisis is being imposed by "technocrat governments" (Italy, Greece), cobbled together "coalitions" (UK) or by complete and overt identity between the ruling class and the "opposition" groups (Spain, and now UK too).
Sickest of all are the "freedom and democracy" pretences of the dominant imperialist world power, using the fake-"left" "politically correct" single-issue politics (anti-racism, feminism, gay rights etc) to sustain its otherwise shot-to-pieces presidential fraud "democracy" to impose brutal fascist blitzkrieg across the world.
New revelations of the degenerate corruption and torture once more endemic in the supposed "freedom and democracy" left behind in Iraq by "job done" departing US troops; of "pissing on the dead" atrocities on top of torture and civilian killing in Afghanistan; of the rage of Pakistan against killer drone incursions and raids; of endless escalations in the Zionist persecution "settler" land theft from the genocidally harried Palestinians; of the corrupt squabbling for Libyan loot by the racist counter-revolution now running NATO-blasted and destroyed Libya; and war provoking death-squad killings of scientists inside Iran organised by Zionism (backed by the US) all underline the sheer depravity of US and world imperialism.
The path into Third World War is unrelenting.
Even before the spiralling crisis collapse of the Western monopoly system has fully imploded (because still just barely propped-up with ludicrous levels of utterly unsustainable and inflationary Quantitative Easing fantasy credit), Third World War is well underway, with the main issue in the upcoming presidential election in America being essentially how much more depraved the American presidency should be, and whether it will need a Republican to escalate the aggressive "shock and awe", or whether Obama-ism can do it, without breaking completely its Goebbels lie pretence of "black nationalist" and "feminist" "progress".
But the squabbling mess of the primaries and the Tea Party movement, like the vicious "diplomatic" insult and recrimination among the Euro nations also underlines the desperate uncertainty and recriminatory loss of confidence in the ruling class everywhere throughout imperialism as the greatest historic failure and disintegration of its profit-making system in all history grips it by the throat.
Whichever way it turns, the unsolvable crisis only points towards the catastrophic failure that Marxist-Leninist science has constantly warned the working class was inevitable.
"Top Dog" imperialist the USA needs to step up the warmongering threats to ensure the world stays compliant, feeding it unlimited quantities of natural resources and super-profits from the surplus value extracted from near slave-level plantation and sweatshop labour throughout the Third World, despite its total bankruptcy.
But every blitzkrieg intensifies the hatred and resistance of the Third World masses to imperialist tyranny, spreading rebellion from "terrorist" insurgency and desperate suicide bombing to the mass upheavals of Egypt and Tunisia.
And despite the deliberate COUNTER-revolution in Libya, and Syria, this keeps spreading, now throughout Nigeria, and significantly into Hungary, one of the former workers states being slaughtered by the capitalist crisis.
The endless Euro crisis meanwhile demonstrates the sheer impossibility of getting out of the crisis; every "solution" leading to more problems in a downwards spiral.
Rescue the French banks by forcing Greece to pay and you threaten unstoppable sovereign debt collapse and a chain reaction; don't bolster them and there is a chain reaction of bank failures. And rebellion either way.
German exports need a bailout; German inflation needs imposed "discipline. Austerity devastates growth but expansion threatens debt failure.
Capitalism has failed and is using financial failure fears to bully workers into accepting penury. But Depression and world war is coming anyway.
Let it collapse. Workers have nothing to gain bailing out bankrupted bankers. They should take over factories farms, housing and the banks too - and everything. It needs a revolutionary leadership - Leninism.
Don Hoskins
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Anti-racism pretences around Steven Lawrence trial are a total fraud to bolster "democracy" illusions and head workers away from revolution: the only way racism can ever really be defeated
Discussion:
The astonishing lengths to which the capitalist state, its media, police, judges and politicians, have gone to secure, and even more, then publicise the convictions finally of two the Stephen Lawrence killers should bring up short all complacent "anti-racism" with the words "total humbug".
Serious anti-capitalist revolutionary understanding will suspect, and correctly, this is yet another layer of capitalist hoodwinking of the working class, behind the liberal pretence of "a step forwards in the fight against racism" etc etc, as plenty of liberal-Guardian type commentaries gushed around the trial and its convictions.
Anyone in the working class should be instantly suspicious of any issue which the capitalist media elevates to the top of the TV news bulletins for days on end, (one Channel Four News giving it nearly half its day's coverage) or devotes multiple double-page spreads to, as has happened with this trial, displacing far more serious continuing issues worldwide like what is happening to Nazi-NATO destroyed Libya, "pissed on" Afghanistan, and the scorched remnants of Iraq, the US escalation of African warmongering and neo-colonialism, the slump collapse everywhere, rebellion in the Middle East, etc etc.
Even the rabidly reactionary Daily Mail, with the 1930s headline "Hurrah for the Blackshirts" (Nazis) forever in its history, was banging the drum about its "bravery" in naming and shaming the criminals, while the judge in the case made a special emphasis to hold up his final statement and sentencing especially to allow "more of the public and the press" into the courtroom.
It is not simply that the loudly trumpeted "justice finally comes" is anyway years after the event (because of police delays which probably allowed much of the initial evidence to leak away); that at least three of the participants in a foul, vicious and disgusting scapegoat-murder continue to roam free, and that the "rules" of the capitalist legal system only allow for relatively limited and short prison sentences for the two in the dock, with the reactionary and racist ethos of the prison system in general almost certainly guaranteeing them a relatively soft time.
Nor is it simply that police humbug about "relentlessly pursuing" the remaining perpetrators was exposed within days by the announcement that the special team of investigators on this case was to be disbanded, and the case file details mothballed, because there are "no fresh leads", and because capitalist crisis cuts mean there is no money for such investigations anyway.
Even in the unlikely hypothetical event that Scotland Yard now recruited half its workforce from the black population, and properly promoted many of them as deserved, to avoid any question of "institutionalised racism", and even it then put all of them onto the investigation non-stop, armed with the most fantastic of modern forensic technology etc and, as a result, the entire crew of backward nazi-minded no-hopers had been rounded up, convicted and had been banged up in the harshest of conditions for the rest of their lives, it would still be a gigantic con trick.
The notion of "anti-racism" has been one of the great frauds ever perpetrated on the working class, (alongside feminism and "gay" rights), not because it isn't a foul symptom of an exploitative society, but because changing that is a single-issue reformist impossibility within capitalism.
Racism arose from exploitation, and not the other way round
Workers are not exploited because of race; racism exists because of exploitation and the ruling class use of any and every possible way of dividing and splitting workers.
Racial oppression was based, not least, on the three centuries of genocidally murderous slave-trading out of Africa, as a convenient ruling class means of ideological justification for its inhuman oppression; but plenty of inhuman exploitation was simultaneously being imposed upon workers in Britain and America at the same time, and the rest of Europe and no more horrifically than upon the entirely white population of Ireland, kept in colonially dominated thrall for centuries and eventually slaughtered in their millions by the Great Famine.
The real divisiveness and antagonism of capitalism, the class divide and exploitation, will not only endlessly tear apart society however notionally "colour-blind" it has become, or is allegedly battling to be (which is a nonsense anyway) but will always revive every kind of antagonism and especially racism of all kinds (anti-Irish, anti-Lithuanian, anti-Islam, anti-Arab, anti-Yorkshire, anti-bloke-up-the-road) and particularly so as the unstoppable crisis collapse unravels faster and faster in to utter Depression disaster, destroying jobs and wiping out livelihoods.
Even if the pretence is made that a specific form of "anti-black" racism, meaning anti-Caribbean and anti-African racism, is "being fought" it simply seeps into other channels, as found suitable by capitalism, such as anti-Islamic, or anti-Pakistani, or anti-gypsy racism and all the demented hostility towards the Middle East focussed around the nonsensical "war on terror" firstly and then counter-revolutionary provocations against assorted demonised countries like Libya and Syria.
Even the notion that "anti-black" racism is being dealt with is a nonsense anyway as any black driver, stopped yet again in the city suburbs for imaginary "driving infringements" can attest or as the deprived youths in the UK riots areas will also confirm after years of constant harassment by police, misuse of "stop-and-search" being one of the factors which led to the explosive developments in the summer and almost certainly plenty more to come.
As increasingly desperate deprivation and poverty is imposed on the bottom layers of society in even the richest countries, the frantic scrabble for survival will whip up the most desperate hostilities too, directed against everyone and anyone perceived to be competing for jobs and scarce salaries and wages, or even the tiniest scraps needed for survival as things get more and more desperate.
Meanwhile the real fascist racist depravity – lubricated by constant anti-Islam, anti-"dictator" anti-"anything that can be used" scapegoating to whip up petty nationalism, chauvinistic self-righteousness and posturing, lying "freedom and democracy" smugness – has continued non-stop for a decade and a half, blitzing and destroying country after country with a brutal savagery that is far beyond the imagination of even the Hitlerites.
It is capitalism and its total vicious competitive scramble imposed on everyone in society, and most of all the working class as the bottom, which will endlessly and always stir up such bitterness and hatreds, not only in various deliberate ways, such as the constant and deliberate racist pressure of the "stop and search" laws, but arising out of these constant molecular level antagonisms which capitalist society generates.
There is no more point in "fighting racism" as such than there would be in "treating spots" in a case of measles, with Calamine lotion.
Whatever temporary salving effect there might be, it will do nothing to stop the problem.
For that the source and cause of the issue has to be tackled, and the "measles" in the case of racism is the monstrous, exploitative, capitalist system itself and the catastrophic collapse it is falling into.
It must be overturned.
When a planned socialist world can be constructed, under the guidance of the dictatorship of the proletariat, firmly holding power against the old capitalist counter-revolution, then gradually and steadily a society will develop of cooperative rationality in which ingrained racism will slowly disappear, perhaps taking some generations, just as it is disappearing in Cuba's workers state for example
As the quote below explained at the time of the "Leeds footballers" incident, all capitalist society moralising against racism is not simply pointless without this revolutionary perspective, destined to break on the rocks, but a misleading distraction for the working class from the real questions of overturning capitalism.
Here's what the EPSR has argued in the past, in this case around two footballers beating up a black club-goer in Leeds, but even more applicable to the murderous thuggery in the Lawrence case and many others, including the unprovoked Christmas shooting of an Indian student in Salford:
Pointless support or sympathy for overpaid racist thugs is not the issue. The problem is the total confusion about capitalism's responsibility for sustaining racist backwardness which this sort of personal and individual vilification lets off the hook. Regarding football louts (on or off the pitch) as a 'source' or 'cause' of fascist prejudice (a) identifies the wrong culprit; and (b) even more disastrously implies a completely false 'solution' via reformist moralising pressure on individuals to seriously re-think and revise their behaviour.
While bourgeois 'legality' and widespread moral condemnation can indeed force individuals to behave better, and by example make everyone think much more carefully about how they see things and how they give vent to their prejudices, neither the law, nor the pulpit, nor the occasional press witchhunt of someone (usually a celebrity) for criminal or outrageous behaviour can even stem the growth of racist and fascist mentalities, let alone eradicate them from society.
Going along with the blackguarding of Bowyer and Woodgate is helping to spread exactly the WRONG signals to society.
It implies that reformist pressures and moral example really work in this society.
It also implies that racism and fascism will become less and less of a problem.
Neither of these is remotely true. In fact they are both so false; and about such crucial questions in society, that going along with this attempted campaign of public vilification of Bowyer and Woodgate amounts to support for criminal brainwashing of the working class.
Aggressive expressions of race-prejudice and fascist-party support are certain to keep growing in Britain.
Pointlessly scapegoating Bowyer and Woodgate as though they were a 'source' of this, which could be 'cured' by their vilification, is more likely to make them martyrs to the cause of increasing British nationalist chauvinism than anything else.
The world capitalist crisis is inevitably going to turn the existing massive race-prejudice (albeit still latent for the moment) into active political fascist jingoism.
And leading the way in whipping it up will be this selfsame capitalist press, - as it has done in the past with "Hop off you Frogs", etc, - which currently finds it convenient to put on a big show of anti-racist self-righteousness and bravado by heaping published abuse on Bowyer and Woodgate and daring them to sue.
And this is the big issue, - what this selfsame capitalist press is going to be doing in the near future as the international trade-war and slump deepen, sending bankruptcies, unemployment, homelessness and poverty soaring.
To keep the working class divided so that it does not get together to raise a revolt against the degeneracy of the capitalist freemarket system, it is the capitalist press, television and radio which will have the crucial role in initially playing on people's existing-prejudices.
The riots have already kicked off in 2001 because of the worsening economic perspectives and feelings of frustration and insecurity which the slump damage so far has caused or threatened. With ethnically-segregated residential areas already (due to the persistent cultural shallowness of the capitalist system and its encouragement of clannishness for reasons of social and economic survival or getting-by), - it is inevitable that worsening conditions for jobs, housing, schooling, health service, etc, etc, will spread capitalism's rotten basic rivalry in all things (jobs, housing, wellbeing, living standards, education, etc) into blame and envy about the slump too. As with scarce council resources already, with endless complaints that services for one community are better than for another or are being improved at the expense of another, - - so will resentment escalate astronomically when jobs have to be lost, or closures made, and different ethnic groups all think that they are getting the unfair treatment.
Once living standards start falling, and people can no longer provide for their families as they used to be able to, - then the latent prejudices which saw riots around the North in 2001 will begin to be whipped up into hardline fascist politics.
It is capitalist society AS A WHOLE which will be leading the way, no one part of it.
It is pointless just blaming the fascist parties, for example. They are the SYMPTOMS of growing divisions and conflicts in society, not the cause.
It is pointless blaming the capitalist media as such. They don't run capitalism.
But the media, of course, keep everyone brainwashed so that the capitalist system remains protected.
And that is just what the press are doing now, pretending that they could never be seen as a key part of the causes of racism by putting on this huge show of vilifying Bowyer and Woodgate, thereby also conveniently adding simultaneously to the general brainwashed confusion about where race-riots come from by implying that overpaid thoughtless thugs are the cause, and that giving Bowyer and Woodgate a good public kicking will help wipe out the phenomenon.
But is it, even so, not a good thing that two potentially fascist-minded, public figures have at least been publicly humiliated for their thuggish and suspect racist conduct?
Not really, because all of the anger which might have been channelled against capitalist society for routinely creating such wretchedness (as this type of after-drinking-hours brawl) has been vented uselessly on these oiks, who are also victims of capitalism in their own sad way. (EPSR 1135 07-05-02)
Murder is obviously more serious even than such beatings but it is still pure diversion to talk about "fighting racism" as such, which it why it has been a constant mainstay of the multiple varieties of the fake-"left", one of the single-issue reformist issues used to preen and pose "righteously" (and "politically correctly") while avoiding the real matter of actual world capitalist crisis and collapse driving the entire planet back into not just "wars" (for oil or whatever shallow partial "left" explanations are advanced) but total warmongering mayhem and destruction.
The world does not face a steady climb to gradually improve society – including attitudes on race – but the need to get straight to the revolutionary point, focusing the minds of the entire working class on the real issue of ending this capitalist mess.
Whose side they are on depends on this revolutionary question in the end, whatever their flaws, weaknesses and prejudices. These (including sometimes racist attitudes) must be constantly battled against but it will only be mostly flawed human material that will make the revolution, because capitalist distortion has produced no other kind.
Issues are whipped up constantly like the Basildon gypsies eviction, and the ruling class is always fanning the flames to turn one section of workers on another, such with specious surveys, like no less that three just out, "proving" that jobs have been "taken by immigrants". Utter crap.
It is the permanent condition of capitalism to maintain a "reserve army of the unemployed" to keep workers disciplined and fearful, and this always is increased in times of slump failure; it is capitalism which takes the jobs, not immigrants, as was proven in the Soviet Union where unemployment was rapidly eradicated once a socialist planned economy was built.
The internationalisation of the football moralising with recent suspensions for some players around "name calling", and more of the same facile moralising "tut-tutting" in the UK against crowd taunts, only extends the cosmetic nonsense of this anti-racism game-playing posturing by "liberal" capitalism.
(That has nothing to do with pandering to reactionary dismissals of the matter by the bourgeois football organisations so thoroughly integrated into monopoly capitalist commercial interests but everything to do with exposing and making clear the failure of the fake- "lefts" to talk about the real causes of conflict, hatred and war at all levels of society.)
The fake-"left" sanctimonious moralising on these questions is utter opportunism which embeds layers and layers of duplicity, throughout the entire corrupt Labourite spectrum and all of the "revolutionary" swamp, Trotskyites and revisionists alike.
None are more disgusting than the fat, fake-"left" smug opportunism of the likes of Labour MP Dianne Abbott playing the black nationalist card straight after the Lawrence trial, with a shallow rabble-rousing reverse-racist comment on Twitter, which deliberately and consciously takes the attention of all away from the capitalist crisis now driving the entire world into chauvinist warmongering conflict, under the pretence of "fighting racism".
The sickest part of this opportunism was the lying pretence that "divide and rule" is a race issue and not a class one, deliberately obscuring the fact that race and racism is consciously used as a way of splitting workers from workers, disrupting and dividing their class solidarity which is the only way that they will ever be able to organise the vital revolutionary fight to end the depravities and antagonisms of capitalist class society.
Divide and rule was certainly a key weapon of imperialist colonialism, and continues to be used by it.
But is part of class rule, the worldwide dominance of capital over the entire planet by the tiny ruling class whose dictatorship – the dictatorship of big money capital – is the reality behind all pretences of "democracy" and "freedom".
Abbott and her ilk, and the fake-"left" revolutionaries who give credence to this "left" wing of reformism by "critical support", sustain the now almost historically bankrupt "parliamentary democracy" lie with special attention to confusing the doubly exploited and oppressed racial minority sections.
And by doing so they ensure the continuation of "divide and rule" and oppression.
Playing the race game itself is divide and rule, and so too is reverse racism, even if more understandable in its origins among racially harried sections of the population.
"Understandable" is not clarity, and deliberately fostering the continuation of race separateness and hostility, as Abbott is doing as a well-known and "popular", and cynically knowing leader figure, is playing the capitalist game.
What else can be expected from an opportunist careerist like Abbott who has wormed her way into a Labour hierarchy that sustains and bolsters British capitalism and its sick "democracy" joke, misleading the working class for decades, leaving it now victim to the "austerity" of catastrophic capitalist collapse and failure.
It is the same Labourism now actively colluding in the imposition of the slump disaster onto workers under the pretence that "austerity has to be accepted" signalling to the ruling class that Labour will step in to keep that Slump "discipline" going if the inevitable and unstoppable rising popular discontent should bring down the botched-together, unstable "Coalition" fraud of "democratic" government.
Could anything be smellier and more repellent??
Yes, Labour warmongering racism. The Labour "lefts" and their "revolutionary" Trot and revisionist "conditional" supporters, are part of propping up Blairism, (with a few scatted "rebel votes" carefully calculated to avoid real opposition), which was the main instigator of two Nazi wars against Iraq and Afghanistan built on openly Goebbels lies (WMD etc, the start of a now continuous fascist war drive for US imperialism to continue its world oppression by riding out the disastrous crisis now sucking the world into a vortex of slump collapse and war.
There always has been lardings of racism embedded in the tyrannical suppression and sweatshop exploitation of the Third World which provides the enormous super-profits keeping hypocritical Western "freedom and democracy" afloat.
But with the crisis-driven turn to continuous warmongering (effectively the opening scenes of the Third World War) this is stepped up even further, in contemptuous and careless killing and slaughter in Iraq and Afghanistan of insurgent resistance and civilians (torturing, rampaging, collecting body parts, even literally pissing on bodies).
Most sick of all is the six month Nazi-NATO blitzkrieging of Libya where depraved racism and hatred has been taken up a level to all-out prisoner massacres, death-squad terror pogroms and ethnic cleansing expulsion against anyone with a "black skin".
This depravity is all apiece with the extreme violent reaction stirred up and provoked by the Western intelligence agencies, a ragtag band of monarchism, petty bourgeois nazi-arrogance, reactionary tribalism and volunteer colonial stoogery in a violent pseudo-"rebellion" falsely dressed up as part of the Arab Spring (to fool the philistine ignorance and willing gullibility of the class-collaborating fake-"left") and given military support once all-out civil war had been achieved.
Such backward racism, is almost certainly still continuing despite the deliberate and sinister silence of the Western politicians ever since (including Abbott and the other "Labour lefts") with the ever-compliant and willing bourgeois media now diverting attention onto whipping up similar hatreds against Syria's bourgeois nationalism, and behind that scapegoating Iran.
But there is worse still.
The entire American fraud of "presidential democracy" which is not only leading but escalating this foully racist and destructive warmongering, is being kept going itself only by taking advantage of the "anti-racist" duping of the American and world working class, namely in the form of Barack Obama and the "civil rights achievement" of a "black man in the White House" (along with the twin weapon of Hilary Clinton's "feminist" achievement).
It has been the culminating point of a ruling class adaptation to such fake- "left" sponsored single-issue politics, which not only quickly absorbed its essentially non-threatening demands, (because non-revolutionary) but which has used them as a significant weapon to head the working class away from the only effective anti-racism there is, which is total overthrow of capitalism.
For the still diehard sections of the ruling class who cannot even stomach this much of a concession to their arrogance there is the consolation that like all reformism, official anti-racism is mostly so much flannel anyway with just a few token gestures made: that like everything else it can be commodified and exploited for profit: that "black participation" can usefully soak-up the best, most active and brightest of the black population and recruit them for capitalism's own ends in management, science, IT, the anti-racist industry itself and so on (just as it recruits does the most intelligent and dynamic individuals of the working class and the Third World); that the rest (which will always be the great majority kept as "losers" in the inequality and unfairness of capitalism) can be useful gun fodder for the escalating fascist warmongering monopoly capitalism is waging as it drives into total world war mayhem to try and escape its crisis disaster and collapse.
As a last resort such politics have now been directly mobilised to keep going the "democracy and freedom" pretence of American imperialism even as it escalates its fascist international warmongering and terrorising.
Just when the presidential democracy racket itself had virtually collapsed, as the impact of the Afghanistan and Iraq debacles and resistance, essentially brought down the George W Bush presidency (facing the lowest approval levels in history in a welter of corruption, exposés and ruling class splits and confusion (and the same effectively forcing Blair's retirement in the UK), the "black man in the White House" get-out-of-jail free card anti-racism card has been played to give the whole democracy fraud a further extension,
Obamaism has not been a "step forwards" (under pressure or otherwise) for US or the world's masses.
Exactly as Marxism predicted against a welter of hostility and opposition, which saw half the EPSR support sneak away in the flurry of petty bourgeois bemusement and confusion which swept through the US "civil rights" movement, a hoodwinked Third World population (particularly in Africa) and much public opinion in Europe, the black/feminist Obama/Clinton presidency has been even worse than Bush.
Obama has not only continued the monstrous warmongering blitzkrieg on the planet which is now constant, but has escalated it hugely, stepping up the use of robotised death squads (automated killer drones) in Afghanistan and increasing troop levels in giant surges; spread the war into Pakistan with illegal cross border raids, (drone and human), instigated the death-squad raid that "took out" Osama bin Laden in a completely illegal war-crime assassination, grotesquely publicised and cheered on; congratulated (and colluded with) the coup perpetrators in Honduras and subsequent terror assassinations of dozens of journalists and opponents; supported the bloody coup in Cote d'Ivoire instigated by the reactionary Sarkozy regime in France; turned a blind eye to the cold-blooded shooting down of around 70 "redshirt" democracy demonstrators in Bangkok to prop up the reactionary Thai monarchy; turned a blind eye to the shooting down, beating, imprisonment and torture of popular demonstrations in the Gulf States, Yemen, Oman and Saudi Arabia; continued to arm, finance and sustain the reactionary military dictatorship in Egypt, which despite retreats before the Tahrir Square revolutionary upheavals, and the token sacrifice of former gangster dictator Hosni Mubarak, continues to impose its rule over the notional "democracy" that has been "granted"; continues subsidies (billions of dollars and arms) and support to the ever more genocidally Nazi Zionist-Jewish colonial intrusion of the artificial "state" of Israel into the stolen lands of the Palestinians; and has been at the heart of the NATO blitzkrieg destruction of large part of Libya and the sickening mass killing of its defence forces and civilians alike.
That is not half of it.
The Guantánamo torture and concentration camp remains not only open but renovated and upgraded, and the CIA and military operators there unpunished, as is the case for most of the foul torture, humiliation and civilian killing perpetrated in Iraq, notably in Falluja, and numerous incidents like the Hadditha killings (well documented by the film-maker Nick Broomfield), in Afghanistan's Bagram, and more.
Obama's watch sees the massive increase in the Pentagon's plans to directly police the African continent with troop deployments in Uganda for example and ; the intensification of US military input into Africa, via Africom and deployments in Uganda and South Africa among others, as well as escalation of the Pacific military threats to China and rival Japanese imperialism.
And Obama-ism has been the main agent for the Quantitative Easing gigantic payoffs made to the bankrupted banks and trading houses on Wall Street, not only the key mechanism for ensuring the devastating Depression disaster of capitalism's collapse is forced onto the working class , but the central weapon in the massively stepped up trade and currency wars now forcing Europe to take the brunt of the disaster (after Japan previously).
America's strategy of "shock and awe" bullying intimidation of the whole planet, to force the crisis outwards as its best means of surviving the world crash crisis, suppressing worldwide rebellion and rival capitalist challenges for collapsing markets, and riding the eventual world war turmoil that is capitalism's only strategy for escaping from "overproduction" has been escalated for 15 years.
It has been made possible by the greatest confidence trick of all time, covering up an escalation of fascist aggression and torturing war, with slickest ever political-machine manipulation American "democracy".
Obama-ism with its sick-inducing soft-focus homesy family images and packaged "personality" imagery, tricks honed and refined ever more in Obama's home Chicago Democrat party (which has the most cynical and corrupt reputation for manipulation and stitch-up of all) has used this "political correctness" single-issue, to rebuild the despised and increasingly distrusted hypocrisy of American bourgeois democracy and cover it up. Fascism that has fooled everyone it is not fascism, is the greatest propaganda triumph of all time, thanks to the fake-"lefts" and decades of diversionary anti-revolutionary politics.
But Obamaism inside, as outside America, displays utter racist degeneracy. The growing black prison numbers are massively out of proportion to the population percentage; "One in three Afro-Americans stands a lifetime risk of going to jail" according to the bourgeois press. "More are in prison, on parole or probation than enslaved in 1850." Anti-Hispanic racism is grotesque:
Isobel Gomez's apartment on the outskirts of Birmingham, Alabama, has the hunkered-down quality of a wartime bunker. There are boxes of bottled water, rice, beans and tortillas stacked against the living room wall – sufficient to last her family of five several days. The curtains are drawn and the lights on, even though it is early afternoon.
For the past two weeks, this small space has been Gomez's prison cell. She has been cooped up here, shut off from natural light and almost all contact with the outside world since 28 September, the day a judge upheld the new law that has given Alabama the distinction of having the most draconian immigration powers in America.
Gomez (the name is not her real one, at her request) used to be a gregarious person, taking her daughters to school, visiting her mother nearby, shopping every day. Now she leaves the apartment only once a week, to stock up on those boxes of essentials at the local Walmart.
The day after the new law was upheld, Gomez saw three police cars driving around her housing complex, which is almost entirely Hispanic in occupancy. Word went around that the police asked men standing on the street to go inside their homes or face arrest.
She took the mandate literally, and from that moment has barely set foot outside. She no longer drives, her car sitting unused by the kerbside. Under the new law, police have to check the immigration papers of anyone "suspicious" they stop for a routine traffic violation – a missing brake light, perhaps, or parking on the wrong spot.
"If they see me they will think I'm suspicious and then they will detain me indefinitely," Gomez says.
Why would the police think she was suspicious? "They will see the colour of my skin."
Gomez's is one of thousands of Hispanic families in Alabama trapped in a sort of half-life while they wait to see what will happen in the courts to the new law, HB56. Both the US department of justice and a coalition of local groups are challenging the clampdown at the 11th circuit appeals court in Atlanta, Georgia. The court must decide whether to allow the new law to stand or to block it pending higher judgment by the US supreme court; its ruling is expected by the end of this week.
While the judges deliberate, Alabama's uniquely tough new provisions remain in effect. In addition to the police check of "suspicious" people, anyone failing to carry immigration papers is now deemed to be committing a criminal act.
Undocumented immigrants are also forbidden from entering into a transaction with the state, which has already led some town halls to demand residents produce their papers or risk losing water supply. Schools have been instructed to check the immigration status of new pupils as young as four.
Even families legally entitled to be in the country are being caught. Cineo Gonzalez was shocked a few weeks ago when his six-year-old daughter came home from school carrying a printout. It gave details of HB56 and its implications, under the heading: "Frequent questions about the immigration law."
Gonzalez is a US permanent resident, having come from Mexico more than 20 years ago. His daughter is an American citizen, having been born in Alabama. Both are entirely legal. Yet she was one of only two children in her class – both Hispanic in appearance – who were given the printout.
Why was she singled out, Gonzalez asked the deputy head teacher. "Because we gave the printout to children we thought were not from here," came the reply.
Cineo Gonzalez is a taxi driver. Soon after the law came into effect, he began getting calls from Hispanic families. "People started asking me for prices. How much would it cost to go to Indiana? How much to New York? Or Atlanta, or Texas, or Ohio, or North Carolina?".
At about 2am one night, he was woken up by a woman who asked him to come and pick her and her family up immediately and drive them to North Carolina.
He went drove to their apartment where he found the two parents, three children and a small number of bags waiting for him. "Can you hurry up, we're very scared," the woman said. "The police followed my husband on his way back from work and that's why we're leaving."
It took eight hours to get to North Carolina. The children slept the whole journey; the father sat in silence; the mother cried all the way.
"That was devastating," Gonzalez says. "I knew things were bad, but this really showed me something was happening. Families are being destroyed."
'Outside the offices of the Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama, HICA, about 30 people – including several small children – are sitting waiting for legal advice. ..In a consulting room, a case manager is drawing up a power of attorney letter for a couple who fear they could be rounded up and deported at any time. The legal document – one of hundreds taken out by parents in the state – sets out what should happen to their eight-year-old daughter...[if] they both suddenly disappear.
In this case, it gives one of the couple's friends, a US citizen, the power to make decisions for the girl on anything from medical procedures to schooling. "This is very cruel, very extreme," the mother says, asking to remain anonymous. "We have never done harm to anyone. We've only worked hard. .."
Why does she think they – the Alabama authorities – are doing this? "We ask ourselves that too. Why are they doing this? They say it's because we are taking jobs from local people, but I don't think it can be about that. It's about racism."..
Most of the 100 or so families who are now coming to HICA for help every day are doing so to have powers of attorney drawn up for their kids. Others want advice about what to do when teachers enquire about their children's status. Increasingly, people are coming in having been fired by their employers for lack of immigration papers.
Efren Cruz has lived in Alabama for 23 years having come here when he was 14 from Mexico. He speaks fluent English with a rich southern drawl. Since HB56 came into effect he has been sacked by four different steel and paper mills where he has worked on and off for years. Now he's jobless.
But he's not taking it supinely. He laughs at the suggestion that the new law is designed to stop illegal Mexicans taking jobs away from worthy and needy local Alabamans. "...We do the jobs that nobody else wants to do."
...across the state this week, poultry and meat processing plants, including the giant Tyson, have been closed or put on limited production schedules because of an unofficial walkout by Hispanic workers. In the north of the state, the pungent smell of rotting tomatoes hangs in the air across huge tranches of land that has been virtually abandoned by workers who, through fear or anger, are no longer turning up to gather the harvest.
Just how long this standoff will continue, and what happens to the thousands of families caught in limbo, will depend largely on what the 11th circuit appeals court rules, and ultimately on the final say of the US supreme court.
In the meantime, though, Isobel Gomez remains trapped inside her prison cell apartment.
There are complex issues raised by immigration, which also cannot be solved by "anti-racist" reform as EPSR 1333(23-04-02) described:
More and more conflict is inevitable,[as crisis grows] thereby unavoidably confirming the more 'realistic' scenario of fascist politics, and rubbishing the petty-bourgeois PC idealism of all "we will stop fascism" subjectivists.
And in these circumstances, all ultra 'left' 'anti-racist' posturing of the "open the doors to all immigration and all asylum-seekers" kind will only be seen by the whole working class as throwing more fuel on the flames, and will thus further play into the BNP's hands.
The anti-immigrant turn by 'official' social-democracy will solve nothing either, - other than possibly save New Labour some votes that Blunkett & Co might otherwise have lost to the BNP.
But increased racist legislation is still a further drift down the road to fascism, whether introduced by Blunkett or the BNP.
And although it is precisely all the OTHER problems of imperialism (slump, inter-imperialist trade war, etc) which make fascism the system's final destination in crisis, (racism being the SYMPTOM of fascism and not remotely its CAUSE), ever-increasing confusion about ever-increasing social degeneration is not helping anything.
Racism and all other problems of capitalism can be tackled only by the fight to abolish the profit making system itself. All else, as crisis rapidly deepens, is an opportunist diversion. Build Leninism.
Don Hoskins
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World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).
US bullies UN unanimity that Cuba blockade is inadmissible
UNITED NATIONS, October 25. -Nations participating in the 66th UN General Assembly overwhelmingly rejected, for the 20th time, the U. S. economic, commercial and financial blockade of Cuba
Jorge Valero, Venezuela's ambassador to the UN, reiterated his condemnation of the criminal blockade of the island and stated that the siege of Cuba "is not an abstract measure implemented against a government but, on the contrary, has a dramatic impact on daily life... and represents a massive violation of the human rights of a dignified and sovereign people. "
Valero stated, "In a context characterized by constant threats to the sovereignty of states and by systematic violations of international legality, it is now more than ever the time to demand an end to the shameful blockade of Cuba. "
"It is time for double standards in the implementation of international justice to end. We cannot continue allowing the weak to be condemned for being weak and tolerating the violations committed by the imperialists of the North, " he affirmed
Li Bandung, representing the Chinese delegation, described the blockade as senseless and called on Washington to lift the illegal measure and begin to normalize relations with Cuba
"China has always believed that countries should develop mutual relations on the basis of respect for rights and sovereignty, " he said
He emphasized that China is opposed to any unilateral sanction against Cuba because this violates the right to survival and development, and affects commercial relations among countries
Russia described Washington's hostile policy as inadmissible and its representative highlighted that the measure has had effects contrary to those sought in the Cold War
"This practice, which has damaged international relations over the past 50 years, demonstrates that the interests of third countries are being violated due to the blockade's extended measures," he noted
Le Hoai Trung, Vietnam's permanent representative to the UN, likewise condemned the blockade and called for its immediate end because it is in violation of the international policy proclaimed by the UN Charter, has a counterproductive and illegal effect at the global level and is an attack on the life of a whole people
The Vietnamese delegate also cited agreements adopted by the Non-Aligned Movement against Washington's policy of hostility, PL added
Meanwhile, through its representative Nikolai Ovcyanko, Belarus condemned the blockade as a violation of UN principles
For the Bielorusian diplomat, Washington's unilateral punitive measures constitute a rupture with the principles of international law, while negatively affecting the living
conditions of the Cuban people
"In this context, Belarus rejects any focus based on the utilization of unilateral commercial measures to the detriment of other states," he stated, also condemning the imposition of similar sanctions on his country
Other nations, including Bolivia, Mexico, Nicaragua and Uruguay, also expressed arguments in support of their vote for the resolution presented by Cuba.
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World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).
Cuba will change everything that needs change within the Revolution and within socialism – Statement by Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla on the resolution "The necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba." New York, October 25, 2011
Mr. President: ON November 13, 1991, this General Assembly made the decision to include in the program of its next period of sessions, an examination of the issue, "The necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba."
Those were the times during which the United States decided, with cruel opportunism, to tighten the siege of the island, which was fighting alone. It did so through the so-called Torricelli Act, which cut off our trade in foodstuffs and medicines with subsidiaries of U.S. companies based in third countries. That was the official act which made notorious and public the extraterritorial implementation of the blockade laws against third states
It would have seemed impossible then that, 20 years later, this Assembly should be considering today the same issue, so closely linked to the right of nations to self-determination, international law, international trade regulations and the raisons d'etre of this organization
It has already become one of the traditional issues of the General Assembly, which calls for the most reiterated statements, with the most categorical and overwhelming support and which demonstrates with the greatest clarity the uncomfortable isolation of the aggressor country and the heroic resistance of a people who refuse to give up their sovereign rights
For two decades, the international community has unvaryingly and repeatedly demanded an end to the economic, commercial and financial blockade of Cuba by the United States. It has done so through resolutions approved almost unanimously every year, through dozens of appeals by heads of state and delegations referring to the issue in the high-level general debate of this Assembly, and statements by virtually all international agencies and state groupings, in particular those of Latin America and the Caribbean
In 1996, the Helms-Burton Act extended without precedent the blockade's extraterritorial dimensions and integrally codified "regime change" and a subsequent direct intervention in Cuba. Nobody knows that the 2004 Bush Plan for Cuba has been left without effect
The Secretary General's report on this issue, which includes statements from more than 160 countries and specialized United Nations agencies, illustrates in great detail the persistence of this criminal policy and its direct effects on the Cuban population and economy
The direct economic damage inflicted on the Cuban people through the implementation of the blockade is already in excess of $975 billion, calculated at the depreciated value of the dollar against the gold index
Article II, Paragraph b) of the 1948 Convention against Genocide typifies as an act of genocide, and I quote, "...serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group" and in Paragraph c), and I quote, "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."
According to a United States government memorandum of April 6, 1960, the objectives of the blockade are "...disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship [...] to weaken the economic life of Cuba [...] denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government."
The United States has never concealed the fact that its objective is to defeat the revolutionary government and destroy the (p6)? (from page 8) constitutional order which the people sovereignly defend, what former President George W. Bush called "a regime change" and which is now taking on new dimensions
Mr. President:
Despite the false image of flexibility that the current government of the United States is trying to convey, the
blockade and sanctions remain intact, in total implementation and their extraterritorial nature has been accentuated in recent years. As a distinctive feature of the period of President Obama, the persecution of Cuban financial transactions throughout the world has been reinforced, with no respect for the laws of third countries or the opposition of their governments
Cuba remains powerless to freely export and import goods and services of any kind to or from the United States. It cannot use the U.S. dollar in its transactions, including those paid to the United Nations Organization and other international agencies. Neither can it have accounts in this currency in third country banks or access to credits from banks in the United States, their subsidiaries in third countries or in international institutions such as the World Bank or the Inter-American Development Bank
The prohibition on trading with United States subsidiaries in third countries remains unchanged. Business executives from other nations interested in investing in my country continue being sanctioned, threatened or included on blacklists. International agencies, UN programs and agencies have not escaped this policy, due to the government of the United States blocking the cooperation given by these bodies to Cuba, including cooperation directed at areas of extreme sensitivity
The seizure, in January of 2011, of $4,207 millions of funding from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, for the implementation of cooperation projects with Cuba aimed at combating AIDS and tuberculosis, demonstrates this
As a result of Cuba's expose, the U.S. Department of the Treasury issued a general license in May of this year to release those funds, which expires June 30, 2015
But the very fact that resources from this humanitarian organization require a license from the United States government in order to reach Cuba, in addition to utilizing these highly sensitive programs as hostages of its policy of aggression towards my country, shows a flagrant disrespect of the United Nations and the institutions comprising it
Various cooperation projects undertaken by the International Atomic Energy Agency have also fallen victim to the blockade
In the midst of the supposed relaxation allowing certain groups of U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba, very recently the Department of the Treasury also refused to issue travel licenses to Cuba to two important U.S. nongovernmental organizations which have cooperated with Cuban institutions in the health sphere for a number of years. This decision could prevent the arrival of donations of medicine to which our country does not have access because of the blockade
The truth is that U.S. citizens' freedom of travel remains encroached upon and that Cuba continues being the only forbidden destination
Mr. President:
On repeated occasions representatives of the United States have stated here that the issue we are discussing today is a bilateral matter and therefore, should not be discussed in this forum. They will probably repeat this fallacious argument today
The facts demonstrate its inconsistency. Citizens and companies of many member states represented here have been the subject of sanctions for establishing economic relations with Cuba
If not a demonstration of extraterritoriality, what are the fines imposed August 18, 2011 on the subsidiary of the French CMA CGM shipping and transport company for offering container services to Cuba? How could one describe the demands made by the European subsidiary PayPal, a company facilitating electronic transactions via Internet, on the German Rum Co. firm to remove Cuban rum and cigars from its webpage?
As can be appreciated in Cuba's response contained in the abovementioned report from the Secretary General, the examples on extraterritoriality are innumerable
Mr. President: President Obama's most recent statements on Cuba have left more than a few observers speechless, but they do not surprise us. The response of President Obama to the offer by the Cuban government to establish a dialogue on all issues of interest on the bilateral agenda, has been, once again, an evasive rejection on the basis of absurd arguments and unacceptable conditions which have never worked. His posture is old, repetitive, anchored to the past; it is as if, instead of being the President elected for change, his predecessors are speaking, including Republicans. He seems to be misinformed, totally unaware of what is currently taking place in our country, of our history and culture
Cuba made the great change in 1969. At the cost of
20,000 lives, it swept away the dictatorship of Batista, the strong man of the United States. Since then, it has been changing day by day and it is due to its capacity for constant renovation that it has been able to resist. Others were unable to resist because they did not change and stagnated or because they lost their way. Today, Cuba is changing and will resolutely change everything that has to be changed within the Revolution and within socialism. More revolutionary and better socialism
What have not changed for 50 years, Mr. President, are the blockade and the policy of hostility and aggression of the United States, despite the fact that they have not
worked and will not work
But what the United States government wants to change will not change. The Cuban government will continue being the "government of the people, by the people and for the people." Our elections will not be auctions. There will not be four-billion-dollar election campaigns or a Parliament supported by 13% of electors. We will not have corrupt, political elites, separated from the people. We will continue to be a true democracy and not a plutocracy. We will defend the right to truthful and objective information
We will continue to conquer "all justice." We will protect equality of opportunity for every child and we will abandon no one. We will not renounce our social policies. Health care and education will continue to be universally available and free of charge. We will assure the right to work, a dignified retirement and social security. Equal pay for equal work will continue to be the norm. We will protect mothers-to-be and the disabled. Human beings will continue to come first. We will defend our culture
We will continue to believe in human values. The exercise of human rights will be guaranteed for all Cubans. The economy must be efficient, but it will continue to serve the people. The lives of the people are and will be more important than macroeconomic data. Economic policies will continue to be discussed with the people. The consequences of the global economic crisis will be born by all. We will continue to redistribute wealth, so that there are no rich, no poor. We will not allow corruption, speculation, nor will we take money from workers to save banks. We will continue to seek foreign companies' participation in our economy, with no exclusions whatsoever
Mr. President: It would be enough to review documents recently released by Wikileaks about the work of the Department of State and U.S. embassies in all countries, directed at obstructing political, diplomatic, economic, trade and cooperative relations with Cuba. Shameful in their content are the reports which reveal the concern about, interest in and slander of the humanitarian work done by Cuban medical brigades which are offering their noble, disinterested services to millions of people in dozens of sister countries
The family ties and the limited cultural, academic and scientific exchange which exist between the United States and Cuba show how positive an expansion of these ties would be for both peoples, without the obstacles and conditions imposed by Washington. Cuba's proposal to move toward the normalization of relations, and the expansion of bilateral cooperation in diverse spheres, stands. The reciprocal solution to pending humanitarian issues would likewise be of mutual interest
Would it not be better for President Obama to address problems in the United States and let Cubans resolve our own, in peace and tranquility?
One of the five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters has recently completed his full, unjust 13-year sentence, down to the last minute, but is now prevented from returning to Cuba to rejoin his family, while the other four remain cruelly and unjustly incarcerated as political prisoners. The blatant corruption of the legal process, and the illegal conduct of the government during the trial, are widely known and well documented. Why are the Five not freed in an act of justice, or at least as a humanitarian gesture?
Mr. President: I must transmit the profound gratitude of the Cuban people to all the countries which, over a 20-year period, have expressed, with their voices and votes, the necessity of ending the most unjust, prolonged and far-reaching unilateral sanctions in history, which have affected millions of Cubans
In the name of Guillermo Dominguez Diaz (16 years of age), of Ivis Palacio Terry (18), Randy Barroso Torres (17) and of Adrián Izquierdo Cabrera (12) who have undergone protective surgery and spent months in casts, in bed, because the extensile pediatric prostheses they need are only produced in the United States or under U.S. patents, and in the name of Maria Amelia Alonso Valdés (2), Damián Hernández Valdés (4) and Dayán Romayena Lorente (12) who are suffering from central nervous system tumors and should be treated with Temodal, a U.S. patent protected product
In the name of my self-sacrificing, generous, optimistic and heroic people, and for the good of all nations and "world equilibrium", I request your support for proposed Resolution L.4 entitled, 'The necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba.'
Thank you very much. •
Voting by countries and regions
• NEW votes in favor this year (1): South Sudan. New votes against, in relation to last year: 0. Absent countries: Libya and Sweden. Countries abstaining (3): Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau. Votes against (2): United States and Israel
ANALYSIS BY GEOGRAPHICAL AREA
North Africa and the Middle East: of a total of 19 countries, 17 in favor, one against (Israel) and one absent (Libya)
Sub-Saharan Africa: of a total of 48 countries, 48 in favor
Asia and Oceania: of a total of 38 countries, 35 in favor, three abstentions (Marshall Islands, Palau and Micronesia)
Latin America and the Caribbean: of a total of 33 countries, 33 in favor
Western Europe and other states: of a total of 27 countries, 25 in favor, one absent (Sweden) and one against (United States)
Eastern Europe: of a total of 28 countries, 28 in favor
Countries supporting the Cuban resolution (186):
NORTH AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST (17):
Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran. Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, Morocco,
Oman, Qatar, Aaudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia,United Arab Emirates and Yemen
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA (48):
Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cape Verde, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome & Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa,
South Sudan, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe
ASIA AND OCEANIA (35):
Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, China, DPR Korea, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kiribati, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nauru, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Samoa, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Timor
Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Vietnam
LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN (33):
Antigua & Barbuda, Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Chile, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Haiti, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Surinam, Trinidad & Tobago, Uruguay and Venezuela
WESTERN EUROPE AND OTHER STATES (25):
Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Spain, S Switzerland, Turkey and United Kingdom
EASTERN EUROPE (28):
Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kirguistan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia,: Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Rumania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Tayikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. •
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