Internationalist Communist Tendency

Port Au Prince before the earthquake

It’s still not known exactly how many people died in the earthquake of January 12, but current estimates are that over 200,000 people have lost their lives. Reuters announced that figure could jump to 300,000 once all the bodies are recovered. A further 250,000 are said to be wounded and one and a half million people are estimated to be homeless. The earthquake, which measured 7.2 on the Richter scale, is one of the most lethal disasters in modern history. The aid which followed, or rather failed to follow, shows again what a morally bankrupt system capitalism is.

The Role of Imperialism

Haiti has a double geographical misfortune. It lies on two fault lines (the Septentrional fault in the north and the Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden fault in the south), but perhaps even more disastrously, it’s situated right next to the USA.

Self-organization of the proletarians against the disaster, the lumpen-capitalists and state failure

By an anonymous comrade

It would be great, having this means of dissemination, if you could take into account what is happening in Concepción and its surrounding areas and other areas affected by the earthquake. Everyone knows that from the outset many people applied common sense and went to the places where supplies are stored, without appropriating more than what they needed. That is logical, rational, necessary and inevitable, it seems absurd to even put it under discussion. Not only was there spontaneous organisation (especially in Conception) of people, who distributed milk, diapers and water according to the needs of each individual, according to the number of children per family in particular.

After two days of clashes in Rosarno 66 people have treated in hospital, 17 locals, 19 police and 30 immigrants. Two of the latter were beaten with metal bars on the night of January 7-8 and remain in a serious condition. Others were run over by cars. This was the response to the sudden explosion of anger the day before, after two immigrants were wounded by a coward with an airgun. The blind rage of the immigrants, who have poured in hundreds on to the main road that runs through the town, has spared nothing in its path, leaving a trail of burnt-out and damaged cars — some with people inside — and rubbish bins overturned. Images of the protests have found plenty of space in the media (1).

The revolt was really inevitable. A BBC video in February (2) showed the awful living conditions of these proletarian brothers.

This play, which opened at the National Theatre in October is about the financial crisis or as Hare puts it, the four days when “capitalism ceased to function”. The author admits it is not a play but an attempt to tell a story. It is poor theatre in the normal sense. It is instead a type of intellectual journey in which the author attempts to discover why, on 15 September 2008 capitalism ceased to function.

David Hare is a veteran leftist playwright. He presents himself in the play as completely ignorant of the financial world. He is thus guided in his quest by Masa who escaped from Sarajevo as a girl aged 10, and was working for Lehman Brothers until its collapse. The interaction between Masa and the author is the only half theatrical relationship in the play. The bulk of the play consists of real banking, finance and government characters, being brought on stage to explain things, or comment on events.

(From Prometeo 1 Series VII %%% On Monday 16 November Channel 4 put out a Dispatches programme entitled “Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby” which revealed not only that millions of pounds were being channelled to both major political parties by the Zionist lobby (as it should have been more correctly called) but also that there were news operations purporting to work in Britain which operated out of an annexe of the Israeli Ministry of Defence (see also the reference to AIPAC below which organises a permanent blog against the BBC). No real surprise that the political parties were mired in this game but the extent of the lobby’s success was shown in the refusal of the BBC to screen the Disasters Emergency Committee’s humanitarian appeal for the children of Gaza under pressure from the Zionists.

Copenhagen Fiasco

The United Nations Climate Change Conference, to be held in Copenhagen in mid December, has been billed as one of the most important meetings of world leaders ever. Its president Connie Hedegaard declared that;

If the whole world comes to Copenhagen and leaves without making the needed political agreement, then I think it’s a failure that is not just about climate. Then it’s the whole global democratic system not being able to deliver results in one of the defining challenges of our century. (…) It’s not an option (1)

Since then US President Obama has announced that the US will not be able to sign up to any agreement produced in Copenhagen. Without the US no agreement can be reached and, at best, the meeting will be a meeting to prepare for another meeting in 2010.