By Bryan Koulouris in Socialist Alternative. The Bernie Sanders campaign for President is gaining more traction than anybody expected. This reflects the massive, widespread hatred of Wall Street, the frustration at big business domination of the political system and the openness to socialist ideas in US society. Sanders’ rallies have constantly necessitated bigger venues than organizers planned. Thousands are being turned away at the doors from New Hampshire and Iowa to Colorado and Minnesota. Polls show Sanders’ support skyrocketing, putting him within ten percentage points of Hillary Clinton in state after state. Socialist Alternative stands for building a new, mass working people’s party. We disagree with Sanders’s approach of running in the Democratic primary.
Newsletter Bankers, fast track, Finance and the Economy, Greece, Independence, indigenous, Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Rights, Israel, Palestine, Racism, Slavery, TISA, TPP By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org
July 4th, 2015
By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese. Today, there continue to be struggles for independence in the US and around the world. In the US, as the country celebrates the 4th of July, more are understanding that the so-called “founding fathers” have taken credit for a mass movement of colonists who sought independence, where nearly 100 “Declarations of Independence” were written before the Jefferson version; and where the issues of racism, sexism, and ethnic cleansing of the Indigenous were not recognized. Rather than celebrating the slave-owning plutocrats who hijacked this country we celebrate those who continue the struggle for self-determination here and around the world. The struggle, as we can see in Greece, is against the plutocratic bankers who profit while the 99 percent suffer the consequences of their wealth extraction. True independence is a worldwide struggle that is ongoing.
By Bill Bigelow for Zinn Education Project. The fireworks of the 4th of July turns an immensely complicated time in U.S. history into a cartoon of miseducation. For example, check out Ray Raphael’s “Re-examining the Revolution” at the Zinn Education Project, an article that every history teacher should read before wading into the events leading up to 1776. Raphael analyzed 22 elementary, middle school, and high school texts and found them filled with inaccuracies—some merely silly, but others that leave students with important misunderstandings about U.S. history, and how social change does and does not happen.
The City of Bilbao was becoming crowded by people arriving from all over the Basque Country as the day went on. By noon it was impossible to walk around the city centre. The main streets surrounding the meeting points from which the demonstration was going to start at 17:00 hours were getting packed as this time got closer. “Sare” (meaning literally “Network” in Basque, a citizen network struggling for the rights of Basque political prisoners) was in the way of achieving the objective of the day. This article is a chronicle of that demonstration. 25 years ago the Spanish and French governments applied the policy of dispersal against the Basque political prisoners. Since then and according to the information given by “Sare” the family members and friends that visit the these prisoners travel 352.329 km every week, as much as turning around the earth 8.8 times weekly.
When the Catalans finally had their say on Sunday, more than 80 percent of those who cast their ballots voted to split from Spain. But despite the massive majority, the restive region may be no closer to independence. Denied a real referendum by Spain’s constitutional court, Catalan separatists instead set up voting booths across the northeastern region to host an informal, non-binding “consultation” asking citizens if they want Catalonia to become an independent state. The region’s nationalist prime minister, Artur Mas, declared the vote a “total success” as figures showed 80.76 percent of voters backed independence. “Catalonia has proven that it wants to govern itself,” Mas told a news conference in the regional capital Barcelona. “Catalonia has made a quantum leap in its quest to be able to decide its own political future.”
The leader of the Spanish region of Catalonia has set up a panel to supervise a contested independence referendum next month, despite the opposition of Spain’s central government, which has gone to the courts to block the vote. Spain’s constitutional court said on Monday it would review the legality of the independence vote, effectively suspending it. José Manuel García-Margallo, Spain’s Foreign Minister, had previously told journalists that his government would use “all means necessary” to stop the planned referendum, currently scheduled for November 9. But Catalonia’s leaders, cognizant of the majority’s pro-independence stance, appear determined to push forward.
Just hours after the Constitutional Court accepted the government’s appeal of the Catalan referendum on self-rule, the northeastern Spanish region registered its first protests. Around 300 people congregated in front of the government delegation in Barcelona to express support for the plebiscite, which is scheduled for November 9, and to condemn Madrid’s attempt to get it ruled illegal by a top Spanish court. This early protest was the beginning of a series of region-wide demonstrations planned for Tuesday by a pro-independence group called National Catalan Assembly (ANC).
The people of Scotland head to the polls on Thursday to vote on whether to get independence from the United Kingdom. Scotland has been part of the U.K. for the past three centuries but has its own local parliament. Some Scots, who make up about 8 percent of U.K.’s population, want more local governance and freedom from London, who often vote in more right-wing governments than Scotland does. Prime Minister David Cameron, a Tory, is a staunch opponent of independence, and his government has embraced neoliberal policies and austerity at the cost of the social safety net.
In 1707 a shaky union was set up that made Scotland a part of the United Kingdom. Scottish parliamentarians were bribed with vast sums of money and lucrative pension schemes to move their seats to Westminster, London. It was a sell out of the Scottish electorate that would later prompt its country’s best-loved poet, Robert Burns, to claim about Scottish politicians: We’re bought and sold for English gold. Such a parcel of rogues in a nation. It was colonial expansionism by other means than the barrel of a gun. Empires come and go, and now there is a real chance Scotland will regain its independence. Dennis Canavan, chairman of “Yes Scotland,” is calling for a referendum on who should rule the country. On September 18, 2014, the voting electorate will decide whether they want to remain part of the union or manage their own economy. There is division now, as there was in 1707, but this time Scottish voters have a unique opportunity to express their wishes through the ballot box.
While much of America marks July 4th with fireworks, barbeques and family gatherings, people should also take a moment to pause and consider the state of the very freedoms, liberties and rights that the Declaration of Independence was produced to acquire for the population. At a mere 1302 words subject to editorially consent by its creators, the Declaration of Independence from British monarchical rule listed clear intentions of the-then 13 colonies that wanted to become the United States of America. The preamble is more widely known than the rest of the document, but worth restating for its potency: “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” The ideology behind the document reflected a sense of spirituality, respect and commonality with God and Nature, but more than that, it underscored essentials that a government should provide the governed, and that the governed were entitled to receive, if said government was to remain appropriately responsible and humane to its citizens.
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