Belfast SY Public Meeting on why you should fight for socialism

Thousands of secondary school students awaited A-level and GCSE results anxiously last month. Again it was another record-breaking year for Northern Ireland students who again improved on the previous years results. But even pupils who have achieved top grades will be forced to compete for the miniscule amount of university places on offer. This, and the fact that the education budget faces cuts of 25% this year, leaves tens of thousands of young people in the North without any access to education or a decent job.

By Patrick McGeown, Socialist Youth Lurgan

This year’s figures show there was roughly 53,000 applicants to Northern Ireland universities, but only 8,500 places were available. University applicants are left dejected having missed out on their preferred course or, in a lot of cases, unable to attend university at all. Earlier this year the Con-Dem government announced massive cuts to education across the UK. These cuts will only result in poorer standards in schools, less university places, and pay cuts for teaching staff. This comes at a time when teaching staff are already stretched to breaking point. Teaching staff in secondary schools are already finding their job too hard. Most teachers now have to deal with six or seven classes with many containing over thirty students – a whopping 200 pupils per teacher. Blair’s “promise” of 50% of students attending university and smaller class sizes never materialised. Further cuts will only result in the exacerbating the skills shortages.

Cuts are also affected school buildings themselves. Hundreds of schools in Northern Ireland are in dilapidated states. Roofs collapsing, holes in walls, and damp are commonplace in many schools. Yet over seventy schools were turned down by the Minister for Education Caitriona Ruane for new buildings. Staff and students are under threat of injury and health problems if they continue to work and study in unfit buildings.

An overhaul is needed in education. Massive investment is needed to provide a better learning environment for students with the best learning equipment. Major recruitment is needed to ease the burden on teachers and fight rising unemployment. Tuition fees must be scrapped to allow everyone who wishes to, to go to university. Specialised cheap student accommadation must also be provided. Students should not be forced to pay extortionate rent to private landlords for substandard accommodation. All this would help students to learn in a better environment, help teachers to be more efficient and better at their jobs, tackle unemployment and open the door to a brighter future for young people. Socialist Youth and the Youth Fight for Jobs campaign will be campaigning on these issues and making sure young people have a voice to make sure we are listened to!

RAMY KHALIL
Ramy Khalil is a regular contributor to Justice, the newspaper of Socialist Alternative. He has been an activist in the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 587 and a leading organizer of mass protests against war and budget cuts to education and public services. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in U.S. history, and his articles appear at SocialistAlternative.org.

KELI CARENDER
Keli Carender has been with the Tea Party movement since the beginning. She was leading Tea Party rallies in Seattle in early 2009 before there even was a national Tea Party movement. She has been featured in The New York Times and on National Public Radio. Earlier this year she won the $3,000 Town Hall Award from the Sam Adams Alliance for challenging Democratic Congressman Norm Dicks on healthcare at a town hall meeting. Keli currently researches and writes for www.statebudgetsolutions.org, and is a staff member at Tea Party Patriots. Well known as “Liberty Belle,” she blogs here.

Watch videos of a debate between Keli Carender and Ramy Khalil that took place at the Northwest Socialism Conference on May 8, 2010 in Seattle.

Read a full report of this very interesting debate and the conference.

Capitalism in crisis

Friday 20th August – Saturday 22nd August
Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow
Food, Travel, Accomodation – €60/£50

Download the leaflet here.

The government are shutting the option of eductaion with savage cutbacks and hikes in registration fees. And even the dole has been slashed for young people.

The governments message for young people is clear they want to kick us out of the country through forced emigration. They don’t care about workers, young people or the unemployed.

This is a crisis of capitalism, caused by the greed and speculation of the rich. It underlines the fundamentally undemocratic nature of capitalism, where big business and ‘the markets’ have the power to destroy destroy the lives of millions.

Fightback has begun
Greece has seen a series of general strikes and mass protests in the last months against the cutbacks there Similarly we have seen huge student protests, strikes and occupations against cuts and privatisation of education in Germany and Austria.

More and more people are no longer simply vitims of the crisis and the profit system, but opponents of it.

Summer Festival
Socialist Youth organises this annual Summer festival as an event where young people can come to discuss these and the issues that affect them.

Along with discussion you will also get to relax and enjoy yourself over the weekend with music, barbeques, film showing, football and lots more.
Its an event that you can’t afford to miss!

Did the organizers stop at nothing for profits?

20 people died in the horrific stampede at the July 24 Love Parade festival in the German city of Duisburg, 500 were injured and, for a time, over 1 000 people were officially listed as missing. The revellers panicked at a tunnel entrance. But, already in the build up to the parade many thought there was a risk of mass panic developing.

By Jan Röder and Sebastian Förster, CWI Germany
A young woman told German newspaper Die Welt: “Everywhere you looked, there were people with blue faces. My boyfriend pulled me out over the bodies, otherwise we both would have died in there. How can I ever forget those faces? The faces of the dead.” Another participant told Reuters: “There were piles of injured people on the ground, some being resuscitated, and others are dead and covered with sheets. The place was too full in the afternoon as everybody wanted to get in.”

Tragically local people expected the chaos in advance. Already on June 7 someone wrote on the internet site of the local Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ) newspaper “Is it true that they try to lead one million people through a single lane street (!)- through a TUNNEL!- Through the Karl Lehr street with two dirt tracks to the festival area? In my eyes this is a trap. This will never work. Those who were (at the previous Parades) in Essen and Dortmund knows how crowded the larger streets were. Even that was a catastrophe. And now they are leading it through a single track tunnel? I’ll be damned!!!! People will be dying when they try to leave the festival area on this mingy street.”

Experts warned the organisers that no more than 250 000 people could fit onto the planned festival area knowing that the annual Love Parades were regularly attended by over a million. But with the help of the city administration and the Mayor Adolf Sauerland (Christian Democrat) the organizers held a Love Parade that attracted 1.4 million visitors who had to pass though this 120 metres long tunnel to reach the festival’ s only entry and exit point. Police experts from all over North Rhine-Westphalia commentated that it’s “a death trap”. And the fire brigade had also warned the organizers.

Dr. Motte, who organized the first Love Parades in Berlin say that “The organisers made gross mistakes in the management. How could they lead the people through only one access to the festival area? It is a scandal. The organizers should be blamed. They knew how many people would come”. He told the Berlin Kurier that this Parade was “all about making money. The organisers did not show the slightest sense of responsibility to people”. Since 2006 Dr. Motte has dissociated himself from the Love Parade as, he felt, it had become unpolitical and commercial. The first Love Parade, held in Berlin in 1989, was a free, peace and music festival that in subsequent years developed into a huge annual youth and music event.

This year’s Love Parade was held in the course of the “Ruhr 2010 European Capital of Culture”, an attempt to develop the prestige of the Ruhr area. Sponsors like RWE, a large energy company, pushed the “Ruhr 2010”, while normal people are hit hard by social cuts. Schools, theatres and cultural centres were been closed.

The boss of the fitness company McFit and Love Parade business manager Rainer Schaller wanted to push through the festival at any costs. One of Schaller’s companies had taken over, and relocated, the Love Parade in 2006 after a dispute with the Berlin city authorities, which meant it could no longer continue there. Last year Schaller told the Handelsblatt newspaper that his commercial interest in the Love Parade was to “use a relatively small budget to gain a high recognition factor”. Now, not to endanger his profits, the organizers even led the party go on without announcing what happened. Hundreds of thousands participants didn’t even know anything about the catastrophe until they went home. The officials were completely overwhelmed with the situation.

Duisburg’s Mayor said: “In the run-up to the event, we worked out a solid security plan with the organisers and everyone involved,” But revellers, who tried to tell police officers about the mass panic, were sent away with comments like: “Do you want to organize this? You have to leave this to us!”

The revellers cannot be blamed for losing control and for stampeding in their mortal fear. The deadly catastrophe is the fault of Love Parade management and the city administration.

The greed of the capitalists often ruins peoples’ enjoyment. This applies to the Christopher Street Day parades, where political material is often forbidden while the participants were bombarded with advertisements of the official sponsors. Similarly the discos and music festivals are overpriced. Big music labels just talk about culture but only think of profits, nothing but profits.

But the initial sadness is now turning into anger. Even the right wing tabloid Bild with mass circulation wrote that in Duisburg “seldom have so many experts warned so clearly of the risks of holding such a mass event on a site that was completely unsuitable. Why didn’t someone do something? Did those responsible for the organising thought that couple of positive headlines were more important than the safety of the participants?” On Sunday Duisburg’s Mayor was attacked on the street, pelt with litter and abused as a “greedy avaricious pig”. People demand his resignation. On July 28 there will be a demonstration in front of the Duisburg Town Hall with the slogan: “We fight your greed for profits and prestige!”

By Pete Dickenson
These estimates show a huge difference but it is impossible to check as the company refuses to allow independent scientists and engineers access to perform their own tests. Even if the lower figure is accepted, Deepwater Horizon is the most seriously polluting oil spill in US history, by far exceeding the previous worst, the Exxon Valdez tanker accident off Alaska in 1989 which released eleven million gallons.

It is not clear how long it will be before the well is capped, since attempts to plug the leak are continuing at the time of writing. However a blow-back from a well being drilled in the same area in 1979, Ixtoc 1, took nine months and 22 days to cap. And this was only achieved after two relief wells were dug, a very time-consuming process that in this case, BP admit, will take until August at the earliest.

Even then the technical problems will be massive. The leak is 5,000 feet down on the sea bed, whereas Ixtoc 1 was only in 150 feet of water, and the pipe to be capped is just 21 inches across. In a further complication, the region’s hurricane season is just beginning which could compound the technical difficulties.

To give a handle on the possible scale of this incident, the US Coast Guard categorises marine oil spills as minor, medium or major, with major spills releasing over 100,000 gallons. If the higher estimate of leakage proves true, about 160 million gallons have already leaked, but the impact on the environment will still be severe even if the lower estimates are correct.

Oil poisons the coastal sea floor, interrupting the food chain that marine life depends on and ultimately threatening the extinction of species. The Gulf of Mexico is an important habitat for endangered sperm whales, sea turtles and blue fin tuna which will be under threat. Sea birds are very vulnerable, with millions likely to be killed by exposure to crude oil.

The coastal fishing industry will be devastated as fish are contaminated, with thousands of jobs then destroyed, some permanently. Tourism will be hit if large quantities of oil are deposited on beaches and recreational fishing has to be abandoned.

Many politicians now blame a failure of regulation for the accident and there were scandalous failings in this area. Friends of the Earth described the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the government body responsible for regulation, as corrupt. Even President Obama now complains, after the event, of the cosy relationship the body has with Big Oil, the multinationals dominating the industry.

A US government report on the MMS found a ‘revolving door’ of oil company executives joining the agency, watering down the regulations and then going back to their original companies on higher salaries.

BP applied for a drilling permit for this project to MMS in February 2009, stating that it was ‘highly unlikely that an accidental oil spill will occur’ and even if it did, BP would be able to fix it. The MMS accepted this at face value. No further details were asked for, although BP now admits that it was not prepared for this accident.

The politicians, including President Obama, are hypocritical when they now complain about BP’s activities or the failings of regulation. A month before the disaster the US government announced plans to open up large areas of the coastline to oil exploration, which was banned after the Exxon Valdez accident.

Even after the 22 April explosion, the administration still refused to permanently ban off-shore deep sea drilling, and in fact handed out several dozen new permits for offshore drilling including two to BP.

The regulatory failures were scandalous, if not criminal, but to call for improvements and to restructure the regulatory bodies, as Obama is now doing, misses the point. Deep sea drilling for oil poses huge risks and should be banned permanently.

A wider issue is also involved, the need to tackle global warming. This requires that the burning of oil, a major driver of climate change, be reduced to a fraction of its current level, if not phased out entirely. This will mean that the big oil companies have no future in their present form and need to be restructured.

Most of them dabble in renewable energy technologies at the moment, but this is largely done for PR purposes with no serious intent to switch over their operations in a meaningful way. These companies however possess expertise in many areas that could be used to help switch to renewable energy, for example, in overcoming problems linked to the storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) that urgently need to be solved if this potentially useful technology is to be safe.

Their knowledge of under-sea engineering could be used to devise a safe way to store the carbon dioxide generated when coal-fired power plants use carbon capture technology to eliminate global warming effects.

BP and the other oil companies though, will never voluntarily cease drilling in deep sea locations. Still less will they seriously address problems like carbon capture, since it is more profitable for them to keep operating as they are.

It will be necessary to nationalise these multinationals, and put them under genuine democratic control, in order to begin an orderly restructuring of their operations that will meet the planet’s environmental needs.

By John Sharpe, Socialist Party (CWI England & Wales)

Twelve workers have committed suicide so far this year at the factory that makes Apple iPads. Four others survived, gravely injured, and 20 were stopped from killing themselves by the company. All the dead were between 18 and 24 years old.
Foxconn – the city-sized factory in the Shenzhen free trade zone, southern China – employs 400,000 mainly migrant workers. They work 70 hours a week for about 50 cents an hour under a military-style administration and harsh working conditions.

Foxconn also supply Dell, Hewlett Packard and Sony and is one of the largest producers of computers and consumer electronics in the world.

One worker said: “We are extremely tired, with tremendous pressure. We finish one step in every seven seconds, which requires us to concentrate and keep working and working. We work faster even than the machines.

“Every shift (ten hours), we finish 4,000 Dell computers, all the while standing up. We can accomplish these assignments through collective effort, but many of us feel worn out.”

A week ago an undercover team infiltrated the plant. They told the Daily Telegraph: “Hundreds of people work in the workshops but they are not allowed to talk to each other. If you talk you get a black mark in your record and you get shouted at by your manager. You can also be fined.”

The company are constructing nets around the seven storey dormitories from which workers have been jumping. They have also hired 70 psychologists and brought in Buddhist monks.
Sweatshop

Terry Gou, the Taiwanese billionaire chairman of Foxconn’s parent company Hon Hai, had toured the plant with journalists only hours before the latest death. “This is not a sweatshop”, he told them.

Apple’s sales were £30 billion last year. The company’s audit of its own “supplier responsibility codes” shows that 102 facilities flouted the “rigorous rules” on working hours, 39% broke rules on workplace injury prevention and 30% broke guidelines on toxic waste disposal. There were also violations on child labour and falsified records. Will Apple cancel these contracts? I wouldn’t hold your breath.

The modern, high tech, trendy image of Apple has proved to be a veil behind which hundreds of thousands of workers are brutally exploited in barbaric conditions.

Chinese workers need independent, democratic, campaigning trade unions to fight for decent pay and conditions and for an end to the tyranny of these workplace prisons.

Yes to jobs and education for all

The horrific killing of a 15 year old Nigerian,Toyosi Shitta-bey in West Dublin has highlighted the issue of racism as well as the central role that young people in particular must play in combating it. After the tragic death of Toyosi Shitta-bey, it’s time to draw a line in the sand and ensure such a senseless incident never happens again. Black and white school student friends and peers of Toyosi helped to organise and participated in a 3,000 strong demonstration in memory of the deceased school student, illustrating the sense of friendship, camaraderie and solidarity that the majority of working class young people who go to school in racially diverse and integrated schools, feel.
Nonetheless, racial abuse and bullying are both still a grave problem in schools. A TUI survey in April found that 46% of teachers had reported a racist incident in their schools in the previous month. The government who have cut support for students with English as a second language can certainly shoulder a significant burden of guilt for this recent increase in racism in schools. This increase needs to be solidly cut across and marginalised. The majority of school students, who themselves are anti-racist, holds the key. The silent majority of anti-racist school students needs to come together to become a vocal and organised group in each school, as part of a national anti-racist school student network. If anti-racist sentiment is organised on a school-wide basis, a campaign could be launched to make each school a racism-free zone. With an active group of school students consciously explaining to their peers why this campaign is important, the majority of school students could gain the confidence to speak out against racism in their school.

There’s nothing natural or inevitable about racism or division based on ethnic, religious or racial background. Despite the tremendous wealth and resources that exist, the capitalist system creates a scenario whereby an unnecessary struggle for scarce resources is manufactured. Unable to make massive profits due to the economic crash, the market system has created a scenario of mass unemployment. The privatisation policies of the establishment over years means that housing waiting lists are long and health and education services are inadequate and overcrowded. As well as creating the conditions for competition between people, the state drums up racism on purpose. For example, millions of euro are regularly spent deporting African immigrants in particular. This is an example of state racism whereby the government wants to detract attention away from its bank bailouts and savage cutbacks, despicably attempting to place blame on often penniless black immigrants instead. A strong anti-racism campaign of school students could also protest against deportations and other forms of state racism that attempt to sow division. Young people should reject the capitalist system that has offered them a miserable future of education cuts, unemployment, low pay and competition for scarce college places. Fighting racism means fighting for the right to a decent education and a quality job for everyone. Fundamentally this will mean a challenge to the system as a whole based on socialist policies of solidarity and democratic working class control, management, ownership and planning of the economy according to the needs of people.

Socialist Youth is in the process of establishing a broad anti-racist campaign of young people in schools, colleges and workplaces. Youth Against Racism (YAR) is open to any young person who wants to get active against racism – contact Eddie for more information – 0873141986

By Richard O’Hara

This scheme allows social welfare recipients, who have recently graduated from college, to work on placement schemes for private firms and multinational corporations, while maintaining their dole payments. Its apparent aim is to provide participants with work experience and to improve their employment potential. However, the real experience these highly skilled young workers will get, is that of capitalist exploitation as they work for sub-minimum wages and are used as part of the relentless attack to drive down wages in Ireland.

Companies who participate in the scheme can hire as many interns as they like, and are not required to pay these employees. Thus, they can undercut the minimum wage with state-provided cheap labour.

Amongst the companies who are taking part in the scheme are Microsoft Ireland, Baxter Healthcare Ireland and IBM Ireland, whose parent companies made global profits of $17 billion, $2 billion and $12 billion respectively in 2008. This in itself shows the farcical and unfair nature of the scheme, with hugely profitable global companies being allowed to take advantage of the economic crisis to undercut wages.

Since the beginning of the current recession, IBEC have been to the forefront of the campaign to persuade us that wage levels are too high, that we’re living beyond our means. They, along with the government, have used the recession to try to force down living standards, repeating the mantra that we’ve lost wage competitiveness, despite the evidence to the contrary. Everyone knows that the government, in league with property developers and bankers, caused this crisis, and now backed up by big business and its representantives, are using it to attack workers and the unemployed.

Youth unemployment stands at 32.4% in Ireland. Many young people are being forced to emigrate in search of employment. Providing temporary cheap labour jobs to private companies will not solve this appalling unemployment crisis. Young workers and students need real jobs, not state-subsidised slave-labour for rich multinational companies.

Minister for UNemployment - Reg Empey

Representatives from the Youth Fight for Jobs campaign met Minister for Employment & Learning, Reg Empey, on 18 February to challenge him on the Executive’s failure to create jobs. Youth Fight for Jobs put to the Minister, concrete initiatives which could immediately be implemented to create jobs. We showed how a programme for building social housing, a publicly owned IT sector and how an expansion of the NHS could immediately create thousands of jobs, while at the same time provide much needed services.

By Paddy Meehan

Instead, all we got from the Minister were meaningless excuses. He would “like” to do something but it was the responsibility of other departments; the money wasn’t there; and incredibly creating jobs for young people would annoy big business because “they would have more competition”.

The only co-operation between departments has been on how to cut public sector jobs. Plenty of money has been found to bail out rich bankers and line the pockets of politicians.

It was obvious by the end of our meeting that our ideas fell on deaf ears. This is why Youth Fight for Jobs will take our message to the thousands of young people on the dole and stuck in low paid jobs as well as those in schools, techs and universities who will bear the brunt of the failure of the politicians, to organise and fight for the right to a decent job.

 By James McCabe

Cullen argued that today’s youth are a “mollycoddled” generation and that they should work for free to gain experience.  One young carpenter stated that he had to work the last year of his apprenticeship as a volunteer and asked, “What am I supposed to do now?” Cullen argued, “I worked for nothing many times to get a job, isn’t it better than nothing? Better than sitting in bed all day. In the 40s and 50s we didn’t have the dole, we were in our bare feet and we went out and worked.”

Another young worker asked, “How can I work for nothing and the bank is looking for €2,000 a month?” Bill’s answer was, “You move on! You might have to walk away from your debts and go abroad.” So Bill Cullen’s answer to mass unemployment is simply, work for free or emigrate. When one young woman pointed to the neoliberal policies of past governments, Bill said, “Don’t blame somebody else, go out yourself and do it, don’t be blaming. It’s up to you, not the government.”

Bill’s attacks on workers and social welfare is ironic considering he was campaigning for the last year for the government to implement a scrappage scheme to bail out his retail business. Bill’s arrogance is re-enforced by the government, who introduced the scrappage scheme in the last budget, while cutting social welfare dramatically for those under 23 years of age.

Young workers and unemployed people should organise to resist the attacks from the establishment parties and the likes of Bill Cullen who want to drive us back into the nineteenth century so he can command an army of personal, barefoot slaves, while he sits in his 43 room mansion.