Re: [Marxism] QUICK NOTES: Obama modifies US restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba

[MARGARET WYLES]

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On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 6:56 PM, Walter Lippmann wrote:

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>
>
> Any clue as to why now?

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[Marxism] NEW SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY SPECIAL ISSUE ON MARX TODAY

[George Snedeker]

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SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY 

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No. 54 (Vol. 24, No. 3)  
November  2010 

Marx for Today 

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

EDITED & INTRODUCED BY MARCELLO  MUSTO 

Part I: Re-reading Marx in  2010 

Articles by Kevin Anderson, Terrell  Carver, 
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Michael Lebowitz, Marcello  Musto, 
Victor Wallis, and Rick  Wolff 

Part II: Marx's Global Reception  Today 

Review essays on Marx scholarship  in 
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France, Germany, Italy,  Russia, China,  Korea, and Japan 



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[Marxism] QUICK NOTES: Obama modifies US restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba

[Walter Lippmann]

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Here are a few quick thoughts on today's news about Cuba.
Probably there are additional items I've not considered.

This is a very significant development. While hardly an
end to the US restrictions on travel to Cuba, these are
serious modifications. It will mean many more people in
the US will be able to travel to Cuba. It means that all
US citizens will be able to send money, up to $2000.00
per year, to virtually anyone on the island who isn't a
senior government or Communist Party official. 

It further means additional funding options for Cuba's
expanding private sector, which is being discussed in the
months prior to the Cuban Communist Party Congress set to
be held in April of this year. Travel to Cuba will become
much easier, as it won't all have to be through Miami, so
thus reducing the influence of Miami in US political life.

It's in line with the plans advocated by Obama during his
campaign for the Democratic nomination, but this will now
to go beyond that, as those changes were restricted to 
Cuban-Americans and this is an opening to everyone here
in the United States. Those plans were motivated on the
basis of "decreasing the Cuban peoples' dependence on 
the regime", in Obama's parlance. In plain English this
means deepening social differentiation within Cuban
society. 

Remember that all of these restrictions which are today
being modified were imposed on Cuba by the United States.
No other changes that we are aware of have been in any 
manner made. The Helms-Burton Law as well as the Torri-
celli Law are in full force and effect. "Regime Change" 
remains the policy of the U.S. government toward Cuba

Via this announcement Washington says that it continues
to have the right to determine for the people of the 
United States who may visit Cuba and for what purposes
they may do so. 

The Cuban Five remain in prison. The Cubans still hold
the US agent Alan Gross in custody. Washington's rep who
met with Cuba's foreign minister this week also in a very
provocative step met with a group of opponents of Cuba's
government. The Cuban foreign ministry denounced this as
an interference in the island's domestic affairs.

As yet unclear: what will the ultra-reactionary militants
in Miami do to try to sabotage this opening? Remember the
terrorist bombings in Cuban tourist facilities during the
1990s were aimed at this important sector of the Cuban
economy. Remember there is a trial going on in El Paso at
this time.

Ultra-leftist sectarians will probably denounce this as
a sign of Cuba's further evolution toward capitalism.

We are living in interesting times.


Walter Lippmann
Los Angeles, California
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
=

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary 
For Immediate Release January 14, 2011 
Reaching Out to the Cuban People

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/14/reaching-out-cuban-people

Today, President Obama has directed the Secretaries of State,
Treasury, and Homeland Security to take a series of steps to continue
efforts to reach out to the Cuban people in support of their desire
to freely determine their country’s future.

The President has directed that changes be made to regulations and
policies governing: (1) purposeful travel; (2) non-family
remittances; and (3) U.S. airports supporting licensed charter
flights to and from Cuba. These measures will increase
people-to-people contact; support civil society in Cuba; enhance the
free flow of information to, from, and among the Cuban people; and
help promote their independence from Cuban authorities.

The President believes these actions, combined with the continuation
of the embargo, are important steps in reaching the widely shared
goal of a Cuba that respects the basic rights of all its citizens.
These steps build upon the President’s April 2009 actions to help
reunite divided Cuban families; to facilitate greater
telecommunications with the Cuban people; and to increase
humanitarian flows to Cuba.

The directed changes described below will be enacted through
modifications to existing Cuban Assets Control and Customs and Border
Protection regulations and policies and will take effect upon
publication of modified regulations in the Federal Register within 2
weeks.

Purposeful Travel. To enhance contact with the Cuban people and
support civil society through purposeful travel, including religious,
cultural, and educational travel, the President has directed that
regulations and policies governing purposeful travel be modified to:

· Allow religious organizations to sponsor religious travel to Cuba
under a general license.

· Facilitate educational exchanges by: allowing accredited
institutions of higher education to sponsor trave

Re: [Marxism] [LBO] Surowecki on unions

[Marv Gandall]

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(The link to this New Yorker article was posted to the lists moderated by Julio 
Huato, Doug Henwood, and Michael Perelman, and provoked some lively discussion. 
The article and my comments may also be of some interest here.)

On 2011-01-13, at 10:56 AM, Jim Devine wrote:

> Julio Huato:
>>> Opinions on this piece?
>>> 
>>> http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2011/01/17/110117ta_talk_surowiecki
>>> 
> 
> Louis Proyect wrote:
>> I'm surprised that it appeared in the wretched New Yorker.
> 
> my god, this article is straightforward journalism. And it seems accurate.


Unfortunately, it isn't that accurate, except with respect to what everyone 
already knows: that a majority of Americans are hostile to unions. But 
Surowiecki, like many liberals and radicals, including myself until recently, 
gilds the lily with respect to public support for unions under the New Deal. 
While it remains true that a majority of Americans, unlike today, supported the 
right to organize unions and to strike, a central tenet of Surowiecki's piece - 
that "the general public applauded labor’s new power, even in the face of union 
tactics that many Americans frowned on, like sit-down strikes" is very 
misleading. 

In a fascinating and what I regard as a groundbreaking paper published last 
August, “Public Opinion, Organized Labor, and the Limits of New Deal 
Liberalism, 1936–1945”, two UCal Berkeley political scientists, Eric Schickler 
and Devin Caughey -  examined more than 400 polls by Gallup and others, 
including more than 200 questions relating to trade unionism, and found that 
most Americans in that period not only "frowned" on the "illegal" sit-down 
strikes, but supported state intervention to end them, were more sympathetic to 
employer demands for what we today call "right to work" laws than the closed or 
union shop,  and favoured stripping the new CIO unions of their wartime strike 
rights and drafting strikers into the army. 

Surowiecki undoubtedly drew on the paper for his article. If so, he should have 
known that the "more than seventy per cent of those surveyed in a 1937 Gallup 
poll", on which he rests his claim about mass support for "labor's power" under 
the New Deal, was a result recorded a year earlier, in July 1936 - BEFORE the 
sit-down strikes in the auto plants in the cold winter of 1936-37. This is a 
rather egregious error. Prior to the strikes, a stunning 76% responded 
affirmatively to the question, "are you in favor of labour unions?" But, as 
Schickler and Caughey report, in the 1937 Gallup poll, AFTER the strikes and 
the strike wave which it unleashed in other heavy industries, "half of the 
respondents reported that their views had changed; of these, 70% claimed to be 
more negative towards unions than they had been six months earlier." During the 
sitdowns, polls showed a majority of Americans, particularly in the Southern 
states, favoring the use of force to end them. A minority of unionized workers, 
the unemployed, and the unskilled - those who had a real material stake in the 
outcome - were notably opposed. 

Schickler and Caughey also observe correctly that the closed shop was (and 
remains) "a major concern for unions since the open shop would undermine their 
ability to gain and maintain a substantial membership base across industries. 
But here too poll results indicated that even during the New Deal "a healthy 
majority of the public opposed both the closed and union shop and instead 
favored the open shop". They continue: "Public concern about union power and 
tactics continued throughout the war years. For example, across a range of 
polls from 1941 to 1945, more than 70% of respondents supported banning strikes 
in war industries. In April 1944, 68% supported drafting strikers, with just 
22% opposed and 10% undecided. These data suggest "that the 'no strike' pledge 
made by union leaders following Pearl Harbor, while criticized by some 
observers for taming shop-floor activism (Glaberman, 1980; Lichtenstein, 1987), 
may well have been a necessary concession to a hostile public and Congress". 

The paper is accessible at:
http://web.me.com/devin.caughey/Site/Research_files/SchicklerCaugheyLaborOpinion.pdf

I would encourage everyone to read it in full, not only for its detailed 
exhumation of public attitudes to trade unionism, but also to the New Deal in 
general. This passage in particular caught my eye:

"Taken as a whole, our results suggest two ways in which the contours of public 
opinion posed obstacles to a social democratic agenda in the late 1930s and 
1940s. First, the survey evidence suggests that at an abstract level, there was 
widespread skepticism towards further bold domestic policy innovations in both 
the South and non-South after 1937. Second, 

[Marxism] ACTIVIST NEWSLETTER

[JacDon]

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Jan. 14, 2011, Issue #164
HUDSON VALLEY ACTIVIST NEWSLETTER
jac...@earthlink.net, P.O. Box 662, New Paltz, NY 12561
 
‹
ALL ARTCLES AT http://activistnewsletter.blogspot.com/
 
1. A REVOLUTION OF VALUES ‹ The birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. is Jan.
15. Here's a good quote to remember him with.
 
2. CLIMATE CHANGE: SOONER THAN THOUGHT ‹ New report says temperatures could
rise by more than a devastating 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the
century.
 
3. BRIC BECOMES BRICS:
CHANGES ON THE GEOPOLITICAL CHESSBOARD ‹ The BRICS countries are positioning
themselves to speed up the transition from unipolar world leadership by the
U.S. alone to a multipolar leadership that includes several emerging
countries as well as some developed industrialized powers. Washington is
doing its best to retain the dominant role.
 
4. CHARGES DROPPED IN WHITE HOUSE PROTEST ‹ The government released
remaining defendants without charges in the Dec. 16 civil resistance
demonstration where 131 were arrested.
 
5. DELAY IN U.S. TROOP WITHDRAWAL? ‹ Maybe, in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
 
6. DOMESTIC SPYING NETWORK IN U.S. ‹ Washington is creating a vast network
to collect information about Americans.
 
7. DOES FRACKING CAUSE EARTHQUAKES? ‹ Plenty of relatively small ones, says
this article. 
 
8. THE RIGHT WING AND THE GIFFORDS TRAGEDY  ‹ Conservative "lock and load
rhetoric," and the ranting of cable TV reactionaries helped create the
climate for the Tucson shootings.
 
9. U.S. POVERTY NUMBER MAY BE MILLIONS HIGHER ‹ Census bureau changes recent
estimate of 43.6 million in poverty to 47.8 million, using improved methods.
 
10. DEFEND PUBLIC UNIONS AND WORKERS ‹ Conservative politicians ‹ mostly
Republicans but some Democrats as well ‹ are intensifying their campaign to
cut pay and benefits.
 
11. BUDGET CUTBACKS TARGET PUBLIC WORKERS ‹ State budgets that have been
driven near bankruptcy largely by the Wall Street-led crash. Now the workers
must pay for it.
 
12. PUBLIC EMPLOYEES: MYTHS AND REALITIES ‹ This article from Labor Notes
debunks five specific anti-worker claims with the real facts.
 
13. CANCER-CAUSING CHROMIUM IN OUR WATER ‹ Tap water from 31 of 35 U.S.
cities tested contains chromium-6, a carcinogen.
 
14. ONE MORE DEATH IN PALESTINE ‹ It happened on New Years Day: one more
Palestinian dead at the hands of the authorities, and many more will follow.
But repression breeds resistance in Palestine, and the worldwide solidarity
movement is growing.
 
15. SHARIA CHARADE ‹ Oklahoma's anti-Muslim ballot initiative approved last
November is having trouble in court.
 
16. DOMESTIC NEWS BRIEFS
 
17. INTERNATIONAL NEWS BRIEFS
 
18. MISERY WITH PLENTY OF COMPANY ‹ New York Times columnist Bob Herbert
outdoes himself in this article. We had to reprint it.
 
19. "PHIL OCHS: THERE BUT FOR FORTUNE" ‹ A documentary film has just been
released about Ochs, one of America's greatest topical and protest
songwriter-singers. Here's a link to a good left review, and we reprint one
of his songs.
 
20. GROUPS CAUTION U.S. ON WIKILEAKES REPRISALS ‹ A coalition of 30 free
speech organizations sent an open letter to public officials cautioning
against prosecuting "third party publishers."
 
ALL ARTCLES AT http://activistnewsletter.blogspot.com/
 
 




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[Marxism] Tunisia - the colorless revolution...

[Gary MacLennan]

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On his blog the Angry Arab has mockingly challenged the Americans to give
the Tunisian revolution a colour. But the fact that it is colourless is
proof that it is a genuine movement from below and not something cooked up
in an American Embassy.

What happens now?  Well the Angry Arab is certainly getting excited.  I hope
he is right and that the domino applies.

It is interesting to read the coverage on the Debka.com  site of the
Tunisian revolt.  they could not stop themselves talking about how the
Egyptian and Jordanian leaders are now worried. Of course that is only a
kind of reflexive schadenfreude. It is part of the propaganda which has
Israel as the only democracy surrounded by Arab dictatorships.

In reality more than anything else the same right wing Arab dictators act as
a buffer around Israel.  They and the Israelis must now be truly fearing
that their own people will rise up and follow the example of the heroic
Tunisians.

Some time ago Wallerstein predicted that a fire storm would sweep through
the Arab world.  Let us hope that it begins now.

comradely

Gary

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[Marxism] Translation: Cuba needs changes (Camila Harnecker Pinero)

[Marce Cameron]

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>From new Cuba blog "Cuba's Socialist Renewal"
http://cubasocialistrenewal.blogspot.com
To sign up as a follower or to receive email updates click on link above

[I'd like to invite readers of this blog to check out a new blog,
"Venezuela: Translating the Revolution"
 by Owen
Richards, a sister blog to "Cuba's Socialist Renewal".]

Alongside and intersecting with the grassroots debates on the Draft
Economic and Social Policy Guidelines and the informal debate, there
is a rich discussion and debate taking place among Cuban intellectuals
and academic specialists from a variety of disciplines and a spectrum
of political perspectives within the broad camp of the Revolution. The
Cuban magazine Temas (Themes) is one publication that carries
contributions to this debate among Cuba's revolutionary intelligencia.

The demise of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s
precipitated not only the Special Period economic crisis in Cuba, but
also a flourishing of Cuban social sciences in the Marxist
tradition.With the Soviet manuals on "Marxism-Leninism" discredited, a
revival of genuine Marxism was spurred by both the ideological
challenge presented by the demise of Soviet Stalinism and concrete
investigations into the changes taking place in Cuban society as the
Special Period unfolded.

Camila Piñero Harnecker holds a degree in sustainable development from
the University of Berkeley, California. She is a professor at the
Centre for Studies on the Cuban Economy at Havana University, and her
works have been published both in Cuba and outside the island. She is
also, incidently, the daughter of Chilean-Cuban journalist and author
Marta Harnecker (who now lives in Venezuela) and he late husband,
Manuel "Red Beard" Piñero, who headed revolutionary Cuba's state
security and intelligence service for many years. Here is a slightly
abridged and incomplete translation of one of her recent contributions
to the discussion on Cuba's economic reforms. I'll let you know when
the translation is completed.

How to reassert the principle "to each according to their work"
without money-making becoming the main or sole motivation to work?
Here, Piñero Harnercker's concerns echo those of Che Guevara in the
1960s. Today, revolutionary Cuba returns to the classic debate over
material vs. moral incentives four decades on with the Soviet Union
itself long gone but its presence still felt in many of the
Revolution's concepts, structures, methods and mentalities, and with
the PCC leadership acknowledging certain idealistic errors. Rather
than the victory of one side over the other in this decades-old
debate, the new Cuban "model" of socialist development that is
emerging will be a synthesis of the valid contributions of both sides.

Link to translation:
http://cubasocialistrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/01/translation-cuba-needs-changes.html


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[Marxism] readings on US support for death squads in Angola, Mozambique in 1980s

[Dennis Brasky]

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Comrades,

  I recently asked for and received wonderful suggestions for readings on US
policy in Central America in the 1980s - thank you. Can anyone recommend
books or articles on US support to Savimbi/UNITA in Angola and to the
terrorist RENAMO in Mozambique during those years?

Thanks again
Dennis

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Re: [Marxism] The Wikileaks revolution in Tunisia

[Jay Moore]

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http://www.businessinsider.com/tunisia-wikileaks-2011-1


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[Marxism] Lawyer At Firm Aiding Assange's Accusers Okayed CIA Rendition

[Louis Proyect]

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http://www.justice-integrity.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=236:partner-at-firm-counseling-assanges-accusers-helped-in-cia-torture-rendition&catid=44&Itemid=28




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Re: [Marxism] Article on the PRD and the EZLN in Mexico

[Erik Toren]

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A good article, though having read your article(s) on EZLN, nothing that new
here. ;)

Erik

On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 4:19 PM, Louis Proyect  wrote:

>
> Don't know if this was mentioned here, but this is a very good article:
>
> http://links.org.au/node/2095
>
>
>
>
>

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[Marxism] Article on the PRD and the EZLN in Mexico

[Louis Proyect]

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Don't know if this was mentioned here, but this is a very good article:

http://links.org.au/node/2095






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Re: [Marxism] "left"

[Mark Lause]

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...or we could just use the term in the sense of where we'd take our seats
in the timeless and idealized national assembly...

The problem is that whatever words we've used over the centuries, they are
subject to being assimilated and coopted.

We want justice, freedom, liberty, democracy, socialism, communism,
anarchism, human rights, etc  They won't give them to us or let us take
them, but they'll be quite happy to redefine them and use them to us as a
palliative for our discontent.  This of it as capitalist "empowerment"

"Yeah, there's an app for that..."

ML

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[Marxism] Fake Leftists double standards

[Louis Proyect]

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http://revolutionaryfesenjan.blogspot.com/2011/01/nationalism-can-cause-racism-and.html






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Re: [Marxism] Current situation in Tunisia

[Dan]

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Five members of Ben Ali's family have been arrested on charges of
corruption, including some of the most prominent businessmen in Tunisia.
Apparently, there are calls for a new demonstration tomorrow to force
Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi to step down and for the holding of
"free general elections".
In the capital the situation is tense, with the military patrolling the
streets. There are however indications of disagreements within the
Army's high command over how next to proceed.



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Re: [Marxism] Revolt or Revolution in Tunisia

[Manuel Barrera]

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Jay said: "Comrades: While we have been so focused on the mental state of Jared 
Loughner, we've been missing out on some important developments in the Arab 
World, where the masses have toppled a regime in Tunisia and food protesters 
have taken to the streets en masse in Jordan."


I am sure many here have been multi-tasking  and following these events while 
debating whether a should-be mental patient is part of a rightist reaction or a 
convenient excuse for the Lesser-Evils to call for "civility"--read moving even 
further to the right than they already are. However, I have found it amazing to 
see so much energy and intellectual "capital" expended over that issue; in its 
own way, an example that the LEDs' strategy of obfuscation and justification is 
being successful. Comparisons of the Presidential sophistry in Arizona to the 
mass movement memorials to Evers, King, and others in the past are just one of 
these--seriously, I believe comparing Obama, the Democrats, and Republicans 
politicizations with memorials to assassinated mass movement leaders no matter 
how telling are an insult to the veritable fighters for social justice. And 
THAT contribution was among the best!

I'm not sure if you meant it in this way, Jay, but I do thank you for pointing 
up the patently ridiculous "analysis" of Loughner and related issues of mental 
incapacity under capitalism as juxtaposed to veritable calamities and real 
crimes being shoved under the rug in the name of "civility of discourse". If 
ever there was a time for Marxists/Revolutionists to be uncivil, it is now.

Who knows, maybe we'll be getting back to more substantive issues that have 
been overshadowed by a collective water-cooler discourse on whether it is good 
to be civil or uncivil (I vote for the latter), whether a nut is a racist or 
just a nut, and crying "foul" that the President would use this event in the 
predictable and inevitable way that it has been used.
Really appreciate Marce Cameron's blogs, btw. Cuba's "socialist renewal" is 
just what I needed to pick up the pieces. Mercí, compañero
Manuel

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[Marxism] Current situation in Tunisia

[Dan]

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At the time of writing, Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi has taken
over from Ben Ali.
Ghannouchi is Ben Ali's second-in-command, a top leader of Ben ALi's CDR
party, and a minister in the CDR government since 1986.
A State of Emergency has been declared and the Army has imposed an
indefinite ban on rallies. Shots have been fired at residents who took
to the streets to celebrate the downfall of Ben Ali, forcing people to
return to their homes.
Evidently the CDR is still in control of the armed forces. 
What will be Ghannouchi's next move ? Will he try to placate the angry
masses with promises of jobs and pursue the selfsame policies ? Will he
call for "free" general elections (unlike the 2009 parody of an election
that saw Ben ALi elected with over 80% of the vote) ?
The corrupt elite and the ruling CDR party (since 1957 !) have taken the
measure of popular discontent. It is however doubtful that they intend
to change much in the way things are run in Tunisia, a country founded
on corruption, nepotism and a powerful secret police that has literally
thousands of informers in every neighborhood. 
The Tunisian left is deeply divided and has a long history of
infiltration by the CDR's agents.
The CDR will probably attempt to appease the people with vague promises
of jobs and "democracy", while keeping a firm control over the military.
IT is still far too early to celebrate, and Tunisian leftists are fuly
aware of this.




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[Marxism] Revolt or Revolution in Tunisia

[Jay Moore]

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Comrades: While we have been so focused on the mental state of Jared 
Loughner, we've been missing out on some important developments in the 
Arab World, where the masses have toppled a regime in Tunisia and food 
protesters have taken to the streets en masse in Jordan.  Some good links:

http://www.marxist.com/tunisia-from-uprisinig-to-revolution.htm
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/01/20111614145839362.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/01/20413424337867.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2010/12/20101231161958792947.html


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[Marxism] Song for Bradley Manning, by David Rovics

[Greg McDonald]

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_eood7DUwI&NR=1


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[Marxism] Apropos of Zhao LIang's "Crime and Punishment"

[Louis Proyect]

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/14/china-police-chief-dies-custody
Chinese police chief's widow alleges torture after he dies in custody

After the sudden death of Xie Zhigang, rights group says forced
confessions are rampant in China despite new rules

Within a day of his detention, Xie Zhigang was dead. His interrogators
had called the emergency services because he "had no appetite". He
died in hospital, where doctors recorded the cause as a sudden heart
attack.

His widow said his body told a more complicated story. "There were
bruises all over his body, and deep scars on his wrist and ankles.
Five of his ribs were broken," said Wang Li, who alleges that he died
due to torture.

In a country that has seen repeated scandals over deaths in custody
and forced confessions, two things about Xie's case stand out. First,
the death in Benxi city, Liaoning, in December came months after China
introduced new rules designed to reduce the use of torture in
investigations. Second, Xie, who had been detained on suspicion of
corruption, was a local police chief.

"Forced confessions are rampant," said Phelim Kine, Asia researcher at
Human Rights Watch. "That a security official who fell foul of the
authorities might end up being a victim of the same treatment really
is not surprising. This is the template for investigating crimes."

No one knows how many such cases happen in China each year. A report
from the ministry of public security said 1,800 police officers were
suspended for torture in 2009. In a survey conducted three years
earlier, 70% of prisoners said fellow detainees they knew had made
forced confessions.

Teng Biao, a Beijing-based lawyer, said. "There is no annual official
data on how many people are actually involved and I believe even if
there is, the number wouldn't be true. I can say that it is involved
in most cases to some extent ... Among my cases and those of my lawyer
friends we always come across this."

The worst abuses have made waves in state media and among the public.
Last March, police in a town in central Henan province were sacked
after the death of a man arrested for theft. The Chongqing Evening
News said officers told them he "died suddenly while drinking hot
water". The dead man's family said his nipples had been cut off, his
genitals slashed and his skull fractured.

It has been the futility of such tactics – as highlighted by the cases
of She Xianglin and Zhao Zuohai – that has helped to galvanise
opinion. Both men served lengthy sentences after admitting "murders",
only for their alleged victims to reappear. Both said they were beaten
into confessions.

Those miscarriages of justice were in part responsible for new rules
introduced last year against the use of evidence obtained by torture.
But although they are backed by the five main agencies involved in
criminal procedures, they have yet to pass into national law.

In effect they are internal guidelines, and victims will not be able
to use them to challenge abusive police in the courts. Experts say
they demonstrate a welcome consensus at the top on the need for
action, but implementation by those lower down will be another matter.

"In the criminal procedure law it says clearly that torture and forced
confession is prohibited. But the reality is, the people who do this,
prosecutors, the police... they are not punished for doing this," said
Teng. "The ultimate reason [this still happens] is that there is no
independent judicial system and there are no checks and balances on
public power."

Other factors might be easier to resolve. Investigators are usually
poorly trained, poorly paid and under pressure to achieve results. In
major cases they are expected to meet a deadline, and failure can lose
them a bonus or promotion.

Suspects have no right to a lawyer when they are detained until they
are arrested formally. By then, most confessions have been made. An
experiment by researchers in Beijing found that guaranteeing access to
lawyers from the start almost totally eradicated torture.

Simply telling security officers what to do seems to have little
effect. Since 2006, recording all interrogations of officials has been
mandatory. Yet when Xie's family asked for the tape of his interview,
prosecutors said they had not recorded it because they were not asking
"in-depth" questions, reported China Youth Daily, which broke the
story.

Ban Yue, Benxi's foreign affairs officer, told the newspaper that the
city was taking the case very seriously and that the results of Xie's
autopsy would be published by the end of the month. City prosecutors
said queries should be referred to the provincial office, where the
Guardian's calls rang unanswered.

Additional research by Lin Yi

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[Marxism] Right to arm bears

[Red Arnie]

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As a radical environmentalist, I believe in the right to arm bears and hug 
trees.

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[Marxism] PSUV: Six strategic lines

[Owen Richards]

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http://venezuelatranslatingtherevolution.blogspot.com/2011/01/psuv-six-strategic-lines.html



  

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