People's Democracy

AROUND THE WORLD

Venezuela's March Continues...

ONE by one, the bricks are being removed in the capitalist walls that were erected in Latin American nations during the pro-imperialist rule. Taking Cuba as a model, president of Venezuela Hugo Chavez is chalking his own path towards socialism. Last week, he had nationalised Venezuela's third largest bank, i e the Banco de Venezuela. This bank was earlier privatised in 1996. The government of Venezuela has paid one billion dollars to the Spanish group Grupo Santander for their shares.

This purchase has brought one fifth of all bank deposits in Venezuela into the government fold. After getting the people's nod for nationalisation of core sectors, President Hugo Chavez has nationalised telecommunications, electricity, steel, oil and other core companies in the last two years. The latest push of bringing the banking sector under control will increase the government's role in shaping the economy.

Now, the government can regulate the money supply in a better way. Even earlier, the banking sector was properly regulated and the interests rates and commissions were set by the government. Leonardo Vera, an economist and professor at Venezuela's Central University, pointed out, "The government of Venezuela will now be able to indirectly regulate prices and market strategies."

Moreover, the welfare oriented schemes also will get enough resources after this move. Chavez has once again assured the people of his country that the march towards socialism will continue.

�Sympathy Budget� For Warmongers

IT has now come to light that the Japanese rulers are throwing away the taxpayers� money in the name of national security. Toguchi Osamu, a Japanese Communist Party representative in the Okinawa prefectural government, has raised a question on the expenditure incurred by the US forces stationed in Okinawa.

The revealed fact was outrageous. The prefectural government had paid 10 billion yen to the US forces stationed in Okinawa. This amounts to 71 per cent of the entire nation's electric bill in 2007. Toguchi commented, "The government spends nearly 10 billion yen of tax money in the name of �sympathy budget� while the elderly have to bear the increasing financial burden of medical services that used to be free. Free medical services for the elderly can be achieved by doing away with the sympathy budget."

But this is the picture of Okinawa only. All over Japan, about 33,000 US soldiers are stationed, and the expenditure for this force is enormous. The government has named the expenditure as sympathy budget. The US forces play a role in Japan's national security, the officials justify. The Japanese Communist Party has demanded that this issue should be discussed in the Diet, the Japanese parliament.

Startling Facts On Israeli Offensive

STARTLING facts have come out regarding the war crimes committed by the Israeli forces in Gaza in January this year. Amnesty International, a rights group, has come out with an indepth report on this issue. In the three-week offensive, the report says, 1,400 Palestinians were killed. Among them were 300 children and 900 unarmed civilians. The rights group has questioned: Why did high-precision weapons like tank shells, air-delivered bombs and missiles kill so many children and unarmed civilians?

On the other side, the Israelis have refused to cooperate with the veteran war crimes investigator Richard Goldstone. He is probing this massacre on behalf of the United Nations. This UN probe�s investigator is biased, Israel claims. They say they have themselves investigated the whole episode and announced that their military had done nothing wrong! Hamas, the ruling group in Gaza, is cooperating with the UN investigating team and allowed them into Gaza.

However, even the startling facts revealed by the rights group are an understatement. Israeli forces have used Palestinians as human shields, charged the Hamas. Apart from killing the civilians, Palestinians were blocked from receiving medical care and humanitarian aid from neutral sources. The Hamas has pointed that even the counter-attack killed only 10 Israeli soldiers, showing that it was purely defensive in nature.

"I Have Become A Communist!"

I HAVE become a communist, said a girl to her parents. They were surprised to hear this from their daughter. But the girl did not want to get identified, fearing that she might lose her job. She is one among those lakhs of Japanese who were browsing in Google, Bing etc to come out from the crisis. The crisis that started from the sub-prime loans doled out by the US banks, has affected the second largest economy in the world too. 

The girl found out that "in capitalism now we are controlled by the capitalists, or capital. But I think in a communism society we can think about the whole of society and decide our economic activities in a democratic way." She claims that she is a member of a "lost generation." She also mentioned about the people who came to the employment market during Japan's long stagnation in the 1990s and could not find proper jobs.

She is not alone in embracing communism in Japan. The party that has four lakh members on its rolls, is getting about 1,000 new members every month. Rallies by retrenched Japanese workers have become day to day affair. Presiding over these protests are none other than the leaders Japanese Communist Party. One worker among the rallyists claimed, "I support the Communist Party because it's the one that thinks about workers first." "The Communist Party is the only party that gets really serious about problems like this," said another.

When the recent international economic crisis erupted, Marxist literature came in demand from the affected, would-be affected and may-be affected sections. It was a 'classical' case in Japan. One classical novel was written in 1929 and was almost forgotten by the Japanese. The crisis has brought that novel into limelight now. The title of the novel is Kanikosen, and its story revolves around some poor fishermen uniting against their owners. Along with history, the story also repeats itself.