Daily Archives: July 18, 2021

The distribution of the Because We Care Education Cash Grant (ECG) by the Government started in Region 2 last week. Parents will get $19,000 for each child, of whom there are 172,000 countrywide, costing approximately $3.2 billion. There is no restriction on how the money is to be spent. The project was started by the PPP/C in 2014 at $10,000 for each child. It was discontinued by the APNU+AFC in 2015 and has now been restored by the PPP/C Government.

I caught a television news clip of a portion of the event. Tagewantee Dollarie was interviewed and expressed her gratitude for the help. She explained that she is the sole breadwinner for her grandson. She had been receiving social assistance, which was stopped abruptly and without explanation. She started relating her story quietly, with dignity, emphasizing how helpful the grant would be for her grandson. But when she began to talk about him, what Grade he was in, how well he was doing, and that his father had killed his mother and then committed suicide, the tears flowed, even though she bravely continued the interview. Few who watched this brief episode could have sustained dry eyes or avoided a lump in their throats. There are many similar stories of hardship, in every single community, all across Guyana, made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic and the floods.

The ECG comes in the midst of significant developments in US economic policy for which many in the US have been struggling for decades. Having regard to stagnant wages, disparities in income, the increasing wealth gap and increasing general and child poverty in the US since the 1970s, it would not be hyperbolic to describe the Biden Administrations economic and poverty alleviation policies as revolutionary. One significant element, coincidentally, is the Child Tax Credit. Its effect is a maximum US$300 payment a month to most American families for each child. It is estimated that it will cut child poverty in half in the US.

One of the most important obstacles in the past to social security, or social help, or assistance in the form of cash grants or otherwise, has been the reactionary excuses oppressors have used for centuries to sustain their oppression of the enslaved, indentured, poor and disadvantaged, which is today referred to as the dependency syndrome. The principle is simple if you help the poor to improve their condition, they will become dependent on that help and lose the initiative to help themselves. This theory was not only confined to conservatives and reactionaries. It has held sway over many who have themselves, by their own efforts, made successful lives. They argue that if only those people would not complain, would work, rather than rely on charity, or handouts, they would succeed.

The evidence in recent years has smashed the myth of the dependency syndrome and destroyed the arguments of its advocates. In the US, where in the past Republicans and conservative Democrats have supported the dependency syndrome, only some rabid holdouts remain. President Reagan had popularized the dependency syndrome by infamously railing against the welfare queens. President Clinton, wrenching the Democratic Party to right of centre, applied the dependency syndrome by imposing onerous conditionalities on the recipients of social security. However, most progressives have been buoyed by the great success of the bolsa familia programme implemented in Brazil by the past Lula Governments which, by cash grants, which have substantially reduced poverty. Since then, these programmes have been successfully implemented to varying degrees all over the world. As Nobel Prize winning economist, Paul Krugman, said (NYT 2021-07-16) economists have assembled a great deal of data pointing to the benefits of public spending, especially aid to families with children.

For the above reasons, I was horrified to read a letter in SN of 2021-07-15 written by Mr. Aubrey Norton (PPPs cash grant is both inadequate and ill conceived) in which he criticized the payout for every child in public schools. Mr. Norton is a longtime leader in APNU+AFC, ostensibly socialist in orientation, who is or was a high official in the Office of the Leader of the Opposition. I do not seek to engage Mr. Norton on his political criticisms of the PPP/C Government that the programme fits into the PPPs scheme to create dependence rather than increasing our peoples capacity to earn and live decent and fulfilling lives., or that the PPPs use of state resources creates dependencies to dominate and control the lives of the people of Guyana. These are matters for the Government to respond to.

However, I do take exception to the idea that the ECG programme, by itself, creates dependency of any kind. For Mr. Norton to join with the most conservative, reactionary, politicians worldwide to perpetuate this now largely discredited, backward, dangerous and fallacious nonsense, that cash grants actually create any kind of dependency whatsoever, whether on politicians or anyone else, is quite unbelievable. If this is the motivation of the PPP/C Government, it will certainly fail. And if this is the kind of extremist views, plucked out of the dungeon of Mr. Nortons political mind, that he will bring to the PNCR if he wins the leadership, then God help us.

This column is reproduced, with permission, from Ralph Ramkarrans blog, http://www.conversationtree.gy

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The Dependency Syndrome and the Governments Education Cash Grant - Stabroek News

Just as the Government hails freedom day it also restricts the right to protest and denies freedom of movement. Sian Norris asks if this is just freedom for markets and money rather than people

Its been a funny old time for freedom.

Last Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the go-ahead of so-called freedom day when all Coronavirus restrictions will be lifted, with interventions such as face masks to become a personal choice.

The decision was greeted with a mixture of joy, despair and caution. But one narrative has been clear throughout the pandemic: that Coronavirus restrictions are in opposition to the values of what Johnson called a freedom-loving country. It is very difficult, Johnson told the House of Commons, to ask the British population to uniformly obey guidelines in the way it is necessary.

Similarly, various right-wing commentators have commented on how Johnson is an instinctive liberal, a characteristic which, they claim, has made it challenging for him to impose draconian restrictions to stop the spread of the virus. That instinctive liberalism, one can assume, was behind the alleged comment to let the bodies pile high as opposed to introducing a second lockdown. Johnson denies making the comment.

But hours after Johnson assured the nation that it would soon have its pre-pandemic freedoms back, his Government was voting to take freedoms away via the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill which passed its third reading by 365 votes to 265 noes.

During the vote, instinctive liberal Boris Johnson agreed to severely restrict the right to protest. This includes increasing police powers to shut down protests such as processions and assemblies if they result in serious disruption, for example noise, have an impact on persons in the vicinity, or result in serious disruption to the activities of an organisation which are carried on in the vicinity.

Joining Johnson in the Aye lobby was Sir Edward Leigh, who called Coronavirus restrictions authoritarianism. Steve Baker, who referred to lockdown situations as dystopia. Mark Harper, a leader of anti-lockdown backbenchers, voted for the Bill, as did various other MPs critical of restrictions such as Sir Desmond Swayne who called wearing a mask a monstrous imposition.

Sir Charles Walker, who mounted his own protest against Coronavirus restrictions by walking around London holding a glass of milk, did not vote.

The Bill also includes longer sentences for protesters who vandalise or remove statues, although an amendment by the Labour Party to introduce tougher sentencing for rapists was voted down by the Conservatives.

The gulf between Johnsons hailing of the UK as freedom-loving and the praise heaped on his liberal instincts, and a Bill that removes key freedoms around speech and protest, could not be clearer. On the one hand, we have libertarian MPs decrying basic public health measures as authoritarian. On the other, we have those same MPs banning people banging drums, shouting slogans and occupying space often in the pursuit of greater freedoms.

But we dont have to look too far to understand what is driving these contradictions.

One of the protest movements that has received large amounts of criticism from this Government is the environmental activists Extinction Rebellion. The Home Secretary Priti Patel accused the group who blockade roads and perform disruptive stunts as threatening the UK way of life and floated the idea of categorising its members as an organised crime group.

There can be no doubt that the new Bill will further criminalise many of Extinction Rebellions activities, making it harder to protest against policies that fail to tackle the climate crisis.

In doing so, the Bill smooths the path for business interests whose activities fuel the same climate crisis including the individuals and companies linked to oil and gas industries who donated at least 419,000 to the Conservative Party last year.

Other large Conservative Party donors have a lot to gain from increased restrictions on protests by environmental activists. Sir Michael Hintze, the godfather of Conservative donors funds a climate-crisis denying think-thank. He gave 3,000 to Home Secretary Priti Patel. Lord Bamford of JCB fame is one of the Partys biggest donors while the construction industry influences almost 47% of the UKs carbon dioxide emissions. Ukrainian oil man Alexander Temerko has donated around 20,000 to the Conservative Party via the Offshore Group Newcastle.

This is just one example of a protest movement working in opposition to the interests of Conservative donors that is now facing harsher penalties and restrictions. Various arms of the arms industry, a frequent target for disruptive protests, have spent significant sums on Conservative politicians.

Business interests linked to HS2 contracts, another hot button protest project, have also donated to or are linked to the Conservatives. For example, non-executive Director of the Keller Group, Baroness Kate Rock, is a Conservative Peer. The group won an HS2 contract. Aggregate Industries, which won a modular track contract, is a historic donor to the Conservative Party, having given significant sums between 2008 and 2011.

The Conservative Party has also received 60.8 million from individuals and companies within the property sector another industry that is often the target for protests ranging from rent strikes, occupations and blockades and which would therefore benefit from the Bill.

Alongside the assault on the freedom to protest, last week also saw the Home Offices New Plan for Immigration in the headlines. The plan will make it harder for people seeking asylum to come to the UK, including by changing the rules so that people who arrive via so-called illegal routes will be treated differently to those arriving legally. It has also been mooted that the plan will create offshore processing centres for people seeking asylum.

Just as with the Policing, Crime, Courts and Sentencing Bill, the gulf between the New Plan for Immigration and Johnsons rhetoric about the freedom-loving UK is stark.

While the Conservatives hail freedom day, the walls for a new detention centre for failed women asylum seekers is being built in Hassockfield, County Durham.

Mitie, the company contracted to run the asylum housing at Hassockfield, has Conservative Peer Baroness Couttie as its non-executive Director. The old detention centre for women, Yarls Wood, is operated by Serco and linked to Conservative donors. Camilla Soames, wife of Sercos Director, donated nearly 5,000 to the Party in 2019.

It begs the question: who is freedom for? Does our love of freedom extend to those escaping persecution for expressing their political, religious or social views? Does our love of freedom extend to men, women and children who simply want the opportunity to live free from the fear of conflict and violence?

Or is freedom for markets and the movement of money, rather than people?

Johnson told Parliament that every advance from free speech to democracy has come from this country.

But right now, his party seems intent on rolling back our freedom of speech, freedom to protest and freedom to seek asylum in favour of the freedom to make money.

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Boris Johnson's Idea of Freedom is a Form of Oppression Byline Times - Byline Times

FORMER Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was cheered at a rally in Bradford as he called on the Government to "unconditionally recognise the state of Palestine."

Some have criticised Bradford Council for allowing a sizeable gathering to go ahead after not showing the Euro football final on City Park's big screen, but the Council said the rally's organisers announced the location without notifying them in advance. Discussions only took place thereafter, the Council said.

Mr Corbyn was the key speaker at the event in City Park, dubbed 'Free Palestine, no to foreign wars, no to Islamophobia', which attracted a crowd of over 100 people.The rally, organised by Bradford Stop the War Coalition, also featured a passionate speech from Bradford East MP Imran Hussain.Mr Corbyn, wearing a cream-coloured jacket,was given a large round of applause as he was introduced to the crowd.He spoke of how Bradford was the cradle of the Labour movement in this country" and that those values - such as standing up to mill owners and opposing oppression - were still important today.Turning to Palestine, he said: "I want to see peace, I want to see nationhood for the Palestinian people and I want us to have a Government - as I wanted to be the head of a Government -that would unconditionally recognise the state of Palestine."

The gathering took place at City Park, and began at around 5pm, continuingbeyond7pm.

The gathering was centred around the steps of the Magistrates' Court building.

The speaker introducing the event said Bradford always backs Palestine and "has a long history of it unlike other cities."

Mr Corbyn said: "The city of Bradford was the cradle, the first, in many ways, of the Labour movement in this country. The Independent Labour movement was founded here.

"Many of those who founded the ILP had a vision of a country that cared for each other in health, in education, in housing, the provision of libraries and learning and of opportunities for young people, who stood up against the mill owners.

"Bradford has given so much to the Labour party and the Labour movement and the world all over."

He said Bradford had a long history of opposing war and pointed out that many in the cityhad not seen the sense in British workers fighting German workers as it was essentially a war between Imperialist classes.

He continued to say: "This event is also, of course, about solidarity - solidarity with people all around the world. Much has been said about solidarity with the people of Palestine and I absolutely endorse that."

He bemoaned images of jets bombing homes in Gaza and pointed out that homes on the West Bank were being destroyed by "those who believe that settlers have a right to take over the West Bank."

"I want to see peace, I want to see nationhood for the Palestinian people and I want us to have a Government - as I wanted to be the head of a Government - that would unconditionally recognise the state of Palestine."

"The right and the racists in our society will always seek to divide us."

Richard Burgon, Labour MPfor Leeds East, told the crowd: "It's always an important occasion when we speak out against injustice. It's always an important occasion when we speak out against oppression. It's always an important occasion when we speak out against racism. It's always an important occasion when we come together united by the desire to organise, to create, a better, more peaceful, more just world."

He said "if only they had listened 20 years ago" to the Stop the War Coalition, "many lives would have been saved around the world and it would be a more peaceful place."

Mr Burgon claimed he had got cross-party support for a Bill not to sell arms to Israel.

"Palestine has a right to exist. Palestine will exist," he said.

And there were huge cheers when the introducer added: "Just imagine Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister and Richard Burgon as the deputy.

Bradford East MP Imran Hussain said Bradford had a proud history as a City of Sanctuary and would welcome refugees as "nobody chooses to face persecution."

"Nobody willingly gets on a boat with their children knowing they are almost certainly facingdeath," he told the crowd, as he thanked Bradford people for the 'friendship and welcome' it had given people in need over the years.

"Let's be clear - racism and persecution are still far too prevalent in our society. We only have to look at the football last weekend," he added, pointing out that Bradford stood in solidarity with the England footballers who received abuse after missing penalties.

He continued to say the Palestinian people "continued to face indiscriminate attacks from the Israeli Government."

The rallyhas been organised to raise awareness of the many terrible conflicts and wars which continue across the globe, and which concern so many of Bradfords residents.

These include the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank in Palestine, the war in Yemen and the conflict in Kashmir.

Stop the War has been at the forefront of protesting against wars since its foundation in 2001.

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Bradford crowds cheer as Jeremy Corbyn calls for Government to 'recognise the state of Palestine' - Bradford Telegraph and Argus

Cubans have been marching in the streets for freedom, chanting Libertad! and demonstrating by the thousands that theyve had enough of the sham called communism. They know economic disaster and political repression come with that territory.

Yet today were peering through Alices looking glass as we watch these events unfold. Everything is backwards. Elites in the U.S. government, media, and Big Tech seem to be taking the side of the communist authorities who are clamping down on the protests, Soviet-style. Some journalists and Twitter have spun the idea that Cubans are taking to the streets mostly because of a desire for more awareness of COVID-19 cases and deaths. Please.

Theres always hell to pay whenever you allow too much power into the hands of too few people. Thats the story of communism, in a nutshell. Its a totalitarian system in which a little clique of elites has absolute power to dictate to everybody what they may say, how they may act, what goods and services they may receive, and with whom they may associate. In a word, communism is state-run slavery.

The elites who push it stop at nothing to maintain their power. So it shouldnt surprise us that communist regimes have murdered 100 million people in the twentieth century. Thats probably a gross underestimate, but you get the picture. Its summed up well in Professor R.J. Rummels opening words to his book, Death by Government: Power kills; absolute power kills absolutely.

Its tragic that the free world has never held the lethal ideology of communism accountable for its crimes against humanity. Worse, the ideology is making a comeback, mindlessly promoted and celebrated, often by American youth who have never been taught to know better.

Identity politics (especially in the form of critical race theory,) mob rule, and censorship enforced by Big Tech in America today are the same tools communist regimes have always used to enforce their utopian schemes. If more of us recognized the ideology as the murderous perversion that it is and understood how its tools pave the path to oppression, wed be more vigilant. But how might we build such awareness?

The whole world united to discredit National Socialism immediately after World War II. In a trial in Nuremberg, Germany in 1946, Nazis had to answer for their horrific crimes against humanity, which resulted in the deaths of 11 million people, including six million Jews. Yet despite more than 100 million murders, the victims of communism have never come together in a similar condemnation of communism.

This failure may stem in part from mixed messages the public got from the original Nuremberg trials themselves. The allied powers of World War IIincluding the Soviet Unionserved as prosecutors at Nuremberg. That meant a communist nation could pretend at Nuremberg to stand with the West for human rights, even though its methods of governance were virtually indistinguishable from those of fascists: a harsh surveillance culture, no free expression, a war on private life, gulag camps for political prisoners, mass killings of minorities. Dont forget, either, that Joseph Stalin was aligned with Adolf Hitler for the first two years of World War II.

Nor have the crimes of communist China ever been called to account. Mao Zedongs Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution resulted in the brutal deaths of tens of millions of Chinese. Although many today see China as a sort of state capitalist/communist hybrid, all of the communist tools and techniques to suppress political opposition and repress cultural minorities remain in place there.

Slave labor and concentration camps remain. Speech is strictly controlled. A sophisticated social credit system controls every aspect of life of every private citizen in China. Nor have communist regimes, including those of pre-1989 Eastern Europe, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela, been held accountable for their crimes against humanity.

And in the West? Powerful apologists throughout the world, especially in media, academia, the corporate world, and Big Tech have enabled the cover-up of such crimes. This, in turn, has led to the rise of far-left sentiments in the United States and the West, unchecked by recognition of communisms crimes.

Vladimir Bukovsky (d. 2019,) a preeminent leader of the Soviet dissident movement, was the driving force for putting the ideology of communism in a Nuremberg-like dock for the whole world to judge. He felt for decades that all needed to witness such an accounting for communisms horrific crimes and genocides.

Bukovsky himself suffered 12 years as a political prisoner confined to psychiatric prison-hospitals and gulag prison camps in the Soviet Union. His 1976 deportation to the West, arranged through a prisoner exchange, brought him the freedom to publish his book, Judgment in Moscow: Soviet Crimes and Western Complicity.

Bukovskys initiative for a Nuremberg for Communism lay fallow until Renato Cristin, a philosophy professor at the University of Trieste, proposed they write an appeal and petition that could be circulated throughout the world, to leaders, journalists, and concerned citizens alike. Bukovsky signed on to the initiative they intended to launch on November 9, 2019, the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. But Bukovsky died suddenly just two weeks prior.

Their appeal emphasizes that, unlike the trials of individual Nazi officials at Nuremberg in 1946, the ideology of communism itself must be put on trial. This is not because most of the biggest players of the 20th century, such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and their top-level cohorts are long dead. Indeed, dictators today wear their mantles.

But, unlike the situation with the Nazis, communism has had more than 100 years to march through our institutions worldwide. Few understand that communism, just like fascism, fights for total control over all human beings and their private lives. As Bukovsky stated, it is a cancer on the body of the human race. And its gone unchallenged for too long.

Today we are faced with a New Iron Curtain, an internal front, or an internal split within the West itself. This brings the enemy of the West right into our institutional, cultural, and even our mental world, disrupting us, weakening us and creating chaos in order to generate power vacuums it can then fill.

The New Iron Curtain comes to us in the form of political correctness, identity politics, mob rule, and nonstop propaganda on the internet, all of which serve to manipulate every individual emotionally and psychologically. Communisms warfare today is at least 90 percent psychological. And most people are not psychologically equipped to engage with this onslaught, especially vulnerable youth who are targeted with the full alliance of its progressive column in the West.

Even though a trial couldnt be a courtroom drama like the one that took place at Nuremberg in 1946, the toxins spread by communism need an equally deep reckoning that clarifies what the ideology does to people and how it destroys lives and freedom. In short, we need a moral renewal.

To do that, Bukovsky and Cristin see a public trial for communism that might be developed along three closely related tracks of action, in which all could participate in some way. We might call those tracks reflection, investigation, and condemnation.

First, the world must reflect on how communism has affected our lives and how it marched through all of our institutions, infiltrating them with its intolerance for freedom. We would need to examine how communism subverted education, the media, courts, the arts, popular culture, legislatures, psychiatry, the corporate world, the military, churches, and more.

Second, a legal and historical line of argument would have to methodically examine communisms specific crimes against humanity. Historians and legal scholars would document the crimes and the costs in human lives.

The list of communisms atrocities is long. It includes the deliberate starving of about seven million peasants under Stalins forced collectivization in the winter of 1932-33 and the wholesale reign of terror Mao unleashed during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976.) Everyone ought to hear witnesses who verify what happens in Communisms legacy of gulags, slave labor camps, and psychiatric prison-hospitals.

Third, there must be political and institutional work in which legislative bodies of nations condemn the ideology of communism on moral grounds. The European Parliament actually passed such a resolution in September 2019, historically equating communism with National Socialism. Predictably, leftists were aghast. But this is the sort of work that must persist. Resolutions condemning communism could be generated at various levels of government worldwide, including by states and municipalities, just as has been done in recognizing the Armenian genocide. Corporations and other entities could add their voices as well.

Can any of this happen? Many outlets for this work could be used, including events, conferences, papers, and legislation, and each track builds on and supports the others. People who have survived communist regimes could help through their vocal support and determined action. High-profile media and cultural figures speaking out could also make an enormous difference. Of course, you can help too, by signing the appeal.

But, whether we pursue this Nuremberg appeal or not, we have no choice but to try to make such a public reckoning happen. We are in a war today that we must fight and win if we want to live in a world in which freedom is preserved.

The fact that apologies for Communist China have become radical chic in America should alarm us. Some of the biggest offenders include the NBA, Americas corporate media, Nike, Disney, and tech companies like Apple, Facebook, Amazon, et al. They are joined by the Democrat Party and its media lackeys.

Their support for that regime serves to promote the imprisonment of the Uighur population in concentration camps. Nike, for example, has a supply chain thats interwoven with Uighur slave labor in China. Apologists cooperate with Chinas censorship policies, boost the Chinese governments oppression of religious minorities, and aid Chinas clampdown against freedom in Hong Kong.

But hopeful signs are visible also. We should be heartened to see survivors of communist systems warning Americans that the toxic ideology they escaped is now at our doorstep.

Xi Van Fleet, a mother who lived through the nightmare of Maos Cultural Revolution, recently warned the Loudoun County, Virginia school board about critical race theory. Its the same sort of coercive thought reform she saw used in that reign of terror to divide people, characterized by struggle sessions, the use of concepts like white privilege to sow social distrust,and intense social pressure to conform or be canceled.

We should also find encouragement in Arizonas recent legislation that would have victims of communism tell their stories in public schools. This would greatly balance todays one-sided narratives hostile to America, narratives meant only to serve the social engineering agendas of educrats and the media. American children would learn what its actually like to live under totalitarianism.

All Americans need to learn what is at stake. Communism is not a harmless ideology that simply claims to work for equality and justice. Its a deceptive front that aims to abolish all private life along with private property. The deep truth is that in communism you personally become the private property of the state.

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Why Communism Should Be Tried For Its Crimes Against Humanity - The Federalist