US: Obama's administration, shaken by the crisis

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US: Obama's administration, shaken by the crisis

By Juan Chingo

Thursday, February 12, 2009

In the heat of the brutal economic crisis that destroyed another 598,000 jobs in January, the enthusiasm between Obama's election and his inauguration and his first days of governing has rapidly dissipated. This is one signs of the problems that he confronts and of the exceptional times we are living through. The hudnred-day honeymoon that is given every new US President has not ended, but in scarcely twenty days his administration seems confused, pulled between pressure from the banks and the financial aristocracy that is running the country to exert pressure so that the costs of the crisis fall on the shoulders of working people, whose expectations that Obama's arrival in power would mean some change in their desperate situation, caused by the deterioration of economic conditions.

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GUADELOUPE: General strike continues and spreads to other French colonies

From: http://www.ft-ci.org

Caribbean GUADELOUPE: The general strike continues and spreads to other French colonies
By Philipe
Thursday, February 12, 2009

Since January 20, the island of Guadeloupe, a French overseas department (DOM, new name to designate the former French colonies), has been paralyzed by a general strike. The demonstrations are being led by the LKP (Collective against Exploitation), that arose from the union of more than 40 associations, union and political organizations. Among the main demands, we find a net increase of 200 euros [257.75 USD] per month for the lowest wages, a reduction of 0.50 euros [0.64 USD] in the price of fuel, lowering the value-added tax on mass-consumption products, etc.

In Guadeloupe, the big distribution centers are closed or blocked by strike pickets, getting gasoline is nearly impossible, the hotel industry, at the height of the season, is being severely affected, public administration and agriculture are paralyzed. However, the strike has the support of the great majority of the population, and the demonstrations have been massive for three weeks, "the equivalent of 6 million people in the metropolis" (Le Monde, Feb 2, 2009). The magnitude of the srike is such that the "domino effect" has already made itself felt in the nearby French overseas departments: Martinique (another French island) is paralyzed and supermarkets have been blockaded by demonstrations since February 5, the day when the general strike was called and on which between 15,000 and 20,000 people demonstrated in the streets of Fort-de-France, the capital of the island; in French Guiana, a similar movement is beginning. Likewise, the Antillese who live in Paris organized a demonstration of support for the LKP on January 31, which brought together between 700 and 800 people, according to the organizers.

For his part, the Secretary of State in charge of overseas territories, Yves Jégo, only appeared on the island days after the conflict had begun. From the beginning, in an attempt to demonize the protest, he did nothing but denounce "certain unacceptable provocations" and "intolerable attacks on the rule of law" by the demonstrators and announce totally insufficient proposals, like a one-time bonus of 200 euros beginning in April to the 40,000 households in Guadeloupe that receive the lowest wages ..., and, as could not be otherwise, tax breaks for the bosses, to "allow an immediate increase in low wages." Thus it is that on Sunday, February 8, after 21 consecutive hours of fruitless negotiations with representatives of the LKP, the Secretary of State suddenly took a flight to Paris, in order, according to him, to "negotiate" with Prime Minister F. Fillon. This news made a very bad impression on the strikers, who spontaneously went out to the streets of Pointe-à-Pitre to demonstrate their rejection of his attitude that, according to them, is contemptuous. Although the Secretary of State's arrival was originally appreciated, it now seems to have increased the discontent.

On the other hand, the bosses, brought together in the "Guadeloupe Businessmen's Movement," responded with cynicism in a press release to the workers' demand for a net increase of 200 euros per month in wages, saying that "all wage earners that want to get a net increase of 200 euros [253.45 USD], will be able to do that on the basis of voluntary work and from a quota of extra hours" [1]. Nothing more or less than "working more to earn more," the favorite formula of N. Sarkozy during his presidential candidacy! At the same time, several groups of bosses, impatient at the steadfastness of the strikers, are complaining about the absence of the forces of order. In this sense, we have to say that the protest is unfolding, up to now, without big violent incidents.

It is necessary to point out the silence of the French metropolitan communications media as well as that of the political authorities. In fact, recently, in the second week of conflict, the metropolitan media began to cover events on the island more seriously, in many cases, in order to demonize the strikers. For his part, President N. Sarkozy, in his "big televised speech" of February 5 (as the journalists christened it), in view of the economic crisis and the January 29 strike, did not say a word about the conflict in Guadeloupe and Martinique. This silence could be explained, on the one hand, by contempt from the dominant classes of the metropolis towards the inhabitants of the French colonial territories, and, on the other hand, from fear of contagion in the metropolis of the tenacity of the strike in those territories. If we take into account the magnitude of the January 29 general strike in the metropolis, this fear is more than justified.

In short, this determined struggle, of the workers and exploited masses of French imperialism's colonies, like Guadeloupe and Martinique, has begun to revive some questions tied to national and ethnic oppression. These entanglements can be observed in the cries of "Martinique belongs to us, not them," of some demonstrators, noted by an article on the demonstration in Paris in support of the LKP, where it is stated that, in view of the silence of the government regarding the strike, the demonstrators from the Antilles have arrived at the conclusion that "the French government disparages the people of Guadeloupe and considers them only as French people completely separate" [2], in the demand by the LKP that the language (Créole) and culture of Guadeloupe be taken into account in the communications media, and in the denunciation of the concentration of the determining sectors of the economy in the hands of the "béké" (white descendants of the colonists). With this, we do not mean at all that the current strike movement in Guadeloupe is a movement for independence; we only wish to emphasize that these questions are alive among the population of a territory occupied since the seventeenth century and artificially populated with an enslaved people brought from Africa to satisfy the economic ambitions of the elite of the metropolis. The duty of revolutionaries and workers from the metropolis is to fight, above all, against their own imperialism; that is why they must surround the workers on strike in the French colonies with solidarity and, more than ever, follow their example to realize their own demands and so that the capitalists pay for the crisis.

[1] « Réponses des socioprofessionnels réunis en Mouvement des Entrepreneurs de Guadalupe aux revendications de LKP », versión del 2/02.

[2]CaribCreole1.com,http://www.caribcreole1.com/news/france/1,918,01-02-2009-lkp-sur-seine-le-soutien-s-organise-.html.

ISRAEL elects a government from among war criminals

From: wwww.ft-ci.org

Middle East: ISRAEL elects a government from among war criminals
By Claudia Cinatti

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Parliamentary elections took place in Israel on February 10. At press time, with 99% of the votes counted, Kadima, the governing party, of the current Minister of Foreign Relations, Tzipi Livni, got 28 seats of the 120 in the Knesset (parliament); Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud, 27; Avigdor Lieberman's extreme rightist party Yisrael Beitenu ("Israel, our house"), 15, this is four more seats than it had; and Defense Minister Ehud Barak's Labor Party, only 13 deputies, which involves a loss of 6 representatives. The remainder is shared among 9 other new parties that have exceeded the floor of 2% of the votes, among which is the center-leftist Meretz and the more left-wing Hadash (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, in which Arab parties and the Israeli CP participate), religous parties like Shas, and other parties of the extreme right. Whoever attains a simple majority of 61 seats, will be Prime Minister.

Both Livni and Netanyahu claimed the victory. Owing to the narrow margin and the extreme fragmentation of the Israeli political system, for the moment, these results left the sign of the new government undefined. Most analysts indicate that, although Livni got more votes, it is Netanyahu who is in better condition to form a government, since what is considered the right-wing bloc -- defined as a whole as those who are opposed to resuming "peace" negotiations with the Palestinians -- headed by the Likud, and within which Lieberman is included, would have 64 deputies, while the so-called "center" or, more accurately, the moderate right, headed by Kadima and the Labor Party, that has declared itself in favor of undertaking negotiations with the Palestinian Authority again, would only get 56 seats.

Lieberman's ultra-rightist and anti-Arab party has become an indispensable component for the future government, since without the support of its at least 15 deputies, it seems practically impossible to form a stable government.

All options are open. The very day of the elections, a feverish race of negotiators from Likud and Kadima to get the necessary partners to form a government, began. Nor can the possibility of a "national unity government" be ruled out, although, for the moment, Netanyahu rejected Livni's proposal. According to the weekly Economist, "if Netanyahu is able to consolidate his right-wing bloc, he will presumably try to convince Livni to set aside her dreams of becoming Prime Minister and enter a broad center-right government." Even weeks could pass before it is determined who the new Prime Minister will be and with that, what the orientation of the next Israeli government will be.

In the final instance, these maneuvers will only decide which war criminal is going to be in charge of governing the Zionist state.

A turn to the right

The elections reflect Israeli politics' profound turn to the right. From Livni to Lieberman, the election campaign took place on the rubble of Gaza and the corpses of more than 1,400 Palestinians left by Operation "Cast Lead," that was supported by more than 80% of the population.

According to a survey published by the daily Jerusalem Post, carried out the same day as the elections, "when those surveyed were questioned about their politics, 30% said they were from the right wing, 13%, from the center-right, 23%, from the center, 13%, from the center-left, and only 6%, from the left, 15% did not respond."

Likud, which was coming from a setback, a result of Kadima's split at the end of 2005, made a notable advance, and their parliamentary block went from 12 to 27 deputies. Their candidate, Netanyahu, has become the standard bearer of the Israeli right wing, that rejects undertaking again any negotiations with the Palestinians that would involve returning the occupied territories. Even Netanyahu was critical of the Annapolis agreements, promoted by former President Bush. In the campaign, he promised to oppose absolutely the division of Jerusalem, the return of the Golan Heights to Syria, and the evacuation of the settlers' settlements on the West Bank.

The other big winner of the elections was Lieberman, who ran a deeply racist campaign directed against the Arabs who live in Israel, proposing to take away their citizenship, if they do not swear loyalty to the Jewish state (their slogan was "No loyalty -- no citizenship") and perform obligatory military service, from which they have been exempted, for obvious reasons. To justify this position, it was based on the mobilizations carried out by Israeli Arabs to repudiate the massacre in Gaza. This group, that comprises around 20% of the population, already suffers "legal" discrimination from the government and the Zionist political establishment, that was about to deprive it of all its political rights and outlaw its parties.

The Labor Party is in deep crisis, in such a state that a columnist of the daily Haaretz suggests that "its existence as an independent party no longer makes sense," and that it should merge with Kadima, that has gone on to dominate the center of the political spectrum, since "there are no ideological differences between them," and "both parties combine political moderation with toughness in security matters" (Aluf Benn, "For the sake of peace, Labor and Kadima must merge," Haaretz, 11-02-09).

The elections also showed the disaster of the Meretz party, traditionally identified with pacifism, but which openly supported the state of Israel's massacre in Gaza and got only 3 deputies.

Thus, all the Zionist leaders favored this political turn to the right in an enclave-state, based on racism against the Arabs and colonial repression.

The weight achieved by the right wing in the Israeli elections will be an argument that the coming government will use, regardless of who heads it, to reduce as much as possible any any eventual concession and increase demands on the Palestinians. Several analysts have suggested that the political map which has arisen from these elections would complicate US President Barak Obama's alleged policy of "dialogue," not only towards the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but also towards Syria and, especially towards Iran. However, this is big-time hypocrisy: Obama justified the Israeli offensive against Gaza and continues to permit the brutal Israeli economic blockade. His "peace plan" is based on the supposed "two-state" solution, that is, on negotiating with the Palestinian National Authority (and eventually with Hamas, that is currently excluded from the dialogue sessions) the Palestinian people's renunciation of their fundamental national rights, by naturalizing the existence of ghetto-like cities lacking any territorial unity, in exchange for some minor concessions, like delaying the building of settlers' settlements.

With the Gaza massacre ever present, it remains clear that the only allies of the Palestininan people are the workers and exploited peoples of the Middle East and the whole world.

VENEZUELA: Spoil your ballot or abstain!

From www.ft-ci.org

VENEZUELA: In view of the referendum on the constitutional amendment
Spoil your ballot or abstain!

By LTS of Venezuela
Sunday, February 1, 2009

Once again, the national scene is polarized, facing elections, this time, because of the new attempt by Chávez and the government to win approval of the possibility of indefinite reelection of the President. Demoagogy is gushing forth on all sides, both from the right-wing bourgeois opposition extolling the defense of a supposed "democratic alternative," and from the government, talking about a supposed "expansion of the power of the people." We revolutionaries of the Liga de Trabajadores por el Socialismo (LTS) have established our position between the bourgeois opposition's right-wing political project, that seeks to tie the country hand and foot to imperialism, and that of Chávez, who, in searching for greater autonomy from imperialism, is proposing a national development project tied to groups of a supposed "nationalist" bourgeoisie, against which, we call for spoiling one's ballot or abstaining, from a perspective of workers' absolute class independence. We unequivocally maintain that the anti-imperialist struggle Chávez talks about can only be led consistently and to the end by the working class and its independent organization, which is precisely what Chávez is preventing, as has been shown for all these years.

An attempt to avoid a catastrophic scenario for chavismo: the possible departure of Chávez

Chávez and the government managed, in spite of the severe setback of losing some governments like Miranda and Carabobo, as well as the Metropolitan Distract, to recover a part of the percentage of votes lost in the 2007 referendum on the constitutional reform, with which they achieved a certain majority of votes at an overall national level in the last regional elections. This momentary political circumstance is what they are using to attempt to change the constitution again to permit Chávez to be a candidate for the presidency indefinitely. In addition, the elections were planned just before the world economic crisis began to deal harsh blows in the country, and the government, like every bourgeois government, began to "confront it" with anti-popular economic measures that will fall on working people.

Chavismo, as a regime and a political movement, arranged itself around the figure of Chávez: he is the direct "leader" of the masses, above the parties and machines that back him, as well as the articulator between the different factions in conflict within chavismo. If Chávez were unable to run again in the next presidential elections (2012), it would not only mean an abrupt change in the arrangement of the regime if chavismo kept the presidency, but it would also involve a change as regards the political movement, since there would immediately take place the dreaded process of searching for a successor, which puts at risk tne very continuation of chavismo in power, since there is no suitable presidential candidate with Chávez' attraction. This, without any doubt, will be the reason for the most virulent, brutal internal disputes, from which chavismo will surely emerge very much more fractured and weakened than now.

The absolute key fact of this whole situation is that Chávez' political project -- bourgeois nationalist development of a semi-colonial country -- is inseparable from the Bonapartist traits of the regime, that is, from the need for a strong presidential figure, both politically and legally, that would be capable of fulfilling the role of the nation's "arbiter," as well as being the country's "strong man" facing imperialism: being the guarantor of peace against a new social explosion -- which implies "mediating" and "disciplining" the parties in conflict -- and bargaining with the imperialisms in order to use a larger portion of the surpluses they removed in "national development." That is precisely the hard core of Chávez' project, admitted by the man himself innumerable times. That is what would enter into open crisis if Chávez could not run again for the presidency of the Republic in the coming elections.

The rancid pro-US right wing and its exaggerated "alternative"

The right-wing bourgeois oppostion, that could survive and revive in the national political life, thanks to Chávez' policies and pacts, is only repeating its accustomed and empty phrases about "democracy" and "freedom," that were trampled on for working people many times during all the years of the Punto Fijo Pact, by the right-wing opposition itself, and again during the brief attempt at the bosses' pro-imperialist dictatorship, headed by the unfortunate Carmona Estanga. This right-wing bourgeois opposition has nothing to offer workers and the people, but it makes use of the servility of most of the Venezuelan left to Chávez, as well as his authoritarian characteristics, to practice demagogy about the people's needs and about "democracy." But it is only the most shameless demagogy: it is obvious that unemployment, low wages, the people's health, lack of housing and land for the campesinos, does not bother them, much less are they worried by the lack of "democracy" for the people, the murders of workers' leaders, like the case of the 3 workers' leaders assassinated in Aragua, repression against the fishermen of Güiria, or the killing of 200 campesinos, that has taken place up to now, by killers paid by landowners, or, most recently, the brutal murder of the two autoworkers at the hands of the Anzoátegui state police, where the chavista Tarek Willian Saab is Governor. In none of these cases are they making much of the lack of freedom and democracy! What really worries them is that if the amendment passes, the possibilities of recovering political command of the country would be more difficult for them.

The right-wing opposition busts a gut talking about "alternatives," but as good bourgeois, they are only showing, very conveniently, the superficiality of the matter: the possibility that those who govern may alternate. This is in no way what is essential in the debate for the exploited and impoverished masses in bourgeois society; the problem is not how many different people who govern can alternate. The problem is that they all govern in order to maintain class society; they are all part of "democracy for the rich," against the people. Those who govern, change, but the social system, private ownership of the means of production and life in the hands of some few people and wage slavery for us, for the majority that produces everything, does not change: this is the meaning of bourgeois alternation. Thus, the right wing is cynically trying to equate its bourgeois interest in running the country with the genuine democratic aspirations of the workers and the people. The openly pro-imperialist bourgeois project is what is behind the "No" vote.

Seeking to recover from strategic weakness

The government has already entered a stage of strategic weakness, beginning with the loss of the December 2 referendum, owing to the defection of some 3 million votes. That situation was not reversed by the recent victory in the regional elections, where, despite keeping a majority in races for governors and mayors, it suffered a setback, compared to what it had previously, but also in a large part of the most economically and politically important zones of the country, where more than 40% of the population is concentrated. Chávez will not be able to continue governing as before, we said after December 2, and that is what characterizes the new political moment: the institutional repositioning (governors' and mayors' offices) of the bourgeois opposition, as well as the incipient workers' struggles, outside of the government's official leadership, confirm this. It is also confirmed by the very fact recently of having had to propose unlimited re-election for the rest of the "popularly" elected offices, as a last-minute maneuver to try to assure getting the majority of votes, at the cost of having, in case it passes, to accept the permanent existence of regional leaders ("caudillos") to challenge Chávez, a scenario that he had always rejected.

In this national setting, Chávez and the Venezuelan bourgeoisie in its entirety will have to "reach an agreement" on minimum points for the leadership of the country, as they already did before: the agreements after the coup d'état and after the strike to sabotage PDVSA, as well as the big agreement on the 2004 recall referendum, are clear examples of how they realized minimal agreements to direct the national situation through "institutional and regular channels", that is, so that the class struggle of that time would not be exacerbated. Chávez no longer has the leadership and appeal among the masses that he had a few years ago, and he does not have the guaranteed absolute majority of votes either, that were the basis of his power to "referee." That is why the regime cannot continue the same, and Chávez must negotiate some agreements with the bourgeois opposition.

Facing that scenario, and the setting of an enormous historical crisis of world capitalism, that has not yet hit the country, but that will undoubtedly strike with great turbulence, certainly for Chávez, "his life depends on it," in this election, since he wants to avoid arriving the least bit weakened at a possible negotiation with the right-wing opposition. If he loses, it will be disastrous, and he will do what he has always done, to yield constantly more to the bourgeois opposition and make the mass movement pay the price (releasing coup-plotters, increasing prices, freed from any controls, repressing the most radical struggles, no large raises in wages, etc.). If he wins, he will reposition himself to negotiate with the right wing under better conditions, and in order to "discipline" the most daring and radical sectors of the workers', campesinos' and popular movement. That is why Chávez will use a possible victory to increase his control over the mass movement (workers, campesinos, poor communities) to block any radical and politically independent, truly anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist cause.

A long government of timid patches

The essential element in the unquestionable fall of the strength of Chávez, for some years, has been the failure to solve the basic problems of the country's working and impoverished masses. As has been shown, the pro-imperialist opposition has not advanced considerably in votes, but it is the government that is losing while its rank and file abstains. The problem is that after 10 long years of governing, with enormous levels of support and the workers', popular and campesinos' movement's willingness to fight, with big defeats dealt to the most ambitious and violent attempts of imperialism and its servants, Chávez and his government have been unable to solve even a single one of the structural questions of working people satisfactorily. Most impoverished campesinos continue to be landless; the numbers of reduced unemployment hide the fact that it continues to be the scourge for the poorest groups in the population. In addition, the levels of precarious employment and flexible work are being maintained and even increasing; the work created is, for the most part, uncertain; wages continue to be quite miserable, compared to the needs of the immense majority of working-class families, needs that are scarcely partially alleviated by the food subsidies the government grants and its "assistance." The drama of the lack of housing persists among more than a quarter of the population; access to health care, which presents more "successes," continues, however, to show enormous inequalities between the rich and upper middle-class strata of the population and the problems poor people go through in order to get decent health care; without mentioning that despite all the boasting and demagogy about justice for women, women's emancipation – and especially that of poor and working women, the most exploited and oppressed people under capitalism – relative to domestic slavery and the power to decide about their own bodies and reproduction, has not advanced even a millimeter.

The reason for this can be sought in Chávez' own project: the search for increased autnoomy from imperialism, by proposing a national development plan tied to sectors of the local bourgeoisie, through an alliance between the state engaged in development and "nationalist" sectors of the bourgeoisie, without excluding specific groups of transnational capitalists. In this equation, the state will be the guarantor of the process, both as owner of the oil income, as well as articulating the "national interest," by convincing the workers and dragging them into a project of class conciliation, coexistence between the exploited and their exploiters. For this reason, Chávez has left the capitalist economic structure of the country intact, and thus the big bankers, businessmen and parasitic landowners, both Venezuelans and foreigners, have remained with their properties, businesses and robust profits and are on the increase, in spite of ten such turbulent years of government. This is the project that Chávez embodies, with his demagogic bureaucrats, and it is what he calls us to support with the "Yes" vote this February 15, as he seeks to use votes to strengthen his control over the mass movement, preventing its independent expression and organization.

Bourgeois alternatives and power for the "arbiter" of the nation

Faced with the arguments of the right-wing bourgeois opposition, the government responds by saying that in reality the "alternative" is guaranteed, because it will be the people who decide between the different candidates, certainly without talking about the class character of bourgeois democracy, of the "alternative." The problem is that in substance, both groups, under different forms of governing and regime, support this society based on exploitation. For that reason, even when one person is elected at each election or several alternate in the governments, what really exists is the continuation of the "dictatorship of capital": exploitation and oppression over the working masses and the people.


[To be continued]

FRANCE--A good beginning in the first test of strength against Sarkozy

From: www.ft-ci.org

France facing economic crisis
A good beginning in the first test of strength against Sarkozy
By Juan Chingo
Thursday, January 29, 2009

Today's day of action in France was massive: according to the police, more than a million people participated throughout France, and 2,500,000, according to the CGT. Quantitatively, it is the equal of the big demonstrations that forced the government to back down in 2006, in the struggle against the CPE (first employment contract) or, still further back, in 2003, the struggle for pensions and those of 1995 against Juppé, against the reform of the special system for the railway workers and the RATP (subway and urban transport) and social security, although probably slightly smaller than the last of these struggles. However, compared with those actions, what is original (and potentially significant) about today's action is:

(1) The increasing participation, such as has not been seen for a long time, of the workers of private, industrial and service firms, big multinationals like the steel giant Arcelor Mittal, the automotive companies Peugeot Citroën, Renault Ford, the big tire company Michelin, the environmental gorup Veolia, the private telephone company Free, or the big supermarkets like Carrefour or other wholesale businesses like FNAC and Galeries Lafayette. Although not organized, wage earners from the small and medium-sized companies also participated (as can be seen from direct statements or from media reports of the contingents). From this point of view, the participation of public- and private-sector workers or wage earners is the largest in recent decades (one must stress large participation by teachers and health service workers).

(2) Unlike the struggle against the CPE or the 2003 struggle that ended in defeat, or even the government employees' general strike in 1995, the current movement does not possess a clear unifying demand, but is a clearly political day of action against the results of unemployment, the drop in purchasing power, the destruction of health care and public education, uncertainty in employment, especially among the youngest workers, and basically the feeling of unfairness in that there is a bailout for the banks (recently, it was discovered that, in spite of the last quarter's losses, they ended the year with profits), and nothing for wage earners and retirees. This is shown in the widespread sympathy the action enjoyed among the population (around 75% support), something not seen since 1995 and even at levels higher than then.

On the other hand, we must maintain:

(1) Unlike the struggles mentioned previously, where it was a matter of a day of mobilizations, strikes and struggles of several days or weeks, the current struggle was a strike and demonstration of only one day. To a large extent, the union leaderships called it to try to lessen wage earners' anger, which could be expressed (there is a great fear of this) in harsh strikes in some sector, and without any perspective of continuing. However, the success of the day and the goverment's refusal to change the orientation of the stimulus plan even minimally in the sense that the union leaderships are asking - favoring consumption and not investment, or lowering the value added tax, which conflicts with the fiscal deficit, or increasing the minimum wage, a measure fiercely resisted by the MEDEF [largest employers' association in France], even more so in times of crisis - could force the unions to call new days of struggle as joblessness deepens and anger increases.

(2) Although there were groups of very combative high school students, who were chanting with all their might, the student movement, both high schoolers and, even to a large extent, college students, is still absent. Their entry is one of the things the government most fears (as do the unions themselves, as they showed in the last wave of joint struggles in 2008, where the union bureaucracy abandoned the university students' movement, which ended up brutally beaten), because of the radicalism it could add to the situation.

(3) Finally, the transportation strike was not as terrible as expected, which kept the strike action of other movements from being spectacular and forceful, even more so when one takes into account the importance of this sector in capitalist economy in general and particularly in France, where it has been the backbone of the workers' movement in recent decades. However, this fact highlights another characteristic of this day, when many wage earners stayed at home, lots of them probably in support of the measure and others, only taking the day off for themselves or fearing bigger disruptions, which did not happen. As we see it, this element, stressed by some newspapers in order to breathe freely, continues to emphasize the political character of the action.

The question remains open. The government, as an analysis from the daily Le Monde of January 28 commented, is beginning to show symptoms of weakness. The speed in the change of the state of mind of the population, which in the last six months was astonished and shocked, facing the crisis, and passed to the current dissatisfaction, to the return of "France, that resists," has made the optmistic, swaggering face of Sarkozy's hard right government change. The Parisian daily says this in the following way: "Nicolás Sarkozy, facing the syndrome of the regicidal country" and suggests that "the President of the Republic asserts that he wants to continue the reforms, but he also confesses that 'France is not the simplest country in the world to govern.' He recalls that 'the French guillotined a king,' that 'in the name of a symbolic measure, they could turn the country around.' He speaks of France as a 'regicidal country.'"

The key, then, is the ability of wage earners to respond and organize. In the first place, this passes through fighting for the measures to continue by organizing a real plan of struggle and not unconnected days of action, that have already led big movements in the streets to exhaustion in the past. In the second place, it is crucial to approve a real sheet of demands that includes all the most sensitive grievances and demands for working people and youth (and not the tepidly pseudokeynesian plea of of the document of the eight union centers that called today's action) that would truly weld the unity of the working class and the oppressed, especially their most exploited sectors, the youth of the impoverished suburbs ("banlieues") that mobilized to a great extent in the recent marches in opposition to Zionist aggression against Gaza and, as a deciding question, the young wage eaners, who suffer chiefly the uncertain nature of work with contracts of determined length and who are the first to be fired. Third, we must take up again the best traditions of self-organization that the cycle of struggles of the French workers and youth have given, especially, the attempts at coordination in some cities in the 1995 general strike of public sector employees or the example of the student coordinating committee in 2006, and extend that to the entire workers' movement and deepen it. This is the only way to overcome the trap that the bureaucracy set for the big mobilizations of youth and workers in recent years, leading many of them to defeat, or, when the magnitude of the movement prevented that, to mere, partial setbacks that failed to reverse the fall in the population's standard of living, which has now fiercely accelerated with the crisis, and then allowing the government on duty to retake the offensive. In conclusion, the political character of the action makes the problems of program, strategy and leadership of the wage earners more acute than ever, in order to continue the action and raise it to a confrontation and nothing less, against the regime, the government and the France of the big capitalists and bankers.

Only in this way, trusting in their own forces and organization, placing no confidence in the false friends that are now approaching their marches to try to capitalize on dissatisfaction, like the leadership of the Socialist Party (that has already shown in the past that when it governs, it has no difference from the right wing, and now only wants to relocate itself, in view of the next European elections and the growth of the "far left"), will the French workers and youth be able to defeat Sarkozy and his plan to make the workers pay for the crisis once more.