The soft-drinks giant Coca-Cola is being held responsible for the murder, kidnap and torture of Colombian trade unionists by paramilitary security forces, often working closely with plant managements. According to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, over 3,000 Colombian trade unionists have been assassinated since 1990, in a country where union work has been likened to “carrying a tombstone on your back”.

In 2001 and 2006, lawsuits were filed against Coca-Cola in the US by the International Labor Rights Fund and the United Steelworkers on behalf of SINALTRAINAL (National Union of Food Industry Workers). The cases were contingent upon the 1789 Alien Tort Claims Act which allows foreigners to bring incidents of human rights violations to American courts. The act concerns “the law of nations”, which encompasses genocide, war crimes, extrajudicial killings, torture, unlawful detention and other crimes against humanity. The courts heard of how Coca-Cola bottlers in Colombia had “contracted with or otherwise directed paramilitary security forces that utilized extreme violence and murdered, tortured, unlawfully detained or otherwise silenced trade union leaders.”

On December 5, 1996, at the Carepa plant, Isidro Segundo Gil, a member of the union executive board, was shot dead. Two days later, heavily armed forces informed workers that they too would be killed if they failed to leave the union by 4.00pm. Coca-cola’s plant manager had conveniently prepared resignation notices in advance and, as expected, the union members resigned and fled.

SINALTRAINAL Vice President Adolfo de Jesus Munera fell victim to Coca-Cola on August 31, 2002 in Barranquilla. A year later, the Constitutional Court of Colombia deemed that he was unlawfully terminated by the bottler. The 2006 lawsuit charges that management of the plant collaborated with paramilitary forces and the Colombian Administrative Department of Security to kill Munera.

The 2001 lawsuit ended with the dismissal of Coca-Cola under the order of Jose E. Martinez, a U.S district judge. However, the case is now on appeal as critics have argued that the backbones of the case were overlooked. Further complaints were made by the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke in 2007 over a potential conflict of interest regarding Judge Martinez and his ties with the University of Miami, his previous private law firm and the Coca-Cola Company.

The level of violence employed by Coca-Cola in the intimidation of its Colombian workers is a serious issue. However, if we look more closely at Coca-Cola’s sinister history a number of other crimes become visible. The United Nations’ International Labour Organization was prevented from “examining violations of workplace rights in Colombia” by Coca-Cola executive Ed Potter.

A similar attempt to preserve the integrity of Coca-Cola within the soft-drinks market was made in 2007 advertisements that linked the company directly to Martin Luther King Jr. in a celebration of Black history. The campaign failed to mention his call for a boycott of Coca-Cola during the Civil Rights Movement following the discrimination of Black employees. Coca-Cola’s tendency towards racial discrimination can also be observed in its alleged support of the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the advertisements placed in Hitler Youth booklets. Furthermore in 2001, Coca-Cola had to pay the largest racial discrimination settlement in US history of $192.5 million - a huge contradiction for a company that boasts of its “ long-standing commitment to equal opportunity and intolerance of discrimination.

Perhaps after reading thus far into the dark side of Coca-Cola, it may no longer shock you that this reputable company has long been practicing anti-worker and anti-environmental policies worldwide. The UK’s Channel 4 Production, “Dispatches: Mark Thomas on Coca-Cola” of 2007, exposed child labour in El Salvador sugar fields. During sugar harvesting, the young workers suffer from smoke inhalation, burns and cuts from machetes yet have no access to healthcare. Despite this, Coca-Cola continues to spend $3 billion a year on advertising and claims to firmly oppose child labour.

Coca-Cola also stands accused of overexploitation and pollution of water sources in India, Mexico, Ghana, El Salvador and elsewhere. The Environmental Law Research Center in Geneva concluded in 2007 that “the availability of good quality water for drinking purposes and agriculture [in India] has been affected dangerously due to the activity of the Company [The Coca-Cola Co.]. Apart from that, the Company had also polluted the agricultural lands by depositing the hazardous wastes”.

Meanwhile, Coca-Cola continues to reward executives with hefty incomes whilst thousands of other workers are made redundant or labeled as “subcontracted or flexible workers” who work for the minimum wage and lack job security. Not surprisingly, Director Donald McHenry is a big earner, laying claim to 35,066 stock shares. What may come as a shock after discovering the brutal truth about Coca-Cola, however, is that McHenry was previously a US ambassador to the United Nations and even defended human rights in the Carter Administration. It remains a mystery, then, that a figure of such authority is unable to stop the severe violations of human rights within his own company.

The Stop Killer Coke campaign was founded in a bid to erode the influence and brand value of Coca-Cola amongst consumers. It is also anticipated that ‘Coke’s Bank’, SunTrust Banks, will suffer a loss of profit and credibility. The campaign director, Ray Rogers, stated that “The world of Coca-Cola is a world full of lies, deception, immorality, corruption and widespread labour, human rights and environmental abuses. When people think of The Coca-Cola Company, they should think of a company that has inflicted great hardship and despair upon many people and communities throughout the world. When people see Coca-Cola beverages and ads, they should think of crimes and other misconduct so unthinkable that all of Coke’s products become undrinkable.” As a result of the campaign, at least 50 universities have kicked Coke products off their campuses.

Speaking on behalf of Coca Cola’s victims, Javier Correa, the President of SINALTRAINAL declared “We want justice. We want people to know the truth about what is going on in Colombia against Coke workers. Now that you know, will you please help us?” If you would like to help the victims of Coca-Cola’s vicious crimes, visit the official website of the Stop Killer Coke campaign to join the petition, gain advice on student activism or to make a donation.

The Killer Coke campaign website is www.killercoke.org/

While celebrating Venezuela’s Independence day on Saturday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez expressed his desire to renew anti-drug collaboration and re-open dialogue with the United States. Chávez also guaranteed that his administration has no desire for war.

In a brief conversation with the US Ambassador to Venezuela, Patrick Duddy, Chávez recalled how he had met several times in the presidential palace with John Maisto, the U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela from 1997-2000.

“We ate breakfast, we talked. We must return to that situation,” Chávez told Duddy, according to Venezuelan newspapers.

Referring to the upcoming US presidential elections, Chávez commented, “whoever wins, we should be able to sit down and converse. I did this with Clinton, we sat down to talk.”

Venezuela froze anti-drug collaboration with the US Drug Enforcement Agency in 2005 after DEA operatives were allegedly involved in illegal espionage. Venezuela subsequently presented several plans for renewing anti-drug efforts with the DEA while guaranteeing Venezuelan sovereignty, but relations have remained frozen.

During an Independence Day parade led by the Venezuelan Armed Forces, Chávez warned those who wish to topple the Venezuelan government militarily to put a halt to such plans because the Venezuelan armed forces and reserves are well-trained and ready to defend their nation.

However, Chávez assured, “We do not want war.” “We have in our country a peaceful revolution, but not an unarmed revolution,” Chávez explained.

On Monday, Chávez addressed a military academy graduation ceremony.

“Venezuela today is living a true revolution. There exists a revolution within the Armed Forces, just as in South America. This revolutionary force is of the People,” Chávez told recent graduates.

“If we do not construct our future they will impose it on us. That is the difference between a free country and a dominated nation,” added Chávez, whose administration has deployed the National Guard to help the functioning of social programs such as the government’s growing food distribution network, PDVAL.

Venezuela became independent from the Spanish Empire on July 5th, 1811.

Hedge funds are in the news again. They don’t much like being in the public gaze. We wonder why. Does their speculation cause prices to go up? Do they drive firms into bankruptcy so workers lose their jobs? These are the questions being asked. Let’s see what they get up to.

Where does the name ‘hedge fund’ come from? It has a bucolic feel to it, and that’s the way they want us to think of them. ‘Hedging your bets’ means trying to minimise risk. If a farmer wants to know where he stands, he may sell his 2009 crop, which he hasn’t planted yet, on the futures market. This will give him the money to buy the seedcorn up front and a feeling of security about the future. He’ll get a known price whether the harvest turns out to be good or bad. He hasn’t eliminated risk, just let someone else take it on. If you’ve sent a cheque in for the ‘Reformism or revolution’ book (which is still being printed) you’re playing the futures market! Futures are the simplest form of derivative. The derivatives market is called this because the instrument is derived from another transaction. It is contrasted to the spot market, where goods and money change hands at the same time.

This ‘everyday story of country folk’ is a long way from the reality of what modern-day hedge funds get up to. Some of the derivatives they deal in are so complicated that they need a bank of linked computers to work out the odds. Nobel prize-winning mathematicians have been sucked into the City to feed this tide of ‘financial innovation.’ And the sums of money that they deal with are awesome. Hedge funds are already playing with $2 trillion of other people’s money. There are $600trn of derivatives floating around the globe. They are a form of what Marx called fictitious capital. By way of comparison, the world produces less than $50trn in new goods and services each year.

The scale of operation is bigger but the principle is the same as before. The farmer didn’t want to bet on whether the 2009 harvest will be good or bad. But that meant somebody else did take a bet – the hedge fund. That’s what hedge funds do – bet with other people’s money. And bets can get more and more complicated. Ever heard of forecasts, trifectas, jackpots, placepots or pool bets? These are all ways of betting on horses. Usually they make it possible to win more money for a smaller stake. (This is called leverage in the financial markets.) Provided...always provided the horse you pick runs a bit faster than the others. And, as we shall see, leverage makes it possible to augment losses in the same way.

The attraction for rich people in ‘investing’ in hedge funds is that they promise, and deliver, returns of 30% a year. How is this possible? It’s a grisly story. Recently hedge funds have been betting on banks failing. After all you can win money betting on which horse comes last the same as which horse comes in first. Everyone knows the banks have been leaking profits since the credit crunch started last year.

Bradford and Bingley, for instance, declared a loss of £8m for the first four months of 2008, compared with £108m profits over the same period last year. The main reason for this was because they had to write down £89m in assets, discovering that it was actually bad debt. B & B decided they needed more money in the vaults. They chose to recapitalise by offering a rights issue. This means that they ask existing shareholders to stump up money for extra shares. B & B wants £400m. (Don’t we all?) Shareholders don’t like rights issues. They want to be left in peace with their money. So B & B shares went down in price.

The hedge funds have been on the case like jackals spotting a sick wildebeest on the veld. At one time they held 10% of B & B shares. A firm called GLG still holds 4.1% stake in B & B shares. But Texas-based TPG Capital has pulled out of the hunt. In fact B & B shares have now dipped so low they are said to be ‘virtually worthless.’

Other banks are still being stalked. Hedge funds have been buying up shares in Northern Rock since its collapse last year. They actually brought the bank to its knees in the first place by short-selling its shares (see below). They are punting on the prospect that Gordon Brown and his hapless Chancellor Darling will hurl more money at the shareholders, thinking that they’re all little old Geordie ladies with votes.

In the USA Lehman Brothers bank claims rumours are maliciously being circulated that they are virtually bankrupt and will soon be pulled to pieces like Bear Stearns was a few months ago. The fall of Bear Stearns Bank became a self-fulfilling prophecy once enough money got on the story. Is the threat to Lehman really just a case of incompetent managers blaming others for their firm’s misfortunes? Or are the hedge funds really up to something? Your guess is as good as mine.

So are hedge funds the bad guys? There is a different point of view, given by headlines such as ‘Hedge funds bail out ailing corporate world.’ (Financial Times 02.07.08) The article shows hedge funds rallying round Barclays in its search for funds and underwriting, not sabotaging, HBOS’ rights issue. Angels or assassins? Hedge funds are just capitalists. They will tear a firm to pieces if it makes money and then put it back together again if it makes more money.

But hedge funds work in the dark. And they’re now so mighty that, if they shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre, they can create a panic and amuse themselves later by looting the dead bodies of those caught in the crush. A wall of money can make things happen.

So what? Bear Stearns went belly up because of the financial crisis, not because of the machinations of hedge funds. Banks’ shares are going down because of the financial crisis, not because of manipulation. The financial crisis is part of a crisis of capitalism, not the product of evil minds. But, by golly, capitalism certainly produces plenty of evil minds. Capitalism is a dog-eat-dog world where only the nastiest and most ruthless survive. That’s just the way it is.

The Financial Services Authority has recently demanded that the shadowy people ‘short-selling’ company shares should be identified. It’s the hedge funds. Short-selling is a practice where a capitalist borrows 10 shares worth £100, for instance, on the expectation that they are going down, so that if he is right he can buy them back for £80 and keep the other £20 as profit. This is the opposite of ‘going long,’ when a capitalist buys a security in the expectation that its price will rise, and can keep the extra as profit if he is right.

Will Hutton fingers the hedge funds in an article ‘As we suffer, City speculators are moving in for the kill.’ (Observer 29.06.08) “The hedge funds weren’t even buying back the shares, they were ‘borrowing’ them from pension funds to manipulate the market,” he complains.

He goes on. “A spotlight has been shone on some very murky corners of the financial markets. There practices occur that challenge the very conception of what we consider a company to be, and the accompanying obligations of ownership. A multi-billion pound business has emerged in which shareholders lend their shares to hedge funds to be played with. For a tiny fee, a hedge fund will arrange to borrow shares from a great insurance company or pension fund which it proceeds to sell. Share-loans are believed to exceed a stunning £7.5 trillion.

“What then happens is the opposite of a bubble, a kind of financial black hole. The hedge funds sell the shares simultaneously, and the downward movement becomes self-reinforcing, with companies raising money during a rights issue particularly vulnerable. This is why the government forced disclosure. The hedgies reacted as if they were in Stalin's Russia; their freedom to kill a company stone dead was being challenged. Let's not mince words, that is the aim, and it gets ugly and personal. A senior official told me that in one case some hedge funds had allegedly warned the banks underwriting one rights issue to abandon it or face speculative attack - mafia practice.”

Will Hutton is an intelligent commentator, and his apocalyptic article raises important issues. Hutton’s basic mistake through all his writings is his search for a decent, humane long term form of capitalism as opposed to the rapacious bunch of spivs who actually dominate our economy. We have to ask, why should pension funds lend their shares to hedge funds, who then short-sell the shares in order to make the pension funds’ holdings worth less? And, if the pension fund managers really are that stupid, shouldn’t the funds be nationalised right away just to safeguard people’s pensions?

What is wrong with short-selling? Is it unethical? Under capitalism prices go up and down. They do so because people buy and sell, often with the aim of making money from the transaction. Is Hutton going to ban short-selling, so prices can only go up and never down?

The core of Hutton’s argument, and it has been raised by others, is that the wall of money moved by modern hedge funds can actually make things happen. Share prices go down because hedge funds sell, and not for any other reason, he argues. In that case they are just parasitic plunderers. But Marxists believe that capitalism is an inherently unstable system, and the operations of hedge funds and other speculators are merely the executors of the market forces through which the laws of capitalist anarchy work.

This point is at the heart of a controversy among capitalists and capitalist economists. Milton Friedman asserted that destabilising speculation was impossible. This was supposed to be the case because speculators who ‘got it wrong’ would be buying dear and selling cheap. They would lose money and soon disappear. Friedman, a notorious apologist for capitalism whose disciples advised General Pinochet’s regime of torturers in Chile, assumed that capitalism is a stable system. In that case the market just nudges people and things in the ‘right’ direction. But what is the ‘right’ direction?

Friedman totally ignores the fact that markets can systematically move in ‘wrong’ direction’ - the opposite directions to the economic ‘fundamentals.’ (Whatever they are and whether or not they exist.) This is proved by the existence of financial bubbles. Bubbles have been a feature of capitalism since its inception. For instance during the 1630s Holland was seizes by a mania for tulips. Tulips passed from hand to hand at ever-increasing prices. A rare tulip could sell for more than a farm. Why? Because each speculator assumed that, since prices were going up, they would be able to get more for the bulb than they paid for it. And why were prices going up? Because people were buying bulbs. The whole thing was a classic bubble, based not on ‘market fundamentals’ but on speculative mania.

Charles Kindleberger defines a bubble as “A sharp rise in the price of an asset or a range of assets in a continuous process, with the initial rise generating expectations of further rises and attracting new buyers – generally speculators interests in profits from trading in the asset rather than its use or earning capacity.” His book ‘Manias, panics and crashes’ is a cracking good read and an expose of the follies and villainies of capitalists over hundreds of years. Manias, panics and crashes have all been constant features of capitalism since its dawn – from the South Sea bubble that popped in 1720 to the housing bubble in the USA, Britain, Spain and Ireland that has just been pricked over the past year.

In 1953 Friedman wrote an article called ‘An essay on the methodology of positive economics’ in which he denied that the assumptions behind economic theories need be realistic. Indeed he applauded theories consciously built on unrealistic assumptions. “A theory is to be judged by its predictive power,” he asserts. Marxists deny this. We believe a theory is to be judged by its explanatory power, though we note in passing that Marxist political economy has vastly superior predictive power to the ravings of Milton Friedman.

He goes on, “To be important...a hypothesis must be descriptively false in its assumption.” And by Jiminy does he follow his own advice! He postulates a stable crisis-free capitalism, He ‘abstracts from,’ that is to say he ignores the existence of bubbles, of panics and manias, and of crises. Friedman has an infinite capacity to ‘forget’ about the shambles of real capitalism and instead sings us lullabies about the ‘rationality’ of the market.

But this is not the real market at all. Friedman is conjuring up the ‘invisible hand’ of Adam Smith, the hand of a wise man in the sky with a beard - god. Actually what we call market forces are the unconscious resultant of decisions taken by millions of individuals. These market processes are not willed or planned by any of the participants. Naturally markets are anarchic and can look chaotic.

Can speculators make money by putting up prices or destroying the livelihood of firms? Some argue that it’s all a zero sum game. If one speculator buys a piece of paper and makes money, then somebody else must have sold and lost money. Certainly society as a whole is not made one penny richer from speculation, a parasitic activity that burns up wealth. But if there are a group of people with inside information such as hedge funds, then they can profit at the expense of the savings of widows, orphans and others not in the know.

Secondly, hedge funds are not just gamblers. They are also the bookies. In addition to a share of the winnings, (made with other people’s money) they charge a management fee. As we know, whichever horse comes in first, the bookies always take their cut.

George Soros believes that markets can get it wrong and that bubbles can be blown up by speculative activity. He believes a wall of speculative money is partly responsible for the ever-rising price of oil. There is a difference between Friedman and Soros. Soros has played the markets and won – big time. He’s not just someone who has spent their life telling fairy stories about the delights of capitalism. He knows what it’s really like.

This is what Soros has to say about the fantasy of stable, self-correcting capitalism. "Unfortunately, we have an idea of market fundamentalism, which is now the dominant ideology, holding that markets are self correcting; and this is false because it's generally the intervention of the authorities that saves the markets when they get into trouble. Since 1980, we have had about five or six crises: the international banking crisis in 1982, the bankruptcy of Continental Illinois in 1984, and the failure of Long Term Capital Management in 1998, to name only three. Each time, it's the authorities that bail out the market, or organize companies to do so. So the regulators have precedents they should be aware of. But somehow this idea that markets tend to equilibrium and that deviations are random has gained acceptance and all of these fancy instruments for investment have been built on them."

Soros’ big coup was when, as hedge fund manager, he bet against the pound remaining within the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992. As sterling was being squeezed out of the ERM the Tory government spent billions of our money, in effect throwing schools and hospitals at the foreign exchange markets. To no avail. Soros is believed to have made a billion dollars in a few days. Many economists argue that Soros did us a favour. The Tories had lodged sterling in the ERM at an overvalued rate. The pound was in effect suspended in mid air with no visible means of support and exports were hurting. It was only because of the Tories’ mistake that speculators such as Soros could make money.

Soros argues that a wall of money ($200 billion at last count) is powering up the future price of oil in particular. "The institutions are piling in on one side of the market and they have sufficient weight to unbalance it. If the trend were reversed and the institutions as a group headed for the exit as they did in 1987 there would be a crash,” he warned the US Senate.

For Marxists, speculation does not cause shortages, though shortages can lead to speculation – which makes the shortages worse. Ted Grant once compared the role of speculation to loose ballast in a ship’s hold. If the sea were calm, there wouldn’t be a problem. The storm is the cause of the problem. But in a storm the ballast can punch a hole in the ship’s hull and cause disaster. A wall of money can make things happen, but only when they’re prone to happen anyway.

To coin it in, speculators have to go with the grain of economic processes. Hutton goes on about oil prices, “One witness, hedge fund manager Michael Masters, argued that there were two identifiable sources of new demand over the past five years - from China and from speculation - both around the same scale. Without the speculation the oil price would still be below $100 a barrel.” Masters knows that, if capitalism hadn’t given us a shortage of oil, he wouldn’t be able to make money out of it.

But speculation in petroleum is profitable because demand is outstripping supply. Ten years ago oil stood at $10 a barrel. Oil companies could not be bothered to search for new sources of supply, and the western world guzzled petrol on the grand scale. Nobody knew how much oil the world would want in 2008. Now it’s panic stations.

So the problem is capitalism, not speculation. Prices go up anyway because capitalism is unplanned. Capitalism inevitably creates shortages at some points and gluts elsewhere. Firms go bust and workers lose their jobs because that’s how capitalist ‘competition’ works. Let’s kill it.

This article first appeared on Socialist Appeal.

Despite poor international coverage, the governmental confiscation of 195 firms, including two major TV channels belonging to the holding 'Grupo Isaías', has constituted a major event in Ecuador, for a variety of reasons. First and foremost the long-overdue need for the state to undertake punitive and compensatory action against those bankers whose disastrous activities in the 1990s brought about the worst financial crisis of the country, obliging the government to intervene and sacrifice a considerable part of its budget. The crisis unleashed a tragic wave of migration from the little Andean nation. The liquidity spent by the state in the banking rescue between 1998 and 2001 amounted each year to more than 30% of the GDP.

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa (pictured) had already warned Ecuadorean bankers in his 2006 electoral campaign that the issues arising from the 1998-99 crisis would have to be addresed. The case of Filanbanco, a property of the 'Isaías group', represented in those years only the tip of the iceberg, given the epic proportions of the scandal. Induced by the process of financial liberalisation which had already made its first steps in the 1980s, Filanbanco raised interest rates to the stars, while at the same time its owners diversified their economic activities in unorthodox fashion and used the bulk of the savings to finance their own productive investments. The lax management of their assets, compounded by the maintenance of low reserve requirements, became the preoccupation of the state which, instead of designing an adequate regulatory framework, preferred to use its own funds to guarantee the deposits, a phenomenon which took place across the whole banking system, given the strong influence it exerted in policymaking circles.

Faced with an evident crisis, Filanbanco received various state handouts totalling more than $1200 million but, instead of correcting its policies, it took advantage of these funds to channel them with no interest for a 7 year-period. In 1998, the bank was taken over by the state, after which the government declared a freeze on deposits; there followed the loss of millions of dollars for common citizens. The brothers William and Roberto Isaías Dassum rapidly left the country in 2000, fleeing from an arrest warrant. Ever since, they have kept on directing their operations from Miami, often under false names. The various attempts at extradition have been consistently hampered by deliberate high-level obstruction, which led to the impossibility for US authorities to process the demand. The government of Correa is now looking to implement the extradition request properly.

The AGD (Agency of Deposit Guarantee), an institution whose major task is now to retrieve the money the state had to employ in the banking rescue, has finally issued the order to confiscate all the properties of the 'Isaías group'. This is an unprecedented act of courage, as previous AGD heads found little cooperation from the national government.

With regard to the confiscation of the TV channels, the conservative press has not missed the opportunity to launch its umpteenth crusade against a perceived violation of the freedom of expression. The government has, however, assured Ecuadoreans that it does not intend to control the media seized on Tuesday. These, among which several radio stations are included, will shortly be sold in an auction.

Nevertheless, Tuesday's action has triggered the resignation of the Finance Minister. After initially showing support for the measure, Fausto Ortiz refused to endorse the measure, leading the popular TV commentator Carlos Vera to accuse him of showing a lack of courage. The assemblyman María Augusta Calle has also speculatively advanced that the Minister may have been influenced by pressure from abroad. Ortiz has not yet commented on the matter. Correa has promptly substituted Ortiz with Wilma Salgado, the ex AGD director, recently amnestied by the Constituent Assembly, who has always demonstrated her commitment to punishing the bankers who brought about the financial chaos.

The measure adopted by the government has no doubt been received with great enthusiasm by the population, which had seen in the bankers the main culprit of the economic hardship that hit the country at the turn of the millennium. Especially in the Sierra region, where the Isaías brothers are viewed with suspicion, if not with outright hatred, the confiscation of their goods has been welcomed with particular joy.

These steps have come at a crucial moment for the governing party, plagued by the recent internal division, which led Alberto Acosta, President of the Constituent Assembly, to resign his post in disagreement over the date put forward by President Correa in which the new Constitution should be ready. Nevertheless, Acosta maintains himself in the ranks of Alianza País and has vowed to promote the YES in the referendum over the new Costitution. Moreover, Correa's provides a timely response to those critics who had feared he was moving to the right, confirming with concrete actions his promise to change the country.

Push-polling was a major factor in McCain’s loss in the GOP South Carolina primary. Now John McCain actually credits the Bush campaign team for it’s organization.

Eight years on, with an 89% in-step voting record with President Bush, somehow the term ‘Maverick’ precedes Senator McCain’s name. Regular Fox News viewers will recall Sean Hannity declaring that he will act as a “surrogate” for the McCain campaign.

Few, if any, news junkies will readily remember any mainstream media outlet questioning just how much of a ‘Maverick’ John McCain is, if at all.

But they might remember Obama’s rhetoric about keeping campaign spending capped - and to keep the election fight a clean one.

Well it’s clear Obama has reneged on his campaign spending agenda. Considering that he would almost be tying his hands behind his back in not using all that money he has raised, I think at this point it’s almost a non issue.

A Question For Voters Tired Of Tacticians

How will McCain respond after to the fact to the Obama Campaign’s own recent Push Polling tactic - and how does the Obama campaign respond to the use of their tactics?

Some Background

Either the Obama campaign, or “surrogates”, under the guise of a company called ‘Z&M Research’, have outsourced their work to the Canadian office of an American - owned company - TRG - which coincidentally is laying off almost 400 employees by the end of July.

The Canadian TRG office, located in St. Catharines, Ontario, has been able to capitalize on cheap and expendable labour with their call centres, especially with St.Catharines being a GM town, continually hit hard over the last 29 years by the economic downturn in the auto industry.

Z&M Research appears not to exist - at least based on some initial searching. Perhaps it’s a proxy company that is billed on behalf of the Obama For President Campaign.

But this is only hypothesising. What is fact is that TRG has callers phoning with the following script for the Obama campaign.
TRG (The Resource Group) as a rule doesn’t respond to information about clients.

And what also remains a fact is that as of June 24th, weeks after Clinton has conceded and Obama has been declared the presumptive nominee, the call center is using the same script.

How convenient that this company will be packiing up, 30 days hence, especially if the Obama camp tries to maintain a ‘high-road’ facade. They will be untraceable.

The Obama Script

The questionnaire itself - like most political imaging and negative or positive attribution scripts - starts off fairly innocuously. In this one, callers are asked about election 2004, their likelihood in voting in the 2008 election (Q.3), and even “Generally speaking, do you think that things in this country are going in the right direction, or do you feel things have gotten pretty seriously off track? (Q4)

Q5, and Q6 again still lull the participant asking the respondent whether they would support Obama over McCain, Hillary over McCain, or McCain over Obama or Clinton. It’s a deception that it is just a generic opinion poll.

But this is where it gets fun. Clearly in the interest of collecting Obama data, the questionnaire engages in conjecture, ageism, fear tactics, and maybe a little fact.

Let’s read questions 7 - 12!

Q.7 - “McCain is even more committed than Bush to War in Iraq and Iran. Bush wants us in Iraq for 50 years, but McCain supports permanent U.S. bases and committing our troops there for 100 years. He says there will be more wars in the region and that we may have to bomb Iran. One Republican says McCain would be a bigger war hawk than Dick Cheney.

Q8 - McCain is very critical of lobbyists, but he has several of them managing his campaign, and a total of 59 of them raising money for him. Recently, some of the lobbyists managing his campaign helped broker a deal that will allow the French company Airbus, to build the next aerial tanker for the U.S. Air Force, rather than giving the contract to a U.S. company. We need to create new jobs here, not in France.

Q9 - The housing market is in crisis, wages are stagnating, prices are rising for gas, health care, and food and our economy is losing jobs. But McCain says he’s focused on foreign affairs, not the economy. McCain admitted that, quote, he “doesn’t really understand economics” and, “still needs to be educated” on the economy.

Q10 - John McCain appears healthy, but if elected, he would assume the presidency at age 72 and be the oldest man ever to do so. Only a few years ago, he survived a serious case of melanoma, the most dangerous kind of skin cancer. Given the stress all presidents experience, especially in times of war and economic crisis, we need a younger, more vigorous president to get the country out of the mess it’s in.

Q11 - John McCain is known for his explosive temper. Even one of his Republican colleagues, Senator Thad Cochran, recently said, “He gets very volatile. He gets red in the face. He talks loud…I certainly know no President who’s has a temper like that…You;d like to think that your president would be cool, calm, and collected. He’s commander in chief.” Another Republican Senator, Pete Dominici said, “I decided I didn’t want this guy anywhere near a trigger.”

Q12 - John McCain says he’s a true conservative with conservative values. But he has a known history of adultery, in both of his marriages. One month ago, allegations were made that McCain had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a female lobbyist who was frequently seen travelling with him and whose clients won political favors from him."

The Method

Of the preceding questions, the caller asks the recipient “Let me read you a series of statements about Republican John McCain. For each statement, please tell me whether this description, if accurate (italics added), raisies serious doubts, minor doubts, or no real doubts in your mind about Republican John McCain.”

The script ends as it started, asking about the same Clinton/Obama/McCain matchups.

Again, it’s a clever diversion considering Clinton’s concession.

Clearly the goal is to see how quickly the respondent was manipulated, and to collect data on which of the main questions had the most impact. In other words, which of the “series of statements” affected callers and which themes would be most successful in, again, manipulating the general voting public.

A recent Washington Post poll shows that there is defintely some success in spinning the age issue:

“Numerous polls, for example, have indicated that McCain’s age may be a bigger detractor than Obama’s race. And more are now concerned that McCain will heed too closely the interests of large corporations than said so about Obama and the interests of blacks”

The questions themselves allocate “negative attribution” about the subject. It’s a simple but effective marketing 101 strategy and again, it will be interesting to learn about the questions McCain might employ in imposing the same negative attribution to Barack Obama. Will it be race? The same Washington Post phone poll revealed the following:

At the same time, there is an overwhelming public openness to the idea of electing an African American to the presidency. In a Post-ABC News poll last month, nearly nine in 10 whites said they would be comfortable with a black president. While fewer whites, about two-thirds, said they would be “entirely comfortable” with it, that was more than double the percentage of all adults who said they would be so at ease with someone entering office for the first time at age 72, which McCain (R-Ariz.) would do should he prevail in November.

BUT:

Even so, just over half of whites in the new poll called Obama a “risky” choice for the White House, while two-thirds said McCain is a “safe” pick. Forty-three percent of whites said Obama has sufficient experience to serve effectively as president, and about two in 10 worry he would overrepresent the interests of African Americans.

At the end of the day, it would be sad, but not surprising to see the same divisive actions cut to the core of what actually makes up a population. Good thing there was definitely no sexism involved in the election.

Sven Eric Balabanoff Writes for http://globalpundit.org/

The cleaners on London Underground are taking strike action for a decent standard of living. Successful 24 hour action on the 26th of June was followed by a 48 hour strike starting on the 1st of July.

The organising Union, the RMT, has reported that there was widespread bullying of the strikers. Bob Crow said, “Reports coming in from the picket lines over the last 36 hours indicate that the employers are so desperate that they are resorting to gangster-style intimidation and using the worst sort of fear attacks to stop more people joining the strike.

“Managers have been threatening people with the sack if they join the strike and telling them that they will have sums deducted from their wages that are way above what they could have earned during the strike.”

This heroic struggle by some of the poorest paid workers in the country has been undermined by a complete ignorance on the part of the Union leadership of the working practices of the cleaners. From the start we were asking if we should be signing up agency workers and how the union intended to defend them if we did. We were told to sign them up and they would be looked after.

Three days before the strike I had agency workers telling me that they had not received ballot papers. When I enquired at Unity house I was told that they were not aware that they had agency staff as members and if they were not a part of the ballot they were not protected if they went on strike.

This has led to a situation in my area where a husband and wife team have the husband agency working and the wife on contract and on strike.

This has split the station cleaners and demoralised the agency staff, who were willing to strike for better conditions until the union admitted that they could not defend them.

Better news in the train depots where pickets are signing up new members all the time and the strikes are solid despite heavy handed tactics by bosses and agency staff being bussed in. Even here the order for drivers not to drive trains that have not been cleaned went out far too late.
Now is the time to break the law and not the poor. If we are resolute in defending the cleaners, the whole workforce should be called out in support. Now is the time to break the anti trade union laws and bring all of the Underground out in support.

Justice for Colombia is extremely pleased to hear of the liberation of Ingrid Betancourt in Colombia. Ms Betancourt was freed yesterday in a non-violent military operation and has now been reunited with her family. In the past year JFC has worked closely with Ingrid's family, especially her mother Yolanda, in an effort to secure her release and we send our best wishes to them all. We are especially relieved to hear that none of the hostages were injured or killed as has occurred in previous rescue attempts.

JFC supports the comments made by Marleny Orjuela, the leader of ASFAMIPAZ (the organisation representing the relatives of police and military officers being held by the FARC guerrilla group), who has stated her concern for the remaining hostages.

JFC will continue campaigning for a humanitarian exchange of prisoners to take place in an effort to ensure that all those who have been deprived of their liberty as a result of the Colombian conflict can be reunited with their own families. We will also continue to support calls for a politically negotiated solution to the Colombian conflict.

Jeremy Dear

Chair, Justice for Colombia

Keith Sonnet

Vice-Chair, Justice for Colombia

Note: The FARC continues to hold three civilian hostages (Congressman Oscar Tulio Lizcano, Deputy Sigifredo Lopez Tobon and former Governor Alan Jara) as well as more than 25 military and police officers. The Colombian Government holds several hundred FARC combatants as well as several hundred more civilian political prisoners.