On March 21, 1933, Zangara marched into the execution chamber shouting against the "capitalists" and expressing disappointment that no news camera-men were permitted to witness his execution. "Goodbye, adios to the world," were his last words. 3 FDR's Looking Forward published FDR is shot at in assassination attempt in Miami, Florida, by Guiseppe Zangara, 15 February Giuseppe Zangara was sentenced to serve 80 years for shooting at President elect Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. Though Roosevelt was missed, five bystanders, including Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, were struck. Three weeks after the attack, Cermak died of complications. Zangara's sentence was then changed to death sentence. Thirty-three days after the attack, Zangara was strapped into the electric chair at Florida's Raiford Prison. He glared at his executioners and declared, "Goodbye, adios to all the world." His unclaimed body was buried in an unmarked prison grave. In 1989, as part of an effort by court officials to recover missing court files of historical significance, he filed an FOIA request with the U.S. Secret Service seeking to get back court files concerning assassin Giuseppe Zangara. Zangara, a 32-year-old bricklayer, fired four shots at President-elect Franklin Roosevelt's motorcade in 1933 in Miami. Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was killed and four people were wounded. Roosevelt escaped unharmed. Zangara was found guilty of murder and was executed about a month later. Winslow said a Miami court order showed that a Secret Service agent had checked out Zangara's death warrant and some other court documents in 1954 but never had returned them. Unfortunately, he said, the FOIA request failed to turn up the missing documents. GIUSEPPE ZANGARA pleaded guilty and was executed March 20, 1933 for the March 7, 1933 death of Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who was fatally wounded in an attempt on the life of President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in Miami on Feb. 15, 1933. LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE - May 1998 by DOMINIQUE VIDAL National and/or social liberation movements worldwide are equally affected. The ideology and power bloc which used to be their mainstay, whether they liked it or not, has disappeared. The various movements and causes have dropped out of the international spotlight and are no longer up for grabs in the East West confrontation. In fact, amid general indifference, they have largely forfeited their means of action and political leverage. With its main enemy out of the way, along with the economic, ideological and military threat it represented, the West, led by the United States, has now become the master of the world. A damaging result of this new world order has been the beginning of the process of globalisation. It is no paradox to say it probably began on 9 November 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall, or in August 1991 when Mikhail Gorbachev rallied to the American crusade in the Gulf, or indeed on 8 December 1991, the date of the dissolution of the Soviet Union For decades, every socialist project was contrasted with its only existing embodiment: so-called "real" socialism. And, among revolutionary forces themselves, the process of devising a plausible radical alternative was tragically limited by the Soviet horizon. So, despite the consequences described at the beginning, the fall of communism removes a severe handicap. Far from presaging the end of history and the irrelevance of radical thought, it actually gives a whole new lease of life to ideas of utopia. Future generations will have the freedom to conceive a different kind of society without having to define themselves in terms of a communist model. Of course, there is no going back to a clean slate. However, with the passing of time, it should be possible to learn lessons from the failure of communism and - in other forms and for other reasons - social-democratic reformism. The human imagination must find a new way of thinking based on what men and women need, rather than theoretical or dogmatic concepts to be "implemented". The questions we must ask ourselves may have a familiar ring. How are democracy, pluralism, rights and freedoms to be revitalised, but sheltered from totalitarian intent? How is equality of opportunity and social justice to be guaranteed and the security to which people are entitled assured, without a general "dumbing down" and stifling of initiative? How can the fulfilment of basic social needs be made into a priority for the economy without affecting its development? How can the necessary resources be found for a new balance between work, training, family and community life, and leisure activities when people's time is at last freed up? How can the ground be laid for a distribution of wealth which, worldwide, respects the right of all peoples to development? How can the role of the state be made to serve all these objectives while at the same time the independence of each citizen and each local community is assured? In short, how is the relationship between individuals and society to be reinvented? To these and many other questions, there are no longer any ready-made answers. However, the way is now open and the ground ready to be cleared. At last. Translated by Sally Blaxland IGNACIO RAMONET Last January, the corridors of a number of European airports were adorned with a poster in the style of the Chinese cultural revolution. It showed a row of demonstrators at the head of a march, their faces shining, their colourful banners blowing in the wind. The slogan they were chanting was "Capitalists of the world, unite!" For Forbes, America's magazine for millionaires, this was more than a jibe at the 150th anniversary of the publication of Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto. It was a way of making two things clear. Apparently without fear of contradiction, as the posters were not torn down or defaced. The first is that nobody is afraid of communism any longer. The second is that capitalism has gone over to the attack. capitalism's new-found arrogance. The triumphal tone became apparent after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the Soviet Union collapsed in a welter of political obtuseness reflecting the emptiness of shattered illusions. The sudden revelation of the full consequences of decades of state control in the countries of the former Eastern bloc produced a sort of mental upheaval. The tragic absurdity of a system lacking basic freedoms and a market economy was starkly exposed, as were all the injustices that had followed in its wake. Socialist thinking seemed to subside, along with the belief in progress and a future subject to rational planning. The sole ideological basis of the traditional right had been its anti communism. The collapse of the Soviet system and the implosion of socialism cut the ground from under its feet. Neoliberalism, which had been flagging since the beginning of the century, was left alone in the field, the sole victor of the East-West confrontation. With its main rivals removed, it has re-emerged on all sides, stronger than ever. Its supporters dream of imposing their vision - a neoliberal utopia admitting of no alternative - on the whole world. This campaign of conquest goes by the name of globalisation. It is the outcome of the increasing interdependence of all countries, brought about by the lifting of all controls on the movement of capital, the removal of customs barriers and administrative restrictions, and the intensification of international commerce and free trade; all this under the auspices of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the World Trade Organisation. The financial economy has become entirely divorced from the real economy. The sum total of daily financial transactions throughout the world is about $1,500 billion, but a mere 1 % involves the creation of new wealth. Even in the most developed countries, the dramatic advance of neoliberalism has significantly reduced the role of parliaments and other public players. At the same time, the growth of new information technologies is proceeding without any reference to the idea of social progress. The enormous strides in molecular biology since the early 1960s, coupled with the immense calculating power provided by computer science, have shattered the stability of the technological matrix which public authorities are finding it harder and harder to control. Politicians can no longer assess the risks involved in the acceleration of science and technology (1). Here too, they are increasingly dependent on unelected experts, who direct the government decision-making process behind the scenes. The information revolution has torn our society apart. It has overturned the established pattern of trade, opening the way for the expansion of the global and information economy. Not all the countries of the world have yet been forced into one unit. But the global economy is imposing a single economic model by networking the entire planet. In this new system of liberal social relations, humankind has been reduced to a collection of isolated individuals stranded in a universe of hypertechnology. These brutal changes are causing us to lose our bearings; there is ever-growing uncertainty, the world appears unintelligible and history seems to defy rational interpretation. The crisis we are experiencing is what Gramsci had in mind when he spoke of the old order dying while the new hesitates to be born. We are reminded of Tocqueville's phrase: "When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness." And yet, many people are trying to inject some measure of humanity into the relentless machinery of neoliberalism. They feel the need for responsible involvement and collective action. In an age when power has become abstract, invisible, distant and impersonal, they want to confront those responsible face to face, to direct their anger, fears and frustration at clearly identified adversaries of flesh and blood. They would still be prepared to believe that politics has an answer to everything, even though politicians find it increasingly difficult to propose straightforward solutions to the complex problems of society. And they all feel the need to erect a barrier against the tidal wave of neoliberalism in the form of a coherent ideology that can be opposed to the currently dominant model. To formulate that ideology is no easy matter. There is practically nothing left to build on. Previous utopias based on the idea of progress have all too often sunk into authoritarian rule and oppression. Once again, there is a need for dreamers who can think and thinkers who can dream. The answer will not be a neatly packaged, custom-built project. It will be a way of looking at things, of analysing society, leading gradually to the development of a new ideology that will break the stranglehold of anarcho-liberalism. *** sog *** Neoliberal ideology is busily building a society of selfishness based on fragmentation. To preserve the future, we have to strengthen the collective dimension (3). And collective action is now as much a matter of single-issue campaigns as of parties and unions. *** AoD *** France has seen a proliferation of campaigning groups in recent years. The issues range from food for the homeless (les Restos du Coeur) and the fight against AIDS (Act Up), to unemployment (Action contre le ChYmage - AC!) and housing rights (Droit au Logement - DAL). There has also been considerable growth in local branches of large NGOs like Greenpeace, Amnesty International, MYdecins du Monde and Transparency. Political parties have two particular attributes which detract from their credibility. First, they are all-embracing, claiming to be able to solve all society's problems. Second, they are geographically restricted, i.e. they can act only within the frontiers of a single country. Campaigning groups have exactly the opposite properties. On the one hand they are thematic, i.e. concerned with single issues such as unemployment, housing and the environment. On the other, they are international, i.e. their field of action is the whole planet (4). For many years the supporters of these two different approaches have been at odds with each other, but recently there have been signs of convergence. It is vital that they join forces. This is one of the key problems of political renewal. Campaigning groups are grass-roots organisations, testifying to the richness of social initiative. {John Doe Society - sog} It is therefore essential to build strong links between campaigning organisations and political parties. Campaigning organisations have preserved the belief in the possibility of changing the world, a belief based on a radical conception of democracy. They are the probable source of a renewal of political activity in Europe. . "Today's utopia is tomorrow's reality", as Victor Hugo said. Lamartine agreed that utopias are simply "realities whose time is not yet ripe." It is the committed activists of campaigning organisations who are likely to prove them right. They will resurface tomorrow under other banners. They will be involved in struggles to restore the United Nations' role as the central instrument of international law, to turn it into an organisation that can take real decisions, act decisively and impose lasting peace; to establish international tribunals that can judge crimes against humanity, democracy and the common good; to prevent manipulation of the masses and to end discrimination against women. They will be present in campaigns to secure new legislation on protection of the environment and to establish the principle of sustainable development. In the fight to ban tax havens and promote an economic system based on solidarity. And in many others. Translated by Barry Smerin Return of the Rebels The working classes have not given up the fight despite both overt and covert repression, a weakened and divided trade union movement and media indifference or outright hostility. by CHRISTIAN DE BRIE Alongside the trade union movement, an astonishing wealth and diversity of associations is springing up to challenge the new world order. From local community groups to international non-governmental organisations - there are several hundred thousand of them in all - mobilising hundreds of millions of activists. As the Peoples' Global Action against "Free" Trade and the World Trade Organisation, which met in Geneva in February 1998, stated in their manifesto, direct action against globalisation is the most important thing. "Only a global alliance of peoples' movements, respecting autonomy and facilitating action-oriented resistance, can defeat this ... monster. ... We assert our will to struggle ... against all forms of oppression" (3). Translated by Sally Blaxland THERE IS ANOTHER, BETTER WORLD The hazards of internationalism Billions of men and women, rendered powerless by the fragmentation of the social struggle, are pinning their hopes on a new universalism that does not leave the delicate fabric of the world entirely in the hands of the money men. by ALAIN GRESH We live in extraordinary times. Globalisation is carrying all before it, our means of communication allow us contact in real time with any place you care to name, more people than ever before are travelling the world, yet paradoxically the media space devoted to "foreign affairs" is shrinking to vanishing point. All the research bears this out. Be it in Paris, Washington (1), London or Madrid, television and press coverage of international problems has been substantially reduced. However, there is an exception to every rule and we are informed instantly of any drop in the Nikkei index in Tokyo, invited to rejoice at the new heights reached by the Dow Jones on Wall Street or worry about exchange rate fluctuations in Seoul. Stock exchange news has become the only social glue binding the global village together. Alain Badiou observes in a stimulating reflection on universalism (3), this "process of fragmentation into separate and isolated identities" is only another aspect of a "world that has finally been given a configuration, as a market, a world market. Nothing", he continues, "lends itself more to the invention of new patterns for a uniform monetary system than a community and its territory or territories. What endless opportunities for trade and investment" these innumerable new communities offer as they arise. The many separate states that have replaced ugoslavia or the Soviet Union offered no resistance to the juggernaut of the free market economy. As Alain Badiou observes, "at a time of general movement and the dream of instant cultural exchange, more and more laws and regulations are being introduced everywhere to curtail people's freedom of movement ... Free movement for things that can be counted, by all means, especially for capital, the very essence of such things. But free movement for things that cannot be counted, for the infinite value represented by an individual human life, never! As regards the real life of people and what happens to them", there is - and we must never forget it - "a detestable complicity between the globalised logic of capital and the French mania to preserve their identity". the nation-state - a recent and transitory historical phenomenon (7) - is clearly not the symbolic ideal construct some sentimental elements of the left like to imagine. It has been a key factor in colonial wars, opposition to the labour movement, enforcing moral order, discrimination against women, the marginalisation of minorities, and so on and so on. And the current drift into authoritarian attitudes vis-Y-vis "dangerous elements" and immigrants is unacceptable, even in the name of a self-styled "republican order". How are we to find new forms of rebellion, of dissidence, to meet the new global challenges? With modern means of communication, especially the Internet, it is easy to establish worldwide networks, mobilise, act. But to act locally and on a world scale, to "think global", it is necessary to rediscover universalism, a universalism that is not confined to the values of Western White men, who fall into a trance at the sight of a young girl in a veil and whose real aim in life, to quote Alain Badiou, is "the uniform imposition of what they imagine to be modern". Humanitarian action or laissez-faire? The stagnation of the Soviet system and the collapse of the communist utopia brought discredit on a certain version of internationalism. Even the humanitarianism, which rallied millions of men and women to the cause of emergency aid in time of war and natural disaster, rapidly ran out of steam. No-one was quicker than the organisers of M_dicins sans fronti_res, the organisation that exemplifies that approach, to condemn the political authorities' use of "humanitarian" aid to justify a laissez faire attitude towards the crimes in Bosnia or the genocide in Rwanda. And yet, in the face of fundamentalism, hardening attitudes on identity, or confrontations between increasingly insulated ethnic groups (which do not prevent their foot-soldiers from drinking Coca Cola, their intellectuals from using Microsoft software, and their leaders from calling on the resources of international capital), the peoples of the world have got to find new ways of "living together" and "fighting together". They have nothing to lose from embracing this ideal and, to quote Marx and Engels, "they have a world to win". Translated by Barbara Wilson The US is, in fact, operated as a fascist state by bureaucrats. ~ Bill Payne ~ John Hancock Security to the persons and properties of the governed is so obviously the design and end of civil government, that to attempt a logical proof of it would be like burning tapers at noonday, to assist the sun in enlightening the world; and it cannot be either virtuous or honorable to attempt to support a government of which this is not the great and principal basis; and it is to the last degree vicious and infamous to attempt to support a government which manifestly tends to render the persons and properties of the governed insecure. Some boast of being friends to government; I am a friend to righteous government, to a government founded upon the principles of reason and justice; but I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny. They have declared that they have ever had, and of right ought ever to have, full power to make laws of sufficient validity to bind the Colonies in all cases whatever. They have exercised this pretended right by imposing a tax upon us without our consent; and lest we should show some reluctance at parting with our property, her fleets and armies are sent to enforce their mad pretensions. it was easy to foresee the consequences which so naturally followed upon sending troops into America to enforce obedience to acts of the British Parliament, which neither God nor man ever empowered them to make. It was reasonable to expect that troops, who knew the errand they were sent upon, would treat the people whom they were to subjugate, with a cruelty and haughtiness which too often buries the honorable character of a soldier in the disgraceful name of an unfeeling ruffian. they thought it not enough to violate our civil rights, they endeavored to deprive us of the enjoyment of our religious privileges, to vitiate our morals, and thereby render us deserving of destruction. But what, my countrymen, withheld the ready arm of vengeance from executing instant justice on the vile assassins? Perhaps you feared promiscuous carnage might ensue, and that the innocent might share the fate of those who had performed the infernal deed. But were not all guilty? Were you not too tender of the lives of those who came to fix a yoke on your necks?