It is this combination of processes which culminated in last year's election campaign - with Lula, his key lieutenants and his new image consultants, moving sharply and unilaterally away from even the watereddown governmental programme adopted at the last PT National Meeting December 2001. This at least promised a "break" with the neo-liberal economic model. The abject submission to IMF orthodoxy in the first months of government merely confirms this trajectory.
The choice for the left is now very simple, and immensely difficult. Is it possible to re-apply the pincer strategy?
To far there has been very little Shas mobilain against the go.
ernment's policies. But there are some signs that so-far limited protests by public service unions against the pension reforms will grow. There are even stronger signs that the MST is becoming impatient with the government's refusal to cough up the cash needed to back Agrarian Reform Minister Miguel Rossetto's plans for land expropriations. It may launch a much more aggressive campaign of occupations later in June.
So is there a possibility of combining such mobilisations with the use of elected office to prepare the terrain for a positive rupture? Can the experience of the local participatory budgets be used to launch a national discussion of economic alternatives, and to build broad support and legitimacy for the kind of break with the IMF, which those will demand?
Or is it time for the left to cut its losses and run? The problem with continuing to fight for the former is that it may end up compromising the left with some totally unacceptable, anti-working class measures. The problem with the latter is that, in the absence of broad mobilisation and support inside and outside the PT, it could leave the left more isolated and less influential than it has been for over two decades. Phil Ward THE YANGTZE RIVER Three Gorges dam, the world's largest reservoir and hydroelectric power (HEP) scheme, is due to be filled between June 1-15, provided it is not delayed by the outbreak of SARS in China. Electricity generation will commence later this year: by 2009, the scheme will have a capacity of 18.2GW - equivalent to 18 large power stations - and supply about 10 per cent of China's electricity demand.
The number of people displaced will be 1.2m (the regime's figure) or 1.9m (opponents' figure). The scheme will cost at least $24bn, financed by loans from Morgan Stanley, a share issue (in which private capital has shown very little interest) and the Chinese state.
Several companies are supplying turbines, including GE (Canada), Siemens, Voith (both German), Sade Vigesa (Brazil) and ABB Alsthom (France). The fact that 100 different companies from 17 countries are working off the turbines has raised concerns about their safety and reliability.
All major water diversion or HEP schemes have damaging environmental and human impacts; some predictable, some not. The larger the project, the greater the potential for catastrophe, both gradual and sudden.
Often they also intensify international disputes, such as in Kashmir (the Indus valley) or between Turkey, Iraq and Syria (the Illusu). These facts are even recognised by the World Bank, which promoted a huge dam-building programme in the 1970s, but has pulled out of the Narmada project in India and showed little interest in Three Gorges.
For socialists, another issue is that such schemes are used by capitalism to strengthen central control of resources - like land, water and electricity generation - at the expense of working class and peasant communities. Through political mobilisation, such resources could be provided locally, with social and environmental benefits, rather than the increased inequality and environmental destruction that comes from these money-grabbing schemes
As is normal in schemes like Three Gorges, complaints about inadequate compensation for displacement are rife and the response is repression. 20 farmers were arrested in May when they exposed local officials creaming off resettlement funds. Many of the 640,000 already "resettled" have lost their livelihoods. Abstention
Ever since the 1949 revolution the regime has favoured the Three Gorges dam, either for flood control purposes, or for HEP. Approval was not given until the April 1992 National People's Congress, where an unprecedented 1/3 of delegates abstained or opposed the measure. There has been continuous popular and intellectual opposition in China and all discussion of the issue was suppressed after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.
Critics point out that much of the flooding of the Yangtze plains results from deforestation in the areas downstream and neg lect of control measures in the flood plain as dam building has proceeded apace on the whole river system.
Demand for electricity close to the dam is low, due to large numbers of factory closures. Other HEP schemes in China are unable to sell electricity due to lack of demand. Concern has also been expressed about silting in the reservoir and even the integrity of the dam and the materials used to construct it.
The World Commission on Dams in 2000 raised many problems about dam construction. It argued that hydroelectric dams can contribute as much to global warming as the equivalent fossil fuel power station, because of the gases given off by rotting vegetation in their reservoirs
Even when they don't fail, the existence of dams can contribute to flooding, - as was shown so disastrously in Mozambique in February 2000 and 200l. Managers of the Cabora Bassa dam and South African dams on the Limpopo are thought to have kept water levels high prior to the rainy season in order to maximise electricity generation. Subsequent opening of the sluices to protect the dams contributed to the deaths of thousands.
The Three Gorges Dam and Narmada are small compared to other projects being planned. China is working to divert water 1600km in 3 channels from the Yangtze to the Yellow river and then move the water further north: cost $58bn. In India, the Supreme Court has just approved a $1 12bn scheme to link all the country's major rivers, using |2,500km of canals, with HEP (schemes generating 34GW.
China has 80,000 dams, of which 22,000 are "large", (more than 15m high). This is 45% of the world's total. 3,200 have burst Three gorges will make one big lake since 1950, most of them small. Large disasters have occurred: in 1975, a typhoon in Henan province burst 62 dams, the largest Bangiao, released 500m cubic metres of water. Up to 230,000 people were killed by drowning and disease. Plywood
A burst at a new Italian dam Vaiont, the largest ever to have collapsed, in 1963 killed 2,600 people. A disaster at Glen Canyon dam on the Colorado river in 1983 - which could have released 60 times as much water as Banqiao - was only prevented by the judicious use on the dam's spillways of plywood from a local timber yard.
Awareness of the issues in major water engineering projects has led to a worldwide movement of opposition, which is bound to grow as more huge schemes are dreamed up by governments and their capitalist backers.
Socialists should give their complete backing to these movements, which have already played a central role in developing environmental awareness and showing that there are other ways of meeting the resource needs of worker and peasant communities