Commentary
The workers at American Axle are doing all they can. Their cause is just, they are united in battle and unions from all over are coming to this plant on the Detroit-Hamtramck border to lend support. For seven weeks now, 3,650 workers have been on strike, resisting a very profitable company’s efforts to drastically reduce their wages (by as much as 50 percent) and benefits. However, the balance of forces in this fight is anything but even and they sure could use some help from high places.
Autoworkers are fighting two enemies at once: the company and a far-right Republican government in Washington whose agenda is to make workers suffer and sacrifice for corporate profits. While Democrats are not without blame, the lion’s share of the mess we’re in rests with the Republican Party.
Of all the wrongs to make right in the November elections, those faced by labor should be put on a fast track. For 30 years, the Republican right wing has hit hard at the trade union movement —Reagan’s firing of air traffic controllers was just the beginning.
The scales of justice have been so tilted toward employers they have almost fallen over. Just think about what has taken place: Tax laws that reward companies for moving production out of the country. A National Labor Relations Board that should be called the National Corporate Get-Rid-of-Your-Union Relations Board. An Occupational Safety and Health Administration that has reduced staff and closed its eyes to dangerous work conditions. Free trade agreements that have made it easy for companies to set up production all over the world, worsened poverty and inequality in every country where they have been implemented and led to a massive loss of jobs here in the United States.
In this political climate workers are supposed to feel lucky just to be working and have no right complaining about corporate salaries and the halving of their wages and benefits. “We have the flexibility to source all of our business to other locations around the world and we have the right to do so,” said American Axle CEO Dick Dauch. Work for what I say or I’ll give your job to someone else, he’s saying.
Workers can win under such conditions, but why should it be so difficult? Isn’t it about time to send the Republicans packing?
In addition to the unity and solidarity being shown on the picket line, labor needs a Democratic landslide in the November elections — a landslide that sends a message to the next president and Congress that relief for working people is needed, and a landslide that will give labor the leverage to stop and even reverse the corporate attack.
The AFL-CIO’s “McCain Revealed” campaign shows him to be no friend of labor. His voting record is dismal. He’s voted to block the Employee Free Choice Act, voted to give Bush “fast track” authority on free trade legislation and voted to block a bill to protect overtime rights. McCain continues to be a strong supporter of the Iraq war and there is no way the needs of working people are going to be met while we’re spending three trillion dollars on the war. In other words, a McCain victory will be a continuation of Bush’s policies.
On most issues facing labor, Senators Obama and Clinton have both pledged policies opposite from McCain’s. A huge anti-McCain vote in November will be a defeat for the far-right and at the same time strengthen the hand of labor, the whole working class, women and youth. A big turnout by autoworkers in November will make battles on the picket line a lot easier.
John Rummel (jrummel@pww.org) is a Michigan correspondent for the People’s Weekly World.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
American Axle and the 2008 elections
May Day 2008
Workers of the world unite! That visionary call, issued 160 years ago, is being answered today in new and powerful ways.
As capital has gone global, using workers around the world as pawns in the transnational corporate profit grab, labor unions are going global too. They are forming unprecedented international alliances to fight the global assault on wages, benefits, living standards and worker rights.
• The United Auto Workers and France’s metalworkers federation (FTM-CGT) are developing a joint strategy for organizing at employers they have in common. They have agreed to share information and assist each other.
UAW Vice President and Organizing Director Terry Thurman said, “We are very pleased to work with our French brothers and sisters. … The corporations cross national borders for their self-interest, and our unions need to do the same thing.”
FTM-CGT includes the shipbuilding, aircraft and rail, electrical and electronic, mechanical equipment, metal, agricultural machinery, jewelry making and automobile industries.
• Earlier this month, the Communications Workers of America and Germany’s largest union, Ver.di, launched the first union ever to represent workers in both the U.S. and Europe. The new union, called T-Union, will support T-Mobile workers trying to win collective bargaining rights in the U.S. and other countries. It will also represent German union members who work for T-Mobile in the U.S.
• Last year, the United Steelworkers signed an agreement with Britain’s largest manufacturing union, Amicus, and the British Transport and General Workers’ Union to move toward a merger. Amicus and the T&G have since joined into one mighty union with 2.1 million members, called, appropriately, Unite.
• The AFL-CIO has just formed a new partnership with Enlace — a network of 21 worker centers, unions and organizing groups representing approximately 300,000 low-wage workers in the U.S. and Mexico — to work together to promote and enforce worker rights in the two countries.
All this indicates that labor is beginning to step onto the global stage as the advocate for the world’s people. It gives every reason for optimism as we celebrate May Day, the international workers’ holiday.
U.S., Korean workers: ‘Free trade’ pact spurs race to bottom
Despite strong resistance from labor and civic organizations in both the United States and South Korea, President Bush and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak vowed to push through the stalled Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA).
When Lee met with Bush April 18 at Camp David, according to Lee’s spokesperson, the two presidents chatted “like old friends,” and pledged that their countries’ legislatures would ratify the agreement.
Lee’s right-wing Grand National Party now dominates South Korea’s Parliament, so ratification there is likely, though there is a strong upsurge of grassroots protest. But U.S. ratification is much less likely. Contrary to Bush’s statements, Democrats in Congress, including presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, are generally opposed to the agreement.
“The only trade agreements I believe in are ones that put workers first,” Sen. Obama told members of the United Auto Workers in November. “Because trade deals aren’t good for the American people if they aren’t good for working people. That’s why I opposed CAFTA. That’s why I oppose the South Korea Free Trade Agreement.”
Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee, enthusiastically supports the agreement.
A recent statement issued jointly by the AFL-CIO and Change to Win in the U.S. and the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions says, “The KORUS FTA is based on an economic model that has privileged investor rights over workers’ rights, public services and the environment.”
The joint statement continues, “It is clear that this model will permit restructuring and provoke a ‘race to the bottom’ on working standards in both countries, resulting in the deterioration of wages and working standards.”
If passed, KORUS will be the largest free trade agreement signed by the U.S. after NAFTA. Negotiations on it began in February 2006 and concluded last year. Ratification has been stalled by major protests, especially by labor and farmers’ groups, in both countries.
The Korean Alliance against KORUS FTA, which represents more than 300 Korean organizations, including labor, farmers’ groups and nongovernmental organizations, and hundreds of thousands of people, made clear their concerns in a 2007 report to the U.S. Congress.
The report charged the agreement would limit Koreans’ access to medicines and decrease Korean agricultural production by 45 percent, “meaning that roughly half of South Korea’s farmers will lose their livelihoods.” Further, implementation would diminish Korean authority to regulate water use and energy and even education. The alliance also expressed concern about harmful effects on Korean environmental policies.
Many Koreans, including progressives in the south and North Korean leaders, also fear that the agreement is a way for U.S. imperialist interests to strengthen their reach over the whole peninsula.
For American workers, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said in April 2007 when the agreement was concluded, KORUS would “exacerbate and accelerate the loss of good jobs in the U.S. manufacturing sector, especially in autos, apparel and electronics.”
South Korean President Lee represents the ultra-right Grand National Party, which has its roots in the dictatorship that ended in the 1980s. After years of liberal rule, the GNP won the presidential vote last December and the parliamentary vote this April, when it trounced the liberal United Democratic Party. The GNP won a majority of the 299-member legislature, while the UDP won only about 80 seats, in an election that commentators said was characterized, more than anything else, by widespread demoralization.
The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions says the reason for the ascendancy of the GNP was that, while most people agreed with the liberal UDP’s rapprochement with North Korea, the liberals weren’t able to address the growing rich/poor divide in South Korea.
What’s more, former liberal President Roh Moo-hyun was an original drafter of the KORUS agreement.
Consequently, facing a choice between a pro-KORUS liberal party that had lost the support of labor, the ultra-right GNP and a disunited left opposition, most South Koreans sat out the April vote, pushing voter turnout down to 46 percent, the lowest in South Korea’s history.
dmargolis@ pww.org
China and Africa: A Different Relationship?
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click here for related stories: Imperialism/Globalization
 | 4-24-08, 11:23 am No region of the world was so devastated by both commercial and industrial capitalism and the imperialisms they fostered than Africa. From the 16th to the 19th century, Africa was robbed of tens of millions of its people for the slave trade that European and later North American states used to enrich themselves by developing much of the Western Hemisphere with human chattel. This was followed by colonial empires which looted Africa of its natural resources and also condemned tens of millions of Africans to forced labor in mines and on plantations to pay feudal taxes that were imposed on them. “Africa Arises," chapter six of Gerald Horne’s fine new book, Blows against Empire, looks at a different relationship between Africa and a new world power, the Peoples Republic of China. Along with a huge rise in trade relations and Chinese investments, China is working with Africans to build roads, to assist Ethiopia in constructing the continent’s largest dam, to aid Nigeria in developing a communications satellite system, and to introduce life saving anti-malarial drugs in Uganda. While some critics may argue that the Chinese are doing what the European and U.S. colonial powers have done in the past, Chinese investments in projects to facilitate their gathering of resources, clearly aid African development in a direct way. Horne looks at the positive role that China is playing in the Congo. By contrast, the U.S. through the CIA subverted the anti-colonial peoples revolution led by Patrice Lumumba at the end of the 1950s. CIA operatives and assisted in Lumumba’s murder and installed as its major African “asset” the brutal and corrupt Joseph Mobuto, whose dictatorship lasted three decades and was considered as one of the worst in the world. Horne is not uncritical of China’s past support in the 1970s of adventurist and elements in Africa as part of its anti-Soviet stance and its subsequent “strategic alliance” with the U.S. But, whereas U.S. and European states hypocritically pose as defenders of “democracy” against governments like that of Zimbabwe (Horne reminds readers that it was China which supported Robert Mugabe in the 1970s against political rivals who had Soviet support), China has continued to develop economic relations with various African states that are helping Africans raise their standards of living and improve their overall quality of life. The U.S. is not the only nation by any means involved in neo colonial activities in Africa. France. A large colonial power in Africa until the post WWII era, in a more direct way than the U.S. has its firms and “expatriates” working with local “allies” to control oil, bauxite, and other important resources. French military power is also around in a direct way to back up its firms. But Horne suggests that the “relative decline of U.S. imperialism – the locomotive of world imperialism – may be so significant that it will be unable to arrest the rise of Africa in league with China.” Horne is at his best in this chapter in untangling the complex geopolitical manipulations of U.S. imperialism in Africa, from its continuing attempts to create a dangerous new Africa Command (AFRICOM) for the U.S. military on the continent to advance its imperialist interests, to its struggles to control oil resources to its attempts to undermine Chinese relationships with African nations in a wide variety of ways. Horne also follows the money, showing how predatory “lenders” including U.S. GOP backers “buy up the debt of impoverished African countries from pennies and then force those countries to “renegotiate” under constitutions which give deepen their poverty and provide the ‘lenders’ with super profits. He also shows how U.S. based pharmaceuticals have sought to deny HIV and other life saving drugs to poor African nations, where these diseases are epidemics, in order to retain their profit margins in the developed countries. Meanwhile, the World Trade Organization and the IMF continue to put the squeeze on African nations as they do on Latin American and other nations, limiting social sector development in education and other areas in order to foster “free markets” and “fiscal responsibility” (neo colonialism in what is a fairly crude form). Finally, American based big agribusiness firms are exploiting African land and in effect increasing hunger among its peoples. All of this open plunder should make the critics of Chinese policy in Africa, along with those who selectively criticize the “human rights” abuses of some African states, take pause. Whatever contradictions may exist in China’s policy in Africa(which one might say is clearly one is seeking to develop resources for its own industries) its Communist leadership and revolutionary anti-imperialist traditions have kept it from engaging in the crude forms of exploitation that have characterized the Euro-American states for five centuries. Horne concludes optimistically that the role of China in Africa along with possible role of India (which has, as a legacy of British imperialism, its own Diaspora on the continent) and the global Diaspora created by slavery and colonialism, especially the large African-American community, offers hope for both African liberation and global victories against U.S. imperialism. Whether that, “the coming together of progressive Africans transnationally,” which Horne also sees as “a vindication of (W.E.B.) Du Bois vision” will occur remains unclear. But that it can occur and that all anti-imperialists should struggle to make it occur, not only for Africans but for Americans and all the world’s peoples, is clear. |
Monday, April 21, 2008
Some background about Tibet
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For many Americans with varying political views, Tibet is inextricably linked with Buddhism. The Dalai Lama, living in exile in India, is seen as a leader for spiritual enlightenment and world peace. Most in our country, however, know little about Tibet’s political and economic history.
In “Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth” (January 2007), political analyst and author Michael Parenti pointed out that before the 1949 Chinese revolution, Tibet was an abysmally backward feudal society. Most arable land was still owned by rich secular landlords or wealthy lamas (Buddist spiritual teachers), while most rural Tibetans were serfs, bound to the land, every aspect of their lives controlled by overlords who often tortured, mutilated and sexually abused them.
While Parenti and other observers are critical of many aspects of development since then, it is generally agreed that the life of ordinary Tibetans has improved greatly, both economically and socially.
Former U.N. Under Secretary General and Indian civil servant C.V. Narasimhan, writing in The Hindu’s magazine, Frontline, in December 2000, called Tibet’s agrarian economy “still poor by any standard, but … a considerable improvement over the last four decades. Education is taking off, although Tibet has still a long way to go. Religious freedom has been guaranteed, as indeed over all of China.”
Narasimhan added that India cannot support claims to an independent Tibet since it recognizes by treaty that Tibet is an integral part of China. Others have noted that the Dalai Lama himself calls for greater autonomy, not total independence.
Some 95 percent of the population of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) is Tibetan, and over 90 percent speak Tibetan as their first language. Many ethnic Tibetans also live in other parts of China, including Qinghai and Gansu provinces.
Writing in The Hindu in 2004, correspondent Amit Baruah said the income of the average Tibetan farmer living in the TAR has risen as much as sevenfold since the 1960s. Ninety percent of children are in elementary school, and life expectancy has risen to 67 years from 35 during that period.
Writing last week in Foreign Policy in Focus, Ross Gearllach , an analyst at the Institiue for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, pointed out that the recent protests have not focused on government or army facilities, but instead have targeted businesses owned by Han Chinese.
“The ability of the average ethnic Tibetan to provide for his or her family is hampered by the same inflation and difficulties procuring services that plague the rest of China,” wrote Gearllach. “However, their attempts to do so are further exacerbated by the economic and social discrimination they suffer as a result of government industrialization policies. Beijing’s policy of bringing in settlers from the east to run the new machinery, most of them Han Chinese, makes it increasingly difficult for Tibetans to pursue their traditional lifestyles.”
Much has been said about the history of Tibet’s relation to China. In “Tibet: An Inalienable Part of China,” first published in the German Communist monthly Red Fox and reprinted in the Australian newspaper, The Guardian, Rolf Berthold noted that the Chinese Republic’s first provisional president, Dr. Sun Yat Sen, proclaimed in his inaugural address that the Han, Manchu, Mongols, Hui and Tibetans were unified in one state. The republic’s constitution said Tibet was part of China. Tibetan local government representatives participated in forming the Kuomintang government, and it in turn confirmed the Dalai Lama and had representatives in Tibet.
Given the widespread U.S. efforts to undermine and subvert the socialist countries following World War II, it should be no surprise that Washington has had a hand in developments regarding Tibet. It is generally acknowledged that in the period leading to the 1959 uprising, and continuing at least until 1973 when U.S.-China diplomatic relations were re-established, the CIA funded opposition movements there. The National Endowment for Democracy reportedly picked up this function during the Reagan administration. In a sign the Bush administration is reaching for a more direct relationship, The Hindu last week cited Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s statement that Washington wants to open a consulate in Tibet.
mbechtel@ pww.org
‘Free trade’ deal stopped, unions celebrate
Labor is celebrating the 224-195 House vote April 10 to set aside the U.S.-Colombia “free trade” pact because of concern on Capitol Hill about the continuing murder of trade unionists in that country.
The vote, called for by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, derailed a Bush administration attempt to “fast track” the deal through Congress in 90 days. Under the customary fast track approach to trade deals, Bush wanted Congress to approve the measure by voting on legislation implementing the trade deal, not on the agreement itself.
Pelosi proposed a rules change to drop fast track and stop the 90-day clock. As labor leaders applauded the move, Republicans noted angrily that it was really a vote against the pact, which had been pushed by Bush as “vital to national security and to protecting democracy in Latin America.” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, praising the vote, said “it should never come up on Capitol Hill again until the murders of Columbian trade unionists stop.”
International labor and human rights groups have blamed the Colombian government and right-wing paramilitaries it employs for the deaths of thousands of trade union activists there over the last several years.
Pelosi hinted that she might allow a vote on the pact sometime in the future, possibly in exchange for support from Bush for a second economic stimulus package that would include steps to help working families. Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) both flatly rejected this tradeoff, saying they were unalterably opposed to the Colombian pact. The two senators as well as Pelosi were part of a meeting between congressional and labor leaders where the new economic stimulus package was drafted.
“With the United States economy entering a potentially severe recession, with the trade deficit running at about $2 billion a day, and with unemployment on the rise, the last thing we need is another flawed trade agreement with a country that cannot even guarantee the rule of law, let alone basic human rights for its workers,” Sweeney declared in a prepared statement after the vote. “Congress should give its full attention to addressing the urgent needs of our failing economy. And there should be no vote on the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement until Colombia ends the violence against trade unionists and assures they can exercise their basic rights without fear.”
Change to Win Chair Anna Burger said she was glad that Pelosi is resisting strong-arm tactics by the White House and reasserting congressional authority over trade policies. Burger called for the House to refuse to consider any new trade agreements this year and said a new fair trade “model” is needed before any such deals are considered.
Burger said it would take years, not months, to ensure that the killing of trade unionists in Colombia is really stopped. “Trade isn’t free,” she said, “when thousands are killed for standing up for their rights in the workplace.”
jwojcik@pww.org
Sunday, April 20, 2008
a quote
Black worker to a whte boss; (Presence Africaine, 1956)
Friday, April 18, 2008
The Strange Tibetan Theocratic Model
The Strange Tibetan Theocratic Model
By Jean-Luc Mélanchon
Original source: l'Humanite
Are Western leaders truly defending human rights?
Is it possible to criticize the Chinese government without embracing the Dalai Lama’s theocratic project? For such is the impasse we are heading for as a result of the media-sustained agitation and brainwashing initiated by supporters of a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. So history will have taught us nothing. So we have forgotten all about the US boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games to protest the Red Army’s invasion of Afghanistan in support of Babrak Karmal’s communist government. And how, when it came to condemning this campaign and discrediting communism, just anything went: the US then did not stop at arming and financing all those who fought against the communist government and the Soviets, first among whom the Taliban, then Al Qaeda.
The threat of an Olympics boycott commits us to the same preposterous logic. Apparently, solidarity with the religious Tibetan faction and Tibetan supporters of independence is a must. Never mind if China is severed of a quarter of its territory: that is not something that should make us pause. The feudal regime of the Tibetan monks and their exiled king, the 14th Dalai Lama, must be supported. And the Dalai Lama should be extravagantly recognized as a living God and absolute ruler over the Tibetan people.
His grotesque claim to choose, with his higher clergy, the person in whom he professes he will be reincarnated should be assented…
Not content with all that silly stuff we should also negate the historical links between Tibet and China since the fourteenth century. Forget the fact that the independence movement was instigated in the twentieth century by Western powers at the height of their imperialist supremacy in order to carve China up.
Keep mum about what “the 1959 Chinese crackdown” really cracked down upon: the Tibetan monks’ revolt against the abolition of serfdom and feudal taxes and codes, by virtue of which there was a scale of prices for diverse categories of human beings and the monasteries’ masters had the power of life and death over their serfs…
We are also expected to protest indignantly against the police suppressing the demonstrations in Lhassa, and make nothing of the fact that these started with a pogrom of Chinese shopkeepers. Waste no pity on those who were clubbed to death and burnt in their shops with their families by those who claim to support the Dalai Lama. Have no scruple about calling “genocide” the more than doubling of the Tibetan population since the 1950s. Bow low before the Tibetans’ so-called religious identity at a time when those populations have embarked on the secularizing process characteristic of all developing countries. Turn a blind eye to the strange social code that fidelity to tradition and Tibetan identity as preached by Tibetan monks entails: the condemnation of abortion and homosexuality (deemed unnatural by the Dalai Lama himself), of mixed marriages between Tibetans and Chinese, considered impure, the recruitment of children at a very early age by the monasteries… Say nothing about the recent campaign against the railway linking Beijing and Lassa, with arguments that were used in the nineteenth century, e.g. the condemnation of railways by Pope Gregory XVI as a devilish means to spread new ideas and subvert religious tradition.
How can one invoke human rights and accept the negation of the secularist separation of church and state?
The present campaign in favour of an Olympics boycott therefore amounts to a manipulation; it is a trap for the setting of which the rights of Tibetans and Chinese merely serve as a pretext.
If the real aim was to put pressure on the Chinese government, why did Western leaders allow China to submit its application and why didn’t they say anything when it was elected to play host to the Games? Why do they keep signing contracts worth billions of dollars? Is China an eligible partner for the purchase of nuclear power stations or US Treasury bonds, but not for the organization of the Games? And why choose to meet it on the ethnic field rather than the social field? Is it not because Western powers would have a problem if social claims in China were met?
All this hypocrisy binds the US and Europe to an aggressive escalation against China as a nation: the result will be a unanimous surge of national feeling across the country. The strategists behind this worldwide campaign have rested their hopes precisely on this. The fact it is headed by Robert Ménard [1] is a sure indication that US neo-conservatives are behind it. When all’s said and done, the sorcerer’s apprentices will be found to have once more befuddled us all.
--Jean-Luc Mélanchon is a Socialist senator in France.
[1] Co-founder and general secretary (for life) of the French association Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF). Mélenchon remarks in his blog that the RSF "has shrunken, becoming this one individual" whose defense of civil liberties depends, in an opportunistic way, on the government in question, "being incapable of even token criticism of the use of torture by the U.S., or of seeking legal aid for those detained in Guantanamo.
"
From l'Humanite. Translated by Isabelle Metral.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Martinique poet Aime Cesaire dies at 94
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From Associated Press
Martinique poet Aime Cesaire dies at 94
By HERVE BRIVAL
FORT-DE-FRANCE, Martinique (AP) -- Aime Cesaire, a poet honored throughout the French-speaking world and a crusader for West Indian rights, has died at 94.
Cesaire died Thursday after at a Fort-de-France hospital where he was being treated for heart problems and other ailments, said government spokeswoman Marie Michele Darsieres.
He was one of the most celebrated cultural figures in the Caribbean and was revered in his native Martinique, which sent him to France's parliament for nearly half a century and repeatedly elected him mayor of the capital.
Cesaire helped found the "Black Student" journal in Paris in the 1930s that launched the idea of "negritude," urging blacks to cultivate pride in their heritage. His 1950 "Discourse on Colonialism" became a classic of French political literature.
French Culture Minister Christine Albanel said Cesaire "imbued the French language with his liberty and his revolt."
"He made (the French language) beat to the rhythm of his spells, his cries, his appeals to overcome oppression, invoking the soul of subjugated peoples to urge the living to raise themselves up," she said.
His best known works included the essay "Negro I am, Negro I Will Remain" and the poem "Notes From a Return to the Native Land."
Cesaire was born June 26, 1913, in Basse-Pointe, Martinique and moved to France for high school and university studies. He graduated from one of the country's most elite institutes, the Ecole Normale Superieure.
Cesaire returned to Martinique during World War II and taught at a high school in Fort-de-France, where he served as mayor from 1945 to 2001, except for a blip in 1983-84.
Even political rivals paid him homage.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy successfully led a campaign last year to change the name of Martinique's airport in honor of Cesaire, despite the poet's refusal to meet him in the run-up to the 2007 French elections. Cesaire endorsed Sarkozy's Socialist rival, Segolene Royal.
Cesaire complained that Sarkozy had endorsed a 2005 French bill citing the "positive role" of colonialism. Cesaire spoke ardently against the measure's language, and it was later removed after complaints from former French colonies and France's overseas territories.
"I remain faithful to my beliefs and remain inflexibly anti-colonialist," Cesaire said in a statement at the time.
Sarkozy on Thursday praised Cesaire as "a great poet" and a "great humanist."
"As a free and independent spirit, throughout his whole life he embodied the fight for the recognition of his identity and the richness of his African roots," Sarkozy said. "Through his universal call for the respect of human dignity, consciousness and responsibility, he will remain a symbol of hope for all oppressed peoples."
Royal called him "an eminent symbol of a mixed-race France" and urged that he be buried in the Pantheon, where French heroes from Victor Hugo to Marie and Pierre Curie are interred.
"A great voice has died out, that of a man of conviction, of creation, of testimony, who awakened consciousness throughout his life, blasted apart hypocrisies, brought hope to all who were humiliated, and was a tireless fighter for human dignity," Royal said.
Cesaire was the honorary president of her support committee during the presidential campaign.
Cesaire was affiliated with the French Communist Party early in his career but became disillusioned in the 1950s and founded the Martinique Progressive Party in 1958. He later allied with the Socialist Party in France's National Assembly, where he served from 1946-1956 and 1958-1993.
Associated Press writer Angela Doland in Paris, France, contributed to this report.
Monday, April 14, 2008
U.S. May not Release Guantanamo Prisoners Even if Acquitted
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click here for related stories: Human Rights
| 4-14-08, 10:11 am Even if a Guantanamo prisoner is acquitted on all counts at his trial, the Pentagon may still not release him on grounds he might return to the battlefield, according to an article in the April 14th issue of The New Yorker. The magazine’s Jeffrey Toobin quotes Brig. General Thomas Hartmann, legal adviser to the Pentagon’s Office of Military Commissions, as saying, “What’s unusual about what we’re doing is that we’re having the commissions before the end of the war. The Nuremberg trials (of accused Nazi war criminals) were after World War Two, so there was no possibility of the defendants going back to the battlefield.” But, Hartmann continued, “We still have that problem. We are trying these alleged war criminals during the war. So, in order to protect our troops in the field, in general we are not going to release anyone who poses a danger until the war is over.” By this reasoning, Toobin writes, “even those Guantanamo detainees who are acquitted of the charges against them are analogous to Nazi war criminals.” Curiously, hundreds of Guantanamo prisoners --- once depicted by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as “the worst of a very bad lot” --- have already been released. This raises the suspicion they were innocent victims of dragnet arrests or sold to the U.S. by Afghan bounty hunters to enlarge the picture of thousands of Islamist terrorists seething to attack America. As historian James Carroll put it in “House of War”(Houghton Mifflin), the jails of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are “emblems of a new system of legally dubious incarceration that involved more than eleven thousand detainees held in mostly secret (black site) locations around the world…” As Clive Stafford Smith, a detainees’ lawyer, told The New Yorker: “Now that it’s clear that Guantanamo is such an embarrassment, they are just shipping as many of them (captives) out the door as they can, and just keeping enough of them to save face. It’s a political process that has little to do with terrorism.” |
Only one prisoner since Gitmo first opened on January 11, 2002 --- ex-kangaroo skinner David Hicks---has been actually brought to trial. He plea-bargained a nine-month term which he served out in his native Australia and is now free.
About 275 prisoners remain in Gitmo, down from an estimated peak of 680 from 43 countries. According to Toobin, about 60 have been approved for transfer, if countries can be found to take them, and Hartmann anticipates there is sufficient evidence to bring commission trials against only 80. “In sum,” Toobin writes, “there are more than 130 detainees for whom Administration officials acknowledge they have no plan, except indefinite detention without trial.” Toobin’s article is titled “Camp Justice.”
After years of delay, a trial was actually scheduled to open May 5th against Omar Ahmed Khadr, a Canadian who was 15 years of age when detained on charges of hurling a hand grenade that killed an American GI. According to The New York Times of April 12, military judge Col. Peter Brownback III, pushed back his trial date and instead set May 8th to hear more lawyers’ arguments on pre-trial issues.
Khadr’s lead lawyer, Navy Lt. Comdr. William Kuebler, is quoted as saying, “I don’t believe anyone can get an acquittal at Guantanamo Bay.” He said some witnesses to the firefight say the U.S. soldier may have been killed by friendly fire --- a charge Khadr’s prosecutor claims will be disproved.
Yet what does it matter? Even if proved innocent before his all-military panel, Khadr could be held as long as the occupant of the White House says the War on Terror continues! For many in the Middle East and elsewhere, the legalized duplicity shaping up at Gitmo won’t just give America one black eye but two, plus a broken nose, a fat lip, and a mouthful of loose teeth --- as George Bush whacks away at the Statue of Liberty with his war club.
--Sherwood Ross is a Miami, Fl.-based writer and public relations consultant that may be reached at sherwoodr1@yahoo.comRoss has worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and contributed a weekly "Workplace" column to Reuters America for 10 years.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
No room for talk about killing in society
Talk about irony.
The same day Springfield officials explained new security measures for City Hall, the county sheriff remarked in another public building about wanting to kill people.
Believe it or not, Greene County Sheriff Jack Merritt on Tuesday said the following to a crowd of onlookers at a rally in the rotunda of the state Capitol:
"The way I hear Jason sing the national anthem makes you want to go out and kill a communist."
Merritt, in his bizarre way, was complimenting Jason Yeager, an "American Idol" finalist who appeared at a Jefferson City rally to support legislation that would give psychologists the right to write prescriptions.
Merritt didn't explain his remark but, when a reporter introduced himself to Merritt later, the sheriff said, oops, he probably should have been more careful with his words.
Duh.
Speaking in public about wanting to kill people because of their political beliefs has never been a very good idea. Making that kind of comment these days is even more dicey.
Remember the MSU student who triggered a campus lockdown about a year ago for allegedly sending e-mails saying he wanted to kill minorities?
Did you read about how nervous the city officials have become because of recent murderous violence in Kirkwood and Marionville?
Tossing the K-word around doesn't seem like joke fodder, especially in a public building.
By the way, it's no crime -- a sheriff should know this -- to be a communist. There are lots of avowed communists in this country, living legally, going to work, paying taxes, caring for their children.
There's even a Communist Party-USA office in St. Louis. Here's some of what the party says it stands for, according to its Web site:
"Working people around the world have always sought a future without war, exploitation, inequality, and poverty. They strive to build a brighter future, one based on democracy, peace, justice, equality, cooperation, and meeting human needs."
Thirty-year-old Tony Pecinovsky, a 10-year member of the party living in St. Louis, called Merritt's comment "mind-boggling."
"It is unfortunate that one person's sense of patriotism leads them to talk of murder while ours leads us to fight for peace and democracy and equality and health care and education."
The sad part of this is that Merritt's main point in his speech, a good one, was obscured by his goofy comment.
Merritt was trying to explain that the county's lone staff psychologist sometimes needs to treat Greene County inmates but runs into delays because he can't write prescriptions himself.
The psychologist must first contact the jail's part-time doctor, which can be tricky at night, the sheriff said.
Others at the rally also pushed for a new law allowing psychologists to prescribe certain medications. It does seem like law is needed.
The sheriff is justified in joining with the rallying cry.
His delivery needs some work, though.
A room full of psychologists is just about the worst place to start talking crazy.
-----------------------------------
So apparently people on the far right are crazy enough to start killing. Anti-communism and red baiting never seem to get old to them.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Contact Congressman Bart Stupak, Stop HR4088!
Urgent! Calls are needed to the office of Bart Stupak, Michigan’s 1st District Democrat.
Stupak has signed a discharge petition which would force a vote in the House of Representatives on the seriously flawed, anti-immigrant Shuler-Tancredo bill (The SAVE Act, HR4088). Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership are correctly trying to stop a vote on this seriously flawed bill. Stupak has broken with his Democratic leadership by signing the discharge petition which would bring the measure up for a vote.
The discharge petition seeks to bypass the congressional process to carefully examine a bill, denying the relevant committees the opportunity to review the bill’s merit, or allowing the members to offer amendments that improve the bill. If proponents gather 218 signatures, the SAVE Act will go to the floor of the House for an up or down vote. This is no way to address the complex immigration issue.
Contact him and ask that he not break with his Party’s leadership and that he remove his name from the discharge petition. The far right has organized a big campaign to pressure House members to support the discharge; they must be stopped.
To call: D.C. office: (202) 225 4735
To email, go to: http://www.house.gov/stupak/IMA/issue2.htm
The Save Act is no savior. The SAVE Act would:
Expand the social security no-match verification system to cover all employers and all workers without addressing the well documented flaws of the system. The 17.8 million errors in the E-Verify database, if not corrected, may jeopardize the jobs of an estimated 12.7 million US citizen workers whose information appears incorrectly in the data base.
Cost tax payers billions of dollars to build more fences and walls – a horrible way to deal with people in search of work.
Divert needed law enforcement resources from community safety and force them to act as immigration officers, instead of protecting the people and solving crimes.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
10 things you should know about John McCain (but probably don't)
Original source: MoveOn.org
1. John McCain voted against establishing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now he says his position has "evolved," yet he's continued to oppose key civil rights laws.1
2. According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on
3. His reputation is built on his opposition to torture, but McCain voted against a bill to ban waterboarding, and then applauded President Bush for vetoing that ban.3
4. McCain opposes a woman's right to choose. He said, "I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned."4
5. The Children's Defense Fund rated McCain as the worst senator in Congress for children. He voted against the children's health care bill last year, then defended Bush's veto of the bill.5
6. He's one of the richest people in a Senate filled with millionaires. The Associated Press reports he and his wife own at least eight homes! Yet McCain says the solution to the housing crisis is for people facing foreclosure to get a "second job" and skip their vacations.6
7. Many of McCain's fellow Republican senators say he's too reckless to be commander in chief. One Republican senator said: "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He's erratic. He's hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."7
8. McCain talks a lot about taking on special interests, but his campaign manager and top advisers are actually lobbyists. The government watchdog group Public Citizen says McCain has 59 lobbyists raising money for his campaign, more than any of the other presidential candidates.8
9. McCain has sought closer ties to the extreme religious right in recent years. The pastor McCain calls his "spiritual guide," Rod Parsley, believes
10. He positions himself as pro-environment, but he scored a 0—yes, zero—from the League of Conservation Voters last year.10
Sources:
1. "The Complicated History of John McCain and MLK Day," ABC News, April 3, 2008
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/04/the-complicated.html
"McCain Facts," ColorOfChange.org, April 4, 2008
http://colorofchange.org/mccain_facts/
2. "McCain More Hawkish Than Bush on Russia, China, Iraq," Bloomberg News, March 12, 2008
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aF28rSCtk0ZM&refer=us
"Buchanan: John McCain 'Will Make Cheney Look Like Gandhi,'" ThinkProgress, February 6, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/06/buchanan-gandhi-mccain/
3. "McCain Sides With Bush On Torture Again, Supports Veto Of Anti-Waterboarding Bill," ThinkProgress, February 20, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/20/mccain-torture-veto/
4. "McCain says Roe v. Wade should be overturned," MSNBC, February 18, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17222147/
5. "2007 Children's Defense Fund Action Council® Nonpartisan Congressional Scorecard," February 2008
http://www.childrensdefense.org/site/PageServer?pagename=act_learn_scorecard2007
"McCain: Bush right to veto kids health insurance expansion," CNN, October 3, 2007
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/03/mccain.interview/
6. "Beer Executive Could Be Next First Lady," Associated Press, April 3, 2008
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h-S1sWHm0tchtdMP5LcLywg5ZtMgD8VQ86M80
"McCain Says Bank Bailout Should End `Systemic Risk,'" Bloomberg News, March 25, 2008
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aHMiDVYaXZFM&refer=home
7. "Will McCain's Temper Be a Liability?," Associated Press, February 16, 2008
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=4301022
"Famed McCain temper is tamed," Boston Globe, January 27, 2008
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/01/27/famed_mccain_temper_is_tamed/
8. "Black Claims McCain's Campaign Is Above Lobbyist Influence: 'I Don't Know What The Criticism Is,'" ThinkProgress, April 2, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/02/mccain-black-lobbyist/
"McCain's Lobbyist Friends Rally 'Round Their Man," ABC News, January 29, 2008
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4210251
9. "McCain's Spiritual Guide: Destroy Islam," Mother Jones Magazine, March 12, 2008
http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2008/03/john-mccain-rod-parsley-spiritual-guide.html
"Will McCain Specifically 'Repudiate' Hagee's Anti-Gay Comments?," ThinkProgress, March 12, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/12/mccain-hagee-anti-gay/
"McCain 'Very Honored' By Support Of Pastor Preaching 'End-Time Confrontation With Iran,'" ThinkProgress, February 28, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/28/hagee-mccain-endorsement/
10. "John McCain Gets a Zero Rating for His Environmental Record," Sierra Club, February 28, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/environment/77913/
From MoveOn.org
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Cyprus’ new president moves to reunify divided nation
The stunning election of a Communist president in Cyprus last month promised a new direction for the divided country. Now, newly elected president Dimitris Christofias has taken a historic step toward the long-sought reunification of Cyprus.
On March 21, Christofias met with Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat and the chief of the UN mission in Nicosia, Michael Moller, to hammer out a path towards settlement of what Cypriots call the “Cyprus problem.”
The “problem” dates back to 1974, when right-wing elements in Cyprus, supported by a Greek military dictatorship, staged a coup, briefly taking power. The right-wingers sought to annex the island nation to Greece. Turkey used the coup and the pending annexation as a pretense to invade Cyprus, ostensibly to protect the ethnic Turkish minority there. As a consequence of these events, Turkey continues to occupy the northern third of the island to this day.
Christofias, a historian who previously served as president of the Cypriot House of Representatives, the country’s parliament, is the leader of AKEL (Progressive Party of Working People), Cyprus’ Communist Party. It is the island’s biggest party with deep roots among the people. During his election campaign Christofias pledged to make reunification his first order of business.
Thousands of people, including both Greek and Turkish Cypriots, turned out to cheer the announcement of his Feb. 24 electoral victory. Christofias told them, “As president of the Republic of Cyprus I have the responsibility of uniting and representing all the citizens.’’ He added, ‘’We have a clear vision, a vision to reunite our Cyprus, rid the country of the Turkish occupation and its consequences, turn it into a happy homeland for all its children, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots.’’
“We are pursuing a just settlement, a solution based on UN resolutions and decisions, the high-level agreements of 1977 and 1979, the European and international law,’’ Christofias said.
He wasted no time in moving to make good on this pledge.
At the March 21 meeting, Christofias and Talat agreed to open up two crossing points along the “Green Line,” the UN-patrolled barrier that separates the Cypriot and Turkish sectors of the island, and to set up committees and working groups to prepare for full-fledged negotiations within three months.
As an initial conciliatory measure, military checkpoints on Nicosia’s Ledra Street were dismantled by order of the mayor, Eleni Mavrou, months before the presidential election. Mavrou is a leading member of AKEL. Now, following up on February’s presidential victory, Christofias has brought this initial peace initiative to a qualitatively higher level — Ledra Street is one of the two crossing points opened in the new talks.
It took over 30 years, but Cyprus’ new AKEL government is working to turn the negative developments of the past around.
In his victory speech, Christofias told Cypriots that “our vision is a fairer society with economic development, coupled with more social justice, a modern state that will stand by its citizens in need.’’
He said he would put special emphasis on “all that unites us.
“I am president from the people and will be president for the people,’’ he concluded.
gbono @ cpusa.org
Company fails to pressure striking workers
 |
| John Rummel |
| American Axle workers on the picket line |
GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant, which makes the Buick Lucerne and Cadillac DTS, was officially idled March 31. In addition, seven GM light-truck assembly plants are closed, along with 22 parts operations in North America. Several suppliers also have slowed or idled plants that supply GM.
American Axle called back 140 laid off workers March 31 who returned to work long enough to say they are out on strike and immediately joined the UAW picket lines outside the plant.
“Not to boast or anything, but we’re fighting for all of Middle America,” said Adrian King, president of UAW Local 235. On picket lines throughout this city workers repeat that sentiment. Despite company threats, their resolve appears strong.
CEO Dick Dauch has threatened to move production out of the country. He told the Detroit Free Press, “We have the flexibility to source all of our business to other locations around the world and we have the right to do so.”
From all over Michigan and into Ohio, UAW locals are coming to Detroit to walk the lines and give support. Local 142 from nearby Warren set up a BBQ and fed hundreds over a four-hour period.
Last week Ray Wood, president of UAW Local 14 at the GM powertrain plant in Toledo, brought a bus and car caravan to Local 235 in Detroit and told union members there, “Whatever you need, we’re only an hour away, when they mess with one, they mess with all of us, we’re family.”
“All locals, churches and all friends are welcome to come and walk the picket line,” King said, adding, “water, coffee, soup, anything brought to the line will be greatly appreciated.”
With 29 GM plants entirely or partially shut down, the pressure is mounting on American Axle to negotiate seriously. Despite $37 million in profits last year the company is seeking massive wage and benefit cuts. The company has set up non-union plants in the U.S., Mexico, Poland, Scotland, India and China.
It is estimated that from 2003 through 2006, CEO Dauch received $58 million in compensation. Because the company has provided no data to justify the harsh cuts, the union has charged it with unfair labor practices.
UAW president Ron Gettelfinger characterizes the talks as a “one way street of company demands.”
jrummel @pww.org
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Western fear of communism basis for opinions of China
Langhua Hu’s letter, Understand Chinese issues, culture before judging it (SN 3/31) made me think a little bit.
In Tibet, racist murder gangs incited race riots, killed random Han Chinese and burned down houses and what is the response of many Americans? They raise their hands in delight and sing “Hurrah!”
Such a reaction is nothing more than a natural consequence. After all, the Dalai Lama and his “idyllic” charm attracts all sorts of sensible, American middle-class liberals. It makes sense — poverty and backwardness disguised as “Buddhist peace and humility” makes a better mental picture than the communist, atheist, crowded, contaminated and industrialized cities. It’s almost borderline racist — the thought that only Westerners enjoy running water and electricity, while everybody else is happy with living in abysmal conditions. But when something — no matter how terrible and vile — is crowned by the made-up mysticism of an exotic religion, it’s going to be sure that you are going to get some bored Western kids tailing it.
Don’t misinterpret me — the Chinese Communist Party is made up of a bunch of thugs. However, the “communist bogeyman” holds such a tight grip on American hearts that it leads them to support all sorts of reactionary and savage vile — all for the sake of “anti-communism.” Honestly, how can nationalists murdering random people in the name of “ethnicity and culture” be anything positive at all?
Amir Ouyed
mechanical engineering freshman
Published on Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Friday, April 4, 2008
Martin Luther King, Jr.: 40th Year Anniversary of his Assassination
Take time to reflect on this day, the 40th year anniversary of the assassintation of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He died fighting for what he called a turn toward democratic socialism. We must not only honor his memory, but pick up the blood-stained banner for freedom, justice, equality -- for democratic socialism.
--------------------------------------
January 14, 2006
Martin Luther King, Jr., Democratic Socialist
By Paul Street
One of the many disturbing characteristics of dominant American ideology is the way it deletes radical-democratic beliefs from the official memory of certain acknowledged great historical personalities.
How many Americans know that the celebrated scientist Albert Einstein (voted the "Man of the 20th Century" by Time Magazine) was a self-proclaimed leftist who wrote an essay titled "Why Socialism" for the first issue of the venerable Marxist journal Monthly Review ?(1)
Probably about as many as who know that Helen Keller (typically recalled as an example of what people can attain through purely individual initiative or "self-help") was a radical fan of the Russian Revolution (2).
Or that Thomas Jefferson despised the developing state capitalism of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, warning that it was creating a new absolutism of concentrated power more dangerous than the one Americans rebelled against in 1776 (3).
We might also consider the all-too deleted radical egalitarianism of an itinerant Mediterranean-Jewish peasant named Jesus. Jesus rejected the dominant classist cultural norms of his time by advocating and practicing open commensality (the shared taking of food by people of all classes, races, ethnicities, and genders) and by sharing material and spiritual gifts across the interrelated hierarchies of social and geographical place? As biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan notes, he saw the "Kingdom of God" as "a community of radical equality*unmediated by established brokers or fixed locations" (4).
Along the way, Jesus is reputed to have said that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter that kingdom. He condemned the personal accumulation of earthly treasures and made it clear that God was no respecter of rich persons.. He insisted that one must serve either God or Mammon and pronounced the poor blessed and inheritors of the earth (5).
Such radical sentiments are largely absent from the vapid, falsely comforting, reactionary, and institutionalized twaddle that has so long passed for "Christianity" in corporate America.
Another example of this radical historical whitewashing is provided by America's own Martin Luther King, Jr., whose "I Have a Dream" speech is routinely broadcast and praised across the land on the national holiday named for him. In the official, domesticated version of King's life, the great civil rights leader sought little more than the overthrow of Jim Crow segregation and voting rights for blacks in the U.S. South. Beyond these victories, the "good Negro" that American ideological authorities wish for King to have been only wanted whites to be nicer to a select few African-Americans - giving some small number of trusted blacks highly visible public positions (Secretary of State?), places on the Ten O'Clock News Team....the right to manage a baseball team and/or an occasional Academy Award and/or their own television show.
How many Americans know that King was rather unimpressed by his movement's mid-1960s triumphs over southern racism (and his own 1964 Nobel Prize), viewing the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts as relatively partial and merely bourgeois accomplishments that dangerously encouraged mainstream white America to think that the nation's racial problems "were automatically solved"? How many know that King considered these early victories to have fallen far short of his deeper objective: advancing social, economic, political, and racial justice across the entire nation (including its northern, ghetto-scarred cities) and indeed around the world?
How many Americans know about the King who followed the defeat of open racism in the South by "turning North" in an effort to take the civil rights struggle to a radical new level?
It was one thing, this King told his colleagues, for blacks to win the right to sit at a lunch counter. It was another thing for black and other poor people to get the money to buy a lunch.
It was one thing, King argued, to open the doors of opportunity for some few and relatively privileged African-Americans. It was another thing to move millions of black and other disadvantaged people out of economic despair. It was another and related thing to dismantle slums and overcome the deep structural and societal barriers to equality that continued after public bigotry was discredited and after open discrimination was outlawed.
It was one thing, King felt, to defeat the overt racism of snarling southerners like Bull Connor; it was another thing to confront the deeper, more covert institutional racism that lived beneath the less openly bigoted, smiling face of northern and urban liberalism.
It was one thing. King noted, to defeat the anachronistic caste structure of the South. It was another thing to attain substantive social and economic equality for black and other economically disadvantaged people across the entire nation (6).
How many Americans know about the King who linked racial and social inequality at home to (American) imperialism and social disparity abroad, denouncing what he called "the triple evils that are interrelated": "racism, economic exploitation, and war"? "A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years," Kind told the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) in 1967, "will 'thingify' them --- make them things. Therefore they will exploit them, and poor people generally, economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together" (7).
How many Americans have been encouraged to know the King who responded to America's massive assault on Southeast Asia during the 1960s by pronouncing the U.S. government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" (8), adding (in words that George W. Bush ought to give George W. Bush pause) that America had no business "fighting for the so-called freedom of the Vietnamese people when we have not put even our own [freedom] house in order?" (9)
In words that holding haunting relevance for George W. Bush's supposedly divinely mandated war on Iraq, King proclaimed that "God didn't call American to do what she's doing in the world now. God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war, [such] as the war in Vietnam."
"And we," King added,"are criminals in that war. We have committed more war crimes almost than any other nation in the world and we won't stop because of our piide, our arrogance as a nation" (10).
How many know that King said a nation (the U.S.) "approach[ed] spiritual death" when it spent billions of dollars feeding its costly, cancerous military industrial complex" while masses of its children lived in poverty in its outwardly prosperous cities (11)?
How many know the King who said that Americans should follow Jesus in being "maladjusted" and "divine[ly] dissatisifed...until the the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice.... until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history and every family is living in a decent home...[and] men will recognize that out of one blod God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth"? (12)
How many know the King who told the SCLC that "the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people," King elaborated for his colleagues. "And one day we must ask the question, 'Why are there forty million poor people in America?' And when you beging to ask that question, you are riasing questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question you begin to question the capitalistic economy."
"We are called upon," King told his fellow civil rights activists, ''to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. But one day," he argued, "we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that [radical] questions must be raised.....'Who owns the oil'...'Who owns the iron ore?'...'Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water?' (13)
How many know that King was a democratic socialist who thought that only "drastic reforms" involving the "radical reconstruction of society itself" could "save us from social catastrophe" ? Consistent with Marx and contrary to bourgeois moralists like Charles Dickens, King argued that "the roots" of the economic injustice he sought to overcome "are in the [capitalist] system rather in men or faulty operations" (14)
Interestingly enough, the fourth officially de-radicalized historical character mentioned in this essay (King) saw through the conservative historical whitewashing of the third (Jesus). Here's how King described Jesus at the end of an essay published eight months after the civil rights leader was assassinated: "A voice out of Bethlehem two thousand years ago said that all men are equal....Jesus of Nazareth wrote no books; he owned no property to endow him with influence. He had no friends in the courts of the powerful. But he changed the course of mankind with only the poor and the despised." King concluded this final essay, titled "A Testament of Hope," with a strikingy radical claim, indicating his strong identification with society's most disadvantaged and outcast persons. "Naive and unsophisticated though we may be," King said, "the poor and despised of the twentieth century will revolutionize this era. In our 'arrogance, lawlessness, and ingratitude,' we will fight for human justice, brotherhood, secure peace, and abundance for all" (15).
If I hadn't known better the first time I read that phrase, I might have attributed it to Eugene Debs.
Paul Street (pstreet@niu.edu) is currently teaching a course on the history of the civil rights movement at Northern Illinois University and is the author of Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (www.paradigmpublishers, 2004) and Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (New York, NY: Routledge, 2005).
References
1. Paul Street, "Einstein: Socialist of the Century," In These Times (February 21, 2000).
2. James Loewn, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Text Got Wrong (NY, 1995), pp. 10-12, 22, 222.
3. Noam Chomsky, Power and Prospects: Reflections on Huiman Nature and the Social Order (Boston, 1996), pp. 72, 87-89.
4. John Dominic Crossan. Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (NY, 1995), p. 101 (quote) and passim.
5. Mathew 19:20-24, 6:19, 6:24.
6. Martin Luther King, Jr., " A Testament of Hope," Playboy (January 1969), reproduced in King, The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr (NY, 1986), p. 322; Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here (NY, 1967); David J. Garrow, Bearing the Vross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Council (NY, 1986), pp. 420-624.
7. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Where Do We Go From Here?", speech published as "New Sense of Direction" in Worldviews, 15 (April 1972).
8. Martin Luther King, Jr., "A Time to Break the Silence," 1967 speech to Riverside Church published in Freedomways, 7 (Spring 1967).
9. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution," Congressional Record 114 (9 April 1968): 9395-9397.
10. Martin Luther King, Jr., "The Drum Major Instinct," February 4th 1968 speech, in King, A Testament of Hope, p. 265 11. King, "A Time to Break the Silence."
12. Martin Luther King, Jr., "The Power of Nonviolence," Intercollegian (May 1958); "Where Do We Go From Here?"
13. King, "Where Do We Go From Here?"
14. King, "A Testament of Hope;" Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience (NY, 1967); Garrow, Bearing the Cross, pp. 591-592; Michael Eric Dysoan, I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr. (NY, 2000), 87-88.
15. "A Testament of Hope"
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Economic outlook is dim unless workers have a say
While some may take “what-goes-around-comes-around” satisfaction at the ruin facing Bear Stearns and other Wall Street investment firms, a financial meltdown could result in a freezing up of credit and growth for everyone. What happens on Wall Street might mean real hard times on Main Street. It could take a decade to recover.
The immediate cause is the unraveling of the real estate and mortgage speculation frenzy of the last few years. It is now likely to reduce homeowners’ equity by 30 percent to 50 percent, for a total of $6 trillion to $10 trillion. Home values have already dropped 10 percent.
Complete “unwinding” can spread the ruin to all, not just the speculators. Consequently the Bush administration is now jumping in to bail out these securities firms. In doing so, it is telling us to ignore its ritual worship of the “genius of markets,” its “no problem” commentaries, and its warnings against creating “moral hazards” by saving homeowners. But this also means we should scrap the Bush stimulus package, which contains no banking reform, no taxation of the speculators and little relief for those facing the risk of a genuine depression. Some say that perhaps it’s time to consider nationalization of banks and financial institutions that are responsible for gross management or market failures, as the UK did with Northern Rock last week.
The problem is, because of the war in Iraq and the Bush tax cuts, there very likely may not be enough money to finance the scope of this bailout. This meltdown is not simply a dip in the business cycles of capitalism. Instead, the current business cycle appears to be feeding into a pronounced major economic event — a prolonged recession or even depression. It is being fueled by the growth of parasitic financial activity like borrowing and lending money, and making huge profits, from trading pieces of paper such as mortgage securities that are not backed by any real value.
Huge layoffs, bank runs, long-term stagnation and a decade or more of low growth are now imminent dangers. If one follows the thinking of “big picture” economists from Karl Marx to MIT’s Charles Kindleberger, a structural realignment of global dimensions could be at hand, coinciding with the most important presidential election since that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933.
One result will be the weakening of U.S. economic strength relative to the rest of the world. In particular, the European Union and the emerging “middle” economies of the developing world, such as China, Brazil and India, are moving forward. The 1930s witnessed a realignment of this scope that favored the U.S. The 1970s through the 1990s saw powerful technological transformations that built the material foundation of the global high-tech and supply infrastructure that sustains globalization. The “new world order” of 1990 may have looked to the first President Bush like an era of U.S. world domination, but in fact it was the beginning of the end of U.S. dominance. Although the wealth of the new era has spread unevenly, and is in dire need of reform and regulation, it has nonetheless spread far beyond U.S. influence and control.
So it should be no surprise that the Bush administration has decided to welcome investments by “sovereign wealth funds” of cash-rich China, Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and South Korea. Some are editorializing their patriotic disapproval — but have no alternative to propose themselves.
Yes, foreign countries not under the control of the U.S. government are about to help finance the bailout. They will obtain in return ownership and control of significant pieces of world financial capital and capital markets, at the expense of U.S. capital.
However, many believe, this will, and must, be just the beginning if the economic crisis is to find solution. The time is at hand, many observers say, for reform of major international financial and trade institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organization, to redress the inequities generated by the “long wave” of technological revolution and subsequent economic expansion. Labor unions, both here and abroad, are increasingly arguing that workers of the world, of all occupations and trades, need seats at negotiations on these issues. They argue that workers are the ones who bear the burdens of the inequities. They also look to presidential and congressional candidates to support trade union participation. Hooking workers into the world debate will provide answers that no one else is likely to provide.
jcase @commonhumanity.info
EU commissioner sees light at the end of the Cyprus tunnel
(BRUSSELS) - EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn hailed the planned opening on Thursday of a symbolic crossing through the UN-controlled buffer zone in Nicosia, the world's last divided capital.
"Finally we have some light at the end of the tunnel as regard the prospect of the reunification of Cyprus," Rehn told the European parliament's foreign affairs committee in Brussels on Wednesday.
He said he himself had hoped to take the "historic step" but that the area was "not yet clear of landmines so the opening was postponed and will take place tomorrow instead," when he will be unable to attend.
The opening of the Ledra Street crossing, in the heart of Nicosia's old town, is a significant move for EU member Cyprus, which has been divided along ethnic lines since 1974 when Turkey seized its northern third.
That invasion was a response to an Athens-engineered Greek Cypriot coup in Nicosia aimed at uniting the island with Greece.
A UN plan to reunite the island failed in 2004 when the Greek Cypriots voted against it in a referendum, although the Turkish Cypriots voted overwhelmingly in favour.
But the February election of Communist President Demetris Christofias sparked a renewed drive for peace after several years of stalemate under his predecessor Tassos Papadopoulos.
The move was agreed at a breakthrough meeting last month between the newly elected Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat, who also agreed to resume reunification talks in June.
However Rehn stressed that major challenges lay ahead for Cyprus.
"We shouldn't have too high expectations in the beginning but certainly now there is going to be a serious effort for the resumption of negotiations for a comprehensive settlement of the Cyprus problem," he said.
Rehn, promising juridic, financial and political support from Europe, said the EU had an interest in helping solve the problem of the divided island so that "we don't have this scar anymore in the EU".
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Chavez and the capitalist state
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Originally from internationalism.org
The bourgeois state of Chavez attacks the steel workers
The Chávez government - with the support of the opposition and unions- has unleashed repression against the workers of the Steel Zone of Venezuela who are struggling for their most basic necessities. Here we see the real Senor Chávez and his "socialism of the 21st century".
Here we are publishing a leaflet distributed by our comrades of Internacionalismo in Venezuela. We salute their effort to do this in very difficult conditions of repression and Chavist blackmail. We want to express our solidarity with the workers of the area and with our comrades and call on others to distribute and discuss this leaflet. The struggle of the proletariat is international and must confront all the forms of the bourgeois state, be they "liberal", open dictatorships or wearing the mask of "Socialism".
The bourgeois state of Chávez attacks the metal workers
After more than 13 months of discussion of their collective contract, the steel workers at Ternium-SIDOR have had enough. Indignant about the starvation wages they receive (near to the minimum salary, in one of the regions of Venezuela with the highest cost of living) and the deplorable working conditions that have lead to the deaths of 18 workers and left dozens ill from industrial illness over less than a decade, they have carried out several strikes against the firm's refusal to meet their demands about wages and working conditions.
Various parts of the media have echoed the firm's campaign of victimisation, claiming that their demands amount to more than the firm's annual sales. These lies form part of a "black out" of information, both from the opposition media and the official media, about the true causes of the metal workers' struggles. Since the 1990's these workers have been subjected to a policy of cuts in pay and working conditions, introduced through the programme of restructuring, that has led to their benefits being lower than other workers in the region. The metalworkers' struggle is about a decent level of living. They know that if they accept the company's terms and conditions[1] they will suffer more than two years of miserable increases in their wages and benefits, whilst the price of food and the cost of living increases by more than 30% annually, according to the none too reliable figures of the Central Bank of Venezuela. Another important demand of the movement is to make the contracted workers (who make up 75% of the workforce of 1,600) permanent, since this will give them better benefits. Thus, the struggle of the SIDOR workers is expressing the discontent and uncertainty that dominates the workers in the region and the whole country, faced with the endless increase in the price of food and cost of living generally, along with precarious working conditions.
Likewise, the metalworkers have had enough of the bickering between representatives of the company, government and unions. The latter in particular have progressively undermined the initial demands of the movement (the unions are now "demanding" 50 Bolivars a day, whereas at the beginning of negotiations it was 80). Having fulfilled all of the requirements for going on strike, they took part in the high level commission formed by the nefarious triumvirate. Whilst these gentlemen discussed behind the workers' backs, the workers themselves assembled at the steel work's doors and decided to carry out several stoppages, the most important of these being that of the 12th March for 80 hours which expressed the radicalisation of the movement. They did not have to wait long for the firm and the state to respond: on the 14th March the National Guard and police unleashed a furious repression, leaving more than 15 workers injured and 53 arrested. With this repressive action the Chávez government has unmasked itself in front of the workers: it cast aside its "workers" uniform and put on its true uniform, that of the defence of the interests of the national capital. It is not the first time that the "workers and socialist" state has attacked workers' struggle for their own demands: we only need to mention for example, the terrible repression meted out to oil workers last year who were struggling to improve their working conditions.
The SUTISS union is also part of the repression of the workers (despite union leaders suffering repression), since its role is to act as a fireman in the movement. It tries to put itself at the head of the movement whilst negotiating a reduction in the wage demand.
Referendum and nationalisation: new traps for the movement
Faced with the workers' intransigence, they have pulled another trick from up their sleeve: the holding of a referendum in order to consult each worker about their agreement or not with the firm's proposals. Promoted by the Chavist minister of Labour (a Trotskyist or ex-Trotskyist), the proposal has already received the agreement of the SUTISS, though with certain "conditions". Class instinct has led several workers to reject this trap, which is aimed at undermining the sovereign assemblies (where the real strength of the working class is expressed) by turning each worker into a "citizen", who will have to define himself for or against the firm and state in isolation by means of the ballot box!! Faced with this the workers need to affirm themselves through their sovereign assemblies.
Another trap used against the movement is the proposition by the unions and various "revolutionary" sectors of Chavism to renationalise SIDOR, which is mainly owned by Argentine capital (the Venezuelan state owns 20% of the shares). This campaign could be a disaster for the struggle, since the workers have no choice but to confront the capitalists, be they Argentine or Venezuelan state bureaucrats. Nationalisation does not mean the disappearance of exploitation; the state-boss, even with a "worker's" face, has no other option than to permanently try to attack workers' wages and working conditions. The left of capital presents the concentration of companies in the hands of the state as a quick way to "socialism", hiding one of the fundamental lessons of marxism: the state is the representative of the interests of each national bourgeoisie, and therefore the enemy of the proletariat. The Chavist bourgeoisie today is the head of the state which is seeking to increase the amount of surplus value it can gain, and in the name of "Bolivarian socialism" massively increases the level of precariousness of work through the missions and jointly managed companies (as happened with the workers of Invepal or Inveval).
These "Bolivarian revolutionaries" try to make the workers forget that for many years SIDOR was a state firm, and that they have had to struggle at various ties against the high rank bureaucrats of the state who administered it and their forces of repression, struggling for their own demands but also against the unions (the allies of capital in the factories). At the beginning of the 70's during the first Caldera government, this included burning down part of the installations of the CTV in Caracas in response to its anti-worker actions.
The state has been in the hands of the Chavists since 1999, but has not magically lost its capitalist character. All that has changed are its clothes, which now have a "socialist" colouring; but it is still a fundamental organ in the defence of the interests of capital against those of labour. The fact that Chávez presents himself as a "Sidorist" or a "worker" when it suits him should not confuse us about the class character of the Chavist government, which capital put in place in order to defend its system of exploitation as it sinks deeper and deeper into crisis. The workers are not so stupid as to believe these "revolutionaries" who put forwards the panacea of "re-nationalisation", but who live like bourgeois, earning salaries 30 times or more than the official minimum wage.
The only way to win: real workers' solidarity and solidarity with the population
The only way that this movement can succeed is through looking for solidarity. Initially with the contract workers, where the demand to make them permanent is one of the principle expressions of solidarity; but it is no less important to win the solidarity of workers in other branches of industry, at the regional or national level, since whether we work in the state sector or the private sector, we are all being hit by the blows of the economic crisis. It is also necessary to express solidarity with the population of Guayana, where the unemployed are affected by the high cost of living, and by the problems that the state cannot resolve, such as delinquency, housing, etc. However, this solidarity cannot be carried out through the unions, since they are the main organs for controlling the struggle, creating divisions between different industries and sectors, and in the last instance, complementing state repression; neither can solidarity with the local population be left in the hands of the social organisations created by the state, such as the communal councils. Solidarity must be "generated" by the workers themselves, through assemblies open to other workers.
The struggle of the metalworkers is our struggle, because they are fighting for a decent life, for the benefit of the whole of the proletariat. But the best benefit, apart for the momentary increase in the level of wages, resides in the development of consciousness of the strength that the proletariat has in its own hands, outside of the unions and the other institutions invented by the state in order to control social discontent.
The national bourgeoisie know that the situation in Guyana is intensely dangerous to its interests. The concentration of workers in this region and their experience of past struggles makes it very explosive, since at the same time there is a wider accumulation of labour and social discontent which has existed for some time due to the attacks on employment and workers' living conditions. In this sense, the so-called Metal Zone has a potential for transforming itself into a focal point for the workers' struggle in the country, as happened in the 60's and 70's.
The SIDOR workers have taken the only road possible for confronting the attacks of capital, that of the struggle. Spreading the fight to other branches of regional and national production, whilst looking for solidarity from the population as a whole: this is the road that will enable the Venezuelan proletariat to become part of an international movement for the overthrow capital and the creation of a real socialist society.
25.03.2008
Winter Soldiers offer look at reality in Iraq
Soldier Camilo Mejia, who heads Iraq War Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and spent nine months in prison for refusing to return to Iraq combat, appealed for an outpouring of resistance to the Iraq war as the war enters its sixth year with no end in sight. Mejia spoke at the concluding session of the four-day “Winter Soldier” hearings, Mar. 13-16, sponsored by IVAW.
War resisters in the military have been interrogated by the FBI and imprisoned for their conscientious objection, he told a packed meeting hall at the George Meany Labor Center outside Washington. “We have become a dangerous group of people not because of our military training but because we … dare to follow our conscience.” Mejia called them “a new generation of winter soldiers.”
The hearings were modeled on the 1971 Winter Soldier hearings in Detroit organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, where hundreds of GIs testified about atrocities they participated in or witnessed in Vietnam.
Vietnam veteran Barry Romo, a VVAW leader, told the crowd last week that the first Winter Soldier hearings aroused veterans as well as active duty soldiers to oppose the Vietnam War. VVAW, he said, recruited 5,000 GIs in Vietnam. Like that earlier hearing, Romo said, “This hearing has energized a movement that is going to turn this country around.”
Iraq veteran Kristofer Goldsmith read aloud a letter of commendation he received for his role in helping Iraqi forces “wipe out insurgents.” At one point, he trained his weapon on a child who was waving a stick at him. It was one of many incidents that led him to question the occupation. “The U.S. government put me in that position,” he said. “I could have killed that six-year-old boy.”
He returned from his first tour severely depressed, expecting to be discharged. But he was ordered back for a second tour along with 80,000 other soldiers. In desperation, Goldsmith attempted to take his own life. He was arrested. “I committed a serious offense because I attempted suicide,” he said. After months of ordeal, the military discharged him. But he lost his college and veterans benefits and he continues to battle post-traumatic stress disorder. “My money is disappearing,” he said. “I work as a pizza delivery boy.”
Marine Lars Ekstrom said he suffered an emotional breakdown from brutal “hazing” during his tour in Iraq. It included ordering him to do pushups and then to crawl with his face pressed against the ground causing cuts, a bloody nose, and sand filling his eyelids. “I was more afraid of my own unit than I was of the enemy,” he said. He finally accepted “administrative separation” from his unit.
Marine Matt Howard said the Marine Corps “bases itself on subjugation and abuse” of lower-ranking enlisted personnel. “I was beaten and then I was kicked out of my platoon for being beaten,” he said.
Many of the casualties in Iraq “are from friendly fire,” he said.
Howard was at the front in Kuwait the day the invasion began in March 2003. The first Abrams M-1 tank to cross into Iraq was destroyed by a U.S. helicopter gunship firing rockets armed with depleted uranium, he said. Luckily, the American soldiers escaped. “Why are we using these weapons?” he demanded. “We’re poisoning the soldiers. We’re poisoning Iraq. We’re poisoning the world. Depleted uranium is the Agent Orange of the Iraq war.”
Kevin and Joyce Lucey told the hearing of their son, Jeffrey, coming home from Iraq deeply wounded in spirit. He attempted repeatedly, without success, to get help from the Veterans Administration.
One evening, Jeffrey approached his father in the living room and the two men held each other for a time without words. The next evening when Lucey returned from work, “I held my boy one more time as I lowered his body from the rafters of the basement ceiling and removed the garden hose from his neck.”
“Many say honor and support our troops but rarely mean it,” Lucey said. “We need the administration to stop the talk about how they support the troops and actually do it. It is not right for people to use our loved ones for political gain.” He called on President Bush “to end this war and not begin another one by choice.”
He was followed by Eugene Martin of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, who assailed the Bush administration and Congress for shortchanging the Veterans Administration. Currently, 600,000 disability claims are backlogged because of staffing shortages, he said. “We wave the flag and say we love our veterans but then we treat them this way.”
IVAW Executive Director Kelly Dougherty, a former Army National Guard MP, told the hearing her duty in Iraq was often guarding broken down Kellogg Brown & Root trucks. Crowds would gather around the disabled vehicles and the MPs were sometimes ordered to disperse them with concussion grenades. “I felt so ashamed to be in their country putting their lives and safety at risk for Kellogg Brown & Root,” she said.
greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com
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here's some more info on depleted uranium: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs257/en/
Applications of depleted uranium
- Due to its high density, about twice that of lead, the main civilian uses of DU include counterweights in aircraft, radiation shields in medical radiation therapy machines and containers for the transport of radioactive materials. The military uses DU for defensive armour plate.
- DU is used in armour penetrating military ordnance because of its high density, and also because DU can ignite on impact if the temperature exceeds 600°C."
Depleted Uranium - US Lung Cancer Rates Soar - http://www.rense.com/general69/soar.htm
Soaring birth deformities and child cancer rates in Iraq: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/may2005/iraq-m10.shtml
