People Before Profit blog

May 1: The Power To Stop The System

Sun, 30 Apr 2006 02:15:00 +0000

4-29-06, 9:46 am

WE HAVEN'T seen anything as odious and hateful as the Sensenbrenner legislation since the Fugitive Slave Act of 1857. People should look it up--another law that asked citizens to participate in the persecution of others and the returning of escaped slaves to their former masters. HR 4437 is the culmination of state and local legislation that we have been faced with--persecution in different places for the past 10 years.

It's also the product of 10 years of hate speech on right-wing radio. The level of hate speech and hate-mongering coming from the Clear Channel and others is unprecedented.

This is also globalization coming home to roost. There is a dynamic with the economic powerhouses of Europe and North America in relation to developing countries. The powerhouses are extracting as much wealth as they can from those countries. Legal and undocumented immigration is going to continue in a structural and profound way as long as this is the case.

Our greatest fear is that the Democratic Party is going to cut a deal behind closed doors and contain the movement that has been born.

Capital is creating for us a movement that we didn't have 20 years ago. Capital has sent immigrants to every corner and every town of the country, so that mass demonstrations are possible everywhere. Therefore, I'm going to go to the capital and invite George Bush to join us in 'One Day Without Immigrants' on May 1 and participate in the movement that he is helping to create.

There are some people, who are criticizing the call to boycott, but nevertheless, the call has been made, the word is out there, and people are ready to pursue it.

I happened to be at a conference last Friday at the Catholic Cathedral of Los Angeles, right after Cardinal Mahoney made the announcement not to boycott. I talked to the workers who work at the Cathedral. They came up to me and told me excitedly, 'Nativo, we're not going to work on May 1!

This movement is based on the Ghandian principals of non- cooperation. It's also based on the idea that the only power we possess is our labor power. The only power we have is the power that creates value in this society. When workers refuse to cooperate, they realize the power they have to tinker with and stop the system.

The immigrant 'problem,' as some call it, can only be resolved when workers themselves refuse to cooperate with the system until it fairly remunerates them. And in this case, fair remuneration is full unconditional legalization for all workers past and present.

--NATIVO LOPEZ is president of the Mexican American Political Association and a leading organizer of the 1 million-strong March 25 demonstration in Los Angeles, called to protest vicious anti-immigrant legislation sponsored by Rep. James Sensenbrenner. At an April 22 meeting of organizers in Chicago, Nativo spoke about the importance of the next step in the struggle – the Great American Boycott on May 1.

Energy Crisis: Brother, Can You Spare a Gallon?

Sun, 30 Apr 2006 02:12:00 +0000

4-29-06, 9:43 am

As the Eisenhower administration prepared to take office in 1953, Adlai Stevenson, the unsuccessful Democratic candidate, said: 'the New Dealers have been replaced by the car dealers.' I thought of that today as I read the Republicans new 'energy policy,' or rather smoke and mirrors – dare we even dignify it by calling it propaganda -– aimed at saving their endangered congressional majorities in the coming elections.

First, the Republicans want what they call a 'tax holiday' in the form of a $100 rebate check to every family. Actually, this would amount to two full tanks of gas for most of us with long daily commutes and no feasible public transportation alternatives.

The Republicans, for whom pro-corporate policies are a matter of faith, are obviously hoping that history will repeat itself. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration gave 'tax cuts' for working families were offset by various regressive taxes, property, sales, and social security payroll taxes that took much more out of the checks of those families.

Many working people really didn’t catch on that the federal cut backs which accompanied the tax cuts created the increase in regressive federal, state, and local taxes, and sometimes accepted Republican propaganda blaming social programs, public employees and unions for a tax burden that forced them deeper into debt. The government also went much deeper into debt, as increases in military spending and corporate subsidies far outweighed public sector and social service cutbacks and added to lost revenues from tax cuts. This too was blamed on 'tax and spend liberals' and 'welfare.'

The Republicans have controlled both houses of Congress since 1994 and have no 'tax and spend liberals' to blame for the present crisis. The Republicans have invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq and threaten to launch a war against Iran, two of whom are the world’s leading oil producers. Though rarely discussed in the mainstream media, these events have clearly contributed to the sharp rise in energy prices.

For this reason, it would be difficult for the Republicans to blame the present energy crisis on a 'weak liberal foreign policy' the way Reagan blamed the energy crisis of the 1970s on the Carter administration’s perceived failure to flex US military muscle. Although Russian companies have profited from the price increases as an energy producer, the Republicans can’t (at least I doubt they can) see a Soviet plot to capture strategic oil routes and use their oil money to spread revolution.

Republicans pushed for and won deregulation of the energy industry, so they can’t trot out 'supply side' economists to call for deregulation and privatization of energy resources the way the Reaganites did.

To counter massive popular criticism and the Democratic Party’s call for a 'windfall profits tax' against the oil companies, which is a good short-term idea but one that Bush and the Republicans and their oil company backers will fight to the death, the Republicans resurrected their phony compassionate conservatism, expressing feigned concern for the working families who have to cut back on necessities to purchase gas. They have even suggested that alternative energy resources should be developed and – get a hold of yourself – charges of 'price gouging' should be investigated, despite the fact they have opposed such a measure just months ago.

Along with their opposition to any windfall profits tax, the Republicans remain true to their most sacred beliefs when they continue to push for an Arctic drilling program that would destroy the Alaska Wild Life Preserve while providing massive subsidies and super-profits for oil companies. After all, it was Ronald Reagan who, expressing a strong distaste for all things environmental, said, once you’ve seen one Redwood, you’ve seen them all. For the GOP, that must go double for Alaska, which isn’t even part of the lower forty-eight.

First, no one should take the Republicans program seriously. The 'rebate' concept is meaningless, unless it were to be a regular monthly check, something like 'welfare checks' that the GOP has long seen as leading those who cash them to social purgatory. Their call for the development of alternative energy resources is hypocritical in the extreme. The GOP is big on ethanol since it enables them to subsidize some of their rural supporters, rather than solar power, which they continue to identify with radical elements of the 1960s counter-culture. In fact, Reagan abandoned work done on solar power, which poses the best long-term solution to energy needs, and other alternative energy sources at the beginning of the 1980s, even selling off publicly financed scientific work done in these areas to foreign governments.

The Bush administration has escalated the divestment in basic scientific research that the Reagan administration launched and the Clinton administration slowed down substantially. Who would trust an administration and a party that have undermined and suppressed important research on the effects of global warming, in large part because such research impedes the oil conglomerates, to pursue any serious long-term alternative energy policy?

As for trusting the Republicans and the Bush administration to investigate price gouging, which frankly is always built into any deregulated system, this would be like trusting bookmakers to investigate the fixing of horse races and other sporting events.

But what about the Democrats? While they have proposed a windfall profits tax, increased subsidies to low-income families for home heating costs, stiff penalties for price-gouging, and have repeated vague calls for developing alternatives and eliminate dependence of imported oil, they have yet to present a definitive, long-term national energy policy with concrete proposals that respond to widespread public demands for alternatives energy sources. All the Republicans learn from history is how to recycle and update the prejudices of the past, but the Democrats could learn something if they tried to think outside of the box they have put themselves into. By publicizing a national energy program with serious re-regulation, price and production planning and a real public sector, activists can help the Democrats put the heat on the Republicans and the Bush administration.

Roosevelt’s New Deal government advocated a National Energy Policy, established the publicly owned Tennessee Valley Authority to generate hydro-electric power at low cost, and had plans for large regional public energy projects on the TVA model. Unfortunately, Cold War politics and priorities eventually killed it. Even the Truman administration, which launched the Cold War, fought unsuccessfully to keep states, particularly Louisiana and California, from gaining control of offshore oil resources in order to protect those resources from being handed over to unplanned and unchecked oil company exploitation.

Progressive Democrats also campaigned unsuccessfully against the infamous Oil Depletion Allowance, a 'tax break' that allows oil companies to write off the value of the oil that they use up, giving them an incentive to use more and more fossil fuels rather than either developing any conservation program or any alternative energy program. Democrats in the 1950s and 1960s did successfully stop Republican attempts to sell off public energy resources to private companies. Progressives also resisted until the end of the 1970s right-wing drives to 'deregulate' energy production and also made important environmental advances in taking leaded gasoline off the market and compelling companies to provide energy use information to consumers and, where possible, encourage the purchase of energy efficient products.

Re-regulation, if it were in the hands of those committed to a pro-labor, pro-environment progressive policy, would enable the federal government to begin to actually accomplish what the Republicans have been hypocritically talking about – the development of alternative energy sources and the reduction of profiteering and price gouging.

The oil companies, whose profits are both obvious and obscene, could be compelled to put a large part of these profits into a Public Transportation Trust to fund the development and expansion of bus, rail, and other multi-passenger vehicles to provide public transportation alternatives for the huge number of workers in Urban-Suburban regions who daily drive to work. This would also significantly reduce consumption.

Establishing a 'peacetime military budget' – something in the reasonable vicinity of $200 billion – would also permit the government to promote scientific research and public programs that would encourage greater energy efficiency in both work places and homes, rather than the current nonsense of encouraging families to turn down their thermostat in the winter.

The medium-term effects of such policies would also see a real drop in dependence on crude oil and the possibility of working with other developed and developing countries through the United Nations on a global energy policy.

These are the issues that progressives should raise as the Bush administration and the Republicans make noises to appease the electorate and scrounge around for programs to contain the price of gas until the elections are over. They are the issues that trade unionists, environmental activists, and peace activists should be raising most of all, since they are all inter-related to establishing an economy which produces quality employment opportunities, an environment that gives citizens more than the right to fight traffic jams on the way to shopping malls, and a foreign policy that rejects completely what has most characterized it in recent years, the conquest and control overseas oil resources.

--Norman Markowitz is a contributing editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at

Lower Wages, Higher Profits

Sun, 30 Apr 2006 02:08:00 +0000

4-29-06, 9:39 am

The new spike in oil and gasoline prices is the last nail in the coffin for workers who hoped to see any real improvement in wages this year. Inflation for 2006 is likely to remain in the 3.4 percent to 3.8 percent range, wiping out average wage increases of 3.0 percent to 3.5 percent and leaving workers with less purchasing power.

Over the past five years, as gasoline prices have steadily increased, profits for U.S. oil production and refinery companies have jumped by an average of more than 30 percent per year, according to the Fortune 500 list released in April.

Revenues per worker are highest in the oil industry, where the top pipeline company pulls in $15.6 million per employee. Exxon Mobil generates $4.1 million in revenues for every worker.

New data released by a number of different sources demonstrate that the rise in profits and the decline in real wages extend well beyond the oil industry.

* Production workers are not the only ones facing a broad decline in real wages. New data on salaries for exempt employees from Mercer Consulting shows that pay for salaried workers at 350 large companies barely kept pace with inflation in 2005. Planned salary increases for salaried employees average 3.5 percent for 2006, which means that their gains will be obliterated by higher consumer prices.

* The flip side of lower real wages is higher corporate profits. As wage increases for exempt employees fell to 3.4 percent in 2004 among the 350 companies studied by Mercer, profits at those companies rose 23 percent. In 2005, the average salary increase of 3.6 percent for exempt employees was wiped out by the 3.4 percent increase inflation, but profits rose 13 percent.

* CEOs at the same 350 companies saw their salary and bonus jump 14.5 percent in 2004 and 7.1 percent in 2005. This does not include their stock grants and other long-term incentives that add millions to their pay packages and represent more than 60 percent of total CEO compensation.

* The new 2006 Fortune 500 list of the largest companies reveals that median revenues per employee for the Fortune 500 hit $400,000 in 2005, up from $300,000 in 2003 and 2004.

* There was little or no change in the number of workers employed. The median number of workers employed by a Fortune 500 company in 2005 was 26,000, down slightly from 26,950 in 2004 and identical to the median for 2003.

* Wal-Mart added 400,000 workers between 2003 and 2005 and remains the largest employer in the United States, with 1.8 million employees working at low wages. McDonald’s, the second largest employer and another low-wage company, added 29,000 workers, for a total of 447,000 employees in 2005.

* Companies such as IBM and General Electric that offer higher-paying positions added relatively few jobs from 2003-2005 but still enjoyed substantial revenue growth.

* Overall, the Fortune 500 increased their number of employees by just 2 percent in 2005, but revenues rose 10.2 percent and profits jumped 18.8 percent.

* The long-term effects of the 2001 recession and high unemployment in the post-recession years can also be seen in the most recent report from PricewaterhouseCooper’s Saratoga Institute, which measures the employer return on wages and benefits for the 2001-2004 period. Corporate profits per full-time equivalent employee jumped 190.7 percent from 2001 to 2004.

* Corporate revenues from each full-time equivalent rose 22.7 percent from 2001 to 2004, while costs for each worker dropped by 2.2 percent. The employers’ return on employee compensation rose 35.7 percent.

* In the U.S. in 2004, for every $1.00 companies spent on wages and benefits, they collected $1.82, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. This return on the investment in labor is the highest ever reported, and one third higher than the return on labor in Europe.

* The broadest measure of the ongoing decline in workers’ wages comes from U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis data on GDP. Employee compensation equaled 57.6 percent of GDP in 2003, but dropped in 57.0 percent by 2005. Corporate profits rose from 9.4 percent of GDP in 2003 to 10.8 percent in 2005.

From Labor Research Association

Bush administration wounded, yet more dangerous

Sun, 30 Apr 2006 02:05:00 +0000

4-29-06, 9:36 am

Everybody seems to agree that the Bush administration has lost much of its political support. No longer does it speak with the same authority.

But it is not yet on its deathbed. In fact, there is no evidence that it is ready to make even a tactical retreat.

Internationally, the Bush administration continues its bloody occupation in Iraq, threatens to cut off funds to the new Palestinian government and people, cooks up plans to drop nuclear weapons on Iran, conspires with counterrevolutionary forces in Venezuela, and tightens the embargo on socialist Cuba.

Likewise on the domestic level, the Bush White House has given few signs that it is ready to throw in the towel.

With no popular mandate whatsoever, the Bush administration, in collaboration with the Republican congressional majority, is cutting billions from the budget for people’s needs while throwing billions to the Pentagon.

It is pressing for permanent tax cuts for the wealthiest corporations and families, thus ballooning the federal deficit to record levels.

It is washing its hands — and they didn’t get too dirty in the first place — of any responsibility for rebuilding the shattered lives of hundreds of thousands of people in New Orleans and the Gulf states.

It continues to undermine every regulatory rule that impedes corporate profit taking, while giving a green light to every attack on labor, civil, women, gay and democratic rights generally.

Finally, it is not only breaks and claims to be above the law, but it is also puts in place the legal statutes, institutional structures and personnel in critical agencies that will facilitate this power grab. So far the Republican congressional majority with hardly an exception has given the veneer of legality to this very illegal process.

U.S. imperialist counteroffensive

What explains these very dangerous developments?

I don’t have a complete answer, but I would argue that it is bound up with a counteroffensive of imperialism, especially U.S. imperialism, a quarter-century ago. This counteroffensive took on three formidable barriers to its hegemony. The first was the new configuration of power that took shape on a global level in the late 1960s and 1970s. The defeat in Vietnam, the successful national liberation struggles in Africa and Latin America, and the growth of the socialist camp had tilted the balance of forces on a world scale against U.S. and world imperialism.

The second was the remarkable and rapid crystallization during this same period of new oppositional movements (civil, women, antiwar, labor rank-and-file, student, etc.) that secured new democratic rights and reforms in the course of fierce struggles. In our country, the “Sixties” is still remembered by the reactionary right as a political moment when powerful challenges to “our way of life” were coming from all directions and threatened the stability of our society. Even today, right-wing ideologues bemoan the persistence of the “Vietnam Syndrome” and the “Rights Revolution,” while backgrounding many of the their current struggles (anti-abortion, same-sex marriage, affirmative action, union busting, projecting military power, etc.) with references to the upheavals of that earlier era.

And lastly, the eruption of new contradictions, instabilities and imbalances in the U.S. and world capitalist economies at roughly the same time constituted a powerful barrier to the hegemonic rule of U.S. imperialism and world capitalism. Economic stagnation and falling profit rates combined with exceedingly high rates of inflation, the breakdown of the international monetary system (fixed exchange rates of currencies and convertibility of the dollar into gold), and the rise of new competitive rivalries (Germany and Japan, for instance) within the capitalist core to throw capitalism into its deepest crisis since the 1930s.

The aim of this counteroffensive — rationalized ultimately in the language of militant anti-communism, national chauvinism and racism — was clear: to decisively tilt back the balance of power in the direction of capitalism and imperialism, to reestablish the unchallengeable dominance of U.S. imperialism domestically and internationally, to restore the power, profits and wealth of the ruling classes in the main centers of the capitalist world, and to give new momentum to the world capitalist economy.

Roots in Reaganism

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher began this process in the mid-1970s. Her draconian cuts in public services, privatization of the public sector, and employment of the full force of the state to crush the miners’ strike was a harbinger of what was to come elsewhere in the capitalist world. But Thatcher’s Britain did not have the political, economic, and military might to move this offensive to the international plane.

That would await the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. His ultra-right administration was quick to initiate a many sided offensive against its foes at home and abroad. As you would expect, it was closely intertwined with a brutal assault on wages, conditions and rights of workers at the corporate level that continues to this day.

The Soviet Union became the “Evil Empire”; wars using surrogate forces were fought against progressive and left regimes worldwide; a second arms race ensued; strikebreaking and union busting came into favor; civil and women’s right movements came under savage attack; and neoliberal economic policies were applied with a vengeance. Early on in his presidency, Reagan allowed interest rates to climb to nearly 20 percent in order to drive unemployment up to double-digit levels, weaken the most powerful unions, wring inflation out of the economy, restructure and deregulate industries, give free rein to financial institutions and markets, reassert the international role of Wall Street and the dollar, and rollback the “welfare state.”

Post-Reagan period

In the post-Reagan years the offensive continued, but the methods and mix of imperial rule — economic versus political, consent versus coercion, some concessions to democratic movements versus retrenchment — varied, depending on the administration in the White House. It is no accident that the point man for the Clinton administration was the secretary of the treasury and Wall Street financier, Robert Rubin, who favored economic, multilateralist, and less punitive methods of imperial rule, though not in every situation — remember “welfare reform” and the bombing of Yugoslavia?

By the end of the 1990s, the consequences of this counteroffensive — now nearly two decades old — were apparent and contradictory. The balance of forces was shifted to the advantage of capitalism. Class power in the U.S. and in the other main capitalist countries was reinforced. The dominant status of U.S. imperialism was fortified. And the widening and deepening of capitalist relations — an objective process intrinsic to capitalism — accelerated, reaching nearly every nook and cranny of the globe. But there were unintended consequences too.

New economic contradictions and instabilities on a domestic and global level (a near global financial meltdown in the late 1990s) were triggered. Income inequality within and between countries and regions was aggravated to the extreme. Class, racial and gender tensions were heightened. The environment was despoiled. And robust and durable growth was a no show.

What is more, geopolitical rivalries among the core capitalist countries over resources (especially oil) and spheres of influence (especially the Middle East) were intensified. New economic competitors and configurations of regional power on nearly every continent arose. China arrived as a potential counter-hegemonic power to U.S. imperialism.

Finally, widespread and fierce popular resistance in all quarters of the globe surfaced during this period.

Thus, as Marxism would anticipate, the very advances of capitalist development and the very successes of capitalism’s fierce offensive generated the conditions and forces for its own future undoing.

Order, secrecy and force

Faced with this problematic situation, a section of the U.S. ruling class and its ultra-right political representatives decided that a change of policy, qualitative in nature, was necessary — from hegemony that combines consent and coercion to uncontested world domination that relies exclusively on force — a decision made much easier because of the removal of the Soviet Union from the geopolitical mix earlier in the early 1990s.

Thanks to a right-wing dominated U.S. Supreme Court, the 2000 elections brought into the White House a team of neoconservatives that was chomping at the bit to pursue a far more muscular, coercive and unilateralist policy than previous administrations. And then thanks to 9/11 the following year, this bellicose gang was handed the pretext to employ their new policies full throttle.

Yet, six years later, this project of world domination is in near shambles. Even among some sections of the U.S. ruling class, Bush’s policies, and especially the military intervention and occupation of Iraq, are considered unmitigated disasters that no matter how they resolve themselves have weakened U.S. imperialism economically, politically and ideologically.

This, however, is no reason to lower our activity or vigilance. To the contrary, a more vigorous and mass fight to end the occupation and to preserve democracy is necessary and possible.

After all, this administration doesn’t fit easily on the spectrum of bourgeois democratic rule. It prefers to be on the offensive; retreat is not a word it is comfortable with. It is untroubled by its violations of democratic rights and procedures

Its accent is on order, secrecy and force. Democracies, in its worldview, are messy, disorderly and unable to address perceived internal and external threats to U.S. imperial interests in a timely way. Indeed, when threats appear to emanate from many directions to U.S. imperialist dominance, it gravitates toward employing naked power, shorn of any democratic pretensions.

Break right-wing grip on the Congress

In the “Project for a New American Century,” the neoconservative authors write, “We cannot safely avoid the responsibilities of global leadership or the costs associated with its exercise. America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests. The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before they emerge, and meet threats before they become dire.”

When I first read this passage I assumed that the authors were referring only to external threats. But given the assault of the Bush administration on our democracy, I have to ask if it doesn’t guide its actions within our borders as well.

This, of course, goes against the grain of our traditional notion that a ruling elite moves in an anti-democratic direction only when the internal threat to its interests is immediate, palpable and formidable. But, as we well know, there is something “untraditional” about the crop of conservatives and neoconservatives now occupying leading positions in the executive, legislature, military, security apparatus and judiciary.

And herein lies the danger.

Our rallying cry is for broad unity of action. Anything that impedes that should be rejected. Every inch of democratic space must be defended. The occupation of Iraq must be ended.

And, above all, democratic and peace minded people must throw themselves into the 2006 congressional elections. While we should not dismiss the possibility of an “October surprise,” the main thing is to fight for the broadest mobilization of the American people to break the right-wing grip on the Congress. Nothing would better secure democratic rights and peace.

From People's Weekly World

--Sam Webb is the national chair of the Communist Party USA.

Coca-Cola Misleading Public on Water Issues

Sun, 30 Apr 2006 01:58:00 +0000

4-29-06, 9:29 am

The Coca-Cola company is misleading the University of Minnesota by making unsubstantiated claims about its relationship to water. The Coca-Cola company has a dismal record of protecting water resources. It neither protects nor preserves water. By placing an advertisement in the Daily Minnesota on March 22, the Coca-Cola company is attempting to manufacture an image of itself that it clearly is not - a responsible steward of water.

The reality of Coca-Cola on the ground globally, and particularly in India, is a far cry from what was printed in the Daily Minnesota. The company has conveniently omitted pertinent data, and the advertisement is designed to deliberately mislead the public.

The Coca-Cola company is guilty of denying thousands of people access to water in India by affecting the quantity of water - through its massive water use, and the quality of water - through pollution. Its operations are affecting the very lifeline of India - where over 70% of the population derives a living from agriculture- and taking water away from these communities has resulted in drastic consequences.

Coca-Cola's flaunting of their increased water efficiency in the advertisement fails to provide an accurate picture of the company's relationship with water. According to the company itself, 75% of the freshwater they extract in India is turned into wastewater. And Coca-Cola extracts huge amounts of water, in some cases using up to a million liters of water per day in some facilities in India. Globally, the company extracted 283 billion liters of water in 2004, and turned two-thirds of it into wastewater. No matter how you look at it, that's a lot of freshwater, and unfortunately, a lot of wastewater, courtesy Coca-Cola.

Omitting such relevant numbers when discussing water stewardship is designed to deliberately mislead the public.

We agree with Coca-Cola's assessment that freshwater is a precious and shared resource that is under increasing stress. But for a company that converts the vast majority of the large amounts of freshwater it extracts into wastewater, responsible is hardly the word to describe its relationship to water.

Coca-Cola's abuse of water is particularly striking in a world where lack of access to clean, drinking water is a reality for over 1.2 billion people - about 20% of the world's population. Does Coca-Cola's current relationship with water - turning billions of liters of water into wastewater - qualify it as a responsible steward of water resources in the world, as the advertisement suggests? We think not.

Coca-Cola's claims in the advertisement of 'substantially' returning the water they use to local aquifers in India is also absurd. Just last week, Coca-Cola's top public relations official in India admitted that rainwater harvesting in their Mehdiganj facility 'harvested' only 8% of their annual water use. 8% is not 'substantial' by any measure, and is indicative, once again, of the deliberate attempt by the company to mislead.

Rainwater harvesting is not, as Coca-Cola may suggest, an altruistic measure on their part. It is the result of the formidable community campaigns all across India challenging the company's water abuses that have forced the company to adopt rainwater harvesting. But rainwater harvesting alone is not enough to meet Coca-Cola's supersized thirst for water.

The Coca-Cola company does not mention in the advertisement that it has been indicted for polluting water and land in India, which has resulted in further hardships for thousands. One of Coca-Cola's largest bottling plants in India has remained shut down for over two years now because the State Pollution Control Board will not allow it to operate-citing the company for gross pollution. Numerous tests conducted by government and independent agencies have confirmed that the water around Coca-Cola's bottling plants have been severely polluted and are unfit for human consumption.

Twenty villages in the vicinity of Coca-Cola's bottling plant in Mehdiganj, in northern India, have embarked upon an indefinite vigil on March 23, demanding that the plant shut down before summer begins, when water shortages are particularly acute.

The misleading advertisement in the Daily Minnesota does nothing to assuage the serious concerns of the thousands of people living near Mehdiganj.

As a prestigious institution of higher learning, the University of Minnesota plays a key role in advancing a global society based on the principles of fairness, justice and equality. We believe that continued business with Coca-Cola negates these principles. We invite the University of Minnesota to become part of the solution by refusing to do business with the Coca-Cola company until it cleans up its act in India.

We welcome a thorough investigation into Coca-Cola's crimes in India. Indeed, we expect no less from the University of Minnesota.

We challenge the Coca-Cola company to a public debate on the issues in India for the benefit of the University of Minnesota. The facts tell the true story. The full-page advertisement by the Coca-Cola company does not.

--Amit Srivastava is the coordinator of the India Resource Center, an international campaigning organization that works directly with communities in India affected by Coca-Cola's practices. this article originally appeared on IRC's website.

NEPAL: KING BOWS TO ANTI-MONARCHY UPSURGE

Sun, 30 Apr 2006 01:56:00 +0000

4-29-06, 9:27 am

It is a day of reckoning for Nepal's monarchy. A revolution is taking place there, steadily and resolutely. The pro-democracy movement of Nepalese people has turned into an anti-monarchy upsurge. Millions of people of one of the poorest countries of the world have just rebelled against the despotic ruler king Gyanendra. And ultimately they have won a battle.

A few hours ahead of a show of strength of Seven Party Alliance (SPA) in what was planned to be the largest protest as yet, with a turn over of over 10 lakh people expected, king Gyanendra conceded defeat. He agreed to restore parliament, which he had dissolved on May 22, 2002. He told its session would be called on April 28, 2006. Virtually besieged, the king made a proclamation on television late night on April 24, and said: 'Keeping in mind the wishes of the Nepalese people who are currently engaged in an agitation, and the road map of the agitating Seven Party Alliance, I do hereby restore the parliament.' Revival of parliament was one of the major demands of the protesting parties.

After the king's proclamation for restoring democracy, the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) which had been leading this mass movement, took no time in nominating veteran Nepal Congress leader G. P. Koirala as the consensus choice for prime ministership. The SPA took no time in announcing its objectives to be achieved through the restoration of parliament. These are: Constituting an all party government, elections to a constituent assembly, and on the whole, establishing an inclusive and participatory complete loktantra and the establishment of lasting peace.

When the SPA was holding a meeting to discuss the king's proclamation and choosing a prime minister, the protestors outside kept on shouting slogans: 'Leaders be careful. Do not betray the people.' They repeatedly asked the SPA leaders to announce the date for elections to a constituent assembly.

The indefinite strike since April 6 gave a new impetus to the movement for restoration of democracy and toppling of monarchy. The king, however, resorted to suppression, tyranny and bullets. He banned rallies and demonstrations, imposed curfew, issued orders to shoot the curfew violators. But despite all these threats, the SPA continued to mobilise more and more people for the protest rallies and demonstrations. With each passing day more and more people thronged the streets of Kathmandu and other towns. All along the 27 km long ring road that surrounds Kathmandu agitators were thronging every day in bigger and more bigger numbers. It looked like an encirclement of the capital. And when this mobilisation was to reach its zenith on April 25, king Gyanendra did read the writing on the wall and capitulated.

During these three weeks of intensive agitation the political parties wanted to recall of parliament, an all party government and the election of a constituent assembly that could decided the fate of the monarchy and turn Nepal into a republic. As a matter of fact, during the agitation, cries of 'Hang Gyanendra and Paras' and 'We want Gantantra' were heard more than 'long live democracy'. That spoke of the direction the people's movement had taken. The pro-democracy movement had really turned into an anti-monarchy upsurge. The message from the Nepalese people is loud and clear. They want a republic. Monarchy stands discredited. It has lost legitimacy in the eyes of almost all the people of Nepal.

That is why the issue of setting up of a constituent assembly has become a top agenda for the new government.

Echoing this very mood of the Nepalese people, after the SPA's meeting Communist Party of Nepal (UML) general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal made it clear that 'the announcement of constituent assembly elections will be the main agenda of the revived parliament.' Expressing the same commitment, Nepal Congress spokesperson Krishna Situala said: 'Soon after the revival, the house will form an all party government which will simultaneously pledge to hold elections to the constitutional assembly and call upon the CPN (Maoist) to join the political mainstream.

In the unfolding scenario, with G. P. Koirala as the SPA's nomination as the prime minister, as an interim arrangement the king can at the most have a ceremonial role without draconian power to dismiss an elected government and without exercising control over the Nepal's army. And despite succumbing to the people's movement and restoring the parliament, the vicked king will do everything at his command to retain these powers. All sorts of hurdles would be created. So the Nepalese people's struggle is not over. They have won one battle. Now they have to proceed further for the other.

Once heat is off from him, the king Gyanendra may still attempt to subvert the new arrangement. The SPA's first priority, therefore, has to be for keeping the unity of purpose and action between the SPA and CPN(M), for immediately deciding for holding constituent assembly elections and for takeing necessary constitutional and administrative steps to take the Nepalese army from the king's control.

On day one of parliament session, on Friday, April 28 itself the SPA has to deal swiftly on the immediate tasks before it, which include fixing a date for polls to a constituent assembly, to withdraw ordinances and laws introduced by the king during his direct rule, to take steps to try those who committed excesses on the people during the agitation, release all those detained in connection with the agitation and also to initiate dialogue with CPN (M) and take steps to seek and win their confidence for running the new government and administration. These are the tasks that would act as the cementing force in further developing the unity achieved between the SPA and CPN(M) during the people's movement.

Following the request of G. P. Koirala, CPN(M), has decided to suspend their agitation till April 28, when the revived parliament meets to decide on holding elections to the constituent assembly and begin formal talks with CPN(M). Koirala has already indicated that it would be the priority of the new government to go for election to the new constituent assembly and implement the 12-point programme agreed with the CPN(M) and officially invite them for talks.

The Seven Party Alliance (SPA) includes the major political forces. Nepal Congress and Communist Party of Nepal (MUL)the biggest political formations of Nepal are part of the SPA. With more than 75 per cent MPs with it, the Alliance enjoys a overwhelming majority in the parliament. The Koirala government is, therefore, likely to declare the government's commitments to hold election to the assembly in the very first sitting of the parliament. This will set a new course for Nepal towards abolition of monarchy and establishment of a republic.

The Left and democratic forces have fought a valiant battle. Their unity and mobilisation of unprecedented display of people's power has ushered in a new revolutionary era. All glory to the fighting people of Nepal! All glory to the left and democratic parties of Nepal who are leading their great struggle!

From New Age, the organ of the Communist Party of India

April 29: March for Peace, Justice & Democracy

Sat, 29 Apr 2006 01:45:00 +0000

4-28-06, 9:13 am

March for Peace, Justice & Democracy Saturday, April 29 - New York City March steps off at noon Assemble beginning at 10:30AM – click here for details

Grassroots Action Festival in Foley Square, 1:00PM-6:00PM Maps: Assembly Area and March Route | Festival

It should be magnificent: sunny skies, pleasant temperatures (low 60s), and a massive crowd this Saturday at the March for Peace, Justice and Democracy in New York City.

(Can't make the march? Be there in spirit by making a donation of $10 or more to help cover the costs of this important mobilization!)

April 29 will be a powerful opportunity to raise our voices in favor of immediate withdrawal from Iraq -- and the first real opportunity to come together in large numbers to say no to war on Iran. Read on for new details of the day's events:

Joining us on the march down Broadway through the heart of Manhattan will be prominent supporters of peace including Susan Sarandon, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Gold Star mother Cindy Sheehan, and Daniel Ellsberg; Faiza Al-Araji, a peace and women's rights advocate from Iraq; a large contingent of veterans from this and previous wars, family members of active-duty soldiers, and friends and family of those tragically killed in Iraq.

There will be religious leaders from all the major faith traditions; women's groups; LGBTQ activists; immigrants and advocates for immigrant rights; environmentalists; and what's expected to be the largest anti-war labor contingent ever. All these diverse groups will be joining together in a unified call to bring the troops home from Iraq now, reverse our government's priorities, and turn our country around.

As we march, we will remember and mourn all who have died in this war and shine a spotlight on the horrors being committed in our name. Many marchers will carry photographs or remembrances of U.S. soldiers, Iraqis, and others whose lives were sacrificed to the Bush Administration's arrogant folly. Witness Against Torture, the nonviolent direct action group that marched to Guantánamo last December, will drag a human-occupied 'cage' down Broadway to represent the continuing abuse of detainees in Guantánamo, Iraq and elsewhere. The cage will then be on display in the Nonviolent Direct Action tent at the Grassroots Action Festival.

Even as we stand up against never-ending war and the disastrous policies of the Bush Administration, we will be putting forward our visions of a better world and our hopes for the future. The march will be filled with music and art -- drummers, marching bands, dancers, vibrant banners and puppets -- and will lead into a dynamic grassroots action festival offering resources, inspiration, entertainment, and community.

An array of food vendors will nourish our bodies, while poets, musicians, spoken word performers, hip hop artists, jugglers, and street theater performers will nourish our spirits.

Nineteen themed tents will offer information and opportunities for action from more than 100 different groups, plus activities, workshop, entertainment, and more. You'll be able to sign the Peace Voter pledge, vowing not to support any candidate in 2006 who does not publicly call for a speedy end to the war; learn how to resist military recruitment in our schools; plug into the Peace Zone NYC campaign; and purchase peace-related merchandise, including t-shirts, buttons, and posters.

Some other festival highlights:

* A childrens' peace tent featuring art activities ('Hands Off the War' signs, puppet-making, spin art, peace cranes); games ('Putt for Peace' mini golf, 'Dunk the War' basketball, Jumping for Peace); face-painting, musicians, and jugglers; and educational Q&A sessions with key organizers from each of the April 29 initiating groups. * Tents offering opportunities to take action to prevent war on Iran, and providing detailed information on the truth about U.S. nuclear policy and Weapons of Mass Destruction. * Nonviolent direct action training at the Clergy and Laity Concerned About Iraq tent, in preparation for a May 1 action at the United Nations calling for the closing of the prison camp at Guantánamo. * Performances by the Raging Grannies (Health Care tent); the New York City Labor Chorus (Labor tent); hip-hop artist Spirit Child, from the group Mental Notes (Youth and Student tent). * Documentary film showings, including 'Runway Peace Project' (Equality for Women tent), a film from the Women of Color Resource Center exploring how military symbols filter into fashion and everyday life, and 'Before You Enlist! The Real Deal on Joining the Military' (Counter-Recruitment tent). * A Palestine tent featuring Q&A sessions on Israel and Palestine, an Arabic-style 'cafe' with big rugs and comfy pillows, Arabic music, a folkloric dance performance, and fair trade olive oil from the West Bank.

There's still time to make April 29 an even bigger, more vibrant, more powerful event, amplifying our call for change. Forward this email to all your friends and associates; post it widely on email lists, blogs, and bulletin boards. Dig out your address book and call everyone you know who should be with us on April 29 but may not have made firm plans yet to participate.

If you can't join us on April 29, you can still contribute to the day and the important work for peace in the months ahead by making a financial contribution. You can donate by credit card online or call 212-868-5545 to donate by credit card over the phone. Donations by check can also be made payable to United for Peace and Justice, with 'April 29' in the memo line, and mailed to April 29 Protest, c/o UFPJ, P.O. Box 607, Times Square Station, New York, NY 10108.

See you in the streets on Saturday!

April 29 Initiating Organizations:

United for Peace and Justice Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Friends of the Earth U.S. Labor Against the War Climate Crisis Coalition People's Hurricane Relief Fund National Youth and Student Peace Coalition Veterans For Peace

Decision to Cut Aid to Palestinian Authority Criticized

Sat, 29 Apr 2006 01:39:00 +0000

4-28-06, 9:10 am

The recent decisions by the US and the European Union (EU) to cut funding to the Palestinian Authority as a result of the January 2006 elections that gave Hamas a majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council was strongly criticized this past week by the human rights organization Amnesty International.

In addition to aid cuts from the US and the EU, Israel has stopped turning over to the Palestinian Authority funds it collects as customs taxes on Palestinian goods. Israel, according to a UN Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) report released earlier this month, says it will use the money to reimburse Israeli-based companies that own water and electrical facilities in Palestinian-held territory.

Amnesty argued that the US and the EU have a responsibility under international law to provide aid and to protect the Palestinian populations in the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank.

Such funding directly provides for health care, education and 'most other key services to the Palestinian population.' Amnesty further added that provision of this funding constitutes crucial humanitarian aid 'in light of Israel's failure to do so,' despite the fact that under international law it is legally obligated as the occupying power to provide such assistance. International law governing the role of occupiers was also reiterated recently by the International Committee of the Red Cross director of operations, Pierre Krähenbühl. In a public statement earlier this month, Krähenbühl stated, 'Israel, as an occupying power, has obligations to ensure the well-being of the population in the occupied Palestinian territories.' He also echoed Amnesty's assertion that 'the decision to withhold funds and assistance from the newly elected Palestinian authority could produce further deterioration of the situation for the population and a broader humanitarian emergency.'

Krähenbühl acknowledged statements by the Israeli government that it wants to avoid a humanitarian crisis, but also pointed out that such a crisis is already developing. International estimates indicate that unemployment is projected to rise to close to 40% this year, while the gross domestic product is expected to collapse by an annual rate of between 25% and 49%, in contrast to positive 5% growth in 2005.

Krähenbühl also pointed to a breakdown in the ability of the Palestinian Authority to provide minimal services the population needed to live a normal life, due in no small part to intensified restrictions placed on it by the occupying forces. These restrictions, Krähenbühl said, include 'observation posts, road blocks, checkpoints, the West Bank barrier and other physical obstacles.'

Such restrictions, he added, prevent people from accessing schools and hospitals and severely limit economic activity, such as moving goods to markets or finding and holding employment.

The frequent closing of checkpoints in Gaza and the continued construction of the West Bank wall have resulted in the expropriation of Palestinian-controlled land, severe shortages in staple commodities, and resulting high inflation. These conditions created by the Israeli occupation forces stand in direct violation of the Israeli government’s stated obligations under international law, the Red Cross official also stated.

The UNOCHA echoed the ICRC and Amnesty claims in a recent position paper published in early. The UN organization reasserted Israel's responsibility to provide for the welfare of the population in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza.

UNOCHA also emphasized that despite the important role of international humanitarian organizations in assisting the Palestinian people, they could never adequately cover the lost aid withdrawn by the US or the EU, which, in addition to provision of basic services, pays the salaries of health care workers, teachers, and police. In all, 152,000 Palestinians and 940,000 of their dependents rely on employment by the Palestinian Authority, reports UNOCHA.

Withdrawal of these funds will further increase the already high rate of unemployment, devastate basic services, and impose severe limitations on the ability of the Palestinian Authority to provide security, according to the UNOCHA document.

Though the Bush administration and EU officials claim that the aid cutoff is aimed at punishing Hamas for its policies, these measures will only further harm the already harshly treated populace, is an attempt to overturn a fair election, and legitimizes Israel’s abrogation of its responsibilities as an occupying power.

--Joel Wendland is managing editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at

Vietnam: Communist Party Leader Focuses on War, Corruption and Growth

Sat, 29 Apr 2006 01:35:00 +0000

4-28-06, 9:06 am

Re-elected Party General Secretary Nong Duc Manh has expressed his firm belief that the Party will be able to counter rampant corruption, while eyeing accelerated and sustained development for the nation.

In his first press conference as General Secretary of the Party Central Committee's 2006-2010 tenure, Party leader Manh said on April 25 that his biggest concern was how to make the country develop at a faster, more sustainable and effective rate.

'Good aspects should be nurtured while negative ones, such as corruption, must be reduced,' he said. 'I do believe that we will push back and prevent corruption.'

Party leader Manh said that the corruption problem can be attributed to the moral deprivation of some cadres, greedy individualism, a lack of education and poor human resources management.

He stressed the importance of carrying out a series of solutions at all levels in order to resolve the problem and that loopholes in the management system need to be constantly patched.

'It is persistent and long-term work,' he said, adding that disciplinary action over corruption against about 40,000 Party members over the past five years was actually positive work by the Party, which is keen to deal with negative phenomena in a straightforward manner.

General Secretary Manh also said that he wanted to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor, in order to realise the goals of 'rich people, strong country; and an equal, democratic and civilised society.'

Regarding democracy issues, Mr Manh said that the democratic atmosphere will continue to improve in the future. He said that the Party wanted to listen to not just good news but also different opinions and criticisms to make further improvements.

Answering a question by the press about Vietnamese communists conducting private business, Party leader Manh said that the 10th National Congress approved allowing Party members to open private businesses, but they would have to follow not only the laws, like other citizens, but also the Party's regulations.

He said that the 10th Party Central Committee would issue specific regulations on the issue.

'The country's ultimate goal is to eradicate poverty, therefore, Party members must also act. There is definitely nothing contradictory here,' he said.

He briefed journalists on the results of the 10th National Party Congress and also thanked both the domestic and foreign media for their extensive coverage of the country's most important political event.

He said that after eight days of work under the spirit of democracy, unity, intelligence and renewal, the Congress completed all of its proposed programmes, passed important documents and elected a new Party leadership, including 160 official members and 21 alternate members, for the 10th Party Central Committee.

From Vietnam News Agency

US Imperialism Brings World to the Brink

Sat, 29 Apr 2006 01:32:00 +0000

4-28-06, 9:03 am

The Workers Party of Ireland International Affairs Motion Resumed Ard Fheis (Annual Delegate Conference) Dublin, Saturday 1st April 2006

At the same time as the US attempts to limit global action to prevent harm to the environment and to cut international commitment to the reduction of poverty, the US Ambassador to the UN has objected to language which urges nations to observe a moratorium on nuclear testing and to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. While choking developing countries with economic pressure the US is simultaneously and aggressively building up its military forces and presence throughout the world.

The US military budget request for the fiscal year 2006 is $4,416 billion. The current US military budget is almost as much as the rest of the world combined. The US and its allies account for between two-thirds to three-quarters of all military spending. By contrast the United Nations and all its agencies and funds spend about $10 billion every year.

Despite this the United Nations has faced a financial crisis which has forced it to cut vital programmes and which has inhibited its work. In 1997, for example, half of the US aid was military-related. When the tsunami struck South Asia, US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, said that aid to the region was part of the US 'global war on terror'.

The United States emerged from the Second World War with an extensive array of military bases. Further bases were acquired in subsequent wars - Korean, Vietnam, the Gulf and Afghanistan. Despite the departure of the Soviet Union from the world stage the US continued to maintain its extensive system of military bases as part of its quest to run the world. Subsequent to September 11th and its attacks on Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, the US rapidly increased the number and extent of its military bases. It has increased its presence in the Middle East, the Balkans, Afghanistan, and in a number of the central Asian republics. The US is in the process of expanding its military presence in Latin America and the Caribbean. It has over 730 military bases and installations in almost 60 countries.

The US also maintains its strong military presence on the Korean peninsula. For decades South Korea has been a major US arsenal. More than half of the US nuclear weapons in the Far East were deployed in South Korea. The Pentagon annually holds a large number of provocative military exercises in South Korea, the longest and largest being the 'Team Spirit' manoeuvres. On January 30th 2002 George W. Bush, in his State of the Union address, referred to the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea as part of the so-called 'axis of evil'. This was a clear indication of the continuing hostility of the US to the DPRK which was founded 57 years ago.

The US has systematically undermined the process of denuclearisation on the Korean peninsula. In March 2002, in contravention of the principles of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the US adopted a policy of nuclear pre-emptive strikes against seven countries, including the DPRK. Although the DPRK has clearly stated its desire to resolve issues through talks the US refuses to end its hostile rhetoric, aggressive military posturing and threats to the sovereignty and independence of the DPRK.

The US continues its attacks on the DPRK and also attempts to undermine all efforts at detente and peaceful co-existence and mutual cooperation between South Korea and the DPRK. It has raised the spectre of the DPRK developing an arsenal of nuclear weapons and of threatening the stability and security of not only SE Asia but also the US itself. It has also attempted to demonise the DPRK and indeed people who have supported the right of the Korean people to resolve their own problems peacefully and without outside military interference, by accusing them of many crimes including attempting to undermine the US currency and also of deliberate breach of international intellectual copyright law.

The presence of US military bases and installations constitute not only a direct military threat but also provides support for US economic and political objectives. The war in Afghanistan allowed the US the opportunity to create a secure corridor for US-controlled oil and natural gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea.

The US holds these bases with the intention of maintaining and expanding its political and economic domination. It uses and has used these military forces to exert pressure on those states which seek to assert their national sovereignty and to steer an independent political course. The unceasing expansion of US military power is an integral part of the global capitalist project.

In 1983 Washington unveiled the Programme of Democracy and Public Diplomacy which provided for the establishment of the National Endowment for Democracy. The NED's proclaimed function was to win peoples' minds all over the world by subsiding `democratic institutions' abroad. The use of funds in pursuit of this objective was far from neutral or democratic.

In 1984 the American Institute for the Advancement of Free Trade Unions used the endowment's money to assure the result it desired in presidential elections in Panama. In 1985 a secret report leaked to the British press revealed that the endowment had been financing a campaign to undermine the Left in the labour movement all over Europe. Money was provided to split the French trade union movement, to support reactionary anti-socialist groups in Poland and the Socialist countries, to fund a pro-NATO campaign in the British trade union movement and conduct`anti-communist' operations in Portugal. The National Endowment for Democracy, together with the CIA, funded reactionary, right-wing organisations across the world including attempts to overthrow the government of Ghana in 1983.

The NED has a continuing and established relationship with the US state apparatus. Henry Kissinger, Madeline Albright, Frank Carlucci and Zbigniew Brzezinski all served on the NED Board of Directors. The NED is also deeply involved in Venezuela. In a report to the US State Department the NED said it awarded a large sum to opposition groups in Venezuela in the period before the attempted coup against the government of Hugo Chavez. These organisations included the Centre for International Private Enterprise. The NED has also supported right-wing Cuban groups based in Florida, including the Cuban-American National Foundation, which hate the Cuban government.

The National Endowment for Democracy is committed to neo-liberalism, is deeply hostile to socialism and seeks to undermine socialist and progressive developments, movements and states. It exists for the purpose of supporting US foreign policy. It is an integral part of the ideological apparatus of global capitalism. As such the NED serves the interests of imperialism, actively interfering in the affairs of sovereign states, including overt and covert operations designed to undermine peace, progress and democracy.

Last year, the Workers' Party, in solidarity with its international comrades, recalled the victims of fascist aggression in Europe. The invasion of Abyssinia by fascist Italy, the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and the strangulation of the Spanish Republic were steps on the road to the Second World War in which 54 million people died, 90 million were wounded and 28 million were maimed. Working people died in the trenches, the concentration camps and in their cities, towns, villages and homes. Fascism made murder and cruelty a way of life. The Second World War was the bloodiest, most destructive and most expensive war in human history. The future of humankind hung in the balance.

In 1945 fascism was defeated in Europe. The Soviet Union, the Red Army and the communist partisans and resistance fighters of Europe were instrumental in securing that defeat. Peace had come to Europe - but at great cost. The Soviet Union played the decisive role in that struggle and sustained the biggest losses. Twenty million citizens of the Soviet Union were killed; 25 million lost their homes; 1,700 cities, 70,000 villages and 31,850 industrial enterprises were destroyed.

At this time we must also remember the heroic efforts of the Serbian people against Nazism. Public demonstrations against the Nazis led to the brutal bombing of Belgrade. In 1941 the Axis powers invaded and occupied Yugoslavia. Serbia was occupied by German troops and Kosovo and Metohija were annexed by Albania under the sponsorship of fascist Italy. The so-called Independent State of Croatia established extermination camps and carried out acts of genocide against Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, killing over 750,000.

The brutal character of the Nazi occupation and the Croatian Ustasha regime generated a strong Serbian resistance. Many Serbs joined Tito's communist partisans to effect the liberation of Yugoslavia. The efforts of the Serbian people in the fight against fascism should never be forgotten.

Instead, however, the Serbian people have been falsely demonised as the cause of troubles in the Balkans. This myth was initially invented by the Austro-Hungarian Empire to justify its aggression against Serbia and the same tactic is employed today. Yugoslavia, led by Serbia, fought to defend its territorial integrity throughout the 1990's against imperialist powers committed to the disintegration of Yugoslavia.

It was the legitimate defence of Yugoslavia, its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity which led to the unlawful seizure of President Slobodan Milosevic to appear before the illegally constituted Hague tribunal. Louis Sell, a former US Foreign Service officer, who has written about President Milosevic has made clear that Yugoslavia's public ownership and Milosevic's defence of that economic system were central considerations in the US war against Yugoslavia. The US were concerned at Milosevic's portrayal of public ownership of the means of production and a continued emphasis on [state] commodity production as the best guarantees for prosperity.

The NATO war criminals who ruthlessly attacked Yugoslavia remain free. Slobodan Milosevic, who dared to challenge them, ended his days incarcerated at the Hague where he tragically died in March this year in suspicious circumstances - denied the right to basic medical care and treatment which might have saved his life.

The victory over fascism was achieved in the names of peace, progress, independence and equality between nations and peoples. The Workers' Party of Ireland applauds that struggle and commemorates the role of the Soviet Union, its army and Communist Party, together with all those men and women of all countries who resisted and defeated Nazi aggression.

We must at all times be conscious of the possibilities of reaction and neo-fascism rearing their heads in Europe again. This is a very real possibility as seen by the efforts of the Czech authorities to ban the KSM (communist youth movement) and the recent manoeuvres by the ultra right in PACE.

On Wednesday, 25 January 2006 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) debated (but failed to adopt) a resolution which amounted to a serious offensive against communism. The pretext for this resolution was the adoption of a draft resolution by the Political Affairs Committee introduced by the European Peoples' Party which alleged the need for international condemnation of the crimes of totalitarian communist regimes.

This resolution proposed a re-writing of history, calling for the revision of school books, the establishment of museums documenting these alleged crimes and introducing a memorial day for the victims of communism.

The real purpose of this resolution is revealed, however, in the wording of the report which states: It seems that a sort of nostalgia for communism is still alive in some countries. That creates the danger of communists taking power in one country or another. This report should contribute to the general awareness of the history of this ideology.

The purpose of this resolution was to re-introduce a witch-hunt against those individuals and parties who have contributed significantly to world peace and social progress. It was an attempt to prevent communist and workers parties in Europe and beyond freely contesting elections and taking power, if elected. If there is any doubt about this the words of the report make the position clear where the rapporteur states: I do not share the position of some colleagues that a clear distinction should be made between ideology and practice.

At a time of increasing social unrest against rampant neo-liberalism the prospects for the world's communist and workers' parties have improved. The Left is making a serious challenge, including in the former socialist countries where capitalism has been restored. This report is an attempt to block that progress and to act as a precursor for repressive action against communists, including the banning of party symbols and the proscription of parties themselves.

Anti-communism is not a new phenomenon. However, recent years have seen an upsurge in the attacks against communism with attempts to ban communist and workers' parties and to arrest and imprison their activists. Anti-communism takes the form both of physical repression and ideological attack. It is the duty of all progressives to resist this onslaught from the right.

The Workers' Party of Ireland regards the recent resolution before the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe as a shameless betrayal of the men and women who fought and died in the fight against fascism and a crude attempt to obstruct the struggle for peace and socialism.

The Workers' Party therefore congratulates all those parties, organisations and individuals whose combined work, agitation and organisation ensured that the anti-communist motion was not adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. We must however be aware that those reactionary elements who instigated this motion will already be colluding in further attacks on the political and organisational rights of communist and left-wing organisations.

We, the Communist and Workers' Parties of Europe, must therefore maintain our vigilance and unity.

The Workers' Party also reaffirms its solidarity with those countries and peoples struggling against imperialist interference and aggression and supports the struggles of our comrades in Palestine, Cuba, Venezuela, Yugoslavia, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, Iran and Iraq.

Over the past few months the threat of a widening and worsening of the war in the Middle East has vastly increased. The US, along with its protectorate in Israel and its allies in the EU, have on a continued and sustained basis attacked and demonised Iran and raised the possibility of sanctions or even military strikes against Iran because of a perceived threat that it is about to embark on a nuclear weapons program. While we, as a socialist party, are totally opposed to the proliferation of nuclear weapons it is highly hypocritical that the attacks on Iran are led by the US (the world's largest and most dangerous nuclear power) and Israel (the owner of a large and illegal stockpile of nuclear arms built with US and Western European connivance).

The Workers' Party is conscious of the deeply reactionary nature of the Iranian regime and is aware that the stance adopted by Ahmadinejad's government also serves the purpose of distracting the Iranian people from the serious crises facing the country. This Ard Fheis applauds the efforts of our comrades in the Tudeh Party to form a broad front for democracy and human rights.

This Ard Fheis also notes with concern the deteriorating situation in Iraq. The continuing brutal occupation of Iraq and the atrocities committed by US and British troops has given rise to acts of counter terror. The recent electoral process was marred by fraud and intimidation. Secular candidates and parties were attacked with the aim of ensuring the dominance of sectarian political tendencies. The Workers' Party, which opposed the war in Iraq that has caused and continues to cause great suffering to the Iraqi people, calls for an end to the occupation of Iraq and the establishment of a modern democratic Iraq, free from outside interference and division on religious or ethnic lines.

The gross double standards of the US on this issue are also shown by the attitude of Bush to Pakistan, (a country with a proven and openly admitted illegal nuclear arsenal, and its leader President Musharef, a military dictator who deposed the elected government in a coup d'etat), which is offered the full protection and friendship of Bush and the US. President Musharef is however a loyal toady of the US in the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Nepal; whereas Iran is seen as being a centre of opposition to US hegemony. Should the US or Israel launch a military strike against Iran then, at a minimum, the Iranians will release the restraining hand which they have held over the Shi'ite population in Iraq which will result in further bloodshed, murder and mayhem in that country. In the worst scenario an attack on Iran could lead to a full scale regional war.

This Ard Fheis notes that in recent Palestinian elections the Islamic group, Hamas, secured victory. The US and Israel have refused to recognise any Hamas government and donor nations have threatened to cut off aid. The US, as usual, recognises the results of elections only when it suits. It is clear that the current peace process has broken down and cannot presently be conducted on an even playing field.

The US is not, and cannot be, an honest broker. Israel is the United States' client in the Middle East. Israel is the top recipient of US aid in the world, receiving many billion of US dollars per year and would be unable to maintain its occupation of Palestinian territories without this assistance. Israel uses US manufactured tanks, aircraft and weapons in maintaining its illegal occupation. Further, the US refuses to support international resolutions concerning Israel. It refuses to condemn Israeli aggression and violence and ignores Israel's continued violation of human rights and international law standards.

The US and Britain maintain the pretence of Israel as a victim rather than an aggressor in the region. They ignore the unequal power relations between the parties to the conflict, refuse to condemn Israeli actions, whether military aggression and the slaughter of Palestinian civilians, or the destruction of Palestinian agriculture and social, economic, education and health infrastructure, the denial of freedom of movement, the confiscation of scarce water resources and collective punishments. By contrast every act of resistance to occupation by Palestinians is condemned.

According to World Bank statistics 65% of Gaza's Palestinians are living below the poverty line and Gaza is currently facing a humanitarian crisis. Despite this the Israeli army has extended its policy of closing down and sealing off Palestinian areas. The continued Israeli occupation remains a fundamental obstacle to building a democratic Palestine.

The Workers' Party reaffirms its support for the Left, progressive and secular forces of the Palestinian Revolution which struggle for the creation of a democratic, secular, non-sectarian Palestine. This Ard Fheis supports the Palestinian right of return as set out in UN Resolution 194; demands an immediate end to the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and affirms the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.

We recognise the important role of those countries which have adopted the principles of socialism in their own particular conditions and we remain committed to our vision of a world where war, misery, exploitation, oppression and inequality have been consigned to history and where the dictatorship of capital has disappeared from the face of the earth.

In this context it is important to note important victories for the progressive forces especially in South America. The victory of Michelle Bachelet, herself a victim of the Pinochet dictatorship's policy of torture, and the massive victory of Evo Morales in Bolivia must be saluted. Also the defeat of the US puppet candidate in Haiti is welcomed by this Ard Fheis. The example and practical assistance which socialist Cuba and the Bolivarians of Venezuela, as well as the benefits of the Sao Paolo Forum are all recognised as contributing to these positive steps for mankind.

As Lenin stated in 'Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder': 'We can and must begin building socialism not from fantasy and not from human material that we have specially created, but from what capitalism has left to us as its legacy'. The battle for democracy is a fundamental plank in our struggle. Capitalism is the antithesis of democracy and the process of socialist renewal can be grounded in that struggle.

We can use this to broaden the social front against capital, to expose its inconsistencies and contradictions and to involve broad democratic and progressive forces in the process to effect the radical transformation of the society and world in which we live.

Nonetheless we must always be sure of our own position and aware of all attempts, whether national or international, to rewrite our history. It is only by a firm commitment to our own socialist revolutionary principles that we can effectively engage in broader struggles. While we must recognise the changes that have taken place in capitalist society we must be ever vigilant for all those influences from whatever source which seek to dilute our socialist identity and purpose, which seek to convince us that class conflict is no longer relevant or that there is no alternative to capitalism. The building of socialism necessarily implies the dismantling of capitalism.

The Communist and Workers' parties of the world must establish themselves as the most influential force with the broad labour movement. While a significant section of the working-class remain under the influence of social democratic parties, it remains the task of the communist and Workers' parties to pursue a policy of work within the working class movement to create conditions for unity of action based on the principles of class solidarity.

The War Looks Different from Inside Congress

Fri, 28 Apr 2006 01:35:00 +0000

4-27-06, 9:06 am

Public opinion in the United States and Iraq favors pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, not to mention removing any who have already entered Iran. This sentiment will be on display this Saturday at the United for Peace and Justice March in New York: Inside Congress opinions vary, and it is a distinct minority that is willing to support public opinion. Some in Congress are willing to take half-way and tenth-of-the-way steps in the direction of ending the war, some of them from within such fantasyland worldviews that they are 'threatening' to stop occupying Iraq if the Iraqis don't behave better (that is, threatening something that over 80 percent of Iraqis desire). A forum hosted by progressive House members Thursday morning (to air live on Pacifica Radio from 8:30 to 11 a.m. ET, with blogging on AfterDowningStreet.org, and open to the public in Rayburn House Office Building Room 2325) will highlight the best that Congress has to offer. But it's worth taking a quick overview of what's out there. The grimmest side of the Capitol is, of course, the Senate, which is now considering a 'supplemental spending' bill for the war, something already passed by the House with 71 members voting No. This would mean another $67 billion for occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, including $348 million for constructing permanent military bases in Iraq, something U.S. taxpayers have already spent $1 billion on. The House, amazingly, passed an amendment to its supplemental spending bill stipulating that none of the money could be used for permanent bases. Senator Joseph Biden is expected to offer a similar amendment in the Senate, as well as an amendment that would pay for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan by rescinding certain tax breaks for the top one percent of taxpayers. Senator Robert Byrd plans to introduce an amendment stating that any request for funds for an ongoing military operation overseas, including operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, should be included in the annual budget of the President rather than using emergency supplemental appropriations bills that receive less scrutiny. That's about it for the amendments that make any sense. Then we have an amendment, already introduced, that gets a little weird. Senators Carl Levin, Susan Collins, and Jack Reed have introduced an amendment that Levin says will 'urge the president to make it clear to the Iraqis that their meeting their own self-imposed deadlines is a condition of the continued presence of American military forces in Iraq.' In other words, if the Iraqis don't shape up, we'll do what over 80 percent of them want and pull our soldiers out of their country. Not a bad consequence for a little slacking off, eh? But what if the Iraqis do what Levin and gang want, then do we drop our 'threat' to pull the troops out, or do we then pull the troops out because the situation is more desirable? This exchange from a press conference on Tuesday leaves some doubt: 'QUESTION: It sounds like either way you're calling for a phased withdrawal of the troops, perhaps by the end of the year. (OFF-MIKE) because even if they don't meet the deadlines, you'd pull the troops out, and if they do meet the deadlines (OFF-MIKE) 'LEVIN: This amendment and the sense of the Senate resolution which is attached to it addresses only the question of their meeting their deadlines that their constitution establishes and linking the continued presence of our troops to their willingness to meet their own deadlines. That's all that it covers. ' Senator John Kerry has introduced a bill, S. J. Res. 33, that is somewhat similar: If Iraq does not form a 'unity government' by May 15, then the U.S. would pull its troops out at 'the earliest practicable date.' If Iraq does do so, then Bush is supposed to reach an agreement with Iraq as soon as possible on a schedule for pulling the troops out. This proposal appears to share the same flaw most proposals in Congress have: it leaves too much control in the hands of George W. Bush. Senator Russ Feingold, meanwhile, has introduced S. Res. 171, which calls on the President to submit a report to Congress within 30 days describing the remaining mission of the Armed Forces in Iraq, a current estimate of the time frame required to accomplish that mission, and a time frame for the subsequent withdrawal of troops from Iraq. With Bush having already announced that the troops will occupy Iraq as long as he occupies the White House, it's not clear what report would be generated by passing this bill. What's missing from the Senate is a bill that simply says that the U.S. Congress will no longer pay a dime for the war, and that the war must therefore end now. The House has such a bill, H.R. 4232, the End the War in Iraq Act of 2005, introduced by Congressman Jim McGovern. This bill would allow spending only on reconstruction and on bringing our soldiers safely home. While McGovern's bill has very few cosponsors (15), it might garner more support if a vote could be forced on it. The House 'leadership,' however, is not interested in even talking about the war. Congressman Neil Abercrombie has introduced a petition to try to force a discussion of a bill about the war and to allow any amendments to be proposed and considered on the floor. The petition, H.Res. 543, would discharge another bill, H.J.Res. 55. If 218 members sign the discharge petition, the bill will be brought to the floor for debate and a vote. H.J. Res. 55 is one of many half-way bills in the House. It requires that we begin withdrawing troops by this coming October, which the November elections virtually require anyway, and does not specify when we would have to FINISH withdrawing the troops. Another bill, H.J.Res. 73, introduced by Congressman John Murtha, would 'redeploy' troops and keep them in the region of Iraq, but pull them out of the current occupation. Two particularly pro-war Democrats (and that's saying something), Ike Skelton and Jane Harman, have a bill, HCR 184, requiring Bush to create a plan for 'success' in Iraq. I suppose this bill won't be needed now that Bush has hired a Fox 'News' reporter to speak for him: the successes will be piling up daily. Congressmen David Price and Brad Miller have a bill that makes slightly more sense, HJR 70, requiring Bush to send Congress a plan for pulling the troops out. But Bush has done this: he's announced publicly that he plans to let the next president handle it. Congressman Mike Thompson's HCR348 would 'express the sense of Congress' that: (1) the United States should not maintain a permanent military presence or military bases in Iraq; (2) the United States should not attempt to control the flow of Iraqi oil; and (3) United States Armed Forces should be redeployed from Iraq as soon as practicable after the completion of Iraq's constitution-making process or September 30, 2006, whichever occurs first. This has the merit of addressing the oil question, but it provides for at least five months more of killing, and then 'redeploys' the troops rather than bringing them home. Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey's H.C.R. 35 is a much better bill than these others, with the exception of McGovern's, because it calls for immediate withdrawal. Woolsey has also addressed the larger picture with H.C.R.158 , which would shift our security spending priorities away from war. Congresswoman Barbara Lee's H Res 82 disavows the doctrine of preemption, and Congressman Dennis Kucinich's H.R.3760, with an accompanying Senate bill from Senator Mark Dayton, would create a Department of Peace. A couple of other bills that don't go far enough seem worth supporting because of the important line they draw: Lee's H.C.R. 197 and Congressman Thomas Allen's HR 3142 both call for no permanent US military bases in Iraq. The status of all of these bills and those below can be found on the website of United for Peace and Justice in this Excel file. http://www.unitedforpeace.org/downloads/webready3-3.xls WHAT ABOUT ACCOUNTABILITY These are just the bills that make full-throated or halfassed attempts to end the war or get their sponsor on cable. What about efforts to hold accountable the criminals who launched the war and to reveal the details of their dishonest presentations to Congress and the public? Well, Senator Pat Roberts is blocking all attempts at an investigation of prewar lies in the Senate. He had long since split the investigation into two parts, with one part being the White House's misuse of 'intelligence.' Then, of course, he refused to allow that part of the investigation to happen. Now he's proposing to split that half of the investigation in half, with the half that he'll actually allow to proceed being more 'investigating' that avoids investigating anything. How many times, I wonder, can you cut something in half and keep all the vital organs of it in the half that you keep cutting? In the House, Congressman John Conyers' H Res 635 would create an investigation of Bush Administration crimes and make recommendations on impeachment. Conyers and Feingold have introduced bills (for different reasons) in the House and Senate to censure Bush (H Res 636, S Res 398), and Conyers has also proposed to censure Cheney (H Res 637). THURSDAY'S FORUM If you can't make it, you'll want to listen on Pacifica Radio or watch AfterDowningStreet.org Woolsey, Lee, Maurice Hinchey, and Maxine Waters will be co-chairing a forum on ending U.S. military operations in Iraq and bringing U.S. troops home, while helping the Iraqis regain control over their country and their future. Witnesses will include: Dr. Paul Pillar, Former National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000-2005 and long career in the CIA, faculty member of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University, and author of Foreign Affairs feature article in March/April issue entitled 'Intelligence, Policy, and the War in Iraq' U.S. Congressional sponsors of pending legislation specifying plans and timelines for concluding U.S. military operations in Iraq and bringing home U.S. troops (U.S. Representatives Jim McGovern and Barbara Lee) Ms. Faiza al-Arji. She is a native Shia Iraqi, married to a Sunni Iraqi. They have three sons who currently live in Amman, Jordan. She will speak about her family's experiences in Iraq before and during the war and subsequent occupation. Dr. Dahlia Wasfi. She was born to a Jewish mother and an Iraqi father. She recently put her medical career on hold to visit with family members in Iraq, and recently returned from a three-month stay in Basra and Baghdad. She will describe her experiences in Iraq and discuss the life of Iraqis under occupation. Charlie Anderson (Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class, U.S. Navy-Ret.) He served with the Marine Crops' Second Tank Battalion during the invasion of Iraq. He is now the Southeast Regional Coordinator of Iraq Veterans Against the War and will discuss his experiences in the military during the war in Iraq. From

Wealthy Heirs Have Estate-Tax in Cross-Hairs

Thu, 27 Apr 2006 01:44:00 +0000

4-26-06, 9:15 am

The Bush tax cuts for the rich didn't go far enough, says a lobbying effort spearheaded by the 18 wealthiest families in the country. According to a new report co-authored by Public Citizen and United for a Fair Economy (UFE), these families have banded together to secretly finance a campaign to repeal the estate tax.

Combined, this group of families have spent over $490 million since 1998 to finance 'a massive anti-estate tax juggernaut,' the report states, that could save them as much as $71.6 billion.

The 58-page report profiles the families and their businesses worth over $185 billion. They own or own large portions of such national and multinational corporations as Wal-Mart, Koch Industries, Amway, the Seattle Times, and Mars Inc., and make well-known products like Gallo wine, Campbell's soup, and M&M's. Also included among this elite is Richard ‘Dick' DeVos, who is currently using his huge personal fortune to fund his campaign for governor of Michigan.

Seven members of these families are closely tied to the Bush, administration as they served as either 'Pioneers' or 'Rangers' in the campaign, collecting $100,000 or $200,000 for his reelection bid. Some, like Dick DeVos, have strong ties to now-disgraced members of Congress such as former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX).

They have provided millions to outside groups in order to hide their ties to the campaign to repeal the estate tax. Some of these groups include anti-tax think tanks like the Club for Growth, the Free Enterprise Fund, and Citizens for a Sound Economy/Freedom Works. In addition to this, they have poured tens of millions into ad campaigns and lobbying efforts, the report points out.

The report also reveals that they have used their positions in national business and trade associations such as the Wine Institute, the Food Marketing Institute, the National Grocers' Association, and the US Chamber of Commerce to lobby for repeal of the estate tax.

According to the report, the campaign they have financed relies on fear-mongering and distortions of reality to advance their message. They claim that estate taxes drive small business into bankruptcy and are a burden on middle-class farm families. According to them, women and minorities are disproportionately affected, despite the fact that almost all of the members of the families behind this campaign are white, and most of the real power brokers are men.

Indeed, they claim that the estate tax is an unjust tax on the earnings of hard-working people. But, as the report finds, few of the members of the 18 wealthiest families actually earned any of the wealth they now possess. In fact, most of these families have been rich for generations, and individual members have inherited their wealth rather than working for it.

Their dishonest campaign has misled the American public by trying to create the impression that estate taxes large sections of society.

In the summer of 2005 a $7 million national ad campaign paid for by the Free Enterprise Fund and the American Family Business Institute claimed that due to the estate tax, 'When you die, the IRS can bury your family in crippling tax bills.'

The ad was exposed for this misleading claim by the Annenberg Project's website FactCheck.org, which pointed out that very few families actually are subject to the estate tax.

The truth, according to spokespersons for Public Citizen and UFE, is that only one quarter of one percent of all estates will owe any estate taxes next year. In fact, when challenged about the anti-estate tax campaign’s claims, the American Farm Bureau, a trade association influenced by members of these 18 families, could not identify a single instance where a family was forced to sell its farm due to owing estate taxes!

Calling the campaign to repeal the estate tax 'one of the biggest con jobs in recent history,' Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook remarked, 'This long-running, secretive campaign funded by some of the country's wealthiest families has relied on deception to bamboozle the public not only about who must pay the estate tax, but about how repealing it will affect the country.'

Claybrook and others spoke at a press conference announcing the publication of the report.

Lee Ferris, of UFE, urged voters not to 'let a handful of wealthy families sway Congress to twist the tax laws for their own benefit.'

The report predicts that if a repeal of the estate tax is passed, it will cost the federal treasury $1 trillion in the first ten years, an amount equivalent to recent projections of the total cost of Bush’s war in Iraq. With severe financial shortfalls in education, health care, disaster-preparedness, and ballooning budget deficits, giving a massive handout to the wealthiest families is a mistake.

Polls show that a large majority of people support keeping the estate tax. Even some wealthy individuals agree that it is part of their responsibility to pay their fair share of the tax burden.

Bill Gates Sr. told reporters that with wealth comes responsibility. 'The estate tax should be regarded as just paying back to the country for all the wonderful things it's made possible for the people who have that wealth,' he said. 'I don't think there's any great societal goal being served by inherited wealth,' he added.

Actor Paul Newman echoed this sentiment in a prepared statement: 'For those of us lucky enough to be born in this country and to have flourished here, the estate tax is a reasonable and appropriate way to return something to the common good. I'm proud to be among those supporting preservation of this tax, which is one of the fairest taxes we have.'

--Joel Wendland can be reached at

Georgia Insurance Commissioner Oxendine Accused of Cab Scam

Thu, 27 Apr 2006 01:22:00 +0000

4-26-06, 8:53 am

(APN) ATLANTA – Georgia Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine is being accused of taking improper actions which benefitted his cab industry campaign contributors, Atlanta Progressive News has learned.

Godfrey Waterhouse claims his son, Robert Waterhouse, was falsely arrested on account of Oxendine for allegedly running a bogus cab insurance agency. The charges were later dropped, and Waterhouse’s insurance agency appears to have been completely legitimate the whole time.

An international news agency and big-city TV reporters had been waiting at the county jail, cameras rolling, as a high-ranking government official, Mr. Oxendine, led him inside, back in March 2005.

The charges against Waterhouse were quietly later dropped after three weeks. His assets were ceased and still have not been returned, he says.

Meanwhile, Oxendine had demanded that several cab companies obtain new insurance, which they did, and this benefitted Republican Oxendine’s big campaign contributors.

A story by Kafka? No, Oxendine!

And there’s more. Now, the State Attorney General’s Office appears to be investigating the matter, Atlanta Progressive News has learned from various sources, and Waterhouse is not a subject of the investigation; however, his assistance and cooperation is wanted.

Further, numerous cab companies are suing the State of Georgia because of Oxendine, and Waterhouse is trying to figure out what happened to his frozen assets.

Oxendine’s office declined to comment on the matter via his spokesperson, Wayne Whitaker, because the matter has been referred to the Attorney General’s Office.

'The State of Georgia did a terrible thing,” Hyatt Choudhari, owner of Atlanta Airport Superior Shuttle and Limo, told Atlanta Progressive News. 'We were 156 companies doing business with Waterhouse. Probably four- to five-hundred drivers across the state lost a lot of money.”

What you have to understand is, many big cab companies also run their own in-house cab insurance companies, while smaller companies had been contracting with firms like Waterhouse’s.

An APN analysis found that numerous cab and cab insurance company executives have donated to Mr. Oxendine almost every year since 1998:

Solomon Bekele, Insurance Executive. Yellow Cab of Georgia, Inc.; Rapid Taxi Company, Inc.; and VFH Captive Insurance Company.

Cheru Terefe, Insurance Executive. American Cab Company, Inc.; American Association of Cab Companies, Inc.; American Captive Insurance Co.; and Ethio-American Insurance Co.

Konjit Bekele, Insurance Executive. VFH Insurance, American Cab and American Assoc. of Cab companies.

Tafesse Belachew, Businessman. United Taxicab Company, United Empress Cab Company; and United Group Captive Insurance Company.

Mekeren Tassew, Insurance Executive. United Taxi and United Group Captive Insurance companies.

Jifar Jebel, Administrator. United Taxicab.

'We have calculated that Oxendine has taken $1.7 million from the insurance industry over the last decade,' Guy Drexinger, the Democrat running against Oxendine in November, told Atlanta Progressive News.

In February 2005, Oxendine notified the media he would be making a high-profile bust in the little town of Barnesville, about 50 miles south of Atlanta.

The Associated Press and Atlanta's 11 Alive News showed up on March 1, 2005, to photograph Oxendine and the Lamar County sheriff taking Robert Waterhouse, 36, to the county detention center while the GBI raided his home and office.

A local Newspaper Editor in Barnesville’s comments make it appear Oxendine’s “bust” was crafted with an eye for big media dramaturgy.

'They all met in nearby Forsyth before coming here together. We were not informed of the raid at all and I learned of it only when I went downtown for coffee that morning and saw all the cameras. It is my understanding that the local police chief and sheriff were notified only 15 minutes before the raids,' Walter Geiger, Editor of the local newspaper, The Herald-Gazette, told Atlanta Progressive News.

Oxendine told the Associated Press at the time, 'even though the vehicle owners thought they were obeying the law, the taxis and limos must be pulled off the road because they are not legally insured….There will probably be some businesses that go under because of this.''

Any disruption in taxicab service could have a major impact on metro Atlanta's $3.5 billion convention and tourism industry. It also could affect operations at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, one of the nation's busiest airports, The Atlanta Journal Constitution said.

Not only would the big cab companies which funded Oxendine benefit from Oxendine’s actions by their competitors being pulled off the road; also their insurance companies lost a major competitor when Waterhouse was shut down.

A hearing was scheduled for Robert Waterhouse on March 18, 2005. He was released on $25,000 bond.

In September, all charges were dismissed.

On the same day, March 18, 2005, Oxendine withdrew his candidacy for Lieutenant Governor.

The thing is, Waterhouse’s cab insurance agency appears completely legitimate.

Waterhouse’s cab insurance agency was co-owned by his father, Godfrey Waterhouse, 63, who lives in New Zealand. Godfrey Waterhouse told APN he had been placing customers' insurance with Contractors Bonding Limited (CBL), located in Auckland, for several years.

When the Georgia Insurance Code was changed, only companies domiciled in the US became permitted to issue certain types of policies.

CBL executives then assured Waterhouse they were taking over Mark Solofa Insurance, located in American Somoa. CBL faxed Waterhouse a copy of Solofa's Certificate of Authority from the American Somoan Insurance Department. Being located in a US territory, Solofa would qualify under the Georgia law.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) approved Solofa as having the necessary monetary reserves and issued them a code number which would permit them to write business in this state. CBL would continue to broker the policies.

As far as Waterhouses' customers were concerned, everything remained the same except the name on the insurance policy and their state-mandated proof of insurance read Mark Solofa Insurance instead of Contractors Bonding Limited. The Waterhouses continued to have all claims adjusted by Nolan & Co. as they had for many years.

For the next two years, the Waterhouses continued submitting their quarterly surplus lines tax returns to the Georgia Insurance Department showing the name of the company as Mark Solofa.

Oxendine informed the media his investigators uncovered the alleged scam in January 2005 when a Columbus cab company filed a complaint about a claim with Oxendine's office. He said that's when 'we found out that [the Waterhouses] had not written any insurance policies.'

Up until Robert's arrest, Geoff Waterhouse said they were never contacted by Oxendine, nor anyone from his office, nor anyone from any law enforcement agency, nor DA Milam, nor anyone from Milam's office. 'We have ALWAYS dealt directly with CBL and it would be very easy to confirm this from our phone bills, our bank records and with Nolan & Co who did all the claims adjusting,' Waterhouse wrote. He told APN that they would have been happy to turn their records over to any authority who had asked.

When Atlanta Progressive News was first informed of the story from a phonecall from New Zealand, we were able, within minutes, to check the Contractors Bonding Limited website, www.contractorsbonding.com ( As of 31st December 2003, CBL's Shareholders Funds stood at $20m ), the Nolan & Co. website, www.nolanandcompany.com ( Thomas S. Nolan, President and General Adjuster, has 28 years of claim adjusting experience etc.) and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners website, www.naic.org/cis/index.do (MARK SOLOFA INS CO, NAIC#: 11554 Home Office: American Samoa, Business Type: Property/Casualty ) to establish they all appeared to be legitimate businesses as Waterhouse claimed.

Guy Drexinger, Oxendine's opponent, said, 'I have pledged not to accept any contributions from the insurance industry and publicly supported legislation this session that would ban contributions to candidates for Insurance Commissioner from out of state insurance companies.'

CORRECTIONS: An earlier version of this story stated Robert Waterhouse claimed he was falsely arrested. That communication came from Godfrey 'Geoff' Waterhouse, not Robert. The Waterhouses ran an insurance agency, not an insurance company. Also, Atlanta Progressive News does know yet whether the assets which were frozen are missing. The story was been changed to reflect these items.

From Atlanta Progressive News

--About the author: Betty Clermont is a Staff Writer for Atlanta Progressive News and may be reached at

Thousands March in San Francisco for Immigrants' Rights

Thu, 27 Apr 2006 01:13:00 +0000

4-26-06, 8:45 am

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Fifteen thousand people rally and march (April 23) in San Francisco, demanding legalization and equality for undocumented immigrants, and protesting bills in the US Congress which would criminalize immigrant status and establish huge guest worker programs for large corporations.

--All photos by David Bacon, Photographs and Stories: http://dbacon.igc.org

Open Borders

Thu, 27 Apr 2006 01:10:00 +0000

4-26-06, 8:41 am

Here’s a two-word proposal for solving the immigration crisis in the USA: open borders. Before you mouse-click me into oblivion or crumple up your newspaper in disgust, hear me out.

In 1870, when Victor Hugo, a pacifist writer and social critic, proposed that Europe form a union based on principles of free commerce, peace and universal justice, the idea was dismissed as naive, preposterous and undesirable. A couple of decades after Hugo died, however, traditional European rivalries and chauvinism drove the continent into two world wars with an estimated death toll of 70 million people.

In the aftermath of the carnage, Europeans began to think more radically. What if a democratic union really could be formed to live in peace without borders?

The project began humbly in 1951, when a few nations established the European Coal and Steel Community. From that small success, inspired idealists worked diligently for another half century.

Today, Hugo’s dream is reality. Europe has a common market and currency. Customs and passport checkpoints have been abolished at many internal borders, resulting in a peaceful and democratic free zone for travel, work and investment. There are 20 official European languages, spoken by a total of 460,000,000 souls, roughly the population of North America.

The EU is hardly paradise, but it is a model for how many fiercely nationalistic groups, long accustomed to slaughtering each other over the most trivial of pretexts, can create a new and better world from the ashes of devastation and atrocity.

What prevents the US, Mexico and Canada from embarking on a similar road to borderless unification?

It wouldn’t be easy. First of all, it would cost a fortune. We’d need the equivalent of a Marshall Plan to aid Mexico. But if we’ve got $275 billion (and counting!) to wage war and remake Iraq in our image, why not find the funds for waging peace and providing health, education and social welfare for our fellow inhabitants of North America?

There would be countless other obstacles, not the least of which is winning the trust and partnership of the various native cultures and Indian nations with whom our credibility, as well as Mexico’s, is stretched almost beyond repair. We’d also need to address legitimate security and counter-terrorism concerns. We’d need to respect cultural, historical and religious differences. We might have to give up on the idea of military dominance over the rest of the world. But Europe faced similar challenges and is prevailing.

If, like the critics of Victor Hugo, you think a North America without borders is utopian, consider the perils of the anti-utopia currently under discussion: a 2000-mile wall, an ultra-militarized border zone, ghettoization of the Mexican labor force, and criminalization of their presence north of the border. Such a system is a throwback to an age of runaway slaves, collective punishment and debtors prisons. It is impractical, immoral and unsustainable.

Mexican workers arrive in our country as economic refugees, organically following the job market. They are here because US employers have put up several million Help Wanted signs, and because, for one reason or another, their opportunities have eroded at home.

Denying the facts of job shortage there and job surplus here is a fundamental error. As a nation we have said, “We want you, need you and love you; but we also want to incarcerate or deport you whenever we feel like it.” This schizoid message has millions of workers in the streets protesting: “We clean your toilets, pick your vegetables and serve your hamburgers. This is the thanks we get?”

We need to address immigration and dozens of other problems at their source on both sides of the imaginary lines we draw in the sand. We can’t do it overnight. It may take a decade, and it may take a century. May 1, the National Day of Action for immigrant rights, is a good time to begin the conversation.

Victor Hugo said, “There is nothing like a dream to create the future.” A North America without borders is such a dream. On the other hand, raids, walls and the criminalization of honest labor are vile nightmares.

--David Howard (DavidHoward@aol.com) is co-chair of Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions.

Nebraska Official: Cuban Market Important- and other Cuba News

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 03:00:00 +0000

04-25-06,10:31am

Havana, April 19 (Prensa Latina).- Cuban Alimport and the US State of Nebraska signed several agreements on Wednesday for the purchase of 2.8 million dollars worth of food as part of an import deal worth 30 million dollars.

Previously, Nebraska Lt. Governor Rick Sheehy referred to the importance attached by Nebraska farmers and cattle breeders to relations established with Cuba.

The visiting official read a letter by Governor Dave Heineman highlighting that this is the largest delegation to travel to Cuba, 31 representatives including farmers, cattle breeders, cooperative members, as well as representatives of local press and of the US Department of Agriculture.

In a phone contact with the Nebraska delegates attending the signing ceremony, Heineman said that Cuba is a new, important market for Nebraska farmers and pleaded for strengthened links. Alimport General Manager Pedro Alvarez said that Cuba does not blockade, but buys goods from Nebraska or any other country, and it is sending a message of peace and friendship, as it has become a very valuable buyer of US products.

He also indicated that since December 2001, Cuba has imported 1.69 billion dollars worth of US food.

Cuba Summons US to Act on Terrorism

Havana, April 22 (Prensa Latina).- Cuban media condemned US judicial authorities Friday, for not bringing charges against Cuban-born citizen Roberto Ferro, who was recently arrested in California with a cache of more than 1,000 weapons.

Under the banner headline, 'What will the FBI do now?' Granma pointed out that members of the Alpha66 'Cuban-American Miami-based terrorist group with a large dossier of criminal attacks against Cuba' have not been investigated.

Ferro, who was part of that group, and an ex member of the US Army Special Forces, with a long personal arrest record, was also arrested in November and presently faces eight charges for that arrest.

He was also accused in 1990 of directing a paramilitary camp in Pomona, where five pounds of C-4 explosives were confiscated.

At that time, Ferro was convicted to two years in prison, but no action was taken against the terrorist group, which continued operating freely in Miami, although Ferro confirmed that Alpha 66 paid for the weapons.

Granma daily condemned the unexplainable stance by the FBI, which has so far done nothing to find out what happened.

Current Alpha66 chief Ernesto Diaz Rodriguez 'continues promoting terrorism from his office at 1714 W Flagler Street, Miami, and the FBI remains quiet, it editorialized.

Alpha66 planned to murder Cuban President Fidel Castro, has attacked Cuban fishing boats, and threatened to kill people friendly to Cuba in the US, Canada, Mexico, and in Latin America.

The current US administration has excellent relations with Alpha66 (President George W Bush met with eleven Alpha66 cronies on May 20, 2003), despite Miami police documents considering it 'one of the most dangerous organizations' in Miami.

While this happens, five Cuban men: Gerardo Hernandez, Rene Gonzalez, Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando Gonzalez, who monitored terrorist activities of these criminal groups, have been unfairly imprisoned in the US since 1998, the daily contended.

Africa Asia LatAm Solidarity Leader

Havana, April 18 (Prensa Latina).- The Organization of Solidarity with Africa, Asia and Latin America (OSPAAL) presented on Tuesday its next General secretary Alfonso Fraga.

Fraga will replace Alfredo Leon Alvarez in his position, and he will hold other tasks, according to Granma newspaper.

On the occasion of Fraga's swearing in, there was a meeting in this capital of the Secretarial Executive of the Solidarity Entity, with the presence of Fernando Ramirez de Estenoz, head of the International Relations of the Cuban Communist Party Central Committee.

The current OSPAAL General Secretary acted as the Cuban ambassador to the Republic of Chile until his appointment.

Playa Giron: Goals of the Mercenary Invasion

Havana, April 17 (Prensa Latina).- The smoke of the battle of Playa Giron dissipated 45 years ago when the Cuban people defeated the mercenary attack concocted by the US to destroy the then-emerging Cuban revolution.

The goal of the mercenary brigade, trained and armed by the White House to invade Cuba, was to make a beachhead and install a counterrevolutionary government in three days, composed of people from the US military base of Oppalocka, FL.

That puppet government, following its recognition by Washington and the Organization of American States, would request direct US military intervention in Cuba, disregarding the number of people probably killed or the international laws violated.

The General Staff and then President John F Kennedy approved the invasion and planes camouflaged with Cuban flags took off from Central American nations on April 15, as Operation Puma to destroy Cuba´s air defense, bombing the airports in Havana and Santiago de Cuba.

The CIA called that plan 'Operation Pluto' and the 1,400 mercenaries who invaded the Island were backed by 30 planes, a tank company, ten trucks with machine guns, 19 mortars, 18 cannons, rifles, bazookas and ammunition.

The fleet included five gunboats, two war units, three landing craft, tanks and trucks with artillery emplacements and four vessels to transport troops. Marine units made up of at least two destroyers and an aircraft carrier also backed a battalion of parachutists dropped at three points to consolidate control of the beachhead.

At the UN, the US claimed the invasion, of US-armed, trained and transported mercenary brigade 2506 that landed in the Zapata Swamp on April 17, was a local uprising against the revolution.

The invaders were made to believe they would be warmly welcomed in Cuba, although the leaders knew most Cubans supported the Revolution, and the bravery of Cuban militiamen gave a quick revolutionary victory and shattered the plans.

In only 66 hours the Cubans, led by President Fidel Castro, defeated the invaders who surrendered at Giron Beach on April 19, 1961.

The first program of State terrorism the US elaborated against Cuba was thus destroyed.

Cuban Province Attracts Tourists

Havana, April 23 (PL).- Cuban eastern Granma province offers a particular choice for travellers from all over the world, giving the chance of interacting with its well preserved nature and local history.

The number of tourists that after a short stay in Havana look for a site with natural attractions is growing daily. Granma province is becoming a well-known spot for its nature, sea, mountains and history.

Bayamo is the provincial capital and the most visited city. It was one of the Island´s first villages, founded in the 16th century and burnt down by its residents in 1869, to counter an attack by the the Spanish colonial troops during the Cuban war of independence.

A fresh and varied green vegetation is the main feature of the region. The natural colors dazzle many Europeans who enjoy long walks along mountain trails.

Experts have highlighted the mix of warm weather in the valleys and cool temperatures in the mountains, with exuberant vegetation and springs.

As a distinguishing touch, Granma has two national parks: Desembarco del Granma and Pico Turquino, where the flora and fauna are rigorously preserved for people from all over the world to enjoy them

Cuba, Ghana Share Health, Sports

Havana, April 20 (Prensa Latina).- Cuban and Ghanaian parliamentarians are strengthening relations even more with the visit Thursday to this capital of Ghana´s legislative Speaker Ebenezer Sekyi Hugues, invited by the Cuban parliament.

The African leader´s agenda includes laying a wreath at the Jose Marti Monument, meeting with Cuba-Ghana Friendship Parliamentary Group president Roberto Leon Richard, as well as visiting the Latin American School of Medicine.

In statements to Prensa Latina, the visitor highlighted the work of Cuban physicians in Ghana and added that one of the reasons of his trip is to increase that medical support.

Sekyi Hugues, who came accompanied by presidents of permanent working commissions of the Ghanaian parliament, met with the Permanent Commission of Health and Sports of the Cuban Parliament, expressing his interest in the island nation´s achievements in these fields.

Cuba and Ghana established diplomatic relations in December 1959. Nearly 193 Cuban collaborators are working in the African country, among them, 151 are physicians, 38 technicians and four professors at a local university.

Short Story: Mary, Tool and Die Maker

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 02:56:00 +0000

4-25-06, 11:00 am

The alarm buzzed and Mary awoke with a start. It was 5:30, a dark winter morning. Mary was fast and well organized. Everything was planned so she could get to the bus stop by 6 a.m. Mary pulled the quilt up over the bed, hung her night clothes on the bathroom door and took a two-minute shower. Then she jumped into the clothes she had laid out the night before, drank the juice already poured in a glass, grabbed her keys near her purse, exact bus change ready.

Mary did not mind moving fast in the morning. It allowed her another half hour of needed sleep. Near the corner of her street, a homeless man was sleeping on the sidewalk. He was stretched over a vent that put out slightly warm air. Mary did not slow down; she knew she had to go on to work. But her heart hurt. It was wrong to do nothing. “Maybe he’ll freeze to death,” she worried. “Richest country in the world!” she muttered angrily.

The bus was already half full. Mary was not the only Chicagoan rushing to a 7 a.m. job. Most on the bus were African American, like Mary. At the transfer point, the Washington Street bus was waiting. Good! Mary would not have to use her “superwoman” speed to outrun the bus to the next stop. She was a fast runner. “Fast as the wind,” her mother used to proudly say. The day before, the bus was pulling out just as Mary got to the transfer point. Without thinking, she put out a burst of speed and caught the bus at the next stop. To Mary’s embarrassment, the passengers all applauded.

Getting to work a few minutes early gave Mary time to buy a cup of coffee and a donut. Otherwise, the 9 a.m. coffee break was the first chance to put something solid into her stomach. That 15-minute morning coffee break was the best time of the day. Lunch was only 30 minutes. That was barely long enough to walk to the cafeteria, wait in line, get a quick lunch and walk back to her workstation.

Many workers at Elco Parts took the paid coffee break for granted. But Mary’s grandmother had told her what it was like in the 1930’s before the union. There had been no coffee breaks in the Eagle Pencil factory where grandma worked. The workday was nine hours. They just worked straight through until it was time for lunch. If you had to go to the bathroom before lunch, that was a problem. Above the bathroom door were three lights, one for each toilet stall. If the lights were all on, you were not supposed to go in. Each time a woman went into the ladies room, she was supposed to turn on a light.

The first time Mary’s grandma used the factory bathroom, all three lights were out. To her surprise, the bathroom was full of women. They had slipped in without turning on a light. The women were taking a badly needed break. “You didn’t turn on a light?” the women demanded. “I’ll never do that again,” grandma answered.

In the late 1930’s, the union organized the Eagle Pencil factory. The first thing they did was get rid of the lights outside the bathroom door. And the workers won two 15-minute breaks a day with pay.

By 7 a.m. Mary had punched in and turned her lathe on in the machine shop. She had always liked mechanical work and fought to become a tool and die maker. She was one of a growing number of women doing non traditional work, work that used to be for males only. Mary liked the work and liked the higher pay she earned in her trade. On her very first day on the job, she joined the Machinists’ Union. In just two years, Mary became the union steward for her mostly-male department. The plant made tools and parts for an automobile factory.

Denise

As union steward, Mary often fought for workers’ grievances. Some cases were emergencies. This morning she did not have long to wait for the first grievance. At 8:00 a.m. Denise Taylor, one of the newer drill press operators, came into the machine shop in tears. “They want me in human services and I’m afraid they want to fire me,” she said, her voice shaking. “I don’t want to go without my union steward.” Mary shut off her lathe and made a record of the time in her log book. Then she told John Schultz, her foreman, that she was going to human services on union business.

Up in human services everyone was wearing suits, even the women. Their hands were clean and the offices were well heated, in contrast to the machine shop. Mary felt she had stepped into a different world. Still people seemed to be working very hard, eyes glued to computer monitors. As Mary and Denise passed the workstations, no one even looked up. Denise’s foreman was waiting for them in the conference room.

“This is the third time she’s been late in two months. I warned her,” the foreman said.

“I was only five minutes late,” Denise replied. “I couldn’t help it. I had my kids at the day care center by 6:30 but the teachers didn’t come until 10 to 7.”

Denise was a single mother with two children, one two years old, the other three and a half. Every weekday morning, she carried her children to the bus stop, still asleep in her arms. That was a heavy load but she hated to wake them up. The children woke up anyway, soon as they got on the bus. They didn’t want to miss anything. At the day care center, Denise and her children waited for the first teacher to arrive. The center opened officially at 7:00 a.m. but teachers usually came a half-hour earlier. That barely gave Denise time to catch the bus to the plant and punch in by 7. Each morning was a tight race against the clock. If she lost her job, who would pay the rent? Who would buy food and clothing for the kids? Mary was a good griever. This time she decided to go by the book. She would save an appeal based on compassion for another time.

“I don’t see any warning in Denise’s file,” Mary pointed out. “You can’t fire her without an official warning,” she added.

“I warned her,” the foreman insisted. “I told her that if she was late again she would be fired.” Turning to Denise he shouted, “I told you, didn’t I.”

Before Denise could answer, Mary quickly put in, “Did you write it up and notify human services?”

“Not exactly,” the foreman admitted.

“Are you writing this up as a warning?” the personnel director suggested.

“Yeah.” The foreman settled for the official warning but he had the last word: “One more time and she’s out!”

As they walked back to the machine shop, Mary asked Denise if she had any relatives who could help her get the children to the preschool. “Next time,” Mary told Denise, “I may not be able to save your job.”

“My mother’s dead. I have no relatives here,” Denise said, sadly. “Whatever it takes, I won’t be late any more.”

Although she made the promise boldly, Denise had no idea how she could avoid another emergency. She would do it if humanly possible. The job paid enough to rent a decent apartment and to feed and clothe her children. It was scary. Denise knew that 14 million children went to bed hungry in the USA. She was afraid that she and her children would become homeless if she lost her job. She would also lose medical coverage for herself and the children.

It was 9 a.m. by the time Mary got back to her lathe. It was time for a 15-minute break. On the way to the coffee line, Mary was still thinking about Denise and her children. She wished the plant had its own child care center. But Elco Parts was in business to make money, not to care for its workers. Mary decided to treat herself to another cup of coffee and sweet roll. She felt she deserved it. What she did not know is that she would not have time to eat lunch that day.

Feeling just a little guilty about eating the whole sweet roll, Mary promised herself that tomorrow she would eat only half a sweet roll and save half for lunch. It was good to get back to work. Mary enjoyed her job. It was a challenge – reading the blueprints, making the measurements, carefully controlling the cutting tools. There was a lot of satisfaction in using her hands and brain to create a tool that would be used again and again.

She did not change expression when Schultz, her foreman, came into her work area with two time-study men. One held a stopwatch and the other was carrying a clipboard. The time-study men had been buzzing around lately making the workers nervous. Schultz introduced the men with the usual line. “They’re going to study your job to make the work more efficient and easier for you.” The workers knew what that meant - downsizing. Workers would lose jobs.

Mary raised her eyebrows in disapproval but said nothing. “Don’t worry,” Schultz said. “You’ll still have a job. We may not need so many drill press and punch press operators. But skilled trades people like you will still have a job.”

Mary worried about Denise and the other drill press operators. She did not believe that her own job was safe, either. Even if she was not laid off, she would have to work harder. Just to make the rich richer? They were already too rich, Mary thought. She had read in her union paper that the richest 1% owned 40% of the wealth in the USA. The bottom 80% (that’s us, Mary thought) owned only 16%.

With an effort, Mary concentrated on her job and tried to ignore the time-study men. When she was first subjected to time study, it made her so nervous that she began to work faster. That made her angry with herself. No worker in her right mind wants to use a faster-than-normal pace for time study. To compensate, she had slowed down. Her slow-down was so obvious that the time-study men decided to leave. “We’ll come back the next day,” they had warned her. So this time, Mary decided it was best to get it over with and work normally or a bit slower.

After an hour or so, the time-study men left. Mary relaxed and put her mind on her work. It was close to lunchtime, but Mary wasn’t hungry. That was no surprise with two cups of coffee and two sweet rolls in her stomach. Instead of thinking of food, Mary began to plan some union business she would try to do in the half-hour of lunch. She was on the union’s safety committee and they would have to call a special meeting. OSHA had cited the company for poor ventilation in the soaking pits and the paint department. The company paid the small fine and promised to upgrade the ventilation system. Six months had passed and nothing was happening. Mary thought that racism had something to do with the company dragging its feet. Everyone in those two departments was African American or Latino. Maybe it was time for a slowdown in those departments. It seemed as though the company would not do anything until they felt it in their pocketbook.

Mary looked up from her work when Al, another machinist, came over with a blueprint. He wanted to get Mary’s ideas about a tricky part he was making. Just as he spread out the blueprint, they heard a loud blast. Almost instantly, they smelled smoke. People began running away from the paint shop. Mary and Al ran for the exit, taking the route they had practiced in fire drills. Mary had been a high school track star and was well ahead of Al. Suddenly an image of her friends trapped in the paint shop flashed through her mind. So fast that no one could stop her, she turned on her heels and raced back toward the paint shop. A great surge of strength shot through her body and made her feet fly.

Steve

Before Mary could reach the paint shop, flames started shooting through the walls. A blast of heat scorched her face. Leona, the only woman on the paint crew was screaming, running with her clothes on fire. Mary threw Leona down and rolled her on the ground until the flames were out. Mary was afraid of a second explosion. She had to get Leona out fast. But Leona was heavy and there was no way that Mary could carry her. Mary spotted a painter’s tarp, rolled Leona on it and dragged her out the door. Outside, the workers broke out in cheers when they saw that Leona was still alive.

By this time, the fire trucks had come. The firefighters ordered everyone away from the building and did not let Mary stay. “The ambulance is just three blocks away; they will take your friend to the hospital,” they told Mary. She could hear the ambulance sirens and agreed to step back. Down the street, the waiting workers shivered in the cold. There had been no time to get their coats. Mary looked around anxiously for Steve, the painter on the safety committee. Steve was not there.

After what seemed hours, the paramedic teams came out of the building, carrying three stretchers. That would be the rest of the paint crew, Mary thought. Nobody knew if they were dead or alive. Al offered to drive and follow the ambulances to the trauma center but Mary decided to wait at the plant. By this time, the union representative had arrived and was talking to the fire commander. She told the workers that the fire was under control and would soon be extinguished. But it would be hours before they would be allowed to go in to get their personal possessions.

“Get out of the cold and come over to the union hall,” the rep said. “Your things will be safe – the police are closing off the plant.”

“Huh,” Mary said. She did not like leaving without her things. She had left her coat and purse in the plant. Thankfully, her keys were in her pocket. There were only a few dollars and change in the purse but it had all her ID’s. The coat, she expected, would stink of chemical smoke. Workers with cars gave rides to their co-workers and left for the union hall. The rep called taxis for the other workers. “That’s what the union treasury is for,” she told them.

The union hall was filling fast. All union staffers had been called in for the emergency. The staffers made two big pots of steaming coffee. The Good Eats Cafe delivered trays of good-looking sandwiches. Mary remembered that she had not had lunch. Still she was too worried about Steve and Leona to eat. TV camera crews and reporters interviewed groups of workers. Then they got the bad news. Steve died on the way to the hospital. Bill and Wayne, two other painters, were burned over most of their body but had a chance to pull through. Thanks to Mary, Leona was going to make it but her face and back were badly burned. She would need a series of skin grafts in the coming months.

At the union hall, President Paul Paxton called the meeting to order. He said the Fire Department had done a great job. They put out the fire before it spread past the paint shop. The company was calling maintenance personnel back to work immediately. Everyone else was laid off until the fire damage was repaired. Hopefully, that would be just a few days. The audience responded with an anguished groan. Time off without pay! Mary raised her hand to demand, “Are we going to let the company get away with this?” Paxton answered, “I just told the reporters that the union will pursue the company to the limit of the law. We are demanding compensation for Bill, Wayne, Leona and Steve’s survivors. The company is claiming the fire was not the company’s fault. We know better. We warned them about the fumes in the paint shop. And we are not going to stop with winning money. The company heads should go to jail for criminal negligence!”

“And who will pay our wages while we’re out?” Denise asked. Mary turned in surprise. Denise was usually so quiet.

“If you have vacation time coming, we will ask the company to let you take it now. Otherwise, we can only hope that the company will let you work overtime when you go back. Tomorrow, everyone should apply for unemployment compensation. Just in case.”

The meeting ended to give workers a chance to go back to the plant for their belongings. Mary got her coat and bag. They had a burned chemical smell but at least she had her ID’s. With Al, she returned to the union hall to help any way that she could. Steve’s death was so hard to take because it could have been prevented. What the company did was the same as murder, union members were saying.

There was a lot of work to do at the hall. Mary wrote a press release. Al helped Steve’s family make funeral arrangements. They chose a very large church. Thousands who did not know Steve wanted to come to the funeral. They wanted to protest the policy of profits before safety. By the time Mary looked up it was 8 o’clock and now her stomach was really growling. With a start, Mary remembered that she had invited her boyfriend, David, for dinner at 6 p.m. They had met at a community rally at the high school where David taught science.

David

With a ride from Al, Mary was home by 8:30 to find David still waiting for her. He looked worried. “I heard about the explosion on the news,” David said. “I called the union to try to reach you. But I did not get through.”

“Oh David,” Mary said, “I’m so sorry. I should have called.” “You know I love you,” she added. Mary had told David that before but this was different. Everything she had been through that day made her senses sharper and her feelings deeper. David was such a good man, good-hearted, smart and fun to be with. It didn’t matter to her that David was white.

“I love you, too,” David whispered, as he covered her face with kisses. “When I heard about the fire, I realized I can’t live without you. Let’s get married.”

That was not the way either one of them had planned to put the big question. Still it was a good story that their children never tired of hearing. It was also a preview of things to come. All too often Mary got home late when a union emergency came up or a meeting dragged on.

Behind the GOP Attack on Science

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 02:48:00 +0000

4-25-06, 11:00 am

To advance and communicate scientific knowledge and understanding of the earth, the solar system, and the universe. —from the mission statement of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

The problem with a mission statement is that someday, somewhere, you just might run into somebody that takes it seriously. That was the case for James Hansen, a veteran scientist, NASA’s top climate specialist, and director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

In early December 2005, Hansen got into trouble for advancing knowledge about the crisis our planet faces. He called for accelerated efforts to reduce industrial emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases linked to global warming. After his speech, he told Andrew C. Revkin of the New York Times, he was threatened with “dire consequences” if he continued to advance such ideas.

Hansen said his bosses at NASA imposed obstacles to keep him from talking or writing about climate change, including requirements that all his statements and interviews go through public affairs staff, and that his supervisors could decide to stand in for him in any news media interviews. Hansen told New York Times that it would be irresponsible not to speak out, because NASA’s mission statement includes the phrase “to understand and protect our home planet.” He said he was particularly incensed that the intimidating directives had come through telephone conversations and not through formal channels, leaving no significant trails of documents.

A recent New York Times editorial titled “Censoring Truth,” accused the Bush administration of having “secured a special place in history for the audacity with which it manipulates science to suit its political ends.” But the attack by George Deutsch, NASA’s public affairs office, on Hansen was “a new standard of cynicism.”

In fact Deutsch had little, if any, scientific training. His chief credential appears to have been his service with Bush’s re-election campaign and inaugural committee. On his résumé, Deutsch claimed to have earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Texas A&M University, but when the university exposed this as bogus, Deutsch was forced to resign.

The shocker wasn’t NASA’s failure to check Deutsch’s credentials, but that this low-level Bush appointed bureaucrat with no qualifications was able to impose his ideology on agency experts. As Hansen observed, Deutsch was only a “bit player” in the administration’s dishonest game of politicizing science.

Muzzling scientists who make statements that are counter to the interests of big business is a hallmark of the Bush administration. Bush likes to say that “the jury is still out” on global climate change, despite the fact that the polar ice caps are melting, alpine glaciers are retreating, sea levels are rising and coral reefs are dying around the world. The global average temperature in 2005 of 58.3? F. was the warmest since scientists started keeping records in the late 1800’s. Improving the “business climate” for his friends in the auto and fossil fuel corporations is apparently more important to the administration than the risks of global warming.

Policy is where politics and science intersect. Scientific integrity is crucial in developing sound policy. We advance knowledge by allowing scientists the space to freely exchange and discuss findings from their research with a minimum of interference from narrow commercial interests and meddling from politicians. And it’s important to keep the public informed of these developments.

The Bush administration turns this wisdom upside down. It uses political litmus tests for appointments to official scientific advisory panels and shows a preference for corporate advocates. The administration handpicks ideologues to second-guess scientific research and to craft policies that boost corporate profits. It stacks panels with biased scientists with ties to industry, or has eliminated some scientific advisory committees altogether. Additionally, some scientists have noted that White House appointees scrutinize academic researchers, but refuse to acknowledge the biases of scientists on corporate payrolls. The administration’s policy is to use voluntary, market-based measures by corporations to slow, but not reverse, the growth of emissions of CO2 and other “greenhouse gases.”

Unfortunately, this meddling isn’t limited to global climate change. It’s part of a pattern that includes squelching hydrogeologists who speak out about how mountain-top removal mining operations endanger groundwater supplies, and censoring and distorting wildlife biologists’ work regarding endangered species. It extends to policies related to health. As columnist Robyn Blumner pointed out in 2001, “One of George W. Bush’s first acts as president – literally on his first full day in office – was to delight conservative supporters by reinstating the Global Gag Rule.” The rule cuts foreign aid funding to family planning organizations in other countries that provide abortion services or even talk favorably about abortion to their patients or the public.

Bush’s antagonism toward reproductive freedom stretches well beyond abortion into extreme positions against access to contraception and sex education. In 2003, Bush declared that any country that receives funding from the US to fight the spread of AIDS must emphasize abstinence over condoms. This policy had disastrous effects, says Stephen Lewis, the UN secretary general’s special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. US cuts in funding for condoms and an emphasis on promoting abstinence had contributed to a shortage of condoms in Uganda, one of the few African countries which has succeeded in reducing its HIV infection rate. Lewis accused Bush of “doing damage to Africa.” Work to control the AIDS epidemic in Brazil, Senegal and other hard-hit countries has been similarly damaged by Bush’s policies. Meanwhile, religious groups that oppose condom use are receiving an increased share of funding.

A report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, titled Scientific Integrity in Policymaking, identifies policy issues being unfairly influenced by the administration: including climate change, mercury emissions, reproductive health, lead poisoning in children, workplace safety, and nuclear weapons.

“We found a serious pattern of undermining science by the Bush administration, and it crosses disciplines, whether it’s global climate change or reproductive health or mercury in the food chain or forestry – the list goes on and on,” said Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Knobloch says that the panel that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on lead poisoning planned to strengthen the lead poisoning regulations in early 2004, in response to science showing that smaller amounts than previously understood could cause brain damage in children. Before the panel could act, former secretary of health and human services Tommy Thompson rejected the recommendation and replaced two members of the panel with individuals tied to the lead industry.

The Bush administration also influences policy debates by editing scientific reports to censor information that disagrees with its ideology, as was the case with two major reports from the Environmental Protection Agency in 2002 and 2003.

In other important cases ultra-right ideologues have halted sound environmental policies. In February 2006, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer noted:

It’s worth recalling the central role that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour played in derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush’s iron-clad campaign promise to regulate CO2. In March of 2001, just two days after EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman’s strong statement affirming Bush’s CO2 promise, former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chief Barbour responded with an urgent memo to the White House.

Barbour, who served as Bush campaign strategist, represented the president’s major donors from the fossil fuel industry who had enlisted him to map a Bush energy policy that would be friendly to their interests. His political credentials ensured the new administration’s attention.

The memo, titled “Bush-Cheney Energy Policy & CO2,” was addressed to Vice President Cheney and several high-ranking officials with strong connections to energy and automotive concerns keenly interested in the CO2 issue: Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Commerce Secretary Don Evans. Barbour pointedly snubbed Christie Whitman and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, both of whom were on record supporting CO2 caps. The memo ridiculed them for trying to address global warming, which Barbour dismissed as a “radical fringe issue.”

“A moment of truth is arriving,” Barbour wrote, “in the form of a decision whether this administration’s policy will be to regulate and/or tax CO2 as a pollutant. The question is whether environmental policy still prevails over energy policy with Bush-Cheney, as it did with Clinton-Gore.” He denounced the idea of regulating CO2 as “eco-extremism,” and advised them to not allow environmental concerns to “trump good energy policy, which the country has lacked for eight years.”

The memo had impact. On March 13, using the language and rationale provided by Barbour, Bush announced that he would not back a CO2 restriction. Echoing Barbour’s memo, Bush said he opposed mandatory CO2 caps due to “the incomplete state of scientific knowledge” about global climate change.

But the science is clear. In February 2006, a study by a renowned MIT climatologist published in the journal Nature linked the increasing prevalence of destructive hurricanes to human-induced global warming. Now the crows of fossil-fuel dependence are coming home to roost. The US addiction to foreign oil is giving us a catastrophic war in the Middle East, and Katrina gave us a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children.

Was Hurricane Katrina a fluke?

“Very few people in America know the names of Hurricane Katrina’s parents because the coal and oil industries have spent millions of dollars to keep the public in doubt about the issue,” Ross Gelbspan said on Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now show on just days after the hurricane landed. Gelbspan was senior editor for a series of Pulitzer Prize-winning environmental articles and is the author of The Heat is On and Boiling Point.

He went on to say, “It’s very clear that global warming does not make more hurricanes, but it makes them much stronger.” Hurricanes gain energy and power from warm surface water. In the case of Katrina, it began as a Category 1 storm, but as it approached land in the Gulf of Mexico where water temperatures were about 80 degrees, it became “enormously more powerful.” Gelbspan added that this kind of phenomenon is happening all over the world.

A major part of the problem comes from CO2, one of the main “greenhouse” gases which cause global warming and which is generated by burning fossil fuels. The problem is compounded by destroying land covered by living plants that filter CO2 out of the air to make way for parking lots and strip malls. Nature is getting double-punched, then kicked when down.

So what can we do about global climate change? Ross Gelbspan, in his book, Boiling Point, advises immediate global political action. “It’s not lifestyle action,” he writes:

“Even if we all sat in the dark and rode bicycles, it would not stop global warming, especially given the reliance on coal in India and China, and on oil in Mexico and Nigeria and the developing countries.”

Gelbspan urges leadership on “spearheading a rapid transition to clean energy.” Political pressure, Gelbspan urges, is needed to change public policy toward sustainable energy and renewable resources.

Environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. echoes this sentiment. “Of all the debates in the scientific arena… there is none in which the White House has cooked the books more than that of global warming,” says Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. In his book Crimes Against Nature, Kennedy outlines the Bush administration’s assault on the environment and democracy in general. He focuses on the undue influence of transnational corporations. Kennedy further ties the survival of democracy to sound environmental policy, contending that corporate power must never supersede democratic institutions.

But corporate power has, and continues to supersede democracy. Money buys power, including the power to set policy that affects us all. Environmental degradation is business as usual under capitalism. The destruction of environmental health is the symptom of a major social disease. The disease is capitalism; Bush, Cheney and company are its main infectious agents. Mother Nature is reeling on the ropes. Before we go down for the count, isn’t it about time we spoke up on how to fight this disease?

--David Zink is a contributor from Olympia, Washington.

Inside Job: Union Organizing Today

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 02:42:00 +0000

4-25-06, 11:00 am

“Salting has become an instrument of economic destruction aimed at non-union companies unwilling to just hand over their employees,” reads a fact sheet by the anti-union National Right to Work Committee. “‘Salts’ try to destroy their employers,” it continues, “through various actions, including sabotage.”

While these allegations may appear to be an effort to uncoil a complex espionage effort conducted by the CIA, it is not. Rather it speaks of an innovative organizing strategy that is being utilized by labor unions more and more to counter the efforts of anti union employers.

Within the labor movement “salting” refers to the strategy by which union organizers seek employment at a non union workplace with the aim of uncovering unfair and unlawful labor practices, gaining intelligence on the inner workings, garnering support for the labor union and ultimately organizing the workplace. The US labor movement has used salting throughout its history – both the Knights of Labor and the Wobblies employed salts and many of the mass labor mobilizations during the 1930’s resulted from individuals who entered various industries to organize.

Richard Bensinger, former executive director of the AFL-CIO’s organizing department remarked on his role as an inside union organizer. “There is no better way to gain an understanding of the needs, fears and beliefs of workers,” he said, “than to work and experience an organizing drive side by side with them. During my time as an inside organizer, I played an important role in organizing workers and gained invaluable insight into the psychological and interpersonal dynamics of uniting personalities into a single voice for change.”

During the past few years the practice of salting has become important as anti union employers and union-busting firms have developed both legal and illegal strategies for denying workers their democratic right to unionize.

According to the AFL-CIO, 75 percent of employers hire consultants or union-busters to help them defeat union-organizing drives. Twenty-five percent of employers illegally fire at least one worker for union activity during organizing campaigns. More than 24,000 workers in 2000 won cases proving that they had been illegally discriminated against for engaging in legally protected union activity. In addition, according to American Rights at Work, every 23 minutes a worker is illegally fired for attempting to organize a labor union.

With less than 10 percent of the US work force enjoying the benefits of belonging to a labor union including job security, generous medical benefits, pensions and a voice in the workplace, it’s not just important, but urgent that labor unions and allies employ nontraditional means of organizing workers.

Though many corporate sympathizers (and groups which they fund, including the National Right to Work Committee) scoff at the strategy, they have thus far been unsuccessful in challenging its legality. In the 1995 landmark decision in the Town and Country Electric, Inc. case, the United States Supreme Court ruled that an individual can be a company’s employee for purposes of the National Labor Relations Act, even “if at the same time, a union pays that worker to help the union organize the company.” In other words, salting is a legally protected practice.

The National Labor Relations Board, the governmental body charged with executing US labor law, has also upheld the rights of unions to hire salts to organize a work site. In 1993, in the case of Flour Daniels, Inc., the NLRB ruled that an applicant that clearly indicates that he is a union organizer “explicitly places the employer on notice that he will try to exercise his statutorily protected right to organize his fellow employees.”

In 2005 the Laborer’s International Union of North America, which represents about 800,000 construction workers used the strategy of salting to organize Advanced Contracting, a Manhattan-based, demolition company, which was notorious for resisting unionization efforts. The union placed two salts within the firm, which employed mostly immigrant workers. Within less than one week they were able to convince workers of the benefits of unionization, and get 17 of the other 18 workers to sign union cards.

While salting may be perceived as a more grassroots-oriented strategy than traditional union-organizing mechanisms, it also offers many challenges. In the article “Salting the Earth: Organizing for the Long Haul,” published in the New Labor Forum authors Carey Dall and Jono Cohen, both former salts, state:

Working in nonunion sectors usually means low pay, long hours, and horrendous working conditions. Adding the ever present stress of organizing, including the after work or weekend meetings, the constant fear of being found out and fired by your boss is enough to topple even the most stable mind. Also, finding an industry to plug into is not always easy.

One must also not ignore the cultural factor. It’s important that salts are able to relate socially and culturally to the workers in which they are attempting to organize. Unfortunately many organizers that are attracted to the opportunity to salt are white, middle-class college graduates. Lastly, it’s important that unions and other organizations that employ salts, factor in the sustainability of the effort. If the goal of the effort is to organize the workplace, unions must offer the support to maintain the effort to completion - rather-than abandoning the effort prematurely due to a shift in organizational priorities.

Despite these challenges, it is difficult for one not to see salting as a step toward socialism. Salting is important as an offensive tool against corporations and union-busting firms that unethically violate the rights of workers on a daily basis. If unions and allies are able to utilize the strategy to increase union membership and workplace democracy, another world may no longer exist as a mere possibility – it will be a reality.

--Carl Lipscombe is national coordinator for the Student Labor Action Project.

Is Hamas Hopeless? Who is Really Responsible For The Impasse In Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks?

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 02:38:00 +0000

04-25-06,10:09am

The answers to the questions posed above are pretty obvious if all you read or see or listen to are the reports from the mass media in this country. Israel wants peace but the way is blocked due to the election of a terrorist group (Hamas) which now runs the government of Palestine and is devoted to the destruction of Israel. But what if this presentation of the current situation is false?

That is the only conclusion that can be reached after reading 'Hamas: The Last Chance for Peace?' by Henry Siegman (The New York Review of Books, April 27, 2006). Siegman (HS) is a former head of the American Jewish Congress and a Senior Fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations. I intend to review this article and then draw some, to me, obvious conclusions.

HS lists four main reasons why the 'Muslim world' is angry at 'the West.' These are the occupation of Palestine, the occupation of Iraq, the treatment of prisoners in US military (and CIA) prisons, and, finally, US hypocrisy with regard to 'democracy.' It is in this context that we have to look at the rise of Hamas and its relation to 'terrorism.' One thing we must not confuse is al-Qaeda's use of Islam, and Hamas' views. HS quotes an Hamas spokesman as saying that 'Hamas believes that Islam is completely different' from the al-Qaeda view and that its 'battle is against the Israeli occupation and [its] only concern is to restore our rights and serve our people.' And, it should be noted, no serious person thinks Hamas won the elections in the Palestinian Authority, because of its religious doctrines. HS says 'Palestinian society is among the most secular in the Arab world.' Iraq was also a very secular society, unlike our ally Saudi Arabia which is closer to the Taliban. Polls taken after the election showed that 73% of Palestinians favor peace with Israel and the two state formula.

This means there is a real possibility for a negotiated peace, at least from the Palestinian point of view. But what does Hamas want? HS discussed this with a senior Hamas leader and came up with six points that Hamas was willing to let guide its program: recognition of Israel, negotiations with Israel, belief that God gave Palestine to the Muslims [ many Zionists think he really gave it to the Jews-- he should make up his mind] but 'temporal realities' must not be ignored so both international law and the state of Israel can be lived with, a cease-fire, reforming Palestine (to get rid of corruption and build the rule of law, an independent judiciary, and the separation of powers), and lastly, not to impose religious behavior or observances on the people. So far this doesn't sound so bad.

HS, however, reminds us that this moderate position contrasts with Hamas' previous 'odiousness' with respect to it founding documents (August 1988) which were anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish. He also points out that the PLO originally used the same type of language until they engaged in negotiations and learned about the real world. This type of language is also found in the positions of 'official Israeli political parties' some of whom advocate ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. It seems all sides have to step back from these types of extreme views. HS' point is that Hamas is doing so, or at least is ready to do so, as a result of its new found responsibilities as a governing power. It is in the best interests of Israel and the US to encourage this evolution, not discourage it.

So what about all the current talk about not dealing with Hamas, punishing the Palestinians for voting for them, etc., (US democratic values at work-- vote only the way we tell you to). Is this a good tactic?

HS quotes the former head of Mossad (the CIA of Israel), Efraim Halevy: 'Hamas constitutes about a fifth of Palestinian society... Anyone who thinks Hamas will one day evaporate is [simply] mistaken... [I]n the end there will be no way around Hamas being a partner in the Palestinian government.' That was said several years ago, now they are the Palestinian government.

Halevy also said 'if they take a moderate approach... we will not view that as a negative development.' So-- is the Hamas victory the 'end of the peace process'? No, says HS. The peace process was ended in 2000 when Sharon became prime minister of Israel. 'More correctly, it was killed-- with malice aforethought--- by Sharon's 'unilateralism'.' Sharon never had any intentions of being a peace partner with the Palestinians. He and his party found, and finds, fault with whomever the Palestinians put forth as leaders. Nor did Sharon even really want a two 'state' solution. His West Bank policies, according to the Israeli paper Haaretz, as quoted by HS, mean 'the Palestinians are left with no territory on which to establish a state.'

All the blather about Hamas having to renounce terrorism, etc., is just a smoke screen. It is also hypocritical since Israel used raw terror itself to set up the state and to enlarge it. In fact, HS references Righteous Victims by Benny Morris (Vintage, 1999) to the effect that the Palestinians learned the 'art' of mass terrorism against civilian targets from the Jewish resistance movement in Palestine dating back to 1937. This is not meant to validate the immoral and odious use of suicide bombers and other acts of violence against peaceful civilians by Hamas, but to put things in perspective. The behavior of some of Israel's founding fathers also shows that 'terrorists can transform themselves if they have reason to believe that legitimate national goals can be achieved by political means.' The US and Israel must, if they really want peace, and that is questionable, show the Palestinians that their legitimate demands can be realized without the use of violence. If they won't do that, who then is responsible for the consequences?

It seems that the US and Israel are talking about peace and fairness only for public consumption, and in reality are doing just the opposite. The real reason for the hostility to Hamas is that it demands real fairness and real negotiations on the grounds of an 'uncompromising demand for reciprocity.' What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Israel wants to be recognized but, as Hamas asked 'Which Israel?' The Israel of the 1967 borders or the Israel which wants to keep large sections of the West Bank and East Jerusalem? As HS says, 'If its the latter, Hamas will not recognize Israel.' And why should it. If its the latter that means Israel is insincere about peace and only wants more of another people's land.

The bitter truth is, as HS affirms, 'that if Hamas were to recognize Israel tomorrow and dismantled its 'terrorist infrastructure,' there would still not be the slightest prospect for a resumption of a peace process...' unless the US forced it (which it won't) on Israel. The sad fact is the present government of Israel has no intention of treating the Palestinians as equal partners in peace. It is building its wall of separation and making off with as much land as it thinks it can. You reap what you sow, and the Israeli government 'threatens to foreclose what prospects for Hamas moderation may in fact exist.' I

POSTSCRIPT: Since the above was written there has been a war crime committed against the Israeli civilian population by Islamic Jihad (New York Times, 4-18-06, 'Suicide Bombing In Israel Kills 9'. The fact that Israeli state terrorism and war crimes have been committed against the Palestinian people in a far more extensive manner in no way excuses Islamic Jihad for its subhuman moronic attacks on innocent civilians. It puts them on the same level as those who killed Rachel Corrie in cold blood.

The President of the Palestinian authority, Mahmoud Abbas, quite rightly condemned this inhumane attack, it was unworthy of the Palestinian people who were not responsible for the actions of a small faction of fanatics. The Times pointed out Islamic Jihad is the only one of nine Palestinian resistance groups that has refused to engage in a ceasefire currently in effect by the other eight, including Hamas.

Unfortunately, Hamas has endorsed the actions of Islamic Jihad. It is not insignificant that the bombing took place in a working-class neighborhood and that the victims were mostly working people. It shows the immaturity of both Hamas and Islamic Jihad that terror against civilians is lauded in the first place. The fact that neither group sees the difference between the ruling elite and its military and the working people of Israel, potential allies in the struggle for the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and the peace process, shows that neither group is fit to assume a leadership role. Hamas, however, does have a leadership role and the enemies of peace will be using its incautious and foolish endorsement of the senseless killing of innocent people to further isolate and hurt the people of Palestine.

Already an Israeli government official is blaming Hamas for the attack: 'They are responsible because their leaders are encouraging these attacks. It doesn't matter which group did this; it all comes from the same school of terrorism.' It of course is never mentioned that the real School of Terrorism is the Occupation. Hamas should realize that the struggle of Palestinian people is both a national struggle and part of a world struggle against imperialism and oppression of all people's. International solidarity is vital and may well be lost by the immoral endorsements of murderous acts of terrorism committed against working people and other innocent civilians.

Finally, for those who put all the blame for these acts on the Palestinians, they must be reminded, Its the Occupation stupid!

Thomas Riggins in the Book Review Editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.