People Before Profit blog

Exxon Pays for Global Warming Fantasy

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 00:41:00 +0000

4-29-07, 8:38 am

EARTH TALK From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine Dear EarthTalk: Did Exxon/Mobil really pay scientists and economists to write articles trying to de-bunk global warming? -- Rosemary R., via e-mail

A February 2007 report in the British newspaper, The Guardian, fell like a ton of bricks on efforts by ExxonMobil, the world’s largest and most profitable oil company, to repair its damaged environmental reputation. According to the report, the Exxon-financed American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative Washington, D.C. “think tank,” offered scientists and economists $10,000 each, plus expenses, to write articles undercutting the dire findings of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) about the extent and impacts of human-caused global warming.

The ties between ExxonMobil, AEI and the highest levels of government go way back. AEI has received more than $1.6 million from ExxonMobil over the years, and more than 20 of its staffers have worked as consultants for the Bush administration. Former Exxon head Lee Raymond is still an AEI board member.

A month before the Guardian report, the Boston-based Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released its own report documenting ExxonMobil’s $16 million in donations since 1998 to 43 organizations working to discredit the science of human-induced climate change. UCS joins a growing chorus of voices asking the company to turn the corner on global warming and start embracing a transition away from fossil fuels.

“ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer,” says Alden Meyer, UCS’s Director of Strategy & Policy. “A modest but effective investment has allowed the oil giant to fuel doubt about global warming to delay government action just as Big Tobacco did for over 40 years.”

In September 2006, Britain’s leading scientific academy, the Royal Society, asked the company to stop supporting groups that “misrepresented the science of climate change.” In response, ExxonMobil said that it funded groups that research “significant policy issues and promote informed discussion on issues of direct relevance to the company” but that such groups do not speak for the company.

No doubt feeling some heat, ExxonMobil issued a statement recently in response to an IPCC update: “There is increasing evidence that the Earth’s climate has warmed on average about 0.6 C in the last century. Many global ecosystems, especially the polar areas, are showing signs of warming. CO2 emissions have increased during this same time period—and emissions from fossil fuels and land use changes are one source of these emissions.” The statement also acknowledged that “the risks to society and ecosystems could prove to be significant…it is prudent now to develop and implement strategies that address the risks…”

Whether the company is really ready to aggressively develop alternative energy sources—like its competitors Shell and BP—is yet to be seen. But environmental leaders share a guarded optimism that the tide is turning in their favor and that ExxonMobil will back up its words with action—eventually.

CONTACTS: The Guardian, www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,2004399,00.html; UCS Report, www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/ExxonMobil-GlobalWarming-tobacco.html; ExxonMobil,

www.exxonmobil.com/corporate/Citizenship/Corp_citizenship_enviro_policy.asp.

GOT AN ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTION? Send it to: EarthTalk, c/o E/The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; submit it at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/thisweek/, or e-mail: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php.

Atlantans Spell IMPEACH with Candles at Intersection

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 00:39:00 +0000

4-29-07, 8:34 am

(APN) ATLANTA – About 20 Atlanta activists met at sundown at Freedom Park to spell out the word IMPEACH with an array of candles on a hill at a major intersection, Freedom Parkway and Moreland Avenue.

So for about 90 minutes, motorists and pedestrians coming from at least three different directions got a message: impeach.

The event completed a day of impeachment rallies and marches in Atlanta and indeed nationwide. In Atlanta, activists met to rally at Freedom Park at 11am, and later marched as the impeachment contingent in the annual Inman Park Parade, a local community parade.

Numerous cars honked in support this evening. One man walking by stopped to get a closer look.

'What are you trying to spell out?' he asked.

'Impeach,' one activist replied.

'Hell yeah,' he said back.

One Atlanta resident stopped by to find out more about what was going on. 'I drove by and was like that was so cool. It looks amazing from the street,' Erin Routson said.

'I thought [the events] were really great. We definitely put the whole thing out there,' Tracie Stern of Atlanta World Can’t Wait said.

Protester Nick Prakash with World Can’t Wait said he was there 'to get the word out on impeaching Bush. He think’s he’s God or King. He thinks he’s absolute. Abu Ghraib, the Iraq war, a possible Iranian War. Stealing two elections, contempt for the Constitution, getting rid of habeus corpus,' he said.

'They committed a conspiracy of fraud against the American people,' activist Gloria Tatum said of Bush's deceptive case to invade Iraq.

MORNING PROTEST

About 30 people were at the morning protest, Artemis, an Atlanta-based videographer, said.

Activists with World Can’t Wait, Code Pink, and other groups were in attendance at the morning and afternoon events.

'There was a time this morning when horns were going–there was no quiet time,' Stern said.

INMAN PARK PARADE

The public response to the impeachment contingent in the Inman Park parade was overwhelmingly positive. About 60 protesters marched there.

'The crowd was just incredibly joyous,' Stern said.

'The crowd went wild the whole time we went by, people yelled, yeah, impeach the bastard!' Tatum said of the parade.

'90% of the people were just thrilled,' Tatum said.

Protesters carried a 30 foot long 'Impeach Bush for War Crimes' banner made up of three king-sized bed sheets.

There was some concern that the impeachment contingent would be kicked out of the Inman Park Parade, but quite the opposite, the response went well. Stern said World Can’t Wait Atlanta had officially registered and was listed on the program.

IMPEACHMENT LEGISLATION IN THE CURRENT SESSION

US Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) introduced Articles of Impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney earlier this week. After three full days, no Congresspersons have decided to cosponsor the bill.

From Atlanta Progressive News

--About the author: Matthew Cardinale is the News Editor and National Correspondent for Atlanta Progressive News and may be reached at matthew@atlantaprogressivenews.com.

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Big money vs. workers’ rights

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 00:24:00 +0000

4-29-07, 8:28 am

The phenomenal rise of the multi-million-dollar union-busting industry in the U.S. has paralleled the decline in the manufacturing base, the rise of the right wing and the decline in union membership of the past 30-some years.

According to the workers rights advocacy group American Rights at Work, union-busters provide legal and consulting services, training, workshops and materials for supervisors and managers, and a variety of anti-union propaganda for distribution to employees attempting to organize. Additionally, consultants advise management on prolonging the bargaining process ad infinitum and occasionally advise employers attempting to break an established union.

Union-busting is big business

Over three-quarters of employers facing a unionization campaign hire these firms, according to Kate Bronfenbrenner of Cornell University. And it’s one of the prime reasons the labor movement is pushing the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, to strengthen workers’ ability to organize against the anti-union onslaught.

Anti-union campaigns usually involve several consultants and can last from weeks to years, ranging from tens of thousands of dollars to millions in price according to John Logan of the London School of Economics. By some estimates, employers spend between $2,000 and $4,000 per employee on each campaign.

Highly paid and highly effective, almost all union-busting firms claim a success rate of over 90 percent.

Even at the Red Cross

Despite this, the players in this industry are remarkably unimaginative, employing largely the same tactics used by consultants since they first appeared in the post-World War II era.

Currently engaged in an acrimonious organizing campaign with the American Red Cross in Tucson, Ariz., Teamsters organizer Kathy Campbell states that one union activist was called in to supervisors’ offices a total of five times for a minimum of one hour at a time in the final week before one NLRB election.

Another activist was rumored to be a bartender working at the Red Cross only as a “union plant” who would vote “yes,” then leave the company. At least, that’s the story supervisors told to the activist’s coworkers, and to public supporters of the union, when they called supporters at home the night before the local newspaper ran a story detailing the activist’s experience of supervisor intimidation.

How they operate

According to Bronfenbrenner’s research, half of the companies experiencing a union drive threaten to close their plants and one-quarter fire at least one union supporter.

Additional strategies include manipulating the bargaining unit, “love offerings” such as unexpected raises and promotions, distributing voluminous amounts of anti-union publications, and delaying the election to gain more time to counter-organize.

The union-busting industry also includes, to a lesser extent, industrial psychologists, security firms and publication houses specializing in anti-union materials. While the industry still maintains its stronghold in the U.S., consultants are increasingly seeking to export their services, and are having some success in Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.

Union-busting firms rarely speak directly to employees, preferring to interact primarily with supervisors and managers. Frontline supervisors are trained, coached and sometimes cajoled into doing the dirty work of the union-busters and upper management, and supervisors who are not willing will be fired or re-assigned.

Who’s the outsider?

Typical of union avoidance consultants, Labor Relations Services, Inc., states on its website that “management and employees are best served by working directly together without the intervention of an unwanted, potentially adversarial, outside party, such as a union.”

Aside from the union avoidance consultants’ obvious third-party status, the deeper truth here is one that is frequently missed. The “union” in labor union refers not only to a formal labor organization, but most especially to the “union” of workers on the shop floor.

A labor union at its essence is no outside party — it is an extension of the camaraderie and solidarity of rank-and-file workers recognizing their common interests as members of the working class.

From People's Weekly World

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Fri, 27 Apr 2007 07:43:00 +0000

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Japan: Time to show zero tolerance for violence

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 07:27:00 +0000

4-26-07, 3:22 pm

The killing of Nagasaki City Mayor Itoh Iccho in a shooting during his election campaign is a heinous crime unheard of in Japan’s political history since the end of World War II. The task now is for the whole society, in particular political parties and politicians, to show their determination that they will not tolerate such an act of defiance against freedom and democracy.

On April 17, in a published comment on the incident, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo only said, “I hope that investigators will get to the truth behind the incident.” He gave no words of criticism or indignation at this act of violence.

On the following day, Abe modified the comment he issued the previous day. He said, “Resorting to an act of violence during the election campaign is an attack on democracy and must not be condoned for any reason.” However, his initial reaction was extraordinary at a time when political leaders of opposition as well as ruling parties in their statements were condemning violence, including a statement published soon after the incident by Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo.

Journalist Torigoe Shuntaro on a TV program criticized Abe’s comment regarding the incident. He said, “That is not a kind of comment a prime minister should make on a politician’s death in gun violence during an election campaign. At the least he should have stood firm against the crime by stating that it is a challenge to a democratic society and it must not be condoned for any reason.”

Faced with increasing criticism not only from the media but from among politicians, the prime minister’s spokesman made an excuse saying, “The prime minister feels the same way though his comment was a bit short.”

However, this was not the first time that the prime minister showed how insensitive he is to acts of violence.

When former Secretary General of the Liberal Democratic Party Kato Koichi’s parents’ house was burnt down last August in an arson attack by a rightist denouncing Kato for opposing the prime minister’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine, Abe, chief cabinet secretary at the time, and then Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichiro kept silent for two weeks about the incident. Due to growing criticism from within the LDP for their lack of sensitivity, Koizumi finally stated, “Suppression of freedom of speech with violence must never be condoned.” Abe was also compelled to state, “I want to wait for what investigators might say. If the crime was committed for the purpose of suppressing Kato’s opinion, it is absolutely unacceptable.”

In 2003, a bomb was planted at the house of a high-ranking foreign ministry official who was Japan’s chief negotiator in talks aimed at normalizing relations with North Korea. Commenting on this incident, Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintaro showed his tolerance toward this act of violence by saying, “It is not surprising.”

If this kind of tolerance persists, violence and lawlessness will not be eliminated from Japan. The arson attack against the ex-LDP secretary general who was critical of the prime minister’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine and the 1990 shooting of then Nagasaki Mayor Motoshima Hitoshi in connection with his statement that the emperor is responsible for the war show that violent attacks on the freedom of speech have taken place in conjunction with the increasing adverse current that justifies Japan’s past war of aggression.

The freedom of speech is an essential to democracy. In defending the freedom of political activities, it is necessary to eradicate the tendency that tolerates violence. It is time for the political world to show zero-tolerance for violence. From Akahata

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Labor’s New Footing: Trade Unions Map the Road Ahead

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 05:25:00 +0000

One big question for the US labor movement was answered by the midterm elections last year. Rebuilding the labor movement has to combine fresh and innovative organizing approaches with political action. Coming out of the defeat of the ultra-right Republicans in the Congressional elections in 2006, the labor movement is energized and on the move. Most everyone – from the Democratic Party and their candidates to the Republican Party – recognize the role the unions played.

The importance of labor’s contribution to the defeat of the Bushies in Congress was immediately apparent in the “First 100 Hours campaign” of the new Congress. Raising the minimum wage was front and center. In addition labor’s most important political objective, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), was rapidly introduced and passed through the House Education and Labor Committee and will probably have been passed in the House by the time you read this. The bill is co-sponsored by 233 members of Congress including many who are newly elected. [Ed. This issue went to press in late February. EFCA passed in the House on March 1 and is currently pending in the Senate.] The bill would take corporations and employers out of the business of union elections and allow workers, on their own, to organize a union by a majority signing union cards in a workplace.

Nothing shows the new energy and unity coming out of the elections like labor’s work on the EFCA. Both the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win (CtW) unions are fully mobilized for its passage and working together. There are using national and regional conferences, rallies, phone banking, the Internet, hearings, workplace meetings

Subject to Debate

There is a real important lesson in this turn of events for labor as it tackles the big challenges ahead. When John Sweeney was first elected president of the AFL-CIO in 1995, his election was the tip of a powerful reform movement in labor that was alarmed at the drop in union membership and the trade union’s decline in economic and political power. Almost immediately, as the federation began the process of rebuilding, a powerful debate broke out.

On one side were those who believed that lack of will and resources were the main problems holding back organizing and weakening labor. On the other side were those who thought that the problem had more to do with the hostile right-wing environment created by big business starting with the Reagan/Bush years and Patco. And there were many others who correctly said that rebuilding the labor movement would require both a new commitment to organizing and greater and more independent political action.

With many variations on a theme these differences blossomed and eventually resulted in the split in labor. But the labor movement today is shaking off that past. The unity in action around EFCA is a big step towards healing the breach and reuniting labor. The EFCA combines the need to organize with independent political action in an inseparable whole.

Labor’s EFCA Strategy

The unions pushed hard to get the EFCA introduced early and then passed in the new House of Representatives as part of a bigger strategy around the bill. Everyone understands very well that major opposition will develop in the Senate and that, even if it were to pass, Bush would immediately veto the bill. But the emerging strategy is to now turn support for workers’ right to organize and the EFCA into a major presidential campaign issue for the 2008 elections. Likewise labor intends to make the bill an issue in targeted 2008 congressional elections, where vulnerable Republicans face difficult re-election bids, especially in the Senate. Then, the thinking goes, with new victories in the House and Senate and a pro-labor Democrat in the White House, the Employee Free Choice Act can become the law of the land.

We can see the strategy in action and working already. Senator Barack Obama, John Edwards and Congressman Dennis Kucinich have all come out for the EFCA as part of their presidential campaigns. Hillary Clinton was a co-sponsor in the last session of Congress. But getting candidates to endorse and mention workers’ right to organize is not enough. Rather, linking the fight for the EFCA to ongoing struggles will be key. In the first hearings, held when the bill was reintroduced into the new Congress, one of the first to testify was Keith Ludlum who is deeply involved in efforts to organize the 5,500 pork processing workers at Smithfield Foods in Tar Heel, North Carolina. Ludlum was illegally fired during a 1994 organizing drive by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. With the EFCA those workers in Tar Heel would have been union a long time ago.

Other unions have set up meetings with members of Congress to hear similar first-person stories about company abuse and illegal activities to defeat union organizing. Many in labor also want Congress to hold hearings on EFCA around the country as a way of showcasing business and government attacks on the right to organize. They believe that live testimony will put added pressure on Congress to act to defend basic labor rights. Organized labor’s fight for this legislation needs to be seen as the cutting edge, the framework, for meeting labor’s many challenges.

The Challenges Ahead

There are many challenges facing labor today. Plant closings, job loss, and capitalist globalization are taking a vicious toll on US workers, destroying living standards and even whole communities. Wages and working conditions are under assault. Bush and others are leading the charge to do away with employer-based health care while at the same time doing nothing to provide for universal health care. The war in Iraq is killing thousands of people, both US and Iraqi. Many of the US dead and wounded are union members or from union families and all are overwhelmingly working class. Plus the war wastes billions of dollars that could be far better used for meeting people’s needs and providing jobs. Corporate and government abuse and scapegoating of immigrant workers is increasing. Corporate racism and discrimination against women are on the rise in the workplace.

Clearly one important answer to these and many other problems facing unions and working people is a much bigger labor movement. Some 60 million US workers say they would join a union if they could. Sixty million new union members would do a lot more than give workers a fighting chance. It would be a big step forward for democracy in general, for all people. Organization is the best way the working class and working people have of standing up to corporate power and wealth. Think what 60 million more union members would mean in the 2008 elections. That kind of surge in union power and influence could go a long way in slowing down and even reversing the ultra-right Republican political realignment and domination of the past 20 years.

Those kinds of numbers could begin the long process of reversing the terrible economic assault on all workers and working people. This is the kind of voice and potential organized force that could reverse the tax cuts to the rich and redirect money and priorities to vital human needs like housing, education, jobs, ending poverty and raising living standards. This is the kind of power that could guarantee passage of the Medicare for All Act to provide for universal, affordable health care for all in the US. More union contracts that raise wages and protect jobs and working conditions would put upward pressure on living standards for all workers.

In the early 1970’s the labor movement was much bigger than it is today. Yet even divided as it was on the Vietnam War, the Labor for Peace movement was decisive in ending that war. Today a much larger majority of a smaller labor movement is against the Iraq war. Today for the first time in its history the AFL-CIO has broken with US foreign policy and demanded that the troops come home. Large sections of labor have officially endorsed and participated in peace actions. Not since World War I has the mainstream of labor been so active against a war. Think what a labor movement, grown by 60 million members, could do to stop the war in Iraq and prevent a war in Iran.

Sixty million new members would bring millions of new African American, Latino, Asian and other victims of racial and national discrimination into the labor movement. It would bring millions of immigrant workers, women and youth. It would be a very positive change in social composition for organized labor and would tremendously strengthen it over all. Imagine the resulting growth of labor forms like the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, Coalition of Labor Union Women, and Pride At Work. This kind of growth and change in labor would strengthen and cement more strongly the core constituencies of the critical forces in society needed to build a mass all-people’s front against the ultra-right, transnational capital and capitalist globalization .

Not Just a Dream, a Necessity

This is not an argument that the EFCA is a magic bullet that will solve all of labor’s problems. Rather it is an argument that the need to build the labor movement is critical to progress for us all. It is an argument that we need to link passage of the EFCA to all of labor’s immediate struggles and beyond. It argues that passage of this law is vital and in the interests of all progressive and people’s movements. The labor movement will continue to develop innovative and creative organizing strategies that can win. Just look at the Smithfield campaign, SEIU’s great victory for janitors in Houston, or UE’s work in North Carolina and the steelworkers’ Tyson and Goodyear campaigns. The AFL-CIO’s alliance with the “workers’ centers” movement is another great example.

Did you know that every 23 minutes, a worker is fired or retaliated against for their support of a union in their workplace? This fact not only speaks to the viciousness of the corporate attack on unions, but it also speaks to the movement of workers down below. Thousands of workers, even in today’s harsh anti-union climate and unfair labor law, are fighting for their rights at work. The fight for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act gives us all a handle to help them, ourselves and the whole progressive movement.

Church-dictated Health Care Policy?

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 05:19:00 +0000

4-26-07, 1:30 pm

During this time of soaring health care costs and federal health care program cuts, mergers between religious and secular facilities threaten to further constrict health care services. The situation is particularly acute when Catholic hospitals merge with public and secular facilities. Formerly secular hospitals are more and more obliged to follow the dictates of the increasingly conservative Council of Catholic Bishops. This means that the public is denied access to health care services proscribed by a religious entity. In a nation founded on the principle of separation of church and state, this situation is unacceptable.

Catholic hospitals comprise the single largest group of nonprofit hospitals in the United States, representing approximately 17 percent of hospital admissions each year. These hospitals operate according to “The Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services,” issued by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. The directives ban all “homologous artificial fertilization,” abortion in all forms, the promotion of contraceptive practices, and all forms of sterilization. In the event of a merger, secular facilities that formerly offered these services may be forced to discontinue them.

How did this situation arise? Catholic hospitals benefit from substantial financial backing of the Catholic Church. This often gives the Catholic partner in a planned merger an advantage. Besides that, the secular hospital may have Catholic or otherwise conservative and religious board members. Such people may agree with Catholic strictures; others may accept restrictive policies when given the choice between conforming to Catholic doctrine or closing down completely.

It is true that some Catholic facilities perform reproductive health care services under different labels, or through loopholes in Catholic doctrine. Some merged Catholic/secular hospitals move their reproductive services offsite. These “separate but equal” clinics offer some of the services banned in the merged hospital, but do not enjoy the full use of hospital resources and facilities.

Besides that, they are sometimes difficult for some patients to reach. Separate women’s health clinics are targets for anti-abortion activists. Besides that, some Catholic hospitals claimed they would set up separate women’s health clinics as part of a partnership agreement, and never did so, according to an exposé in Ms. magazine several years ago. Separate and unequal facilities are no solution to the problem.

In the end, when push comes to shove, Catholic hospitals will terminate reproductive services if they appear to bend church doctrine too far. It is a matter of survival for them, as they cannot afford to lose Catholic sponsorship.

Historical Background

The Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 gave women the constitutional right to have abortions. During the years since 1973, states have progressively enacted laws making access to abortion more difficult. Twenty-two states have passed “conscience clauses.” These provisions allow individual medical providers, insurers and facilities to refuse to provide services that they find morally reprehensible.

Such services may include reproductive health care and counsel on issues such as fertility, birth control or “safe sex.” In 1997, Congress passed a conscience provision that allows Medicaid managed care plans to refuse counseling or referral for services to which they have a moral or religious objection.

That means, all health care providers and insurers, including those connected to the federal government, must bow to the religious views of a small percentage of the population. This violates the separation of church and state, and seriously curtails access to much-needed health care.

And who is hurt most? Women who need or want abortions for one. Poor women who depend on hospitals for reproductive care when local doctors will not take Medicaid also suffer. Rape victims who are denied access to the morning-after pill are other examples. Gay and lesbian issues come into play when access to safe-sex counseling and reproductive services are forbidden to them. End-of-life rights surrounding a person’s choice to die with dignity are at stake. And it can be reasonably estimated that merged hospitals will not allow procedures in the future that involve products of stem-cell research. This adds Alzheimer’s patients and paraplegics to the list. And all of that is besides the impact on doctors who need to offer their patients a full range of health care options.

In some cases, all workers in merged hospitals are obliged to sign agreements to follow the Conference of Catholic Bishops’ directives. This merging of religious and secular institutions therefore imposes the rule of religious doctrine on all people employed by or seeking health care services from the only facilities available in many communities. This merging of church and state is offensive, repugnant and cannot be tolerated.

New York State

The state of New York is a case in point. Citing health care costs and imminent Medicare cuts, the New York State “Commission on Health Care in the 21st Century,” commonly called the “Berger Commission,” issued a summary of recommendations in November 2006. The commission recommended the closure of nine hospitals in New York, and a “reconfiguration” of 48 others. The commission was given unprecedented power by former New York Governor George E. Pataki, and the state legislature. The Bush administration promised $1.5 billion over five years for rapid implementation of the report.

What will this mean for the people of New York, and by association, of the United States? The closures and mergers will result in displaced hospital workers, and jeopardize the health of people receiving treatment at the targeted hospitals.

Many of the mergers and conversions are between government-owned and private institutions. In Buffalo and Syracuse, this will result in mergers of hospitals regardless of the fact that their employees are organized in different unions, and have different governing structures.

A situation in Kingston, New York, has inspired debate about all of these issues. The Berger Commission mandated the merger of Kingston Hospital and Benedictine Hospital. Benedictine, a Catholic hospital affiliated with the Benedictine Sisters, is obliged to obey Catholic doctrine in all matters. Members of the Kingston community fear serious cutbacks in health care options following this merger.

In 1997, local activists nixed the planned merger of Northern Dutchess, Kingston and Benedictine hospitals. A group, which called itself PMS (Preserve Medical Secularity) successfully mobilized the Mid-Hudson Valley. Their efforts are detailed in a widely distributed video documentary about hospital mergers and how to fight them. Stories like this one provide a ray of hope. The Mid-Hudson group is reviving its campaign against the new state-mandated merger. Other communities need to do the same.

Currently, the Memorandum of Agreement between Kingston and Benedictine hospitals includes a statement that the hospitals “will continue as separate and distinct corporations, each with its own board of directors and corporate missions.” The agreement states that a new “corporate parent” will oversee both Kingston and Benedictine hospitals. The new board of directors will consist of six members from each of the two hospitals. The language is vague, though, and there is no guarantee that reproductive services will continue unabridged in the merged institution.

Call to Action

Handing the reigns of our health care system over to religious bodies is morally wrong, and should grate on the nerves of every American. This trend must stop. This is a call for everyone to research the issue in his or her own community. The actions of the Berger Commission ultimately touch all people in the state of New York. Similar mergers and closures throughout the nation touch all people. We must stop this dangerous trend.

Is your local hospital at risk? Find out. Read your local newspapers. Search for your hospital on the Internet. Is it part of a planned merger? Talk to your family, friends, neighbors and your fellow workers and colleagues. Write to your state and federal legislatures. Joint efforts are most effective. Many organizations will give you advice on how to organize to fight a merger. MergerWatch (MergerWatch.org), Planned Parenthood and the ACLU are three examples. We must stop this dangerous trend and preserve comprehensive health care for all people in the United States.

--Anna Bates is a contributing editor of Political Affairs. Send your letters to the editor to

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Class, Race and Women’s Equality – a Strategic View

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 05:07:00 +0000

4-26-07, 1:30 pm

Editor’s note: Excerpted from The Nature, Role and Work of the Communist Party. See for the full article.

We look at the world through a class lens. The class struggle is the mainspring of the historical process.

As Marx and Engels observed, “the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of the class struggle” (Communist Manifesto) Up until then, the historical process was seen as accidental and arbitrary. In constructing a new theoretical model, they persuasively argued that historical change was in large measure the outcome of the collective struggle of millions against their class oppressors rather than the whims of dominant classes and individuals or historical accidents. Their insight provided people in every corner of the globe with a new way to understand as well as influence history.

The class struggle has its origins in actual exploitative practices, which in turn are traceable to an integrated, global system of exploitation. The ceaseless accumulation of capital and the exploitation of wage labor are two sides of a single coin. And this inner drive is reinforced and sustained by the rivalry of competing capitals.

Left to its own devices, capitalism’s logic is to employ its control over the production process and the state apparatus to squeeze every possible ounce of surplus value from the working class. After all, when it comes to exploitation, capitalism is hard-wired, insatiable, and nearly universal, even penetrating the countries of socialism. But its near universality and dominance has not ushered in an era of peace and prosperity for the world’s people; just the opposite.

It is easy to agree with Marx, in an address to the Communist League he said: The main issue, cannot be the alteration of private property but only its annihilation, not the smoothing over of class antagonisms but the abolition of classes, not the improvement of existing society, but the foundation of a new one. (Historical Materialism: Marx, Engels, Lenin). I’m sure you agree with this, but not surprisingly, social democratic and center forces look at it differently.

Exploitative practices on a corporate and state level, they would agree, do exist, and on a growing scale. But they do not necessarily trace these practices to capitalism’s internal laws and tendencies or to the class nature of the state. Instead, most blame myopic corporations that prioritize short-term profit-taking and misguided public policy.

While acknowledging adversarial relations between capital and labor, they claim that disputes can be resolved within the framework of capitalism, albeit on a more level playing field (economic and political) than now exists.

This ideological fault line, distinguishing Communist and other left forces from social democratic and center currents does not preclude unity of action on issues of common concern however. Nor are the views of social democratic and center forces etched in stone.

In fact, a notable feature of today’s struggle is that social democratic and cen ter forces are not cut from the same cloth as their predecessors of the cold war years. They are bitter opponents of the Bush administration, support coalition building, mobilize labor through its own independent apparatus, oppose the Iraq war, display more sensitivity to issues of equality and diversity, and increasingly have serious doubts about capitalism’s ability to provide a decent life for working people.

Moreover, many welcome our participation in movements and struggles.

While much of the Communist movement’s criticism of social democratic forces was on the mark, sweeping characterizations of them as irredeemably reactionary in the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Revolution were not only mistaken, but also harmful.

So much so that Lenin went to great lengths to counter this in his famous essay, “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder and his speeches to the Communist International in the early 1920’s. But in the end, he was unsuccessful.

In fact, after Lenin’s death, Stalin’s “class against class” policy gave the young Communist movement reason to pursue its sectarian policies with a new vigor, going so far to call social democrats “social fascists.” And this continued until the 7th Congress of the Communist International in 1935, where Georgi Dimitrov argued for breaking with sectarian habits and for unity with social democrats who were changing their views under the fascist threat and the weight of the economic crisis.

On the heels of this, our own party developed broader strategic and tactical concepts of struggle. And only because we did that were we able to contribute decisively to the struggles that brought about a radical realignment of political and class forces in the US.

Moreover, in the course of these struggles, Communists gained the respect of the working class and its allies, thereby creating favorable conditions for the party to grow in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s.

Militancy and initiative mattered for sure, but only to the degree that they expressed themselves in the context of our strategic policy, only to the degree that we contributed to building a broad democratic front, and only to the degree that we assisted in re-electing Roosevelt and New Dealers to Congress.

Thus, the growth we experienced in that period didn’t take place in a vacuum. It required the political elaboration and practical application of a strategic policy that captured the main trends and tasks of that period; and, of course, it was intimately tied up with the growing intensity of the class and people’s struggles. The lessons for our work today are self-evident.

Democracy and Class Struggle

Still another essential feature of a Communist Party is an unyielding commitment to the struggle for democracy and democratic rights.

But isn’t democracy in capitalist society limited and restricted? Isn’t it the most effective means for concealing class relations and rule?

There is no controversy here. No Communist has to be persuaded of the limited character and ideological function of democracy under capitalism. But by the same token, no Communist should forget this incontrovertible fact: the struggle for democracy is of overarching importance to the working class and people’s movement.

It is not simply a means to an end, nor a tactical device to be employed when it advances the class struggle. Rather the struggle for democracy is both a means and an end. It empowers people and people empower democracy.

In fact, it is hard to imagine how the necessary forces can be assembled and unified at each stage of struggle – including the socialist stage – if the working-class and people’s movements are not fully engaged in the democratic struggle.

In democratic struggles – for peace, unionization, health care, racial and gender equality, the environment, affirmative action, education, jobs, living wages, pension rights, etc. – the working class and its allies gain experience, understanding, and cohesion to the point where they can contest for power.

Lenin once wrote, It would be a radical mistake to think that the struggle for democracy was capable of diverting the proletariat from the socialist revolution or of hiding, overshadowing it, etc. On the contrary, in the same way as there can be no victorious socialism that does not practice full democracy, so the proletariat cannot prepare for its victory over the bourgeoisie without an all-around consistent and revolutionary struggle for democracy. (The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination).

In short, there is no road to socialism that bypasses the struggle for democracy. In saying this, are we privileging the democratic struggle over the class struggle? By no means, class and democratic struggles interpenetrate each other in innumerable ways.

Only in textbooks and at high levels of abstraction do we find pure forms of struggle, that is, the democratic struggle here and the class struggle there. In real life, the two interact, draw into struggle the same forces, share a common class foe, and press against capital’s accumulation process.

Over the past quarter century, the struggles against right-wing ascendancy and neoliberal globalization have merged more and more into a single stream of struggle.

While democratic tasks change with each stage of struggle at the national level, today’s overriding democratic tasks on a global level are (and will probably remain so for some time): restraining the aggressive drive of US imperialism and US transnationals, abolishing nuclear weapons, addressing the environmental crisis, and radically reordering unequal relations between developed and developing countries.

Strategy

A cornerstone – some would say the essence – of a Communist Party is its strategic policy.

Without a sound strategic policy a party effectively relinquishes its role as a leader of the class struggle. It can talk militant and sound revolutionary, but without a scientifically substantiated strategic policy, the transition from the politics of protest to the politics of power is impossible.

In determining a strategic policy, we start from a very sober analysis of the stage of struggle and the overall balance and distribution of power among the contending forces. From such an analysis, the main political tasks come into view as well as which forces are obstructing social progress and which are necessary for its advance.

For the past 25 years, the building of a labor-led people’s coalition against right-wing domination of our nation’s political structures has been our strategic objective. It has given political coherence to our policies and practical work and allowed our party to stand head and shoulders above many organizations on the left.

Take, for example, the recent elections, in which the main political task was to take control of Congress out of Republican hands. No other struggle had the same potential to reconfigure the politics of our country and strike a blow for peace and social progress. We understood this, and thus we were where a communist party should be: fully engaged in that struggle which if won changes the dynamics of every other struggle.

Not everyone, including some on the left and even a few in our party, appreciated this. Much the same could be said about the peace movement that took nowhere near full advantage of this political opportunity. As Election Day approached, too few threw themselves heart and soul into the struggle to change Congress, and too much time was spent bemoaning the Democrats. At best they damned them with faint praise.

Luckily, tens of millions of people were of the opinion that the ballot box, despite its limitations, was the most powerful way to express their unhappiness with the war as well as other policies of the Bush administration and acted accordingly.

Struggle for Racial and Gender Equality

A commitment to the struggle for racial and gender equality is at the core of our outlook and practice. The struggle for equality is an inseparable part of the class struggle and the struggle for socialism. It is at the heart of democratic and social progress.

In recent decades vast political, economic, and social transformations have altered the class, national, and racial demographics of the population and the terrain on which the working class and it allies battle their class enemies. Nevertheless, the fight for full equality retains its overarching strategic importance, although it has to be fitted to today’s conditions – politically, economically, socially, culturally and ideologically.

Anyone who devalues the struggle for racial and gender equality in any of its forms gravely weakens the overall struggle for social progress. At the very least, such devaluation limits the sweep of any victory; at worst, it provides an opening to the most backward sections of our ruling class and their political constituency to gain ascendancy. In fact, isn’t that what we have seen over the past quarter century?

Wasn’t the ascendancy of the extreme right achieved in large measure by racist appeals to white voters?

In nearly every category that measures social well-being, the conditions of racially oppressed people have worsened. In the communities of the African American, Latino, Asian American, Native American, and other nationally and racially oppressed peoples the situation is at crisis levels.

It seems like jails can’t be constructed fast enough to accommodate the swelling prison population of whom the disproportionate number are young, African American and Latino men.

Women’s rights have been under siege too – reproductive rights, equal pay for comparable work, living wages, parental leave, quality public education, health care, and affirmative action are being shredded by the extreme right. Racially oppressed women are in the eye of both storms.

The objective of this many-sided assault is not simply to wipe out gains won in earlier periods, but also to crush the fighting spirit of the African American, Mexican American, and other nationally and racially oppressed peoples and women and their developing strategic alliance with labor.

The ruling class well understands that the convergence of labor, the nationally and racially oppressed, and women constitutes its most formidable foe and presages a future without exploitation and oppression.

After all, the nationally and racially oppressed and women are not simply objects of super-exploitation and oppression, but also are fighters, organizers and unifiers; they bring insights and understandings to every struggle; and they bridge the main sectors of the people’s movement.

In fact, the success of the labor-led people’s movement depends on their full participation in the leadership and membership.

There is no other way to go forward.

The new terrain of struggle not only brings some relief from the right’s vicious assault, but also new opportunities to go on the offensive against racism. But if history is any guide it won’t happen without struggle and initiative.

As for us, the struggle for racial, gender and other forms of equality should be given new urgency too; it must come to the top of our agenda and woven into everything we do.

The struggle for equality has to be more than a point of agitation; it must be concrete and practical. It should focus on action. It should be an integral part of our political and legislative agenda. It should proceed on the grounds that white people can be won to fight racism, based on their own interests.

And, the ideological struggle against white and male supremacy should be stepped up. Over the past thirty years, the extreme right has steadily changed the ways that millions understand racial and gender oppression.

Their ideas on equality – how to define it, who has achieved it, what progress has been made, what prevents it, etc. – have become the dominant ones in the minds of millions. Therefore, we, along with other democratic-minded people, have to engage the right (and some others as well) on the level of ideas.

To make matter worse, we run into concepts on the left and in progressive circles that are ideologically disabling too. “Whiteness” theories and studies, for example, tend to focus nearly exclusively on identity and privilege of white workers while leaving major social and institutional realities – like capitalism, the national question, inter, as opposed to intra, class divisions, and the institutional nature of racial and gender oppression – in the background, sometimes to the point of invisibility.

On a broad aggregate level, white workers have a relative advantage over nationally and racially oppressed workers due to the fact that the latter experience national and racial, as well as class exploitation and oppression. This advantage and differential status is reflected in wages and income, employment opportunities, incidence of poverty, home ownership, educational attainment, health care access, life expectancy, and so forth. And in many of these categories, it has grown wider.

This harsh reality belies the claim that racist discrimination and oppression are disappearing, that we live in the post-civil-rights era. But it does not follow that white workers are either privileged or derive material gain from racist exploitation and oppression, except by understanding the dynamics of class and race in the narrowest way – something that I don’t think we should do.

Actually, exploitation of white workers and superexploitation of racially oppressed workers are two aspects of a single process of capitalist exploitation. They are embedded within and reinforce one another.

While racism weighs heaviest on nationally and racially oppressed workers, it also depresses the living standards of all workers. It hollows out democracy generally. It provides a rationale for imperialist war that is never in the interests of the working class. And it weakens, often fatally, working class struggles and disfigures the class and moral outlook of white workers. Racist exploitation and oppression, in other words, constitute a body blow to the economic security, political and organizational unity, and fighting capacity of the entire working class.

Perhaps the best, though by no means the only, evidence of this fact is found in the history of the South, where virulent racist exploitation and oppression combined with intense exploitation of all workers to retard the economic and political development of that region. Even today, nearly 150 years after the defeat of slavery, the living standards, working conditions, and democratic rights of working people in the South lag behind those of their counterparts in the North.

Hence, white workers in the South have paid a steep price in political, economic, social and ethical terms, obviously nowhere near as steep as their Black brothers and sisters, but significant nonetheless. But it is precisely this fact that is obscured by the proponents of the notion of white skin privilege. Even where it is acknowledged, the acknowledgment is usually incidental rather than at the core of their analysis.

Proponents of this concept end up almost inevitably mired in political paralysis and defeatism. After all, once it is concluded that white workers are privileged and have a material stake in the reproduction of racism, what can left and progressive people do besides moralistically posture? In the universe of white-skin privilege, the prospects for class unity, equality, and social progress become dim indeed.

Institutionalized racism is not a transhistorical phenomenon merrily marching through history with a “life of its own.” Nor is it the special product of the working-class movement, as some suggest. On the contrary, it has specific systemic and class roots. It’s a creature of capitalism.

Saying this doesn’t imply that the working class has no hand at all in reproducing racism. To think so would be naïve. Still when racism manifests itself in the thinking and actions of working people, we should be exceedingly careful not to separate its expressions and practices from its capitalist context nor conceal its systemic and class roots.

That said, the struggle against racism is winnable only on the basis of broad, united, multiracial actions, only on the basis of white workers assuming in their own interests and the interests of class unity a major responsibility for combating racism and fighting for the special demands of the nationally and racially oppressed people. Anything less will not have a ghost’s chance of success. Just as a broad antislavery coalition was necessary to overturn the system of slavery in the 19th century, so too is a broad coalition of the working class, the racially oppressed, and all democratic forces necessary to eradicate the contemporary structures of racism and racist ideology as we enter the 21st century.

At any rate, the ideological struggle against racism and for equality is of great importance, and we have to engage it more aggressively.

--Sam Webb is chair of the Communist Party USA. Send your letters to the editor to

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May 2007 – Celebrate May Day!

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 04:53:00 +0000

4-26-07, 1:30 pm

In this issue...

The 2006 congressional elections changed the political landscape in the US, providing new openings for labor to go on the offensive, writes Communist Party Labor Commission Chair Scott Marshall. Communist Party National Chair Sam Webb tackles the nature and role of the Communist Party: what the party of socialism is all about. PA labor editor Ben Sears reviews A Country That Works, by Andrew Stern of SEIU. Is it a new vision for labor or class collaboration? Anna Bates examines the effects of merging private religious control over public hospitals. Who gets hurt when private meets public? In an interview, journalist David Bacon talks about his latest book, Communities without Borders and the immigration issue: why immigrant workers and native-born workers need to work together. Rémy Herrera writes on the history of one of the most famous photos in the world – that of Che Guevara by Korda. Joel Wendland gives an account of the history of the Ford Hunger March and the drive to organize Ford in the 1930’s as seen through the life of Dave Moore.

Please also find book reviews, poetry, commentary and more.

PA Editors

Features: Cover story:

34 Class, Race and Women’s Equality – a Strategic View How class, race and gender affect us in the 21st century. By Sam Webb

14 Barcelona and Forgotten Memory Have the people of Spain forgotten the civil war? By Luis Tijerina

18 Church-dictated Health Care Policy? Who gets hurt when private religious organizations control public hospitals? By Anna Bates

20 Community Creation and Capitalist Globalization: PA talks to David Bacon Why immigration policy needs to change.

24 Labor’s New Footing: Trade Unions Map the Road Ahead After the 2006 elections, it’s time for labor to go on the offensive. By Scott Marshall

28 Which Side Are You On? Is Andy Stern's new book Innovative thinking or class collaboration? By Ben Sears

30 75th anniversary of the hunger march: brother D ave M oore’s story How working people fought for unity and won a union at Ford. By Joel Wendland

38 Secrets and Paradoxes of Che Che has become an iconic image and capitalist commodity. By Rémy Herrera

44 Nuevos pasos de los trabajadores hacia el porvenir Por Scott Marshall

Departments:

04 Letters

05 Marxist IQ

06 Commentary

Guns ‘ r’ Us: The Tragedy of Child Soldiers By Nooshin Shabani

Labor’s Power: It’s Not Just the Numbers By Mike Tolochko

07 That’s Illogical By Owen Williamson

09 Nobody Asked Me, But... By Don Sloan

10 Book Reviews

Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem and the Pursuit of Profit Reviewed by Norman Markowitz

The Chávez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela Reviewed by Gerald Horne

12 Poetry

Crossing Indiana: Fields and Endless Fences By Eric Paul Shaffer

Rosa Parks By Dan Brook

41 Fiction dr By Greg King

Vermont Students Demand Living Wage

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 01:26:00 +0000

4-26-07, 9:22 am

Twelve students at The University of Vermont have launched a hunger strike demanding a living wage for the university's lower paid staff, according to the Student Labor Action Project.

The campaign to compensate the school's employees fairly began in 2005 when students convinced the university's President Daniel Mark Fogel to create a Basic Needs Budget Task Force.

In 2006, the task force found that about 250 of the university's employees earned less than what they must in order to supply their basic needs.

So far President Fogel has refused to implement the recommendations of his own task force and provide pay raises to these underpaid staff.

To help him change his mind, students organized a petition drive, public demonstrations and rallies, and even erected a 'tent city' on the campus to protest the unfair treatment of many of the university's workers.

Student organizers believe that the hunger strike is a last resort as all other means of communicating their demands to the university administration have been ignored.

Support the campaign and send a letter to President Fogel by clicking on the icon in this article.

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Bangladesh: Ominous Portents

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 01:23:00 +0000

4-26-07, 9:18 am

Indeed ominous developments are unfolding in our neighboring country – Bangladesh. As we go to press, according to media reports, the former prime minister and Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson, Ms Khaleda Zia, has agreed to go into exile in a deal (her son arrested on corruption charges will be released to accompany her) with the military-backed caretaker government. Khaleda Zia had ended a five year term as the prime minister in October last year. Under the Bangladesh Constitution, a pre-election interim government takes over the supervision of the elections to be held within two months. Readers will recall following convulsive controversies over the electoral rolls and the charges of attempts to rig the election by the outgoing government, widespread protests occurred leading to the virtual abandonment of elections. A state of emergency was declared on January 11 by the army which is still continuing. The military-backed caretaker government, though proclaiming to create conditions for holding of free and fair elections, has refused to announce any time table, so far. A clear indication that elections are not around the corner came from a verdict of the Bangladesh High Court which on March 27 scrapped the electoral rolls and directed the newly-constituted Election Commission to prepare fresh electoral rolls.

Earlier, Sheikh Hasina, president of the Awami League Party, had been charged with murder and extortion while she was away in the United States of America. Subsequently, the military-backed caretaker government has debarred her from returning to Bangladesh. The Awami League and all other Left and democratic forces were in the forefront of the struggle for restoration and strengthening of democracy in Bangladesh. By both these actions it is clear that the military-backed caretaker government is decimating the political parties, and hence political democracy.

The army-backed caretaker government has declared a so-called crusade against corruption and has made it known that until this is completed, elections cannot be held. This appears to be a virtual repetition of the tactics adopted by the undivided Pakistan Army General, Ayub Khan. In abrogating democracy and imposing a military dictatorship, Ayub Khan had advanced the slogan of `basic democracy’. The people of today’s Bangladesh had suffered immensely with merciless attacks on their language and nationality aspirations under this military dictatorship. Even after the liberation of Bangladesh, the people had experienced, twice, military designed democracy under Gen. Zia Ur Rahman and Gen. H M Ershad. Once again, the people of Bangladesh are being subjected to a military rule that is proclaiming a ‘corruption free democracy’.

While making drastic changes in the anti-corruption laws, more than a hundred political leaders have been arrested. While holding no brief for corruption, the so-called crusade against it cannot be a pretext for abrogating democracy. This is precisely what is being done where a ban has been imposed on political and trade union activities. Almost all the offices of political parties are under lock and key since the declaration of the state of emergency.

In the meanwhile, globalisation’s agenda under the directives of the World Bank are being ruthlessly carried out. Nationalised banks are being corporatised. The Chittagong Port has been privatised. Electricity charges have been hiked. Customs and excise duties on imports have been significantly lowered. All measures that will gladden the hearts of advanced capitalist countries and imperialism are being implemented. With such fresh inroads for maximising profits, it is little wonder that the Western capitals are encouraging the abrogation of democracy in Bangladesh. In this context, it should also be noted that nearly 60 per cent of Bangladesh’s army is involved in international peace keeping operations where the soldiers draw salaries enormously higher than domestically. In order not to disturb this arrangement, the Bangladesh army would think many a time before taking any action that may upset imperialism and the advanced capitalist countries. A situation that is mutually beneficial and convenient to both imperialism and Bangladesh army. Once again, the hypocrisy of the West on their commitment to democracy and human rights is nakedly exposed.

Clearly, the people of Bangladesh are bracing themselves for a long drawn struggle to restore democracy and protect the rights and interests of the common people. The earlier military regimes were defeated. But at a tremendous cost of human life and suffering. Once again, people’s will and democracy will, surely, triumph. In this struggle of the Bangladeshi people, all democratic and peace-loving Indian neighbours express their solidarity.

From People's Democracy

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Repeating History

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 01:18:00 +0000

4-26-07, 9:13 am

No exit strategy; violent resistance by the occupied nation’s citizens; opposition to the war in the United States; international anger at the U.S. because of the war; the American economy being decimated by the war; escalating casualties; presidential refusal to recognize mistakes: all of these statements apply to the Iraq war today as much as they did to the Vietnam War forty years ago.

While it is difficult to pinpoint the start of the Vietnam War, since America was involved marginally in that country as early as the 1950’s, major escalation began in 1964. The circumstances bringing about this escalation parallel the start of the Iraq war to an amazing degree. Brief descriptions of this first, major escalation in Vietnam, and the start of the Iraq war, follow.

During the Vietnam War, the staging area for the U.S. Seventh Fleet was the Gulf of Tonkin, on the east coast of North Vietnam. On August 2 1964, the U.S. destroyer Maddox was on an espionage mission when it was fired on by North Vietnamese torpedo patrol boats. The Maddox, with supporting air power, fired back, sinking one North Vietnamese boat.

Two evenings later the Maddox and another destroyer, the C. Turner Joy were again in the gulf. The instruments on the Maddox indicated that the ship was under attack or had been attacked and the captain began an immediate retaliatory strike. Both ships began firing into the night with assistance from American air power.

Hours later the captain concluded that there might not have been an actual attack. James B. Stockdale, who was a pilot of a Crusader jet, undertook a reconnaissance flight over the waters that evening and when asked if he witnessed any North Vietnamese attack vessels, Stockdale replied: ‘Not a one. No boats, no wakes, no ricochets off boats, no boat impacts, no torpedo wakes - nothing but black sea and American firepower.’

Regardless of any inconsistencies, this incident, which may not have happened at all, was presented to the world as an act of aggression against the United States. The fact that the U.S. had no legitimate business in the Gulf of Tonkin was not addressed. Congress quickly met and with the same lack of fact-finding rigor demonstrated by that body nearly forty years later, passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which allowed the president to take all necessary measures to repel aggression. Those measures resulted in a significant escalation of the war. The ultimate result was years of death and carnage for American soldiers and Vietnamese soldiers and civilians.

On September 12, 2002, President Bush addressed the United Nations and told the skeptical delegates and the doubting world about his belief in Iraq’s progression towards creating nuclear weapons and his purported knowledge of its scientists, weapons designs and attempts to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. None of it was true, but Congress bought the story, with both Republicans and Democrats proclaiming the need to give Mr. Bush the authorization to invade Iraq. The result, to date, has been death and carnage for American soldiers and Iraqi soldiers and civilians.

During the Vietnam War, President Nixon ordered the secret invasion of Cambodia, with the apparent goal of containing communism to North Vietnam. Congress approved the bombing of that nation when it passed the Cooper-Church amendment in 1971. While this amendment restricted the ability of the president to deploy troops, it allowed him to do whatever he deemed necessary ‘… to protect the lives of American armed forces wherever deployed,’ and did little to limit the president’s use of air power. While Mr. Nixon denounced the bill, it did not prevent him from bombing Cambodia under the guise of protecting the lives of American soldiers.

Today Mr. Bush is stating categorically that he knows Iran is supplying weapons to Iraqi freedom fighters. He has further stated that he is going to do ‘something’ about it. Congress appears to be in a somewhat less receptive mood than it was four years ago, but it is likely that, in the name of ‘supporting the troops’ Mr. Bush will once again be given a free reign, with nothing more than a slap on the wrist in the form of a non-binding resolution from Congress to express its displeasure.

When Mr. Nixon opposed the Cooper-Church Amendment (it was an amendment to another bill), he said that it harmed the war effort. Mr. Bush and Co. vehemently opposed the non-binding resolution expressing disagreement with his decision to send an additional 20,000 troops, echoing Mr. Nixon’s sentiments and claiming that it would show the ‘enemy’ that America is divided, and would be a slap in the face to the soldiers serving in Iraq.

In 1967, six Vietnam Veterans founded the organization ‘Vietnam Veterans Against the War.’ These men had served in Vietnam, and knew first hand that the war was, at best, a calamitous mistake. Thirty-seven years later, a group of veterans of the Iraq war formed ‘Iraq Veterans Against the War.’ Like their predecessors, these men and women are exposing the cruelty, carnage and obscenity of the war.

The outcome of the Iraqi war will not be known until some future date; Mr. Bush has said that it will be another president, not he, who decides when American soldiers will leave that country. But history does tend to repeat itself, as has been indicated by even this cursory look at some of the major milestones of the Vietnam and Iraq wars. If that is indeed the case, the world can expect several more years of blood and death in Iraq, more American soldiers returning home in coffins, and a growing resentment of the U.S. There does not appear to exist any more optimistic precedent in America’s history.

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U.S. carrot, not stick, key to IPR protection

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 01:15:00 +0000

4-26-07, 9:11 am

BEIJING, April 25 -- The U.S. government has lately been showing in no uncertain terms its unhappiness with China's protection of the United States' intellectual property rights (IPRs). On April 20 China released a 64-page action plan promising to toughen its laws and increase crackdowns on piracy.

One needs to commend the U.S. government for taking this dispute to the WTO. At least this differs from the long tradition of the U.S. unilaterally imposing sanctions without resorting to a world organization where both parties are members bound by the organization's rules.

Some would sympathize with the United States while understanding the status of IPR protection in China. There is no dispute over U.S. concerns, but as to the approaches to addressing the problems, there exist a variety of views.

The United States tends to think that China either has no ability or intention of fixing the problem. The U.S. argues that the Chinese government has a responsibility to provide protection and ought to have the capacity to improve quickly. Such a view is not incorrect but is somewhat simplistic.

The truth has a lot to do with economics. For a long time, China has been isolated from the world, and its economic system has been quite different from the rest of the world. Consequently, the pricing system of China differs greatly.

Before China opened to the world, it operated independently from the global economy and its people received low wages. Since prices were also low, the purchasing power of the renminbi was actually higher than the official exchange rate would indicate.

With China's opening, its price system has been challenged by the outside world and as a result is being transformed.

On one hand, the inexpensive Chinese labor force has been a magnet for foreign outsourcing. On the other hand, most Chinese consumers cannot afford Western goods under IPR protection. For instance, a Windows Vista package could cost a Chinese worker a month's salary.

Consumers are often forced to choose between not using these products at all in order to respect intellectual property rights or use the products without enough respect for such rights.

Likewise, the Chinese government is faced with a similar dilemma: either rigorously implement its commitment to IPR protection while curtailing domestic demand or meet consumer demand while incrementally enforcing protection.

This is the dilemma of all developing economies. To its credit, the Chinese government has made the strategic decision to launch economic reform, to join international regimes of intellectual property rights, and to eventually accede to WTO.

In assuming its responsibilities it is confronting great challenges. It is unfair for the U.S. to blame Beijing without recognizing the work done and the immensity of the job.

There is much room for improvement on the Chinese side and the authorities are committed to this challenge. However, its success entails cooperation across the Pacific. It is fairly easy to compare the morality behind addressing the IPR issue with some of America's own behavior.

One obvious example, Chinese don't consider U.S. troops' involvement in the 1900 siege of Beijing respectful.

Still, U.S. actions do not provide an excuse for China to evade its own responsibility in cracking down on pirating. But China's conformity with international standards requires international cooperation.

First and foremost, the U.S. needs to understand the complexity of the differences between US and China price systems. The United States is partially responsible for the difference because of its past effort to isolate China. The United States should understand that China needs more time to meet the daunting challenges of IPR protection.

Second, making concessions to the developing countries by discounting the standard prices of goods with U.S. intellectual property rights provides the best incentive to build a consumer culture with respect for law, especially for economically disadvantaged countries.

The US strategy should not be to expect Chinese not to buy these goods or to punish them when the two price systems are so skewed. Rather, it should nurture customers who are willing to respect IPRs while paying reasonable prices.

Third, the U.S. should reach an agreement with China for phased implementation of IPR protection. There exist not only unequal economic conditions between the two countries but also significant regional disparities within China.

With phased IPR protection, the U.S. could encourage the Chinese central government to launch protection with regional governments and finally all other sectors following suit.

Forth, encourage the good practices already in effect.

On April 10, a Council on Foreign Relations Task Force report on Sino-American relations was released advocating continuing the trajectory of engagement set by Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972. The report calls for an 'affirmative agenda'.

Its major findings are to incorporate China into a global system integration is a responsible course involving a blend of engaging China on issues of mutual concern, weaving China into the fabric of international regimes on security, trade and human rights. These findings affirm the outcome of past engagements that have motivated China as a stakeholder in the world system. The same approach will increasingly intertwine China's interests with the rest of the world.

The wisdom of integrating China into the community of nations has so far worked and should continue to be effective.

Given China's current challenges, IPR protection neither constitutes an imminently pressing issue nor vital interest. Many competing priorities demand more attention and resources.

China will continue to make progress on IPR protection, and its overall improvement is commensurate with China's advancement in economic development and integration into the world economy.

Compared with punitive measures, the engagement approach is far more productive.

--From XinhuaNet. Shen Dingli is executive dean, Institute of International Studies, and director, Center for American Studies, Fudan University.

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Audio: Congress Stands Up to Bush and Pushes on Civil Rights

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:40:00 +0000

4-25-07, 10:40 pm

Gabcast! Poltical Affairs #13 - Congress Stands Up to Bush and Pushes Civil Rights
Democrats Stand Up to Bush on the Iraq War; PA Joins a Media Coalition to Protest Postal Rate Hike; Legislation is Needed to Reduce the Gender Pay Gap; and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act is Re-introduced in Congress.

Click here to open and subscribe in iTunes Democrats Stand Up to Bush on War

This past week, congressional leaders from both houses met in conference to negotiate the final version of a $124 billion spending supplemental. The final bill includes a timetable for withdrawal that would begin no later than October 1 and requires that President Bush be accountable to Congress for the war in Iraq.

The announcement of the outcome of the conference brought sharp words for the President from Democratic leaders.

In a speech, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, “No more will Congress turn a blind eye to the Bush administration’s incompetence and dishonesty.'

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), who led Senate Democrats during the conference, told reporters that “On Iraq, the American people want a new direction, and we are providing it.”

In addition to a redeployment timetable, the supplemental provides funds for the war, increased spending for veterans' benefits and health care, additional funds for the Gulf Coast recovery, and other items typically found in spending supplementals.

Congressional Republicans refused to fight the timetable provision at the conference and left criticism up to the White House. Both Vice President Cheney and President Bush questioned the loyalty of members of Congress and accused them of 'emboldening the enemy.'

This claim appeared to contradict a statement last week by Defense Secretary Robert Gates who described the congressional debate as 'helpful.'

The anti-war group Americans Against Escalation in Iraq reported that hundreds of thousands of voters contacted their representatives during the congressional recess last week to insist that Congress stand by its vote to change course in Iraq.

Groups like Americans United for Change and VoteVets.org are targeting some Senate Republicans as well as several House Republicans in a TV and radio ad campaign. The ads are highlighting their refusal to side with the vast majority of Americans who want to bring the war to an end.

VoteVets.org has even teamed up with MoveOn.org to create a television ad campaign produced by Oliver Stone to increase pressure on congressional Republicans.

In related news, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama delivered a major foreign policy speech in Chicago this week during which he accused President Bush of abandoning the global leadership afforded by his office. Bush, said Obama, squandered the goodwill and unity the world offered the US after the attacks in September 2001.

Obama expressed a concern that Bush's incompetence would lead many Americans to stop viewing their own security and well-being as connected with that of the rest of the world. Obama called for a multifaceted foreign policy that combined aid programs, multilateral unity and strength, adherence to international law, and diplomacy.

Obama said, 'This will require a new spirit – not of bluster and bombast, but of quiet confidence and sober intelligence, a spirit of care and renewed competence. It will also require a new leader.'

PA Joins Media Coalition to Block Postal Rate Hike

Political Affairs magazine has joined with over 100 other publications and media organizations to oppose a planned US Post Office rate hike. The proposed hike unfairly burdens small publications with higher postal rates, and grants special favors to major media corporations.

In fact, the hike proposal was submitted by TimeWarner, one of the largest media corporations in the world. The plan was selected by postal regulators without public input.

So far more than 50,000 letters from supporters of the independent media have been sent to Congress and the Postal Board of Governors protesting the plan.

Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL) has pledged to convene a hearing on the matter in his House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Let's be clear. This is a First Amendment issue. Rate hikes that unfairly target small publications and benefit the wealthy corporate media undermine the right to a free press.

Political Affairs isn't an organ of corporate America. It is a voice of and for working people. With these new regulations our voice could be silenced.

Please tell Congress and the Post Office to stop the rate hike and protect the First Amendment. Go to PoliticalAffairs.net, scroll down the Take Action column, and click on the 'Stop the Post Office' icon for more information and to let your voice be heard.

Legislation Needed to Reduce Gender Pay Gap

April 24th was Equal Pay Day, the day that marks how far into the calendar year the average woman must work to earn as much as a man earned last year.

Full-time women workers are paid an average of 77 cents for every dollar men are paid. Women of color are short-changed even more as African American women are paid only 68 cents and Latinas just 57 cents on men's dollar.

The WAGE Project estimates that this persistent wage gap costs the average full-time US woman worker between $700,000 and $2 million over the course of her work life.

A new study by the American Association of University Women finds that education doesn't help overcome the difference. Women are paid about 80 percent of what men are paid one year out of college. But within 10 years, the gap grows to 69 percent – even after accounting for such factors as the number of hours worked, occupations, or parenthood.

An AFL-CIO survey of working women found that 57 percent of the respondents believe their employers do not compensate them equal to their male counterparts.

The most successful tool for closing the gender pay gap has been the union. According to labor statistics, women who belong to unions earn 31 percent more than their non-union counterparts.

Legislative efforts to close the pay gap include two bills introduced in this session of Congress. The Paycheck Fairness Act and the Fair Pay Act would provide legal remedies for victims of the gender gap, outlaw gender-based wage discrimination, and establish the principle of comparable worth.

Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, said, 'Day-to-day, women struggle to make ends meet and provide for their families. [The gender gap] hurts their ability to save for a home, for medical emergencies, or for retirement. We need this legislation now more than ever.'

Men have a stake in supporting equal pay. Women adversely affected by the gender gap are their mothers, sisters, intimate partners, and children. Additionally, men who work in fields predominantly held by women are also victimized by the gender gap.

In the end the gender gap is a tool of super-exploitation and division. The billions stolen from women each year through the gender gap do not end up in the pockets of male co-workers. They end up on the corporate bottom line as profit.

Using right-wing propaganda to convince men that either they have an interest in maintaining the gender gap or that it doesn't exist divides working people by gender. It weakens the unity needed to create a democratic society where each has an equal voice and receives a just reward for their contributions.

Non-Discrimination Bill Re-introduced in Congress

A measure that would outlaw discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation and gender identity was re-introduced in Congress yesterday. The bipartisan bill, known as the Employment Anti-Discrimination Act (or ENDA), would make it illegal to fire, refuse to hire or refuse to promote an employee based on the person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

Expressing strong support for passage of the bill, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said, 'In far too many states, it is still absolutely legal to fire someone because of their sexual orientation and gender identity or expression.'

Nancy Wohlforth, Co-President of Pride at Work, AFL-CIO, the LGBT voice in the labor movement, said, 'The fundamental precepts of the labor movement are centered around the recognition that workers must be assessed only on their job-related performance. Yet, all forms of workplace and employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression remain lawful in the majority of US states.'

Currently 33 states lack legal bars against discrimination based on sexual orientation, and 42 states allow discrimination in the workplace based on gender identity.

H. Alexander Robinson, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, a civil rights organization for the African American LGBT community, said, 'We envision a world where all people are fully empowered to participate safely, openly, and honestly in family, faith and community, regardless of race, gender-identity or sexual orientation. ENDA is particularly important because it will provide protections in the workplace, the source of most people’s livelihoods.'

National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Matt Foreman singled out for praise the bill's inclusion of transgender workers for protection against discrimination. Foreman said, 'We vowed we would not support an Employment Non-Discrimination Act that left behind the transgender members of our community.'

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Labor, Civil Rights Groups Praise Introduction of Anti-Discrimination Bill

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 04:35:00 +0000

4-25-07, 12:30 pm

A measure that would outlaw discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation and gender identity was re-introduced in Congress yesterday (4-24-07). The bipartisan bill, known as the Employment Anti-Discrimination Act (ENDA), would make it illegal to fire, refuse to hire or refuse to promote an employee based on the person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

Expressing strong support for passage of the bill, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said, 'In far too many states, it is still absolutely legal to fire someone because of their sexual orientation and gender identity or expression.'

Sweeney added that protections against job discrimination should be expanded to include sexual orientation and gender identity. 'It is just plain wrong for anyone to discriminate against or fire a worker based on sexual orientation or gender identity, and this legislation gives Congress the chance to make such shocking discrimination illegal once and for all,' he stated.

Nancy Wohlforth, Co-President of Pride at Work, AFL-CIO, the LGBT voice in the labor movement, said, 'The fundamental precepts of the labor movement are centered around the recognition that workers must be assessed only on their job-related performance. Yet, all forms of workplace and employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression remain lawful in the majority of US states.'

Currently 33 states lack legal bars against discrimination based on sexual orientation, and 42 states allow discrimination in the workplace based on gender identity.

In a press statement, ACLU Legislative Counsel Christopher Anders added his organization's support for the bill. 'Too many people for too many years have lost jobs for no good reason. Congress should pass, and President Bush should sign, this bipartisan bill this year,' said Anders.

The National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC), a Washington DC-based civil rights organization dedicated to empowering Black same-gender-loving, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, weighed in with support for ENDA. H. Alexander Robinson, NBJC's executive director and CEO, said, 'We envision a world where all people are fully empowered to participate safely, openly, and honestly in family, faith and community, regardless of race, gender-identity or sexual orientation. ENDA is particularly important because it will provide protections in the workplace, the source of most people’s livelihoods.'

Robinson urged quick and decisive action by Congress to provide this protection. 'Discrimination is wrong and discrimination in the workplace should be illegal,' he stated.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), which first supported the original version of the bill introduced in the mid-1970s by Rep. Bella Abzug (D-NY), echoed support for the bill.

NGLTF Executive Director Matt Foreman especially singled out for praise the bill's inclusion of transgender workers for protection against discrimination. 'We vowed we would not support an Employment Non-Discrimination Act that left behind the transgender members of our community,' he said.

NGLTF withdrew its support for ENDA in the late 1990s when its leading proponents failed to include gender identity as a protected category. Supporters of the more inclusive version of the bill won their case in 2005 when the bill was revised.

A spokesperson for the Business Coalition for Workplace Fairness, a coalition of companies that support passage of the bill, cited legal protections from discrimination as the best way to promote diversity, a key to productivity and the recruitment of qualified and talented workers.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), one of the bill's original co-sponsors, rejected criticism leveled by anti-gay opponents of the bill. In the few states where similar measures have been adopted, Frank asserted, “it has caused none of the problems that opponents inaccurately claimed it would and it has provided job protection for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people who ask simply to be allowed do their jobs and be judged on their job performance.”

Responding to anti-gay critics of the bill, ENDA supporters point out that the bill excludes small businesses from its scope, has nothing to do with legalizing gay marriage, and would not require companies to create new employee benefits.

--Contact Joel Wendland at

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A Political Lemon Law: Rejecting a culture of lies

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 01:55:00 +0000

4-25-07, 9:46 a..m.

This past weekend, I got together with one of my best friends in life and listened as words of pain, bitterness and confusion flowed freely from his lips. He had just learned that one of his family members had been killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq. A young man, scarcely in his second decade of life, was gone.

Sadly, there was nothing unique in the torrent of emotions my friend was feeling. The families of young women and men who have lost their lives as a result of the Bush administration's military adventurism in Iraq have felt the same intense grief. There are other families, of course, who wonder whether their young men and women will be coming home, safe and sound.

What struck me about my friend's reaction to the tragic news was that he turned grief outwards, as he is an activist in the progressive movement and has been (and remains) in the heat of the anti-war struggle.

What was really getting to my friend was not simply the loss of a relative so young. No, indeed. Instead, he focused on the Bush administration and the ultra-right. And he talked extensively about the Blackwater USA, the private company engaging in paramilitary and security operations in Iraq, and being paid rather handsomely as a result of its contracts.

'Sometimes,' he said, 'it makes me wonder whether people care.'

This question was only somewhat rhetorical. As an activist, my friend knows that there are plenty of people that care, not just in the US, but worldwide. What is at the core of his statement, I feel, is why there aren't more people who care; why isn't anti-war sentiment universal?

My friend knows, of course, that building a movement for change -- whether it is to end a war, strengthen the labor movement, or achieve socialism -- is an ongoing struggle which requires gaining ground and then keeping it. Military battles operate in the same way. When emotions hold sway, it is easy to think that what is obvious to an individual should also be obvious to everyone else. Because this isn't the reality, such attitudes don't help to build effective movements. The old adage, 'slow and steady wins the race' is as true in politics as it is in a game of cards.

This isn't to say what my friend was feeling wasn't valid or heartfelt on his part, because it was. The feelings of those whose sentiments are supportive of the ultra-right, specifically those who aren't cynical manipulators at the policy and corporate media levels, are similarly valid. My anti-war friend has been deeply hurt; many who are pro-war are deeply frightened.

Of course, this fear has been whipped up by the Bush administration and ultra-right which has served it up more often than a morning cup of coffee. President Bush and Vice President Cheney have mentioned 9/11 and Al Qaeda every time opposition to their militarism is raised.

Let's be clear: The invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 or Al Qaeda, as the Downing Street memo and the Defense Department Inspector General's recently declassified report make clear.

Or, to put it more simply, the invasion of Iraq had as much to do with the threat of terrorism as Prohibition in the 1920's had to do with stopping the import of German beer.

It is a mistake to believe that President Bush, Vice President Cheney or the ultra-right generally is stupid. And I am not ready to endorse the viewpoint of Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, among others, that Bush is in denial. Perhaps I am wrong with giving the President and his ultra-right glee club any credit for intellect. I believe they know that Iraq has become a mess. I believe they know what they're doing. And I believe that what is taking place in the hallowed halls of the administration, where they're knee deep in big crappy, is not policy or leadership. It is sales.

That's right. It is sales. And telling outright lies in the name of sales is an established fact of life. It has become an almost accepted cultural phenomenon: The used car that 'was only driven once by a little old lady in Pasadena;' the product that's 'new and improved.' The breath mint containing cloraphyl. That was a really successful ad decades ago, until someone pointed out that goats consume cloraphyl almost exclusively and they still smelled like goats.

Yesterday, the media covered hearings on Capitol Hill in the matter of the death of football-star-turned Ranger Pat Tillman and his death by fratracide (friendly fire). Military personnel who knew the truth were ordered not to say anything; Tillman's family was lied to; and the military public relations machine spun in to action. Vice President Cheney was involved in a similar cover up after shooting his friend in the face during a hunting accident on a Texas ranch; his cover up was less effective, and of shorter duration than the obsfuscation in the Tillman case. Perhaps Cheney should have had some Pentagon staffers in tow during his hunting trip.

And the Office of Special Counsel announced an investigation as to whether Karl Rove used federal property in connection with fundraising activities for political campaigns in violation of the Hatch Act. The office will also investigate the firing of at least one US attorney. Two things should be kept in mind: The person conducting the investigation is a political appointee of the Bush administration, and that office has never conducted an investigation of this scope and importance in its entire history.

We can add this to the list of investigations involving government: Teapot dome; Watergate; Iran-Contra; the investigations into the FBI and CIA; the plethora of investigations involving the Clinton administration. And this list is hardly complete.

With the Democratic party's mid-term election victories, it is easy for pundits to suggest that these investigations are 'politically motivated.' In the world of sales, these would be known as 'buzz words.' Our culture doesn't think in those terms, necessarily, because no commercial I've ever read or seen says something like: 'Don't buy our competitors product. It's politically motivated.'

It seems to me ineffective to attack the ultra-right on the issue of policy acumen or political leadership, since they have none and can offer none. Instead, let's reject their sales technique, perhaps amending a well known line from an anti-war song by the late Phil Ochs: 'We Ain't Buyin' Anymore.'

And let me suggest it is past time for a political 'lemon law.'

-Lawrence Albright is a contributing writer for Political Affairs on politics and culture.

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Boris Yeltsin and Jenny Lopez

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 01:46:00 +0000

4-25-07, 9:41 am

A few days ago, according to Pravda, (the former paper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union now specializing in National Inquirer-like gossip) a newly rich 35-year old Russian billionaire banker, Adrei Melnichenko paid Jennifer Lopez $3 million to perform at a birthday party for his wife Aleksandra at their Berkshire England estate. Great for Jenny Lopez! But what a sad commentary on the extravagance of gangster capitalism amongst Russia's ruling class, a class brought to power by the late but not so great Boris Yeltsin. What a tragic coincidence of death and outlandish opulence, symbolic of Yeltsin's enduring legacy.

The week began with an announcement of Yeltsin's death occasioning much commentary on his role and legacy as he lies in state awaiting burial. Not surprisingly much of it has praised him as a great liberator and troubadour of justice, democracy and the American way. The praise is so excessive it almost echoes a strain of super-Yeltsin, reminding me of a conversation I once held with a Young Communist League of the Soviet Union (Komsomol) staffer who described Michael Gorbachev in a similar cult of personality way: 'He's no ordinary man.' Well neither was Mr. Yeltsin.

The New York Times described him as leaving a 'giant if flawed legacy.' Tracing the development of what even they call 'buccaneer capitalism' and the 'usurping of political power by a new class of oligarchs' they go on to commend his actions that insured that there would be no return to socialist property 'that reduced a talented and cultured people rich in natural resources to a beggar among nations.'

Hunh? A beggar among nations? The former Soviet Union? The country that defeated the three-fourths of Hitler's Army and achieved strategic military parity with the US? The country whose industrial might came prior to the collapse of equaling many developed capitalist countries?

Clearly revealed in this single phrase, is the deep class hatred of US imperialism for the former USSR, a hatred that has blinded them from all sense of objectivity and balance when considering the legacy of Yeltsin and his descendants, a hatred that has led them to elevate a hopeless drunk and manic depressive to the level of super star. No wonder then that they look over his trampling over democracy and the will of the former Soviet people in the name of free markets. It should be remember that Yeltsin defied Soviet elections and law by:

1) ignoring the national plebiscite in which a majority voted for retaining the USSR; 2) outlawing the Communist Party; 3) blowing up Parliament with rocket and tank fire with defenseless legislators inside.

This is how the Times shamelessly portray him as 'a democrat who often ruled in the manner of a czar. He showed no reluctance to use the power of the presidency to face down his opponents as he did in 1993 when he ordered tanks to fire on a Parliament dominated by openly seditious Communists.'

Oh really? Now one can see it clearly: this is the kind of thinking that led to arming of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan; the alleged support given the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, the aid rendered the late Jonas Savimbi in Angola and host of other dictators and petty tyrants. All and anything in the name of fighting communism and for free markets.

And for this Yeltsin has been bestowed a mantle of greatness.

Yeltsin's legacy lies in greatness of the betrayal of the hopes and aspirations of the Soviet people. It is he who reduced the country to a beggar among nations, raising the infant mortality rate to Third World levels, lowered the life expectancy rate, and created extreme poverty and wide scale hunger for millions. How this could have happened in a country that boasted of 'developed socialism' how it was that the working class and people sat aside and were at best neutral while these events took place remains a huge question. However that in no way excuses the legacy of Yeltsin or the opulent excesses of his followers, who romp in billions while their country men and women starve.

--Joe Sims is editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at

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Articles of Impeachment of Dick Cheney

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 01:23:00 +0000

4-25-07, 9:18 am

(APN) ATLANTA -- Today [4-24-07] US Rep. Dennis Kucinich introduced Articles of Impeachment against Vice President of the United States Dick Cheney. Kucinich did not limit the Articles to the issue of Iran; they also include defrauding the public and Congress over the need to invade Iraq. Prisoner torture, outing CIA agents, and illegal domestic warrartless wiretapping were not included as reasons.

The main sections of the FULL TEXT of the bill as obtained by Atlanta Progressive News are reprinted below. We redacted the individual exhibits supporting various claims, as well as the 'line numbers' for flow. However, the files are available here as well: http://kucinich.house.gov/UploadedFiles/int3.pdf

Impeaching Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Resolved, That Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States, is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate:

Articles of impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives of the United States of America in the name of itself and of the people of the United States of America, against Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States of America, in maintenance and support of its impeachment against him for high crimes and mis3 demeanors.

Article I

In his conduct while Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of Vice President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States by fabricating a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the use of the United States Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to our national security interests, to wit:

(1) Despite all evidence to the contrary, the Vice President actively and systematically sought to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States about an alleged threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction...

(2) Preceding the March 2003 invasion of Iraq 20 the Vice President was fully informed that no legitimate evidence existed of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The Vice President pressured the intelligence community to change their findings to enable the deception of the citizens and Congress of the United States.

(3) The Vice President’s actions corrupted or attempted to corrupt the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, an intelligence document issued on October 1, 2002 and carefully considered by Congress prior to the October 10, 2002 vote to authorize the use of force. The Vice President’s actions prevented the necessary reconciliation of facts for the National Intelligence Estimate which resulted in a high number of dissenting opinions from technical experts in two Federal agencies.

The Vice President subverted the national security interests of the United States by setting the stage for the loss of more than 3300 United States service members; the loss of 650,000 Iraqi citizens since the United States invasion; the loss of approximately $500 billion in war costs which has increased our Federal debt; the loss of military readiness within the United States Armed Services due to overextension, lack of training and lack of equipment; the loss of United States credibility in world affairs; and the decades of likely blowback created by the invasion of Iraq. In all of this, Vice President Richard B. Cheney has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as Vice President, and subversive of constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice and the manifest injury of the people of the United States.Wherefore, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office.

Article II

In his conduct while Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of Vice President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States about an alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda in order to justify the use of the United States Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to our national security interests, to wit:

(1) Despite all evidence to the contrary, the Vice President actively and systematically sought to deceive the citizens and the Congress of the United States about an alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda...

(2) Preceding the March 2003 invasion of Iraq the Vice President was fully informed that no credible evidence existed of a working relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, a fact articulated in several official documents, including...

Article III

In his conduct while Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of Vice President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has openly threatened aggression against the Republic of Iran absent any real threat to the United States, and done so with the United States proven capability to carry out such threats, thus undermining the national security of the United States, to wit: (1) Despite no evidence that Iran has the intention or the capability of attacking the United States and despite the turmoil created by United States invasion of Iraq, the Vice President has openly threatened aggression against Iran as evidenced by the following:

(2) The Vice President, who repeatedly and falsely claimed to have had specific, detailed knowledge of Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction capabilities, is no doubt fully aware of evidence that demonstrates Iran poses no real threat to the United States as evidenced by the following:

(3) The Vice President is fully aware of the actions taken by the United States towards Iran that are further destabilizing the world as evidenced by the following...

(4) In the last three years the Vice President has repeatedly threatened Iran. However, the Vice President is legally bound by the U.S Constitution’s adherence to international law that prohibits threats of use of force...

Wherefore Richard B. Cheney, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

From Atlanta Progressive News

--About the author: Matthew Cardinale is the News Editor and National Correspondent for Atlanta Progressive News and may be reached at

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Defeated Pakistan Army Reluctant To Return To Tribal Areas, 700 Troops Killed

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 01:19:00 +0000

9:15 am

Pakistan’s army suffered losses of 700 killed in its unsuccessful effort to push Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters from Afghanistan out of their tribal sanctuaries in Pakistan, an Islamabad-based journalist reports. That defeat may explain Islamabad’s reluctance to resume the struggle.

“With every incursion, civilian death and displacement, the Pakistan Taliban grew stronger,” writes Graham Usher in the April 16 issue of “The Nation” magazine, published in New York. The Taliban “defended villages, ambushed army patrols, killed pro-government elders and imposed their own brand of ‘Islamic’ law and order. “

“When the army sued for peace with pro-Taliban tribesmen in the Waziristans in 2005 and 2006, it was not because of a new ‘holistic’ strategy for the tribal areas, as sold by (Pervez) Musharraf to Washington,” Usher said. “It was because of the army’s military and political defeat.”

In 56 years of independence, Pakistani soldiers had never set foot in the Waziristans, “part of the trade-off for keeping the tribes loyal,” Usher said, and when they did the numbers of civilians killed and displaced were in the thousands.

Malik Qadir Khan, a tribal leader in North Waziristan explained, “Everyone supported the Taliban when the army came in. It was a people’s revolt. Pakistan had broken its promise, and that’s a big thing in the tribal areas. You don’t break your promise.”

Although U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney’s advice to Musharraf has been to “go after them,” journalist Rahimullah Yousafzai, an expert on the tribal areas believes, “every use of force is a victory for the militants.” Yousafzai said the answer “must involve a strategy that provides education and jobs for thousands of impoverished and unemployed youth, who are ready recruits for the Taliban.”

The tensions in the tribal regions will not lessen until Pakistan has a civilian government, historian Ahmed Rashid told Usher. “Only a civilian government can bring reform. You cannot have free elections in the tribal areas when there are no free elections in Pakistan,” Rashid said.

Currently, the Pakistan Taliban are the de facto rulers of the areas vacated by the Pakistan Army. In Miramshah, capital of North Waziristan, it is not the elders or police who govern, Usher writes, “It is the mullahs and young men with black shaggy hair and rifles slung over their shoulders.”

Usher said the U.S. “will not tolerate” the standoff and the public response to the retaliatory Pakistani bombings in Bajaur tribal area and South Waziristan has been “ferocious.” Locals claimed the attacks, which killed seminary students and woodcutters, were not executed by Pakistani army helicopters but by U.S. Predator drones flown in from Afghanistan.

Suicide bomber responses to the aerial attacks since then mean the Taliban is saying, according to retired army general Talat Masood, “If you come after us in the name of America’s war in the tribal areas, we will come after you all over Pakistan.”

Two week before the upheavals began last March 9th in Islamabad when Musharraf suspended Pakistan’s Chief Justice, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, Cheney flew into Islamabad to deliver a “tough message” to Musharraf, namely he was upset by peace agreements Musharraf signed with pro-Taliban tribesmen along Pakistan’s border areas with Afghanistan, Usher wrote. “Bloodied by Iraq, the Bush Administration has realized that Afghanistan could tip the same way.” Since 9/11, Pakistan has received $10-billion in direct U.S. aid and as much again in covert aid, “most of it military,” “The Nation” article says.

The “crisis” Pakistan’s President-General Musharraf faces today, Usher writes, is the worst since he took power in his Oct., 1999 coup, and the situation in the tribal regions will not improve until democratic elections are held.

Critics of Musharraf have taken to the streets not only to defend an independent judiciary. “They want Musharraf to stand down, exiled civilian leaders like Benazir Bhutto to come home and free and fair elections to be held so that Pakistan can once again be a democracy,” Usher writes. This would mean “an end to policies based on military might, political abdication and panicked American dictates” but “so far no U.S. government official has called for a return to civilian rule in Pakistan.” --Sherwood Ross is an American writer who covers political and military subjects. Reach him at

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Cuba to Honor Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 01:17:00 +0000

4-25-07, 9:11 am

Havana, Apr 24 (Prensa Latina) Cuban artists will honor two great Mexican painters, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, a tribute that will be sponsored by several cultural institutions.

The program, scheduled from July 6 to November 24 in Havana, will be dedicated to Frida's 100th birthday and the 50th anniversary of Rivera's death, it was reported here on Tuesday.

Mexican Cultural Attache in Havana Eduardo Menache told a news conference that organizers expect to convey the two painters' cultural and social wealth and their legacy to the world.

'Frida and Diego, rather than being Mexican, are Cuban, universal, and this tribute will contribute to keeping on building the two countries' identity,' Menache said.

The program to pay tribute to the two Mexican artists, 'paradigms of Latin American plastic art in the 20th century,' will also consist of two contests, a children's creative workshop, theoretical events, the inauguration of a collective mural and exhibitions.

On this occasion, a delegation headed by researcher Teresa del Conde and two of the four 'Fridos' (Kahlo's pupils) will travel to Cuba.

The program will begin on July 6 (on Kahlo's birthday), when an exhibition of paintings by Cuban artists Zaida del Río, Alicia Leal, Agustín Bejarano and Eduardo Roca (Choco) will be inaugurated.

In addition, six second-year students of the San Alejandro Fine Arts Academy will paint a collective mural, and the exhibition 'Long Live Life: Frida', consisting of artworks by 40 Mexican artists, will be inaugurated.

The Pablo de la Torriente Brau Center will call the contest 'A Song for Frida and Diego', in which all Cuban singer songwriters can participate with songs on the struggle for social justice.

There will be a poster contest in which Cuban designers and artists will take part, and 1,000 copies of the winning work will be reproduced.

Other activities include the exhibition of films and documentaries on Mexican muralist movement.

From Prensa Latina

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