People Before Profit blog

Editorial: Iraq Is The Homeland of All... Let Us Build It Together

Tue, 31 Aug 2004 01:27:00 +0000

Weekly edition: 24 August 2004 Iraq Is The Homeland of All... Let Us Build It Together

After the collapse of the dictatorship, Iraqis of various political, ethnic, religious and communal affiliations were looking forward to building a new life on the basis of respect for different opinion, multiparty system, discarding violence irrespective of type and source, practicing civilized debate, and the rule of justice and law.

The process since then has witnessed numerous difficulties, hurdles and interference. Some of these relate to the way the change came about and the resulting occupation of our country. This has confronted our people and the patriotic forces and parties with interlocking tasks, where the patriotic aspects have merged with the efforts to achieve democracy. Rebuilding various institutions and organs of the Iraqi state on new basis has emerged as an absolute necessity for achieving a number of tasks along the path of ending occupation, regaining sovereignty and tackling urgent issues, namely security, stability, unemployment, economic revival, provision of public services, Reconstruction, etc, thus moving forward in building a peaceful prosperous democratic Iraq.

Along this path, there have been basic achievements contributing to the vitality and determination to proceed with the political process. Thus there have been the Law for Iraqi State Administration in the Transitional Period, its appendix, the formation a broadly-based interim government, the transfer of power on June 28, and finally the success of the National Conference as well as the emergence of the Interim National Assembly through the broadest exercise of democracy and most comprehensive representation of the sections of Iraqi society.

During the National Conference and afterwards tensions and clashes continued in Najaf and other Iraqi cities. In a profound feeling of concern, the Conference adopted a responsible initiative to tackle the crisis, provide relevant solutions and contact all sides, appealing on them to exercise patience and prudence as well as adopting well-balanced solutions that give priority to supreme national interests. The initiative defined the route for moves and efforts to restore peace and avert further dangers to innocent people, stressing the need for the rule of law and order as well as resorting to dialogue to solve problems. The initiative included sending a delegation and a call to abolish militias, surrender weapons, end occupation of the holly shrine in Najaf and join the political process. At the same time, the Conference strongly urged the government, political parties and popular organizations to take initiatives and exert all efforts to avert the military option as a solution for problems.

As tensions, clashes and a senseless whirlwind of bloodshed, destruction and devastation have continued, we believe that the Conference' initiative should be re-launched. All sides concerned should openly accept it and exert all efforts to implement it in order to stop bloodshed and to save citizens' lives and the holly shrines. This will create the atmosphere for the interim government to carry out their promise to the Iraqi people to establish security and stability, improve living standards, provide public services, provide the prerequisites for achieving full independence and national sovereignty, as well as preparing for the upcoming general elections. Thus, it is imperative to openly and clearly declare acceptance, without stalling or delay, of the unanimous decision of the National Conference.

Let us end the crisis by a historical declaration of a decision to disband militias, surrender their weapons, resort to peace and join the political process. In this there will be no losers but winners, for the greatest winner will be our homeland, our people as well as their hopes and aspirations to build a secure and peaceful Iraq of love, fraternity and understanding; a fully independent and sovereign Iraq.

It is the homeland for all of us. So let us build it together as a democratic, federal and unified Iraq

--Tareeq Al-Shaab is the central organ of the Iraqi Communist Party.

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Open Letter to George W. Bush from Michael Moore

Tue, 31 Aug 2004 01:18:00 +0000

August 26, 2004

It Takes Real Courage to Desert Your Post and Then Attack a Wounded Vet

Dear Mr. Bush,

I know you and I have had our differences in the past, and I realize I am the one who started this whole mess about 'who did what' during Vietnam when I brought up that 'deserter' nonsense back in January. But I have to hand it to you on what you have uncovered about John Kerry and his record in Vietnam. Kerry has tried to pass himself off as a war hero, but thanks to you and your friends, we now know the truth.

First of all, thank you for pointing out to all of us that Mr. Kerry was never struck by a BULLET. It was only SHRAPNEL that entered his body! I did not know that! Hell, what's the big deal about a bunch of large, sharp, metal shards ripping open your flesh? That happens to all of us! In my opinion, if you want a purple heart, you'd better be hit with a bullet -- with your name on it!

Secondly, thank you for sending Bob Dole out there and letting us know that Mr. Kerry, though wounded three times, actually 'never spilled blood.' When you are in the debates with Kerry, turn to him and say, 'Dammit, Mr. Kerry, next time you want a purple heart, you better spill some American red blood! And I don't mean a few specks like those on O.J.'s socks -- we want to see a good pint or two of blood for each medal. In fact, I would have preferred that you had bled profusely, a big geyser of blood spewing out of your neck or something!' Then throw this one at him: 'Senator Kerry, over 58,000 brave Americans gave their lives in Vietnam -- but YOU didn't. You only got WOUNDED! What do you have to say for yourself???' Lay that one on him and he won't know what to do.

And thanks, also, Mr. Bush, for exposing the fact that Mr. Kerry might have actually WOUNDED HIMSELF in order to get those shiny medals. Of course he did! How could the Viet Cong have hit him -- he was on a SWIFT boat! He was going too fast to be hit by enemy fire. He tried to blow himself up three different times just so he could go home and run for president someday. It's all so easy to see, now, what he was up to.

What would we do without you, Mr. Bush? Criticize you as we might, when it comes to pointing out other men's military records, there is no one who can touch your prowess. In 2000, you let out the rumor that your opponent John McCain might be 'nuts' from the 5 years he spent in a POW camp. Then, in the 2002 elections, your team compared triple-amputee Sen. Max Cleland to Osama bin Laden, and that cost him the election. And now you are having the same impact on war hero John Kerry. Since you (oops, I mean 'The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth!') started running those ads, Kerry's polls numbers have dropped (with veterans, he has lost 18 points in the last few weeks).

Some people have said 'Who are you, Mr. Bush, to attack these brave men considering you yourself have never seen combat -- in fact, you actively sought to avoid it.' What your critics fail to understand is that even though your dad got you into a unit that would never be sent to Vietnam -- and even though you didn't show up for Guard duty for at least a year -- at least you were still IN FAVOR of the Vietnam War! Cowards like Clinton felt it was more important to be consistent (he opposed the war, thus he refused to go) than to be patriotic and two-faced.

The reason that I think you know so much about other men's war wounds is because, during your time you in the Texas Air National Guard, you suffered so many of them yourself. Consider the paper cut you received on September 22, 1972, while stationed in Alabama, working on a Senate campaign for your dad's friend (when you were supposed to be on the Guard base). A campaign brochure appeared from nowhere, ambushing your right index finger, and blood trickled out onto your brand new argyle sweater.

Then there was the incident with the Crazy Glue when your fraternity brothers visited you one weekend at the base and glued your lips together while you were 'passed out.' Though initially considered 'friendly fire,' it was later ruled that you suffered severe post traumatic stress disorder from the assault and required certain medicinal attention -- which, it seems, was provided by those same fraternity brethren.

But nothing matched your heroism when, on July 2, 1969, you sustained a massive head injury when enemy combatants from another Guard unit dropped a keg of Coors on your head during a reconnaissance mission at a nearby all-girls college. Fortunately, the cool, smooth fluids that poured out of the keg were exactly what was needed to revive you.

That you never got a purple heart for any of these incidents is a shame. I can fully appreciate your anger at Senator Kerry for the three he received. I mean, Kerry was a man of privilege, he could have gotten out just like you. Instead, he thinks he's going to gain points with the American people bragging about how he was getting shot at every day in the Mekong Delta. Ha! Is that the best he can do? Hell, I hear gunfire every night outside my apartment window! If he thinks he is going to impress anyone with the fact that he volunteered to go when he could have spent the Vietnam years on the family yacht, he should think again. That only shows how stupid he was! True-blue Americans want a president who knows how to pull strings and work the system and get away with doing as little work as possible!

So, to make it up to you, I have written some new ads you can use on TV. People will soon tire of the swift boat veterans and you are going to need some fresh, punchier material. Feel free to use any of these:

ANNOUNCER: 'When the bullets were flying all around him in Vietnam, what did John Kerry do? He said he leaned over the boat and 'pulled a man out of the river.' But, as we all know, men don't live in the river -- fish do. John Kerry knows how to tell a big fish tale. What he won't tell you is that when the enemy was shooting at him, he ducked. Do you want a president who will duck? Vote Bush.'

ANNOUNCER: 'Mr. Kerry's biggest supporter, Sen. Max Cleland, claims to have lost two legs and an arm in Vietnam. But he still has one arm! How did that happen? One word: Cowardice. When duty called, he was unwilling to give his last limb. Is that the type of selfishness you want hanging out in the White House? We think not. Vote for the man who would be willing to give America his right frontal lobe. Vote Bush.'

Hope these help, Mr. Bush. And remember, when the American death toll in Iraq hits 1,000 during the Republican convention, be sure to question whether those who died really did indeed 'die' -- or were they just trying to get their face on CNN's nightly tribute to fallen heroes? The sixteen who've died so far this week were probably working hand in hand with the Kerry campaign to ruin your good time in New York. Stay consistent, sir, and always, ALWAYS question the veracity of anyone who risks their life for this country. It's the least they deserve.

Yours,

Michael Moore

PS. George, I know you said you don't read the newspaper, but USA Today has given me credentials to the Republican convention to write a guest column each day next week (Tues.-Fri.). If you don't want to read it, you and I will be in the same building so maybe I could come by and read it to you? Lemme know...

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Books - Against Global Apartheid & South Africa and Global Apartheid, by Patrick Bond

Sat, 28 Aug 2004 01:33:00 +0000

Patrick Bond of the University of Witwatersrand in Johanneburg has developed a reputation as one of the more trenchant critics of both governments in Southern Africa – especially the African National Congress led regime in Pretoria and the ZANU-PF administration in Harare – and international financial agencies, e.g. the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

In these works, he combines his two interests in a sweeping critique cum condemnation of both these regimes, along with these international agencies. The author is understandably upset with the difficulty that Southern African regimes have had in resisting the dictates and mandates of the IMF and World Bank.

His works are worth reading but a major flaw of his work is that despite his detailed critiques of these ruling parties and Washington, conspicuously missing from his narratives is similar consideration of the domestic opposition, especially in South Africa, which is disproportionately comprised of the affluent and retrograde from the European minority. One would never know from his writings that not only do they continue to control the commanding heights of the economy in this region but, as well, they have at their disposal powerful political parties – e.g. the formation led by the odious Tony Leon, who only figures in these pages when the author quotes him approvingly when he assailed ANC foreign policy. Thus, the naive reader can easily put down his works with the idea that the problem in the region is that leaders are knaves – not that there is a powerful obstructionist opposition with ramified ties to the Washington he so rightly despises.

* * * At times it seems that the author's irritation at the ANC especially overcomes his analysis. Thus, he cites President Thabo Mbeki's words, 'The globalization of economy resulting among other things in rapid movements of huge volumes of capital across the globe, objectively also has the effect of limiting the possibility of states to take unilateral decisions.' The author acknowledges the veracity of these words, but then proceeds to suggest that South African's economy would be radically different – but for the knavery of the ANC. [Against Global Apartheid – hereinafter, AGG: viii] He does this though he writes subsequently, 'virtually no single country has the reserves to withstand a co-ordinated attack by financial speculators.' [AGG-p.8] Yet his hostility to the ANC and Mbeki is such that when he and they make concrete proposals that all fair-minder observers would support – e.g. 'rejuventating the UN' by broadening the membership of the all-powerful Security Council – the author simply mentions this point then says a few paragraphs later that this potentially powerful demarche is 'beyond my immediate scope to address...' [AGG-117] I suspect that one reason why Mbeki has referred to Bond and his ilk as 'ultraleft' is not necessarily because of his and their stiff opposition to many of their policies but also because even when Mbeki and the ANC come up with positive programs – e.g. reforming the UN – instead of helping to propel this initiative forward, which is indispensable for the future of international peace and security, the author either ignores or dismisses the point.

Thus, the author is critical of South Africa's performance at the now heralded 1999 Seattle global trade meet, where Pretoria's delegate – who was the 'only proponent amongst developing countries' of including 'labour, social and environmental' clauses in trade agreements – was thwarted. [AGG-130-131] This is a complicated matter, as evidenced by Pretoria's difficulty in rallying its traditional allies to its banner. But for the author, it is just more evidence of how 'misguided' and feckless the ANC is.

In the second volume under review, the author is scathing in his analysis of Pretoria's attempt to bring peace to war-torn Burundi. Yet, as so often happens in these pages, the author does not provide the reader with alternative proposals beyond debt cancellation – which, of course, is an issue for the Paris and London that go unmentioned, more so than Pretoria. Indeed, the author's obvious hostility toward the ANC and its allies makes the reader rather skeptical of his overall arguments.

In the second volume under review, the author writes of 'alienation and discontent...obviously increasing' among the African majority in South Africa. [8] Yet because the author neglects to mention throughout the horrible reality of organized right-wing and ultra-right wing forces imbedded amongst the European minority in that nation, he is unable to explain why this same African majority continues to vote heavily for ANC governments, for despite their apprehension or even critique of this organization, they recognize that there is a larger, more sinister foe: something that for whatever reason the author scandalously neglects.

In addition, though the author is justly critical of the various regimes in Washington, at times he paints a picture that lets them off the hook-curiously. Thus, he writes that 'many countries witnessed extraordinary social, civil and regional conflicts...during the 1980s-90s.' [AGG-18] He then lists a number of African nations, including Angola. Later he writes of 'violent regional conflicts,' including Angola and Mozambique (where the opposition MNR was long in the pay of the global right-wing). [AGG-39] Still later, he writes of '27 years of Kenneth Kaunda's nationalist misrule' in Zambia. [AGG-46] However, one would never know from this book that the Angolan conflict – akin to a number of the conflagrations he lists – were exacerbated and lengthened considerably by aid from U.S. imperialism. Thus, the war in Angola lasted until about 2002 with the fires being stoked by generous U.S. aid to UNITA. As for Zambia, this slighting reference to Kaunda elides the massive destabilization this nation suffered over decades because of Lusaka's selfless aid to the South Africa in which the author now resides. Hence, again, the unsuspecting reader might think that Angola's and Zambia's problems are wholly home-grown.

Similarly, France does not figure at all in his analysis (nor does Britain), though Paris and London are still major players in the domestic economies and politics of Africa and feel that they deserve a privileged position in the continent's exploitation. This is all quite curious. Like many authors, Bond writes blithely about 'post-Cold War geopolitical fragility,' [AGG-19] which is proper, but he does not note at all the role of the former Soviet Union as something of a counterweight to U.S. imperialism (see Vietnam, for example); thus, he does not contemplate the blow to the hopes for the socialism that he so ardently desires by both the fall of the USSR and its blunders – which in the eyes of some, has harmed immeasurably the prospects for a socialist future. Thus, the author writes that the cry in the 1970s for a 'New International Economic Order...faded badly over the subsequent two decades,' but the reader is not given a hint as to why.

To be fair, the author does not appear to approve of any government on the planet – not just those in Southern Africa. Though apparently a Marxist and socialist, he lists Cuba as a representative of 'Third World Nationalism' though Havana for some decades has been in the forefront of shaping Marxist and socialist thought and praxis. [AGG, 94] But this category is rather questionable, in any case, since the leader of Russia (a nation that overthrew Havana's patron, the former USSR) and Nigeria, which harbors one of Africa's more rapacious capitalist classes are both listed with Castro and Cuba under this heading. Similarly, he avers that the regime of Bill Clinton and that of Gerhard Schroeder were 'virtually indistinguishable from the policies of conservative predecessors' e.g. 'Reagan' and 'Kohl.' [AGG, 118] Contesting this point would require a volume as long as the ones under review but suffice it to say that this is something of an overstatement, which could mislead progressive forces both tactically and strategically if followed.

To his credit, the author is laudatory of 'Global Justice Movements,' e.g. environmental and labor activism, etc. Yet, unless one is an anarcho-syndicalist it is difficult to imagine the realization of some of Bond's goals – e.g. 'nixing' or liquidating the IMF and World Bank – absent the holding of state power by progressive forces at some point. One gets the impression from Bond that marches and demonstrations and 'Social Forums' will bring this about, though at best these are necessary – but not sufficient – preconditions.

Thus, I think, because of this preference for mass movements to bring change and his shunting aside regimes of all stripes, he does not engage sufficiently the 1998 proposal by the ANC-led alliance for a 'Brasilia-Pretoria-Delhi-Beijing' alliance to challenge U.S. imperialism and its acolytes. There have been other discussion about a 'Moscow-Delhi-Beijing' alliance and still others that the author does not note. Yet, as imperfect as it may be, it will require state power of some sort – ultimately – to confront in the global arena the state power in Washington that the author so ardently denounces.

One of the major points contemplated by the 'Global Justice Movement' in the U.S. is the relative paucity of African-Americans in the ranks of the anti-corporate-led-globalzation movement. I have long felt that one reason for this omission is this movement's emphasis on stressing maintenance of U.S. sovereignty in the face of global agreements, whereas African-Americans – traditionally the most progressive sector in an otherwise moderate and conservative U.S. electorate – from their own experience have learned that they make progress often when U.S. sovereignty is circumscribed: witness the clamor today for international monitors for the November elections in fraud-ridden Florida, for example or the process by which 'racial' segregation retreated during the Cold War, not least because of global pressure. I can now add another factor to my explanation of why some African-Americans have steered clear of this movement for if Bond's words are indicative of the thinking in this movement – and I think they are – it will be quite difficult to sell African-Americans on an explanation of Southern Africa's ills that puts African-led parties front and center and barely mentions the existence of reactionary parties led by the 'white' minority.

Consequently, though these works contain valuable data, reading them is akin to watching a boxing match, while only scrutinizing one of the fighters. But, unfortunately, the ANC does have formidable foes at home, enemies with profound connections in Washington and New York and London. I hope that in his future work the highly prolific Professor Bond would tackle this fraught and important subject.

Against Global Apartheid: South Africa Meets the World Bank, IMF and International Finance By Patrick Bond Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 2003,xxix + 326 pp. Illustrations, notes, charts, index. ISBN 1 919 71382.

South Africa and Global Apartheid: Continental and International Policies and Politics By Patrick Bond Uppsala, Sweden: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet 2004, 45 pp. ISBN 91-7106-523-7

--Gerald Horne is a contributing editor of Political Affairs.

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Land Reform in South Africa

Sat, 28 Aug 2004 01:09:00 +0000

Mobilise the workers and the poor as progressive motive forces to accelerate land and agrarian transformation in South Africa -- from the South African Communist Party

Our Central Committee (CC) is meeting this coming weekend to discuss and adopt, amongst other things, our 2004 Red October Campaign and Plan. The CC will however also be dealing with other critically important matters, including evaluation of developments within ANC, Alliance and government since the elections. The CC will also undertake a comprehensive class analysis of the first ten years of our democracy, in order to identify some key challenges facing the SACP over the next decade. In addition we will be undertaking a comprehensive review progress of our financial sector campaign and decide on appropriate action in the wake of slow delivery by the financial industry to millions of our people.

Our main focus of our 2004 Red October Campaign is to launch a sustained campaign on acceleration of land and agrarian transformation, primarily directed at commercial agriculture. To this end we have invited the Minister of Land and Agriculture, Cde Thoko Msane-Didiza, to address and engage with the Central Committee on progress and in land and agrarian transformation.

Our countryside reflects very sharply the enclave nature of our economy. It is divided into two very distinct (racial) enclaves shaped by centuries of land dispossession and forcible proletarianisation of the black rural masses, one being former bantustans and the other white, dominated by agribusiness and white farms.

The ‘white’ countryside

The South African agricultural economy is dominated by large agri-business that spans the entire agricultural value chain. Like the rest of the South African economy, the accumulation regime in agriculture has not fundamentally changed over the last ten years. Even worse, South Africa’s agriculture and its accumulation regime still represent some of the worst features of the political economy of land and agriculture under apartheid. More than 80% of prime agricultural land is owned by about 55 000 mainly white corporate and individual farmers.

Since 1994 South African agri-business in particular has consolidated its economic position, and sections of it actually flourishing, not least because of new regional and global opportunities post-apartheid. For example, real profit rate by agriculture, forestry and fishing rose from 100 in 1995 to 143 in 2002, thus increasing this industry’s share of total profits from 67,8% in 1995 to 72,7% in 2002. Labour productivity in this industry rose from 123,6 in 1996 to 151,9 with an average annual growth rate of 3,26 in 2002.

Despite this performance black, mainly African, farmworkers have suffered greatly and have borne most of the brunt of the continuing accumulation regime in agriculture. They still represent what is perhaps the most exploited section of South Africa’s working class. For instance, this industry’s share of total employment declined from 10,7 in 1996 to 9,9% in 2002. The wage share by this industry has further declined from 32,2% in 1995 to 27,3% in 2002. Another example of how capitalism is failing our democracy!

Yet there are opportunities. For example it is estimated that between 43-47% of all cattle in South Africa, about 12% of sheep, and 60% of goats, are owned by black, and predominantly, African population, and yet this section of our people only produce 5% of all red meat in South Africa.

The commercial agricultural sector is still characterised by the many farmworkers’ families living on farms. Not only are these workers being paid low wages, but also they are, in many instances together with their families, daily subjected to all forms of exploitation and abuse. Some of these abuses include long working hours of work and gross lack of access to basic services like water, electricity, proper housing and sanitation continue to be major problems, despite new statutory minimum conditions of service.

There is widespread violence directed against black farmworkers as a routine form of discipline, including murders. This is complicated by an untransformed justice system that still predominantly favours the white farmers. Much as we deplore and condemn all forms of violence in the countryside, media tends to project a false picture as if most of the violence is that directed against white farmers. The most pervasive form of violence is that directed against black farmworkers.

Since 1994 our government has made significant interventions in the agricultural economy. The flagship of government’s land and agrarian programme has been land reform and land restitution. However this is moving rather slowly as it is only 3% of the land that has been redistributed to the majority, hence, the government’s recent release of an AgriBEE Charter. Other progressive measures taken by government include extension of security of tenure for farmworkers and their families, as well as the labour market reforms setting minimum wages and conditions of service. As the SACP we have welcomed the recent publication of a draft empowerment charter for agriculture, underlining the urgency of accelerating land and agrarian transformation and as an important pressure point on private capitalist agriculture. An important objective of our campaign is to ensure that the voice of the workers and the poor is heard in the development and finalisation of this AgriBEE Charter.

However, significant as these reforms and interventions are, they have not fundamentally (or even remotely) transformed the current accumulation regime and the political economy of this ‘white’ countryside. Despite some improvements, apartheid class, gender and racial relations remain. Agriculture in general, and small and medium farmers in particular, represent some of the most backward sections of white private capital in South Africa, and the one most strenuously resisting transformation of the countryside.

However it is important that we should not blame government for all these weaknesses, rather to mobilise social motive forces for rural transformation and put more pressure on commercial agriculture.

The former Bantustans

The vast majority of the rural population in South Africa is located in the former Bantustans. In most of these territories our people are subjected to the rule, authority and patronage networks of the system of traditional leadership. There is minimal productive economic activity, thus having some worst forms of poverty. However this does not mean there is no accumulation at all.

The single largest source of income in these former Bantustans is wage remittances from the urban areas, in some places estimated to be as high as 80%. Social grants are the second most important source of income, contributing between 10% and 20%. This figure is possibly much higher today as unemployment rises and government’s increased expenditure on social grants. In fact in thousands of rural villages, the highest source of income is now from the social grants. These grants have cushioned many of the rural people from the worst forms of poverty.

Yet there are very real possibilities to generate productive economic activity in these areas provided there is a systematic and focused state-led strategy in this regard. For example the livestock in the hands of many rural families, as highlighted above, is something that can be used as a basis for generating sustainable income and livelihoods. In addition many people in rural areas have access to some agricultural land, which with systematic support, including necessary agricultural inputs, can be used to launch sustainable household-based subsistence agriculture, co-operative and small-scale farming.

Government has also made some significant policy and legislative interventions in this enclave of the rural economy since 1994. Our new democratic constitutional dispensation, principally the establishment of wall-to-wall municipal government, is an important advance towards liberating our people from the legacy of apartheid and bantustan administrations and undiluted rule by traditional leaders.

The government’s approach to traditional leaders has creatively sought to recognise their role, but within the context of democratically elected government. This has gone some way in securing the support of most traditional leaders for our democratic dispensation, though not without contradictions and contestations.

Some of the key challenges

Government has understandably made quite different interventions in relation to the two enclaves of the rural economy, because the two are obviously not the same. However what has been a missing link is an overarching strategy for the countryside as a whole, the ‘white’ and former Bantustan ‘countrysides’. Much as the two require different strategies but these must be components of a single overarching strategy to create a deracialised, sustainable rural economy, and a single countryside. This should be the main thrust of government’s Integrated, Sustainable Rural Development Plan.

It is our conviction that the foundation for building sustainable livelihoods and fight poverty in the countryside should be accelerated access to productive land for household based subsistence in both, and cutting across, the dualistic rural economic enclaves. Much as we know that under capitalism, a black farming capitalist class will emerge, albeit very small, this will not address rural poverty, nor even transform the current accumulation regime in agriculture. This also means revisiting the question of agricultural extension officers; as such a strategy will require the training and deployment of thousands of these.

A critical debate that needs to be taken forward is around the development of a coherent industrial strategy in agriculture whose main objective would be to progressively restructure commercial agriculture to respond to the challenge of poverty and job creation. Crucial in all this is the mobilisation of the social motive forces for transformation, principally farmworkers, the poor, agricultural co-operatives and other small-scale farmers. There should therefore be a partnership between these forces and an active, and interventionist state.

The above constitute some of the perspectives and issues that will inform our 2004 Red October Campaign and beyond.

--Blade Nzimande is the general secretary of the South African Communist Party.

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American Youth To Study Medicine in Cuba

Sat, 28 Aug 2004 01:01:00 +0000

Executive Director of Pastors for Peace, Rev. Lucius Walker, sent a letter this week to all American students enrolled in medical studies in Cuba informing them that the US government will allow the continuation of these scholarships, in spite of recent travel restrictions.

'As far as we know,' he said, 'this is the only exception that has been made so far to the Bush administration’s draconian new restrictions on travel to Cuba.'

'The arrangement is that 28 members of the US Congress are writing a joint letter to the State and Treasury Departments on behalf of all the medical students —current students as well as future enrolees. The State and Treasury Departments, for their part, have announced that they will grant travel authorization so that all the enrolled students will be able to legally continue their studies, and to legally travel to and from school,' according to Lucius Walker.

He also informed that all students should expect to receive written confirmation of this arrangement within the next two weeks, adding that new students will be traveling on August 25, as previously announced.

Walker described the arrangement as an 'important victory' and thanked a number of people and organizations that made it come about.

In the letter to the young Americans of the Latin American Medical School scholarship program, he thanked –first of all- the students themselves, their parents, friends and supporters; members of the Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucuses; and 'the specific intervention of Secretary of State Colin Powell.'

'We owe a special debt of gratitude to Reps. Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Charles Rangel (D-NY), and to their staff members, who have worked tirelessly to help us achieve this historic victory,' Walker added.

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Some Basics on China

Fri, 27 Aug 2004 02:11:00 +0000

From New Age, August 2004 edition. Know China Before Comparing

The People's Republic of China is one of the major political and economic powers in the world today. It has reached sixth place in the world in terms of economic aggregate. For a country which was utterly backward, feudal and semi-colonial till the People's Revolution in 1949 and for a country which is the most populous in the world whose population (including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) totals around 1.4 billion, it is not a mean achievement. The tremendous progress that is taking place in China has become a focus of attention and analysis in the world. Obviously, the developing countries including India look up to China for experience and for emulation.

At the same time there are differing views on Chinese development. It is a puzzle to some. It is a model to some who think that it can be copied or replicated. Some think that there is lack of democracy and there are violations of human rights in China. Some consider that China is no more a socialist country.

But the leadership of Communist of China (CPC) and the government seem to be clear in what they do. It is appropriate here to quote from the document of the 16th Congress of CPC, 2002.

'We must be aware that China is in the primary stage of socialism and will remain so, for a long time to come. The well-off life we are leading is still at a low level; it is not all-inclusive and is very uneven. The principle contradiction in our society is still one between the ever-growing material and cultural needs of the people and the backwardness of social production. Our productive forces, science, technology and education are still relatively backward, so there is till a long way to go before we achieve industrialisation and modernisation.'

Hence, there is a thrust to release and develop the productive forces at all levels, in industry, in agriculture, in services and all other sectors. Economy Maintains a Steady Growth rate

Chinese economy has been registering a steady growth rate. By 2002, the growth registered in industrial production was 10.2 per cent over the previous year. The total output of grain in 2002 was 457.11 million tonne, up one per cent over the previous year. It is reported that steady progress was there in animal husbandry and fishery. China is a major consumer of steel, cement, coal and crude oil, which according to estimates account for 21 per cent, 50 per cent, 31 per cent and 17 per cent respectively of the global aggregate. It shows the huge demand for the economic construction and domestic consumption. This is a reflection of the tremendous growth. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased by 8 per cent in 2002 compared to the previous.

Unemployment and Poverty

However, the Chinese do not hide the fact that they have the problems of poverty and unemployment. But due to various measures of the Chinese government there is steady decline in poverty and unemployment. China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao admitted in March 2003 that around 30 million people in China lived under the poverty line of per capita annual income of RMB 625 (one US dollar is equal to approximately 8.5 Chinese RMB). But the World Bank figures based on the income of US one dollar per day showed that China had 490 million people under the poverty line by 1981, 98 million by 1999 and 88 million by 2002. One can see the decline.

The urban unemployment was 4 per cent at the end of 2002. The number of people employed in rural enterprises totaled 133 million. A quarter of China's rural population had moved out of farming, transferring from agriculture to non-agricultural sectors. There are problems of migrant labour added to the problems of paid-off labour.

The urban-rural divide in terms of per capita income, healthcare and education etc is visible. The per capita income of urban residents is almost three times higher than the rural residents. The divide is visible in terms of modernisation and industrialisation also.

But the Party and government are quite aware of these problems. Emancipating the minds, seeking truth from fact, keeping pace with times and making innovations in a pioneering spirit are the virtues of this vibrant intervention in the situation. Reforms and opening up are to be seen in this context.

Agriculture and Industrial Growth

Then, there is shortage of foodgrains. There is shortage of water for irrigation and also in urban centres. The reforms in agriculture are quit significant, particularly the rural tax reforms. The Chinese government decided in 2003 to abolish, exempt or lower 15 charges on the country's 900 million farmers in a bid to reduce their excessive financial burdens. According to the government plan, the agricultural tax will be reduced by more than one per cent per year on an average and they will be rescinded in five years. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao promised to scrap agricultural taxes in five years.

In order to boost its industrial growth and infrastructural developments Chinese government has created free economic and technological zones. Then, there are special efforts to upgrade the skills of laid-off workers and migrant labourers and place them in employment suitably. This includes loans for laid-off workers.

FDI in Economy

China is inviting Foreign Direct Investments (FDI). In 2002, the Contracted Foreign Capital through FDI stood at 82.8 billion US dollar, up 19.6 per cent and the Foreign Capital actually utilised was 52.7 US dollar, up 12.5 per cent. By the end of 2002, China had approved 4,24,196 foreign-funded enterprises, with Foreign Contracted Investment reaching 828.06 billion and Foreign Capital actually utilised totaling 447.97 billion US dollar. The FDI is used primarily in manufacturing sector.

Foreign Capital is utilised in different forms namely, Foreign Direct Investment, Chinese Foreign Equity Joint Venture, Chinese Foreign Contractual Joint Venture, Foreign Capital Joint Enterprise, Joint Stock Foreign Investment, International Leasing, Compensation Trade and Processing and Assembly. In the first half of 2004, the foreign exchange reserves reached 470.6 billion US dollar.

These FDI will have to operate under Chinese Law. No FDI can take over any sector in China. State sector continues to be the dominant sector. Non-state sector, private sector and other joint-sectors can coexist, but state sector will continue to be the main component of the economy. Even, the FDI is overwhelmingly from overseas Chinese. There is a misconception of the utilisation of FDI in China. In India there are people who argue in favour of hiking the FDI cap in Telecom, Insurance and Civil Aviation. In China, the state holds a major share in all the telecom operators. In the three listed operators China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, more than 70 per cent of the shares are non-private.

China has a huge domestic market. By the end of 2002, the total fixed-line and mobile telephone users numbered 421.04 million in China. There were 33.7 telephones per 100 persons in China. Now the figures will be more.

China is not willing to allow FDI more than 25 per cent in Civil Aviation (that too not in key security areas) and not prepared to hand-over Insurance sector to FDI. The state sector will have its predominance in insurance sector.

Having set the task of building the economy and creating wealth and prosperity as the central task, the Party and the government are in full command in directing and carrying forward the process.

Adherence to the socialist road, the people's democratic dictatorship, the leadership of the Communist Party and Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong thoughts are considered to be the cardinal principles on which the entire paradigm of development is supposed to operate. Now the Communist Party of China upholding Deng Xiaoping Theory, it has declared to act on the important thought of the 'Three Represents'.

What are the social contradictions in China today? How China addresses the new problems caused by reforms process? What is the present theory of socialism and its practice? How to connect the progress on material front and the progress on ethnical front? Need to be studied.

--D. Raja is the general secretary of the Communist Party of India. He Yong is a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

New Age is a publication of the Communist Party of India.

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Towards an Impure Poetry

Fri, 27 Aug 2004 02:01:00 +0000

It is good, at certain hours of the day and night, to look closely at the world of objects at rest. Wheels that have crossed long, dusty distances with their mineral and vegetable burdens, sacks from the coal bins, barrels, and baskets, handles and hafts for the carpenter’s tool chest. From them flow the contacts of man with the earth, like a text for all troubled lyricists. The used surfaces of things, the wear that the hands give to things, the air, tragic at times, pathetic at others, of such things – all lend a curious attractiveness to the reality of the world that should not be underprized.

In them one sees the confused impurity of the human condition, the massing of things, the use and disuse of substances, footprints and fingerprints, the abiding presence of the human engulfing all artifacts, inside and out.

Let that be the poetry we search for: worn with the hand obligations, as by acids, steeped in sweat and in smoke, smelling of lilies and urine, spattered diversely by the trades that we live by, inside the law or beyond it.

A poetry impure as the clothing we wear, or our bodies, soup-stained, soiled with our shameful behavior, our wrinkles and vigils and dreams, observations and prophecies, declarations of loathing and love, idylls and beasts, the shocks of encounter, political loyalties, denials and doubts, affirmations and taxes.
The holy canons of madrigal, the mandates of touch, smell, taste, sight, hearing, the passion for justice, sexual desire, the sea sounding – willfully rejecting and accepting nothing: the deep penetration of things in the transports of love, a consummate poetry soiled by the pigeon’s claw, ice-marked and tooth-marked, bitten delicately with our sweatdrops and usage, perhaps. Till the instrument so restlessly played yields us the comfort of its surfaces, and the woods show the knottiest suavities shaped by the pride of the tool. Blossom and water and the wheat kernel share on precious consistency: the sumptuous appeal of the tactile.

Let no one forget them. Melancholy, old mawkishness impure and unflawed, fruits of a fabulous species lost to the memory, cast away in a frenzy’s abandonment, moonlight, the swan in the gathering darkness, all hackneyed endearments: surely that is the poet’s concern, essential and absolute.

Those who shun the 'bad taste' of things will fall flat on the ice.

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Torture and Bush's Word Games

Thu, 26 Aug 2004 01:10:00 +0000

Socrates was right in this: most of any argument depends on defining your terms. Perhaps he, like Nostradamus, was engaging in prophecy, foreseeing the inanity of the definitions of the Bush Administration potentially leading to the end of the world.

There are battles happening everywhere these days about such difficult and obscure issues as how to define 'torture,' from Washington, DC to Teheran to Guadalajara. Is torture actually torture, or is it only 'mistreatment?' Are 'we' not the kind of people who do what US soldiers and 'intelligence' operatives have been photographed doing, or do 'we' actually have some 'responsibility?' Is Donald Rumsfeld, an even more virulent form of 'The Donald' than the Trump-meister, a Secretary of 'Defense,' or is he really an offense against nature, morality, simple humanity and even common sense?
It is fascinating to watch the fancy dance steps these apologists for torture go through to avoid saying what is obvious on the face of it. The photos from Abu Ghraib gain some of their power from the same things that gave the Rodney King video power – they give the lie to all the verbiage that officials use to distance themselves from reality and from responsibility for what they do and what those they supervise and order around do. Before the photos, there were reports of the torture and abuse, but since they were only words, Rumsfeld, Bush and others were able to use just words to dismiss those reports.

These battles over definitions are not abstract, not meaningless. They are a battle to make words mean something real, to make the way we discuss things approach closer to what actually happens. The battle is not about whether or not Rumsfeld should have known that there were photos out there that could 'damage our reputation,' the battle is about the reality that that bad reputation is based on. When the Bush administration abrogates the ABM Treaty, removes the US from the Kyoto Accords, declares that US treatment of prisoners isn’t subject to the Geneva Conventions and demands that the US be exempt from international courts of law, when Bush made clear that he would order an invasion of Iraq no matter what the UN did, they set the stage for the abuses. It has now come out that Rumsfeld explicitly signed off on the not-dissimilar methods used in the US prisoner camp at Guantanamo Bay. While it is noted that one of the soldiers accused of 'mistreatment of prisoners' was a prison guard in civilian life, the question isn’t often asked what this says about what methods he engaged in to 'enforce discipline and gather information' on his regular job.

The battle is not just about words but about reality, about what we can see with our own eyes. We can’t let the Bush administration and its apologists get away with the magic act of getting us to disbelieve our own moral sense of what is right and what is wrong. We can’t let them get away with using slippery spin words to escape their responsibility for these inhuman actions.

It is becoming clearer every day that Bush, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, et al. are not just thieves, conspiring to steal the 2004 elections, they are not just liars, denying their active planning for an invasion while denying it in public and making up reasons to sell their invasion of Iraq which can pass the 'bullshit' test. They are not just right-wing jerks of the kind we’ve seen many times before. They are war criminals, and no amount of spin can hide the facts. The battle, the debate, is not about how many photos should be published in the newspapers or shown on TV, the debate is about the policies themselves, the 'leaders' themselves, the decisions they made, the rationalizations they created, and the lies they told and are still telling. The Iraqi prisoners deserved better treatment, the U.S. public deserves truth, and Bush deserves to be thrown out, impeached out, and elected out of office.

Words and their definitions are important, and the slippery language that Rumsfeld uses is more evidence of his disrespect for truth. Insisting that words mean what we know them to mean is part of our battle for justice, peace and real compassion.

--Marc Brodine can be reached at pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net.

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Protest GOP in New York: Demand Health Care

Wed, 25 Aug 2004 03:44:00 +0000

Originally published in the People’s Weekly World.

The National Council of Churches, along with 100 other organizations, has sent the clarion call to everyone protesting the anti-people policies of the Bush administration and its congressional allies. The familiar health themes will be featured at the protest rallies at the Republican National Convention: People Before Profits, Health Care is a Human Right, No Profits in Health Care, Health Care not Warfare, Stop Privatization in Health Care, Stop Drug Company Greed, Universal Health Care for All, Why is the U.S. the Only Country Without Health Care for All?

The National Coalition on Health Care (NCHC) has put forward a program that can encompass everyone who opposes the Bush administration’s payoffs of the drug and insurance companies. The NCHC is a nonpartisan group, but in this case its demands clearly point the finger at President Bush, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Dr. Bill Frist (owner of the largest for-profit hospital chain in the world), and their corporate backers.

The NCHC recommendations are all the more important since the arm-twisting that Frist and Bush used to get their Medicare legislation passed has completely backfired. You rarely hear either of them extolling the virtues of their prescription drug plan, a plan that everyone now sees as a payoff to the drug manufacturers.

NCHC head Dr. Henry Simmons set the tone for the next stage of this health care campaign: 'Small incremental changes are not sufficient. We need reforms that are systemic and we need them now.'

James Winkler, general secretary of the United Methodist Church General Board, put it straight: 'America can make health care accessible to everyone and now is the time for us to make it happen.'

Some of the highlights of the NCHC program include simplifying and modernizing the administration of health care; making the financing of health care more equitable; launching a nationwide effort to dramatically improve the quality, safety and value of health care; and bringing the cost of health care in line with other parts of the economy. The group also calls for immediate coverage of everyone within three years of the passage of any national health bill.

These are hardly earthshaking proposals. In fact, had they been put forward a few years ago, they would have not caused a ripple. But, the Bush/Frist health care grab for profits has so distorted the delivery and financing of health care that they are now seen as major steps forward — and they would be.

So, when you arrive in New York City over the weekend of Aug. 27, bring your own slogans on homemade, union-made and community-made poster boards displaying your anger and demands for health care for all. On Aug. 28 Roger Toussaint, president of the Transit Workers Union Local 100, will address the health care crisis at a media forum Aug. 28 at Elebash Hall, CUNY Graduate Center, Fifth Avenue and 34th Street at 11 a.m. The forum will be followed by an interactive exhibit titled 'The Medicine Show.'

On Sunday, Aug. 29, the United For Peace and Justice will be hosting a gathering of hundreds of thousands of people to tell the Republican National Convention and Bush that four years is ENUF and you’re OUT.

Health care activists will be gathering at the 'Health Care Crisis and Election 2004' Conference and Rally of the Uninsured Aug. 31 and Sept. 1 at the CUNY Graduate Center Auditorium, 365 5th Avenue, starting at 9:00 a.m. on both days. (No admission fee). The conference is sponsored by the Campaign for a National Health Program, and speakers include Steelworkers Union President Leo Gerard, and Congressman John Conyers, author of HR 676, the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Bill.

On Sept. 1, the New York City’s Central Labor Council will host a 4 p.m. rally at the corner of 8th Avenue and 30th Street, going down to 23rd Street.

All of these events deserve (and will get) the largest of turnouts. Be sure to bring your health care demands on posters and talk with everyone who is attending and mobilizing for the November elections to oust Bush, Frist and the other Republicans from leadership in Washington, D.C.

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McCarthyism in the Academy

Wed, 25 Aug 2004 01:33:00 +0000

In an Italian movie, The Conformist, a Fascist assassin goes to confession and tells the priest of his many crimes. When the priest asks if he is a member of a 'subversive organization,' he replies that he hunts down the subversives. The priest answers that all is forgiven.

In US media, right-wingers lie routinely about the left and liberals without confessions. Today, liberals like comedian Al Franken (in US politics comedians are often more insightful than media talking heads) and FAIR, the progressive media watchdog, have begun to expose the lies and the liars.

In the academic world such attacks still occur where Communists are concerned. Previously, in the HUAC tradition, only anti-Communist voices were officially heard. Today, former Communists and scholars studying the CPUSA, anti-Communists and those with mixed opinions of the movement are acceptable. Yet, in the Catch-22 tradition, Communist Party USA activists and scholars are not considered 'reliable' interpreters of CPUSA history.

A 'gentleman’s agreement' exists in both establishment circles and even among some on the academic left to recognize respectfully the academic red-baiters and ignore the academic Reds. In essence, what this does is create the impression that the CPUSA or any socialist movement doesn’t exist in the country.

I’ve been attacked as a Communist party member in both rightwing and establishment media for decades. I try not to hide my political beliefs and affiliations. When these sources contend that I am a regular writer for the People’s Weekly World and an 'editor' of Political Affairs (which is very unfair to Joe Sims and Joel Wendland, who do the day to day editorial work) I take it as a compliment, albeit a 'left-handed' one. I hope that their attacks will boost circulation, Yet, I realize that it is more important for non-Communists to answer such attacks because anti-Communism is really aimed at them as much as it is aimed at me, for whom the word Communist is a badge of honor, not a stigma, as the ruling classes through the world have sought to make it since the Communist Manifesto of 1848.

Recently, John Haynes and Harvey Klehr, leaders since the Reagan years of what I call the 'HUAC school' of CPUSA scholarship (compiling party documents in the HUAC tradition as police dossiers) launched an attack on me in their polemical book, In Denial, as part of a general attack on contemporary liberal and left scholarship on the CPUSA. Their aim, I think, is to compel scholars and journalists writing about CPUSA-related history to put some statements concerning espionage and Soviet domination as the equivalent of the Surgeon General’s warning on cigarette packs. In the Encyclopedia of American National Biography (1998), a major reference work, I wrote six articles, including one on Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, which they targeted. My article, they claimed, was 'dishonest' and dangerous in such a reference work. Why had the editors let me write this entry? I was 'accused' by reviewers of having said that the so-called 'Venona' files had been 'discredited.' Right-wing reviewers used the work to assert that I had written that the Rosenbergs were 'orthodox Jews' rather than Communists. First of all, the editors asked me to write the Rosenberg entry because my name had been suggested to them positively by some scholar (I still don’t know whom, although Klehr and Haynes might want to investigate and have the editors name names). I presented the facts of the Rosenbergs’ life, their trial and execution, and the fierce and unresolved political debate concerning the case, which has now lived significantly longer than they lived. I wrote that the Rosenbergs had been born into Orthodox Jewish families, not that they themselves had been Orthodox Jews as adults. I wrote that stories former Soviet KGB agents had sought to sell in the 1990s accusing prominent figures of being Soviet agents had been discredited, not that the Venona project decryptions of Soviet messages had been discredited. I have strong doubts about the so-called 'Venona documents,' but I didn’t include those doubts in my article. What I wrote had very little to do with what Klehr, Haynes and reviewers had said, but for them that was never the point.

A generation ago, I met Harvey Klehr at an event at the CPUSA’s national headquarters. He was not yet the leading professional anti-Communist that he was to become. When I mentioned that he had not interviewed CPUSA members as against ex-Communists, he said that such people always lie. When I told him that I was a Communist, he looked at me as if I were a vampire and said something to the effect that 'you call yourself that.' Klehr and Haynes and their red-baiting allies will continue to scavenge through Communist documents here and abroad searching for spy and conspiracy stories. Most liberal and progressive scholars will mention, footnote and then try to ignore them. However, it is far healthier to confront their distortions and delusions, which have both trivialized and demonized the Communist movement. Their work is to scholarship what the 17th century Catholic Church was to science when it compelled Galileo to repudiate his theory that the earth traveled around the sun because it contradicted Catholic dogma.

When he was a young anti-Fascist in Vichy controlled Martinique during World War II, Frantz Fanon remembered a teacher warning him and his fellow Black students that whenever they heard talk about the Jews, they should know that the Fascists were talking about them. When the red-baiters of the Right and Center in the US talk pejoratively about Communists, we should all know that they are now and have always been talking about progressives and the broad left.

--Norman Markowitz is a contributing editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net.

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Revolution Will Continue After We Dump Bush: A Letter from Steve Earle

Tue, 24 Aug 2004 12:17:00 +0000

The word 'immediate' best describes the atmosphere around the studio as this record was being made in the late spring of 2004. The prisoner abuse scandal had just broken and the Bush administration, still reeling from the 9/11 commission hearings, was circling the wagons. The Democrats, for their part, were carefully (sometimes, in my opinion, too carefully) trying to sort out how best to press the advantage. Meanwhile, back here in Tennessee, me and my boys had a deadline to meet. The most important presidential election of our lifetime was less than seven months away and we desperately wanted to weigh in, both as artists and as citizens of a democracy. All but two of these songs were recorded within 24 hours of the first line hitting the paper. We worked 12- and 14-hour days and in between takes and over meals we talked about the war, the election, baseball, and women, in precisely that order. Maybe I am getting old. Democracy is hard work. American democracy requires constant vigilance to survive and nothing short of total engagement to flourish. Voting is vital, but in times like these voting alone simply isn’t enough. By the time some of you hear these songs the election will be over. Then the real struggle begins. When the dust clears and the votes are all counted (we’re watchin’ YOU, Jeb) it will be up to all of us—Democrats, Republicans, Greens, and independents alike—to hold whomever is left standing accountable for their actions on our behalf every single day that they are in power. The day after the election, regardless of the outcome, the war will go on, outsourcing of our jobs will continue, and over a third of our citizens will have no health care coverage whatsoever. Like I said, it’s hard work and there’s so much to be done. And there always will be. The Constitution of The United States of America is a REVOLUTIONARY document in every sense of the word. It was designed to evolve, to live, and to breathe like the people that it governs. It is, ingeniously, and perhaps conversely, resilient enough to change with the times in order to meet the challenges of its third century and rigid enough to preserve the ideals that inspired its original articles and amendments. As long as we are willing to put in the work required to defend and nurture this remarkable invention of our forefathers, then I believe with all my heart that it will continue to thrive for generations to come. Without our active participation, however, the future is far from certain. For without the lifeblood of the human spirit even the greatest documents produced by humankind are only words on paper or parchment, destined to yellow and crack and eventually crumble to dust. Yours for the motherfuckin’ revolution, Steve Earle Fairview, Tennessee May 2004 For Johnny Cash and Warren Zevon — See you when I get there, brothers.

--Used with permission. For more information and to download some of Steve Earle's new songs see .

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ACLU: ‘Surveillance-industrial Complex’ Expands Gov’t Spying Power

Mon, 23 Aug 2004 23:20:00 +0000

From The NewStandard

In a report released this week [ed. – August 13], the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) describes what it calls a growing 'surveillance-industrial complex' in which the US government is increasingly relying on the private sector to collect personal information about US citizens and residents.

In response to its findings, the ACLU is embarking on a nationwide grassroots campaign to put pressure on private companies that readily collude with government agencies in violation of people’s privacy.

'The amount of direct surveillance that government security agencies can conduct, and the number of people they can hire, will always be limited,' said report author Jay Stanley in a press statement. Stanley is the Communications Director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Program. 'But leveraging the private sector,' he continued, 'vastly expands the government’s capacity to invade our lives.'

The report, entitled 'The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: How the American Government is Conscripting Businesses and Individuals in the Construction of a Surveillance Society,' details the variety of ways government agencies go about enlisting the help of private individuals and businesses in efforts to monitor Americans’ behavior.

According to the report, federal and state governments have instituted a variety of programs to encourage individuals to monitor their neighbors and coworkers. Although the most publicized such program, Operation TIPS, was discarded by Congress due to privacy concerns raised at the grassroots level, the ACLU says many similar programs, including elements of the TIPS program, are employed nationwide.

For instance, a program called Coastal Beacon recruits fisherman and members of the public to watch for 'suspicious activity' in Maine; in a direct imitation of its now-defunct national counterpart, Florida’s TIPS plans to train first responders, cable technicians and other public and private sector employees to report evidence of criminal activity seen in people’s homes; and Community Anti-Terrorism Training Institute, or 'CAT Eyes,' ostensibly 'educate[s] citizens in the civilian community to be effective eyes and ears for potential terrorist activities.'

Potentially fueling abuse of these government watch programs, reports the ACLU, there is a more generalized campaign urging Americans to be suspicious of each other and to report 'out of the ordinary' behavior to authorities. The report cites numerous examples of these efforts including a Maryland State Police flyer asking citizens to watch for 'anyone who does not appear to belong' and Department of Homeland Security materials distributed in Ohio telling people to be alert for 'persons not fitting into the surrounding environment,' including any 'beggar, demonstrator, shoe shiner, fruit or food vendor, street sweeper, or a newspaper or flower vendor not previously recognized in the area.'

The ACLU says it is predictable that such efforts would lead to people 'turning in' those they dislike and tips based on racial profiling.

While the government says this level of 'vigilance' and surveillance is necessary to prevent terrorist attacks and increase national security, the ACLU argues that these programs often serve to 'create an atmosphere of conformism and mistrust that encourages abuses, divides Americans from one another and casts a chill over the traditionally freewheeling nature of American life.'

Contributing to the problem, says the civil rights group, is that it is unclear in most cases what the programs do with the information they gather. It is 'far from clear,' writes the report’s author, how personal data are 'recorded, shared and stored in domestic intelligence or law enforcement databases, or what is done to ensure that innocent individuals who are the subjects of raw suspicions and rumors will not have a permanent black mark associated with their names in some government database.'

According to the report, 'Experience has shown that such safeguards are rarely created by security agencies on their own without intense outside pressure.'

In addition to increased reliance on individuals to conduct surveillance for the government, the ACLU says that since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the government’s efforts to involve private businesses in the collection and supply of personal data have accelerated.

'The U.S. security establishment is reaching deeper and deeper into our private lives by forcing the corporate sector to inform on the activities of individuals,' said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU, in a press statement. 'The government has always recruited informers to help convict criminals, but today that recruitment is being computerized, automated, and used against innocent individuals on a massive scale that is unprecedented in the history of our nation.' Using businesses to gather personal information is 'often a path of least resistance to working around privacy laws,' argues the report’s author. 'It allows the government to carry out privacy-invading practices at ‘arm’s length’ by piggy-backing on or actually cultivating data collection in the private sector that it could not carry out itself without serious legal or political repercussions.'

There are many means employed by the government to gain access to personal data held by businesses. In many cases, companies will provide data to the government at mere request. The ACLU cites recent instances in which numerous airlines, including JetBlue, United, American and Northwest, voluntarily provided the government with information about their passengers.

In other cases, the government can simply purchase personal information on the open market. Data aggregating companies, such as Acxiom, Choicepoint, and Seisint profit by collecting detailed personal information and selling it to the government. The ACLU reports that one of the largest of these companies, Choicepoint, boasts contracts with at least 35 government agencies, including an $8 million deal with the Department of Justice.

For those companies that do not make their data readily available to the government, federal law enforcement agencies have new authorities under the USA Patriot Act to gain unprecedented access to such information without meaningful judicial review. Through the use of National Security Letters (NSLs), which do not require judicial approval, the FBI has powerful tools with which to demand records from businesses.

Civil libertarians have bestowed particular ire upon National Security Letters because they allow law enforcement to demand that third party record-holders turn over information not targeted at particular individuals. For instance, the FBI can ask a bookseller to turn over a list of everyone who purchased a certain book, or, ostensibly, everyone who has ever purchased anything at the store.

In its report, the ACLU gives the example of a December 2003 NSL request to hotels in Las Vegas, in which the FBI obtained information about all their costumers. Additionally, says the ACLU, the FBI gathered information about people who flew into the city, rented vehicles or used a storage facility. 'The FBI thus indiscriminately scrutinized the lawful activities of an estimated 270,000 Americans based on no individualized suspicion of wrongdoing,' writes the reports author.

The FBI and local Las Vegas law enforcement agencies told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that there was no specific or credible terrorist threat to the city during the days they collected data.

Federal surveillance agencies are also taking steps to seek passage of laws and regulations requiring companies to build their infrastructure in ways conducive to monitoring and to store certain kinds of information for long periods of time.

In what the ACLU called the 'the constitutional equivalent of the government requiring that all new homes be built with a peephole for law enforcement to look through,' the Communication Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), passed under the Clinton administration, already requires that the telecommunications industry conform to the FBI’s specifications for equipment design to enable easier phone wire-tapping.

Now, reports the ACLU, federal law enforcement agencies are pushing for a wider interpretation of CALEA, which would force telecom service providers to build broadband technology so as to allow eavesdropping on internet phone calls by law enforcement. They also seek authority for the FBI to scrutinize some internet content without a warrant and track the physical locations of cell phone users.

Additionally, the ACLU says the Bush administration has been calling for a 'mandatory customer data regime,' by which companies would be legally required to store personal information for longer periods of time.

The ACLU argues that all of this government snooping into people’s personal data 'creates constant uncertainty whenever people are in a situation where an informant might be present, enormously amplifying the effect of government surveillance on individual behavior and psychology.'

Along with the release of the report, the ACLU is launching a campaign it says is designed to 'regain consumers’ personal privacy rights.' The ACLU’s Surveillance Campaign will attempt to mobilize people to pressure a targeted list of companies to take a 'no spy pledge,' by which they promise not to turn customer data over to the government; to use legal means to fight government demands for such information; and to notify customers in the event the company is served with a legally binding request to turn over information.

The list of companies targeted by the campaign includes banks, pharmacies, retailers, airlines, and car rental agencies.

'An important step in regaining control of our personal privacy is to demand that businesses not acquiesce in being drafted into adjuncts of a surveillance state,' said Barry Steinhardt, Director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Program. 'If a big company won’t defend its customers’ privacy, then consumers should take their business to a company that will.'

The NewStandard asks readers to support independent, non-commercial, non-profit media.

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Sweating for the Olympics

Sun, 22 Aug 2004 02:18:00 +0000

From CorpWatch

At the Olympic Games in Athens this year, the logos of McDonalds, Samsung, Coca-Cola, and other multinational advertisers will saturate the festivities to the tune of $1.339 million. But the corporate self-promotion and commercial branding won't end when the games come to a close. Sportswear companies have negotiated $81 million worth of licenses from the International Olympic Committee, allowing them to adorn their products with the Olympic emblems. Behind the five inter-twined rings and the Athens 2004 kotinos laurel wreath insignia, hidden from the eyes of the world, non-union, underpaid labor will be sewing the shirts, gluing the shoes, and putting zippers to running suits and track apparel branded as Olympic in working conditions that would make even the most highly trained athlete sweat.

While the sportswear market was valued at over $58 billion in 2002, and select athletes garner millions of dollars through corporate endorsements - such as football champion David Beckham's $161 million lifetime deal with Adidas - workers in sweatshops in Indonesia, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Turkey, China, Thailand, and elsewhere are paid a dollar or two a day, while facing hyper-exploitation, unhealthy working environments, sexual harassment, verbal and even physical violence from their employers.

This year, Global Unions, Oxfam, the Clean Clothes Campaign and others groups are aiming to change these conditions by turning the spotlight on the situation of workers producing apparel and athletic footwear for sportswear giants Nike, Adidas, Reebok, Fila, Puma, ASICS, Mizuno, Kappa, and Umbro. They call their campaign 'Play Fair.''Play Fair campaigners interviewed close to 200 workers in factories worldwide and in factories producing goods for Olympic brands,' says Katherine Daniels, trade policy advisor at Oxfam, 'and they found cases of workers working shifts up to 16, even 18, hour for pittance wages that are not enough to live on. And they found gross intimidation and violations of workers rights, and intimidation for those who wanted to form or join trade unions.'

Gearing up

In the past decade, anti-sweatshop activists have targeted highly visible firms like Nike, Reebok and Adidas, with campaigns on college campuses, at major retailers like the Gap, and at other athletic events. However, until recently sportswear giants like Fila, Puma, ASICS, Mizuno, Kappa, and Umbro have stayed below the radar. Now, these colossal Italian, British, Japanese, German, and American companies increasingly marketing sportswear as street clothes to young people using advertisements placing more emphasis on lifestyle than on athletic performance.

Fila and Puma are cases in point, selling their fashionable wear and old school sneakers to skaters, jocks, and hip hop heads. Fila spends $116.4 million a year to maintain its image - the company shelled out $7 million to basketball star Grant Hill to peddle the Fila brand - while Puma pays more than $107 million per annum on advertising.

Originally an Italian company, Fila has been owned since 2003 by a private New York-based holding company called Sports Brands International, closely associated with the investment fund manager Cerberus Partners, which controls 20 sportswear and footwear subsidiaries, including the Ciesse brand. Fila promotes itself as on the luxury end of the sporting apparel industry, with 'an Italian flair for style,' partnering in promotion with the automakers Ducati, Ferrari, and Pininfarina. As a private company, SBI is not required to disclose its finances.

German-based Puma makes 'lifestyle' sportswear such as funky suede trainers, track suits, and up-market Nuala yoga clothing endorsed by supermodel Christy Turlington. Puma is the world's sixth largest sportswear brand, doubling its profits in 2003 from $108 million to $228 million.

Sports brands like Fila and Puma do not manufacture shoes and apparel themselves, but instead subcontract out the work to factories around the globe, which are described by the Play Fair at the Olympics campaign as sweatshops. While both Fila and Puma have stated their commitment to honoring the labor rights of the workers who produce their merchandise, the reality on the factory floor seems to belie these claims.

'I have many health problems: headaches, diarrhea, stomach flu, back pains, and muscle cramps,' says Fatima, a 22 year old woman working for a Indonesian factory that produces for Puma, Fila, and other sportswear companies. 'All these are caused by the situation in the factory - the bad air, having to stand all day, and the long hours of work without sufficient rest, water or food.'

According to the campaign's report, Puma and Fila contract out to companies that regularly abuse workers, such as a factory in Indonesia where managers sexually harass the women, a Puma subcontractor in Bulgaria that threats to fire workers if they refuse to work overtime, and Puma and Fila subcontractors in Turkey that force overtime work on employees, among many examples.

Puma and Fila also subcontract out to companies that are virulently anti-union. Rana, a Turkish garment worker for a factory that produces for Puma and Lotto, says 'Last year while the workers of the next factory were striking in front of their factory, our supervisor said to us 'You will see - all of them will lose their jobs. You never make this mistake. Otherwise you will face the same consequences.'

Fair play

Fila counters that it follows a very strict code of conduct. According to Fila spokesman Mark Westerman, 'Fila takes the Oxfam report seriously and has very strict standards that we adhere to in the production of our products all around the world...In addition, we have requested a meeting with the leaders of Oxfam so that we can better understand their claims, while at the same time clearing up any misunderstanding they may have with regard to our business practices.'

Fila's Code of Business Conduct states that Fila will not do business with those who employ forced labor, that factories 'must be free of any hazardous conditions,' and that 'Vendors/Suppliers must respect and recognize the rights of all employees to lawfully organize and bargain collectively.'

While Puma did not respond to repeated inquiries from CorpWatch, Puma's Social and Environmental Report states: 'The observance of human rights at all our global production sites is one of our fundamental requirements... [Manufacturing partners production] must not be realized on the grounds of exploitative activities such as child labor or forced overtime work.'

The actual impact of codes of conduct like these on the employment practices of sportswear companies is questionable. The Play Fair at the Olympics report documents the falsification of evidence during codes of conduct inspections at plants producing for Fila, Nike, Umbro, Speedo, Reebok, and ASICS, including the creation of false wage records, pressuring workers to say that they work a ten hour day and have two days off a week, and similar bogus claims.

Hee Wan Khym, senior research analyst with the US union UNITE HERE who has traveled around the world investigating sweatshops, says that codes of conduct and monitoring are limited. 'My concern is whose paying these monitors? Is it the same corporations that are breaking the law?'

Picking up the pace

According to critics, the companies are not just indirectly complicit in the treatment meted out to workers by their subcontractors. They are directly responsible for pushing their suppliers, who in turn squeeze their workers.

'When consumers go into a store we can buy any number of these sportswear brands, so you have Nike, Reebok, Fila, Puma in an intense price war with each other to gain our dollars,' says Oxfam's Katherine Daniels. 'What this means is that they in turn push that competition onto their suppliers, requiring their suppliers to reduce their prices, who in turn push down the competition, and squeezing competition out of their workers in the form of longer hours, requiring them to sew and manufacture faster, and lower wages.'

Elsa, an Indonesian worker who makes apparel for Fila, Puma, ASICS, Lotto, and Nike, says that speed up in production is particularly hard on the factory workers. 'In the garment division, the usual target is a thousand pieces per lane, per day. But during export days, the target doubles to two thousand pieces. This doubling is very stressful for us, and we often cannot reach it.'

Seeing red

Organizing around workers' rights in sweatshops poses many challenges, particularly since capital invested in the garment industry is some of the most mobile in the global economy. Campaigners and workers are constantly aware that shops may close down and relocate at the merest sign of labor unrest.

And while the conditions in apparel and footwear factories in the global South may be appalling, sweatshop jobs may often be better than other local jobs. Some critics in developing countries have expressed concern that anti-sweatshop activism might backfire and lead to the shutting down of factories and the loss of jobs.

Hee Wan Khym of UNITE HERE, which is an affiliate of the International Textile, Garment, and Leather Workers' Federation that is spearheading the Play Fair at the Olympics campaign, responds that closing these factories is not on the agenda. 'In all of the international solidarity campaigns we undertake, our goal is not to shut the factory down. On the contrary we dialogue with the brands to ensure that they continue a steady order with the factory, at the same time trying to improve the working conditions, trying to implement the demands that the workers collectively outline as most pertinent to them.'

The issue of the survival of jobs in the garment industry, including in sweatshops, is a pressing concern for other reasons. Many countries will face the devastation of sportswear jobs at the end of 2004 when the World Trade Organization lifts the quotas that have regulated trade in the apparel industry. 'On December 31st of this year, those subsidies will be completely dismantled, says Alejandra Domenzain of Sweatshop Watch. 'There are entire countries - for example, in Bangladesh something like 70% of their national income comes from their textile industry - [whose] economies are going to be devastated.'

How those workers who produce for the sportswear industry will cope with such sea changes remains to be seen. Yet building international solidarity with other unions, targeting high profile companies like Fila and Puma at events like the Olympics and building consumer pressure will undoubtedly continue to be a central part of the strategy.

UNITES' Khym says that, despite the difficulties, working for collective bargaining rights is the most important issue. 'At the end of the day, I believe the best monitors [of working conditions] are workers themselves-that is, when they organize and organize unions.'

--Sasha Lilley is a writer for CorpWatch and producer of Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio's KPFA.

LINKS

Play Fair at the Olympics http://www.fairolympics.org http://www.playbytherules.org

Global Unions http://www.global-unions.org

Sweatshop Watch http://www.sweatshopwatch.org

Clean Clothes Campaign http://www.cleanclothes.org

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Iraqi Olympic Soccer Teams Gives Bush the Boot

Sat, 21 Aug 2004 02:43:00 +0000

Sometimes we are reminded that the Olympics can serve as an international platform not only for nationalism and truck commercials, but also resistance.

In an incredible piece by Grant Wahl on Sports Illustrated.com, the Iraqi Olympic Soccer team has issued a stinging rebuke to George W. Bush's attempt to use them as election year symbols.

Iraq's soccer squad is perhaps the surprise of the entire Olympics, advancing to this weekend's quarterfinals despite the war and occupation that has gripped their country for the last 17 months. Yet amidst cheers and triumph, they were infuriated to learn that Bush's brain, Karl Rove, had launched campaign ads featuring their Olympic glory as a brilliant by-product of the war on terror.

The commercial, subtle as a blowtorch, begins with an image of the Afghani and Iraqi flags with a voice over saying, 'At this Olympics there will be two more free nations -- and two fewer terrorist regimes.'

Bush has also been exploiting their exploits in stump speeches. Much more comfortable talking sports than foreign policy or stem-cell research, Bush brayed with bravado in Oregon, 'The image of the Iraqi soccer team playing in this Olympics, it's fantastic, isn't it? It wouldn't have been free if the United States had not acted.'

This has compelled the Iraqi soccer team, at great personal risk, to respond. Mid-fielder and team leader Salih Sadir told Sports Illustrated, 'Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign. He can find another way to advertise himself.'

Sadir has reason to be upset. He was the star player for the professional soccer team in Najaf. Najaf has in recent weeks been swamped by US troops and the new Iraqi army in an attempt to uproot rebel cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr. Thousands have died, each death close to Sadir's heart.

'I want the violence and the war to go away from the city,' said Sadir, 'We don't wish for the presence of Americans in our country. We want them to go away.'

Sadir's teammates were less diplomatic.

Midfielder Ahmed Manajid, told Wahl angrily, 'How will [Bush] meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women? He has committed so many crimes.'

Manajid understands Sadir's pain because he is from another Iraqi city that has been in a state of siege, Fallujah.

Manajid told Wahl that his cousin Omar Jabbar al-Aziz, who was a resistance fighter, was killed by the US, as were several of his friends. Manajid even said that if he were not playing soccer he would 'for sure' be fighting as part of the resistance.

'I want to defend my home. If a stranger invades America and the people resist, does that mean they are terrorists? Everyone [in Fallujah] has been labeled a terrorist. These are all lies. Fallujah people are some of the best people in Iraq.'

Usually when there is political unrest on Olympic teams, the coach tries to be a mitigating force with the media. But not here and not now. Iraqi soccer coach Adnan Hamad also went public to Sports Illustrated saying, 'My problems are not with the American people, They are with what America has done in Iraq: destroy everything. The American army has killed so many people in Iraq.'

To be clear, Iraq's team is not pining for former Olympic head Uday Hussein, notorious for torturing athletes that under performed. Yet they don't feel their choice has to be between Uday's way and the bloodbath that has been visited upon their country. As Hamad said,' What is freedom when I go to the [national] stadium and there are shootings on the road?

The ideas expressed by the Iraqi soccer team are by all counts commonplace in Iraq yet find little expression in the mainstream media here at home. It is critical that their words find ears.

Without WMDs, Al-Qaeda connections, and with an Iraqi populace that overwhelmingly views the U.S. as occupiers and not liberators, what possible justification does Bush - and Kerry - have for supporting this invasion that has cost hundreds of billions of dollars and countless lives?

Take time this weekend to root for the Iraqi soccer team. Their ascent will accompany a platform for ideas that demand to be heard.

--Dave Zirin can be reached at editor@pgpost.com. His book 'What's My Name Fool': Sports and Resistance in the United States (Haymarket Books) comes out spring 2005. To get his column every week, e-mail

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High-Tech Democracy?

Sat, 21 Aug 2004 01:05:00 +0000

Many advocates of information technology claim it brings greater democracy. This optimism is naive if blindly accepted. Information technology must be managed at every step by citizen oversight. The role of new technology will be largely determined by how democratized our institutions are before it is implemented. Remember, technological discoveries come into existence willy-nilly often to the surprise of inventors and society alike. However roles for the technology are chosen.

This then becomes a 'which came first, the chicken or the egg' question. If the institutions and history have been for the most part undemocratic, then it seems very unlikely technology will democratize institutions.

Democracy has an implied 'participatory aspect,' but what about technology, shouldn’t it have a 'participatory' dimension to it? Maybe the lower the participation in one lends itself to a lower participation in the other.

History would suggest that no, democracy is not going to be helped along by technology. So it is an encouraging surprise that our contemporary world has the ultimate example of participation in technology: the open source movement. This movement is known for its massive number of participants, the size of the projects and wide use of the software it produces. People who write software do so for free, and users have free access – a cashless production-consumption cycle! The talking heads who claim new technology will lead to greater democracy may be right, but perhaps not in the form their advertisers intended.

The open source movement is a component of a larger paradigmatic shift towards technological innovation and use shaped by populism rather than top-down state/corporate social engineering. The terms 'decentralized' and 'distributed' characterize open source and free software in every stage – creation, production, promotion and use. Decentralization is a powerful buzzword because it has everything to do with the tactical success of a populist movement over state or corporate control.

In the early to mid-20th century large, systemic, electronic technologies were the province of the Pentagon and a few corporations such as AT&T. Since the 1980s, with such things as personal computers and online communities, some information technologies slipped out of the state/corporate centralized control. This was most likely unintended, and the more authoritarian members of the business and police sectors have been regretting this ever since. This network-information paradigm is more about distributed intellectual capital than it is about concrete technology – routers, computers, etc. It is by nature people empowering. But there are at least two obstacles to the people being empowered by the network paradigm.

One threat to the decentralized network paradigm is business. The more business gains control of the network the less powerful and less functional the network and information become for the public. To be fair, this definition of business as antagonistic is self-imposed by the monopolistic outcomes it seeks.

Another threat to this network paradigm is unavailability, the 'technological divide.' One area where we have a real revolution in closing the economically created technology divide is in recycled computers running linux. After the big consumerist orgy of the last ten years in which so many people bought computers, combined with how Microsoft Windows is designed to need the newest hardware, has caused a glut of old computers thrown into dumpsters. Organizations are snapping up these old computers, installing linux on them and giving them to poor kids and then following up with education, including computer science, programming and awareness of the social dimensions of networking. This is a real revolution. Thousands of urban poor kids communicating with each other in a hacktivist agenda is a serious threat to the corporate system. Rather than using an expensive computer solely in the process of earning or spending a paycheck, the hacktivist on a free computer using free software to pursue personal or community enrichment places a gaping hole in the corporate fabric.

This is not the entire revolution; these brilliant young urban hackers are merely a part of it. The revolution involves creating ways to step out of the profit motive, corporate-dominated system.

When people step out of the cash economy (alternatively called the corporate system) politicians and corporate CEOs lose money and more importantly lose control of the masses. Most often this stepping out of the cash system takes the form of self-sustenance – growing food and making the basics such as shelter and clothing. This is an empowering stance to take, but it is a closed system (by intention) and all of the empowerment is directed inward. When network users and programmers step out of the cash economy something else happens. It is an open system, not just open but an exponentially growing open system – where the commodity is spread in a non-deterministic pattern over time and space to an unknown amount of addressees, and then each addressee can modify, replicate or amplify the message and send it out again.

Self-sustenance kills corporatism locally. Populist network-informationalism kills corporatism and colonialism universally. Network-informationalism was a military technology/strategy implemented in 1969. Popular belief claims it was designed so that the corporate culture could survive a nuclear attack by a Communist super-power. Now the people of the global anti-capitalist movement, the real Communist super-power, have the network weapon, and we can survive any attack from the corporate super-power.

We live in a time with very recent unprecedented populist victories using networks. The Chiapas indigenous people’s war of resistance was the first anti-global-capitalism networked war. The people of Chiapas were the winners. The Seattle anti-WTO protests in November 1999 were another famous instance where a new complex level of populist uprising occurred called swarming. As of this writing, the Iraq uprising that began in April 2004 could become a second occasion like the Chiapas war in which a global network of anti-capitalists engage in and support on the side of the Iraqi general population.

Networked-informationalism will not feed or clothe us, it is the systemic method by which the oppressed will coordinate to circumvent or nullify institutions that would prevent us from feeding, clothing, educating and governing ourselves.

--Lance Miller can be reached through his website at .

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Cuba and US to Cooperate on Anti-cancer Drug Research

Fri, 20 Aug 2004 13:08:00 +0000

From Granma

ON July 15, and for the first time in 40 years, a cooperation agreement was signed by Cuban and U.S. companies for the transfer of biotechnological technology directed at developing vaccines against cancer. The agreement was signed between the CancerVax Corporation and the Center for Molecular Immunology at the International Conference Center in Havana.

President Fidel Castro Ruz attended the signing, as did other leaders of state and government; Dr. David Hale and Hazel Aker, executive director and vice president and attorney for the CancerVax Corporation, respectively, as well as the directors of Cuba’s most important scientific centers and health institutes.

During the event, a video message was shown to participants, sent from Dr. Donald Morton, U.S. professor and outstanding cancer specialist and medical director and chief surgeon at the John Wayne Cancer Institute in Los Angeles, California.

The message, read by Dr. Morton himself, congratulates all those involved in this significant event for their dedication, cooperation, commitment and labor to make the day possible. He commented that the agreement signed is very important to him for many reasons: 'I am a cancer surgeon and a survivor of this disease who has spent the last 40 years doing research on the use of the immune system and controlling cancer. I have dedicated my career to leading research on promising technologies, such as therapeutic cancer vaccines and the challenge to try and intimidate it.

Morton further comments that unfortunately, the incidence of this disease around the world is continuing to grow. The World Health Organization estimates that in the year 2000, more than 10 million persons throughout the world were diagnosed with cancer, and that number will grow to 15 million by the year 2020. He notes that by that time, cancer will have become the most frequent cause of death in the world, because it will have exceeded cardiovascular disease, and he adds that in his opinion, the technologies represented in the signed agreement are potentially useful for the treatment and control of cancer.

'We believe that the candidates for products that you have developed in Cuba represent new approaches. A unique, unprecedented discovery that of the development of vaccines against cancer designed to stimulate the immune system,' Morton says.

'Thank you all for your continuous support for cancer research and each one of you for your personal involvement,' he concluded.

There is no tradition of south-to-north transfer of technology

Speaking on behalf of Cuban scientists, Dr. Agustín Lage Dávila, director of the Center for Molecular Immunology, said that dissatisfaction is a scientist’s natural state of being, and it is known that what remains to be done is much more than what we have done so far.

Lage said that it was necessary to recognize that an important point had been reached that had made the signing of the agreement possible. He recounted the history of how scientific work had begun in Cuba to search for anti-cancer vaccines, with the purpose of halting the growth of malignant tumors.

That project received a boost from Fidel Castro’s decision to develop a Center for Molecular Immunology, even in the context of the tremendous economic difficulties that the country was experiencing during the 1990s, he noted.

CancerVax, a company that was already known in Cuba for its work on melanoma vaccines, came into contact with the Center for Molecular Immunology in 2001, and its attention was caught by the first clinical results that our country had at that time for a vaccine for the treatment of advanced lung cancer, Lage explained. He recalled how Dr. Donald Morton visited the country, and that from then on, a process of contact began that took more than three years of negotiations, culminating in the signing of the current agreement.

For technical reasons, a complex negotiations process is already underway involving three different cancer vaccines, all under the protection of six patents from the Center for Molecular Immunology and the Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Center, with different manufacturing processes, Lage noted.

'This negotiation has additional complications, and anyone could recite a long list of reasons why this agreement could have been impossible, he added.

There is not tradition of technology transfer, particularly in biotechnology, from Southern to Northern countries, generally speaking, and particularly in the case of Cuba and the United States, Lage affirmed. It is no secret that there is a 40-plus year void of a total absence of economic cooperation, a situation for which we have never blamed the U.S. people, far less the scientists of that country,' he said.

Joint work for equal productive processes in both countries

Within that complex context, CancerVax decided to set about reaching an agreement, together with Cuba, for the transfer of technology with the goal of producing anti-cancer vaccines, which has been achieved, Lage explained. 'The reasons that made it possible include, among other elements, the enthusiasm and perseverance of Professor Donald Morton and Dr. David Hale, attorney Hazel Aker and her team, and the ethics of medical scientists who put the interests of the sick before any other consideration.'

He further mentioned the determination of the Cuban authorities and of the Center for Molecular Immunology, in being faithful to the idea that both Cuban and U.S. patients deserved all their efforts to overcome the obstacles and abnormal conditions surrounding these negotiations to make the project possible and open a new road forward.

From now on, a joint scientific team from both institutions are to plan and lead new clinical trials, including the United States and Europe, he explained, adding that conditions will be created to produce vaccines by CancerVax and Cuban scientific centers, as they work to make the productive processes in both countries equivalent and to obtain the vaccines’ registration in order to begin distribution.

Difficult moments will occur and will be overcome, as on other occasions; longer lives and quality of life for cancer patients depends on our ability to overcome them, Lage affirmed. 'Our colleagues at CancerVax have believed in that ideal and we share it,' he stated.

A ray of light in the darkness of cancer

For his part, Dr. David Hale, speaking for CancerVax, expressed his gratitude for the labors undertaken by all parts to make the agreement possible, and emphasized that it is the first such agreement signed between biotechnology institutions in Cuba and the United States.

Hale especially noted the support lent by scientists, congress members and other officials and figures in the United States to contribute to this achievement, and added that cancer patients are excited about the results that could be obtained through this biotechnology agreement.

Vaccines have already been created in the world to eliminate certain human diseases, and others are being developed by scientists to fight AIDS and malaria and to prevent and cure cancer, he noted.

Hale said that he was impressed by Cuban biotechnology and its scientists, and for advances achieved in the production of vaccines for controlling diverse diseases.

It is necessary to have the new products approved and registered to be able to use them throughout the world, Hale noted. In spite of the differences and challenges, joint work has been done towards both countries’ shared vision of biotechnology and its benefits for humanity. There is a ray of light in the darkness of cancer, he affirmed.

The document was signed by CancerVax, Dr. David Hale and attorney Hazel Aker, and on the Cuban side, by Dr. Agustín Lage and attorney Norkis Arteaga, president of the CIMAB distribution company.

After the signing ceremony, Fidel had a fraternal conversation with scientists from both countries and other guests.

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Prosperity and Poverty in China

Fri, 20 Aug 2004 00:05:00 +0000

China's development at a critical point--common prosperity or half in poverty? From People’s Daily Online

The critical point mentioned here is the point the United States experienced in 1929. An inappropriate comparison is that, nations that cross this point are today's European and American countries, and those who fail to cross the point are today's Latin American countries. When statically observing the Latin American economy, one always wants to ask--what is the cause of continuous fluctuations in Latin-American economies? To these questions there exist various answers, but most of them being explanations made from the economic point of view. In fact, however, this is a political question.

It can be seen that the biggest difference between Latin American nations and European and American countries is that the latter's economic advancement resulted in the whole society's common prosperity, while that in the former plunged nearly half of the population into poverty. What are the relations between Latin America's extreme poverty and its economic stagnation and fluctuations? It seems the answer can be found from the history of economic development.

The United States before October 1929 enjoyed successive years of economic boom. In the face of the optimistic sight of slow coming of an economic crisis, the media and economists believed the US economy had got rid of the rule of economic crisis, so they never stopped giving publicity to permanent prosperity. Government officials promised a rosy future to the public in which each household would possess two cars. The conclusion was based on these facts--in a decade the US economic scale grew by over 50 percent, and the average annual industrial growth rose nearly 4 percent (the situation was quite similar to that of Latin America before 1998).

But some discordant economic figures and phenomena were neglected--the proportion of agricultural income to the gross national income was 16 percent, and by the end of the 1920s farmers began going bankruptcy in large numbers, with their income declined sharply (about one-third of the per-capita income of the country). The gap between the rich and the poor was thus widened noticeably. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate rose continuously to hit a record of 25 percent. Behind the economic prosperity, 60 percent families were merely having enough to eat and wear. At the same time social mores were going downhill rapidly.

Then there fell the black Thursday, a day that will remain forever in the memory of Americans. The then President Herbert Hoover, a follower of liberal economics who believed in the role of the invisible hand, was at a loss what to do in the face of the crisis.

When a pure market economic mode develops to a certain stage, it will reach a critical point, and that was the crisis point experienced by the United States in 1929. The history of economic development seems to have proved that those that have crossed this critical point are today's Euro-American countries; while those that have not done so are today's Latin American countries.

In a period before the critical point, normally there is a fairly big raise in industrial efficiency. The explanation on this is that the integration of the internal industrial structure and the information about material circulation that brings about a smooth connection of the chain of product mix, a low cost of supply-demand relationship and a gradual improvement of technology and technique, has led to increase in profits. This, when manifested in micro-economy, is aimed to pursue efficiency and gradually remove personnel from their work posts, thus generating a huge army of unemployed population. Increase in the unemployment rate is a direct cause of the gap between rich and poor, this is the root cause of social injustice resulting from the connotative growth of capital. Economic development benefits some people, while elbowing another sector of the people out of the ranks of the beneficiaries.

Under a certain market capacity, the widening of the rich-poor gap means no way out for products; this is the very economic crisis described by Karl Marx. The economic development mode characterized by pure pursuit of efficiency would winnow a part of social members from the circle of economic development, which would intensify the trend of increased capital profit rate and decreased salary for workers. This is the principle explaining why economic development purely pursuing efficiency in divorce of social responsibility will inevitably entail polarization between rich and poor.

That's why it is said that polarization is a by-product of capital in pursuit of efficiency. Thinking in line with this idea seems making it possible to prove the relationship between efficiency and polarity being a kind of necessary and sufficiency relationship, conversely, application is also workable. For example, 'allowing some people to get rich first' is a method of striving for efficiency, and the method of dual urban-rural structure also conforms to this principle. Efficiency can be generated by the method of whether artificially or naturally restraining some people from entering into the economic cyclic circle. Liberalists confined economics to the scope of economic activities and neglected the fact that economic development is a part of the social system. They refused man-made rational interference and the result of allowing capital to pursue profit is the creation of numerous social problems resulting from the polarization of high efficiency.

Fortunately, the United States had the new Roosevelt administration, and the most noted and effective policy of the new administration was 'relief.' In the form of government deficit, the nation made extra-large investment, with the government expenditure rising from 13 billion dollars in 1933 up to 103 billion dollars during WWII. The Ordinary laborers were allowed into economic activities by a work-relief program. The move was followed by a wartime system. These are direct causes that the American economy stepped out of unemployment crisis and became an economic power as it is today.

The practice most worthy of use for reference here is to eliminate polarity; its economic meaning is that it extended economic activities beyond the few people in advanced control of resources and benefited the majority people, for only when the dual role of human resources as consumers and laborers is given full play can it be the base and reason for the ceaseless expansion of the economic scale. Surplus value is man made, so only when man's economic activities effectively increase can it be the cause of the accumulation of social wealth.

The most brilliant achievement of liberalist economics is the supply of a theoretical basis for the privatization action in the times of Thatcher. The process of economic development to which this theory was introduced is a process of increasing efficiency while neglecting economic and social responsibilities, and is an action in opposition to the rational construction of humanity. Thatcher's privatization was workable because it was the result of the many accumulations of social justice. The solution of the question of surplus justice by the use of efficiency in China's reform and opening up process is a also a way, the two have the same meaning in economics.

Liberalist economics can create a short period of economic boom at a time when there is too much fairness, but such prosperity, in most cases, can only last briefly on the basis of the original scale. Some measures adopted in compliance with the nature of selfishness can improve management and stimulate man's enthusiasm for labor. But after this sort of hardware resources is used up, new economic increment would exclude most people from participation in distribution, full expression will be given to the selfish characteristics of capital, and serious losses will be incurred to social responsibility.

In Latin America nearly half of the population are living in poverty, and the economy is plagued by sustained fluctuations--this proves that the critical point has not been got over, contrarily, due to the lack of political measures of remedy, impoverished population has kept increasing and consequently touched off political instability. In the process of the emergence of such predicament, the shadow of liberalist economics can be seen--a group of Chilean economists who had advanced studies in Chicago University learned the whole set of liberalist economics. Their difference from the critical point of the United States is the new problems facing current Latin American economies, that is, international market orientation and international political intervention. The direct cause for the Left-wingers in these countries who began to step on to the stage in recent years was that they have begun to perceptually realize the danger of liberalist economics, attempted to try some new development methods and hoped to take some Left-deviation policies to defuse contradictions.

In crossing the critical point, European countries did not manifest themselves in such pronounced form as the new Roosevelt administration did. But Europe's socialist movements helped countries there to cross the point in a progressive way. For example, they used law to protect laborers' rights and interests and increased social security and welfare. Pure economic means usually turned out to be of no avail in the face of the question, and only political means can be used to express social justice, that's why, in the final analysis, this is a political question.

Now it's easier to understand China's economic question. As one has a look at China of today, one comes to see what a similarity of China's unemployment rate, and the number and income of its impoverished population is to that of Latin American countries. Many places in China are surprisingly close to the United States in its economic and social problems in 1929, such as the proportion of agricultural income to GDP and the proportion of farmer's per-capita income to average social income are almost equal. Take another example. The unemployment rate and the moral issue have become problems of serious concerns to society. These features represent a signal that China's economy is entering the critical point. The point is not 1,000 dollars per capita GDP, for the United States reached the point at 200 dollars per person and Latin American countries at 4,000 dollars. If a large-scale inflation breaks out now and plunge people at the bottom rung into dire poverty, the consequence will, of course, be very serious.

Evidently, the fundamental way to avoid the Latin American style is to build a strong national industrial system to bring more people into economic activities. It requires us to complete reform to the investment system as soon as possible and kick off large-scale economic construction. China's new government made a landmark move in the crucial period of economic development and the Third Plenary Session of the 16th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) took a memorable turn in the process of China's economic advancement. The firm grasp of the bottom line of 'putting people first' in the scientific development concept is a political tactic successfully preventing China from falling into the pit of a Latin American mode.

--By People's Daily Online

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Child Care Promises Fall Through

Thu, 19 Aug 2004 09:47:00 +0000

Welfare Series: Child Care Promises Fall Through Used with permission from Women’s e-News By Jennifer Friedlin, WeNews correspondent

When the federal welfare program was restructured in 1996, the government promised to provide child care to single parents required to take jobs outside the home. Often, however, that promise is not being kept and families pay the price.

NEW YORK (WOMENSENEWS)--Elizabeth Mayes is barely getting by, working 20 hours a week for $5.20 an hour at a local Burger King.

Mayes, 29 and a welfare recipient, says she would like to pick up more hours, but she is competing with a number of workers for the evening shifts, the only shifts she can work due to a shortage of child care for welfare recipients in her hometown of Corinth, Miss.

'I don't have child care right now because have to wait to get my children's birth certificates and then they said they would put me on a waiting list,' said Mayes, a mother of two sons, ages 5 and 4. 'I can only work nights right now, when I can leave my kids with my brother, my mom or whoever.'
Mayes is not alone. The Children's Defense Fund reports that at least 550,000 children who qualified for federally subsidized child care were on waiting lists for child care and only 1 out of 7 children are receiving the subsidized child care they are eligible for under federal guidelines.

The Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program overhauled the federal welfare system in 1996. The former program had extended cash assistance to single parents with children, in effect providing federally subsidized child support for those parents raising children alone. The old program had a work requirement, but the new law, called TANF, had rules that were considerably harsher and included a host of penalties and fines if a parent receiving assistance did not seek and gain paid employment. At the same time, the new law offered single mothers pushed into the low-wage labor market child care services and other supports to make it more feasible for the mothers to work for wages.

Child Care Promises Broken

But as the Mayes case illustrates, a vast unmet need for child care remains. Advocates argue that federal funding has proved insufficient and tight state budgets are further constraining child care spending. As a result, many analysts fear that low-income single mothers are stuck between a rock and a hard place; either they work to meet their families' financial needs or stay at home to care for their children.

'The working poor have to make choices different from wealthy people,' says Ken Rankin, an attorney representing a woman whose untended children died in an arson fire while she was at work. 'They have to make a choice to feed their family and go to work or stay at home because the baby sitter didn't show up. The wealthy don't have to make such choices.'

'The whole mantra of the welfare reform movement is work first, work first, work first,' said Avis Jones-DeWeever, study director in the area of poverty and welfare at the Institute for Women's Policy Research, a public policy research institute in Washington, D.C. 'But the lessons we've learned is work is not enough. These families need supports to move out of poverty.'

The 1996 welfare law froze the amount each state would receive to provide assistance to single-parent households and gave each state options on how to spend the money supporting its low-income families.

At the time, caseloads were at an all-time high. Between 1996 and 2001, federal and state child care expenditures more than tripled to $8.4 billion as falling caseloads freed up money that otherwise would have been spent on cash support. The states overall chose to spend these funds for child care and other supports. Since 2001, however, funding for government subsidized child care has held steady. And, now, with TANF caseloads again inching up, states will have to draw from the same pot to cover both increasing cash payments and rising child care costs.

Many States Cut Back

Over the past few years, as the states faced their own budgetary shortfalls, many tightened the screws on child care. A 2003 report from the Government Accounting Office showed that since January 2001, 23 states reduced child care funding for low-income families.

During the 2003 budget crises, for instance, Minnesota reduced the number of families eligible for child care assistance by deciding only families with incomes at 175 percent of poverty level (down from 290 percent) would qualify.

Nebraska cut 1,600 kids off subsidies when it reduced the income cutoff from 185 percent of poverty to 120 percent of poverty.

As Tennessee was struggling to cope with its budgetary constraints, the state decided to allow welfare mothers a one-year exemption from work requirements to stay home and care for their newborns, an offer expected to save the state $4.3 million a year.

'Some studies have come out that show that newborn to one year is a critical bonding period, but really bottom line this was a budget issue,' said Michelle Mowery Johnson, the spokesperson for Tennessee's Department of Human Services. 'We had a shortfall in our budget and child care was the reason.'

She said the number of families requiring cash assistance due to their poverty levels shot up 30 percent over the past three years, while the federal TANF grant remained unchanged, making it impossible for Tennessee to cover both the cost of child care and TANF cash grants.

'The reality is most states are making cuts because they can't service all the kids anymore,' said Bethany Little, director of government relations at the Children's Defense Fund in Washington, D.C. She estimated that over then next five years some 300,000 to 450,000 child care slots would be eliminated.

Watching the Reauthorization Bill

What happens to some of those children will, in large part, be decided by congressional action on the reauthorization of TANF. The Senate has put forth a much more generous plan for funding child care than the House of Representatives.

The TANF reauthorization bill that recently passed in the House of Representatives would offer an additional $1 billion for child care for the next five years, over and above the presidential budget for such services. The Senate, meanwhile, passed an amendment several months ago to increase federal child care funding by a total of $7 billion over five years.

Those who supported the Senate's proposal argued it was needed to cover current child care costs as well as future costs stemming from an expected increase in the work requirement. The Senate Finance Committee has voted to require TANF recipients to work 34 hours, up from 30, while the House passed a bill that would increase work hours from 30 to 40 a week.

The question now is what will happen when the House and Senate go to conference to discuss the TANF reauthorization bill. If the House and Senate split their differences down the middle, as some experts say is likely, then TANF reauthorization could require recipients to work 36 hours a week while only increasing child care funds by an additional $4 billion.

Some experts fear that such a compromise will not provide enough money to maintain the current level of services and cover additional costs stemming from increased work requirements. If that's the case, many more mothers will face some difficult decisions, said Jennifer Mezey, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Law and Social Policy, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that advocates on issues affecting low-income families.

'You find families are put in the position of having to make hard choices. Do they leave work to go back on welfare or do they put their kids in a situation they are not totally comfortable with?' said Mezey. 'It's a terrible situation to put parents in.'

--Jennifer Friedlin is a writer based in New York.

--Carla Thompson helped in the reporting of this story.

For more information:

National Welfare Engine: http://www.welfareengine.org/

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities-- Welfare Reform and TANF: http://www.cbpp.org/pubs/welfare.htm

Welfare Made A Difference Campaign: http://www.wmadcampaign.org/

For a Full Version of Today's graphic: http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/1939

Copyright 2004 Women's eNews. The information contained in this Women's eNews report may--with the prior written authorization of Women's eNews--be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed. To obtain permission, send an e-mail toand provide the publication or broadcast date and the name of the newspaper, magazine, radio or television station, cable network, Web site, newsletter or list serve where it will be replicated. Please include the approximate size of the audience you intend to reach.

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Dump Bush movement says ‘we can do it’

Thu, 19 Aug 2004 01:08:00 +0000

People's Weekly World Newspaper BOSTON — John Kerry and John Edwards left the Democratic National Convention July 29 to barnstorm across the country, buoyed by ringing calls both inside and outside the convention for George W. Bush’s defeat as a menace to world peace and democracy.

Pollsters claimed that the convention produced only a small 'bounce' for the Democratic nominees, but a combined total of 100,000 people showed up at campaign rallies the following week, including 17,000 in Scranton, 25,000 in Harrisburg, 10,000 in Greensburg — all in Pennsylvania, 10,000 in Wheeling, W.Va., and 25,000 in Canton, Ohio.

The convention delegates as well as the estimated 35,000 activists in Boston put aside their many and sometimes profound differences in the interests of one overriding historic imperative: Dump Bush!

The scores of forums and rallies at churches, hotels and campuses complemented and reinforced the message of unity against Bush and the ultra-right. Hardly a single constituency was overlooked. More than 5,000 youth turned out for a 'Rock the Vote' concert featuring Maroon Five and LL Cool J on July 29.

The Old South Church was packed for an interfaith service July 28, on the theme 'Let Justice Roll,' in which preachers quoted scripture to uphold the rights of the poor and the oppressed. The congregation read aloud in unison, 'We insist that everyone has the opportunity to work, be compensated fairly … the right to organize … a fair minimum wage and a true liveable wage.'

The service, sponsored by the National Council of Churches and other faith-based groups, is to be repeated in churches and temples across the nation as an answer to Bush’s hijacking of religion to promote his ultra-right, anti-union agenda. Meanwhile at the Fleet Center, many convention speeches showed the stark difference between the ultra-right Republican agenda and the Democrats backed by a broad 'oust Bush' movement. Convention delegates were a cross-section of the country itself. Nearly 40 percent of the 3,500 delegates were people of color and 800 were union members. Speakers hailed a unity in Democratic ranks not seen in 50 years.

But the Democrats didn’t just stop with appeals for party unity. They called for an end to the nasty GOP tactics used to divide the country, whether based on race, gender, or sexual orientation.

Barack Obama, the U.S. Senate candidate from Illinois, said in his prime-time keynote speech that certain forces like to keep the country divided between 'red states' and 'blue states.' But 'E pluribus unum … Out of many, one,' he said.

Winning the undecided
Great pains were taken in the convention’s final session to present Kerry as a war hero, surrounded by his fellow Vietnam War vets, ready to serve as commander in chief. There was a parade of generals, admirals, and veterans, including former Sen. Max Cleland, a triple-amputee Vietnam vet, who introduced the nominee. Kerry vowed to increase the numbers of troops by 40,000 but promised they would not be deployed to Iraq – a concession to the demands of the peace movement.

'I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war,' Kerry said, vowing to 'end the back-door draft of National Guardsmen and reservists.'

His promise to appoint an attorney general 'who upholds the Constitution' was clearly directed at John Ashcroft. The speech was greeted with cheers reflecting confidence that Kerry’s eloquence succeeded in deflating Bush’s pose as a 'war president.'

Delegates respond

Delegate Peggy Tanksley, dressed in a stars and stripes costume, told the World, 'As a delegate with AFSCME and Ohio, I care about letting people know that labor is alive and well and will most definitely bring victory to Kerry in November. Bush is dishonest and arrogant about it. He lied to the American people. I feel sorry for John Kerry because he will have to undo all the damage that Bush has done.'

Ana Riewerts, a Cuban American delegate from Hoboken, N.J., denounced Bush’s draconian measures that make it virtually impossible for families to contact their loved ones in Cuba. 'I believe that the new policy of the Bush administration towards Cuba has divided the Cuban American community for the first time in 40 years,' she said.

Carmen Boudier, a delegate from Hartford, Conn., said, 'This convention has attracted lots of women and many from the younger generation. … Our future is at stake and they will play a great role in defining it.'

Bush-Cheney counterattack

The convention and the outpouring that greeted the Kerry-Edwards road trip sent the White House scrambling for a diversionary ploy. Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge convened a news conference and raised the terror index to 'Code Orange.' The alert, he intoned, 'is the result of the president’s leadership in the war against terror.'

Later it leaked out that the alert was based on three-year-old intelligence.

The Republicans’ hopes for holding on to the White House rest on their success in dividing the voters and instigating fear. In Boston, Ridge had filled the streets with police from as far away as Washington, as well as National Guard units, in hopes of instilling fear. But the atmosphere was upbeat if not outright jubilant.

Pox on both your houses rejected

The argument that Kerry is 'Bush lite' and should be rejected in favor of a vote for Ralph Nader was resoundingly rejected. That argument surfaced at the convention of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), which packed the gymnasium of Roxbury Community College July 29.

After one speaker expressed disdain for all 'you Democrats' forced to endure the 'boring' Democratic convention, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) took the floor. With anger in his voice, Conyers said, 'This is the most exciting convention I have been to in my life.'

He asked for a show of hands of those thinking of voting for a third-party candidate. Conyers told the scattered few that their votes could help to a second term 'the most crypto-fascist government that has ever existed in my lifetime. … Don’t tell me Ralph Nader didn’t cost Al Gore the 2000 election, because he did. Don’t tell me he can’t cost Kerry the election in 2004. He can.'

Questioning progressives who could be responsible for a Bush second term, Conyers said, 'Is that what you are able to show millions of potential progressive voters?'

He added, 'There are 97 days between now and the day that may be the most important in your lifetime so far. Is it going to be Kerry and Edwards?' The crowd answered with stormy applause.

With unity, victory is in our reach

The PDA convention underlined the role played by progressives in uniting the anti-Bush coalition and convincing them that victory is within reach if they stand and fight. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean decried 'those in the Democratic Party who did not stand up against the most radical right-wing extremist of our lifetime. … I say it again: We are not safer since Saddam Hussein was arrested. Now a majority of the American people agrees with me.'

Victory for Bush-Cheney and the ultra-right, he said, rests on 'the 50 percent of the people who do not vote. You know how you get that swing vote? By strong convictions.'

A few moments later, Dean greeted Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), hailing him as the 'real deal' for inspiring a grassroots movement that continues to grow. The two former presidential candidates stood on the stage with their hands clasped together over their heads as the crowd cheered.

'We’re going to make John Kerry the next president of the United States,' Kucinich said. 'But we are not going to be suddenly quiet. If they think that, they haven’t been watching. … This election is not just about a race that ends in November. It’s about continuing the struggle and never to yield. Our efforts are constant and ceaseless.'

Kucinich welcomed Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) to the platform. The two lawmakers mustered the 126 lawmakers who voted against the Iraq war. 'Being a progressive means we don’t want our civil rights and civil liberties violated,' she said. 'It means jobs with justice. Not only are we going to get our voters to the polls, we are going to make sure our votes are not stolen. And we are going to insure that we have a seat at the table of a new Kerry-Edwards administration.'

That same note of urgency and hope was expressed by former California legislator Tom Hayden, who told the crowd that Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy were forced to respond to powerful 'social movements' for progressive change during moments of grave national crisis. Kerry too will face those pressures if elected, he said.

'This election is going to be a referendum on whether we go along with this war or not,' Hayden said. 'If Bush gets a second term, the rest of the world will say, ‘Well, I guess the majority of the American people go along with this madness.’ Elect Kerry and give him the mandate to end the war and take the country back from the right.' The crowd responded with a long standing ovation.

We can win Ohio

Jim Barrett, a Kucinich delegate from Cleveland and retired director of the Cleveland Municipal Court, was sitting in the crowd. 'I think this is a great awakening,' he told the World. 'People of the same mind are coming together and learning they are not alone. … We are leaving Boston energized. A populist leader like Dennis Kucinich gives us a rallying point. Dennis was the first to say that Bush told ‘lies and damn lies’ about his invasion of Iraq.'

Ohio voters can be convinced to vote against Bush, he said. 'We’ve got to get a large vote in cities like Cleveland. Nobody wins Ohio without a plurality of 150,000 votes in Cuyahoga County. What is happening is that people who thought of themselves as conservatives are hurting. The failed policies of Bush, his outsourcing of jobs, has played havoc on the people of Ohio.'

Incredible energy to dump Bush

Inayat Lalani, a retired surgeon and Kerry delegate from Fort Worth, Texas, also attended the PDA convention. 'The delegates to the Democratic National Convention are far to the left of the leadership,' he told the World. 'On Iraq, the delegates want the troops brought home now. They want a single-payer health care plan. Expand Medicare to cover the whole population.'

He added, 'We need a big Democratic sweep both in the presidential and congressional elections to convince the Democratic Party leadership that the people are a lot more liberal than they are willing to concede. The danger in pandering to the right is that more progressive voters will just stay at home.'

He shook his head vehemently when asked if Texas is a sure win for Bush. 'No, not at all,' he said. 'Texas is a battleground state. There will be another attempt to steal this election as they did in 2000, but we won’t let it happen.'

Kim Cohen, a Kucinich delegate from Boulder, Colo., said, 'I personally plan to work like hell to get Kerry elected and at the same time put him on notice that I will be watching. Politics as usual is not acceptable. I am a nurse’s assistant in home health care for seniors. It costs $5,000 a month to put them in nursing homes. Home care is better for seniors and far more cost efficient. Kerry should change the system.'

Kerry sent John Norris, national field director of the Kerry/Edwards campaign, to appeal for PDA support. He flashed slides on a screen showing 21 battleground states with 5.8 million swing voters and millions of non-voters. 'You are the most effective communicators in this campaign,' he said. 'There is incredible energy this year like I’ve never seen before to take back the White House from George W. Bush.' The crowd roared.

--The author can be reached at greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com.

Chavez Wins Referendum! Viva!

Wed, 18 Aug 2004 04:50:00 +0000

Venezuela Analysis

President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, first elected in 1998 made democratic history today in a triumphant defeat of the recall referendum on his Presidency.
The very Constitution that he championed in 1999, that re-elected him in 2000, allows for a mid-term recall referendum for the President's term in office. After six years in office, in this recall referendum held on Sunday, August 15th, Chávez lead with a 58% majority. Voters clearly exercised their constitutional right to confirm the President in a historic referenda process, never practiced in the history of this hemisphere.

Under the watchful eyes of over six hundred international observers and media scattered throughout the country, a majority of Venezuelan's prevented their president from being ousted by a coalition opposition led by Acción Democratica (AD) and the Christian Democrats (COPEI), both parties representing the moderate and ultra right. Renowned international electionobserver delegations from the Carter Center, Organization of American States (OAS), and European Parliamentarians hailed the referendum process as free and fair.

With this referendum President Chávez's government has been reaffirmed in a total of eight elections, referendums and plebiscites in six years. Apart from the democratic processes at work, Chávez and his government have withstood the coup d'etat of April 2002, a general lockout orchestrated by the oil-igarchy management and union leadership (CTV) that stalled the country's oil economy. They have resisted the aggressive private media (press and television alike) that has been carrying out a flagrantly racist character assassination of the Mestizo (Indigenous, Black and White) politically left President.

Chávez escaped an opposition hired Colombian paramilitary's attempt to assassinate him in May 2004. He has remained popular while a segment of the Catholic church leadership who enjoyed the benefits of aligning themselves with the wealthy tried to diminish his commitment to the Church and the poor. He has jarred the political opposition that is backed by the private media and corporations, not to mention the international private media that continues to frame Chávez as a militant red beret military commander and Chief, in spite of his repeated landslide democratic electoral victories. It has kept the tide out from the oil guzzling empire just north of Caribbean sea, who earned tax free investment and free market opportunities here for 80 years and backed the failed coup d'etat against Chávez in April 2002.

Regardless of this pressure, Chávez remains the only elected leader of a nation that has relentless guts to give continuing volume to his peoples opposition to US-led neo-liberalism in the region and economic, political and military aggression the world over. If the social movements who captured the world's imagination with the slogan 'another world is possible' could choose a political leader it should be President Hugo Chávez. Such resistance runs in the veins of Hugo Chávez's Bolivarian Revolution provoking left and middle ground political leaders.

In Latin America Chávez received the un-stinted support of progressive political parties such as Lula's Workers Party (PT) in Brazil that sent a delegation of support this week. The Argentinean government sent two former Presidents: Eduardo Duhalde and Fernando de La Rua of the Peronist party. He receives standing ovations from Latin American Indigenous Rights Movements, Landless Movement of Peasant (MST), and Via Campesinas (Peasants Movement-- 60 million strong world wide).

Chávez enjoys credibility among leftist academics, writers, and artists, who signed a manifesto of support. It included such leading thinkers as Eduardo Galeano (Uruguay), Ahíjaz Ahmad (India), Tariq Ali (Pakistan-England), Manu Chao (Spain-France), Eric Hobsbawm (England), Naomi Klein (Canada), and Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London (England). The letter stated: ' we wish to denounce the disinformation campaign that is being orchestrated by the major media and that attempts to characterize Chávez as a tyrant, a President who has consistently respected the rule of law and the country's Constitution'.

Endorsement of the President is now trickling in from the United States. Jesse Jackson dissenting from his own Democratic Party position articulated by the US presidential candidate John Kerry has signed a Chávez campaign letter. A few dozen US citizens including US congressman and Hollywood star Danny Glover are here in Caracas adding their voice to the never ending chants of 'Uh ah Chávez no se va' (Uh ah Chávez will not go) that is echoing in the streets.

With yet another massive win under his belt, the real question is will the United States stay out of the internal politics of this country and let President Chávez carry out the democratic mandate of his people, or will they be continuing their overt and covert operations in Venezuela, as they did thirty years ago in Allende's Chile?

--Sharmini Peries writes for Venezuela Analysis.

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