People Before Profit blog

Uprising: Bolivian Workers Topple President

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 07:04:00 +0000

8-30-05, 3:00 pm

“Landlocked Bolivia, South America’s poorest country, is once again locked in uncertainty. In June, 2005, for the second time in the 21st century, a Bolivian president has been forced to resign in the face of massive popular demonstrations, strikes and road blockades. An interim caretaker government has been installed, headed by a lawyer and former Supreme Court justice, Eduardo Rodriguez, with the sole purpose of administrating general elections in December. Many analysts forecast that if honest elections were to be held today, Evo Morales, former leader of the coca growers union and candidate of the populist Movimiento al Socialismo party (MAS-Movement to Socialism) would win a clear plurality, if not a majority of the popular vote. The Miami Herald describes Morales as an “anti-American and anti-globalization Socialist who is close to Cuba’s Fidel Castro,” but in fact his political ideology could be best described as a mixture of indigenism and populism. However, with rural, neighborhood and ethnic organizations, regional separatist forces, numerous traditional political parties, labor unions, transnational corporations the military and coca growers all involved in the struggle for power, the relationship of social and political forces in this impoverished Andean nation is anything but clear. Nor can Washington’s influence, control and even intervention be discounted, since rich gas-producing fields at stake. Even more challenging to traditional political analysis is the fact that the voice of coca producers is being heard for the first time at the governmental level, seeking legitimacy in the democratic process.

Poverty and Militancy

According to United Nations figures, Bolivia is the poorest nation in South America. In the western hemisphere only Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras and Haiti have worse poverty than Bolivia. According to census figures, a majority (62 percent) of the country’s 8.3 million inhabitants identify themselves as members of indigenous ethnic groups. Almost one third of the population identifies itself as Quechua, and one quarter as Aymara (two ethnic groups descended from the peoples of the Inca empire), while another 6 claims other indigenous origin. A small ruling “caste” of largely European-descended Bolivians has successfully monopolized political and economic power since the country’s foundation. This has been such a constant that some radical analysts now describe the country’s independence from Spain as little more than a passing of the colonial whip-handle from Spanish to local Creole hands, without ever lifting the lash from the backs of the indigenous majority. Indigenous Bolivians were not even granted citizenship until 1952, and de facto (even if no longer de jure) ethnic and linguistic inequality remains a daily fact of life in Bolivia.

According to UN figures, Bolivia also has the greatest degree of economic inequality of any country in South America, a problem reported to be growing day by day. Racism, rampant injustice, economic exploitation and extreme poverty have borne bitter fruits of instability and conflict: Bolivia suffered at least 200 coups d’etat in 180 years of independence.

Yet, Bolivia is not simply another ungovernable, chaotic “failed state.” In the last century Bolivia has been the scene of some of the strongest labor militancy in South America, with the Bolivian Workers’ Confederation [COB] leading working class movements against poverty, racism and dictatorship. In the heyday of mining in Bolivia, unionized workers could easily bring the country to a stop or bring a dictator to his knees. Unfortunately, in recent decades the power of the miners’ unions in Bolivia has declined sharply with the playing-out of the mines and the government-decreed privatization and downsizing of the mining industry in 1985-moves that cost the jobs of more than 27,000 miners. During the same years, globalization and the “Drug War” have brought about the growing destitution of Bolivia’s rural farmworkers and small landowners.

A direct result has been massive flight to the cities. A once largely rural country is now over 60 percent urban, and while the population of rural zones is stagnant or falling, the cities’ average annual growth rate of 3.7 percent is concentrated in the “rings of misery” that surround all the country’s urban centers. Here, neighborhood associations and ethnic-based political forces have attempted to fill the power-vacuum left by the collapse of organized labor as a major player in the country’s politics. And in the rural areas, the “elephant in the room” which once no one dared to mention (coca) has also begun to stir and make its presence known in the corridors of power. At the same time, regional divisiveness has been increasing. The country’s Andean west, largely indigenous, poor, mainly rural, centered around the cities of Los Altos and Cochabamba, remains the seat of what is left of labor union power, and has become the base for powerful new ethnic and neighborhood-based organizations. In contrast, Bolivia’s historically Creole “southeastern crescent,” dominated by the city of Santa Cruz, has been more favorable to globalization and forms the power-base of the country’s traditional political parties.

In recent decades, pressures toward globalization has been met with docile and often enthusiastic responses on the part of Bolivian government leaders, most notable among them Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, the “great neoliberal reformer,” who turned Bolivia into an experimental subject for the application of radical International Monetary Fund and World Bank policies. The country has been described as Latin America’s “most faithful student” of the doctrines of neoliberalism. The immediate result has been an overwhelming economic, social and political crisis, the underlying cause of the current wave of rebellion.

Resistance and Repression

Since the year 2000, when economic problems reached crisis stage, the country’s leaders have imposed “structural adjustments” at the insistence of the IMF and World Bank. Economic stagnation, along with a lack of real plans to address economic inequality, cuts in social expenditures made as part of “structural adjustment,” and external debt payments (which absorb an astounding 55.5 percent of the entire gross national product), public job cuts and liberalized labor laws have all hit (mainly indigenous) poor and rural people the hardest. Fully two thirds of the nation’s population is now in absolute poverty (compared to a Latin American average of “only” 43 percent ), and United Nations reports conclude that “it will be impossible for the Bolivian state to accomplish” plans for the reduction of extreme poverty by 2015. At the same time, quality of life indicators continue to fall, in what economists have politely described as “a crimp in the development process.” This desperate situation has resulted in equally desperate popular resistance, beginning in 2000 with a so-called “Water War” against commercial bottling plants drawing on Bolivia’s already limited mountain water supplies. This was followed by a broad nonviolent popular uprising in September, 2000. In June, 2001 there were widespread highway blockades, and in February, 2002 an uprising of coca farmers.

National elections in 2002 brought about major changes in Bolivia’s congress, including the first significant indigenous presence in the congress. Evo Morales’ MAS party, a largely indigenous movement, won 21 percent of the popular vote, coming in a close second to Sanchez de Lozada’s rightist Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario [MNR] with 22 percent . Additionally, the Movimiento Indigena Pachakuti [Pachakuti Indigenous Movement], headed by Felipe Quispe, gained 6 percent of the vote.

The first “Gas War” took place in September and October of 2003. In early September, rural Aymara demonstrators around the national capital of La Paz began to block roads and to hold mass marches. On October 8, the largely rural uprising had grown into an indefinite general strike called by neighborhood organizations in El Alto, the Aymara ethnic “capital.” Strikers’ roadblocks and mass demonstrations cut off supplies of food, fuel and consumer goods to La Paz for more than a week.

In response to the strikers’ actions, the government sent military units into El Alto and imposed a wave of violent repression, with a toll of over 60 dead and 400 wounded, including one soldier who died. The brutality of the repression against unarmed strikers, along with Sanchez de Lozada’s refusal to talk with strike leaders, led to demands for his resignation. Popular pressure grew to such a magnitude that on October 17, 2003, Sanchez de Lozada was forced to resign and to flee to the United States. He was succeeded by Carlos Mesa, his Vice President, who immediately agreed to implementation of the strikers’ major demands: a referendum on natural gas policy, repeal of the existing energy laws, and a Constitutional Convention [Constituent Assembly] to rewrite the country’s Constitution.

However, the traditional parties retained a two-thirds majority in the Congress, more than sufficient to block any reformist initiatives. The much-demanded gas referendum was held as promised in July, 2004, but was so ambiguously worded that the resulting new energy law enacted in May, 2005 pleased nobody. And, the promised Constitutional Convention was postponed indefinitely.

On June 10, 2005, three weeks of popular uprising, strikes and road blockades once again brought the fall of the country’s government.

Unbounded Rhetoric, Unresolved Crisis

This most recent upsurge in popular resistance has been dubbed “Gas War II,” since it was sparked by renewed demands for nationalization of Bolivia’s natural gas production [which, in fact, is already nationalized in the ground, but which is then becomes the property of transnational corporations “at the wellhead” for 18 percent of its market value]. However, the current upsurge stems from issues that are much broader than just natural gas. At least two distinct political agendas have emerged: the popular “October Agenda” supported by the Left, demanding effective nationalization of gas production, and “the refoundation of the Republic” with a Constitutional Convention to rewrite the national constitution; and a competing “January Agenda” of the traditional Santa Cruz Creole oligarchy, pushing a rightist project of globalization, regional separatism and local private profit from the gas industry. A Constitutional Convention has now been scheduled to open July 2, 2006, but whether this will actual occur and what changes it may bring largely depends on events in the coming months.

As Bolivia’s elections, set for December, 4, 2005, draw nearer, events in that country have evoked the widest possible variety of comments and speculation. Ultra-left groups in Bolivia and elsewhere excitedly proclaim that the country is in a “pre-revolutionary” situation, conveniently ignoring the fact that the Bolivian military is still very much in physical control of the country (even though choosing to stand aside during the most recent events), and that populist leaders like Evo Morales have clearly opted for nonviolence and incremental democratic change. According to the Communist Party of Bolivia, “there are some popular or labor leaders who claim that the hour of revolution has arrived and that a people’s government must be imposed. Some are arguing along the same feverish line of thought for a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.” The truth is that these ideological flights of fancy fall like a ring onto the finger of the separatists and reactionaries who, before losing their privileges, would rather see Bolivia torn apart. It is hardly necessary to point out that any such experiments would be strangled in the cradle, either by lack of popular support, or perhaps by the intervention of neighboring countries who hunger for our natural energy resources.”

In North America and Europe there are those on the left who claim that Morales and the Bolivian indigenous movement are raising the new-wave, power-shunning, “fourth world” postmodern banner that was dropped by the “Zapatista” movement in Mexico. A few even express pipe-dreams of La Paz under Morales becoming a new Katmandu, where “everything goes,” showing up the hypocrisy of the “War Against Drugs” and opening a space in the world for a new attitude toward substances, lifestyles and personal freedom.

However, more sober observers recall that the United States is deeply involved in “Drug War” activities in Bolivia, and is likely to remain so in the foreseeable future. The “Drug War” continues to be a convenient excuse for intervention to protect transnational interests against local threats, as in Colombia. It would be no surprise if at some point we begin to hear rhetoric from the Bush Administration demanding American or “international” intervention in Bolivia to prevent the emergence of a “Narco-State in the heart of South America” (and not incidentally, to aim another dagger at the heart of the nearby Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela).

In statements following the resignation of Carlos Mesa, the Communist Party of Bolivia warned that the country’s crisis is far from being resolved. In fact, the Party had issued an earlier warning that “the country is in great danger,” and “the difficult situation that our country faces [is] a generalized national crisis that threatens the integrity and the very national existence of Bolivia as we know it.” Party First Secretary Marcos Domich declared: “Our reflections [are] that the tactics on the people’s side are, generally, mistaken. Neither this government nor this Congress will resolve our demands and our needs. Only a political change of scene, early general elections, can give us time to breathe in the present battle, and at the same time create a space for real unity of the people’s forces.” Where the Bolivian crisis may lead is still undecided, but the Party’s call is for unity, vigilance and democracy as the situation develops day by day.

Short Story: One Thousand Dollars – A Thin Slice of My Life

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 06:51:00 +0000

8-30-05, 2:45 pm

The US entered World War II, and Hoke Inc. (a company on Eagle Avenue in the Bronx where I was employed as a machinist, manufacturing small torches for use in the jewelry industry), changed its production to flamethrowers. Flamethrowers shot a gasoline mixture more than one hundred feet and then ignited it, burning everything it doused. It was a horrible weapon, but its justification was that this was a war against fascism.

Hoke grew rapidly to more than one hundred employees, who were represented by the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America—better known as UE of the CIO. I was chief steward of this union, which had in its constitution the rule that no official could earn more than the highest paid employee. The union meetings were very democratic and all were encouraged to voice their opinions. Members helped each other to improve educational and technical skills. Wages were frozen (as were prices), so the main job of the union was to represent the workers in their grievances against the company. It was the most democratic union I’ve ever belonged to, and I’ve belonged to many—the Musicians Local 802, IBEW, IUE, and the Carpenters Union in Tucson. Many called UE a communist union, but it really wasn’t.

Most of the employees were gung-ho and worked feverishly to produce as much as possible with as few rejects as possible. The three shifts vied with each other as to which could produce the most. The few who resisted this point of view were pressured by their peers to go along. I worked as a supervisor, with the union’s agreement, on the third shift as well as a toolmaker on the first shift. This was a war against Fascism, the merging of state and business in dictatorial rule, capitalism’s last endeavor.

With the successful end of the war, I was exhausted and ready to do anything else. My wife had a sister with a son who had just had an asthma attack, and the family decided to move to Tucson, Arizona. I was to be the scout and get a job there and also find living quarters for the family. We had been married about a year and a half. I was 26.

My mother requested that I say goodbye to my uncle before I left. My uncle was my mother’s only brother, a dentist who was very nice to us. He once took our family to a restaurant in Manhattan – the first and only one I ever went to before the age of sixteen. I was only about seven, but I still remember Child’s Spanish Garden decorated with many palm trees and a marimba band with its members dressed in south sea island costumes playing beautiful music. Once he also drove us to Coney Island in his automobile where we had a wonderful experience. My uncle treated my mother’s teeth gratis, as well as seeing me a few times in his office on Third Ave. He was a good guy.

I went to his office and said goodbye. I’m sure my mother primed him because he presented me with a check for a thousand dollars and wished me good luck in Arizona.

I thanked him profusely and told him I’d repay it when I could. He walked me to the subway station on the sunny side of the street, and I again thanked him and said I considered it a loan. He said, “I’m very successful and if someone were to approach me and give me $5,000 to cross the street and walk in the shade, I’d refuse. Don’t worry about the $1,000.” I thanked him again and told him I nevertheless considered it a loan.

Traveling to Tucson on American Airlines in a twin propeller engine plane, taking sixteen hours and fourteen stops, was a wonderful experience never to be forgotten. I was met by a comrade going to the University of Arizona and was temporarily boarded in a dormitory off campus.

I showed up at Austad Inc. as a result of having gotten a job offer through the mail. I thought it was a machine shop but it turned out to be a boiler factory. It had one lathe, one drill press, and one shaper. I was put to work to repair the lathe; although I had never done millwright work before, I had seen it done at Hoke and proceeded to repair the machine. Toward the end of my first day on the job, a man dressed in western clothing came up to me. He had a large police dog held close to his right side, and he kept hitting his left leg with a short whip in his left hand. He walked toward me, said, “I’m Mr. Austad,” looked me over from head to toe and back to head, spit on the ground said, “ you went twice,” then walked away. I soon figured out that what I had done wrong was go to the John twice.

Austad was a cruel man who had his thirty workers working outdoors with a chain link fence around the compound, a shed covering the equipment, an enclosed office and a small toilet in the center of the yard. He directed the welders to work on the exterior of these large gasoline tanks to be buried at gasoline stations. Through the top hole in these 10 to 12 feet high tanks they would lower a welder with a small air hose whose job it was to weld the plates on the inside of the tank. While the man was inside the welders on the outside were directed to knock the slag off the welds making very loud banging noises. The man inside was pulled out after an hour or so and was disoriented, staggered around, vomited on the floor, and when revived, quit. After one month I was the only one left of the original thirty. New recruits were plentiful, and he hired and fired at will. He directed two of us to move a large I-beam to another location. My buddy picked up his end, I tried to lift my end. It would not budge and since I failed at doing what he asked, Austad said, “You, git.” So much for Austad. May he rot in hell.

Jobs were scarce in 1946 Tucson, so I was fortunate to get a job at Standard Stations, essentially cleaning the toilets every hour on the hour and doing my share of vomiting each day. After a few months I joined with two other employees in an effort to purchase a Phillips 66 Station across the street. We worked the station for a few weeks and decided to purchase it, but the seller said he would not sell to a Jew.

Tucson, a small city of 35,000, was very bigoted and racially intolerant. It had signs in all eating establishments stating in bold letters, “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.” Black people and Native Americans were not permitted to enter. The local movie theater allowed Black people to sit exclusively in the balcony. Black children living a few blocks from a neighborhood school were bused 20 miles to Dunbar, a segregated school. Native Americans were jailed for just being alive. My wife and I and our comrades spent much time distributing leaflets, picketing and speaking up at the City Council meetings. She spent weeks in front of the unemployment office, where she solicited signatures on petitions to increase Unemployment Insurance in Arizona from $13 a week for 13 weeks to what New York had, $26 weekly for 26 weeks. We were met with much opposition and harassment from the police and FBI. Tucson was a tough place to make a living. About 35 of us, organized and politically active and dedicated did our best to protest conditions. We were all good friends, helped each other, actually like family. When my wife and son and I were very hungry, we went to Claire and Lou and always received spaghetti, banana cake, and love. To this day, I think of Claire and Lou every time I eat spaghetti.

We were in our small trailer set-up in the trailer park with toilet and showers in the center of the park. Our son had the bedroom and we slept in the eating area on two small couches which became a four foot wide bed at night. Before moving into the trailer, we had our furniture sold at an auction. Things we bought for over a $100 sold for $8. Never attend an auction of your possessions lest you are cursed with the memory for the rest of your life.

One day we received a letter from my aunt, my uncle’s second wife. He had died and she found an entry in his checking account showing his $1,000 check to me. She assumed that it was a loan and requested that I please return it. I replied that I was in no position to do so but would as soon as I could. More lawyer letters followed.

By 1950, we could not continue to struggle in Tucson knowing I could get work in New York. We left Tucson with all our belongings packed in our Hudson, wife, son and I as well as our dog Spotty, and a friend’s child, for whom we were given $50 to deliver to a relative in New York. We were unhappy to leave but there was no alternative. We were welcomed with open arms by my wife’s sister and our brother-in-law, to live with them rent-free in their three-room apartment in the Bronx until we were able to afford our own apartment. It took us nine months.

My sister-in-law and brother-in-law were both teachers. He was also a vice president of the Teachers’ Union, very active and included in his activity the tutoring of several Black children each year in an effort to get them into New York’s better high schools, such as the Bronx High School of Science. He was very successful in his efforts and we couldn’t go anywhere Without someone coming over and thanking him. He was later fired from the New York school system for refusing to sign a loyalty oath. This was later overturned in the courts and he received back pay but no return to his teaching position. She was also very active and drew praise from many parents of her pupils and the other teachers in her school. They were both loving and giving and treated us with kindness and understanding. Real family.

By that time Senator Joseph McCarthy was riding high and spreading fear throughout the country. I visited my old union, UE, which had been thrown out of the CIO for being communist-led, along with other progressive unions like Mine Mill and Smelters. Many UE shops had been raided and now had IUE and IBEW unions representing them. The CIO was trying to be more super-patriotic than McCarthy. The UE representative I spoke to asked me to try to get a job at American Cystoscope Manufacturers Inc.(ACMI) located in the Bronx with about 500 employees. They recently voted UE out and IBEW in. I applied and was hired as a toolmaker in a 12 -man department where German was the prevailing language. ACMI was composed of approximately 450 German-Americans, 49 Italian-Americans and now one Jew.

Every morning as I walked by hundreds of workers on my way to my department, I turned left and right and said, “Good Morning.” Although I initially got no replies, this changed after a couple of months because at the monthly union meetings I stood and spoke everyone’s shared thoughts for all to hear. The union meetings were held in a long hall with two large members of the Anastasia mob at the front and three each at each side of the hall. They stood while everyone else was seated. The meeting was scripted and practically none of the members ever spoke. I rose at every meeting and pointed out the constantly increasing prices of food and other necessities while our wages remained constant. At the end of each meeting one of the goons would come up to me and tell me, “ you talk too much.” When elections came for the negotiating committee, I was elected chairman of the committee. We demanded a $.25 an hour raise, management offered only $.05. I spoke for a strike and the vote was overwhelming in favor.

We walked the picket line in the cold and rain, while the special police harassed and bullied us. The union rented a hall nearby for the picketers to warm up and meet. My wife went from store to store asking for and receiving food for the strikers, who were getting no help from the union. The IBEW would daily discourage us and call for an end to the strike.

After several weeks, I received a summons to attend a pretrial meeting at the county court house with the attorney for my aunt in the case of my debt of $1,000. I took off from the picket line and went to the courthouse where I was greeted by her attorney with, “Take off your watch and ring, I am entitled to accept them in partial payment of your debt to your aunt. ”I took off my Timex and gold wedding ring and placed them on the table between us. He said “What’s wrong with you, why are you doing this? Do you realize your boss will fire you as soon as the strike is over? I spoke to your union and their enforcers will wring you out before they are through with you. The FBI has had a flyer printed about your past communist activities and it is being distributed now to the strikers. Why are you doing this?”

I answered simply, “We are on strike for higher wages and better working conditions and benefits.” He told me to take my watch and ring, patted me on the back and extended his hand which I accepted. He said, “Good luck and you had better be careful.” And we parted.

I returned to the rented union hall and was told that ACMI management called a meeting. They had an offer to make. The workers were filing out of the hall when two of the goons pulled me to an alcove, threw me against the wall and punched me in the stomach. I, however got even by throwing up on one of them who wanted to kill me but was restrained by the other with, “We were only instructed to keep him from the meeting.” The next day the strike was over, the workers agreed to a $.05 an hour raise and no increase in benefits. I was fired. As I gathered my tools an older toolmaker pulled me to the side and told me , “Karl, when you’re leading a parade, it’s important to look behind you.”

In a few days, I received a summons to appear in a Queens courthouse to answer charges of not meeting my obligations in the matter of the $1,000 I owed. Called to the witness stand, I was asked by my aunt’s attorney if I owed the $1,000 . I tried to explain the circumstances of receiving the money and said that I did consider it a loan. Upon hearing those words the Judge ordered me to repay the loan and closed the case.

My sister, whom I felt knew everyone, had a lawyer friend, and asked him to submit papers of bankruptcy for me, which he did.

I never repaid the $1,000.

No Way! French Workers Reject EU Constitution

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 06:44:00 +0000

8-30-05, 2:45 pm

Neoliberalism, a strategy of finance capital, was implemented in France at the beginning of the 1980s. Circumstances were that it was not imposed by a Reagan or a Thatcher, but with a French touch by successive “socialist” and right-wing governments. Marked by measures of financial austerity, debt restructuring and anti-inflation measures, the neoliberal turning point was resolutely and definitively adopted by the Socialist Party (PS) controlled government in 1984. In 1986, the right wing regained power and accelerated the speed of the project. In the mid-1990s, the socialists were returned to power and confirmed their support for neoliberalism by privatizing more than the right had done before, reducing the differences between the two parties to rhetorical nuances. PS affirmed its role as a government party as essential to the ruling classes as its right-wing parties, imposing the destruction of social services on paralyzed trade unions. Thus, it is this France, dominated by big capital, subjected to neoliberalism and aligned behind the US, that French leaders from among the right wing and the socialists dragged into the European Union building process, itself liberal and pro-US since its origins. This Europe, which has been under construction since 1957 without the consent of its citizens, is that of big capitalists. The capitalists knew this when they made the “call of 100,” an invitation to French capital to support passage of the Constitution treaty (published in the arch-conservative, anti-working class newspaper, Le Figaro). The florets of French capitalism were present: Total (oil), BNP-Paribas (banking), L’Oréal (cosmetics), Schneider (machines), Dassault (armament and media), etc. In 2004, Total made the highest profits ever recorded by a French firm and laid off thousands of workers. BNP-Paribas posted €4.7 billion of profits; L’Oréal €3.63 billion. If Schneider reached only profits of €600 million, it paid off its shareholders with the biggest rise in dividends and its employees and subcontractors with outsourcing. At the same time, French private sector wages increased by only 0.3 percent. One worker out of six earns the minimum wage, one million people live with the “minimum income of insertion” (unemployment compensation) and seven million are officially poor. These inequalities are those of a France whose leaders have abandoned it to plundering by finance capital.

It is against this backdrop that the French said “no” on the May 29th referendum on the European Union Constitution treaty, or the constitutionalization of neolibearlism in Europe. It is a “no” which can be seen as a victory for all the workers in the world.

This referendum reminded the owners and their politico-media servants that the people exist. They have changed, but are still here. The “no” was a class vote: 80 percent of blue-collar workers, 67 percent of white-collar workers, 70 percent of small farmers, 64 percent of civil servants, more than 50 percent of craftsmen, small shopkeepers and intermediate professions, 66 percent of the poor households, 71 percent of unemployed workers, etc., voted “no.” Young people from all backgrounds massively mobilized for the “no.” This vote is the product of the consciousness of the working classes, the first victory of their resistance and their unity against neoliberalism since the great strikes of 1995.

As a reward for their rebellion, the people were attacked with insults from the defeated, humiliated elites. One accused the people of being racist, saying that those who called for a “no” joined with the extreme right-wing of the National Front (FN) party head by Le Pen. That the “no” collected votes of the extreme right and that part of the population was manipulated by words of hatred is a fact. But let us keep in mind the essential point.

The political influence of Le Pen’s party is not due to the racism of the French people, even less to its “fascization.” It is due to the reaction of an extremist fraction of the bourgeoisie contrary to the popular beliefs adopted and practiced by young people, be they French or immigrant, to build together in a spirit of tolerance a multicolored, melting and métisse France made of all races and nationalities. Most French people support the concept of fraternity – contrary to the neoliberal model of a globalized apartheid. Le Pen, on the other hand, defends the interests of a bourgeoisie hostile to the supranational powers.

Originally a tool of the PS eager to break the influence of the Communist Party, Le Pen’s party has escaped from their hands. It thrives on the nauseous manure of the history of French bourgeoisie, that of slavery and colonization, collaboration and imperialism. Today, the FN has influence in the French government (the Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy leans towards Le Pen’s ideology and is considered a potential successor to President Chirac). The ideology of the FN is venom that the ruling classes injects in the veins of those hurt by neoliberalism. Its most effective antidote is the working people of the cities, the youth of the popular suburbs, mixing French and foreign workers, unemployed and undocumented – the advanced guard helping France in its fight against racism. The reaction of the ruling class after the referendum shows the fictitious character of French bourgeois democracy. Almost all of the leading political parties supported the European neoliberal project and are suffering in the polls as a result. President Chirac with a 24 percent favorable rating in June; Sarkozy at the head the Chirac’s right-wing Union for a Popular Movement party (UMP); Hollande, leader of PS (with a popularity index now lower than those of the Communist and Trotskyist leaders); Giscard d’Estaing, former French President and initiator of the constitutional project, lost in the dungeon. The propagandists of the misinformation media, almost all mouthpieces of the capitalists added to the reaction. The editor of the French right-wing newspaper, Le Monde, treated the people who voted “no” as idiots, after publishing a string of abuses fired off by former leftists Daniel Cohn-Bendit from Germany and Antonio Negri from Italy.

The shake up of the government after the failure of the referendum reveals more maneuvering for the 2007 presidential election. On one hand Chirac’s appointment of Dominique de Villepin suggests an appeal to the left with calls for a fight against “social fracture,” Chirac’s old slogan against right-wing extremism. On the other, Sarkozy appeals to the right wing with hysterical calls for restoring security. But both of them converge towards more neoliberalism, attacks on the labor legislation, more repression and expulsions of immigrants, and, in spite of appearances, more submission to the United States – at least on the economic level. In addition to Sarkozy, Chirac appointed new pro-Americans as ministers of Economy, Budget and Foreign Trade. They claim to help their country and do nothing but serve their class. More recently, we learned that a Franco-American military base, with CIA agents collaborating with the French secret services, has been in activity for three years in Paris.

If democracy for a huge majority of the French is limited to a small outing to the polling station one Sunday a year to take one’s place in the queue in silence, to shake one’s head at the call of their name in silence, to slip an envelope into the ballot-box in silence, and to go back home in silence, with nothing changing, this is nothing much. French democracy currently is for shareholders, its ethics that of financial markets, its pluralism that of two “single parties” (PS and UMP) who carry out the same policy of dominant capital against us by force. The bourgeoisie has the power and does not intend to release it. We do not live in democracy. Is it a form of dictatorship?

There are positive lessons to be drawn for the progressive left from the victory of the “no.” One of the turning points of the referendum campaign was the lucid and firm expression of the militants of the left-wing General Confederation of Labor (CGT), whose direction initially favored the “yes,” like many European trade-union leaders, but came to firmly oppose the neoliberal project of the Constitution. When CGT truly represents the interests of its members and all workers, the trade union can count on their mobilization and devotion. CGT’s experience shows that the claim that “60 million trade unionists are for the ‘yes’ in Europe” is a lie, because the European trade-union movements that support neoliberalism, by treason, opportunism or weakness, do not represent their members or the working class.

The French Communist Party (PCF) ultimately made the right choice of supporting the “no,” in total agreement with its members and supporters. The result: 98 percent of the Communists voted “no” on May 29, the highest proportion of all the French parties. In the PS, on the contrary, pro-Constitution party leaders used procedure to narrowly gain the party’s official endorsement of a “yes” vote, but the party’s members voted “no” by 59 percent.

Thus the rebuilding of a fighting left will have to be radically democratic, listening to the people and at the service of active, participating and mobilized members and supporters, without aping bourgeois electoral games. During the campaign, the PCF represented the leftist force with the largest organizational and logistical role against the treaty. Without its local framework and its concrete support brought to all the other progressive components of the “no” campaign, the victory would undoubtedly not have been possible. The victory of “no” campaign is the opening of an historical opportunity for unity of the French left – perhaps for the very first time in our country.

Nevertheless, this process of convergence and building unity obviously presents a number of risks. The first one is that of prematurely making radical demands (such as for Chirac’s resignation or the dissolution of the National Assembly) that are beyond the capabilities of the left to win.

A second risk is the potential for derailing the momentum gained by the victory if the Communist Party were to form a new electoral alliance with the PS for the 2007 elections. While such a strategy makes it possible to save a handful of members of Parliament for the Communists, it undermines the force the Communist Party won in the campaign against the treaty. The same would happen in case of similar alliance between the Trotskyists of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) and the “dissidents” of the PS, led by former socialist Prime Minister Fabius, who the elites are calling the leader of “no” campaign, who gave the country as a present 20 years ago to the neoliberal speculators and whose international vision does not exceed support to extreme-right-wing Zionists and Cuban-Venezuelan counter-revolutionaries. Humiliated in 2002 with the defeat of PS leader Jospin against Chirac and Le Pen, divided by narrow personal ambitions and adrift from its base, the PS had placed its pawns both on the “yes” (Hollande, leader of the PS) and on the “no” (Fabius, number two leader of PS), so that the horizon of its political project remains neoliberalism and nothing else.

The third risk is more serious. It is the potential unity of Chirac’s right-wing party with the extreme-right-wing (to fight against immigration in particular), which would lead the PS to accelerate even more its evolution towards anti-working class positions. For the moment, without great leaders and still too weak, progressive forces have not been able to prevent these potential risks from becoming realities.

Some observers have praised the contribution of citizens’ movements that aligned themselves against reactionary parties and collaborationist trade unions (including on the left). Remember the two best organized “movements” in France are those of the bourgeoisie in power: the “Union for a popular Movement” (Chirac’s right-wing party) and the “Movement of the enterprises of France,” the big business association. For progressives of all countries, the urgent priority is to organize ourselves, to gather together and to extend our militant base. This implies a strong rejection of “social-liberalism,” which is nothing other than neoliberal drifts inside traditional “socialist” parties and trade-union movements. It is advisable to prolong, multiply, widen, deepen the open discussions and the concrete fights that made possible the victory of the “no,” to build little by little solidarity among workers actively in the struggle. It is also necessary, thanks to the joint and solidarity mobilizations of the peoples of Europe, to bring more pressure to oppose the continuation of the neoliberal destruction across Europe, as well as the attempts to neutralize the French “no” by concerted reactions of European ruling classes who are committed to submitting their countries to dominant of finance capitalism and US militarism and imperialism. The road to reappropriate our language (Marxism) will be long, to read again the history of our fights here and elsewhere, to reinforce exchanges between workers’ organizations of the North, to revive true and deep solidarity with the South and its peoples in struggle (in Iraq, Palestine, Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba…), to transform our criticisms of neoliberalism and war into concrete, efficient, radical proposals of rupture with capitalism and with imperialism. The democratic Europe we will build, one of social rights and new solidarity, will be socialist and internationalist or it will not be. Because this is not the form of the system – neoliberalism – that causes the problems, but its essence – capitalism, which is still a system of exploitation and oppression, alienation and destruction, inequality and injustice. Even if the present situation calls for a rupture in France, to admit that we are not the day before a revolution does not mean that we must give up neither the objective of a revolution nor the purpose of the construction of socialism in our country. This long-term goal, as well as that of a social and democratic project for Europe, is to be thought and promoted practically within the framework of the fight for socialism on a worldwide scale. The French “no” is a step, modest, but real, in this direction.

The Battle for Congress in 2006

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 06:28:00 +0000

8-30-05, 2:45 pm

As the 2006 election draws nearer, Congress is becoming the battleground for Bush administration policies. The President’s loyalists continue to support the war drive and privatization of Social Security, but more than a few are jumping ship. The shifts within Congress, and breaks in the Republican stronghold, provide an important opening to mobilize voters, blunt the attacks, and build support for bold pro-worker legislation.

In response to Bush’s falling ratings, unions, peace and civil rights groups are turning up the heat on Congress to heed grass roots demands to end the war on Iraq, repeal the Patriot Act and halt privatization of Social Security.

Demands are also heating up for the right to unionize, universal single-payer health care, immigrant rights, an expansion of voting rights, and for unbiased judicial appointments. Breaking through the Republican lockstep, labor and allies have received bi-partisan co-sponsors for the Employee Free Choice Act, the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act, and the SAFE Act that would place important limits on the government’s surveillance powers and access to personal records.

Splits within the Republicans have dealt Bush several setbacks. Early in the year, the vote to prohibit stem cell research did not pass. The Bush administration has also been setback with bi-partisan Congressional support for investigations against Tom DeLay, and calls to close Guantanamo base.

Perhaps the most significant development is the 64-member Out of Iraq Caucus led by Rep. Maxine Waters. The Caucus formed following a June vote for an immediate plan to withdraw from Iraq, which received 128 votes including five Republicans.

Earlier, 51 members signed Rep. John Conyers request for a special counsel to investigate torture and possible violations of the war crimes act. Over 500,000 voters and 91 members of Congress signed Rep. Conyers letter to the president demanding answers on the Downing Street memo leading up to the war on Iraq. Outrage at this memo has led to increasing opposition to the war. The facts around this memo have catapulted members of Congress who supported the war to question their past actions.

As popular support for the war wanes, the potential to force Congress to end the war increases. As the truth becomes known on the Iraq war, the economy, and Social Security, Bush’s poll ratings have fallen to historic lows, only 30 percent to 40 percent approval.

The 200 municipalities who took a stand against the Iraq war have now joined together as Cities for Progress, linking the demand to bring the troops home with economic issues including living wage jobs and healthcare, and incorporating the Mayors’ Campaign to abolish nuclear weapons. The war on Iraq and Social Security are key issues upon which Congressional incumbents will be judged, and upon which the Bush administration could fall. The administration policy in both cases is based on big lies, and in both cases the stakes are extremely high.

Bush has been met with protests on every stop of his tours to promote privatization of Social Security. Everywhere he goes, including areas where he won the election, support for his program decreases. Once people get a true picture that this is no more than a gift to Wall Street at their expense, they are not ready to support. The young generation, targeted by the Bush administration with the expectation that they would be lured by private accounts, has turned out to be more sophisticated, and even among young people support for privatization is down.

These experiences are an indication that the Republican majority in Congress is not unshakable, and that the 2006 elections could result in a major upset.

Congress by the Numbers

The full House is up for re-election in 2006 as are 33 Senate seats, including 15 Republicans and 19 Democrats. If six Republican seats are lost, Democrats win control. With Jeffords retiring in Vermont, it seems likely that Bernie Sanders will become the first left independent to serve in the Senate. Democratic Senators Sarbanes in Maryland and Dayton in Minnesota are also retiring. Other hotly contested races are in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington State. Also in 2006, 36 Governors will be up for election. There are 22 Republicans, including New York, Illinois, Ohio, Maryland, Massachusetts, Texas and an open seat in Florida where Jeb Bush is term limited. In addition 14 Democrats are up for election including Jennifer Granholm in Michigan and Janet Napoletano in Arizona and Bill Richardson in New Mexico. In 2005, the Governors of New Jersey and Virginia are up for election. Municipal elections will be held in many cities, including the important New York Mayor election. These local elections will also set the stage for 2006.

Local ballot initiatives are already in the planning for states with hotly contested Senate and Governor races in 2006. Ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage are being prepared for Ohio, Michigan and Arizona. Labor-led legislative initiatives to require Wal-Mart to provide health care or pay into state funds are unfolding in many states.

In addition, all but 13 State Legislatures are taking up the issue of paper trail on voting machines so that votes can be manually recounted. In many states, restoration of voting rights, same day registration, public financing of elections and a host of other bills are being fought through. The Pro-Democracy March in Atlanta, Georgia demanding the re-authorization of the Voting Rights Act, opened a massive organizing drive in the South to defeat the extreme right-wing in 2006 and 2008.

Bold Action

This is a time for bold demands and bold action. Congressional Democrats are under fire to come out fighting against Bush administration policies. This was the theme running through the annual meeting of the America’s Future conference, as well as grass roots organizing efforts like MoveOn and Progressive Democrats of America.

The America’s Future Conference expressed a new appreciation of the role of labor in electoral politics, and the need for the entire community to participate in growing the union movement as essential to move a progressive agenda forward.

In a parallel vein, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists convention rejected as defeatist any approach within labor of a split or a withdrawal form the legislative electoral movement against Bush.

The local victories won by broad, issues based labor and community coalitions across the country show that even in the present climate of fear and attack, gains can be achieved. These gains lay the foundation for bigger challenges in the 2006 Congressional elections.

The potential for broad coalitions to win can be seen in the election of Antonio Villaraigosa as Mayor of Los Angeles. It can be seen in the eight State Legislatures that shifted from Republican to Democrat in the 2004 elections. It can be seen in the overwhelming votes to raise the minimum wage in Florida and Nevada in 2004.

In Florida the minimum wage referendum received one million more votes than Kerry did. 850,000 workers received a raise as a result of this bill. It shows that Kerry should have stood with the referendum. It also shows that decisive numbers of voters can be won away from Bush on issues of survival that affect their lives.

It would be a huge mistake to become complacent. While there are shifts taking place, the extreme right-wing is not backing off. The attacks are in part out of a position of weakness within US imperialism, and weakness within the far-right. Their think tanks are busy at work, developing different ideas to try and appeal to various sections of the population.

The Bush administration has shown it will attempt to ram through their agenda no matter how small the support. For example, the administration is wooing centrist Democrats to support plans to privatize Social Security. However, the ability of the Bush administration to force it’s agenda through the Republican controlled Congress can be blunted with an approach that includes individual Republican support on specific issues like no privatization.

In this context, strong voices with advanced demands are critical to influence the issues on the table at the moment, as well as to build a grass roots base for electoral victories that will change the balance of forces in Congress and overall.

For the broad labor and peoples’ movement there is little choice but to stick together and increase the street heat. The number of unemployed remain shockingly high even more so among African American and Latino youth. The numbers of uninsured and those without pensions continues to skyrocket while huge sums are sent on the Iraq war and tax cuts to the super rich. Institutional and overt racism are widening the gaps of inequality. New economic crises threaten to further undermine the security of working families. The need is for universal health care, living wage jobs, affirmative action, equal rights for immigrants, and an end to the war.

Every local issue is related to the actions of Congress. Every member of Congress must be judged on the basis of their votes and their actions. This is not a time to pull back or stand still. This is a time to be bold and connect every movement to getting out the vote this year and especially to change Congress in 2006 and deliver a blow to the Bush agenda.

--Joelle Fishman chairs the Political Action Commission of the Communist Party USA. Reach her at pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net.

Able to Fight: the Struggle for Civil Rights for People with Disabilities

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 06:25:00 +0000

8-30-05, 2:45 pm

Last June, a group of disabled civil rights activists took over the office of Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen following his announcement that approximately 100 individuals with disabilities who are dependent on ventilators but otherwise live independently would have their benefits continued under the state medical benefits program, known as TennCare, only if they received treatment in a nursing home.

The events in Nashville are but the latest manifestation of an ongoing militancy in the civil rights movement for persons with disabilities. While a militant current has always been present in the movement, epitomized by organizations like American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today (ADAPT) and local groups like Boston’s Disabled People’s Liberation Front (DPLF), it has been only in the last decade or so that such elements have received a broader acceptance among individuals with disabilities and community activists.

One of the unique features of the current civil rights movement for persons with disabilities is that it has thus far failed to capture the nation’s attention or imagination in the same manner as the civil rights movement which defeated Jim Crow in the south and served as the motivating force behind the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964.

An overview history

Inspired by the victories of the broader civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the civil rights movement for persons with disabilities began to quietly organize during the 1960s. It was a formidable task.

The nascent movement shared some commonalities with the broader civil rights movement, but also some important differences. The struggle against segregation was a common feature, for instance. But in the case of individuals with disabilities, the segregation took the form of institutionalization. Unlike the broader movement for civil rights, the segregation was not enforced by aggression and racist law, but by a mixture of pity or indifference. The broader civil rights movement fought for the right to sit anywhere on the bus, drink from any fountain, vote in elections and other efforts to show that a person’s race had no impact on their ability to do anything and everything any other person could do. For persons with disabilities, it was often impossible to get on the bus in the first place, to find a place to be served in a restaurant, to operate a water fountain, or to physically get to the polling place to cast a ballot.

Given this situation, it is only natural that the early efforts of the civil rights movement for persons with disabilities were oriented toward improvements in physical accessibility. The Architectural Barriers Act of 1968 was enacted in one of the last gasps of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,” a series of progressive steps which were somewhat eclipsed by the escalation of US involvement in Vietnam.

The Architectural Barriers Act was one of the important pieces of civil rights legislation to be adopted in 1968; the Fair Housing Act (an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964) was the other. The Architectural Barriers Act provided that federal or state government buildings would be accessible to persons with disabilities, and it established accessibility standards as well as Architectural Accessibility Boards in all states. Despite its good intentions, however, enforcement of the Architectural Barriers Act proved difficult and uneven, due in no small measure to inconsistency in both training and funding.

The recognition of this reality led to the adoption of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The late Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, a Minnesota Democrat, successfully incorporated Section 504 into an appropriations package, and its presence was instantly noted by the small, but growing, civil rights movement for persons with disabilities. Section 504 required all executive agencies to adopt rules for use within programs for which they had jurisdiction. The regulation made it illegal to discriminate against persons with disabilities in federally funded programs and activities, and covered both physical accessibility issues as well as matters of employment.

Section 504 was a major advance in several areas and a significant disappointment on one level. In terms of advancement, the regulation contained a federal level definition for who was considered to be an individual with a disability for the purposes of civil rights protection. The second major advance was the introduction of the concept of reasonable accommodation for employees with disabilities. This concept provides that “otherwise qualified individuals with disabilities” may need certain considerations to enable them to perform “the essential functions of the job.” This could mean, for example, that an employee with a disability might need a greater maneuvering radius around their work station, an individual to read documents if they were visually impaired, greater amplification on their telephone or a Telephone Device for the Deaf if they were hearing impaired, a re-structured work schedule in order for them to keep medical or therapy appointments, and so forth. Section 504 also made it illegal to ask an applicant for employment whether they had a physical or emotional disability, had ever applied for or received Workers’ Compensation or any other kind of related inquiry. The intent of the regulation was that employers needed to consider the potential employees’ qualifications, not their disability.

Two disappointing elements of Section 504 were that it didn’t establish an affirmative action requirement that might have further encouraged employers to hire qualified persons with disabilities. The requirement for employers to make reasonable accommodations was also substantially limited, insofar as employers didn’t have to make any reasonable accommodations that might affect the profits of the business. Further, from a legal perspective, Section 504 didn’t offer a private right of legal action. As a practical matter, this meant that individuals with disabilities whose rights were alleged to be violated had virtually no right to litigate, and when they did they had to show that the alleged discrimination was intentional.

Still, Section 504 had a tremendous potential to make a difference in the lives of persons with disabilities. The US Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the Justice Department and other cabinet level agencies soon followed suit. One of the greatest, wasted potentials was through the federal Office of Revenue Sharing. The Office of Revenue Sharing was charged with disbursing federal monies to cities and towns and had gone as far as issuing its own Section 504 rules. The impact of this would have compelled cities and towns receiving these funds to make much-needed changes that would have afforded greater accessibility for persons with disabilities in municipal facilities. By 1985, however, President Ronald Reagan had abolished the Office of Revenue Sharing, resulting in a halt to these changes in many locations.

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 built on the ground Section 504 had established. While Section 504 was specifically tied to federally-funded programs, the ADA expanded its coverage to all but the smallest private employers, covered state and municipal government buildings and facilities and established a new category the law called “Public Accommodations,” which covered most commercial businesses as well as hotels and motels. Almost immediately, supermarkets and other businesses began to make accessible parking spaces, hotels made a percentage of their rooms accessible and supermarkets finally removed barriers they had placed to insure that shoppers didn’t wander off with their carts but also kept shoppers who used wheelchairs from coming in. “It’s amazing that they cared more about a $20 shopping cart than they did about my being able to shop in their store,” noted one activist in Indiana.

While the ADA corrected some of the deficiencies in Section 504 (it was not limited to federally funded entities, permitted private lawsuits with awards that covered reasonable legal fees in order to encourage attorneys to take on the cases and gave enforcement authority to two government agencies), there were also some unfortunate repetitions of Section 504’s defects. The ADA failed to establish any affirmative action requirement for hiring persons with disabilities and gave substantial weight to businesses making accessibility changes and reasonable accommodations that were affordable, with the regulations using the vague term “maximum extent feasible” in several places.

One year after the passage of the ADA, the Government Accounting Office issued a report noting that compliance with the new law and, indeed, an understanding of its requirements, was sporadic. The GAO investigators reported that barriers were being removed which were not, in fact, barriers to accessibility in the first place.

The struggle against non-physical barriers

It is important to note that all of these regulatory victories did not come from any altruism or largesse on the part of the US government or major corporations. These victories came after decades of educational and organizing activities by individuals and organizations focused on civil rights for persons with disabilities.

The movement was neither much publicized nor touted, and there was no primary leader of the movement. The organizational form of the movement was largely local in nature, loosely structured. With the exception of some civil disobedience and direct action, such as the efforts of ADAPT around the struggle for accessible public transportation in Denver and similar efforts elsewhere by ad-hoc groups, the media barely seemed to notice.

During much of the 1980s, the civil rights movement for persons with disabilities, anchored by locally-based Centers for Independent Living, was focused primarily on efforts to maintain the fruits of its victories in the face of the pro-corporate, anti-people policies of the Reagan administration. They faced serious internal and external obstacles.

One of the foremost obstacles found both within and without the movement is observed by noting that a person with disabilities is an identification that includes not only those with physical disabilities but also those whose disabilities are emotional. While advances in addressing accessibility issues are beyond doubt, persons whose disabilities are emotional or not physically apparent often have greater struggles. There is a much higher degree of acceptance for a person with a physical disability, particularly if their disability was caused by an accident or trauma, than there is for a person who is dealing with depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, post-partum depression, etc. There is often a fear, inadequate understanding of these disabilities, or a denial that these are real issues as well represented by recent comments made by actor Tom Cruise.

This is not to suggest that persons with physical disabilities have crossed some Rubicon and have won every struggle. There is still an ongoing struggle against a cultural element that suggests persons with disabilities are to be pitied. This culture has been promoted by well-meaning organizations whose fundraising strategies have hinged on presenting persons with disabilities, particularly children, as pity objects for the purpose of encouraging the average person to part with their money. And, it must be admitted, they have been hugely successful along these lines. One of the by-products, however, is that successful fundraising strategies of this type have not kept pace with the new realities in which persons with disabilities are seeking in ever greater numbers to enter the workforce. What they find is that while some employers are wary of the cost associated with potential reasonable accommodations requests, a second barrier is created by pity. “Who wants to hire a pity object,” says one activist.

With unemployment rates for persons with disabilities anywhere between 70 and 90 percent, too many people with disabilities find themselves dependent on Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, a program for persons with disabilities which, under current rules, limits the amount of income an individual can earn and requires repayment of monies if the income threshold is crossed. While SSI is a valuable assistance program, it relies on the belief that people with disabilities can’t and shouldn’t hold jobs.

Challenges to an effective movement

The civil rights movement for persons with disabilities also faces challenges from within its own house. There is a wide variance of opinion in the movement. There are those who advocate a gradual approach to issues, and those who adopt a more militant posture. Some want to protect existing gains, while others want to build on them or pressure authorities for greater, more consistent enforcement.

These differences are to be expected in virtually every movement, but in a movement such as the civil rights movement for persons with disabilities, it would be surprising if these inner struggles didn’t occur. There are many reasons for this, but a few deserve prominent mention. First, the civil rights movement for persons with disabilities is not homogeneous. It is made up of persons with physical disabilities, persons with emotional disabilities, parents, friends and service providers. For some, the movement is at the core of their identity as individuals, while for others there are different, but no less personal, motivations.

Second, the movement is cross-class in composition. Many are unemployed, but an increasing number are working in a variety of jobs. Thankfully, the number of persons forced to do piecework in so-called “sheltered workshops” is declining. But there are also individuals who, for whatever reason, have sufficient financial resources as to not have to worry about their future well-being. The cross-class nature of the movement is such that it is arguable whether the lessons learned from the history of organized and unorganized labor, such as the strength of unity, have been internalized to any significant degree.

The weaknesses in the movement were exemplified in the recent events around Terri Schiavo in Florida. The most militant sections of the movement, and much (though not all) of the movement generally, found itself in agreement with the most conservative Republicans, including the president’s brother, Governor Jeb Bush, that Schiavo’s life should be artificially prolonged. To the majority of the civil rights movement for persons with disabilities, the Schiavo case was a battle against forced euthanasia and the concept that having a severe disability was something many people would rather end their lives over than live with, a message conveyed by the Academy Award winning film, Million Dollar Baby.

On the basis of these precepts, the movement’s position on the Schiavo case was consistent and logical. Clearly, the political forces that took unusual legislative means to prolong Schiavo’s life were motivated by the most cynical political motives of promoting an ultra-right agenda. This right-wing cynicism was considered less important to many movement activists than what they saw as the larger issue: having a long-term disability need not mean the end of a useful life.

One of the facts that bodes well for the growth and political evolution of the civil rights movement for persons with disabilities is that it is an inclusive class of persons. As people live longer, the more likely individuals are to have some form of disability at some point in their lives, and an accompanying need to avail themselves of civil rights protection in employment, housing, services and/or accessibility.

The takeover of the Tennessee Governor’s office by persons with disabilities and civil rights activists should be seen as both a continuation of a lengthy struggle and as potentially bringing the movement into the next stage: The all out struggle against the ultra right. And ultimately, the realization that full rights for persons with disabilities, including the right to employment, accessible and affordable housing and full accessibility to theatres, hotels, places of worship, vacation spots, will be fully secure only with a qualitative and quantitative change called Bill of Rights socialism.

--Write to Lawrence Albright at pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net.

September/October 2005 (table of contents)

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 06:05:00 +0000

Televangelist Robertson and the Decadent Capital of Big Oil

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 01:00:00 +0000

8-30-05, 8:55 am

You know U.S. Christian televangelist Pat Robertson of the Christian Coalition is tight with God. Such tightness has it privileges. One grabbing headlines now is the privilege to call for the U.S.-led liquidation of Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s president, redistributing oil revenue to his nation’s low-income majority.

Further, he is looking to change Venezuela’s commercial relations with some of the world’s people, including low- and middle income Americans facing record gas prices this summer. Chavez also backs below-market oil prices for Caribbean nations. In sum, his energy economics threatens the unlimited expansion of prices and profits for Big Oil.

It has a big problem in Chavez, whose energy ideas would be wonderful for ordinary Cuban people (two-thirds of whom are Blacks). Briefly, their daily struggles flow from the 40-plus years of the U.S. economic blockade and the fall of the former Soviet Union. Thus Robertson, with his juice card on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, backs more blood for Big Oil, which must “grow or die” in all of its decadent grandeur. For Robertson and the barons of Big Oil he speaks for, Chavez threatens to limit the growth of prices and profits for this valuable commodity. For the Christian televangelist, then, Chavez’ privileging of people over profits is a sin. For that this sinner must go, and quickly.

So we find Robertson of the neo-con choir basically shilling for Big Oil, a leading sector of the U.S. economy under the Bush White House. His role is to push the American political spectrum more to the decadent extreme. Some call this the right wing.

Big Oil’s profits are at record levels and headed up—but that is not enough. More profits are needed by investors. It matters not to them who or what feels the pain from rising oil prices and profits.

Even Wal Mart Stores, Inc., whose shoppers and workers are low-income Americans generally, is feeling the bite from Big Oil in the form of slower rates of profit. Millions of U.S. Wal-Mart shoppers and workers are spending less due to increases in gas pump prices. Here, we see a conflict between sectors of capital (retail vs. energy), which does not break its over-all unity against wage earners and their families.

Accordingly, it falls to Robertson, who funds George W. Bush and the GOP with big bucks, to demonize Chavez, democratically elected more than once to lead his nation. Decadent capital breeds decadent mouthpieces. Robertson is simply one of them.

--Seth Sandronsky is a member of Sacramento Area Peace Action and a co-editor of Because People Matter, Sacramento's progressive paper. He can be reached at ssandron@hotmail.com.

Oil Prices And The World Economy

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 00:55:00 +0000

8-30-05, 8:51 am

WITH headlines tracking the ever-rising price of oil, the lack of any major effect of the shock on global growth has become the subject of discussion and speculation. Taking one of the many internationally traded varieties of relevance to developing Asia, the price per barrel of Dubai Fateh crude averaged $28 in February 2004, around $35 between May and December 2004, nearly $40 in February 2005, crossed $45 in March and $50 in June and stood at $55 in mid-August. Other varieties like American light crude have crossed the $65-per-barrel mark in international markets in recent weeks. GROWTH DRIVEN PRICE RISE OF OIL

The fundamental reason why prices have risen so dramatically is that demand—especially driven by growth in the US, China and India—has outstripped the capacity of the industry to pump out crude and refine it. Global demand is estimated to have risen by 2.7 million barrels per day in 2004, the highest since 1976. Nearly a third of that growth came from China, where oil consumption soared by around 16 per cent in 2004. On the other hand capacity has not been expanding to meet this growing demand. As a result, surplus capacity in the oil producing system is limited. Spare capacity in 2004 is estimated to have fallen to 1 million barrels per day (b/d), its lowest level in 20 years. Saudi Arabia, the country which sits on the largest share of global reserves and which was responsible for increasing availability when supplies were tight in the past, is also nearing its limits. Given the nature of the industry, supply can adjust only with a considerable lag, since investment requirements are large and involve substantial gestation lags. Investment has not kept pace with demand partly because of the low oil prices of the 1990s, when the average real price of oil was half that in the 1980s.

FACTORS LEADING TO UNCERTAINTY

The effects of medium term excess demand on prices have been aggravated by a number of factors that have increased uncertainty. The most important is, of course, the continued occupation of Iraq by the US and its allies and the strong resistance of the Iraqi people to that occupation. The inability thus far of the US army to contain the armed struggle, despite the use of violence even when it endangers civilians, has reduced exports and led to expectations of uncertain future supplies from Iraq. In addition, the war has precipitated terrorist attacks in the world's largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia, that has affected oil supplies, even if temporarily. So long as the threat of such attacks remains, supplies are uncertain and prices are buoyant. The net result has been that any development that affects or could affect supplies from any other country triggers a price increase. This could be political uncertainty in Nigeria, the battle for control of Yukos in Russia, civil strife and oil industry strikes in Venezuela or fears of the impact of Hurricane Dennis on US oil supplies. All of these have in the recent past substantially affected prices at the margin and even led to a spike in prices. The upward pressure on prices that result from these developments has been further exaggerated by speculative investments by financial investors in oil markets. The base for speculation seems even greater since the sharp price increases of recent times have not spurred inflation, curbed growth and forced a cutback in demand. The dissociation between the level of oil prices and the rate of global expansion only strengthens expectations of further price increases.

One explanation advanced for this lack of association between oil prices and growth is the fact that the real price of oil, which adjusts the nominal price increase to take account of changes in the prices of commodities other than oil, is by no means at a peak. Thus, in terms of 2005 dollars, the 1980 price of Arabian Light, which was $35.69 in nominal terms, amounted to $84.29. That is $25 per barrel or 40 per cent higher than today’s price in real terms.

DEMAND FOR OIL IS PUZZLING However, the fact that in absolute terms today’s real price of oil is far short of its historic peak does not detract from the fact that recent increases in that price have been dramatic and that the real price of oil is at a 15-year high. So the persistence of growth and demand for oil is indeed puzzling. It suggests that the expectation that rising nominal oil prices would trigger contraction in government spending to smother inflation, as happened at the time of the second oil shock at the end of the 1970s, has not been realised. One reason for this could be that the impact of oil price increases on the balance of payments is not immediately debilitating because of the greater access to foreign exchange of the big spenders. Many countries have been able to finance a rising oil import bill without much difficulty. For example, China keeps sucking in oil despite higher prices because of the consistently high increase in its export earnings; India manages because of large IT-related revenues and capital inflows; some other developing countries are able to stay afloat because of remittances from migrant workers; and the US pulls through because of capital flows that finance its burgeoning trade deficit and make it the world’s largest debtor nation. Thus the fact that the world is awash with liquidity that can be accessed in the form of foreign revenues, debt, portfolio investments or foreign direct investment by countries that are better off has helped ensure that a sharp contraction of the kind triggered by the second oil shock has not occurred. The resulting persistence in strong demand for oil has contributed to buoyancy in prices because supply too has not been responsive to price increases.

IMPLICATIONS OF GLOBAL OIL SCENARIO

These features of the global oil scenario have two implications. First, it is likely that prices are likely to remain high for some time to come even if the era of cheap oil is not altogether over. Second, as and when specific developments threaten to affect or actually do affect oil supplies from any existing location, a further spike in oil prices is a real possibility. But already there are signs that things may change. To start with, not all countries are in a position to cope with the current price of oil. Many poor countries cannot access foreign credits with the ease that characterises the more developed even among the developing. But that is not all. Even some of the more developed countries in developing Asia have been badly affected in 2005, when prices have continued to rise and the discount on the West Asian varieties they import has fallen sharply. Asia, which imports 70 per cent of its oil from the Middle East, has received a larger oil shock this year than last. Countries are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain retail fuel subsidies. Thailand abandoned subsidies in August, while other governments, such as India’s, have raised prices despite opposition. In the event growth and oil demand are likely to fall. Thus the hike in oil prices is bound to have an adverse effect on the global system soon. What is not certain is the nature and location of that adverse effect. Fears of a global recession arise because the already high US trade deficit is widening sharply. Clearly, if prices rise further, global growth could indeed stall. However, that projection hinges on the perceived trade-off between growth and inflation, and is predicated on the assumption that oil prices increases will lead to more general inflation. Governments attempting to combat inflation will then embark upon contractionary fiscal and monetary policies, which will bring down inflation but also imply lower rates of aggregate economic growth.

OIL PRICE HIKE MAY NOT LEAD TO INFLATION

It is correct to assume that governments across the world remain obsessed with inflation control, because the political economy configurations that have led to the domination of finance still persist. However, the prior assumption, that oil price hikes necessarily lead to higher inflation, may not be so valid any more.

Certainly it is true that for a very long period—in fact almost the whole of the second half of the 20th century— oil prices showed a strong relationship to aggregate inflation rates in the world economy. Between 1970 and 2000, for example, world trade prices and oil prices were strongly positively correlated and in the largest economy, the US, the Consumer Price Index inflation tracked movements in world oil prices.

But, there is evidence that this relationship may have changed. Though oil prices have been exceptionally volatile recently, such fluctuations appear to have had little impact on aggregate inflation rates in either developed or developing countries. Rather, such inflation rates have been relatively stable and even fallen slightly compared to the earlier decade.

So what has changed in the world economy to cause such an apparently established relationship to break down? The first important factor is the reduced dependence of the industrial economies upon oil imports, at least in quantitative terms. For the group of industrial countries in the OECD, net oil imports accounted for 2.4 per cent of GDP in 1978, but have since fallen continuously, to amount to only one per cent of GDP.

But the second factor may be even more significant. This is a distributional shift, whereby the burden of adjustment to higher oil prices is essentially borne by workers across the world and non-oil primary commodity producers in the developing countries. These prices do not rise in tandem with oil prices and in some cases have declined. This means that even though energy is a universal intermediate good, its price rise does not cause prices of many other commodities to increase anywhere near proportionately. This in turn enables aggregate inflation levels to remain low even though oil prices may be increasing.

WORKERS BEAR THE BRUNT

It is well-known that the period since the early 1990s has been once of a substantial decline in the bargaining power of workers vis-à-vis capital in most of the world, and this has been reflected in declining wage shares of national income and real wages that are either stagnant or growing well below productivity increases. This provides a significant amount of slack in terms of the ability of employers to bear other input cost increases. In addition, this disempowerment of workers also means that such input cost increases can be passed on without attracting demands for commensurate increases in money wages in the current period. Along with workers, agriculturalists and other non-oil primary commodity producers have also been adversely affected and been forced to take on some of the burden of adjustment. Indeed, even manufacturing producers from developing countries have been adversely affected in a situation where intense competitive pressure has ensured that they cannot pass on all their input cost increases.

INEVITABILITY OF GLOBAL RECESSION

Thus, even if growth persists despite rising oil prices, the distribution of the benefits of that growth is likely to be extremely unequal. But even growth is likely to be unequally distributed. In the case of the poorer, oil importing developing countries, the effects of higher oil prices are already adverse and can get worse. These countries have much smaller volumes of remittance incomes from abroad and cannot access large capital inflows. Thus they have to adjust to rising oil prices by squeezing demand through contractionary policies that reduce domestic incomes and increase unemployment. This is the only way they can deal with their balance of payments difficulties. So long as these sections are forced to bear a disproportionate share of the burden, the current oil shock may not seem a big problem. But if for some reason they cannot be called upon to do so a global recession may be inevitable.

From People's Democracy

Earth to Dubya, Come In Dubya

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 00:51:00 +0000

8-30-05, 8:47 am

Someone needs to grab Mr. Bush by his shirt collar and shake him out of his stupor. Cloistered in Crawford and on permanent vacation, our dear President seems completely disconnected from reality. Whether it's the cries of a grieving mother camped at his front gate, or the burgeoning anti-war movement she inspires, or the snafu he unleashed in Iraq for no legitimate reason, Bush is utterly out of touch with the real world. With his free speech zones and by-invitation-only town hall meetings, our President lives a surreal life in which he is sheltered, like the child of an over-protective mother, from the harsh truths of the world in which the rest of us live.

Take, for instance, our President's recent pronouncements regarding the completion of Iraq's draft constitution. Flush with a confidence that only comes with delusion, Bush heralded Iraq's Sunni-free constitution as 'an inspiration to all who share the universal values of freedom, democracy, and rule of law.'

Just as long as you're not Sunni. If you are, Iraq's draft constitution is more of a slap in the face than an inspiration.

By submitting the draft constitution for ratification over the strenuous objections of the Sunni members of the drafting committee, the Shiites and Kurds sent an unmistakable message – Iraq's Shiites and Kurds are more concerned with meeting the Bush administration's deadlines than they are with transforming Iraq into a sustainable democratic nation. Then again, maybe the Shiites and Kurds aren't particularly interested in a unified Iraq.

Under the draft constitution, Iraq would be a federal republic, with decentralized seats of power. Baghdad, for centuries the seat of Arabic learning and culture, would no longer have a central role in Iraq, much less the Arab world. Indeed, under the draft constitution, Iraq is not even considered an Arab nation. Offended by Iraq's new non-Arab status, Iraq's Sunnis are also justifiably concerned that a federal Iraq will ultimately mean a divided Iraq.

Signs of Iraq's splintering are already evident. Iraq's tremendous oil wealth is concentrated in the north and south of the country. In the north, the Kurds have already carved out an autonomous region known as Kurdistan where the Iraqi national flag is nowhere to be seen and many inhabitants have never visited Baghdad and don't even speak Arabic. In the south, the Shiites are creating their own autonomous zone with increasingly close ties to Iran. Sandwiched in the relatively oil-free center of Iraq are the Sunnis. It's bad enough that the Sunnis would be left without important oil reserves, the draft constitution goes one step further and concentrates the distribution of Iraq's oil revenues between the Kurdish north and the Shia south. The Sunnis are rendered beggars.

Another insult handed to the Sunnis by the draft constitution is the document's de-Baathification of Iraq. Notorious as the party of Saddam, the Baath party consisted largely of Sunnis. While there were many Baathists who committed atrocities and abuses during Saddam's reign, there were many more who, as teachers and professionals, were compelled to join the party. By barring any and all former members of the Baath party from participating in Iraq's new government, far more Sunnis than Kurds or Shiites are preemptively disenfranchised.

The point is not that we should necessarily feel sorry for or pity Iraq's Sunni population. Rather, the real point is that Iraq's draft constitution bodes poorly for just about everyone. Vowing to reject the constitution come October, the Sunnis are pushing to register enough Sunni voters to veto the offending document. While many Sunnis will try to reject the draft constitution at the ballot box, there are many who will reject the draft through violence. By ostracizing Iraq's Sunnis, the Kurds and Shiites have virtually guaranteed a protracted period of violence and political conflict.

In other words, a full-fledged civil war in Iraq is now that much more likely.

If Iraq were to completely (rather than almost-completely) disintegrate into chaos and war waged upon largely sectarian lines, not only would the U.S. military's presence be indefinitely extended, but the entire Middle East region would be further destabilized. That wouldn't benefit anyone other than those who thrive in chaos – terrorists.

Which is why it is so delusional for Bush to pronounce that Iraq's draft constitution will only help 'make America more secure.' So long as Iraq's draft constitution relegates the Sunnis to second-rate status, nothing could be further from the truth.

Then again, 'nothing could be further from the truth' aptly sums up Bush and his administration, particularly on the issue of Iraq.

--Ken Sanders is a writer in Tucson whose work has been published by Z Magazine, Common Dreams, Democratic Underground, Dissident Voice, and Political Affairs Magazine, among others.

Venezuela to Provide Discounted Heating Oil and Free Eye Operations to U.S. Poor

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 00:50:00 +0000

8-30-05, 8:45 am

Venezuela’s Chavez said to visiting Rev. Jesse Jackson today that he would like Jackson to help with finding a way to provide discounted heating oil and free eye operations to poor communities in the U.S. Pointing out that Venezuela provides 1.5 million barrels of oil per day to the U.S., Chavez said, 'we would like to provide a part of this 1.5 million barrels of oil to poor communities.'

Chavez made these comments during his weekly television program Aló Presidente today, which Jackson briefly attended to speak to Chavez and the audience. Jackson is on a three-day visit to Venezuela, during which he will meet with local religious leaders, Afro-Venezuelan groups, the president of the state oil company PDVSA, President Hugo Chavez, and visit poor-neighborhoods to see Venezuela's social programs at work.

Chavez had first mentioned the plan to supply discounted oil to poor communities in the U.S. last week, while in Cuba, but did not provide any details beyond that. Today he specified that it was heating oil that the Venezuelan government was looking into because this seemed the most feasible and most necessary approach. Given the high price of oil this year, heating oil is expected to reach very high levels this winter, which will be unaffordable for many poor families in the U.S.

'There is a lot of poverty in the U.S. and don’t believe that everything reflects the American Way of Life. Many people die of cold in the winter. Many die of heat in the summer, many unemployed and that die of starvation,' said Chavez in explaining why Venezuela was interested in providing discounted heating oil to the U.S. poor. 'We could have an impact on seven to eight million persons,' he added.

Chavez said that he was interested in talking to Jackson about this plan, so that his organization and other U.S.-based groups might help with it. Chavez mentioned the groups TransAfrica Forum, Global Exchange, and Global Women’s Strike that could also help implement the plan.

Part of the plan was for the U.S.-based and Venezuelan state-owned oil company Citgo to provide heating oil directly to poor households. Chavez said this would not present a loss to Venezuela because the idea would be to offer the oil at a lower rate because intermediaries would not be involved. Up to 30% to 40% of the cost could be saved said Chavez. Citgo licenses 14,000 gas station franchises and 8 refineries in the U.S.

Venezuela’s ambassador to the U.S. Bernardo Alvarez, had told Chavez that the embassy has already received over 140 requests about the plan, even though it has not been formally announced yet.

Free Eye Operations

Chavez spent a large part of his Sunday talk show discussing new healthcare plans for Venezuela. Part of this discussion also involved the provision of free eye operations to people in all of the American continents, north and south. The operations Cuba would provide the bulk of the operations, with Venezuela providing the transportation.

Chavez said that of the six million operations that Cuba and Venezuela would want to organize over the next ten years, there would be slots for 150,000 U.S.-Americans per year. Each country will receive a quota. Chavez gave some examples, explaining that there would be 100,000 for Brazilians, 60,000 for Colombians, 12,000 for Panamanians, 30,000 for Ecuadorians, 20,000 for Bolivians, and 20,000 for inhabitants of the Caribbean. Chavez said that those interested in the eye operations should turn to the Venezuelan embassies in their respective countries.

The plan to provide free eye operations is part of the 'Mission Miracle,' which is one of the many new social programs that Chavez government has instituted in the past two years in Venezuela. By the end of December, 150,000 Venezuelans will have received eye operations. These operations involved operations for cataracts, myopia, pigmentary retinosis, and many others.

From

Movie review: The Dukes Of Hazzard

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 00:47:00 +0000

8-30-05, 8:43 am

A risible redneck revival Directed by Jay Chandrasekhar

YEE Haaw? Yee Argh, more like. If you didn't get enough of this risible redneck apologia for southern-fried segregation during its 147 television episodes launched in 1979, you're hardly likely to take up with its dire cinematic successor.

Designed for deadheads with a penchant for country cousins, The Dukes of Hazzard features Sean William Scott, Johnny Knoxville and Jessica Simpson as the good ol' boys Bo, Luke and sister Daisy Duke.

The Dukes family business is moonshine, concocted and perfected as the deadliest drink in the district by their whiskery Uncle Jesse - Willie Nelson doing a passable impression of a good ol' country boy.

While the lads are out delivering the drink in their orange Dodge Charger, affectionately known as General Lee, Daisy is attracting the attention of all the low-lifes in Hazzard's finest drinking establishment The Boar's Nest.

It's owned by burly businessman Boss Hogg - Burt Reynolds in white suit and silver syrup - who's up to his usual no-good scams, this time trying to turn Hazzard County into a giant opencast mining concern. Never mind that nobody cares if Hazzard is turned into a nuclear wasteland, the Dukes have a bounden duty to put the pedal to the metal and seek help from a sexy scientist in the state capital.

Given the fact that the original TV series made no mention of black people, the film takes time out to explain that the confederate flag that adorns the roof of General Lee was applied without their knowledge.

This, of course is pointed out after comments by black people and liberals in the city. As with every other racist reference, the Dukes defence is included in the title song, 'We're good ol' boys ... never meaning no harm.'

Meanwhile, Boss Hogg is organising the local Hazzard County race to provide the Duke boys with the opportunity to display a stock car crunching finale, while competing with a former county champion.

With the usual range of incredible car chases - one having General Lee run up the side of a bridge and somersault over the freeway - it's about as funny as chewing on lizard gizzard.

As for dressing up and pretending that they're Japanese and black people, it's a little too obvious in its patronising acknowledgement of the TV show to say the least.

If you can make it to the predictable ending, the end credits include a range of out-takes that aren't so much superior to the rest of the movie as to be the only genuine laughs along with Willie singing the song.

From Morning Star

Statement About Draft Constitution: Iraqi Communist Party - Central Information Bureau

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 01:52:00 +0000

8-29-05,9:49am

The text of the adopted draft constitution of the republic of Iraq, which will be put to a public referendum in mid October 2005, was read out yesterday in the National Assembly in Baghdad.

The declaration of this document, and the forthcoming referendum, constitute an important development in the on-going political process in the direction of consolidating democracy and its institutions, completing the transitional period, restoring security and normal conditions, and achieving our country’s full sovereignty and independence.

The draft constitution has emerged out of a protracted process, due to the fact that it has taken place under difficult conditions in our country, on political, security and socio-economic levels, as well as a balance of forces that has developed out of abnormal and exceptional circumstances. It is the outcome of a struggle between different visions and opinions with regard to the future of Iraq.

All this had its direct and deep impact on the process of drafting the constitution that we had wanted, and strived for, to be one that enjoys consensus among the various constituents of our people: ethnic, religious, confessional and political, and also express a spirit of equal citizenship for Iraqis.

While viewing positively the draft constitution in its general context, we stress at the same time our reservation regarding many of its articles, especially those that, in some of their clauses and formulation, encroach upon the desired civil-democratic character of the constitution, and those that restrict women rights and do not allow them to achieve equality with men.

Finally, we had hoped that the process of writing the constitution, presenting it to the people and for referendum, would take place in a more transparent manner and in more conformity with the need for respecting parliamentary traditions and norms.

Let's make 60th anniversary of atomic bombing a turning point toward nuclear weapons abolition

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 01:40:00 +0000

8-29-05,9:37am

It is 60 years since the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and on Nagasaki three days later.

Hibakusha - surviving victims - who experienced 'hell on earth' have overcome enormous difficulties and have been calling for there to be no more hibakusha. Their life and death condemnation of nuclear weapons that totally destroy humanity and even deny victims dignified deaths has touched the hearts of many people, and their calls have converged into one large movement to achieve peace without nuclear weapons. It is this movement that has many times checked the danger of nuclear war.

Intense discussions

Without their keen wishes being realized, hibakusha are growing older. Their average age is now 73. What is more,the United States stubbornly refuses to fulfill the 'unequivocal undertaking' to eliminate nuclear weapons and is openly pushing ahead with its war of aggression against Iraq. Against this background, the determination to achieve a world free of war and nuclear weapons is spreading steadfastly.

Hibakusha made their first international call in a message to the world published by the Japan Confederation of A and H Bombs Sufferers Organization (Nihon Hidankyo) in August 1956. It stated: 'We appeal to the world: Never again must humanity experience the same calamities and suffering as we did.' Nihon Hidankyo has issued a second message to the world calling for 'No more Hiroshimas and No more Nagasakis' to represent an idea shared by all humankind.

This year's International Meeting of the World Conference against A&H Bombs was held with the theme: 60 Years Since the Atomic Bombing:

Time to Develop Actions and Cooperation for a Nuclear Weapon-Free, Peaceful, and Just World.'

Responding to this call of hibakusha, a record 264 overseas delegates from 29 countries, including government officials of Malaysia, Mexico, Sweden, Vietnam, Cuba, and the League of Arab States, took part in discussions.

The 'Declaration' made it clear that despite the persistent adverse current represented by the Bush Administration adopting a preemptive attack strategy, an overwhelming majority of world opinion is in favor of a peaceful world without nuclear weapons, and that the anti-nuclear movement is making progress. It called on the world to redouble the effort to develop international cooperation and joint action in this 60th year since the atomic bombings.

Recalling the 1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto that states, 'We appeal, as human beings, to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest,' the 55th Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs held just before the 2005 World Conference appealed to take 'immediate steps to reduce the nuclear threat.'

This year's World Conference of Mayors for Peace seeking for urgent actions for the elimination of nuclear weapons attracted 275 people, including 99 mayors from 25 countries, including those from the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

More young participants

It was good to see a large number of young people take part in this year's World Conference from around the country and abroad, including 130 young people from France. They organized the 'International Youth Rally' where about 3,000 participants exchanged their anti-nuclear weapons actions, adding a new page in history.

To people of the atomic-bombed country, and people of the country with the war-renouncing Article 9 in the Constitution: The JCP calls on all of you to sincerely accept the earnest commitment of hibakusha and act together to create a world free of the threat of nuclear weapons. Let's increase activities to achieve peace while furthering cooperation with younger generations!

From Akahata

What Things Might Be Like In A Parallel Political Universe

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 01:30:00 +0000

In 1940 after the great CIO organizing strikes, the passage of major New Deal legislation and Franklin Roosevelt’s campaign to reorganize the Supreme Court and the Coming of WWII, playwright and humorist George S. Kaufman, who made his living mocking everyone, wrote a satirical story, “The Great Caviar Riots” in the Nation in which he mocked both the culture of protest and the upper classes, who now took to the streets to regain their culinary class privileges. As it turned out, though, the cold war, the military industrial complex, the anti-labor Taft-Hartley law and McCarthyite policies against the left enabled the rich to regain most of the privileges they had lost without launching sit-down strikes in country clubs to end caviar shortages.

Even though Franklin Roosevelt died in 1945 and the last significant progressive legislation in U.S. history was enacted under the banner of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society administration in the late 1960s, the Right in the United States uses the mass media it controls and has instant access to argue that “liberals” and the left “control” the media. Even though Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren retired in 1968 and the liberalization of the Federal Judiciary, begun during the New Deal, was ended in the 1970s and reversed fully in the 1980s(except for the Clinton years, when mostly centrists and some liberals gained appointment, the federal Judiciary for most of the last twenty-five years has been stacked with at best conservatives, at worst, ultra rightists like Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas) the right continues to crusade against “activist judges”(meaning judges who refuse to automatically rubber stamp their political initiatives and throw out any progressive legislation or lower court decisions). One could go on and on, from the $400 billion for military spending that is criticized for not being enough, to the trillions in deficits that are blamed on “welfare” and social programs that have been cut back since the 1970s and in some cases, like AFDC, no longer exist, to the manufactured fascination with crime and death seen in the murder mysteries that dominate news and public affairs and fiction television while rising fuel prices, falling real wages, environmental disaster, and a “war” in Iraq (the war as war is conventionally defined is over but the occupation is continuing in a more destructive way for American troops than the war itself) and the “war on terrorism” are thrown in to the news and public affairs mix. The Revolution Will Not be Televised? Why Not? Everything else is in a media stream of consciousness that merges with everything else to encourage people to see reality in fragments between commercials. The real question under capitalism is not whether or not The Revolution will be televised but how many people will be watching.

The Right has in effect created a parallel “reality” though that serves as a sensearound for most Americans, although they have access to alternate sources of information and entertainment that they can use to try to find both what and why things are happening and to keep from loving Cold Case Files/Forensic Files/Survivor/Law and Order/Desperate Housewives, a “reality” where everyone is trying to seduce, rob, maim and kill you all of the time and the only safe course is to stay home, take a break by watching Pat Robertson on the Family Channel, and leave your house to go shopping and occasionally to vote Republican.

But what if we turned the tables on the Right and make their upper class backers believe that the parallel realty they have created is real, that they, like the rich in the caviar riots, must demonstrate, protest, even riot to regain their class privileges. Cindy Sheehan, a heroic woman who refuses to be the Good Mother sending her son to his death in a foreign war with the heartfelt thanks of her government (Mussolini’s Fascist regime in the 1930s used to give women who bore sons who would be soldiers “fertility awards” for their service to the state) has challenged the rightwing writers who have defamed her, telling them to either to send either join the army and go to Iraq themselves or send their sons and daughters.

That inspired me to come up with this idea: A “Patriot Draft” for the rich and the Right. Since liberals and the left are neither brave nor trustworthy, as Limbaugh/Hannity/Coulter ad nausea tell us ad nausea, why not give them all Section Eight Deferments and restrict the draft to Conservative Republicans ages 18-62 (those old enough to vote and not old enough to collect Social Security). Since lower income people and the poor are in those categories because of their own moral flaws, as the Right has informed us for so long, give them Section 8 deferments also and restrict the draft to families with household incomes above two hundred thousand dollars.

Protests would of course begin immediately. On the New York Stock Exchange, hundreds would step forward to sign Vouchers of Resistance to the “Patriot Draft.” Draft counselors would tell clients to sell Condos and donate stocks to charities to reduce their incomes. Country clubbers would buy audio tapes of the collected works of Marx and Engels to prove to the Bush administration that they were not “patriot” at least as GW would define patriotism. Wealthy women would march in the streets denouncing the government for forcing their millionaire middle-aged husbands to desert them. Colonies of millionaire draft dodgers would spring up in Monaco and Bali and the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation would relocate there. The heavy draft of Federalist Society members would create a real crisis in rightwing judicial appointments.

But this would be just the beginning. Faced with a growing upper class insurgency, the administration would try to accuse the protesters of being foreign agents, but it would be difficult to create mass fear against Monaco, Lichtenstein, or even Switzerland, whose banking laws would attract many of the protesters.

Finally, Bush would accuse his enemies of being Sushi munching agents of Japanese Empire and ban Sushi from all menus on the ground that it was encouraging draft resistance (except of course for an American Gulf Coast version, which would be officially called “freedom fish”).

After Selective Service drafted Rupurt Murdoch’s son (Murdoch’s attempt to restore his Australian citizenship while keeping his American properties having failed.) Fox News would turn against the administration, as did Oliver North who, after being sent to Afghanistan, converted to Islam and joined the Taliban because they never waffled, were firm in their belief in God, and knew how to fight a culture war? They also reminded him of Reagan’s National Security Council.

Opposition to administration policy began to trickle down when to the masses of people when multi-million dollar NFL quarterbacks were drafted. Now the Country Club Draft Resistance movement was joined by a new mass organization, the HCLF(Howard Cossell Liberation Front). A national beer boycott followed, along with Japanese creditors withdrawing funds because of the Sushi ban. The administration’s bombing of Monaco, which it accused of harboring draft dodgers, terrorists, and weapons of mass destruction, was answered by a NATO counterattack. As the economy collapsed Bush sought asylum in Taliban controlled areas of Pakistan along with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bolton.

An Interim Government of National Salvation including Liberals, Communists, Socialists, NFL Football Players, was then established and a policy of “deRepublicanization” was launched. The government was trying to repair relations with the United Nations and hoping that the UN might intervene to compel the Taliban to extradite Bush and the other fugitives short of military action.

The upper classes that had started the whole thing by their anti-draft protests were now shamefaced. They would not be drafted any more (no one would) but the huge increase in wealth they had experienced since the Reagan presidency was being rapidly lost. They now tried to argue that they had never supported Reagan or anybody named Bush. Just like there were no self-proclaimed Nazis in Germany after 1945, you could find no self-proclaimed Republicans in the United States after the “Patriot Draft” and the fall of Bush.

Scholars of course had different interpret of what had happened. From exile in Pakistan, Mustafa Ahmad who it was rumored had previously been called Ronald Radosh wrote a book based on “Soviet Intelligence” archives which contended that the whole thing was the fruition of an old Soviet plot to take over the NFL and turn it into the NLF. The Cleveland Browns (who were really Reds) and the Greenbay Packers, a public ally owned (hence socialist) team were at the center of the plot. Red Flag on the Fifty Yard Line was the title of Ahmad’s (Radosh’s?) work, which won the General Zia Prize in Pakistan for the best political work exposing the evils of Communism and American Football.

In the U.S. most writers saw the events as the result of a government that had gotten away with so much for so long that it thought that it could get away with anything, including making its upper class supporters live up to its virtual reality world as draftees. Why did they launch the Patriot Draft Act? Why did they send Bolton to the United Nations? Why did they invade Iraq to fight terrorists and find weapons of mass destruction? Why did they call Iraq, Iran, and North Korea an “axis of evil”? Why did they tolerate private armies and contractors that undermined their military’s own strategy? Was it the blind pursuit of profit, as the Marxists (who were now being taken seriously) said? Was it a combination of religious fanaticism and sheer stupidity, as the liberals generally believed? The only thing that everyone was sure about was that they stole the 2000 election to gain power for themselves and after that called everything they did an extension of democracy.

Let us leave the virtual reality we have created with a virtual happy ending for the virtual reality the administration has given us. While the purpose of this article was to use satire to delineate the “reality” of an administration by pretending that it would violate its most sacred tenet, total protection for the rich and powerful, the Bush administration has shown us that it is capable of saying and doing anything, however absurd. The only way to have a happy ending, Hollywood or otherwise, is to concentrate all of our efforts 24/7 on the driving the Republican Right from power and repairing the damage of a generation.

'What if America Found its Soul?' : A 12 Step Program for America [PA Online Editor's Choice]

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 00:20:00 +0000

8-29-05, 8:38 am

Waking up to Discover Your Soul is Missing....the Ultimate Nightmare

“You're spiritually empty, you know. Your life is out of spinning out of control. I see a bleak future if you don’t….”

'What the hell are you talking about? As powerful and successful as I am? I believe in Jesus, I read the Bible, I go to church on Sunday.....'

'Hey, hey, hey! Save the defensive diatribe. You came to me for help, remember? If you really want me to sponsor you, I need for you to be honest, with me and with you. Remember, awareness is the first step and 'da-Nile' ain’t just a river in Egypt!'

'I don't even know why I came here. This is a waste of my valuable time. I have more pressing engagements, and I am leaving!'

'Go ahead. Perhaps you just aren't ready. But remember, by denying you have a problem and walking out that door, you are proving you have a problem. Denial and the 'self will run-riot' are two obvious signs of an addict.'

'All right, all right! It is true. I have problems that I can't fix on my own.'

'It's good to hear you admit that. Awareness is the first step. I think you may be ready to join our group.'

'All right, maybe I am. So now what do I do?'

'We'll join the discussion and you can introduce yourself like the others do. Then you can tell your story. Trust me. You will feel a rush of tremendous relief once you open up to the group and start a real spiritual journey.'

'Who will be there?'

'The world community. Not one of us is above reproach Each of us has suffered from spiritual maladies like you By coming here today, you are taking the crucial first step that many of us did. You will be joining the world community and moving toward spiritual healing. Now let's sit down. You will be surprised at how readily the group will embrace and support you.'
Mustering the Courage to Take that First Step

(The two seat themselves in the crowded room filled with the pungent odors of cigarette smoke and coffee).

'Is it my turn to talk?'

'Yes, America. Go ahead.'

'My name is America, and I am an addict.'

(In a chorus of replies in varying languages, the group welcomes America)

'I am addicted to power, over-consumption, imperialism, deceit, avarice, hubris, and war. Like a spoiled child with a self-will run amuck, I have tried to force each of you to bend to my will. My life has become unmanageable, I am powerless over my additions. I am prepared to turn my will over to a Power greater than myself and allow that Power to restore me to sanity. The fact that I am speaking to you in English and expecting all of you to understand me shows how deep my arrogance runs. I come before you today with a broken spirit. I have grossly abused my immense power, and for that I am sorry. That is all I wish to say today. Thank you.'

(The other members of the group thank America for speaking)

By the Sweat of my Brow

Nine months pass, and America, supported by its sponsor, works the Twelve Steps with a powerful determination. It is a long and arduous path, but America adheres to its deep conviction to follow a course of spiritual redemption and fulfillment. Surprisingly, many of the numerous nations and people America has harmed over the years respond in a forgiving and supportive manner. Let's listen in at the Twelve Step meeting in which America gives a detailed accounting of its spiritual awakening.

'My name is America, and I am an addict.'

(America is met by a chorus of welcome from the other nations comprising the Twelve Step group)

'I stand before you with nine months of sobriety and mental clarity under my belt, and I thank my Higher Power for granting me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage the change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. I thank those of you who have offered me guidance and support along the way.

'As I embarked on my spiritual transformation, I realized what a cancer I had become to humanity. To remedy this, I have shed my obsession with being number one, and I have embraced a belief in a Power greater than myself. My Higher Power is a composite of Jehovah, Jesus, Allah, Vishnu, and many others. In fact, my Higher Power is amorphous, and those amongst my people who remain atheist embrace science or reason as their Higher Powers. Regardless of its form, the Higher Power I have chose to embrace espouses the values of non-violence, thrift, honesty, responsible use of power, equality, compassion, critical thinking, careful scrutiny and evaluation of evidence, preservation of our environment, a distribution of resources that provides for the well-being of virtually all human beings, respect for human rights and dignity, and participation in the global community. Wow! When I look at the values of my Higher Power, I see how obscenely misguided I was! Before my spiritual transformation, adherence to these principles would have been utterly laughable, as all of you know.

'Having fulfilled Steps One, Two and Three by admitting my powerlessness, finding faith in a Higher Power to restore me to sanity, and turning my will over to the care of my Higher Power, I fulfilled the harrowing task of Step Four; I made my searching and fearless moral inventory. Afterwards, the visage peering back at me in the mirror was more foul than the picture of Dorian Gray. My corruption and moral turpitude had wrought an odious image, and at that point, I knew the meaning of the notion that the 'truth hurts'.

'Today I am going to engage in Step Five as I admit to the God of my understanding, myself and to others the exact nature of my wrongs. I need to take a deep breath before I get started, and I need some water.'

(America sighs deeply and with a trembling hand takes a long sip of ice water to help regain composure).

'Here I go. I wrote my transgressions out and numbered them. I am going to read them to you. Please bear with me as my voice cracks and I shed an occasional tear:

(In a tone of uncertainty, America begins reading the carefully prepared self-idictment)

1. I nearly exterminated the indigenous people of North America, as I committed acts of genocide and stole their land. To this day I continue to treat Native Americans in a shameful manner.

2. I imported and enslaved human beings from the continent of Africa, and I built a thriving economy with their blood, sweat, and tears. It is with deep humiliation that I admit the vile depths to which I sank in perpetuating the evil institution of slavery. Black Americans struggle to this day with gross economic inequality, inferior public education, bigotry, lack of access to quality health care, persecution by the criminal justice system, and inadequate representation in the government.

(America pauses briefly for a few more deep breaths and another drink).

'Ok, I am ready to continue,' America says with a growing resolve behind the tremulous voice.

3. Hispanics became my largest minority as immigrants streamed across my borders seeking economic opportunities and shelter from oppressive regimes I had created in Latin America. Without stopping to realize that integrating into a culture and learning a foreign language do not happen overnight, and that many of these new Americans were willing to do the work that many indigenous Americans were unwilling to do, I was indifferent to their needs and met them with bigotry. I even allowed armed vigilantes (who defiled the name of Revolutionary War heroes by calling themselves Minutemen) to patrol my borders to 'curb illegal immigration'.

4. I allowed and even openly endorsed an ongoing repression of gay rights. I banned gay marriage in many states and refused to pass hate crime laws to protect gays from savage attacks and murder. I also chose not to protect gays from discrimination in the work place. Simply put, I left 5% of my population unprotected by the rights guaranteed to my citizens under my Constitution.

5. It took me, the bastion of freedom, until 1920 to amend my Constitution to give women the right to vote. To this day I continue to reject an amendment which would guarantee women equal rights. While women enjoy many more rights today than they have throughout my history, they still face many barriers in access to equal education and employment. Women are still grossly under-represented in my government.

6. After a respite of about fifty years during the Twentieth Century, I resumed a laissez faire business environment. Union membership fell to 9% of the work force. Avaricious titans like Wal-Mart abused their employees and paid them sub-standard wages. Energy leviathans like Exxon reaped obscene profits at the expense of the American consumer by keeping oil refinery capacity low, and by pouring large sums of cash into think tanks which created propaganda to further their agendas. The restrictions on the securities and banking industries innovated after the stock market crash in 1929 were removed. I made it more difficult for consumers to sue corporations and businesses. I kept the minimum wage at sub poverty level for years. In short, I favored profit-making and money over human beings. I stand before you in ignominy.

(America again pauses to regain composure, still surprised at the audience's empathy).

7. My foreign policy was based on pursuit of hegemony and global domination, at any cost. Perhaps more nauseating than the policy itself was the way in which I peddled its virtues to my own people (and to the rest of the world) like an uscrupulous used car salesman. As I committed war crimes, repeatedly violated international law, ignored the UN, killed millions of innocents in many countries on multiple continents, and tortured prisoners of war, I worked vigorously to persuade the world that I was 'spreading freedom' and 'planting the flag of liberty'. In Nagasaki and Hiroshima, I killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians in an unnecessary show of force against a nation on the verge of surrender. I have supported corrupt and ruthless dictators (many of whom tortured and killed thousands of their own people) like Saddam Hussein, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, Halie Salassie, General Augusto Pinochet, and both Somozas in Nicaragua (to name but a few). With an unparalleled zeal, I pursued the Bush Doctrine, which called for me to strike pre-emptively and unilaterally, and to do whatever it took to maintain my military dominance. I invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq (in defiance of the UN) to topple Hussein, a former ally whom I had supported while he was committing acts of genocide against the Kurds in the 1980's. My pretexts for the invasion were later exposed as lies. My dishonesty, war crimes, and gross miscalculations related to Iraq resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, thereby creating an untold number of new terrorists ready to retaliate by gutting my own citizens like fish. My perverse actions in Iraq also led to the death of two thousand of my own soldiers, who had agreed to lay their lives on the line to defend a nation, not to expand an empire.

8. I created a complicated network of corporations and business entities like Bechtel, Halliburton, the Carlyle Group, and Lockheed Martin, whose bottom-line profits were significantly fattened by the existence of a perpetual state of war. Many of their executives retired to become members of government and vice versa. Huge campaign donations and powerful lobbying efforts ensured the continuation of lucrative government defense contracts to feed this entity called the military industrial complex. When the 'Communists' ceased to be a viable threat in the minds of my citizens (with the collapse of the Soviet Union), I needed a new enemy to justify the continued escalation of military spending. Opportunistically, I seized 9/11 as the advent of a 'War on Terror'. By 2005, military spending had reached $600 billion (including expenditures for military-related endeavors by non-military government entities like the DOE). While I represented only 5% of the world's population, the money I spent on defense equaled 50% of what the entire world spent to defend themselves. It was staggering to realize how distorted this situation really was.

9. I even had a proxy state to help me carry out my war crimes. Ignoring the fact that there was room for co-existence in the Middle East, I threw the full weight of my financial and military support behind Israel, my co-conspirator in engaging in state terrorism. Ignoring the plight of the Palestinians, it was easy to look the other way when the Israeli government committed atrocities against them. In fact, I even endorsed these acts of state terrorism against the Palestinians as justified acts of self defense. However, when the Palestinians retaliated, I cried foul and labeled them as terrorists. My hypocrisy was practically without bounds.

10. As I slopped the corporate hogs dipping their snouts into the trough of the military industrial complex, I used the 'War on Terror' I had created to justify siphoning funds from the 'socialistic welfare state' to stuff the pockets of my corporate cronies. Along the way, I bankrupted myself by accruing a debt of $8 trillion, which gave me further justification to seriously curtail or end the 'handouts' to the 'lazy masses'. The wealth gap widened to a chasm as the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few grew to a level unseen since the 'Roaring 20's', the precursor to the Great Depression. I raised regressive taxes and lowered progressive taxes. I was addicted to wealth, power and war. I just couldn't get enough, and I didn't care who got hurt or died along the way.

11. Through my corporate-dominated media, I deluded my people into believing that I was Gary Cooper in High Noon, and that I could do no wrong as the sheriff who would make the world safe for democracy. I used the media as a means of propaganda to glorify over-consumption, violence, and immediate gratification. I became a debtor nation of people who felt compelled to have more, bigger, better and faster. Right now. I desensitized my people to the plight of human suffering here and abroad. I promoted religious fanatics like Pat Robertson who were as inflammatory and dangerous as the Islamic mullahs I cursed. I glorified unrealistic ideals of financial success, fame, and physical attractiveness to the point that those who did not 'fit the mold' often experienced depression and eating disorders. Fast food, easy bucks, quick weight loss, and instant salvation (for a free ticket to heaven, accept Christ as one's savior) became 'spiritual' staples of my people.

12. I acted with a growing disregard for the state of the environment. I refused to sign the Kyoto Treaty and denied the reality of Global Warming as I produced 25% of the greenhouse gasses. I relaxed clean air and water laws. I allowed my friends in the oil industry to portray Global Warming as a myth and to impede development of energy sources as an alternative to fossil fuels. The concession I finally made to the need to lessen dependence on fossil fuels was to increase the production of nuclear energy, despite its inherent dangers to humanity and the environment.

'Looking over this moral inventory, I now realize the depth of my iniquity, and I feel deeply sorry to those I have harmed along the way. Words cannot express the anguish I feel for the damage I have wrought upon the world.'

(America pauses and sobs fitfully for several minutes. His peers watch and wait with patience and respect, knowing that regardless of America's crimes in the past, a spiritually enlightened America has the capacity to make the world a much better place. They also recognize that they are not without sin either, and are still on the life-long road to redemption themselves).

(Having regained a semblance of composure, America speaks again)

'I am ready to continue now. Having fulfilled the Fifth Step by admitting the exact nature of my wrongs to you, I am now ready to have the Higher Power of my understanding remove these defects of character, which means I have also accomplished Step Six. As I stand before you, I will take Step Seven and humbly ask Him to remove my shortcomings. Higher Power, I humbly ask you to remove my shortcomings.'

How Will America Repay its Debt to the World?

'As you know, Steps Eight and Nine involve listing those I have harmed and making amends to them. The list of those I have harmed over my 229 year life span would be too long to enumerate here, but I will tell you how I plan to make amends:

'I will start by disbanding the military industrial complex. I need to end the incestuous relationship between my government and its defense contractors. I will stop the obscene over-spending on defense in order to start paying down my atrociously high debt, and to infuse more money into humanitarian efforts within my borders and abroad. I will bolster my public education system, find ways for all of my people to access health care, work toward ending homelessness, increase funding to assist the disabled and those with emotional disorders, and significantly increase humanitarian aid to other nations, while seeing to it that the money is channeled toward teaching them to fish rather than simply giving them fish for the day. I also pledge to take up the cause of the formation of a sovereign Palestinian state, and to utilize my power in the United Nations to better the world rather than abusing it to further my self interests.

'I will end my colonial occupation of sovereign nations like Iraq and abandon my imperialistic designs spelled out in the Bush Doctrine and Project for the New American Century. I will begin a systematic closing of my military bases around the world. If other nations do not have the right to maintain military bases on my soil, I have no right to maintain bases on their soil. I will scrap my plans for the militarization of space. I will work toward multi-lateral nuclear disarmament across the globe. While my defense spending will diminish dramatically, I still recognize the need for a reasonable military force to defend my people, and will provide one.

(America is forced to pause as listeners drown out America's discourse with their enthusiastic applause).

I will make reparations to black Americans a reality by channeling significant amounts of money previously spent on defense toward improving education in the inner city schools which have predominantly black enrollment, offering educational assistance and job training to black adults, and finding ways to deliver adequate health care and employment opportunities to black Americans. Descendents of former slaves, black Americans still face many obstacles resulting from years of bondage, abuse, and dehumanization of their race.

I will end the corrupt stranglehold of the Duopoly of the Democratic and Republican Parties and legitimately open the playing fields to candidates from other parties. I will employ Clean Money, Clean Elections reform, which will distribute equal amounts of public money to qualified candidates, and will end the corruption resulting from lobbyists and corporate interests gaining undue influence over elected officials. Fraudulent elections like those in 2000 and 2004 will be banished to the dustbin of history as I implement election laws to prevent the Katherine Harris's and the Diebolds of my nation from determining presidential election outcomes. These will be important steps toward creating a healthy republic based on my Constitution, an ingenious blueprint for government without equal.

I will finally admit that the War on Drugs has been a sham, used to justify military intervention in countries like Colombia and to stock the prison industrial complex (another of my corrupt, incestuous government/corporate relationships) with slave labor from amongst the poor and minorities. Prohibition failed, and so has the War on Drugs. I am calling a cease fire in this war, and will divert funds from law enforcement and use them to educate children about the inherent dangers of using tobacco, alcohol, and other recreational drugs, and for programs to treat addicts. Draconian laws which send non-violent drug users to prison for possession of small amounts of illegal drugs will be abolished. Harsh laws and consequences for driving under the influence will remain on the books.

I am going to re-strengthen laws to regulate businesses so that I can strike a balance between raw capitalism and socialism. History has taught me that unregulated businesses will seek to maximize profit, regardless of the human cost. Organized labor plays a valuable role in protecting the rights of my working people, and its members will again enjoy many of the legal protections which I have stripped from them over the last thirty years. Alternatively, I have also learned the folly of over-regulating corporations to the point that they are unable to make a reasonable profit. My new paradigm will involve finding a middle ground so that business and humanity can thrive harmoniously.

The passage of the ERA and a constitutional amendment ensuring gay rights will become realities. The Voting Rights Act will become a permanent federal law to ensure that minorities are not denied their fundamental Constitutional right to vote in my elections. I will aggressively work to help the growing Hispanic population integrate into my society without discriminating against them, or demanding that they know English on the day of their arrival. I will disband the Minutemen.

Finally, I will work to become a cooperative member of the world community rather than the belligerent bully I have been. Working through the public education system (teaching my children), I am going to infuse my people with a respect and understanding of other cultures and nations. Unilateral foreign policy decision-making will be history, except in matters of self-defense. Under my new system of values, the dominance of the white patriarchy will end. I am a homogenous melting pot of immigrants from around the globe. This is one of my strengths, and I will maximize it by opening doors to wider participation by members of varying races, religions, genders, sexual orientations, cultures, and nationalities. Being white, male and Christian will no longer be a prerequisite to rise to the top of hierarchies amongst my people, government and organizations. In this way, my ties with the world community will strengthen, and much of the global hatred for me will subside. With a renewed spirit of cooperation, I will be able to tenaciously pursue the truly noble causes of peace and social justice. Cindy Sheehan will feel proud of her nation once again.

(America sits down to a round of thunderous applause and humbly thanks the group for its support).

Roll up Your Sleeves and Get Busy

Several days pass, and America's Twelve Step sponsor again initiates a conversation with the spiritually renewed nation:

'So America, you set some lofty goals for yourself. Do you think you can reach them?”

'I have prayed and mediated for the will and the power to carry out my amends to those I have harmed. That was my Eleventh Step. It is now up to me to do the work, but the outcome rests in the hands of my Higher Power.'

'I do believe you have reached the Twelfth Step. America, you have truly had a spiritual awakening and are ready to practice these principles in all your affairs. I wish you the best.

Remember, humanity is counting on you!'

Jason Miller is a 38 year old activist writer with a degree in liberal arts. He works in the transportation industry, and is a husband and a father to three boys. His affiliations include Amnesty International, the ACLU and the Americans United for Separation of Church and State. He welcomes responses ator comments on his blog at

Striking Mechanics Fight for Jobs, Airline Safety Concerns Mount

Mon, 29 Aug 2005 00:45:00 +0000

8-28-05, 8:43 am

Romulus, Mich. -- On August 20th, 4,430 airline mechanics at Northwest Airlines went on strike. After several months of negotiations, it became obvious to the union that the company had no intention of budging from its initial offer and wanted to push the workers to walk out.

At the beginning of negotiations the company insisted that it needed the mechanics union (Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association) to make $176 million in concessions. The company threatened bankruptcy and demanded a 25.7 percent pay cut and the right to fire 53 percent of the mechanics in order to outsource their work to non-union subcontractors.

Since the mid-1990s, Northwest has cut almost 5,000 union mechanics from its payroll, all under threat of bankruptcy. Meanwhile, Doulgas. M. Steenland, the company's CEO who has presided over the companies financial woes over the last four years, took in about $5.4 million in salary and stock options last year alone. While the union says that its counter-proposals provided $176 million in concessions and increased productivity, the company refused the offer by insisting that it be allowed to start slashing jobs immediately.

In addition to these demands, the company jumped the gun and began subcontracting some of the work to non-union workers last December. This violation of the existing agreement was a show of bad faith as negotiations for the new contract began. In so doing, Northwest Airlines tried to impose its demands even before a new agreement had been reached.

Northwest also tried to force the union to rush a vote on the company’s final offer, hoping that the members wouldn’t have time to analyze what the company is trying to do to them.

According to Harry S., a mechanic with 17 years at Northwest, all of these demands were meant to force the union to walk out. He says that some members might have agreed to the economic portion of the company’s offer, but when they learned that the company wanted to fire half of their membership and refused to negotiate any of these terms, the membership united and agreed to authorize a strike.

Over 92 percent of the union members voted in late July to strike.

A main point of contention for the union has been the company’s claim that it needs the union to give back $176 million in order for it to stay afloat. So far, the union estimates that in the last 18 months the company has spent $107 million to train and replace union mechanics with non-union workers and for other expenses related to busting the union.

According to a letter of support written last month by flight attendants union Vice President Jeff Gardiner, 'Management is throwing millions of dollars toward intimidating its employees when that money could be better spent for a better business plan that includes hedging fuel, paying down debt and funding pensions.'

In fact the company’s economic woes arise not simply from the economic downturn or high fuel prices, but, says AMFA President O.V. Delle-Femine, 'management is trying to exploit this economic situation to bust our union.' And instead of reinvesting its resources to account for growing fuel prices and ensuring longer-term financial stability, the company is working on breaking the union. But the mechanics on the picket line know why the company is willing to risk financial stability to break the union. They believe that the company is trying to prop up its bottom line, not with sound financial practices, but by forcing out union workers.

In order to bust the union, the company has spent the last 18 months organizing non-union subcontractors and replacement mechanics.

I talked with one replacement worker who happened to quit while I was visiting the picket line. He was roaming Metro Detroit Airport's McNamara Terminal, which houses Northwest, trying to buy a ticket to fly back home. He spoke only under condition of anonymity, so I call him Johnny J.

Johnny is from San Francisco and says he was hired by a company called Strom Aviation, which specializes in hiring aircraft technicians. The company’s website promises 'high wages and long-term assignments' available across the country because the 'aviation industry is booming.'

Johnny says that the company brought them to an aircraft 'training facility' in Tucson, Arizona where he worked on a computer training simulation for one only week. Johnny described the training as unrealistic. 'Once you were out on the floor,' he said, 'the work was different.'

Then the airline brought the replacement workers in packs of 60 to 80 'like cattle' to Detroit.

It was only there that the replacement workers found out they were being hired to cross a picket line. 'They lied to us,' Johnny says. 'We didn’t expect to take someone else’s job.'

But many of them said, 'We’re here, broke, so what the hell.'

They quickly learned, however, that the company had no intention of keeping its promises. Replacement workers were promised $1,000 bonuses, new tools, and permanent positions. When the bonus wasn't forthcoming and the tool kit was joke, Johnny quit. He said, 'I couldn’t even fix a bike with the tools they gave us.'

The replacement workers have also been tightly locked up two to a room at the nearby Hyatt-Regency Hotel. Work shifts are never consistent and security is so tight that workers are not allowed to leave the hotel except to go to work. Johnny states, 'They treated us like slaves and dumb asses.'

He says that he was also motivated to quit because he hadn’t intended to take anyone’s job.

When he left, the airline topped off his experience by driving him to the bus station and paying for a ticket home on Greyhound.

Northwest prefers poorly trained, underpaid mechanics who, as one striker said, 'don't know how to change a light bulb on the wing tip' in order to increase its profits. In fact, safety issues since the beginning of the strike have seen a tripling of Northwest’s flight cancellations and a 50 percent flight delay record.

A sore spot for the striking mechanics has been the lack of official support from other unions at the airline. Despite a letter of support from the flight attendants’ union (PFAA), a strike vote in mid-August failed to win a majority for a sympathy strike. Many flight attendants are concerned, however, as a federal judge recently threw out their lawsuit to block Northwest from training replacement flight attendants for an upcoming anticipated battle with the company.

PFAA’s leadership may issue another call to vote on a sympathy strike and have set up a strike fund to help the mechanics.

Other maintenance and grounds workers who work alongside the mechanics have refused to support the strike. In fact, the airline has agreed to give some of the mechanics’ work to other maintenance workers who are members of a machinist union local (International Association of Machinists, IAM).

Harry S. says the grounds personnel shouldn’t get used to the work, however. 'If we lose, give it six months and all of that work will be non-union and at cut rates of pay.'

The mechanics are worried about the implications of the failure of the other airline workers to support the strike. While it is true that IAM is still bitter about the mechanics’ 1997 split and subsequent decertification of several IAM locals to fill out its membership, for rank and file workers, IAM’s refusal to support the strike signals an 'everyone for themselves' era of unionism.

--Joel Wendland may be reached at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.

The Calm Before

Mon, 29 Aug 2005 00:17:00 +0000

8-28-05, 8:14 am

It's very, very early morning on Saturday, August 27, in Crawford, Texas. The roads are as dark as Dick Cheney's heart, and the stars as numerous as W's lies. All hell has not yet broken loose and may or may not do so later today. But the police are telling the media that they're preparing for trouble. And Camp Casey 2 ran a workshop yesterday on how to nonviolently respond to hostility. (Watch video on Truthout.org.)

Huge numbers of supporters of Cindy Sheehan are expected here today, along with a rumored crowd of pro-war activists (whether it will be of any size remains to be seen). And then there's the rumor that local military recruiters will work the crowd if it materializes at the high school stadium. This is one of those rumors that makes a little too much sense to seem true. What, after all, does it mean to be a pro-war activist if not to sign up and engage in the war?

Tonight at Camp Casey 2 there were a couple of hundred people around through the evening. We ate and enjoyed the performances of some extremely talented musicians and singers. Then we all gathered 'round as Cindy did an interview from the middle of the tent with Bill Maher on his HBO show. I hope to upload at some point a video we taped of the event that does not show what Maher said (we couldn't hear him), but does include shots of the crowd, which Maher could not see (we were all behind the camera), but which he clearly heard – there were deafening shouts and cheers after each of Cindy's best remarks.

From Cindy's statements, it was easy enough to tell what she was being asked. She insisted more than once that Bush KNEW he was lying about the reasons for the war, and she cited the Downing Street Memo. She said the word 'lies' more often than it's probably been printed in the past year by the New York Times.

She was also clearly asked about ending her campaign, because she replied that the anti-war movement has a life of its own, and that she couldn't stop it if she wanted to.

Following the Bill Maher taping, we watched a three-giant-screen film presentation called 'Artists Against the War,' which told the story of the anti-war movement from the war on Afghanistan through to the War on Iraq.

As this presentation made clear, there has been an understanding of the lies that drove this war since before the war was launched, a serious analysis of the real motives, and a massive movement of resistance, all unbeknownst to the common consumer of corporate news.

But the movement that is busy being born at Camp Casey is something new and more inspiring than anything we've seen before. It raises hopes that we may make future wars far more difficult in this country. And I'm inclined to think that even pro-war activism will help in this change – for the reason that Cindy gave so brilliantly at her press conference yesterday morning: democracy thrives on participation.

If one of the motives for war is to diminish (through fear) political involvement on the domestic front, both anti- and pro-war activism work against that calculation. And if war becomes less attractive to the powerful in this country, it may be that we can turn their focus to sports or some other means of distracting people from their lives.

But another motive for war is to justify Pentagon spending. And if we are going to end wars, we must end that insane level of unaccountable waste. This is a step that is not found in any of the competing petitions and proposals that I have seen for an 'exit strategy.'

Unless we have a vision for massive investment in the economy through something other than the Pentagon, such as renewable energy, mass transit, education, health care – unless we have a vision for a world that can handle peace, then we're going to have a hard time ending wars.

But we may not have as hard a time ending this current war as many now think. A movement is building. And it is setting its sites on demanding action from Congress. And already in Congress we are seeing movement in the right direction, perhaps most notably in the growing support in the House International Relations Committee for a Resolution of Inquiry into pre-war lies (H Res 375).

The movement born in Crawford will metamorphose into a series of bus tours targeting key congressional districts on the road to Washington, D.C., between now and September 24. For details on where the buses are going, see: http://www.bringthemhomenowtour.org/

From

SYRIA: Active promotion of gender equality in rural areas

Sun, 28 Aug 2005 03:50:00 +0000

8-27-05,11:50am

DAMASCUS, 26 Aug 2005 (IRIN) - Men and women from local communities, NGOs and key decision makers in eastern Syria agreed in a recent workshop to actively promote gender equity and empower women in their respective governorates.

Iyad al-Dakhil, deputy director of planning in the Deir Ezzor governorate said that the workshop gave women a platform to discuss and call for their rights to be respected.

“This has been absent in our society,” he said. 'I was surprised to see that both men and women were open to this idea of promoting gender equality despite our traditions where men dominate society,' he explained.

Two sessions entitled 'Training Workshop for Mainstream Gender Knowledge among Decision Makers in the Local Community' were held by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), in cooperation with the Syrian Women's General Federation, on 23 and 24 August.

Similar workshops also took place last week in Sweida, 106 km south of the capital, Hama, 209 km north of the capital, and Aleppo, 355 km northwest of the capital.

“The workshop focused attention on vital roles played by men and women in sustainable development,” said al-Dakhil. “I believe I have to reconsider my relationship with my wife and I’ll spread gender equity among my family members, relatives and friends.” The aim of these workshops was to disseminate basic knowledge among key decision makers at a governorate level and where the UN has ongoing projects.

'This workshop has shed light on problems facing rural women. It has injected confidence in the participants,” Boshra Abdel Rajab, participant and architect said.

The participants also agreed on a general definition of gender that did not contradict their own norms and traditions.

“Participants in the workshops have defined gender as social relations between men and women,” Omar Trabulsi, trainer and researcher, said after the workshop.

Ibtsam al-Dibs, chairwoman of the local branch of the Women’s General Federation, explained that this was the area’s first workshop on gender.

“Women in the city of Deir Ezzor practice their rights, including education and in work, but in rural areas, they are deprived, especially when it comes to access to education,” she said.

The population of Deir Ezzor is estimated at 1,150,000. About 300,000 live in the city while the rest are in rural areas.

Al-Dibs explained that rural women in this governorate tend to work on farmland and at home and end up working harder than men in some cases, she noted. Men play an economic role and control income distribution, while women play stereotypical social roles, she added.

Another major issue for women is that they have no right to inherit land in rural areas.

Reasons for such inequality come down to the governorate also being ruled by tribal culture, according to Zubeir Sultan, director of culture in the rural areas in Deir Ezzor. Hence, traditions not particularly favourable to women were strongly maintained.

Sultan said that the dowry payment (the sum of money paid by the bride to the bridegroom) was high in rural areas, reaching up to US $20,000 in some cases.

He pointed out that the birth rate in these areas was also high, with population growth rates reaching 4 percent with family’s having 10-12 children. “The higher the number of children a man has the more proud he is,” he said. This he said was not fair on women and prevents them from working.

Participants talked about the massive contradictions in society, such as the fact that difficult economic situations prompt most men in present day society to prefer partnership with working women.

At the same time, due to the prevailing traditions, society refuses a woman’s right of education and work. And sometimes the tribal mentality deprives women from both and even, in some cases, marriage itself.

Saleh al-Ramadan, planning director for rural areas, said in the past, gender issues were not considered in development projects, but that this would now change.

The Economics of Genocide in Sudan

Sun, 28 Aug 2005 03:02:00 +0000

8-27-05, 10:59 am

Remorseless ethnically-targeted human destruction in Darfur now garners only slim and diminishing news coverage. Perversely, this is true even as accounts from various international actors---especially the UN political leadership---become more deeply mired in disingenuousness and self-exculpatory pronouncements. A few voices speak with honesty and deeply informed conviction; but they are too few and have too little chance of changing the ghastly default 'policy' that currently substitutes for a morally intelligible international response to ongoing genocide.

Largely obscured in accounts of the Darfur crisis is a clear macroeconomic view of the financial, commercial, and investment realities that sustain genocide. While considerable attention has been devoted to growing regional competition for the scarce natural resources in Darfur (chiefly arable land and water), and to the impact of widening desertification throughout the Sahel and the consequences of drought, very little attention has been paid to those economic realities that explain Khartoum's ability to conduct serial genocide in Sudan. The jihad against the people of the Nuba Mountains, beginning in 1992; the scorched-earth clearances directed against the indigenous (largely Nuer) populations of the oil regions in southern Sudan and border areas, beginning in 1997; and the current genocide in Darfur, beginning in 2003: all were financed by Khartoum's National Islamic Front (NIF) at the economic expense of Sudan's marginalized peoples.

The NIF is insulated from the consequences of its gross mismanagement of the Sudanese economy---including responsibility for an external debt that is one of the world's very largest on a per capita basis---by oil revenues, by a lack of meaningful international oversight, and by ongoing commercial investments in the Khartoum region from a wide range of European and Asian companies (see below).

But current financing of genocide in Sudan derives chiefly from oil revenues that officially began to flow in August 1999. These revenues now exceed $2 billion per year, according to the estimate of a well-informed Sudan oil analyst. What is not sufficiently recognized is that for several years before the first export shipment of crude oil left Port Sudan, Khartoum had been engaged in substantial in-kind trading with China: future oil and anticipated oil revenues in exchange for Chinese arms, especially tanks, but also combat aircraft, armored personnel carriers, and substantial medium-sized weaponry; China was also Khartoum's primary supplier of small arms. Chinese arms continue to be used by Khartoum's military forces, not only in Darfur (by both the regular army and the paramilitary Janjaweed) but by the NIF's military proxies in southern Sudan, grouped loosely under the banner of the 'South Sudan Defense Forces.' A number of these militias continue to be heavily armed by Khartoum, and recent reports from well-placed observers suggest that serious violence may be impending in the Malakal area of Upper Nile Province (the province in which the oil reserves are concentrated). Fighting has been heavy at times since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA; January 9, 2005), which calls for the disarming of these militias within the first year.

But far from disarming the militias, the NIF appears intent on retaining them as military proxies, and the potentially explosive fighting in the Malakal area pits militia forces loyal to the NIF against those militias that are attempting to join the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (one of the options guaranteed under the CPA). The involvement of the NIF's Military Intelligence in new militia deployments is extremely ominous.

Additionally, Chinese arms design and engineering assistance have allowed the NIF over the past six years to become largely self-sufficient in the production of small- and medium-sized weaponry. Military production at such locations as the vast GIAD industrial complex outside Khartoum (with both commercial and military production capabilities) is now enormous, though we have little way of ascertaining just how great a percentage of national wealth is consumed by arms manufacture.

THE IMF: NO SERIOUS ECONOMIC SUPERVISION

Here the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is exemplary in revealing just how little serious attention has been devoted to the relationship between Sudan's economic realities and the NIF's ability to conduct genocide.

Because of Sudan's staggering external debt (see below), the NIF has been forced to accept bi-annual IMF reviews, which are suitably published in lengthy PDF documents, with abundant graphs and charts, and written in dispassionate 'bureaucratese.' But a careful reading of these documents suggests that for all their high-toned production values, they are hollow at the core---refusing to speak to the issues of most significance. An historical example here is suggestive.

A very lengthy (and confidential) IMF report tabled on November 20, 2000 manages to devote to the issue of military expenditures (and their impact on the economy the IMF purports to analyze) precisely one line-item in one chart (Table 2, page 9). But even this single line-item is enormously revealing. In the course of offering an overview of the NIF regime's budget for the years 1998 to 2000, the IMF (under the heading 'Memorandum items') offers a summary of specifically 'Military expenditures' (sources are given as 'Sudanese authorities and IMF staff estimates').

The figure for 1998 is 42.8 billion dinars, or roughly $170 million at the time; for 1999 the figure is 62.2 billion dinars, or roughly $250 million; and for 2000, the Government of Sudan figure indicated is 84.1 billion dollars, or roughly $340 million dollars. The military budget doubled in the time between the year before oil revenues began to flow and the year following the start of oil-revenue income. (1998 is also of note because it represents the year in which Canada's Talisman Energy became a 25% partner in the southern oil-producing consortium, providing shameful Canadian moral cover for savagely rapacious activities and continuing scorched-earth clearances in the region.)

The cause/effect relationship between oil revenues and the military instruments of genocidal destruction could not be clearer. Moreover, the IMF made no effort to gather a full account of NIF military expenditures. There was no inclusion of the well-documented 'in-kind' trading (weapons for oil/anticipated oil revenues) between China and Sudan. And the IMF figure for military expenditures did not include the enormous fuel bill for military activities, or dual-use (military/commercial) construction and manufacturing, or the financial deals made with the militias to keep ethnic animosities in southern Sudan at their most destructive in the oil regions. Nor did 'military expenditures' include the 'payment' to the muraheleen, or Arabized militia, that came in the form of looted cattle and human slaves.

There was and is a great deal that doesn't show up in the sanitized bookkeeping of the IMF, which is most comfortable in a 'see no evil, hear no evil' assessment posture. But the picture is all too clear: oil revenues sustained genocidal destruction in southern oil fields (and continue to fund the brutal militias of the 'South Sudan Defense Forces'), and they now provide the military hardware and military/militia salaries that sustain genocide in Darfur.

This writer was harshly critical of the November 2000 IMF 'Second Review' report. The response of the IMF to such criticism? By June 2002 IMF reports had unconscionably censored all data on military expenditures: not a single line-item, in another 60-page report, was given over to the role of such expenditures in the overall Sudanese economy ('Sudan: Final Review Under the Medium-Term Staff-Monitored Program and the 2002 Program,' June 4, 2002). The same was true of the October 2003 IMF report, which despite dozens of pages of graphs and charts had not a single reference or number attached to military expenditures ('Staff Report for the 2003 Article IV Consultation,' October 20, 2003). This occurred even as the IMF projected yet greater increases in Sudan's external debt (from $20 billion in 2000, to $24.2 billion for 2003, to $25.1 billion for 2004; Table 3, 'Selected Economic, Financial Indicators, 2000-04,' Staff Report for the 2003 Article IV Consultations, October 20, 2003).

Such whitewashing is utterly disgraceful, and the perfect example of how the international community refuses to acknowledge the role between macroeconomic realities, including unsustainable external debt, and genocidal ambitions.

Even so, the mismanagement of the Sudanese economy by the NIF (which is responsible for the vast majority of the country's massive external debt) is evident from other parts of IMF reports. The November 2000 'Second Review' was unusually frank in speaking about a critical failure to capitalize adequately the agricultural sector. Here it is important to understand that Sudan is a huge land mass, with vast tracts of arable land; some have argued the country could become the 'breadbasket of Africa.'

But as the IMF noted, 'in 2000 [there was] an increasingly critical shortfall in credit to the agricultural sector during the key planting season' [page 13]. A regime that was at the time receiving---with the spike in oil prices---roughly $500 million in new oil revenues annually failed to capitalize adequately its agricultural sector.

When we survey the current massive international effort to provide food for 3.5 million people in Darfur, and when we look honestly at rapidly deteriorating food security in Bahr el-Ghazal and Upper Nile Provinces in southern Sudan, we should be asking forcefully about the failure of the NIF to provide food for its own civilians, and the grotesque substitution of military purchases for investment in agricultural production. As the UN World Food Program recently warned:

'At the height of the annual 'hunger gap' and rainy season, the UN World Food Program is particularly concerned about the chronically impoverished regions of Bahr El Ghazal in the South, and the Kordofans in central Sudan and Red Sea State and Kassala in the East. Inter-agency rapid needs assessment missions earlier this year confirmed that food security was poor in many parts of southern, central and eastern Sudan. Nutrition survey results are consistently reported [NB] above the threshold indicating an emergency.'

'In Upper Nile State, preliminary result of a nutrition survey in June [ ] showed global acute malnutrition among children under five was 39.3%, while severe acute malnutrition was 5.9%.' (UN WFP press release, August 12, 2005)

The same NIF regime that has left its agricultural sector badly undercapitalized, and makes virtually no effort to provide food for starving Sudanese children, is currently using oil revenues to purchase---most profligately---highly advanced MiG-29 combat aircraft from Russia. Of course there are many other obscenely profligate military purchases by the NIF, including a considerable number of the HIND helicopter gunships that are implicated in so much of the human destruction both in the oil regions of southern Sudan and in Darfur.

If the IMF is to fulfill its responsibilities in any meaningful way, these issues should be foremost in any assessment of the Sudanese economy. Instead, we find only bureaucratic indifference and a clear bowing to NIF pressure. What else could possibly account for the deletion of all references to military expenditures in the June 2002 and October 2003 reports?

[Though the World Bank has no active lending portfolio in Sudan because of Khartoum's continuing default on it financial obligations to the Bank, there is certainly room for further restriction. But recent accounts suggest instead an accelerating rapprochement between the World Bank and the NIF, and Khartoum clearly holds out hopes for debt relief. Even participation in the World Trade Organization (WTO) is now clearly within reach, the NIF feels.]

NEAR-TERM PROSPECTS FOR A NEGOTIATED PEACE: EXCEEDINGLY SLIM

All this occurs with ongoing genocide in Darfur as backdrop. And there is no prospect for an end to conflict that sustains the genocidal destruction. Peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria were delayed from August 24 to September 15 to accommodate the disarray of the Sudan Liberation Army/Movement, far and away the larger of the two primary insurgency movements. But the SLA/M is wracked by growing internal division and breakdowns in chains-of-command. Moreover, there has been no substantive progress to date: a 'declaration of principles' signed at the last session of negotiations, now almost two months ago, was far too vague (and was signed only under duress according to a spokesman for the smaller Justice and Equality Movement). The extraordinarily difficult issues of substance---security, power-sharing, wealth-sharing---all remain outstanding.

Ominously, the NIF, which dominates Sudan's incipient 'Government of National Unity,' faces no significant internal pressure to negotiate expeditiously and justly in reaching a settlement for Darfur. This is one reason that Kofi Annan is obliged in his most recent (August) report to the UN Security Council to again 'demand that [Khartoum] stop using planes in offensive military operations' in Darfur (Associated Press, August 16, 2005). Such aerial military restraint has repeatedly been demanded of the NIF, which had appeared to accede; but this reneging on a clear commitment suggests a brazen disregard for diplomatic efforts by the international community and augurs poorly for success in Abuja.

The death of John Garang, and his replacement as First Vice-President by Salva Kiir, ensures the loss of whatever moral leverage and political skills might have been brought internally to bear on the NIF over Darfur. And Kiir, politically much less skilled and experienced than Garang, faces daunting challenges in the south: the new Government of South Sudan (GOSS) has still not been formed; the oil revenues that are to go to the south cannot be released until the GOSS has been formed; moreover, highly informed sources indicate that oil revenues put in escrow by the NIF are far short of what has been expected by the SPLM, suggesting the possibility of dangerously contentious disputes over the north/south boundary in the oil regions. The oil sector has always been excessively opaque in Sudan, another major failure of IMF auditing and another challenge for the new GOSS. Militia confrontations in Upper Nile (especially in the Malakal area; see above) pose the most immediate challenge. Darfur will receive only token assistance from the new First Vice-President.

DARFUR IN KHARTOUM'S FISCAL CALCULUS

The full perversity of the NIF's stranglehold on the Sudanese national economy continues to be most destructively on display in Darfur. Far from contributing meaningfully to the international aid effort, running to many hundreds of millions of dollars, the NIF continues to arm, train, and pay the very Janjaweed militias that are creating intolerable levels of security---the single greatest obstacle to increased humanitarian reach and efficacy. The NIF devotes only token amounts of food aid to Darfur, even as the international community struggles with the overwhelming burden of providing the 60,000 metric tons per month of food and critical non-food items necessary for more than 3.5 million conflict-affected civilians.

To date, the greatest monthly dispatch falls far short of meeting these human needs. One small measure of the shortfall in food is the steady rise in admissions of children to Supplementary Feeding Centers: the rate has increased sharply and steadily from January of this year (approximately 6,000 admissions) to the most recent reporting month of June (almost 20,000) (Darfur Humanitarian Profile No. 16, reporting data as of July 1, 2005; page 7, Chart 6). Children are perversely good indicators of nutritional shortfalls. Another indicator is the number of camps for displaced persons with Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) rates in excess of 15%, the threshold for a humanitarian emergency: in Darfur many of the largest camps and locations fall into this emergency category, including El Geneina (17% GAM), El Fasher town (the capital of North Darfur, 18% GAM), Kutum (18% GAM), Zam Zam camp (23% GAM), Ed Daein (25% GAM), and Abu Shouk camp (26% GAM) (Darfur Humanitarian Profile No. 16 [DHP 16], 'Rates of Global Acute Malnutrition in Greater Darfur, January-June 2005,' page 7).

As DHP 16 also notes, 'the deterioration in the nutritional status of vulnerable populations continues and is expected to remain fragile through the seasonal hunger gap' [i.e., through October] (page 7). Just as significant is the warning that there are 'increasing signs of food shortages among the general population. After the failure of the 2004/05 harvest season, agricultural perspectives for 2005/06 look bleak. Cultivation possibilities for Internally Displaced Persons are barely existent, with almost no land or resources at hand' (DHP 16, page 5). Affected populations have 'exhausted [their] coping mechanisms' (page 3), even as the NIF (as well as the insurgents) 'harass humanitarian organizations and workers,' deny 'access to affected areas and IDP camps,' and in the case of Khartoum, impose 'stifling travel requirements' (page 4).

While DHP 16 notes important progress in some areas, the shortfalls are in many respects more significant: 45% of the 3.2 million conflict-affected persons (the UN figure as of July 1---two months ago) still do not have access to clean water; 37% have no access to primary health care; and 28% are without adequate food (DHP 16, Chart 4, page 6)---this more than two and a half years into the crisis.

Despite heroic efforts by humanitarian organizations on the ground in Darfur--the UN World Food Program and the International Committee of the Red Cross delivered 41,000 metric tons of food to 2.3 million recipients in June---it is clear that August and September (the two heaviest months of the rainy season), as well as October, will see significant attenuation of relief efforts. Much can be attributed to adverse weather conditions and consequent logistical difficulties; for example, the very large Abu Shouk camp in North Darfur and the Ardamata camp in West Darfur are only two that have recently experienced serious damage during the season's heaviest rains, with further displacement of many IDPs. A scandalous lack of international funding leaves many organizations scrambling for resources, further exacerbating the problem of inadequate humanitarian capacity.

But the primary constraint on humanitarian delivery remains the intense insecurity throughout Darfur. The NIF continues to foster this insecurity, devoting substantial economic resources to the effort. Certainly the humanitarian officials of the UN recognize the central issue:

''There is one overriding problem that needs to be resolved---that of armed militias [the Janjaweed],' Niels Scott, head of the Darfur unit of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Khartoum, added. 'We are receiving reports of banditry and armed attacks on a daily basis and these people need to be neutralised,' he said.' (UN IRIN, August 9, 2005)

But the NIF has no intention of disarming the military proxies that are working to constrain humanitarian relief. On the contrary, as Kofi Annan is obliged to note in his July report to the Security Council, more than a year after the UN had secured from Khartoum a promise to disarm the Janjaweed, and more than a year after the Security Council 'demanded' that Khartoum disarm the Janjaweed---

'there is little evidence of any serious efforts by the Government [of Sudan] to disarm the Janjaweed and other armed, outlawed groups. [ ] Despite [its previous commitments], Government of Sudan officials have recently made it known that the disarming of the militias will commence only after a political settlement is reached. In so doing, the Government has unilaterally introduced a conditionality on future compliance that contravenes its obligations and sets back efforts to provide safety and security for civilians.'

Most disturbing is the clear commitment of national financial resources to genocide in Darfur:

'The Sudanese government, after promising a parade of foreign leaders over the past year to rein in the violence in Darfur, is still paying regular salaries to leaders of militias there that continue to attack and kill civilians, say American officials and aid workers stationed in Sudan. [ ] State Department officials say because government-financed militias and others have been so successful at intimidating or killing civilian residents, now almost everyone who might have been a target is either dead or living in a refugee camp.'

'Yet the militias remain armed and poised in the western provinces, American government officials say. The militias also continue to train and arm recruits. At a recent ceremony for 400 recruits, senior Sudanese military officers applauded the graduates, African peacekeepers who saw it told aid workers.' (New York Times [dateline: Khartoum], July 21, 2005)

Beyond deliberately sustaining the insecurity that preserve a genocidal status quo in Darfur, the NIF actively obstructs, harasses, and denies humanitarian assistance (see detailed account by this writer, 'Genocidal Choke-hold in Darfur: Khartoum's continuing restriction of humanitarian aid,' August 17, 2005, at: http://www.sudanreeves.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid...). In short, the NIF uses Sudan's national resources, human and material, to obstruct humanitarian relief from saving the lives of Sudanese civilians.

THE ECONOMICS OF FORCIBLE DISPLACEMENT

One of the most vicious features of economic 'development' in the Khartoum region, amply funded by many European and Asian companies conducting 'business as usual' with the NIF, is the continuing forced displacement of already displaced persons, many of them from southern Sudan or from Darfur. For years the NIF has been steadily pushing these most vulnerable civilians away from the main urban areas of Khartoum, including Omdurman. This has deprived people of not only the opportunity for employment (the distances are simply too great to allow for affordable transportation), but basic services. Civilians from Sudan's marginalized regions are treated as human refuse, to be pushed further and further from viable centers of economic and investment activity.

These cruel efforts have accelerated in recent months, and especially in the wake of riots in Khartoum occasioned by the death of John Garang (according to many reports, significant violence against non-Arab populations in Khartoum continues). Amnesty International provides a compelling account of one especially telling series of events:

'Amnesty International condemns the forced mass relocation of the entire Shikan Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp, which took place on 17 August 2005.'

'At 4 am in the morning of 17 August 2005, armed police surrounded the Shikan IDP camp, located in Omdurman, Khartoum. National security forces had notified some members of the camp leadership the previous day that they would be checking the camp for stolen property, following the recent riots marking First Vice-President John Garang's death. National security forces arrived with lorries, emptying the entire camp of its residents. 500 families were moved to Thawra camp, 170 families were relocated to Al-Fatah III, and 371 families will be allotted places to return to in Shikan.'

'Al Fatah III and Thawra are locations lacking the most basic means of survival. Thawra, located 55 kilometres north of Khartoum, was previously a garbage dump, and lacks all essential services. Water, healthcare, and educational facilities are non-existent as the location is no more than a patch of desert. Al Fatah III is better only in that it possesses one water pump.'

'The actions of the authorities violated the fundamental rights of these individuals to freedom of movement and freedom to choose one's residence, as enshrined in international human rights law---including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Sudan is a State party.' (Amnesty International, Public Statement, August 23, 2005)

This forced displacement of 500 families to the site of a garbage dump, with no essential services or even water, provides an appropriate context in which to judge the significance of a statement made very recently (August 24, 2005) in Darfur by Antonio Guterres, UN High Commissioner for Refugees:

''[To residents of Riyad Camp:] Nobody will force you to return,'[Guterres assured the leaders of displaced people who told him rape and burning of villages are still occurring in Darfur. 'The UN is independent from the government [in Khartoum],' Guterres added, 'so nobody can force you to return.'' (Public statement, Office of the UN High Commission for Refugees, August 24, 2005)

And just why should the residents of Riyad camp in Darfur feel secure in hearing Guterres' words, given what has relentlessly occurred over the years in Khartoum itself? given the fate of the people living in Shikan camp a week ago? And what of the very considerable evidence that forced, coerced, and inappropriately induced movements of civilians continue to occur in Darfur itself, even as Guterres utters his bland assurances? (See discussion of this evidence in section on 'Forced Displacement' in 'Genocidal Choke-hold in Darfur,' August 17, 2005, URL above). Despite UN assurances from Guterres and Kofi Annan's special representative Jan Pronk, forced 'returns' of IDPs remains NIF policy in Darfur, this as a means of 'resolving' the humanitarian crisis and obviating the need for an international humanitarian presence.

ECONOMIC AND MORAL INCOHERENCE

In his most recent (August 2005) report to the Security Council, Annan is obliged to warn that despite some improvements in Darfur, 'living conditions are steadily deteriorating' (Associated Press, August 16, 2005). This deterioration in living conditions, more severe and consequential than Annan suggests, will continue until security in Darfur improves significantly. And yet as Annan again reports:

'The Government [of Sudan] still shows no intention of disarming the Janjaweed or other militias, 'and is yet to hold a significant number of them accountable for the atrocities of earlier months.''

The protection of civilians in camps for displaced persons consists not in the easy words of Kofi Annan, Jan Pronk, or Antonio Guterres, even when they are not marred by disingenuousness. Nor does it consist in the abilities of an African Union force that operates without sufficient manpower, equipment, logistics, or a meaningful mandate for civilian protection. Civilians will be protected in Darfur, livelihoods restored, and meaningful security afforded in rural areas only with the deployment of international forces much greater and more capable than the current (or contemplated) AU mission. This seems highly unlikely.

On the other hand, significant economic pressure on the National Islamic Front, and its brutal commandeering of the Sudanese national economy, may help to free Darfur and other marginalized regions of Sudan from the ongoing threat of genocidal tyranny. For certainly so long as the NIF pays no price for exorbitant military purchases while Sudan's children starve, there will be no true peace in this tortured land. So long as oil revenues are largely controlled by this coterie of ruthless survivalists, there will be no rational economic order or general prosperity in Sudan.

So long as the IMF produces white-washing reports that refuse to examine or even refer to military expenditures, and that are content to refer to genocide in Darfur as a 'deteriorating security situation in Western Sudan' (Staff Report, October 20, 2003), the NIF will understand that it confronts no meaningful international economic supervision. Warming relations with the World Bank, signals that WTO membership is possible, and massive commercial investments by European and Asian companies---all work to convince Khartoum's genocidaires that it will feel no economic penalty for its crimes and profligacy.

The current divestment campaign in the United States, presently organized at the level of state legislatures and college and university campuses, is one of the few hopeful signs in this bleak picture. If companies such as Germany's Siemens, France's Alcatel, Switzerland's ABB Ltd, China's PeteroChina and Sinopec can be successfully targeted for divestment, and forced to suspend their commercial operations pending a halt to genocidal destruction in Darfur, real economic leverage will have been achieved. These and many other companies supporting Khartoum have equity market exposure in the US (i.e., they trade shares on the New York Stock Exchange) and are held in many endowments and investment funds. If these hundreds of billions of dollars are screened for companies doing business as usual in the midst of genocide in Darfur, their share prices can be badly damaged, forcing a reconsideration of the business wisdom of continuing operations and investments in Sudan (significantly, Switzerland's ABB Ltd. has already announced it is undertaking such a 'reconsideration' in light of the divestment campaign).

The states of Illinois and New Jersey have already divested, passing binding legislation that forces the sale of all shares in companies supporting Khartoum's genocide in Darfur. Harvard and Stanford Universities have begun the process of formal divestment (both universities have, for example, already divested fully from China's PetroChina; China, while highly unlikely to suspend operations, can be forced to use helpfully its enormous diplomatic leverage with Khartoum).

Divestment certainly doesn't generate pressure with sufficient urgency or rapidity; but if we look at the long history of NIF genocides---reaching back at least to the jihad against the people of the Nuba Mountains in 1992---then we must realize that not to act because results are slow is morally incoherent.

Care should certainly be exercised to ensure that divestment does not inadvertently harm investment in southern Sudan and marginalized regions of Sudan. But there is currently so little such investment that the danger must be rated as very low indeed.

The international community has fully demonstrated that it has no intention of confronting the NIF diplomatically---or even backing up previous diplomatic 'demands' (such as the Security Council 'demand' of July 30, 2004 that the NIF disarm the Janjaweed). Nor is there any willingness within the international community to move beyond the default policy of relying on the AU to protect victims of ongoing genocide. Humanitarian assistance is the primary substantive response to ethnically-targeted human destruction in Darfur.

Economic pressure on a cynical, brutal, and callously destructive security cabal---all that the NIF finally is at its core---will, even if slow to develop, at least not be hollow.

From

Reverend Pat: Have Gun Will Travel

Sun, 28 Aug 2005 02:59:00 +0000

8-27-05, 10:55 am

The old Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev once compared religious leaders who attacked the Soviet Union as comparable to the priests who threw holy water on the weapons of the Czar’s armies. But Pat Robertson has gone Nikita once better, advising the U.S. government on National Cable Television (actually the Family Channel, formerly the Christian Broadcasting Network) to murder Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, whose popular democratic government, according to Reverend Pat, threatens to become a haven for 'Communist infiltrators' and Muslim terrorists. Reverend Pat then issued what the mass media called an 'apology' stating that he was just frustrated with Chávez.

First of all, the charges are crackpot. Communists don’t 'infiltrate' societies except in the propaganda of their exploiters and oppressors. Communists are of the people and fight for the people, to advance the economic, social and political rights of the people in order to create socially just societies that are really run by the people. The Muslim religious right in their general views have much more in common with Robertson than with Communists anywhere on earth or with the non-Communist progressive government of Venezuela, whose only connection with some Muslim countries is oil production.

Then there is the question of Robertson’s apology. How many people have been frustrated with Reverend Pat, Jerry Falwell, and the right-wing religious fundamentalists who have been throwing holy water on the Republican Party and every repressive and reactionary policy pursued by Republican administrations since the 1970s? How many gay men and lesbians were physically and psychologically attacked by Falwell’s and other fundamentalists fomenting hysteria in their circles by claiming that AIDS was both God’s revenge against gays and was being consciously spread by gays into the heterosexual population? How many women were physically and psychologically assaulted by Robertson’s and other fundamentalists vilifying advocates of reproductive rights and helping to create the climate of opinion in which a number of doctors who perform pregnancy terminations have been killed or maimed by killers who thought they were doing God’s work?

Yet no one has come forward on national television or even local access broadcasting with a call to 'take out' Robertson because of the suffering his has inflicted on Americans. If they did of course they would be quickly arrested for making terrorist threats as would anyone who made such a threat in writing or in public speech against President Bush or, one would assume, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, or any other leader looked upon favorably by the Bush administration.

Venezuela by the way is deeply Roman Catholic country whose people elected Hugo Chávez in a free election and continue to support him in spite of the attempt by Venezuelan rich and the U.S. government to overthrow him. Chávez’s 'crime' is that he has not gotten in with the drill of sacrificing the Venezuelan people to the IMF-World Bank-WTO system and their criminal policy of forcing poor countries to reduce spending for schools, medical care, sanitation, public transportation, and subsidies on basic foodstuffs in the name of creating a global 'free market' that will ultimately produce world economic growth and make everyone everywhere 'middle class.'

You don’t have to be a right-wing religious fanatic to believe in such lunacy, but it helps, since large numbers of poor people will starve or at the very least have their already low life expectancies seriously shortened, and it must be comforting to believe that they will go to heaven for their sacrifice. Chávez is more interested in building schools and housing for the poor and in finding ways to permit the Venezuelan people to share more equitably in the nation’s oil resources. That is the real 'crime' that the Bush administration and its close ally Pat Robertson have against him.

Of course, Reverend Pat’s suggestion that the U.S. government murder Hugo Chávez, which in today’s world would be called 'state terrorism,' isn’t exactly new in postwar U.S. foreign policy. The revolutionary Congolese leader, Patrice Lumumba, was the target of direct CIA assassination plots in 1960 and his eventual murder by his political enemies had at the very least indirect CIA support. The Central Intelligence Agency and other U.S. government representatives turned over long lists of names of Communist party activists in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, and Indonesia in 1965 (where an estimated one million people were murdered by the right-wing military government which came to power) and many other countries where U.S. supported right-wing dictatorships came to power.

The Indonesian leader Sukarno was also the target of a CIA assassination plot earlier and the plots to murder Fidel Castro in the 1960s and 1970s were both legendary and legion. These plots, though, were carried out covertly until Ronald Reagan in the 1980s went after leaders of 'rogue states' like Libya’s Quadaffi, trying to bomb the right target to kill the leader in the Hollywood action adventure tradition.

The open use of political murder as an instrument of foreign policy is along with the torture of prisoners and the denial of due process and habeas corpus rights to alleged enemies a barbaric retrogression to a world of warlords and gangsters. A 'religious leader' adopting such arguments makes a more powerful case against religion as the foundation of a moral order than the writings of a million atheists ever could.

There are of course untold numbers of progressive religionists who both preach and practice the Golden Rule: Do Unto Others as you would have Others Do Unto You. There are denominations and groups within all of the world’s major religions who have fought for peace, equality and social justice for all people here on earth and continue to do so. These are not the people though who collect hundreds of millions for their 'television ministries' as they buy and sell cable networks and run interference for the most reactionary sectors of American society.

Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, et al, crossed the constitutional line establishing the separation of Church and State a long time ago and got away with it. Today, they are as much a part of the Republican Party was the Roman Catholic Church was a party of the Christian Democratic party of Italy in the decades after WWII (although Italy did not have such a commitment to the separation of Church and State).

It is time that both secular and religious people who are not ultra-right begin to fight back against this sinister alliance. First, the tax exemptions of religious groups who are in effect major activist groups inside the Republican Party can be investigated and removed by a government willing to do so. Those who dress racism, sexism, and homophobia in religious garb deserve to be condemned rather than catered to. Those who casually call for the murder of foreign heads of state, or anyone for that matter, should be held accountable for their statements. To passively accept a political climate in which such statements are made by authority figures is to insure that such statements will be eventually acted upon.

--Norman Markowtiz can be reached at pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net.