People Before Profit blog

Italian American Identity: To Be or Not To Be

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 02:15:00 +0000

8-28-09, 9:55 am

In the 1950s and early 1960s, it was the accepted view among many social scientists that, as ethnic assimilation advanced, ethnic group identities would fade away. But in fact, ethnicity continued to impact significantly upon political life. Why was that?

Acculturation and Assimilation

In 1967, I published an article in the American Political Science Review arguing that assimilation would not wipe out ethnic politics and ethnic identities in the foreseeable future because assimilation was not happening.

I suggested that we needed to distinguish between culture and social systems. A culture is a system of beliefs, values, images, lifestyles, and customary practices including language, law, arts, and the like. A social system consists of the structured relations and associations among individuals and groups both formal and informal: family, church, school, workplace, and other networks of roles and status. The culture is mediated through the social system or social structure, as it is sometimes called.

To become well practiced to a prevailing culture is to acculturate. To become absorbed into the dominant social structure is to assimilate. Since the beginning of the American nation the Anglo Protestant nativist population has wanted minority ethnic groups to acculturate but not necessarily assimilate. The “late-migration” Southern and Eastern Europeans were expected to discard their alien customs and appearances offensive to American sensibilities. A new verb was invented: they had to “Americanize.”

To make matters worse, these immigrants of the late nineteenth and early 20th centuries settled mostly in the large urban centers of the Northeast and Midwest (where the jobs were), places that small town Protestant America already loathed as squalid and decadent hellholes.

The public schools became special agencies of acculturation to be imposed on the immigrant children. As a child in a classroom full of Italian-American grade-schoolers in New York City, I was treated to patriotic tales about George Washington, Nathan Hale, Paul Revere, and other of our “heroic founders.” We recited the Pledge of Allegiance and sang the “Star-Spangled Banner” and “America the Beautiful.” And I recall at least one of my teachers telling us in an annoyed tone: “Tell your parents to speak English at home.”

By the second-generation (children of the immigrants), the ethnics already had undergone a substantial degree of acculturation in language, dress, recreation, entertainment tastes and other lifestyle practices and customs, while interest in old world culture became minimal if not nonexistent.

However, such acculturation was most often not followed by social assimilation. The group became Americanized in much of its cultural practices, but this says little about its social relations with the host society. In the face of widespread acculturation, ethnic minorities still maintained social group relations composed mostly of fellow ethnics.

The pressure to acculturate was not accompanied by any invitation to assimilate into Anglo Protestant primary group relations within the dominant social structure. It seems the nativist bigots well understood the distinction between acculturation and assimilation, even if they never actually used such terms. In a word, “You must Americanize but not in my social circle.”

Dual Identities and Group “Traumas”

Many of the crucial images that a marginalized ethnic group has of itself do not come from itself but from the dominant culture and dominant social order. For us Italians, the immigrant generation was reduced to a Luigi caricature, a simple soul who spoke in a pasta-ladened accent. Then came the perennial Mafia mobster, recently given new life with The Sopranos. Also still going strong are the television commercials portraying large boisterous Italian families gathered around the dinner table to shovel immense amounts of food into their mouths and at each other in what resembles an athletic contest.

Another enduring stereotype is of the Italian American as a working-class boor, a dimwit proletarian, visceral, violent and thoroughly unschooled. There is nothing wrong with being working-class but there is plenty wrong with a vulgar class caricature that defames all working people (whatever their ethnic antecedents). Left out of such scripts are the realities and struggles of workers, a subject seldom treated in the mainstream news or entertainment media.

Media stereotypes aside, there exists a duality in the Italian-American self-identity: on the one hand, a strong in-group pride regarding our heritage and an assertion of our worth as Italians to counteract the wretched stereotypes, along with strong family involvements that remain ethnically tinged, to say the least.

On the other hand, there are the strenuous assertions of our “100 percent Americanism” as a way of overcoming social marginalization. This is what I have called cultural ambidexterity, the promotion of both ethnic pride and Americanism all at the same time, usually accompanied by a political conservatism.

It is an image duality that fits into the acculturation/assimilation model: we acculturate to the American identity, often with a compensatory militancy because of our being somewhat marginalized and unassimilated. This marginalization at the same time adds to our determination to hold to an Italian group awareness and loyalty.

There are ethnic groups that have sustained enormous historic trauma, leaving them with an enduring mega-narrative. For them, ethnic identity is an especially strong imperative. A few prominent examples:

• African Americans who have braved centuries of slavery, plus a century of segregation and lynch-mob rule, and today the persistent poisonous sting of White racism.

• Jewish Americans who have been victimized by two thousand years of Christianist inspired anti-Semitism and violence capped by the historic trauma of the Holocaust.

• Latino-Americans and Asian Americans who would be much further along the assimilation track having been fairly early arrivals, but whose ranks have been lately infused with millions of newcomers, thereby raising fresh issues of acculturation, economic hardship, and even residential legality, all of which heightens a defensive awareness of group identity. In the case of Asian-Americans – and to some extent with Latinos also – there is the additional mark of racism with which to contend.

• Arab Americans and Persian Americans in this country in relatively smaller numbers with less visibility but who in recent years have been unjustly harassed and stigmatized as being associated with terrorist groups.

In each of the above examples, group identity retains a special saliency because it is linked to past or present issues of discrimination and mistreatment. What I wrote in my 1967 article still seems to hold: while much ethnic militancy and group boosterism is considered clannish, it “is really defensive. The greater the animosity, exclusion, and disadvantage, generally the more will ethnic self-awareness permeate the individual’s feelings and evaluations.”

In addition, let it not be forgotten that people retain ethnic attachments not only because their group is under assault but because the attachment provides a nurturing social and cultural experience. So along with the negative-defensive identity we have the positive-enjoyment ethnic experience. This is as true of Italian-Americans as of any group in the United States.

The Future Has Arrived

Does assimilation happen to any ethnic group? Yes indeed. Those northern European Protestants who invaded this country in what are called the “early migrations” of the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, riddled as they were with sectarian enmities and national differences, pretty much blended into the nativist melting pot by the mid-19th century. Today persons of long settled and much mixed northern European Protestant lineage are often notably vague about their antecedents. Their ethnic identity is a matter of no great urgency and has a low saliency to their self identity.

Some white Protestant immigrants are relatively recent arrivals yet they have enjoyed a fast-track assimilation, given their linguistic, physical, religious and temperamental resemblance to the Anglo-American Protestant prototype. British workers who migrated here at about the same time as Italians, Greeks, and Jews were more or less well assimilated within one generation.

The 1967 article I wrote about ethnic assimilation – or rather the absence of assimilation – focused on the Southern and Eastern European groups of the “late migrations” of 1870-1914. I concluded that ethnic identity would persist and would continue to play a role in political life well into the distant future. My article relied on data from the early 1960s but also from the 1940s and 1950s, in other words, as much as sixty or seventy years ago.

With this passage of time, one might say that the “distant future” has arrived, at least for the white ethnics: the Irish, Poles, Italians, Greeks, Portuguese and others. Today the ethnic identities of these late migration groups have much less saliency. This can be seen most dramatically in the political realm where references to a candidate’s ethnicity have become quite rare unless the individual is African-American, Latino, or Asian.

Recall how John F. Kennedy’s Irish Catholic antecedents were such a touchy issue in the 1963 presidential contest. But by 2004 it no longer mattered that Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry was a Roman Catholic. And in the 2008 election, it went largely unmentioned that vice presidential candidate Joe Biden was Irish Catholic.

In 2006 the media took no notice that Nancy Pelosi was the first Italian-American Speaker of the House; instead attention dwelt almost exclusively on the fact that she was the first woman to occupy that post.

For years Italian-American organizations had called for an Italian-American appointment to the Supreme Court. By 2006 there were two Italian-Americans on the Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito, both conservatives. Progressive Italian Americans like myself were not dancing in the streets bursting with pride. If anything, we opposed both nominations. Obviously the politics of such jurists were of more significance to us than their ethnic antecedents.

In fact, as far as I could observe, no one took note that there were two Italians on the High Court except for the several conservative Italian-American organizations that ran full-page ads in 2006 designed to misrepresent those who opposed Alito on political grounds as being opposed to him out of ethnic bias. Thus the ads argued that Alito was being derisively called “Scalito” (true) because of some anti-Italian prejudice (untrue). Actually the conflation of names was invited by their similarity and impelled by the fact that Alito was a right-wing reactionary twin of Scalia’s.

Pre-election opinion polls and exit polls published in the mainstream press reveal what groups are still in the public consciousness and what groups have faded into the background. After the 2008 presidential election, the New York Times devoted an entire page to how various groups in America voted. The Times broke down the electorate by income, gender, education level, region, and religion, but no ethnic groups other than Latinos and African-Americans.

Gone were the old time Harris-poll and Gallup-poll reports on how Italians, Irish, Poles, Germans, Hungarians, Portuguese, Greeks, and the like have voted. The white ethnics of the late migrations seem to have assimilated into the electoral mainstream, at least as distinct voting groups.

Good-bye Columbus

Those of us who are Italian Americans might ask, is assimilation our ultimate fate? And does assimilation mean disappearance as a distinct ethnic entity? Is it our destiny to be melted down by the melting pot, going the way of the earlier Anglo-Protestant groups?

Be aware that social assimilation also leads to a high degree of biological assimilation, in other words, intermarriage and interbreeding with increasing numbers of offspring who are of mixed heritage. This growing tendency toward intermarriage has been a source of concern among some Jewish organizations that posit the question: “Will intermarriage succeed in doing what 2000 years of oppression could not do?” (namely bring about the disappearance of the Jewish people).

For Italian Americans at the present time ethnic awareness still retains a significant saliency even among those who attain high levels of education and professional training – as demonstrated by the rich offering of scholarly papers presented at the yearly meetings of the American Italian Historical Association.

There is no reason to assume that a person’s identity choices are mutually exclusive rather than multifaceted. Multiculturalism can obtain not only in society but within individuals. And individuals of mixed descent can enjoy multiple identities and loyalties.

In addition, as noted earlier, ethnic identity is not only reactive but proactive, not only a defense against derogatory stereotypes, not only a compensatory assurance of group worth, but a positive enjoyment, a celebration of our history and culture in this country and in Italy. It is a way of connecting with others in what too often is a friendless and ruthless market society, a nurturing identity that is larger than the self yet smaller than the nation.

It would do well if we could bring more of a social content to our ethnic identity. The Italian-American Political Solidarity Club has just published a book whose title urges as much: Avanti Popolo: Italian-American Writers Sail Beyond Columbus. The book urges that on Columbus Day instead of celebrating conquest we should acknowledge those who fought for the rights of all immigrants and for social justice.

Indeed Italian Americans need to bring substance to the symbolic politics that have been fed to us. We do not need another statue to Columbus. Some such as Diane Di Prima, Tommi Avicolli-Mecca, and Juliet Ucelli have organized “Dumping Columbus” readings and other events that challenge the iconic image of the Great Navigator and instead commemorate the Native Americans he enslaved and murdered.

Philip Cannistraro and Gerald Meyer (of German Protestant lineage) edited a book, The Lost World of Italian-American Radicalism, that reclaims some of the history of radical Italian-American immigrants, labor leaders, union organizers, antiwar activists, and political protesters, a history long neglected or repressed.

To frame the Italian-American experience within a context of struggle for social justice and economic survival is to give it a dimension that goes beyond nostalgia and sentimentality, and flies in the face of the stereotypes that weigh down upon us Italians. Thus do we not only realize more of ourselves but we connect to more of the world, especially to the class realities that compose so much of life yet remain too often unmentioned and unnoticed.

--Michael Parenti is the author of twenty-one books including The Assassination of Julius Caesar (New Press), The Culture Struggle (Seven Stories), Contrary Notions (City Lights), and God and His Demons (Prometheus Books, forthcoming).

Ramblin' Jack Elliot at the Colony Cafe

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 02:07:00 +0000

Performance review The Colony Café Woodstock, NY 8/21/09

It’s a muggy late August evening in Woodstock. The scent of hours-old summer rain breathes new life into the earth around the Colony Café. As I walk up to the Spanish-style façade of the club I see a group gathered in the alley. They’re standing around a smallish man recognizable by his large, white cowboy hat. It’s Ramblin’ Jack Elliot.

As I approach he stops his conversation and looks at me warmly. “Hi, I’m Jack.” We speak ever so briefly and throughout he offers one-liners of a dry, biting type but they are wrapped in a glowing smile. However at this point Jack cannot be pulled away for an interview. He’s catching up on old times with old friends including John Sebastian and Happy Traum.

Apropos to tonight’s headliner, the Colony Café is a welcoming place – an old fashioned ballroom with a classic wrap-around balcony, wonderful acoustics and so many good vibes that they spill out of the tall juiliette windows. The room is filled as the first act, Nathan Moore, takes the stage. Moore offers a tight, clean, well-performed set of Dylanesque songs that surely would have been welcomed at the old Café Espresso or Café Wha. He was very well-received, but the crowd’s polite anticipation made it clear that it’s just not easy opening for a legend.

Ramblin’ Jack, introduced by Happy Traum, took the stage to the accompaniment of thunderous applause, but the crowd became hushed with the first utterance of a blues progression played on the sparkling strings of his guitar. Jack’s reedy voice wailed out, wafting up to the balcony and beyond. In it one can here the powerful influence of Woody Guthrie, whom Jack traveled with and who left an indelible imprint upon Elliot. Lo, so many years later, Jack Elliot carries with him the wisdom of the years. And damn if he still doesn’t sound like Woody. He sings the blues like he was there when they were created: equal parts shout, holler, jubilation and lament. Filling each space with runs up and down his fret board, Jack demonstrated the unique guitar styling that’s part of the myth about him. A bit stiffer now, but the chops are still there, and not all that different from back when Phil Ochs held up a major label record date to wait for Jack to get to the studio. Yes, he played with most of the legends.

Elliot’s performance at the Colony offered an intimate look into the man who carries with him the residue of his endless musical encounters. When he called John Sebastian up to the stage to sit in on several numbers he clarified that the two had known each other since at least the days of the Gaslight Club in Greenwich Village. Sebastian, still looking boyishly spry, carried several harmonicas up with him, adding something so authentic that it bypassed the folk revival and sounded vaguely reminiscent of a distant past. The two played “I Ride an Old Paint,” a cowboy song and part of Guthrie’s repertoire from the ‘40s. Here, Elliot and Sebastian seemed to have climbed out of the soundtrack of an old western movie, what with Jack hunched over his guitar, donned in cowboy hat and bandana.

To add to the authenticity, they played “Koo Koo Bird,” with its lonesome, ringing harmonies and sobbing harmonica, and “Freight Train Blues” which featured Jack’s yodel and John bending the notes of his blues harp, growling behind him. With eyes closed one could easily imagine Woody and Sonny Terry sitting onstage as they would have some sixty years before. But watching these two improvise through several unrehearsed folk songs together, it was easy to see that this music – like Ramblin Jack Elliot – is truly timeless. Elliot has become part of the fabric of folk song, not just an elder of the genre but a section of its foundation. Stories abound of how Ramblin’ Jack used to follow Woody around, in awe of the folk giant, copying his every mannerism. Woody would tell people, “The only guy that sounds more like me than me is Jack.” But by this late date, Elliot doesn’t have to put on an affected southwestern accent – this is part of who he is. Jack, with head thrown back, eyes closed and hands caressing the blue seventh chords out of his old guitar, feels every nuance. Folk music—the songs of the commoner, the worker, the prisoner, the traveler – runs through the blood of Ramblin Jack. He’s the real deal.

Ramblin Jack Elliot’s latest compact disc, A Stranger Here, is now available at record stores near you.

Caster Semenya Ain't 8 Feet Tall

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 08:42:00 +0000

8-27-09, 4:22 pm

If you aspire to be a star woman athlete but have no aspirations to appear in Playboy's Women of the Olympics issue, you are far better off being from South Africa than the United States. The Western media's handling of the story of Caster Semenya, the gold-medal-winning 18-year-old South African runner, has been at best simplistic and at worst repellent. In a salacious, drooling tone, 'Is she really a he?' is the extent of their curiosity. On various radio shows, I've been asked, 'Why does she talk like a man?' No one defines what 'a man' is supposed to talk like. Or, 'Do you think she's really a dude? Is this a Crying Game thing?' I've heard it all this week, and most of the questions say far more about the insecurities of the questioners than about Semenya's situation.

It's not just in the confederate confines of sports radio. I appeared on Campbell Brown's CNN show, where my co-panelist, Dr. Jennifer Berman, said that suspicion of Semenya's gender was justified because she is '8 feet tall' (she's 5-foot-7). How an 18-year-old runner became Yao Ming in Dr. Berman's mind was never addressed. This is hysteria, pure and simple, and it is born out of people's own discomfort with women athletes who don't conform to gender stereotypes.

In South Africa, however, the response could not be more different. Semenya was greeted by thousands of people in a celebration that included signs and songs from the antiapartheid struggle.

She was even embraced by former South African first lady Winnie Mandela. 'We are here to tell the whole world how proud we are of our little girl,' Mandela told cheering fans. 'They can write what they like--we are proud of her.'

As Patrick Bond, a leading South African global justice activist, said to me, 'To order Semenya tested for gender seems about as reasonable as ordering IAAF officials like Philip Weiss tested for brain cells--which actually isn't a bad idea given his recent off-field performance. And if Weiss doesn't have a sufficient number of brain cells to know how to treat women athletes, it would only be fair to relieve him of his functions for the good of world athletics.'

It's not just national political figures with global profiles who are embracing Semenya.

The people have rallied around her fiercely, particularly in the very rural, impoverished, subsistence-farming community where Semenya was raised. Her home village, Masehlong, has an unemployment rate near 80 percent. They only recently acquired electricity.

As The Guardian recently wrote:

The loyalty of Semenya's friends and neighbours is striking. South Africa's rural communities are typically regarded as bastions of social conservatism divided into traditional gender roles and expectations of femininity. But there is no evidence that Semenya, an androgynous tomboy who played football and wore trousers, was ostracised by her peers. Instead, they are shocked at what they perceive as the intolerance and prurience of western commentators.

'They are jealous,' said Dorcus Semenya, the athlete's mother, who led villagers in jubilant singing and dancing on Friday. 'I say to them, go to hell, you don't know what you're saying. They're jealous because they don't want black people improving their status.'

It perhaps shouldn't be so surprising that they recognize the West's 'intolerance and prurience.' Unlike the United States, South Africa has same-sex marriage.

The Afican National Congress Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, while arguing in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage, said, 'In breaking with our past...we need to fight and resist all forms of discrimination and prejudice, including homophobia.'

Unlike the United States', South Africa's Constitution formally prohibits discrimination based on sexuality. The Constitution reads:

The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.

This does not to mean South Africa is some sort of Shangri-La for LGBT people. But it does suggest the United States can stand to learn at thing or two about discrimination and human sexuality.

There is currently no definitive information regarding Semenya's sexual orientation or gender choice. We know she identifies herself as an 18-year-old woman and she can run like the wind while not looking like a conventional pinup.

Unfortunately for women athletes, you can't be too masculine for fear you'll be called a lesbian. You can't be too aggressive for fear that you will be called mannish. You must be an outdated stereotype of a woman before you are an athlete. You must market yourself as nonthreatening and blazingly heterosexual.

The most famous female athlete of the first half of the twentieth century was Mildred Ella 'Babe' Didrikson. She won three medals in track and field in the 1932 Olympics and also became the standard for all women golfers. Yet despite her towering athletic accomplishments, Didrikson was denounced as 'mannish,' 'not-quite female' and a 'Muscle Moll' who could not 'compete with other girls in the very ancient and time honored sport of mantrapping.'

Hearing that in addition to track and field she also played basketball, football and numerous other sports, an astonished journalist asked Didrikson, 'Is there anything you don't play?' Without missing a beat, she reportedly answered, 'Yeah, dolls.'

From Babe Didrikson to Caster Semenya, to paraphrase the ad for Virginia Slims: you've come a long way... maybe.

--Dave Zirin is the author of A Peoples History of Sports in the United States (The New Press) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.

Cuban Sports a Regular Target of Talent Theft

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 08:29:00 +0000

8-27-09, 4:09 pm

Original source: http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs2622.html CubaNews>

Much as the international practice of buying and selling sports talent hurts the feelings of people who live in poor countries – euphemistically referred to as 'developing countries' – is actually part of a much more serious and deep-seated crime that also includes brain drain, the theft of a nation’s artistic and cultural patrimony, unequal exchange, asymmetric integration, migration for economic reasons and many other forms of imperial plundering.

In the recent World Athletic Championships held in Berlin, we could see for ourselves once again that a high number of medalists native from poor southern countries were competing for rich northern ones.

Media globalization, so common nowadays, fosters the dissemination throughout Third World countries of lifestyles and consumption guidelines that prevail in the rich countries. These in turn lead to a 'universalization of aspirations' that compels people to migrate in search for a chance to enjoy a supposedly ideal way of life.

Since the offer to migrate is formally frowned on by the receiving countries – despite their pro-free trade rhetoric – third-world labor becomes cheaper and therefore a victim of selective migratory policies implemented by these same rich nations.

The sarcastic maxim that “money doesn’t make talent; it just buys it when it’s done” stands out as the sad truth in this drainage of athletes that started to draw attention as of the 1950s for its obvious detrimental effects on the poor countries, frustrated to see sports talents developed at great economic cost seduced by opulent nations.

For all the efforts to present it as a logical outcome fueled by the dream of going places cherished by young athletes from southern countries for whom there’s no light at the end of their society’s tunnel, we can’t disregard other determining factors, for example, the magnet policies designed by the industrialized nations.

No program set in motion by some governments in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean to try and curb the recruitment of sports talents and their exodus has been able to modify the current trend of an increasingly worsening phenomenon.

Cuba has managed to put up a wall to protect itself against Washington’s onslaught in the field of sports thanks to most Cubans’ patriotic devotion to and identification with the socialist revolutionary project. However, the fact that the island has chosen to fight tooth and nail to safeguard the tenets of amateur sports over the principles of a market-oriented professionalism has been used by its powerful enemy to attack the Revolution, a reaction in keeping with capitalism’s basic instincts.

When Cuba banned all forms of commercial exploitation of sports right after the triumph of the Revolution in 1959, the purchase of athletes and trainers became a tool of the counterrevolution. No sooner had the island started to pick up medals and reached the highest level of sports development in Latin America than pressure mounted to lure athletes into defection and improve strategies to that end.

Thousands of Cuban athletes, trainers and managers have firmly declined the enemy’s offers to make the leap, often rejecting sums of money way in excess of what they would give to others anywhere else as well as the extraordinary privileges that the U.S.-born Cuban Adjustment Act grants to those who leave the island by illegal means. Yet, only when they succeed in recruiting someone does the media break the news as part of a smear campaign which is no doubt the longest and strongest ever launched against any country in the history of mankind.

In the early 1990s Cuba had to take a number of steps of a mercantilist nature to cope with the economic crisis caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist countries that used to help the Island resist the U.S. blockade through fair trade practices. Cuban society as a whole ended up facing the onrush of those elements of capitalism and their intensified attempts to hire Cuban amateur athletes whose sincere support of the socialist project has been repeatedly put to the test and validated, albeit not without some unfortunate exceptions.

In order to properly assess the merits of Cuba’s sports policies we must take into account that the country’s victories have been achieved in the middle of an unevenly-matched struggle between the will of a small, poor nation to develop its own socialist project and the Empire’s irrational determination to prevent it.

--A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.

Fighting for the Right to Walk

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 08:05:00 +0000

8-27-09, 3:45 pm

Gaza’s troubles have somehow been relegated, if not completely dropped from the mainstream media’s radar, and subsequently the world’s conscience and consciousness. Weaning the public from the sadness there conveys the false impression that things are improving and that people are starting to move on and rebuild their lives. But nothing could be further from the truth. Since the conclusion of Israel’s war last year, the Palestinian Ministry of Health declared that 344 Gaza patients have reportedly been added to the swelling number of casualties. Khaled Abed Rabbu, once a young father of four is a precise living example, such an eloquent paradigm of what no human being ought to endure in this world laden with international human rights organizations, mediators, advocates and diplomats. His house was completely destroyed, as were two of his little girls. He buried 7 year old Soad and Amal, just two, soon after burying any hope that Samar his 4 year old daughter’s future would be any less bleak. According to an IslamOnline report, Khaled’s wife, Kawthar lined up the children in front of their house in the Jabaliya refugee camp, holding a white flag. But their internationally recognized gesture was disregarded by Israeli forces and the shelling of their home and family commenced. These miserable events unfolded at Christmastime last year, when the Rabbu family was reduced by nearly half. But since then, they, and a disgracefully large number of other such families, have somehow slipped our minds. Completely surrounded still, and prevented from ever advancing back to point zero, the Israeli siege on Gaza is what one must certainly brand the quintessence of barbarism. Like in December of 2008, the Israeli blockade means that almost nothing enters or exits Gaza; injured in need of treatment are not allowed exit nor entrance, as is the case with medical supplies, medicine, food and almost anything in-between. With entire neighborhoods pulverized in the attack, concrete is desperately needed to rebuild the many homes, mosques, hospitals and other structures that were destroyed. That too, is forbidden. And so Khaled, like so many others, has little hope that his home, which has now lain in shambles for the better part of a year, will be restored any time soon. From September 14 to October 2, 2009, the Human Rights Council will conduct a session where the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights will present its report based on the fact finding mission, headed by Justice Richard Goldstone, conducted after the Israeli attacks. Nearly eight months after the bloodletting of Operation Cast Lead, a 34 page report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights was released on August 13, pressing for a lifting of the Gaza blockade. The new report, which will be presented along with Goldstone’s report in September, lays out the many incomprehensible details of how the Israelis battered the Strip, one of the most impoverished and the most densely populated piece of Planet Earth. The details were laid out, chastising Israel for snubbing the most basic norms of human decency: “Under the Universal Declaration of Human rights, everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country…and everyone has the right to seek asylum. Such calls were ignored, and the borders of the Gaza Strip remained closed throughout the conflict.” “The right to health of children, set out in article 24 of CRC, is of particular concern in Gaza. United Nations agencies, Ministry of Health officials and health NGOs report that rising poverty, unemployment and food insecurity, compounded by the conflict, have increased the threat of child malnutrition. In January, UNICEF said that 10.3 per cent of Gazan children under five were stunted.” The report continued on, expressing concern that the only export allowed out of Gaza in nearly two years was 13 large truckloads of cut flowers, fully recognizing that the siege was in direct response to the Gazan people exercising their right to elect the Hamas government. From the denial of food to medical supplies to housing to clean water to education to any basic sense of what is called the “highest attainable standard of physical and mental health” according to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), Israel managed, as the report concluded, to deny pretty much every last one. One has to wonder, and even after so many years of witnessing such amazing ingenuity when it comes to tormenting the Palestinians, does the Israeli government, and further, does the Israeli public feel any sense of shame, remorse or even the slightest embarrassment when the most basic norms of human behavior must be laid out in so elementary a fashion, reminding, and then re-reminding them that it is a fundamental human right to have access to something as basic as food and clean water? This is a thought that Khaled must ponder from time to time. It is sure that life has been no cake-walk for Khaled, but perhaps this last year has been the most trying of all. Two little ones lost, homeless, and his third of four children struggling to walk in a Belgium hospital. Sana, his four year old, was supposedly one of the lucky ones on that day, for she survived, and was one of very few that escaped to safety through Egypt’s sealed border. But she has two bullets lodged in her tiny spine, so deeply embedded that Belgian surgeons cannot remove them. So now she is paralyzed, her body propped up and supported by a vibrant pink and purple back brace, like a fairy’s suit of armor. Chances of ever walking again are grim. Just two or three short years after graduating from a crawl, and now she will most likely be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life, even though her doctors and her mother say that she is desperate to walk again.

And so it seems to be the sad case that this exhaustive 34 page report failed to mention, or perhaps it may be until this point that a clause has never been drafted, declaring the universal right for every little girl and boy to walk. --Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author of several books and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, 'The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle' (Pluto Press, London), and his forthcoming book is, “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London), which is now available for pre-orders at Amazon.

Lonesome Hobo Economics: The Bar Tab Will Have To Be Paid

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 02:20:00 +0000

8-26-09, 10:00 am

...Kind ladies and kind gentlemen... I did not trust my brother, I carried him to blame Which led me to my fatal doom to wander off in shame.....

Bob Dylan, JWH, Lonesome Hobo 1967

The Congressional Budget Office announcement of a nearly $10 Trillion price tag on government borrowing for the next decade has sent a shiver up the spine of the most committed liberals. Some time ago economist pundits were debating the 'multiplier' effect of the stimulus. For every dollar spent, how many jobs would be created? How much real value would be created in exchange? Capital investments in infrastructure, for example, are generally thought to provide the biggest bang for the buck: mass transit, universal single-payer health care and other investments in public health, universal high-speed Internet, education (depends on what you teach!) come to mind as high return value spending. But those take longer to get into the pipeline. And people are hurting now. Bailouts to bankers, while necessary to prevent financial collapse, have not provided much bang. Unemployment benefit extensions likewise, while vital, have less octane too. Of course replacing unemployment with national and regional service, employer-of-last-resort spending, would rank rather high on the return value list.

The bill will have to be paid, no matter. By ourselves and our children. Probably we will have to inflate our way out of some of this debt. Probably the dollar will fall relative to other currencies and we will pay even higher prices for imports – especially oil. If the return bang for the buck on spending is too small, that will mean a lower average standard of living in the US. Of course no one will stand idly by for that. But the rich have abundant defenses most of us lack in the scramble for crumbs.

Unless of course we all put our shoulders to the wheel and begin to kick some serious butt! The Hobo heard Limbaugh yesterday whining about Obama's Zombies of 'union thugs' and 'OFA zombies' that are now showing up in force at more town meetings and scaring the bejeezus out of the creeps, screamers, white supremacists, outright ignoramuses and insurance company employees tea-bagging health care reform. I even detect a note of apprehension in Limbaugh's rants, wondering if 'show trials' for his dittoheads may be coming. My wife is a Quaker, and thinks it is a good thing for due process that the Hobo is not President, as he would have difficulty resisting such trials for forces seriously working to destroy American democracy, the torturers, the flagrant liars and scoundrels.

The era of class struggle is not over. It turns out the owner of the bar has been drinking most of the profits and now wants the loyal patrons to double down on the tab. We better get him now before he scoots out the back door and we are the only ones with glasses when the cops come!

The Hush-Hush Story: Why They Tortured

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 02:16:00 +0000

8-26-09, 9:57 am

 Original source:

It's like a can of worms from which a few are slithering out. Most of the major media have avoided even approaching it. But if it is as is being suggested the implications are enormous, touching not only on the real reason prisoners were tortured but, as well, into the real origin of the war in Iraq.

The US Senate Armed Services Committee report, issued April 21, on the interrogation techniques employed against detainees following the September 11 terrorist attack, wrote Pepe Escobar in the Asia Times, 'reads like deja vu all over again: the US establishment under Bush was a replay of the Spanish Inquisition. And it all started even before a single 'high-profile al-Qaeda detainee' was captured. What Bush, vice president Dick Cheney, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and assorted little inquisitors wanted was above all to prove the non-existent link between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al-Qaeda, the better to justify a pre-emptive, illegal war planned by the now-defunct Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in the late 1990s. The torture memos were just a cog in the imperial machine.'

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman mentioned it in his column April 24, writing, 'For the fact is that officials in the Bush administration instituted torture as a policy, misled the nation into a war they wanted to fight and, probably, tortured people in the attempt to extract 'confessions' that would justify that war. And during the march to war, most of the political and media establishment looked the other way.' Krugman was more explicit in his blog, titled 'Grand Unified Scandal' appearing the previous day, after the Senate report came out. 'Let's say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link,' he wrote. 'There's a word for this: it's evil.'

The impetus for the comment by Krugman and Escobar was a story carried April 21 in the McClatchy Newspapers by Jonathan S. Landay The story has made the rounds on the internet and in some of the foreign press but as of this writing has been ignored or obscured by most of the major U.S. media.

'The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist,' wrote Landay. 'Such information would've provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush's main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. In fact, no evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and Saddam's regime.

'The use of abusive interrogation - widely considered torture - as part of Bush's quest for a rationale to invade Iraq came to light as the Senate issued a major report tracing the origin of the abuses and President Barack Obama opened the door to prosecuting former U.S. officials for approving them.'

Landay went on to quote 'A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue' saying former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld 'demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.'

'There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used,' Landay was told. 'The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there.'

'There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder,' the informant continued. 'Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly, by CIA ... and by others, that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies.'

Senior administration officials, however, 'blew that off and kept insisting that we'd overlooked something, that the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information,' Landay was told.

The Senate report itself quoted a former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, who told Army investigators three years ago that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under 'pressure' to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq. 'While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq,' Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. 'The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link ... there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.'

Another newspaper that carried the story of the Senate report that included the Iraq connection was the Detroit News. Reporter Gordon Trowbridge wrote that 'Administration officials repeatedly tried to link Iraq and al-Qaida in public statements as a potential justification for the war, but intelligence reviews have discredited the notion of significant links between the two. The accusation that senior officials chose to pursue interrogation tactics in pursuit of such information is likely to further anger opponents of the Iraq invasion and of harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation, putting prisoners in stress positions for long periods of time or exposing them to extreme heat and cold or loud noises and music.'

Trowbridge's report indicates that one of Cheney and Rumsfeld's 'people' was none other than the latter's number two Paul Wolfowitz, a long time vociferous advocate of an attack in Iraq. He is said to have asked for regular updates on the interrogations.

'I think it's obvious that the administration was scrambling then to try to find a connection, a link (between al Qaida and Iraq),' said Senate Armed Services Committee, chair by Sen. Carl Levin, (D-Mi). 'They made out links where they didn't exist.'

'So now we know: Saddam made them do it,' wrote Charley James, 'The Progressive Curmudgeon, in the very informative and lively L.A. Progressive , 'The Levin report into Pentagon torture ... tore down the last false flag flying on the devil ship SS Torture, revealing that waterboarding and all the rest of the barbaric acts performed in our name on prisoners resulted from Cheney's frustration at not getting what he wanted: Someone to pin 9/11 on Saddam and 'fess up about how bin Laden was sleeping with The Tyrant of Baghdad.'

'Reasonable people ought to be able to reach consensus on a few key points: Harsh interrogation methods should be used only as a last resort,' says Clifford D. May, president of the right-wing Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (founded two days after September 11, and chair of the Policy hawkish Committee of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD). 'They should never be used for revenge, punishment or to force confessions.' However, as James observes, it beginning to look like forcing a confession is exactly what the neo-conservative cabal in the White House and the Pentagon was up to.

Writing in The Guardian (UK) April 24, Matthew Duss drew attention to Rand Beers - a former NSC counterterrorism adviser who resigned over the war 'which he correctly predicted would be disastrous for American security, and who was recently nominated for an under-secretary position at the Department of Homeland Security, concerning accused Al Qaeda operative Ibn al Sheikh Al-Libi who after being captured by the US in Afghanistan in late 2001, under torture - 'evidence' of a tie between Al Qaeda and Iraq. As Beers recounted last year, 'Al-Libi's testimony was used by the Bush administration to substantiate its allegations that Iraq was prepared to provide al-Qaida with weapons of mass destruction.' However, Beers continued, 'in January 2004, al-Libi recanted his confession. He said that he had invented the information because he was afraid of being further abused by his interrogators. ... The administration's best case for the value of enhanced interrogation techniques, then, turned out to have been fundamentally flawed'.'

'We now know that torture is inextricably tied to the Iraq war. Far from defusing 'ticking time bombs', torture was employed by the Bush administration in order to generate information that would support their planned invasion of Iraq.'

Notice the word 'planned' here. The effort to extract evidence of a tie between September 11 and the government of Saddam Hussein began before the invasion was launched. It is obvious now that the attack was in the making before the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

'But the torture of al Libi worked to sell the war in Iraq, providing the 'evidence' that Secretary of State Colin Powell used when he spoke before the United Nations Security Council in February 2003,' Steve Weissman wrote on Truthout.org last Saturday. 'I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these [chemical and biological] weapons to al-Qaeda,' Powell asserted. 'Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story.'

It now appears that then U.S. National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was the first official to give the go ahead for employing 'enhanced interrogation techniques.' Why her? And, why the hurry? She is declining comment now but maybe she could explain the strange statement she made at a press briefing in May 2002. 'I don't think anybody could have predicted ... that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile,' Rice said at a press briefing in May 2002. Actually the Administration was warned that something was afoot ad that it probably would involve airplanes. Was the surprise that it happened or the way that it happened and was the idea to blame whatever happened on Saddam Hussein?

This week, former Ambassador Joe Wilson wrote in his blog, Daily Beast:

'Cheney's request for the declassification of material is a welcome development, but it should not be limited to his narrow request. Our country's understanding of what was done in our name by the Bush administration depends on the release, not just of the documents Cheney has designated, but of all documents related to the efforts of the Bush administration and Cheney himself to defend the indefensible-the decision to invade Iraq despite the knowledge at the time that Iraq did not have a nuclear program, had no ties to al Qaeda, and posed no existential threat to the United States or to its friends and allies in the region.

'The disinformation campaign to manipulate public opinion in favor of the invasion, the torture program, and the illegal exposure of a clandestine CIA agent-my wife, Valerie Plame Wilson - were linked events. In their desperate effort to gather material to whip up public support, Cheney and others resorted to torture, well known in the intelligence craft to elicit inherently unreliable information. Cheney & Co. then pressured the CIA to put its stamp of approval on a series of falsehoods-26 of which were inserted into Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech before the United Nations Security Council. At the same time, Cheney was furiously attempting to suppress the true information that Saddam Hussein was not seeking yellowcake uranium in Niger. After I published the facts in an article in The New York Times in July 2002, Cheney tried to punish me and discredit the truth by directing the outing of a CIA operative who happened to be my wife.'

The suggestion that Bush Administration used torture in an effort to get a prisoner to back up their previously made claim that Iraq was linked to despicable 911 terrorist attacks is reason enough to insist that there be a special commission to look into the matter. I suspect that much of the resistance to doing so flows from concern that question might arise about other things involved in the run-up to the war. Like, why were the plotters were so desperate to link 911 to Iraq? Could it be that some sort of attack on U.S. soil was anticipated and whatever happened, the finger would be pointed at Bagdad? A can of worms indeed.

--BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Carl Bloice is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked for a healthcare union.

How the IAAF Got Confused About Gender

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 02:16:00 +0000

8-25-09, 9:56 am

A small army of specialists have been ordered to determine if South Africa's international champion in the women's 800 meter race, Caster Semenya, is really a woman. After her blazing victory and complaints from her international opponents, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) ordered a 'gender test' that includes examinations by 'a gynecologist, endocrinologist, psychologist, an internal medicine specialist and an expert on gender.'

The situation is more than Kafka-esque, say Semenya's family, friends and supporters; it's racist. Leonard Chuene, who heads South Africa's international athletics, told reporters, 'Who are white people to question the makeup of an African girl? I say this is racism, pure and simple.'

Chuene, who resigned from his position at the IAAF in protest, also noted the stigma that has been heaped on Semenya because of the IAAF's question about her gender. 'In Africa, as in any other country, parents look at new babies and can see straight away whether to raise them as a boy or a girl,' he said. 'We are now being told that it is not so simple. But the people who question these things have no idea how much shame such a slur can bring on a family.'

Critics of the IAAF's move have charged the federation with doing nothing more than simply searching for an explanation for why Semenya so dramatically improved her times in the 800 meter race over last year. The 18-year old shaved something like eight second off her best time in 2008.

IAAF ordered the test perhaps because they could not chalk her victory up to rigorous workouts and talent. After all, South Africa is a poor country whose athletes should simply not match up to athletes from European countries.

As Dave Zirin and Sherry Wolf observe in a recent piece in The Nation, 'A country's wealth, coaching facilities, nutrition and opportunity determine the creation of a world-class athlete far more than a Y chromosome or a penis ever could.' Zirin and Wolf also noted that homophobic stereotypes of 'mannishness' and 'manliness' have fueled much of the historic controversy around gender identity in sports, which dates back decades to proposals by some Olympic officials to force women athletes from African countries to parade nude in front of them to determine their gender identity.

Given this history and the instability of the social constructions of gender on a global scale, IAAF officials knew there was something wrong. Semenya passed drug tests, so she must be a man.

'Just look at her,' said Russia's Mariya Savinova, who lost to Semenya. Elisa Cusma, the Italian runner who also lost to Semenya, told Italian reporters: 'These kind of people should not run with us. For me, she's not a woman. She's a man.'

South Africans remain staunchly supportive. Thousands of South Africans crammed into Tambo International Airport near Johannesburg for mass rally to welcome Semenya and her teammates home after the competition August 25th.

The Young Communist League of South Africa described the incident as laced with racism, sexism and vestiges of imperialism. In a statement the YCL said, 'it feeds into the commercial stereotypes of how a woman should look like, their facial and physical appearance, as perpetuated by backward Eurocentric definition of beauty.'

In addition, 'It suggests that women can only perform to a certain level and that those who exceed this level should be men. It seeks to reinforce the societal stereotypes that men are better than women, and thus, cannot go unchallenged,' the YCL charged.

The YCL also charged the IAAF with violating its own rules about the maintaining the privacy of athletes who undergo such 'gender testing' and called for an investigation into who leaked the details of the case to the media.

In the end, what should have been a celebration of Caster Semenya's athletic accomplishments has been subverted to dominant, if outdated, confusions about the diversity of human life.

Killer Whales Need Some Help to Survive

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 01:57:00 +0000

8-25-09, 9:38 am

EarthTalk From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: How are populations of the world’s orca whales faring these days? Are we still in danger of losing them all in the wild? -- J. Witham, Bangor, ME

The largest member of the dolphin family and a major draw at marine parks, orcas (also known as “killer whales”) are highly intelligent and social marine mammals that, because of these traits, have come to be known as ambassadors for nature and marine ecosystems around the world.

But the fact that people love orcas—most of us only ever see them in captivity—has no bearing on how well they are thriving in the wild. Many of their habits are still a mystery to science, as the great black and white creatures, which can grow to 26 feet and weight six tons, are fast-moving and difficult to track (they are the most widely distributed mammals on Earth, besides humans).

Given this uncertainty, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a nonprofit group that maintains a frequently updated global list (the so-called “Red List”) of endangered and threatened wildlife, merely lists the status of orcas as “data deficient.” IUCN is currently involved in an assessment of orca populations around the world to determine what their status should be.

Orcas may not have a clear-cut conservation status internationally, but the U.S. government is concerned enough about the animals that ply the waters of Washington’s Puget Sound and San Juan Islands (known as the “southern residents”) to put them on the federal endangered species list. Chief among threats to orcas there is loss of food supply, mostly West Coast salmon populations destroyed by hydroelectric dams and other human encroachment. Habitat loss, chemical pollution, captures for marine mammal parks and conflicts with fisheries have also each played roles in the decline of the Northwest’s orcas.

According to the National Marine Fisheries Service, an arm of the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the southern resident orca population—the best studied wild animal population in the world—has fluctuated considerably since researchers began studying it in earnest some three decades ago. In 1974 the group was comprised of 71 whales, but then spiked to 97 animals by 1996. But since then the population fell below 80 and has remained around that level ever since.

Due to their voracious appetites and their place at the top of the ocean food chain, orcas are very susceptible to pollution and chemicals and suffer from diseases and reproductive disorders accordingly. For this reason many scientists consider orcas an “indicator species” regarding the health of marine ecosystems in general. That is, if orcas are in decline, the rest of the ocean is likely in big trouble, too.

Of course, increased concern about the health of marine ecosystems in recent years is good news for orcas, which are dependent on a wide range of fish and marine mammals for sustenance. The preponderance of protected stretches of both ocean and coasts gives orcas a boost in their struggle to stay one step ahead of extinction. If world leaders continue to value marine ecosystems and limit the extraction of seafood species and contamination by pollutants, killer whales will have a fighting chance to keep on as icons of the sea—and those of us onshore and bobbing on boats will continue to be delighted and amazed by them.

CONTACTS: IUCN, www.iucn.org; National Marine Fisheries Service, www.nmfs.noaa.gov.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php. EarthTalk is now a book! Details and order information at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalkbook.

Venezuela Responds to Washington Post Allegations

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 01:54:00 +0000

8-25-09, 9:34 am

Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in the U.S. Statement

The Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in Washington, DC categorically rejects the editorial 'The Advantages of Chavez,' published by the Washington Post today. Once again, this newspaper irresponsibly lashes against the government of President Hugo Chávez Frías and the glorious Venezuelan people. Unlike the unfounded allegations made by the newspaper, the Venezuelan government has consistently reiterated the lack of ties to Colombian guerrilla groups. The Washington Post continues to use the recent allegations about a cache of weapons allegedly found in FARC’s hands to justify the militarization of the armed conflict that for six decades has affected the sister Republic of Colombia, as well as the threatening and unjustified U.S. military presence in the region. This concern has been reiterated by most of the leaders of the member countries of UNASUR.

On several occasions, Venezuela has echoed calls for finding a negotiated political resolution to the Colombian conflict that leads to a lasting and positive peace for the benefit of the Colombian people and the region. The ongoing militarization responds to other interests and objectives that threaten the stability, peace, development and integration of the hemisphere.

Again, this newspaper abuses its privileged position and the trust of its readership in order to echo the voices of powerful sectors of the U.S. that once again vilify Venezuela and oppose the processes of change that are currently taking place in the region. These are the same voices that are nostalgic about Cold War policies toward Latin America, used to intervene and overthrow democratically elected governments, and that today oppose progressive governments that for the first time, in 200 years, are undertaking efforts to ensure the welfare of the majorities as well as South American integration. In this sense, the editorial completely ignores the strengthening of UNASUR as a regional integration system. The Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela also rejects the meddling of this newspaper in the internal affairs of our country when it refers to the alleged closure of 32 radio stations. The Venezuelan government, making full use of its sovereignty, and searching for the democratization of the media, applied the law to 32 radio stations and 2 regional TV channels that were illegally using the public airwaves. In Venezuela, there is a vibrant communications sector that includes 872 radio and television stations that operate openly and in compliance with the law.

The Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ratifies once again its utter rejection of this gross campaign of disinformation and lies against the government of President Hugo Chávez Frias, while expressing its willingness to work with any government, within the frame of respect for the sovereignty of each nation, in the fight against common scourges which endanger peace and stability in the hemisphere.

Washington, D.C, August 24, 2009

Podcast #107 - Labor Leads on Employee Free Choice, Health Reform and more

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 01:51:00 +0000

Subscribe to this podcast in iTunes

Political Affairs Podcast #107 - Labor Leads on Employee Free Choice, Health Reform and more

On this episode, we talk with People's World labor editor, John Wojcik, about the coverage of labor and working class issues in that publication. When the corporate media is full of hype, you can get the facts at PeoplesWorld.org.

Bipartisanship and the Healthcare Struggle

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 01:36:00 +0000

It seems clear that the prospects for a bipartisan health care bill are diminishing with each passing day. And as far as I'm concerned that is a good thing. Nothing good, nothing resembling 'reform' could come from bipartisanship in this Congress. The Republicans have no appetite for real health care reform. The health care system isn't broken in their view. So why fix it? A few cosmetic changes maybe, but nothing more.

According to media reports, the Democrats have begun devising a strategy to pass a bill without Republican support. I applaud them. While I can understand President Obama's desire to pass a bipartisan bill, there is nothing necessarily virtuous about bipartisanship, it should not be turned into a principle of political governance. Conversely, political partisanship is not necessarily a dirty word either. The appropriate method of governing can't be decided abstractly.

Process in politics is important, but it shouldn't trump the democratic will. Millions elected Barack Obama and a new Congress in the expectation that they would bring real change to their lives. But the health care debate is making crystal clear that the Republicans and to a degree some Democrats are in no mood to assist the the legislative agenda of the Obama administration – an agenda that the majority of Americans elected him to carry out.

The mission of the extreme right in the Republican Party (and the extreme right dominates the GOP), in fact, is to sabotge health care reform and Obama's Presidency by any means necessary. It will embrace bipartisanship only in words and only to the degree that it stalls the reform agenda of the President. Once negotiations become substantive, right wing extremists turn nasty and let loose their attack dogs, including their gun toting ones, on the President and other advocates of real change.

I know the American people would like to have less rancor and partisanship in politics, but it is hard to imagine that changing anytime soon. For one thing, the extreme right turned mean spirited and divisive politics into its trademark three decades ago and there is little reason to think that will change going forward. In fact, the noise from the right wing is becoming more strident and shrill, more dangerous, and more irresponsible since President Obama was elected.

For another thing, eras of deepgoing democratic reform – the 1930s and 1960s come to mind – are a product of clashing partisan interests and political coalitions. Feelings are intense, democratic life is charged, divisions along class and social lines emerge in clearer form, and social inertia gives way to social action. Like it or not, political leaders and ordinary people take sides.

Franklin Roosevelt and John L. Lewis took sides in the New Deal era; so did President Lyndon Johnson and Dr. Martin Luther King in the Civil Rights era. And in both eras, millions – most of whom were new to political activism – threw themselves into the struggle for progressive social change. It wasn't always pretty, but it was nearly always necessary. Had political leaders not taken sides and had not people taken to the streets, progressive change would have died stillborn.

With the wreckage of 30 years of right wing rule everywhere, an economic crisis of immense proportions hanging over the country, an extreme right, badly weakened, but still a part of the political equation, and powerful corporate interests and their supporters in both parties who either want to prevent or contain people's reforms, can we move this vast country in the direction of economic justice, equality and peace without intense, sustained, and partisan struggle with an increasingly anti-corporate thrust? History and common sense say 'no.'

A reformer from an even earlier era famously said, 'Power concedes nothing without a struggle.'

Tax Benefits for Energy Efficiency

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 02:32:00 +0000

8-24-09, 10:!3 am

EarthTalk From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: Since Obama took office, have any new incentives been put in place for homeowners looking to increase energy efficiency and reduce the overall environmental footprints of their homes? -- Rob Felton, Little Rock, AK

In fact, yes. Homeowners can get up to $1,500 back from the federal government for any number of energy efficiency upgrades at home. If you upgrade to energy efficient insulation, windows, doors, heating, air conditioning or water heaters between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2010, you are eligible for a tax credits of up to 30 percent of product costs.

The credit is capped at $1,500 combined; meaning it only applies to $5,000 in total costs. More details are available at the website of the Tax Incentives Assistance Project, a coalition of public interest nonprofit groups, government agencies and other organizations focused on energy efficiency.

Of course, the Obama administration is also thinking long term, and would like to leave its mark in furthering efforts to wean ourselves off foreign oil and increase our production and use of homegrown clean renewable energy. In light of such priorities, tax credits are also available for 30 percent of the cost—with no upper limit—on the installation of renewable energy equipment at home, such as geothermal heat pumps, solar panels, solar hot water heaters, small wind energy systems and fuel cells.

Homeowners won’t get the money back when they initially pay for equipment or upgrades, but they can add the credit amount to their overall tax refund, or deduct it from what they owe, when filing their federal income tax forms at the end of the year. Unlike tax deductions, which merely lower the total amount of taxable income, tax credits reduce dollar-for-dollar the amount of tax owed.

Homeowners should know that they can also get federally backed mortgages to pay for a variety of energy efficiency measures, including renewable energy technologies, on their new or existing homes. The federal government supports these loans by insuring them through the Federal Housing Authority or Veterans Affairs programs, allowing borrowers who might otherwise not qualify to pursue upgrades, and securing lending institutions against loan default.

Don’t own a home? Depending upon make and model, you can get between $250 and $3,400 back from the federal government for buying or leasing a new hybrid or high efficiency diesel automobile. And the automakers themselves—through their own “Automotive Stimulus Plan”—are giving consumers up to $4,500 back on the purchase of a new or used vehicle that gets gas mileage of at least two miles per gallon better than their old model.

A number of new energy-efficiency incentives are also available at the state level across the country. The

Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy website provides up-to-date listings of what may be available in your neck of the woods. With so much encouragement, how could you not want to go green?

CONTACTS: Tax Incentives Assistance Project, www.energytaxincentives.org; Automotive Stimulus Plan, www.automotivestimulus.org; Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy, www.dsireusa.org.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php. EarthTalk is now a book! Details and order information at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalkbook.

Honduras: Pre-revolutionary Situation?

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 02:27:00 +0000

8-24-09, 10:07 am

Pre-revolutionary situation? Some analysis of the situation in Honduras are fairly static.

We have to differ with many local and foreign analysts who have tried to understand the situation in Honduras by imposing pre-existing parameters and by using basic concepts of the Marxist dialectic without any scientific criterion. Many have seen a failure of the Honduran grassroots resistance, failing to understand that historical materialism is not a mathematical formula where only variables change, but rather, a way to interpret reality objectively.

When it comes to analysis it is complicated to get out of 'molds' and comparisons with this or that previous experience. Many even speak of a pre-revolutionary situation as if the movement of social forces at any moment could convert itself into a kind of recipe with pre-determined levels, like today insurrection, tomorrow pre-revolution, the day after insurrection, and so on. But, history that follows formulaic patterns or models is not credible.

The reality of the situation with Honduran social movements is fairly complex, but clearly reflects the class struggle between the national bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Now, of course, we conceive of the proletariat as an ensemble of diverse forces that are chemically impure; an ensemble in which are present laborers, campesinos (who represent the majority of workers in the country), grassroots churches, professionals, feminist groups, students, teachers, informal workers, the unemployed, and a lot more. Class position is decisive. In this country if you are not a member of the oligarchy or one of their lackeys, you're proletarian.

Lack of organization and maturity?

Some have said that the lack of organization and maturity of grassroots movements has been a key factor in their 'incapacity to take advantage of this conjuncture to take power.' This ignores that the maturity and organization of resistance forces is not measured by their capacity to take on the army henchmen of the bourgeois state and defeat them in the short run. That is measured by their capacity to react and coordinate the masses, something that has been demonstrated from day one of the coup. The fact that we did not make the news every day is related more to the criterion of 'news' held by communications media than to the movements daily actions. In Honduras people are resisting day in and day out.

It would be dogmatic to pretend we have a perfect movement. The national leadership has made a huge effort to keep the masses from reacting with violence. Its also been clear that there are those who prefer to take their own path and act on the margin of the plans of the resistance. Others work a lot under the guidance of the organized leadership. However, to the extent that the movement has been growing, discipline, organization, and consciousness have been strengthened. We are moving on from reacting in favor of a leader to the clear necessity to found a new country. In all this we clearly see the dialectic of the resistances nature and its path to victory.

Now what makes for a victory? Many have affirmed that the process will lead to a sad, mediated outcome in which the dictatorship and its accomplices end up strengthened, with president Zelaya tied hand and foot, powerless to do anything. What's behind that interpretation? Is the idea that everything depends on whether the constitutional president comes back, or doesn't? This kind of pessimism is glued to old experiences and underestimates the peoples capacity to carry on their struggle. It does not seem very scientific to put 'fatal terms' on social processes.

There are essentially two possible short term scenarios for what may happen in the country. a) the president returns; and b) the president does not return to his post. No matter the scenario, the struggle will continue because the ultimate goal is the re-founding of our nation, not just the return of president Zelaya.

It should be clear that the current stage of the struggle requires mobilization for the restoration of constitutional institutions and lawful government. This is so because letting this coup survive intact would be a grave error given the precedent it would establish for the future of Honduras and of Latin America. It seems clear that the imperial right sympathizes with this strategy; one sign of that is the recognition and support of the Honduran fascist regime by private enterprise in Guatemala; without a doubt that country is the next target of the counterrevolutionary continental resurgence.

The National Constituent Assembly

The next stage aims to take the power in order to realize a National Constituent Assembly to re-define the legality of the country. This struggle will follow the electoral path because, among other reasons, taking the road of armed struggle would result in legitimizing the arguments of the right. The imperial media would find it easier to demonize and isolate our movement, just as they have done with the Colombian armed movements.

In no way can the conditions that have come about in this country be considered a defeat. On the contrary, we have gained a lot, and every day this becomes more and more evident. It cannot be said that this comes late; its simply an event happening when it must happen. Once again, it is not dialectical to think that revolutionary movements come about like cultural fashions.

If objective, we will see that pre-revolutionary moments do not exist. The conditions of struggle in Honduras are rooted in a revolutionary process whose aim is to attain a different society, more just, more equitable, progressive, and revolutionary.

We must not, either locally or internationally, fall into despair because of results we see in the daily press, or in day by day experiences of this revolution that at time seems to raise our spirits, and at time cause great skepticism. Now the path is laid down, and come what may, we are going to follow it through to final victory.

--Ricardo Arturo Salgado is a sociologist in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Translated by Felipe Stuart C.

Youth Can Make the Change We Need

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 02:23:00 +0000

Editor's note: The following is the text of a speech delivered to the closing session of the Young Communist League's national school (August 2009).

It’s been a long nine days in the YCL School. We held classes on Marxist Methodology, Socialism, Strategy and Tactics, the fight against racism and more. It has been a lot and I hope speaking dialectically that each of us is a different person than we first started. It’s all about the negation of the negation and everything is dialectical! Every year we talk about how important the YCL School is and how it fits into a major struggle we face. Last year and this year the schools take on a new, more significant role because of the time that we face. Last August we were in the massive struggle to elect Barack Obama. People came to school and were able gain valuable insights and lessons on the political moment they were able to take back with them and apply to the election struggles they were in engaged in.

With the election of Obama we are seeking to find our new footing. We need to be able to grasp and apply Marxism in new and creative ways that help to define and understand our role as Young Communists in this political moment. In some part the school plays an important and vital role in that process. We can come together, take a step back from the daily struggles we are engaged in or are wanting to engage in, and have a broad view and understanding of where we are and how are going to move forward.

And we don’t have a lot of time to sit in our hands as events are constantly changing and becoming more complex as time goes on. We are in some of the sharpest and contentious battles for reform we have seen in a long time. We find ourselves in a heated and vicious struggle for healthcare reform that, win or lose, will determine the tempo and process for change for sometime to come. This struggle is bringing forward all of the contradictions that we face. On one side is an angry and rabid right wing struggling to reassert themselves after the defeat of 2008 with Limbaugh and Glenn Beck their new spokesmen spewing racism and hatred. On another side is the Obama administration who is trying to put forward progressive reforms and is being besieged and attacked at every twist and turn. We also have a progressive movement whose scope does not match the need of what is required today. It needs to be bigger, broader and more flexible in order to carry out the reforms of the Obama administration and to struggle in a progressive direction on all questions.

The YCL National School provides the space for young people to explore all of these features of today through the very unique lens of Marxism. We live in confusing times and it’s hard to understand the right way forward. The lies, racism, and apathy that capitalism breeds run deep and we are coming out of 30 years of having the wool, at least tried, to be pulled over our eyes. Marxism, if we study it and learn to grasp it and apply it in creative and flexible ways, leaving behind dogmatism and rigidity, can help to pull that wool out of our eyes and to really see and understand the world around us.

It can be, if we let it, a liberating experience to grasp and understand the forces at work so that we can all be agents of change. That is the beauty of Marxism when understood right – it can be a source of freedom. It helps us to be conscious agents of change because we know the problems and sources of those problems and how to go about changing them. This, to me, is what freedom and free will is.

For some of us, coming out of the school, that process maybe taking place now. For others, it maybe five or 10 years down the road and there will be some moment that what was said and discussed here falls into place. And that’s ok. It is through the right mixture of experience and struggle that Marxism is made clear and it is a lifetime process to constantly study, update and expand our understanding of Marxism and the world.

It’s not an easy task that we set for ourselves, today, as Young Communists. We stand on the shoulders of a proud history of struggle and countless comrades who gave their lives, both figuratively and literally, for the cause of peace, democracy and socialism in the USA. So that the ideas of equality and freedom enshrined in the founding documents of this country could be fulfilled for everyone, not just those who could afford it.

While it has never has been easy in our nearly 90 years of history, it has always been exciting. September 1st marks the 90th Anniversary of the Communist Party, USA. In those 90 years of struggle our comrades and particularly the young people have been called forward to take up challenging and daunting tasks. It was the YCL and the Party who helped to organize the Abraham Lincoln Brigades to fight fascism in Spain. It was the YCL and the Party who played a large role in organizing the CIO and industrial unions. It was the YCL and the Party who helped lead the struggle in the deep South against racism and lynching and for equality of African Americans in the 1930’s and onwards. It was the Party and the YCL who helped lead the demonstrations and protests to free Angela Davis and against apartheid in South Africa in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

These struggles have been carried forward to now when the Party and the YCL helped to elect the first African American president and are now actively engaged in the struggle for deep, radical democratic change. And I think about our comrades that have gone before – the ones who gave their lives in the fight against racism in the South, who put their lives on the line so that workers could have the right form a union or who spent years in prison for their belief in a better world – what they would say and think about an African American president in the United States and the struggles that we face today. I would venture to think that they would be as proud as we are of electing Obama and excited about the new opportunities for struggle and building the Party and YCL.

That tasks that we have set for ourselves are not less daunting, challenging and exciting – to strengthen and build the movement for radical change among youth and students. To win this, though, will take a mixture of the right politics, the right tactics and the right thinking. We cannot be rigid, we cannot be narrow and we cannot pursue a course of going it alone. We must appreciate and understand what is new, what is different and what is possible.

For if we win in this, to build a massive movement for democratic change, the possibilities of what is possible are great and profound. No less profound than the New Deal in the 1930’s or of the many other struggles we have been apart of. For the countless other democratic struggles that we have been apart of were necessary to get us to where we are today. And it’s our task to build on them and fulfill them and create a new era of peace and justice.

I want to congratulate and thank all of you, both presenters and participants, for making the 2009 YCL National School a major success.

Amnesty International, Others Denounce Repression in Honduras

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 02:17:00 +0000

8-24-09, 9:58 am

Human rights are taking a beating in Honduras in the aftermath of the June 28 coup d'etat which sent left-wing President Manuel “Mel” Zelaya into exile. Although the corporate controlled media are not reporting it, the de-facto government headed by Roberto Micheletti is employing heavy handed tactics to silence opposition activists and media.

Amnesty International has issued a report based on testimony of witnesses and other evidence that points up the nature of this repression. The full report can be read on the Amnesty International website at www.amnesty.org. It is based on a visit by an AI delegation to Honduras from July 28 through August 1, which interviewed a number of people including some that were being held in detention by coup security forces at the time. It focuses particular attention on police and military repression of a pro-Zelaya, anti-coup demonstration in the community of El Durazno, just outside Tegucigalpa, on July 30. Amnesty International accuses the police, some of whom had disguised their faces with bandanas, on that occasion of charging into a peaceful crowd of demonstrators, arbitrarily detaining people and beating them both while they were trying to escape and while they were in police custody. The report is illustrated with photographs showing welts and other injuries which resulted from police beatings. It also reports that police and soldiers attacked demonstrators by pelting them with rocks.

The AI report also says that the Micheletti coup government has targeted pro-Zelaya media and human rights defenders. Some media outlets have been closed down and others have faced threats. Alex Matamoros, of the Center for the Investigation and Promotion of Human Rights (CIPRODEH), tried to come to the defense of some youths who were being beaten by police while in custody on August 12, and found himself targeted also. When he explained to the police that he was a human rights monitor, they shouted “here there are no human rights'. He was eventually forced to sign a paper saying that he was being charged with “supposed acts of destruction of private property public disorder and terrorism.” The coup government has been claiming that the demonstrations for the return of Zelaya are carried out by foreigners, including Cubans and Venezuelans, and are being financed by the Colombian FARC, Armed Forces of the Colombian Revolution. But there is no evidence for any of this; the demonstrators are clearly Honduran citizens, organized by Honduran labor unions and other mass organizations.

The Amnesty International Report points out that the behavior of the Micheletti regime in repressing peaceful protest and freedom of expression is in violation of several articles of the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and calls on the regime to cease these violations and punish the perpetrators.

Last week, the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights (CIDH in Spanish), an autonomous body of the Organization of American States (OAS) carried out a week long study visit to Honduras to assess the human rights situation. Although their full report is not yet available, a preliminary statement by CIDH president Luz Patricia Mejia presents conclusions very similar to those of Amnesty International. According to Telesur, she cited “a pattern of disproportionate use of the public forces [i.e. army and police], arbitrary arrests and control of information directed at limiting public participation” of those sectors of the population who are opposed to the coup. Mejia also denounced the use of curfews, and cruel and degrading treatment of people arrested.

The number of dead resulting from the coup and its aftermath is not fully known, but is believed to be at least eight or nine, including one journalist, two activists of the pro-Zelaya Democratic Unification Party, at least one person killed while demonstrating at the airport when Zelaya tried to return soon after the coup, two schoolteachers killed more recently while demonstrating against the coup near Tegucigalpa, and at least one person murdered near the border when Zelaya made a symbolic re-entry some weeks ago. As there are other people unaccounted for, there may have been more fatalities.

Women's rights organizations claim that the coup military and police have been using sexual harassment and even rape as mechanisms of political control. The Cuban news agency Prensa Latina reports that Feministas en Resistencia (Feminists in Resistance) and the Centro de Derechos de Mujeres (Women's Rights Center) have documented 19 cases of rape carried out by coup military and/or police. “These observations were corroborated by an “International Feminist Observation Mission which included observers from Canada, Costa Rica, El Salvador, the U.S.A. and Guatemala. The Amnesty International report also contains complaints of sexual abuse.

Several regional organizations, including UNASUR, MERCOSUR and the Bolivarian Alliance for the People of America (ALBA), among them encompassing the majority of South American countries, have announced that if these conditions continue and if President Zelaya and constitutional normality are not restored promptly, they will refuse to recognize the results of the presidential and legislative elections presently scheduled for November 29, 2009, meaning that they will consider the government that results from those elections to be illegitimate.

Book Review: Cuba – What Everyone Needs to Know

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 02:13:00 +0000

8-24-09, 9:53 am

Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know by Julia E Sweig New York, Oxford University Press.

Original source: Morning Star

This remarkable book sets 128 questions, ranging from 'What were the main features of Cuban life during Spanish colonial rule?' to 'How extensive is Cuba's cultural projection – music, art, film, literature – on the global stage?'

Julia Sweig is director of Latin American studies at the US Council on Foreign Relations, so her answers are detailed and authoritative, reinforced with a longish index and a short but useful bibliography.

Divided into sections covering Cuba's early colonial history, the 1959 revolution, the cold war, Cuba's place in the world and US-Cuba relations, Sweig's answers range from a single paragraph to several pages in length. Detailed coverage is given to the 1962 missile crisis, the young Cuban Elian Gonzalez who was held hostage in the US, the Mariel mass exodus and subsequent refugee crises.

The 'special period' is covered sympathetically and the case of the heroic Cuban Five is covered in almost sufficient detail, given the overall plan of the book.

The remarkable nature of this book consists in the deft combination of the didactic with the dialectical. Myriad facts show that Cuba-US relations are the result of US imperialist ambitions that pre-date its own foundation, rather than some ephemeral 'Cuban communism.'

Is it too much to hope that the current US administration will build on such conclusions?

Slave Cemetery Found Near Sugar Mill in Trinidad

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 02:10:00 +0000

8-24-09, 9:51 am

TRINIDAD, Cuba, Aug 22 (acn) Researchers from the History Museum and the Archaeology Department of Curator’s Office of this city on the southern coast of Sancti Sipritus confirmed the finding of the first slave cemetery in the ancient Guinia de Soto sugar mill.

Head specialist of Trinidad’s History Museum Hector Manuel Viera Cartaya, said after with the falling down of a tree and the erosion of the soil, five perfectly-preserved corpses buried in a very organized way, were brought up to the surface.

The remains have high cheekbones, perfect dentures, wide noses and resistant bones. These, according to experts, are characteristics found in the Africans that were brought to Cuba as slaves. Local specialists also said that the stratum of the soil was unaltered which ratifies the discovery of the cemetery.

Viera Cartaya explained that burial dates back to late in the 18th century or early in the 1800's, the period of the highest development of the mills, when there were some 200 slaves in the area, according to texts on the topic.

After exhaustive field work, experts said that the cemetery was located about 30 meters away from the location of the house of Justo Germán Cantero, owner of the Güinía de Soto and the Buena Vista mills.

Viera Cartaya said that slave burial grounds discovered in the area and in other regions of Cuba were mostly found close to water streams, in mounds 40 to 50 meters away from the landowner’s house.

After completing the studies, the remains were taken to the graveyard of the town, Trinidad, which was the third village founded by the Spanish colonizers in Cuba.

Güinía de Soto became one of the most important mills of the famous valley after Cantero brought from Paris, France, the Derosne train or steam engine that boosted the sugar production.

From the Cuban News Agency

World Conference Calls for Abolishing Nuclear Weapons

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 02:07:00 +0000

8-24-09, 9:46 am

Original source: Akahata (Japan)

About 7,800 people taking part in the 2009 World Conference against A & H Bombs-Nagasaki pledged to increase grassroots efforts to pave the way for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

The main and concluding part of this year’s World Conference took place in Nagasaki from August 7-9.

Young participants from abroad as well as from all over Japan attentively listened to A-bomb survivors (Hibakusha) speaking about their experience of the atomic bombing and 64 years of their suffering from various diseases caused by exposure to atomic bomb radiation.

A 23-year-old medical social worker from Fukushima, who attended the meeting with Hibakusha, said, “I am struck by the fact that the atomic bombings not only took the lives of so many people but also continue to torment Hibakusha even after more than 60 years because of after-effects. We must not be deceived by arguments to justify nuclear weapons as something necessary for peace.”

Taniguchi Sumiteru, a Hibakusha of Nagasaki, at a young people’s meeting spoke about his bitter experience to 1,600 participants and called on them to “join hands with Hibakusha in the movement to totally eliminate nuclear weapons as swiftly as possible.”

The closing plenary of the World Conference adopted a letter to the world’s governments calling on them to act to start international negotiations for a total ban on nuclear weapons and their elimination.

In concluding all the programs of the 2009 World Conference against A & H Bombs, Taka Hiroshi, Japan Council against A & H Bombs secretary general, called on participants to achieve the goal of collecting 12 million signatures in support of a world free of nuclear weapons toward the next NPT Review Conference next May.

Taka also called for immediate action to replace the present government in the upcoming election over Japan’s future and action to get Japan to strictly observe the war renouncing Article 9 and the Three Non-Nuclear Principles (not to possess, manufacture or allow the entry of nuclear weapons).

Nagasaki mayor pledges to continue to call for nuclear weapons to be eradicated so that everyone can live with dignity

On August 9, bells resounded over the City of Nagasaki at 11:02 AM, the time when a U.S. atomic bomb detonated 64 years ago.

At the memorial ceremony held by the city, Mayor Taue Tomihisa in the Nagasaki Peace Declaration referred to U.S. President Barack Obama’s Prague speech in April and said that a superpower possessing nuclear weapons “finally took a step towards the elimination of nuclear armaments.”

He also said, “The government must globally disseminate the ideals of peace and renunciation of war prescribed in the Japanese Constitution. The government must also embark on measures to establish a firm position on the Three Non-Nuclear Principles by enacting them into law.”

Miguel D’Escoto, U.N. General Assembly president, attended the ceremony and spoke.

Prime Minister Aso Taro in his speech, who had emphasized that Japan needs to be protected by the U.S. nuclear umbrella in his Hiroshima speech, never touched on the Obama speech that called for a world without nuclear weapons.

Drones and Democracy in Afghanistan

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 02:00:00 +0000

With elections just around the corner in Afghanistan [elections were held Thursday Aug. 20 – ed.], it might be timely to reflect on the US engagement with that stricken nation and consider just how much foreign intervention has contributed to the prospect and possibility of free and democratic elections. More, it is fitting to consider what kind of example the US and its allies have given to the people of Afghanistan, if they have bestowed any wisdom and guidance for a nation facing a turbulent and uncertain future, to say the least.

The US initiated a sort of “shock and awe” operation in Afghanistan in late 2001, what appeared to many as a knee-jerk reaction to September 11th, in the midst of a half-heartedly supportive but largely bewildered American public. The Bush administration gave many reasons and justifications for that grizzly war, to hunt down Osama Bin Laden, to defeat the newly exposed world-wide network of Al-Qaeda, with its countless numbers of active and “sleeper” cells spread throughout the world. But the so-called Operation Enduring Freedom would not have actualized without an intense propaganda campaign, that once again attempted to paint the US war as an act of liberation. To present the deadly bombs and unforgiving missiles as such, mainstream media decried the mistreatment and abuse of women, learning new and foreboding terms such as “purdah,” “burkah” and the like. US public stared hunger and poverty in the eyes on the nightly news, and the US prepared its grief-stricken and enraged nation for decisive and direct action.

And so, the Bush administration and its many spin doctors taught us that there was only one way to reform this nation, eliminating illiteracy, advocating women’s rights, improving access to food, proper educational institutions, development, access to healthcare, essentially the hope for a brighter future for a young generation of Afghani children. And their redeeming plan was war.

It is simply arcane to read the bantering of mainstream US commentators these days, as they reflect on the upcoming August 20th elections and ponder what else the US must do to “win hearts and minds of the Afghani people”. For one, might I suggest the arrest of the use of drones in targeted assassinations of US enemies. In May 2009, CIA director Leon Panetta delivered a speech where he claimed that, “(Drone) operations have been very effective because they have been very precise in terms of the targeting and it involved a minimum of collateral damage.”

But the use of unmanned drones as weapons of war has been decried as so 'cruel as to be beyond the pale of human tolerance', according to Lord Bingham, one of Britain's most senior judges, in a recent interview cited in the Independent. 'It may be – I'm not expressing a view – that unmanned drones that fall on a house full of civilians is a weapon the international community should decide should not be used.'

Lord Bingham’s views, as those of others, are supported by ample evidence, of weddings that turned into funerals, and funerals that themselves turned into mass burial grounds.

US enthusiasm regarding the success of the drones has in fact crossed borders into Pakistan, also claiming the lives of hundreds.

Former senior counterinsurgency advisor to the US Army, David Kilcullen told Congress in June 2009 that “Since 2006, we’ve killed 14 senior Al Qaeda leaders using drone strikes. In the same period, we’ve killed 700 Pakistani civilians in the same area.'

Yet, the charade trudges on. Pro-US Afghan President Hamid Karzai continues to stage his government’s make-believe democracy, although his loyalists are in continuous decline. Major media continue to cite improvements in people’s lives, regardless of contradicting reports by the UN. US officials tirelessly, although unconvincingly prattle of winning hearts and minds, as bomb blasts, drone attacks and death hover over the devastated place. Such a degrading view of human life, say nothing of our intelligence.

But the facts are truly grim. According to a recent UNICEF report, an estimated 22 million Afghans, or 70 percent of the population, live in poverty and substandard conditions. 40 percent of children less than three years old are underweight and 54 percent of children under five are stunted. Over 100,000 people - most of them children and women - remain displaced by conflict and drought.

Contrary to widespread claims of progress, UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, John Holmes, says the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan has worsened. If fact, in February of this year, and for the first time in seven years, the UN launched a comprehensive humanitarian action plan to try and alleviate even a small portion of the suffering there. A study conducted by the American Medical Association a few years ago found that two-thirds of Afghans over the age of 15 are depressed. Post traumatic stress disorder was also reported as prevalent, with 41 percent of non-disabled persons showing symptoms. Of the individuals surveyed, 80 percent expressed feelings of hatred. It goes without question that these statistics have ballooned with the rising death tolls that plague the country.

So, there hasn’t been the kind of progress once hoped for; not so many schools built, there haven’t been so many hospitals established. Hunger and illiteracy, for the most part have remained the same if not on the incline. The refugee population continues to swell, while delivering aid to desperately needy towns and villages becomes increasingly difficult.

But one thing cannot be disputed regarding US contributions to the people of Afghanistan: a lot of people have been ripped to pieces by botched drone operations, a lot of young minds have been molded, through the tragedies that they endure and witness each day, to distrust this notion of “democracy”. This dilemma is of great concern to the US Army. In fact, in responding to this very problem, National Security Advisor James L. Jones stated regarding the use of drones in targeted assassinations, “In one mishap you can create thousands of more terrorists than you had before the mishap”.

Well, if this is our sole concern, and if the pointless loss of life in itself is not deplored, if the suffering of the Afghanis is only a point of unease when it could potentially breed more “terrorists”, then “winning their hearts and minds” is quite simply outside the realm of possibilities.