People Before Profit blog

The Baghdad Tapestry

Fri, 31 Dec 2004 09:14:00 +0000

A Thousand Years of Spinning Invasions into Liberations

It’s a nifty trick.

On the evening news, two talking heads – one liberal, one conservative – trade verbal shots over the war in Iraq.

“And let’s not forget,” says the conservative, “We are fighting the war on terrorism in Iraq.”

“Come on,” says the incredulous liberal, “you know there was no connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda.”

“Really?” says the conservative, “My son is fighting in Iraq. He’s fighting al-Zarqawi. And you know as well as I do that al-Zarqawi is connected to bin Laden and al-Qaeda.”

“No,” says the liberal, not buying the backward logic, “we created the terrorist situation in Iraq by invading the country, not the other way round.”

Sadly, the liberal missed the point: on most days, a good story beats the straight truth. That al-Zarqawi appeared as the terrorist enemy only after the invasion was not relevant to the good story. What was relevant was that the war in Iraq was suddenly becoming what George W. Bush said it was: the war on terrorism.

The Bush administration knows its history. Spinning illegal invasions into righteous liberations has been an effective practice for a thousand years.

In 1066, William of Normandy invaded, occupied, and plundered Saxon England. But history remembers William’s invasion as one of righteous liberation. Why? Because William had the sense to spin his crime into heroic art on the Bayeux Tapestry. That is, he told a good story.

Of course, much like Bush’s invasion of Iraq, the true story of William’s invasion of England was something altogether darker and more brutish. It is a story with a frightening modern day moral.

In December, 1065, the King of England – Edward the Confessor – was dying. He had no clear successor, and many lords laid claims to the throne. But two nobles were front runners. One was Earl Harold, an English lord. And the second was William of Normandy, a lord of a large, prosperous stretch of northern France.

When Edward died in January 1066, Earl Harold claimed the throne. But he soon had to defend his claim against the claim of the foreigner, William.

Was William’s claim to the English throne justified? William knew a good opportunity when he saw it – a weakened England with no clearly established leader and a land full of rich natural resources – so that was claim enough.

In late 1066, travelling with a large army, William set sail for England. He landed near Hastings, in the south of England, where he and Harold engaged in battle. And in a day, William destroyed Harold’s army and killed King Harold.

From there, William systematically destroyed all Saxon resistance, laying waste to the people and country. Norman French leaders quickly took over all important positions in England, and the country was duly plundered.

But William had a public relations problem. Since he was not the rightful heir to the thrown, and since he had brutally invaded and plundered England, he needed an image make over if the people of England were to accept his rule. So he commissioned the Bayeux Tapestry.

The seventy metre long, embroidered tapestry tells the tale of William’s invasion – but tells it backward, using the outcome to justify the means. According to the Tapestry, William’s invasion was the story of England’s righteous liberation from Harold, a usurper and dictator.

It made a good story.

No doubt, the English people at the time knew the tapestry’s story was false. But as the years passed, the myth of William the Conqueror as liberator of England overtook the reality.

Sound familiar?

Today – since the Weapons of Mass Destruction story failed, and since the al-Qaeda Links to Saddam story failed – the Bush administration is busily weaving its newest story in a Baghdad Tapestry, of sorts.

And this story unfolds nicely: 9/11 is connected to al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda is connected to al-Zarqawi. Al-Zarqawi is connected to Iraq. Thus, 9/11 was justifiable grounds for America’s righteous liberation of Iraq.

Remember, on most days, straight truth is less interesting than a good story. And like the Bayeux Tapestry, the finished Baghdad Tapestry will certainly tell a good story.

And then, one day not long from now, our children will celebrate the invasion of Iraq as George the Conqueror’s great war against terror.

It’s a nifty trick.

--Steven Laffoley is a writer living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. You may e-mail him at stevenlaffoley@yahoo.ca.

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Bush's Militarism Inspires Anti-war sentiment Among Students and Trade Unionists

Fri, 31 Dec 2004 01:46:00 +0000

Cuban Delegation Visits India

From People's Democracy

CARRYING the message of peace, friendship and solidarity, a two member delegation from Cuba visited Guwahati recently and interacted with cross section of the people — students, teachers, intellectuals, social and political activists, literary and cultural activists etc. They also visited the state headquarters of the CPI(M) in the city. The Cuban delegation comprised Pablo Baccallo Infante and Juan Pozo Alvarez, both representing the Cuban Communist Party. Party's Central Committee member Pablo Baccallo, a former university professor is also in charge of the Party's wing on education, culture and science. The people of Guwahati, and indeed of the entire North-Eastern India, warmly greeted the Cuban leaders and bade hearty welcome and conveyed through them the message of admiration and support, friendship and solidarity, to the heroic people of Cuba. The visiting delegation arrived in the city as part of their goodwill mission to various cities in India in a bid to strengthen the unity between the people of the two countries. They came at the invitation of the All India Peace and Solidarity Council. A Reception Committee of North-Eastern India was formed to welcome the fraternal delegation with former chief minister Sarat Ch Sinha, noted intelletual Dr Hiren Gohain, CPI(M) state secretary Hemen Das, CPI leader Drupad Bongohain, RSP leader Paresh Boruah in the presidium. Dr M Nara Singh of Manipur was the working president while Purno Boro CPI(M), Munin Mahanta (CPI) and Sailen Medhi were the general secretaries of the Reception Committee. In the afternoon on December 4, Baccallo and Alvarez attended a friendship meeting at the Faculty House of Guwahati University(GU) on their way to the city from the Borjhar Airport. GUWAHATI UNIVERSITY MEETING

The Guwahati University meeting was organised jointly by the Guwahati University Teachers' Association, GU Officers' Association, GU Workmen's Union and the Post Graduate Students' Union (PGSU) and the Law College Students' Union of the University. The Cuban delegation was given a rousing welcome at the University campus. The meeting was attended among others, by the vice-chancellor Gajan Talukdar. CPI(M) leaders Hemen Das and Uddhab Barman were also present. Addressing a huge gathering of teachers, students, workmen etc, Pablo Infante said that for the first time they had visited an Indian university. Thundering against aggressive designs of the second Bush administration, Baccallo Infante said, the US government has been hostile towards the communist government in Cuba and the national situation in socialist Cuba has really become serious today. But the Cubans will never yield to the mounting hegemonistic pressures of the US government. They would continue to resist the aggressive policies of US imperialism, Baccallo asserted amidst great applause. In Cuba today, there is no racial, gender-based or religious discrimination. The socialist government has been pursuing a policy of equality. The country has achieved significant growth in the fields of education, health care and in all other fields concerning the welfare of the people, he claimed. Giving an account of the progress made by his country in the field of education, he said education in Cuba was free from the primary level to the University level. In 1959 there were only three universities in this country. Today, Cuba with a population of 11.1 million, has 64 universities, 7,00,000 university graduates, 25,000 teachers and 67,500 doctors in all. Once the university student finishes his or her study, he or she is sure to enjoy a job guarantee. The Cuban delegation also addressed a gathering at Srimanta Kalakshetra on December 4 in the evening. The next day, the two communist leaders also came to the Assam State Committee Office of the CPI(M) at Hedayetpur in the city. They were received and greeted by the Party's state secretary Hemen Das, CCM, Uddhab Barman and other comrades. Explaining the achievements of socialist construction in Cuba, the delegation said in a brief meeting in the CPI(M) office, the people in his country were holding high the banner of Marxism and Leninism and were proud of being ruled by the Communist Party under the leadership of president Fiedel Castro.

PUBLIC RECEPTION & WARM FELICITATIONS

The two member Cuban delegation was accorded a public reception at the Pragjyoti Cultural Complex, Machkhowa in the heart of the city on December 5. More than a 1000 strong gathering of students, youth, teachers, workers and employees, literary and cultural celebrities, social and political activists inside the newly built auditorium enthusiastically participated in the public reception organised by the Reception Committee of North-Eastern India. In his welcome address on behalf of the Presidium of the Reception Committee, former professor of Guwahati University Dr Hiren Gohain said, 'Assam and other parts of North-Eastern India are known for the bounty of nature, manifest in the magnificent hill-ranges, the mighty and majestic Brahmaputra river, the dense forests and their rich and diverse wild life, and reserves of oil and natural gas. But so far it cannot be said that this wealth has been of much benefit to the people of this region. Dependency and backwardness have kept the region largely under-developed, and they have had an unsettling impact on ancient traditions of friendship, co-operation and harmony among the different ethnic groups of the region. We are therefore keen to learn from people of Cuba the secret of their remarkable achievements.' Condemning the blatantly unjust and atrocious acts of illegal military intervention and terror perpetrated by US administration for nearly half a century against Cuba, Dr Gohain, in his speech pinpointed the acts of subversion and terror financed and sponsored by US imperialism. The US administration is aiming at destabilising and overthrowing the progressive government in Cuba, he added. Expressing solidarity with the heroic people of Cuba, Dr Gohain further said 'it is urgently necessary for all progressive and right thinking people of the world to unite in defense of Cuba and against the danger of American hegemony .... And the people of India, including the people of North-Eastern India, must rally to the cause of greater understanding and co-operation with the people of Cuba.' The Cuban delegation was also greeted and felicited by the state leaders of the Students' Federation of India, Democratic Youth Federation of India, All India Democratic Women's Association and a host of other organisations. In their response to the warmth of the reception and intensity of solidarity with the people of Cuba, Comrade Pablo Baccallo and Juan Alvarez were visibly heartened and expressly exultant. In their exuberant expression of thanks, Pablo Baccallo said in the jam-packed auditorium, socialist Cuba has achieved tremendous success concerning the welfare of the people. He also gave precise informations with concrete statistical data on the achievements and significant growth after the revolution in his country. Then he went on telling the huge gathering of the apprehensions of the Cuban people and their government. He said that the US administration under Bush was unhappy with the activities of the Cuban government. The US imperialist is doing all the things to malign the Cubans and their government. The North-East Reception Committee also organised a cultural show as part of the reception, felicitation and expression of solidarity. Cultural celebrities of Assam like the Sarma duo, Dilip and Sudakshina, Khagen Mahanta, along with a number of troupes presented variety of programmes. The folk and mass-cultures of the North-Eastern region enthralled the Cuban delegates and other audience. Finally, on the morning of December 6, the Cuban delegation left for Patna in their mission for friendship and solidarity. Among others, CPI(M) leader Hemen Das and Purna Boro, CPI leaders Munin Mahanta bade them farewell at the Guwahati Railway station.

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Hate Music: New Recruitment Tool for White Supremacists

Fri, 31 Dec 2004 01:41:00 +0000

From World Press Review

This fall, hate groups took their longstanding effort to recruit teen-agers into the white supremacist movement to a new level, with the owners of a neo-Nazi record company promising to deliver 'hatecore' music into the hands of 100,000 teenagers during the 2004-2005 school year. They even created a CD filled with racist music expressly for this purpose.

In one sense, there was nothing new here. Hate groups have for years sought to reach a younger audience with their message of hatred and bigotry, changing with the times and technology. We have seen hate groups create racist and anti-Semitic Web sites designed to appeal to children, and even the creation of racist video games with names like 'Ethnic Cleansing.'

But with the start of the 2004 school year, the neo-Nazi Panzerfaust Records upped the ante with a brazen campaign dubbed 'Project Schoolyard,' geared specifically to middle and high school students, ages 13–19. Panzerfaust announced plans to distribute as many as 100,000 free CDs to students in schools across the country. They indicated that they would produce the CDs cheaply and in large quantity, making them widely available to white supremacists across the country, who would in turn volunteer their time to hand out the CDs and help make the campaign a success.

Panzerfaust made no effort to hide the main purpose of 'Project Schoolyard.' Their Web site proudly proclaims: 'We just don't entertain racist kids … We create them.'

This was no idle threat. Panzerfaust offers for sale CDs from hundreds of hate music bands from the U.S. and abroad, and the label has grown considerably in the last few years. Based in Newport, Minnesota, the company is run by a former member of the virulently anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi National Alliance. It now competes with the Alliance's own hate music company, Resistance Records, once the most successful such business in the country.

The Panzerfaust 'sampler CD,' created specifically for this campaign, was made to appear as if it were just another collection of cutting-edge music. Unwitting teenagers would not immediately suspect the CD's racist overtones unless they played it or logged on to the Panzerfaust Web site, whose address is prominently featured on the CD jacket. Once online or tuned-in, the student would encounter the in-your-face racism that is the trademark of the hate music scene.

This very public effort to reach teenagers with racist music underscores the seriousness with which hate groups view their recruitment efforts. After all, it is a matter of survival for neo-Nazi groups to ensure a new pool of recruits who can take up the banner of spreading racism and hate. Hate music provides a ready mechanism for hate groups to raise funds, to recruit new members and give hardened bigots a sense of belonging.

So nearly three months into their campaign, are Panzerfaust's efforts having any impact? Are the CDs getting into the hands of students as promised, and if so, are they having the intended effect of winning over converts?

Although the campaign continues to threaten our schools and communities — the CDs have already shown up at schools in at least four states — there is some good news. School districts, law enforcement authorities and informed parents have been vigilant in spreading the word about Panzerfaust and its campaign to spread hate among children. Dozens of school districts from California to Florida, alerted early on to the campaign by watchdog groups such as the Anti-Defamation League and the media, have put out information helping teachers and students identify the deceptively packaged CDs.

When the CDs finally surfaced — appearing in places such as West Virginia, Florida, South California and Missouri — the reaction was swift, with students, parents and educators taking a stand against hate and proclaiming, in various ways, 'Not in our community.'

In Madison, West Virginia, three men in black jackets and dark combat boots distributed approximately 125 CDs to students stepping off the bus at a middle school and a high school. That same day, the town's mailboxes were stuffed with newsletters filled with racist and anti-Semitic hate propaganda.

One student journalist recently recounted the reaction school officials in the Charleston Gazette: 'Panzerfaust's racist and anti-Semitic hate music has passively slipped beneath the radar in several states — but not in Madison.' The student described how her fellow students at South Charleston High School immediately alerted the vice principal, who then raised the alarm to schools throughout the county via e-mail. This led district officials to tighten security around school grounds, and prompted student leaders to speak out against hate in their community. Those students voluntarily turned the CDs over to school officials. One student recalled: 'When I observed the derogatory images of a woman holding a gun and another girl pulling down her skirt on the back of the disk, I handed in the CD. I could not believe that people came into my town with this hate music. It's awful.'

Similar reactions to the appearance of the Panzerfaust CDs have grabbed headlines in the national media and appeared on the network news, shedding more light on the group's campaign and aiding in alerting the public to the threat. Yet there is still reason for concern about Panzerfaust's tactics. Their campaign is not going away any time soon.

On Panzerfaust's online forum, white supremacist fans have enthusiastically embraced the project and many claim to have personally handed out the CD in high schools, colleges and stores in different parts of the country. Local chapters of groups like the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement have made a contest out of the distribution campaign, calling on racist groups in Georgia to compete against each other to see who can distribute the most white supremacist propaganda, with extra points being given to those who hand out the Panzerfaust CDs.

Meanwhile, Panzerfaust, claiming to have sold out the first batch of CDs in less than two weeks, is offering them for sale again with special deals for those who order bulk copies. Panzerfaust refers to this as 'phase two.' On one online forum, a member of the California-based racist Golden State Skinheads discussed plans to purchase 'as many of these as we can.'

While it may be impossible at the end of the day to gauge the effectiveness of Panzerfaust's efforts to tap into a youthful audience, their efforts to actively and even brazenly recruit young people into the hate movement is disturbing — indeed shocking. We must remain vigilant, while alerting schools and parents to the dangers that hate groups pose, not only in schools, but in the home, where the Internet makes it possible for hate groups to deceptively target teenagers with Web sites and 'racialist' chat rooms that are always just a few clicks away.

It is imperative for parents and caregivers to know the warning signs and to monitor what their children are downloading from the Internet and listening to on their headphones. The first line of defense in protecting our children is an awareness of, and responsiveness to, the deceptive tactics of the haters.

--Abraham H. Foxman is National Director of the Anti-Defamation League and the author of 'Never Again? The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism' (HarperSanFrancisco, 2003). For more information on hate groups go to www.adl.org.

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HIV/AIDS Pandemic Must Be Priority

Fri, 31 Dec 2004 01:35:00 +0000

From ILCA

Working families of the union movement are deeply disturbed by the horrors of the HIV / AIDS pandemic, and believe that addressing this crisis – both at home and abroad – must be an immediate priority for our nation.

With more than 40 million people infected and over 25 million people dead, we are facing on of the worst crises of our times. More than twenty years into the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the number of people living with HIV/AIDS has reached its highest level to date, showing our failure to defeat this dreaded disease.

The HIV/AIDS pandemic is reversing decades of development and threatening economic and social prosperity worldwide. Anything less than a full force effort to rein in this disease is simply immoral in the face of such tremendous human suffering.

Women have been especially hard hit by HIV worldwide. Today, nearly 60 percent of the people living with HIV are women. In sub-Saharan Africa, the hardest hit region, 13.3 million women are infected with HIV. We know that in the United States, African American and Hispanic account for 80% of HIV/AIDS cases among women. Women’s limited access to formal education, literacy skills, income and power heighten their vulnerability to HIV and women who seek out effective protection and treatment are blamed and often denied support from their families. We need to break the vicious cycle of poverty, discrimination and disease that traps women infected with HIV/AIDS.

The global labor movement must work to protect the rights of all workers dealing with HIV and AIDS, and play a key role in our communities in responding to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center supports partnerships between unions and committed employers to help workers living with HIV/AIDS stay on the job, earn a living and support their families. The AFL-CIO will continue to work in the US and globally to fight on the behalf of infected workers and their families.

On World AIDS Day 2004, under the banner of “Have you heard me today?” it is our obligation to respond to a crisis that claims the lives of working women and men everyday. Our nation needs an immediate response to the suffering of people dying from a preventable and treatable disease. History will prove that this is one of the single most important issues of our lifetime for social progress and basic human rights. Inaction is nothing less than shameful.

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The Struggle for Ukraine

Thu, 30 Dec 2004 01:40:00 +0000

From Granma

Try as they might, Russia and the United States can claim that the factor of geopolitics is not involved in the struggle for the Ukraine, with the US warning that democracy is at stake there and the Russians going so far as to deny that GP considerations are involved, but in order to believe either claim one must either deny reality or deny the facts. One must be in deep denial in order to accept these claims, even if the Ukrainians, the Americans and the Russians are not. The simple fact and the undeniable reality would seem to be that the Russians hold all the cards, while all the Americans can really do is issue vague and veiled threats that they cannot possibly enforce.

By such threats Colin Powell has put himself and the US out on a limb ready to be sawed off at any moment by Mr. Putin, who would most likely be quite pleased to oblige, and who probably would not be adverse to continuing on with his tree surgery if given the opportunity or the challenge. The Russian President has quite obviously set about the task of restoring order throughout Russia and its sphere of influence, and so ensuring that the Ukraine remains safely in the Russian embrace is merely consistent with such task: indeed, were Mr. Putin to do otherwise would be totally inconsistent with this enterprise of keeping Ukraine within the Russian orbit, would put the Russian president's job in jeopardy and would make Russia even more vulnerable and exposed than already is the case to its South, Southwest and West. He quite clearly has the backing of the Russian people in this regard, so even if he wanted to adopt another policy vis-à-vis Ukraine, he cannot, without destroying his legitimacy, authority and credibility. It is quite interesting that one week he is announcing a new nuclear weapon to be developed by the Russians and in the next his support for PM Viktor Yanukovych, who the Central Election Commission has declared won last weekend's presidential election, which assertion of course Viktor Yushchenko the opposition candidate is disputing.

The basis for the West's claims that said election was fraudulent is that the exit polling conducted by certain organizations indicated that Mr. Yushchenko would win the election and also that there were widespread examples of voting irregularities like ballot stuffing and the like. On the basis of these questionable claims the opposition has taken to the streets in a bid to win there what it could not win at the ballot box, which effort amounts to a coup d'etat by any other name. It is revealing that the US and the West first employ the rhetoric of democracy to advance their interests in the Ukraine, and that when they lose the game they claim that it was rigged from the start. When the outcome is not to their liking they immediately claim foul, as if a truly democratic and honest election would in mean their triumph electorally, which is not necessarily the case. It is just as likely that Ukrainians would vote for the Establishment candidate as they would for the opposition's candidate, if not more likely, as appears to have happened as a result of the presidential election.

The struggle for the Ukraine reminds one of other contests and confrontations between East and West over Berlin, Cuba, Vietnam, Afghanistan and other such famous Cold War battlegrounds, in which case the Great Game between the Great powers continues on in a different guise but with the same rules in force as before. One such rule is that if vital interests are not at stake then one of the players should not bother with getting involved, which rule is violated only at great cost which both have discovered to their great regret time and time again. In the instant case it seems that the Russians have the vital interests at risk, and on the contrary that the US and its allies have no vital interests to protect in the Ukraine, which begs the question as to why they would risk so much in seemingly forcing the issue there. In fact the Russians in general, and Mr. Putin in particular have so much at stake in Ukraine that it is all too easy to foresee Russian intervention, perhaps even invasion and occupation: after all, if the US could invade and occupy Iraq with hardly any acceptable or believable pretext or justification, why cannot the Russians act in similar fashion when their vital and national interests are quite clearly involved in the event, particularly when their national security is also quite clearly involved?

Like other political dramas the one that is coming to a head in Ukraine is replete and complete with contradictions, with the players involved having engaged in role reversal, like actors who switch parts in medias res. As with any drama, this one has its heroes and villains, its producers and directors, its playwright, even its audience. Indeed, it is the task of those of us in the front seats to make sense of the plot, to identify the cast of characters, and then to determine who is really bankrolling the production or calling the shots from offstage.

It's a production that even the most wild-eyed Hollywood producer would never dream of trying to sell to his lenders or some movie studio, and certainly isn't a production one would discover playing on Broadway, or even off, so bizarre is the story line that no one buy it, never mind a bank or a Hollywood high-roller. Take the case of opposition candidate Viktor Yuschenko, who not too long ago seemed like a Grade B movie actor with looks to spare but who had a hard time getting his campaign off the ground. Then he has a private dinner with President Leonid Kuchma and suddenly resembles Count Dracula. His makeover, which he ascribes to a plot on the part of his enemies, which claim the latter of course do not subscribe to, instead describing his sudden transformation as a case of serious food poisoning, somehow energized his campaign, probably because many Ukrainians just felt sorry for the man. The result was that the outcome was close enough in the recent Ukrainian presidential election that he could plausibly claim that the election was rigged and stolen by the Viktor Yanukovych campaign, i.e. the dreaded Establishment. Naturally the Prime Minister and Mr. Kuchma his mentor will have none of it, with the question being just how this little drama with an ever-thickening plot is going to be resolved.

The White House and the Kremlin are energetically denying it, but there is no question but that the evolving crisis in Ukraine is being stage managed from afar, with both sides involved up to their ears in Byzantine intrigue, the stakes being in this latest version of the Great Game the very fate of that beautiful country where East meets West. Some even say that the fate of Russia is also in play, the theory being that if Ukraine falls to the West, Russia cannot be too far behind. In any case, one can easily see how Vladimir Putin's hand is being strengthened by the turmoil on its southern border, just as he was strengthened by the bloodshed in Beslan. It is unlikely that Russia will allow the West to establish a base camp right on its back porch, regardless of what it takes too stop the encroachment and regardless of the circumstances. Mr. Putin has been on a roll lately, and he is not about to allow the West to do swallow Ukraine, not without having to fight for it. The Kremlin has drawn a line in the sand as it were, and the line stops in Kiev or thereabouts, with Mr. Putin in no mood to accept Western meddling. Besides, were he to do otherwise, he might find himself overthrown or at least rendered irrelevant back home, so his own survival and self-interest are also at stake.

The West seems to be employing the usual rhetoric of democracy. The same kind of divide and conquer tactics that have worked so well before, most recently in the Balkans where Yugoslavia was dismembered, now in Iraq where that country is also being taken apart and now being used by the West to try to finish the job of killing off its former enemies once and for all, with Ukraine the newest battleground between East and West, both literally and figuratively. There are rumblings about Russian-speaking Eastern Ukraine seceding from Western Ukraine, which result might after all be the real goal of the United States and its allies. When their plan didn't work out according to plan, and they lost the election, they raised a howl because they thought that having an election would automatically mean their victory. Then they tried repeating their Polish experience, where the unraveling of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War began in the first place. Now they try to close the circle in Kiev, while encircling the Russians.

The problem is that Viktor Yuschenko is no Lech Walesa, and the Yuschenko campaign is certainly not Solidarity. In place of a mass movement or popular uprising we have simply another politician or opportunist with backing from Western interests who really aren't interested in the Ukrainian people, but are really only interested in their own self-interests, all the while seeking to undermine Russia while continuing the ongoing project of its dismemberment. History repeats itself, but usually as a farce the second time around. What is transpiring in the Ukraine is not just a farce, but also a tragedy which only seems to become more tragic with every passing day that the main protagonists fail to reach a solution or a denouement that everyone can live with. What is fascinating is that the Ukrainian authorities are emphasizing the rule of law, the courts and the Constitution, while the opposition attempts to win on the streets what it lost at the ballot box, and is doing so using the most undemocratic tactics imaginable in its bid to win power. This is a major contradiction that we have seen time after time, the latest one being the invasion and occupation of Iraq, where the US is supposedly attempting to implant democracy utilizing the most undemocratic means of all, by which we mean an illegal war and the commission of scores of war crimes.

There is no question but that democracy, or some form thereof, lies in Ukraine's future, but the way to get there must be democratic in itself. The West and its pro-Western Ukrainian allies seem to believe that merely holding an election automatically entitles them to rule, and that they can only lose an election through fraud, when such obviously is not the case. The premises of their campaign are thus faulty ab initio, and their ultimate success is highly questionable at best, particularly with the Russians jealously guarding their backs and their neighborhood.

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The Crisis in the Sudan – Darfur

Thu, 30 Dec 2004 01:34:00 +0000

From Information Bulletin (Sudanese Communist Party), October 2004

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA)

The Crisis in the Sudan – Darfur

A meeting of leadership of the National Democratic Alliance took place in Asmara, during the period of July 14-20, 2004, at which it discussed the situation in the Sudan with particular reference to the situation in Darfur. It also reviewed the Niefasha Agreement concluded between the Sudanese government and the People’s Movement for Liberation of the Sudan.

The conclusions reached at by the meeting state the following :

The Alliance considers in this connection the following measures to be essential conditions without which the Niefasha Agreement cannot achieve its desired objectives : Several basic and pivotal factors dictate the determination of the Alliance’s options in tackling the new realities resulting from the agreement :

1) In spite of the fact that SPLA has signed the peace protocols with the government, it will remain as part of the NDA abiding with its decisions

above all the Asmara Documents of 1995 concerning issues affecting the Sudan destiny.

2) The basic and necessary conditions for achieving democratic transformation and consolidation of peace is continued unity of the NDA as well as continued development of its visions, program and work machinery in a manner that corresponds to the developments dictated by the Agreement and to the requirements of the new political realities. In this regards, the Alliance will elaborate a specific work program that will be implemented in two levels :

- The internal level : It will mobilize the mass movement to achieve the democratic transformation, to support the peace process and to transform the agreement into a comprehensive one including the inclusion of Darfur and Eastern Sudan in the formula.

- On the outside level : The Alliance will undertake to assure all possible support to the Alliance activities inside the Sudan and to the expected dialogue with the government.

Darfur

The Alliance discussed the situation in Darfur in the presence of the National Liberation Movement of Darfur – the Alliance’s newest member – and reached the following statement:

« The Sudan National Liberation Movement (Darfur) participated in the meeting for the first time, respresented by the President and Secretary General. It presented a detailed review of developments in Darfur. A resolution adopted by the meeting stated:

The leadership affirms its condemnation of the terrible deterioration of human conditions in Darfur and demands the following :

1) Respect of the cease fire agreed upon the SNLM (Darfur) and the government.

2) Immediate disbanding and disarming the Janjaweed militia and trying its leaders before special courts under international supervision.

Investigation of crimes, genocide and ethnic cleanings determining the responsibles and presenting them to trial..

4) Rebuilding of destroyed villages and returning the original inhabitants, assuming securing and providing care to them, compensating all those whose properties were damaged, as well as rebuilding the infrastructure.

5) Ban military flights over Darfur and supply of arms to it, strict control of all road transports to consolidate the cease fire.

6) Organizing a broad regional and international mobilization campaign addressed to concerned organizations with the aim of obtaining aid to those affected and to assure the proper delivery of aid. »

The meeting also adopted a statement of principles governing the process of negotiation concerning Darfur which states :

1) The problem of Darfur is a political one. It is a part of the overall political crisis. It will never be properly tackled except in the framework of the comprehensive political solution that the Alliance is to achieve.

2) The Darfur crisis is the result of the political and economic marginalization of broad sectors of the Sudanese society, and cannot be remedied except by resorting to a dialogue leading to peaceful, just political solution based upon commitment to eradicate the roots of the conflict and abandoning the violence.

3) Emphasizing the principle of democratic transformation, guaranteeing general freedoms, respecting human rights and the supremacy of the rule of law which will be guaranteed by the the permanent and transitory constitutions based on the right of citizens, separation of authorities and equality in rights and duties as well as non-discrimination among citizens because of race, religion, sex or culture.

4) Just participation in all levels of government and authority, commitment to the principle of decentralization – federal government – based on the diffusion of authority between centre and regions in a matter which will allow the regions to rule themselves by themselves.

5) Adhering to just distribution of wealth between the centre and the regions to achieve comprehensive balanced and sustained development.

6) Establishing ownership of land in Darfur based on historic rights of the various tribes while at the same time taking into consideration the common good.

7) Investigating violation and adhering to the principle of compensation and amending harm done.

8) Spreading the principle of reconciliation and coexistence among tribes in Darfur and refraining from exploitation of tribal strifes for political ends with the objective of preserving the component of social fabric.

9) Respecting human rights as stated in international covenants and inclusion of these rights in the transitional and permanent constitutions, and emphasizing the principle of independence of the judiciary, separation of authorities, and non-exploitation of religion in politics.

10) On the basis of agreement to the afore mentioned principles an end should be put to acts of belligerency, cease fire should be achieved and an agreement attained on transitional arrangements for ending fighting and entering into direct dialogue aiming to attain a just settlement to end the on-going war in Darfur.

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Iron Workers win at J.D. Steel

Thu, 30 Dec 2004 01:29:00 +0000

Iron Workers’ win at J.D. Steel reaches Latino workers with key protections and could strengthen rights for 10,000 construction workers--AFL-CIO

From ILCA

In March 2003, workers spearheaded a campaign to form a union with the Iron Workers at JD Steel, a reinforcing iron subcontractor for such projects as water treatment plants, sports stadiums, performing arts centers and parking lots.

As a subcontractor, the company often received public funds. To draw attention to the campaign, the union activists focused on educating elected officials across Arizona about JD Steel and the workers’ issues.

In September, the JD Steel workers won a watershed victory that has the potential to reinforce the workplace rights of as many as 10,000 construction workers nationwide. The Iron Workers signed a union contract with JD Steel, covering 600 workers in 21 states. The agreement provides for improved wages, health insurance, pensions, a grievance procedure and a training program. The pact also creates a unique multistate organization, Iron Workers Local 846, giving the union and the employer the flexibility and mobility to reach out to more workers. This wide geographic scope is attracting interest from other companies, say union leaders. As construction companies expand nationally and increasingly do business in many states, unions have to change their own structures to better enable workers to have a voice on the job, Iron Workers leaders say. Creating a multistate local is one example of how unions are changing to help the workers and employers in their industries build strength.

U.S. workers face massive obstacles to forming unions

With its recent victory at JD Steel, the Iron Workers—like many other building and construction trades unions—are accelerating their commitment to helping Latino workers, especially immigrant workers, win justice on the job. These unions are using innovative strategies such as hiring bilingual organizers, forming alliances with community groups and providing outreach services to Latino workers. In 2002, for instance, the Iron Workers launched a partnership with a social service and advocacy agency in Silver Spring, Md., to provide legal help to immigrant workers (see America@work, October 2002).

Workers in the United States—regardless of their job or country of origin—face harassment and intimidation when they try to form unions. Fully 92 percent of private-sector employers, when faced with employees who want to join a union, force workers to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda, according to Cornell University scholar Kate Bronfenbrenner. And during 25 percent of organizing campaigns in the private sector, employers illegally fire workers just because they want to form a union.

But immigrant workers face additional obstacles. For those who are undocumented, employers’ threats of deportation literally can be a matter of life and death. Top officials at the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) say the question of resident status hampers the agency’s investigations. “In responding to immigrant worker deaths, the agency encounters a difficult situation because sometimes workers are afraid to speak out about unsafe or unhealthful conditions for fear of being deported” John Henshaw, OSHA administrator, told a Senate subcommittee in 2002.

Latino workers need the freedom to speak out because they suffer disproportionately from job hazards. The rate of work-related fatalities among Latino workers is 25 percent higher than for workers overall, and foreign-born Latinos are more likely to die than Latinos born in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Even though private-industry injury and illness rates overall dropped 35 percent between 1992 and 2001, fatalities among Latino workers in the United States increased by 67 percent in the same period and have dropped only slightly since then, according to BLS statistics from November 2003. The construction industry is one of the most dangerous industries, and while Latinos make up about 11 percent of the US workforce, they make up 15 percent of all workers in the construction industry.

The new contract with JD Steel gives workers the tools to address workplace safety issues, including a union—management committee and a grievance procedure.

Engaging local elected leaders

In seeking support for their efforts to form a union, workers and union activists reached out to local lawmakers, meeting with mayors, city council members and staff in Arizona in the year and six months before the union reached agreement with the company. The engagement of elected officials who recognize that supporting working families benefits the communities they represent helps create an environment in which employers feel less emboldened to wage aggressive anti-worker campaigns.

Elected officials make decisions about how to spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars every day on public projects as water treatment plants. Typically, they choose the general contractors for such projects, and the primary contractor in turn selects subcontractors such as JD Steel. Workers met not only with general contractors but also other decision makers in charge of large projects, including the owners of the Arizona Cardinals football and Phoenix Coyotes hockey teams to discuss their issues.

Ensuring workers remain front and center

Leaders of the Arizona AFL-CIO and the Maricopa Area Labor Federation tapped into their relationships with affiliate unions and elected officials, nurtured over years of political campaigns and legislative battles, to aid the Iron Workers’ organizing campaign. “We take the workers—not the organizers, not the leader—to the politicians” says Rebekah Friend, president of the Arizona AFL-CIO. “The politicians have to listen to the workers.'

Meeting with elected officials was a new—and sometimes daunting—experience. Worker Felipe Hernandez says before talking with the Glendale, Ariz., city manager, he had never been inside a city hall. When TV cameras showed up to film the workers testifying at a Glendale city council meeting, worker Roberto Duran says, “We were nervous.” But Duran says he stayed focused on his goal of justice on the job.

“We understood that's what we had to do” he says. “The key is we were telling the truth and insisted they do something.” Now that the workers have a contract with JD Steel, they are visiting elected officials again—this time to tell them about their newly won contract.

“We are very happy and proud” says worker Martin Ramirez. “People never thought we’d win” he says, but the Iron Workers’ victory “sets an example that we can.”

“I believe the agreement with J.D. Steel…sends a clear message to the construction community that this organization is willing to do whatever it takes to make being union a good business decision” says Iron Workers President Joseph Hunt.

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The Grinch in the White House

Tue, 28 Dec 2004 18:50:00 +0000

Christmas has come and gone and we may have all been amused by the story of the Grinch who stole Christmas and other holiday tales. But in looking over the press I found several stories in real life that make the Grinch look not so bad. After all he only stole one day out of the year while the Grinch who lives in the White House is planning to steal the very lives of millions of children around the world, all of their days, in order to continue to enrich the ultra-wealthy millionaires he calls his base.

Recently Oxfam reported that an estimated 47 million children are expected to die over the next decade due to poverty and lack of food (that's around 13,000 kids a day – all preventable by the way).

This is backed up by a recent Unicef report (New York Times 12/10/04) which says one billion children (ie., over half of all the children on the planet) are suffering 'extreme deprivation' due to war, HIV and poverty.

Since 1990 3.6 million people have been killed in war – almost half of them children. (How many of the 100,000 people murdered by the Pentagon in Iraq were children?) Girls suffer disproportionately more than boys. Most of the 120 million children denied primary school education are girls.

Of the developed countries, we in the United States can take pride that our God-fearing leaders still allow us to have the highest child poverty rate – 21.9 percent left behind. It's not that we can’t eliminate child poverty, both here and in the rest of the world. It's that we lack the will to do so.

Our President, who calls Jesus his favorite 'philosopher,' doesn’t seem to have his priorities in the right order. The Times had an article I saw on 12/22 headed 'U.S. cuts aid to world food programs' – a perfect response to the Oxfam and Unicef reports.

We should note that global military spending is $956 billion per year (the U.S. spends the most by the way) vs. the $65 billion or so that it would take to get rid of poverty. Nevertheless our fearless leader wants to cut back what we give to the world food program.

As a result of the U.S. cuts about 6 million people will loose food aid. There are more hungry people than ever before. The Times of 12/8/04, in an article by Elizabeth Becker ('Number of Hungry Rising, U.N. Says'), reports that at least 5 million children die of hunger every year – this is from the the food and agriculture agency and is higher than the Unicef estimate.

The Times says 'the number of chronically hungry people rose to nearly 852 million, an increase of 18 million since 2000.' This is happening while the world itself is collectively getting richer and producing enough food to feed everyone.

It is of course the capitalist economic relations, so praised by the pundits of globalization, that prevent the proper distribution of food to the hungry. Even when people are working they can’t afford food. One half of the workers of the world 'earn less than $2 a day.'

In the face of all this human misery and suffering, Oxfam also reported that the wealthy nations are now giving one half of what they gave in 1960 for aid to the poor countries. So its not just the U.S. but the capitalist world as such that is ignoring and perpetuating poverty and starvation.

Let's return to the 6 million people affected by U.S. cuts in food aid. How much money are we talking about? The U.S. is cutting $100 million. That is a paltry amount considering the government in the last seven years alone has given $147 billion to one defense contractor, Lockheed – let alone what it gives to Boeing and the others!

We can’t give less than 1 percent of what we toss out to a defense contractor every few years in order to provide food to six million people? I don’t think Jesus would like this philosophy.

The six million have to starve because we have to lower our deficit – which was created by giving enormous tax cuts to the rich by the Bush administration. Well, so much for the Grinch in the White House. I wonder if he remembers what his favorite philosopher had to say about the rich man getting into Heaven?

--Thomas Riggins can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.

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Iran Suspends Nuclear Program

Tue, 28 Dec 2004 18:42:00 +0000

Iranian Regime agrees to fully suspend its nuclear enrichment program

(From editorial in the 'Nameh Mardom', Central Organ of the Tudeh Party of Iran No. 700, 23rd November 2004)

The high-ranking officials of the Islamic regime during talks with Britain, Germany and France agreed to the terms offered and brought the Nuclear Enrichment Program to a full suspension. They did so from a weakened standpoint and without heeding the national interests of Iran. Hassan Rowhani, who is the head of the Iranian Security Council and is responsible for the Nuclear Program in Iran, announced on Sunday, November 14: '... Iran accepted the almost complete suspension of its Uranium enrichment and thus the threat of referring this subject to the U.N. Security Council was avoided.' Referring to the position of the Islamic Regime, he also added, 'The issue is not the cessation, the issue is suspension and a voluntary one at that ... we guarantee.' He further added, 'The Paris agreement is a preliminary agreement. In the final agreement the long-term interests of Iran and those interests deemed necessary by the Europeans will have to be fulfilled.... This agreement is based on the wide ranging future cooperation of Europe and Iran.'

Asefi, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in explaining the details of the Paris Agreement reminded, 'The Agreement has a qualitative difference with previous arrangements. The issue has now become how Iran could continue its programs in such a way as to avoid causing any alarm to others.... No wrong has been done to Iran and emphasis has been put on the voluntary nature of the suspension by Iran.'

One has to emphasize, however, that despite what Rowhani and Asefi say, and despite the positions taken by others in the regime, the media in Europe and the United States have published various reports on the surrender of the Islamic Republic regime, and the efforts of this government on obtaining guarantees from the three mentioned European countries on its future.

In reality, the diplomacy of the regime has been put in such a stalemate that it could act in no other way. Noisy propaganda and lies generated by the faction loyal to the Supreme Leader and the words of Tavakoli in the parliament (Majlis) in opposition to the Paris Agreement has been manufactured more for its internal consumption and for deceiving the people than out of concern for the national interests and rights of Iran.

The important point here is that one has to clearly differentiate the dishonest position taken by the government and its public-relations campaigns from the rightful and honest opposition of the progressive forces within the country. This is, of course, an inherent difference.

Now, after the announcement that the demands of the Europeans have been met by the regime, the Islamic Republic is hoping that in the political and economic areas, and in security issues the European assurance will materialize.

According to Assefi, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to pursue the assurances provided by the European Union, three committees have been formed: Nuclear Issues Committee, Political Security Issues Committee, and Economic Issues Committee.

The Islamic Republic was ready to accept the full suspension of Uranium enrichment only after meeting between Tony Blair and George Bush, during which the U.S. president announced that he supported the European negotiations with Iran. In addition, concurrent to the talks between the Iranian and the three European countries, British, French, and German companies reminded their respective governments that in the case of unsuccessful talks and if their business with Iran might damage their American investments, they will not be providing nuclear reactors to Iran.

In light of these events, the bankrupt diplomacy of the Iranian regime had no choice but to give in to the European demands!

One of the most important aspects of the agreement with Europe over the nuclear program and the suspension of the nuclear enrichment program is its clear effect on the internal political equations within Iran and the great shake-up it caused within the power structure and the partisan politics within the government.

From the very beginning of the talks it was clear that there were hidden signs and other more visible signs of tension between the political factions over nuclear issues, how to resolve them, and which faction would take charge of relations with Europe and the future relations with United States.

The reality is that the current resolution, which just happened at on the eve of a presidential election and other serious upheavals within the ruling class, has strengthened the positions of some people, groups and factions within the government and has eroded and weakened that of other factions, groups and people. And it continues to do so.

The position taken and what was said by Tavakoli, the oppressive regime's well known pawn inside the parliament, in opposition to the resolution and Rafsanjani's speech given during the Friday prayers, stating that the road to reaching an agreement with Europe is clear and is a very good indicator on the importance the aforementioned point.

Tavakoli and the groups associated to this view of the oppressive regime see public deception, clashing with the outside world, and other such adventures as being to their benefits and therefore, are attempting to keep the crisis unresolved. In doing so, they seek to bring about circumstances which will reinforce and stabilize their position.

This opposition to the Paris Resolution is mainly aimed at completely controlling the system and making it conform; thus it is very destructive, anti-national and extremely damaging. The agreement of elements such as Rafsanjani, Rowhani and groups related to them that are working for the survival of the regime is only the result of the profits they stand to gain.

By keeping the status quo they seek to reinforce their lucrative relationships with multi-national corporations in service of the international banks. The position taken by Mohammad Khatami who considered the Paris Agreement a great victory can also be considered with similar motives; meaning that it is rooted in the internal struggles and tensions of current dire situation.

In any event, any progressive and patriotic force would be relieved that the threat of war and its after effects have been avoided. But one has to be reminded that Iran's national interests and their fulfillment takes an undisputed precedence, especially in the current world affairs, and the location that Iran due to its geography has been placed in. And it cannot be overlooked for a moment.

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The Death of Reggie White: an off the field obituary

Tue, 28 Dec 2004 18:35:00 +0000

NFL legend Reggie White passed away in his sleep Sunday at the tragic age of 43. The 6' 5' 300-pound 'Minister of Defense' was a football immortal without peer. He played in 13 consecutive pro bowls and retired as the all time NFL leader in sacks. In 1997 White led the hapless Green Bay Packers to its first Super Bowl victory in more than 30 years. Packers QB Brett Favre said that White was 'the best football player I ever played with or against.' He was a dominator, a force of nature who changed the game with an unholy combination of speed, strength, and smarts.
White's premature death has also unleashed a torrent of testimonials about his off-field work. He set up countless charities and got his hands dirty in the lives of gang members, drug addicts, and convicts. As former NFL great Cris Carter said, 'Reggie made a far greater impact off the field than he did on it.'

But there is another side to White that deserves exploration before his canonization is complete. This side encapsulates his political ideas that spanned the gamut from the noble to the wretched. Just as White never backed down from his beliefs, we should stare them in the face and not blink away from either their bravery or bigotry. Reggie White's ideas were rooted in the best and worst of his deep evangelical Christian faith. There is an expression that 'the religion of the slave and the religion of the slave owner' are two entirely separate belief systems. One set of beliefs can forge a moral giant like Martin Luther King and the other can sustain the cruel small-mindedness of George W. Bush. Reggie White embodied and voiced both the religion of the slave and slave owner. He risked his life and career at the service of both resistance and then reaction

BURN

During the epidemic of Black church burnings that swept the South in 1995, Reggie White brought the issue national attention after one of his own Tennessee parishes was torched. 'I think it's time for the country to take this stuff seriously,' White told the Boston Globe. 'It's time to stop sweeping this stuff under the rug because progress in race relations has not been made.'

He then stood up to authorities shamefully trying to blame African-Americans for torching their own churches. White put the focus squarely on the white supremacist hate groups everyone outside Southern law enforcement could see were responsible. 'When is America going to stop tolerating these groups?' White asked The New York Times. 'It is time for us to come together and to fight it. One of the problems is that the people financing and providing the resources for this type of activity are popular people with money who are hiding under the rug. Some of them may be policemen, doctors, lawyers, prominent people who speak out of both sides of their mouths. That makes it difficult to stop but not impossible. Not when we come together as one force against hate.' There was a joy in hearing someone with the endless charisma of Reggie White speak the truth and make it plain in his signature raspy voice. When this mountain of a man sifted through the wreckage of his church shaking with anger, we seethed alongside him. Maybe in another era, White embarks on a path of anti-racism fighting the tide of bigotry. But in the absence of a mass movement, the ugly side of Reggie White's politics and beliefs found voice. He became a confident and proud voice for an anti-Gay agenda and in the process became a spokesperson for organizations fanning the flames of the very bigotry that gutted his church.

THE WHEEL TURNS

This journey for White began in 1998 when he was invited to address the Wisconsin state legislature. White was expected to speak for roughly five minutes about his charity work. Instead he delivered a rambling hour long rant where he said the US had 'turned away from God' by allowing 'homosexuality - one of the biggest sins - to run rampant.' He also said, 'People from all different ethnic backgrounds live in this lifestyle. But people from all different ethnic backgrounds also are liars and cheaters and malicious and back-stabbing.'

He pointedly rejected the idea of civil rights protections for gays and lesbians, which Wisconsin in 1982 was the first U.S. state to enact claiming to be 'offended' by any comparison of Gay rights to Civil Rights. Afterwards, White was utterly unapologetic saying that if anyone found his remarks offensive, 'that was their problem.'

In the brouhaha that followed, CBS sports withdrew their contract offer to become a pre-game show announcer after his retirement. White and his wife Sara, on the television show 20/20, blamed this on 'sodomites' within and outside the network.

White continued to speak out against Gays and Lesbians, and in doing so, allied himself with a rogue's gallery of bigots and hate mongers. His 'family spokesman' became a man named Bill Horn, president of the vociferously anti-gay organization 'Straight from the Heart Ministries'. Soon White was getting support, well-wishes and speaking engagements from the likes of the Rev. Donald Wildmon's American Family Association (AFA), Gary Bauer's Family Research Council, and the Christian Coalition. Unlike Bauer who resembles a Kermit the Frog Shrinky Dink, White could actually articulate the 'Pro-Family agenda' euating Gays with child molesters and drug addicts, while not making the audience nauseas. His African American identity was also a plus for near all-white groups trying to shake accusations that their anti-Gay 'pro-family' agenda was a kissing cousin to both racist and white supremacist ideas.

White spoke at one rally in Iowa protesting Gov. Tom Vilsack's executive order banning anti-Gay discrimination in state agencies. 'Straight from the Heart's' Horn said the order 'is a big political payoff to the governor's transvestite and cross-dresser supporters.'At the rally, Horn wept as he introduced White to the Crowd, saying 'Reggie doesn't hate homosexuals; he loves them so much he is going to be honest with them and tell them that what they are doing is destructive.'

White followed Horn by preaching, 'Every black person in America should be offended that a group of people should want the same civil rights because of their sexual orientation.' When several gay civil rights advocates attempted to question the speakers they were escorted out by force. 'They were promoting anger and violence tonight,' expelled activist Tina Perry told the Des Moines Register. 'They slammed anyone who did not agree with their agenda.'

White, as the Minnesota Family Council said, became someone who 'defends the family the same way he defended the goal line.' This is an insult. As a player, Reggie White never ran away from a battle and worked to inspire his teammates to greater heights, liberating the Green Bay organization from decades of futility. As a 'defender' of family values, he stood for bigoted ideas that keep humanity in chains. He supported the vilification of Gays and Lesbians instead of, as White himself said so eloquently as he sorted through the burnt carcass of his church, 'coming together as one force against hate.'

I will miss Reggie White. I will miss seeing if there may have been another chapter in his life down the road, where he would have devoted his body and soul to standing against the moneyed bigots of this country, instead of alongside them.

--Dave Zirin’s new book ''What’s My Name Fool?': Sports and Resistance in the United States' will be in stores in June 2005. You can receive his column Edge of Sports, every week by e-mailing edgeofsports-subscribe@zirin.com. Contact him at editor@pgpost.com.

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U.S.: Congress Tries to Undermine War Crimes Court

Tue, 28 Dec 2004 18:31:00 +0000

From Human Rights Watch

(New York, December 8, 2004) – The United States intensified its assault on international justice with Congress’ approval yesterday of the “Nethercutt Amendment,” Human Rights Watch said today. This provision, part of an overall spending bill, mandates withholding antiterrorism funds and other aid from countries that refuse to grant immunity for U.S. citizens before the International Criminal Court. At the same time that the Bush administration is seeking to place the United States above international law, serious allegations of prisoner abuse by U.S. troops from Iraq to Guantanamo Bay continue to be made. Under these conditions, U.S. efforts to obtain immunity for its citizens have become even harder for its allies to accept, Human Rights Watch said. The International Criminal Court (ICC)—which can prosecute only the most serious crimes and only if a country is unwilling or unable to do so—could have no role in jurisdiction over these crimes by U.S. forces because of various limitations on its authority. “While accounts of U.S. abuse of prisoners keep surfacing, the United States is ratcheting up pressure on states to place U.S. citizens beyond the reach of a court that can only be used as a last resort,” said Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice program of Human Rights Watch. “As revelations of abuses continue, U.S. insistence on immunity strikes a particularly raw nerve.” The amendment to the U.S. federal spending bill threatens to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to countries that have joined the International Criminal Court but do not sign bilateral immunity agreements. These agreements require countries to guarantee that both U.S. nationals and non-U.S. nationals working for the United States will not be handed over to the ICC. This violates states’ obligations under the ICC treaty to fully cooperate with the court.

The amendment threatens aid available under the Economic Support Fund—intended to help U.S. allies promote democracy, fight terrorism and corruption, and resolve conflict. Jordan, which has helped train Iraqi police and hosted conferences on the reconstruction of Iraq, is set to lose approximately $250 million in aid. Peru is expected to lose $8 million that would have funded democratic reforms and programs to reduce coca cultivation, drug-trafficking, and terrorism. Also at risk is the Bush administration’s own Middle East Partnership Initiative, intended to promote reform in the Arab world. “The United States is bullying smaller, weaker countries because of an ideological obsession with an illusory threat,” said Dicker. “It is putting its ill-conceived campaign ahead of other interests the U.S. government claims are its highest priorities.” For the past two years, the Bush administration has used another law, the American Service-members’ Protection Act, to threaten countries with a suspension of military aid if they do not sign the immunity agreements. Last year, the United States suspended military assistance to more than 20 countries over this issue, including aid designed to help several Eastern European countries deploy troops to Iraq. Despite persistent pressure, the United States has failed to crack the will of many ICC states. Rather, the United States has succeeded in isolating itself, Human Rights Watch said. “The United States has already alienated many countries in its campaign against the ICC,” said Dicker. “At a time when it is complaining about lack of support from its allies, the United States is stomping on other states even harder to get what it wants”. The Nethercutt amendment was first introduced into the U.S. Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill in July by U.S. Representative George Nethercutt, a Republican from Washington state. The amendment includes an exemption for countries covered under another economic assistance program known as the Millennium Challenge Account, as well as the option for the president to waive the Nethercutt Amendment’s restrictions for members of NATO and major non-NATO allies. However, these waivers are not guarantees and would still leave many countries open to pressure to violate their ICC obligations, Human Rights Watch said. The ICC can only prosecute when national courts are unwilling or unable to try genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. This year, the court began investigating crimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, where mass atrocities have been committed in recent years. Based in The Hague, the court has broad international support. Currently, 97 countries have ratified the Rome Statute establishing the court, and nearly 140 have signed this treaty. For more information on Human Rights Watch’s work on the International Criminal Court, see http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/icc/

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Pablo Neruda: A People's Poet

Tue, 28 Dec 2004 05:12:00 +0000

[Editor's note: An excerpt of this article appears in the January print edition of Political Affairs.]

PABLO NERUDA FOR US: An Intervention

It is a rare pleasure and honor to be asked to intervene in this unrepeatable occasion – the centennial anniversary of Pablo Neruda’s birth – in a site convulsed by revolutionary upheavals. A pleasure not only because Neruda, to quote Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is 'the greatest poet of the 20th century, in any language.' An honor because he was also a communist artist. But more than being the finest poet and a communist militant, he was one of the most useful for the 'conscientization' (to use Paulo Freire’s term) of at least two generations of Filipino intellectuals and activists. More significant, this event is happening in the Philippines, and particularly here in the University of the Philippines, Diliman, birthplace of the unprecedented First Quarter Storm that exploded on the eve of the infamous martial-law regime of the U.S.-Marcos collaboration.

Neruda is not a stranger to Filipinos precisely on account of that terrible convulsion and catalyst called the U.S.-Marcos dictatorship from 1972 to 1986. We, partisans in the brigade of cultural workers, found Neruda useful for making sense of reality – the reality of colonialism, poverty, oppression, fascist violence, injustice, and suffering that Neruda descanted from his early Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada (1924) to Extravagarios (1958) and the formidable Memorial de Isla Negra (1966-70). We found Neruda of service for making intelligible, even bearable, that fierce solitude of underground exile, imprisonment, and desperate ostracism for which the only remedy (given the models of perseverance in the three volumes of Residencia en la Tierra) is fraternity, collective struggle, intransigent sacrifice. It was both serendipitous and fortuitous.

Allow me to delineate the genealogy of this usefulness and serviceability. From 1927-35, Neruda served as unsalaried consul to Burma, Ceylon, Java, Singapore, and elsewhere. One can speculate on the probability of his visit to the Philippines, that land (according to the annals of the Tang dynasty in China) 'fittingly inhabited by snakes and savages.' In his memoirs, he expresses identification with the travails and resistance of diverse Asian peoples. This empathy found its seductive mimesis in that classic of anti-romantic surrealism, the first cycle of Residencia en la Tierra (1933), right in the midst of the global crisis of finance capitalism, the last stage of imperialism (in Lenin’s definition). In this, as in all his works, Neruda shares Walter Benjamin’s prophetic judgment that every work of art is both a document of civilization and of barbarism. Whether you like it or not, one cannot escape being tried and judged in the crucible of the disasters and crises of our time.

Both barbaric and civilized forces traverse the labyrinthine narratives of Neruda’s poetry as it evolved from the twenties to the middle of the century. Intractable paths are inscribed in the trajectory of his imagination. Was the obscure, bewildering style of the early Neruda an escape from the tragic predicament of Chilean society? Was he a fugitive from existential anguish and alienation celebrated by Nietzsche, Heidegger and their cult of nihilist relativism? Neruda staked out a peculiar itinerary, enigmatic but logical, in its historical situatedness. Between the romantic exuberance of his Crepusculario (1923) and the poignant lyricism of Veinte poemas, between the monumental epic sweep of Canto general (1950), the rigorous self-reflexion in Tercera Residencia (1935-47) and the disarming simplicity of Odas elementales (1954-59), we find Neruda descending – like Dante in La divina commedia, into the infernal wasteland. The critic Luis Monguio captures Neruda’s inscription into the historical 'thickness' of this cultural maelstrom between the 'wars' whose climax was the materialist vision of the heights of Macchu Picchu in Canto general (1961; on Neruda’s 'moral realism,' see the insightful essay by Greg Dawes 2003).

It was as if Neruda anticipated the searing vision of Antonio Gramsci, his Italian contemporary, who in a way provided the ethical and aesthetic rationale for radical anticapitalist surrealism. Gramsci observed that in the interregnum, that volatile no-man’s land, between a decadent crumbling world and another painfully struggling to be born, we encounter the most dreadful morbid symptoms of humans struggling to survive. We encounter wild excesses, strange transformations, perverse and monstrous happenings – all these spectacular or imperceptible occurrences faithfully chronicled in the 'magic realism' of Garcia Marquez, Alejo Carpentier (who coined the term 'lo real maravilloso'), the surrealist and expressionist experiments of Cesar Vallejo, Andre Breton, James Joyce, Franz Kafka and other avant-garde guerillas of the last century. This is explainable as a revolt against the life-denying repressiveness of capitalist society and as a symptom of frustration, hopelessness, despair.

The early Neruda may be self-indulgent, like the 'Europhile cadavers' he scorned in his later years. But in his engagement with the political crisis of his epoch, he succeeded in forging the 'conscience' of his race (to echo the hero of Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) through the critical and fantastic realism of his vocation as citizen-artist caught between two worlds. This is the Neruda we might consider exemplary.

We in the Philippines, and millions in the beleaguered 'third world' (now known as the peripheral South to the metropolitan North) found insight and catharsis in Neruda’s wrestling with the mystifying demons of capital and its comprador executioners. Of course, Neruda was not the only one we read, but he was one of the more exceptionally lucid and provocative. This episode of Neruda’s bohemian individualism soon ended – not yet with the martial law of General Augusto Pinochet (now on trial for his crimes), but with a benchmark event of modernity: the civil war in Spain in 1936-1938. This was the decisive break, the turning point, for Neruda, just as the Marcos dictatorship was for progressive Filipino intellectuals of my generation and the next. From this perspective, Neruda helped us make sense of that key moment in our national life, affording us a taste of agency when the gatekeepers of history nodded and allowed us to take a measure of control even in the role of victims and exiles. And this break in the quotidian routine of neocolonialism has closed, opened, narrowed, widened, in the momentous years following February 1986, 'the people power' insurrection which overthrew Marcos, Estrada, and now threatens the present incumbent in Malacanang Palace.

During the Cold War, in spite of the prestigious Nobel Prize, Neruda had been reviled for his communist militancy. This dates back to his commitment to revolution in the thirties when he sided with the Republican forces in Spain, a turn often ignored, marginalized, or glossed over, by scholars and reviewers. Neruda’s partisanship with the Soviet Union and the Republican cause, with the camp of Federico Garcia Lorca, Rafael Alberti, Miguel Hernandez and other fighters for socialism, against fascist nihilism (allied with Hitler and Mussolini and a death-worshipping Catholic Church that fully supported Generalissimo Franco), all contributed to the transformation of the neoromantic Neruda into a poet of universal import, the bard of secular grace and materialist redemption. It was not a transformation but a metamorphosis since old elements of baroque wit were sublated, by a dialectical sleight-of-hand, into the ironic and comic conceits of Incitacion al Nixonicidio y alabanza del revolucion chilena (1971). In this he resembled the Peruvian Cesar Vallejo whose Poemas Humanos and Espana, aparta de mi este caliz, written between 1936 and 1938, testify to the same praxis of compassionate sharing and communal struggle.

We can say with conviction that the poet of Espana en el corazon (1937) was the Neruda we read and translated then, the bard who spoke truth to power, the poet of devotion to the revolutionary ideals of the oppressed but insurgent community of peasants, workers, indigenous communities, and middle elements. It was a meeting of comrades engaged in a common struggle. Poetry became a mode of social action and communication, achieving Neruda’s desire to 'write with your life and my own.' Neruda himself attested to what his engagement in the Spanish Civil War contributed to his growth: it helped him understand more, be more natural, and above all 'live more near the people' (1971, 162). Our enjoyment of Neruda’s art, then, was strategic, for pedagogical and programmatic reasons. This education of the senses – a production of social existence, as Marx stressed in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (1964) – was mediated by the practices of everyday resistance, condensed in art, love, scientific inquiry and political mobilization. In this way, the sensory faculties become practical 'theoreticians,' debunkers of ideologies. We find the entire history of feelings crystallized in every phantasy or intuition that condenses the whole society’s dream of release, fulfillment and happiness amid hunger, torture, exploitation and death, the dream of freedom through the ordeal of physical and historical necessities (Caudwell 1937).

We find a confirmation of this thesis in Neruda’s project for an antipoetic strategy, 'Toward an Impure Poetry,' targetting the elite aestheticism of Wallace Stevens, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Octavio Paz, and others: 'Let that be the poetry we search for: worn with the hand’s obligations, as by acids, steeped in sweat and in smoke, smelling of lilies and urine, spattered diversely by the trades that we live by, inside the law or beyond it' (Neruda 1961, 39). But this is not naive empiricism or vulgar pragmatism. What Neruda accomplished in this 'impure' craft is the discovery of 'anticipatory illumination,' or, in Ernst Bloch’s words, the Marxist poet 'makes the world become aware of an accelerated flow of action, an elucidated waking dream of the essential' (1996, 88). In the artistic dream-work, absence and presence are articulated in a productive synthesis. Rene Jara calls Neruda’s quest for the presence of what is absent, that call for a more intense life, the key to the principle of composition in his major works: 'The world takes on form through a mechanism of contiguities and displacements that arises from the polyvalence of worlds and the constitution of an alternate symbolic process that springs from a preconscious figurative plane prior to the semantics of definition' (1992, 149).

When Neruda became a Communist senator in the Chilean parliament, he had to disavow sectarian ultra-leftism and fight for the democratic rights of all the people – not just workers or peasants. He knew the lessons of Lenin’s warning against 'left-wing infantilism.' In his Incitement to Nixonicide and Praise for the Chilean Revolution, Neruda rejected the 'mystical hermeticism' of his previous work by assuming the office of the people’s tribune: 'I reserve, as an experienced mechanic, my experimental office: I must be, from time to time, a poet of public use, that is to say, I must give the brakeman, steward, foreman, farmer, gasfitter, or the simple regimental fool the capability of cutting loose with a clean punch or shooting flames out of his ears' (1973, 5-6). Indeed Neruda’s desire is to be the bardic witness of the people, the organic intellectual of the laboring masses.

Let us invoke our own Amado V. Hernandez, one of the few Filipino writers of the pre-war generation, who not only translated Neruda but also imitated his materialist approach to ordinary things. Hernandez drew inspiration from Neruda’s love for quotidian reality: watermelon, artichoke, dictionary, onions, animals, and so on. It was a celebration of everyday life before global consumerism had reduced everything to goods for sale or fetishized simulacras. It was this homage to the sensuous texture of worldly life that appealed to the young rebellious spirits of the First Quarter Storm and the nationalist movement that preceded it. It was not so much the melancholy aestheticism of the Veinte poemas and the early Residencia that fascinated us; rather, it was the works that defied the 'insurmountable solitude' of Latin America and, from the heights of Macchu Picchu, sought to recover the indigenous, aboriginal creativity of the millions subjugated by the ruthless glories of the European, Anglo-Saxon 'civilizing mission.'

One wonders at the striking affinities between the lives of Neruda and the Filipino socialist rebel. Hernandez followed an analogous path in his transcendence of the genteel tradition via a passage through labor union activism and his partisanship for the Huk uprising. Hernandez’s underground experience during the Japanese occupation, and his persecution by the neocolonial state, paralleled Neruda’s exile, his return to Chile in 1943, and his subsequent political engagement as a member of the Communist Party of Chile. Like Neruda, Hernandez valued the creative process of work, everyday labor interacting with mundane objects and places, humanizing the environment and caring for the now endangered ecology of our planet. In February 1948, Neruda escaped from military violence, crossing the Andes mountains with the manuscript of his masterpiece, Canto general, rescued in his saddlebag. He had lived an underground life from 1947 to 1949, only to emerge into exile until 1952. Countless 'third world' writers’ lives – one recalls here the Kenyan Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, the Indonesian Pramoedya Ananta Toer, the Turkish Nazim Hikmet, and many others – find an allegorical mirror in Neruda’s vocation and its articulations. For our part, we found in Neruda of the polemical Incitation (A Call for the Destruction of Nixon) a logistical toolkit for the simple art of speaking the truth in defense of humanity, a calling that Robert Bly (1971), amid anticommunist hysteria, regards as Neruda’s lasting virtue. His relentless attack on U.S. imperialism was a vow of solidarity with our struggle against that Cold War behemoth which supplied weapons and diplomatic support to the state terror of the Marcos regime whose blood-debts are still unsettled up to now. Neruda took sides, a protagonist in the drama of the continuing class struggle of our time – he chose life and the creative vitality of the people, all the subjugated and dispossessed, as well as the indigenous survivors of imperial conquest.

In these dark days of terror in the Homeland Security State, blessed by the USA Patriot Act, despite the rumored end of the Cold War, we find neoconservative scholars and even postcolonial critics praising Neruda the surrealist, the sophisticated humanist, the lover in the 1994 film Il Postino. Every persona or mask assumed by Neruda, no matter how tactical or expedient, becomes aggrandized and fetishized. We can already discern this in Ben Belitt’s (1972) obsessional pursuit of the 'unknown Neruda,' protean and multiplicitous. Nowadays, almost every quality of the chameleonic poet becomes praiseworthy – except the communist militant enamored of a classless future. Indeed the Marxist-Leninist Neruda, winner of the Stalin Prize, is anathematized, demonized, stigmatized. He is a curse to be exorcized by distraction and trivialization. In his erudite volume on Neruda, Rene de Costa (1979) would summon the figure of Neruda the flamboyant trickster, the verbal magician, whose performance eludes discursive critique.

But these reactionary arbiters of taste cannot wholly suppress the truth distilled in the homage paid by the Nobel Prize committee that, in 1971, singled out Neruda’s art whose 'elemental force brings alive a continent’s destiny and dream.' The all-encompassing mythopoeic reach of Canto general cannot be deflected nor deconstructed into mystical aporias. Nor can the voice of the 1948 classic ode, 'I wish the woodcutter would wake up' (1982) – read by generations of American students – be silenced, a Whitmanesque hymn that resurrected the seemingly eclipsed presences of the multiethnic proletariat, of the African slave 'who brought you the music born in his country,' and the Native American warriors.

In his addressing the heterogeneous multiethnic 'peoples' of both north and south hemispheres of the American continent, Neruda seemed to have successfully translated into practice Kenneth Burke’s wise but ignored counsel to the 1935 American Writers’ Congress. In the spirit of the Popular Front, Burke proposed correctly that instead of the worker, the symbol of the 'people' be used for an effective 'propaganda by inclusion' that would engage the full allegiance of the vast majority of citizens, including factory workers. Mindful of sectarian dogmatism and the profoundly seductive forms of alienation pervading bourgeois life, Burke’s reason coincides with Neruda’s concern for inclusiveness, transitions, mediations, linkages: 'And since the symbol of ‘the people’ contains connotations both of oppression and of unity, it seems better than the exclusively proletarian one as a psychological bridge for linking the two conflicting aspects of a transitional, revolutionary era, which is Janus-faced, looking both forward and back' (1997, 280). Looking backward and forward, Neruda prophesied at the end of that utopian but realistic epic, Canto general:

Y nacera de nuevo esta palabra, tal vez en otro tiempo sin dolores, sin las impuras hebras que adhirieron negras vegetaciones en mi canto, y otra vez en la altura estara ardiendo mi corazon quemante y estrellado.

[And this word shall be born again, perhaps in another time without suffering, without the impure offshoots that dark vegetation adhered to my canto, and once again in the heights my impassioned heart will be burning and starry.] (Costa 1979, 177)

Cynical academics today dismiss communism as something that has allegedly lost 'gravitas' (Stavans 2004). Neruda’s communism, in my view, is what underlies his protean, versatile and metamorphic art that Belitt, Costa and others celebrate. It is identical to his fidelity to the vision of freedom and social liberation from natural and man-made historical necessity. It is not dictatorship nor totalitarian domination of the multitude condemned by liberal democrats worshipping the free market, private property of productive means, consumerism and 'free play' of the ego-centered individual. It is equivalent to Neruda’s vision of solidarity with the builders of Macchu Picchu, with the toiling masses of the three continents that produced the accumulated wealth of modern society. In effect, it is emblematic of revolutionary hope. We need to distinguish this signifier and its concept from the straw-figure or caricature fabricated by the apologists of U.S. imperial hubris.

We may appeal to the poet Roque Dalton’s testimony to situate Neruda’s fundamental vocation: 'The revolutionary is, among other things, the person most useful to his epoch because he lives to bring about ends that signify the highest interests of humanity. This holds true for the revolutionary poet – as revolutionary and as poet – in that, from the publication of his first word, he is addressing all people in defense of their own highest longings' (2002, 9). And so it is precisely Neruda’s fidelity to the socialist goal of emancipation of the larger part of humanity from the tyranny of profit and commodity fetishism (of whose insidious impact Marx first warned us), from exploitation by alienated and alienating structures of class and race, that makes Neruda’s work pernanently useful and valuable to Filipinos and 'third world' peoples (San Juan 1994). This, I think, is the kernel of the essential Neruda.

Caught in the second front of the U.S. war of terror against its victims, we find this combative Neruda a comrade in the anti-globalization battle-front. He provides weapons that enlighten and sustain, necessary and pleasurable instruments for the common good. On the whole, Neruda’s art represents a subtle and passionate dialectical grappling with the sensuous richness of nature and the built environment. The power of his poetic intuition derives from his political and civic responsibility, not only to Chileans but also to all humans sharing the same predicament of fighting for justice and popular liberation, with all its attendant dangers and opportunities. As he affirmed in his Nobel Prize speech, Hacia la ciudad esplendida (an image inspired by the French communard Arthur Rimbaud): All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence, in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song.... For I believe that my duties as a poet involve friendship not only with the rose and with symmetry, with exalted love and endless longing, but also with unrelenting human occupations which I have incorporated into my poetry. (1971, cited in San Juan 1994, 16). Seen from this angle, Neruda’s historicizing and futurist imagination does not contradict the Marxist stance of moral realism; in fact, it reinforces it. We can see this prophetic and critical realism extending its universal reach in the antiglobalization movement today, as well as in traditional revolutionary movements – from the Zapatistas of Mexico, the Palestinians in the occupied territory, to the Nepali and Peruvian Maoists, to the black and brown militants in the United States, and of course the combatants of the New People’s Army in our midst. In one of his late poems, 'El Pueblo,' Neruda revitalized his popular-democratic inclusiveness, that combination of presence and absence we have noted earlier:

Por eso nadie se moleste cuando parece que estoy solo y no estoy solo, no estoy con nadie y hablo para todos:

alguien me esta escuchando y no lo saben, pero aquellos que canto y que lo saben siguen naciendo y llenaran el mundo.

[So let no one worry when I seem to be alone and am not alone, I am not with nobody and I speak for all – Someone is listening to me and, although they do not know it, those I sing of, those who know go on being born and will fill up the world. (1970, 453)]

Our debt of gratitude to Neruda can be measured only by the victories of our national-democratic struggle. For his resourceful resistance to fascism in Europe and Latin America, for his resolute opposition to the U.S. invasion of Vietnam and Cambodia, for his sympathy with the Cuban revolution, for his support of President Salvador Allende and the brief socialist interlude interrupted by the Pinochet coup of September 11, 1973, twelve days after which Neruda died – all these are registered in the 6,000 pages of his Obras completas – we salute Pablo Neruda (born on July 12, 1904 as Neftali Ricardo Reyes y Basoalto and died on September 23, 1973) and express our solidarity with the invincible peoples of Chile and the Americas. Mabuhay si Pablo Neruda! Long live Pablo Neruda!

REFERENCES

Belitt, Ben. 1972. 'The Moving Finger and the Unknown Neruda.' In Pablo Neruda: New Poems, edited and translated by Ben Belitt. New York: Grove Press. Benjamin, Walter. 1969. Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books. Bloch, Ernst. 1996. 'Marxism and Poetry.' In Marxist Literary Theory: A Reader, edited by Terry Eagleton and Drew Milne. Oxford UK: Blackwell. Bly, Robert. 1971. 'Refusing to be Theocritus.' In Neruda and Vallejo: Selected Poems, edited by Robert Bly. Boston: Beacon Press. Burke, Kenneth. 1997. 'Revolutionary Symbolism in America.' In Communism in America: A History in Documents, edited by Albert Fried. New York: Columbia University Press. Caudwell, Christopher. 1937. Illusion and Reality. New York: International Publishers. Costa, Rene de. 1979. The Poetry of Pablo Neruda. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Dalton, Roque. 2002. 'Poetry and Militancy in Latin America.' In Art On the Line, edited by Jack Hirschman. Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press. Dawes, Greg. 2003. 'Realism, Surrealism, Socialist Realism and Neruda’s ‘Guided Spontaneity.' Cultural Logic. Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York: International Publishers. Jara, Rene. 1992. 'Chile.' In Handbook of Latin American Literature, edited by David William Foster. New York: Garland Publishing Inc. Marx, Karl. 1964. The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, edited by Dirk Struik. New York: International Publishers. Monguio, Luis. 1961. 'Introduction' to Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda, edited and translated by Ben Belitt. New York: Grove Press. Neruda, Pablo. 1961. 'Toward an Impure Poetry.' In Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda, edited by Ben Belitt. New York: Grove Press, Inc. ----. 1971. Towards the Splendid City / Hacia la ciudad esplendida. New York: Harcourt Brace and Co. ----. 1972. Selected Poems, edited by Nathaniel Tarn. New York: A Delta Book. ----. 1973. Incitement to Nixonicide and Praise for the Chilean Revolution, translated by Steve Kowitt. Austin, Texas: Fly by Night Printing Collective. ----. 1982. 'Pablo Neruda’s ‘Let the Rail Splitter Aware' and 'Notes on the Poem and the U.S. Peace Movement.' Ray O. Light Newsletter 11 (August): 1-20. Reprinted from Let the Rail Splitter Awake and Other Poems by Pablo Neruda, published by Masses & Mainstream Inc., New York, 1950. San Juan, E. 1994. From the Masses, to the Masses. Minneapolis, MN: Marxist Educational Press. Stavans, Ilan. 2004. 'Pablo Neruda: A Life Consumed by Poetry and Politics.' The Chronicle of Higher Education (July 2).

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Continuing Crisis In the Sudan

Tue, 28 Dec 2004 04:26:00 +0000

From World News

The Scotsman World put to shame as Sudan heads for disaster

Via the crackle of a satellite phone, the punctured hopes of the people of Darfur were dealt another blow.

On the line was Hassan Khamis, military coordinator for the National Movement for Reform and Development, one of the rebel groups holding out against the Sudanese government.

Just five days earlier, on Monday last week, the government had agreed a ceasefire. It said it was ordering its troops in three areas of Darfur to step down. But on Friday, the reality was very different. 'As we are speaking, they are shooting at our base... near the border with Chad,' Khamis claimed. 'They are attacking us and the Sudanese Liberation Army [SLA],' he added, referring to Darfur’s main rebel group.

Two of his group were wounded. They in turn managed to capture an army truck. But all hopes of a fragile peace breaking out in this blighted and forgotten part of Africa were once again blown away.

It is not the first time that a ceasefire has been broken before the ink is dry. The first was declared in April. Another was declared in November, and was broken by the SLA less than two weeks later.

Meanwhile, talks between the SLA and another rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), have foundered, following an upsurge of violence in the southern part of the state.

Last week, Save the Children announced it was pulling out of the country, declaring it too dangerous. Two local members of staff had been raped when a Save the Children convoy was attacked by militiamen on the road from Kas to Nyala. Simmering with tension, it is only a matter of time before the violence in Darfur explodes.

‘Compassion fatigue’ is being blamed for the fact that what the UN describes as the world’s gravest humanitarian crisis, with some 2.3 million people reliant on overseas aid to survive, has been largely ignored since the summer.

Already, disease and famine has accounted for some 70,000 deaths in Darfur since March, according to the World Health Organisation. Yet the situation looks bleaker than ever.

'We just cannot continue to expose our staff to the unacceptable risks they face as they go about their humanitarian duties,' said Mike Aaronson, head of Save the Children UK.

Medecin Sans Frontières, which also lost a member of staff in an area into which Sudanese government troops had advanced, have decided to stay, for now.

Aid workers fear speaking out, aware that by doing so the government may crack down on relief. But one said privately: 'The situation is now more unstable than it was in the summer. We have to use UN helicopters because the roads are so insecure... looting is now accepted as normal.'

As a result, aid is not reaching the unknown thousands of refugees huddled in camps in the more desolate parts of the region.

Save the Children estimates that there are two million people in Sudan in dire need of humanitarian aid. It fears the World Food Programme will only be able to reach half of them.

Hundreds of thousands are likely to make the desperate journey to Chad, but a poor rainy season there means they are unlikely to find any respite.

This Christmas, thousands have poured into the shops in Britain to buy the re-recording of Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas, inspired by the terrible famines of 1984 and 1985.

The conflict blighting Sudan today has its roots in those dark days. Mainly nomadic Arab tribes (known as the Janjaweed) came into conflict with local African farmers over what remained of the fertile land. Soon, religion and politics added to the mix.

The Arab tribes are seen as being supported by the Islamist government of Sudan, led by President Omar Hassan El-Bashir, who has been accused of arming the Janjaweed.

In turn the African tribes armed themselves and formed the SLA and the JEM, to fight for greater rights and autonomy.

The conflict has now spiralled out of control. There are four rebel groups operating in Darfur. The most recent addition, the Sudanese National Movement for the Eradication of Marginalisation (SNMEM), carried out its first military action against the Sharif oil pumping station, killing 15 last Sunday.

The biggest fear of diplomats is that Sudan will collapse completely. That concern was allayed a little with news on Friday that the Sudanese government and the main rebel group in southern Sudan, the People's Liberation Army, will sign a peace agreement in January to end more than 20 years of civil war. But the situation remains fragile.

Such a fate, they believe, could be a hundred times worse than the current tragedy in Darfur.

The further instability on the ground has been noted by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who said last Wednesday that 'the 15-nation Security Council had to take new decisions urgently to curb escalating violence in Darfur'.

Annan is expected to report on Darfur next month, to try to evaluate whether genocide has taken place. But any question of sanctions is certain to be opposed by Russia and China, Sudan’s chief trading partners.

On Thursday evening, US President George W Bush signed into law new legislation which calls upon him to freeze the assets of Sudanese officials and government-run businesses. But it remains to be seen if the US administration will still take such a hard line against Sudan, following the departure of Secretary of State Colin Powell.

For the refugees, the situation, heading into the New Year, has worsened.

As fighting intensifies in Darfur, and as the aid agencies retreat, the scene is set for a situation that should shame the world.

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TV Makeover Shows Are Prime-Time Madness

Tue, 28 Dec 2004 04:16:00 +0000

From Women's E-news

(WOMENSENEWS)--Remember when the typical New Year's resolution consisted of a pledge to lose weight and exercise more?

If you're a woman who gets her image inspiration from prime-time television, signing up with Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig on Jan. 2 doesn't cut it anymore. Cutting--as in plastic surgery--is what cuts it.

Major and minor networks and cable channels have pulled out the stops on the makeover act.

Programs such as TLC's 'Ten Years Younger' begin at the modest end of the transformation spectrum, focusing on the right foundation undergarments, flattering clothing styles and better diet and hygiene. But pain, risk and lost privacy mark programs such as ABC's 'Extreme Makeover' and Fox's 'The Swan,' which feature sad people convinced that a new outside will help them heal on the inside.

I'm incredulous that anyone still buys into this notion or wants to spend their evenings watching people who do. These programs promote plastic surgery, implants, liposuction and 'fat transfer' (in which your lipo-suctioned fat is injected elsewhere in your body for 'contouring' purposes, a gruesome thought) as panaceas for low self-esteem, bereavement and years of self-neglect. The overall message is that one's success and happiness will increase with body parts that aren't original. The message is expressed by subjecting pitiful people to pitiless scrutiny.

Weeping and Fairy Tales

The weepiness of the participants is revved up to make the fairy-tale endings seem more miraculous.

On 'The Swan,' the relentless camera kept zooming in on a tearful Patti, still mourning her late husband, and Dore, despairing at not being able to conceive after 10 years of fertility treatments.

On 'Extreme Makeover,' Bubba's sad eyes showed his heartbreak over the death of his fiance. They had reasons to be bereft and their grief was painful to watch. Although the programs say they offer therapy and counseling, their real focus is on getting you that new bod, the one that will make all your friends and family at last see you as being 'hot.' Being told that you're 'hot' or 'a rock star' are the coveted pronouncements made at the 'reveal,' when we finally see the result of all that making over.

Raising Morale by Undergoing the Knife

It's obvious from looking at these programs that more women than men feel an urgent need to go under the knife to raise their morale. Why?

'When I would ask my patients coming in for cosmetic surgery why they wanted to have it done, they would say,'my husband thought my boobs were too small,' or 'he thought my tush was too flabby,' says nurse practitioner Irid Naver, former director of women's health at Mercy Medical Center, Baltimore. 'It was usually about an opinion or criticism they received from someone else, not something they necessarily wanted for themselves.'

Indeed, in a where-is-she-now feature on 'Extreme Makeover,' trainer Michael Thurmond asked his makeover alumna, 'So how does your husband like this body?'

Naver says she's concerned that viewers--watching three months of surgical recovery compressed into 40 minutes--will underestimate the suffering involved in the procedures makeover participants undergo. And she's repelled by the humiliation participants are willing to endure to obtain the makeovers (such as a woman on 'Ten Years Younger' agreeing to stand in a cage on a Los Angeles street while passersby are asked to guess her age).

'Great Face for Radio'

On 'The Swan,' a woman named Amy, an aspiring singer, was described as having 'a face that held back her singing career.' Weeping, she herself confessed, 'I was told I had a great face for radio.' Piling on, her plastic surgeon said, 'She doesn't have a feminine face.' The childless Dore also would be re-sculpted because, according to her doctor, 'I want to feminize her.' The comments validate Naver's observation: These individuals are giving themselves over to someone else's vision of who they should be; not their own.

The results of these endeavors all look pretty much the same at the end of the day: Long, swingy hair (usually blonde), lots of cleavage, slinky gowns; very Vegas, very predictable. At the end of the makeover, regardless of each woman's wants, needs, hopes, dreams, they're all made into the same creature.

So why do people watch?

'Horrific Accident Scene'

The spate of reality TV shows has made voyeurism a constant in prime-time programming, and the makeover shows capitalize on that. Viewers dissatisfied with their lives may look at the makeover sad sacks and the grisly surgery they endure and decide their lives aren't so bad after all.

'I can't not watch,' said a viewer in a November posting on 'The Swan's' message board. 'It's like a really horrific accident scene.'

As with so much of what's depicted in media, there are bound to be copycats. These shows are leaping off the TV screen and coming to the mall.

Partners in Beauty, a network of Southern California beauty and health services, invited military wives to receive what they billed 'the first-ever Extreme Military Makeover.' The winner, Marine Corps spouse Lori Brown, 31, is to receive a variety of services valued at more than $45,000, including breast augmentation, abdominoplasty, liposuction and facial rejuvenation procedures. Brown will also receive laser vision correction and cosmetic dentistry. Her 'reveal' will take place in January at Saks Fifth Avenue in San Diego's Fashion Valley Mall.

In the press release announcing her selection, you can discern the front-loading of emotions that is the trademark of the makeover mania: 'Having given the ultimate sacrifice, supporting her husband, an enlisted Marine for 10 years, and caring for her children, including a son suffering from cerebral palsy and epilepsy, Brown is being given the gift to finally care for herself.' But what is really going on here is that, just as on television, Brown is being given a starring role in an infomercial for her makeover providers. (A note to the publicist who produced the news release: Had Brown made 'the ultimate sacrifice,' she wouldn't be around for a makeover.)

People generally feel better when they believe they look good.

Far be it from me to begrudge anyone that warm glow, but the merchandising of self-worth through surgery is a big prime-time lie.

You can't inject self-confidence with a syringe, or improve your love life with bigger breasts or bigger hair. You won't love yourself more, or be more loved, if you have your toes shortened or removed to get into today's narrow stilettos or even, for some women whom no detail escapes, have your labia reshaped to get the picture-perfect vagina.

When it's all over, the makeover queens have to go home to themselves and the families who knew them when. Whether or not they surrendered their internal pain at the TV studio along with the excess pounds and their former body shape is anybody's guess.

My guess? Probably not.

--Sheila Gibbons is editor of Media Report to Women, a quarterly news journal of news, research and commentary about women and media. She is also co-author of 'Taking Their Place: A Documentary History of Women and Journalism,' Strata Publishing, Inc., which received the 2004 'Texty' Textbook Excellence Award from the Text and Academic Authors Association, and of 'Exploring Mass Media for A Changing World,' Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

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Guantánamo's Torture Chambers

Sun, 26 Dec 2004 15:30:00 +0000

From Granma

AFTER Australian David Hicks’ horrific revelations concerning the torture he suffered in the Guantánamo concentration camp, including mysterious injections with substances of unknown origin, the lawyer for two of the French detainees: Nizar Sassi and Mourad Benchellali, released in July, recently announced in Paris that his clients suspect that they were also the victims of experiments in one of the most sinister interrogation centers at the US military base.

In the latest edition of the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, lawyer Jacques Debray reported that Sassi and Benchellali, who were also forced to take suspect medication, are now wondering if they were victims of experiments carried out by their torturers.

To date, his clients have only agreed to recount a few details of what happened to them in Guantánamo, says Debray; “the French Intelligence Agency DST has explained to them that that would be better while other French nationals are still detained there,” said the lawyer.

“But they have described similar scenes to those in Abu Ghraib,” he affirmed, specifying that the two former detainees, arrested in Pakistan and in US custody after the invasion of Afghanistan, didn’t even know that there was a war in Iraq until after their release.

“In Guantánamo, they were received by U.S. soldiers who urinated on them when they were taken off the plane. At no point did they know why they were there,” he related.

“They were interrogated at least 100 times, and before their interrogations, they would be taken past certain rooms from where they could hear screams. Nizar also told me that they were chained up in a room equipped with one-way mirrors where it was extremely cold.

They also recounted that there were chambers where they would have to listen to extremely violent music.

The two former Guantánamo detainees also spoke of “strange” medications that they were forced to take. “Once, after having received one of those medications, Nizar fainted and thinks that he was drugged without his knowledge for one or two days. They also received injections. They do not know what medication they were given but the two affirmed that one of the other detainees was covered in a rash after having received these medications.”

“They are wondering if they were experimented on, “ the Parisian lawyer affirmed.

“The medication bottles bore numbers and a doctor visited them to ask them if the medicines had had any effect. Other than those questionings, they were unable to see a doctor, except on one or two occasions, because in Guantánamo, everything functioned on a reward system; Nizar had to wait one year before seeing a dentist.

Nizar and Benchellali affirmed that there were an “impressive number of psychiatrists” in Guantánamo and units reserved “for those who went crazy.”

Medical experiments on prisoners are strictly prohibited by the UN convention against torture and other treaties concerning cruel, inhumane or degrading punishment.

David Hicks, one of the few detainees to have been formally charged and who was provided with lawyers given his status as an Australian citizen, recently disclosed in a sworn affidavit, made public in his country, that he was forcibly injected with drugs.

In an affidavit provided by his defense attorneys in Australia, Hicks details the torture he suffered at the hands of his U.S. interrogators, explaining how they banged his head on the asphalt, with his eyes blindfolded, during interrogations that lasted for hours.

Meanwhile, they also deprived him of food and made him run in shackles that tore the skin off his ankles.

Captured while fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan, 29-year-old Hicks was moved to Guantánamo in January 2002.

”I have been struck with hands, fists, and a rifle butt,” he affirmed in the statement, also taken up by the Australian press.

“I was beaten while under the influence of sedatives that were forcibly administered via injections,” he stated.

He said that appearances by members of the Internal Reaction Force (IRF), a military squad utilized to terrorize “uncooperative” detainees with its dogs - were so common that it was said that the attacked detainees had been “IRF’ed.”

He confirmed that on one occasion he did not see daylight for eight months.

A military court is to try Hicks in March, it was added.

The affidavit confirmed that numerous doctors collaborated on inflicting the torture.

The system created by the Pentagon and the CIA in Guantánamo cannot be considered anything other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture,” observed the Red Cross in its report sent to Washington, according to The New York Times.

The Red Cross confirmed that doctors and nurses advised the interrogators of prisoners’ physical vulnerabilities, something that the report describes as a flagrant violation of medical ethics.

According to the Times, the torture experts at Guantánamo are able to seek advice from a group called the Behavioral Science Consultation Team, also known as “Biscuit.”

As far back as last August, the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet disclosed that doctors and other health professionals were complicit actors in the torture that took place in Abu Ghraib as well as in Afghanistan and that they were collaborating on the design and practice of psychological and physically coercive interrogation.

The Guantánamo concentration camp, established on the illegally occupied territory of the same name, is under the command of US General Jay W. Hood.

The Red Cross International Committee presented the confidential report to the U.S. government in July following an inspection visit by a delegation to Guantánamo the previous month. Copies of the report were distributed in the White House, the Pentagon and in the State Department. Without any result.

The revelations contained in the affidavit by Australian national Hicks and the suspicions raised by lawyer Jacques Debray occurred shortly after the publication of a report by the Red Cross that denounced the doctors who acted as advisors to the torturers at the U.S. military base.

THE FBI CONFIRMS THE HORROR

In emails recently received by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the FBI has involuntarily confirmed the horror lurking behind the bars of the cells installed there by the administration at the illegal US military base in Guantánamo.

“I have seen a detainee seated on the floor of an interrogation room, wrapped in an Israeli flag, with loud music and flashes from an stroboscope,” an agent told his superiors in a email dated last July 30.

The FBI erased the names of its agents and the dates of the described incidents in the emails obtained by the ACLU. FBI agents have participated in 747 detainee interrogations in Guantánamo, according to its own reports.

“On some occasions, I entered interrogation rooms and found a detainee tied down in a fetal position on the floor, without a chair, food or water. In most cases they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and they were left like that for 18 to 24 hours or more,” said the other agent.

A FBI representative related that he had visited an “almost unconscious” prisoner in a room where the temperature was certainly well above 38 degrees and there was a quantity of hair on the floor.”

The detainee “had apparently torn out his hair during the night,” he explained. » Find more of the online edition.

Non-Reportage Of Mass Murder

Sun, 26 Dec 2004 15:25:00 +0000

From

The latest updated UNICEF report (December 2004) reveals massive under-5 infant mortality in Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan totalling over 0.4 million for the year 2003. However Anglo-American-dominated global media will simply not report this horrendous mortality in these US-occupied countries.

The US-led invasion of Iraq was not UN-sanctioned and was ostensibly based on three palpable falsehoods, namely that Iraq posed a threat to remote Anglo-Celtic countries such as the US, UK and Australia; that there were Al Qaeda-Iraq Government links; and that Iraq (like the US, the UK and others) possessed biological, chemical and nuclear weapons of mass destruction.

Millions of sensible, humane people around the world were utterly unconvinced about these propositions at the time of the invasion and their sensible, honest assessments were subsequently borne out. The invasion by the US-led Coalition of a remote, non-threatening and economically and militarily crippled country constituted an egregious war crime.

The massive, avoidable mass mortality in the US-conquered Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories, as now confirmed by the latest UNICEF report, represents excessive civilian mortality in conquered countries that in turn also constitutes an egregious war crime.

Indeed some months ago I and others separately lodged formal complaints to the International Criminal Court about US Coalition war crimes in Iraq on the basis of illegal invasion and excessive civilian mortality in a conquered country.

Six months ago my conservative assessment that the post-invasion avoidable mortality in Iraq was of the order of 100,000 per year was based on straightforward analysis of publicly-available UN and UNICEF demographic data and is in agreement with the latest updated UNICEF figures.

However what is profoundly disturbing is the extraordinary refusal of Anglo-American-dominated, mainstream global media (with a notable few exceptions) to report this publicly-available, expert evidence of massive post-invasion avoidable mortality (or “excess mortality”).

In late October 2004 the prestigious UK medical journal The Lancet published an expert study with data indicating a post-invasion excess mortality of up to about 300,000 (i.e. 180,000 per year). However there was only limited subsequent mainstream media reportage of a lower estimate of post-invasion excess mortality of 100,000 (arrived at by deleting mortality data from the Fallujah area as being unrepresentative).

The same US and UK governments which had falsely claimed imminent long-distance Iraqi threats, the existence of Al Qaeda-Iraq links and Iraqi weapons of mass destruction now disputed the veracity of peer-reviewed, scientific research on Iraq mortality in a top medical journal. The US-installed Iraq puppet government was extraordinarily eager to minimize the extent of Iraqi casualties - just as it has been obscenely eager to help the US wreck Fallujah (an Iraqi city of 300,000) “in order to save it”.

The UK Government Foreign Minister Straw put up what is termed a “straw man” argument (an actually irrelevant proposition) based on only considering post-invasion avoidable mortality to be “violent civilian deaths”. Since the US military do not bother counting the civilian casualties of their barbarity, the magnitude of “violent civilian deaths” remains difficult to ascertain in war-wracked Iraq.

Of course the reality is that whether a child dies violently (the “straw man”) or dies of disease as a result of destruction of the economy and infrastructure, the end result is the same and the culpability the same.

My calculations published in Australasian Science in June 2004 indicated that since the beginning of US-UK attacks in 1991 the excess mortality in Iraq had been 1.5 million and the under-5 infant mortality 1.2 million. My conservative estimate that excess mortality and under-5 infant mortality were of the order of 100,000 per year since the final invasion in March 2003 is consonant with the latest UNICEF report (December 2004) and the data in The Lancet paper (late October 2004).

The continuing dishonesty and lack of urgent humane concern of the US, UK, Australian and puppet Iraq Governments are what one would expect of inhumane, war criminal regimes. However the refusal of the Anglo-American-dominated global mass media to report publicly-available, horrendous infant mortality data from the UN and UNICEF constitutes egregious holocaust denial (noting that such denial of the Jewish Holocaust is deservedly a crime in France, Germany and some other countries).

At what level of magnitude would mass mortality become “news” if only for 24 hours – before being supplanted by Hollywood, Business or Sporting scandals?

Thus one can imagine the following extreme scenario - there are 6 billion people in the world and the last American survivors of some catastrophe might like to hear of the demise of the rest from a prestigious US news medium.

I am a dedicated biological scientist who has laboriously spent a year calculating avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality for every country in the world since 1950 using publicly available UN and UNICEF data.

Thus the total post-1950 avoidable mortality (excess mortality) has been 1.3 billion for the World, 1.2 billion for the non-European World, 0.5 billion for the Muslim World, 5.2 million for Iraq and 16.2 million for Afghanistan.

News fit to print for Americans, Britons or Australians? No way!

Since it is Christmas time, with special reverence for infants and mothers, perhaps the total post-1950 under-5 infant mortality would be “newsworthy” – 0.9 billion for the World, 0.8 billion for the non-European World, 0.3 billion for the Muslim World, 3.3 million for Iraq and 11.2 million for Afghanistan. But again global mainstream media are unmoved.

Unfortunately, on average 90% of the under-5 infant mortality in the non-European World since 1950 has been avoidable and substantially linked to violent and malignant First World impositions - most notably at present from the “democratic imperialism” of the US and the UK in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thus according to the latest UNICEF report (2004), in 2003 the under-5 infant mortality was 110,000 in US-occupied Iraq (population about 24 million), 292,000 in US-occupied Afghanistan (population 22 million) and 1,000 in the invading and occupying Coalition country Australia (population 20 million) – see http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpolya/

The Ruler is responsible for the Ruled. This continuing, horrendous avoidable infant mortality is mass murder of innocents by three of the world’s most long-lived democracies, namely the US, the UK and Australia. This is not merely “democratic imperialism” as touted by its exponents but actually an insidious “democratic Nazism”.

The awful truth will never go away – even though Anglo-American-dominated global media continue to lie by omission over this massive avoidable human mortality. Arundhati Roy has succinctly summarized the apparent moral blindness of the rich perpetrators in “The Chequebook and the Cruise Missile” (Harper Perennial, London, 2004): “the ultimate privilege of the elite is not just their deluxe lifestyles, but deluxe lifestyles with a clear conscience”.

Peace is the only way – continuing war and mass murder by the rampant US Coalition must eventually be contained by resolute exposure, sanctions, boycotts and bans applied by an indignant World against all the guilty countries.

» Find more of the online edition.

A War We Didn't Have to Fight

Fri, 24 Dec 2004 07:40:00 +0000

'Many in the military believe the war is a disaster. Never has there been such bad feelings between the military and civilian leadership in the Pentagon. It is unreasonable to expect our military to continue absorbing losses for a war we didn’t have to fight. Before the war we thumbed our nose at most of the rest of the world. We can hardly expect them to come to our rescue – putting their lives on the line for miscalculations of the Bush Administration.'

Al-Qaeda continues to attack around the world and is a major threat to the United States. This disturbing situation is a direct result of the President’s failure to lead a worldwide effort to remove the threat posed by al-Qaeda. Instead, he diverted our military power and intelligence to a totally unnecessary war in Iraq, a country that had no real connection to 9-11 or to al-Qaeda and was not a threat to the United States

The President promised Congress and the American people that he would not engage in war, except as a last resort. He did not fulfill this promise. Instead, the President went to war based on exaggerated intelligence known to be of uncertain reliability. He did not allow international weapon experts to finish their inspections or check out our intelligence; he didn’t even allow U.S. personnel to participate in the inspection process. The President and his advisors were already on their path to war and interpreted intelligence data to suit their own needs. They deceived themselves, the nation, or both.

Regardless of its adequacy, Bush’s post-war plan was doomed to failure because of: Resentment of Iraqi citizens and the Muslim world over an unprovoked invasion based on a false premise. Enormous loss of life and human suffering. Vast destruction of the country’s infrastructure and personal property. Increased support for al-Qaeda because of our actions. As for the war on terror, the Bush Administration’s response has been too limited in scope to solve a global problem and has spread our military too thin. Nothing is being done to address the root causes of terrorism, which would significantly reduce the continuing threat to the United States. Invading Iraq has further weakened the war on terror and the President has no workable exit strategy. Two options for getting the U.S. out of Iraq and a bold strategy to reduce the threat of global terrorism are discussed in this article.

The President’s fatal misjudgments went unchecked because neither Congress nor the media challenged the President’s decisions on fighting the war on terror or going to war with Iraq. They did not perform their vital role as checks and balances on the administration in power. Instead, Congress gave the President a blank check for war. A more appropriate type of authority is described in this article.

THE DETOUR FROM TERROR TO IRAQ

Initial success of the President's response to 9-11 soon evaporated with a detour to war in Iraq. During the build-up to war, President Bush and Vice-President Cheney consistently por-trayed intelligence data as solid fact, when any reasonable person in their positions should have known they were dealing with intelligence estimates of uncertain reli-ability. Cheney had served in Congress and in several administrations, including positions as White House Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defense. He knew first hand that he and the President were giving Congress and the American people information based on estimates, not actual facts.

The President did not do the responsible thing – have CIA and other data checked out by the 250 UN inspectors then on the ground in Iraq. The inspectors (repre-senting 60 coun-tries) were experts on each WMD category, had no ax to grind, and were in a position to obtain the actual facts – if they had been given sufficient time. Our own experts were invited to participate in the inspections but the administration declined. Inspections ended when they were preempted by Bush’s decision to go to war.

PRESSURE FROM THE TOP TO PROMOTE A WAR IN IRAQ

As Bob Woodward points out in his book, Plan of Attack, Bush had decided on a path to war at least a year before the invasion. At Bush’s direction, the CIA participated in the war planning and sent a team to Iraq nine months early to lay the ground work for the invasion. While arranging for covert entry into northern Iraq, the CIA Director personally told local Iraqi leaders that the United States was serious – the military and the CIA were coming.

Knowing the President had practically made up his mind, top officials exerted pressure by seeking and selectively using raw intelligence data. As Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker, such data was not expos-ed to the vigorous scru-tiny traditionally followed in the intelli-gence community. (Bypassing this scrutiny is known as 'stovepip-ing.') This raw data included some from defectors and exile groups who were promoting an American invasion of Iraq.

People inside the CIA were 'disheartened, dispirited, and angry.' One senior CIA official put it this way, 'Information not consistent with the admini-stration agenda was discarded and information that was (consistent) was not seriously scrutinized.' According to a recent suit filed against the CIA, a senior intelligence officer refused on several occasions to falsify or misstate his reports on weapons of mass destruction. The CIA eventually fired him. The CIA chief weapons inspector, David Kay, put it this way:

'Anything that showed Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction had a much higher gate to pass because if it were true, all U.S. policy towards Iraq would have fallen asunder.'

According to Senator Bill Nelson, the administration told the Senate in a closed (classified) session that Saddam could deliver biological and chemical weapons (notably anthrax) to our cities along the eastern seaboard, using aerial unmanned vehicles. The Senate had received a bad anthrax scare following 9-11 – imagine the impact of this statement.

Over 100 articles have challenged misleading administration statements leading up to the war. None of the reasons in the congres-sional authorization for war have proven to be true. None of the 20-odd claims in Secretary Powell's UN presentation have been borne out. In a documentary, former experts from the CIA, Pentagon and Foreign Service tell the public how they were misled into war (). An Army War College report sums up the situation this way: Saddam was deterred and did not present a threat. Taking him down was a distraction from the war on terror. The anti-terror campaign is unfocused and threatens to dissi-pate U.S. military resources. The U.S. Army is 'near the breaking point.'

ILL-CONCEIVED ATTEMPTS TO REJUSTIFY THE WAR

Once the major claims of WMDs made in the build-up to war were discredited, the Bush Administration put out various other reasons (after the fact) for going to war. The following paragraphs point out these reasons and their weaknesses.

1] Saddam eventually would have converted facilities from civilian to weapons production, reconsti-tuted his former programs and passed weapons on to al-Qaeda terrorists.

There are three problems with this administration scenario.

First, the President got America’s support on grounds that Iraq was concealing lethal weapons and was an imme-diate threat to the United States and the region. Clearly, that support would not have been given had the President’s case for war been based on assumptions of some remote threat in the future. It is extremely doubtful that such a war authorization would even have been submitted by the administration or accepted by Congress.

Second, possible conversion in the future of civilian facilities to weapon use is not sufficient reason to justify war. In fact, war could be started on this basis most anywhere around the world.

Third, Iraq never before terrorized the United States and was not a terrorist state. Dr. Kay’s huge inspection team in Iraq found no evidence of any transfer of illegal weapons to terrorists. CIA analysts were ordered, repeat-edly, to redo intelligence assessments to show an Iraqi connection with al-Qaeda but refused to alter their conclusion. The 9-11 Commission confirmed the CIA analysis. The administration is still in denial.

2] Iraq is now the central front for the war on terrorism.

Fighting Iraq had little to do with terrorism until we made it so, by invading a Muslim nation – based on false claims. There were rumors of an al-Qaeda training camp in the north, but that part of Iraq was not under Saddam's control.

3] If we don’t fight the terrorists in Iraq now, we will have to fight them one day in the streets of American cities.

This is pure conjecture. There were no terrorists in Iraq until we invaded their country. How do we know that the terrorists there now entertain any thoughts of coming to America? It is far more likely that an unprovoked invasion of a Muslim country has inspired resistance by Iraqi citizens who resent our presence and are allowing outside terrorists assist them.

4] Saddam treated his people brutally.

The administration constantly refers to major incidents of brutality that took place many years ago. These incidents were well known to earlier administrations, but Saddam was treated as a valuable ally until the Gulf War. Saddam’s atrocities are entirely unrelated to the war on terrorism. They should have been prose-cuted by a world court tribunal as crimes against humanity, not used (after the fact) as a pretext for war.

5] The war was justified 'because we removed a regime that did have these weapons and gave us no reason to believe they had eliminated them.'

'Did' is the operative word. In order to avoid a preemptive war, does a country have to prove a negative? Poor Iraqi bookkeeping (documenting weapon destruction) does not excuse the war. Given enough time, international weapons experts on the ground would have found out the truth.

6] The world is a safer/better place without Saddam.

Actually, he had been defanged and containing him had worked. His regime was slowly crum-bling under UN sanctions. Both Secretary of State Powell and National Security Advisor Rice said publicly in 2001 that Saddam posed no threat.

7] Congress and other countries around the world also believed Saddam had WMD’s. Other countries and Congress relied to a great extent on U.S. intelligence and numerous unqualified statements by the President and Vice-President. Smaller countries just do not have the big budget, extensive military intelligence apparatus that we do. But, whatever other countries believed, most of them were wise enough to hold out for the facts before agreeing to sign on for a preemptive war. Since Bush was dragging the American people into a preemptive war against the advice of the world community, it was his responsibility to get facts and be sure of his position.

8] We need to spread democracy throughout the Mideast.

This is the administration’s latest after the fact 'reason' for the war. However, the President did not tell us that planting seeds of democracy would risk thousands of American lives or cost hundreds of billions of dollars, with no assurance that this costly experiment would work. As a recent Muslim Nobel prize winner said, democracy is a historical process and cannot be imposed militarily from the outside. Accord-ing to a Boston Globe report, the CIA, State Department and an international consulting firm all warned the administra-tion against trying to build democracy 'on the ashes of Sad-dam’s regime.'

A Defense Science Board report, submitted this past fall to the Pentagon, contains widespread criticism of the administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq. Regarding democracy, the report said Muslims do not hate our freedoms (as Bush contends), but rather, they hate our policies. Forcing freedom in the Middle East is seen as patronizing, causing chaos and suffering while threatening the survival of Islam itself. Also, there is worldwide anger and discontent over the ways U.S. pursues its goals, and these ways have '… played straight into the hands of al-Qaeda.'

AN INTIMIDATED CONGRESS GAVE THE PRESIDENT A BLANK CHECK FOR WAR

When the President decided prematurely to go to war in Iraq, Congress relied on the same intelligence that he (presumably) used and gave him a blank check. Under our Constitution, Con-gress is supposed to be an equal branch and act as one of the checks and balances on the Executive. Congress did not ask the tough questions, examine evidence or enter into a robust debate. It did not seek independent informa-tion or actual data from international inspectors.

The type of authorization Congress should have given the President is illustrated below. It was sent by a WWII Vet (the author) to some members of Congress before they voted.

IRAQI MILITARY AUTHORIZATION

First prove whether useable wmds actually exist in iraq and pose a threat If so, disarm and remove saddam with interna-tional and regional support Cite 'kennedy' model for maximum diplomacy and minimum loss of life on both sides Make dismantling al-qaeda the first priority - (Al-Qaeda, not Saddam, attacked us brutally and continues to threaten us.) PS. Can you pass this test -- would you support Bush’s war if Iraq was not a 5th rate power or if members of your own family were going to be on the firing line?

Most in Congress fell into lockstep with the President without calling in outside experts to get both sides of the story. Members relied on administration witnesses and top level officials. In effect, Congress ceded its constitutional war-making power to the Presi-dent. Congress abandoned the all-important system of checks and balances that our founding fathers had so carefully built into our democracy.

A SUBSERVIENT MEDIA The media is our watchdog. It is the only way the public can find out more than the government chooses to tell us. As our major source of information, the media is the lifeblood of our democracy.

The media marched to the drumbeat of the administration and sent its own people to join military units to report from there. They also did not ask the tough questions or examine evidence. For example, if banned weapons of the magnitude claimed by the President actually existed, where was the proof of at least a few -- or even one?Or, more obvious, why didn’t the administration use international experts on the ground in Iraq to verify its intelligence?

The media's tendency was to rely on high-level sources sympa-thetic to the administration and on Iraqi defectors and exile groups, instead of doing their own work independently. The coverage of many newspapers was highly defer-ential to the White House. There were some notable excep-tions, such as the Knight Ridder newspa-pers, but they do not receive national attention.

The New York Times periodically reported that the threat from Iraq’s weapons programs was real and ominous. In May 2004 and again in July 2004, the Times published (to its credit) an apology to readers for (1) running numer-ous stories containing misinformation and (2) not challenging the Presi-dent's assumptions. The Times Ombudsman said: The Times reporting relied on exiles and anony-mous administration sources. The Times was used to further a cunning cam-paign to promote WMD stories. When these stories broke apart, Times’ readers never found out why or who the mistaken sources were. The Washington Post ran a major editorial in support of the war. Its editorial assumed facts not in evidence. As Bob Woodward pointed out in his book on the war, his own newspaper downplayed contrary evidence from its reporters by putting their articles on back pages. A courageous investigative report by Howard Kurtz confirms the mistakes of his newspaper. The Washington Post has not yet apologized to its readers for having misled them.

TWO POSSIBLE EXIT STRATEGIES The President insisted on an unnecessary war in Iraq and will not change his course. As a result, our military is suffering increasing loss of life and injuries – practically every day. Injuries now approach 10,000, many of which are permanent disabilities, including blindness and mental health problems. Civilian loss of life and injury in Iraq exceeds 100,000, and cooperation with U.S. occupiers is a death warrant. Rampant disease and a crippled health system are threatening to kill even more Iraqi civilians than have died in the war’s aftermath. If we are not careful our country will become immune to continued death and destruction like another superpower (Germany) did during WW II.

Many in the military believe the war is a disaster. Never has there been such bad feelings between the military and civilian leadership in the Pentagon. It is unreasonable to expect our military to continue absorbing losses for a war we didn’t have to fight. Before the war we thumbed our nose at most of the rest of the world. We can hardly expect them to come to our rescue – putting their lives on the line for miscalculations of the Bush Administration.

Our continued presence in Iraq is causing most, if not all, of the resistance and acts of terror. From the Iraqi’s perspective, we are the crazed foreigners who invaded their country, and who are stealing their oil and killing many thousands of civilians – including women and children. When our military occupation ends, so will the insurgency. Insurgents and outside terrorists will no longer have a mission.

The Iraqi people should decide their own destiny. It was always a fallacy that we could force our way of life on another country with a different background and culture. An American president would be widely acclaimed here and in Europe, Iraq and other Muslim countries if he would adopt one of the following two strategies (or a combination), either of which can be adapted to changing circumstances on the ground:

Strategy # 1 – Start with partial withdrawal A recent article urges a new direction with a five-step program to begin withdrawal of our troops. (Erik Leaver, 'A New Course in Iraq,' Foreign Policy in Focus, Dec. 10, 2004.) It concludes the following: 'The current U.S. approach in Iraq is too costly in human and financial terms to Americans at home, our troops abroad, and to the very people this war was supposed to liberate.' '… the U.S. needs to accept the fact that continued military occupation by the U.S. will only cause more casualties, foster division in the country, and keep reconstruction from advancing.' '… continued fighting and the fact that any polling location guarded by U.S. troops will be a military target, means free and fair elections can’t take place as scheduled in January.' 'More Iraqi security force recruits and Iraqi police officers have been killed than Americans. Iraqi security forces can’t succeed as long as the U.S. is leading a war on the ground.' The five steps set forth in the article are: Declare an immediate cease-fire and reduce the number of troops. Total withdrawal would depend on strengthened Iraqi security forces and assistances from Muslim countries. Declare no intention to maintain a permanent or long-term military presence or bases in Iraq. Accelerate reconstruction giving Iraqis more control over funding; increase Iraqi jobs and projects targeted to their needs. The prospects of free elections at the end of January are dim. U.S. should call for a delay of national elections while helping Iraqis hold elections for local government. Congress should shape U.S. policy by tying a forthcoming supplemental (as high as $100 billion) to the four points above. Strategy # 2 – Start with immediate withdrawal to the borders Withdraw our military but maintain about 60,000 along the borders (with a quick response capability) until a peaceful election can be held and a new government installed. Allow any country willing and able to participate in reconstruction. Accelerate U.S. reconstruction, but only if Iraqi (and perhaps other Muslim) security forces maintain safe conditions. Failure to do this would automati-cally terminate U.S. participation. These two options are simply practical ways to extricate ourselves from an impossible situation that the President has led us into. They will still give Iraqi people a decent chance to create their own version of democracy.

A BOLDER STRATEGY FOR THE WAR ON TERROR An Asian-Pacific conference on security concluded that the world is losing the war on terror because the United States has expanded the sea of hatred and deep-seated rage in the Muslim world. The conference also deduced that the use of force by itself cannot eliminate terrorist threats. In a New York Times article, top terrorism expert Richard Clarke contends the United States is headed in the wrong direction. He claims that trying to impose democracy on an Arab nation at the end of an American bayonet is 'dead on arrival.' To eliminate terrorism, he says, we must have the support of the moderate Muslim community.

The President’s idea that we can deal with each and every country that supports or harbors terrorists is foolish bravado and impossible to achieve. Eliminating worldwide terrorism is a shared responsibility that requires leadership and cooperation from all heads of state. A global problem needs a global solution. This demands a more comprehensive and aggressive worldwide strategy. The essential elements (costing a fraction of war) are to: Mandate, through the United Nations, each nation’s responsibility to remove terrorist activities in their own country and help others do the same. Outlaw bomb-making nuclear material, inspect all countries that might give such material to terrorists, and enforce severe penalties for violations. Withdraw U.S. forces from Muslim countries and participate in peacekeeping through the UN and NATO. Sponsor a UN commission to identify the root causes of terrorism and determine remedies. Put as much U.S. power and prestige behind building a Palestinian state as was done in building Israel. Make energy independence one of America’s highest priorities. Terrorists may adopt the strategy of disrupting our major sources of oil (such as Saudi Arabia), as is being done today in Iraq. The UN must declare war on terror worldwide with the full support of every member country, backed by their military power and intelligence activities. Each country needs a mandate to dismantle terrorism and to assist other UN countries as needed. Any country not relentlessly pursuing terrorists or continuing to support them should receive sanctions, be suspended from the UN, and be subject to military action. Periodically, the UN should hold head of state progress meetings.

In parallel with UN action, the United States should sponsor a UN commission to identify fundamental changes that would reverse the root causes of organized violent behavior in the world. People everywhere need hope that one day we will return to more peaceful ways, without a fortress mentality.

THE BOTTOM LINE As 2002 mid-term elections approached, Bush intimidated Con-gress into passing an open-ended authority, allowing him to use force in Iraq. He manipulated our nation into an unpro-voked and costly conflict.

A common problem in the periods preceding and following 9/11 was allowing analysis and use of intelligence data to be influenced by the administration’s own priorities and preconceived notions. (See also ).

Having misused our military might against a small Muslim country, without sea power and unable to defend its own airspace, we are no longer respected by the world community. According to the Defense Science Board report, 'The war has increased mistrust of America … weakened support for the war on terrorism and undermined U.S. credibility worldwide.'

By staging a unilateral, preemptive war based on bad infor-ma-tion, the administration has opened Pandora’s Box. We have set a horrible precedent, and America’s good name is under attack. It will take at least a decade to repair America’s credibility and rebuild trust in our Govern-ment.

Bush is still ducking responsibility for the crisis his administra-tion created. He, alone, is responsible for his words, deci-sions and the people he appointed. The buck stops at his desk.

We should wonder whether recent terrorist attacks around the world would have happened if the United States had conducted an all out war on al-Qaeda, instead of divert-ing our military power to Iraq.

As an Islamic guerrilla fighter during the 1980’s war in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden takes credit for having bled the Soviet Union into bankruptcy. Currently, he is taunting the U.S. over the size of our budget deficits and hopes to help send us into bankruptcy too.

The public must become better informed and wake up to the failures of Congress and the media in checking the Executive’s abuses of power. We need to send better representatives to Congress – ones who are willing and able to carry out their obligations under the Constitution. Public hearings should be held to inquire into the media conduct of its role in our democracy. Looming issues include: real independence from those reported on, excessive concentration of ownership and conflict of interest between ownership and the people’s right to know.

Also, an independent investigation of the war is in order, questioning how the administration used intelligence, legality of the war and its necessity.

--From Media Monitors Network

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5,000 Cuban Students Protest Anti-Cuba Policies

Fri, 24 Dec 2004 02:42:00 +0000

Students Respond To US Provocations

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/index.html

ABOUT 5,000 students, mostly from university, and youth participating in the Revolution's programs condemned US policy against the island, namely the latest provocations from the US Interests Section, which represents Washington's interests in Havana.

The event was held at the Josi Martn Anti- Imperialist Tribune, across from the US Interests Section in Havana (USIS). Several speakers rejected 'the most recent act of interference by the George W. Bush administration.'

Among other provocations, they were referring to the illuminated circle containing the number 75, put up on December 6 together with other Christmas decorations in the gardens of the diplomatic headquarters. The sign refers to the 75 individuals detained by the national authorities last year. Cuba proved that this group was engaging in activities jeopardizing state security with the financial and material support of the US government and thus charged the individuals involved in these activities as mercenaries.

After James Cason, the USIS head, ignored two diplomatic notes protesting the provocation, the Cuban government set up a billboard denouncing the US torture of prisoners of war, facing the 75 sign.

The December 20 event celebrating the 82nd anniversary of the Federation of University Students (FEU) was also attended by several members of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Cuba.

Among them, Vice President Carlos Lage, Ricardo Alarcon, president of the National Assembly of People's Power; Abel Prieto, minister of culture; and the minister of education and higher education, Luis Ignacio Gomez and Fernando Vecino.

Obviously, Mr. Cason does not know Cuban history and the fulfilled desire of Josi Martn that the first law of our Republic was the culture of people's full dignity, stated Patricia Flechilla, a junior high school student.

Freddy Fernandez, leader of the Federation of Students in Intermediate Education, recalled US crimes in countries such as Iraq, and accused Cason of being a false diplomat because of the subversive and destabilizing activities he carries out in Cuba.

Lisandra Montero, a student teacher, pointed out that behind the US provocations, threats, and aggressions there is a deep fear of the example the Cuban Revolution represents for the rest of the world.

'Every machination of the Northern power makes us prouder and stronger,' Carlos Lage Codorni?, FEU president at the University of Havana, underlined.

FEU President Joan Cabo pointed out that if the United States attacks the island, it will find legions of youth ready to become heroes or martyrs in defense of the achievements of generations of Cubans who made today's nation possible.

'Washington does not have the moral or legal authority to condemn Cuba,' stated Hassan Pirez, second secretary of the National Committee of the Young Communist League. 'With our achievements in health, education, culture, and the social sector in general, we are the ones who have much to show to those who are today slandering and threatening us,' he observed.

Some of the most popular musical groups and dance companies from the island performed at the 82nd anniversary of the FEU.

The FEU was founded on December 20, 1922 at the proposal of the anti- imperialist leader Julio Antonio Mella, who became a co-founder of the Cuban Communist Party three years later.

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The Bush Economic Plan: Born Again Economics

Fri, 24 Dec 2004 02:27:00 +0000

The burgeoning Federal budget deficit should have been the focus of President Bush's economic conference last week. But inexplicably, it was not. Perhaps the President really does take the Bible as literally as his Christian Right base. After all, his cavalier approach to the deficit bears an eerie resemblance to an Evangelical giving away his possessions in anticipation of the Apocalypse. Maybe the party of 'Whip Inflation Now' and fiscal discipline has been hijacked by the Christian Right. It is hard to imagine the Grand Old Party ignoring a deficit this dangerous for something that looks this much like 'Born Again Economics.'

The first pillar of Born Again Economics: the Apocalypse is coming, so there is no point in saving for the future. Mission accomplished! When George W. Bush entered the White House in 2001, the Congressional Budget Office projected a $5 trillion reduction in federal debt over ten years. When Bush is sworn into his second term next month, the CBO will instead project a $2.3 trillion increase in the debt. Unless of course, the Bush tax cuts are made permanent. Then the figure will double.

This leads to the second pillar of Born Again Economics: the 'left behind' theory. In the widely successful and astronomically profitable 'Left Behind' series of Christian Right novels, all non-Christian believers are left behind to suffer or die on Earth after true believers ascend to Heaven. During the 2004 election, the GOP mobilized millions of Evangelicals who take these Biblical apocalyptic tales literally. And make no mistake; the GOP didn't pull that off by selling traditional Republican values like fiscal responsibility or States' rights. They did it by talking about Good and Evil and tacitly endorsing the notion that the existence of the State of Israel, the war in Iraq and 9/11 are in fact a prelude to a biblical event.

Well, this week President Bush offered his own 'left behind' theory. The Bush version works like this: if you are poor or middle class, you will be left behind. This is because the vast majority of the projected ten-year, $1.9 trillion dollar redistribution of government revenues that President Bush advocates through permanent tax cuts will go to the very richest Americans. By definition, this will drain resources from desperately needed services used by the poor and middle class, like public education, Medicare and the 911 Emergency Response System.

President Bush will argue that the redistributed wealth will eventually stimulate enough economic activity to make up for these lost revenues. Unfortunately, it is having an immediate and exploding effect on the deficit, which places added pressure on the structure of the American economy and makes the possibility of this scenario a long shot at best.

The final, but most important pillar of Born Again Economics: fear. Charlatans, false prophets and the Bush political team know that fear motivates. Vice President Dick Cheney stooped low enough to say America stood a better chance of being attacked if people voted for Senator John Kerry. President George W. Bush even sold the War on Iraq by telling Congress and the country that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapon. That was scary. It wasn't true. But it was scary.

Now Bush has opened his Evangelical tool kit to sell wholesale changes in Social Security, doing everything but strapping on a poster board that reads, 'The end is near'. Unfortunately, few outside the Administration have concluded that the end is near enough to warrant wholesale changes or that privatization will help workers in the long run. Nearly everyone concludes, however, that privatization will make Wall Street money in the short run, and add even more to the bloated deficit.

And that is the key to Born Again Economics: it's the short-term payoff that seems to matter. That would explain the President's willingness to pass a massive debt burden onto future Americans. It's not exactly the American dream or sound economic policy. But for some reason, that doesn't seem to bother this President.

Blaine Townsend (blaine2024@yahoo.com) is a San Francisco-based investment advisor.

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David Stern's Hoop Schemes

Thu, 23 Dec 2004 20:50:00 +0000

As the U.S. military was blowing Fallujah, Iraq , to bits to make it safe for elections in January, some pro basketball players fought with some fans who heckled and harassed them in Michigan on November 19. The brawl was shown on TV nationwide. Later, prosecutors filed criminal charges against five Indiana Pacers players and seven fans involved in the melee at the Pacers game against the Detroit Pistons. Mass media generally showered attention on this example of sports violence. In contrast, there was scant information from the same media outlets on U.S. military violence in the streets of Fallujah. U.S. reporters embedded with the American military had few chances to show and tell readers and viewers what really happened in Fallujah. Thus Iraqis – kids, women and men – killed and wounded by the U.S. military were largely hidden from Americans’ view.

Yet in plain sight were the penalties handed down to the fighting players by National Basketball Association (NBA) Commissioner David Stern. With no hesitation, he suspended nine of them. “Stern earned universal plaudits from sponsors and marketing experts for his swift actions,” Sacramento Bee sportswriter Debbie Arrington wrote on Dec. 7. Apparently, Stern soothed the nerves of businesses invested in the NBA, meaning corporate America.

Perhaps Stern’s heroics took him off track for a minute from doing what he does best: Lobbying local government officials to build new arenas for NBA owners. As the lives of America ’s working majority become less stable under President Bush’s economic policies, Stern works hard to funnel tax dollars to NBA billionaires. They include the owners of the Sacramento Kings basketball team, Gavin and Joe Maloof. Earlier this year, the Maloofs and the well-heeled consultants who speak for them to elected officials had pleaded for local taxpayers to pay for a new Kings arena with luxury suites.

Stern backed the brothers Maloof over the objections of some working people who opposed such funding. In fact, Stern telephoned politicians to try and persuade them to see things the Maloofs’ way. Otherwise, other cities would quickly greet the Kings with open arms and tax dollars, Stern said, ready to give away public funds to this NBA franchise. Not that long ago, Sacramento politicians inked a deal to sell about $73 million in bonds to help keep the Kings financially solvent. Here was a case of ordinary people paying debt service to bondholders for the “privilege” of keeping pro sports in town.

When Wall Street plays, Main Street pays. Got game?

--Seth Sandronsky, a member of Sacramento Area Peace Action and a co-editor of Because People Matter, Sacramento’s progressive paper. He can be reached at:

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