People Before Profit blog

Book Review: No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 04:39:00 +0000

No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century, 1950-2000

Edited by William Minter, Gail Hovey, and Charles Cobb Jr.

Trenton: Africa World Press, 2008.

Solidarity Forever?

No Easy Victories is a remarkable and often insightful collection of essays and reflections, many of which have been penned by those who played leading roles in the dramatic story of how a conservative hegemon--the United States--was compelled to retreat somewhat in its support for colonialism and apartheid during the second half of the twentieth century. The numerous photographs alone make this book well worth the price and underscores how this book, inter alia, is a valuable document.

It is because of this book that I came to discover that a man I have known as a friend--Robert Van Lierop, the attorney and filmmaker who produced the wonderful documentary, A Luta Continua (1971)--had a grandfather who had participated in the so-called Boer War over one century ago in South Africa, while his father, who was a merchant seaman, visited there. The Van Lierops, who are of Surinamese descent, are worthy of a book all their own, yet for the time being his contribution to this worthy volume must suffice.

In her finely crafted essay in the book, Lisa Brock reminds us of the legacy bequeathed to us by the Council on African Affairs, which, beginning in the 1930s until its unfortunate and untimely demise in the 1950s hounded out of existence by the bloodhounds of the Red Scare, held high the banner of anticolonialism in Africa. Their leader, Paul Robeson, once shared a London flat with Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta, while their intellectual inspiration, W. E. B. Du Bois, was invited to settle in Ghana by his pupil, Kwame Nkrumah.

It is because of this book that I was made to recall the enormous contributions that figures like Harry Belafonte and Peter and Cora Weiss have made to the cause of progressive humanity for decades. Belafonte, who is still active at a time when lesser mortals have chosen comfortable retirement, helped to make Martin Luther King Jr. the icon he is today and, likewise, contributed heavily to the success of Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba. The Weisses helped to bring attention to nations like Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau--and not least their leaders Eduoardo Mondlane and Amilcar Cabral--at a time when, sadly, many of their compatriots could find neither on a map. Peter Weiss, in addition to being a major philanthropist for African causes, also has been a pioneering lawyer, creatively applying international human rights standards in notoriously parochial U.S. courts. Cora Weiss, in addition to her humanitarian efforts, has been a stalwart of the movement against nuclear weapons.

It is because of this book that I was reacquainted with old friends like Gay McDougall, who still bestrides the planet like a Colossus and who was standing alongside Nelson Mandela when he cast his first vote. This book also reminds us of the gargantuan contributions of Randall Robinson, who built TransAfrica into a major force in Washington, D.C., and continues to write best-selling books that force us to engage with issues that some would prefer to forget, such as reparations for the ravages of slavery and colonialism.

This book also reminded me of figures I had forgotten--sadly enough--such as the late Congressman Charles Diggs, who was a legislative lion in opposition to apartheid, and Goler Butcher, who before her tragic death, was one of the most skilled international lawyers in the United States. And, this book also made me recollect the pivotal role played by Julius Nyerere, who at immense cost to his nation and his own security, opened wide the doors of Tanzania not only to opponents of colonialism in Africa but also to opponents of white supremacy in the United States, a group that included a host of Black Panthers who continue to reside in southeast Africa. The priceless memories of the African American activist Sylvia Hill, recalling in this book the Pan-African Congress that took place in Dar es Salaam in 1974, will provide an important building block for the fortunate historian who chooses to write about this important ideological turning point in the history of Pan-Africanism.

This book compels us to recall connections that still need to be contemplated, for example, that between Namibians and the Lutheran Church, and the critical role played by the union of stevedores, headquartered in San Francisco, whose reluctance to move cargo headed for the land of apartheid was a turning point in U.S. labor's engagement with Africa. This book also has considerable information on the all-important 'divestment' movement that swept U.S. campuses from the 1960s through the 1990s. This decentralized movement involved students protesting the fact that colleges routinely included in their endowments investments in corporations that had holdings in apartheid South Africa. Forcing them to 'divest' was a mighty blow on behalf of liberation and was also a model of how to galvanize a national movement in a vast and conservative nation that stretches three thousand miles from the Atlantic to the Pacific--then two thousand miles more to encompass Hawaii and hundreds of miles more to ensnare Alaska.

Still, as U.S. imperialism continues to play an outsized role in Africa, magnetically pushing states away from public sector remedies to deep-seated problems for fear of angering Washington which has converted privatization and the mythical 'market' into a latter-day god, it remains important to provide a critical examination, even of those who so heroically have opposed Washington's policies. Thus, members of this list should be alert to the fact that the title notwithstanding, this book focuses heavily and disproportionately on the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. Zimbabwe receives short shrift, for example. This may be part of an inadvertent process of creating a historic narrative of this topic and this period with Mandela on one side of the Atlantic, coupled majestically with George Houser--a Euro-American founder and leader of the American Committee on Africa (ACOA)--on the other side. A problem with this story is that it does not frontally engage the sharp ideological and political combat that determined the final outcome.

During the time of the liberation struggle in Zimbabwe, for example, the party of Robert Mugabe, now the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), received substantial support not only from a critical mass of U.S.-based Black Nationalists, but also from many of the Euro-American left who were heartened by its closeness to China; concomitantly, many of these same forces were not particularly fond of Joshua Nkomo's the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), because of the perception that it was overly close to the former Soviet Union. I recall vividly a planning meeting in early 1980 to plan a fundraising concert for Zimbabwe just before the first democratic elections. There was sharp contestation with a considerable number of people demanding that all the proceeds go to ZANU (the eventual decision was a 50-50 split between this party and ZAPU). Inevitably, the perception that ZANU was close to China and represented 'true' Black Nationalism proved decisive in the minds of some. Similarly, before these elections, 'activists' of a different sort--Euro-American mercenaries--flocked to the then Rhodesia in the hundreds (perhaps the thousands) to combat African liberation. As private sector mercenary firms, such as 'Blackwater,' capture headlines because of their depredations in Iraq, it would have been informative if this volume had noted their historical predecessors.

As we now know, Mugabe and Co. emerged triumphant in these 1980 elections, as did China in its struggle with the Soviet Union, which has disappeared. Zimbabwe's present political stance has attracted numerous foes in the North Atlantic with Mugabe's presence almost wrecking a summit between the African Union and the European Union (EU) in Lisbon in December 2007. One of the reasons that the EU chose not to pull out of this gathering despite Mugabe's presence is because of the fear that this boycott would only serve to deepen Beijing's already ramified ties with the beleaguered continent of Africa. I think that one of the many reasons that South Africa has not heeded the cries of many calling for a crackdown on the Mugabe regime is because of a justifiable apprehension of crossing swords with the leading regional ally, Zimbabwe, of the planet's rising power: China. Clearly, China and one of its closest African allies, Mugabe's Zimbabwe, will be major factors, respectively, globally and in Southern Africa, for some time to come, and it would have been useful to have received in this book needed historical background and context on these pressing matters.

The same holds true for Angola. The authors do make reference to the mid-1970s crisis in the run-up to independence from Portugal when some in the United States opposed the ultimately triumphant faction, the MPLA, which continues to lead the government in Luanda. Again, some U.S.-based Black Nationalists and others influenced by Beijing opposed the MPLA (Movimento Popular de Libertacao de Angola) because of its perceived closeness to Moscow. This contretemps helped to split the then vibrant African Liberation Support Committee, which had mobilized thousands, particularly in New York City and Washington, D.C.

Yet, the most lengthy and comprehensive essay in this estimable collection chastises the 'Angolan government' since it 'made little or no effort to reach out to U.S. civil society or even to Africa activists' (p. 47). Likewise, it is asserted that 'the Angolan government never established a working relationship with its potential supporters in the United States' (p. 35). First of all, Luanda may have had justifiable suspicion of 'U.S. civil society,' since a considerable portion of this amorphous entity backed Angola's mortal domestic opponents on grounds that, in retrospect, seem either shady or specious. A little digging would have revealed that Holden Roberto, one of the key leaders of these vigorous anticommunist forces in Angola and responsible for the slayings of countless MPLA cadre, had enjoyed a long history with 'U.S. civil society,' including some who are otherwise treated heroically in these pages.

Moreover, I should mention that a casual browser in the collections of the New York Public Library will find a pamphlet I edited in solidarity with the MPLA during these tumultuous times--entitled 'The Facts on Angola'--which was intended to bolster this party in its struggle against U.S. imperialism, apartheid, Roberto (and Jonas Savimbi), and, of course, Maoist China. I had no problem gaining access to the MPLA representative at the United Nations at that juncture, Elisio de Figueiredo, who emerged as his nation's first ambassador to the United States.

Of course, I did this political work in conjunction with the awkwardly named National Anti-Imperialist Movement in Solidarity with African Liberation, which was similarly perceived as being overly close to the Communist Party in the United States. This organization, which maintained a special relationship to those viewed as allied to Moscow--which, as it turns out, were most of the leading forces in Southern Africa--goes unmentioned in these pages. Similarly, I recall a well-attended meeting in Harlem in the 1980s to hear an address by South African Communist Party leader, Moses Mabhida. Likewise, I recall hosting South African Communist leader Chris Hani during a visit to Los Angeles in the early 1990s. (In retrospect, it seems that the event in which I hosted Hani was spied on illicitly by a so-called 'rogue' San Francisco police officer working in tandem with right-wing forces; this was the subject of major litigation that I trust South African investigators will note if ever Hani's assassination is accorded a proper investigation.) There is no mention of the epochal 1981 solidarity conference at Manhattan's Riverside Church, perhaps because U.S. Communists were perceived as playing a leading role, though, in fact, there was a broad constellation of forces at work led by the exceedingly competent Trinidadian-American lawyer, Lennox Hinds, who went on to play a leading role in Mandela's post-1990 rhapsodically received visit to the United States.

Neither Mabhida nor Hani are mentioned in these pages (nor is Hinds), which is fair enough--the book states clearly that it is not meant to be comprehensive--but it fudges the issue by sniping at previous histories for not being comprehensive. The editors assert early on, 'when we began working on this project, we were motivated in large part by our dissatisfaction with existing accounts of the period' (p. x). However, for those seeking to understand contemporary reality--which is part of the purpose of reading history like this in the first place--one can close this book unprepared to comprehend how, for example, Communist-influenced forces played a pivotal role in December 2007 in dislodging a sitting president, Thabo Mbeki, as leader of the African National Congress. Or, for that matter, one is unprepared to comprehend how Mbeki and his challenger, Jacob Zuma, are both former Communists trained in the former Soviet Union with the latter's Russian reportedly being quite fluent. Charlene Mitchell, an African American Communist, is highlighted, but African solidarity was not her primary portfolio (though it would have been useful if, in the pages devoted to her, she had been asked about a journey she made to Congo-Brazzaville during the height of the Cold War when this nation was going through a Marxist phase of leadership; indeed, attention to so-called Francophone Africa is scant in these pages). The contemporary Russian scholar, Vladimir Shubin, has written at length about Moscow's considerable support for African liberation (for instance in his ANC: a view from Moscow (Bellville, South Africa: Mayibuye, 1999), and, again, as Moscow revives once more under the leadership of Vladmir Putin and seems destined to continue playing a major role in global affairs, it would have been helpful to readers to provide the relevant historical background for Soviet initiatives in Africa.

Yet, the activist who receives the fullest treatment in these pages, George Houser, acknowledges his anticommunism, and to the credit of this volume, it is pointed out that his organization--the ACOA--was propelled into existence not least as an outgrowth of the fierce governmental assault on the Council on African Affairs, led by the prodigious leftists, Paul Robeson and W. B. E. Du Bois. Unfortunately, the reader does not receive much assistance in comprehending how it was that socialist-oriented organizations in Africa came to receive considerable support in the citadel of anticommunism, the United States. Part of the answer rests in the fact that African Americans--who were not as captivated by conservatism--were the bulwark of the movement in solidarity with Africa.

Again, unfortunately, this volume underestimates the support that the anticolonial resistance in Kenya received during the most frigid period of the Cold War, the 1950s. We are told that with rare exception there 'was virtually no analysis or criticism of the war' in East Africa (p. 19). This is simply not true. The Kenyan labor leader, Tom Mboya, first visited the United States in 1956 at a time when the Suez crisis marked the beginning of the end of British colonial rule, as Moscow was threatening to rain rockets down on London. Subsequently, Mboya appeared on U.S. national television--perhaps the first African to do so--and was on the cover of the major newsweeklies, rubbed shoulders with both John F. Kennedy (from whom he was able to obtain considerable sums for an airlift of students to matriculate at U.S. universities, one of whom was his Luo comrade, Barack Obama Sr.) and Richard M. Nixon, and received maximum financial support from the U.S. labor movement. Mboya also spoke eloquently and at length about Africans' outrage at the maltreatment of African Americans--a factor that separates him conspicuously from the bulk of his Southern African counterparts who, too often, were notoriously silent on this bedrock issue. This synergistic relationship between Africans and African Americans redounded to the benefit of both, a fact that too should have received more attention in these pages.

It is evident that another factor which spurred the existence of the ACOA was the apocalyptic reaction to 'Mau Mau' in the North Atlantic community. There was a real fear that it might signify a final reckoning when the myriads of sins committed over the centuries by white supremacy and colonialism, including the slave trade and land expropriation, were finally meeting the retribution they so richly deserved. As things turned out, thousands of Africans were slain--and a few dozen Europeans (as they were termed accurately then)--but that reality should not be allowed to obscure the real hysteria that put colonialism and white supremacy decisively on the back foot.

One cannot separate the popularity of the Swahili language in black America--including the manufactured holiday that is Kwanzaa--from the resonance struck by Kenya beginning in the 1950s. Likewise, the confluence of the Suez crisis with 'Mau Mau' led to more attention to the chief victim of the joint British-French-Israeli aggression: Egypt. This, in turn, gave a boost to the Nation of Islam in the United States, an indigenous nationalist-oriented religious formation that was born decades earlier but only began to gain traction when the organized left (Robeson, Du Bois, and others) were in retreat. Similarly, the U.S.-born philosophy known as 'Afro-centrism' could easily be termed 'Egypt-centrism,' which is a direct manifestation of this growing fascination with Cairo. 'Mau Mau' was studied extensively by Medgar Evers, a leading African American martyr of the movement for whom a college in New York City is named; he named one of his children after Kenyatta, Kenya's leader, and along with his brother, contemplated the founding of a 'Mau Mau' in Mississippi, the heart of darkness where he was born. Malcolm X, who was catapulted to prominence as a result of his association with the Nation of Islam, had called for a 'Mau Mau' in Harlem.

How African militancy inspired the same militancy in Black America is largely an untold story in these pages. In part, it stems from the orientation, which emphasizes the ACOA, students, and religious elements, and does not give sufficient attention to, for example, Black Nationalists and Marxists of various stripes. Thus, when Patrice Lumumba was slain, a group of African Americans invaded the inner sanctum of the United Nations in protest. The gripping film, The Battle of Algiers (1965), is still a staple in Black America and inspired the Black Panther Party, which established an outpost in Algeria and continues to have members exiled in Tanzania.

It would have been worthwhile, as well, if this book had pointed out one of the major problems with the solidarity organizations based in Washington, D.C. (as opposed to New York City): their often problematic relationship to the political establishment. At times, activists joked that instead of these organizations lobbying on our behalf in Washington, D.C., they lobbied us on behalf of Washington, D.C.--that is, as if to say, 'Congress will not simply accept your demands, please accept half a loaf.' Most of the time, they would be ignored and would be sent back to Congress with renewed instructions, but at times, this 'reverse lobbying' prevailed.

Another weakness of this trans-Atlantic movement was that when movements came to power, instead of tending to and nurturing solidarity movements that boosted them, they instead abandoned them, discarding them as if they were soiled paper napkins, thereby weakening these newly founded governments' attempt to influence Washington. This was a strategic blunder of monumental proportion to the extent that it merits an intensive study grounded in multiple archives.

Nevertheless, the words with which I opened this review should be emphasized--this is a highly valuable volume--and any reservations expressed here are far outweighed by this fact. It belongs in every library in Africa--and, most of all, in South Africa. Still, in its very strength it exposes an entire realm of research that has yet to be completed.

Georgia Suffers in Bush’s 2009 Federal Budget Proposal

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 03:21:00 +0000

2-28-08, 9:22 am

Original source: Atlanta Progressive News

(APN) ATLANTA – The Bush Administration rolled out a $3.1 trillion budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2009 on February 4, 2008 that calls for increased spending on national defense and foreign aid, while calling for cuts in funding for key domestic priorities.

While Bush has received global acclaim for dramatically increasing global aid, including to Africa, a state-by-state analysis prepared by the U.S. House Budget Committee reveals Georgia is set to receive cuts across several important domestic areas in the US, including education, public safety, transportation, and housing and low-income family assistance.

Georgia could lose close to $150 million in funding for these priorities alone.

'Given the President’s legacy of not really funding social programs, I’m imaging there’s very little good news, if any, for Georgia,' Martin Matheny, Communications Director for the Democratic Party of Georgia (DPG), told Atlanta Progressive News.

'Georgia Republicans and Washington Republicans – they're all the same,' Jane Kidd, Chair of the DPG, said in a statement obtained by APN. 'Their priorities are just wrong.'

POOR HIT HARDEST

Georgia’s seniors, disabled, and other low-income citizens living in public housing could be hit the hardest.

'We are disappointed, but not surprised, by the budget for low income housing programs that President George W. Bush has sent to Congress today,' Sheila Crowley, President of the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), said in a February 4, 2008, statement. 'It is a typical Bush budget, one that offers some small steps forward, while taking many steps back.'

President Bush’s budget calls for a $16 million reduction in Georgia’s share of the Public Housing Capital Fund (PHCF), which is used for repairing and modernizing public housing.

It is in this context, that Atlanta Housing Authority is arguing it does not have enough money to improve public housing, only to tear it down when matched with private investment. AHA does not acknowledge, however, its request to the City of Atlanta for $243 million to rebuild market rate housing in those sites.

While it is true Bush’s budgets have cut PHCF dollars, Atlanta Housing Authority has been given regulatory and budget flexibility through a Move-to-Work demonstration program meaning they are not limited to PHCF funds to improve public housing.

Moreover, since AHA has required residents to work full-time in 2005, rent payments from families have increased revenue to the agency to make up for Bush’s budget shortfall.

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) reports a national backlog of $18 billion in unmet needs for public housing repairs. The President’s proposal seeks to cut this fund nationally by 17 percent, according to the NLIHC.

Sixty Georgia communities could lose $15 million for Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), which provide local funding for job creation, economic development, and affordable housing.

The President’s budget cuts CDBG by $731 million below the current level needed to maintain current services. The current CDBG funding level is currently $816 million below the 2001 level.

Georgia’s low-income families might have to turn off the heat and air conditioning next year because the 2009 budget calls for a $3.3 million reduction in the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).

A large number of families receiving assistance from LIHEAP have young children, seniors, or disabled citizens living in the household.

The number of families on LIHEAP has decreased every year since 2001 to only 5.8 million families or 16 percent of those eligible.

While home heating costs for the average family have risen 80 percent, according to the US Department of Energy (DOE), the Bush Administration has proposed cuts below the amount needed to maintain current services in six of the last eight years.

Bush’s budget also calls for a $1.5 million cut to the Child Care Development Block Grants in Georgia, which help provide assistance with children for low-income families.

'The [2009] HUD budget as proposed by President Bush is not based on the real needs of real people,' Crowley said. 'Rather it is based on a strategy to cut as much as possible from domestic discretionary program before he leaves office.'

The NLIHC offered some other numbers for national perspective: a 27 percent cut for senior, low-income housing; a 32 percent cut for disabled housing; a 20 percent cut for the lead hazard reduction funds; and flat funding for homeless assistance grants and housing for people with AIDS.

EDUCATION AND PUBLIC SAFETY

Education in Georgia would take a hit under Bush’s new budget. The White House proposal would cut $38.8 million from career and technical education.

Georgia would lose $3.4 million in Improving Teacher Quality Grants, leaving over 15,000 Georgia children in overcrowded classrooms and without qualified teachers.

Over 20,000 children would have difficulty getting access to academic assistance, career exploration, and skills development under a proposal to cut $8.9 million from Georgia’s 21st Century Learning Centers.

'I certainly don’t want to make it sound like we’re opposing foreign aid or national defense but there are way too many cuts for things that families in Georgia need,' Matheny told APN.

Public safety in Georgia could take a hit as the new budget proposes cutting $8.4 million from Assistance to Firefighters Grants and $5 million from Bryne Justice Assistance Grants.

The cut in firefighter grants, which helps get first responders the equipment and training they need, represents a total of 93 potential individual grants to Georgia fire departments.

The $5 million cut in justice assistance grants is enough money to put 137 extra law enforcement officers on the street.

'Putting more cops on the street has been proven to prevent violent crime,' Matheny told APN. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that for every one percent increase in the number of officers on the street, violent crime decreases by 0.4 percent.

OTHER GEORGIA CUTS

If US Congress approves and President Bush signs his 2009 budget proposal into law, there will be plenty of other cutbacks for Georgians to deal with.

The Social Services Block Grant would lose $15.5 million, which would affect child care, child welfare services, and abuse prevention and intervention.

Georgia would lose Federal-Aid Highways Program money to the tune of $21.7 million. This program helps states improve and repair, highways, bridges, and other transportation infrastructure.

The Dislocated Worker Program is set to lose $4.5 million, which could help provide job training and placement for 1,411 Georgians. In 2005, 83 percent of Americans that participated in this program found a job within 90 days.

'This is really some pretty horrible stuff,' Matheny told APN. 'We see these cuts every year out of the President. He seems to enjoy putting the burden on the working poor, the working class.'

From Atlanta Progressive News

--About the author: Jonathan Springston is a Senior Staff Writer for Atlanta Progressive News and may be reached at jonathan@atlantaprogressivenews.com.

Changing times

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 03:19:00 +0000

2-28-08, 9:20 am

Original source: The Guardian, Australia

In yet more signs of changing times towards the political left is the election of Demetris Christofias as President of Cyprus and the smooth change in the leadership of Cuba. Both events took place last Sunday and both have their own significance.

There are favorable indications that under the leadership of Christofias it may be possible to achieve an agreement with Turkish Cypriots and thereby unify Cyprus once again into a single state rather than the present division of Cyprus into zones with separate Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot governments.

Communists are proving to be the unifiers while conservatives are shown to be those responsible for divisions and strife, the most recent example being the deliberate and long-planned tearing away of Kosovo as a province of Serbia.

The western imperialist states, with the US and Britain in the lead, deliberately fostered the break-up of Yugoslavia into separate states — Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia with Kosovo making the seventh. This has been achieved by playing on nationalist and religious sentiments and by using military force.

It’s all about creating as many mini-states as possible, thereby to control each state separately.

The same policy of divide and rule was imposed on the former Soviet Union even though this was carried out by internal traitors who set about destroying the unity of the Soviet Union. Several of these separate states became easy targets for the western powers to dominate and establish governments to their liking — Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Georgia and Azerbaijan with a tense struggle taking place for political dominance of the Ukraine. In several cases new political leaders were flown in from refugee circles in the United States.

The unity of nations on the basis of equality is the watchword of the communists while divide and rule are the watchwords of the western imperialist powers.

Of course, as with most things, there are two kinds of unity. It can be pursued for progressive purposes and on the other hand, unity for the purpose of domination, control, the establishment of military bases and the exploitation of the labour of a country and its resources. The unity of NATO and the European Union are examples of this latter sort of unity.

The smooth change of leadership in Cuba which took place without conflict, without demonstrations in the street, without confrontation or sharp divisions is a very important achievement. At a time when the western capitalist powers, the US in particular, are looking to foster differences and create divisions the total unity of Cuba’s National Assembly in changing a number of the officials in leading government positions together with the unity and calmness of the Cuban people was an exemplary example.

The mass media in countries like Australia trumpet the idea that it’s all because of Fidel Castro’s domination. The reality is that the Cuban people are now highly politically conscious and understand what needs to be done in each new circumstance. This has certainly been achieved as a result of Fidel Castro’s political leadership and that of the Communist Party of Cuba over the 50 years following the success of the revolutionary struggle. This has been achieved by conviction, education, example and achievement and definitely not by way of dictatorship.

Into the leadership have gone elected representatives from the Communist Party, the Young Communist League and grass roots organizations such as those covering health, science, culture and the production sectors, workers and farmers. Almost 42 percent were elected for the first time to the National Assembly, reflecting the advancement of new personalities into the leadership. Women comprise 43 percent while 36 percent are between the ages of 18 to 30 years. (See page 6 for details of Cuba’s electoral system)

This is a modern day trend — towards unity which opposes conflict and division. Latin American countries are adopting various cooperative projects in economic fields, in trade and in communications. This process is led by Venezuela and Cuba on the basis of equality and mutual benefit. Such unity will ultimately triumph over the domination, repression and exploitation that are the stock in trade of the capitalist system.

From The Guardian, Australia

In Iraq forever?

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 03:15:00 +0000

Original source: People's Weekly World

Battle expected in Congress over Bush’s long-term Iraq stay

The online activism group MoveOn.org has launched an “Iraq/Recession” campaign, aiming to “make sure that politicians and pundits understand what voters already know: As long as we keep pouring that money down the drain in Iraq, we won’t have the money we need to solve our economic woes.”

With the war costing Americans more than $338 million a day, MoveOn says, “The tradeoffs are stark: Bombs or unemployment insurance for people laid off as the economy slows? Billions for Halliburton and Blackwater, or help for people on the verge of losing their homes because of the subprime meltdown?”

Urging people to raise the issue in letters to their local newspapers, MoveOn says, “More and more Americans are making the connection between the billions we’ve spent over there and the crumbling economy here at home.”

But, even as the Iraq price tag approaches $500 billion so far, the Bush administration is pushing a plan for long-term involvement in Iraq that could squeeze American taxpayers and federal, state and local budgets for years to come.

Negotiations are set to start Feb. 27 between the White House and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki over an open-ended military, political and economic agreement that would secure a heavy U.S. military/corporate presence in Iraq for decades. To date neither the U.S Congress nor Iraq’s Parliament has been consulted about the proposed deal.

The U.S. occupation is currently operating under a United Nations Security Council mandate that that will expire at the end of this year, as insisted on by Iraq. Negotiations on the new U.S.-Iraq agreement are supposed to be completed by July 31.

Rep. William Delahunt (D-Mass.) told a congressional hearing Feb. 8 that the “Declaration of Principles” announced last November for the agreement “suggests an indefinite U.S. military presence in Iraq.” The proposed agreement is “not just about military commitments,” he noted, but also includes “a political and economic agenda that involves serious and possibly open-ended obligations.”

Delahunt chairs a House foreign affairs subcommittee that has held three hearings so far to try open up public debate on the agreement.

After months of administration stonewalling, Defense Secretary Robert Gates tried to pacify congressional opposition, telling the House Armed Services Committee on Feb. 6 that the U.S.-Iraq agreement would not include any commitment to defend Iraq militarily and would not specify permanent U.S. bases.

That did not impress Joseph Gerson, director of programs at the American Friends Service Committee in New England, which is working on an anti-military-bases campaign. Gates assures us the U.S. military presence in Iraq is “not permanent,” said Gerson, “but neither is the Great Wall of China or the pyramids in Egypt, and they’re still there.”

It is important to remember that Bush’s original goals in Iraq were not only to gain control over Iraq’s oil but also consolidate long-term control over the entire region’s oil and geopolitics, Gerson told the World. The Bush administration is planning for 14 long-term military bases in Iraq, he said. The aim is to “turn Iraq into a virtual unsinkable aircraft carrier for the U.S.”

Salam Ali, a spokesperson for Iraq’s influential Communist Party, said the issue has not been adequately discussed by Iraq’s cabinet or lawmakers. He warned that the U.S. could steamroller ill-prepared Iraqi negotiators into a deal that would not only allow an enduring U.S. military presence, but also entrench U.S. corporate interests in Iraq.

Any agreement Ali emphasized, “should provide a timetable for withdrawal.” In addition, he said, Iraq has to regain full control over its oil revenues, which are still being administered by a UN-mandated fund dominated by the U.S., International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

Echoing the concerns raised by U.S. lawmakers, Ali said that in Iraq, “you cannot at all just sign an agreement without referring to Parliament. All stages of negotiations have to be transparent, not behind closed doors without the Iraqi people knowing what’s going on.”

In the U.S., the battle over the proposed agreement could become “the principal focus of Democratic opposition to the war this year,” Gerson said.

Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have both called for requiring the administration to obtain congressional approval for any long-term agreement with Iraq.

Noting that “the financial cost of this war is well on its way to a trillion dollars — with no end in sight,” Delahunt assailed the administration for trying to block Congress from weighing in.

On Feb. 11, 50 House members sent a letter to President Bush saying the administration” must engage with Congress on long-term agreements on Iraq.”

Republican presidential contender John McCain emphasizes his support for a long-term U.S. occupation of Iraq. However, staking his campaign on the claimed success of Bush’s troop surge could be a problem for McCain, says Foreign Policy magazine commentator Blake Hounshell. In a blog at the journal’s web site, Hounshell writes, “Most voters have made up their minds about Iraq: They want to leave, recent success be damned. That sentiment will only increase as the economy sours and calls grow to spend that $10 billion a month at home.”

India: New Policy on Defense Contracts Offsets

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 03:10:00 +0000

2-28-08, 9:11 am

Original source: People's Democracy

India's policies on defense-related acquisitions from abroad and production within India are believed to have been directed not only at ensuring India's security interests but also at promoting self-reliance and indigenous capability in this vital sector often involving advanced technologies. Whatever one's opinions about intentions, questions have often been raised, including in these columns, as to whether these goals have actually been achieved. Again, while the point may be debated, clearly there are major problems going by the evidence in the past two decades.

India has been buying ever larger quantities of increasingly sophisticated military hardware from foreign suppliers, while its defense forces have not been able to acquire necessary comparable equipment from Indian state-sector manufacturers due to inadequate performance, inordinate time delays and massive cost overruns. Fighter aircraft such as the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), jet trainers, helicopters, main battle tanks, submarines are all military equipment in which India has had active indigenous or collaborative R&D or manufacturing programs over several decades. But, as inventories have reached the end of their life cycles calling for replacements, India has repeatedly been forced to go in for costly foreign acquisitions while requisite indigenous capability has continued to languish even for the next generation of technology. This has not only increased India's dependence on imports, and vulnerability to technology denial regimes, in such a vital sector, it has also meant huge lost opportunities for enhancing science and technology capabilities, and downstream spread effects, in important sectors of national industry.

Very belatedly, India had set in place over the past two years a policy of 'offsets' in major defense contracts worth over Rs 300 crore in value. Under this clause, a party securing such a contract was obligated to plough back to Indian parties at least 30 per cent of the contract value by way of buy-back of products and services, with a provision for a higher percentage in special cases. Of course, there still remained the danger that even such offsets may amount to little more than some sub-contracts or assembly-line operations, not resulting in any upgradation or absorption of know-how or capability, but it least it was a beginning.

Unfortunately, under pressure from major manufacturers in the US and some other Western countries, there are moves to dilute even this offset clause in important ways to the detriment of the long-term Indian interests. As we go to press, Defense Ministry officials have confirmed that a modified DPP will be notified by April 2008.

OFFSET POLICY

The policy on offsets, first enunciated in 2005, was further elaborated along with rules and procedures in the Defense Purchase Policy (DPP) of 2006 under which a new Defense Offset Facilitation Agency (DOFA) was also set up to work with vendors on implementation and monitoring. Offsets could include buy-back of products or services, foreign direct investment (FDI) in Indian public or private companies for such products or services or co-development and infrastructure, or even FDI in Indian entities engaged in defense R&D. All these were envisaged to be 'direct offsets' that is directly related to the contract, the procurement of items under it, and their cost.

In the short period DPP-2006 had been in operation, two major contracts had been concluded with offset clauses. Israeli firm ELTA System had been awarded a contract worth Rs 900 crore for supplying radars. Under the offset provision, ELTA signed contracts with two Indian firms for purchase of components, with Astra Microwave securing a contract worth Rs 100 crore. Similarly, in the $1 billion (Rs 4000 crore) contract awarded to the Russian manufacturers of the Mig-29 for upgrades of the IAF's fleet, the vendor has agreed to offsets of $300 million. Several other pending deals such as for refueling tankers also contain offset clauses.

Interestingly, even the controversially cancelled deal to purchase 196 military helicopters from the French-led European conglomerate Eurocopter (most probably cancelled under pressure from its US rivals Bell Helicopters as revealed in these columns a few months ahead of the cancellation) had contained offset provisions with Eurocopter having agreed to 30 per cent offsets as required.

Two points must be noted here.

First, such offset clauses are not unique to India nor are they some archaic leftovers of an earlier 'socialistic' self-reliance policy incommensurate with the contemporary realities of globalization. Many countries have, and continue to successfully enforce, such offset clauses in the interests of their economies and in order to boost their knowledge base and industrial capabilities. Israel, Malaysia, Thailand to name a few are among many other countries in Asia and South America having even more stringent offset conditionalities than India.

Take for instance Israel's $2.5 billion order for 50 F-16 fighter aircraft from the US giant Lockheed Martin which had lost out to its American rival Boeing (both now pushing aggressively for the Indian 126-aircraft deal). Israel secured an offset package of $850 million or about 35 per cent of the contract value spread over 10 years. Within 3 years of signing the deal, Lockheed Martin had already invested over $250 million in 12 Israeli firms for sourcing various components, assembly and post-production services. Israel not only enhanced their capabilities in these sectors it also ensured that it acquired new knowledge in advanced areas. Lockheed Martin was made to invest and participate in co-development of flight simulators and helmet-mounted display systems, as well as other technologies relating to space applications and electronics. Israel also made full use of its option clause for acquisition of a further 50 F-16s to add pressure on the US vendor.

OFFSETS FOR WHAT?

Second, as also brought out by the above example, offsets should not be seen merely as commercial propositions by which India could earn additional money thus reducing capital outflows in defense contracts. Merely obtaining orders for some components, or securing servicing and overhaul contracts, or even assembly and license- production is not sufficient to ensure absorption of know-how and building up the capacity to independently develop and manufacture equipment using the next generation technology. Indeed, India's own experience of serial license-production agreements clearly reveals the yawning gap between certain types of licensed manufacture and development of indigenous capability.

India manufactured the French Alouette helicopter (Cheetah) and its engine at HAL, Bangalore, in the '70s and '80s but, not having absorbed the technology, was forced to go for imports of the next generation helicopters such as the Eurocopter. HAL's bottom line was certainly boosted, its turnover substantially increased for several years, but this does not appear to have translated into capability to develop and make its own helicopters, forcing the government to go in for another sequence of imports and license arrangements. Similarly, India is now in the market reportedly for 200 howitzer artillery guns building up through licensed manufacture towards an inventory of 1500 guns worth an estimated $2.5 billion (Rs 10,000 crore), and even had to buy howitzers on an emergency basis during the Kargil conflict, despite having had full access to the Bofors technology since the '80s.

Therefore, in working out offsets, quite apart from the commercial angle, it is very important to see that offset arrangements are properly planned and channelized to projects and institutions with a clear vision of what is required in the short and medium term in terms of developing independent indigenous capability and know-how.

NEW POLICY

Despite this past experience, and in spite of some success in pressurizing vendors into more meaningful collaboration through the policy of direct offsets under DPP-2005/6, the defense ministry is in the process of modifying the DPP particularly is respect of offsets. It is no coincidence that this process has been initiated at a time when major Western military hardware vendors are salivating at the $30 billion Indian acquisition budget, and especially the massive $10 billion deal for multi-role combat aircraft, in the tender for which India has specified a 50 per cent offset condition, much to the open displeasure of US aviation majors Lockheed Martin and Boeing. It is also no surprise that defense ministry spokesmen confirmed the advent of a new offsets policy just prior to the opening of the large arms expo in Delhi on February 18.

The revised policy proposes three major departures all leading to a framework of 'indirect' offsets in contrast to the earlier system of direct offsets.

The first allows for 'banking' of offsets wherein offsets accumulated under one project can be shown against any subsequent project too.

The second, although apparently an extension of the first, allows companies engaged in civilian contracts to 'bank' such offsets and show them against offset requirements in military contracts. Clearly, this is purely a commercial consideration and makes no allowance for the fact that the main purpose of offsets is, or ought to be, building capability and know-how in the defense technology sector albeit with spin-offs in the civilian sector. It is also a measure that will clearly favor Boeing which can show offsets and 'bank' its sub-contracts to Indian parties making fuselage parts for the passenger jets being bought by Air India and Indian Airlines while tendering for the combat aircraft order.

The third modification and perhaps the most dangerous is to allow vendors to charge for technology transfer, show these charges as part of the offsets and deduct these charges from the actual offset payments. This is a specious provision and opens the door to all sorts of underhand manipulations, will render the entire offsets mechanism useless and make its processes completely non-transparent.

Who is to define what constitutes transfer of technology and what price to attach to it? In any sub-contracting or license production, there is some technology transfer involved. Under the direct offset clause operational hitherto in India, and practiced elsewhere in the world, licensed production includes technology transfer for manufacture. Under the modified provision, it can be charged separately, and an arbitrarily determined technology fee can be subtracted from any buy-back arrangement! With a 50 per cent offset provision for the fighter deal, about Rs 20,000 crore worth of business was expected to come to Indian firms but, with the new technology transfer clause, this could easily be reduced to half or even less!

VESTED INTERESTS Vs NATIONAL INTERESTS

It is significant that pressure has been brought on India to change its offsets provisions particularly by US companies especially in the aviation sector.

The US Defense Department has always opposed offset clauses, but has not stood in the way of contracts including such clauses when it serves US policy or when US companies push for them, as with the Israeli case cited above. In the case of India, the US India Business Council (USIBC) constituted and empowered under the US-India Strategic Partnership has been pushing hard for precisely such modifications in offsets policy as are now being made in the soon-to-be-revised DPP.

At the Bangalore air show in 2007 when US aviation companies made a big show of their various offerings, Nikhil Khanna, Director of Policy Advocacy at USIBC in Washington said: 'We have encouraged the broadening of the definition of offsets to include indirect offsets, so other areas of India's economy may gain from the massive investments that are sure to flow from aerospace and defense contracts.' and added that this would credit for technology transfer, limitation of liability, and the ability to 'bank' the value of current projects as offsets for future defense contracts. At that time Khanna stated that new Delhi was 'considering the suggestions'. Defense minister A K Antony stated that 'if there is scope for improvement, we will adjust and make minor changes to the policy.' It now seems that he has! Only thing is, the changes are not minor!

Indian industry has reason to feel deeply aggrieved. The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), through a Committee chairmanship of Rahul Bajaj had advocated an aggressive offsets policy as far back as 1999. CII had strongly recommended that 'direct offsets be implemented as a matter of National Policy for Defense Procurement [so as to] get state-of-the-art technologies for both Public and Private Sectors [and] give major thrust to Self Reliance.'

The proposed modified offsets policies, being instituted at the instigation of US companies backed by political pressure, will negate these aims. It is therefore imperative that pressure be brought upon the UPA government to abandon these changes, stay the course with direct offsets and ensure that the offsets are properly directed and monitored so as to reduce India's dependence on imports and consequent vulnerability to technology denial regimes while simultaneously leading to significant enhancement in science and technology capabilities, as well as a spread effect in important industrial and research sectors of the national economy.

From People's Democracy

Ethics Problems Haunt John McCain

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 03:11:00 +0000

2-27-08, 9:12 am

Sen. John McCain tried to prove his ethical good standing Monday, Feb. 25, by claiming to have acted 'exactly' like former Democratic presidential hopefuls Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt. 'We're doing exactly what Howard Dean did in a previous election and what the FEC ruled in the case of Congressman Gephardt,' he told reporters.

McCain likened himself to Dean and Gephardt in order to sidestep charges that his recent flouting of rules related to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) federal matching funds program, a system he helped create and which benefited him tremendously in this election cycle, is illegal.

A major difference between McCain and Gephardt and Dean, however, is that the FEC approved Dean and Gephardt requests to drop out of the public financing process. This time around writes Democratic National Committee General Counsel Joe Sandler in an e-mail to Democratic Party supporters, 'John McCain decided to break the law by ignoring the rules laid out as part of the federal matching funds program.'

Readers might remember the early days of the McCain campaign late last year when staffers went unpaid and volunteers drove the Arizona senator to his next appearance in front of mere handfuls of Republicans. At that time, McCain sought to use the federal matching funds program to boost his campaign resources.

McCain did so in two ways. According to the Washington Post, McCain used an 'FEC certification to bypass the time-consuming process of gathering signatures to get his name on the ballot in several states, including Ohio.'

More controversial, however, is the fact that McCain also used the promise of an influx of taxpayer dollars into his campaign as collateral when he borrowed heavily from a Maryland bank, reported the Post.

Publicly available FEC reports as well as a draft of the agreement between John McCain and a lender who offered him a line of credit (posted at Talking Points Memo) indicate McCain used the federal matching funds as collateral to get as much as a $4 million line of credit to keep his faltering campaign afloat, of which almost $3 million was spent.

The text of the agreement between McCain and the bank says that McCain will 'grant to the Lender, as additional collateral for the Loan, a first priority perfected security interest in and to all of Borrower's right, title and interest in and to the public matching funds program.' The agreement is basically a promise by John McCain to repay the loan with taxpayer dollars from the federal matching funds program if the campaign could not repay it with other income, the basic definition of collateral.

Despite McCain's early campaign misfires, divisions in the Republican Party propelled him to frontrunner status, and his promise to maintain the Bush doctrine for four more years has nearly clinched the nomination.

After spending millions based on a promise of more taxpayer dollars to follow, McCain changed his mind. On Feb. 6, one day before McCain's toughest rival, multimillionaire Mitt Romney, backed out of the race, John McCain sought to be released from his legally binding contract with the FEC to abide by federal laws overseeing the dispersal of matching funds. Federal law allows a candidate to be released from the agreement only if the candidate has not accepted any taxpayer dollars and if that candidate does not use the promise of federal dollars to borrow cash.

Now that taxpayers unwittingly helped boost the financial fortunes of what was a dismal campaign that couldn't generate the enthusiasm and excitement needed to bring in campaign donations on its own, McCain has gone back on his word and violated federal campaign laws he helped pass.

McCain's use of promised federal matching funds as collateral to borrow millions during the primary season meant that he by default agreed to a spending limit of about $54 million on his campaign until the general election campaign begins next September.

As of the end of January, McCain's campaign reported having spent close to $50 million. By any reasonable estimate, he has surpassed the limit he agreed to when he accepted federal taxpayer funds.

This likelihood led FEC Chair David M. Mason, a Republican, to warn McCain last week that he might have broken the law and that the FEC had not approved his request to withdraw from the federal matching funds program. The criminal offense could carry a prison sentence and stiff fines. Mason further stated that McCain might have to wait until September to spend new money on his campaign.

McCain's spending habits in violation of FEC rules are the basis of a complaint filed by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) on Monday, Feb. 25. DNC lawyers demanded McCain produce FEC approval of his withdrawal from the federal matching funds program.

In response to McCain's claim that he is a paragon of virtue like Howard Dean, on Tuesday, Feb. 26, the DNC released the letter Dean received from the FEC in December 2003 approving his November 12, 2003 request to release his campaign from the federal matching funds agreement.

In sharp contrast to McCain's claims, Dean's request to be released from the FEC program came well before primary elections were held, but most importantly before he accepted taxpayer dollars or other benefits from the program, which McCain had clearly accepted.

'The crucial issue here is John McCain's integrity. John McCain poses as a reformer but seems to think reforms apply to everyone but him,' said DNC Chair Howard Dean responded to McCain's claims in a press statement. 'This is just the latest example of his do as I say, not as I do double standard, and it's unlikely to be the last.'

--Reach Joel Wendland at

Chad: Poverty-Stricken Neoliberal Model

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 03:09:00 +0000

2-27-08, 9:10 am

The most recent and failed uprising of opposition groups to the government of Chad is another episode in the drama lived by a people in one of the poorest nations on Earth.

What can we say about the battles that were on the verge of overthrowing the current president, Idriss Deby, the first elected in Western democracy style elections 12 years ago and who comes and goes from power.

The accusation that Sudan supported the most recent armed actions against the government is not very believable when other foreign actors use all types of methods to control the nation’s oil.

On this occasion, France backed the status quo with a European military force, which gave rise to those who assure that 'as long as Chad doesn’t advance and the poverty worsens, Paris will continue propping up and overthrowing presidents via conspiracies and coups.' But the interests of the French are not those that totally dominate in their former colony and the adjacent zones.

THE FOUL SMELL OF OIL

Oil and natural gas are the main fuels that keep today’s world running. No magnet attracts transnational capital more than 'black gold.' No other source tops the fabulous profits and it is the most monopolized of the neoliberal economic system.

The US based Exxon-Mobil is the most notorious in the plundering of resources in the region. 'Blessed' by the World Bank, it led the investments in the 1,050 kilometer Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline, the longest in Sub Saharan Africa —from the Chadian port of Doba to Cameroon’s Kribi—, which transports 225,000 barrels of oil daily since four years ago.

Exxon Mobil and Chevron contribute almost 65 percent of the total capital of US $3.5 billion, while the disastrous situation of the two African countries made it necessary to obtain backing from the World Bank, which gave only US $130 million, only a symbolic 3 percent, because what dominates is the ability to pressure the governments so as to maintain the favorable conditions for exploitation by the big corporations.

The World Bank classified the oil pipeline a Class A project, a category which, in this case, doesn’t rate excellence, but risk. It supported plans which leave important zones of great environmental and cultural value unprotected, favored the destruction of sacred places, principally of the Pygmies of Cameroon who were displaced through coercion with serious damage to their health.

DOUBTFUL BENEFITS

The benefits for the population of Chad, of whom 80 percent live in poverty, are dubious. For example, in Doba, the school that Exxon Mobil had 'donated' three years ago has an enormous hole under the blackboard and the health center lacks basic hygienic conditions and equipment. Likewise, the methods used by the US Company favored the emergence of Mafias, which take half of the worker’s salary.

The oil pipeline, completed in 2004, showed Exxon Mobil and the other companies’ disregard for the affected populations. The benefits that were going to contribute to Chad were estimated at US $3.8 billion in the first ten years, but they became a nightmare for the poorest of the population.

The abuses reached such an extent that small farmers like Andre Deoutal were forced to sell for a pittance the land where his entire family lived. He complained: 'We are poorer that before, prices have risen, the families are broken up,' he told EFE.

In the end the World Bank gave its approval of a project showing the hypocrisy of its discourse about good government, corruption and reducing poverty. It imposed the construction of an oil pipeline that only brought greater wealth to the corporations and the governments in power.

Meanwhile, the battles between the army and the opposition are now history, until the next chapter. What remains is the bleeding of the Chadian population which must repay the huge debt without benefiting from the natural resource belonging to them.

From Granma

Iraq's Health Sector Under Pressure

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 03:07:00 +0000

2-27-08, 9:08 am

Original source: IRIN News

BAGHDAD, 26 February 2008 (IRIN) - With scores of doctors killed over the past few years, an exodus of medical personnel, poor medical infrastructure and shortages of medicines, Iraq's health sector is under great pressure, a senior Health Ministry official said on 26 February.

'We are experiencing a big shortage of everything. We don't have enough specialist doctors and medicines, and most of the medical equipment is outdated,' said the official who preferred anonymity.

'We used to get many spinal and head injures but were unable to do anything as we didn’t have enough specialists and medicines. Intravenous fluid, which is a simple thing, is not available all the time,' the official said.

'We have no neurosurgeons in Baghdad which has about five million people. Even with the security gains of the past few months, it is still dangerous for doctors and their families to step out of their houses,' he said.

He said no new hospitals had been built since 1986, at the height of the Iran-Iraq war.

Since the US-led invasion in 2003, 618 medical employees, including 132 doctors, as well as medics and other health care workers, have been killed nationwide, according to figures from the Iraqi Health Ministry released earlier this year.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of other medical personnel are believed to have fled to Iraq's northern semi-autonomous Kurdistan region or neighbouring countries.

Shortage of medicines

On 22 February the health minister highlighted the shortage of medicines: 'The Iraqi Health Ministry is suffering from an acute shortage of medicines… We have decided to import medicines immediately to meet the needs,' Minister Salih al-Hassnawi told a press conference in the northern city of Arbil.

Al-Hassnawi blamed what he called an 'obvious blemish' in the government's 2008 budget with regard to the import of drugs for medicinal purposes.

He said the 2008 budget meant total expenditure on medicines, medical equipment and ambulances would amount to only US$22 per citizen.

Expired medicines

Al-Hassnawi also blamed corrupt individuals for importing expired or counterfeit medicines and circumventing ministry testing procedures.

'Only a small amount of the imported medicines find their way to the ministry's labs,' he said.

In the past few days a factory in Kadhimiyah (northern Baghdad) had been found sticking fake expiry dates on already expired imported medicines, he said.

From IRIN News

Fidel Won the Battle

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 03:04:00 +0000

2-27-08, 9:05 am

Original source: CubaNews

The outcome of this story couldn't have been more frustrating and unexpected for the enemies of the Cuban revolutionary process, nor more promising for its heroes: the Cuban people.

In truth, the dramatic plot created by the propaganda machine of the empire intended to impose an end agreeable to their convenience for the epic insistence of the Cubans to forge their own sovereign, just and honest present.

But, none of the apocalyptical forecasts in form of violent death of the leader, coup d'état or military uprisings took place. No forced surrender through diplomatic isolation, economic blockade, street protests, international condemnation or financial ruin…

Lately they hung on the death or disability of the leader from natural or accidental causes as a means to achieve their purposes, after wasting many millions of dollars financing dissidents; slanderous campaigns throughout the world; counterrevolutionary radio, television broadcasts; brain drain and other measures which moved to indignation and people's unity rather than serving to create unrest.

Many tons of papers were wasted in plans for an impossible transition to capitalism, in which they shattered the neurons of many well-paid talents –all aware of the uselessness of such pledge.

While the empire increasingly conditioned the offensive carried out by its intelligence institutions to the electoral objectives of the party in government, the Cuban leader managed – in spite of his physical limitations – the course, rhythm and character of events with such wisdom that each enemy action turned against its own promoters.

The message of Fidel Castro to the Cuban people, in which he announced his decision not to seek or accept a renewal of his functions as President of the Council of State and Commander-in-Chief, has meant the successful outcome of another battle of the Cuban revolution against its enemies. This is so, because Cuban constitutional order was respected, the order that Cubans decided by themselves, without submission to foreign powers.

For many months, after serious health problems affected Fidel Castro, the empire unleashed a media campaign about his replacement as Head of the Cuban State with all kinds of speculations on how would or should the succession be. They purposely ignored that the revolution in Cuba had, for a long time, achieved levels of institutionalism and enough organizational capacity to solve this legal problem, not technically complex but serious from the point of view of the security of the nation.

But it wasn't even necessary to submit Cuban institutions to this test, due to the awareness of Fidel's role of in the revolution, the discipline with which he assumed his process of recovery and the popular identification with his leadership.

The vast majority of the Cuban people have developed such a confidence in their revolutionary leader for so long, that when hearing from him, in full control of his faculties, making the decision to not continue in his position, his decision was approved without objections.

Many tears have wet the cheeks of the Cubans upon learning of this decision of their maximum revolutionary guide. They see him as the hero of all the victories and honors that the nation has achieved in half a century. But they have accepted it as the best solution: because Fidel said so!

The air breathed in all of Cuba is of great confidence in the future of the revolution because Fidel has given assurances that the country has leadership cadres with the necessary authority and experience to guarantee the substitution, as well as the capacity to continue forming others, thus guaranteeing the continuity of the revolutionary process.

The government of the United States is very concerned over the continuity of the Cuban revolution since foreseeing the inevitable defeat of the Batista´s tyranny which Washington supported until his overthrow on January of 1959.

The United States has always pretended to ignore that the current Cuban political phenomenon is part of a revolutionary process begun during the mid-19th century which today is headed by Fidel Castro as it had been previously led by José Martí and other heroes.

The Communist Party of Cuba is a continuity of the Cuban Revolutionary Party founded by José Martí as an organization gathering all Cubans to fight for their independence from Spain and to prevent absorption of the country by the United States, Fidel will continue to lead the revolution, as Jose Marti has been doing in every moment.

Fidel shall be present in the leading actions of Raul Castro, for they are the same person, not by means of cloning, but because of their common revolutionary and patriotic roots, those that define their political projections and their ideals, as well as their influence in the revolutionary process and the popularity stemming from their merits in the popular struggle, always in the vanguard since the times of the Moncada barracks´ attack in 1953.

Fidel will continue in charge for many thousands of cadres will see to it that neither capitulation nor any other trend different from the revolutionary one defined by him will prevail.

Fidel will keep leading the Revolution because it is mainly thanks to him that nowadays Cuba is a nation of educated, healthy and patriotic people, ready to cultivate unity and solidarity in order to maintain and defend their independence, their cultural identity and their social justice, achieved all along the last half century.

When someone asked me what sorts of changes could be expected to take place in Cuba after the 24th of February session of the National Assembly, I answered, based on Fidel's recent message to the Nation: 'A very big change!' And my answer is based in the fact that the Revolution will count on the intelligence of the most outstanding revolutionary leader of our time, free of the everyday managerial responsibilities, entirely dedicated to serve the cause with his talent.

From CubaNews. A CubaNews translation by Ana Portela. Edited by Walter Lippmann.

Video: Paul Robeson – The Great Forerunner

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 08:03:00 +0000

For more see, Communist Party USA

Cuba's New Leader Promises Change to Make Cuba Stronger

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 03:32:00 +0000

2-26-08, 9:32 am

Original source: Xinhuanet

HAVANA, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) -- Cuba's newly-elected President Raul Castro said Sunday that he would bring about changes in the country to make its government more efficient and economy stronger.

In his first address as president to Cuba's legislature, the National Assembly of People's Power (ANPP), Raul Castro said the country needs 'a smaller number of central administration bodies and a better distribution of their functions.'

'We have to make our government more efficient,' he said in the speech after being unanimously elected by Cuban lawmakers to succeed his elder brother Fidel as the country's leader.

He also said the government will focus on satisfying citizens' basic needs 'both spiritual and material, starting by boosting sustained economic growth.'

Local media said the new leader also indicated that he was reviewing the possibility of a gradual reevaluation of the Cuban peso and some 'small restrictions' on Cuba's economic system could be removed in the coming weeks.

President Castro also pledged to loosen control over some social activities.

'We must not fear disagreement in a society like ours, in which due to its very essence there are no antagonistic contradictions because there are no social classes that create such things,' he said.

Raul Castro has headed Cuba's caretaker government for 19 months, after Fidel needed emergency intestinal surgery and provisionally ceded power in July 2006.

Fidel announced on Feb. 19 that he would retire as Cuba's leader, after nearly 50 years in power. However, the 81-year-old retired leader pledged to continue communicating his thoughts to the Cuban people through media articles.

Despite the promises of change, President Castro emphasized that he would take on the legacy of his elder brother and consult him on 'decisions of fundamental importance for the nation's future, including defense, foreign policy and socio-economic development.'

'Fidel is irreplaceable and the people will continue his work even when he is not physically here, because his ideas will always be present,' Raul Castro said.

He said he would be on guard against any U.S. 'meddling' in Cuba's internal affairs, after several U.S. presidential candidates cried for change in Cuba days ago.

Raul Castro, who served as Cuba's defense minister before the election, also found himself a successor, Julio Casas Reguiero, who previously served as first vice minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and No. 2 in the Defense Ministry.

Apart from the new president and defense minister, Cuba also embraces a new Council of State, a 31-strong body that will make the most important decisions in Cuba in the next five years.

From Xinhuanet

APN Guide to Delegates to the Democratic National Convention

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 03:29:00 +0000

Original source: Atlanta Progressive News

(APN) ATLANTA – The Democratic National Convention will host 3,515 pledged delegates and 852 unpledged delegates from all over the country in Denver, Colorado, from August 25 through August 28, 2008.

Georgia will send a total of 133 delegates to Denver to choose between US Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Barack Obama (D-IL).

Neither candidate has enough delegates at this point to secure the nomination, even after well over half the country has voted.

Some pundits and other experts have raised the specter that Democrats will have a brokered convention, meaning neither candidate will have enough delegates to secure the nomination on the first ballot.

'It’s too soon to say we’re going to have a brokered convention - everybody panic,' Martin Matheny, Communications Director for the Democratic Party of Georgia (DPG), told Atlanta Progressive News.

'The fact that we’re this close now and it’s not decided speaks to the strengths of the two candidates,' Matheny said.

APN asked Matheny if he thought the nominee would be determined by superdelegates, or unpledged party leader and elected official (PLEO) delegates.

'What we want is to get together and united behind somebody and put a Democrat in the White House,' he said. 'We want to make sure that this is decided by the voters, not the superdelegates.'

Georgia will send 13 superdelegates to the Convention this summer.

'The superdelegates for each State are determined by the national Party,' Matheny told APN. 'They send us a list. Most of the superdelegates are superdelegates by virtue of party bylaws.'

The Georgia superdelegates are: former President of the United States, Jimmy Carter; US Reps. John Lewis (D-GA), Hank Johnson (D-GA), Sanford Bishop (D-GA), David Scott (D-GA), John Barrow (D-GA), and Jim Marshall (D-GA); DPG chairwoman Jane Kidd; State Labor Commissioner Michael Thurman; President of the Georgia AFL-CIO Richard Ray; Elected official of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Lonnie Plott; Carole Dabbs, former top aide to former US Sen. Max Cleland (D-GA); and Party activist, Mary Long.

Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin was a superdelegate until she stepped down as the head of the National Conference of Mayors last year.

Matheny said Georgia will also send two unpledged add-on delegates who have yet to be named. These are similar to the other superdelegates in that they are unpledged and will most likely be figures in the DPG.

While some of Georgia’s superdelegates have made a public commitment to one candidate, the majority is undecided. Matheny said DPG chair Kidd is not leaning one way or the other at this point.

'She kind of considers it her job to stay neutral for a while,' Matheny told APN. 'I don’t even know who she voted for on Super Tuesday.'

LEWIS EQUIVOCATES ON CLINTON ENDORSEMENT

US Rep. John Lewis has endorsed US Sen. Hillary Clinton. However, the Associated Press reported February 14, 2008, that Lewis was considering switching to Obama.

The New York Times newspaper reported February 15, 2008, that Lewis would no longer back Clinton and instead switch over to the Obama camp.

Lewis represents District 4, which Obama carried easily on Super Tuesday. The Times reports that he said he did not want to go against the wishes of his constituents.

But The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Washington Post newspapers ran stories the same day that quoted Lewis’s spokeswoman Brenda Jones as saying The Times and AP reports are not accurate.

It is important to note, however, that Lewis’s office frequently disputes the accuracy of articles, especially those involving comments made by Lewis. In the last two years, Jones has disputed two other reports by the Associated Press: one involving Lewis’s comments on impeaching President Bush, and another involving his endorsement of US Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT; then D-CT). Lewis’s office also disputed a report in APN about the Lieberman support as well.

US Rep. Scott told The Associated Press he would also switch to Obama. 'You've got to represent the wishes of your constituency,' Scott told the Associated Press on February 14. 'My proper position would be to vote the wishes of my constituents.'

Obama won Scott’s District 13 with 80 percent of the vote.

If the reports are true, Lewis and Scott would join US Reps. Johnson and Bishop as Obama supporters.

Clinton has already secured endorsements from Thurman and Dabbs.

HOW TO BECOME A PLEDGED DELEGATE

In addition to the superdelegates, Georgia will send 57 pledged district-level delegates. Obama will receive 40 of these while Clinton will receive the other 17, according to a press release from the DPG obtained by Atlanta Progressive News.

Here’s how it breaks down: Georgia has 13 Congressional Districts. The number of delegates in each of those Districts is determined by the size of the population.

For example, District 11 has three delegates. Since Obama won that district, he will get two delegates and Clinton will get one.

Will Fowlkes, 40, a senior project manager who has never been to a national Party Convention, is hoping to be that Clinton delegate.

'I always kind of wanted to do it,' Fowlkes told APN. 'I figured since I’m pretty much well-immersed in the Presidential cycle, this is my next step.'

Fowlkes is the District 11 Chairman for the Clinton Campaign and said he will probably have to face one other person to get the delegate slot.

'The competition will be a lot more stiff for me since there is one spot,' he told APN.

When a person wants to be a delegate to the Convention, he must first declare which candidate he wants to support. Then he must fill out the proper paperwork and send it in to the Congressional District Chair.

For example, in Fowlkes’s District, the Chairman is David McLaughlin. The deadline for turning in the paperwork in all districts is April 4, 2008.

A representative from the Campaign has to go over the application and approve the name. Fowlkes said this ensures that there are 'loyal people' at the Convention.

Once the Campaign approves the name, it is up to the candidate to Campaign and hold fundraisers in their election to become a delegate. Each delegate is expected to pay his own way to Denver and cover all expenses.

Fowlkes told APN he is hoping to raise enough money so that he and at least his 18-year old daughter, who is voting in her very first Presidential Election, can travel to Denver.

Each of Georgia’s 13 Congressional Districts will hold delegate elections on April 19, 2008. Anyone, regardless of party affiliation, can show up in their District that day and vote, so long as they are registered to vote in that District.

The process is very informal in that the vote could be taken by a show of hands, depending on how many people show up, Fowlkes said.

There is only one vote and majority rules. If a candidate gets the most votes, he or she is heading to Denver.

But there are also 10 alternate slots for District-level pledged delegates. Fowlkes said if he has to run against another candidate and that person wins, Fowlkes could become an alternate.

OTHER DELEGATES

Georgia will send 19 at-large delegates and 11 pledged PLEOs to Denver. The DPG State Committee chooses all of these.

The State Committee is one of two DPG operating committees. It has 296 congressional district members, 30 at-large members, and 25 ex-officio members representing all of Georgia’s 159 counties.

To be an at-large delegate, a person must declare his candidacy, choose a candidate, and fill out the proper paperwork by May 15, 2008. The State Committee elects the at-large delegates on May 24, 2008.

Obama will receive 13 statewide at-large and seven pledged PLEOs while Clinton will receive six at-large and four pledged PLEOs, according to the DPG.

Rounding out Georgia’s delegation are 12 standing committee delegates, all of whom are chosen by Georgia’s elected delegates, and three Convention pages, which are chosen by DPG Chairwoman Kidd.

Bad Boys, Nasty Boys: Out of the GOP’s Closet

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 03:26:00 +0000

Republican party politicos espouse an unflagging devotion to old-fashioned morality and family values, inveighing heavily against gay marriage, abortion, homosexuality, adultery, feminism, crime, stem-cell research, secularism, and liberalism—all of which they tend to lump together as different facets of the same evil decadence.

GOP leaders dilate on the need to “put God back into public life.” Many of them even claim to be directly guided by their deity’s mandate when legislating and governing. Their private deeds, however, frequently betray their words. Consider this incomplete sampling of politically prominent “social conservatives” who preach the conventional virtues to their constituents while practicing something else in their off-hours.

Recently-deceased Representative Henry Hyde, Illinois Republican, played a key role in the impeachment campaign waged against the adulterous president Bill Clinton. The several obituaries I read about Hyde failed to mention that he a six-year liaison with a young married mother of three children. The woman's former husband blamed Hyde for the divorce that followed from the affair, and for the emotional damage inflicted on his children. Hyde dismissed the affair as “a youthful indiscretion”---it having ended when he was just a callow youngster of 46 or so. In 1992, Hyde divorced his wife of 45 years. Soon after that, she died and he quickly remarried.

Representative Bob Livingston, Louisiana Republican, married with four children, resigned as House speaker-elect after his marital infidelities made the headlines in 1998.

Speaker of the House, Republican Newt Gingrich, led the charge against the philandering Clinton while himself carrying on an affair with a congressional aide. Gingrich hastened a divorce action against his (second) wife while she was hospitalized with cancer in order that he might marry the aide. At one point Gingrich’s ailing ex-wife and children had to get material assistance from their local church, having received insufficient sums from Gingrich himself. In 2007, he claimed to have come to grips with his “personal failures,” having sought God’s forgiveness.

Republican Baptist minister Bill Randall, who had been aggressively touted by the Republican party as a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in Florida, admitted that he had fathered an illegitimate child in the 1980s. After confirming the child's existence, he changed his story the next day during a press interview, suddenly insisting that his teenage son was the father. Sensing that no one would swallow that story, Randall again reversed course and admitted to paternity. He did everybody a favor by dropping out of the 1998 congressional race.

Bob Barr was a Georgia GOP congressman until 2003, after which he became a conservative activist. While still married to his first wife, he was romancing the woman who would become his second wife. Barr was on record as a staunch right-to-lifer, but this did not prevent him from driving wife #2 to a clinic and paying the costs for her abortion. He soon took on a new mistress who became wife #3 shortly after he dumped #2. While in Congress, Barr authored the “Defense of Marriage Act,” probably with good reason.

Three leading candidates for the Republican 2008 presidential nomination, Rudolph Giuliani, John McCain, and Newt Gingrich, had five divorces between them, all involving adultery. On the Democratic side, the three front runners, John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, had neither divorces nor infidelities. Yet it was the Republicans who laid claim to being keepers of traditional family values, while damning the liberals for their amorality and profligacy.

In 2007, Senator David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican and family-values man, made the news for having patronized a prostitution ring in Washington, D.C. for several years, and earlier having used the services of a New Orleans brothel over a five-month period. Vitter refused to resign, assuring everyone that “I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife.”

Along with the hypocritical philanderers, there are the subterranean gay blades. In 2007, Bob Allen, Florida Republican state legislator, married with one child, was arrested in a public restroom after offering to perform oral sex on an undercover officer for $20.

Another restroom adventurer was Senator Larry Craig, Republican of Idaho, an outspoken opponent of gays in the military and gay marriage. Craig was famously arrested for directing sexual advances toward an undercover police officer in a men’s toilet at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. The police had been monitoring the restroom because of complaints about sexual activities there. Craig pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct. A number of other men, including one from Craig’s college days, identified the senator as having engaged in sexual activity with them or having made overtures with that intent, including an encounter in the restrooms at Union Station in Washington, D.C.

A few weeks later another GOP politico who consistently voted against gay rights, Washington State representative Richard Curtis, was caught with his panties down. Dressed in women's lingerie he met a man in a local erotic video store, and went with him to a downtown hotel for a night of oral and anal copulation. Once the story broke, Curtis resigned from office. By now, word on the Internet was that GOP stood for “Gay Old Party” or “Greedy Old Perverts,” and that Richard Curtis had left public life “so he could spend more time masturbating with his family.”

There are the three classic cases of ultraconservative anti-gay gays who go back half a century: FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, McCarthyite investigator and Washington lobbyist Roy Cohn, and Cardinal Francis Spellman of the New York Roman Catholic archdiocese. All three of these prominent right-wingers and keepers of American homophobic vigilance were themselves secretly full-blown homosexuals who sometimes partied together in the company of choice male escorts---back in the days when the press dared not touch such stories.

In the above cases, what is deplorable is not only the obviously hypocritical inconsistency between professed beliefs and private behavior, but the professed beliefs themselves; beliefs that advocate discrimination against gays, brand prostitutes as criminals, equate abortion with murder, denounce divorce as a mortal threat to family and nation, and treat sex between unmarried consenting adults (even of the heterosexual variety) as sinful fornication.

Consequently, a noticeable number of conservative politicos face the daunting task of trying to submerge their lascivious desires in order to live up to their puritanical mouthings, trapped as they are in an unyielding cycle of surreptitious sin and furious public denunciations of those same sins.

In recent years, Republican ranks appeared to be riddled not only with sexual hypocrites but, far worse, sexual predators. There was the former Republican mayor of Waterbury, Connecticut, Philip Giordano who is now serving a 37-year sentence for sexual abuse in 2001 of two girls, ages 8 and 10.

Jim West, conservative Republican mayor of Spokane, Washington, backed a measure to prohibit gays and lesbians from teaching in public schools on the presumption that they might get too close to their pupils. Meanwhile he was using his city hall computer to troll for sex with high school boys. Two men accused West of molesting them when they were Boy Scouts and he was a troop leader. He was ousted in a recall election in 2005.

A GOP congressman from Florida, Mark Foley, was caught sending sexually explicit emails to teenaged boys who had served as congressional pages. He reportedly invited one page to engage in oral sex with him, an offer the boy refused. Foley chaired the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, which introduced stricter legislation for tracking sexual predators. Republican congressional leaders had received complaints about him from congressional pages---which they repeatedly failed to act upon. Foley resigned from Congress in 2006.

At that time, allegations of improper interactions with congressional pages were leveled at another Republican Congressman, Jim Kolbe of Arizona, who decided not to run for reelection.

In 2007, a Florida federal prosecutor working for the Bush administration, operating in “one of the most conservative United States attorney’s offices in the country,” dedicated to a hardline law-and-order approach, was charged with traveling across state lines to have sex with a five-year-old girl. J. D. Roy Atchison, had been chatting online with an undercover officer who posed as a mother offering to let men have sex with her young daughter. When arrested en route to his would-be rendezvous with a five-year-old, Atchison was carrying a doll and petroleum jelly. While detained in a federal prison in Michigan, he committed suicide.

In such instances, the most reprehensible thing is neither the hypocrisy nor the professed beliefs, but the behavior itself, involving the molestation and sexual assault of children and unwilling adolescents. The perpetrators are not merely hypocrites, they are criminals. In these cases, they really are sinners.

So the holy hypocrites—philanderers, homophobic gays, and pedophiles---crow their devotion to traditional morality while pursuing material and emotional plunder more rapaciously than any of us ordinary infidels and libertines. Looking at the above cases, and the many others that one could add if space and patience allowed, we can conclude that professions of religiosity are no guarantee of moral behavior. If anything, the hypocrites use religion as a bludgeon to be brandished against liberal opponents in order that they themselves might better pursue their aggrandizing goals and desires---no matter how selfish and destructive these may be. If this be morality, who needs degeneracy?

John McCain's Health Plan: Tax Hike and Insurance Boondoggle

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 03:09:00 +0000

2-26-08, 9:05 am

'How about a thousand years of affordable health care?,' asks Iraq war veteran Rose Forrest in a new TV ad produced by in response to presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain's recent statements suggesting he didn't care if US troops stayed in Iraq for that period of time.

McCain's critics argue that his support for out-of-control spending on an endless occupation of Iraq, about $10 billion per month and already surpassing $1 trillion, compares unfavorably to his role in the Senate in blocking a $5 billion expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) for the children of working families who cannot afford health insurance.

The VoteVets.org ad goes on to demand McCain commit to America's working families rather than Iraq, wondering whether or not McCain has 'already promised to spend trillions in Baghdad.' VoteVets.org is a veterans organization dedicated to electing Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to public office who advocate veterans issues and seek the the speedy end of the wars.

Veterans aren't the only ones questioning McCain's health care policies. In a recent post to its blog, the AFL-CIO also sharply criticized McCain's proposals on health care. Essentially, McCain wants to treat employer-sponsored health benefits as part of taxable income. That idea would likely impose a massive tax increase for working families totaling about $1 trillion over the four years of a McCain presidency, according to an estimate OMB.

The AFL-CIO post stated that McCain's proposal 'would make health care even more out of reach for most of us.' The plan would specifically harm union members who have won good health care benefits through collective bargaining.

'An employee whose health benefits are worth $15,000,' argued the AFL-CIO post, 'would have to pay taxes on an extra $15,000 in income.'

The McCain campaign insists that its proposed tax hike would be offset by tax credits given to individuals who purchase insurance. But a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation reveals that McCain's proposed tax credits would cover less than half of the average cost of a health insurance premium.

If passed, McCain's plan would create an incentive for employers to dump health care benefit plans and push workers into the private health insurance market on their own where most would find paying premiums impossible.

While Republican 'free market' ideology of profits over health are at the heart of McCain's proposals, recent reports of McCain's long-standing and deep ties to Washington lobbyists also explain his motives.

One of McCain's top campaign advisers is former Republican member of Congress Thomas Loeffler. Loeffler now runs the lobbying firm The Loeffler Group whose clients include the cash-rich and immensely powerful pharmaceutical lobbying group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). PhRMA donates millions to congressional campaigns and has spent tens of millions of dollars to block health care proposals that would make access more affordable.

Notably PhRMA spent about $22 million in 2007 successfully lobbying Congress and John McCain to block several health care reform proposals offered by Democrats, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

One bill, endorsed by senior groups like the labor-affiliated Alliance for Retired Americans, would have allowed the federal government to negotiate prices directly with pharmaceutical companies under the Medicare prescription drug benefit and legislation. The intention of this proposal was to make lower-cost drugs imported from Canada more widely available and expose domestically produced drugs to greater competition. The aim was to keep prescription drug prices from continuing their faster-than-inflation growth.

Republicans filibustered the proposal last April. John McCain failed to show up for the vote. In 2007, prescription drug prices grew by almost 8 percent, or close to twice the rate of inflation. Pharmaceutical corporations represented by PhRMA continue to make record-breaking profits of people's illnesses.

--Reach Joel Wendland at

¿La mayoría antirracista alcanza a su mayoridad?

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 09:15:00 +0000

2-25-08, 4:00 pm

A comienzos de julio de 2007 la Suprema Corte de la nación, en una acción atrevida, contravino a los fundamentos legales de Brown v. the Board of Education. En un fallo de cinco a cuatro, la mayoría republicana en la Corte rechazó planes para la desegregación racial de distritos escolares en Louisville, Kentucky y Seattle, Washington. El fallo fue visto como una senda victoria de la ultraderecha neoconservadora en sus esfuerzos por deshacer los avances logrados por derechos civiles en la década de los 1960. Comentó Sharon Brown, abogada encargada de la ultraderechista Fundación Legal del Pacífico al New York Times, “Estas son las decisiones más importantes sobre el uso de raza desde Brown v. Board of Education… Con estos fallos, se estima que unos mil distritos escolares por todo el país que mandan un mensaje equivocado a los niños sobre cuestiones de raza van a tener que dejar de hacerlo.”

Hace apenas un año, los votantes en Michigan y Nevada habían optado por prohibirles a las universidades estatales la utilización de raza como criterio para admisiones. Armado con el fallo de la Suprema Corte e impulsado por iniciativas electorales, esperaban los que se oponen a la igualdad dar la chispa a un nuevo movimiento social. En efecto, con las ondas radiales inundadas por el odio venenoso de personajes como Don Imus, Paris Hilton, Bruce Richards y más recientemente el geneticista James Watson, el racismo parecía estar conquistando nuevo terreno en la discusión pública y privada, eso sin ni siquiera hablar de la política oficial.

Aunque parezcan significantes, estos referendos y fallos judiciales ahora parecen haber sido nada más que los últimos suspiros de una ola republicana ya desgastada y moribunda. En esas mismas elecciones de medio término, los votantes, enfadados por la guerra en Irak, espantados por las amenazas de privatizar al Seguro Social y alarmados por la supresión del sufragio Afronorteamericanos en las elecciones presidenciales de 2004, dieron una paliza contundente al extremismo republicano. Al parecer, el electorado ya anda cansado de la siembra de miedo, de la división y del odio poco disfrazado, todo fomentado por una minoría ultraderechista mediocre e indigna. Demandaba el país un cambio de rumbo.

Queda evidente la profundad y amplitud de esta demanda en las precandidaturas de Barack Obama y Hillary Clinton, precandidatos demócratas favorecidos, una situación que en si mismo habla a gritos sobre cuánto han cambiado las cosas. Los patronos de votaciones en Iowa, New Hampshire y Nevada sugieren que ya viene un nuevo amanecer en términos de conciencia y actitudes públicas. Vale la pena considerarse muy detenidamente el hecho de que un cambio así de pensamiento de masas pudiera haber ocurrido luego de casi dos décadas de domino republicano. No solo había un asalto ideológico junto con una campaña política para minar a los logros del período del movimiento por los derechos civiles y del Nuevo Trato (del presidente Franklin Delano Roosevelt, en los años 1930), pero también el impacto económico y social de la política de la administración Bush, una política racista de filo agudo. Además, sirviendo como fuente e inspiración tanto a la política como a la campaña, hay un sistema de racismo institucionalizado, sistema incrustado dentro de la estructura misma del capitalismo monopolístico actual.

Por eso, en esta primera década del siglo XXI, se enfrenta el pueblo afronorteamericano a una realidad compleja y contradictoria. Luchan indicios de claro progreso con una herencia duradera de segregación racial y de trato desigual; una y otra vez se enfrenta la esperanza con la desesperación. El pago desigual, educación y vivienda de pésima calidad, prácticas racistas de ocupación laboral, discriminación bancaria y un sistema discriminatoria de justicia criminal, todos se combinan para levantar obstáculos sistémicos enormes en contra de la verdadera igualdad.

La realidad es que todavía existen estos retos, y hasta han crecido y empeorado en ciertos aspectos. Un estudio llevado acabo por el Centro por el Progreso Norteamericano hace subrayar a varios obstáculos sistémicos que surgen de la economía del racismo. Por ejemplo, han caído los ingresos medianos durante el período reciente. “Cayeron los ingresos medianos de Afronorteamericanos,” escriben ellos, “en un promedio de 1,6 por ciento anualmente bajo la administración actual. En 2006, los ingresos medianos de Afronorteamericanos fueron de $32.132 [anuales], figura que es, en realidad, $2.603 menos que sus ingresos medianos de $34.735 (en dólares de 2006) en 2000”. Esto resulta sustancialmente menos de lo que ganan los blancos: “En 2006 sus ingresos medianos eran de $32.132, comparados a $52.432 para los blancos”.

Hay que tomar precauciones cuando se analizan datos sobre ingresos promedios, ya que pueden variar mucho las ganancias respectivas de los grupos. Para calcular los ingresos medianos se consideran las ganancias de todas las clases de una populación dada. Los ingresos de los blancos, ya que incluyen capitales de la clase dominante, son mucho más altos que los de Afronorteamericanos, que tienen una élite proporcionalmente mucho menor y menos adinerada. Una comparación mucho más útil sería la de blancos de clase trabajadora con Afronorteamericanos.

También subieron las tazas de desempleo durante los años de Bush: “Subió la taza de desempleo de Afronorteamericanos por un promedio de 0.2 por ciento cada año bajo la administración actual, después de haber disminuido en los años 1990,” alega el estudio. “En 2007, la taza de desempleo de Afroamericanos fue una figura preocupante de 8,3 por ciento, mientras que para los Norteamericanos blancos oscilaba esta figura alrededor del 4.1 por ciento”.

No resulta sorprendente el avance la pobreza durante ese mismo período:

Sufren más Afronorteamericanos de la pobreza bajo Bush. Estaban en la pobreza más Afronorteamericanos en 2006 que en 2000, luego de habernos visto un gran mejoramiento en los 1990. En 2006, un 24,2 por ciento de Afronorteamericanos se encontraban en la pobreza. Comparen esto a 2000, cuando un 22,5 por ciento estaban de bajo de la línea de pobreza… La pobreza entre los Afronorteamericanos había disminuido sustancialmente entre 1992 y 2000, cayendo del 33,4 por ciento al 22,5 por ciento.

Una vez más hay que tener cuidado al revisarse las estadísticas de la pobreza, especialmente la caída de nueve por ciento durante la subida del ciclo económico durante los años 1990, mucha de la cual fue debida a las madres solteras que se trasladaban de welfare a trabajos de servicio mal pagados, levantándolas por encima de la línea de pobreza, pero muy apenas. Muchas de ellas viven en la precariedad y solo viven a un solo cheque de pago del precipicio.

Además, estas madres solteras negras y latinas ya perdieron muchos de sus avances en la recesión de 2001. Según un estudio llevado acabo hace dos años, también hay que tomarse en cuenta el hecho de que la eliminación de welfare (asistencia pública) y otros programas de ayuda social como cupones para alimentos han afectado a los ingresos de la gente, cancelando casi por completo cualquier avance logrado en el sector de empleos. Este aumento en el número de empleos rebajó la taza de pobreza por unos 3,3 puntos a fines de los 1990, pero la pérdida de beneficios de asistencia social añadió de vuelta unos 1,6 puntos a esta figura.

También sufrió el acceso al cuidado de salud bajo el dominio ultraderechista, en la opinión del Centro por el Progreso Norteamericano. “Bajo Bush, el porcentaje de Afronorteamericanos sin seguro médico creció del 18,5 por ciento al 20,5 por ciento. En 2006, unos 7,9 millones de Afronorteamericanos no estaban cubiertos por un seguro médico”. El estudio subraya una vez más que durante los 1990 había un aumento ligero en la cifra de personas aseguradas, un aumento ya disuelto como resultado de la recesión de 2001 y las pérdidas de empleo y salarios después.

Por muchas medidas, entonces, se ha empeorado la suerte de los Afronorteamericanos en los últimos años. Sin embargo, el retrato resulta mucho más complicado y peligroso que lo ya descrito. Toma las cifras de Afronorteamericanos en pobreza que citamos arriba, que sugieren que la cuarta parte de ellos vive bajo esas condiciones. En realidad esa cifra está más cercana a la mitad cuando se incluyen a los que viven cerca de la línea de pobreza. En un reporte preparado por el Comité de Económica del PCEU, escribe Art Perlo que:

Casi la mitad de la población Afronorteamericana subsiste en pobreza o casi en pobreza; sin ingresos mínimos adecuados. Más de uno de cada nueve existe en pobreza aguda, literalmente al borde de la muerte. La cuarta parte de todos los pobres son Afronorteamericanos. Se ha aumentado la pobreza por unos 5,3 millones de personas desde 2000 hasta 2005; 1,2 millones de ellos (un 22 por ciento de ellos) Afronorteamericanos.

Debe entenderse que para Latinos estas cifras son similares.

Estas cifras forman en si mismas una denuncia fulminante al capitalismo, ya que aun que hayan habido oscilaciones ligeras, se han quedado casi estancadas durante 25 años. Las estadísticas no tienen cara, pero los de abajo son en gran parte personas de edad mayor, niños, madres solteras y trabajadores mal pagados. Subsisten estos casi sin cuidado médico ni acceso a una vivienda digna. Con bajos niveles de capacitación laboral, muchos se encuentran sin trabajo y sin esperanzas de conseguir ningún trabajo permanente. Es un malgasto tremendo de talentos y potencialidades humanos, un malgasto que se perpetua de generación en generación sin esperanza evidente de salida. Los programas para combatir a la pobreza no les han ayudado. Los programas de acción afirmativa, aunque sean importantes, se les escapan, y el red de seguridad social que una vez les hubiera protegido ha sido despedazado en el nombre del “amor duro” y de salvarse quien pueda.

Como se indica arriba, la taza afronorteamericana de desempleo anda por el 8 por ciento. Sin embargo, varían las cifras por regiones y ciudades. Indica Perlo que “en 2003, tuvo empleo solo el 50 de Afronorteamericanos en la ciudad de Nueva York”. Otro factor es edad; los jóvenes sufren de cifras más elevadas. “En 2004, menos del 39 por ciento de los jóvenes Afronorteamericanos (de 16 a 24 años) tuvieron trabajo (en contraste, el 59 de blancos y el 60 por ciento de Hispanos si lo tuvieron)”.

El estudio del Comité de Económica subraya que son mucho más altas las cifras reales de desempleo, ya que no se les cuentan a los que han sido marginalizados del mercado de trabajo. Estima Perlo que la taza verdadera de desempleo está alrededor del 17 por ciento. El análisis del Comité también apunta a la falta de trabajo estable, sobre todo entre los hombres afronorteamericanos. “Ya para 2002, uno de cada cuatro hombres afronorteamericanos estaba sin trabajo durante todo el año”. Las cifras para mujeres jóvenes son del 20 al 25 por ciento.

Una fuente principal de la desigualdad afronorteamericana es la de la discriminación salarial racista. “Las ganancias de los hombres negros alcanzan al 70 por ciento de las de los blancos ($17.000 menos); para las mujeres es del 83 por ciento (o, $6.000 menos). Esta diferencia salarial forma la base de una división social racista de trabajo que constituye el fundamento de la desigualdad moderna. Lo que se le roba al trabajador afronorteamericano es fuente de ganancias extra, o de súper-ganancias, fuente de capitales que alcanza a los miles de millones de dólares. Se debe a muchas causas, incluyendo a la falta de sindicatos laborales o la falta de educación, las disparidades regionales en salarios, y las diferencias ocupacionales y por edad. Así es que los salarios son los más iguales en donde existen sindicatos y en donde rigen los estándares federales de salarios. Donde no hay, “último ocupado, primero disparado,” es la práctica más común. Se estima que uno de cada tres Afronorteamericanos que tiene trabajo está empleado en el sector público. No cabe duda que este es un factor principal contribuyente a cualquier avance económico y en la estabilidad que se ha logrado. La industria que emplea al mayor número de hombres Afronorteamericanos es la de camiones de carga.

Experimenten los Afronorteamericanos formas de discriminación tanto abiertas como sistémicas. En 1999 habían más de 2 millones de incidentes de discriminación abierta contra minorías y mujeres, según el estudio de Perlo. Las razones sistémicas atribuidas por el estudio incluyen la falta de redes personales de amistades y contactos, lugares de trabajo alejados de los centros urbanos, la globalización, la pérdida de trabajos sindicalizados, antecedentes penales (factor que afecta a uno de cada cuatro hombres afronorteamericanos) y factores educacionales.

Otra forma más de discriminación sistémica es lo que el Comité de Economía califica como la imposición de un “impuesto de barrio,” el cinco a diez por ciento extra que pagan las comunidades negras y latinas para bienes y servicios, incluyendo alimentos, préstamos, renta y seguros. Un ejemplo evidente de este “impuesto” es la compra de autos y casas:

Los automovilistas afronorteamericanos con idénticos vehículos e iguales antecedentes pagan más para el seguro y los impuestos de su coche; entre $400 y $1,000 más por año en algunos estados.

Las familias de escasos recursos pagan un promedio de dos puntos más para los préstamos del auto. Eso puede muy fácilmente añadir $35 a los pagos mensuales. Pagan estos un punto de porcentaje más para la hipoteca de la casa, ajuntando por lo menos otros $100 por mes al abono de la casa.

A los Afronorteamericanos que compran autos (y, presumiblemente, hipotecas, casas y otras compras mayores) se les ofrecen precios más altos o productos inferiores.

Otra medida importante del estado de igualdad es la de ser dueño de su propia casa. El Centro por el Progreso Norteamericano enfatizó a las pérdidas relativas experimentadas durante los años recientes debido a la avaricia de la clase dominante y al descuido gubernamental bajo Bush:

El crecimiento del porcentaje de Afronorteamericanos que son dueños de sus propias casas ha sido más lento bajo Bush que en los 1990. Creció el porcentaje de propietarios de casas entre los blancos tres veces más rápidamente que ese mismo porcentaje entre Afronorteamericanos entre 2000 y 2006. Esta tendencia se debe a que los Afronorteamericanos han visto hasta un declive en su porcentaje desde 2004. Compara esto a los 1990, cuando el porcentaje de Afroamericanos con casa propia iba creciendo al ritmo anual de 0,8 por ciento desde 1994 hasta 2000.

Hasta con cierto crecimiento, resultó este porcentaje mucho menos para los Afronorteamericanos, que no nos sorprende dados los patronos de racismo económicos arriba mencionados. Declara Perlo, “Los porcentajes de casas propias para 2003 eran 48 para Afronorteamericanos, en contraste al 75 por ciento para los blancos. El valor mediano pagado de las casas fue de $64.000 para los dueños blancos, y $35.000 para los dueños blancos. Entre familias con reportes de crédito similares, los Afronorteamericanos e Hispanos tienen un 30 por ciento más probabilidad que los blancos a ser cobrados la taza máxima de intereses en las hipotecas de alto riesgo”.

Queda bien claro que la crisis hipotecaria les va a golpear más duramente a las minorías que a los demás. En una conferencia celebrada en Nueva York por el Instituto de Política Fiscal, documentó James Parrot cómo es que los nuevos compradores afronorteamericanos y latinos de casas en Nueva York fueron empujados a sacar estos préstamos aun cuando hubieron podido pagar los préstamos normales. Ya solamente un 25 por ciento de las hipotecas de alto riesgo no enfrentan a la ejecución hipotecaria. Se espera que llegará la taza de ejecución hipotecaria al 40 por ciento en el curso de este año. Entonces, queda evidente el racismo institucionalizado en la estructura misma de la economía: trabajos, patronos de vivienda, desempleo, el “impuesto de barrio,” entre muchos otros factores. Cualquier nuevo movimiento pro derechos civiles con ganas de luchar contra la discriminación que sigue manifestándose hoy en día tendría que dirigirse a reformas radicales que puedan desarraigar a los fundamentos estructurales bien establecidos de la práctica racista.

La demanda del pago de reparaciones (por daños infligidos y el valor del trabajo robado al pueblo afronorteamericano durante la época de esclavitud y después) fue la forma popular que cobró esta demanda, en especial a fines del siglo XX y comienzos del siglo XXI, y recibió una amplia audiencia hasta la tragedia del 11 de septiembre, cuando quedó marginada por la “guerra contra el terror” de Bush. Aunque nunca recibió gran apoyo fuera de la comunidad afronorteamericana, la atención que recibió esta propuesta por parte los medios masivos de información indica a una creciente conciencia de que tenemos que dirigirnos a los aspectos económicos del racismo. Una cuestión central es si esta acción de desagravio tomaría una forma de clase trabajadora o una forma pequeño-burguesa.

Quizás estaban fascinados algunos sectores de la élite dominante con la idea de resolver para siempre con un pago en efectivo al debate histórico sobre el trabajo no pagado y mal pagado de la esclavitud y después. Sin embargo, cobraba más resonancia el concepto de una concesión social que iniciaría un desembolso masivo de capitales para becas, vivienda, cuidado de salud, escuelas e infraestructura, medidas especiales que proporcionarían el fundamento de una verdadera igualdad. Esto, junto con una eliminación de la discriminación salarial y medidas de pleno empleo para la mitad más pobre de la comunidad afronorteamericana hará mucho por redimir a las promesas violadas del pasado. Desgraciadamente, es poco probable que semejantes medidas serán consideradas por si solas aparte de los más amplios movimientos por la paz y la justicia.

Sería más factible dirigirnos a estas medidas especiales dentro del contexto de una lucha más amplia de otras minorías, trabajadores y mujeres contra los grandes monopolios y contra los aprovechados de la crisis económica que se aproxima. Estas demandas han de ser centrales en esa lucha. ¿Estas reformas son posibles? ¿Hay bases para construir a ese movimiento? La evidencia de los ciclos electorales más recientes junto con los cambios en el sentimiento público todos nos sugieren que la respuesta es que “Si”.

En realidad, las encuestas de opinión pública en años recientes indican a un proceso constante de abandono a las actitudes abiertamente racistas. Ya en 1954 en el momento de Brown v. Board una mayoría de norteamericanos apoyaba a la decisión del tribunal de acabar para siempre con la segregación “de jure”. Como escribió Jeffrey Rosen en el New York Times, reflejando sobre el significado del voto sobre la acción afirmativa en Michigan, “Cuando fue decidido Brown, el resultado recibió el apoyo de un 54 por ciento del país”.

Las actitudes hoy en día tocantes a la acción afirmativa revelan una respuesta mixta similar; sin embargo hay un movimiento lento pero constante hacia una conciencia no racista y antirracista. Está tendencia está presente en varias cuestiones, como son los matrimonios, la acción afirmativa, los esfuerzos por la integración racial y opiniones sobre la cuestión misma de las razas. Como ejemplo, en una encuesta USA Today / Gallup realizado en agosto y septiembre de 2007 apoyaban los respondientes a matrimonios entre blancos y Afronorteamericanos por un 79 por ciento al 15 por ciento. En 1983 solamente un 43 por ciento los apoyaba, y un 50 por ciento contestó a la negativa. En 1968, el año del asesinato del Dr. Martin Luther King, un 20 por ciento apoyaba al derecho de casarse, pero un 73 por ciento no. En 1958, cuatro años después de haberse declarado anticonstitucional la segregación racial, un 97 por ciento estaba en contra de los matrimonios “mixtos.”

A pesar de estas tendencias, hay muy amplio apoyo al fallo emitido en julio por la Suprema Corte, con un 73 por ciento de acuerdo de que “no debe considerarse la raza de un individuo en las admisiones a escuelas”. Sin embargo, no hay duda que la fraseología de la cuestión sobre el caso de la Universidad Qunnipiac tuvo mucho que ver con el resultado. Así es que, cuando la encuesta ABCNews/Washington Post preguntaba más específicamente “La Suprema Corte restringió recientemente a la utilización de raza por parte de distritos escolares locales para asignarles a estudiantes a las escuelas. Algunos argumentan que este es un retraso significativo a los esfuerzos por la diversificación a las escuelas públicas; otros dicen que no debe que utilizarse raza en las asignaciones escolares. En balance, ¿apruebas o desapruebas a esta decisión?” Un 56 por ciento desaprobó al voto del tribunal, con un 40 por ciento en apoyo al mismo.

Cuando fue realizado una encuesta Newsweek más o menos en ese mismo momento, se les preguntaba a blancos “¿Apruebas o desapruebas al fallo de la Suprema Corte que limita al uso de raza para planes de integración racial escolar?” Un 35 por ciento lo aprobó contra un 29 por ciento a la negativa. Cuando fueron incluidos todos los que respondieron a la encuesta, un 36 por ciento no estaba de acuerdo con la Suprema Corte, con un 32 por ciento de acuerdo. Se pueden encontrar resultados similares sobre las actitudes hacia la insensibilidad racial, en donde más de la mitad toman ofensa a los comentarios racistas que oyen, y más o menos la tercera parte no.

Medio siglo de lucha no fue sin resultados. Ya ha ganado bastante terreno el concepto de que todos compartimos una sola humanidad común. Está bien claro que los movimientos pro derechos civiles, las luchas por los días de fiesta de King y de Cesar Chávez, juntos con la desegregación y esfuerzos por la acción afirmativa han influenciado de manera positiva a la conciencia de las masas sobre cuestiones de raza. Hay que verse esto como una gran victoria ideológica. Aunque abunden los perjuicios y prácticas racistas, se opone una mayoría al racismo como ellos lo entienden. Tomado junto queda evidente que fue certero el análisis del Partido Comunista a fines de los 1980 de que se estaba formando a una mayoría antirracista.

El concepto de una mayoría antirracista cuando fue ofrecido por primera vez fue disputado airadamente, y fue denunciado por opositores como propuesta demasiado optimista y peligrosa con potenciales de desarmarle al movimiento progresista, una reacción bien comprensible en vista de las contrarrevoluciones de Reagan y Gingrich de aquella época. En un momento cuando todavía apestaban las fallas Baake, Weber y demás asaltos contra la acción afirmativa, junto con campañas políticas estilo “Willie Horton” y los inicios de un ataque contra welfare y otros programas de ayuda social, resultó difícil de creer el concepto de que iba disminuyéndose la base masiva de la ideología racista en vez de estar creciendo. Factor adicional en el pensamiento de izquierda de ese momento fue la influencia de la tesis de la “aristocracia trabajadora,” el concepto de que gozaban los trabajadores masculinos blancos de un estatus de privilegio con relación a los demás sectores de la clase trabajadora, un privilegio basado sobre los beneficios materiales del racismo.

Quizás los teóricos actuales del “privilegio blanco” son descendientes ideológicos de los que abogaban por la “aristocracia trabajadora” en los años 1960 y 1970. Sea verdad o no, las manos nudosos de trabajadores blancos que votaron por Barack Obama en Iowa, New Hampshire y Nevada llaman a unir a los intereses democráticos y de clase por la esperanza de un futuro común. Hay que decir que los votantes afronorteamericanos han hecho esas llamadas con su mayoría contundente en elecciones tras elecciones. Queda seguro que esta nueva reciprocidad será notada y escuchada.

Surgen de las grandes luchas de hoy una nueva esperanza y nuevas formas de unidad. Hace falta esto y más para derrotar a la derecha republicana en noviembre, un logro del cual depende el progreso de la lucha por la igualdad afronorteamericana. Hay que transformar a los sentimientos antirracistas a la acción antirracista. Al centro de esa acción tienen que estar las reformas a profundidad para eliminar a la desigualdad económica racial. El capitalismo se ha mostrado incapaz para la tarea. Es más, es el capitalismo mismo que fomenta y luego se aprovecha de tal desigualdad.

Pero esto solo presta más urgencia a la tarea de hacer demandas agudas a que se dirija la atención a la economía del racismo exigiendo una implementación inmediata de reformas radicales. Lo explicó El Dr. King hace casi medio siglo, por qué no podemos esperar. Las luchas de hoy por la plena igualdad económica y política ahora producirán las soluciones de mañana.

Harold Washington: The People’s Mayor

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 09:06:00 +0000

The 1980s opened with a huge transformation in American political and social life unseen since the Great Depression. With the election of Reagan there began a shift in ideology and politics to the right and an economic restructuring unparalleled since Franklin Roosevelt. The New Deal was decimated. Reagan and his successors shifted national resources to military spending and war, weakened federal oversight of consumer goods and worker protections, eliminated and stripped education, housing, health care, affirmative action and welfare programs. In the name of the “free market,” they promoted “free trade” and the abandonment of communities by big business seeking cheap labor and super profits. They nearly succeeded in strangling the Great Society, and the biggest target of this project was the nationally and racially oppressed, especially those living in urban areas.

But in this wave of Reagan reaction and corporate greed, there stood an island of hope, a city with a new idea for fighting back. At the helm of that city was a people’s mayor named Harold Washington, the first African American mayor of Chicago. African American mayors such as Carl Stokes (Cleveland), Richard G. Hatcher (Gary), Tom Bradley (Los Angeles), Kenneth Gibson (Newark), Ernest Morial (New Orleans), and Coleman Young (Detroit) probably paved the way for him and the style of coalition politics he adopted. In Chicago in the run-up to the 1983 election, the coalition Washington helped bring together included the labor movement infuriated over the loss of jobs and plant closings, reformers tired of corrupt and racially divisive machine politics, and growing African American and Latino communities struggling for civil rights and a voice in city government. One former 7th ward coordinator for Washington’s 1987 campaign said, “I loved the Washington days; it was magical.”

Background

Harold Washington was born at Cook County Hospital in 1922 and grew up in modestly comfortable surroundings. In high school, his schoolmates recalled, he was an avid reader, a gifted student, friendly and popular, enjoyed music and dancing, and excelled at baseball, track and boxing. In the late 1930s, he dropped out of high school to join the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal public works program established to create jobs. After several months, Harold returned to Chicago and worked odd jobs, including a brief stint in Chicago’s stockyards. In 1942, Washington was drafted into the Army and assigned to an engineering battalion, where he rose in the ranks and participated in the Pacific theater of World War II.

Discharged from military service in 1946, Washington returned to Chicago, took a clerical position in the Treasury Department, and, having finished his high school diploma in the Army, began at Roosevelt College. He became an elected leader in student organizations, and by the early 1950s had helped turn the Young Democrats into an important political force in Chicago’s 3rd ward. Meanwhile, Washington had finished his law degree and took several low-level political appointments.

Throughout this early period of his political life, Washington worked hard to breakdown racial barriers for young African American political hopefuls in the city government using coalition politics, shrewd political maneuvering, and mobilizing new participants in the process. Mostly, however, Washington confronted hostility in Chicago’s Democratic machine toward any challenge to the “way things are done.”

In 1964, Washington won election to the Illinois state house of representatives where he served until 1976. Washington’s major legislative accomplishments included ethics reform and the passage of an historic bill he authored to make Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a legal holiday. Elected to the state senate in 1976, he turned in 1977, following the death of Mayor Richard J. Daley, to a failed attempt to win the Democratic nomination for Chicago mayor. In 1981, Washington won election to the US House of Representatives from Chicago’s predominantly African American 1st district.

Along the way, Washington was an advocate for the labor movement, the peace movement, and a variety of people’s causes. Long-time Chicago peace and labor activist Beatrice Lumpkin, recalled a rainy afternoon in the early 1970s at which a few hundred Chicago residents gathered at a rally sponsored by the Chicago Peace Council to protest the war in Vietnam. Lumpkin recalled, “Harold spoke strongly against the war. He was one of the more progressive legislators. I was very impressed that he spoke in the rain and grateful to him for coming and giving our rally greater impact.”

“Save Our Jobs”

Washington’s relationship to the labor movement went back a long way. When plant closings in northern Illinois, Indiana, and southern Wisconsin pounded the Chicago region economically in the late 1970s and early 1980s with no relief in sight, Washington could be counted on to be part of the struggle to save jobs and provide relief. According to one source, Chicago alone lost 300,000 between 1970 and 1983, over 120,000 of which disappeared between 1979 and 1983. Among the hardest hit workers were those in the manufacturing sector, especially steel.

The 1980 closure of Wisconsin Steel located in Chicago’s east side was the final straw for many disaffected workers. After years of racism and sexism in the plant, after struggling with a union (Progressive Steel Workers Union – PWSU) that was less an advocate for the workers than a company mouthpiece, the workers were shocked when the corporate owners of Wisconsin Steel shut down the plant without warning or any kind of relief benefits.

Retired African American steel workers Frank Lumpkin, who had also campaigned for Harold Washington in his earlier state and federal campaigns, along with other laid off workers and angry retirees, formed the “Save our Jobs” committee. The organized public protests, demanding relief for workers in the form of the benefits that Harvester, the billion dollar operation that owned Wisconsin Steel, refused to pay after the mill closed. and the organization of resources to keep the mills opened. The committee circulated a petition, gathering some 4,000 steelworkers’ signatures, and delivered it to the Illinois state legislature and to members of Congress, including Rep. Harold Washington.

Meanwhile, the PWSU did little or nothing for the workers. An NLRB investigation of the PWSU found that its lawyer, “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak, Washington’s future nemesis within the Democratic machine in Chicago, had accepted campaign contributions for alderman from both Harvester and from the PWSU. But Vrdolyak’s power in the machine was so strong, many Wisconsin Steel workers refused to challenge him directly.

By the middle of 1981, the struggle to re-open Wisconsin Steel, win back benefits and to re-gain lost jobs, shifted as Ronald Reagan took power. It seemed clear that Reagan would simply defund the federal Economic Development Administration, which held the Wisconsin Steel plant, and force its closure.

From the floor of the House, Rep. Harold Washington stated: It bothers me deeply that in a crisis situation of high unemployment this administration seems to be turning its back upon that major problem and going out on flights of fancy, talking about supply side economics.

In the end, the struggle was partially victorious, retirees were paid partial benefits, but the plant never re-opened. According to Beatrice Lumpkin in Always Bring a Crowd, the biography of Frank Lumpkin, Washington won the support of Chicago’s steelworkers with his strong support for their struggle. Washington’s determination to speak up on this issue enabled him to win labor’s endorsement in the campaign for mayor even as the party machine set up obstacles to that labor endorsement

Politics of a New Type

Having been soundly defeated in the 1977 mayoral primaries, Washington made his 1983 candidacy for mayor contingent on the success of registering 100,000 new Black voters and raising a certain amount of funds before an official campaign would be put together. But he refused to confine his appeal to African Americans. In the summer before the 1983 primary, he said, “As a practical politician, I would seek to build a coalition of Black and white campaign workers throughout the city. The issue would not be anti-race, but anti-greed and anti-corruption.” After the 1983 victory, Washington stated: In our ethnic and racial diversity, we are all brothers and sisters in a quest for greatness. Our creativity and energy are unequalled by any city anywhere in the world. We will not rest until the renewal of our city is done. ...[W]e are going to do some great deeds here together.

Washington felt that white voters who initially resisted his candidacy could be won over if a dominant theme of his campaign and his administration of the city was to eliminate corrupt forces that also hurt the city’s white residents as much as its people of color.

Chicago journalist Ron Dorfman, who edited the recently published photographic essay of Washington’s career, Harold!: Photographs from the Harold Washington Years, said in an interview with Political Affairs that Washington was particularly skilled at bringing diverse groups together. In the African American community, Dorfman said, “Harold brought together different factions in the Black community together.” Uniting labor progressives, nationalists, and traditional civil rights people in the African American community, Dorfman suggested, was a key element of Washington’s candidacy, and “there really wasn’t anybody else who could pull that part of the coalition together.”

Within three months or so, organizations like Operation PUSH, welfare rights organizations, African American churches, and labor unions helped register over 200,000 new African American voters in the city. Public figures like Stevie Wonder, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr., African American elected officials state representatives Carol Mosley Braun and Danny Davis, and US Rep. Gus Savage appeared at many public events to promote the voter registration drive. The success of the drive hinged partially on community reaction to ongoing Democratic machine refusals to address the demands of the people, to marginalize African American communities, and to perpetuate patronage politics.

African American educator and activist and Chicago resident Dee Myles, now a member of the editorial board of this magazine, said, initially there was concern about whether or not Washington’s candidacy would take hold in the African American community. But when it did, “the support for Washington in the African American community grew quickly. Literally you could feel it, you could cut it with a knife it was so thick.” Myles, who worked in the 1983 campaign as a precinct worker and in the 1987 campaign as a ward coordinator in the independent political committee in the 7th ward, described the campaign of 1983 as a real people’s movement. She remembered people riding on the bus to work in south Chicago wearing their blue Washington for Chicago buttons. After his election, a city ban on public musicians was lifted, and there just seemed to be more music in the city, Myles said. “It was really a period of engagement that was quite astonishing.”

Washington knew he couldn’t rely on the Democratic Party to either win mayoral elections or to govern with his reform program. “It was understood that if stability was going to be produced, and progress and building support was going to be maintained from election to election, an independent operation was needed so that he wouldn’t have to depend on the regular Democratic Party machine,” said Myles. Even in the ward’s where Democratic alderman supported him, Washington needed an independent movement to help secure that support and ensure those alderman also did not have to rely on the machine for reelections, Myles said. She explained the differences within the Democratic Party in Chicago thusly: “In Chicago at a certain point, the line of demarcation between the regular Democrats and the independent Democrats seemed to be as great as between the Democrats and the Republicans.”

Indeed, after his victory in the 1983 primary, the Democratic machine appeared to be aloof to his candidacy and even proposed running Mayor Jane Byrne, whom Washington had defeated in the primary, as a write-in candidate, according to Washington biographer Dempsey J. Travis in his book Harold: The People’s Mayor. Other leading figures in the Democratic Party machine even hinted at endorsing the Republican candidate who immediately launched an openly racist campaign against Washington. After his election, Democrats in the city council who had opposed his candidacy and his ethics reform program, fought him every step of the way. Miles recalled one steelworker friend of her saying he’d tune the television every night to the “Council Wars” between Washington’s supporters and opponents on the city council to “find out what they’re doing to Harold tonight.”

Washington appealed to independent voters from a large cross-section of the city’s electorate: a broad coalition of Democrats, independent-minded Democrats, others on the left, and still others who held no specific ideological viewpoint but were alienated form the process by corruption in or the ineffectiveness of city government. To succeed at this unorthodox approach to politics, Washington encouraged the formation of independent political organizations to boost his campaign and to promote his program.

Coalitions

One of the most important elements of the Washington campaign was the drive for interracial, inter-ethnic unity. Washington found in racial diversity a source of strength. In his first inaugural speech, he said: “We are a multiethnic, multiracial, multilanguage city and that is a source of stability and strength.” While all observers of those events seem to agree that the unique unity of Latino and African American voters helped send Washington to City Hall, it is also true that a growing number of whites who came to see his program and accomplishments as beneficial to all Chicagoans. According to former Chicago Alderman and Washington supporter Dick Simpson, though Washington never received more than 20 percent of the white vote, it was clear that had he lived, Washington’s share of that vote would have grown.

Washington’s Republican opponents, and even some within the Democratic machine, successfully promoted fears among white city residents that handing power to an African American would cause the city to fall apart or promote “retribution against whites,” Simpson noted. Washington “did diffuse that sentiment. There was no longer fear of African Americans in positions of power by the time his regime ended,” Simpson recalled. “He was successful in diffusing that racial animosity, but not successful enough by 1987 to win over a majority of white ethnic voters.” Still, the trend favored an anti-racist majority in the city.

Here again, the labor movement played a key role. The Coalition of Black Trade Unionists pressed the Chicago Federation of Labor to endorse Washington during the general election battle.

Latino community leader and garment workers union organizer Rudy Lozano was among several organizers within the growing Latino community who helped forge support among Latinos and put together a strong base of support both for Washington’s candidacy and in the battle to win Washington’s reform platform in the city council. Lozano, who had also been a key figure in the “Save Our Jobs” campaign, was based in the 22nd ward and led the formation of that ward’s independent political organization. In 1984, despite the fact that African Americans and Latinos comprised 55 percent of the votes in the city’s 49 wards, only 15 Blacks and one Latino sat as alderman on the city council. The main cause of this was that gerrymandering of aldermanic wards had weakened the voting power of the Black and Latino majority.

A battle over redistricting had begun. Machine politicians fought redistricting in order to block Washington’s reform platform. They had succeeded in the past of forcing Mayor Jane Byrne, who had also run as a reform candidate, to back off ethics reform by keeping control of the city council and brow-beating her into submission. But Washington and his supporters, armed with the independent political forces and a broad multiracial coalition as the tool for winning popular support, took their stand.

The organization that Lozano and his allies put together in the 22nd ward was an unrivaled model of grassroots organizing. Get-out-the-vote campaigns mobilized huge sections of the population who had not participated before behind Washington’s reform program. Some people close to Lozano also suspect that his assassination in June 1983 was directly linked to his efforts on Washington’s behalf. Other key wards with large or predominant Latino populations mobilized independent political committees also, turning out large votes for city council members who would back Washington’s program. These victories occurred despite the Democratic machine’s use of the city attorney’s office to persecute Latino election workers and to set the US Immigration and Naturalization Service loose in Latino wards as an intimidation tactic.

Washington’s Legacy

April 2008 will mark the 25th anniversary of Washington’s inauguration as mayor of Chicago. In honor of the anniversary, the Harold Washington Commemorative Year was established to celebrate his life and work by holding dozens of public events around the city, church services, music programs, and university symposia as well as the publication of the book Harold!: Photographs of the Washington Years. The Commemorative Year is headed by numerous prominent Chicago elected officials as well as many of the people who actually fought by Washington’s side all those years ago.

Some of Washington’s accomplishments are tangible and remain part of the political life of Chicago to this day. With the people behind him, organized and willing to fight, Washington won many of the battles in the city council. According to Dorfman, the ethics reform program Washington instituted at city hall was his biggest success and is still in many ways a feature of Chicago politics despite the fact that prominent machine figures have returned to power. Washington created freedom of information rules in city government that opened political activities up to public scrutiny. Transparency in government, in a city previously rife with machine politics and patronage, was a crucial victory. Dorfman said, “Much of his program was in fact enacted and is still in place, and was carried on by Mayor Sawyer after Washington died and is still being carried on by Daley.”

Washington’s affirmative action policies were another key change he brought to city government. “He opened city hall to not only African Americans but also Latinos, women, gays, Asians – everybody that had been locked out,” said Simpson. Leadership and management positions in the city government included more women and people of color. “It is now just a part of the city fabric,” said Dorfman. “Absent Harold, it wouldn’t have happened. Harold did it and it stuck.”

Another unquantifiable part of Washington’s legacy is his enduring influence on national politics. Just about everyone interviewed for this story eventually came around to talking about another emerging Chicagoan – Barack Obama. Perhaps it is no accident that he too talks in broad, hopeful terms about change, reform, and empowering the people to reclaim democracy. Indeed, is it mere chance that Obama’s main campaign image is a rising sun over a flag and the words “Obama for America”? Those blue buttons that dotted Chicago’s landscape in those exciting days of 1982 and 1983 showed rays of the sun like hope rising above the words “Washington for Chicago.” Perhaps Washington’s very greatest legacy is the insurgent challenge to politics as usual Obama represents on a national stage. Perhaps “the peoples’ mayor” will inspire the making of “the peoples’ president.”

The Anti-Racist Majority Comes of Age

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 08:58:00 +0000

In early July of 2007 the Supreme Court boldly struck down the legal underpinnings of Brown v. the Board of Education. In a five to four decision, the Republican majority on the court, overturned desegregation plans by school districts in Louisville, Kentucky and Seattle, Washington. The ruling was seen as a landmark victory by the neo-conservative right in their efforts to undo the civil rights achievements of the 1960s. Sharon Brown, lead lawyer for the right-wing Pacific Legal Foundation, remarked to the New York Times, “These are the most important decisions on the use of race since Brown v. Board of Education …With these decisions, an estimated 1,000 school districts around the country that are sending the wrong message about race to kids will have to stop.”

Just a year earlier, voters in Michigan and Nevada had opted to prohibit state universities from using race as criteria in admissions. Armed with the Supreme Court ruling and momentum generated by ballot initiatives, opponents of equality hoped to spark a new movement. Indeed with airways filled with the venomous hate speech of Don Imus, Paris Hilton, Michael Richards and more recently geneticist James Watson, racism seemed to gain a new standing in public and private discourse, to say nothing of official policy.

Significant though they may be, these referenda and judicial rulings now may only have been the last dying eddies of a spent and exhausted Republican wave. In the same mid-term elections, voters angered by the Iraq war, aghast at threats to privatize Social Security, and alarmed by the suppression of the African American vote in the presidential election two years earlier gave a sound thumping to Republican extremism. The electorate seems to have grown weary of the fear mongering, division and thinly-disguised hate displayed by an undistinguished and undeserving right-wing minority. The country was calling out for a change of course.

The depth and scope of this call is strikingly exemplified by the candidacies of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the two Democratic front runners, a status that by itself speaks volumes to how much things have changed. Voting patterns in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina suggest a new day is dawning in public perception and attitude. That such a shift in mass thought patterns could occur in the face of almost two decades of Republican rule is worthy of serious scrutiny. The ultra right's ideological assault accompanied by a political campaign aimed at undermining the gains of the civil rights period and the New Deal over this time period culminated with the economic and social impact of the Bush administration's sharply racist policies. Behind both the policies and the long-term campaign as source and inspiration lies a system of institutionalized racism, a system that operates within the framework of today’s monopoly capitalism.

Thus, in this first decade of the 21st century, the African American people are confronted by a complex and contradictory reality. Signs of clear progress conflict with an enduring legacy of segregation and unequal treatment; hope repeatedly confronts despair. Unequal pay, substandard education and housing, racist hiring practices, redlining by banks, a discriminatory criminal justice system all combine to create enormous systemic obstacles to achieving equality.

These challenges still exist and in fact in some respects have grown more severe. A study prepared by the Center for American Progress points to several systemic obstacles that have their source in the economics of racism. Median income, for example, has declined in the recent period: “African Americans' median income,” the study says, “declined by an average of 1.6 percent per year under the current administration. In 2006, African Americans' median income was $32,132, which is actually $2,603 lower than their median income of $34,735 (in 2006 dollars) in 2000.” This is substantially lower than for whites: “In 2006, their median income was $32,132, as compared to $52,432 for whites.”

Caution should be exercised when considering median income, as earnings by the two groups vary widely. Median income considers the earnings of all classes in a given population. White income, because it includes ruling class capital is therefore much higher than for African Americans, who have a much proportionally much smaller and less well-to-do elite. A more useful comparison would be between working-class whites and African Americans.

Unemployment rates also went up during the Bush years: “Unemployment levels for African Americans increased by an average of 0.2 percent each year under the current administration after declining in the 1990s” the study argues. “In 2007, the unemployment level of African Americans stood at a distressing 8.3 percent while white Americans hovered at 4.1 percent.”

Not surprisingly, poverty rates saw an increase in this same period: More African Americans are in poverty under Bush. More African Americans were in poverty in 2006 than in 2000, just after we saw a vast improvement the 1990s. In 2006, 24.2 percent of African American individuals were in poverty. Compare this to 2000, when 22.5 percent were below the poverty line … Poverty among African Americans decreased substantially from 1992 to 2000, going from 33.4 percent to 22.5 percent.

Here again caution must be observed when reviewing poverty statistics, particularly the nine percent drop during a upswing in the economic cycle during the 1990s, much of which was due to single mothers moving from welfare to low-paying service jobs, taking them above the poverty line, but not by much. Most live precipitously near the poverty line, just a paycheck away from the brink.

Furthermore, these Black and Latina single mothers lost many of the gains in the recession of 2001. According to a study done two years ago, consideration also has to be given to the fact that the elimination of welfare and other transfer payments like food stamps, greatly affected income by almost completely offsetting gains made by employment. Thus greater employment reduced poverty by 3.3 points in the late 1990s, but less in transfer payments added back 1.6 points.

Access to healthcare also suffered under right-wing rule according to analysis by the Center for American Progress: “Under Bush, the percent of African Americans without health insurance has increased from 18.5 percent to 20.5 percent. In 2006, 7.9 million African Americans were not covered by health insurance.” The study points out again that during the 1990s there was a modest increase in the number of people insured, a gain dissolved in the aftermath of the 2001 recession and declining employment and wages since.

By many measures then, the plight of African Americans has worsened in the past several years. However, the picture is far more complicated and dire than so far described. Take the numbers of African Americans living in poverty quoted above, which suggest one-quarter live in such conditions. In actual fact the number is closer to one-half when those living in near poverty are included. In a report prepared by the Economics Commission of the CPUSA, Art Perlo writes that: Nearly half the African American population lives in poverty or near poverty – below a minimum adequate income. More than 1 in 9 lives in deep poverty, literally on the margins of survival. One quarter of all people in poverty are Black. Poverty increased by 5.3 million from 2000 to 2005; 1.2 million (22 percent) of the increase was African Americans.

It should be pointed out that these figures are repeated for Latinos.

A glaring indictment of capitalism is that these figures while varying slightly have gone virtually unchanged for the past last 25 years. Statistics are faceless, but those living on the bottom half are mainly the elderly, children, single mothers and the working poor. They are largely without health care or access to descent housing. With low skill levels, many are unemployed and have no hope of permanent jobs. Here is huge waste of human talent and potential, a waste that is perpetuated from generation to generation with seemingly no hope of escape. Anti-poverty programs have not helped them, affirmative action programs, while important, largely elude; and the social safety net that once protected have been shredded in the name of “tough love” and self help.

As indicated above, Black unemployment stands at around eight percent. However the numbers vary from region to region and by city. Perlo indicates that “in 2003, only 50 percent of African Americans in New York City had jobs.” It also is affected by age with youth experiencing higher amounts: “In 2004, fewer than 39 percent of young Black men (aged 16-24) had jobs (vs. 59 percent and 60 percent for white and Hispanic.)'

The Economics Commission study points out that actual figures of the unemployed are much higher as those who have been pushed out of the labor market are not counted. Perlo’s estimate is the real unemployment rate is more like 17 percent. The Commission’s analysis also points to lack of steady employment, particularly among Black men. “By 2002, one of every four Black men in the US was idle all year long.” The figures for young women are 20 to 25 percent.

A prime source of African American inequality is the racist wage gap: Black male earnings are 70 percent of white ($17,000 less); for women its 83 percent or ($6,000 less). This wage differential is the basis of a racist social division of labor that is the foundation of modern inequality. The difference paid Black labor is the source of extra or super-profits, an amassing of capital that runs in the billions of dollars. It has many origins including lack of unions, education, regional disparities in pay, occupational and age differentials. Thus wages are most equal where unions and federal wage standards obtain; where they do not, last hired first fired remains a standard practice. It is estimated that one-third of all employed African Americans work in the public sector which is without doubt a major contributing factor to whatever economic gains and stability that has been achieved.

African Americans experience both overt and systemic reasons forms of discrimination. In 1999 there were over 2 million instances of the former for minorities and women according to Perlo’s study. Systemic reasons attributed by the study include, lack of personal networks, job locations away from urban centers, outsourcing, de-unionization, criminal records (one in four Black men) and education.

Yet another form of systemic discrimination in the Economics Commission’s view is the imposition of a “ghetto tax,” a five to ten percent extra cost paid in Black and Brown communities for goods and services, including groceries, loans, rent and insurance. A glaring example of this tax is in purchasing cars and homes:

• African American car owners with identical cars and driving records pay more for car insurance and car taxes – between $400 and $1,000 more per year in some states.

• Low-income families pay an average of two percentage points more for car loans. This can easily add $35 to monthly payments. They pay one percentage point more for home mortgages – adding at least $100/month

• African Americans buying cars (and presumably shopping for mortgages, houses, and other major items) are targeted with higher prices or inferior products.

Another important measure of equality status is homeownership. The Center for American Progress, stressed the relative losses experienced in recent years because of ruling class profiting and governmental neglect under Bush: The increase in African American homeownership has been slower under Bush than the 1990s. The homeownership rate for whites increased three times faster than the homeownership rate for African Americans between 2000 and 2006. This trend is in part because African Americans have actually seen their rate decline since 2004. Compare this to the 1990s, when African Americans' homeownership rate increased by an average annual growth rate of 0.8 percent from 1994 to 2000.

Even with some increase in homeownership the rate were still far less for African Americans, not surprising given the patterns of economic racism discussed above. Perlo states that “Homeownership rates for 2003 were 48 percent for Blacks vs. 75 percent for whites. Median home equity was $64,000 for white homeowners, $35,000 for Black homeowners. Among families with similar credit ratings, Blacks and Hispanics are 30 percent more likely than whites to be charged the highest interest for sub prime mortgages.”

The subprime mortgages crisis is sure to affect minorities more severely than others. At a recent conference held in New York by the Fiscal Policy Institute, James Parrot documented how Black and Latino new home buyers in New York were pushed to take out such loans even when they could have afforded the normal loans. Only 25 percent of sub primers are not in foreclosure. The foreclosure rate is expected to go to 40 percent this year.

It is in the structure of the economy then, jobs, housing patterns, unemployment, the “ghetto tax” to name a few, that institutionalized racism manifests itself. A new civil rights, movement aimed at addressing continuing discrimination must in the first place address itself to radical reforms aimed at rooting out the ingrained structural foundation of racist practice.

The demand for reparations was the popular form this economic demand took, particularly at the turn of the century, and received a wide hearing, until the tragedy of September 11th, when it was pushed off the historical stage by Bush’s war on terror. While not receiving wide support outside of the African American community, the attention reparations received by the mass media pointed to a growing recognition that the economics of racism must be addressed. A major question however is whether such redress will take working-class or petty-bourgeois forms.

It may have been that some sections of the ruling elite were intrigued by the idea of settling the historic dispute regarding the unpaid and underpaid labor of slavery and beyond with a cash payment. However, more broadly resonating was the concept of social grant that would introduce a massive outlay of capital for scholarships, housing, health care, schools and infrastructure, special measures that would provide a foundation for real equality. This coupled with an elimination of wage gap and full employment measures for the poorest half of the African American community would go a long way to making good on the broken promises of the past. It is unlikely however, that such measures will be addressed on their own, separate from wider social movements for peace and justice.

More feasible would be to address these special measures within the context of a broader struggle of other minorities, workers and women against the big monopolies and the profiteers of the coming economic crisis, of which these demands must be a central part. Are such reforms possible? Is there a basis for building such a movement? Recent election cycles along with shifts in public sentiment suggest the answer is yes.

Indeed, surveys of public opinion in recent years point to a steady swing away from overtly racist attitudes. Already in 1954 at the time of Brown v. Board a simple majority of Americans supported the court’s decision to do away with de jure segregation. As Jeffrey Rosen wrote in the New York Times reflecting on the significance of the Michigan affirmative action vote, “When Brown was decided, 54 percent of the country supported the result.”

Attitudes today particularly with regard to affirmative action betray a similarly mixed response, however, there is a steady drift towards non-racist and anti-racist consciousness. This tendency is present on a number of issues including marriage, affirmative action, integration efforts and opinion about race itself.

In a USA Today /Gallup poll taken in August and September of 2007, for example, respondents approved of marriage between whites and Blacks, 79 percent to 15 percent. In 1983 only 43 percent approved, with 50 percent answering in the negative. In 1968, the year of Dr. King’s assassination, 20 percent supported the right to marry, but 73 percent did not. In 1958 four years after legal segregation was declared unconstitutional 97 percent were opposed to “mixed” marriages.

Seemingly flying in the face of these trends is support by wide margins for the Supreme Court’s July decision with 73 percent agreeing that “an individual’s race should not be considered in admissions for schools.” However the wording of the Quinnipiac University question doubtlessly contributed to the response. Thus, when ABCNews/Washington Post poll asked more specifically “the Supreme Court recently restricted how local school boards can use race to assign children to schools. Some argue this is a significant setback for efforts to diversify public schools, others say race should not be used in school assignments. On balance, do you approve or disapprove of this decision?” 56 percent disapproved of the court vote, with 40 percent approving.

When in a Newsweek poll taken around the same time whites were asked: “Do you approve or disapprove of last week’s Supreme Court decision to limit the use of race for school integration plans? Thirty five percent approved with 29 percent answering in the negative. When all respondents were factored in 36 percent did not agree with Supreme Court, with 32 percent concurring. Similar results are to be found in attitudes on racial insensitivity with over half having heard racist remarks and felt offended, while approximately one-third did not.

A half century of struggle has not been without results. The concept that all people share a common humanity has gained a strong foothold. Clearly, the civil rights movements, the King and Cesar Chávez holiday struggles, along with desegregation and affirmative action efforts have positively influenced mass consciousness about race. This must be seen as a major ideological victory.While many racial prejudices and practices abound, a majority oppose racism as they understand it. Taken together it is evident that the Communist Party’s assessment in the late 1980s that an anti-racist majority was forming was percipient.

The concept of an anti-racist majority when first advanced was hotly disputed, with opponents warning against it as potentially disarming and overly optimistic, an understandable response in light of the Reagan and Gingrich counter-revolutions of the period. With the smell of the Baake, Weber and other anti-affirmative action assaults in the air, coupled with Willie Horton-like political campaigns and the beginnings of an attack on welfare and other entitlements, the concept that the mass base for racist ideology was shrinking rather than expanding, was difficult to digest. An additional factor in left thinking at the time was the influence of the “labor aristocracy” thesis, the concept that white male workers had privileged status in relation to rest of the working class, a privilege resting on material benefits from racism.

It may be that the “white privilege” theorists of today are the ideological descendants of the labor aristocracy advocates of the 1960s and 1970s. However, likely or unlikely, the gnarled hands of white workers pushing the button for Barack Obama in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada are a call for uniting class and democratic interests for hope in a common future. It has to be said that African American voters in their overwhelming majority in election after election have made such appeals. This new reciprocity will surely be taken note of and heeded.

Hope and new forms of unity are emerging in the great struggles of today. That and more will be required to defeat the Republican right in November, an achievement that progress in the struggle for African American equality depends. Anti-racist sentiment must be translated into anti-racist action. At the center of such action must be deep going radical reforms to eliminate economic racial inequality. Capitalism has proved itself inadequate to the task. More, capitalism itself breeds and profits from such inequality.

But this is all the more reason that pointed demands to address the economics of racism must be forward with the demand for immediate implementation. Dr. King explained almost a half century ago, why we can’t wait. Today’s struggle for full economic and political equality now will produce tomorrow's answer.

Japan: After Assault, Japanese Communists Renew Call for Ending US Occupation

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 05:04:00 +0000

2-25-08, 11:05 am

Original source: Akahata

Anger is boiling up in Okinawa and across the country due to a recent rape of a junior high school girl by a U.S. Marine.

Okinawa Governor Nakaima Hirokazu met with Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo and other government officials in Tokyo to lodge a strong protest. The Okinawa Prefectural Assembly and assemblies of municipalities, including Okinawa City and Chatan Town, have adopted resolutions of protest.

The government requested the U.S. forces to tighten discipline and take preventive steps. U.S. Ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer and the U.S. military’s Okinawa Area coordinator repeatedly expressed their regret.

However, as Foreign Minister Komura Masahiko made his remarks attaching key importance to “minimizing the adverse impact on the Japan-U.S. relations,” it was obvious that the Japanese and U.S. governments are predominantly concerned with the prevention of any damage to the Japan-U.S. military alliance. With such a stance, they cannot take the steps necessary to ensure the safety of the public.

Imposition of U.S. bases in Okinawa

The United States forced the Japanese government to host U.S. bases as a continuation of its military occupation of Japan after WWII.

In Okinawa, while under occupation, the U.S. forces appropriated private property and land to build military bases and then expanded them by force with bayonets and bulldozers. The Japanese government, however, approved these bases without resistance.

Therefore, the government must shoulder its responsibility for inflicting unbearable suffering on the residents for more than 60 years, and take drastic measures to prevent further crimes. It must take a step to remove the U.S. bases, and not content with requesting “discipline”.

The government has forced Okinawans to sacrifice themselves under the pretext that the U.S. forces are stationed in Japan to defend it. It is undeniable that the Japanese government policy of pressing Okinawans to endure suffering has encouraged crimes by U.S. servicemen. “Defense of Japan” can never justify the existence of U.S. bases, particularly in the current situation in which even the government in its national defense program outline admits that “a full-scale invasion of Japan is increasingly unlikely.”

U.S. bases in Japan are a stronghold in the U.S. preemptive war strategy which has nothing to do with the defense of Japan. For example, Okinawa-based U.S. forces have taken part in operations in Iraq. In 2004, a large helicopter based at Okinawa’s U.S. Marine Corps Futenma Air Station crashed onto a university campus in a residential area while conducting exercises for operations in Iraq.

Okinawans refuse to continue to sacrifice themselves. It is time for the Japanese government to seriously respond to the call of Okinawans, not evasively stressing discipline and education in the U.S. military.

After the gang rape of an elementary school girl in 1995, the U.S. government and military pledged to prevent further crimes. Nevertheless, sexual crimes have been repeatedly committed. Behind the repeated crimes committed by U.S. servicemen, particularly in Okinawa, is the fact that the they are taught that the U.S. occupied Okinawa because the blood of many U.S. soldiers was spilled there. The U.S. forces still occupy vast prime land and enjoy special privileges under the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement. There is no way to eliminate U.S. military-related crimes other than the removal of U.S. bases from Japan.

From Akahata

Developing Nations, Climate Change and Resources

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 04:58:00 +0000

2-25-08, 11:00 am

Original source: The Guardian

Last year the UN declared that the struggle against climate change should not prevent developing nations from addressing their social and economic needs.

The developed nations have high per capita emissions, and Australia and the US have the worst. However, climate change is threatening the entire planet, and it’s crucial for all greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced as rapidly as possible, including those emanating from developing nations.

Raising the standard of living in less developed nations, while simultaneously reducing their emissions, cannot be achieved by using the most developed capitalist nations as a model. If the entire world used the same types of motor vehicles and power generation as is predominantly used in developed nations, and to the same extent, greenhouse gas emissions would explode.

Raising the standard

Improving the standard of living in less developed nations would be assisted by helping them acquire industrial facilities which counteract climate change, for example renewable energy electricity generators. This would boost their industrial production, minimise their operating costs and enable them to benefit from carbon trading.

However, the development of renewable energy sources and technology is bitterly opposed by the extremely powerful groups of industries which benefit from the existing mining and power generation arrangements, and which have the ear of many current western governments.

A good example is provided by battery-operated electric cars. Practical examples of these vehicles have already been produced, and the use of solar and wind energy to power them is feasible, offering the prospect of zero-emission vehicular transport systems.

In the early 1990s, after the passing of anti-pollution laws in California, General Motors and other companies were forced to produce electric cars. Development of new battery systems meant that the GM cars could travel 290 kilometres without recharging. Their radically simple engineering and low maintenance requirements were of potentially huge benefit to less-developed nations.

However, marketing of electric vehicles seriously threatened the existing markets for petrol-driven vehicles. Anticipating repeal of the Californian legislation, GM had refused to sell its electric cars, and only leased them out, with little marketing. In 1996, after a court decision in their favour, the corporation recalled all but one of them, and literally crushed them to a metal pulp. The sole surviving example of this brilliant technical innovation now stands in a US motor museum.

Planet’s resources

Capitalism’s resistance to radical new environmental innovations is not the only problem. Living standards are to a great extent dependent on material possessions, production of which largely depends on access to the planet’s material resources.

However, these resources are being depleted more rapidly than they can be replaced, in order to force-feed the world’s markets (particularly in the most developed nations) with commodities.

It therefore follows that raising the standard of living in developing nations, while simultaneously reducing the global extraction of resources, will require a reduction in the consumption of commodities in the most developed nations.

Recycling of commodities and materials is an important aspect of dealing with the resources crisis, but the essence of the solution is political. In recent world history, Cuba has shown how the loss of material resources (in their case petroleum, fertilisers and other goods imported from the former Soviet Union) can be overcome, while maintaining quality of life.

But Cuba has a socialist government. In contrast, the capitalist economies of the developed western world depend for their stability (and the corporations for their profits) on ever-expanding markets for new commodities. Any suggestion that they should use the earth’s resources more modestly and responsibly is bound to be bitterly opposed by the predominant sectors of capitalism.

The major barrier to dealing with climate change while preserving the earth’s resources lies within the political economies of the developed nations. For example, a government which really acted in the interests of the Australian people would maximise the development, production and use of renewable energy sources and would, for example, take over the Mitsubishi plant to produce state of the art zero-emission vehicles.

We’re still a long way short of reaching that stage. But it’s possible to get there, and it’s crucial that we strain every muscle to do so.

From The Guardian

Black History Month: Henry Winston and the African American Freedom Struggle

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 04:36:00 +0000

2-25-08, 10:37 am

Editor's note: Henry Winston is the former chair of the Communist Party USA (1966-1986). Jarvis Tyner is the executive vice chair of the Communist Party USA.

PA: In his book, Strategy for a Black Agenda, published over 30 years ago, Henry Winston postulated that a new stage of struggle had been reached, one that combined the struggle for civil rights with the struggle for economic rights. In your view, are we still at this stage?

JARVIS TYNER: Strategy for a Black Agenda first came out in 1973. The book was and remains a fundamental contribution to the struggle. The issues that Henry Winston raised centered on the unity of the class and national questions. In his book, he stressed the need for the Black liberation movement to come to grips with the long-term economic crisis faced by our community, and to direct the struggle against racism toward a broader struggle against the power of monopoly capitalism and imperialism. I think that message is still very powerful. I also think that we are still in that stage of the struggle, although the situation today is more complex in a lot of ways.

PA: There is a story that Henry Winston actually met with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Is that true?

TYNER: I was there when they met. It was when King came to speak at the centennial celebration of W.E.B. Du Bois and made that sterling speech against anti-communism as he paid tribute to Du Bois. Winston asked me and a couple of other comrades to be with him backstage. When Dr. King came in they shook hands and he said, “Mr. Winston, I’m so glad to meet you!” They exchanged a number of appreciations, and Winnie (as he was affectionately known) mentioned that he had two Southern brothers. Winnie was from Mississippi originally, so he and King had that kind of rapport. It only lasted about 10-15 minutes, but it was a very nice exchange. At that time if your remember King was meeting with Malcolm X. He was trying to bridge the gap that had been artificially imposed on the movement – that the nationalists couldn’t talk to the civil rights people – the integrationists – and that the Left was a pariah in the civil rights movement. He was challenging all of that near the end. He was coming out against the Vietnam War. So the meeting between Winston and King meeting was very appropriate in that context, and it went very well. As we know, King was not afraid to examine radical ideas. And Winnie was very brilliant on the tactics and strategy of the civil rights movement and the fight against racism. I think they both appreciated each other’s role very much. It was a very nice meeting, at which I sat back in awe of these two great Black leaders.

PA: On the issue of strategy and tactics, Winston wrote often about the important role of African Americans in the labor movement for galvanizing the entire labor movement behind the civil rights struggle. How would you characterize his assessment of the role of Black workers?

TYNER: Winston understood that Black people, in general, were 95-96% working class. In Detroit, for instance, you had a very high percentage of industrial workers who were African American, and although Detroit has been devastated by the decline in the auto industry, NAFTA, and all the other problems of globalization, nevertheless, those are the people’s roots.

Winston used to say that African American steelworkers, autoworkers, electrical workers, etc. had to be viewed in the context of the fight for civil rights. What he understood and what he taught us was that there was a link between the class and national questions, and that Black workers played a decisive role in that respect. In the history of our struggle, even in the antebellum slavery period, Black workers, freed and slave – the slaves themselves, of course, were workers, they just weren’t paid – comprised the largest number of abolitionists, in the sense that they were fighting for their own freedom.

Black workers played a tremendous role at that stage in the fight against slavery, and in the post-slavery period and during Reconstruction, Black farmers and working-class ex-slaves played a key role in the fight for a new democracy. That continued all the way through to the great upsurge of the 30s, when it was possible to organize workers in the Deep South on the basis of anti-racism, in which the Party played a big role, and again Black workers came to the fore. If look at who led the civil rights movement in the South, you can say that it was led by middle-class people like King and the preachers, but who was their constituency? The constituency was rural Blacks, farm workers, small farmers, and, of course, in the cities, workers in the mills and factories down there. Steelworkers in Birmingham played a huge role in this fight.

This was what Winnie always taught us. He helped the Party see the strategic role of African American workers, particularly the organized sector of the working class, in advancing the struggle for the liberation of our people, and indeed of society as a whole. He always talked about the advanced Black proletariat in different parts of the country, who had gone into industry and found their way into unions – who had to break their way in in many ways – and who played a very militant role in the rank-and-file.

These workers brought their skill and organization, and the power of the labor movement, into the African American fight for freedom and the civil rights movement, and in that sense their role was historic and critical to moving forward. Racism is rooted in capitalism, and therefore who was better able to fight capitalism and racism than the people who were producing that surplus value, who understood how the system worked, and could play a leading role? That is why the working class is always the most consistent fighter in the Black community for an end to racism.

PA: Given the fact that Winston placed the unity of the class and national questions so squarely in the foreground, and that early civil rights organizations like the Civil Rights Congress and International Labor Defense, led by William L. Patterson, unabashedly combined two forms of struggle, the economic and the civil rights struggle, do you think that Winston saw the civil rights movement in the 1960s as having gone off course?

TYNER: No, not at all – he hailed it. If you read the Party literature on the civil rights movement in the 60s or anything Winston wrote about it, it was hailed as a great struggle. Certainly it was centered on social questions, but you cannot foresee how the upsurge is going to come against injustice. It may seek a form that you didn’t foresee. The civil rights movement naturally arose on the basis of the apartheid situation in the South, the fact that people had to go to the back of the bus, that people had to attend segregated schools based on separate and unequal, and that people were not allowed to sit in the same meetings together, Black with white. They went to separate churches, to separate sections of movie theaters upstairs. I remember going down South as a child and sitting upstairs, and I asked my cousin why we were doing this. He said, “Don’t ask that question or we’ll get in trouble.” That was the way it was.

So these were the things that were up front and in your face every day. Those were the questions that the struggle was initiated on. In 1960 with the sit-ins in Greensboro, the Montgomery bus boycott before that, the Brown vs. the Board of Education decision regarding segregated schools, all that happened in Little Rock, that was the way it came about. But I think Dr. King understood – and this was something Winnie had done a lot of thinking and writing about – that it was indeed necessary for that struggle to now take on a more class-oriented approach and attack the economic roots of racism, that it was necessary to do this in order to structurally change the systemic racism that was linked so closely with capitalist profits and power, and the strength of imperialism around the world. Henry Winston wrote about that in his Strategy for a Black Agenda and other works. He brilliantly clarified people’s thinking and made them move forward.

He thought the 1960s were great, but it was the evolution that occurred in the 60s that brought people to that point. Remember that Dr. King went from Montgomery to Memphis to show his solidarity with the sanitation workers there, and that he felt that the need to build the labor movement in the Deep South was so important. He was very close to the labor movement and to the 1199 healthcare workers here in New York, which he called his favorite union – they named their center after him. He really understood those workers very well. It was the hard economic questions, as well, that brought him to oppose to the war in Vietnam. He saw the international role of imperialism, its racism, adventurism, and aggression abroad, as very much related to the fight against racism at home. Du Bois understood that too, and King stood on the shoulders of Du Bois and all the other greats before them.

They both knew about William L. Patterson, and about the Civil Rights Congress and its great role, and they knew how the process had developed. Back in William Patterson’s day it was Scottsboro and the blatant cases of racist lynching. W.E.B. Du Bois also fought against lynching. All of that culminated in the organization of labor in the South. But now there was a whole new cycle on a different level, and it was linking the class struggle with the national struggle into one powerful coalition. Both in terms of their membership and their programs, groups like the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU) and before that the NALC (Negro American Labor Council) embodied that fight, making the link between the class and national questions. Winnie understood that connection very well and wrote about it brilliantly.

PA: What role did Henry Winston play in developing ties between the African American community here and the struggle for national independence on the African continent?

TYNER: At the end of the Vietnam War, the issue that was growing larger and larger was the fight for the defeat of apartheid in South Africa and solidarity with Africa in general. I remember discussing the national issue in the Party and saying that the next big international question was going to be solidarity with African liberation, particularly the end of apartheid in South Africa, which we felt was the kingpin, the key to opening up a new phase of liberation in Africa. I think that has proven true.

Winnie actually knew many of the African leaders and was particularly close to the SACP (South African Communist Party), whose status was illegal, of course, at that point. Therefore, many of its leaders were living in Eastern Europe and western capitalist countries, but they sought health care in the Soviet Union and the GDR (German Democratic Republic). Winnie had actually spent many hours with some of the top leaders of the South African Communist Party, because they met together in health clinics and hospitals. (Winston had suffered a brain tumor while imprisoned in a US federal prison for his leadership in the Communist Party. Before the tumor was treated, in Eastern European health centers, after his release in 1961, it had damaged his optic nerve and caused him to go blind.) They were more than comrades. They were comrades and close, close friends – and they literally had hours to talk over things.

When Winnie returned from abroad, he said that we had to do something on this question. He kept pushing it for many years. He helped initiate the formation of the National Anti-Imperialist Movement in Solidarity with African Liberation or NAMSAL. Henry Winston was the one who came up with the concept of isolating the racists, that is, of boycotting South Africa in every aspect of international diplomatic and economic exchange, to isolate the racists until they ended the system of apartheid. He was the one who raised the issue of freeing Nelson Mandela, and he was the one who knew all the leaders personally, such as Oliver Tambo, the head of the ANC, and Moses Mabhida and J.B. Marks, leaders in the SACP.

Winnie’s writings were extremely popular among the African leaders, because he had a deep, Marxist-Leninist scientific analysis of what was happening in Africa, and he reflected the best thinking that had come out of the African American community on how to liberate the continent. Kwame Nkrumah was associated with our Party when he was here. A lot of African leaders came to the United States to attend college. Some also went to Eastern Europe to school and came back with a Marxist analysis, and that helped to spur things on. Patrice Lumumba, who was murdered, was an advanced thinker and fighter against imperialism who fought to free the people of the Congo. His murder was clearly decided on in Washington and executed from there. And, of course, that sparked this whole movement.

Winnie had a great understanding of what was happening in Africa and conveyed that to us. I know that when African Americans would go to Africa, they would be asked, “Do you know Henry Winston?” And a lot of them didn’t know who Henry Winston was, so when they came back they said, “Who is this Henry Winston? I’ve got to get to know him.” Well, Henry Winston was the Chairman of the Communist Party, and many of them came knocking just to talk to Winnie and to get to know him. He had such prestige on the African continent, the same kind as Paul Robeson had.

The CIA did everything it could to try to block this kind of relationship with the new African leaders. They knew the power of it and what it meant, especially if it was on an anti-imperialist basis, if it was not simply about a color relationship, although that had its place and its reason – and is understandable – but the deeper meaning of Winston's message was anti-imperialism. From that perspective, all the socialist countries were rising and forging solidarity with the African liberation movements, and all the Communist parties around the world were doing the same. This made it possible for a comrade like Winnie, who had a special understanding and outlook, to bring his communist understanding to the struggle and help advance it.