People Before Profit blog

Cuban Antiretroviral Drugs against HIV Improve Quality of Life

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 04:23:00 +0000

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 30 (acn) Over 4,000 Cubans infected with AIDS taking mostly Cuban-produced antiretroviral drugs, have noticeably improved their quality and expectation of life.

In an exclusive interview to ACN news agency, member of Cuba’s national commission for AIDS explained that on these drugs production, and on the acquisition of others from the World Fund, Cuba spends $2 million a year, to guarantee totally free treatment to the patients.

Perez Correa highlighted the antiretroviral treatment is available to every person needing it, and that since 2001 it includes the Cuban-made antiretroviral drugs.

He also stressed that from every 100 HIV carriers that developed the disease, 24 of them would die within the same year, however from 2003 on the lethality of the disease has decreased a 5 percent, which allows this persons to reinsert themselves in everyday life.

From those persons infected in 2001 who are receiving the antiretroviral treatment, 90 percent are still alive. Before the implementation of this treatment seropositive patients would died within two years.

According to international researches, seropositive persons using this treatment live as an average four years longer than those that don’t. Life expectancy after getting the HIV is now with the new treatments 25 to 35 years, a different situation than before when within 10 years, the infected people died.

Cuba is among the 14 countries in the world with lowest infection rate thanks to the information and prevention campaign, which have allowed the population to become HIV-AIDS aware.

Since 1985-86 some 10,600 cases have been diagnosed in Cuba, 33 of them children. The genre infection rate is 4 men per each woman. The scourge is mainly present in men having sex with other men, and within this group those who are bisexuals.

From the Cuban News Agency

Obama Creates Working Families Task Force

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 04:19:00 +0000

President Barack Obama began this week the arduous task of reversing the Bush administration's anti-working families policies.

Welcoming labor movement leaders, small business owners, and representatives of not-for-profit groups to the White House Friday, Jan. 30, Obama issued three executive orders that will promote the rights of workers; he also announced the formation of a new White House Task Force on Middle Class Working Families.

The first executive order prevents taxpayer dollars from going to federal contractors who attempt to intervene when their employees decide to organize a union in their workplace. In addition, the president ordered that employees of federal contractors be informed of their rights under federal labor law. Finally, Obama ordered that qualified employees should be able to keep their job even when the federal contract changes hands, helping government agencies to retain experienced workers.

The Obama executive orders reverse previous Bush administration rules that allowed employers who hold federal government contracts to interfere and even violate federal labor laws by preventing workers from joining or organizing labor unions.

In a statement, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said, 'Today’s actions show that the Obama White House is the working families’ White House.'

Change to Win Federation Chair Anna Burger added, 'Today, the Obama administration reaffirmed its commitment to America’s workers. Taken together, these orders show that the administration recognizes the federal government's responsibility, as the nation's largest purchaser of goods and services, to set model employment standards for private sector workers, as well as for the direct federal workforce.'

Obama announced these executive orders at the same time he unveiled the official creation of the White House Task Force on Middle Class Working Families. The task force will be headed by Vice President Joe Biden in consultation with Obama's top economic advisors and relevant cabinet heads.

With a GDP that collapsed by an annual rate of nearly four percent and a record number of people seeking unemployment benefits, focused and urgent action is needed to reverse the economic recession and pave the way for a new productive economy, President Obama said.

Working families 'need us to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan,' he stated, 'a plan that will save or create more than 3 million jobs over the next few years and make investments that will serve our economy for years to come.'

In addition to creating jobs and rebuilding America's infrastructure, the president's economic recovery package would invest in renewable energy sources, modernize health care, and improve mass transit systems.

'What we can't do is drag our feet or delay much longer. The American people expect us to act,' Obama added.

In addition to reviving the economy, President Obama stated that his administration's goal is to promote an economy that 'create[s] jobs that sustain families and sustain dreams; jobs in new and growing industries; jobs that don't feel like a dead end, but a way forward and a way up; jobs that will foster a vibrant and growing middle class, because the strength of our economy can be measured directly by the strength of our middle class.'

Vice President Biden noted, 'Over the course of America's last economic expansion, the middle class participated in very few of the benefits. But now in the midst of this historic economic downturn, the middle class sure is participating in all of the pain.'

The Middle Class Working Families Task Force will be studying and recommending 'the most far-reaching and imaginative solutions' to problems working families face from the need for good jobs, keep their homes, get access to affordable health care and quality education and much more.

The White House set up a new Web site at which will allow the public to follow the activities, discussions and recommendations of the task force. According to the Web site, the task force's first public meeting will convene in Philadelphia in late February to discuss ways to create 'green jobs.'

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Israeli CP Launches Election Campaign Against Extremism

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 05:48:00 +0000

Original source: Communist Party of Israel

Hadash (the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality – Communist Party of Israel) launched its new election campaign today (Monday, January 26, 2009) ahead of the nearing general elections, and has chosen to focus on the fight against fascism and racism.

The Jewish-Arab front's new campaign slogan is 'Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies. Hadash – the opposite of Lieberman.' Yvette Lieberman is the leader of the racist Yisrael Beiteinu party.The campaign will also feature several videos showing Jewish and Arab youths and a website.

'We are the secured room for all those who fear the onslaught of 'Liebermanization',' said Hadash chairman, Knesset Member Mohammad Barakeh. 'Unfortunately, 'Liebermanization' is not limited to the man himself and has permeated through Israeli society.'

The party feels that the racism suffered by Israeli Arabs is growing by the day, citing the Central Elections Committee's decision to disqualify two Arab parties, a decision later overturned by the High Court of Justice – as a prominent example.

The move, said the party, was part of a long-term trend aimed at demonizing the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel portraying it as the enemy. That sentiment, said a party source, was the reason for the new, aggressive counter-campaign.

'This (trend) is destructive to the Israeli society,' said MK Dov Khenin. 'That is why Hadash, which is the complete opposite of Lieberman, decided to rally all the democratic and liberal forces in Israel against racism and 'transferism.' We know that there are plenty who oppose Liebermanization.'

'The racist discourse seems to be increasing with corruption. The saying that fascism is the scoundrel's last resort, fits Lieberman and his followers like a glove,' added Barakeh

'I'm worried about the big picture. The mandates his is expected to get are a manifestation of Liebermanization within Israeli society. The fight against racism goes beyond the election campaign. Unfortunately, it is evident in every aspect of our lives.'

Japan: Illegal to Send MSDF to Somalia

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 05:11:00 +0000

Original source: Akahata (Japan)

The Liberal Democratic and Komai parties on January 22 held an anti-piracy project team meeting and agreed on sending Maritime Self-Defense Force vessels to the sea off Somalia in Africa as early as March.

The government is trying to justify the MSDF deployment to the region under Article 82 of the SDF Law. However, this is a provision concerning sea patrol and cannot be applied to the Somalia mission.

Maritime patrol is an action to be carried out in Japanese territorial waters or in the seas near Japan.

What the MSDF wants to do in the waters off the coast of Somalia in the name of anti-piracy operation has serious problems. The MSDF will not only guard Japanese-registered ships but also will have to protect Japanese crew or passengers on foreign vessels, Japanese cargo on ships of foreign registry, and other Japan-related ships.

The question of the use of arms is another problem. The use of weapons can be expanded to self-defense, emergency escape, and protection of MSDF vessels, actions that are in violation of the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution.

The government has already deployed the SDF to the Indian Ocean to support the US war in Afghanistan under the pretext of counterterrorism. MSDF deployment to off Somalia, though using anti-piracy efforts as an excuse, will only help pave the way for more dispatches of troops on missions abroad.

It is said that the collapse of the Somali state due to the 20-year-long civil war had driven local fishermen into acts of piracy as a matter of survival after losing their livelihoods. When it comes to anti-piracy measures, what should be done is to make diplomatic efforts to help end the civil war and stabilize the local people's livelihoods through policing actions against pirates.

The need is for Japan to support the Somali peace process, not promote unconstitutional dispatches of troops. It should help to improve the security capabilities of surrounding nations that include Yemen, and increase Japan's assistance for such international organs as the International Maritime Organization seeking to reinforce their anti-piracy measures through legislative, judicial, and administrative approaches.

Zimbabwe: The Darkness Before the Dawn?

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 05:07:00 +0000

Original source: IRIN News

HARARE, 30 January 2009 (IRIN) - There is not likely to be much of a honeymoon period when Zimbabwe's new unity government takes office in February – both the international community and citizens demand urgent action to tackle the country's humanitarian disaster.

The outline of a power-sharing deal between President Robert Mugabe and the opposition has existed since September 2008, but implementation foundered over claims of bad faith leveled by both sides. Then, at the fifth attempt to break the deadlock, regional leaders announced on 27 January that Mugabe and his rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, had agreed to form an all-party government on 13 February.

That deal was endorsed by Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) on 30 January. The party, however, will be looking for guarantees from leaders of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) over the equitable sharing of power in the new government, in which Mugabe will retain the presidency and Tsvangirai will be sworn in as prime minister on 11 February.

Tsvangirai has faced criticism from within his own party that he is being too hasty, with the terms of the deal not iron-clad, and SADC not an impartial or honest broker.

An MDC member of parliament (MP) and trade unionist said the deal was 'suicidal' for Tsvangirai, even with the post of prime minister guaranteed by an amendment to the constitution. 'It's clear he will go in there on their [Mugabe's ZANU-PF party] conditions as a junior partner, which means he won't be able to change policy,' he told IRIN.

'His own political future will be compromised. ZANU-PF will use Tsvangirai to resuscitate their party: if people say they're hungry – blame it on Tsvangirai. He came in promising change, and he won't be able to deliver. If he says his hands are tied, people will say, 'Why did you go in knowing your hands would be tied?''

An MP for the smaller MDC faction, led by Arthur Mutambara, dismissed these fears. 'I've never understood why anybody would be ineffective, sitting in a cabinet with old, tired ZANU-PF ministers. At the technical and intellectual level, I just don't see what the fear is,' she commented.

'The most they can do is refuse to deal with the matter [on the table], and then you say the cabinet was split [over the decision].' Mutambara, a professor of robotics, will become a deputy prime minister in terms of the September agreement.

Zimbabweans are exhausted by hyperinflation, food shortages and the evaporation of social services - all of which need political stability to fix. At abortive SADC-mediated talks on 19 January in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, protestors tried to barricade the negotiating parties in the hotel venue until they had agreed a deal.

Technically there has been no government since general elections in March 2008, in which the MDC outpolled ZANU-PF and Tsvangirai beat Mugabe in the presidential race. Tsvangirai fell short of winning over 50 percent of the vote and an outright victory in the first round, and then pulled out of the run-off in July in protest at brazen state-led political violence that killed over 80 of his supporters.

The Global Political Agreement (GPA), negotiated by then South African President Thabo Mbeki, aimed to break the political impasse by splitting power between the three parties, but did not address the thorny details of divvying up cabinet posts, and the responsibilities of president and prime minister.

Analysts suggest this has been the wrangle since the GPA was signed in September, with Mugabe facing hardline elements in his faction-riven party, who are resisting a deal.

Tired

'Zimbabweans are battered and bruised,' said one civil society activist. 'The process has been so drawn out – increasingly, all sides to the dialogue have become discredited.'

When Tsvangirai and Mutambara are sworn in, 'Would this be a real commitment to address the real issues facing poor and vulnerable people in Zimbabwe?' one NGO manager mused. 'If setting up an inclusive government is a show of commitment by political leaders, then that's good.'

The alternative to power-sharing would be fresh elections, but many fear it would be a signal for renewed repression. 'SADC will sit on its hands, there will be no platform for us to access guarantees [on free and fair polls], just elections on Mugabe's conditions,' the trade unionist said.

Harare's broad avenues, posh suburbs and city centre skyscrapers have not changed in a decade of recession – they have simply become more pot-holed, overgrown and run-down. But the suffering in urban households is intense, and people's resilience remarkable.

Aid workers call it a 'silent emergency', in which pregnant mothers can die because they cannot afford medical care; people succumb to cholera because, after being treated, they return to neighborhoods polluted with raw sewage; and seven million of Zimbabwe's estimated resident population of nine million people require food aid.

Sebastian Mtaramutswa depends on food relief, just like three-quarters of the people in his village near Goromonzi, 40km from Harare. The rains failed during the 2007 planting season and few in his 200-strong community have assets to tide them over. In 2008 he had no fertilizer so is he preparing for another grim harvest in March/April 2009. 'You just have to manage,' he told IRIN.

The struggle is about to get even tougher. The World Food Program's (WFP) aid basket currently stretches just far enough to feed Mtaramutswa's household of seven for a month; on 29 January, as a result of a jump in beneficiaries and stalled donor funding, WFP announced the halving of cereal rations, which had already been cut in late 2008.

How urban Zimbabweans survive, when the average monthly salary is the value of a loaf of bread, seems inexplicable. Remittances of family members working abroad is crucial – although with the dollarisation of the economy and the shrinking of the parallel market, the value of those hard-earned pounds and rands has fallen.

Trading is another option, often the only real reason to come to work; for the more adventurous, there is also illegal gold panning and diamond mining. But it means barely surviving.

Child nutrition levels have not yet passed the emergency threshold, partly because adults seem to be prioritizing their children. A survey in 2007 by the UN children's agency, UNICEF, found that 17 percent of adults had one or zero meals the day before they were interviewed; in 2008 the figure had shot up to 47 percent.

Helping health

In a stop-gap measure to support a collapsing health sector, UNICEF is procuring 70 percent of all vital medicines required in the country under a US$20 million program; antiretroviral drugs for AIDS treatment and childhood vaccines fall under a separate initiative. UNICEF is also providing a financial 'incentive' in US dollars to get 20,000 health staff back to work as the cholera case load hits an incredible 60,000.

Health workers, like teachers, have demanded their salaries be paid in foreign currency, which the government has refused, even though the economy has effectively been dollarized. The government blames its predicament on the West, which it accuses of applying sanctions to oust Mugabe as punishment for land nationalization introduced in 2000, aimed at commercial farms.

Since the government dropped its three-month suspension of humanitarian operations in August, aid workers have been far freer to operate. Dollarisation has improved the ability of NGOs to run their programs, although some agencies still do not have access to funds 'frozen' by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe.

How far humanitarian organizations should go in supporting functions of government - in what is widely accepted as a man-made crisis – is an issue of debate. 'We can't supplant government, or do anything as big as government,' one aid worker noted.

Major infrastructural projects, like the estimated US$300 million needed to fix the sewerage and water supply, requires donor engagement. But this can only come when Western governments are prepared to sign off on a new administration and pump in reconstruction aid. One potential wrinkle is that the US, Britain and France have insisted that their support would be conditional on the removal of Mugabe.

'Somebody needs to tell them to shut up,' said the civil society activist. 'Mugabe is a factor in the politics of this country – we cannot wish him away. Whether illegitimately or illegally, he's still a factor.'

Show us the money

A Western diplomat said Mugabe's removal was not a pre-condition set by other European powers for the recognition of a unity government. 'If Tsvangirai says Mugabe has met the demands the MDC has set, are we going to say we won't re-engage?'

'Aid would be progressive', and calibrated to the performance of the new government, and the workability of power-sharing, he said, adding: 'international re-engagement is indispensable to pull Zimbabwe out of the crisis and, more importantly, Western re-engagement.'

Without a political deal to start halting the slide, 'the situation would become very, very dangerous in this country,' the envoy said, in reference to reports that the Zimbabwean military have become actively involved in diamond mining around the eastern town of Mutare.

A UN Development Program discussion document on recovery in September 2008 estimated that Zimbabwe would need US$5 billion in foreign aid, including debt relief, over the next five years, along with painful reforms to the economy. The European diplomat pointed out that the global economic crisis would undoubtedly put pressure on aid budgets next year, while Zimbabwe's self-classification as a middle-income country could complicate funding mechanisms.

There would also likely be debate in the Zimbabwean cabinet over economic reforms, among other policy issues. It was the government's World Bank-inspired structural adjustment program in the mid-90s that breathed life into the previously supine unions, and ultimately led to the formation of the MDC in 1999.

Currency reform would be one of the planks of recovery, which is in effect being brought about with dollarisation, but as one humanitarian official pointed out, 'without the necessary social security protection in place for the poor'.

Zimbabwe's infrastructure, although worn and wobbly, is still in place. The expectation is that with international aid and committed political leadership, the country could rebound quite quickly.

An estimated three million people have left the country in search of work. Many would remain abroad, their families dependent on their remittances, but some would return, bringing skills with them. How they will be received could be an issue: as one journalist joked, they would be regarded as having run away, when their colleagues stayed and endured.

Comment: The Role of Predator Drones in Obama’s Foreign Policy

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 10:14:00 +0000

Last weekend the major US media reported that three US-fired missiles struck targets in the northwest frontier region of Pakistan near its border with Afghanistan. The missiles were fired from Predator drones (pilotless aircraft operated by the CIA) apparently in collaboration with Pakistani intelligence, which provided information on the presence of Al Qaeda or Taliban militants. After the attack, according to the LA Times, 'village elders told provincial officials there were no Taliban in the area, which they described as a hamlet populated mainly by shepherds. Women and children were among the 22 dead, they said.'

Since last summer, when President Bush ordered the creation of this CIA operation (which fires drone missiles guided by remote control at individuals it believes to be leaders of Al Qaeda or the Taliban), at least 100 civilians have been killed in nearly 30 missile strikes in the northwest frontier region, according to the Pakistani government.

In a statement, the Pakistani government this week responded by calling on Obama to review this missile strike policy 'and adopt a more holistic and integrated approach toward dealing with the issue of terrorism and extremism.' The Pakistani government added, 'We maintain that these attacks are counterproductive and should be discontinued.'

Pakistan, with its fragile domestic situation, cannot afford such abuses of its national sovereignty to continue.

Pakistan could emerge as an important regional ally of the US and other countries opposed to the violent groups that have sought refuge in the mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Remote-controlled missile strikes over the protests of the Pakistani government are the worst way to build such an alliance, however.

Perhaps the CIA hates it when its critics “drone on” about “innocent civilian deaths.” But the moral outrage kindled around the world by the deaths of so many innocent civilians, whether in Gaza, Pakistan, Iraq or Afghanistan, is not a figment of the liberal imagination. Real human children and mothers and fathers are week after week being killed by the technological wizardry the CIA unleashes from on high.

In fact, no military solution from the air or ground will ever be found to solve the deplorable conditions – grinding poverty and benign neglect – that breed violence, hatred and rebellion.

Obama and his closest advisors may have made a careful political calculation before authorizing the CIA missile strikes in Pakistan: that the American public opinion would back the president on his decision to kill Al Qaeda leaders. Indeed, if Gallup conducted a survey on this one question, huge numbers of people would probably agree with his decision in this instance. The administration's political calculation may also have included the intent to send a message to all quarters that this president is willing to use both force and diplomacy, to kill America's enemies or bring them to the table, even if that means innocent civilians may be killed in the process.

History shows us, however, that one missile strike leads to another. Dozens of missile strikes, instead of simply eliminating people thought to be an enemy (and we have only the CIA's word that those who die are the enemy), inevitably create new enemies. Soon ground forces, warships, bombers and more are mobilized to manage a quagmire like the US invasion of Iraq or Vietnam, or the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviets in the 1980s and currently by US-NATO forces.

History also teaches that no outside intervention in Central Asia has succeeded for long or accomplished its main aims in any meaningful way. The CIA agents in their sterile state-of-the-art offices in Langley, Virginia who plot the trajectories of missiles fired from the Predator drones surely take great pride in their massive technological superiority over the poorly-armed and untrained mountain people in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. But in the end history has always had a harsh lesson for such hubris.

In his inauguration speech, President Obama outlined a welcome change from Bush administration policies. He promised to extend an 'open hand' to the world and to pursue diplomacy to improve international relations. Since entering office, Obama has taken important steps to live up to the promise of a more peaceful world: he has ordered the closure of Guantanamo, appointed a special envoy to oversee the administration's interest in a permanent settlement in the Middle East, ordered the first steps for withdrawal from Iraq, and overturned the Bush philosophy of 'either you're with us or against us.'

Addressing the huge crowd gathered to celebrate his inauguration, President Obama said this: 'To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West – know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.'

This is a lesson President Obama and the American people should apply to this case. It is a lesson learned the hard way over the past eight years. Only a surge of diplomacy, development and deescalation of military force can repair the damage caused by the Bush doctrine. Since 2006, the American people, weary of war and militaristic policies, have voted to bring this doctrine to an end. While Obama campaigned on making this change and has taken some steps in that direction, the CIA missile strikes in Pakistan could undo all of the positive good he is trying to accomplish.

On another note, none of the missile strikes in Pakistan has created a single job in the US. No child was added to the health care rolls. No new public school was opened as a result of these attacks. No student found college expenses any more affordable. No family saw a bank agree to let them stay in their foreclosed home a little longer as a result of what President Obama authorized in Pakistan. Indeed, military escalation anywhere will cost the US its ability to recover from recession or to lay the basis for a new productive economy, as Obama has pledged.

Instead, anger against the US has been inflamed in Pakistan as more civilians have died.

It is up to the peace movement and all working-class forces to change the political calculus in this country, so that missile strikes in a distance land that result in the deaths of non-combatants are never politically feasible.

Obama Signs Historic Fair Pay Law

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 08:47:00 +0000

'This is a wonderful day,' President Obama announced just prior to signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, Jan. 29th. '[I]t is fitting that the very first bill that I sign ... that it is upholding one of this nation's founding principles: that we are all created equal, and each deserve a chance to pursue our own version of happiness.'

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is a law that amends various federal civil rights statutes to give workers who have experienced pay discrimination better tools to seek redress and win back pay and damages in court. The bill was named after Lilly Ledbetter, a 19-year employee/supervisor at Goodyear Tire. After learning from another employee that she had been the victim of pay discrimination that has cost as much as $200,000 in wages and retirement benefits, Ledbetter sued her former employer. Ledbetter had as much experience and as many positive employee reviews as those male workers, doing the same job, who received higher pay.

A jury agreed that the company had discriminated against her based on gender and awarded her back pay and damages. The company appealed the verdict, and in 2007 the US Supreme Court overturned the jury verdict. Though discrimination had clearly occurred, the conservative majority on the court ruled, the law disallowed a lawsuit filed after six months of the first discriminatory pay check, despite the fact that Ledbetter did not know that her pay was any different from her co-workers for many years afterward.

'Lilly Ledbetter did not set out to be a trailblazer or a household name,' President Obama continued. 'She was just a good hard worker who did her job – and she did it well – for nearly two decades before discovering that for years, she was paid less than her male colleagues for doing the very same work.'

Obama praised Ledbetter for her tenacity and courage in seeking to have her complaint heard and her case brought to a court. 'She could have decided that it wasn't worth the hassle and the harassment that would inevitably come with speaking up for what she deserved,' he added.

Ledbetter's courage will improve the lives of working families across the country, Obama said. 'Equal pay is by no means just a women's issue – it's a family issue. It's about parents who find themselves with less money for tuition and child care; couples who wind up with less to retire on; households where one breadwinner is paid less than she deserves; that's the difference between affording the mortgage –or not; between keeping the heat on, or paying the doctor bills – or not.'

And in tough economic times, Obama stated, 'the last thing [any family] can afford is losing part of each month's paycheck to simple and plain discrimination.'

Obama added that the bill should send a message to employers to review their practices and ensure that they treat each worker fairly and equally.

The president dedicated the signing of the bill to his grandmother who experienced the gender-based glass ceiling but kept on working and struggling to give her family the things they needed. He also dedicated the signing of the bill to his daughters 'and all those who will come after us, because I want them to grow up in a nation that values their contributions, where there are no limits to their dreams and they have opportunities their mothers and grandmothers never could have imagined.'

Closing his remarks by reiterating that the Fair Pay Act is about 'basic fairness,' Obama thanked Lilly Ledbetter for her courage and hard work in making it a reality.

Union Women Eager for Solis to Start Her Work

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 03:49:00 +0000

Original source: Women's e News

(WOMENSENEWS)--Rep. Hilda L. Solis' pending confirmation as secretary of labor this week has union women's hopes up.

'During the Bush administration, working women were left to fend for themselves; but under Solis, that will change because she understands the challenges personally as well as professionally,' says Anna Burger, secretary-treasurer of the Washington-based Service Employees International Union, which has more than 2 million members, 1.1 million of whom are women. 'Although the department has had a women's bureau for more than 60 years, many secretaries of labor have given little attention to developing policies and procedures that enable women to support themselves and balance work and family responsibilities.'

Solis, who was nominated in December, has faced opposition from some Republican members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee over her stance on labor issues. One senator on the committee has blocked a vote on her nomination by anonymously placing a hold on it last week.

If she manages to win confirmation, Solis is expected to be more aggressive in the implementation of occupational health and safety precautions than her Republican predecessor, Elaine Chao, the only member of President Bush's cabinet to serve a full eight years. Burger is ready for that.

'We need new laws that will protect flight attendants who are suffering severe hearing loss because of jet noise and child care providers who work in other people's homes,' Burger says, adding that the only new regulations on workplace hazards in recent years have been required by the courts. 'Most of the laws on the books are designed for workers in manufacturing jobs that are disappearing.'

Burger also hopes that Solis will make enforcement of pay equity legislation a top priority. The Lilly Ledbetter bill passed the Senate by a margin of 61 Democrats to 36 Republicans Jan. 22 after overcoming a series of hostile Republican amendments. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican minority leader who is married to Chao, had threatened to filibuster the Ledbetter bill because he had claimed it would increase the likelihood of litigation.

'As a member of the California Legislature, Solis pushed for pay equity legislation,' says Burger. 'She also marched with our union in Los Angeles to support low-income workers, many of them women, because she wanted them to have the same opportunities she has had.'

Solis appeared before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Jan. 9. The ranking Republican member, Sen. Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming, is reviewing her written answers to several follow-up questions. Another Republican on the committee, Sen. Orrin B. Hatch of Utah, has said he will support Solis' confirmation.

Once her nomination goes to the full Senate for a vote, Solis could face more roadblocks from Republicans.

Sixth Woman in the Post

If confirmed, Solis would be the sixth woman to lead the department, which has a $10.5 billion budget and over 15,000 employees. More women have served as labor secretary than any other cabinet post.

Under Solis, the Department of Labor is expected to increase its budget for enforcement of the federal minimum wage law of $7.25 per hour, which will take effect July 24. Under the Bush administration, spending for enforcement decreased 13 percent. The majority of minimum-wage workers in the United States are women.

Hilda L. Solis

'One of seven children, Solis was the first in her family to go to college,' says Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. 'As the First Hispanic woman to serve in the California State Senate and a former chair of the bipartisan Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues, Solis championed increases in the minimum wage and work force training that are a lifeline for these women.'

After receiving her master's degree in public administration from the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, Solis served as an assistant in the White House Office of Hispanic Affairs under President Jimmy Carter and as an analyst in the Office of Management and Budget.

From 1992 to 1994, she served in the California State Assembly and the California State Senate from 1994 to 2000. In addition to authoring 17 state laws aimed at combating domestic violence, Solis led the battle that increased the state's hourly minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.75 in 1996.

Solis was so committed to raising the minimum wage that she used money from her campaign chest to fund the signature-gathering operation, which placed the measure on the ballot.

In 1997, Solis overcame the strong opposition of former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson and the California business community to win environmental protections for communities of color that suffered health problems because of haphazard enforcement of environmental laws.

In 2000, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who chairs the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, presented Solis with the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for spearheading this legislation. The first woman to receive the award, Solis donated the $25,000 prize to local environmental groups.

At her Jan. 9 confirmation hearing, Solis told the Senate labor committee that job training, especially for the unemployed and returning veterans, would be her top priority. A vote is expected later this week.

The United States lost 2.6 million jobs in 2008, the worst year for job loss since 1945. In December the unemployment rate for women soared to 5.9 percent.

Women are hard hit by job loss, Solis told the committee. The typical woman earns 77 cents for every $1 earned by a man and has fewer financial resources to withstand unemployment.

Parents Met in Citizenship Class

The 51-year-old daughter of a Mexican shop steward and a Nicaraguan assembly line worker who met in a citizenship class, Solis was first elected to Congress in 2000 and represents a largely Hispanic and Asian district of suburbs east of Los Angeles.

The secretary of labor will be one of the most important positions in the Obama administration, predicts Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, in New Brunswick.

'The economy is the No. 1 issue facing the country,' says Walsh. 'Like Frances Perkins--the first secretary of labor appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Great Depression--Solis will be responsible for coming up with solutions to serious problems like rising unemployment and stagnant wages.'

Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, which represents over 800,000 workers, says Solis would be a strong advocate for low-income and immigrant women.

'There's no better public official to ensure that low-income female workers will be included in the plans of President Obama and Congress to revitalize the economy with green jobs that pay excellent salaries and benefits,' says Durazo. 'Solis authored the Green Jobs Act of 2007, which was intended to secure up to $125 million in funding for federal and state green job-training programs, including a special provision for job training in low-income communities.'

Supports Bill to Ease Unionizing

Some Republican senators have opposed Solis' confirmation because of her support for the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for workers to unionize.

Although it is illegal, one-fourth of employers facing organizing drives fire at least one worker who supports the union, according to Rep. George Miller, the California Democrat who chairs the House Education and Labor Committee and supports the bill, which would also establish civil fines up to $20,000 per violation against employers who violate workers' rights during an organizing campaign.

Unions and businesses are spending millions of dollars to influence the shape of policy in the 111th Congress.

In 2007, Solis voted for the bill, but it failed in the Senate.

'My father's membership in the Teamsters union helped my family have health and other benefits even when times were tough,' Solis said at her confirmation hearing.

Solis has voted with the AFL-CIO 97 percent of the time. Labor unions are her leading supporters, contributing $888,050 to her campaigns since she first ran for Congress in 1999, according to the Washington-based Center for Responsible Politics, a nonprofit that monitors campaign contributions.

'Union membership is a major plus for women because they earn higher wages and are more likely to have health insurance, pensions and other benefits,' says Geri Jenkins, co-president of the Oakland-based California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, which has over 80,000 members in 50 states and has organized over 19,000 nurses at 50 hospitals since 2000.

'But under the current law, employers discourage women from joining unions by using intimidating tactics like hiring replacements and conducting one-on-one meetings with supervisors who threaten to fire workers.'

USA Today Columnist Says Those Seeking Bush Prosecution Driven by 'Revenge'

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 03:44:00 +0000

Hardly had President Bush slunk out of Washington before his apologist Ross Baker, the Rutgers political scientist, defamed those seeking his prosecution as motivated by “revenge.” They “should let their hate ‘die away,’” Baker advised in his January 27th USA Today article. Bush’s critics are mere low types “possessed of a kind of legalistic blood lust that can be satisfied only by criminalizing conduct of which they do not approve.”

Nowhere does Baker credit the Bush posse now forming up with seeking justice after the frightful firestorm of death and destruction Bush called down upon Iraq. No, as far as Baker is concerned, Americans should make “allowances for errors in judgment” by the lying imbecile that killed a million human beings, drove four million from their homes, killed four thousand of our sons and daughters and wounded thirty thousand more.

By accusing the posse of “hate,” Baker is standing reality on its head. It was Bush that was filled with hatred. It was Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Co. that did the killing. They were the thugs dripping with “blood lust.” They were the ones that ordered the torture of innocent human beings. What is it, if not hatred of the most despicable genre, to kidnap men off the streets with no warrant and imprison them half way around the world without charging them of any offense, not even for spitting on the sidewalk, and humiliate and torture them for years to the point of madness and suicide?

Baker’s article gets worse. He prays that President Obama, “with his sense of decency and fair play will, in time, shame the haters” so the country can go forward to “deal with our daunting problems.” Again, Baker wants to shame the posse for doing its job! Baker even rationalizes this by pointing to the lack of prosecution of President Kennedy, who ordered the assassination of Viet Nam’s Ngo Dinh Diem, and of President Reagan’s “illegally supplying arms to the anti-communists in Nicaragua.” Well, maybe if those presidents had been tried for their crimes then George Bush might not have assumed he was free to plunder and torture at will today. Meanwhile, new criminal evidence keeps coming to light.

Baker says those seeking Bush’s prosecution will be satisfied “only by criminalizing conduct of which they do not approve,” as if the posse is making up the laws as it goes along! Wrong! As Francis Boyle, the University of Illinois political scientist, reminds in “Destroying World Order”(Clarity), Bush’s illegal attack on Iraq violated the United Nations Charter, the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact, and is a Nuremberg Crime against Peace. Wars of aggression were “criminalized” generations ago.

Yes, accusing Bush’s critics of seeking “revenge” is absurd. Those that want to see Bush in the dock could easily walk away from any confrontation. The reason they can’t is because it is Justice, not revenge, tugging at their conscience. Justice is weeping. She is pleading with us because Bush trampled the Constitution and the new president is solemnly sworn to prosecute. President Obama doesn’t have a choice as to prosecute Bush or not. He can’t use “looking forward” as an excuse for looking away. He must do his duty or turn the government over to somebody who will. After all, we elected a president, not Santa Claus.

Baker, of course, never mentions what it is that distresses people of conscience about George Bush: the lies, the “preventive war” with its dragnet arrests, barbarities, bombings (78,000 murdered by air strikes alone), even the torture of children in Iraq’s prisons. No, you’d think Bush did nothing worse than take a lollipop from a toddler. Had Baker been alive in 1775 he might well have asked the Colonists to forget and forgive King George III for his “errors of judgment” and “fat-headedness.”

If Professor Baker thinks the republic should not prosecute the biggest criminal that ever drew breath on this continent, maybe his heart will melt with pity, too, for the two million Americans imprisoned for lesser crimes, such as writing a bad check, stealing a car or mugging an old lady to snatch her purse. Not one of these prisoners, no, not one, ever started a war, and thousands of inmates are doing time for nothing worse than selling a few joints. So why not open the prison gates and set the criminal class free? After all he’s done, if Bush ain’t guilty, name one American who is. Whoopee! At last, compassionate conservatism for all, Ross Baker style!

What is the Real Crime? Man Kills Family, Self After Being Fired

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 08:54:00 +0000

As the two big parties in Congress debate the minutiae of and push back and forth on their ideological differences over President Obama's economic recovery package, a report today, Jan. 28, by the Associated Press reveals that at least five mass murder-suicides have occurred in Southern California over the past year, apparently linked to anxiety and desperation over the economic crisis.

In the latest case, Ervin Lupoe and his wife Ana were fired from their jobs as medical technicians at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Los Angeles. In a letter found at the scene where police believe Lupoe shot his wife, their five small children, and then himself, Lupoe wrote that they had been fired from Kaiser Permanente after an internal investigation by the company found they had misled government agencies in order to get affordable childcare for their five children.

When their actions had been discovered, Lupoe said, a company administrator told them two days before last Christmas, 'You should not even had bothered to come to work today you should have blown your brains out.'

Lupoe went on to write that their complaints to higher-ups in the company fell on deaf ears and the two were fired on Christmas Day.

'They did nothing to the manager who stated such and did not attempt to assist us in the matter, knowing we have no job and five children under 8 years with no place to go. So here we are,' the note said.

Kaiser Permanente then denied that any such advice to kill themselves had been given to Lupoe or his wife.

No specific details can be found in the article about the Lupoe family's financial situation, and by all accounts the Lupoe's seemed happy and normal.

What we do know is that 2.6 million people like the Lupoe's lost their jobs in 2008. In addition, hard economic times might force a working family with five children to find way – any way – to provide child care for their small children, between four months and eight years. Working families pay thousands each year to provide decent child care so that they can get to work.

We also know that hundreds of thousands of families, faced with rising mortgage payments and job losses, lost their homes in 2008. In an instant many happy families who seemed confident about their financial situation became desperate and angry.

We also know that Bank of America got $25 billion from the financial bailout last year and spent some of it to conspire against American workers to keep them from joining labor unions. We know that top executives at AIG got an easy handout from Washington and then turned around the next weekend to spend hundreds of thousands on a plush weekend getaway. This past week we learned that President Obama had to intervene directly to prevent Citigroup, which got tens of billions in taxpayer dollars in 2008, to stop them from spending $50 million on a corporate jet.

Where is the bailout for families like the Lupoes?

Over the past eight years, Bush administration and Republican cuts for child care programs and after school programs to help families like the Lupoes make it from paycheck to paycheck have been gutted in favor of an illegal war in Iraq and tax cuts for the richest families and corporate CEOs in the country.

That is the true crime here.

Now working families have an opportunity for change. We need to grab onto that opportunity with all our might and fight to make sure what happened to the Lupoes never happens to another family again.

Cuba Advances in Therapeutic Use of Stem Cells

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 07:11:00 +0000

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 28 (acn) Cuba has extended the therapeutic use of stem cells to several of its provinces after 511 patients have been successfully treated since 2004.

Nearly 80% of the cases treated with the implant of adult stem cells coincide with people suffering from acute ischemia in the lower limbs and also in cases of so-called diabetic foot.

According to Porfirio Hernandez Ramirez, Deputy Director of Research at the Institute of Immunology and Haematology in Havana, with the use of this treatment, in most of the cases surgery was not necessary, ulcers cicatrized and the patients’ health improved.

He added that Cuban medical and scientific institutions are working together to use the so-called regenerative medicine in muscle and neurological pathologies, bone problems, diabetes and in the recovery of vital organs with functional failures.

Stem cells have the ability to regenerate tissue damaged by diseases, traumas or aging. They stimulate the growth of blood vessels and can be obtained from the bone marrow, the umbilical cord, the brain, the lungs, etc.

From the Cuban News Agency

Iraqi CP Leader at Election Rally in Nasiriyyah

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 06:40:00 +0000

We will stand firmly against Trinity of Backwardness: disease, poverty and illiteracy

The leader of the Iraqi Communist Party, Hamid Majeed Mousa, addressed a big election rally held in the city of Nasiriyyah, in Thi Qar province in southern Iraq, on Friday 22 January 2009, in support of the party electoral list (No. 307) which is contesting the forthcoming provincial elections. The delegation included member of the party's Central Committee, Jassim al-Hilfi.

The rally, held in the sports hall of Naseriyyah, was attended by party members and supporters from the city as well as districts such as Qal'ah, Nasser, Rifa'i and Shatrah.

In his speech, Mousa expressed his wishes that the party electoral would be able to fulfil the aspirations of the population of the province. He said: 'The land on which we are standing is endowed with enormous wealth, but the oppressive regimes that came to rule Iraq only offered Iraqis injustice, murder and starvation. Taking a genuine stance towards the causes of the people and responding to their needs require an honest and courageous stance against the trinity of backwardness: poverty, disease and illiteracy. This does not come easily, but through combating corruption and undermining the positions of corrupt elements, in all state institutions and organs.

Mousa stressed the importance of participation in the provincial elections as a big patriotic obligation, especially that the struggle is continuing over defining the features of the new political system for Iraq. He summarized the plan put forward by Iraqi Communists as aiming to establish a pluralist and unified democratic and federal Iraq, that is independent, free and prosperous, in which human dignity and rights are respected. This project emphasizes the principles of citizenship, 'away from sectarianism and division, and away from the whims of chauvinism, nationalist intolerance and hatred,' he said.

'Without promoting tolerance and coexistence among all Iraqis, irrespective of their ideological orientation, ethnic and religious affiliations, one cannot conceive that Iraq would become peaceful and embark upon building and reconstruction. He pointed out that the provincial councils will have an important role in the expressing the will of the people. He stressed, furthermore, the need to reach out and get in touch with the silent forces; those who have been ignored, and to make them aware of the significance of the Iraqi Communist Party's program for change and construction.

The secretary of the party provincial committee and member of the party's Central Committee, Rahi Muhajir, had earlier welcomed comrade Mousa and other guests. He referred to the significance of the visit and its timing, expressing the party appreciation and respect for the province, its people and activists, and also offering support for the party election campaign.

Source: 'Tareeq Al-Shaab,' the central organ of the Iraqi Communist Party, 27 January 2009.

Poetry: February/March 2009

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 05:17:00 +0000

Paying the Bills

By her tail 49 has dragged my dad
from the barn to the farmhouse porch.
He rests a minute, stands, dust
of the gravel drive rising
from the gulleys cut by his heels.
She is not stupid; she knows the smell
of slaughter on that trailer. In seconds
she'll kick at his ribs and sprint again,
yank him over the volted fence, away
through the corn to the chicken coop.
Who is more stubborn, more animal?
She in an hour will climb the ramp
in her heaviness, beaten, he in a year
will running, bucking, be hauled
to the suburb, the factory, torn
by his heels from his earth.
But for now, each other's simple danger, they
go tensing, Homeric, bound
in their clash to the dust they rile--
as if such strife could undo
their fortunes, could settle their debts
in the books of men.

--by Amy Groshek

Previously published in Seeds of Fire, Smokestack Books, 2008. Used with permission.

Bamboo Bridge

by Doug Anderson

We cross the bridge, quietly.
The bathing girl does not see us
till we've stopped and gaped like fools.
There are no catcalls, whoops,
none of the things that soldiers do;
the most stupid of us is silent, rapt.
She might be fourteen or twenty,
sunk thigh deep in the green water,
her woman's pelt a glistening corkscrew,
a wonder, a wonder she is; I forgot.
For a moment we all hold the same thought,
that there is life in life and war is shit.
For a song we'd all go to the mountains,
eat pineapples, drink goat's milk,
find a girl like this, who cares
her teeth are stained with betel nut,
her hands as hard as feet.
If I can live another month it's over,
and so we think a single thought,
a bell's resonance.
And then she turns and sees us there,
sinks in the water, eyes full of hate;
the trace broken.
We move into the village on the other side.

--Reprinted with the permission of Doug Anderson; previously published in "The Moon Reflected Fire" by Doug Anderson, Alice James Books, 1994 and "Seeds of Fire," Smokestack Books, 2008.

Short Story: The Peace Vigil

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 05:15:00 +0000

Dusk, in the living room of a rambling, country-style house in Texas, where three women and two men are about to mark an important occasion. It’s the second anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, and while in urban places people are commemorating the day with antiwar marches and demonstrations, in this small Hill Country town these five folks are about to hold a peace vigil.

“I’ve put together a litany for peace,” says Bob, a serious-looking, blond-haired man. Light from the corner floor lamp reflects off his steel-rimmed glasses, making his pale blue eyes almost invisible from where he sits in an easy chair. A transplant from Minnesota, Bob is in his mid-thirties and already set in his methodical, bachelor ways. His dark blue suit and tie seem to emphasize his soberness. “I’ve included excerpts from the Mennonites, the Reformed Church, the Presbyterians, the Franciscans and the National Council of Churches,” Bob explains.

“Sounds very ecumenical,” says Mary, the hostess, carrying in a tray of matches, unlit candles and ceramic bowls, which she places on a table. A Texas-born craft artist in her late forties, she tends toward an agreeable, bosomy plumpness. She wears hooped earrings, a full-skirted multicolored dress and a crocheted shawl, all made by her own hands. Adjusting still to her recent divorce — “clearing cobwebs from my mind,” she describes it — childless and living alone with her beloved white cat, Oscar, she’s delighted that three of her best friends and even a stranger have responded to her call for a vigil. She hopes that Eduardo and his family will show up too. Nowadays, she likes people around her all the time.

Mary distributes the items on the tray. Then she settles down on a floor cushion in the center of the room. “Let’s make memorial lamps y’all,” she tells the group; and murmurs of assent are followed by a busy silence, as each person lights a candle wick, holds the burning taper over a clay vessel and uses the hot dripping wax to lodge the base of the candle firmly into its container. Five instant “lanterns” glow and cast shadows on the walls and ceiling. The aroma of perfumed smoke fills the room.

“I’ll pass around copies,” Bob announces. He extracts them from his briefcase and hands each person several stapled-together pages.

“Are you a minister?” Ruth asks Bob. A newcomer to the Hill Country from California, Ruth has met the others this evening for the first time, having gotten word of the event from an announcement on an Internet blog. Ruth is an ummarried, pretty, dark-haired woman in her early twenties, who lives in a small nearby city and works as a secretary. She wears a simple knitted grey dress and sweater and sits at one end of the sofa with Oscar, who has snuggled onto her lap. She doesn’t encourage the cat by petting him, but she doesn’t push him away. She reasons that the feline, a contrarian by nature, has selected her because of her allergy to its hair and dander. Already, Ruth feels her nose itching.

“No, a lowly accountant, I’m afraid,” Bob tells Ruth.

“Bob is too modest,” says Edith, an attractive, well-off widow in her early sixties, who sits in perfect posture on a straight-back chair opposite Ruth. Edith has applied her makeup skillfully, and her stylish pinstriped pantsuit makes her appear thinner than she is. Like Bob and Ruth, Edith is a Texan by choice, having come to the Lone Star State from Massachusetts as a young bride years ago. A grandmother now, she prides herself on looking ten years younger than her actual age.

“I want you to know,” Edith says to Ruth, “that Bob prepares all the spiritual stuff for the nondenominational prayer circle he and Mary and I belong to.”

At this moment, Bruce, who reclines at the other end of the sofa, waves some sheets of paper in the air. “Folks, I’ve got me some copies here of a humdinger responsorial by a Rose Marie Berger, hot off the Internet.' Bruce, who owns a thirty-acre pecan ranch, is slim, loose-jowled and rugged in blue jeans, sports jacket and the cowboy hat he always wears, even indoors. A friend of Mary’s from school days, and for a brief period a long time ago her lover, he finds himself, now twice divorced, drifting back into Mary’s emotional orbit.

Two rival litanies have been proffered, and the women aren’t sure how to respond. After all, fragile masculine egos are at stake.

“My, my, we’re certainly blessed with offerings,” Mary laughs. “Does anyone object to using them both?” Nobody does.

“So, pass around your copies, Bruce,” says Mary.

Scanning the two readings, Ruth decides that Bob’s is more general and more religious, while Bruce’s is full of facts and figures. Ruth, who considers herself an agnostic freethinker, prefers the more secular one, but of course doesn’t say this.

“Do y’all want to vigil in here or outside?” Mary asks.

“Oh, outside,” Edith says, “So people can see us.”

“Yes, outside,” Ruth seconds. So my nose won’t itch, she thinks.

With lanterns and litanies in hand they file out through the front doorway. Oscar exits at their feet.

Outside, it has grown dark and street lights have come on. From the yard, a gentle March breeze wafts over the five vigilers, who stand in a circle on the neatly painted planks of the wide front porch, their heads bowed. Neither cars nor pedestrians pass by. The only sounds are the rumble of an 18-wheeler on Texas 27 and the close-by whirring of wings. A pair of swallows has made a nest between the rafters and the eaves, and they flutter into the porch and out again, afraid to get on their nest while humans are so near. Oscar squats and watches the birds, his tail twitching, his pupils narrow slits.

The lanterns, set high on a wooden ledge, flicker but keep burning. Together with the porch light, they give the vigilers enough light to see the pages they hold in front of them.

The opening prayer in Bob’s litany is read first, with Bob speaking the leader’s part. “We gather to proclaim and hear Jesus’s message of peace, and like him we will seek to do good and heal all who are oppressed by evil, poverty, war and injustice, by the power of God, who is judge of the living and the dead. Amen.”

The others respond in unison, “Merciful God, in Your gracious presence we confess our sin and the sin of this world. You show us the way to peace in Jesus, you call us to love one another, but we are a people divided against each other in our pursuits of power, control and security. We stray from Your intentions. Neighbor turns against neighbor in anger. Nation clashes with nation in war. Lord, have mercy upon us, heal and forgive us. In Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.”

Standing in the circle, Ruth feels uncomfortable. She attributes this feeling to the time she was in grade school and sang Christmas carols in class. Her father, Jewish and secular, instructed her not to sing the word “Christ,” for if she did she would be giving lip service to the belief that Jesus was more than a great human being, that he was Divine. She could sing the other words in the carols, but when it came to that one, she must keep mute. Her mother, a fallen-away Catholic, supported this edict. Every Christmas Ruth refused to voice the forbidden word. And now the childhood taboo makes her wince as she intones “Christ.” She fights her unease, saying to herself, “I’m voicing this word in an important cause and the message is right.”

Proceeding to the intercession, Bob says, “In the terrible context in which Jesus offered a different vision for life, in an era which included the need to confront the Roman Empire that threatened the world at that time, he opened his mouth and said, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’”

The others recite, “In the terrible context in which the church and the world confront the empire that threatens today’s world, we open our mouths and say, ‘Blessed are the innocent poor in Iraq, for theirs is the support of the faithful.’”

Bob: “Jesus said, ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.’”

The others: “We say today, ‘Blessed are those who mourn the loss of their beloved in this war, for they will be comforted.’”

Bob: “Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.’”

The others: “We say today, ‘Blessed are the peace marchers and the human shields, for they will be called children of peace and children of God.’”

Together, all five read aloud the closing Benediction, “And may God bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in this world, so that we can do what others claim cannot be done. Amen.”

The vigilers place their papers on the floor and clasp hands. A stillness descends over the circle. The candles flicker and glow. The swallows cease fluttering and settle down, despite the human presence. Feigning loss of interest in the birds, Oscar tongues himself clean. His neck twists halfway around and his leg points straight over one shoulder. A feline contortion that would make a yogi weep, thinks Ruth.

A boy from the neighborhood, about 14, saunters past the house, whistling. He glances at the vigilers with mild curiosity, stops whistling but doesn’t slow his pace. What a pity, thinks Edith, that more of Mary’s neighbors aren’t aware of what we’re doing. They should be out here with us, she thinks, instead of glued to their boob tubes, getting brainwashed.

“It’s time for Bruce’s offering,” Mary tells the group, breaking the silence. Bruce grins at Mary in gratitude, thinking how attractive Mary looks and how glad he is that she’s free and that he’s back in her life again.

Bruce reads, “Sergeant Christopher A. Wagoner, age 24, from Fairview Heights, Illinois, killed when his convoy hit a land mine. Sergeant Kenneth Conde, Junior, age 23, from Orlando, Florida, died from injuries received during enemy action. Lance Corporal Timothy R. Creager, age 21, from Millington, Tennessee, died in hostile action. Staff Sergeant Stephen G. Martin, age 39, from Rhinelander, Wisconsin, died at Walter Reed Army Medical Center from injuries sustained the previous week in a car bomb explosion.”

Edith reads, “The week the thousandth U.S. soldier was killed in Iraq, Christian Peacemaker Team member Greg Rollins wrote in his diary, ‘The explosion shook me, made my ears ring and made time unstable. I turned around and twenty meters away a wall of dust enveloped the street, where the concrete median had been blown to pieces. The next thing I noticed was that the explosion left everyone around me dazed — children and adults alike. You could see it on their faces. Some people yelled. Others said nothing, but stared. Somewhere behind all this, two Iraqi men ran, carrying a wounded third.’”

Ruth recites the names, ages and hometowns of more soldiers killed in action.

Mary reads another passage from the diary, “I watched all this shock around me through my own shock. Time sped up and slowed down. The light was too bright and people moved too fast, and I watched a middle-aged Iraqi man crying as his friend led him by the arm down the street.”

Bob announces more dead soldiers’ names, ages and hometowns.

They continue round the circle, alternating between the diary and the roll call of the dead — whose names by now seem legion — until they reach the end of the responsorial and intone in unison, “Amen.”

Ruth feels deeply moved. The others, too, seem strongly affected by the readings. With a feeling of shared accomplishment in the air, they are about to gather up their things and go inside, when a car pulls up in front of the house. A man, a woman and a little girl of about five get out of the car, walk up the stone footpath and onto the edge of the porch, where they hesitate, smiling shyly at everyone. The woman, whose black hair reaches to her waist, wears a blue dress with a bright floral design on it. The girl’s dress is almost identical, and bow ribbons adorn the ends of her braids. The man’s dress trousers and green guayabera shirt make an odd contrast to the furrows in his face and the calluses on his hands, which attest to a harsh outdoor life.

Mary greets the newcomers with a wide smile and big hugs. “I’m so happy y’all got here,” she tells them. “We were just fixin’ to go inside and have coffee and oatmeal cookies.”

Eduardo smiles humbly “I apologize for my lateness,” he says. “My poor English must have made me misunderstand the hour of the get-together.”

“Well, you’re here now is what counts,” Mary says.

Mary ushers them further into the porch, where the child spies Oscar. With a squeal of delight, she dashes over to the cat and fondles him. Ruth can tell that the animal barely tolerates this sudden, unwanted attention. His tail flicks erratically and he appears on the verge of scampering off.

“This is Eduardo, Josefina and their beautiful daughter, Carmelita, recently from El Salvador,” Mary tells the others. Bob, Bruce, Edith and Ruth dutifully introduce themselves, and the adults shake hands all around. “I met them only last month, when Eduardo planted some trees for me. And by the way, Eduardo’s a wonderful landscaper, in case any of you need one.”

“I’m looking for a reliable yard man,” Edith says. “I’ll get his phone number later, Mary.”

Mary longs to draw Eduardo and Josefina into the vigil and now she thinks of a way to do it.

“Eduardo, before we go indoors, would you lead us in a final prayer?”

“Alright,” Eduardo says, “I will do my best.”

Josefina calls Carmelita over. The circle is reformed, eight heads are bowed and all is hushed.

“Oh merciful SeΖor,” Eduardo intones, “Whose only Son, Jesus Christ, suffered, bled and died on the cross to wash away our sins. We beg you, wise Father and Savior, to guide President Bush in his great war for Peace and against Evil and Terror in the world. We beseech you, SeΖor, to lead the brave troops to a glorious victory in Iraq. Amen.”

No chorus of amens follows Eduardo’s — only a faint amen murmured by Josefina and then a fainter one by Carmelita. After an interval of stunned speechlessness, Mary says, “Thank you, Eduardo.”

Ruth’s good feelings of a moment before, dissipated by Eduardo’s prayer, are replaced by a surge of outrage. She hears herself cry out, “This isn’t what our vigil is for.”

Eduardo looks bewildered.

“I’m sure Eduardo means well,” Mary says.

“He probably thinks we wanted him to say those things,” Edith says.

Ruth isn’t assuaged. To Eduardo she says, “Do you think Bush is bringing peace by making war on a country that never threatened the United States? Do you think bombing people brings peace?”

Eduardo answers, “Yes. Sometimes bombing brings peace, when you fight against evil terrorists. Do you not support the troops?”

“I support them by demanding that they be brought home,” Ruth says.

Now Eduardo, too, grows angry. He turns to Mary and says, “What do you and your friends want from me? My family and I visit your house. I make a prayer for you, as you asked me to do. Yet, you are not pleased with me. You let this crazy woman shout at me.”

“Eduardo, I don’t let her,” Mary says. “We have free speech in this country.”

“I wasn’t shouting,” Ruth says, and sneezes. “I would never allow Josefina to talk to a man that way in my house,” Eduardo says.

“‘Allow Josefina!’ Listen to Mr. Macho Man,” Josefina says.

Everyone stares at her. Other than the few Spanish words spoken to Carmelita and the amen murmured after Eduardo’s prayer, this is the first time Josefina has said anything. Josefina smiles at everyone, shy again. Eduardo glowers. He seems on the verge of grabbing Josefina and Carmelita and stomping away. Carmelita puts her thumb in her mouth.

The agitation has stirred up the swallows, who flit in and out of the porch again. Stealthily, Oscar slinks towards the birds, in what Ruth takes to be the classic predator-on-the-prowl-stalking pose. When he realizes they are beyond reach, he stops, licks his chops and gazes wistfully up at them, plotting his next move.

“Now folks, everyone be calm,” Bruce says, adjusting his hat. “Just hold your horses and keep your hats on.” No one reacts to him except Mary, who pats him fondly on the back.

Carmelita dreads the tension between her parents. Taking her thumb out of her mouth, she reaches one small hand out to her father and the other to her mother and forms a link between them.

Bob gets an idea. “Listen, good people,” Bob says. “We have gathered here for a peace vigil, have we not? Let us, then, be peaceful, and like Carmelita let us join our hands in reverential meditation.”

For the third time that night, a circle is formed, hands are joined and heads are bowed. In the stillness that ensues, the swallows return to their nest. Ruth, holding Eduardo’s warm, rough hand, feels her anger begin to recede. Bruce squeezes Mary’s hand and feels her hand squeeze his. Edith, clasping Bob’s smooth, cool hand, vows to talk him into studying for the ministry. Eduardo, with Carmelita’s moist little hand in his, decides to stay for oatmeal cookies — for Carmelita’s sake. Josefina senses a growing self-confidence. Oscar sits, wraps his tail around himself and closes his eyes, resigned to catching swallows in his dreams.

Book Review: 2666, by Roberto Bolaño

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 05:11:00 +0000

2666 by Roberto Bolaño

New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Translated by Natasha Wimmer.

Women and girls in the fictional Northern Mexico city of Santa Teresa are being murdered. Law enforcement officials, riddled with incompetence and corruption, have few clues and do not seem overly concerned. The women, whom Bolaño catalogs in great detail, sometimes in precise forensic detail, in the novel's massive middle section, are maquiladora workers, students and prostitutes. Many are not even identified before being handed over to the local student hospital or buried in the public grave.

Bolaño's widely acclaimed novel, 2666, is presented in five parts, originally intended as five separate novels. Bolaño didn't make much money as a writer until his novel The Savage Detectives made a huge splash in its 2007 English translation – four years after the Mexican-Chilean author died of liver cancer.

Before his death, Bolaño had asked that 2666 be published as five separate books in order that whatever proceeds he earned from their publication might go to his surviving family. Five years after his death and the publication of the novel in its nearly 900-page entirety, Bolaño's latest work has been recognized as one of the finest novels of 2008.

2666 opens in European academia. Four scholars begin an investigation into the life and disappearance of a well-known German novelist. Their search for him and the details of his life lead them to Santa Teresa, Mexico where he was seen last. While there, they encounter a depressed Mexican academic obsessed with a book hanging on his clothes line and a mysterious black car stalking his neighborhood. During their brief visit to the city, the academics learn about the serial murders that have taken the lives of more than 200 women. But, for them, the search for a missing German novelist seems more consequential.

The detailed and relentless cataloging of the deaths of hundreds of women in the border city of Santa Teresa in the novel's longest part, titled 'The Part About the Crimes,' serves as a lens through which readers witness the brutality of a modern society whose fabric has been torn by the exigencies of global capitalism, internal and external migration, and the dehumanization of the characters who people this nightmarish landscape.

At one point the narrator tells of an episode in which two young girls are kidnapped on the street in broad daylight in front of their two younger sisters. The younger sisters run to a neighbor's house, as their own parents are at work in a local maquiladora. The neighbor, who has to go to a public phone because she has none in her house, tries to call the parents at work, but her attempts are met with refusal by the telephone operator at the factory who rejects all 'personal' calls. Writes Bolaño:

'Despondent, [the girls' neighbor] went back to her house, to the other neighbor woman and the girls, and for a while the four of them experienced what it was like to be in purgatory, a long, helpless wait, a wait that begins and ends in neglect, a very Latin American experience, as it happened, and all too familiar, something that once you thought about it you realized you experienced daily, minus the despair, minus the shadow of death sweeping over the neighborhood like a flock of vultures and casting its pall, upsetting all routines, leaving everything overturned.'

(At this point, it is worth noting that the present action of the novel occurs mainly in the late 1990s, prior to the emergence of the new Latin American left and its bid to shed the dominance of North American imperialism. It is also worth noting that Bolaño's sojourn in Mexico began in the 1970s as a college student after his family fled the Pinochet dictatorship for having supported the socialist government of Salvador Allende.)

Indeed, it is the violence and murder, the brutality of the crimes, that upsets the routine of this neglected life. While some individuals on the police force want to solve the murders, the higher-ups are unmoved. When a car linked to a number of the murders turns out to be the make and model of car often used by the older children of the city's elite families, pressure is applied to the police to stop pursuing that lead.

In an earlier part of the novel, an African American journalist named Fate travels to Santa Teresa to cover a boxing match. When he learns about the crimes, his journalistic curiosity is piqued, but his editor refuses to allow him time and resources to write an article on them. At one point, someone tells him, 'No one pays attention to these killings, but the secret of the world is hidden in them.'

Indeed, the secret of the world is hidden in them, in the killings of women deemed inconsequential and replaceable, in the mystery of power and corruption, labor and life, in the struggle for survival that is lost in the anonymous back alleys and basements of the all-too-real globalized city.

Book Review: The End of Empires

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 05:07:00 +0000

The End of Empires: African Americans and India

By Gerald Horne

Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 2008.

Gerald Horne's most recent book, The End of Empires: African Americans and India, tells a neglected story of racism, war and international solidarity. Horne outlines the mutually beneficial self-interest between African Americans and Indians in the struggle against racism, and how this self-interest not only spanned the oceans, but blossomed through the course of World War II and paved the way for both the Civil Rights Movement and the Indian Independence Movement.

Horne takes us back in time; he outlines the upsurge of the Asiatic Exclusion League on the West-Coast and its fear of an 'Asiatic Menace.' According to Horne, '...South Asians were described in terms eerily reminiscent of how African Americans were portrayed.' Horne continues: Politicians...sincerely interested in keeping their jobs could not easily ignore such anti-Asian sentiment.' In fact, the Governor of California had this to say: 'the Hindu...is the most undesirable immigrant in the state. His lack of personal cleanliness, his low morals and his blind adherence to theories and teachings [so] entirely repugnant to American principles makes him unfit for association with American people.

West Coast trade unions got into the racist fray also. The Portland Trades and Labor Assembly and the Seattle, Denver and San Francisco Central Labor Councils and Building Trades Councils, with a combined membership representing hundreds of thousands of trade unionists, 'endorsed and subscribed to The White Man,' a publication 'devoted to the movement for the exclusion of Asiatics.' At stake were jobs. In fact, race riots broke out all over the West Coast, 'caused by the employment of Hindoos at a wage far below what is required by a white man to support himself, let alone support a family,' said white supremacists. Of course, African Americans were already excluded from most good paying, union jobs.

As racist community organizations, politicians and trade unions closed ranks against South Asians, the African American community began to view India and her people as natural allies. In fact, the NAACP's Crisis newspaper, welcomed correspondence from Indian leaders; one of whom had this to say about his trip to America: 'During my visit...I have seen many evidences of blind race and color prejudice of the worst possible kind...something for which even I was not prepared.' Since most Indians experienced racism in their home land – from British colonizers and from the centuries-old caste system – this was no insignificant observation.

As The Crisis began to correspond with and publish articles from Indian authors, Indian newspapers began to report on US racism. The Swarajya, published in Madras, wrote that 'the whites cannot bring themselves to treat them [African Americans] as equals.' And L.L. Rai, a comrade of W.E.B. Du Bois, in his newspaper, The People, said, 'Modern America seems to have gone almost mad in its advocacy of the cult of the Nordic Race,' noting that the 'Negro Race especially is made fun of on every possible occasion. Either the Negro is servile in his attachment to the white man, or else he [is] treacherous and cunning and wicked.' Consequently, African American and Indian publications on both continents brought attention to each others plight and laid the groundwork for future cooperation and movement-building. In other words they laid the base for international solidarity.

As World War II broke-out, Great Britain and the United States were faced with a dilemma: either change their racist policies towards people of color, i.e. colonialism and Jim Crow, or face revolt – at home, in the colonies, and at the front. According to Horne, 'London and Washington were wary of the presumed affection of Black America and India for Japan – and their concomitant hostility toward the British empire.' Another problem for London and Washington' was that a socialist (A. Philip Randolph) and a presumed communist (Paul Robeson) – both of whom were uncompromising in their backing of Indian independence – were widely viewed as being part of the mainstream of Black America.' The fact that 'India was beginning to recognize that one of its most strategically-sited allies was Black America' made the hypocrisy felt by both African American and Indian soldiers on the front-lines of war that much more unbearable.

Horne's book unfolds with insight and skill. In The End of Empire the emperor has no cloths, as British colonialism and US Racism are laid bare. I have touched on only a few of the insights that The End of Empire has to offer. Needless to say, Horne's new book is another great work by one of today's most prolific and respected historians.

Oscar 2009: 'Bleak Chic'

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 05:00:00 +0000

With the exception of films like 'The Visitor' and 'Slumdog Millionaire,' 2008 filmgoers were presented with a fistful of downers. Critics whose profession involves decoding such phenomena attributed it to late blooming revulsion over the eight-year tragedy of the Bush administration, which brought more deregulation, more broken homes and hearts, and a nagging sense of hopelessness at home, continued bloodshed overseas, and the continuance of torture as a policy. Somewhere during the Christmas rollout of films earmarked for Academy consideration, the expression 'bleak chic' began to be bandied about. A few films attempted to counter the despair, among them, the Forrest Gumpish Brad Pitt starrer, 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,' which has unsurprisingly garnered the largest number of nominations. Other little seen gems such as 'Frozen River' and 'Wendy and Lucy' limned heartbreaking portraits of what Michael Harrington (in 1960!) called 'The Other America.' Both films seemed close to delivering the coup de grace to the notion of the American Dream.

I would have loved to have seen Michelle Williams nominated for 'Wendy and Lucy' and was amazed when Melissa Leo scored a Best Actress nomination for her role of a single mother who turns to smuggling immigrants across the Canadian border into the US to keep her family together. I was sorry to see Sam Mendes' adaptation of the classic Richard Yates novel, 'Revolutionary Road' given such short shrift. Leo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet expertly portrayed a pair of ordinary middle-class Americans adrift in a 1950s dream world which edges them toward self-destruction.

At least Michael Shannon won a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role as the loose cannon mental patient who seems the only character in the film capable of speaking the truth. Another surprise was the total shutout of Clint Eastwood's 'Gran Torino.' In the film, Eastwood (who also directs) created a portrait of a closed down bigot who ultimately comes to the aid of his neighbors, a family of Hmong immigrants. It seemed like the sort of career-capping role that won John Wayne his 'True Grit' Oscar, but for whatever reason, it was passed over. I'll be very interested to see the films coming out in 2009 now that we have a new President who appears willing and able to acknowledge and attempt to resolve the greatest crisis the country has faced since the Depression of 1929-1941.

The Nominations:

Best Actor:

Brad Pitt ('The Curious Case of Benjamin Button') Frank Langella ('Frost/Nixon') Sean Penn ('Milk') Richard Jenkins ('The Visitor') Mickey Rourke ('The Wrestler')

Best Actress:

Anne Hathaway ('Rachel Getting Married') Melissa Leo ('Frozen River') Meryl Streep ('Doubt') Angelina Jolie ('The Changeling')

Best Supporting Actor:

Josh Brolin ('Milk') Michael Shannon ('Revolutionary Road') Heath Ledger ('The Dark Knight') Phillip Seymour Hoffman ('Doubt') Robert Downey, Jr. ('Tropic Thunder)

Best Supporting Actress: Kate Winslet ('The Reader') Amy Adams ('Doubt) Viola Davis ('Doubt') Penelope Cruz ('Vicky, Christina, Barcelona') Marisa Tomei ('The Wrestler') Taraji Pittenson ('Curious Case of Benjamin Button')

Best Director:

Danny Boyle ('Slumdog Millionaire') Gus Van Sandt ('Milk') Stephen Dalary ('The Reader') David Fincher ('Curious Case of Benjamin Button') Ron Howard ('Frost/Nixon')

Best Picture: 'Slumdog Millionaire' 'Milk' 'Curious Case of Benjamin Button' 'Frost/Nixon' 'The Reader'

Best Foreign Film: 'Baader Meinhoff Complex' (Germany) 'The Class' (France) 'Departures' (Japan) 'Revanche' (Austria) 'Waltz With Bashir' (Israel)

Projected Winners: Best Actor: Sean Penn (The only role he's ever played in which his character is likeable) Best Actress: Anne Hathaway (The New Star on the Block) Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger (James Dean of the 21st Century) Best Supporting Actress: Kate Winslet (Really a leading role. She's great in this, but why not for 'Revolutionary Road' as Best Actress?) Best Picture The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ('Forrest Gump' redux. The 'Have a Nice Day' movie of the year) Best Director: David Fincher: For helming this schlock ('Benjamin Button') Best Foreign Film: 'Waltz With Bashir' (Just a hunch)

My Picks: Best Actor: Richard Jenkins ('The Visitor') Best Actress: Melissa Leo ('Frozen River') Best Supporting Actor: Michael Shannon ('Revolutionary Road') Best Supporting Actress: Viola Davis ('Doubt') Best Picture: 'Slumdog Millionaire' Best Director: Danny Boyle for 'Slumdog Millionaire' Best Foreign Picture: 'Waltz With Bashir'

Latin American Workers Uniting, Talking with Maria Pimentel

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 04:49:00 +0000

Editor's note: Maria Pimentel is the international secretary of the Brazilian General Workers' Union Central (CGTB).

PA: Tell us about the CGTB. In what sectors of the Brazilian economy is CGTB strong?

MARIA PIMENTEL: In 2008, the CGTB entered its 22nd year. During this period it has organized five national congresses. Today, the CGTB is active in 14 states of the Brazilian Federation. It also participates actively at the international level, and since 2003 has sent a delegation to the ILO (International Labor Organization). We are very deeply rooted in manufacturing industries, metallurgy, construction, and textiles. We also have affiliates in the information technology sector, among public employees, and in commerce and cooperative enterprises. In agriculture, we are present among the sugar cane workers and also participate in both the rural settlers and landless rural workers movements.

PA: What are the strategic priorities of the CGTB?

PIMENTEL: The main strategic priority of the CGTB is to achieve for Brazil’s workers conditions of work and wages that permit them to live a dignified life in accordance with the wealth that Brazil possesses. In that sense, we are fighting for a developed country that is sovereign and independent, where the State plays an active role in accelerating the country’s economic growth and strives to unite the workers and their unions around achieving these goals.

PA: What is the relationship between the CGTB and other Brazilian labor federations? Does the labor movement share strategic goals?

PIMENTEL: Since our main goal is the unity of all Brazilian workers, we concentrate our energy in building and strengthening the Forum of Trade Union Centrals. There are six legally-constituted Union Centrals, which are now eligible to receive money from the Federal Budget to promote trade union activities and support struggles for workers’ rights. The Forum of Trade Union Centrals addresses the main demands and problems that the Brazil’s working people face. The Forum also frequently deals with international issues that affect working people on a global scale.

PA: How would you describe the state of the labor movement in other countries in Latin America? Is there a formal relationship between labor federations which agree with the CGTB’s strategic approach?

PIMENTEL: In Latin America the workers movement is now experiencing huge growth. The election of patriotic and progressive governments in the majority of countries on the continent, such as Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and others, was due to huge mobilizations of the people – mainly of the organized sectors of the working class. There is throughout the continent a strong current of progress among all the trade union organizations. Based on our experience in creating the Forum of Trade Union Centrals, a structure which combines all Brazil’s labor federations – independent of their international affiliations – into a unified aggregate, the CGTB is committed to strengthening all efforts at united action on the part of Latin America’s workers and people.

PA: What kind of relationship does the CGTB have with the Cuban trade union group, the Confederacion de Trabajadores de Cuba (CTC)?

PIMENTEL: The relationship between the CGTB and the Cuban CTC is a long-standing one. We have a strong fraternal relationship based on mutual solidarity. We both participate as Deputy General Secretaries in the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU). We are in frequent contact with Cuban CTC leaders and share the same views about the role of workers and the goals of the international labor movement, especially on our continent.

PA: What is the percentage breakdown in the CGTB between private and public sector workers?

PIMENTEL: The public sector represents about 15 percent of the organizations affiliated with our Trade Union Central. We have a strong presence in the public sector in all the main states of the country, such as Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and we are also active in the South and Northeast. In the private sector our presence is also significant, in large enterprises as well as small and medium-sized ones.

PA: What is the attitude of the CGTB toward the leadership of the government in Brazil?

PIMENTEL: For Brazil, Lula's government has meant a decisive break with the neoliberal policies of the former government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso. The Lula government has put a stop to the privatization of important sectors of our economy. It has also helped to propel the growth of the internal market by increasing wages and expanding employment, and it has promoted the integration of the country with the rest of Latin America through Mercosul (the Southern Common Market) and Unasul (the Union of South American Nations).

Another important development for workers under the government of President Lula has been the direct participation of the CGTB in important government decision-making bodies such as the Council of Economic and Social Development, as well as the agencies concerned with migration, industrial policy, the fight against hunger, Mercosul, and other aspects of social and economic policy. The CGTB is also represented on International Relations Commission of the Ministry of Labor, the Commission on Fair Labor Standards, and the Council of Women. All of these are new agencies that were created by the Lula government to allow the working people of Brazil to participate directly in formulating the policies of their government.

PA: Which policies of the Brazilian government does the CGTB support and which does it want to change or improve?

PIMENTEL: We support the government’s policy of investment in the country's growth by creating good quality jobs and improving the consumer power of the workers. We also support President Lula when he criticizes the policies of financial speculation that have brought about the bitter economic crisis, a crisis that was caused by Washington and Wall Street and is being suffered by everyone.

However, the CGTB has stated clearly to President Lula that it the monetary policy of the Brazilian Central Bank must be changed. The interest rate dictated by the Central Bank is currently around 14 percent. Because credit is so expensive, it has a negative impact on the country’s economic development. This has created a situation that favors the interests of finance capital – a sterile, unproductive force in the economy. The payment of interest is now the top economic priority, at the expense of healthy economic growth.

PA: Does the CGTB have any contact with the AFL-CIO in the United States?

PIMENTEL: The CGTB looks forward to deepening its relationship with the AFL-CIO, but it has not had too much success up until now. We have more contact with those sectors of the labor movement that participate in the ILO conferences.

PA: What is the CGTB’s position on the WFTU (World Federation of Trade Unions) and the ITUC (International Trade Union Confederation)?

PIMENTEL: The President of the CGTB, Antonio Neto, was elected President of WFTU in 1994. After three years as President of the WFTU, Neto was elected Deputy President at the last WFTU Congress held in Havana in 2005. The CGTB is also a member of the General Council of the WFTU and the Financial Control Commission.

In terms of trade union policy, the CGTB concentrates its efforts on building the unity of all the world’s workers. This means always searching for ways to work together with labor councils and trade unions everywhere. The unity of the Brazilian Labor Centrals is an important example for the international trade union movement, especially for workers in Latin America and the Caribbean. Unity of action, as determined by the main interests of the workers’ movement, is the position we defend within the WFTU.

PA: What is role of women in the CGTB?

PIMENTEL: The CGTB is at the forefront of organizing working women into trade unions. We promote the formation of women’s sections within unions, and work to create women leaders and the election of women to leading posts in our trade unions. We also participate in the Brazilian Women’s Council, an official organization which debates public policy affecting women.

PA: Are there immigration issues between Brazil and neighboring countries? What work has the CGTB done in this area?

PIMENTEL: The CGTB participates in the National Council on Migration, a new organization created by the Lula Government. On the Council, the government works with the Trade Union Centrals to formulate policies for documenting and assisting immigrant workers. Immigrant workers are granted the same labor rights as other Brazilian workers. They have legal work documents and universal health assistance. Such measures prevent the exploitation of unregistered immigrant workers.

PA: What is the role of the CGTB at the annual conferences of the ILO in Geneva?

PIMENTEL: Both the CGTB and the WFTU work to counteract hegemonic and neoliberal tendencies in the ILO. We offer our support and solidarity to countries that strive to maintain their national sovereignty but are systematically attacked at the ILO conferences, as has happened with Venezuela, Cuba, Argentina, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Byelorussia, Syria and Palestine, among others. By coming to their defense, we have are succeeded in building the unity of the developing countries against the policies of enslavement, monopolization and foreign intervention.

In 2002, because of this unity, we won a very significant victory when the ACFTU (All-China Federation of Trade Unions) regained its seat on the Governing Body of the ILO after a 12-year absence. This victory of the international trade union movement dealt an important defeat to those who wanted – at all costs – to isolate the ACFTU, the largest labor federation in the world, in order to maintain their exclusive position within the ILO. As a result of our struggle, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions won the support of the huge majority of the world’s labor federations for its re-integration into the Administrative Council of the ILO.

How Nigel Lawson Got Global Warming Wrong

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 04:44:00 +0000

Just because the Greenland ice sheet is not going to disappear in the next decade is not an excuse for inaction or for ignoring the increased speed of glacial melting there (since glaciers are the source of much of the fresh water humanity depends on). The melting of such a massive ice sheet is a prolonged process, and action to slow or stop it requires thinking and acting using a long time frame. The longer we wait, the more we guarantee the worst results.

Another confusion which Lawson promotes is to obscure the difference between uncertainty about details of climate change on the one hand, and uncertainty about the basic underlying reality of global warming on the other. Most climate scientists have a great deal of the first kind of uncertainty, and very little to none about the second kind.

Another partial truth is that there is considerable variation in the weather, and that predictions about the weather (particularly predictions longer than a week or two) are notoriously unreliable. But these sophisticated deniers, including the better known Bjorn Lomborg (author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It ), use our uncertainty about short-term, transitory weather patterns to cast doubt on the growing certainty about longer-term climate change.

Another partial truth (wrongly ignored by some global-warming scientists) is that there are many challenges facing the world, and there are other important issues to address besides global warming. This much is certainly true – we shouldn’t become monomaniacal about climate change and CO2 emissions to the point that we ignore these other issues, such as growing global poverty, growing water stress, declining agricultural yields, or the increase in strains of communicable diseases that are resistant to antibiotics. But none of this is a reason to postpone action on global warming.

Yet another partial truth Lawson employs confuses time frames. While the currently observable impacts of global warming are growing rapidly, the most dire consequences are many decades or even centuries away. This is used as an argument to delay taking any action. However, each year we wait while continuing to increase humanity’s output of greenhouse gases will make solutions more difficult, complex, expensive, and painful.

Unlike earlier deniers (such as Michael Crichton in his book State of Fear and Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma), this more sophisticated crop concedes some of the reality of global warming, or at least the increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere which are the result of human activity. But they then use every uncertainty, every partial truth, to urge us to postpone taking any decisive action. Lawson goes on to say that even if it is necessary to take serious action on global warming, it is politically impossible. Contrary to Lawson's opinion, if we must take action but it is not yet politically feasible, our job is to work to challenge and change those limitations on action.

A book review is not the place to debate at length the details of these the arguments about climate change. For those interested in a more in-depth discussion of climate change, there is a rapidly growing literature, such as The Long Thawby David Archer, or The Rough Guide to Climate Change by Robert Henson, among many others.

There is also a growing alarmist literature, given to dire predictions such as that of James Lovelock in Rolling Stone several months ago of six billion people dead from global warming by the end of this century, or the near apocalyptic predictions of The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler.

Our task today is not to imagine the worst, nor to delay while hoping for the best. Our job is to act based on the best current knowledge, flawed and limited though that is. Our knowledge about global, human-caused climate change is incomplete, but the knowledge is real, independently verifiable, and concerns a process that is having increasing, immediately observable and measurable impacts.

This point leads to another set of arguments Lawson makes at some length. He argues, in his concluding chapter, that global warming isn’t really happening on the scale its advocates claim, and that to the degree it is happening, it is not as bad as some maintain. Lawson believes, however, that even if it is as bad as they say, we cannot be absolutely positive it will keep getting worse – and even if it does, we cannot do anything about it because it would be too expensive. Besides all this, enough voters haven’t elected enough politicians who will take action. So let’s delay, delay, delay.

This is akin to the attorney who argues that his client is not guilty of murder, but if there was a murder it was self-defense, or, if not self-defense, temporary insanity – besides which, we cannot be absolutely positive about what happened since none of the jurors were actually in the room at the time.

Lawson goes on to say there is an “ethical issue . . . not just about how much we care about future generations; it is also about how much we care about the present generation, not least in the developing world, and its children.” In other words, let’s do other things (which currently are just as politically unlikely) like reducing worldwide poverty and disease. Let the future worry about its own problems. This is a false choice—either do something about poverty or do something about global warming which may not really hurt for a long time. We have to do many things at once, and in reality, many of the issues the world faces are interlinked—like the increasing water crises in many parts of the world, exacerbated by global warming.

Lastly, Lawson argues that global warming is really all a matter of blind devotion and senseless belief: “With the collapse of Marxism ... those who dislike capitalism ... have been obliged to find a new creed. For many of them, green is the new red.” In other words global-warming science is all hysteria caused by a left-wing conspiracy.

Rather than being an appeal to reason, this book is an appeal to ignorance, inaction, incomplete knowledge, and anti-communism. It is an appeal to do nothing until it is much later, when the problems will be much worse, and the actions we will have to take will be more painful, more expensive, and less effective.

The Concept of 'Aura' and the Question of Art in Althusser, Benjamin and Greenberg

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 04:40:00 +0000

I think we should not expect Marxism to produce a scientific (correct) theory of art, which would be like a Marxist theory of biology attempting to replace Darwinism. Instead, the theory must come from within the realms of art and be 'internal' to that gamut of practices. Of course, Marxism has an input to make on this subject, and, in the absence of a universally accepted theory, it is obliged to take a position on art, to pick a side, so to speak. It is also obliged to champion those theories of art it thinks are the most progressive and scientific. I am not convinced that Marxism has done this in the past at all times.

The Marxists Louis Althusser, Walter Benjamin and Clement Greenberg have, I would argue, produced the most progressive theories of art, sometimes almost as an aside to their more pressing concerns. This essay critiques their contributions and also seeks to amalgamate them into a new and radical whole.

It will help us to start this investigation by thinking of visual art as visual philosophy. Art, if it is not simply decorative, entertainment, or utilitarian, communicates deep and fundamental ideas, just like philosophy. I realize, of course, that “What is philosophy?” is no easy question. The Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser (1918-1990) has, however, made it an easier one for us. For Althusser, philosophy is class struggle in the field of theory. It battles over the status of the sciences. Thus, the practice of science is distinguished from the practice of ideology. Art, however, differs from philosophy in that, while philosophy (at least as commonly understood) deals with the rational via writing, art specializes in “feelings,” taking feeling to mean both emotion and sensory perception, using its materials in subtle ways to affect the senses.

Linking art and philosophy in this way has the benefit of revealing a hitherto hidden aspect of art: As Althusser said, all philosophy interpellates us as subjects. The same can be said about art. “Interpellation' is a concept Althusser developed in his theory of ideology. For Althusser, ideology (even a system of false ideas such as bourgeois ideology) participates in the ongoing reproduction of the already existing social conditions of production. 'As any child knows,' Althusser said, all societies must reproduce themselves. Ideology is necessary in order to reproduce the 'right kind' of human subject with the 'right kind' of 'mentality' for functioning properly in capitalist society. The bourgeois state has organized modern education to manage this task, a task which once had been the function of religious institutions. Part of this reproduction process is the “interpellation of the subject.” Althusser’s example is the French police way of hailing: “Hey you there!” Such hailing functions so that the subject recognizes he or she really is a 'responsible individual' subject to ideology.

For Althusser, the ruling philosophy always interpellates subjects, it always has a particular 'world view,' and it hails its subjects to recognize its authority. However, all interpellation by the state must be 'materialized.' It can never just consist of 'pure ideas' floating from one brain to another. It must therefore exist in actual practice. We 'act out' ideology, or to put it another way, because practice always comes before theory, ideology legitimizes practices that already exist (e.g., ideology legitimated the Iraq war after the war had already been started).

But, as Althusser said, bourgeois philosophy “lives by its denegation,' the promise of an objective knowledge of what philosophy is, as a practice, which is offered by Marxism, is always denegated, or disavowed, by bourgeois philosophers, who assert that such knowledge is impossible. This denial of status is crucial to the ruling ideology. The bourgeois world view, for example, sees itself as just because it is universal, which means beyond all partisan positions. Because of this it may/can be forceful, resort to violence, etc.

The professional art teacher is similarly obliged to deny real knowledge of their practice. The phrase 'there's no accounting for taste' is one of the unwritten commandments of modern art education. This reflects the bourgeois notion that art (ultimately) cannot 'be scientific' or subjected to scientific analysis. In this, the ruling philosophy has decided what science and art is, but at the same time (absurdly) it holds there can be no definite (scientific) knowledge of it. It also asserts this of its own practice of philosophy. According to the ruling philosophy, we cannot know what philosophy does, as a practice. All of this is a function of the classical 'bifurcation thesis,' the great separation of the humanities from the sciences, which runs through all modern western education. The bifurcation thesis functions on the basis of the common ideology; it is simply asserted (unproven) by that ideology.

The theorist who in the modern period really began to pick apart this assertion in relation to art was Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), especially in his essay 'The Author as Producer.' While, for Althusser, ideology takes part in social reproduction by creating 'suitably subjected subjects,' this was a process largely envisaged as taking place in domain ideology. Even though he describes ideology as existing in material practices, these practices are defined by Althusser with an emphasis on the ideological.

Benjamin takes over aesthetically where Althusser leaves off ideologically by considering the material (aesthetic) form of the interpellation, i.e. the sensual mediation of the idea. Certainly, Althusser did this too when he wrote (relatively briefly) about art, Brecht, and the theatre, against the aesthetic of 'myths and drugs,' as he put it, but Benjamin is a more detailed and, I suggest, gets us further.

Benjamin, at the time of his writing, was bemoaning the rise of Neo-Kantian philosophical aesthetics (as opposed to Marxian materialism), and demonstrated its revival in the practice of contemporary leftist art. He put forward his theory against positions that he felt were then, in the 1930s, dominant, 'Activism' and the 'New Objectivity' (Neue Sachlichkeit).

Activism promoted a classless notion of 'common sense' and defended, according to Benjamin, the 'indefinable attitude' of 'men of mind,' referring to their placing all of the emphasis on a metaphysical notion of content understood as entirely separate from the process of language use. Benjamin opposed the Lukacsian theory of art, and any dramaturgy that based its principles on a notion of tragedy which perceived the dramatic hero as the proponent of will in a conflict between two mutually exclusive ethical demands. He criticized, on this basis, those whom he saw as undergoing a revolutionary development only in terms of mentality, without at the same time being able to think through the question of their own work, its technique, and its relationship to the means of production.

He thought that these movements functioned (however revolutionary they may have seemed) in a counter-revolutionary way as long as artists experienced solidarity with the proletariat only in the mind, and not as material producers. Instead of asking what the position of an artwork was vis-à-vis the production relations of its time – does it underwrite these relations, is it reactionary, or does it aspire to overthrow them? – Benjamin said we should rather ask the question: What is the artwork's position within the relations of production? He argued that this way of looking at art would make artistic products accessible to immediate materialist social analysis, the concept of technique being the dialectical starting-point from which the 'sterile dichotomy' of form and content could be overcome.

For Benjamin, this was a better way to determine the relationship between an artwork's political tendency and its quality. If a correct political tendency in a work of art includes its literary (artistic) quality, then its literary (artistic) tendency should consist in a progressive development of technique. His example is Brecht's 'art of thinking inside other people's heads.' (We should note here that, according to Warren Montag, Althusser also came to this conclusion at one point ). Benjamin argues that Brecht's method allowed the process of drama to become transparent to the spectator: that in order to make the sensory transactions accountable, Brecht had developed just such a 'productive aesthetic' – for example, the well known 'alienation effect' (not to be confused with Marx's concept of alienation) was a sensual technique of this aesthetic.

However Benjamin seems to diverge from this theory when we come to his far more influential essay, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' (Harrison, 2005). This difference is worth examining because of the latter essay’s standing in the field of art and art history/criticism.

In this essay, Benjamin has been interpreted as saying that the new capitalist production relations and the new forces of artistic production within it, such as photography and film, overcome the above-mentioned limitations by (we must presume) the fact of their mass reproducibility – because mass reproduction removes the so-called 'aura' of the traditional work of art. Of course, Benjamin's concept of 'aura' is usually taken as referring to a politically undesirable thing by the left, given that it can imply a precious, unique, 'elitist' quality, but the background of his thesis derives here from a particular, and relatively traditional, view of art history.

It has often been stated in the literature that previously art was religious and that it is only now with modern production that it has become political. Benjamin seems to legitimate this view in his 'Work of Art” essay of a radical shift from the previous conditions of art production. I submit, however, using as an example Althusser's theory of how modern education as part of the ideological state apparatus (which deals with the reproduction of ideas) emerged from a feudal background. Althusser contends that art, although definitely located in religious culture, was even in its feudal past political, not least because religion itself was a political force responsible for the maintenance of class order. The change in the mode of production does not alter this aspect.

Put bluntly, Benjamin does not seem to acknowledge this function of religious art, and therefore makes the modern condition of art too radically distinct from past class relations. One consequence of this is that his idea that the art of the past did not have a mass audience (as the art of modern reproduction does) is overstressed. In fact, art produced by the old guild system could often be seen by large audiences and even be paraded in the streets. Also, its method of production was often not individual but workshop-based, so that many artists, including apprentices, would work on a single painting. This is not so dissimilar from, say, today's film production, but, ironically perhaps, today's celebrity artists are actually less likely to work together this way.

Benjamin’s position also assumes that art needs a mass audience immediately to have a 'mass effect,' a position which ought not to be simply taken for granted. Great works of art may achieve their mass effect instead by permeating culture slowly, but nevertheless more thoroughly than lesser works, in the passage of time. There are of course many examples of this that we can experience right now in the museums, and this is, of course, a tacit acknowledgment that art has this exact function, in time.

Benjamin's other key idea in 'The Work of Art” essay, that traditional art has an aura because of its provenance as a unique object in time, may perhaps be considered a progressive, material, aura. By progressive I mean that provenance is always involves a material object being subject to the unique moment in which it was materially constructed, as well as with the material processes that affect it in its subsequent history – all of which are aspects revealed by the object (when studied closely). Thus, even if a work of art is reproduced exactly, it is difficult to fake provenance. Time cannot be repeated.

If this interpretation is correct, the sharp contrast, which is often implied, between the new 'anti-aura' and the feudal tradition with its religious 'pro-aura,' is erroneous. All 'good works of art,' considered as such within the framework of the new capitalist production relations at the close of the feudal period, tended to be newly defined in terms of a 'reactionary' aura whatever their technical means. This was, we must assume, because of the new bourgeois humanist ideology and the new practices (exploitation, expropriation, wage slavery) it validated for that/the new ruling class. There was perhaps only a relatively slow shift in terms of the aura, just as the Reformation was a process that represented a slow shift in religious sensibility.

Today there are merely different institutions (aesthetic state apparatuses), such as schools, museums, and galleries, for art. And it was and is not something unique to the new technologies promoted in and through these institutions to act against aura. The simple fact of being inherently reproducible is no guarantor against reactionary aura. Indeed we must point out that photography and film today do not generally (exceptions exist of course) go against aura; in fact, they are invariably treated as having the most intense aura of all artworks. The aura they do have, however, is not exclusively found in the uniqueness of the material object itself (the 'original film,' although there is of course the 'director's cut'), but is also due to the uniqueness of the author 'showing up' in the work (a la 'auteur theory'). But this is little different from the same attitude as in regard to a 'traditional' painting (although certainly the traditional Christian attitude towards the artwork may have been actually less directly associating religious values with the individual artist’s particular genius).

We can now accept that if the aura of the traditional work of art was once related to its religious context, this was because it was meant to impress the illiterate and had a hypnoidal function (that is, if there was no subversion of this by the artist), adding to the special atmosphere of the church/temple. For example, traditional stained glass windows in typical European churches provided Christian narratives using light; this was their 'special effect.' Is this hypnoidal effect, this aura, something that modern mass reproducible artworks lack? Hardly. Today, film and video are perhaps the most hypnoidal of all media, given that, to induce this state in a subject, the classic ruse is to use a 'fixed moving point,' such as the typical glowing TV/video image.

Today we have Microsoft Windows taking the place of the old stained glass windows. As 'windows,' we see they still glow with an 'inner light.' The only difference is we now invariably have these little 'temples' at home, where they can more easily probe us and know our 'preferences.' In a sense, they watch us far more closely than Big Brother ever could in Orwell’s “1984”; they are the new temple and oracle rolled into one.

Thus we can see that there are at least two kinds of aura, and two ways we can treat this concept-term. Iona Singh has shown how the apparent aura of great works of art by Vermeer ('Vermeer, Materialism, and the Transcendental in Art,' in Rethinking Marxism, Vol. 16 no. 3) is in fact its superior physical/sensual properties, made by an artist with great skill with materials, and it is this 'sensual aura' that is actually misrepresented by bourgeois critics who wish to salvage these great works for their 'normal' hypnoidal aura. Yet, at the same time, we see that there are traditional artworks that do have aura in precisely the negative sense, in that they use their technical means almost solely for purposes of heightening illusion at the service of mystical ideas. So, while an original traditional artwork (say, a painting) may have aura due to its unique provenance and its expert technical qualities, the new media also has this same aura, and also its own provenance as a material object. It cannot avoid this because there is always the original (even with mass reproduction and even with the Internet). Hence today, art film and photography have just as much, or as little, aura as traditional paintings by old masters, and in terms of artistic technique have the potential to hide the sensual-material transactions between the spectator and the artwork to a far greater extent because of the greater technical possibilities that exist today for illusion.

Benjamin's 'The Work of Art” essay has often been taken as the modern left’s justification for many recent kinds of 'new technological' but still narrative art, art that, in effect, still suffers from the same problems his other, more radical, essay attacked (this seems to be a peculiar contradiction in Benjamin's work). Today, mere use of new technology plus a loosely critical narrative, destined to find sympathy with a liberal outlook, is perhaps the equivalent to Benjamin’s 'new objectivity.' Ironically, however, because of the way Benjamin legitimates its use, this narrative technique becomes the ground on which today's progressive art invariably avoids the scientific question. For Benjamin, it seems to enough to be progressively tendentious and to use new technology, which then stands for 'new technique.' Although I have no wish to single out any artist, the contemporary work of Bill Viola comes to mind here, with his use of large video plasma screens showing figurative and highly illusionary, emotional, narrative artworks. His exhibition “The Passions” at the National Gallery London (22-10-03 to 04-01-04) was in a darkened room and the entire effect was hypnoidal.

Such emotionalist art always verges on being sophisticated kitsch. It has all the attributes of kitsch: it is highly illusionistic, sentimental and reliant on fancy new technology; but while I criticize, we should also note that Viola is a very professional artist and has genuine expertise, which it would be a mistake to dismiss as simply 'low.'

In his famous defense of ‘high’ modern abstract art against the forces of populist kitsch, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch' (1939), Clement Greenberg wondered how we could possibly account for 'high art' alongside 'low' culture, given they are so different. In his essay, Greenberg deals with a problem that Benjamin (in the essays I have mentioned above) only approaches indirectly: the accusation of elitism against advanced art technique, or in other words against avant-garde art. Certainly, it can be inferred that Benjamin’s concept of the diminishing of aura by mass reproduction is simultaneously an attack on elitism.

For the Marxian Clement Greenberg of 1939, his understanding of the new US abstract expressionist avant-garde arose from: “a superior consciousness of history – more precisely, the appearance of a new kind of criticism of society, an historical criticism …which made it possible.”

This 'consciousness of history' (according to this particular essay) somehow or other affected artists, who were even unaware of it, as it apparently just floated in on the breeze of the Zeitgeist.

In terms of Benjamin’s productive aesthetic, we can see how naïve Greenberg’s 'spiritual' view actually is, how it is really a repetition of the position that Benjamin was against. Yet, peculiarly, it is used to defend just the kind of technique and quality Benjamin was arguing for (at least in “The Author as Producer”).

Greenberg’s stance clearly stems from a Marxist, but still rather humanist and consequently Hegelian, understanding of art and ideology, in which art is reduced to ideology and ideology is really “Spirit” dressed as class struggle. Thus, for Greenberg, the state's education of the artist makes no appearance and everything is a question of mental and narrated allegiance, hovering at a distance above economic facts, but occasionally dipping into them to justify certain opinions. Greenberg essentially writes about art from a position assumed to be beyond scientific accountability, that is, from the traditional perspective of the arts/science bifurcation. He is in art, so he accordingly feels little obligation to provide evidence to the same degree as would be necessary in scientific discourse. Here it is only required to be convincing in the 'humanities-art way': to be erudite, to be well-referenced, and to be a bit radical. Consequently his Marxism functions not to demand any scientific advance in art theory, but as an externally applied politics, i.e., more a posture than a position.

In order to save the avant-garde and high art, with its special aura, even from the Soviets and their fellow travelers, whom he saw as aesthetically entwined in old-fashioned realism. Greenberg is thus obliged to distinguish between avant-garde art and 'lowbrow' kitsch. But he had to do this without breaking the bourgeois taboo against “accounting for taste.” Therefore his theory is ultimately only able to infer the existence of undefined 'special people' who have the capacity to 'divine' the difference between 'high' and 'low.' This notion of 'special people' is also applied to the artists he championed. Thus, although Greenberg champions avant-garde abstract artists, his is not the more rational avant-garde aesthetic of, for example, the Soviet Constructivists (e.g. Malevich, Popova, Rodchenko and Rozanova), or that of Mondrian, but a mystical one that suited his denegation of exact knowledge better. This was undoubtedly an aesthetic which still owed a great debt to the European and Soviet avant-garde in formal terms, but also, I argue, had hypnoidal aspects that could more readily support a mystical narrative.

The works of the Abstract Expressionists are technically impressive and formally radical and were, I think (though I will not argue that here), superior to the then official Soviet art (whose existence, I believe, contributed to the eventual downfall of the Soviet Union), and had ditched certain 'dangerous' Brechtian elements of the kind for which Benjamin argued.

To conclude, I maintain that in the new (US) context the techniques of avant-garde art were relatively defused to make them more amenable to their new social context, yet they still functioned in a progressive way (internally to the US, while externally they became a reactionary symbol representing the radicalism of the 'free world').

Greenberg, Benjamin and Althusser were writing against the same historical backdrop, the October Revolution and the rise of the artistic avant-garde, particularly the Soviet avant-garde, and its influence, and the lasting effects of World War II, including the legacies of Nazism, Stalinism and cult of personality. It seems to me that Benjamin and Althusser were struggling to free themselves from the vestiges of humanism in how Marxism was interpreted, and that they realized the question of art was somehow central to this project. They did not entirely succeed. Indeed, they both retreat, after making some bold advances at certain stages in their writings (Althusser, for instance, towards the end of his essay on the Piccolo Teatro), to a slightly more conservative position on the question of art. I suggest this was because they came up against the dominant world view that Greenberg aptly voiced and for which he was lionized. Greenberg’s theoretical bequest, however, is much weaker than either Benjamin or Althusser, because he does not really offer any new concepts of art for us to work with.