People Before Profit blog

Bush's Speech: Let's Count the Lies

Thu, 30 Jun 2005 01:54:00 +0000

6-29-05,9:54am

In the coming free 30 minutes of uninterrupted airtime that ABC News and the Disney Corporation will no doubt give to a spokesperson for the majority of Americans who believe that the war on Iraq was a mistake, I expect we'll see some of the following points made about the speech that Bush just gave.

First, it was curious to see Bush adopt usage of the French language, in particular his repeated usage of the word 'oui.' At one point, he said 'Oui, accept these burdens.' Some viewers supposed he meant 'We accept these burdens,' but no one has been able to identify a single burden that Bush has accepted, leading to the consensus that the French word must have been the one on the teleprompters.

Second, and there's no really delicate way to put this, it was stunning to see the extent to which Bush flat out lied his ass off. The Downing Street Minutes and related documents have made clear, among other things, that Bush determined early on to promote two false justifications for the war: asserting a threat from Iraq's fictitious weapons of mass destruction, and blaming the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, on Saddam Hussein. Tonight, Bush said he never made any such crazy claims.

Just kidding. Actually, Bush made them again tonight. Of course, voices in the media believe the fact that he's lying his ass off is 'old news,' and polls ARE starting to reflect that. But apparently repetition of the lies themselves is new news, worthy of commercial-free airtime that even the Michael Jackson trial never merited. And ABC News had been given the speech transcript ahead of time. They provided commentary on it before and after Bush read his lines. Yet their commentary never touched on the 'old news.' Bush came back to September 11th at least four times during the speech. He said that we (oui?) are fighting 'a global war on terror,' and that 'the terrorists we're fighting aim to remake the Middle East…Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war.'

'Terrorists on streets of Baghdad are followers of the same ideology,' Bush said, that produced the attacks of – you guessed it – September 11, 2001.

But – do we really still have to say this? – the regime that Bush changed in Iraq had exactly nothing to do with those attacks. And the terrorists on the streets of Baghdad were not there until Bush attacked and occupied Baghdad. So, why did he do so?

There was, he just reminded us, 'only one course … to defeat them abroad before they attack us at home.'

Bush is sticking to the lies that he included in the formal letter and report that he submitted to the United States Congress within 48 hours after having launched the invasion of Iraq. In the letter, dated March 18, 2003, the President made a formal determination, as required by the Joint Resolution on Iraq passed by the U.S. Congress in October 2002, that military action against Iraq was necessary to 'protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq,' as well as suggesting that the war is part of a global campaign against those behind the attacks of September 11, 2001.

But Iraq couldn't even shoot down an airplane after endless and illegal provocation during the summer of 2002. What was the threat? That they would nuke us in 45 minutes, that unmanned planes would spray us with killer chemicals? These lies have all been shredded, and yet the idea that there was a threat is still new news to ABC News.

'We [oui?] fight today,' Bush said tonight, 'because the terrorists want to attack our cities and kill our citizens, and Iraq is where they are making their stand. We will fight them there, and we will stay in the fight until the fight is won.'

So, the disaster that Bush has created in Iraq is now the justification for having created it. But who is this universal group of 'terrorists' fighting this global war?

Bush made that clear tonight by quoting none other than Osama Bin Laden as saying that 'the war is waging in Iraq.' But he didn't say that BEFORE Bush launched a war against Iraq! Hey, Ted Koppel, do you guys, like, keep stuff on tape or that sort of thing?

Bush added to his lies tonight, as he does every day in which he maintains silence on key points about which the media will not ask him. He did not say tonight that there will be no permanent US military bases in Iraq. He did not say tonight that the Iraqi people will get to keep their oil. He said he would give no exit date until 'the job is done' and the 'mission' is 'complete,' but he did not provide any way for a mortal to measure whether that state of affairs has been reached or not.

'To complete the mission, we will continue to hunt down the terrorists and insurgents.' But won't you always continue to hunt down somebody or other, Mr. President? So, won't the mission never be complete? So, won't there be permanent military bases? And wouldn't you now forswear any interest in giving oil to your cronies if you were ever going to do so?

Bush said nothing about the rise in terrorist incidents since he launched his war on terror, nothing about the steep decline in affection for the United States around the world. He knows that he has made us less safe, yet he asserted that 'My greatest responsibility as President is to protect the American people.'

But, as Sam Husseini has argued, a good way to reduce the fighting in Iraq and make Americans less hated would be for Americans to take steps to investigate and, if necessary, impeach Bush. The message that would send to the people of Iraq would be far more powerful than any boost in U.S. Army recruitment.

Or, we could all sign up and go kill and die for Bush.

Hmm.

It's a tough choice, I know.

'This 4th of July,' Bush said tonight, 'I ask you to thank the men and women defending our freedom by flying the flag…or helping the military family down the street.'

Why don't you PAY the military family for the work it does, and provide those people with decent health care and education? I'll fly a flag or eat a picnic on one, as I see fit, but it won't be because you lied to a bunch of courageous young people and sent them off to give their lives or their limbs or their sanity for your wealth, ease, and ego, while you mumble lies off a teleprompter about what you're sacrificing.

You want to sacrifice? Take ten minutes and answer Congressman Conyers' letter. Did you know that 128 Congress Members and 560,000 of the rest of us have signed it?

Do it for your country, Mr. Commander in Chief.

Give 10 minutes back to the nation that has given you so much.

Joint Statement by Leaders of Iraq’s Labor Movement and U.S. Labor Against the War

Thu, 30 Jun 2005 01:47:00 +0000

6-29-05, 9:52 am

June 26, 2005 Washington DC, USA

At the invitation of U.S. Labor Against the War, a delegation of six Iraqi labor leaders representing three of that country’s major labor organizations toured the United States between June 10 and June 26, 2005. They visited 25 cities, attended 45 events and 10 press conferences, met with thousands of working people, union leaders, members of Congress and other public officials, religious and community leaders, and antiwar and other social justice activists. They have given voice to the people of Iraq whose voices have been largely unheard in this country. They brought a story of courage, hope, struggle and resistance on the part of Iraq’s working people that has been absent from the mainstream U.S. media. The following statement was drafted and signed at the conclusion of their visit. It represents the consensus view of all the Iraqis and their U.S. hosts:

We, the representatives of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI), the General Union of Oil Employees (GUOE), and U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW) issue this statement at the conclusion of an historic 25-city tour by leaders of the three Iraqi labor organizations in the United States.

We speak in the spirit of international solidarity and respect for labor rights around the world. We speak in the spirit of opposition to war and occupation and for the right of self-determination of nations and peoples.

On behalf of the Iraqi labor movement, we met and spoke directly to thousands of Americans, including workers, union, religious and political leaders, anti-war activists and ordinary citizens. All of us, both Iraqi and American, were deeply heartened at the solidarity expressed throughout the tour. We have seen with our eyes and felt with our hearts that the people of the United States do not want the war and occupation of Iraq to continue. We are strengthened in our understanding of the deep commitment of organized labor and workers in Iraq to a unified democratic, independent Iraq, with full equality between women and men in terms of rights and duties, and based on full respect for the human identity without discrimination on any basis.

The tour was an expression of the following key principles: The principal obstacle to peace, stability, and the reconstruction of Iraq is the occupation. The occupation is the problem, not the solution. Iraqi sovereignty and independence must be restored. The occupation must end in all its forms, including military bases and economic domination. The war was fought for oil and regional domination, in violation of international law, justified by lies and deception without consultation with the Iraqi people. The occupation has been a catastrophe for both our peoples.In Iraq, it has destroyed homes and industry, national institutions and infrastructure – water, sanitation, electric power and health services. It has killed many thousands, and left millions homeless and unemployed. It has poisoned the people, their land and water with the toxic residue of the war. In the United States, more than 1700 working families have suffered loss of loved ones and thousands more have been wounded, disabled or psychologically scarred in a war that serves no legitimate purpose. The cost of the war has led to slashing of social programs and public services. It has militarized our economy, undermined our own liberties and eroded our democratic rights. We believe it is the best interest of both our peoples for the war and occupation to end and for the Iraqi people to determine for themselves their future and the kind and extent of international aid and cooperation that suits their needs and serves the interests of the Iraqi people. We strongly and unambiguously condemn terrorist attacks on civilians and targeting of trade union and other civil society leaders for intimidation, kidnapping, torture and assassination. The occupation is fuel on the fire of terrorism. The national wealth and resources of Iraq belong to the Iraqi people. We are united in our opposition to the imposition of privatization of the Iraqi economy by the occupation, the IMF, the World Bank, foreign powers and any force that takes away the right of the Iraqi people to determine their own economic future.We call on nations across the globe to help Iraqis regain their economic capacity, including full reparations from the US and British governments to rebuild the war-ravaged country. We call for the cancellation of Saddam’s massive foreign debt by the IMF and other international lenders without any conditions imposed upon the people of Iraq who suffered under the regime that was supported by these loans. The foreign debt of Iraq is the debt of a fallen dictatorship, not the debt incurred by the Iraqi people. Further, we call for the cancellation of reparations imposed as a result of wars waged by Saddam Hussein’s regime, and call for the return of all Iraqi property and antiquities taken during the war and occupation.' The bedrock of any democracy is a strong, free, democratic labor movement. We are united in our commitment to build strong, independent, democratic unions and to fight to improve the wages, working and living conditions of workers everywhere. We confront the same economic and corporate interests that have mounted a global assault on workers and labor rights. We demand strong labor rights in Iraq at the same time that we strive to reverse the erosion of labor rights in the United States and elsewhere around the world where they are threatened. We call for free and independent labor unions in Iraq based on internationally recognized ILO conventions guaranteeing the right to organize free of all government interference and including full equality for women workers. We support the direct participation of labor and workers’ representatives in drafting the new labor code, in determining government policies affecting unions and workers’ interests, and in drafting the new constitution. We condemn the continued enforcement of Saddam’s decree number 150 issued in 1987 that abolished union rights for workers in the extensive Iraqi public sector and call for its immediate repeal. We commit ourselves to strengthening the bonds of solidarity and friendship between working people of our two countries and to increase communication and cooperation between our two labor movements. We look forward to delegations of Iraqis and Americans visiting each other’s countries for mutual support, and to strengthen international understanding and solidarity in our common struggle for peace and establishment of a democratic civil society that respects human rights and freedom. With the strength and solidarity of workers across the US, in Iraq and internationally, we are confident that we can build a just and democratic future for labor in Iraq, the US, and around the world.

Signed June 26, 2005.

Venezuela: Anti-poverty Programs Funded by Citgo

Thu, 30 Jun 2005 01:44:00 +0000

6-29-05, 9:48 am

From

Caracas, Venezuela—Yesterday, during his weekly television program Aló Presidente, Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez announced the second stage of the Mission Mercal with the approval of an addition $295 million. This money is designated towards expanding the network to provide 60 percent of the population, or roughly 15 million Venezuelans, with high quality basic food staples at up to a 50 percent discount by the end of the year. Chávez also inaugurated another 1,000 food houses (casas de alimentación), or soup kitchens, that are expected to be up and running by the mid July.

Mercal is the largest storage, distribution and wholesale food stuffs network in Venezuela’s history. Dating back to April, 2003, Mercal was one of the programs created by the Chavez government to counter the country’s massive dependency on imported food products. Currently the Mercal network consists of 14,000 stores and supplies 10 million Venezuelans with government subsidized food.

Using Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables as a point of reference for the socio-economic divisions in a capitalist society, Chávez, alongside the Minister of Alimentation, General Rafael Oropeza and the Governor of the state of Falcón, Jesús Montilla, emphasized the importance of guaranteeing Venezuela’s food sovereignty as well as the meeting the basic necessities of the Venezuelan people. 'It is a bridge towards life,' Chávez declared, adding that 'this is socialism; capitalism is the kingdom of inequality, and in our country equality must be for everyone.'

Additionally, Chávez inaugurated 1,000 food houses and announced that they will open their doors by July 15th. A food house, basically the equivalent of a US soup kitchen, targets groups such as senior citizens, pregnant women, and disabled persons, living in the most destitute conditions and provides them with a free lunch and an afternoon snack. Combined, these two meals contain 79 percent of a person’s daily caloric needs.

Currently, there are 4,052 food houses that serve 600,000 people. With the opening of the 1,000 additional food houses, over 900,000 people will be served. It is expected that yet another 1,000 food houses will be opened within the next month, bringing the total to over 6,000.

'Who can study, play, write or take up arms to defend the fatherland if they are hungry?' Chávez asked while visiting one of the food houses.

The Alimentation Ministry also announced that monthly scholarships of $83.70 will be turned in to all of the helpers of the food houses so that they construct recreation spaces for senior citizens around the food houses, which will become the new axis of community interaction.

Citgo Funds Mercal

Chavez explained that the expansion of Mission Mercal was possible due to profits obtained from Citgo, the refining and gas station chain Venezuela owns in the U.S. In 2004 Citgo provided $445 million in dividends to its parent company, the state-owned oil company PDVSA. This money was turned over directly to PDVSA's social fund, which is being used to fund the Mercal expansion.

'This company [Citgo] never provided dividends to Venezuela. 14,000 gas stations and eight refineries and the profits that this company had since [Venezuela] bought it have remained in the U.S.,' said Chavez during his television program. 'Now we decide what to do with the profits,' he added.

Australia: The Resistance to Howard's Anti-union Laws Begins

Thu, 30 Jun 2005 01:40:00 +0000

6-29-05, 9:43 am

From The Guardian

Several thousand workers in the Pilbara in Western Australia ignored government threats and kicked off the ACTU’s week of protest against the Howard government’s anti-union laws on Monday this week. They gathered at the Windy Ridge oval in the north-west town of Dampier and were unanimous in their support of a motion from union delegates to stay off the job until the first shift on Tuesday. The majority were mining and construction workers along with teachers and prison guards.

They defied threats of the Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews that the government would take legal action against any worker who opposes his bills. 'Employees should be aware of the potential consequences if they choose to take unlawful industrial action', Andrews warned.

The Building and Construction Industry Improvement Bill 2005 which is at the top of the list when the new Senate sits, outlaws virtually all forms of industrial action, including meetings and rallies. In fact any form of industrial action by building and construction workers during the life of an agreement will be illegal.

Individual workers taking such 'illegal' action face fines of up to $22,000 and their unions can be slugged $110,000. It also gives courts the power to order trade unions to pay unlimited amounts of compensation or to sequestrate their assets.

The legislation is retrospective, so that any industrial action against it before it was enacted, such as last Monday’s, could be deemed illegal; hence the intimidations and threats from the Minister prior to their action in the Pilbara. Terror laws apply to workers

The legislation provides for a permanent Building Industry Commission, to take over the policing of workers and unions on construction sites from the interim Building Industry Taskforce. This commission will have the power to interrogate individual workers.

The powers of the Commission and its head have strong similarities to those granted to ASIO in the name of fighting terrorism.

As with the ASIO laws, the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Bill can deny workers the right to silence and rob them of the common law right not to incriminate themselves.

The Commission can order building workers not to reveal the contents of any interrogation to family or friends.

As with the ASIO legislation, failure to comply can result in workers being jailed or fined.

The head of the Commission is the former federal policeman Nigel Hadgiss who has already chalked up considerable anti-worker and union-bashing credentials as head of the taskforce.

The Building and Construction Industry Improvement Bill adds to the long list of lies that have flowed out of the Howard government. The government paved the way for the legislation with claims of rampant illegal activity in the building industry and the holding of a Royal Commission.

The Commission turned into a multi-million dollar witch hunt of unionists and unions. Employers were let off the hook: tax rorts, corruption, occupational health and safety breaches, failure to pay entitlements, etc were overlooked. The whole farce has only resulted in one conviction!

But that did not stop the Commission or the media demonising building and construction workers and their unions as stand-over merchants and thugs.

The scene was set to extend the ASIO/terror laws to a militant, unionised section of the workforce. The Commission in this case plays the role of ASIO and the police.

This new legislation creates a precedent, which the government certainly plans to extend to other areas of the workforce. Essential services such as oil and electricity are being considered as next on the list.

It is Howard’s war on workers on behalf of the major employers.

It is a real, class war. As the offensive on workers’ wages and conditions continues to make inroads and the government’s policies of privatisation of education, health, water, electricity, transport and cuts to social welfare continue, the resistance will grow.

The Howard government is preparing the way now to crush all dissent and struggle against his policies as they bite deeper.

Alongside this campaign, the plight of asylum seekers and the camps that the government has been building in remote areas of Australia must also be highlighted.

It is imperative that the trade union campaign against these laws is built as quickly as possible involving the community. In particular the government must not be allowed to use any of this new legislation against any worker or trade union.

July 2005 (editorial comment and table of contents)

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 02:15:00 +0000

Music Review: Devils and Dust, Bruce Springsteen; Hearts in Mind, Nanci Griffith

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 02:08:00 +0000

6-28-05, 10:12 am

Bruce Springsteen Devils & Dust Columbia/Sony 2005

Nanci Griffith Hearts in Mind New Door Records 2005

Two artists rarely seen as part of the same music scene released new compact disc albums early this year. Their highly personal and deeply political music bonds them in my mind. Both artists were born a little over 50 years ago, Nanci Griffith in Texas and Bruce Springsteen in New Jersey.

Both write their own songs and collaborate with some of the best musicians available. Bruce’s rock background is not that dissimilar to Nanci’s country/folk genre. A few years ago, Griffith toured the states with the Crickets, the group that backed up Buddy Holly. It was the closest she came to rock and roll; something she calls 'folkabilly.'

Of course, there was a major difference in publicity greeted by the release of each CD. For Bruce there was the normal high fanfare and hype. His record deal with Columbia/Sony is a lot different from Griffith’s new record company, New Door Records. And, of course, Bruce is a megastar and Nanci is not.

Also, the Springsteen Devils & Dust CD has embarked on a new technology, i.e., the disc itself has the CD on one side and a DVD performance on the other. Other artists, such as Neil Young, have provided a DVD disc in addition to the regular CD. Bruce, while often projecting himself as a laid-back performer and producer, at the same time, likes to be in the frontline of new technology.

In Hearts in Mind and Devils & Dust, Griffith and Springsteen explore the everyday activities of the people they encounter. They draw very clear pictures of their musical characters. Both artists associate with peace and social justice struggles. Whether their paths have actually crossed is not as important as recognizing their mutual opposition to war, poverty and injustice. They represent a growing number of songwriters and performers who are on the side of everyday people. Both are Grammy-winning artists.

Peace/Vietnam Focus by Griffith
Nanci Griffith’s new album has as its first song 'A Simple Life.' It is an appeal to have a life 'Like my mother' with 'one true love for my older years.' Then she makes her appeal for peace: 'I don’t want your wars to take my children.' She co-wrote the song with Elizabeth Cook. This song, as the rest of the album, is softly sung, but with searing intent.

Her first album in a few years, she shifts her attention to Vietnam. One original song involves her activism with the Vietnam Veterans Against War’s Campaign for a Landmine Free World. The song she wrote is called 'Heart of Indochine,' written while visiting Vietnam. The song is replete with appeals for peace. She sings of the horror of French and US imperialism in Vietnam.

The chorus is: 'Hoa binh…hoa binh, [‘peace’ in Vietnamese] Peace in the Heart of Indochine.' She sings of a friend: 'I am in a cafe in Ho Chi Minh City/ My friend Bobby Muller is sitting with me/ This traffic is maddening/ In his wheelchair he’s napping/ I wonder at times, does he walk in his dreams.'

She writes through the eyes of returning Vietnam veterans. Griffith was married to a Vietnam vet with whom she remains friends and a musical colleague.

Her other song, 'Old Hanoi,' invokes the Graham Greene, Quiet American theme.

In another powerful antiwar appeal, 'Big Blue Ball of War,' Nanci Griffith writes and sings about the First World War’s devastation. She laments, 'Almost a century, the blood has flowed/ We’ve killed our men of peace around this ball/ And, refuse to hear their ghosts.'

In 'Mountains of Sorrow' guest writer Julie Gold makes her contribution. She writes in the CD booklet: 'Nanci Griffith phoned to ask me to play a fund raiser in Boston….for the Vietnam Veterans of America’s Campaign for a Landmine Free World.' Gold wrote this song after that appearance and it focuses on the World Trade Center disaster. Another friend of Griffith, Clive Gregson, contributed, 'I Love this Town,' a story about a big city experience from a small town guy.

On a personal level, she writes a song to her father who was musical colleague of Hoagie Carmichael. The song is entitled, 'Beautiful.' There is a photo of Griffith’s mother and her father in the booklet. The booklet accompanying the CD has all the lyrics.

For fans of Sylvia Plath there is a song, this one written by Le Ann Etheridge, called, 'Back When Ted Loved Sylvia.' This is an exceptional song and presentation.

Extensive Career Achievements

After a successful career in the 1980s, Griffith again came to prominence in her 1993 'Other Voices, Other Rooms,' which won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Performance. The album included Bob Dylan’s 'Boots of Spanish Leather,' a song that Dylan, the previous year, requested she perform at his historic Madison Square Garden 30th anniversary concert. She had a personal setback when she was treated for breast cancer in summer 1996, which caused her to leave a tour with The Chieftens. In the following year she was treated for thyroid cancer.

Despite these physical setbacks, she joined the international effort to stop the spread of land mines. In January 2000, she traveled to Vietnam and Cambodia with the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (VVAF), retracing the steps of her ex-husband and still friend Eric Taylor, a veteran of that war.

The new millennium also brought three new retrospectives, including 2002’s double CD, The Complete MCA Studio Recordings, which marked the U.S. debut of 'Stand Your Ground,' an impassioned antiwar statement she recorded during Gulf war-era sessions a dozen years earlier for Late Night Grande Hotel. Nanci represents that quiet strength that will move mountains and bring peace and justice.

Top of His Game The new Springsteen album shows him at the top of his creative game. There is no E-Street Band on this CD. This is largely a solo acoustic event with some carefully selected guitar and vocal backup. Even his wife, Patti Scialfa is backup only on a couple of songs. The CD booklet contains all the lyrics, a good idea, since Bruce is uneven in the enunciation of lyrics to some of the songs.

This CD starts with an overpowering song, the title song, 'Devils & Dust.' In Devils & Dust, Springsteen takes you into the heart and mind of a soldier living in fear and doing his job. He says he has his 'finger on the trigger/but I don’t know who to trust.' He returns to the telling phrase; seemingly an explanation to the post-traumatic stress crisis that so many veterans are experiencing. 'I’m just trying to survive/ What if what you do to survive/ Kills the things you love/ fear’s a powerful thing,' to cause the motivation to survive and return home, in one piece, to families. This song recalls the '4th of July' album, which was Bruce’s anti-Vietnam War statement. And, in fact some radio stations are playing them back to back.

Reviewers are comparing this album to Nebraska and Tom Joad since both bring the lives of working-class people into the forefront. It is a good comparison and the trilogy would make a fine gift.

The CD provides a full range of human experiences. His song, 'Reno,' is about a guy, fresh from leaving his girlfriend, who seeks solace with a very accommodating prostitute. The graphic words put the parental advisory words on the CD cover. Bruce puts it all up front.

On 'All I’m Thinking About' and 'Maria’s Bed' Springsteen adopts another voice to deliver his verse. On 'Long Time Comin’' Bruce develops a song with an important one liner to his young listeners: 'Let your mistakes be your own.' He has a special song to 'Black Cowboys' with his own rendition.

The final song on the CD has a Mexican man thinking about his wife as he goes across into the US: 'Matamoros Banks.' This is powerful, year 2005 version, of the many folk songs written to highlight the imperialism that forces people to move to find jobs in countries that want their cheap labor.

With Springsteen playing guitar, percussion, tambourine and having a string background with, a group called the Nashville String Machine, the presentations on the CD are very musical, rhythmic and often gospel-like.

The DVD Completes the Success

On the DVD Springsteen takes us to a small farmhouse and sings with his acoustic guitar. He makes it a very personal experience, there is no backup. The cinematography is exceptional and the acoustics are perfect. He sings five songs including 'Devils & Dust,' 'Reno' and 'Matamoros.' This part of the performance is very reminiscent of Nebraska.

He introduces his songs by saying, 'You have to write from your inner core.' He continued that this is all that makes sense and if you don’t do that, you’ll fail. He proudly reminded his fans and viewers that back in the 1970s he was originally signed as an acoustic guitar player and often played with a 12 string. 'All the songs are about people whose souls are in danger or at risk. They all have something eating at them. Some come through successfully and some come to a tragic end,' he says.

The album was not greeted with full enthusiasm. But, it went to the top of charts, immediately. For example, on the negative side, The Village Voice reviewer roundly condemned it.

This is the kind of musical presentation that will grow on you, just like Nebraska, Tom Joad and almost all of Springsteen songs and their presentations do. The combination of the CD and DVD provides a complete Bruce experience not to be missed.

Sports: Pining for the Pistons

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 01:58:00 +0000

6-28-05,10:00am

The world be an incrementally better place if the Detroit Pistons had won the NBA championship last week. I believe this even though their Game Seven loss to the Spurs meant that we’ve been spared a Mitch Albom column about his experience watching the game with Isiah Thomas, John Kennedy, James Naismith, and Morrie.

The world would be better. But not because the Pistons are a terribly appealing team. Center Ben Wallace shoots free throws like he is trying to smite errant pigeons. The Detroit bench is so shallow, Kelly Tripucka and Earl “The Twirl” Cureton played in game six. Their best player is named Chauncey.

No. A Pistons win would have been a delicious slap in the face to what was becoming a well-orchestrated Pistons Backlash. The Pistons had become a team that people hated, and seemed to enjoy hating, a little too much. The vibe was not dissimilar to how some people talk about the city of Detroit itself: a little too “street,” a little too “hip-hop,” a little too “urban,” all of which are code words for a little too Black.

One nationally syndicated columnist, Michael Cunningham, called the spindly Tayshaun Prince a “Whining Pterodactyl” that “should be extinct.” He then described Rip Hamilton as having “Tap-Dancing Tantrums;” Ben Wallace’s reactions to fouls were called the “Afro Pout” and Chauncey Billups had what Cunningham called a “Woof Whine.” This kind of commentary boggles the mind. Was there no one to advise Cunningham that comparing NBA players to tap-dancing animals might be a bad idea? Who is Cunningham’s editor, Trent Lott? Jesse Helms? Bill Cosby?

Standing up to the Piston’s backlash meant standing up to this tide. It also meant standing with perhaps the most maligned player in the NBA not named Ron Artest: Rasheed Wallace.

A second Wallace championship would have been a sweet sight indeed. Last year, there was perhaps no greater moment in sports than seeing Rasheed Wallace stand triumphant next to seething NBA commissioner David Stern. Imagine George W. Bush’s face if he had to give the Congressional Medal of Honor to Moqtada Al-Sadr, or if Ariel Sharon was forced to host a tribute to Edward Said. That was Stern’s reaction to celebrating ‘Sheed. This is animus writ large - rife with reverberations that extend far beyond a clashing of personality and ego. It was only 18 months ago when Wallace laid a verbal smackdown on Stern, saying, “I see behind the lines. I see behind the false screens. I know what this business is all about. I know the commissioner of this league makes more than three-quarters of the players in this league... They look at black athletes like we’re dumb-ass n------. It’s as if we’re just going to shut up, sign for the money and do what they tell us.”

Stern, who is challenged about as often as Vito Corleone in an Olive Garden, shot back, “Mr. Wallace’s hateful diatribe was ignorant and offensive to all NBA players. I refuse to enhance his heightened sense of deprivation by publicly debating with him.”

This year, it would have been even more fun to see an encore. Recently, Stern has been hard at work alongside Republican arch-strategist Matthew Dowd about how to “help the NBA’s appeal in the red states.” Wallace, meanwhile, visited the White House last year along with the Championship Pistons, stopping just long enough to say, “I don’t have shit to say to [Bush]. I didn’t vote for him. It’s just something we have to do.”

Herein lies the heart of the Stern/Wallace conflict. It is really about the future of the NBA, and whether the league will adapt to a right wing climate in the country by muzzling its players. It doesn’t matter that Wallace is a skilled big man willing to take big shots in the fourth quarter, play tough defense and be entirely unselfish with the ball. Stern wants him to go away because he represents a block against what NBA suits want the league to become.

The Stern Agenda of a sanitized, 21st century NBA loved and supported by alums of both Bob Jones University and the Belmont Street Projects alike, is a Park Avenue pipe dream, and something we should oppose. Journalist Scoop Jackson likes to say, “Basketball isn’t a metaphor for life, basketball is life.” Life right now is polarized, racialized and divided. So is basketball. As long as that’s the case, I know whose side I’m on - and it ain’t David Stern’s.

--Dave Zirin’s new book “What’s My Name Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States” will be in stores in June 2005. Check out his revamped website edgeofsports.com. You can receive his column Edge of Sports, every week by e-mailing edgeofsports-subscribe@zirin.com. Contact him at whatsmynamefool2005@yahoo.com.

A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Globalization

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 01:57:00 +0000

6-28-05, 10:00 am

The illegal and criminal invasion of Iraq continues to be a drain on US imperialism complicating its ability to respond more forcefully to North Korea, Zimbabwe and other perceived 'outposts of tyranny.'

One of the principal reasons why Washington is failing in Iraq is because, increasingly, the US people themselves are turning against this imbroglio. The Army is straining to meet recruitment goals, not least since volunteers among African Americans have fallen by a whopping 41 percent. Black soldiers enrolled in the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program is down 36 percent. The Marine Corps also reports a drop in Black recruits. In fiscal 2000, African Americans represented almost a quarter of Army recruits. That percentage fell to 22.7 in 2001, 19.9 in 2002, 16.4 in 2003, 15.9 in 2004 and 13.9 through the first four months of fiscal 2005. Strikingly, no such decline has been found among Latino or 'non-Hispanic white' recruitment, though there has been a general decline among women of all ethnicities. On March 14, 2005, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that

only 36 percent of Black youth felt that the war was justified, compared with 61 percent of whites. Meanwhile, 80 percent of Blacks and 71 percent of women reported that the war made them less likely to join the military … In April 2003, one year after the invasion of Iraq, a Gallup Poll reported that while 78 percent of whites supported the war, only 29 percent of Blacks did.

This is no surprise to acute observers. 'I have not found a Black person in support of this war in my district,' says Harlem congressman, Charles Rangel. 'The fact that every member of the Congressional Black Caucus, emotionally, politically and vigorously, opposes this war is an indication of what Black folks think throughout this country,' he argues.

Part of this decline is no doubt due to antiwar activism. The Coalition Against Militarism in Schools in Los Angeles has been crusading successfully against recruiting for soldiers in area high schools and their efforts are being emulated nationally.

This activism is also leading to the shining of a bright spotlight on those who are profiting handsomely from the war. This growing list includes William 'Bucky' Bush, brother of one president and uncle to the current White House occupant. He is a major investor and sits on the board of St. Louis-based Engineered Support Systems Incorporated, whose shares just hit an all-time record high, not least due to its Pentagon contracts derived from the war.

Increasingly, activists are focusing their attention on these 'merchants of death.' Two years ago 23-year old Rachel Corrie of the US was killed while trying to block the demolition of a home in a refugee camp in the illegally-occupied Gaza Strip. Now her parents have filed lawsuits in Seattle and Israel seeking compensation for their daughter’s death. Intriguingly, their prime target is Caterpillar Inc. which, they claim, violated state and international law by selling specially designed bulldozers to the Israeli military knowing that they would be used to demolish homes and endanger civilians, such as their daughter who was crushed. She was wearing a bright vest at the time indicating she was a member of the International Solidarity Movement, a group working against demolitions. These bulldozers have been used to destroy about 10,000 buildings in the West Bank and Gaza, leaving 50,000 people homeless. The Corrie lawsuit is part of a growing trend of attorneys suing corporations for their alleged complicity in the acts of foreign nations’ human rights violations.

The religious community also has begun to target Caterpillar. They are bringing shareholder resolutions against this firm for reasons similar to the Corrie lawsuit. Four Roman Catholic orders of nuns and the Berkeley-based group Jewish Voices for Peace argue that Israel has used these bulldozers for illegal home demolitions and they are demanding an investigation into whether such use conformed with the company’s code of business conduct. Supporters of the shareholder resolution include two major Protestant denominations, the 3.6 million-member Presbyterian Church U.S.A. and the 8.4 million-member United Methodist Church. In July 2004 the former denomination became the first mainline Protestant denomination to vote to begin a process of divestment from US firms that support the occupation by Israel. In recent months the World Council of Churches has asked Christian churches to consider similar measures and Episcopalians, Methodists and United Church of Christ members are among those discussing the issue. Still, the Presbyterians have been in the vanguard as their general assembly voted 431 to 62 to examine their $8 billion stock portfolio for the purpose of divestment.

Needless to say Caterpillar is hardly the only corporation profiting from existing technologies or creating new ones. Thus, according to the March 3, 2005 Daily Telegraph of London, the Pentagon is developing a weapon that delivers a jolt of excruciating pain from afar and is researching avidly the question of how much pain can be induced in individuals hit by electromagnetic impulses created by lasers, without killing them. Tests on animals showed that such laser pulses produced 'pain and temporary paralysis.' Concerns about the ethical dimensions of such research, and weapons, have been dismissed peremptorily by the Pentagon.

Indeed, the April 1, 2005 New York Times reports that the 'costs of the Pentagon’s arsenal could soar by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. The Pentagon has said it is building more than 70 major weapons systems at a cost of at least $1.3 trillion this at a time when the health care system is enduring extreme duress and colleges are raising tuition costs sharply.

The militarization of outer space is a cardinal principle of these dangerous dreams. On March 1, 2005, Pentagon chief, Donald Rumsfeld, signed a new National Defense Strategy paper that said the use of space 'enables us to project power anywhere in the world from secure bases of operation.' The Pentagon is developing a suborbital space capsule that could hit targets anywhere in the world within two hours of being launched from US bases. According to the March 29, 2005, Washington Post, the Pentagon is also developing systems that could attack potential enemy satellites, destroying them or temporarily preventing them from sending signals.

Increasingly, these plans are targeting the world’s most populous nation, China, though US imperialism finds it difficult to accept that it may have committed the strategic blunder of the millennium when it aligned with Beijing against the former Soviet Union, thus opening the door to massive inward foreign investment that has transformed this Asian nation into the planet’s dynamo.

Increasingly, the conflict between Washington and Beijing is beginning to resemble, in part, the cold war conflict with Moscow. Thus, in early 2004 in its annual report the US State Department scored China’s human rights record. Premier Wen Jiabao hit back hard scorning Washington’s own record at home, the death penalty, racially motivated killings, etc., not to mention its record abroad including complicity in torture.

Also, like the cold war, US imperialism is seeking to encircle China with a string of unfriendly regimes and bases bristling with weaponry. Certainly that is the import of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and the US bases in former Soviet Central Asia. That is also suggested by the US-Japan agreement to challenge China concerning its rebel province of Taiwan, which was the unspoken catalyst of the enormous anti-Tokyo demonstrations that rocked China in April 2005.

US imperialism also has been courting India, which was attacked by China in 1962. However, Beijing has been scrambling to improve relations with this South Asian giant, an effort that culminated in a recent successful trip to New Delhi by Wen Jiabao. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was effusive and uttered words that will echo through the century. 'India and China can together reshape the world order,' he exclaimed in words that were not greeted happily in the capital of the world’s self-proclaimed 'sole remaining superpower,' the so-called 'indispensable nation.'

Already China is foiling the plans of US imperialism to maintain the existing 'world order.' Though Washington is straining mightily to destabilize the regime of oil-rich Venezuela, China is seeking simultaneously to bolster it, developing 15 oil fields in the eastern region of this South American nation and providing President Hugo Chávez with a $700 million line of credit to build housing. In neighboring Brazil, China has inked a $1 billion deal to build a gas pipeline across the continent’s largest nation.
Last year China stymied US efforts to levy sanctions on Sudan, but it is in Zimbabwe, increasingly the target of an Anglo-American crusade, that Beijing has been noticeably active. This is no surprise. During the liberation war in this southern African nation, Beijing was the most avid backer of the eventual victor and now ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU-Patriotic Front), and Washington was not necessarily upset by this since the alternative was the Soviet-backed Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (ZAPU).

But now as Washington strains to assist its chief ally, London, in destabilizing the regime of President Robert Mugabe, these imperialists find that Beijing is a major stumbling block, as Harare is rapidly implementing a 'Look East' policy that seeks to reorient its policies away from the Atlantic and toward Asia, especially China. This is part of China’s overall policy toward resource-rich Africa. Between 2002 and 2003 China-Africa trade jumped 50 percent to $18.5 billion and is expected to grow to $30 billion by 2006. By way of comparison, US-Africa trade was $44.5 billion in 2004 but is not expected to match the exponential growth of China’s commerce on this continent. China has oil interests in Sudan, Chad, Nigeria, Angola and Gabon.

China also has begun to encroach on traditional US turf, i.e. Israel. An angry Washington barred Israel from participating in developing the Join Strike Fighter because of this nation’s purported violations of agreements about arms sales to China. Israeli intelligence no doubt has been paying close attention to global trends and espies that China is ascending just as US imperialism is buffeted by a falling dollar, a questionable stock market and spiraling trade and budget deficits.

In response, Washington is striving mightily to crackdown on Beijing but the integration of these nations’ economies makes this tack problematic at best. For example, Wal-Mart is a principal trading partner of China; the yuan is pegged to the dollar to say nothing of the purchase of US Treasury bills to keep this government afloat by the Chinese central bank. Thus, though the White House has tried to blame China’s sizeable entry into the global petroleum market as a cofactor in the rise of gasoline toward $3 per gallon, in 2000 Sinopec, the Chinese state-owned oil and gas giant, raised some $3.5 billion by selling shares on the New York Stock Exchange, with Exxon-Mobil buying a large stake. Halliburton, the patron of Vice President Dick Cheney, has since provided Sinopec with a design for a new chemical plant; Bechtel, a major funder of GOP political campaigns nationally, has helped it build a petrochemical complex in China; ConocoPhillips, the Texas oil corporation, has aided Sinopec in oil and gas exploration. And, as was pointed out in the February 25, 2005 New York Times, in 2002 'Sinopec received a $429,000 grant from the United States Trade and Development Agency. The purpose was to help an import-export subsidiary to develop an electronic procurement system,' even though a Sinopec subsidiary was then under sanctions for sales to Iran or that 'Sinopec ranked among the 100 richest firms in the world….'

The problem for US imperialism is that the fateful 1970s decision to align with China against the former USSR means that Beijing now has considerable leverage in Washington. Thus, Semiconductor Manufacturing International, China’s largest maker of computer chips, created enormous problems in Washington when it threatened to buy billions of dollars of chipmaking equipment from Japan instead of the US after failing to secure a loan guarantee from the US Export-Import Bank. The failure was due to lobbying by Micron Technology, the Idaho-based chipmaker whose supporters include a conservative Congressman from this state. Yet, indicative of how Beijing has split the US ruling elite, making action against China difficult at best, nearly two dozen members of Congress from California objected strenuously to this Idaho démarche on behalf of Applied Materials, yet another megacorporation, which is allied with China, along with the New York based Citigroup.

The extensive involvement of US corporations with China has complicated the attempt to inveigle the European Union into maintaining an arms embargo against Beijing. If China is such a danger, wonders the EU, then why are US high-tech firms so deeply enmeshed in this Asian nation’s economy? Increasingly, the EU is not tailing after the US, which is undermining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the very concept of the 'West,' an amorphous term in any event. Thus, despite US efforts to isolate Venezuela, Total, the French oil company, is involved in a multi-billion dollar joint venture in Caracas. Meanwhile, Spain has decided to sell arms to Venezuela, despite strenuous objection by the US and Colombia.

Though Washington still steadily maintains its embargo against socialist Cuba, cracks in this mighty edifice are also beginning to surface. Louisiana, a relatively conservative state, has been in the forefront, as Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and Pedro Alvarez, director of the Cuban firm Alimport recently signed a $15 million trade deal for rice, dairy products, soya, fish feed stock and other goods. Since December 2001, Cuba has paid a hefty $1 billion in cash to US businesses for food purchases. Governor Blanco was effusive during her Havana visit. According to the March 20, 2005, Granma, [Cuba] she chortled, 'The people of Louisiana wish to say to the people of Cuba … much love and respect is extended across the Gulf of Mexico.' The astute Governor was following in the footsteps of chief executives of Illinois, Minnesota and North Dakota, all of whom have made pilgrimages to Havana of late.

Governor Blanco no doubt recognizes that US imperialism finds it harder and harder to issue diktats in a world where communist parties in Havana and Beijing are gaining in influence. This is so even in the erstwhile 'backyard' of imperialism, as evidenced by the historic meeting between Caribbean and African nations that recently occurred in Jamaica. In a concrete manifestation of Pan-Africanism that would have made W.E.B. Du Bois proud, the 15 nation Caribbean Community (Caricom) decided to grant observer status to the African Union and the latter reciprocated the gesture. Exchanges in culture, sports and education were cemented, along with abolition of visas in the two regions. South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma announced that the time had long since passed for closer collaboration between Africa and its diaspora. In that regard, Pretoria recently announced that former Haitian leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, driven from office into exile in South Africa as a result of a 2004 coup, had been appointed minister of the diaspora, to coordinate efforts in this all-important realm, a development that excited and intrigued African-American groupings.

This kind of solidarity is critical nowadays as US imperialism has not relinquished its historic role as devastator of Africa, an ignominious role that stretches back to the heyday of the hated African slave trade. Just recently, Titan, the US-based military communications company, was fined $28.5 million after pleading guilty to criminal charges that it violated legislation barring the bribery of foreign officials, in this case, the West African nation, Benin. The company had channeled $2 million to the 2001 re-election campaign of Matthieu Kerekou, the then president. These funds were used to buy votes and in turn Kerekou was expected to support Titan’s attempt to establish a wireless telephone project in Benin. This comes in the wake of revelations reported in the April 25, 2005 edition of The New Republic that former Liberian leader, Charles Taylor, now in exile in Nigeria, and reviled for his horrific role that led to the virtual dissolution of the state, was for years on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Thus, US imperialism finds itself besieged on all fronts, at home and abroad. Overstretched in Iraq, unable to provide a robust response to Beijing’s challenge, with Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America embarking on a path of independent development and quarreling with erstwhile allies in Europe, US imperialism is inevitably facing a severe crisis.

--Gerald Horne is a contributing editor of Political Affairs and author of Red Seas: Ferdinand Smith and Black Radical Sailors in the United States and Jamaica (New York University Press).

Protest Politics 101: An Interview with Frances Fox-Piven

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 01:49:00 +0000

6-28=05, 9:55 am

Editor's note: Frances Fox Piven is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the City University of New York. She is author of a number of books on class, including Regulating the Poor, Poor Peoples’ Movements, and The New Class.

PA: At the recent Left Forum in New York City you spoke of organizing centers of resistance against the policies of the Bush administration. What are presently the most important issues in the fight and the most important centers of organization?

FFP: I think the Iraq war is a very important issue. A strategy that could create trouble for Bush’s war effort is the call for counter recruiting. Counter recruiting can take many forms. In NYC for example, many teachers are already involved in counter-recruiting efforts. What makes this so important is that it intersects with a number of the Bush administration’s vulnerabilities. They are having great difficulty in keeping the different branches of the military service up to quota. One of the reasons, of course, is that news is getting out about the war and how terrible the conditions are for the American troops in Iraq. Another reason is the ambivalence Americans have about the war. Everyone supports our troops, but that’s a little bit different than supporting the invasion in the first place.

If the administration is unable to keep up the numbers in the armed forces’ needs with volunteers, they will have to begin to talk about a draft. If they begin to talk about a draft, I think the costs of the war would begin to come home to many more Americans than are now aware of them.

I think we also ought to do the kind of organizing that shows the relationship between $500 billion a year in military costs and cuts in domestic programs. Of course, the enormous tax cuts pushed through by the Bush administration are also forcing cuts in social spending. We ought to talk about the connection between these different aspects of Bush’s policies in our organizing work.

PA: Do you see these main issues as defensive or do you see any possibility for going on the offensive against the right and the Bush administration?
FFP: It’s hard to tell until you try. There are a lot of people in the social sciences who study social movements. I don’t think any one of them would claim credit for ever having predicted an uprising. Most organizers keep trying: they keep testing the waters.

The communists who organized the unemployed in the early 1930s began trying to do that kind of organizing in 1921. And they just kept trying and then in 1930, people suddenly responded. One could say the same thing about the civil rights movement. People were always trying to mobilize Blacks to demand the rights that they had in fact formally won after the Civil War in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. Then suddenly in the 1950s it became possible.

In retrospect we can say that conditions changed. Many more Blacks were now wage workers living in the cities of the South. They had the advantage of concentrated numbers in the ghettos of those cities and were liberated from the overwhelming power of the planters. But at the time nobody quite read those signs in that way. It was only through trial and error that organizers tapped into the current of both hope and indignation that undergirded the Civil Rights movement.

PA: On the role of the left in today’s context, some don’t regard electoral or legislative strategies as effective or useful. How would you respond to that?

FFP: I’m inclined to agree that if we restrict ourselves to electoral strategies, we are not going to win. After the 2004 election for example, many people who had worked on that election, sat back and said, 'In order for such an effort to be really successful, we need some very substantial reforms of our electoral process.' They talked about a national voter registration system because now every state, country and local election board really makes the decision about whether to accept a voter registration application or not. And we need the right to vote to be guaranteed nationally because now you can’t litigate against practices that disenfranchise people on the state and county level. Election Day should be a holiday so that working people are not so pressed for time when they go to vote. It should not be the case that election officials are partisan and have positions, as they did in 2000 and 2004, in the Bush campaign. On computer voting, for example, we should have voter verified paper trails and open source codes. It’s a long list. But we are not going to win any of those things until we win an election. And so we are in a conundrum.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t think electoral politics are important. It’s just that if we restrict ourselves to electoral politics we are never going to break out of the box. American history has experienced upsurges of protest from below that have sometimes shattered the constraints under which we operate. That was true in the American Revolution itself and it was true in decades leading to the Civil War and the emancipation of Blacks. The abolitionist movement, Black and white, was critical to that achievement.

It was certainly true of the labor movement, the poverty movements of the 1960s and the civil rights movement. None of those movements were primarily electoral efforts – they were effective because they threatened to fragment electoral coalitions. They were able to do that because movements have a kind of communicative and disruptive power that leaps over the propaganda machines that the two parties control and have controlled for a long time. Protest movements are able to raise issues that are not dictated by party operatives and their fat cat contributors. Those issues are in a sense communicated more widely when the movements are disruptive. Moreover, the disruption itself has an impact: if you shut factories down, you are going to get a lot of people angry and you are also going to attract a lot of allies. Similarly, if you shut down the schools. The universities today, for example, have more people as employees and students than the mass production industries. So there are many sites for this kind of movement mobilization. But what’s important about them is that they don’t rely on resources and channels that are controlled from the top and they are therefore able to raise new issues in dramatic ways and reach new people. We probably can reach more people with social protest than we can reach with get-out-the-vote campaigns.

PA: At the Left Forum there was a number of workshops on the subject of imagining a new society ranging from the 'Soul of Socialism' to 'What would a new socialist USA' look like. What value would this kind of discussion or freedom dreaming have. And how do you see us getting there?

FFP: I don’t think we are very clear about how to get there. But I do think it’s important to keep raising the possibility of an alternative kind of society. Otherwise we get overwhelmed; it’s both intellectually and culturally overwhelming, by the 'There’s No Alterative' (TINA) idea. That is the argument of the right: the business right and its populist allies: that this is the only way. It isn’t and we know it. We have little glimmers about how it’s not the only way because our society has been different in the past under the pressure of mass uprisings in the ‘30s and the ‘60s and also because European societies are not just like the US. They are not as bound by the dictates of capital; they moderate those dictates. Maybe we can and maybe we can’t have an entirely different society, but if we don’t struggle for one, then it’s going to be pretty barbaric. And in order to struggle for one we have to believe in the possibility of other institutional arrangements than the kinds of arrangements that are dictated by contemporary American capitalism linked to this political/religious theocracy that we have today.

Israel to Expel 100,000 Palestinians Under Racist Law

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 01:43:00 +0000

6-28-05,9:45am

GAZA- - The Israeli government approved on Sunday a law to deny Palestinians married to Israeli citizens the permanent stay visa in Israel, and expel all those staying illegally from Israel.

The Israel law is targeting mainly Arab families, where Arab Israeli citizens have married Palestinians from the occupied territories, and live together inside Israel.

Israeli media sources asserted that the law was submitted by the Israeli Interior Minister Ophir Pines-Paz.

The law stated that the Israeli Interior Ministry would give residency permits to those who entered and stayed illegally, except when this has happened without bad intentions or under uncontrollable conditions.

The law also prevents those deemed by Israel as a “security threat” from applying or receiving a permanent residency visa, and those who are illegally staying in Israel must be expelled first in order to apply for a residency visa, as long as they haven’t stayed illegally for more than one year. The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth has indicated last week that the number of Palestinians married to Israeli Arabs who would be expelled according to this law are about 100,000 civilians, especially after the Israeli government and Knesset have approved the extension of the amended citizenship law, which prevents the reunification of families where either of the spouses is from the occupied Palestinian territories.

On the other hand, the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) demanded the Israeli Prime Minister oppose this law, as they constitute a grave breach of citizens’ rights.

ACRI added that the limitations on the citizenship law ignores the living conditions of many families that applied for a reunion, and the approval of this law would jeopardize thousands of families in Israel, in addition to considering Palestinians as second class citizens, even those born inside what is called now Israel.

A press statement by the association stated that as Israel lacked a defined policy for non-Jewish immigrants, as their procedures had been frequently changed over a few years according to government and Interior Ministry policies, which didn’t follow a common set of standards.

The association called on the Israeli government to set a clear and open immigration policy that deals with all sorts of immigrations, as well as the Israeli state’s duties towards its citizens, which are based on predefined standards in terms of granting status to non-Jews.

Fallout: Reflections on the 60th Anniversary of the Trinity Test

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 01:41:00 +0000

6-28-05, 9:45 am

July 16, 2005, will be the 60th anniversary of the plutonium-fueled atomic bomb, tested at White Sands, New Mexico. On July 15th and 16th the Los Alamos Study Group, a nuclear-weapons watchdog, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, will hold poetry readings and a silent auction in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. John Bradley, a fellow poet, and editor of Atomic Ghost: Poets Respond to the Nuclear Age (1995), and Learning to Glow: A Nuclear Reader (2000), and this writer, are two of the readers invited to participate.

As my father helped in the manufacture of the plutonium used in the Trinity A-bomb, and in its twin, Fat Man, dropped on Nagasaki August 9, 1945, I want to reflect on my father’s 36-year Hanford work history which began in January 1944 at what was then coded the Hanford Engineering Works (H.E.W.). Because my father was typical of Hanford workers – most of whom came to the world’s first plutonium-manufacturing plant on the banks of the Columbia River in the scablands of southeastern Washington State from other states as far away from Washington as Louisiana and New York, I am writing then about Hanford workers in general, and about the invisible class structure of a US government 'company town.'

The company town was Richland, which I sometimes pun as en-Richedland; a former farming town on the Columbia plateau, as were also White Bluffs and Hanford itself. General Leslie Groves, the Donald Rumsfeld of his time, the military head of the Manhattan Project, had the farmers and orchardists moved off their land – and the farmhouses, town halls and granges bulldozed over. The property was needed for the war effort, and to help defeat the Axis powers. They were paid off cheaply for alfalfa fields and beautiful apple, cherry and pear orchards – so that the US might seed atomic fruit.

The Native Americans were affected also, as the Columbia, the Yakima and Snake rivers were traditional salmon fishing grounds for the Yakama, Wanapum, Nez Perce, Cayuse, Walla Walla, and other Pacific Northwest tribes, to say nothing of the riparian wildlife that depended on the rivers. The Yakama tribe was forced to give up some of their legal rights as their reservation included part of what was to be called the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

When you read the histories of the Manhattan Project, and of the creation and use of the atomic bombs, you read about Robert Oppenheimer (the scientific head of the Manhattan Project), General Groves, and others of the nuclear and military priesthood: physicists, chemists, and mathematicians. But you will seldom read about workers, the men and women who built the huge wartime plant (B-reactor); the company town of Richland, and those whose jobs it was to process the plutonium from yellowcake uranium (sent to Hanford from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, another company town) into plutonium pucks after B-reactor had been completed.

Richland, Washington, was as much a 'company town' as any coal mining town owned by Peabody Coal. But instead of Pinkerton thugs watching over the town, Groves had his military intelligence at work, making sure there were no communists, socialists or unpatriotic types working at the nuclear plant or in the businesses that served the community. (I wrote about ur-Homeland Security in 'Mother Witherup’s Top Secret Cherry Pie' in my 1990 book Men at Work). Also, and this was General Grove’s doing, the workers and businesses in Richland, were all white folks. The African Americans who worked on construction helping to build the plant, and the other reactors that went online during the Korean War, had to live downriver in Pasco, Washington, and in often substandard housing. There were no Hispanics or Native Americans either working at Hanford – and there were only one or two Hispanics and/or Native Americans in my graduating class of 1953.

The young and mostly white work force at Hanford was not by accident. Groves made certain that no workers at Hanford, Oakridge or Los Alamos – the nuclear Holy See of the Manhattan Project – transferred from one community to another. This, in Groves’ mind, insured the secrecy of the project. The scientists, however, the nuclear priesthood, were able to travel from Met Lab in Chicago to Oak Ridge, or to Los Alamos, or to Hanford to tune up and tinker with the fissioning and manufacturing processes.
My father, Mervyn Clyde Witherup, came to Hanford from Kansas City, Missouri, January or February of 1944. He had been working in quality control, checking the annealing on cartridges, at the Remington munitions plant in Kansas City. Remington was then a subsidiary of DuPont. I don’t have the space to go into the history here, but DuPont contracted to build and run the very first nuclear reactor in the United States. There were announcements at Dad’s workplace that there was an opportunity for higher wages were one to 'Go West, young man.' My father decided to make the move, and the rest of the family joined him in June 1944: my mother, me, sister Sandra, and Mervyn Jr., ages nine, three and one respectively. The youngest, sibling, Constance, was born in Richland, 1945.

Father was typical also of having worked for a DuPont company. Many of the other workers recruited for H.E.W. had come from DuPont plants across the country. Dad was 4-F because of a bad shoulder from an auto accident in Kansas City – and he always felt somewhat guilty about not being in the war, though he balanced this, as did many of the other workers, and their families, with the satisfaction that he was doing important, wartime work. Few of the workers knew what they were making at Hanford, until the actual dropping of Little Boy on Hiroshima, and Fat Man on Nagasaki. Then, and throughout the cold war, and even to this day, workers and the majority of the families believed that the atomic bombs helped win the war in the Pacific, and that their use against civilian populations was justified.

General Groves saw to it that the table cracks were filled, and the table varnished over; that is, he saw to it that newspapers in Washington, Oregon and Idaho did no investigative reporting on what was going on at H.E.W. Nothing but company propaganda got through into the community. One never heard from school lectern or church pulpit any criticism of Hanford. As everyone was white, or European American, we were not aware of class or racial differences either, except when our sports teams played the mostly Black Pasco Bulldogs!

The children of physicists, doctors, chemists, engineers and workers wore pretty much the same style of clothes to school, shirts, slacks and shoes ordered from Montgomery Ward or Sears and Roebuck in Seattle; and although the better paid scientists lived in single unit government housing, while the rest of us lived in prefabs or duplexes, the gray and brown shingle sameness of government housing erased class differences. Because of government secrecy – neither scientists nor workers were to talk about their jobs with their families, or said chemist or worker, and his/her family, would be on the next train, or moving van.

My father’s first job – he told me later on – was to help log in the graphite blocks that were used in B-reactor. Then he was, for awhile, a timekeeper; then trained as an operating engineer to work in the process that separated the plutonium from the slurry after the uranium was fissioned. The separation process was done in a huge two-block long facility called a 'Queen Mary,' and this was one of the more toxic workstations in the process. Also, most workers had to pull shift work: days, swings and graveyards. Such shift work, which made for disrupted sleep rhythms, along with the toxic work environment, helped bring on cancers and illnesses of the immune-deficiency system in later years.

Dad had his 35th birthday on July 14, 1944, two days before the Trinity test. I doubt he, or any of the other workers, even knew of the Trinity test, though they had helped manufacture the plutonium, softball-sized core used in the Trinity A-bomb. Though Little Boy, a uranium bomb, of a gun-fired type, was used first, and Hiroshima thereby became the icon for the atomic age, it was the Trinity test, an implosive device with a plutonium core wrapped in explosive lenses, that began the nuclear age, and was the template, after Nagasaki, for the nuclear warheads that followed.

At this writing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is being discussed at the UN. That nation-states even argue for the maintenance of nuclear weaponry, in the name of 'national security,' is but a continuation of insanity. In the United States the myth still prevails, and intentionally so, that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki helped win the war. Many Historians and scholars of the Manhattan Project have since pointed out that the atomic bombs were used, not to win the war against Japan, but to prevent Stalin and the Soviets from encroaching further in Europe.

It is documented that General Groves himself admitted that Stalin was the real target of the atomic bombs. As Joseph Rotblatt, a physicist who left the Manhattan Projects on ethical grounds, says in the introduction to Hiroshima’s Shadow (Pamphleteers Press, 1998), an important anthology of nuclear essays and documents (privately published, I might add): Although I had no illusions about the Stalin regime – after all, it was his pact with Hitler that enabled the latter to invade Poland – I felt deeply the sense of betrayal of an ally. Remember, this was said at a time (General Groves at a dinner where Rotblatt was present, that the intention of the Manhattan Project was to subdue the Soviets) when thousands of Russians were dying every day on the Eastern Front, tying down the Germans and giving the Allies time to prepare for the landing on the continent of Europe. Until then I thought our work was to prevent a Nazi victory, and now I was told that the weapon we were preparing was intended for use against the people who were making extreme sacrifices for that very aim. Until my father’s death from prostate cancer in 1988 – an illness due to thirty years of labor at Hanford, he held to the belief that his work had been patriotic and meaningful. He always claimed that Hanford had a history of being a safe workplace; that the various contractors, DuPont, GE, United Nuclear, etc. had the workers health in mind. Meanwhile, workers, family members, farmers downwind from Hanford and salmon-eating Native Americans continued to die from all kinds of cancer. The workers and family members who still live in the Richland area – now called the Tri-Cities (Richland, Kennewick and Pasco), and the sons and daughters of Hanford workers who went to work at Hanford, or went to college, then came back to work at Hanford, are still patriotic, and yet, many of them, believe the myth the the atomic bombs ended World War II. Though the high school in Richland, from which I graduated in 1953, has fissioned into two high schools, the older and larger of the two, Richland High, still calls their sports teams the Richland Bombers; and there are atomic bomb logos on the green and gold letter sweaters, and a mushroom cloud at the center blooming from the letter 'R' in the center of the gymnasium floor.

In spring of 1994, my father having been dead six years, I toured the Hanford site with members of Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility and visiting educators and scientists from Chelyabinsk, Russia. The Chelyabinsk nuclear facility was very much like Hanford, both in its physical buildings and in its cold war mission. I was sitting alongside a woman journalist and educator as the bus passed by B-reactor – I forget the exact words we exchanged (my Russian had long since rusted) – but I mentioned the word 'graveyard,' and it suddenly hit me, again, not only my emotionally charged father’s death, but all the many ghosts of Nagasaki, ghosts of Hanford workers, and the ghosts of the Yakama and Wanapum people: the spirits of salmon, grouse, coyotes, geese, and rattlesnakes – on the once beautiful Columbia plateau, a land and river still striking and resonant, but now one of the most contaminated places on the planet.

Of the scientists and military people who witnessed the Trinity test, Robert Oppenheimer’s quote is probably the most well known and repeated: 'I am become death, the Shatterer of Worlds. (quoting from the Bhavagad-Gita). But I prefer what Kenneth Bainbridge, the naval officer who was in charge of the Trinity test, said.

'Now we are all sons of bitches.'

--Bill Witherup is a poet and playwright from Seattle.

Our Best Hope

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 01:34:00 +0000

6-28-05, 9:36 am

For a movement to gain power and create a new society – and that’s what we are all about in the end – political imagination as well as historical memory are vital at every turn. For many progressives and left minded people, however, given our nation’s present political conjuncture, this may not seem like a propitious moment for dreaming and imagining.

After all, for the past 25 years, we have been on our heels with barely a moment to clear our heads before the next body blow by our powerful class foes. In such circumstances, the natural reaction is to duck, assume a defensive posture, and shut down our imaginations. But this is a mistake and I will tell you why.

In the course of consolidating its economic and political positions, a hyperaggressive US imperialism brings in its train new and powerful oppositional forces, many of which – and not only the young anti-globalists – are beginning to think on a system level of analysis.
Admittedly, they don’t yet embrace socialism, but they do imagine a society without the hardships, oppressions, worries, pressures, instabilities, and unseemly profiteering that are emblematic of and structured into present day capitalism. They envision a future that would bring material security and a sense of community; they yearn for a new birth of freedom; they hunger for a joyous life – they want a little heaven on this earth.

This structure of feeling doesn’t, all at once, translate into a mass constituency for socialism. In fact, it can just as easily morph into a mass base for political reaction as we have seen, but the way to respond to it is not to squirrel ourselves away in left forms that are detached from the main organizations of the working class and people and tone deaf to the actual dynamics of class and democratic struggles.

But rather our task is to join with millions to defend and expand democracy and in the course of these struggles to weave together and share a vision of a different world that qualitatively enlarges the boundaries and transforms the meaning of freedom.

Socialism and Values

Our vision has to be informed by a set of normative values. Some of the most important are social solidarity, equality, nonviolence, democracy, respect for difference, individual freedom and liberty, sustainability, and internationalism.

These values should shape the culture, discourse, and decision-making processes of a socialist society. While they can only be realized over time, they must remain in the foreground in every phase of the socialist project. They must condition the means as well as the ends of socialist development.

There was a tendency in the communist movement, however, to see these values instrumentally. In the name of fighting the class enemy and building socialism, socialist norms, morality, legality, and values became too easily expendable.

I like to think we have learned some lessons in this regard. One of which is that we can’t be cavalier about the values that should guide our project. If our values don’t animate the revolutionary process, if the means and methods of socialist construction aren’t reflective of socialism’s values, then socialism’s spirit and structures will be deformed. Socialism will concede its most attractive feature – its humanism and moral authority, which once lost, is difficult to regain.

Who Are the Actors in the Transition to Socialism

Essential to our political imagination is a vision of the class and social forces that have to be assembled to win political power and begin the process of socialist construction.

In my view, at the center of this assemblage is the multiracial, multinational, male-female, multigenerational working class. And to this I couple the communities of the nationally and racially oppressed, women, and youth. Together these social forces are – what I call – the 'core constituencies' of a broader people’s coalition insofar as their participation in this coalition is a strategic requirement at every stage of struggle, including the socialist stage. Remove any one of them from the mix and the prospects for winning are not simply greatly dimmed but doomed.

Around this core are gathered other diverse social movements whose interests and issues of struggle ally them with these core constituencies. While I resist the idea that the working class on its own can bring its class opponents to its knees, I don’t minimize the strategic social power of the working class nor occlude the Marxist insight that the working class because of its economic location, political capacities and historical experience is best positioned, though not preordained, to emerge as the general leader of the broader democratic movement. Implicit in all this is the notion that there is no direct or smooth path to socialism or a 'Great Revolutionary Day' on which the economy breaks down, the workers revolt and seize power, the state, economy and civil society are smashed and remade from top to bottom in one fell swoop, and socialism springs up full grown, like Athena from the head of Zeus. You may be thinking that this is a caricature, but such ideas have always had some currency in the communist and left movement.

The other vision of the revolutionary process, which I embrace, is that the struggle for socialism goes through different phases during which the configuration of contending class and social forces changes, requiring, in turn, new strategic policies and forms of transition to match the new alignment of forces and new level of mass political consciousness. Periods of advance will yield to periods of retreat and vice versa. Shifting alliances will form and reform with each side struggling to turn provisional allies into stable ones. Electoral and legislative forms of struggles will interact with various forms of extra-parliamentary mass action. For a while no class is hegemonic and control of the branches of government is contested and indeterminate with each power bloc trying to capture the initiative. Much depends on a meltdown in the structures of coercion and paralysis, if not divisions, within ruling circles. Even when political ruptures occur, they will be neither complete nor irreversible. In fact, on the day after the transfer of power, socioeconomic life will probably look much like it did the day before. Thus, revolutions are not single events or a single act, but rather a series of events and processes stretching over time and involving the exploited and oppressed both before, during, and long after the revolutionary transition. Nor are revolutions imitative. They offer some regularities, but only in the most general sense. Yes, political power has to migrate from the hands of one class into the hands of another – that’s the fundamental law of revolutions. Of course economic transformations have to occur. And a revolution in the meaning of freedom, culture and values is absolutely necessary. But all of this can happen in a variety of ways. For instance, the pace and scale of socioeconomic and cultural transformations will vary greatly depending on mass consciousness, the leadership skill of the revolutionary forces, and objective circumstances. At one time I held the view that the movement would narrow as socialism came into view. But I am of the opposite opinion now. Socialism has to be a mass social upheaval of all the discontented and all the various social movements. Some will bring with them backward notions. Many will be newcomers to politics.

Thus, the struggle for socialism is not just a project of the left; it has to be a project whose mass character deepens, deepens again and deepens still again at every stage in the process. Without such a character, socialism will remain in our imagination.

In seeking forms of transition to socialism and in considering its main tasks in our country, we should be unabashed proponents of our own nationally specific path. Of course, we should study the experiences of other countries, but there are no universal models of socialism. In fact, if I were to write a book on our path to socialism, I would not make the particular features of our country an addendum, but rather a main thread. For example, given our tradition of democracy or given the way that race has structured the politics, economics, culture, consciousness, and historical trajectory of our nation, our vision of socialism must include an unyielding commitment to expanding democracy as well as completing the unfinished democratic tasks that we will inherit, beginning with the eradication of racism in all of its forms. Any, even the slightest, devaluing of democracy or the fight against racism, will keep the socialist movement on the political periphery.

We also have to anticipate that multiple parties and movements will lead the millions who are no longer 'willing to live in the old way.' In such a front, parties and movements will cooperate as well as compete over a range of issues and for mass influence, but hopefully the accent will be on cooperation and unity. Obviously, a movement for socialism should seek a peaceful path, especially in this era. In the end we only demand that the American people in their millions be allowed to be the final arbiter of the socioeconomic character of our country. Of course, our ruling class is far from generous in spirit. Thus, the best guarantee of a peaceful transition is an aroused, mobilized, united, and determined people. By the same token, the left has to heed the wishes of the electorate as well, including the possibility of being removed from office by a majority of voters.

The Day After

The conventional view of the communist movement was that after the revolutionary forces won political power, the period of consolidation would be relatively brief and new forms of popular power would emerge to replace our hopelessly corrupted political institutions.We also assumed that the state would acquire more functions and extend its reach into new areas of social, cultural, and civic life, including control of the mass media. Another assumption was that market relations would quickly give way to centralized planning and a completely socialized economy. Finally, we were of the opinion that socialist state property would be clearly dominant and would eventually become the singular form of ownership.

These assumptions have to be revisited and revised in view of experience and new theoretical insights. I would like to briefly turn to these questions. To begin with, I don’t think that the people of our country will agree to dismantle the political structures that currently exist and have existed for over 200 years. Nor do I think that they will jettison the Bill of Rights or the Constitution or a system of checks and balances on concentrated political power. More likely, they will want to extend, deepen and modify them based on the unfulfilled promises of our democracy, new democratic desires, and the needs of socialist construction.

At the same time, I suspect – and more importantly historical experience would strongly suggest – that new popular institutions will emerge somewhere in this process. Today millions of people feel alienated from our government. Nearly one-half of the people don’t vote. Many people see government as disconnected from their day-to-day life, even an obstacle to their aspirations. To overcome this, an energized and rapidly growing movement will likely create new institutional forms that draw millions into struggle and devolve political power to the grass roots and workplace. Or to put it differently, socialism will be empowered by people and be empowering of people.

With regard to the role of the state, the experience in other socialist countries suggest that functions that in the past we assumed would be the province of a socialist state might be done better by either nongovernmental organizations or lower levels of government. Federal power would have a role to be sure, but I also think that we have to keep in mind that such power is distant and beyond the reach of the very masses of people who are supposed to be authors and architects of this new society.

As for the economy, the main issue is not whether we would employ market mechanisms, but rather the issue is to what extent and for how long? In the past, there was a tendency to think market relations would disappear almost overnight. I’m unconvinced that that’s an accurate reading of the classical literature or a lesson that we should draw from the experience of socialist construction in the 20th century.

I would expect that the economy would be a mixed one, combining different forms of socialist and cooperative property as well as space, within clear limits, for private enterprise. While democratic planning would begin to play a role in organizing economic life, market mechanisms would probably operate over sectors of the socialized economy for much longer than I thought years ago.

At the same time, I would envision a guaranteed income and the decommodification of some sectors of the economy like health care, food and nutrition, education, child and elder care, and so forth. In other words, the costs of the reproduction of labor power would be socialized as much as possible. The federal budget would be overhauled and its priorities radically changed. The economy would be demilitarized and restructured. A social fund would be established to compensate for racial oppression, gender discrimination and other injustices. The narrowing of economic equalities would be a paramount goal of a socialist society. And forms of participatory decision-making would be instituted from the workplace and community up.

One of the most complex tasks of a socialist society will be achieving a sustainable economy. It will, according to Marxist economists and ecologists, require major changes in our production methods and consumption patterns.

It is hard to imagine how this challenge, not to mention challenges like overcoming racial and gender inequality, demilitarization, urban and rural revitalization, and so forth, can be successfully tackled without planning. Market mechanisms can play a useful role in economic coordination as I said, but the redirection of the economy along fundamentally new lines requires a planning process at every level.

A final challenge on the morrow of the revolution is to reimagine our nation’s role on a global level. Without going into detail, we will immediately remove our uniform of global cop and exploiter and take our place alongside other members of the world community and demand no special privileges. There is much to love about our country, but the image of a city on a shining hill and arrogantly wielding its sword does the American people as well as the world’s people enormous harm. In fact, if the city shines at all, it is in no small measure because our imperialism, often with the use of military force and financial power, has structured international relations between the capitalist core and its periphery so that astronomical wealth at one pole is combined with unspeakable deprivation and immiseration at the other. Eight million people die each year because of poverty and ten million from AIDS. Hundreds of millions of human beings are living in slums on nearly every continent. This has to change for all of humanity’s sake, but it won’t until we restructure our relationships with the global community.

I have confined myself to the day after the revolution, but extending the time frame a bit further into the future brings additional images and possibilities. Homelessness and joblessness would be eradicated. Toxic dumps would be cleaned up and replaced with gardens and playgrounds. Our skies would be blue and pollution free. Our neighborhoods would become places of rest, leisure, culture, and green space. The whole panoply of oppressions that scare our people and nation would be on the wane. Human sexuality and sexual orientation would be enjoyed and celebrated. The audiences at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall would look as diverse as the people of our city.

The prisons systems would be emptied and the borders demilitarized and opened. Women would be regularly receiving Nobel Prizes in the sciences. The Pentagon would be padlocked and the swords of war would be turned into plowshares and we would study war no more. And, finally, the full development of each would be the condition for the full development of all.

--Sam Webb chairs the Communist Party USA.

India: Role of the Communists in the Restoration of Democracy

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 01:22:00 +0000

6-28-05,9:28am

THE clamping down of internal emergency on June 26, 1975 and its operation over the next 19 months represents one of the darkest periods in the political history of India. For all practical purposes, the Indian Constitution was kept in suspense, parliamentary democracy was trodden brutally underfoot, and an authoritarian rule proclaimed. Three decades onward to that malevolent episode, the importance of carrying forward the struggle to safeguard democracy has to be realised in the proper perspective of what had happened thirty years ago.

NATIONAL ECONOMY IN DEEP CRISIS

The slogan mongering about removal of poverty (garibi hatao!) notwithstanding, the entire decade before the declaration of ‘emergency’ was riven with abject poverty. The number of people – 70 per cent of the population according to reliable estimates – under the poverty line went on increasing at an alarming rate. The Ford foundation-inspired ‘green revolution’ effectively robbed the rural poor of whatever little purchasing power they yet possessed. The falling prices of cash crops like jute, oil seeds, and cotton ruined the farmers even as black-marketeering and hoarding started to flourish. A 22 per cent increase in the general price level was noted during the early 1970s with the incidence of direct taxes adding to the extreme misery of the mass of the people.

The Indian industry was in deep crisis. Indira Gandhi had closed down 3,000 engineering and textile mills on returning to office in 1971. The industrial recession had a deep and pervading effect on the manufacturing sector. Meeting in Kolkata over June 10-12, 1975, the Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) noted that the economy was in a state of dysfunction with spiralling unemployment, wide lay-offs, and a severely shrinking job market. The loot of the monopoly capitalists and of landlords was being ensured at the cost of extreme misery of workers, peasants, employees, professional groups, and small manufacturers.

In this dysfunctional economic background was the swing of political events that gave birth to the evil of ‘emergency.’

POLITICAL BACKGROUND

The fourth general elections depicted the unravelling of monopoly control of the Congress across the country. The fall-out was a severe internecine strife within the Congress itself. Two trends must be noted here. On one hand, the ‘syndicate’ Congress chose to veer towards the Jan Sangh-Swatantra Party political grouping. On the other, there was a rift within the Left and democratic forces. The 1972 Madurai party congress of the CPI(M) in 1972 had already noted that the leadership of several Left and democratic parties swung towards the Indira Congress and thus exposed their vacillating character. They also, noted the party congress, joined in the campaign of slander against the CPI(M).

It was the massive win that the Congress managed to post in this background of weakness of the Left and democratic forces that started the train of events. The Congress as the ruling party also claimed success over the events in Bangladesh where the struggle of the masses had triumphed. Posing as a ‘socialist,’ Indira Gandhi indulged in reckless counter-democratic ploys to win elections in states like Bengal while also triumphing elsewhere.

THE BENGAL SCENE

In Bengal, the Congress organised and put in place its assault on the CPI(M) as also on democratic forces and organisations led by it. Yet, the CPI(M) emerged as the biggest single political party in the 1971 Bengal state elections, winning 113 seats. Ignoring CPI(M)’s claim to form the government, a makeshift outfit of political coteries was asked to put up a coalition government. Two months later, under President’s rule, a swath of terror cut across Bengal,organised by the central paramilitary forces, and the thugs of the Congress. The CPI(M) was the chief target. More than 1100 of CPI(M) workers were put to death. Party offices, TU offices, and the offices of mass organisations were ransacked and occupied. Thousands of people were implicated in false cases, thousands more incarcerated without the benefit of trial. In the circumstances, riding a wave of terror and openly rigging the polls, the Congress managed to ‘win’ the election of 1972.

Jyoti Basu wrote in his booklet entitled The Decimation of Parliamentary Democracy in West Bengal, that the people of West Bengal had remained in the front ranks of the resistance against the policies of the Congress. The Left and democratic forces in West Bengal posed a challenge to the Congress. The triumph of the masses in West Bengal would encourage people elsewhere to defy the authoritarian ploys of the Congress.

The Congress took recourse to semi-fascist terror to clamp down its sway on Bengal. The ninth congress of the CPI(M) noted how the Congress, desperate to cling to office, had trodden underfoot, parliamentary democracy, voting rights, and the dignity due to the opposition.

CPI(M)’S WARNING

As far back as 1972 had the CPI(M) commented at the ninth congress of the Party that factors like the failure to provide relief to the mass of the people, the tendency towards using implements of oppression, the weaknesses of the Left opposition and of the bourgeois parties, and the intolerance shown towards the opposition per se were indicative of the danger of a one-party authoritarianism. The warning went largely unheeded.

In the period preceding the ‘emergency,’ several big movements took place. These included strike actions, particularly the 22-day railway strike that was brutally suppressed. Elsewhere, Jayaprakash Narayan led a movement that brought to the fore issues like the emergent needs of the people, the issue of safeguarding democracy, and fulminating against corruption.

A rift among the bourgeois political parties was apparent when, in March of 1975, Jan Sangh, Congress (O), Bharatiya Lok Dal, and other bourgeois parties placed a charter of demands in the parliament. The CPI(M) was self-critical about its inability to take part in the anti-Congress movements across the country.

EMERGENCY CLAMPED DOWN

On June 12, 1975, the Congress was routed in the Gujarat state assembly elections. On the same day, the Allahabad high court adjudged that Indira Gandhi had won from the Rai Bareili parliamentary constituency by adopting illegal means. The court countermanded the election and ruled that Indira Gandhi would not be able to contest elections for the next six years.

The developments caused ripples to rise against Indira Gandhi within the Congress itself. Rather than tender her resignation, Indira Gandhi chose to declare ‘internal emergency’ on June 26, 1975. She wanted to convince the world that the emergency had to be imposed in order to secure the nation from the right reactionary forces and from the ultra Left. Her arguments do not hold water. Congress had always been friendly with outfits like the RSS whom Indira Gandhi had often praised. The ultra Left Naxalites were in 1975 a disorganised and spent force. Her arguments in favour of the ‘emergency’ were attempts to justify authoritarianism.

The Left remained riven with disunity. CPI jumped on the bandwagon of Indira Gandhi. The CPSU and other communist parties of some socialist countries openly supported Indira Gandhi. The CPI(M) Polit Bureau while calling for a broad front declared that the drive to build up greater and stronger Left and democratic unity must go on relentlessly.

DEMOCRACY UNDER ASSAULT

A K Gopalan who was the leader of the parliamentary party was stringent in his attack on the ‘emergency.’ He raised the following points in his speech in the Lok Sabha where the bill for approval of the ‘emergency’ was brought up on July 21, 1975.

* A large number of opposition leaders were in jail, including 39 MPs, many of whom were Congressmen * The ‘emergency’ was an assault against the people and the people had been robbed of their constitutional rights to democracy * The union government did not tolerate opposition; nor did it put with criticism and movements and struggles were struck down * Three thousand CPI(M) workers were arrested in the name of an anti-rightist drive

The general fall-out of the ‘emergency’ were:

* The parliament was deprived of all rights and privileges * Freedom of speech was suspended * Censorship of the media touched horrifying proportions * Thousands of political workers were jailed without trial, including MPs and MLAs * Opposition-run autonomous institutions were set aside * Oppression on the people was unleashed in the name of population control measures * Attempt was made to delete the fundamental rights from the Constitution through the 42nd amendment * The storm troopers of the Congress and the Youth congress created an atmosphere of terror in the country

RESISTANCE

The opposition to authoritarianism ran along two streams of resistance. The CPI(M) and some Left parties were engaged in continuous opposition. They were in the front ranks in the fight against semi-fascist terror in Bengal, Kerala, and Tripura. On the other hand, there were the rightist parties like the Congress(O), the Jan Sangh, and the Swatantra party who became vocal on the issue of democracy. The latter movement grew in stature under the leadershipof Jayaprakash Narayan in parts of north and western India. After meeting with Jayaprakash Narayan in Delhi and Kolkata, the CPI(M) and the Left proposed joint, parallel, or coordinated movements on the issue of civic rights. The central committee of the CPI(M) had in the meanwhile called for the formation of a broad front with eminent persons of all political parties for the restoration of democracy. It also called for the massing of broad forces, on the tactics of ‘united front from below’, of the supporters of the opposition political parties. It was said that the Left and democratic forces would act as the principal instruments of the broad assemblage of forces; and that the broad assemblage did not connote the formation of either a political party or an electoral front. Based on this understanding, the struggle against authoritarianism grew across the country and it took covert as well as overt forms. The working class played a big role in this movement for the restoration of democracy. The movements took place despite the ban on such actions. Elsewhere, the Congress(O), the Jan Sangh, the Swatantra party, and the socialist parties combined to set up the Janata Party. The CPI(M) had no illusions about the programmatic understanding of the Janata Party. Its efforts were to ensure that the largest votes were cast against ‘emergency’ and that the opposition unity did not get to suffer. The election slogan of the CPI(M) was: Vote Against ‘Emergency’. In the 1977 elections, Congress(I) was defeated and the new Janata Party-Congress-for-Democracy government withdrew the ‘emergency.’ The struggle, however, had not ended.

STRUGGLE GOES ON

The sustained pressure of movements led and organised by the CPI(M) and the Left that finally saw the restoration over time of the democratic rights that the ‘emergency’ had abrogated. Withdrawal of MISA and of the 42nd amendment to the Constitution, too, saw the new regime drag its feet before the CPI(M) and the Left brought pressure to bear on the union government. The tenth congress of the CPI(M) was very correct in pointing out that the struggle against overt attempts to clamp down authoritarianism was to be a long and sustained struggle. The defeat of the Congress in the elections never meant the defeat of the classes that created the ambience of authoritarianism. The correlation of class forces had not changed .The danger of parliamentary compromise on the question of removing the structure of authoritarianism continued to remain. The need of the hour was, noted the CPI(M), to unite the masses against authoritarianism. Realising the importance of broad forum and democratic resistance, the CPI(M) spoke of the need to utilise the opportunity created by the rift in the bourgeois parties to set up the broad forum and to utilise it towards breaking down the authoritarian structure. It was found necessary to bring out from within the fold of the ruling classes and the parties of the ruling classes, those sections that opposed authoritarianism. It was Marxist strategy to mobilise any class and party for the safeguarding of democratic rights. The tenth congress of the CPI(M) also noted that the danger of authoritarianism lay hidden, in the increasing domination of monopoly and big capitalists, and landlords, and in the increasing influence of foreign monopoly capital. The CPI(M) stated that while utilising the potential of wider resistance to authoritarianism, the CPI(M), and the working class must ensure that the domination and influence of these classes went on the wane. To change the correlation of class forces and to free the masses from the twin bourgeois-landlord formations, it was necessary to build up a Left and democratic front. A priority of the Left and democratic front would be to continue unabated the struggle against authoritarianism. It was noticed soon enough after the formation of the Janata Party-CFD government that it had great and fundamental difference with the Left on the question of democracy. Apart from hesitating in carrying forth the task of dismantling the ‘emergency’ structure, the union government, and Janata Party-led state governments, would chose to bring down oppression on the democratic rights and on democratic movements of the people across the country. Indira Gandhi was to take advantage of the disquiet the people felt at the economic policy of the new regime in Delhi and elsewhere. The Left Front governments of Bengal and Tripura, on the other hand, engaged themselves in the task of expanding democratic rights. Among the issues of priority marked out by the LF governments were: abrogation of incarceration without trial, restoration of democratic rights, freeing of political prisoners, democratising the education system, and holding elections to the three-tier panchayat system. The policy of the LF governments gave relief to the working people, and as the forces of democracy became stronger, the forces of authoritarianism became weaker.

NEXT PHASE OF THE STRUGGLE

The analysis of the CPI(M) about the danger of authoritarianism was proved correct when Indira Gandhi came back to office in 1980. The National Security Act and the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) were put in place ––counter-democratic legislations each. The aim was to increase oppression as the protests against economic deterioration became widespread. ESMA was targeted to ban strike actions. Mail started to be censored. Parliament was to be made inconsequential. States rights started to be interfered with. A presidential form of government was talked about. The Constitution was being amended to suit authoritarian whims.

The rift in the opposition ranks, especially after the formation of the BJP, helped the Congress since the BJP was concerned only in becoming Congress’s alternative and was no longer interested in coalitions or fronts against authoritarianism. The eleventh congress of the CPI(M) (held in 1982) marked the challenge of authoritarianism as the principal danger.

Indeed, the Congress continued to be on the path authoritarianism even after the assassination of Indira Gandhi and of the triumph in the subsequent Lok Sabha polls. As the twelfth congress of the CPI(M) pointed out: the ruling classes and the ruling class parties could never implement their anti-people economic policies without organising an assault on the democratic norms. Democracy, indeed, continued to be attacked at the grass-roots level. NSA continued, MISA was re-imposed, strike actions were viciously attacked, the Andhra Pradesh state government was toppled, the government media was utilised to serve the interests of the Congress.

At the same time, the danger of separatism and secessionism started to raise their ugly heads in Punjab, Assam, north-eastern India and elsewhere — causing a threat to be poised against national unity and integrity. The opportunistic policy of the Congress increased the dimensions of the danger. As the twelfth congress of the CPI(M) noted: in office, the Congress endangers not only democracy but also national unity.

LEFT AND DEMOCRATIC FORCES

It was chiefly under the aegis and leadership of the CPI(M) that the process of building up unity among the Left and democratic forces started to gain momentum once more. The Bengal Left Front played a stellar role in this regard. Following discussions, and after the Bhatinda Congress, the CPI changed the line of cooperation with Congress and joined the Left forces. A coordination committee of the Left was set up at the parliamentary level. The unity of the Left was reflected in the expanding mass struggles. The Left unity also played a role in working out relationships with the opposition bourgeois parties. In the case of the opposition bourgeois parties, two elements assumed importance. First, taking a secular stand became an effective indicator in the background of the enhanced danger of the forces of communalism. Second, the role of the regional parties became important in the task of safeguarding democracy as these parties gained in strength. Four conclaves of 17-18 opposition parties were held in Vijaywada, Delhi, Srinagar, and Kolkata in 1983-84. These developments saw an increase in the size and frequency of mass rallies on the question of safeguarding democracy.

COMMUNAL DANGER

It is not possible to discuss the struggle to uphold and strengthen democracy without referring to the menace of the communal forces. This is necessary for a correct analysis of the past, for a proper assessment of the present situation, and for the sake of struggle to be waged in the days to come to defend and strengthen democracy.

Before the elections of 1977, the Janata Party was formed. One of the constituents of that party was the Jan Sangh, which was guided by the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh or the RSS. The latter started to control the new regime right from the beginning and encouraged the growth of Hindu communalism in a big way. The Jan Sangh soon claimed that its members must have the right to be the members of both Jan Sangh and the RSS. The crisis within the Janata Party deepened. The CPI(M) had long back issued warnings against the Jan Sangh and the RSS.

Calling the authoritarian Congress and the communal Jan Sangh-RSS the ‘twin dangers,’ the CPI(M) Polit Bureau had in 1974 called for a struggle against both. On the July crisis of the Janata Party, the assessment of the CPI(M) was that following the unravelling of that party, the remaining entity was under the control of the Jan Sangh-RSS with a few socialist and progressive personalities yet remaining within the fold of the party. The CPI(M) refused to support the regime. The central committee of the CPI(M) stated that the struggle against authoritarianism and communalism must be accompanied by the struggle against vested stakes to defend the interests of the people, and to provide at least temporary relief to the masses of the people.

Political parties did not always seriously view the gaining of strength of communal forces during 1987-88. The CPI(M) in contrast talked of fighting the authoritarian Congress by mobilising a comprehensive opposition unity, while working to isolate the forces of communalism. At the height of the struggle against the plethora of corruption at the highest places during Rajiv Gandhi’s premiership, the central committee of the CPI(M) pointed out that the anti-communal stand of the CPI(M) and the Left urged upon those parties, which would enlist the help of the forces of communalism to form electoral alliances against the Congress, to rethink their line. The CPI(M) in fact continued with energy to bring to the secular platform even those parties that were keen to strike a compromise with the BJP. The CPI(M) spoke clearly of the ‘twin danger of authoritarianism and communalism’ in the election manifesto for the 1989 polls. The CPI(M) also refused to have any seat adjustments with the BJP and, indeed, the CPI(M) candidates won from constituencies like Kanpur and Nawada defeating BJP candidates. On the issue of building of a temple at Ayyodhya during the time the V P Singh-led government was in office at the centre, the CPI(M) made clear that a firm stand must be taken on the question of secularism and against communalism. The Congress and the BJP together proceeded to vote out the Singh government, enhancing manifold the communal danger to the nation.

DANGER TO DEMOCRACY

Subsequently, the BJP government assumed office as a danger to democracy. The attacks on democracy included attacks on minorities, genocide in Gujarat, attempt to introduce presidential form of government through amendment of the Constitution, introduction of POTA, infiltration by the RSS not only in education institutions but also in the armed forces. Ideologically speaking, the communal drive is an attack on democratic values.

6-28-05,9:25am

30TH ANNIVERSARY OF 'INTERNAL EMERGENCY’

It is not correct to think that the danger to democracy would be forthcoming from a particular political party. The danger to democracy is inherent in the various forms of conflict between the people, the ruling classes, and the economic policy that the ruling classes would like to clamp down on the people. To take an example: those who argue forcibly in favour of liberal policies are also vocal in favour of curtailing the rights of the working people. Of late, the interference from the administration, and even from the judiciary, is increasingly witnessed on TU activities, against the right to strike, and against the right to hold rallies and meetings. The policy of liberalisation, and the economic outlook that caters to the interests of the international finance capital, cannot be established in a full-fledged manner unless they are able to curtail the democratic rights of the people. Thus, the struggle for democracy is essentially important as a part of the struggle against the policy of liberalisation.

CAFTA Rolls Back Worker Protections

Tue, 28 Jun 2005 01:59:00 +0000

6-27-05, 10:02 am

Despite public opposition, the Bush administration and the congressional Republican leadership plan a big push to pass the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in the next few days and weeks. The trading partners governed by CAFTA would be the United States, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, and possibly the Dominican Republic.

According to some press reports, the administration is pulling every favor, making any deal, and twisting many arms to get a passing vote on CAFTA, especially within its own party.

CAFTA has brought out important differences among the Republicans as some key congressional districts and states with Republican members have been hard hit by free trade deals. Across the political spectrum, critics of free trade have blamed previous free trade agreements for the loss of jobs and declining agriculture, especially NAFTA on which CAFTA has been modeled.

Republican members especially from industrial states like Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania and agricultural states like North and South Carolina are going to have to deal with constituents who see that another 'free' trade deal is going to cost them quite a bit.

For Democratic critics of the agreement, the elimination of labor standards and environmental protections makes the agreement too difficult to pass.

Despite the administration’s claims that CAFTA would create strong labor standards, a careful reading of the provisions of the deal show that enforcement of labor standards would practically be stripped of any meaningful power.

According to analysis of the agreement provided by the AFL-CIO, CAFTA removes existing labor protections that allow workers to petition for elimination of trade preferences for governments that do not protect the right of workers to collectively bargain through their unions.

Additionally, specific sectors and producers who violate workers’ rights under current agreements and trade law can be targeted for such petitions to withdrawing preferential trade status. Withdrawal of preferential trade status is an important device for pressuring governments and businesses to abide by international standards of worker protections.

CAFTA eliminates the petition for withdrawal of preferences process, reducing penalties for worker rights violations to small fines that would in fact allow the violating government to continue the abuses. And since CAFTA prevents workers for pressuring companies or sectors of the economy by doing away with the current processes for filing grievance claims, governments can simply pay small fines to subsidize bad corporate behavior and anti-worker policies.

To top off the meaninglessness of the fines, CAFTA orders that fines not be paid to workers who were abused, or to governments that brought complaints, or to a third party with oversight, but to themselves. That’s right, the offending government pays itself the fine.

Imagine if drunken drivers were ordered to pay a fine to themselves for their dangerous behavior. Would they stop?

Under current trade agreements, also known as the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), workers in Central America and here have been able to some extent to pressure governments to improve labor law and enforce workers’ rights. While uneven and imperfect, GSP petitions have used trading preferences to pressure labor law reform and improved conditions for workers in specific industries. Petitions can be initiated by workers and their unions.

Under CAFTA the government is the only authorized entity allowed to make complaints about workers’ rights and labor laws.

While the current GSP operates on numerous levels to influence and pressure governments to adhere to international labor standards and with enforceable and potent means of achieving those goals, CAFTA turns full responsibility over to government who have proven to be uninterested in protecting workers’ rights - including the Bush administration.

Not only are basic things like a higher standard of living and the economic benefits of having a well-paid workforce at further risk with CAFTA, but so are the very notions that people in their own countries have a right to say what their governments do, or more generally that working people from different countries have a right to aid one another in a struggle for a better life.

This trade agreement strikes right at the heart of democracy, turning oversight over trade and the rights of working people over to big corporate government, business-oriented bureaucrats, and their politicians.

Working people have very much to fear from a deal that cuts them out of the picture and intends to cut their futures to pieces.

Send your thoughts to pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net.

End the Ban on Travel to Cuba

Tue, 28 Jun 2005 01:54:00 +0000

6-27-05, 9:59 am

A bipartisan House bill (HR 1814) to end the ban on travel to Cuba may come up for a vote this week.

Proposed by Reps. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and William Delahunt (D-MA), this bill orders that 'the President shall not regulate or prohibit, directly or indirectly, travel to or from Cuba by United States citizens or legal residents, or any of the transactions incident to such travel that are set forth in subsection.'

The proposal to end the ban has broad support in the US and in Cuba for a variety of reasons. Banning travel to Cuba is not based on 'national security' interests but rather on narrow political interests that do not reflect true public opinion. The ban on travel to Cuba is a politically motivated repression of the internationally recognized right to free movement.

Under the Bush administration’s current policies on Cuba, dialogue and exchange between neighboring peoples is disallowed. Instead the government operates a heavy-handed licensing process that restricts travel, limits cash assistance for families, and inhibits humanitarian donations.

US citizens are routinely fined by the Treasury Department for 'unlicensed travel,' and some Cuban Americans have been permanently barred from visiting the island by the US government.
In 2003, the Bush administration tightened travel restrictions for Cuban American family members living in the US to once every three years. This rule allows no exceptions for emergencies and narrows the definition of 'family' so that Cuban Americans can no longer visit or send money or packages to aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, or nephews.

Lifting the ban would mean that not only Cuban families would benefit, but also Cuba’s travel and tourist sector would benefit. The island’s small business sector, from restaurants owners to taxi drivers, artisans, families that provide lodging, and others, would gain economically from an increase in the number of US travelers.

An increase in trade between the US and Cuba would also grow. In 2004, despite severe restrictions on trade with Cuba, agricultural sales to Cuba from US farmers totaled about $450 million. A growth in this area would benefit both countries.

US farmers, hard hit by low prices and shrinking markets, recognize this benefit. Restrictions on trade, they say, prejudice sales to Cuba of foodstuffs like rice, meat, vegetables and fruits. Criticisms of the trade ban have been so loud that a bipartisan effort to ease restrictions on trade with Cuba is also working its way through Congress.

The administration also tightened restrictions on academic travel and cultural exchanges with Cuba, canceling approximately 90% of existing academic exchange programs. This Bush administration policy violates the principle of US law, specifically the Free Trade in Ideas Act of 2004, which prevents the President from prohibiting or otherwise restricting foreign travel undertaken for educational purposes.

It is time the US Congress adopts a realistic and mutually beneficial policy on trade and travel with Cuba. The pretense of looking for Communist bogeymen in order to satisfy a small group of campaign donors hurts all sides and seems silly and anachronistic.

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

1676: The Dark Shadow of America’s Creation Myth

Tue, 28 Jun 2005 01:49:00 +0000

6-27-05, 9:53 am

In the fabric of America’s national creation myth we find its highest ideals – but so too, we see the shadows cast by its darkest truths.

After nearly thirty-five years, I can still remember:

In the school gymnasium of a small New England town, twenty-five first grade students sit cross-legged, in a large circle. A dozen or so of the children wear black hats made of construction paper. Each hat has a yellow paper belt fitted around it with a square paper buckle. The remaining children also wear headgear made of construction paper – brown headbands with hand-painted paper feathers. In the circle’s centre sits a woven cornucopia. Nearby is corn still on the cob, cylindrical cranberry sauce in a dish, peas, pies, and a turkey. Also on the floor are paper decorations, paper cutouts of pumpkins and turkeys, pilgrims and the leaves of fall. Behind the children, parents watch from a row of assembled chairs.

The students’ teacher kneels in the circle. She is tall with shoulder length blond hair. She wears a blue knit sweater and a short brown skirt. 'Do you remember what we talked about, children?' she asks. 'ThePilgrims? And where they landed?'

'On Plymouth Rock,' a few students say.

'That’s right, children,' the teacher says with a smile. 'The Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620.' Then she adds, 'The Pilgrims came to America to find freedom.'

This celebration was the first time I remember thinking about America’s creation myth – The First Thanksgiving. And although the memory remains fragmentary, I recall that I was a Pilgrim. And I was proud of that. Pilgrims, as we were told, were the first settlers in America.

Of course, this wasn’t true. The true natives of the continent predated the Pilgrims by thousands of years. Later, the Vikings – 600 years before the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth – tried to settle in Newfoundland, with little luck. In fact, the Pilgrims of Plymouth were not even the first permanent European settlers. That had already happened in 1607, in Jamestown, Virginia. So why say the Pilgrims were the first? What was it about these people and this event – the Pilgrims, their Plymouth settlement, and the Thanksgiving holiday – that captured the American imagination and became the first creation myth of America?

The answer is idealism. The Pilgrims metaphorically became the first 'Americans' because they came to the new world to create an ideal community. Unlike the settlers of Jamestown, the Puritan Pilgrims were settlers of conscience, fleeing religious persecution in England, seeking freedom of worship in America. Their survival and success in the new world was evidence of God’s deliverance bringing liberty and freedom to America.

Of course, the myth was not always in tune with reality. True, the Pilgrims did leave England in 1620 – after living a few years in the Netherlands – to establish a new community in which to practice their faith without the King’s interference. And true, they were persecuted – to some extent – in England. But the Puritans were also a political power, taking control of the country for a time under Oliver Cromwell.

But the most fanatical Puritans believed that the corruptions of England and the English church would never be purged. They left England, in October of 1620 – financed by speculative merchants hoping to profit by the pilgrims’ labor – to create heaven on earth in America.

On a windy day in September of 1620, 102 pilgrims gathered on the busy docks of Plymouth, England. There, with their modest possessions and provisions, they boarded the three-mast, wooden ship called the Mayflower and set sail for the new world. After sixty-six days at sea, on November 11, 1620, they landed on the shores of Massachusetts. And after five weeks of looking for a satisfactory site, they settled 'Plymouth plantation.'

Their first year was difficult – forty-six of the settlers died – but they persevered, with the considerable help of the native Wampanoag Indians, who brought the starving Pilgrims turkey and corn. As well, the Wampanoag showed the Pilgrims how to cultivate the land, and soon the Pilgrims prospered.

The successful harvest of 1621 warranted a celebration. As legend has it, the Pilgrim leaders invited some ninety-one Wampanoag to share in a three day thanks giving celebration – a moment of genuine brotherhood against the elements.

So too, back in the school gymnasium, the twenty-five children continue their free-form reenactment of the occasion, sharing the food with enthusiasm and laughter. This Thanksgiving was a noble creation of the American ideal.

Or was it?

The annual celebration of Thanksgiving was not begin until 1676, long after the Pilgrims had established themselves in this new land. And by this time, the memory of their native friends had evaporated in the face of war with the Wampanoags. After the celebrations of 1621 and again in 1623, tensions between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags grew as the British plied the Wampanoags with alcohol to obtain signatures for land rights. The aggressive displacement of the Wampanoags resulted in war, which the British easily won.

The victory and subsequent enslavement of the Wampanoags was the reason for The Day of Thanksgiving proclamation of 1676. The proclamation begins, 'The Holy God having by a long and Continual Series of his Afflictive dispensations in and by the present Warr with the Heathen Natives of this land, written and brought to pass bitter things against his own Covenant people in this wilderness...'

Residing in the dark shadow of America’s creation myth is a paradoxical truth: in settling Plymouth plantation, the Pilgrims had created a fundamentalist religious state, which neither tolerated non-Christians nor dissenters. Those among the Puritans who did not live up to the faith were banished. Others were famously accused of witchcraft and, found guilty by a 'trial,' were hanged.

And the paradox?

The pilgrims were tenacious and industrious. Their work ethic remains one of the enduring values of America. But their escape for freedom was not for liberty. It was for purity. Ironically, out of this dark, intolerant society came America’s purest value – idealism. And this idealism would, in part, be used by the enlightenment founding fathers for different ends. Though the Pilgrims established America’s ugly strains of fundamentalism, racism, and manifest destiny, the ideals behind the creation myth – brotherhood, liberty, community – gave the children sitting in a gymnasium in 1971 an idealized expectation for their America.

And for me, proudly wearing that black construction-paper pilgrim hat, the creation myth of the Pilgrims and of Thanksgiving was a promise.

And a promise, especially for a first grader, meant something.

--Steven Laffoley is an American writer living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The above is excerpted from Mr. Bush, Angus and Me: Notes of an American-Canadian in the Age of Unreason to be published in September 2005 by Pottersfield Press. You may e-mail him ator steven_laffoley@yahoo.com.

Karl Rove Disinforms Again

Tue, 28 Jun 2005 01:44:00 +0000

6-27-05, 9:50 am

Karl Rove, who serves as Bush’s key political strategist and unofficial minister of propaganda, hit a particularly low note, even by his standards, last week. At Conservative party meeting in New York, Rove said 'conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.'

Democratic Senators were screaming foul and calling for Rove’s resignation, which they won’t get of course, proclaiming that the attacks were not a 'partisan issue.' In reality, they are a partisan issue, not primarily between Democrats and Republicans but between Communists and those small groupings of the broad American left who opposed the Reagan administration’s contra war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, which produced the Al Qaeda group, and all of those who supported that contra war and created the conditions for the unprecedented terrorist attacks. The Communist Party, USA’s national contention in Chicago next weekend will be the convention of the only U.S. political party who supported internationally the forces in Afghanistan that, had they triumphed, would have made the 9/11 attacks and all that has followed from them impossible.

A little erased history might help to put this in perspective. In 1979, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor and an extreme anti-Soviet policy planner convinced Carter to use the CIA to provide support to rightwing Muslim guerrillas fighting against the Afghanistan’s Communist party government, which had taken power in 1978 and was attempting to advance far-reaching land and social reforms in the countryside. Brzezinski hoped, as he later boasted, to get the Soviets to fall into the 'Afghan trap,' to intervene in the conflict and get bogged down in a Vietnam style counter-insurgent war. The Soviets did intervene at the end of 1979. Later, the Reagan administration greatly expanded aid to the Afghan contras, who were hailed as 'freedom fighters' while the Kabul government had very little support in the US, unlike the Nicaraguan Sandinista government, which faced a similar contra war. Since the Soviets were involved and the war was going on in a Muslim country, only the CPUSA, consistently supported the Afghan government and challenged the CIA inspired propaganda that portrayed the Soviets as fighting a genocidal war in Afghanistan and ignored totally both the atrocities of the guerrillas and their political ends.

By the late 1980s, there were over 50,000 foreign 'freedom fighters' fighting a 'holy war' in Afghanistan from CIA supported bases and training camps in Pakistan. Among them were five thousand Saudis led by Osama bin Laden, a scion of the richest capitalist family in the region, a family who had assets in excess of $6 billion and whose wealth came from their construction business through connections with the Saudi royal family and contracts from the Arab-American Oil Company (ARAMCO) and other firms. Bin Laden had been working with the CIA for years—some sources say as earlier as 1979—in both fund-raising among the Saudi rich and, given his engineering background, logistics work for the guerillas, whose stock in trade against Soviet forces and the Kabul government was the kind of terrorist attacks for which they are now globally known. The Al Qaeda network was created by bin Laden in 1988, to expand and internationalize the 'holy war.' Although attacks on 'Christian crusaders' and 'Zionist Jews' had been part of the 'freedom fighters' rhetoric from the beginning, the guerillas 'victory' in Afghanistan and the destruction of the Soviet Union in 1991 led Bin Laden and his extreme reactionary group to turn on their former U.S. government allies (in a sense, both had cynically used each other).

The United States was now declared to be the main enemy, its people and its culture fair game, as the Soviet Union and the Afghan government had been in the 1980s. When bin Laden sought to expand his 'holy war' back home in Saudi Arabia, his family largely disowned him and the Saudi feudal regime forced him out. But he retained large sources of wealth and was able to relocate eventually to Afghanistan, where the clerical fascist Taliban regime, the product of imperialism’s 'victory' in Afghanistan, gave him sanctuary.

My own suspicion is that Bin Laden’s former CIA friends, not to mention his family’s business associates in high U.S. corporate circles, including those with direct Bush family connections, saw him as a minor nuisance, even after U.S. installations and citizens were attacked and lives lost.

This was the situation that the Bush administration and 'conservatives' faced on September 11, 2001, a situation that their appeasement and active support of 'jihad' in Afghanistan had created as clearly as the Chamberlain government’s appeasement to Nazi Germany in order to use it to destroy the Soviet Union and failure even after WWII began in 1939 to take the German war machine seriously had led the British to Dunkirk in 1940.

At least Chamberlain, before he was removed and replaced by Winston Churchill, didn’t have the 'chutzpah'(overweening arrogance) to say that his Conservative Party had courageously stood up to Hitler while the Labor party was mired in cowardly pacifism.

Actually, what the Bush administration did on September 11 was to run around, as my late mother used to say, like a chicken without a head. It was more interested in saving its face and protecting the president from any possible attack than in coming forward and providing leadership for the people in the first hours of the attack. Then it was interested in exploiting the attack for political reasons—accusing critics of being disloyal, massively increasing military spending in response to what was essentially a domestic police matter, and creating a Department of Homeland Security, another big spending bureaucratic agency, as conservatives like to say about HUD and HEW, instead of working with the already extensive domestic security apparatus. Bush also immediately sought evidence to blame the Iraqis, who had nothing to do with the attack and encouraged rather than reduced a panic atmosphere in the country in which Anthrax letters, rhetoric about Weapons of Mass Destruction, and mass a media frenzy that might have even embarrassed the old Hearst press, ran wild.

One day, and I doubt it will take that long, writers in the United States will began to deal seriously with this terrible set of episodes: The protection given the wealthy Bin Ladens in the United States on the day of the attack while completely innocent people of the Muslim faith were picked up and held in preventive detention. The flying schools in Florida that gave lessons to the suicide hijackers and thought nothing of the fact that they didn’t even come back to learn how to land airplanes, a comment on the deregulated anything for sale capitalism that 'conservatives' glorify. The invasion and occupation of Iraq in the name of fighting both 'international terrorism' and removing weapons of mass destruction, when there were no weapons of mass destruction and there were not then, but are now, Al Qaeda terrorists killing both Iraqis and U.S. military personnel in the country. The 'investigation' of the attacks which cut out entirely the CIA bin Laden connection and used a tunnel vision approach in its examination of evidence, never even contemplating serious political questions related to the attack.

Conservatives, cold war liberals, and anti-Communist anti-Soviet 'leftists' who supported the contra war in Afghanistan all deserve blame for the Al Qaeda attacks, but it was the Reagan administration which greatly expanded the support begun by Carter to the rightwing guerillas.

It was the Bush I administration which rejected any compromise solution to the war in Afghanistan after Soviet troops were withdrawn in 1988 and gave full support to Muslim guerillas and its Pakistani allies, who then backed the Taliban regime until the September 11 attacks. And it was the Bush II administration which used the attacks to do virtually everything except fight real terrorists—proclaiming an open-ended 'war against terrorism' to replace the cold war, enacting legislation that threatens the civil liberties of all Americans without impeding Al Qaeda or similar groups, and invading strengthening Al Qaeda through the diversionary Iraq invasion and occupation. Rove and his rightist minions hate words like 'therapy,' because they believe in punishment society where understanding and forgiveness exists either in an afterlife or in the institutions reserved for the upper classes, the 'elect.' In that case, they resemble the Al Qaeda fanatics that they claim to be fighting.

'Conservatives saw what happened to us on 9/11, Rove contended,' and said ‘we will defeat our enemies.’ Liberals saw what happened to us and said ‘we must understand our enemies.’'

First, no one wins any war without understanding the enemy. Second, Rove’s kind of conservative country club Republican still has far better relations with the Saudi elite than they do with the people of New York City, who like the people of San Francisco, and the Hollywood movie industry they have long portrayed as internal enemies. What was it Walt Kelly’s cartoon character, Pogo, once said in what some saw as an aside at cold warriors and McCarthyites 'we have met the enemy and he is us.'

--Norman Markowitz is a contributing editor of Political Affairs. Reach him with your thoughts at pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net.

THE BOOK ROUND UP # 4: PREVIEWS & NOTES ON NEW WORKS

Tue, 28 Jun 2005 01:40:00 +0000

6-27-05, 9:44 am

Here is another of our occasional book round ups consisting of short notices of works we have not been able to fully review. These are essentially meta-reviews (reviews of book reviews). If any of our readers are inspired to read one of these books and wish to write a full review for us, please contact pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.

THE ETHICS OF IDENTITY by Kwame Anthony Appiah, Princeton University Press, 2004, 358 pp., reviewed by Jonathan Freedman in The New York Times Book Review, Sunday, June 12, 2005.

Any book by Appiah is worth reading. In this book he wants to give a boost to the revival of liberalism by up dating, as it were, the views of John Stuart Mill as expressed in his classic 'On Liberty.' Freedman says Appiah wants to 'focus ethical attention on the notion of identity.' The individual self has the freedom to create itself on the one hand, and on the other 'it is shaped by collective identities' as Freedman puts it. This is a complicated dialectic to navigate. For example, Appiah says 'The final responsibility for each life is always the responsibility of the person whose life it is.' This was the also the view of J-P Sartre in his existentialist mood-- but the contradictions in this view drove him from existentialism towards Marxism. I wonder if Appiah will be nudged away from Mill towards Marx by those same contradictions. What are the contradictions? Here is Freedman again: Appiah 'insists that [the] very process of having an identity involves ‘soul making’ the nurturance of the possibility of ‘ethical success’; and he is clear that the state has not just the right but the obligation to undertake this task....' Well he is in good company along with Plato and Aristotle and Marx himself! We see the contradiction-- the state is obligated to nurture our ethical consciousness but the 'final responsibility' is ours. Is it? What about being in a state like the US-- a monopoly capitalist corporate dictatorship with a formal, but in many respects non-functioning, democracy that under educates the poor and exploits immigrants and racial minorities. If the state fails to undertake its ethical educative function, how can individuals end up with the 'final responsibility' for their ethical makeup? Appiah deals with many other problems as well. He has a notion of 'rooted cosmopolitanism.' That is, I am a citizen of the world but I am also an American citizen citizen of the world. Appiah insists, according to Freedman, 'that without a deeply felt commitment to the local there can be no genuine sense of obligation to the universal.' This is an important book by one of the most important contemporary social philosophers.

THE WORLD IS FLAT: A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY by Thomas L. Friedman, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005, 488 pp., reviewed by Amitabh Pal in The Progressive, July 2005.

I really feel for this reviewer, having to wade through 488 pages of Friedman’s nonsense when there are really important books to be read. This book is another paean to the wonders of globalization. The main point of this book is, as Pal writes, that 'Technological forces-- such as the Internet and out-sourcing-- have altered the nature of the workplace so fundamentally that they have changed the world.' This takes 488 pages? Friedman thinks this thesis proves how great globalization is for everyone in the world. That is why the world is 'flat'-- our differences are flattening out. Pal points out that he does have a chapter about those who don’t benefit from globalization 'such as in rural areas in many parts of the globe.' We are talking here of billions of people but Friedman quickly gets back on track singing hosannas to 'free trade [which is trade actually manipulated by the rich countries], capitalism, and technological innovation.' Pal thinks, 'The jury is still out on whether Friedman’s beloved globalization will bring any relief to the world’s deprived.'

What is he talking about? The jury has been back a long time now. Globalization does not exist to bring relief to the deprived and it only worsens deprivation. Pal himself says, vis a vis India (one of Friedman’s examples of good globalization) that 'free market policies have failed to reduce poverty any faster than the state-oriented policies before them....' In fact, he says, 'the free market has done worse in some respects.' As for the USA, which Friedman thinks benefits from globalization, Pal points out the poverty figure is 'significantly higher' than in most of Europe. Yes Virginia, people are better off in France than here. Pal also says that this book virtually ignores South America. This is because South America 'has fallen on hard times and the people of that region have repeatedly rejected the neoliberal model in recent elections.' If Pal is still waiting for the jury to come back someone should tell him the courtroom is empty because they came back long ago with a negative verdict for globalization and everyone has gone home already. Don’t waste your time with this book!

THE ETHICAL BRAIN by Michael S. Gazzaniga, Dana Press, 2005, 201pp., reviewed by Sally Satel in The New York Times Book Review for Sunday, June 19, 2005.

If this book is anything like its review then it has serious problems. Its author is a certified neuroscientist but appears to be prone to using science to support his personal opinions. This is similar to biologists bitten by the God bug who want to use Darwin to support religious causes. He is also a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics. Knowing of the President’s deep commitment to science and to ethics I imagine Mr Bush uses the same high standards of appointment for this position has he does in judicial appointments. Ms. Satel approves of this book. She is a resident 'scholar' at the American Enterprise Institute. The quotation marks are to remind people that this is an Institute funded for and by the right-wing and any similarity to scholarship that goes on there is purely coincidental. This, by the way, does not stop The New York Times from opening its pages to it. Here are a few examples of Gazzaniga opinions. He thinks we will be able to do some tampering with our genes to increase physical and mental abilities. He concludes, 'I remain convinced that enhancers that improve motor skills are cheating, while those that help you remember where you put your car keys are fine.' This is based on, according to Satel, considerations having to do with basketball and the 'logic of competition.' He also has opinions about using science in social disputes. For example, some scientists argue against killing juveniles who have broken capital laws. Their reasons are that young people’s brains are not fully developed vis a vis their frontal lobes-- the brain area that helps 'curb impulses and conduct moral reasoning.' Is this sort of information relevant? Gazzaniga writes, 'Neuroscientists should stay in the lab and let lawyers stay in the courtroom.' This is in the Bush scientific tradition-- let environmental scientists stay in their labs and classrooms and let congressmen get on with making the environmental laws the administration favors, for example. Here is another finding: 'It appears that a process in the brain makes it likely that people will categorize others on the bases of race.' He also, the ethical part here, explores the idea that we have 'an innate human moral sense.' He concludes that, 'We must commit ourselves to the view that a universal ethics is possible.' I have a feeling the American Enterprise Institute thinks it has already been found: In the red states.

--Thomas Riggins is the book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.

Main St. to Democrats: No Compromise with GOP Plans for Social Security

Tue, 28 Jun 2005 01:36:00 +0000

6-27-05, 9:40 am

People on Main St. have rejected the idea that Social Security needs to be fixed, despite the claims of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Democrats in Congress are responding to that grassroots opposition, an expression of progressive family values. This is no time for Democrats to compromise with the Social Security proposals of the president and his GOP backers.

One of them is Republican Bill Thomas who represents Bakersfield in the House of Representatives. He also chairs the House Ways and Means Committee. Like Bush, Thomas talks about saving Social Security. Yet he comes not to save but wreck the program that provides about 47 million Americans with monthly checks, and keeps roughly half of retirees out of poverty.

That is a mark of Social Security’s success. The program is also in great financial shape, and has never been healthier. Social Security, begun in 1935 during the depths of the Great Depression, is fully funded to pay Americans their disability, retirement and survivor benefits for the next 46 years, according to projections by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

There is no need for Congress to change the program's financing arrangement. Democrats such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi who represents San Francisco need to stand firm against any GOP plans to fix Social Security. There is nothing broken, as the program’s financial problems exist only in the minds of the president, his GOP backers and the Cato Institute who claim that Social Security faces a cash flow problem beginning in 2017. That is the year the Social Security trust fund will begin to be used to help finance program benefits paid to the disabled, retirees and survivors. This is not a problem, but exactly what Social Security was set up to do by the Greenspan commission in 1983. Thus in 12 years when the payroll taxes paid by employees and employers become less (not more) than the Social Security benefits being paid out, the trust fund will make up the difference. Again, this funding of the program will proceed according to plan.

Crucially, the trust fund is growing as it has grown each of the past 22 years from payroll tax revenue. The Social Security trust fund will hold $3.6 trillion (in today’s dollars) in 2017, according to Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC.

Contrast the financial safety of Social Security to what private-sector companies are doing: underfunding and defaulting on their employees’ retirement pensions. United Airlines is one example, having gotten the green light from a federal bankruptcy court in May to pull the plug on employee pension plans.

Other companies are sure to follow, inside and outside the airline industry. This trend of financial instability in the private sector makes Social Security much more vital to Main St.’s income.

In his second term, President Bush has made fixing Social Security a high priority. Yet Main St. has rejected his plan, remarkably, to cut benefits and carve out private savings accounts to be invested on Wall St. from the payroll taxes that fund Social Security. Democrats must not agree to compromise on Social Security with Bush and other Republicans offering their versions of fixes for the program.

Main St. does not want the popular program to be fixed by politicians who claim, falsely, that they need to do so because Social Security is going broke. Send the GOP fixers off to the Fourth of July recess with a failing grade for the president’s plan to wreck what American workers decades ago forced the federal government to create.

Nobody in the upper class gave them anything. Instead, they fought the good fight for Social Security and won. Now it’s Main St.’s turn to hold Congressional Democrats’ feet to the fire to defend that victory.

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

Republican Stinginess on VA Spending Angers Veterans...Again

Mon, 27 Jun 2005 01:13:00 +0000

6-26-05, 9:16 am

During congressional hearings last week, Jonathan B. Perlin, the Veterans’ Administration undersecretary for health, admitted that the VA is short $1 billion and may not be able to cover current needs this year.

Perlin’s announcement came just after congressional Republicans and the Bush administration blocked two Democratic efforts to raise the VA’s funding. In addition, Republicans in both houses have so far thwarted a Democratic initiative that would have fully funded veterans’ health care programs and prevented them from being subject to budget cuts. In April, Jim Nicholson, the Bush-appointed Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs, urged the Senate to vote down an amendment sponsored by Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), a member of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee covering veterans affairs, that would have added $1.9 billion to the VA budget.

Nicholson, in a letter to the Senate, had claimed, 'I can assure you that VA does not need emergency supplemental funds in FY2005 to continue to provide timely, quality service that is always our goal.'

Aides close to Murray say that Nicholson may not have been forthright about his claim. The VA has known of the shortfall since at least April, when Nicholson made the claim. The Republican-controlled Senate took his advice.

Rep. Chet Edwards (D-TX) had also raised questions about the budget shortfall and even proposed paying for a $2.2 billion increase in the VA budget by rolling back part of the Republican tax cut for people with incomes of more than $1 million. The Republicans voted down Edwards’ plan in the House.

Stinginess with the VA budget by the Bush administration and the congressional Republicans has angered veterans groups. In January, a Pentagon spokesperson called for sharp cuts in veterans’ benefits and described the costs of such benefits as a 'hurtful' to national security. (Fore more on that story, click here.)

Since then, the Republicans in the House passed a funding package for the Department of Veterans Affairs appropriation for 2006 that has been sharply criticized by the American Legion, the Paralyzed Veterans of America and the Disabled American Veterans.

Veterans groups point to poor health care, long waiting lists, VA hospital closings, and lack of service at veterans’ health care facilities as a sign that a stronger fiscal commitment to caring for US veterans is needed. But cutting the budget to pay for tax cuts for the rich is the top priority of the Republican Party and the Bush administration.

So much so that when Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-NJ) publicly called for increases in funding, he was fired as House Veterans Affairs Committee Chair and replaced by Rep. Steve Buyer (R-IN) who was appointed to the post specifically to enforce spending cuts.

Buyer angered veterans groups further, when he claimed in an interview that not all veterans deserved to be treated equally by the VA system and that Congress had to 'drill down' on VA funding.

While the Republicans have claimed that their proposal actually increases funding next year, analysis of their spending package indicates about $960 million of their spending 'increase' comes at the expense of important VA medical care spending.

Further, the Republican 'increase' simply doesn’t cover much needed funding, especially as medical and re-training programs are in growing demand as veterans return form the Iraq war. Over 18,000 medical-related evacuees have so far been brought home from Iraq.

Joseph A. Violante, legislative director of the Disabled American Veterans, said that the Bush administration and Republican maneuvers to hide their stinginess indicates that despite their claims about being supportive of the military, they really don’t view the care of veterans as 'a continuing cost of war.' Veterans aren’t a priority to the administration or the Republicans, he added.

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