People Before Profit blog

A Veto Is a Vote for Eternal War

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 02:39:00 +0000

For George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, 2008 is too soon to end a war that they intend to last forever. 2008 is too soon to stop constructing enormous military bases in Iraq and abandon them. 2008 is too soon to bring our men and women home to their families and the criminally inadequate health care and nonexistent job assistance that we travel around the world to murder whole nations in defense of.

If Bush vetoes or signing-statements the supplemental war bill, he is saying he wants the war to last much longer than the American people or the troops say they want it to last. And that is what Democrats would point out if they had the nerve.

I'm afraid that instead some of them will claim that Bush is defunding the troops. But how can he be? The Pentagon is rolling around in hundreds of billions of dollars, huge chunks of which it has a disturbingly frequent habit of wasting or misplacing. And Congress, meanwhile, while this big loud debate is going on over the 'emergency' supplemental, is busy providing standard budget funding for the war, not just for 2008, but even for 2009 – that is beyond the date by which it is requiring Bush to end the war.

The extent to which the rhetorical contest centers around who is funding and who is defunding 'the troops' (meaning the profits of the oil and weapons companies that grow fat on the blood of young Americans and the Iraqis they kill) is exactly the extent to which we'll see Congress continue to fund more war and more war and more war.

Any Democrat who accuses Bush of defunding the troops is advocating for more war, which is exactly what the public does not want. Bush should be accused of ignoring the will of the public and its elected representatives. Bush should be accused of wanting eternal war and making plans to add a war on Iran into the mix.

Many Congress Members say they oppose an illegal and aggressive attack on Iran. But from the moment the attack begins, will they bend over backwards to make sure they are ahead of Bush in funding 'the troops' to continue it, even while making noises of opposition? Or will they drop the whole pretense that wars are fought on behalf of soldiers and assert the Constitutional power to hold accountable an outlaw president through the process of impeachment?

This few-months' cakewalk in Iraq has become a permanent illegal occupation and oil theft. Congress never authorized this and wouldn't authorize it if it were put to a vote. But Congress funds it year after year and off into the future. If Congress will not put its money where its mouth is, we will have more wars, and those wars will never end, because they are not wars but occupations.

When Bush accuses Congress of defunding the troops, the correct response is not to point out that Congress is dumping trillions of dollars into Bush's wars. The correct response is not to claim that Bush is the one defunding the troops. The correct response is to change the debate by accusing Bush of wanting to continue the war forever. When do Bush and Cheney want to end the war? That should be the question on the lips of reporters at every press conference. When will you end the war? In 2007? In 2008? In 2009? If Congress required that the war end by 2025 and barred the use of funds for it beyond that point, would that be too soon for you, Mr. Unitary Executive?

The Democrats have the upper hand. The media is pretending that Congress has really insisted on ending the war in 2008. The public passionately wants Congress to do just that. Now is the time to make clear that a veto is a vote against that, a vote to continue the war into 2009. Let Bush advocate in public for an Iraq war that extends into 2009, and he'll leave Nixon and Truman's unpopularity records in the dust.

Georgia Legislature Launches Working Families Caucus

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 02:05:00 +0000

(APN) ATLANTA—The Georgia Working Families Caucus (WFC) is the Georgia General Assembly’s newest legislative caucus, having officially formed this session “in order to develop and promote legislation and policies that invest in workers, families, and communities,” Atlanta Progressive News has learned.

The Caucus is composed of over 20 members from around the state and meets every Thursday at noon during the Legislative Session to outline Caucus positions, discuss issues, and hear briefings from experts and advocates. The Caucus is also working closely with the Atlanta/North Georgia AFL-CIO and the labor community in Georgia.

“We do not have any Republican members yet but we have opened the invitation to all members,” Rep. Brian Thomas (D-Lilburn), a Caucus Co-chair, told Atlanta Progressive News in an interview.

Rep. Thomas, Rep. Pam Stephenson , and State Sen. Nan Orrock (D-Atlanta) are the three Co-Chairs of the Caucus.

Caucus members extend invitations to the Thursday meetings to all their colleagues in the Legislature.

After operating informally for two years, the Caucus has now officially adopted a Constitution and By-laws at the beginning of the Session and has made it their goal to lobby support for better education, health care, higher wages, workers’ rights, and more.

“[We are] strongly in support of raising the minimum wage,” Rep. Virgil Fludd (D-Fayetteville), a Caucus Vice Chair, told Atlanta Progressive News.

The Caucus also “opposes cuts in PeachCare” and has taken a “tough stance against payday lending,” Fludd added.

One legislator told Atlanta Progressive News there hasn’t been a WFC until now is because Democrats controlled the Legislature in Georgia for several years, and thus, working families’ issues had always been an assumed priority. Now with Democrats in the minority, the WFC is a needed mechanism to ensure that working families’ issues remain on the forefront and legislators are organized.

RAISING THE STATE MINIMUM WAGE

The first bill the Caucus voted to support was SB 13, a bill to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour by January 1, 2008.

The bill also would have indexed increases in the minimum wage to increases in the cost of living and expanded the categories of workers eligible to receive the minimum wage, according to a separate press release obtained by APN.

The Caucus held a press conference and rally at Atlanta City Hall February 10, 2007 to rally support for the legislation. The bill also was promoted in a rally at the Capitol the following week for Poor People’s Day, as covered in APN. The Insurance and Labor Committee at that time delayed consideration of the bill.

However, SB 13 failed to pass out of Committee.

“[We are] not giving up on that by any stretch of the imagination,” Jones said of SB 13. “We’re going to have to find incentives to make it advantageous for the other side” to support it.

“I don’t know if there is cause for optimism on the minimum wage bill this session,” Orrock told Atlanta Progressive News. “We’re going to work on that issue.”

Orrock believes the bill will pass if it can reach the floor.

POSSIBLE RETURN OF PAYDAY LENDING

The Georgia General Assembly voted in 2004 to outlaw payday lending. This kind of lending system “preys on people who need money who cannot pay back money in a timely manner,” Thomas said.

HB 163 would have brought back payday lending with “so called ‘protections,’” Thomas added.

“The Caucus concluded that the working families of this state deserve continued protection against loan sharks that prey on low income working families,” according the press release.

House members voted 82-77, March 27, 2007, to approve HB 163, but 91 votes were needed to send it to the Senate, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper (AJC). The first attempt to send the bill to the Senate last week resulted in a tie vote.

“I am more than pleased” that this bill did not move on, Sen. Emanuel Jones (D-Decatur), another Caucus Vice Chair, told APN.

“The bill would have created more of a burden… for people that need help the most,” he added.

“It [was] a real win for Georgia,” Sen. Orrock said of the bill’s defeat. “We’re very pleased that the coalition of forces opposing the bill was successful.”

PEACHCARE UNDER ASSAULT

PeachCare is Georgia’s program for providing health care to children of low-income families. Currently, there are 308,000 children covered under the program, according to The AJC.

The House voted 101-63, on March 27, 3007, to pass HB 340, a bill crafted by House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram). HB 340 would make fewer families eligible for the program and enrollees would also have to pay extra premiums for dental and vision coverage.

Richardson assured opponents no child covered now would be dropped from the program. The Speaker also claims this measure removes illegal immigrants from coverage but House Minority Leader DuBose Porter (D-Dublin) said current law already bars illegal immigrants from the program, according to The AJC.

“Why are we reducing benefits for those that need it most?” Jones asked.

“The success of the Speaker’s bill was a real blow to working families,” Orrock said. “We’re going to work hard to oppose its passage in the Senate. There will be a lot of pressure to hold the line and protect working families.”

“I’m not surprised the bill passed the House considering it was the Speaker’s bill,” Jones added. The bill was written and passed “purely for political purposes.”

The Caucus supports HB 620, one bill that could help offset gaps in federal funding. The bill would allow for the recovery of federal Medicaid funds to make up for other federal PeachCare funding that may not be available.

The House has not yet voted on HB 620. HB 340 now moves to the Senate for consideration.

“I would urge people to call their Senators and let them know they need to do right by Georgia’s children,” Orrock added.

CAUCUS WEARY OF TAX LIMIT AMENDMENT

SR 20 calls for “an amendment to the Constitution so as to provide for limitations on state government taxation and expenditures.”

It passed the Senate on March 20, 2007, and is now under consideration in the House. The Caucus made SR 20 part of their weekly discussion March 29, 2007.

“A bill like that would limit programs that benefit working people,” Thomas said.

This resolution “artificially restricts and limits what you can do with revenues that come in that exceed budget levels from prior years,” Orrock said.

Orrock called SR 20 a “dangerous measure” because it “continues to spread a view that any government expenditures are not in the interest of citizens.”

THE OFF SEASON AND BEYOND

The work of the Caucus will not end when the Legislative Session ends.

“Now that we’re structured formally, we’ll be able to meet regularly,” Thomas said. “[The] Steering Committee will communicate regularly when the Legislature is not in Session.”

“We would like Republicans to join us [but] some see the group as too liberal,” Jones said.

“The door’s open to everybody,” Fludd said.

Jones told APN because this is not an Election year, the Caucus will have more chances to meet and prepare for next Session. He added that the minimum wage legislation and protecting PeachCare will remain his top two priorities.

Orrock said there are “myriad” issues needing attention including education, the care of senior citizens, and the care of the mentally disabled, issues that are sure to get the attention of the Caucus in the off-season and beyond.

From Atlanta Progressive News

Billions condemned to premature death from hunger and thirst

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 01:59:00 +0000

More than three billion people in the world condemned to premature death from hunger and thirst

That is not an exaggerated figure, but rather a cautious one. I have meditated a lot on that in the wake of President Bush's meeting with U.S. automobile manufacturers.

The sinister idea of converting food into fuel was definitively established as an economic line in U.S. foreign policy last Monday, March 26.

A cable from the AP, the U.S. news agency that reaches all corners of the world, states verbatim: 'WASHINGTON, March 26 (AP). President Bush touted the benefits of 'flexible fuel' vehicles running on ethanol and biodiesel on Monday, meeting with automakers to boost support for his energy plans.

'Bush said a commitment by the leaders of the domestic auto industry to double their production of flex-fuel vehicles could help motorists shift away from gasoline and reduce the nation's reliance on imported oil.

''That's a major technological breakthrough for the country,' Bush said after inspecting three alternative vehicles. If the nation wants to reduce gasoline use, he said 'the consumer has got to be in a position to make a rational choice.'

'The president urged Congress to 'move expeditiously' on legislation the administration recently proposed to require the use of 35 billion gallons of alternative fuels by 2017 and seek higher fuel economy standards for automobiles.

'Bush met with General Motors Corp. chairman and chief executive Rick Wagoner, Ford Motor Co. chief executive Alan Mulally and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group chief executive Tom LaSorda.

'They discussed support for flex-fuel vehicles, attempts to develop ethanol from alternative sources like switchgrass and wood chips and the administration's proposal to reduce gas consumption by 20 percent in 10 years.

'The discussions came amid rising gasoline prices. The latest Lundberg Survey found the nationwide average for gasoline has risen 6 cents per gallon in the past two weeks to $2.61.'

I believe that reducing and moreover recycling all motors that run on electricity and fuel is an elemental and urgent need for all humanity. The tragedy does not lie in reducing those energy costs but in the idea of converting food into fuel.

It is known very precisely today that one ton of corn can only produce 413 liters of ethanol on average, according to densities. That is equivalent to 109 gallons.

The average price of corn in U.S. ports has risen to $167 per ton. Thus, 320 million tons of corn would be required to produce 35 billion gallons of ethanol.

According to FAO figures, the U.S. corn harvest rose to 280.2 million tons in the year 2005.

Although the president is talking of producing fuel derived from grass or wood shavings, anyone can understand that these are phrases totally lacking in realism. Let's be clear: 35 billion gallons translates into 35 followed by nine zeros!

Afterwards will come beautiful examples of what experienced and well-organized U.S. farmers can achieve in terms of human productivity by hectare: corn converted into ethanol; the chaff from that corn converted into animal feed containing 26% protein; cattle dung used as raw material for gas production. Of course, this is after voluminous investments only within the reach of the most powerful enterprises, in which everything has to be moved on the basis of electricity and fuel consumption. Apply that recipe to the countries of the Third World and you will see that people among the hungry masses of the Earth will no longer eat corn. Or something worse: lend funding to poor countries to produce corn ethanol based on corn or any other food and not a single tree will be left to defend humanity from climate change.

Other countries in the rich world are planning to use not only corn but also wheat, sunflower seeds, rapeseed and other foods for fuel production. For the Europeans, for example, it would become a business to import all of the world's soybeans with the aim of reducing the fuel costs for their automobiles and feeding their animals with the chaff from that legume, particularly rich in all types of essential amino acids.

In Cuba, alcohol used to be produced as a byproduct of the sugar industry after having made three extractions of sugar from cane juice. Climate change is already affecting our sugar production. Lengthy periods of drought alternating with record rainfall, that barely make it possible to produce sugar with an adequate yield during the 100 days of our very moderate winter; hence, there is less sugar per ton of cane or less cane per hectare due to prolonged drought in the months of planting and cultivation.

I understand that in Venezuela they would be using alcohol not for export but to improve the environmental quality of their own fuel. For that reason, apart from the excellent Brazilian technology for producing alcohol, in Cuba the use of such a technology for the direct production of alcohol from sugar cane juice is no more than a dream or the whim of those carried away by that idea. In our country, land handed over to the direct production of alcohol could be much useful for food production for the people and for environmental protection.

All the countries of the world, rich and poor, without any exception, could save millions and millions of dollars in investment and fuel simply by changing all the incandescent light bulbs for fluorescent ones, an exercise that Cuba has carried out in all homes throughout the country. That would provide a breathing space to resist climate change without killing the poor masses through hunger.

As can be observed, I am not using adjectives to qualify the system and the lords of the earth. That task can be excellently undertaken by news experts and honest social, economic and political scientists abounding in the world who are constantly delving into to the present and future of our species. A computer and the growing number of Internet networks are sufficient for that.

Today, we are seeing for the first time a really globalized economy and a dominant power in the economic, political and military terrain that in no way resembles that of Imperial Rome.

Some people will be asking themselves why I am talking of hunger and thirst. My response to that: it is not about the other side of the coin, but about several sides of something else, like a die with six sides, or a polyhedron with many more sides.

I refer in this case to an official news agency, founded in 1945 and generally well-informed about economic and social questions in the world: TELAM. It said, and I quote:

'In just 18 years, close to 2 billion people will be living in countries and regions where water will be a distant memory. Two-thirds of the world's population could be living in places where that scarcity produces social and economic tensions of such a magnitude that it could lead nations to wars for the precious 'blue gold.'

'Over the last 100 years, the use of water has increased at a rate twice as fast as that of population growth.

'According to statistics from the World Water Council, it is estimated that by 2015, the number of inhabitants affected by this grave situation will rise by 3.5 billion people.

'The United Nations celebrated World Water Day on March 23, and called to begin confronting, that very day, the international scarcity of water, under the coordination of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), with the goal of highlighting the increasing importance of water scarcity on a global scale, and the need for greater integration and cooperation that would make it possible to guarantee sustained and efficient management of water resources.

'Many regions on the planet are suffering from severe water shortages, living with less than 500 cubic meters per person per year. The number of regions suffering from chronic scarcity of this vital element is increasingly growing.

'The principal consequences of water scarcity are an insufficient amount of the precious liquid for producing food, the impossibility of industrial, urban and tourism development and health problems.'

That was the TELEAM cable.

In this case I will refrain from mentioning other important facts, like the melting ice in Greenland and the Antarctic, damage to the ozone layer and the growing volume of mercury in many species of fish for common consumption.

There are other issues that could be addressed, but with these lines I am just trying to comment on President Bush's meeting with the principal executives of U.S. automakers.

--From Granma International

Autoworkers confront globalization

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 01:52:00 +0000

Autoworkers face one of their biggest challenges ever: how to fight in an era of globalization when companies threaten to move ever more production abroad to get the lowest wages and benefits possible.

With contracts for Daimler Chrysler, Ford and General Motors expiring this September, delegates at a United Auto Workers special convention in Detroit this week are working to develop a unified approach. A big concern is resisting the auto companies’ efforts to drive down wages and benefits. It is becoming increasingly evident that giving in offers no guarantee of keeping jobs but does guarantee that the race to the bottom gets faster and faster.

Yes, the Big Three are facing market challenges here in the U.S., but while closing plants at home, all three have embarked on a global splurge to build plants abroad. GM has manufacturing operations in 32 countries. GM and its main supplier Delphi have both opened major new facilities in recent years in Mexico, Eastern Europe, China and other Asian countries.

And while Ford, Daimler Chrysler and GM battle Toyota and others for market share here, the global trend is increasing interconnection and interdependence among auto companies.

GM and Toyota have a 23-year joint venture in Fremont, Calif. — New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. — building the Pontiac Vibe, Toyota Tacoma pickup and Toyota Corolla.

Ford and Mazda have a joint venture. GM Renault and Nissan jointly make commercial vans. Chrysler is slated to make minivans for Volkswagen. VW supplies diesel engines for Dodge. Ford is scheduled to make a minicar for Fiat in Europe. GM, Isuzu and Suzuki have a joint venture. And Daimler Chrysler, Mitsubishi and Hyundai developed a 4-cylinder engine to be made in Michigan.

These alliances, while making it possible to share production and downsize, also enable the companies to open more and more nonunion plants, while closing those that are unionized.

Free trade agreements have not brought economic security to workers of any country. Instead, the agreements promote competition among workers and weaken and cheapen labor worldwide. They do this in part by facilitating capital’s ability to move in and out of countries, and thus to whipsaw workers against each other in the infamous race to the bottom. In an era of globalization when operations can move from country to country, companies pit plants in the U.S. against plants in countries where wages and benefits are low. Auto companies are taking profits from one country, investing in another and claiming profit losses to gain more concessions.

GM claims it needs concessions from the union because “accounting gaffes” show profits less than expected — even as it reported a fourth-quarter profit of $950 million and anticipated “improved earnings” in 2007. Meanwhile it is opening billion-dollar plants around the world, including a big Opel plant in Slovakia and new facilities in China.

Daimler Chrysler too is saying that concessions are needed, but its net income in 2006 rose to $4.3 billion from $3.8 billion the previous year.

What can autoworkers do to fight back? The recent push by the UAW leadership to meet with autoworker unions of other countries is a positive development. The UAW recently hosted representatives of the Japanese autoworkers in Detroit and has meetings planned with autoworkers in Thailand, Mexico, South Africa, South Korea, Argentina and Brazil. It should also seek to meet with China’s autoworkers. As auto production has become global, so too must the union movement.

Autoworkers also have to demand action in Washington. The problems faced by autoworkers and their union require national government solutions. Health care cannot be bargained away without a national health plan in place guaranteeing universal affordable coverage. Corporations cannot be allowed to plead losses in the U.S. without looking at their worldwide profitability. Communities that are losing funds for schools and services need emergency funding. Money must be made available for health care, housing and job retraining among other things. All options including nationalization under public and union control must be considered to keep the plants open. When led by competent managers and run democratically, plants run for the public good can perform better than those managed privately.

While the industry is changing and becoming global, auto production is still a big factor in the U.S. However, it is becoming more nonunion. Organizing Toyota and others will not be easy, but passing the Employee Free Choice Act will be a big first step. Most important, the union will have to mobilize its membership and lead a fight against concessions. It may not be able win on everything but if it doesn’t fight, it will have a hard time winning the confidence of all autoworkers, union and nonunion.

A Veto Is a Vote for Eternal War

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 01:48:00 +0000

British Acknowledge 600,000 Iraqi Deaths

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 02:24:00 +0000

British Officials Accept Estimates of 600,000 Iraqi Deaths

As sectarian violence in Iraq continues to flare up despite a massive Bush-ordered military escalation, The Independent is reporting that British government officials have described as 'sound' the methods used to estimate that more than 600,000 Iraqis have been killed since the invasion.

The study was conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University and a Baghdad University and published in the respected medical journal The Lancet two years ago.

The study has been publicly rejected by the US and British governments. But recently declassified British government documents show that the chief scientific adviser to Britain's Ministry of Defense described the methods used in the study as 'robust' and 'close to best practice.'

During the war, more than 3,240 US troops have also been killed, and conservative estimates of the numbers of troops wounded both physically and mentally are well over 50,000.

Commenting Tuesday on the refusal of President Bush to accept the electoral mandate for a new direction in Iraq by bringing the war to an end, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NB) characterized the effects of the war as 'significant damage to our military' and 'devastating to our country.'

Congress set the stage for a confrontation with Bush over the war policy by passing two bills that tie a timetable for withdrawal to new funding for the war.

Congressional Democratic leaders warned President Bush Wednesday that he must accept a timetable for withdrawal.

NYPD Spied on Bush Administration Critics

In what may be the most widespread abuse of police power outside of the federal government, New York police agents spied on critics of the Bush administration leading up to the 2004 Republican Party National Convention, reports the New York Times.

According to the daily, undercover officers traveled to various cities in the United States, Canada and Europe to infiltrate activist groups in order to compile information on planned demonstrations in New York during the Convention.

Police and witness documents reveal that the agents spied on the president's detractors in order to identify possible security threats. But the scope of the infiltrations included non-violent peace organizations, artists collectives, and other civic organizations with no known connection to violent groups or activities.

New York City officials announced Wednesday that they intend to block the release of further documents related to the activities of police agents to avoid lawsuits.

The revelations come just as Congress battles the FBI over the latter's role in rampant abuses of US PATRIOT Act provisions, including the use of so-called national security letters under false or improper pretexts to gain access to private information.

The Justice Department Inspector General estimates that there may have been as many as 3,000 such violations of the law by FBI agents, prompting Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to state: 'We're going to be re-examining the broad authorities we granted the FBI in the Patriot Act.'

Leahy's challenge comes just after Congress voted overwhelmingly to repeal portions of the PATRIOT Act that weakened congressional oversight of US Attorney appointments.

Until these recent revelations by the inspector general, Justice Department officials and the White House defied Democratic members of Congress and the media to find a single instance of abuse of the law under their watch.

The actions of the FBI and New York City police appear to confirm the worst fears of civil libertarians who rejected the White House's weakening of Constitutional protections in the name of security.

Activists Urge Congress to Protect Social Security and Medicare

The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare this week delivered more than 134,000 letters from its members to Capitol Hill urging Congress to protect Social Security and Medicare.

The letters oppose any legislation, plan or conference report that will in any way harm the benefits, structure or traditional role of Social Security and Medicare.

The letter campaign prompted Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA) to say, “With so many issues on our legislative agenda this session, it’s important to remind my colleagues that preserving Social Security and Medicare should remain a congressional priority.'

Members of the group have signed more than 2 million petitions and letters delivered to Congress since the privatization of Medicare began in earnest with the passage of Bush's Medicare Modernization Act in 2003.

Barbara B. Kennelly, the president and CEO of the group, said, 'America can afford Social Security. Strengthening Social Security for the long term is an attainable goal.'

'However,' she added, 'the President and some of his allies in Congress have not abandoned their goal to privatize Social Security and Medicare. Now they have opted for a more subtle approach: using taxpayers’ frustration with mounting deficits as an excuse to radically alter Social Security and Medicare in the name of fiscal discipline.”

Find out more and get involved at .

NOW Endorses Sen. Hillary Clinton

In a statement released today, National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy announced that organization's enthusiastic endorsement of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) for president.

She said: 'At this time in our history, this country needs strong, experienced and principled leadership to restore faith in our government and repair its credibility at home and abroad, and to end the destructive policies that have eroded our civil liberties and increased injustice and inequality in our society.'

She went on to say, 'Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is just such a leader. She has a long history of support for women's empowerment, and her public record is a testimony to her leadership on issues important to women in the U.S. and around the globe. She has eloquently articulated the need for full economic, political and social equality for women in every institution of society, taking action throughout her career [...] to advance the civil and human rights of women and girls.'

Find out more at .

Hate Crimes Bill Introduced in U.S. House

Last week, Reps. John Conyers (D-MI) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) introduced the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

This bill would give the Justice Department the power to investigate and prosecute bias motivated violence by providing it with jurisdiction over violent crimes where the perpetrator has selected the victim because of the person's actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.

The bill would allow the Justice Department to aid state and local jurisdictions either by lending assistance or, where local authorities are unwilling or unable, by taking the lead in investigations and prosecutions of violent crime motivated by bias.

The bill has been endorsed by notable individuals and over 210 law enforcement, civil rights, civic and religious organizations, including the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the Presbyterian and Episcopal Churches, and the Parent’s Network on Disabilities.

In a statement released last week, Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese said, “Each year, thousands of Americans are violently attacked just because they are Black, female, Christian or gay. These crimes not only harm individuals, but they terrorize entire communities. It’s the responsibility of our government to protect all Americans.'

Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force stated, “At long last, Congress is poised to recognize the reality of hate violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. It’s a disgrace that bigotry and ignorance have prevented Congress from taking real action to address hate crimes for nearly 20 years.”

According to a poll conducted in February, 73 percent of registered voters say that they support hate crimes legislation.

Right now, the bill has close to 140 co-sponsors. Further congressional action on the bill is expected this spring.

Go to and to urge congressional support for this bill.

Bush Administration Responsible for Erosion of Civil Rights, Says Report

A new report catalogs the erosion of civil rights across the country over the past six years and blames the Bush administration for 'willful neglect and calculated design' in dismantling civil rights protections.

Authored by the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights and the Center for American Progress, the report uses data compiled by former Justice Department officials who served under the Bush administration as well as other experts.

According to the report's authors, 'The Bush administration continues to use the courts and the judicial appointment process to narrow civil rights protections and repeal remedies for legal redress while allowing the traditional tools of the executive branch for civil rights enforcement to wither and die. The resulting inequality of opportunity, deteriorating civil liberties, and rising religious and racial discrimination are sad commentaries on the priorities of the current administration.'

The report calls on Congress to take action. Specifically, Congress should review the Bush administration's implementation and enforcement of civil rights laws with oversight hearings, revise civil rights laws to allow civil suits in federal courts, enforce affirmative action policies, use commitment to civil rights as a 'litmus test' for federally appointed judges, prosecutors, and other law enforcement officials, and pass immigration reform which at a minimum provides a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Read the full report at .

| | |

Saying No to Bush's War in Indianapolis

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 02:19:00 +0000

ANTIWAR RALLY OCCURS ON MARCH 24, UPCOMING THIRD ANNUAL MIDWEST PEACE AND JUSTICE SUMMIT, APRIL 13-14

It was a combination party and antiwar rally the drew 200 or so mostly youthful participants who gathered in downtown Indianapolis at Monument Circle, the major public gathering place there, on Saturday afternoon, March 24, to commemorate and protest four years of war in Iraq. Speakers were interspersed in between live music, music that ranged from original antiwar punk rock to Bob Dylan, John Lennon’s “Imagine,” and a cappella songs for peace. A highlight of the afternoon’s events was the reading of the names of the 75 soldiers from Indiana who have so far died in Iraq, the reading of each name followed by the ringing of a bell.

Three kiosks highlighted how much the U.S. was spending for the military as opposed to other countries (the U.S. is first, at $552 billion, China a very distant second at $62.5 billion, the United Kingdom third at $51.1 billion, all the way down to Canada at $10.9 billion), the number of Iraqi casualties, and the severe costs of the war in human and monetary terms to U.S Iraqi War veterans themselves. Three sign-on boards were part of the kiosks, where activists themselves could write their own messages on the following: “What Is Peace?” “What Do You Want to Say to the Iraqi People?” and “What Do You Want to Say to the U.S. Government?” One person had written on the placard addressed to the Iraqi people, “Stop insulting Mussolini and Hitler by comparing them to Bush and Cheney!”

The rally was organized by students from the University of Valparaiso, in the southern part of Indiana, and had been in planning since November, 2006. March 24 was chosen because the students involved would then be back from spring break. Outreach to 13 other Indiana colleges and universities, from major state universities such as Indiana University-Bloomington, Purdue University, and Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI); small private colleges in the state such as Hanover College, Manchester College, and Butler University; Catholic colleges from Notre Dame to lesser-known ones such as Marian College in Indianapolis; and even community colleges such as the branches of the Ivy Tech state system, was effected, with participation from several of them at the rally. Noticeably missing from the attendees, however, were the major old-line peace groups in Indianapolis such as the Indianapolis Peace & Justice Center (IPJC), although individuals from the IPJC, DSA and other groups were there.

The memorial that comprises Monument Circle is a memorial to U.S. war veterans from the Civil War through World War I, and even though it is generally regarded in Indianapolis as the premier forum for “free speech” in Indianapolis, use of this site requires, first, a $250 application fee, then, the posting of a $2,500 bond to cover up to a million dollars in liability. However, veterans’ groups are exempt from these fees for use of Monument Circle, and #49, Central Indiana Veterans for Peace eagerly volunteered to be co-sponsor. Harold Donle, Communications Director for #49 and a Vietnam veteran, said that Veterans for Peace would gladly co-sponsor rallies for other antiwar and progressive groups on Monument Circle, so that they would not have to pay the fees involved.

Indianapolis organizers for the antiwar rally also included students and professors from IUPUI who’ve also been involved in organizing the Third Annual Midwest Peace and Justice Summit, which will be held Friday and Saturday, April 13-14, on the IUPUI campus. Keynote speaker for Friday evening, April 13, will be Cindy Sheehan, and keynote speaker for Saturday will be James Yee, the U.S. Army Muslim chaplain accused of aiding terrorism, then acquitted and given an honorable discharge, who is now demanding an apology from the U.S. government. During the Summit, there will be numerous groups tabling, speakers and panel discussions, workshops, and even free food! More info, along with an IUPUI campus map, is available on the Midwest Peace and Justice Summit’s Web site, http://www.mpjs.org.

Why I Wrote The Muhammad Ali Handbook

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 02:15:00 +0000

There are more books about Muhammad Ali than Abe Lincoln: 300 titles in the children's section alone. You can also purchase The Muhammad Ali Reader, the Tao of Muhammad Ali, or the $10,000 G.O.A.T. - a massive coffee table book about all things Ali that is slightly larger than a typical coffee table. His is a history that has been repeatedly regurgitated for popular consumption. Despite - or maybe because of - this crisis of Ali overproduction, I felt compelled to write The Muhammad Ali Handbook.

An informal Ali School of Falsification has been running full throttle since 1996. That was the year Ali, his hands trembling, lit the Olympic torch in Atlanta. The connection between Ali and the global audience crackled and his Olympic moment sparked a renaissance of interest.

The way this interest has been sated, however, has been with books and retrospectives swamped with either sugary spin or slander. The dominant discourse has come from the 'sell Ali' crowd. They are part of the Champ's inner circle and last year made a deal with CKX inc. to sell his image for $50 million. They are the same company that turned Elvis Presley into a velvet painting. CKX inc. marked Ali's 65th birthday in January with the release of a new line of snack foods with names like 'Rumble,' 'Shuffle' and 'Jabs' and flavors such as 'Fruit Fight,' 'Thrill-A-Dill-A' and 'Slammin' Salsa.'

This new sanitized Ali can shill for Microsoft or receive honors at the White House. He is someone George W. Bush could cuddle next to for the cameras and comfortably call 'a man of peace.'

The second strain comes from the 'smear Ali' crowd. There is a new cottage industry of books that attempt to prove in the words of one particular piece of trash that 'Ali was an unapologetic sexist and unabashed racist' who 'was bad for America.' This group takes Ali's opposition to the war in Vietnam and his Muslim religion, and crushes him for having the temerity to speak his mind. They come off as a thinly veiled exercise in attacking those today that would dare resist.

These two wings of the Ali School of Falsification share a common destination: the obliteration his wildly attractive and all-to-edgy political impact. Sport - and all popular culture - is the business of perception. Therefore to understand Ali, we must not only know the man, but also how he was perceived. Since the 1960s audience consuming the young Ali were part of some of the most important social upheavals in the 20th century, it makes taking this holistic view all the more important.

My book takes the starting point that Ali was someone who was both shaped by and a shaper of his times: the segregation of the 1950s; the revolts of the 1960s; the sybaritic 1970s; the despair of the 80s and the commercial culture of the 1990s. His chameleon like ability to be a man of all seasons, makes him unique in the history of sports. Many star athletes live in isolation, their lives defined by bodyguards and gated communities: the general public a nation of enemies. For Ali, particularly the young Ali, his ear was to the street. Having a bodyguard was not his way. As he said,

'I'm an easy target. I'm everywhere; everybody knows me. I walk the streets daily, and nobody's guarding me. I have no guns, no police. So if someone's gonna get me, tell them to come on and get it over with - if they can get past God, because God is controlling the bullet.'

This may be another world from today's athletes, but Ali could not be more relevant and reclaiming his legacy could not be more pressing. We live in an era where sports has become an industry that towers titanically over the grandest dreams of its founders. It is bigger than US steel, and counts profits in the hundreds of billions. The stars of the SportsWorld are given a platform that dwarves both celebrities and elected leaders. But that platform comes at a price: it comes branded with corporate logos and the expectation that those given the stage will toe the line. Muhammad Ali represents a different path: the person that would not be who they wanted him to be. And we are richer not only for the experience but the example.

To tell this story, I wanted the book to be a part of the MQ Publications handbook series. They intersperse almost every other page with rare photos, quotes and interviews. Comparing most biographies to the MQ series is like comparing a map to a globe: it's the same story but told in a radically different way. They deserve the credit for placing my text in a package that is simply breathtaking.

I feel like we have created a book that makes a small contribution toward historical preservation. The goal is simple: to make sure those who would sell Ali by the pound or smear his reputation as a freedom fighter, don't destroy a name that deserves to echo unvarnished through the struggles of the future.

Purchase from .

If you live in the DC area, support independent bookstores and purchase from Busboys and Poets or Politics and Prose.

Veto This

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 02:10:00 +0000

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is right to point Unitary Executive George W. Bush toward a copy of the Constitution. The President (should Bush care to resume that legal role) is permitted to veto bills but not to write them. In particular, the President cannot rewrite legislation after it has been voted on and before he signs it. Nor can any member of Congress.

Bush's longstanding habit, of course, has been to rewrite laws after he signs them, by the use of 'signing statements.' This is also completely unconstitutional. And it is, I think, his most likely course of action with the 'supplemental' war bill – assuming the Democrats don't weaken it. He wants the money without delay, and he knows the Democrats and the media will avert their eyes from any signing statement. However, he does not want the media to report that he signed a bill containing a withdrawal deadline – even an unenforceable one. So, he may veto as promised.

Bush is accusing the Democrats in Congress of 'defunding the troops', while with much more accuracy the peace movement is complaining that the Democrats have not used the power of the purse to force a rapid withdrawal. Meanwhile, the Democrats are preparing to point their fingers at Bush the instant he vetoes the supplemental and shout 'You're the one defunding the troops.'

It would be hard to find a more glaring example of buying into your opponent's terms of debate to your own disadvantage. The Pentagon is rolling in money. The only way to protect the troops is to bring them home. Bush's crime is not the mythical nonsensical sin of 'defunding the troops,' but rather that of launching and continuing a fraudulent, illegal, aggressive war on and occupation of a foreign nation. Forget the funding the troops nonsense; Bush needs to stop KILLING the troops and using them to kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Last November's elections were dominated by a demand to end the war, not to dump more money into it.

But the Democrats have not passed a bill that would cut off the money and force Bush to end the war, even if he signed the bill into law. Instead they've passed a bill aimed at allowing them to announce that his veto 'defunds the troops.' Rather than perpetuating the myth that wars are fought on behalf of the kids sent to kill and die and be injured, the Democrats should respond to a veto by announcing that Bush has refused to continue the war on the terms set by Congress, so Bush will just have to end the war. At least, that's what the Democrats should do if their aim is to change policy and achieve peace. If their aim is just to make Bush look bad on his own terms, then I guess they should accuse him of 'defunding the troops.' But they should be aware that this will just lock them in more firmly to a commitment to keep 'funding the troops' forever.

Pat Buchanan thinks the Republican plan in all of this is for Bush to veto the bill, for Pelosi to propose a new bill that is just what Bush wants, and for that bill to pass with the support of all the Republicans and half the Democrats, thus splitting the Democrats and funding the war with no strings attached. Pelosi and her close colleagues have already indicated that this is the course they'll take. In making that threat to their fellow Democrats, they may have unwittingly made a promise to Bush and the Republicans.

But why must Pelosi always play into Republican plans? Why can't Pelosi refuse to take the bill Bush wants to the floor? Why can't she take one that more Democrats want?

If Pelosi pushes Bush's bill, the peace movement must demand opposition of course. And if that splits the Democrats, well, a half a party for peace is better than none at all.

If Pelosi were smart, she would push a bill that dropped the extra items that are so easily ridiculed: the spinach, peanuts, etc, and dropped the toothless limitations that Bush opposes as micromanagement; and moved up the exit date and used the power of the purse to enforce it.

If Bush turns his back on this pile of money with a veto, the Congress should make clear that he may have missed his only chance at it. And he should be given no war money as part of the regular budget while this is being worked out. If Congress gives Bush a second chance, it does not have to be one he prefers. It can be one that makes clear the terms are going to become less and less favorable to him with each redrafting.

The beauty of this situation is that a bill to end the war can fail in Congress and thereby end the war, or be vetoed and thereby end the war. If we bear in mind that the Pentagon regularly 'misplaces' more than enough money to pay for a safe and orderly and rapid withdrawal of all troops and mercenaries, and that the only way to support the troops starts by bringing them home, then a defeat is not possible once Pelosi gets behind a real bill for peace.

Arab Leaders: Peace Making Could Not Be Unilateral, Divisible

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 02:05:00 +0000

Flanked by international and regional non-Arab dignitaries representing the UN, EU, OIC, NAM and the leaders of Turkey, Malaysia and Pakistan as well as the foreign minister of Iran, the leaders of the 22-member League of Arab States on Wednesday re-launched in Riyadh their five-year old Arab Peace Initiative, determined to reactivate it with mechanisms and a follow-up diplomatic campaign that will again take it to the United Nations Security Council despite a U.S. veto, which aborted a similar move in the bud last year.

Confidently, seriously, unwaveringly and collectively Arab leaders are again binding themselves and their countries to their “strategic option” of peace with Israel, offering their Initiative as a realistic, pragmatic, affordable and workable platform that could make a comprehensive regional peace within the reach of the living generations, but unfortunately they are reciprocated by a non-committal Israel and United States who instead are dealing tactically and evasively with an historic opportunity that if missed would plunge the Middle East into an open-ended conflict, to the detriment of all parties involved.

According to the Israeli daily Haaretz on March 18, The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the U.S. State Department consider the Arab initiative a forthcoming but non-binding (to them of course) Arab position that accordingly could only be encouraged and not dismissed out of hand to negotiate further Arab concessions.

The 24-member board of trustees of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG), co-chaired by former European Commissioner for External Relations, Lord Chris Patten, and former U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Thomas Pickering, warned in a statement ahead of the Riyadh summit that the opportunity is not “open-ended” and the status quo cannot be maintained indefinitely.

“If the current chance for a breakthrough is not grasped over the next few months -- with the government of Israel and the U.S. having the most critical role in this respect -- there is a real possibility that support for a two-state solution among Palestinians and in the wider Arab world would disappear, with all the renewed tensions this is bound to generate,” their statement warned.

Nine facts should be brought to the attention of the peace-loving world community to understand the counterproductive tactical passive Israeli and U.S. engagement and the credibility of the old-new Arab endeavour:

First, shockingly both allies are rejecting or demanding amendments to the Arab plan, but have no concrete alternative plans of their own to offer except Bush’s “vision” and Israel’s unilateral long-term and transitional plans for the Palestinian – Israeli track of the sixty-year old conflict, but nothing for settling the collective Arab – Israeli conflict.

“We expect an offer by Israel,” Secretary General of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, said. Ironically when Israel occupied Palestinian and Arab lands in June 1967, late Israeli minister of defence, Moshe Dayan, announced the Israelis were waiting for a phone call from any Arab leader. Forty years later, in defiance of U.N. resolutions, the Israeli army is still occupying and colonizing the lands and oppressing the people, but nonetheless the call is coming collectively by twenty-two Arab leaders.

Second, Israel rejected publicly then undermined the Arab initiative of 2002 in the same year by reoccupying the Palestinian self-ruled areas and Washington the next year steered the Quartet of the U.S., UN, EU and Russia to come up with their own initiative, the “Road Map,” which was nonetheless accepted by the Arab states and the PLO, but Israel attached 14 undeclared conditions to her acceptance thereof, which were backed by Bush’s letter of guarantees to Ariel Sharon on April 14, 2004, a backing that bought the plan to its demise and the peace process to its current dead end and made it possible for the Arab leaders to consider reactivating the initiative their summit meeting in Beirut approved in 2002. However the U.S. as recently as last year vetoed a similar Arab move to have the UN Security Council adopt their initiative.

Third, revitalizing the Arab initiative comes only after the failure of the Quartet, Israel and the U.S. to deliver on their four year old “Road Map” and the 15-year old Madrid Conference process of 1991, which has proved futile and declared “dead” by the Arab League chief, six years after declaring its death by the comatose former Israeli premier Ariel Sharon.

Fourth, the comprehensive and collective Arab approach to solving the conflict with Israel is building on the dead end the bilateral and step-by-step approaches reached. It is worth noting that the most enthusiastic advocates of the comprehensive approach are Jordan and Egypt, who only with Mauritania were the three members of the Arab League to sign bilateral peace treaties with Israel, because they are the most threatened by the absence of a comprehensive peace and by persistence of the status quo.

Fifth, reactivating the Arab initiative is in itself an indirect declaration of disillusionment with the U.S. sponsorship of the unproductive peace processes that have ruled out involvement by the world community, prevented the implementation of international legitimacy resolutions and for sixty years proved a failed alternative to UN engagement.

Sixth, the Arab Peace Initiative is also building on the international legitimacy of more than 70 resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly and the Security Council during the past 59 years, which were rendered inapplicable by the opposition thereto of Israel and the U.S. who managed to veto thirty more.

Seventh, the new found confidence of the Arab leaders stems from the forgoing facts, the Arab and Palestinian consensus on the initiative, which is backed by the Turkish-led Organization of Islamic Conference and the Non-Aligned Movement as well as by the world community, all which also neutralized the Iranian and other opposition to the initiative. “We deal with world powers with understanding but on equal footing,” the Saudi Arabian monarch, King Abdullah, said on Monday, confirming the new confidence.

Eighth, the seriousness of Arab leaders stems from the fact that they are the most to loose from the deadlocked no-war-no-peace status quo and that is why a veteran moderate Arab state like Saudi Arabia is staking her leading Arab and regional role and risking a political rift with her historic U.S. ally.

Ninth, although the two sides are not on a collision course, obviously the Arab Peace Initiative is drifting apart the U.S. and its most trusted Arab friends; however hanging on to her strategic alliance with Israel is alienating more normally friendly moderate and liberal Arabs at a time Washington is decisively in need for their support on other regional involvements.

Under the pressures of the latest Israeli war on Lebanon, the U.S-led war on Iraq, the brewing U.S. crisis with Iran and the 59-year old U.S.-backed Israeli war on the Palestinian people, the Arab League governments found a diplomatic opening to re-launch their initiative to try on their own this time containing the ensuing possible internal threats and regional turbulence.

Possible Diplomatic Leverage

In view of the absence of an Arab military option due to Israel’s overwhelming superiority, a diplomatic option due to the U.S. identification with the Israeli policies, ruling out the people’s war though it proved effective wherever the Arab regular forces where absent in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Iraq and the Jordan Valley in 1969, Arab leaders found an opening to balance the U.S.-Israeli alliance by the diplomatic counterweight of a long forthcoming world community as their only remaining option, availing themselves of the U.S. critical need for their support in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and vis-à-vis Iran.

Were the U.S. –Israeli allies to continue passively and tactically evading commitment to the Arab initiative as the only concrete peace offer in the town, the Arab leaders still could prod the alliance to be more forthcoming by highlighting the fact that the cool bilateral peace treaties with Jordan, Egypt and Mauritania are increasingly besieged by popular opposition, proved un-conducive to regional security and stability, let alone being a collateral for the security and peaceful development of their signatory states, and threatened by escalating violence and extremism emanating from their inability to develop into vehicles for a just and lasting regional reconciliation and co-existence as envisioned by their signatories and sponsors. Increasingly also those treaties are threatened by the absence of a comprehensive deal, now made possible by the Arab initiative.

To counterbalance the U.S.-Israeli evasive engagement, Arab leaders could give muscle to their peace offensive, which so far has proved effective enough for the U.S. and Israel not to dismiss it out of hand and not to play down the world consensus on its seriousness and credibility; they could suggest trading those bilateral treaties for their collective initiative as a possible diplomatic leverage to prod both allies to ponder choosing between an all-comprising peace and a comprehensive no peace.

All mainstream Israeli leaders have on record judged those treaties as “strategic assets;” U.S. military, political and financial guarantees for sustaining them is proof enough they are “strategic assets” to the United States too. To secure these assets both allies should be made aware the treaties have to be of similar strategic value for the Arab signatories as well, otherwise why sustaining them!

The precarious regional situation, the snowballing threat of violence and extremism, Arabs standing to loose most of the deadlocked status quo, disillusionment with sixty years of U.S.-sponsored conflict management, absence of other alternatives, all are reason enough for Arab peace advocates to ponder such an option to bolster their initiative and prod their peace protagonists to be more forthcoming. Peace making in the end could not be but a two way effort.

Tactical U.S. - Israeli Approach

The Arab initiative was endorsed unchanged by the Arab League summit meeting in the Saudi capital Riyadh on March 28-29 amid mainly Israeli demands for amendments thereto and a flurry of diplomatic activity unprecedented in recent years aimed at amending it, despite a denial by the visiting US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.

A parade of dignitaries flooded the region. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was preceded by the EU's special envoy Marc Otte, UN envoy, Alvaro de Soto, Belgian Foreign Minister, Karel De Gught, and Norwegian state secretary, Raymond Johansen. Rice followed. German Chancellor and current EU President, Andrea Merkel, and US House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, as is Swedish Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt, were all expected to join. “I believe this is a moment of gathering dynamism,” Ki-moon said in Israel days ahead of the Arab summit.

However, Ki-moon’s optimism has yet to be vindicated. Only partially the diplomatic boycott of the Palestinian government was breached, but the economic siege and the financial strangling of the Palestinian Authority remained intact. “Norway announced immediate lifting of embargo and decided to deal with all members of the government and to restore ties,” Palestinian Information Minister Mustafa al-Barghouti told the Palestine radio, adding: “France, Spain, Italy and Sweden are following.”

With the exception of Norway’s Johansen, all visiting dignitaries were representatives of three quarters of the international Quartet of Middle East mediators, whose failure to realise their 2003 Road Map has created the current impasse and whose Road Map plan was floated originally to thwart the 2002 Arab plan. All of them came with one message, which the Quartet affirmed on Thursday night, March 22: The Arab summit has to make the Palestinian government meet its three conditions and “the commitment of the new government in this regard will be measured not only on the basis of its composition and platform, but also its actions.”

The Quartet was referring to the Palestinian unity government recently formed on the basis of the Saudi hosted, mediated and sponsored Mecca Accord, which made it possible to form a ruling coalition of the rival movements of Fatah and Hamas as a pre-requisite for both convening the Arab summit and endorsing the Arab Peace Initiative.

Rice came to the region ahead of the Arab summit planning tactically to bypass the Arab diplomatic offensive by suggesting two parallel tracks that were rejected by both Israel and the Arabs: A Palestinian – Israeli negotiations over the final status issues, which was rejected out of hand by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and a meeting of the international Quartet with the Arab quartet of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and Jordan plus Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

She floated the idea of “adding an element of active diplomacy” and suggested Arab governments take steps toward conciliation with Israel before an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement is complete, and after a meeting with Ki-moon test ballooned the idea of the Quartet + Quartet plus two, as a confidence building down payment to Israel; she was helped by Olmert, who said he “wouldn't hesitate” to look at an invitation to such a summit “in a very positive manner.”

Bringing Arab heavyweights like Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to unilaterally normalize relations with Israel beforehand would be indeed a breakthrough, but it would also be a death blow to Arab consensus that could undermine not only the Arab initiative but all peace prospects for the foreseeable future. Egyptian Foreign Minister, Ahmad Abul Gheit, on record refused such a prospect.

Points of Conflict Unresolved

The Palestinian unity government is one of four major obstacles Israel is citing for her rejection of the Arab initiative because this government include Hamas, which is condemned also by the U.S. as a “terrorist” organization. The other three are: The reference in the initiative to the Palestinian Right of Return on the basis of UN resolution 194, full withdrawal of the Israeli occupying forces to June 4, 1967 lines, including eastern Jerusalem, which is the third obstacle. Israel accordingly is demanding corresponding amendments, which is a sure recipe to undermine Arab and Palestinian consensus on the initiative, which is its main asset, as well as any other negotiable initiative as had been the case since 1948.

Rice disappointedly ended her fourth Middle East shuttle in four months without announcing any dramatic breakthrough neither on Israeli-Palestinian track nor on the Arab – Israeli track. Olmert quashed her planned accelerated negotiations with President Mahmoud Abbas on the final status issues, which represent exactly the foregoing Israeli points of conflict with the Arab initiative; on the rock of these same obstacles the Oslo accords grinded into a halt when both sides had to begin the final status talks at the end of the interim self rule in July 1999; the failure to resolve them next year at the trilateral U.S.-Israeli-Palestinian summit in Camp David led to the second Palestinian anti-occupation uprising, which in turn led to the following five years of tit-for-tat violence that deadlocked the peace process and brought the Road Map to its demise.

At a March 27 news conference in Jerusalem Rice announced that Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will meet every two weeks, but will not tackle “core issues” like final borders, Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees. She had her country’s carte blanche support for Israel to blame for Olmert’s resolve to disappoint her publicly. The United States has given Israel $51.3 billion in military grants since 1949, most of it after 1974 – more than any other country in the post-1945 era. Israel has also received $11.2 billion in loans for military equipment, plus $31 billion in economic grants, not to mention loan guarantees or joint military projects. This open-treasury support has been all along the main leverage for Israeli territorial expansion, demographic cleansing, diplomatic inflexibility and obsession with the military-dictated peace pre-requisites.

Prior to her ongoing reoccupation of the Palestinian autonomy areas in 2002, Israel was in effective control of 85 percent of historic Palestine compared to the 55 percent it is entitled to under the UN resolution 181 (the partition plan); the 1948 war between more than 120.000 WWII-trained Israeli troops and the less than 50.000 combined forces from seven Arab states, then under British and French mandates, ended with the displacement of less than one million Palestinian refugees, whose national and private rights have been at the core of the Arab and Palestinian – Israeli conflict ever since, thus turning by the sword the Arab majority of the UN-sponsored state into a minority. More than 22 percent of Arab citizens of pre-1967 Israel, who mark the Land Day on March 31, have been systemically dispossessed of their land to own now less than 3 percent of the area of the Hebrew state. In the Israeli occupied West Bank more than 62 colonial settlements, built on Palestinian publicly and privately-owned land since 1967, are now host to more than 450.000 Jewish settlers.

Dispossession and displacement of Arab Palestinians have at least to stop, let alone redressing the historic injustice, to make room for peace making. A Palestinian state on 22 percent of historic Palestine, within the pre-1967 armistice lines of 1948, is only part and not all of the solution. 73 Palestinian groups urged the two-day Arab summit in Riyadh to uphold the Right of Return. Hence the Arab summit’s rejection of acquisition of land by force, reiteration of land for peace as the basis of the Arab initiative and refusal to heed the Israeli proposed amendments.

Changing the initiative is virtually impossible in the near future because the rules of the Arab League demand that all decisions be accepted unanimously, Amr Mousa said. “There will be no amendment to the Arab peace initiative,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal also reaffirmed on March 25, adding: “(It) is the best framework for a comprehensive and fair resolution of not only the Palestinian-Israeli problem but the entire Arab-Israeli conflict.”

However, the Arab leaders meeting in Riyadh left the door open for Israeli engagement; they decided not to discard the Quartet’s Road Map and approved it as one of the terms of reference for peace making in addition to their initiative. Another provision stipulated “reaching a just solution for the problem of Palestinian refugees to be agreed upon in accordance with the Arab peace initiative in implementation of the resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations No. 194.” Both provisions keep the door open for diplomacy.

For Israel, history for making peace starts in 1967, for Arabs in 1948, and here lies the conflict that has deadlocked the peace process and the efforts of the international community to resolve the Middle East chronic and yet intractable conflict, because the core issues that sparked six major Arab – Israeli wars and could ignite more military confrontations predate the 1967 war, where Israel is seeking to make history stops. Here is the chestnut of the Arab –Israeli conflict, which failed all previous peace efforts and could make or break future similar endeavours. The ball is in the Israeli court.

Cuba, Nebraska Defy US Blockade

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 01:54:00 +0000

Havana, Mar 28 (Prensa Latina) The signing of agreements to sell food from the US state of Nebraska to Cuba confirms Wednesday the increasing rejection of that country´s managerial sector of the economic, financial and trade blockade against the island.

Ruben Bonilla, commissioner of the Corpus Christi Port in Texas, praised the signing of two contracts between the Cuban Food Importing Company ALIMPORT and two US transnational companies as another step to abolish the blockade Washington imposed 45 years ago.

The signing completed another accord inked in 2006 by ALIMPORT director Pedro Alvarez and Nebraska State governor Dave Heineman, who traveled to Havana on Monday accompanied by 30 businesspeople from his demarcation.

Those contracts amounted to $60 million and, according to Alvarez, the island has purchased over $2.2 billion in grain, pork, beef and powdered milk from the United States since 2001.

The ALIMPORT director stated that, despite being efficient and prestigious companies, sales from the US arouse uncertainty in Cuba, due to actions by the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the State Department.

Purchases by US agriculture products were over $560 million in 2006 and have reached $108 million this year, according to the executive.

--Editor's note: Help restore friendly relations with Cuba by supporting the right to travel there. Click here to send a message to your representative.

Prison Proletariat: Exploiting Inmate Labor

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 04:21:00 +0000

American history as taught in the US frequently emphasizes that one of the by products of the Civil War between the states during the mid-19th century was the elimination of slavery. And students learn about the 13th amendment to the Constitution of the United States that made slavery illegal. A closer look at the amendment, however, shows the prohibition against slavery to be far from absolute. The 13th amendment actually states: 'Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction,' and effectively gives constitutional cover to the exploitation of prison labor. The use of inmates as a labor force certainly isn't a new one. It has been a feature of prison life for hundreds of years. Who hasn't heard of the 'chain gang,' for instance, that has well represented in popular songs and movies. In the film Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Warren Beatty as Clyde Barrow tells the true story of Barrow's having cut off two of his toes to escape a work detail in order to impress Bonnie Parker, portrayed by Faye Dunaway. It also served to enhance the 'anti-authority' message of the film. Some historians and journalists have subsequently commented that self-mutilation of inmates in the Texas prison system of the early 20th century was not uncommon, such were the brutal conditions associated with prison work details in the fields. Another widely circulated story had a US military serviceman writing home during World War II to boast that Al Capone, then incarcerated at Alcatraz, was doing his laundry. What is a relatively recent development is the extent to which both private companies, and the US military, have exploited prison labor. Until the 1970's, it was illegal for private companies to engage inmates in labor, although both federal and state governments were able to use inmates for such things as making furniture for government offices and, of course, license plates, among other things.

But many private companies were quick to involve themselves with inmate labor for many reasons, the most obvious of which was profit. Inmate labor provided a potentially large work force, exempted from federal regulations governing wages and occupational health and safety. According to the US Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), as of December 31, 2005 there were 2,193,798 people in federal, state or local prisons or jails, an increase of 2.7 percent over 2003. Out of every 100,000 male inmates, BJS reported, 3,145 were African-Americans; 1,244 were Hispanic; and 471 were white. The number of women incarcerated at the end of 2005 increased by 2.6 percent when compared to year end figures for 2004. Very clearly, these numbers represent a sizeable, captive labor force, and major corporations have not been as shy about availing themselves of that source as they are about being exposed for doing so. 'Slavery is being practiced under the color of law,' said prison activist and jailhouse lawyer Ruchell Magee in comments quoted by the Berkeley-based Prison Activist Resource Center. 'Slavery 400 years ago, slavery today, it's the same thing, with a new name. They're making millions and millions of dollars enslaving blacks, poor whites, and others -- people who don't even know they're being railroaded,' Magee commented. (Magee was initially a co-defendant along with noted Communist professor and activist Angela Davis against charges arising from a courtroom shootout in 1971. Their trials were separated; Davis was acquitted of all charges). Federal inmates are usually employed by UNICOR Federal Prison Industries, Inc. Their website (www.unicor.gov) boasts seven groups: 'Clothing and Textiles,' 'Electronics,' 'Fleet Management,' 'Industrial Products,' 'Office Furniture,' Recycling' and 'Services.' These divisions provide labor connected to more than thirty different products; from law enforcement, military and industrial uniforms to the refurbishing of vehicles; from making draperies to providing fulfillment services. UNICOR states its mission is to 'contribute to the safety and security of our Nation's correctional facilities by keeping inmates constructively occupied; produce market-price quality goods for sale to the Federal Government; operate in a self-sustaining manner; and minimize FPI's impact on private business and labor.' It must be noted that a reduction in recidivism -- the likelihood of a repeat offense -- isn't mentioned in the mission statement. This is an interesting omission, insofar as proponents of the move permitting private corporations to use inmate labor have customarily cited decreased recidivism in their arguments. Private corporations and firms who have looked to the prison labor force also give little more than lip service to notions of rehabilitation, preferring instead to rely on the argument that prisoners can perform work that no one else will do. This argument was well and truly scuttled by Seth Sandronsky, a Sacramento based peace activist and progressive journalist. In his article 'US Prison Nation' that appeared in the December 2-3, 2006 issue of Counterpunch, Sandronsky wrote:

'Without a doubt, harsh laws that sentence non-violent drug offenders to prison are propelling the rise of the U.S. prison population. At the same time, national minorities of both genders are less likely than their white counterparts to be employed. In short, U.S. prisons are caging surplus workers whose labor the American economy increasingly does not need.

'This employment and imprisonment link is not the irrational working of a rational economy. To the contrary, we see an irrational economy that more and more requires prison cells for those who have no chance of finding their way onto employers' payrolls. Why would people of any developing nation wish to emulate the job and prison conditions of the U.S.?'

Sandronsky's question is a fair one, indeed.

The Prison Resource Activist Resource Center (PARC) is focusing much of its efforts on exposing the realities of prison labor. They refer to the 'Prison Industrial Complex,' a term they adapted from a presentation by Angela Davis, as having the following features:

• The exponential expansion of prisons and jails, with rising numbers of men and women prisoners from communities of color;

• The increasingly symbiotic relationship between private corporations and the prison industry -- a relationship in which private corporations feed the punishment industry and the punishment industry yields enormous profits for private corporations;

• The reliance of many communities on prisons and jails for short-term economic vitality, particularly in the aftermath of corporate migration to impoverished countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, and South East Asia;

• The increasing political influence of prison guards, prison officials and conservative penologists;

• The collaboration of politicians and the corporate controlled dominant media in the wholesale criminalization of communities of color (and particularly youth of color) and in the representation of prisons as a catch-all solution to problems (problems created by capitalism in the first place). The expansion of the Prison Industrial Complex, like the Military Industrial Complex that came before it, has as its genesis the highly touted 'public-private partnership' often emphasized by the ultra-right. In this case, not insignificant numbers of the public have been imprisoned to enrich even further private firms, of which Wackenhut and the Corrections Corporation of America which, between them, are benefiting from the labor of more than 100,000 prisoners according to the PARC.

This prisoner labor-for profit equation is aided and abetted by the fact that prisoners are customarily paid less than minimum wage. Although prisoners in California are paid the minimum wage, according to the PARC, this is customarily reduced so that the inmate receives $1.15 per hour -- and that's on the high end.

This point is further supported by an article by Carey Seal, appearing in the Baltimore Chronicle in 2003. 'Prisoners do not retain all their earnings; fiscal arrangements differ from state to state. After federal and state taxes are withheld, somewhere between 41% and 80% of a prisoner’s wages is applied toward costs of incarceration; the balance may go toward support for prisoners’ families, victim compensation, prisoner “allowance,” and/or a savings account for the prisoner to access when leaving prison. The “allowance” is becoming more important as some state prison systems, strapped for cash, are requiring prisoners to make co-payments for medical care and prescriptions; in the state of Washington, prisoners are even charged a $10 UPS delivery fee to ship their belongings when they are transferred from one facility to another,' Seal wrote.

Their working conditions are no better than their wages. 'The conditions for working prisoners are among the worst in the industrialized world,' according to the PARC. 'There are no benefits, no vacation, no decent health care, no safety standards, and prisoners are not allowed to form a union. Severe repression and longer sentences result from a refusal to work. Prisoners are beaten, put in solitary confinement, or both. There is no oversight of prison labor conditions, and no accountability, so prison officials have no incentive to provide safe working conditions or treat prisoners humanely.' These realities are exemplified by one prisoner from Arkansas, who wrote to the PARC about his work on what was known in the prison as the HOE-SQUAD.

'I was forced to work while it was raining and lightening,' this inmate wrote. 'I was forced to work in water and mud. I was forced to use a hoe to chop grass all the way to the dirt not missing a single blade of grass or get wrote up. I was forced to chop at the ground 200 times in the same spot before moving a step, using the same arm. The officer was cursing the entire squad and laughing at us and yelling. He also threatened us if we did not follow his orders. I was physically threatened by the High Rider who watches over all the squads and he did this in front of inmates, officiers and the field major (BOSSMAN) who said nothing to stop these illegal acts.'

Critics of prison labor policy point to incidents like the one above not only to demonstrate the need for humane conditions and oversight, but also to point out that many prison jobs are of no value in preparing a prisoner for work outside the walls.

'All this is not to say that prisoners should not work. Prisoners should have the same right to work as people on the outside,' PARC states. 'They however need to have safe, meaningful work, decent pay, and the right to organize or unionize.'

It would be a mistake to think that only private employers are eager to exploit prison labor. The United States Army is, as well. On January 14, 2005 the Army issued a revised 'Army Regulation 210-35: Civilian Inmate Labor Program.' Section 1-5a of that regulation states as follows:

'Civilian inmate labor programs benefit both the Army and correction systems by:

(1) Providing a source of labor at no direct labor cost to Army installations to accomplish tasks that would not be possible otherwise due to the manning and funding constraints under which the Army operates (emphasis added); (2) Providing meaningful work for inmates and, in some cases, additional space to alleviate overcrowding in nearby correction facilities.'

The regulation also provides that correctional officers, not the military, will have the responsibility for inmate control and conduct.

Despite the platitudes the regulation contains about 'meaningful work for inmates,' the core of this regulation is about using imprisoned labor for military purposes; something that harkens back to the policies of Nazi Germany and Italian and Japanese fascism.

There is something more than slightly hypocritical about all of this when it is considered that US policy from the Cold War period onward have made reference to individuals imprisoned in the People's Republic of China, Cuba and the former Soviet Union. The late Communist Party leader Victor Perlo was on target when he wrote in 1999:

'We have a half-million more prisoners than China, which has nearly five times our population. We have twice the rate of South Africa or Cuba; five times the rate of China, Canada or Mexico; six times the rate of Germany or France. Our Black population of 35 million approximates the Black population of South Africa. But there are 900,000 Blacks in U.S. prisons compared with 140,000 in South Africa.

'U.S. imperialism uses cries of prison labor to attack China and other socialist countries. Unfortunately, the UAW leadership, in its magazine Solidarity, puts China on probation for various sins, notably human rights violations like prison labor. These statements help General Motors instead of union members. Those concerned with human rights should look homeward.' ('Prison Labor in the US,' August 17, 1999).'

Cuba has been on the receiving end of criticism from various US administrations since its successful 1959 revolution and subsequent efforts to build socialism. But the Cubans are not fooled by the reason for the increase in prison labor on these shores.

'Thanks to prison labor, the United States is once again an attractive location for investment in work that was designed for Third World labor markets.,' writes Vicky Pelaez in an article for El Diario-La Prensa in New York and subsequently adapted for Granma, the newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba. 'A company that operated a maquiladora (assembly plant in Mexico near the border) closed down its operations there and relocated to San Quentin State Prison in California. In Texas, a factory fired its 150 workers and contracted the services of prisoner-workers from the private Lockhart Texas prison, where circuit boards are assembled for companies like IBM and Compaq. '

Let's return to the question Seth Sandronsky asked in his Counterpunch article:'Why would people of any developing nation wish to emulate the job and prison conditions of the U.S.?'

The answer, of course, is that no nation wants to emulate the job and prison conditions of the US. Not in China or Cuba; not in Venezuela or Bolivia; not in Iraq or Iran. Internationally, and increasing here at home, people are rejecting the ultra-right's profit uber alles agenda and coming to the understanding that when George W. Bush and his cronies refer to 'American values' and the proverbial 'good old days,' they do not have the Ron Howard-Henry Winkler television show, 'Happy Days,' in mind. Indeed, if the prison labor situation is any indication, they're thinking of the Bastille and of sweatshops like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York, where 146 immigrant workers were killed in a fire on March 25, 1911.

The late comedian Richard Pryor, commenting about prisons in the United States, said there was 'no justice….just us.' One doesn't need to be a Marxist to understand the 'irrationality' of capitalism, as Seth Sandronsky's article noted. While all people of good will would find the exploitation of prison labor abhorrent, it must be understood that such exploitation is the name of the game called capitalism. And as long as words like 'supply,' 'demand,' and 'profit' are deemed more important than 'reason,' 'fairness,' 'humanity,' 'democracy' and 'sanity,' the struggle will and must continue.

Four years on, and determined to stay

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 02:12:00 +0000

The people of the US, Britain, Australia and some other countries were rushed into the invasion and occupation of Iraq on a litany of lies — lies about weapons of mass destruction, that Iraq was preparing nuclear weapons, that it had relations with al Qaida, lies that it had an arsenal of chemical weapons.

Four years on, these false claims are never mentioned. They have been replaced with claims that defeat would have incalculable consequences for the standing of the US in the Middle East and the world. We are told that the military forces are bringing democracy and the rule of law to Iraq, that the Iraqis cannot administer their own country and that their police and army need to be trained by foreign occupiers.

These assertions are just another web of lies to neutralise the opposition to the war by the people of the occupying countries.

The war has to be kept going by any and every means. Huge profits are being racked in by the contractors and armament makers and those whose objective is to get control of the very large Iraqi oil resources that are still publicly owned. There are moves going on now in the Iraqi parliament to privatise Iraq’s oil resources and let the big oil companies of the west take over.

But these objectives do not exhaust the aims of the imperialist powers.

Iraq and Afghanistan are strategic countries in the Middle East and in the Caucasian region of the former Soviet Union. These countries contain huge oil and natural gas resources. If the American empire is to dominate the whole world it must gain unchallenged control of these resources to feed its own industries while starving all competitors.

It is with these objectives in mind that the US government is building the largest US embassy in the world in the former palace of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. Permanent US military and air bases in Iraq have been constructed. This is also behind the decision of the giant US company Halliburton to move its headquarters from Texas to Dubai in the Persian Gulf. This move would put Halliburton in a better position to control the whole of the Middle East and Caucasian oil resources.

The US Vice-President Dick Cheney is a former director of Halliburton and it is Halliburton that receives billion dollar contracts related to the war in Iraq. This is the same Dick Cheney who recently visited Australia and discussed Middle Eastern and Asian matters with Prime Minister Howard.

Writing in The Australian on the recent Japan-Australia agreement, Dennis Shanahan said that 'Mr Cheney gave the Japanese proposal new life on his recent visit to Japan and Australia'. This is yet another important brick in building alliances with compliant governments that will sign up to the US plans.

The plan includes enlisting India in a four-way pact of the US, Japan, Australia and India to contain and encircle China and the Russian Federation which are not prepared to go along with the prospect of US domination.

The Australian article says that 'Australia has been approached to dramatically upgrade its three-way security arrangements with Japan and the US to include India in a four-way security agreement that would encircle China…'

It is for all these reasons that George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard keep on declaring that they will never get out of Iraq 'until the job is done'. They do not have an 'exit strategy' as others are demanding because they have no intention of getting out now or in the future. The job will not be done until the US has achieved world domination.

This is a reason why John Howard will fight the coming Federal election tooth and nail even to the extent of staging some terrorist provocation to stampede the Australian people once again to re-elect his government. He believes that only he can keep Australia in 'safe hands', meaning in hands willing to put into effect Australia’s part in US plans.

What these conspirators forget is that empires inevitably crumble and the last aspirant to world domination, who aimed to create a '1000 year Reich', lasted for only about 10 years.

From The Guardian

Rethinking the History and Future of the Communist Party

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 02:00:00 +0000

Editor’s Note: This is the text of a speech delivered at the reception of the Communist Party USA archives at the Tamiment Library at New York University.

First of all, I would like to thank both the CPUSA and NYU for this marriage – it is one, perhaps not made in heaven but no less celestial and lofty for that. The thrust of my brief remarks is to suggest that the history of the CPUSA and, indeed, the global movement of which it is a part, has been distorted grievously by the infestation of anti-Sovietism and anticommunism and the opening of these wonderful archives should not only lead to a reassessment of the party but help to push back the right-wing which has profited so handsomely from anti-Sovietism and anticommunism – forces which have brought this nation to the brink of catastrophe, not only in Iraq and the Middle East generally but vis-à-vis China as well. I suggest in these remarks that future generations will not necessarily be as seized as this one apparently is with how and why the former USSR was a supposed 'Evil Empire' and how and why some in the US – e.g. the CPUSA – could support this state; I think future generations in the US will take note of the fact that the presumed primary victims of the so-called ‘Evil Empire – in Soviet Russia, for example – tend to agree with President Putin, whose popularity ratings are about double those of the current US President, in his assertion that the fall of the USSR was the greatest geo-political catastrophe of the 20th century. I think future generations in the US-as my remarks suggest will wonder instead how and why the US aligned with so-called Islamic fundamentalism against the former USSR – an appropriate question, I think, as we sit in the shadow of the former World Trade Center – particularly given that the period from 1941-1945 demonstrated decisively that these two nations could collaborate for mutual advantage.

Let me begin by quoting the fortunately retired NY Times right-wing hack columnist William Safire: 'Before Nixon died,' he said, 'I asked him – on the record – if perhaps we had gone a bit overboard on selling the American public on the political benefits of increased trade with China. That old realist,' continued Safire, 'who had played the China card to exploit the split in the Communist world, replied with some sadness, that he was not as hopeful as he had once been: 'We may have created a Frankenstein [monster],' said Nixon.

Nixon, the hard-boiled realist was on to something for although contemporary analysts have managed to convince the chattering classes in this nation that the former Soviet Union collapsed of its own weight and that China’s role in the encirclement of Russia had little or nothing to do with the retreat of socialism, that China’s waging war on socialist Vietnam or backing genocide in Cambodia or collaborating with US imperialism and apartheid South Africa in Angola thereby causing over-stretching of resources in Moscow – none of this had anything to do with the tumultuous events of 1989-1991.

Yet, once again, history has proven to be a cruel teacher and taskmaster for because of Nixon’s decision to 'exploit the split in the Communist world,' U.S. imperialism just exchanged one Communist antagonist in Moscow for a far larger, far stronger Communist antagonist in Beijing. Future dictionaries may well illustrate the definition of the phrase 'Pyrrhic victory' with a picture of Nixon’s trip to Beijing in 1972. In fact a future project for a comparative diplomatic historian is to analyze how long French elites thought they had pulled a fast one on Britain by backing the rebellious colonists in North America at the end of the 18th century and compare when did it dawn that they may have outsmarted themselves with how long it took US elites to realize that they were in an analogous position to French elites when it comes to China or how long did it take British elites to recognize that they had erred grievously when approximately 100 years ago they began to build up Imperial Japan as their watchdog in Asia – certainly London was aware of their blunder by December 7, 1941.

To be sure, certain perspicacious journalists have recognized that with its spectacular growth rates, its astonishing $1 trillion in foreign reserves (part of which is slated to be invested globally which will be shaping global markets for decades to come), its space program – including shooting down a satellite – its busy activity in resource rich Africa, China presents a formidable challenge to US imperialism going forward. In that context I recommend to you a raft of books that I have reviewed in the CP journal, ‘Political Affairs,’ particularly Joshua Cooper Ramo’s ‘The Beijing Consensus’ or Ted Fishman’s ‘China Inc.’ or the recent book by Financial Times columnist, James Kynge, ‘China Shakes the World.’ Unfortunately, this journalistic insight has not trickled down to the scholars, most of whom are still peddling the fool’s gold of 'Cold War triumphalsm’, blithely unaware that the Cold War may be seen by future generations not as an era of US victory but an era not only of Asian recovery – as China and India followed Japan into the front rank of nations with monumental consequences for the fate of white supremacy – but, ironically, as some were chortling about the supposed 'death of communism', Communist parties in Beijing especially, and to a degree in New Delhi and Tokyo were strengthening. Indeed, just as anticommunists in the 1950s had a bitter battle over 'who lost China?' – or how did the CP take over in China – future anti-Communists may well be asking 'who lost the US?', i.e. how did US imperialism lose its pre-eminent position in a so-called uni-polar world? Ironically, China policy will be Exhibit A when these future analysts begin to answer these questions.

Now it is often said that every generation has to rewrite history. For example, at one time there was a prevalent 'moonlight and magnolias' version of slavery and Reconstruction that fundamentally portrayed 'happy Negroes' during the slave era and portrayed the period following slavery as a dastardly period of Negro misrule and corruption. This began to change in the 1930s with the publication of Du Bois’ magisterial ‘Black Reconstruction’ and changed decisively with the publication of Eric Foner’s ‘Reconstruction.’'

One of the reasons why I personally – and I daresay future generations – are so pleased by the depositing of these CPUSA archives is because it is painfully obvious that the history of the Communist movement in this nation is long overdue for a massive rewriting and these archives will prove indispensable in that process.

It is easy to see why future generations will be displeased with much of the present history that has been written to this point about the Communist Party because it has been incredibly biased, one-sided, deeply influenced by the conservative drift of the nation – not unlike pre-Du Bois histories of Reconstruction – and, fundamentally, anticommunist.

For this exhilaration at the collapse of the Soviet Union has continued even though, I think, future generations may eventually view the events of even recent weeks as a blaring wake-up call, that we are residing in the midst of a tectonic shift basically induced by Nixon’s fateful decision to 'exploit the split in the Communist world', which opened the door for massive direct foreign investment in the Chinese economy thereby creating an economic juggernaut that is viewed by hawks in Washington as a threat that combines the most fearsome aspects of the old Soviet Union with that of US imperialism’s other antagonist of decades past – Japan of the 1980s and 1930s.

For a future scholar might well entitle a future book on the crisis faced by US imperialism, ‘From 9/11 to 2/27.' For just as 9-11 announced the arrival on the global stage of yet another antagonist that is a direct product of Cold War strategy – so-called 'Islamic fundamentalism' –2/27 marked the moment when a hiccup in Shanghai contributed to convulsions on Wall Street. The consequences of the chain of events unfolding is hard to predict – though I do find it curious that recent coverage in the bourgeois press of the debate on protection for private property in China seemed to be strangely supportive of the 'left' in Beijing, as if it was thought that this might slow down the Chinese juggernaut.

Of course, the challenge from Asia is sufficiently formidable for the myrmidons of imperialism and white supremacy but there is another aspect of the heralded Cold War that is now coming back to bite this nation in a big way – I refer, of course, to the aforementioned so-called 'Islamic fundamentalism.' The 'death of communism' analysts are akin to the man who jumps out of the Empire State Building, and as he passes the 40th floor shouts out 'so far, so good.' In other words, the collapse of the USSR seems like a good thing to critics – if you ignore the impact of 'Islamic fundamentalism' in years to come, as this tendency was a foundational aspect of the Soviet Union’s collapse and U.S. imperialism’s strategy to attain this goal.

Now I find it heartening that so many are joining the amen chorus that asserts that George W. Bush is the worst President in US History – the follically challenged Donald Trump being the latest among these. Now admittedly this title of being the worst has considerable competition – how can one omit the slave-owning, Native American hating Andrew Jackson, for example? – yet, in any case, I think that future generations may well conclude that yes, Bush, was the worst, but the errors were as much those of his class as they were of himself individually.

For let us not forget that it was more than 25 years ago during the administration of Jimmy Carter, then Democratic Party leader, that US imperialism escalated its interference in the internal affairs in Afghanistan – as his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski conceded in a remarkable interview a few years ago – thereby helping to induce Moscow’s escalated assistance to a besieged left-wing government in Kabul, in an attempt to bleed the Soviet Union figuratively and literally. This strategy involved the inflaming of religiosity in the Islamic world and, as is well-known, brought Osama bin Laden himself to Kabul and the creation of foreign legions of Islamic fighters who are now bedeviling the planet from New York to Algiers to London to Madrid to Baghdad to Kashmir to Southern Thailand to Manila to Bali. Again writers like Kathy Gannon, Robert Dreyfuss, Mahmood Mamdani and others have written in detail about this Faustian arrangement – and, again, I have reviewed many of these works in ‘Political Affairs.’

But even these writers, as perceptive as they are, have not detailed the entire scope of the monstrosity that was created in order to subdue the former USSR and, yes, future scholars will be spending a considerable amount of time exploring this phenomenon. For, as is well known, it was once thought that Shia Islam was little more than a seedbed for the emergence of Communists, as the history of both the Tudeh Party of Iran and the Iraqui Communist Party exemplified. But then with its maniacal anticommunism, US imperialism engineered the downfall in 1953 of the progressive Mossadegh regime, not least because of its displeasure about its oil policies, which led directly to the rise of Ayatollah Khomeni in Teheran, then collaborated with Saddam Hussein in the repression of Iraqui Communists. Again, Brzezinski, a prolific writer, wrote openly about the strategy of whipping up nationalism as a counterweight to Marxism.

Nevertheless, scholars of the future, I’m sure, will be struck by the evasions employed by those who have sought to deny a connection between the Cold War and the fact that US imperialism and so-called 'Islamic Fundamentalism' shared the same trench during this conflict. These fathers refuse to take responsibility for parentage. The question is often narrowed to asking in regard to the largest covert action in CIA history – the intervention in Afghanistan – whether Osama bin Laden himself was on the US Payroll; being a multi-millionaire bin Laden hardly needs a check from Washington in any case. Or they try to argue that the CIA basically was a passive conduit for funding to Pakistani intelligence, which then should be held responsible for US policy in Afghanistan that led to the building up of so-called Islamic fundamentalism – as if Washington has no control or influence with Islamabad, which is ludicrous, of course. .

A tell-tale sign of how the bourgeoisie chooses to interpret the rise of so-called 'fundamentalism' will be revealed later this year when Universal Studios releases the blockbuster movie, ‘Charley Wilson’s War’ starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts; the best-selling book that this movie is based on whitewashes CIA aid to the anticommunist rebels in Afghanistan and refuses to confront the fact that part of the payoff to Pakistan in backing this US sponsored insurgency was at least tacit or willfully ignorant support for the so-called 'Islamic bomb', which is now causing sleepless nights in Washington for fear that the US stooge Musharraf will be overthrown in Islamabad and this deadly weapon will fall into the hands of Osama bin Laden’s allies. The preliminary reading is that Hollywood will provide its mass audience with the ‘moonlight and magnolia’ version of history – but we shall see. Stay tuned.

Of course, this strategy of relying on ultra-nationalism in order to destabilize a secular left has had a domestic counterpart. Indeed, the domestic Cold War has had the unsurprising result of weakening the left, strengthening the right and therefore not only making it more likely that the nation will be ensnared by quagmires such as those unfolding in Iraq and, ironically, Afghanistan but, as well, insures that labor will continue to be pulverized by capital at home.

Nowadays, too many scholars feed their audiences a form of verbal comfort food meant to reassure their readers as they sate their appetites. Thus few acknowledge that months before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the nation was aflame with headlines about the 'Plan of San Diego.' According to this breathtaking scheme, revolutionary Mexico in the midst of turmoil was collaborating with Japan – and possibly Germany – to reclaim the territories seized by the US during the war of aggression of 1846, establish in its stead independent Black and Native American Republics and, not least, liquidate the Euro-American male population – a subject I write about in my book, ‘Black and Brown:’ Obviously, the obscenity of white supremacy and the appearance that it was a policy driven by a monolithic white community was driving Washington’s victims on this continent to desperate measures. But then came the Bolshevik Revolution and after that the formation of the Communist Party USA with its emphasis on working class solidarity and staunch opposition to white supremacy, as evidenced by its signature campaigns of the 1930s – the labor organizing drives that led to the formation of the CIO and the crusade to save the Scottsboro 9 from lynch law. Such efforts helped to convince many in the Black community particularly that this nation could be redeemed and schemes like the 'Plan of San Diego' lost resonance. This conclusion was reached in the face of an unrelenting effort by Tokyo to convince African Americans that this land of white supremacy was beyond redemption and that Japan was the 'champion of the colored races.' Black Communists like James Ford and Ben Davis – who was elected to the NYC Council from Harlem – argued vehemently against this notion with no small result, a subject I discuss at length in my book ‘Race War!’.

Yet after Japan was vanquished not least due to this popular front of left and center – both domestically and globally – US imperialism turned its venom on the Black Left in particular, forcing it to retreat and thus preparing the ground for the rise of various forms of nationalism, including the Nation of Islam which was born in the 1930s as something of an acolyte of Tokyo as evidenced by their still articulated notion of the so-called 'Asiatic Black Man.' Strikingly, the Nation – with its notions that those who are defined as 'white' are little more than devils – did not begin to grow until the 1950s when the left was in retreat.

Indeed, the reigning metaphor for US politics might be Jack Benny, the comedian. You remember the violin playing comic from Waukegan, Illinois, known to be a notorious cheapskate, tight with a dollar, who was notorious for a routine when faced by a robber who placed a gun at his head and shouted, 'your money or your life.' Benny, the cheapskate worried more about money than life itself, then tells the robber as he ponders, 'I’m thinking, I’m Thinking.' The unrealistic wing of the bourgeoisie, like Benny, has been willing to run the risk of losing life itself by allowing right-wing nationalism to flourish on the grounds that this environment is better suited for guaranteeing profit-making.

Nevertheless, scholars e.g. Mary Dudziak and Thomas Borstelman among others have pointed to the unavoidable conclusion that the civil rights gains of the 1960s were driven in large part by the existence of the Soviet Union – in that Washington had difficulty winning hearts and minds among the 'colored' majority in their ideological contest with Moscow as long as people of color in this nation were treated so atrociously. Therefore, Jim Crow had to go. Similarly, there were those who predicted that the collapse of the USSR would lead to a new birth of freedom for social democracy, as it escaped the supposed albatross of being associated with Moscow. Yet, as the recent elections in Finland demonstrated, social democracy has not flourished in the absence of the USSR (simply trace the baneful impact that neighboring Estonia has had on Helsinki, for example), even in its erstwhile citadel of Scandinavia, where conservatives have made a remarkable comeback. And, yes, it is fair to give the existence of the Soviet Union for the fact that social welfare measures developed in the U.S. in the 1930s, as the ruling elite feared what might arise if they did not compromise, and, yes, the attack on these measures followed like clockwork the demise of the Soviet Union.

Thus, in many ways, we can attribute the agonized retreat of white supremacy to the existence of the former Soviet Union and its allies in the US – who are reflected in profusion in the CPUSA archive – just as we likewise, can give credit for this historic retreat to heroic Haiti, whose victory some two centuries ago against slavery was similarly an important intervention against racism and, likewise, has led to a punishment of Haiti that has lasted to this very day.

This also reminds us that our foremothers and forefathers of the 19th century were similar in many ways to Black Communists in that they were strict internationalists. In fact, I think future scholars will demonstrate that during a time when Washington was in constant conflict with London – most notably during the War of 1812 when the redcoats burned down a good deal of this nation’s capital – leaders as diverse as Frederick Douglass and Ida Wells-Barnett were as close to London as Paul Robeson was to Moscow. This stretches back to the origins of this nation for as historians Simon Schama of Columbia and Cassandra Pybus of Australia have both pointed out in recent worthy books, by far more Negroes fought on the side of the British during the 1776 war than on the side of the rebellious colonists, led by slaveholders e.g. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

It is an elementary part of diplomatic statecraft that an oppressed people – e.g. African Americans – will seek to ally with the antagonists of those who are oppressing them and that those opposed to the oppression of this group (e.g. progressive Euro-Americans) will tend to do the same thing. Indeed, one can argue that even those who have not been oppressed have acted in this fashion. Consider one of antebellum Va.’s leading sons, Matthew Fontaine Maury – a huge statue in his honor continues to stand in Richmond – despite the fact that during the Civil War, this leading Confederate conspired with France, after it seized Mexico, against the U.S. and offered to return California to Mexico if France backed the Confederacy. My most recent book, ‘The Deepest South’, explores this matter in detail. Yet, just the other day, leading legislators in Georgia were pushing a bill to establish a Confederate History Month in April in order to deflect attention away from apologizing for slavery. This is one of the many reasons I do not take too seriously the commonly accepted idea that hostility to Communists stems from their ties to a foreign power – Moscow; if that were true why does this nation continue to honor not only those who tried to overthrow the govt. in order to maintain slavery but conspired with foreign powers in order to do so? – yet there are statutes built in their honor and their deeds are celebrated.

Indeed, I think historians of the future will be struck by the fact that in attempting to assess the impact of the CPUSA, some scholars spent more time seeking out documents in Moscow, as opposed to this country – and, thus, this NYU archive will continue to gain in importance. I am continually struck by the fact that there has been a repetitive ideological tendency reflected in the writings of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Walter Benn Michels, Richard Rorty – and a host of other liberal and social Democratic writers – who lament the decline of a conversation about class and deride what they see as the undue emphasis on race in the U.S. But such analysts rarely put this discussion in the context of a concerted effort by the US to basically outlaw Marxism – and a conversation on class which it has exemplified – as reflected in the Smith Act trials that swept the nation from New York City in 1949 when the entire CPUSA leadership was placed on trial, then jailed, to Honolulu where a similar trial occurred in 1952. It is striking that there are hundreds of thousands of pages of transcripts from these trials which are gathering dusts in archives across this vast land and have yet to be tapped by historians.

When these sources are explored, I think scholars of the future will be struck by, for example, the response in Honolulu when tens of thousands of workers went on strike when labor and CP leaders were convicted of Smith Act violations in 1953 – a response totally unlike the response on the mainland. Of course 98% of these workers were of Asian-Pacific ancestry, which suggests that scholars have also been derelict in analyzing why these workers were less anti-communist than their Euro-American counterparts. In any case, deploring these convictions in Hawaii was an African-American poet and journalist by the name of Frank Marshall Davis, who was certainly in the orbit of the CP – if not a member – and who was born in Kansas and spent a good deal of his adult life in Chicago, before decamping to Honolulu in 1948 at the suggestion of his good friend Paul Robeson. Eventually, he befriended another family – a Euro-American family – that had migrated to Honolulu from Kansas and a young woman from this family eventually had a child with a young student from Kenya East Africa who goes by the name of Barack Obama, who retracing the steps of Davis eventually decamped to Chicago. In his best selling memoir ‘Dreams of my Father’, the author speaks warmly of an older black poet, he identifies simply as 'Frank' as being a decisive influence in helping him to find his present identity as an African-American, a people who have been the least anticommunist and the most left-leaning of any constituency in this nation – though you would never know it from reading so-called left journals of opinion. At some point in the future, a teacher will add to her syllabus Barack’s memoir and instruct her students to read it alongside Frank Marshall Davis’ equally affecting memoir, 'Living the Blues' and when that day comes, I’m sure a future student will not only examine critically the Frankenstein monsters that US imperialism created in order to subdue Communist parties but will also be moved to come to this historic and wonderful archive in order to gain insight on what has befallen this complex and intriguing planet on which we reside.

Women key to advances in Congress

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 01:54:00 +0000

In the first 11 weeks of the 110th Congress, several pieces of progressive legislation, including the Employee Free Choice Act and an increase in the minimum wage, have passed in the House. With the new Democratic majority, congressional silence on the Iraq war has been shattered.

Women have been a big part of this. In November, voters sent more women to Capitol Hill than ever before. In at least three Senate races, in Virginia, Montana and Missouri, women voters made the critical difference in defeating Republicans.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is the first woman ever elected by her colleagues as Speaker of the House.

Phyllis Wetherby, president of the First Pittsburgh Chapter of the National Organization for Women, told the World, “Women are slowly gaining, too slowly, considering that women are more than half the population. But we keep gaining, and it has already made a difference.

“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put the core issues — 9/11 panel recommendations, minimum wage, stem cell research and prescription drugs — right into the vote on House rules,” she said. “The House passed this legislation in about half the first 100 hours that Speaker Pelosi promised.”

Wetherby, who also serves on Pennsylvania NOW’s political action committee, has 40 years of experience advancing women’s rights and the progressive agenda.

When the November election dust settled, the number of women U.S. senators had grown from 14 to 16, representing 13 states. Democratic women now hold 11 of these seats.

In the House chamber there are 71 women representatives from 30 states, with California voters sending the most, 19. Women gained four seats over last time. Democratic women hold 50 seats, their GOP counterparts, 21. In addition, three nonvoting delegates, from the District of Columbia, Guam and the Virgin Islands, are women.

There are 21 women of color in the House, almost all Democrats. African American women hold 12 seats, Asian Pacific Islanders two and Latinas seven. No women of color serve in the Senate.

Two representatives, Barbara Lee and Lynn Woolsey, co-chair the Progressive Caucus, the largest caucus in the House. Twenty-four women are members of this caucus.

“Women voted for change in this election,” writes Susan Carroll, a senior scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “The exit polls provide compelling evidence that Democrats would not be in control of the new Congress without strong support from women voters.”

A case in point: the GOP’s third in command, Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, crashed and burned in November as his Democratic opponent Robert Casey Jr. captured 61 percent of the women’s vote and 57 percent of men’s.

Wetherby pointedly observed that although the gender gap in the United States is still alive and well, “It’s been a long time since women I asked to register to vote told me that ‘my husband votes for me.’

Senate Takes Up Debate on Iraq Withdrawal Timetable Bill

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 09:57:00 +0000

The House of Representatives took a huge step toward ending the war in Iraq last Friday by passing the Iraq Accountability Act, a bill that ties troop withdrawal to a White House funding request. The effort to end the war turns this week to the Senate where members will begin debating their version of this troop withdrawal package.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney used name-calling and hysteria to try to stop passage of the Iraq Accountability Act. Bush called it 'defeatist' and insisted that setting a timetable for withdrawal would cause another major terrorist action in the U.S. Cheney insisted that supporters of the bill are aiding the 'enemy.'

Clearly, Bush hoped that division in the anti-Iraq war movement and the Democratic Party would cause the bill to fail. But after its passage Bush continued to lob insults and abusive rhetoric at the bill's supporters.

The passage of the bill, however, is a great victory for the American people, the Democrats, and the anti-Iraq war movement. Speaker Pelosi succeeded in bringing together a broad and diverse collection of moderate and liberal Democrats (and two Republicans) in the House to pass a bill that essentially puts Bush on notice that his stay-the-course/escalation policy is nearing its end.

While some in the peace movement wanted to block the package and hold symbolic votes on measures that would not pass, other organizations saw the value in contesting for a bill that would unite more broad sections of the public and Congress and set a timetable for withdrawal.

, for instance, in a strategy memo released to its members over the weekend described the passage of the Iraq Accountability Act as a 'first step' in a journey to end the war. The November election was a mandate for Congress to act to reverse Bush's stay the course mentality. The passage of this law is such an action.

The memo argues that the goal is to isolate the Republican members of Congress who insist on unquestioning support for Bush's 'stay the course' policy by forcing war supporters to choose 'between plans to end the war and supporting endless war.'

The passage of the bill sends a message to moderate congressional Republicans who are up for reelection in 2008 that they should cut their losses and choose to side with the vast majority of Americans and the voters in their districts and states by supporting a timetable for withdrawal.

In the Senate, the two obstacles to passage of a similar bill are the Senate 'filibuster' rules that allow the minority to prevent a bill from being voted on unless 60 members vote to end debate. Republicans could block a vote with as few as 41 members siding with Bush's stay the course mentality.

In a move that shifts the full burden of rejecting a bill that contains troop withdrawal measures to President Bush, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) says his party will not filibuster the measure. With 21 Republicans up for reelection in 2008, this opportunistic move is designed to allow Senate Republicans in unsafe seats to find some political cover.

The other obstacle is that more conservative Democrats and Republicans may try to eliminate the troop withdrawal language with amendments.

A larger version of the Pelosi-led congressional coalition will be needed in the Senate. Additionally, greater unity by the anti-Iraq war movement that helped win passage of the bill in the House will also be needed to keep pressure on the Senate in order to win enough votes to push a good bill through.

For its part, the Senate can decide if it wants to stand with the people who by an overwhelming majority want to bring the war to an end or to stand with an increasingly isolated president who has openly rejected the mandate set by the voters in November 2006.

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel (NB) sharply criticized President Bush this weekend and helped illuminate the choice facing moderate Democrats and Republicans about this vote and the need to set a timetable for withdrawal.

On ABC's This Week, Hagel said, 'We have clearly a situation where the president has lost the confidence of the American people in his war effort. It is now time, going into the fifth year of that effort, for the Congress to step forward and be part of setting some boundaries and some conditions as to our involvement.'

Hagel went on to hint that impeachment of Bush is not out of the question, if he continues to refuse to respond to the will of the vast majority of the people.

The Friends' Committee on National Legislation, asked its members this week to call on their Senators to support keeping a timetable for withdrawal in the Senate version of the funding supplemental.

In his message to supporters, John Isaacs of the Council for a Livable World also urged passage of a Senate version of the troop withdrawal measure, as well as a provision to block a preemptive attack on Iran, and called for turning down Republican amendments to weaken the bill.

The House version of the bill contains additional funds to shore up the failing veterans' health care program. An amendment offered by Sen. Barack Obama will likely be added to the Senate version with similar aims. In an effort to weaken support for the bill, Republican pundits labeled such additional provisions as 'pork.'

Things Fall Apart: China and the Decline of US Imperialism

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 05:34:00 +0000

When historians of the future look back, they may very well conclude that 2007 marked the time when the crisis of US imperialism became so obvious that even the dimmest bulb could detect it. For it is evident that imperialism is about to suffer a staggering and transformative defeat in Iraq as this illegal and criminal invasion has stretched the military to the breaking point, alienated allies and emboldened the lengthening list of foes of US imperialism.

At the same time, China, still ruled by a Communist Party, has accumulated an eye-popping $1 trillion in foreign currencies, a figure never before attained by any nation. This sum is so formidable, so huge, that there is a palpable fear in Washington that Beijing may develop a version of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, rendering both of these imperialist dominated vehicles irrelevant. In the so-called “backyard” of Washington, socialist Cuba has not been slowed down by the hospitalization of President Fidel Castro and continues to move from strength to strength. Cuba and China in turn serve as anchors for Africa, Asia and Latin America in their ongoing attempt to break the chains of imperialist bondage. All this suggests that the crisis of US imperialism continues unabated.

The declining prestige of Washington was no better revealed than when the human rights watchdog of the United Nations rebuked the US for violations of international law at home and abroad, especially in connection with its so-called “war on terror.” Adding to a growing cascade of criticism, singled out were the secret detention facilities where torture is the norm and the failure to provide prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba with due process of law. But what really captured attention were the sharp criticisms of US domestic policy. Washington’s draconian asylum and immigration policies, the promiscuous deployment of the death penalty and life imprisonment and police brutality, were all condemned in no uncertain terms.

This international body of experts seconded by the UN oversees implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and chose 2006 to examine US compliance with this document for the first time since 1995. Predictably Washington reacted angrily to this rebuke. Ironically, the nation that has taken it upon itself to evaluate nations near and far and the extent to which they have complied with Washington’s version of “democracy” and “freedom,” now cries foul when the “script is flipped.”

US imperialism finds it hard to ignore this complaint from the UN for George W. Bush recognizes that it is precisely his malfeasance in the global arena that may very well jeopardize not only his legacy but his freedom of movement as well. For as the noted University of Virginia law professor, Rosa Brooks, put it recently, the US Supreme Court ruling in the case of Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, concerning a so-called “enemy combatant,” suggests that Common Article Three of the Geneva Convention applies to the conflict with al Qaeda. But more than this, the high court holding makes high-ranking Bush administration officials – including the president -– potentially subject to prosecution under the federal War Crimes Act.

What this suggests is that US imperialism cannot escape the grasp of global forces, no matter how well it is able to bludgeon domestic opposition. More than this, even sectors of the US ruling elite have come to recognize that conservatism, which has served this class so well to this point, may be very well incapable of protecting its interests as the 21st century unfolds. For example, how can one expect the US right wing to subdue the rudimentarily conservative force that is so-called Islamic fundamentalism when historically they have been in the same trench, e.g. during the war in the 1980’s in Afghanistan that turbo-charged religiosity?

The bold posture of the UN is emblematic of how the international community has come to recognize that US imperialism is a primary threat to international peace and security. Similarly, this is suggestive of how the erosion of the strength of US imperialism has made Washington more susceptible to being influenced by global trends. In the first place, the tax cutting mania of the Republican right – without the concomitant muscle to slash social programs proportionately – has made this nation more dependent on capital flows from Asia in particular to curb escalating deficits. As foreign nations have grabbed a larger stake in the US government and economy, understandably they have become more concerned about their investments here – which provides more incentive for them to rein in Washington.

Of late, China and Russia on the UN Security Council have banded together to curb the more horrific and lunatic plans of Washington, e.g. imposing severe sanctions on Iran due to its attempt to develop civilian nuclear energy. Still, disturbing plans continue to emerge about Washington’s plans to bomb Iran – which would be akin to opening the gates of hell.

Resort to bloody war has been the ultimate sanction held out by US imperialism for those so bold as to ignore their diktat but the catastrophic conflict in Iraq has shown that this threat is not as meaningful as it seems. The puncturing of this threat has plunged sectors of the US ruling elite into crisis mode. This melancholy was not assuaged when Israel proved unable to overpower Lebanon during its disastrous 33-day war that unfolded during the summer of 2006. Israel was encouraged by US imperialism to contribute to its ill-conceived “war on terrorism” by seeking to eliminate Hezbollah with the conflict over detention of Israeli soldiers as a pretext. But Israel was unable to accomplish this task, which diluted its importance in the eyes of US imperialism, with consequences that continue to be tallied. In a column for the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami argued that since “US deterrence and respect for the superpower have been eroded unrecognizably,” this means that “an exclusive ‘Pax Americana’ in the Middle East is no longer possible because not only is the US not an inspiration today, it does not instill fear.”

As regimes globally sense that US imperialism may be weakening, there is a ripple effect in diverse areas. In the first place, it has called into question the utility of the dollar, the viability of which has obviated the necessity of making the tough decisions on fiscal matters that this nation’s debt and deficits would ordinarily mandate. For example, in 2006 the United Arab Emirates, which had accumulated a treasure trove of dollars, announced that it has moved 10 percent of its $29 billion in foreign exchange reserves into euros, the common currency of the European Union, the erstwhile ally cum competitor of US imperialism, which has dreams of global domination all its own. Certainly the controversy in March 2006 when Dubai Ports World was blocked from taking over the interests in the US of another foreign entity, Britain’s P&O, soured many Arabs on the reliability of US imperialism.

Other sober analysts transnationally are weighing a flight from the dollar as well, which if implemented could have disastrous consequences for US imperialism. In August 2006, China and Japan, Asia’s two economic giants and rivals, developed what was termed an “unusual consensus” in support of an ACU or an Asian currency unit to – as noted in the Financial Times – “reduce their reliance on a weakening dollar.” Speaking in Australia, Fan Gang, a leading Chinese economic theorist, called for a sharp devaluation of the dollar as a way to bring health to the global economy. Of course, this could mean a sharp rise in prices for all manner of US imports including toys, automobiles, clothes, consumer electronics, and the like. The ACU has many hurdles to overcome before becoming reality, but the fact that Tokyo and Beijing could agree on its importance is suggestive of the crisis of US imperialism.

Even sectors of the US ruling class are now joining with progressives in calling for the ouster of the Bush regime. Calling for the ouster of this criminal regime and actually accomplishing this task are two different matters. For like the towering government debt and deficits that have accumulated under his watch, Bush has left many land mines behind, which will be bedeviling this nation for decades to come and are quite susceptible of exploding at any moment. There are many examples of this but what quickly comes to mind is the fact that the overstretched US military, pressed for recruits, has allowed the infiltration of their ranks by neo-Nazis. Such is the conclusion of the well-respected Southern Poverty Law Center, which has reported the disturbing news that Aryan Nations graffiti can now be found in Baghdad, along with numerous soldiers with fascist tattoos. As the neo-Nazis see it, joining the military allows them to gain military training, which could be critical in coming years. Moreover, it allows them to “legally” slaughter those not of European descent. Purging the military of this vermin and scum has to be seen by progressives as a top priority.

Certainly their presence does little to halt the desperate belligerence that today characterizes US imperialism and increasingly this hostility is targeting China which is both “non-European” and ruled by a Communist Party, thus attaining the “daily double” of right-wing hate politics. It is true that a number of Fortune 500 corporations have invested heavily in China, which serves as a restraint on the bellicosity of US imperialism toward Beijing. But it should not be forgotten that as I write a roiling and fierce debate is unfolding in the ranks of the elite National Association of Manufacturers over trade with China. The split in their ranks pits smaller US manufacturers who are being hammered – as they see it – by Chinese factories against their larger counterparts, some of whom are benefiting from what is seen as an undervalued Chinese currency. “China is waging a mercantile war,” claimed M. Brian O’Shaugnessy, President of Revere Cooper Products, Inc. of Rome, New York, “and we’re being pacifists.” These smaller corporations are threatening to leave the NAM unless it takes a tougher stance against Beijing; of course, though these smaller companies make up 74 percent of the NAM membership, they only contribute 23 percent of the dues – so the whales are expected to prevail over the guppies. Still, one cannot easily expect these forces to go silently into the night if they are defeated.

A weakened US imperialism inevitably will be seeking scapegoats for the decline of the self-proclaimed “sole remaining superpower” in Beijing, e.g. accusations about China’s currency manipulations already have gained traction and, of late, led to serious debate in the Congress about slapping an astonishing 27.5 percent duty on their exports to this country. Moreover, China’s relations with Iran and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), the remaining members of the so-called “axis of evil,” are already the cause for anguished commentary in Washington.

Beijing has strengthened its relations with Tehran significantly, for example, signing several long-term energy exploration production and delivery contracts since 2004 with Iran worth more than $100 billion. In 2006 China invested in Iran’s domestic oil-refining industry, agreeing to expand the country’s gasoline output significantly.

China and the DPRK have long been close allies. Recall, for example, the latter stages of US imperialism’s bloodthirsty invasion of the Korean peninsula in the 1950’s, when it was common wisdom that these two Asian nations were as “close as lips and teeth.” Concerns about the DPRK‘s attempt to develop nuclear energy have caused Washington to try cajoling China into pressuring its ally. The fact that South Korea is lukewarm at best about sanctioning its northern neighbor is suggestive of the point that Koreans from north to south are looking forward to reunification and have little interest in bending to the intimidation of Washington.

China and Syria also have strong commercial ties, as Beijing has invested substantially in the development of this Arab state’s transportation infrastructure, as well as in energy exploration and production. China is also a key supplier of military equipment to Syria.

China has become a major investor in Venezuela’s energy sector and is also investing in this nation’s transportation infrastructure, including railroads, ports and crude oil tankers, not to mention telecommunications, mining and agriculture. Caracas is directing more and more of its oil exports to China, which has not made Washington happy. In 2004 this figure amounted to 12,000 barrels of oil per day to China but by 2006 this figure had jumped to 200,000 and is slated to rise to 500,000 by 2009. China also has supported the attempt by Venezuela to obtain a coveted seat on the UN Security Council.

China has invested heavily in US Treasury securities and other US assets to the tune of about $800 billion. It is also true that if China were to devalue its currency as some in Washington are demanding this could reduce the value of China’s foreign assets by a hefty $200 billion. Why should China – the creditor – yield to the demands of the US, the debtor?

Drunk with national and racial chauvinism, there are those in Washington who have yet to understand fully the comparative decline of US imperialism and its inability to impose its diktat. There seems to be little realization that China possesses countermeasures of its own. Beijing could liquidate its massive holdings of US Treasury securities, pushing US interest rates higher and the value of the dollar much lower against other major currencies. This could mean higher taxes – or dramatic slashes in government programs.

What is striking about this developing relationship between Beijing and Washington is that, in some ways, it is coming to mirror the cold war. Increasingly Washington is taking umbrage at the fact that the world’s most populous nation is developing interests globally. Washington seems to be particularly concerned with Beijing’s incursions in Africa, which the US and Western Europe alike have long seen as its own private preserve and has long been a major petroleum supplier to both. Of late, this tendency has been manifested in overheated press coverage in the US about China’s role in Africa. Typical was an August 2006 New York Times article which spoke wondrously of Dakar, Senegal, long a bastion of French influence, but which now is home to Chinese merchants who sell shoes, electronics, plastic jewelry and toys…. China, it seems, is suddenly everywhere in Africa, not just in oil-rich states. Trade between Africa and China has almost quadrupled since 2001 and last year reached almost $40 billion… in Sierra Leone Chinese companies have built and renovated hotels and restaurants. In Mozambique, Chinese companies are investing in soybean processing and prawn production. At the African Union summit meeting in Banjul, Gambia last month, the Chinese delegation dwarfed the ones sent by France, Britain and the United States.

This reference to “oil rich states” was not coincidental since Nigeria, Gabon and Angola are among the major petroleum producers globally. Also, not coincidentally, the Supreme Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, General James Jones announced in May 2003 that in the future US naval forces under his command would spend much less time in the Mediterranean. Instead, he predicted: “I will bet they will spend half the time going down the West Coast of Africa.” That same year, a senior Pentagon official was quoted as saying that a “key mission for US forces [in Africa] would be to ensure that Nigeria’s oilfields, which in the future would account for as much as 25 percent of all US oil imports, are secure.”

Unsurprisingly, in January 2005 the US Navy commenced a two-month Gulf of Guinea deployment with participation by the USS Emory, carrying about 1,400 sailors and marines; port calls were made in Douala, Cameroon (close to Nigeria); Sekondi, Ghana; and Port Gentil, Gabon. Reportedly being considered as a potential site for a US military base is the island state of Sao Tome and Principe, close by the major oil producers and a former entry point for the unlamented African slave trade.

The so-called “war on terror” is also the stated rationale for Washington’s increasingly large footprint in Africa. Algeria, the supplier of huge amounts of liquefied natural gas to North America, has been critical in this regard. Algiers has been the recipient of significant amounts of military assistance from the US but this has not quelled – and, in fact, may be heightening – regional instability, as suggested by the coup in Mauretania, Tuareg revolts in Mali and Niger and continuing unrest in southern Algeria itself.

Indeed, there is concern throughout Algeria about the peculations of Halliburton, which has been bleeding the nation white. Surely this misbehavior only serves to underscore why more and more African nations are looking to Beijing as a counterweight to US imperialism, just as they once looked to Moscow.

No doubt Zimbabwe is viewing things through this lens. Heavily sanctioned by London and Washington, not least due to its expropriation of farmers from the European minority, Harare has decided to “Look East” and, as a result, China has become this African nation’s second largest supplier of imported goods. In 1998 China ranked only 11th in Harare’s roll call of importers. Now it accounts for 6 percent of Zimbabwe’s imports. One informed estimate is that there are at least 15 to 20 sizable Zimbabwe-China business deals, mostly involving state enterprises.

This nervousness about the global reach of Beijing illuminates as well the panic about Venezuela that has gripped the US ruling class. Unquestionably, Caracas has sought to use its oil wealth for progressive purposes, e.g. its alliance with Argentina that has led to development of a regional bank targeting nations frustrated with the domineering International Monetary Fund. Caracas also has purchased $3 billion in Argentine bonds, not to mention $25 million in Ecuador’s debt. Just as China has tightened ties with Iran, Venezuela has acted similarly. On the banks of the Orinoco River in this South American nation is a sprawling factory that churns out 40 tractors a week; this is a joint venture between Tehran and Caracas with a bus factory and a cement plant soon to come. Iran plans to invest a sizeable $9 billion in 125 projects in Venezuela.

Caracas’s close ties to Havana are a matter of public record. Cuba, which has invested heavily in human capital, has supplied Venezuela with 14,000 doctors who now provide free treatment to the poor. This is not to mention the 3,000 Cuban medical staff who were deployed to South Asia recently in the wake of the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan. Within 48 hours of Hurricane Katrina Cuba offered to send 1,600 doctors to the Gulf Coast, plus 36 tons of medical supplies – but this urgent offer went unanswered. Hundreds died, mostly poor and Black, due to a lack of aid and treatment. That China has tightened relations with Cuba of late, has provided Havana with even more flexibility in making such generous offers.

What is of ultimate concern to US imperialism is that an alternative power center is developing in Beijing, which makes it difficult for Washington to bring to heel nations like Venezuela, Iran, the DPRK, Cuba and Zimbabwe. Yet instead of a calm and calculated assessment that would reveal that this turn of events is due to the weakening position of US imperialism and the disastrous decisions it has made over the years, including invading Iraq, aligning with China against the former USSR some three decades ago and generally seeking to stem the inexorable tide of history, Washington has sought scapegoats and China’s ascension inevitably has attracted jealous attention.

This mordant concern reached an apogee in October 2006 when Bush signed a new national space policy that rejects future arms control agreements that might limit US flexibility in space and asserts a right to deny access to space to anyone “hostile to US interests.” This chilling document, which reads like something out of bad science fiction, stresses national security, encourages private enterprise and characterizes the role of US space diplomacy largely in terms of persuading other nations to support US policy. Worried observers argued that this initiative was simply a prelude to introducing weapons systems into the orbit of planet Earth.

Thus, as recent as 2004 the Air Force announced a doctrine that detailed how protecting US satellites and spacecraft may require “deception, disruption, denial, degradation and destruction” targeting various foes. When in September 2006 the US military leaked the alleged secret that Beijing supposedly had tried to disrupt the orbit of a US satellite, it came clear even to the most obtuse who this new space initiative was targeting: China, of course.

It is difficult to overestimate the abject danger of this latest turn in the military strategy of US imperialism. It is not enough to jeopardize life on Earth, now Washington seeks to place the entire solar system in peril. But like global bullies of the past, US imperialism will discover to its dismay that it is much too late to play King Canute seeking to stem the tides of history. China’s rise is inexorable, as is the crisis of US imperialism.

Setting a New Agenda: Politics 2007

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 05:30:00 +0000

Editor’s Note: PA talks to Joelle Fishman, chair of the Communist Party’s Political Action Commission, about this year’s political landscape. PA: Why are there such a large number of Democratic candidates entering the race for 2008? Given our independent political orientation, what should our stance be?

JF: Bush is an unpopular, lame-duck president. But more important is the growing upsurge to change the direction of the country and defend basic democracy. We saw that in the results of the 2006 Congressional elections, but the extreme right-wing grip is still there. The difficulty of getting any peace or pro-labor legislation passed in the Senate is an indication of the continued grip by the right wing. We’re in the midst of a transition, and people are hungry and looking for who’s going to represent people’s needs, who’s going to come out strongly to end the war, on economic issues, and universal health care. In 2008 there is the possibility of a decisive defeat of the ultra-right in the White House and in expanding the majority in Congress. Clinton, Obama and Edwards are the front runners now among the Democrats in these early stages of the campaign. Richardson is ranked fifth and Kucinich is ranked ninth. The diversity among the candidates is significant. The huge turnouts to hear Obama in the South represent a challenge to the Southern strategy and to racism, and an embrace of the basic democratic traditions of our nation. The 2008 elections are intertwined with the results of the 110th Congress. The ability to win on some key issues will have a big impact. Grassroots organizing and action on issues is what’s key, moving with the labor movement and core sections of the all people’s coalition – African American, Latino, women and youth voters. Of course, peace is foremost. Candidates will be judged on the issues and on the ability to continue to expand and deepen the broad people’s coalition, which is the only way we can wrest control away from the right wing.

PA: The peace movement played an important role in the 2006 elections. How do you think this will continue to play out?

JF: It’s in the forefront, and it can’t be any other way. The whole economic program – the 100 hours campaign and the next legislative steps – that the Democrats campaigned on is going to be impossible to carry out with the huge sums of money being poured into the war in Iraq. Obviously, deep opposition to the war among the people was key in the 2006 elections. The labor movement played a key role, specifically around the campaign to stop the Bush agenda, including both the war and economic issues. I had the opportunity to be in Washington for the January peace march and lobby organized by United for Peace and Justice. It was impressive. I was also able to be a part of Lobby Day with over 1,000 people on Capitol Hill representing all but two states. The Congressional aides told us pointedly, “You have no idea of the impact that you’re making. Please keep this up.” It is important for peace forces to develop tactics based on the understanding that in order to stop this war it’s going to take coalition politics at the legislative level. There is not a large enough Democratic majority to pass legislation to end the war without some Republican support. At the same time it’s going to take a strong, organized broad voice from the grass roots. This will be the way to curb Bush, and stop his pre-emptive war agenda to go into Iran and perhaps elsewhere.

PA: Is it possible to regard this upsurge of democratic struggle as a new beginning?

JF: An important turning point is taking place. Democratic control of Congress, albeit narrowly in the Senate, creates new conditions. You can see that from the strengthened leverage of the Out of Iraq Caucus, the Progressive Caucus, the Black Caucus, the Hispanic Caucus, and the Asian Pacific Caucus. We anticipated this, but it is quite something to see it playing out in life. It will take some careful thinking and analysis to develop the appropriate tactics. This brings to mind an article by Zbigniew Brzezinski, in which he comes out against the escalation of the war. Of course, he is for the occupation, but opposed to escalation. On stopping the escalation we agree. After that we diverge in worldview and general direction. Another example is the Republicans who voted for the non-binding resolution. Peace, labor and the people’s movements have to develop the tactics that take advantage of splits in the right-wing, and forward motion by some Democrats as the situation plays itself out.

PA: What does the Communist Party think are the most advanced agenda items that can be won in this Congress?

JF: Any legislative victory will need majority Democratic unity. In the case of the 100 hours agenda, it was near unanimous. In this Congress some Republican support is also needed to get the 60 votes required in the Senate. Certainly at the top of the agenda is ending the war in Iraq. The 100 hours agenda is instructive. Raise the minimum wage, cut interest rates on student loans, lower prescription drug prices, etc. The whole program went through the House in 42 hours. In the Senate, however, it’s still working its way through. But if you take the example of the minimum wage, you see the problem we confront. The Senate Republicans were able to deny the required 60 votes for passage of the so-called “clean” minimum wage bill. They only allowed an increased minimum wage to pass with a business tax credit attached. What will happen in the conference committee between the House and the Senate remains to be seen.

One of the most important bills is the Employee Free Choice Act. It would take away a lot of the barriers that workers who desperately want a union now confront. Workers want a union not only to have a structure for grievances and due process but also because union workers make substantially more in pay and benefits. It’s exciting that the EFCA has been introduced with 233 sponsors. This is an issue not just for current union members but for whole communities that will benefit, and the labor movement’s mobilization is being approached in this strong way.

The health care crisis is so huge. It’s a horrible thing. I know someone who lost her life because she didn’t have health care, and many of us experience the consequences of inadequate health care. The numbers without any coverage continue to mushroom under the Bush administration. There are a number of legislative approaches. Here in Connecticut, as in about 18 states, the big issue before the legislature is the health care crisis. The best proposal under consideration is universal single-payer health care. It has a lot of support. There are also less comprehensive solutions under consideration. At the national level, H.R. 676, introduced by Rep. John Conyers and co-authored by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, for universal single-payer health care, is the strongest legislation and it is gaining more and more labor support. There are also local movements to expand specific aspects of health care that deserve support.

There are still defensive battles being fought in Congress. Privatization of Social Security is still on the table for Republicans, as are anti-immigrant measures.

Election laws and voting rights is extremely important to hopefully prevent the theft of future elections and ensure the enfranchisement of all those of voting age.

Legislation has been introduced for relief and rebuilding the Gulf Coast that was so devastated by Hurricane Katrina and completely ignored by the Bush administration, even in the State of the Union address.

Not the least of the work of the 110th Congress are the scores of hearings underway to discover and hold accountable the prosecution of the war in Iraq and many other aspects of the Bush administration.

PA: What is the best means of maintaining the center-left people’s coalition that defeated the Republicans in 2006 and will be needed to win all of these battles and to win again in 2008?

JF: We talked before about contending with the continued hold on government by the right wing. There are huge pressures from Wall Street as well. It’s necessary for the broad movement to take stock and reach an assessment of the balance of forces in Congress and in the country in order to keep the unity and forge ahead. Unrealistic assessments can lead to bad tactics. For example, to end the war, the left has to reach out on issues that will bring broader support. In early February, 70 percent of the people were opposed to the escalation of the war, but only 50 percent were in favor of limiting funding for the escalation.

There were those who wanted to ignore the need to mobilize the 70 percent support for the non-binding resolution against escalation which had nearly unanimous Democratic support and some Republicans in Congress, and only support cutting funds for the war, even though the votes for that were no-where near passage. In life, the debate and passage of the non-binding resolution, historic in a time of war, increased support to pass binding resolutions.

The mobilization of close to a million phone calls, e-mails and messages to members of Congress was key to the outcome. This was accomplished by new national coalitions of unions and consumer organizations along with peace organizations. There is no contradiction between mobilizing broadly to stop the escalation of the war, while at the same time building grassroots support for more advanced legislation such as H.R. 508, introduced by Reps. Woolsey, Lee and Waters. This is the most comprehensive bill that deals with ending the occupation, diplomacy in the region instead of military action, health and well-being of troops when they return, and financial responsibility for the restoration of Iraq.

There are some people who argue that the Democratic majority in Congress should have enacted H.R. 508 immediately, making this a litmus test for every congressperson. Yet, not even the non-binding resolution could get 60 votes in the Senate, although it did get a majority. Those members of Congress who are in the forefront, and those who are moving forward should be recognized and encouraged to take the next step. Those who continue to support Bush’s war should be protested.

The challenge is to develop the tactics that will inspire much greater and broader “street heat” from labor, churches, state legislatures, cities, and neighborhoods. We’re in a new moment. Attacking the progressives in Congress, or the Democratic majority in Congress, for not being radical enough will not bring the troops home. Of course, pressure is needed, but the fire must be kept on the Bush administration and the extreme right wing. That will build the broad unity necessary to accomplish a long overdue exit strategy from Iraq, and to deliver a decisive blow to the ultra-right in 2008.

--Joelle Fishman chairs the Political Action Commission of the Communist Party USA. Send your letter to the editor to

| | |

Clean and Green: The Road to a Sustainable Future

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 05:24:00 +0000

What form of transportation burns the most fuel per traveler? Air travel. In midterm election campaigns, many Democrats sharply opposed GOP policy on energy and the environment. Some called for reducing tax breaks and subsidies to oil corporations. Now that the Democrats have won control of both houses, what will they do with it? Provide new incentives to develop cleaner alternatives? Raise gas mileage standards?

Even Democrats are divided. Representative John Dingell (D-Michigan), who will chair the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is a friend of the auto companies. He advocates “market solutions” and opposes mandating higher fuel efficiency standards for cars. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan), however, who also considers herself a friend of auto, co-sponsored a clean energy bill that would subsidize alternative energy, push for energy independence, and put upward pressure on fuel mileage.

What lies in our future: more dirty energy from coal plants? Pollution from fossil fuels contributes to thousands of cases of lung disease and asthma in the US each year. As our demand for electricity grows, we can burn more fossil fuels that continue to pollute the air with mercury and climate-changing greenhouse gases. Or, we can use clean, affordable renewable energy sources like wind and solar power.

Initiative 937

Voters in Washington state chose the latter course in the recent election when the “Clean Energy Initiative (I-937)” won by 52 percent. The initiative requires the largest electric utilities to get 15 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020. The reduction in air pollutants will be like taking two million cars off Washington’s roads.

The initiative requires utilities to offer their customers conservation opportunities including cash rebates for energy efficient appliances, home weatherization, and lighting, heating, and cooling systems for businesses. The initiative includes new efficiency upgrades at existing hydropower facilities. Similar legislation has been enacted in 20 other states.

Backers of I-937 included a broad coalition of utilities, businesses, labor (the United Steelworkers, SEIU, and Aerospace Machinists played a leading role), farmers, the League of Women Voters, the Audubon Society of Washington, even a group calling itself the Republicans for Environmental Protection.

Supporters hope that the initiative will kick-start energy efficiency and renewable energy projects across the state. That will help create thousands of family-wage jobs in engineering and construction, especially in rural areas, and provide crucial additional income to rural landowners. Farmers hosting wind projects will earn more than $5,000 a year per wind turbine, helping keep family farms alive.

Can We Do It?

Readily available renewable resources and conservation opportunities can easily meet future energy needs. A recent study cited by I-937 backers identified enough untapped renewable energy to power approximately 1.4 million homes in the Northwest (about 2,000 average megawatts (aMW)). Another study found that there was an additional 2,500 aMW of very low-cost energy efficiency available to the region’s utilities.

Wind and solar energy resources are diverse and robust. There is more than enough to meet growth needs with appropriately sited projects – and avoid those projects that would endanger wildlife or harm communities. There are two ways to generate power from sunshine:

1. Photovoltaic cells. These include the solar panels. 2. Power towers, in which mirrors focus sunlight on a boiler that generates steam and electricity.

Solar devices don’t work in the dark, so electric storage and transmission capacity needs to be developed.

Developing solar resources could have side benefits. In an article titled “Save the Environment and Make Jobs for the Poor” in the November 16, 2006 issue of The Oregonian, Darren Freeman wrote: We need a green job corps. The safest communities aren’t those with the most police and prisons, but those that have the best education and jobs for young people. The same kids we are throwing in the garbage can of failed schools and prisons are the same kids who could be putting up solar panels. They are so creative and energetic, but nobody has given them a grand call or a high mission. There is a hole in the soul of America right now. People want to be brought together and do something great and noble again. But can we afford clean energy? Coal prices in the West leapt 150 percent between 2003 and 2006. Natural gas prices have tripled since 2002. Solar energy currently costs 40 cents per kWh.

Current Energy Costs (per kilowatt-hour)

Coal: 5.5 – 6 cents Natural gas: 7 cents Wind power: 5 – 7 cents Solar: 40 cents

Government incentive programs, together with low prices secured by volume purchasing can get solar energy prices down to 12 cents per kWh – and photovoltaic prices have been declining an average of 4 percent per year over the past 15 years.

Alternative Fuels

As a nation, we are addicted to foreign oil. Clearly there’s a need to wean off this stuff. Increasing use of more fuel-economic vehicles and improving the grid of mass transit people-and-commodity-movers is a big piece of the puzzle. Biofuels fuels – derived from living plants – are being promoted by several corporations and their political agents as “The Answer” to our fuel woes. There are two major types: ethanol – grain alcohol, mainly derived from corn in the Midwest at about $1.30 a gallon and dropping, and biodiesel – mainly from soybeans and canola seed for about 50 cents a gallon.

Biodiesel is a non-toxic, biodegradable fuel that can be made from a range of new or waste vegetable oils, animal fats, and oilseed plants like palm. Used in its pure form in diesel-engine vehicles, or blended with gasoline to boost car performance, biodiesel has significantly lower emissions than petroleum-based diesel when burned.

According to a 1998 report by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory cited by Renewable Energy Access, biodiesel use results in carbon monoxide reductions of approximately 50 percent over regular diesel, and carbon dioxide reductions of 78 percent, on a net life cycle basis.

Normally, used cooking oil from restaurants is a waste that has to be treated and disposed of. But recycled cooking oil, filtered and cleaned, is a source for biodiesel. The exhaust smells like french fries. A small refinery can produce up to one million gallons of biodiesel per year, at about 50 cents per gallon.

According to Shaun Stenshol, owner of Maui Recycling Service in Hawaii, a diesel car engine needs little modification to run on used cooking oil and gets about 35 to 45 miles a gallon. A tank of biodiesel is good for 550 to 600 miles, and it makes no difference in the car’s performance.

Crops are grown right here in the US, so no wars for foreign oil, and no destruction of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. No oil tankers rupturing off coasts, spilling gunk over shores and wildlife. It creates jobs, plus, Willy Nelson likes the idea!

Bio Boondoggle?

Unfortunately, there are some big flies in Willy’s soup.

In a October 13, 2006 posting on the Renewable Energy Access site, Jan Steinman said that “The used cooking oil waste stream will never supply more than a few percent of today’s transportation needs. We need to ‘power down’ before we can hope to supplant more than a few percent of petroleum use.”

In an article titled “The Real Scoop on Biofuels,” published in the November 1st issue of Common Dreams, Brian Tokar, who directs the Biotechnology Project at Vermont’s Institute for Social Ecology, makes some interesting points.

There are serious concerns about this rapid diversion of food crops into production of fuel for automobiles. Fuel producers are already competing with food processors in the world’s grain markets. The grain required to make enough ethanol to fill an SUV tank just once is enough to feed a person for a whole year.

Every domestic biofuel source – the ones currently in use as well as those under development – produces less energy than is consumed in growing and processing the crops. The entire soy and corn crops combined would only satisfy 5.3 percent of current fuel needs. This puts a serious strain on food supplies and prices.

Switchgrass, for example, can grow on marginal land and presumably won’t compete with food production, but it requires 45 percent more energy to harvest and process than the energy value of the fuel that is produced. Wood biomass requires 57 percent more energy than it produces, and sunflowers require more than twice as much energy than is available in the fuel that is produced. “There is just no energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid fuel,” said David Pimentel in a Cornell press statement this past July. “These strategies are not sustainable.”

Even Brazilian sugarcane, touted as the most impressive biofuel success story, has its downside. The energy yield appears beyond question: ethanol from sugarcane may produce as much as eight times the energy that it takes to grow and process. But the same hectare of land cleared to grow sugarcane could absorb 20 tons of CO2 if left alone. Brazil is using half its annual sugarcane crop to provide 40 percent of its auto fuel, while increasing deforestation to grow more sugarcane and soybeans.

If sugarcane and soy plantations continue to encourage deforestation in the Amazon and in Brazil’s Atlantic coastal forests, any climate advantage is more than outweighed by the loss of the forest. And, the Amazon forest is rich in biodiversity.

This is bad news for wildlife; endangered species in particular. Malaysian and Indonesian rainforests are being bulldozed for oil palm plantations – threatening endangered orangutans, rhinos, tigers and countless other species – in order to serve the booming European market for biodiesel.

Tokar asks, “Are these reasonable tradeoffs for a troubled planet, or merely another corporate push for profits?” (For more on this, see: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1101-32.html)

Farmers are feeling increasing pressure from consumers to grow foods more organically with less chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Crops grown for industrial and fuel purposes are exempt from that pressure, so are more likely to pollute groundwater supplies. The impacts of pesticides, nitrate runoff into water supplies, and the increased demand on water will likely increase as “energy crops” like corn and soy begin to displace more drought tolerant crops such as wheat in several Midwestern states. Aquifers – underground reservoirs – are already being depleted. The Oglala aquifer, a great reservoir of water underlying the western plains, has been pumped nearly dry.

How About Electric Cars?

To solve the automotive problem, the major proposals are for electric and hybrid electric/fuel cars – the more miles per gallon, the better.

When you pull into a parking lot in many northern locations, you’ll see plug-ins mounted on posts. For decades, parking lots in Canada have had these to connect a variety of headbolt, dipstick, block heaters, and other devices to prevent freezing damage in subzero temperatures. They’re already in place. They can also be used to recharge electric car batteries.

Unfortunately, the “market solutions” gang is holding things up again.

The movie Who Killed the Electric Car gives a new meaning to the term “Vehicular Homicide.” The EV1 from General Motors, a quiet and fast electric car that produced no exhaust and ran without gasoline became incredibly popular in California in the mid-1990’s, gathering a loyal base of drivers. An electric car that worked was on the market and in demand. But within a few short years, GM and the makers of other electric cars began pulling them off the road and having them destroyed, claiming that they weren’t viable and there was no real demand. The film dissects a complex web of deception and greed involving oil companies, car manufacturers and the government. (see: http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/)

But even electric and bio-fueled cars won’t solve the transportation woes of our metro areas. If all we do is just swap them for fossil fuel guzzlers, people will still suffer road rage and waste time in traffic jams. To solve those problems requires sound planning, creating more bicycle-friendly opportunities, improved mass transit, and inter-city rail service.

Nuclear Power

Nuclear power has pretty well been proven to be a losing proposition. Too many problems, including radioactive waste management problems, risk of accidents and contamination. The security measures necessary for safe storage and transport of nuclear materials would spur the creation of a police state.

Conservation

According to Brian Tokar, the solution lies in technologies and lifestyle changes that significantly reduce energy use and consumption.

What form of transportation burns the most fuel per traveler? Air travel.

The #2 “offender”: cars. Ask yourself: can I bike or hike instead of driving to work, school, the store, or to the library? Or take a bus? Carpool?

Whenever possible, buy food grown locally from your local co-op instead of food shipped long distances.

Plant some trees. Each pound of wood, leaves, etc. a tree grows is a pound of carbon dioxide filtered out of the air.

There is no single answer; no magic bullet to deliver us into an energy-sustainable society. Visualize an interlocking, coordinated grid of wind farms, solar panels and towers, biofuel processing plants and outlets, more and better public transportation, and other elements. That’s what we’ll need: many pieces to put this puzzle together. And, we’ll need something that is anathema to the “market solutions” clique that got us into this predicament: good, comprehensive planning at a higher level than capitalism can tolerate. In short, our most urgent need is an ecologically informed socialist society – the sooner the better.

To gain a better understanding of why our North American transportation system got into such a sorry condition, and how automotive and gas corporations and their “market solutions” cronies spurred the growth of poorly planned suburbs, the car-dependent culture, and long commutes in single-occupant vehicles, the movie Taken for a Ride is definitely worth watching. (http://www.newday.com/films/Taken–for–a–Ride.html)

April 2007 – Celebrate Earth Day, April 22nd

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 05:21:00 +0000

3-27-07, 1:00 pm

As global warming threatens to destroy human life on Earth, David Zink details the various alternative energy options and the political struggles to win a new direction on energy consumption. Joelle Fishman, chair of the Communist Party’s Political Action Commission, discusses looming congressional battles for peace, workers’ rights, universal health care, and more. Prasad Venugopal and Joel Wendland examine the causes and consequences of the US and Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. Rémy Herrera looks at the political economic issues behind Bush’s endless war. With an evolving role in global affairs, China’s international policies threaten to impede and even undermine US global hegemony, writes Gerald Horne. Why do US government policies seem to reflect Washington’s own definition of what terrorism is? asks Nooshin Shabani.

Find these articles plus book reviews, poetry, a short story and much more in this issue.

PA Editors

Departments

04 Letters 05 Marxist IQ 06 Commentary Who's the boss? By Bob Rossi

The Terrorist in the Mirror By Nooshin Shabani

07 That’s Illogical By Owen Williamson

09 Nobody Asked Me, But... By Don Sloan

10 Book Reviews Jasenovac and the Holocaust in Yugoslavia: Analyses and Survivor Testimonies Reviewed by Norman Markowitz Final Victim of the Blacklist: John Howard Lawson, Dean of the Hollywood Ten Reviewed by Michael Shepler

12 Poetry

On the Line By Lucy Duroche

Pyramid Builders By Brian Fitzpatrick

Siempre By William Aberg

41 Fiction The Vegan Vampire: An unfinished gothic novel By Karin S. Coddon

Features:

Cover Story 24 Clean and Green: The Road to a Sustainable Future How can we turn the tide against global warming and save the planet? By David Zink

14 Things Fall Apart: China and the Decline of US Imperialism The decline of the empire opens new global possibilities for liberation and sovereignty. By Gerald Horne

20 Bleeding Somalia Dry: US Imperialism in the Horn of Africa The Pentagon declares Somalia to be the new model for its brand of military intervention. By Prasad Venugopal and Joel Wendland

28 Setting a New Agenda: Politics 2007 The broad movement takes on Bush and the Republicans. By PA

30 Cyberpower: How the Internet Impacts US Politics What role will the Web play in the 2008 presidential election? A huge one. By Lawrence Albright

34 War and Crisis Behind war is economic and political crisis in the capitalist system. By Rémy Herrera

38 People Before Profits: A Review of the Work of Victor Perlo Victor Perlo’s contribution to Marxist thought. By Stan Perlo

44 Limpio y Verde: El camino a un futuro sostenible Por David Zink

| | |