People Before Profit blog

Global Recession: Protectionism and Diversification in the US and South America

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 07:54:00 +0000

3-30-09, 2:43 pm

Original source: Council on hemispheric Affairs

As the G-20 meeting is about to begin in London, the outlook for Latin American growth in 2009 is grim, as the tempo of foreign direct investment ( FDI) and loans stand-by credits and development funds plummet, the demand for commodities diminish, and foreign remittances plunge. The World Bank vice president for Latin America and the Caribbean, Pamela Cox, is forecasting 0.3 percent growth for Latin America this year, down from the originally 2.7 percent predicted in January. Cox anticipates that countries most closely linked with the U.S. economy will be hit the hardest. Thus, NAFTA, CAFTA and the U.S.-Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act (CBTPA) may prove particularly harmful for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean in the foreseeable future.

On the other hand, South American nations like Peru and Brazil that have diversified their bilateral trade partners over the last decade, may be less impacted by the global recession. MERCOSUR, UNASUR, ALBA and other South American regional trade agreements could also help to soften the blow on the continent. Nonetheless, much of South America is now experiencing a recession, and the debate on how to most effectively respond to it varies widely among economists.

Those Who Diversify: Chile

At a G-7 meeting in early February, finance ministers maintained an anti-tariff rhetoric and pledged to remain “committed to avoiding protectionist measures.” Accordingly, Timothy Geithner, US Treasury Secretary, stated, “all countries need to sustain a commitment to open trade and unfettered investment policies which are essential to economic growth.” While some left-leaning governments in South America are erecting trade barriers, Peru and Chile are robustly pursuing their free trade model, with a free trade agreement (FTA) between the two nations having gone into effect on March 1, 2009. Moreover, in conjunction with this agreement, the two countries continue to diversify their trading partnerships. Chile has signed comprehensive FTAs with the US, Canada, the EU, South Korea, Japan, Central America and Mexico.

Peru

Meanwhile, its trade agreement with Australia went into effect on March 6, 2009. According to Financial Times, Peru’s President Alan Garcia signed FTAs with Canada and Singapore in 2008 and expects the pacts to come into effect this month. Peru’s trade deal with China should also take effect within the next few months, and agreements with South Korea, Central America, and Japan are currently under negotiation. Their advocates insist that Chile and Peru’s economies have benefited enormously from free trade, but a number of area nations and various leftist analysts are moving away from an unalloyed neo-liberal-oriented enthusiasm for this type of approach.

Washington’s Approach

The U.S. is also somewhat shifting away from the neo-liberal free trade model. “Our consensus to advance international trade is frayed,” explained senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.) at the nomination hearing of US Trade Representative nominee Ron Kirk on March 9, 2009. “Our faith in the international trading system is badly shaken.” The Obama administration has vowed to shift U.S. trade policy away from a strategy of signing new agreements to impose tougher labor and environmental standards and position them in the core of the FTA prior to the final passage of trade deals. The Office of the USTR also has issued a statement claiming that trade policy will contain a new element of “social accountability,” intending to make the trade pact part of the solution “for addressing international environmental challenges.”

In response to the current world economic crisis, however, drawn out trade agreements do not offer a timely or convincing solution to a very real problem. In order to allow for a more immediate impact on the economy, the US along with a number of South American nations have implemented Keynesian economic policies that protect domestic markets and stimulate demand. Proponents of this economic model assert that the solution to a recession is to stimulate a state’s economy through a combination of increased infrastructure spending by the government and interest rate reductions. This is exactly what President Barack Obama is hoping to do with the $787 billion economic stimulus package he signed into law on February 17, 2009. Within the US, the stimulus package has received criticism for not addressing the finance and mortgage situation, not being big enough and quick enough, as well as neglecting to provide enough stimuli for the private sector, and to protect the public from senior personnel gouging taxpayer funds by means of ill-earned bonuses by ethically challenged financial officers.

Internationally, the biggest criticism regarding trade policy has been the “Buy American” provision. Although Obama amended this language so that Washington would not violate trade agreements and international trade laws, the plan still favors US steel, iron, and manufactured goods for infrastructural projects. While the US will not be found disrupting its trade relations with Canada and Mexico, US steel and iron will be able to maintain their preferences over the largest emerging economies, such as Brazil, India, and China. Some economists fear that if the US is able to close its market from these nations, the affected developing countries may be forced to decide to close their own borders, with their 2 billion or so consumers, to American exports, and thus ignite a trade war. World Trade Organization (WTO) director, General Pascal Lamy remains cautious over the provision. After Obama watered down the language, Lamy said, “We all know the devil isn’t in the details, it’s in the implementation.”

Those Who Stimulate: Brazil

Brazil, Colombia, and Chile are also implementing Keynesian national stimulus packages, though on a much smaller scale when compared to that of the US Brasilia’s $281 billion deal is focused primarily on supporting the energy and transportation sectors of South America’s largest economy, according to Prabir De of Indian Express Finance. In December 2008, Brazil also announced 2009 tax cuts of 8.4 billion reais (US $3.6 billion), directed primarily at the obligations borne consumers. According to Brazzil Mag, the measure also included a tax reduction provided on the Tax on Industrialized products for the Brazilian auto industry until March 31, 2009. The carmakers agreed to transfer the tax cuts to reduce the prices charged to their customers, making prices for their vehicles considerably cheaper.

Colombia

The Brazilians are not the only South Americans attempting to jump start their economy. Colombia’s plan represents the largest annual infrastructure spending in its history. The 55 trillion peso (US$22 billion) stimulus plan includes over 100 electricity, transportation, oil, and sanitation projects, according to Latin Finance. Colombia’s economy is predicted to grow less than 2 percent this year, and the stimulus is expected to allow it to weather the storm, according to Carolina Rentaria, head of Colombia’s National Planning Department.

Chile

Chile will also break its record for economic stimulus spending this year, as President Michelle Bachelet announced a $4 billion scenario to curtail the effects of the global recession on January 6, 2009. The primary aim of the stimulus is to create the conditions for economic growth as well as to generate 100,000 new jobs. As Davor Luksic of The Americas Society reports, the stimulus focuses on tax rebates and subsidies, such as $1 billion for Codelco, the country’s giant state-owned copper producer. The January plan followed a $1.15 billion spending bill, which was passed in November 2008, and was intended to stimulate lending to small businesses and middle-income households. Santiago is also mulling over temporarily cutting the 19 percent value-added tax (VAT) and adding a one-time payment to low-income families as a third economic stimulus, according to a Reuters report.

Although stimulus packages do not include explicit protectionist mandates, such as tariffs and anti-dumping measures, several developing nations have argued that fiscal stimulants and bailouts (especially to large bank and auto bailouts in the US and Europe) may be having an adverse effect on international trade. At a WTO Trade Policy Review Body meeting, developing countries were concerned about large subsidies being made to individual industries, such as U.S. steel fabricators. At the same meeting, Brazilian Ambassador Roberto Azevedo told journalists that protectionism includes more than just controlling imports and raising tariffs. It also includes subsidies and large stimulus packages, which are typically not available to developing nations with limited resources. Azevedo argued that industrialized nations “are increasing the capacity of their industry to compete in a way that developing countries cannot.” Since developing nations do not have the funds to implement such large scale supportive measures, their only alternative is raising tariffs.

Those Who Tariff: Argentina

As part of their economic defense strategy, Argentina, Ecuador, and Paraguay have all raised tariffs to protect their domestic markets. In November, Argentina and Brazil lobbied to raise the common tariff of MERCOSUR, the South American regional trade bloc, but Paraguay and Uruguay did not support the overtly protectionist measure. In response, Argentina unilaterally imposed tariffs on a variety of goods including shoes, appliances, farm machinery, processed food, steel, iron and textiles. Buenos Aires in turn was criticized by Brazil, China and Paraguay for its new system of licensing and minimum pricing that it has applied to over 1,000 imports in recent months. The Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest observed that Brazilian manufacturers consider that Argentina’s new policies “unfairly discriminate against their products… by delaying shipments for up to 60 days and effectively excluding imports that fail to meet the price requirements.” Yang Shidi, economic and commercial counselor of the Chinese Embassy in Argentina also condemned the import restrictions as “discriminatory,” in an interview published in La Nacion. Yang went on to assert that the new policies have hurt Chinese producers and are inconsistent with a 2004 memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Argentina and China, which acknowledges China’s market economy status.

As a result of Argentina’s restrictions and its trade deficit with Brazil, the Paraguayan government announced on March 1, that it will apply certain tariffs to imports from Argentina and Brazil in order to protect its local industry. Paraguay’s Finance Minister Dionisio Borda argued that Asunción’s treatment of Argentinean and Brazilian imports would be similar to their respective treatment of Paraguayan imports. Borda stated, “We, too, are going to apply the same measures they have adopted.” He assured the interested parties that the measures would “be temporary” and serve as part of the economic recovery plan. Paraguay is also implementing its own “Buy National” campaign similar to the US “Buy American” provision, which will give local Paraguayan goods and services a 70 percent preference, according to Borda.

Ecuador

President Rafael Correa of Ecuador is essentially forcing citizens to “Buy Ecuadoran” products with his newly imposed import restrictions. According to a WTO press release, Quito raised tariffs between 5 and 20 percent on 940 products, including perfume, liquor, shoes, shampoo, grapes, butter, turkey, caramels, cell phones, eyeglasses, sailboats, building materials and transport equipment. As prices of imported goods drastically increased, some argue that buying domestic is now the only practical choice for most Ecuadoran consumers. Correa, however, predicts that the tariffs will have only a minor impact on citizens, because “the poor don’t consume perfumes, liquor and chocolates.”

Ecuador’s new tariffs have been criticized as one of the world’s most protectionist responses to the global economic crisis. Gary Hufbauer, of the conservative Peterson Institute for International Economics, argues that no other country has harsher restrictions on imports. Correa said drastic measures were necessary to prevent Ecuador’s economy from crumbling, as petroleum prices declined and remittances and earnings on foreign investment plunged. It should be noted that Ecuador is extremely vulnerable in the current situation because it adopted the US dollar as its official currency in 2000 after the country was beset by a withering banking crisis. This prevents Quito from printing its own money. Ultimately, this could prove to be problematic if Ecuador’s trade deficit widens because its economy could collapse due to a drainage of US dollars. Correa hopes that the restrictions will keep $1.46 billion from exiting Ecuador’s $50 billion economy, according to Jeanneth Valdivieso and Frank Bajak of the Associated Press. Some economists are also calling for the creation of a national currency to replace or supplement the dollar, in order for Ecuador to maintain a more sound monetary policy.

Paraguay

Although tariffs are seen as short term solutions, they can have long term consequences. For instance, some economists argue that tariffs and price controls have the potential to trigger global “trade wars,” as witnessed in Paraguay’s response to Argentina’s imposed tariffs. They also agree that protectionist measures, such as Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, prolonged the Great Depression longer than may have been necessary. Thus, newly imposed tariffs should only be counted on to provide temporary relief (much like an economic stimulus), and they should be re-evaluated as the beginning signs of a recovery appear.

A Global Solution to a Global Problem

As the economic crisis continues to globalize, South American nations are pursuing various trade deals, implementing economic stimulus packages, and imposing new tariffs in response. All of these individual national efforts seek to soften the blow delivered by the downturn, but it is unlikely that they alone will solve the problem. Latin American stocks have plummeted and the International Labor Organization has issued a warning that 2.4 million Latin Americans shortly could join the ranks of the unemployed this year as a result of the incessant crisis. Nevertheless, the catastrophe extends far beyond Latin America and the entire Western Hemisphere, and thus there is dire need for global collective action. The G-20 summit in London that begins in a few days, offers a good deal of potential to develop a concerted response. At this point, the only thing the world’s economies seem to agree on is that the financial regulatory system needs to be reformed, but exactly to what extent, continues to be a serious concern. Developing nations want greater governance over the operation of the international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). They also agree that the IMF needs to be rendered more flexible in terms of the conditionalities it imposes on countries receiving financial aid.

Developing nations also fear that they will be “crowded out” by developed nations in terms of access to loans and investment capital. Latin American finance ministers have called for a recapitalization of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), currently the largest lender in Latin America for major development projects. The World Bank is proposing a Vulnerability Fund that would similarly focus on infrastructure projects and maintaining adequate financing of schools, health care, and loans for small businesses for low income elements of the population.

The US is also calling for greater financial regulation, while simultaneously calling on the EU to engage in greater government spending and in economic stimulus programs. The EU, much like Latin America, feels as though it is being forced to clean up a mess that originated mainly in the US There is a fear that the G-20 summit will be spoiled due to delegates bringing with them contrasting objectives and with only 24 hours to rush through the chaotic agenda. One can only hope that the world powers listen to the worthy voices of developing nations and work together to overcome the global crisis. If the former don’t, the real problems will really begin.

Keep Pressure on for Single-Payer Solution

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 04:45:00 +0000

3-30-09, 11:33 am

WASHINGTON, D.C.-- Following its successful town hall meeting with Rep. John Conyers in Northampton, MA, last week, PDA is moving south to sponsor a rally in support of the single-payer solution outside the White House Regional Health Forum tomorrow, March 31, in Greensboro, NC.

The rally will begin at 9 a.m. outside the North Carolina A&T Alumni Foundation Event Center, 200 N. Benbow Road, in Greensboro.

The purposes of the rally are to demonstrate to the White House the broad public support (including 59% of doctors) for the single-payer solution to America's healthcare crisis and to make sure that single-payer is given a fair hearing by the Obama administration's healthcare policy task force and by Congress.

“Health costs are now the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in this country and a limiting factor in U.S. business competitiveness,” said Tim Carpenter, PDA's executive director. “Every other developed country in the world has a national healthcare program because, like Medicare here, they cost less in overhead and provide more services. Nevertheless, the U.S. government insists on supporting the for-profit insurance approach to healthcare largely because well financed lobbyists from the private insurance companies exert a great deal of influence. We're determined to break that cycle.”

PDA, along with more than 70 co-sponsors in the House, supports Conyers' HR 676 to create a national single-payer system that would guarantee care for all while reining in the spiraling cost of healthcare in the U.S.

Progressive Democrats of America is one of the nation's fastest-growing grassroots political organizations; it has active chapters in 45 states. PDA is dedicated to reviving the progressive tradition of the Democratic Party through grassroots organizing and working with elected Democrats to advance peace, justice and social, economic and environmental responsibility. More information is available at: .

Gas Stations and Environmental Hazards

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 01:49:00 +0000

3-30-09, 8:38 am

EarthTalk From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: I am looking at possibly buying a house that is very close to a gasoline station. Is it safe to live so close to a gas station? What concerns should I have? I have toddler and infant babies. -- Ranjeeta, Houston, TX

Despite all the modern health and safety guidelines they must follow, gas stations can still pose significant hazards to neighbors, especially children. Some of the perils include ground-level ozone caused in part by gasoline fumes, groundwater hazards from petroleum products leaking into the ground, and exposure hazards from other chemicals that might be used at the station if it’s also a repair shop.

Ozone pollution is caused by a mixture of volatile organic compounds, some of which are found in gasoline vapors, and others, like carbon monoxide, that come from car exhaust. Most gas pumps today must have government-regulated vapor-recovery boots on their nozzles, which limit the release of gas vapors while you’re refueling your car. A similar system is used by the station when a tanker arrives to refill the underground tanks. But if those boots aren’t working properly, the nearly odorless hydrocarbon fumes, which contain harmful chemicals like benzene, can be released into the air.

Higher ozone levels can lead to respiratory problems and asthma, while benzene is a known cancer-causing chemical, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The quest to reduce ozone levels has led the state of California to implement a more stringent vapor-recovery law, effective April 1, 2009, which requires that all gasoline pumps have a new, more effective vapor-recovery nozzle.

Underground gasoline storage tanks can also be a problem. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that there are some 660,000 of them from coast-to-coast. Many a lawsuit has been filed against oil firms in communities across the country by people whose soil and groundwater were fouled by a gas station’s leaking underground storage tank. In the past, most tanks were made of uncoated steel, which will rust over time. Also, pipes leading to the tanks can be accidentally ruptured.

When thousands of gallons of gasoline enter the soil, chemicals travel to groundwater, which the EPA says is the source of drinking water for nearly half the U.S. If buying a home, consider its potential loss in value if a nearby underground storage tank were to leak. Gasoline additives such as methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE), which has been outlawed in some states, make the water undrinkable—and that is only one of 150 chemicals in gasoline. Repeated high exposure to gasoline, whether in liquid or vapor form, can cause lung, brain and kidney damage, according to the NIH’s National Library of Medicine.

Spilled or vaporized gasoline is not the only chemical hazard if the station is also a repair shop. Mechanics use solvents, antifreeze and lead products, and may work on vehicles that have asbestos in brakes or clutches. Auto refinishers and paint shops use even more potentially harmful chemicals.

In today’s car-centric world, we can’t escape exposure completely, because these chemicals are in our air just about everywhere. But by choosing where we live, keeping an eye out for spills, and pressuring the oil companies to do the right thing for the communities they occupy, we can minimize our exposures.

CONTACTS: U.S. EPA, www.epa.gov; National Institutes of Health, www.nih.gov.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php. EarthTalk is now a book! Details and order information at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalkbook.

Why Immigrant Workers Will Fill the Streets This May Day

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 01:46:00 +0000

Original source: Truthout.org

In a little over a month, hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of people will fill the streets in city after city, town after town, across the US. This year these May Day marches of immigrant workers will make an important demand on the Obama administration: End the draconian enforcement policies of the Bush administration. Establish a new immigration policy based on human rights and recognition of the crucial economic and social contributions of immigrants to US society.

This year's marches will continue the recovery in the US of the celebration of May Day, recognized in the rest of the world as the day recognizing the contributions and achievements of working people. That recovery started on Monday, May 1, 2006, when over a million people filled the streets of Los Angeles, with hundreds of thousands more in Chicago, New York and cities and towns throughout the United States. Again on May Day in 2007 and 2008, immigrants and their supporters demonstrated and marched, from coast to coast.

One sign found in almost every march said it all: 'We are Workers, not Criminals!' Often it was held in the calloused hands of men and women who looked as though they'd just come from work in a factory, cleaning an office building or picking grapes. The sign stated an obvious truth. Millions of people have come to the United States to work, not to break its laws. Some have come with visas, and others without them. But they are all contributors to the society they've found here.

The protests have seemed spontaneous, but they come as a result of years of organizing, educating and agitating - activities that have given immigrants confidence, and at least some organizations the credibility needed to mobilize direct mass action. This movement is the legacy of Bert Corona, immigrant rights pioneer and founder of many national Latino organizations. He trained thousands of immigrant activists, taught the value of political independence, and believed that immigrants themselves must conduct the fight for immigrant rights. Most of the leaders of the radical wing of today's immigrant rights movement were students or disciples of Corona.

Immigrants, however, feel their backs are against the wall, and they came out of their homes and workplaces to show it. In part, their protests respond to a wave of draconian proposals to criminalize immigration status, and work itself for undocumented people. But the protests do more than react to a particular congressional or legislative agenda. They are the cumulative response to years of bashing and denigrating immigrants generally, and Mexicans and Latinos in particular.

In 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act made it a crime, for the first time in US history, to hire people without papers. Defenders argued that if people could not legally work they would leave. Life was not so simple.

Undocumented people are part of the communities they live in. They cannot simply go, nor should they. They seek the same goals of equality and opportunity that working people in the US have historically fought to achieve. In addition, for most immigrants, there are no jobs to return to in the countries from which they've come. Rufino Dominguez, a Oaxacan community leader in Fresno, California, says, 'The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) made the price of corn so low that it's not economically possible to plant a crop anymore. We come to the US to work because there's no alternative.' After Congress passed NAFTA, six million displaced people came to the US as a result.

Instead of recognizing this reality, the US government has attempted to make holding a job a criminal act. Some states and local communities, seeing a green light from the Department of Homeland Security, have passed measures that go even further. Last summer, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff proposed a rule requiring employers to fire any worker who couldn't correct a mismatch between the Social Security number the worker had provided an employer and the SSA database. The regulation assumes those workers have no valid immigration visa, and therefore no valid Social Security number.

With 12 million people living in the US without legal immigration status, the regulation would lead to massive firings, bringing many industries and businesses to a halt. Citizens and legal visa holders would be swept up as well, since the Social Security database is often inaccurate. Under Chertoff, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement has conducted sweeping workplace raids, arresting and deporting thousands of workers. Many have been charged with an additional crime - identity theft - because they used a Social Security number belonging to someone else to get a job. Yet, workers using another number actually deposit money into Social Security funds, and will never collect benefits their contributions paid for.

The Arizona legislature has passed a law requiring employers to verify the immigration status of every worker through a federal database called E-Verify, which is even more incomplete and full of errors than Social Security. They must fire workers whose names get flagged. And Mississippi passed a bill making it a felony for an undocumented worker to hold a job, with jail time of 1-10 years, fines of up to $10,000, and no bail for anyone arrested. Employers get immunity.

Many of these punitive measures were incorporated into proposals for 'comprehensive immigration reform' that were debated in Congress in 2006 and 2007. The comprehensive bills combined increased enforcement, especially criminalization of work for the undocumented, with huge guest worker programs under which large employers would recruit temporary labor under contract outside the US, bringing workers into the country in a status that would deny them basic rights and social equality. While those proposals failed in Congress, the Bush administration implemented some of their most draconian provisions by executive order and administrative action.

Together, these factors have produced a huge popular response, which has become most visible in the annual marches and demonstrations on May Day. Nativo Lopez, president of both the Mexican American Political Association and the Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana, says 'the huge number of immigrants and their supporters in the streets found these compromises completely unacceptable. We will only get what we're ready to fight for, but people are ready and willing to fight for the whole enchilada. Washington legislators and lobbyists fear the growth of a new civil rights movement in the streets, because it rejects their compromises and makes demands that go beyond what they have defined as 'politically possible.''

The marches have put forward an alternative set of demands, which include a real legal status for the 12 million undocumented people in the US, the right to organize to raise wages and gain workplace rights, increased availability of visas that give immigrants some degree of social equality, especially visas based on family reunification, no expansion of guest worker programs, and a guarantee of human rights to immigrants, especially in communities along the US/Mexican border.

At the same time, the price of trying to push people out of the US who've come here for survival is that the vulnerability of undocumented workers will increase. Unscrupulous employers use that vulnerability to deny overtime pay or minimum wage, or fire workers when they protest or organize. Increased vulnerability ultimately results in cheaper labor and fewer rights for everyone. After deporting over 1,000 workers at Swift meatpacking plants, Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff called for linking 'effective interior enforcement and a temporary-worker program.'' The government's goal is cheap labor for large employers. Deportations, firings and guest worker programs all make labor cheaper and contribute to a climate of fear and insecurity for all workers.

The May 1 actions highlight the economic importance of immigrant labor. Undocumented workers deserve legal status because of that labor - their inherent contribution to society. The value they create is never called illegal, and no one dreams of taking it away from the employers who profit from it. Yet the people who produce that value are called exactly that - illegal. All workers create value through their labor, but immigrant workers are especially profitable, because they are so often denied many of the union-won benefits accorded to native-born workers. The average undocumented worker has been in the US for five years. By that time, these workers have paid a high price for their lack of legal status, through low wages and lost benefits.

'Undocumented workers deserve immediate legal status, and have already paid for it,' Lopez says.

On May 1, the absence of immigrant workers from workplaces, schools and stores demonstrates their power in the national immigration debate and sends a powerful message that they will not be shut out of the debate over their status. They have rescued from anonymity the struggle for the eight-hour day, begun in Chicago over a century ago by the immigrants of yesteryear. They overcame the legacy of the cold war, in which celebrations of May Day were attacked and banned. They are recovering the traditions of all working people for the people of the United States.

--David Bacon is a writer and photographer. His new book, 'Illegal People - How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants,' was just published by Beacon Press.

US Media Silences Support of Cuba and the Cuban Five

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 05:19:00 +0000

3-28-09, 12:09 pm

HAVANA, Cuba, March 28 (acn) An unprecedented event in the history of the United States, a gesture of solidarity with Cuba and the Cuban Five, has been silenced by the US media, reported Granma newspaper.

In a commentary entitled “Ten Nobel Laureates Address the US Supreme Court' Granma states that on March 6, twelve amicus curiae briefs were presented to the US Supreme Court in support of a January 30 petition presented by Cuban Five defense lawyers to re-examine the case.

The petition represented the largest number of amicus ever presented before the US Supreme Court for the revision of a trial, and is signed by 10 Nobel Prize winners: José Ramos Horta, President of East Timor; Adolfo Pérez Esquivel; Rigoberta Menchú; José Saramago; Wole Soyinka; Zhores Alferov; Nadine Gordimer; Günter Grass; Darío Fo; and Máiread Corrigan Maguire.

It also includes the support of the entire Mexican Senate; the Panamanian National Assembly; Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland (1992-97); and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997-2002), who signed the amicus presented to the US Court. Joining them were hundreds of legislators from around the world, as well as organizations of lawyers and legislators.

Granma highlighted that this event would have made headlines in newspapers and radio and television newscasts in the United States and in any other part of the planet, if it weren’t related to an irrefutable and also unprecedented act: the support of Cuba and the Cuban Five, unjustly imprisoned in the US for fighting terrorism against their country and in the world.

The publication pointed out that the self-proclaimed champions of freedom of speech, the United States, has surrounded the case in a veil of silence.

From the Cuban News Agency

Canada and the G20 – State-Monopoly Capital Fights for Advantage

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 05:16:00 +0000

3-28-09, 10:05 pm

Original source: Focus on Socialism

Prime Minister Harper will head to the London G20 on April 2nd boasting of Canada’s superior banking system that he says will pull the country out of recession faster than any other country on earth. Harper’s boast is made even as Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page told MP’s on March 28th that the Canadian economy is contracting faster than the predictions of Conservative Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney. Page told Parliamentarians that his departments scrutiny of government data and private forecasters predict that GDP will decline by 8.5 percent in the first quarter of 2009 and 3.5 percent in the second quarter, contradicting the Harper Government’s claim that the economy would decline 0.08 percent in 2009 and actually expand in the first quarter of 2010. Page also predicted that the government deficit will be $38 billion in 2010-2011 not the $33.75 billion claimed by Flaherty. The Parliamentary budget officer also predicted that unemployment will increase by another 385,000 by June 2009 bringing the official overall unemployment rate close to 8 percent. The Harper Government’s response to Page’s report to Parliament was to cut his departmental budget, refuse to provide him with vital government data and to refer all public requests for information to an out of date Government website loaded with Conservative Party propaganda.

Page is not alone in exposing the flaws in the Harper forecasts. Former Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge also disparaged Flaherty and Carney’s rosy forecasts warning that the Conservative government’s budget stimulus won’t even be felt until 2010 and 2011. Dodge predicts it will take years to correct the global capitalist financial system. Dodge asserts the most optimistic forecast doesn’t foresee a return to pre-recession levels of capacity in production until late 2013. In his report Dodge examined trade imbalances and predicted rising consumption taxes. The latter was confirmed by the McGuinty Ontario budget that is planning a rise in combined GST/PST taxes. Dodge called for all financial institutions to build up their reserves and to agree to controls imposed on derivative and credit default swaps.

Prime Minister Harper confronts a dilemma. The captains of high finance can’t agree on what is really happening in the Canadian economy as it slides inexorably into depression. For the first time in his political career Harper’s instinct to provide knee jerk support for US Government formulas is not an option. President Barack Obama has not interfered aggressively into the US economy to save Canada. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is struggling to get Congressional approval for a half a trillion dollars to remove toxic mortgage debt from US banks and to implement a $787 billion stimulus package. The US sweet heart deal means for every $100 in toxic mortgages purchased from banks, the private sector will put up $7, the government puts up $7 and the remaining $86 would be covered by a government loan provided by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Christina Romer, chairwoman of the US White House Council of Economic Advisers told CBS' The Early Show Monday March 23rd. “We're not trying to rescue everyone. We're trying to rescue the system.' A similar bailout has taken place in Britain where last October Prime Minister Gordon Brown flooded collapsing British Banks with 500 billion pounds sterling to little effect as several of Great Britain’s leading banks collapsed in ruin. The comparable figures in Canada are $125 billion bank bailout and a $40 billion stimulus.

All of the leaders of the capitalist states are “trying to rescue the system” by adopting massive bank bail outs while at the same time fighting among themselves to impose regulations on banks and financial institutions that are responsible for triggering the crisis in the first place. They just can’t agree on how to do it. The April 2nd meeting was preceded by the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governor’s meeting of March 14. The Central Bankers and Finance Ministers issued a joint communiqué. That should mean that all those attending agree with its central thesis. That is far from the case.

Point two of the G20 finance ministers’ and central bank governor’s communiqué states: “Our key priority now is to restore lending by tackling, where needed, problems in the financial system head on, through continued liquidity support, bank recapitalization and dealing with impaired assets, through a common framework. We reaffirm our commitment to take all necessary actions to ensure the soundness of systemically important institutions.” Point three of the communiqué claims that fiscal expansion provided at the previous Washington G20 meeting, supports growth and jobs. Where has that happened? Unemployment has increased in all of the G7 countries since the banker bailouts. In spite of their miserable failure, brazenly the central bankers and finance ministers declare: “We are committed to deliver the scale of sustained effort necessary to restore growth, and call on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to assess the actions taken and the actions required. We will ensure the restoration of growth and long-run fiscal sustainability.” The G20 April Meeting will do nothing of the kind. The G20 will reveal deep inter-imperialist divisions and the clash of separate global ambitions of Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Canada and the USA. A variety of regional interests lead by such emerging capitalist economies as Russia, Brazil and India, will be contending for influence. Looming over the entire event will be The People’s Republic of China, a mixed socialist-capitalist economy and the only member of the G20 that is still recording growth and that commands critical influence over the debt crisis in the USA.

The G20 slogans against protectionism and appealing for a global solution to the economic crisis of capitalism are imperialist slogans calling upon the working class to assist the capitalists to rescue the capitalist system. The slogans of the leading capitalist states are designed to separate the working class from the nation. Assailing protectionism is nothing more than an imperialist appeal to subordinate people’s sovereignty over the destiny of the countries involved.

What the leaders of the G20 have in mind as a role for the IMF is fully exposed in what is happening to Iceland, Latvia, Hungary, Rumania, Ukraine and Czechoslovakia.

In the former socialist east, in exchange for IMF bail outs, the “new capitalists” of the former socialist states must accept instructions from their US-British-French and Canadian betters to burden their working people with more decades of heavy labour, further reduce spending on social programs, give up the last vestiges of sovereign control over their economies and natural resources and spend hefty portions of any IMF loans they may receive on NATO military projects on their sovereign territory. The Canadian banks, swollen with capital provided by Finance Minister Flaherty, will be there skulking about to see what ‘deals” can be had for investor insiders eager to plunder the weakened once viable socialist economies.

And what about the US-EU-and British bankrupt banks the Wall Street-Canary Wharf citadels of finance capital, now teetering and in ruins? These are the “systemically important financial institutions” that collaborated with rogue capital to roam the world in a frenzy of greed wrecking the global capitalist financial system? They are already forgiven, propped up, refinanced and encouraged to do it all over again, this time with some rules and properly chastised to show more discretion.

What militant worker, labour leader or Communist believes such balderdash? Incredibly some do and advise workers their only option is back one of the variants that will emerge from the G20. “Back our team – we are the home team?”

Opportunism on the left today is to assert that workers have to choose between one of the capitalist variants that will appear at the G20 attempting to save the profit system. It is not the task of the left to assist the capitalist system out of its crisis. It is the task of the left to take advantage of the crisis to advance the cause of socialism. Some Communist leaders disagree. They assert that socialism is not on the agenda, and that our task is to back the lesser of the evils as the crisis deepens.

When since the advent of capitalism has socialism not been on the agenda? Militancy today is to advance a labour program for the nation! Labour militants condemn and repudiate all of the capitalist formulas as providing nothing more than a mitigation of the suffering of the working people – not a solution!

NATO: After 60 Years, Out of Area or Out of Business?

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 05:14:00 +0000

3-28-09, 10:00 pm

Original source: Berlin, March 27, 2009 – On the morning of April 4th, some twenty heads of state (including US President Barack Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel) will shake hands for a photo-op on the bridge across the Rhine River that connects the German town of Kehl with Strasbourg in France, seat of the European Parliament and the Council of Europe. At this, the 60th anniversary of the NATO Alliance, which France has recently rejoined, the heads of NATO states will consider ratifying a new Strategic Concept for NATO as a military force intervening in countries around the world. The preceding night the NATO heads of state will attend a gala dinner in the German spa resort city of Baden-Baden. On both sides of the Rhine, President Obama and the other NATO heads of state will be greeted by demonstrations expected to be at least as large as those that met President Bush at the G8 Summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, in 2007. Since last June, activists from at least 20 European countries and the US (including intellectuals, scholars, trade unionists, and people of all ages and walks of life) have been planning the demonstrations. Now they are contending with massive police and military security preparations in France and in Germany. So far, the protesters have not yet received permission form the French authorities for a peaceful demonstration in the city center of Strasbourg to oppose decisions by NATO heads of state that will have an impact on European citizens far into the future. Some 900 security personnel are to be flown in from the US to accompany President Obama, who will be staying at the Strasbourg Hilton. More than 30,000 German and French police and military personnel have been engaged to suppress the protests in 'security precautions' that even exceed those for the visits of President George W. Bush to Stralsund, Germany, in 2006 and to Heiligendamm in 2007. Already last week, 450 anti-NATO demonstrators were arrested on March 21st near NATO headquarters in Belgium. French and German citizens have been issued curfews, and many must carry special badges just to enter their own neighborhoods. Citizens have even been ordered by police to remove peace flags from their windows. There are indications that the German and French police and military are receiving their orders directly from US Homeland Security. NATO is on the threshold of a fundamental reconfiguration. The Strasbourg NATO Summit will be the official start of the discussion on a new Strategic Concept that will define the direction of NATO for the years to come. NATO was founded in 1949 during the Cold War with a mandate to defend the member nations on their own soil. Rather than disbanding NATO at the end of the Cold War, the US and other world leaders have pursued an expansionist agenda since 1991, including “out of area” wars in the Balkans and in Afghanistan/Pakistan, along with escalating military budgets: NATO countries now account for 75 percent of global military expenditure.. Under US leadership, NATO seeks to make decisions regarding military missions without agreement by the United Nations. In Strasbourg some NATO leaders will even seek to abolish the consensus decision-making process within NATO itself, thus forcing 'unwilling' nations in NATO to go along with wars with which they disagree. At the same time, more countries are being offered NATO membership in an effort to encircle Russia and strategically important areas in the Middle East. Proponents and opponents of NATO both view the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to which the US is committing significantly more troops, as a key test for the “out of area” intervention concept. Large numbers of European citizens do not want their countries to be drawn into wars, whether through paying for the costs or through contributing soldiers or through allowing the U.S. and/or NATO to conduct wars using military bases on European soil. According to some surveys, more than 70 percent of Germans oppose the Afghanistan war, but German citizens were not allowed to carry any protest banners when presidential candidate Obama spoke in Berlin last July. French citizens have long been proud of some measure of independence from the US, and many strongly disagree with President Sarkozy’s decision to bring France back into NATO. There have been massive protests and civil disobedience against US and NATO military bases in Italy, Greece, and Spain. In Ireland, widespread public opposition forced the US to shift much of the US troop transport away from Shannon commercial airport to the Leipzig commercial airport in Germany. And the Czech government fell on March 24th, in large measure due to opposition to the government’s support of the proposed US “Star Wars” radar base that is opposed by ca. 70 percent of Czech citizens. (Following the NATO Summit in Strasburg, President Obama will travel to Prague for a US-European Union Summit on April 5th, where he will also be met by protests.) Anti-NATO protesters’ plans in France and in Germany April 1st to 5th include: - a camp near Strasbourg April 1st to 5th; - a hearing on the war in Afghanistan in Karlsruhe, Germany April 2nd; - a congress of leading intellectuals, activists, and representatives of European political parties in Strasbourg April 3rd and 5th; - demonstrations and civil disobedience in Baden-Baden April 3rd; - civil disobedience and, separately, a peaceful demonstration in Strasbourg April 4th. US peace organizations have endorsed the appeal for the anti-NATO demonstrations, among them the largest U.S. umbrella peace organization, United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ – with more than 1000 member organizations), and Code Pink. For the full text of the NATO appeal and endorsing organizations in the US and in 32 other countries, see http://www.no-to-nato.org/en/appeal/ Speakers from the US who will be in Strasbourg include Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), Joseph Gerson of American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and the international No Bases Network, Jacqueline Cabasso of Mayors for Peace and the Western States Legal Foundation, and Matthis Chiroux, a member of Iraq Veterans against the War (IVAW) who was in Afghanistan. Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky is sending a videotaped speech. The many international guests who will be speaking in Strasbourg include Tariq Ali from the United Kingdom, Malalai Joya from Afghanistan, and Tadaaki Kawata from Japan. Websites with information about the NATO protests/congress in English:

http://www.no-to-nato.org/ http://www.gipfelsoli.org/ http://wri-irg.org/node/6990 http://www.vredesactie.be/article.php?id=56 http://www.natozu.de/index.php?id=28 http://www.block-nato.org/index_en.htm http://linksunten.indymedia.org

Studies on NATO from the Information Center on Militarization in Tübingen, Germany (in English translation): http://www.imi-online.de/2009.php3?id=1930

Buy American and the Recovery Program: Now What?

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 05:06:00 +0000

3-28-09, 11:55 am

Original source: Economic Policy Institute

In February 2008, the US Air Force stunned the aerospace industry, many members of Congress, and thousands of Boeing workers in Washington State and Kansas when it awarded its $35 billion contract to build a midair refueling tanker to the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company and Northrop Grumman. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked, did the Pentagon give “sufficient consideration to the impact of the contract award on jobs in America…”? The answer, according to an assistant secretary at the US Department of Defense was that the Air Force gave it no consideration at all. With job losses reaching epic numbers and Congress debating an economic recovery package that will provide billions of dollars to rebuild the U.S. infrastructure, such consideration must be part of government spending decisions.

“Jobs” should be the mantra for any policy maker looking to restore the nation’s economy. As jobs are eliminated month after month, consumption is falling, retail sales are shrinking, more homes are going to foreclosure, and tax revenues are declining sharply. Having surged to 8.1 percent this past month, the unemployment rate is expected to climb still higher. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) will help, but Congress needs to find more ways to prime the pump and create American jobs now.

The US government has for many years spent hundreds of billions of dollars a year on private sector labor, goods, and services. Now that Congress has enacted the economic recovery program, billions more will be spent on equipment, labor, and services for “shovel-ready” projects involving our nation’s infrastructure. Such government expenditures ought to maximize efforts to reinvigorate the manufacturing sector, which has been decimated over the past few years. This won’t happen unless the President and Congress implement the recovery program by utilizing strong measures to ensure that expenditures directly contribute to domestic employment. As past experience indicates, little or no consideration is usually given to directing government spending in a way that will promote the employment of US workers. Unfortunately, the EADS-Northrop Grumman deal is more the rule than the exception.

The concept of using government programs to directly promote job creation is hardly novel. One of the government responses to the Great Depression was the enactment of the Buy American Act in 1933, which required the federal government to support domestic workers by purchasing goods made in the US. The Act states: “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, and unless the head of the department or independent establishment concerned shall determine it to be inconsistent with the public interest, or the cost to be unreasonable, only such unmanufactured articles, materials, and supplies as have been mined or produced in the United States, and only such manufactured articles, materials, and supplies as have been manufactured in the United States substantially all from articles, materials, or supplies mined, produced, or manufactured, as the case may be, in the United States, shall be acquired for public use…” 41 USC Sec. 10(a). Domestic sourcing requirements like those in the Buy American Act are critical to our recovery, and Congress should be applauded for including them in the ARRA.

It is not adequate, however, merely to adopt well-intentioned domestic sourcing laws. Despite its intent, vaguely written waivers to the Buy American Act create huge loopholes through which jobs can be exported to other countries – paid for by US taxpayers. At present, grounds for waivers include: a finding that the cost of the domestic end product would be unreasonable without a waiver, that domestic end products are not reasonably available in sufficient commercial quantities of a satisfactory quality; or that a domestic preference would be inconsistent with the public interest. Notably, the impact of a waiver on US employment is not a factor in determining whether to grant a waiver. This is particularly problematic with respect to waivers based on “public interest” given that a waiver’s impact on reducing U.S. employment could undermine the public interest rationale on which the waiver is based. Thus, a concise definition is needed to determine what is “inconsistent with the public interest,” and this must take into account both short and long term impacts on domestic employment.

The waiver process should also be improved by clarifying the term “unreasonable costs.” The definition of this term should be restrictive enough to give most domestic bidders preference over their foreign competitors. The cost analysis should exclude from consideration factors related to start up costs for domestic production. Further, federal agencies should be required to determine whether domestic production could be initiated to meet procurement needs and how adding to global competition and supply would impact the long term cost analysis.

Products should also be required to be at least 75 percent US-made in order to qualify under the Buy American Act as domestic. (Content is generally 50 percent under current law.) This requirement should act as an incentive to contractors to initiate domestic production, as well as to bring offshored work back home. Domestic content calculations should also be limited to tangible items such as raw materials, production, components, parts, and assembly. Costs associated with non-tangible items such as intellectual property rights and patent rights, should be excluded. Current domestic content requirements are vague, reflect a myriad of interpretations, lack uniformity, and do not always comport with a common sense understanding of “made in America.”

Federal agencies and state and local governments must be held accountable for their decisions with respect to domestic sourcing, particularly if a decision to waive domestic sourcing involves funds provided by the newly enacted stimulus package. Public reporting through the Federal Register and timely postings on public websites like Recovery.gov should be required every time a waiver of domestic sourcing is requested. Reporting requirements should also be imposed with respect to decisions on these waiver requests. The government should use its central website for posting federal, state, and local waiver requests as well as the determination of those requests. In addition, the number and details (e.g., category of job, pay rate, location) about jobs that are supported by federal funding should be publicly reported on the central website. Precise employment information of this nature is critical for the government to determine if its efforts are contributing to sustainable job creation, one of the overall goals of the recovery program.

The federal government needs to embrace wholeheartedly the goal of creating good jobs in the United States. Including domestic sourcing requirements, like those reflected in the Buy American Act, strengthening enforcement of such requirements, and creating transparency in all aspects of the program will go a long way towards achieving that goal and strengthening the role of government as an engine of economic growth.

--Owen E. Herrnstadt is Director of Trade and Globalization for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

A 12-point Program to Reverse the Economic Crisis

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 02:53:00 +0000

3-27-09, 9:42 am

Original source: People's Weekly World

Because of the election of Barack Obama, the American people in their great majority have a leg up, but there is still a long way to go. To his credit, the new president is off to a quick start. In less than three months in office he has:

* Issued an order to close Guantanamo prison and end torture.

* Signed the Lilly Ledbetter bill, giving much greater scope to workers’ discrimination claims.

* Opened up a greatly needed dialogue with the Muslim and Arab world, including overtures to Syria and Iran.

* Ordered the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq no later than 2011.

* Rolled out a new framework for diplomacy and conflict resolution, notwithstanding an escalation of troops to Afghanistan, which we oppose.

* Reinstated Davis-Bacon Act provisions requiring paying prevailing (union scale) wages on public works projects.

* Changed the framework for nuclear nonproliferation and dismantlement in a very positive way.

* Reversed many Bush administration rulings that have been so harmful to the environment.

* Took some steps to reverse draconian policies toward Cuba.

* Dropped some of the worst aspects of our immigration policy.

* Placed health care at the top of the administration’s agenda.

* Supported new Labor Secretary Hilda Solis’ rulings overturning many anti-labor directives of the Bush years.

I could go on, but I think it is obvious that the Obama administration represents a qualitative break with right-wing extremism and free market fundamentalism.

Not to see this, not to acknowledge this, not to welcome this, no matter whether you live in or outside U.S. borders, is to act like the ostrich that sticks its head in the sand and misses what is happening on the ground.

Immediate challenge

As important as the initiatives are, the immediate challenge for the White House is to revive and then sustain economic activity. So far, the Obama administration has correctly ruled out some standard answers for addressing this economic crisis.

To begin with, no one in the administration thinks the economy on its own will return to near-full capacity and full employment.

Nor does anyone think that the Republican Party prescription to freeze spending is worth a moment’s consideration.

Nor can you find anyone in the White House who believes that the debt overhang — the enormous debt accumulated over nearly three decades — can be reduced except in the long term.

Nor can you find in the administration or among progressive Democrats in Congress anyone who subscribes to the notion that fine-tuning with standard monetary and fiscal tools is enough.

Finally, no one in the Oval Office sees punishing homebuyers as an anti-crisis measure. The fact is that homeowners and especially sub-prime borrowers are neither the cause nor responsible in any way for the housing market collapse.

Moreover, as Joe Sims has laid bare in his article, “How Racism Sparked Capitalism’s Financial Crisis,” this Wall Street/Washington-nurtured crisis is steeped in cynical and virulent racism.

Lagging demand

Obama understands that the near- and medium-term problem is lagging demand for goods and services, in other words, insufficient purchasing power in the hands of working people — high income, low income and no income.

The president's stimulus package goes in this direction. Despite what Republicans say, it is a good measure that will ease the pain of this crisis, create jobs and begin to re-inflate the economy.

The president also understands that the economy has to be restructured if it has any possibility of rebounding in a sustained way. The stimulus package combines elements of stimulus and restructuring, as does his budget, which accents tax shifts and public-sector-led investment in health care, education and energy efficiency.

His plans to institute a new set of regulations on financial markets and his commitment to green jobs, energy and technology are also meant to fuse stimulus and restructuring objectives together.

More far-reaching steps needed

Given the depth and scope of this crisis, in my view, the administration will inevitably have to consider some more far-reaching measures.

At the top of my list are:

1. Counter-crisis spending of a bigger size and scope to invigorate and sustain a full recovery and meet human needs — something the New Deal never accomplished.

2. Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act in order to rebalance power between labor and capital in the economic and political arenas.

3. Managed trade and trade agreements that have at their core the protection and advancement of international working class interests.

4. Equality in conditions of life for racial minorities and women.

5. Amnesty, easy path to citizenship and full democratic rights for undocumented immigrants.

6. Turning education, child care and health care into “no profit” zones.

7. Rerouting investment capital from unproductive investment (military, finance and so forth) to productive investment in a green economy and public infrastructure.

8. Changing the direction of our nation’s foreign policy toward cooperation, disarmament and diplomacy.

9. A full-scale assault on global warming.

10. A serious and sustained commitment to assisting the developing countries, which are locked in poverty and misery.

11. Global cooperation on a new level and with a new content. The era of U.S. imperialism dictating to the world is over; in fact, no state has the political, economic and ideological capital to exercise a dominant influence on world developments. The world is multipolar and that isn’t going to change any time soon, especially as new states emerge, China in the first place, and new configurations of regional power become new global realities.

Unlike at the end of World War II when U.S. imperialism gave stability, coherence and rules to a new global capitalist order, no state today has that capacity, resources or legitimacy. These new correlations of power on a world scale can be an opportunity or a danger. International working class unity is imperative.

12. Democratization of economic life, beginning with democratic public takeover of finance, energy and other industries whose future is problematic if left in private hands.

Democratize our financial system

Public ownership of the financial system, as well as elimination of the shadow banking system and exotic derivatives, is imperative.

The banks and other financial institutions are insolvent because of their speculative activities. Simple capitalist justice would say that financial managers, stockowners and bondholders should eat their losses. Why should taxpayers pick up the tab for their high-stakes gambling in a financial casino?

Some say that financial institutions are too big to fail. But haven’t they failed, and failed spectacularly, already? Some will say yes to this question, but go on to insist that if banks to go belly up, the results will be catastrophic. They will remind us of the panic and credit freeze that followed the meltdown of Lehman Brothers.

The danger of panic, capital flight and market turmoil can’t be dismissed out of hand. Financial markets are deeply and broadly, vertically and horizontally, integrated on a global scale, probably more so than any other market in the global economy. As a consequence, they are quick to melt down steeply and suddenly and spread contagion to other countries, regions and worldwide.

Despite this, radical reform of the financial system — and I would include here the Federal Reserve Bank — makes good sense in the short and long term. We need an efficient, flexible and democratically controlled financial system that assists in the allocation of money to productive uses domestically and internationally.

What makes working people angry is that their tax dollars are going to bail out robbers and they get nothing in return except more debt to pay off in the future.

To allow this situation to go on can badly hurt the new administration and its recovery plans.

Our answer is democratic public ownership, but as important a measure as that is, it is neither a quick fix nor unproblematic. A lot of unknowns exist. The danger of further panic and flight is real.

It appears the president, following the advice of his Treasury secretary and main economic advisor, favors what I call a bank/hedge fund fix to revive our dysfunctional finance markets.

But we shouldn’t consider the case for public ownership closed. The pressure of economic events and the performance of financial markets going forward — not to mention the public anger — could bring this issue to the surface again.

--Sam Webb is national chair of the Communist Party USA. This is excerpted from his report to the party’s national committee, March 21, 2009. Join the party at .

Iraqi Teachers Union Under Attack

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 02:48:00 +0000

3-27-09, 9:37 am

Original source: UnionBook

The Iraqi Teachers’ Union is facing extreme attack from the Iraqi Government. The Iraqi government has appointed an official body and granted it the authority to take over the union. This government body demanded that the leadership of the union must hand over the keys to its headquarters along with membership and other records.

The government claims it wants the union to hold national election and that the current leadership are not allowed to stand for re-election again.

It is worth to note that the ITU has already held two national conferences since 2003 with a third emergency conference in late 2007 to elect a new president, brother Jasim Al lami.

This is clear violation and interference in the internal democratic affairs of the union by the current Iraqi government. The ITU leadership has refused to hand over the union and is ready to struggle to preserve the independence of the ITU. The leadership of the union said they will hand over the union only to a newly elected leadership at in open national conference organized by the ITU. The ITU leadership, because of its firm but principled position, is under the threat of prison sentence.

The Iraqi government has continued to be hostile to free trade unionism, despite the huge support it received from the unions in Iraq ever since 2003. The Iraqi government not only refused to abolish Saddam’s Hussein restrictive anti union law but in fact it has used against the Iraqi nascent democratic unions, reluctant to enact an internationally recognized labor code but further it issued in 2005 another restrictive Order that took over the assets and monies of the unions.

The Iraqi trade union movement (the General Federation of Iraqi Workers GFIW) has submitted complaint against the Iraqi Government to the International Labor Organization (ILO) and I believe the ILO has censured the Iraqi government over its violation of trade unions rights in Iraq and called on the government to back off and hence allow the unions in Iraq to organize openly and freely.

The current attempts by the Iraqi government to take over the union are not just illegitimate and unacceptable but blatant interference and are a clear violation of the Iraqi constitution that guarantees workers the right to organize.

The ITU will resort to all means and activities guaranteed by the Iraqi Constitution to defend its right to organize teachers openly and freely.

The ITU will organize protests, strikes and file law suits against all these undemocratic procedures that are dictatorial inspired culture.

The ITU held a national protest in central Baghdad on 21 March 2009 to highly the issues is facing but has unfortunately been subjugated to abuses by the Iraqi security forces. The ITU while deplores and condemns the practice of the security forces is adamant to carry on with struggle and hence is organizing another national protest with major demonstration in central Baghdad on 28 March 2009. The ITU is calling on trade unions supporters across the glob to raise their voices against these undemocratic practices by the elected government of Iraq.

Express your support for Iraqi teachers by writing to the Iraqi government to oppose its takeover of the union here.

--Abdullah Muhsin is the British representative of the Iraqi Teachers Union, which is affiliated with the General Federation of Iraqi Workers.

Can the Populist Upheaval Take a Working-Class Turn?

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 02:46:00 +0000

3-27-09, 9:35 am

The populist over outrage over AIG bonuses, and bailouts that seem to payoff the perpetrators of the financial crisis while millions are left out of work with no medical benefits, and unemployment benefits that are running out, or will run out long before job growth returns – is heading towards a social and political, not just economic, tipping point.

Already, the Obama administration is running out of political capital to legislatively pump more capital infusions into the existing banking system. But Republicans and conservative Democrats are prepared to block a public takeover of the banks that most of the world's economists are proclaiming essential to restoring the solvency of the banking system.

In addition Republicans are working industriously and cynically to divert public frustration into dead-end criticism – attempting to blame anyone but themselves for the disaster they brought on the nation, and the world. Thus Treasury Secretary Geithner's latest non-legislative initiative to clean out toxic assets is given a low chance of success my most observers. How soon till the tipping point? Well, it took only 72 hours following the Katrina disaster in the Gulf before savagery took over the streets of New Orleans – and many communities are beginning to look similarly devastated. Three of the most respected US economists, Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglit and Ken Rogoff are starkly warning that not just an economic, but a social catastrophe is looming if forceful action is not taken.

But from this moment, it looks as if the US poltical system, compromised by decades of corrupt and reactionary interests is not capable – on its own – of making the adjustments necessary to meet the challenge of the unprecedented scale of this crisis. As Martin Wolf commented recently in the Financial Times – it appears that President Obama will have to attend the critical G-20 meeting of the top industrialized nations in London next week to address the global crisis WITHOUT a clear plan of recovery. And there is not much in the world that is scarier than that. The Lincoln-like demeanor and aspirations of President Barack Obama may be tested as none have been since the 16th President himself. The truth is that the destiny of our country is in the hands of the masses of working people of the United States. Right now. If we can move together to compel the diversionary and backward looking forces of finance capital and reaction to the side of the historical stage, then the mounting populist explosion can be directed toward insuring that the American story will play out in a new and higher quality of life all.

If we do not, then it is hard to even measure the depth of the tragedies to come. Populist outrage can turn inward against itself if we do not – all of us on the Left, in the first place – put our hands to the wheels of cooperation, mobilization, organization and progressive change. Lets talk to each other, take care of each other, and find the path that unites.

--John Case is a contributor to Political Affairs.

It’s A New Era! Some Thoughts on the Times We’re Living In

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 02:42:00 +0000

While some are still in denial, most agree that with the election of Barack Obama and the new Congress a new era has been entered. This is not only true in the US but also has huge implications worldwide.

Arch-conservative William Kristol (NY Times 1/26/09) described the change this way, “All good things must come to an end. January 20th 2009 marked the end of a conservative era.”

Of course, in this case 30 years of a bad thing came to an end.

Kristol and his political kin were in a state of great depression after January 20th. On the other hand tens of millions poured into the streets; celebrating, dancing, singing crying tears of relief and welcoming the end of the conservative era.

This was no ordinary election – nor is this an ordinary time the country is going through. A historic transition is occurring. Since Ronald Reagan’s victory we have been living through an epoch dominated by an ultra-right, racist, corporate offensive. Today’s new era potentially could be a progressive one with labor and people’s forces making great strides in bringing about a more just, democratic, peaceful society and world. This potential is very much worth fighting for.

The voters did not elect a socialist president and Congress – far from it. They did elect a leadership that could take us toward peace and economic justice. The majority voted for a Congress they hoped would reverse 30 years of damage to democracy, race relations and the well being of working families. The majority wanted to bail out the working-class and middle-class victims of Wall Street’s crooks. The majority wants to help the Main Streets of America.

The new era will not be a post-capitalist – neither will it be post-imperialist. It can however set the stage for big strategic changes in the kind of society we live in. The new framework can set the stage for a more humane and democratic society.

To understand what is happening, one must look beyond what’s being debated in Washington today. To see the real potential, the focus has to be on the newly created and invigorated progressive movements that came to life during the monumental election struggle last year. The labor movement is stronger as are the civil rights, peace, economic and social justice, environment, women’s, youth student and seniors movements. All are on a new level. The new movements that came from the Obama campaigns effort along with groups like MoveOn.org have huge constituencies and are still very active. These new movements can move mountains if united and activated around the issues of the day.

With that in mind I think some really great things are possible.

For example, the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act will lay the basis for a large expansion in the size and influence of organized labor which will strengthen strategically the working-class movement and all movements for progressive change. Everybody who believes in real democracy needs to get aboard.

The passage of new laws to increase taxes on the rich and increase spending for education and mass transit are possible. This would create many new jobs.

The repeal of the “three strikes” and other unjust conservative-era laws would mean that tens of thousands could be decriminalized and restored to live healthy and constructive lives.

Instead of imprisoning the victims of drug addiction, a new universal health care system would provide addicts with access to free well-run rehab centers in every community. Our country could start to build more schools than prisons again.

This new era should put an end to the gangster capitalism that has ruined the nation. It could pass new laws and regulations that would outlaw the criminal behavior that now dominates the financial sector.

In the new era I think it’s possible to rebuild the social safety net and eventually pass a single payer national health care system. I think it will be possible to end to the robber baron type capitalism we have been suffering under that has created the mess the country is in now. It will take real struggle but it’s possible.

A new era could bring new priorities. Beyond the historic stimulus package now offered, I think we could have a long-term effort to seriously rebuild our cities and rural areas with union labor and strong affirmative action that could create millions of permanent jobs - with struggle this is possible.

This new era could open the way for stricter laws against racial profiling, discrimination, police brutality, immigrant-bashing and gay-bashing. It could also mean winning a democratic and humane path to US citizenship for millions of undocumented workers.

Why can’t the new era be a time that we win strong environmental protection, end global warming and where green development becomes the norm? Why can’t it be one where wars over oil and other natural resources will be greatly lessened? Can we not find the path to peace in the Middle East including realizing a two state solution and withdrawing all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan? Again, with struggle, this is possible.

A new era of alliances for peaceful cooperation, real global economic prosperity to bring to an end the billions now living on less than a $1.00 a day is within reach.

However, for this to occur, a central ingredient is required; the movements that helped Obama win, indeed, all movements need the left to help them reach higher levels of consciousness, unity and action. The left is needed to help this new movement take on the difficult struggles ahead.

Yesterday’s narrow tactics of much of the left have got to be abandoned. New and broader tactics are needed to move in today’s people’s movements.

Obama’s election has opened the doors of change and created a new movement that can walk through those doors. If the left is to be effective it must learn to work with people they don’t agree with ideologically and philosophically. Agreement should be on the vital issues of the day.

Those who yesterday defined their “advanced” political understanding by how isolated they were from the political center need to move beyond that kind of thinking. (Not that these were good political practices in the past!)

Today there is a new center and a broad masses that are moving towards the left in their thinking and actions. They are energetic, flexible and tend to reject dogmatic approaches. They are ready for action and most importantly they are less affected by red baiting.

Most of the struggles of the past 30 years were defensive. Some of us are so used to losing that we don’t know how to win.

Addressing the “left,” Linda Burnham made some good points on this matter in a recent paper; “Notes on an Orientation to the Obama Presidency.” She said, “If the criterion is that the only change to be supported is that which strikes a decisive blow at capital, then the gap between where we are now and the realignment it would take to strike such a blow is completely and perpetually unbridgeable”

She calls on the left to “live in the times we’re in meeting the challenges we’ve been given and making the most of every opportunity …” That’s sound thinking for this period.

Much can be learned from the complete panic and bankruptcy of ideas on the right today. They have no new ideas but are adamantly and fanatically against every step the Obama administration takes. They see the politics they advocated over the last 3 decades collapsing here as it has in most of Latin America and around the world. They see themselves becoming more isolated in a rapidly moving process of change that is sweeping the country.

Their era has come to an end and while they would like to revive neo-liberal policies and trickle down on us again, the tide has turned... However, they could come back if the movement for change is derailed. The left has to play an active role in that movement to help prevent that from happening.

This new era is marked by a new spirit and new confidence among masses and political leaders.

The spirit of “Yes we can” – 'Sí se puede' lives.

John Sweeney after a meeting with Obama and labor leaders, at the White House said, “For the first time the White House is the house of working families.”

At that meeting Obama’s people told them to unite into one federation – for that to come from the White House is historic.

In describing the great potential after Obama’s inaugural, Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) said, “This election shows that we are prepared to create a truly integrated democratic society.”

Rush Limbaugh openly says that he, “hopes Obama fails.” That’s a voice from the old era…

Harry Belafonte speaking at the Community Inaugural Ball in Washington in January said, “If Obama fails, we all fail.” That’s a voice for a new era.

Sam Webb describes this period as 'a spring time of possibilities.”

I say, “Let a million beautiful flowers of unity, of struggle and change bloom in every community, in every union hall, church, temple, mosque, and people’s organization…a new era is in birth.”

Don't Go There Mr. President

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:37:00 +0000

- 17,000 OR 21,000 MORE AMERICAN TROOPS WILL NOT PROTECT AMERICANS AGAINST AL QAEDA ATTACKS.

The Obama Plan instead will accelerate any plans al Qaeda commanders have for attacking targets in the United States or Europe. The alternative for al Qaeda is to risk complete destruction, an American objective that has not been achieved for eight years. A future terrorist attack need not be planned or set in motion from a cave in Waziristan. The cadre could already be underground in Washington or London. The real alternative for President Obama should be to maintain a deterrent posture while immdiately accelerating diplomacy to meet legitimate Muslim goals, from a Palestinian state to genuine progress on Kashmir.

President Obama is right, at least politically, to take very seriously the threat of another 9/11 from any source. Besides the suffering inflicted, it would derail his agenda and perhaps his presidency. This is all the more reason he must understand that by repeatedly threatening to “kill al Qaeda” he is provoking a hornet’s nest without protection against a devastating sting.

The hard choices are laid out very clearly in writings by the CIA’s former point man on Osama bin Ladin, Michael Scheuer, who also ran the Agency’s rendition program and still supports it. Scheuer is a tough guy, in other words, who says the options are either to kill all the jihadists, make it quick, and withdraw [not a real option], or begin pursuing an agenda which addresses what he calls Muslim issues: the American military and civilian presence in the Arab Peninsula, the unqualified US support for Israel, US support for states which oppress Muslims [China, India, Russia], US exploitation of Muslim oil and suppression of its price, US military presence in the Islamic world, US support and protection of Arab police states. [Michael Scheuer, Marching Toward Hell, 2008]

Such an approach would create an option to violence for many millons of jihadi sympathizers and potential recruits. It would create an incentive not to inflict terrorism, blow up airplanes and hotels, or deploy a nuclear bomb in a suitcase. It would disturb the multinational oil companies and the Israel lobby, but open a better path to stability than wars against the Muslim world.

- ESCALATION OF AMERICAN TROOP LEVELS IS A SLIPPERY SLOPE. JOHN F. KENNEDY SENT 16,3000 AMERICANS TO SAVE SOUTH VIETNAM FROM THE VIETCONG.

President Obama obviously has no intention of sending hundreds of thousands of American troops into Afghanistan or Pakistan. But escalation, once it begins, is increasingly difficult to stop. Already Obama’s generals want more troops than the president is sending. The neo-conservatives and Republicans are demanding a “Must-Win War” and denouncing any talk of an exit strategy. A gradual American escalation may play into the jihadist game plan, drawing more Western troops into jeopardy, or permitting a retreat into mountainous wastelands if necessary. Any “redeployment” [another word for retreat in the minds of the neo-cons] other than returning with Bin Ladin’s head on a platter, provokes a right-wing reaction at home. The easy solution to these pressures is another escalation followed by another, like one drink at a time. [See D. Ellsberg, Secrets, 2002]

- A REGIONAL DIPLOMATIC AND POLITICAL SOLUTION IS POSSIBLE, BUT NOT BY IMPOSING U.S.-NATO DOMINANCE.

In the model currently applied, military force is to be followed by diplomacy with NATO at the center. Whatever the reason – access to oil resources, global dominance, the clash of fundamentalisms, distrust of the region – this desire for Western dominance delays and may even derail any possible diplomatic solution. The primary powers in the actual region include Iran, India, Russia and China, all distrusted on various levels by the US government, which therefore wishes to include them only as junior partners or satellites of NATO. Take the example of Iran; with 150,000 American troops on its border with Iraq, and upwards of 100,000 more on its border with Afghanistan, are they going to revert to their 2001 posture of supporting the US in Afghanistan? Or take the Shanghai Cooperation Organization [China, Russia and Central Asian countries]; will they be persuaded to welcome NATO? – they already are on record calling for US military withdrawal from the region. Or take the Kashmir crisis; does the US expect Pakistan to withdraw support for the Taliban and other jihadists they see as a bulwark against the Indian threat in Kashmir and Afghanistan while the US tilts towards India?

The other problem with a diplomatic solution for the US is the uncomfortable matter of democracy. In Afghanistan, the Karzai regime might not survive this year’s election, in which case the US will be seeking a substitute who signs off on the occupation. In Pakistan, the US has spent nearly a decade, and $11 billion in taxpayer money, supporting a military dictatorship and now, after the assassination of Benezir Bhutto, the US has been backing the Zardari regime against the more popular movement of Nawaf Sharif supported by thousands of lawyers and civil society in the streets. Anything resembling genuine popular democracy in Afghanistan or Pakistan would end the Western military occupation, or at least the air war, house to house roundups, and mass incarceration at Bagram and force a reversal of the current ratio of 18:I spending priority on the military. [See, Tariq Ali, The Duel, 2008, and Ahmed Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 2008].

– THE COST IS FAR TOO HIGH, ANOTHER TRILLION IN TIME

Bush’s war costs in Afghanistan have been $173 billion from 2001 through 2009. Obama’s proposals for Iraq/Afghanistan are $144 billion this fiscal year, but not broken down. The secret war by the US-trained “Freedom Corps” in Pakistan is budgeted at $400 million. As America’s infrastructure decays, the Army Corps of Engineers is spending $4 billion for construction in Afghanistan this year, including 720 miles of roads this year alone. [W. Post, Mar. 22]. The expansion of Afghanistan’s army will cost “up to” $20 billion in the next several years, while Afghanistan’s entire national budget is $1.1 billion for this year.[Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation, Mar. 23]. Cost overruns and corruption being what they are, it is easy to predict the Afghan/Pakistan wars costing one trillion dollars by the end of the president’s first term. Military spending will continue to outpace civilian reconstruction aid indefinitely.

In summary, be prepared for a war that spans the length of the Obama presidency, an Obama War. Expect the Congress to be inert and distracted. Expect little help from the media.

But hey, we’ve been here before.

It’s time for a new movement against reckless escalation, especially one which threatens to divert our attention from the crisis at home, while only leaving poverty, malnutrition and anti-American hatreds rising abroad.

The new movement could begin this week, a living memorial to the passing of Dr. Martin Luther King on April 4, 1968.

Don’t Escalate, Negotiate
Diplomacy and Development, Not Predators and Prisons
What about the Home Front?

* Visit Get Afghanistan Right and learn more about reasons to oppose an escalation in Afghanistan: http://www.getafghanistanright.com.
* Call your Member of Congress and let them know you oppose escalation in Afghanistan. If you’re not sure who represents you, visit the House of Representatives website https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml and input your address – it will give you the name of your congressperson (and, it will take you to their email form). You can reach them through the Capitol switchboard: 202-224-3121. United for Peace and Justice prepared some fantastic fact sheets: http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=4019 to help you prepare.
* Call the White House and tell the President you oppose escalation in Afghanistan: 202-456-1111.
* Sign the petition over at Rethink Afghanistan: http://rethinkafghanistan.com/?utm_source=rgemail calling for oversight hearings on the Afghanistan policy. (They’ve also just posted part 2 of their excellent film…see the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WhQON0MiGc&feature=player_embedded.)
* Sign Sojourner’s petition to Obama: http://go.sojo.net/campaign/afghanistan2009_obama.
* Sign the Friends Committee on National Legislation’s petition calling for an investment in peace, not war, in Afghanistan: http://capwiz.com/fconl/issues/alert/?alertid=12647486.

Venezuelan Parties and Associations React to Government’s Revised 2009 Budget

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 02:34:00 +0000

Original source: Venezuelanalysis.com

Mérida, March 24th 2009 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – On Monday, the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) declared its full support for the revised budget that President Hugo Chávez announced last Saturday. The Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) said the measures will fulfill their purpose of helping Venezuela cope with the decline in oil prices brought by the world financial crisis, but are “insufficient” to construct an alternative to capitalism.

PSUV Vice President and former Venezuelan Finance Minister Rodrigo Cabezas said the measures contrast with the economic policy recommendations of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which Venezuelan presidents implemented during the decades before Chávez was elected in 1999.

“The IMF packages were aimed at preserving capital, and the measures that the Venezuelan government has implemented are aimed at preserving the purchasing power of the workers,” said Cabezas, after meeting with the minister of planning and development, Jorge Giordani, to discuss the changes.

“The measures preserve the social element as the basis of the revolution for the Venezuelan people,” said Cabezas, highlighting that spending on social programs known as “missions” was kept intact, as Chávez had promised.

Cabezas also echoed Chávez’s demand that top government functionaries lower their salaries and bonuses and eliminate unnecessary spending in their institutional budgets. “We ask government functionaries to bring dignity to the policy of austerity toward which we are all oriented, and which cannot be purely rhetoric; it must be put into practice,” said Cabezas.

Currently, top officials in some state institutions, including the National Electoral Council (CNE) and the state oil company PDVSA, are reported to have monthly incomes of between 30,000 bolivars ($14,000) and 60,000 bolivars ($27,900), while the minimum wage in Venezuela, one of the highest in Latin America, is slightly more than 800 bolivars ($372) per month.

This week, legislators in the National Assembly revived discussions of a proposed law that would limit the income of top government functionaries to twelve times the minimum wage, a maximum of 9,600 bolivars ($4,465) per month at the present time.

In a press conference Monday, the general secretary of the PCV, Oscar Figuera, also reiterated the urgent need to put a cap on executive salaries in public institutions, and criticized the National Assembly for its “lack of political will” to pass income limits, which were first proposed in 2006.

Figuera praised the package of budgetary adjustments that Chávez announced Saturday, highlighting the 20 percent increase in the minimum wage and the decision not to increase the domestic price of gasoline or devalue the Venezuelan currency.

However, Figuera said the changes are “insufficient.” He pointed out that the sales tax, which was raised by 3 percent, “is a regressive tax that affects principally the popular sectors.”

Instead, the government should eliminate the sales tax, make income taxes more progressive, and maximize taxes on speculative profits, said Figuera.

Also, the government should nationalize Venezuela’s entire banking and financial sector and create a socialist council of workers to participate in the management of all nationalized companies, said Figuera.

Figuera concluded that the government must “take advantage of the crisis of the capitalist system of production in order to vindicate a proposal that breaks away from the known models of organization of the state and society, not just administer the crisis.”

Meanwhile, the conservative party COPEI said the government is “mortgaging the future” by tripling its domestic debt. COPEI President Luis Ignacio Planas also accused the Chávez administration of “letting itself be governed by the Cubans.”

In contrast, the fifty year-old Bankers Association of Venezuela (ABV) approved of the measures. ABV President Victor Vargas called the whole package of economic adjustments “not only opportune, but necessary to prevent the effects of the international financial crisis on our economy.” Vargas assured that private banks are prepared to finance the state without reducing loans to the private sector.

The president of the powerful confederation of private business associations known as FEDECAMARAS, José Manuel González, said the government’s measures should have included more investment in the private sector and legal guarantees to attract foreign direct investment. González also said the government should reduce its international aid and investment, including regional economic blocs in which Venezuela trades subsidized oil for goods and services.

In rebuttal Tuesday, Minister Giordani said the government will continue its investment in strategic productive sectors, including energy, construction, and agriculture. The government took control of the majority share of oil exploitation in the Orinoco Oil Belt in 2007, nationalized most of the cement industry in 2008, and now plans to focus its agricultural investment in the creation of state and community-run agrarian communes.

“We have clear objectives: social inclusion and defense of employment,” said Giordani, noting that the government has created important international investment funds with several countries including China, Russia, and the members of the Venezuela-led ALBA trade bloc.

The economic measures announced Saturday aim to reduce budgetary allocations in 2009 by 6.7 percent compared to the original budget that was approved by the National Assembly in January. The new budget is based on an estimated average price of $40 per barrel of oil this year, down from the original estimate of $60 per barrel of oil.

On Monday, the average price of oil from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), of which Venezuela is a member, rose from $48.70 per barrel to $50.10 per barrel.

Global Economic Crisis Hits Vietnam

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 02:33:00 +0000

3-26-09, 9:22 am

Original source: Vietnam News Agency

Economy rises 3.1 percent this quarter

HCM CITY— GDP growth in the first quarter was 3.1 per cent, the Ministry of Planning and Investment announced yesterday. This was much lower than last year’s figure of 7.4 percent.

However, Planning and Investment Deputy Minister Cao Viet Sinh said the 3.1 percent increase was good considering the global economic downturn.

Agriculture and seafood grew a mere 2.86 percent as compared to the same period last year. Representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development attributed the slight increase to the poor harvest of paddy during the winter season in the north and a lower-than-expected yield during the winter-spring season in the south.

However, the ministry said exports of several agricultural produces, including rice, had remained significant thanks to high demand in the global market.

As Russia recently allowed 30 seafood exporters to resume trading, the ministry also expected the industry would meet export targets for the second quarter.

The Planning and Investment Ministry reported 8.15 per cent growth in construction and industry over the same period last year. Services expanded 8.05 per cent against the same period last year.

The ministry estimated March exports at $3.9 billion, and $13.5 billion for the first quarter.

Gems and precious metals were the biggest foreign currency earner, a year-on-year increase of 4.9 percent, followed by rice, pepper and tea.

The ministry also reported first-quarter imports of $11.8 billion, a 45 percent decrease compared with the same period last year.

In HCM City, about 21,000 of 26,000 workers who lost jobs successfully found new ones. However, authorities admit finding new jobs for the rest remains difficult.

Deputy Minister Sinh expected that the first quarter would be the worst. He predicted that there would be significant improvements from the next quarter as a series of Government’s measures take effect.

However, Sinh said responsible authorities at provincial levels must speed up and implement the measures simultaneously to make the recovery more effective.

He also confirmed that planning and investment would submit to the Government recommendations to postpone price hikes for several imported materials.

It was also suggested that the Government cut import tax on several products, reduce interest rates for exporters and allow more businesses to benefit from the Government’s incentive policies on stimulating consumption and investment.

Sinh also said his ministry would suggest that Government bonds allocated to several ministries, sectors and provinces be returned if not used by the end of September. The Government this year issued bonds worth up to VND56 trillion.

The ministry will set up inspection teams to supervise the implementation of measures worked out by the Government to prevent economic slowdown and ensure social welfare.

Equality Index Shows Growing Gap Between Blacks and Whites

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 02:30:00 +0000

3-26-09, 9:18 am

In its recently published annual report titled 'The State of Black America' for 2008 and 2009, the National Urban League reported a growing equality gap between African Americans and whites. According to the report's Equality Index, which compiles data on major economic and social indicators, the status of Blacks declined from 71.5 percent of in 2008 to 71.1 percent in 2009.

According to the report, the only area in which the gap narrowed over the past year was in health care. This narrowing of inequality, however, resulted not from improved access to affordable, quality health care by African Americans, but by a significant decline in health care coverage for whites.

Among the major indicators included in the Equality Index over the past six years, poverty and rates of homeownership worsened for African Americans but improved for whites. Both groups made improvements in educational accomplishments, but progress proved to be slower for Blacks. Data revealed, however, that Blacks continued to lag in access to early childhood education, the report found.

The report also compared trends in status by race during previous economic recovery periods. The numbers showed Blacks and whites experienced similar trends in key areas like median household income, poverty, unemployment and home ownership.

During the so-called economic recovery from 2001- 2007, both Blacks and whites saw a decline in real median household income and an increase in the rate of poverty. Real median household income from 2001 - 2007 declined 1.7 percent for Blacks and 3.9 percent for whites, and poverty rates increased 7.9 percent for Blacks and 5.1 percent for whites.

By contrast, during the 1990s while trends were still similar, African Americans saw much greater progress. For the duration of the economic expansion in the 1990s, real median household income grew by 23.6 percent for African Americans and 13 percent for whites, while poverty rates declined by 30.6 percent and 17 percent, respectively.

According to the a press statement from the National Urban League with the release of the report, the new data 'reminds the country that the election of President Obama does not mean the work of civil rights is done.'

“The election of the first Black president does not mean we can all now close up shop and go home,” said the National Urban League President and CEO Marc H. Morial. “Instead, it’s more important than ever that the National Urban League and other organizations and individuals committed to positive change work even harder to lift up our communities and move this country forward.”

“For the first time we have a president whose political base is in a city so we feel that he can better understand the issues and concerns of urban America,” Morial said. “We want to make sure that we work with the administration to ensure that urban America is included in the policies coming forth to help this country recover economically. Only then can we begin to close the equality gap.”

Martin Luther King, III, also noted in the report's introduction that Obama's 'election is not the fulfillment of the Dream. ... The American narrative cannot realize its greatest promise unless the narratives of all its peoples are part of that promise. In other words, realizing the American Dream must be a complete possibility for every American.”

Accompanying the report, the National Urban League released a public message to President Obama containing three main recommendations that can help narrow the gaps in major social indicators between Blacks and whites.

The message recommended meaningful efforts to ensure the inclusion of all workers of all races and backgrounds in the 'Green Jobs Revolution.' Investments should be made in job training and job creation in communities with large populations of disadvantaged workers, especially urban areas.

The message also called for addressing the disproportionate impact of the housing crisis on African Americans by passing a 'homebuyers Bill of Rights.' Such a law should help protect new homebuyers from predatory lenders by providing financial literacy workshops, credit counseling, fair housing advocacy and foreclosure prevention efforts, especially in underserved minority communities.

Finally, the NUL message recommended closing the educational funding gap 'so all children have the same opportunity to learn and excel.' Currently, suburban school districts typically have much higher per-student funding than urban communities that disproportionately serve minority families.

Readers can access the report at the National Urban League's website.

The Dance of the Trillions to Shore up Banks, Bankers, and Gamblers

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 03:28:00 +0000

'Deficits in the, let's say, 5 percent of GDP range would lead to rising debt-to-GDP ratios that would ultimately not be sustainable.' -- Peter Orszag, Obama White House budget chief

“The [US] financial system is facing possible total losses of $7 trillion. ...With the banks 'effectively insolvent', we've concluded that the only viable solution is nationalization.” -- Matthew Richardson and Nouriel Roubini, American economists

“China is worried that the U.S. may solve its problems by printing money, which will stoke inflation.” -- Zhao Qingming, Chinese financial analyst

'Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce.' -- James A. Garfield, (1831-1881) 20th President of the United States

After ten years of wholesale financial deregulation, bad policies and unsound banking practices, and facing a worsening recession, over the last year and a half the US government has been pumping trillions of dollars in order to deleverage and recapitalize banks that were on the brink of insolvency. But the banking crisis is of such a magnitude, and the damage done to the financial system so widespread, that each pumping of money into the system has never seemed to be enough. This is because numerous American financial institutions, and among the largest, have suffered multibillion-dollar losses, not only with subprime mortgages, but especially with large amounts of derivative products that have turned sour. Not the least of these are the famous gambling products called credit default swaps, (CDS), [which the Bank of International Settlements is reporting to be worth some $57 trillion.

For its part, ever since the collapse of the investment bank Bear Stearns on March 15, 2008, the Fed has pumped trillions of dollars, under various forms, into sick financial institutions in order to keep them afloat, or in order to merge them with other entities.

In the case of Bear Stearns, for example, the Fed guaranteed $29 billion so that the new owner of Bear Stearns (JP Morgan Chase) would not suffer losses on the most risky assets on the books of the acquired bank. The Fed has also been buying loads of financial assets from troubled institutions, thus issuing new “high-powered” money against such assets. On November 25, 2008, for example, the Federal Reserve Board launched its up-to-one-$ trillion Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) to support the issuance of asset-backed securities (ABS) collateralized by student loans, auto loans, credit card loans, and loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration (SBA).

As recently as March 17, 2009, the Fed has also announced that its purchases of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) would be expanded from $500 billion to $1.25 trillion, and that it intends to double its purchases of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Federal Home Loan Bank bonds to $200 billion from the $100 billion intended initially.

Because the Fed stands ready to buy large amounts of the newly issued Treasury bonds to cover the large U.S. government's fiscal deficit, it can be said that the Fed is actively and effectively busy monetizing both the public debt and private financial debts. As a consequence, the Fed's balance sheet has ballooned to over $2 trillion now from less than $900 billion only one year ago. And it is likely to continue to expand in the coming months. Some of these loans will be repaid in the future and some of the new money will be retrieved, but if the Fed were to sell its portfolio of Treasury bonds to prevent an onset of inflation or to prevent the US dollar from depreciating too fast, bond prices would drop significantly and interest rates would also rise quickly.

Similarly, the US Treasury has been “investing,” guaranteeing and loaning hundreds of billions of dollars of public money to large American banks. It began on earnest last September, after the large investment bank Lehman Brothers($691 billion of assets at the end of 2007) failed and the large world insurance company American International Group (AIG) followed thereafter and became insolvent. Then, the U.S. Congress passed in a hurry the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), under the threat of a financial Armageddon.

It has been evaluated that all these public bailouts of the financial system amount together to a staggering $12.9 trillion, nearly as large as the US economy (GDP) at some $14 trillion, and larger than the current US national debt of $11 trillion. This includes, of course, the close to $800 billion Obama Economic Stimulus package that the new administration sent to Congress in February and that Congress passed with a minimum of Republican support (none in the House and three in the Senate).

That is where we stand.

On Monday, March 23, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced that the Obama administration had decided to create a Public-Private Investment Program, and to pour $75 to $100 billion into it, the money coming from remnants of the old TARP program. The purpose, this time, is to rid American banks of the bad financial assets that are destroying their balance sheets, to the point of insolvency. What the new “Program” calls for is the purchase of as much as a half-trillion dollars of the American banks' so-called toxic assets, with the government providing 85 percent of the funds to willing private investors at low interest rates, and guaranteeing (through FDIC) any loss on the financial assets that banks will unload through public auctions. The political attractiveness of this measure is that it provides a public subsidy to the banks and other financial institutions without Congress having to debate and vote new funds. It can be done administratively.

What can be said is that finally the Obama administration is doing, through the back door, what I myself recommended last April 12, 2008. The Obama administration, in effect, has decided to create the equivalent of the old Resolution Trust Corp. to liquidate bad mortgage-backed assets and other bad financial bets made by the banks and large insurance companies, such as AIG. The way that it is being done, however, is questionable, because this may turn out to be very costly to the U.S. taxpayers and is less than transparent.

Indeed, the new entity to be created would be tailored somewhat along the lines of the 1980s' Resolution Trust Corp., which was established to dispose of the bad real estate assets of savings and loan institutions. However, and this may be a sign of the times, the new public-private program would be a mixed venture and would be far from having the same powers that the RTC had in managing the current troubled banks. Nevertheless, the new PPIP will fill essentially the same basic function as the RTC, i.e. selling bonds and borrowing in order to finance the purchase of bad “toxic” assets from insolvent or near insolvent institutions, in partnership with private investors and managers.

Financially, this is an operation that could be very profitable to the private firms that join the government in the operation, because the profit potential for them is high and the risks of losses are at a minimum, since such losses will be underwritten by the government. Therefore, most everybody in the private financial industry stands to win with the new policy: 1- the banks will rid themselves of bad assets at enhanced market prices (compared to what they are worth today); 2- banks' shareholders will see an appreciation in the value of their common shares; and, 3- private investment firms and hedged funds will buy some of these assets at prices lower than par, using low cost non-recourse government loans, and all the while being fully protected by government guarantees of no loss to themselves. The only losers in the operation could be the American taxpayers who are guaranteeing that there would be no loss to private investors. That is the reason Wall Street rallied 500 points after the announcement of the new banks' bailout. Cynics could say that this is American-styled capitalism at its best: no loser except possibly the government and the taxpayers who support it. How it is going to play politically is anybody's guess. It may be a good thing for the Obama administration that such a plan is not going to be debated in Congress.

When all is said and done, the Obama administration is essentially pursuing a policy similar to the one followed by the Bush administration, i.e. supplying public money to private banks and to private investors with a minimum of strings attached. Remember that last September, the Bush administration committed $400 billion to obtain a near 80 percent control in the world's two largest mortgage companies, Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association: FNM) and Freddie Mac, (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation: FRE) which were close to insolvency. Instead of taking them over and placing them into administrative receivership, in order to change their business model and their lending practices, since the government was guaranteeing these two institutions' outstanding debts, (more than $ 5 trillion US), the Bush administration chose instead to keep up the appearance that these were still two privately run banks and only appointed a legal conservator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The rest was business as usual, including the payments of huge bonuses to the entrenched management.

Similarly, with the new Public-Private Investment Program, the Obama administration would have the authority to place a failed bank deemed 'too big to fail' in the equivalent of a conservatorship, while keeping its management more or less intact. One thing is different this time, however. Indeed, contrary to what happened after the US government poured $185 billion into the large insurance company AIG, this time around the Treasury Secretary would have the power to limit payments to creditors and to break contracts governing executive compensation. The fact remains that there is still no intention of placing the most insolvent firms into administrative receivership and to change their business model or practices.

In conclusion, let us say that there will be consequences following from all this bailout money. In particular, what foreign lenders, especially the Chinese, do with their holdings of US dollar-denominated debt, considering the risk of future interest rates hikes and future dollar depreciation. Already, China's Premier Wen Jiabao has publicly raised his government's concern about the safe value of the US Treasury bonds and other dollar-denominated assets that they hold in huge quantities. – But, I guess, this is something for another day.

Specter Can Kiss His Job Goodbye

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:58:00 +0000

3-25-09, 9:48 am

In what amounted to little more than a cowardly flip-flop, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter (R), yesterday (Mar. 24) announced he would side with big banks and corporations like Citigroup and Wal-Mart against working Americans. He announced he would help Senate Republicans filibuster the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would remove barriers to unionization.

Although Specter had co-sponsored the bill when it was introduced in 2004 and voted for it in 2007, he caved to pressure from anti-worker right-wing groups that threatened to finance an expensive primary challenge against him in 2010.

Specter claimed his new-found opposition to bill lay elsewhere, however. The economic downturn makes 'this a particularly bad time to enact employee’s choice legislation,' he inexplicably claimed. Specter indicated also that he doesn't have the courage to be the lone Republican voting against a filibuster. After voting for the president's economic stimulus package in February, to the seething anger of pundits, ideologues and special interest groups around his party, Specter apparently felt too much heat to cast a second vote in favor of working families.

Specter's 'recession' excuse

But is Specter's 'economic recession' excuse for opposing legislation that would favor working families correct? In a time with sinking wages and disappearing job security, doesn't unionization seem like the best way to boost wages and compensation and keep people at work?

According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), unions have little impact on whether companies decide to close their operations. In a recent report, EPI analyst John DiNardo wrote, 'the organized business lobby has been drumming up fears that enactment of the Employee Free Choice Act would kill jobs by forcing more employers out of business. That claim is not borne out by historical data or existing credible research.' In fact, the evidence reveals that 'American employers as a group need not fear firm insolvency as a result of granting workers rights to collective bargaining.'

Indeed, history reveals the 'recession' excuse to be false. The passage of expansive workers rights in the mid-1930s – in the middle of the Great Depression – accompanied high economic growth rates in the late 1930s and the 1940s. High rates of unionization between World War II and the early 1970s – about 30 to 35 percent of all workers – coincided with the most sustained economic growth period in US history.

Only when union density began to decline in the early 1980s with the Reagan administration's harsh anti-union policies, did working Americans begin to see a divergence between high productivity and wage growth. By the 2000s, productivity continued to grow but workers' compensation actually fell for the first time in American history during a so-called recovery. The rate of unionization in the private sector stood at about eight percent – the lowest since before the Great Depression.

Stagnant wages in the recent period actually helped to worsen the current recession by ensuring that working families had little savings and few resources to fall back onto when employers cut jobs and mortgage and credit card payments came due.

The plain fact is unionization did not cause the recession we're in. Corrupt business practices by banks and financial giants like AIG and Citgroup did. While people like Arlen Specter and his right-wing friends like to blame workers for the collapse of the economy and do everything they can to protect their financial backers in the banks and the big corporations, hard-working Americans know the truth.

That is why the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act should not be left up to the Arlen Specter's of the world, the milquetoast defenders of CEOs and big business. It is a fight that continues and can still be won if labor and its allies refuse to give in.

Specter's job

On a side note, it is not clear that Specter's decision on this matter will save his job. Why would hardline Republicans back off their primary challenge in 2010? Specter has proven an unreliable tool for them. Why wouldn't they spend the resources to replace him with someone far more reliable?

For its part, because of his stance up to now in support of the Employee Free Choice Act, labor has overlooked Specter's horrible positions on other issues and lent him support. What incentive for this does labor have now? Truth be told, Specter can kiss his job goodbye in 2010. Labor should look forward to having a real ally in the Senate after the 2010 election from a state that voted heavily for President Obama and is trending Democratic more each passing day.

Atlanta: Emory University Investigating Anti-Palestinian Chalkings

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:57:00 +0000

3-25-09, 9:46 am

Original source: The Atlanta Progressive News

(APN) DECATUR – Students at Emory University are troubled by anti-Palestinian remarks which were written with chalk on the main campus on November 02, 2008, saying they feel intimidated by the messages and that the Administration has failed to take action against the alleged perpetrators.

The University has denied twice to Atlanta Progressive News that what occurred should be considered hate speech; however, interviews and records show that the University is investigating the matter and may be filing student conduct charges against the alleged perpetrators.

According to an Incident Report obtained exclusively by Atlanta Progressive News, Emory University police responded early morning on November 03, 2008, after being flagged down by a student. The student was Shahmeer Halepota, a pro-Palestinian activist, students said.

'The student stated he observed his chalk advertisement had been defaced with racially orientated and derogatory remarks,' the report states.

The police report implicitly confirms that there were slogans on the ground when it notes 'Night One responded to erase the remarks.'

Emory Advocates for Justice in Palestine (EAJP) reported they had put up advertisements in chalk for an upcoming event, Week Against the Wall, on the University's 'free speech area' on the evening of November 02, 2008, in accordance with Administration rules about how to advertise student events.

In the evening hours, a group of students apparently erased and marked over these with anti-Arab slogans.

The writings included such phrases as Arabs Go Home, Arabs Get Out of Emory, and You've Got Nothing, all of which were signed all Irgun, Nick Juliano, 22, a senior and pro-Palestinian activist, told Atlanta Progressive News. Juliano saw the messages and completed a written narrative for Emory Police.

Irgun is a Hebrew acronym for the National Military Organization in the Land of Israel which existed prior to establishment of the State of Israel. In 1948 it was declared a terrorist group and was condemned by the World Zionist Congress for massacres and bombings.

Halepota said Emory officials had recently told him not to speak about what happened until the investigation was complete.

Emory Police took photographs of the incident but refused to release them to APN, arguing that they were private property of Emory and part of an internal investigation.

'The photos are being used as evidentiary. They have been submitted as part of an evidentiary process. There was not a crime, so they are property of Emory University,' Lt. Cheryl Elliot, Public Information Officer, told APN.

'It may fall under disorderly conduct. It's not hate speech. There has to be damages or threats [to be considered hate speech]. Defacement, like graffiti, is a crime. On our campus, we allow people to do chalking,' Elliott said.

'There's no victim. There's no damage to property. There's no intent [of these things]. So, there's none of the elements to be considered under the Georgia criminal code,' Elliott said.

Emory Police did not take an official police report because there did not appear to be a crime and, according to Elliott, 'It was his [Nick Juliano's] preference not to be filed as a criminal report. His statement to us was he didn't want anything to be made public. There was no [police] investigation.'

'He came to us and said he didn't want us to do anything... that places us in a position... [the incident report] was done for our purposes of documentation... They [the students] wanted that [investigation] process done through the University system, and we have to respect that as police officers,' Elliott said.

Juliano does recall telling Emory Police that he wanted the matter to be handled internally by Emory.

'What I meant by that was that we did not want to sue people, but that we wanted the Emory Conduct office to handle this, that we didn't want to drag this into the courts. But I did not mean that the incident should be closed off to non-Emory students,' Juliano said.

'These incidents and allegations have been investigated by Emory Police and Campus Life officials,' Emory University responded in an official statement prepared for Atlanta Progressive News.

'As a matter of policy, Emory does not comment on student conduct procedures or outcomes,' Emory's statement said.

'Emory takes allegations of intolerance very seriously. The University is dedicated to fostering a culture of mutual respect and civil dialogue within its diverse community,' the statement said.

However, one University spokesperson insisted to APN 'there is no hate crime involved.'

Saba Khalid, 20, a junior at Emory and an activist, told Atlanta Progressive News she believes she knows who three out of four of the perpetrators are, and that they include student leaders of pro-Israeli groups at Emory.

Atlanta Progressive News obtained copies of Facebook messages between Khalid and another Emory student, Eddy Goldfarb, which appear to show Goldfarb implying that he was involved in the incident and saying he knows the identity of all the participants.

After receiving the copies of the messages, APN confirmed their authenticity by obtaining the password to Khalid's Facebook account from Khalid, logging in to Khalid's account, and verifying the conversation in Khalid's inbox. With Khalid's permission, APN also reviewed what appeared to be, by all indications, Mr. Goldfarb's public Facebook page.

'I can tell you that there were 4 people in the group that chalked that night... I certainly was not in charge of anything... I have talked to all of them personally, and no one of them admits to writing anything as outrageous as 'go home arabs,'' Goldfarb wrote.

'I'm reluctant to drop names. All the chalkers have suffered a severe backlash internally from Michael Rabkin [director of Emory's Hillel] and several concerned and prominent members of Hillel,' Goldfarb continued.

'I truly don't think anyone will crack or admit anything, but in terms of all this back and forth... I firmly believe it has to stop. Emory is a model campus and it doesn't deserve a war between our two groups that smacks of hatred and alienates other students.'

Khalid told APN that she spoke in person with Goldfarb in further detail about the incident and that in that conversation, Goldfarb told her the identity of two additional perpetrators.

'We gave proof to our Administration and they sent it around to the various Deans. We then showed all of them we had proof and the Conduct Office talked to me. But no one was brought in and no one was punished,' Khalid said.

'Was there a hate crime on campus? This is something I can't comment on. There is absolutely no anti-Arab sentiment. I can't comment on all of Emory, but as far as coming from Israel supporters on campus there is no anti-Arab sentiment. These are alarmist tactics other groups are using to scare people,' Goldfarb told APN in an interview.

In an interview with APN, Mr. Rabkin denied that he had informally disciplined any of the students involved in the chalking incident and said he did not know about any University investigation.

Juliano said Erik Hoffman, the Assistant Dean for the Office of Conduct, told him the Facebook messages demonstrate certain people are guilty of misconduct, but that it would be difficult to punish them because chalking is not considered a crime on campus.

'If they had spray-painted hate messages would it have been more legitimate [as a hate crime]?' Juliano asked.

According to a copy of the Student Code of Conduct sent to APN by an Emory spokesperson, the University does prohibit 'Threatening harm to any person, or behaving in a manner that a reasonable person would consider alarming or intimidating,' as part of its section on Respect and Consideration.

Khalid also says that she was contacted by Hoffman's assistant, who 'asked for details. He asked for people who were there that night. I asked if they were going to take action. He said there's no policy on chalking so they don't really know. That they really can't take action because there's no policy.'

Khalid also said she spoke with Azzi Harris, an Emory Provost, who told her the same thing.

However, an email from a few days ago from Jonathan Zerulik to Juliano obtained by APN states, 'I am the conduct officer investigating the chalking incident that happened in November. I am in the process of interviewing witnesses. I'm nearing the end of that process. You are in fact one of the individuals on my list to speak with as a witness as well as being the complaining party, but I am waiting until I have completed some other interviews before talking with you,' Zerulik wrote.

'We approached this situation differently than usual, gathering more information prior to opening cases of alleged misconduct against any students,' Zerulik wrote.

'In most cases the information we receive initially is conclusive in pointing to one or more students being in violation of our Code. Since that wasn't the case here I felt it was more appropriate to investigate further before making any specific allegations,' Zerulik wrote.

'While there isn't a conduct case at this point, there is an investigation and it seems likely that there will be some charges of misconduct once the investigation is complete,' Zerulik wrote.

Both Hoffman and Zerulik declined to comment to APN on the investigation, referring APN to Emory's public affairs office.

ONGOING ANTI-PALESTINIAN CLIMATE AT EMORY ALLEGED

The anti-Palestinian harassment had been continuous for the entire month of November, Juliano alleged.

'While we were doing this [advertising for the event], we were verbally harassed by [pro-Israeli activist students],' Juliano claimed.

According to Juliano, a student spat at him two weeks later during the event, and Emory officials again refused to take action against the student.

A mock wall erected on campus to symbolize the wall which Israelis are constructing to separate Palestinians from them, was kicked down, Juliano said. The student who kicked down the wall did face University sanctions, however, and was ordered to pay for the damages, Juliano said.

Later that evening a rabbi from the Emory community road his car into Asbury Circle, turned on his bright lights, and began honking at the members of EAJP who were rebuilding the wall, Juliano alleged.

Prior to this, some brothers from a campus fraternity surrounded the students and made threatening comments and then left, Juliano said.

EAJP believes the issue is being swept under the table by the Administration.

--Alice Gordon is a Staff Writer for The Atlanta Progressive News, and is reachable is alice@atlantaprogressivenews.com. Matthew Cardinale for The Atlanta Progressive News, and is reachable is matthew@atlantaprogressivenews.com.

Past Due for Canadian Troop Homecoming

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:52:00 +0000

3-25-09, 9:42 am

Another four Canadian military personnel have been killed in Afghanistan. It is well past due that Canadian forces be brought home from this senseless war before more die for a poorly defined cause. At the moment there are few if any arguments that stand up as justification for remaining in Afghanistan, and although many causes are given, they are all subordinate to the rhetoric of what is essentially a US led occupation. Democracy became the main battle cry once the original search for bin Laden failed. Yet democracy in a country that has been war torn for half a century and centuries before that by occupying armies, is tribal in nature. It had a system of checks and counterbalances within that structure, including the now western accepted idea of a loya jirga, or grand council of tribal leaders. The closest Afghanistan came to true democracy was before the Soviet invasion, when a somewhat popular (emphasis on somewhat) socialist government granted full women’s rights, supported education for all, provided social services, and allowed democratic voting. Democracy as known in western countries will not be possible in a war torn occupied tribal region. Okay, so we are there for stability and reconstruction – except that the main destabilizing factor is not the Taliban but the NATO and US occupiers. The majority of Afghanis see the occupying forces of NATO, including Canada paramount among them, as being the cause of many of their problems, as any occupying force is justifiably accused. Reconstruction of minimalist infrastructure will not convert the Afghanis to accepting occupation. The Taliban are a group of insurgents, mainly Pashtun in origin from the southern regions of which Kandahar, where Canadian forces are centered, is the main centre. They become “terrorists” to western eyes because they have attacked western forces, killing a proportionally good number of Canadians along the way. They are not a monolithic group, and activities that range from pure war lordism for power through to drug smuggling are all carried out by tribal leaders that are grouped ignorantly under the overall name of the Taliban. Certainly the Taliban are no angels, buy they are ethnic Afghanis and have not attacked any foreign countries. As time moves forward and military pressure increases, it is only natural that the Taliban will increase their intensity towards Canadian forces, learning from other groups how to build and use better explosives and tactics. Al-Qaeda is correctly classified as a terrorist group, but again they originally had little to do with the US other than to be funded by them through the Pakistani SIS in order to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan. The same Soviets, now simply Russians, have again become power players in Northern Afghanistan with some of the Northern Alliance tribes, and are considered as being part of the power behind Karzai’s inefficient government – inefficient at least for the US. Originally, al-Qaeda were mainly interested in Kashmir and Chechnya, and only came to prominence when the US labeled them as the main culprits in 9/11. Now, as the occupation intensifies as it tries to counter the counter-insurgency, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the various war lords and smugglers are inter-connecting their networks and drawing the US into a wider insurgency in Pakistan, a nuclear armed economically and politically fragile state. These are the grand parameters of the war in Afghanistan. Smaller issues such as women’s rights and drug problems are also argued by Canadian politicians and media. Certainly the Taliban treat women as second class citizens, but the current group of war lords and drug lords are not much different. Within the overall context, helping women is simply a non-starter until all the rest of the lies around the US occupation are sorted out. Drug problems followed the US into Southeast Asia and the same pattern is repeating in the Middle East.

There is no oil in Afghanistan, but it does have significant natural gas deposits in the northern regions and is a crucial pipeline trans-shipment route if the US wants to avoid both Iran and Russia for its supplies. The Liberals brought this mess upon the Canadian forces, who are doing what they can under false pretenses for a foreign occupying force. The Conservatives are prolonging the agony by maintaining the forces there, with Liberal approval, until 2011, another two years of wasting valuable Canadian lives. Bring the troops home now.

--Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles’ work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications.