People Before Profit blog

Iraq and the Looming American Defeat

Wed, 31 May 2006 01:59:00 +0000

5-30-06, 9:29 am

The press reports that the Defense Department itself is calling upon the Pentagon to stop paying Iraqi reporters 'to produce positive stories' about what is going on in Iraq and how the Americans are faring. Rear Adm. Scott Van Buskirk, who conducted the investigation for the Defense Department, thinks paying for good press 'could damage American credibility.' Duh! (New York Times 5/24/06). That story appears on page 19 of the Times.

The really important story that I want to analyze was front page news'-- 'In Shadows, Armed Groups Propel Iraq Toward Chaos' by Dexter Filkins reporting from Baghdad. When properly parsed, this story reveals that the war in Iraq is all but over for the US troops. Democracy, however, has not been defeated since it has never existed in this occupied land. What has been defeated is the attempt by the US to set up a government under its control that would be able to police Iraq for the US while we controlled, directly or indirectly, the oil resources. This story reveals that it is only a matter of time before we see the. last US helicopter leaving the Green zone stuffed with our Ambassador, his staff and various Iraqi puppets. The article opens with a description of the 16th Brigade (1000 men) of the Iraqi Defense Ministry. This brigade was assigned to the Dawra section of Baghdad to guard a section of oil pipeline. There was a death squad inside the brigade that was killing anyone helping or working with the Iraqi government. So the government's own brigade had a unit in it that was killing the government's own supporters. That is all you really need to know to figure out how this war is going to end and why the Pentagon is paying reporters to write nice things about the occupation. But it gets better (or worse as the case maybe). Filkins indicates that this brigade is not all that unusual. 'Indeed,' he writes, 'the 16th Brigade stands as a model for how freelance government violence has spread far beyond the ranks of the Shiite-backed police force and Interior Ministry to encompass other government ministries, private militias and people in the upper levels of the Shiite government.' There is, he says, 'a galaxy of armed groups' and they 'are accelerating the country's slide into chaos.' Meanwhile we have to hear Bush and the generals telling us how all is slowly improving, going as planned, etc. This chaos will eventually consume our forces as well and we should get them out as soon as possible and then toss all the war supporters out of office in the November election. What about the brand new Iraqi government for which we have such high hopes? Well, with regard to the death squads, rogue government militias, army units secretly supporting the insurgency, etc., one of two vice presidents of Iraq, Adil Abul Mahdi (more about him later) says, 'No one knows who is who right now.' This sounds like a government on top of the situation. Better stay in the Green Zone for now. Who are these armed groups, officially not part of the insurgency but on 'our' side? According to the article (based on figures from the US Defense Department) they include 145,000 police officers and commandos 'who have come under scrutiny for widespread human rights violations' (the US has set such a good example), thousands more of militia and other gunmen both Sunni and Shiite, also the 145,000 Facilities Protection Service, the Badr Brigade, the Iraqi Army, 105,000 (who with the Police 'often carry out legitimate missions'), the Mahdi Army (which specializes in 'torture, murder, kidnapping and the settling of scores for political parties') and other private groups including 'contractors' (mercenaries). Remember these are supposed to be the 'good guys.' The new Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki says he is going to 'clamp down' and 'disarm' the death squads and militias. But this is just talk. The major militias are supported by the major Shiite political parties that run the government. The usual anonymous American official tells Filkins, 'I think they have the evidence now as to who is doing most of the killing. Its a question of political will to do what needs to be done. I have just not seen it yet.' All this killing and mayhem is going on between the Shiites and Sunnis both independently of and in collusion with the insurgency. Meanwhile the US bumbles around killing innocent civilians and getting its troops killed. In the Sunni areas of Baghdad Shiite death squads are on a rampage killing young men just because they are Sunnis. Who is doing it? Filkins quotes a human rights activist as saying 'It's the Ministry of Interior.' He also quotes Tariq al-Hashemi, the new government's Sunni Vice President (there is a Shiite one as well): 'You ask me who is doing these things. The police, the militias, the political parties-- we don't know.' He wants to purge the Ministry of Interior 'saying,' Filkins writes, 'there are 'thousands' of corrupt and brutal officers who need to fired if the government ever hopes to secure the trust of Iraq's Sunnis.' This is the kind of great democracy we are building in the Middle East. It should also be noted that most of the personnel in the Ministry of Interior were trained by the Americans or under their supervision. The Shiite leaders, however, like the Ministry of Interior just as it is and 'plan to resist any wholesale transformation' of it. Since the insurgency is largely Sunni, the Shiite politicians think what the Ministry is doing to Sunnis is justified. They are just 'doing their jobs,' says the Shiite Vice President Adil Abul Mahdi. The job of torture, murder and kidnapping-- ultimately paid for by US tax dollars! The reason the new government has two vice presidents, a Sunni and a Shiite, is so they both have a say in the killing of each others followers. Bayan Jabr, who is finance minister in the new government, headed the Interior Ministry in the old government. He is also a leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a right wing Shiite political outfit that runs its own terrorist network--the Badr Brigade. He was, in fact, one of Brigade's commanders. American officials are reported to believe that there are 'rogue' elements committing atrocities in the Interior Ministry but think Jabr is more an incompetent than a sinister force-- a 'man who lost control of his ministry.' Anyway, the point of the Times report is that with all the different militias, private armies of the political parties, 'rogue' elements within the government, the army and police infiltrated by the insurgency, etc., there is a clear trend towards chaos on the ground in Iraq. With respect to the control that the Americans have, it is basically the Green Zone, and outside of the Green Zone-- looming chaos which is daily growing. This is the road towards a colossal political and military defeat for the Bush administration. Even the Marines are now implicated in terrorist activities against Iraqi civilians ('Iraqis' Accounts Link Marines To the Mass Killing of Civilians' New York Times, May 29, 2006). Miysar al-Dulaimi, a human rights lawyer who is part of the investigation of civilian killings by Marines in Haditha on May 19, is quoted by the Times as saying the situation on the ground is so bad and 'People are so scared,' that 'They have lost confidence in the Americans.' This is especially so after the killing rampage in which the Marines reportedly engaged. The insurgency seems to be growing in intensity as well. Although we keep getting 'progress' reports from the Pentagon propaganda machine Mr. Dulaimi told the Times 'that outside their bases, the Americans controlled almost nothing.' This after over three years of fighjting! With the military run by incompetent politicians and generals, Rumsfeld and Rice have to sneak into Iraq whenever they show up in the Green Zone, its definitely time to bring the troops home now and let the Iraqi's control their own oil and put an end to the farcical 'War Against Terrorism.'

--Thomas Riggins is the book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at

Latin America - The Path Away from U.S. Domination

Wed, 31 May 2006 01:57:00 +0000

5-30-06, 9:27 am

Washington rumbles with suppressed outrage over Latin America’s latest demonstrations of its sovereignty - Bolivia’s nationalization of its oil and natural gas reserves. At the same time, newly inaugurated president Evo Morales is a prime candidate to join Washington’s pantheon of Latin American bad boys, presently dominated by Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez. Meanwhile, the region’s new populist leadership, also known as the “Pink Tide,” extends its colors across South America ready to leap to much of the rest of Latin America. The “pink tide,” consists of left-leaning South American governments seeking a third way to register their political legitimation to their citizens as well as to register their autonomy regarding such foreign policy issues as Iraq.

Meanwhile, Washington’s lame regional policy has spurred disbelief even among the hemisphere’s most ardent pro-U.S. governments. Some specialists maintain that while the region’s oncoming economic enfranchisement can be understood from a number of perspectives, perhaps the most forthcoming analysis places the roots of the new movement in the bedding soil of an egregiously failed Washington regional policy.

Throughout the Cold War’s gestation, Democratic as well as Republican presidents have not hesitated to call for U.S. intervention in Latin America however persistently malignant these events have turned out to be, ranging from coup-making in Guatemala and Chile, to the fostering of civil wars in Central America, most of these intrusions later proved to be irrelevant, or at least insufficientto protect genuine, even narrowly defined, U.S national interests. Most of all, they proved to be counter-productive or destructive. As a result, much of the region has become estranged from Washington’s leadership, a legacy now apparent in the difficulties currently being encountered by U.S. policymakers. No wonder that in polls undertaken throughout Latin America regarding the Iraq war, and in the strategy of the Bush administration, an average of 85% of respondents have said no to U.S. initiatives.

Post Soviet Latin America The demise of the Soviet Union in 1990 allowed the illusion to be born of a new non-ideological hemispheric alignment almost exclusively based on trade, and not, unfortunately, on a reworked and broadened confidence-building relationship between the U.S. and the rest of the Americas that reflected at least a passing interest in issues pertaining to social justice and the expansion and exercisable option.

Throughout the years, Washington’s policy towards the region has been fueled by a paroxysm of odium aimed at Havana. In Washington’s eye, Castro, who is always with such kindred legions as Venezuela’s Chávez and now Bolivia’s Morales, poses a lethal threat to Washington’s Latin American cosmography. Under the Bush White House, the relative closeness of its ties with any given nation became a function of the latter’s relations with Castro Cuba. Meanwhile, non-ideological programs, such as maintaining the drug war at a satisfactory level and the White House’s almost obsessive interest in privatization and trade, were prioritized first by the Clinton administration and then by the Bush White House.

In affected areas of Colombia, Bolivia and Peru, already functioning anti-drug strategies prompted a series of U.S. initiatives during this period which ended up in failure as a result of ill-conceived crop fumigation and interdiction processes that led to widespread environmental damage along with illness and disease among locally exposed populations. The particular rights of indigenous communities along with the compromising of national sovereignty were among the casualties of these U.S-led efforts. During this epoch, the Pentagon authored a growing pattern of collaboration, mainly with the Colombian military, but also with the armed forces of Ecuador, Peru, and Paraguay. These collaborations, as a result of burdensome military budgets and other ill-started priorities, often ended with the wholesale destruction of traditional agricultural practices and distortion of local economies.

Finding its own way

The policy of replacing meaningful socially-directed aid to the region with increased emphasis on the drug war, as well as stepped up trade in upscale consumables and other luxury items, usually involved no more than 5% of the populace. Only too late did a number of governments discover that their often flawed economic liberalization policies, encouraged by Washington conservative think tanks and other proponents of the Washington Consensus, not only failed to ameliorate profound social and economic structural lesions, but also predictably contributed to tensions between the haves and the have-nots, both here and abroad. For Latin America, this meant disenchantment with the status quo, along with adding further stress to ties between the north and the south.

For its part, upon taking office, the Bush administration immediately picked up where the previous administration had left off but also embedded hard ideological tenets into U.S. hemispheric policy that Clinton had tended to neglect. This was the period that saw the rise of such hard core ideologies and the prominence afforded to such doughty Cold Warriors as Otto Reich and his protégé Roger Noriega, after the former, due to his extremism, was unable to secure a confirmation vote from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to be Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America. The Bush administration’s Latin Americanists now saw the region uniquely through a prism molded by its anti-Havana passions. The administrations Cold War paradigm had the hemisphere divided into a Zoroastrian world of absolute darkness and light. On one hand, favored right-wing governments like El Salvador’s and Chile’s, which had pragmatically allied itself with Washington, in contrast Venezuela and Bolivia, whose leftist politics found themselves out in the cold.

The Contradiction of U.S. Policy

The decision by Bush to submit U.S.-Latin American relations to an outdated and small- minded game plan, which featured a preemptive and expansionist foreign policy accompanied by an increasingly dysfunctional anti-drug policy, has already pushed strained inter-American ties almost beyond the breaking point. In spite of the economic weight and influence of the U.S market, Latin America’s growing discontent over the failures of the U.S. to make its market entirely accessible to Latin American products accompanied by the trade advantages enjoyed by U.S. subsidized crops and products, set the stage for an increasingly snarling relationship between North and South.

The failure to introduce reforms that would accelerate real, inclusive growth, was compounded by a series of egregious foreign policy missteps by the Bush administration. Examples of these range from orchestrating the ouster of constitutionally-elected President Aristide in Haiti, to helping finance the abortive anti-Chávez coup of April 2002, to attempting to blackmail Central American and Caribbean countries to join the “Coalition of the Willing” in Iraq, and to supporting favored conservative presidential candidates throughout the area. The latter action cynically caricaturing its profound concern for “free and fair” elections as it threatened the suspension of various forms of aid if the “wrong” kind of “democrat” was elected to office. Also, there was the Reich-Noriega bullying of government leaders and local politicians who didn’t take the “right” position on such issues as the embargo against Cuba, the election of the OAS secretary-general, and trade.

The ferment generated by Washington’s increasingly malign neglect of the region gave rise to what began to be known as a “Pink Tide” movement that sweeps across South America. But despite the tendency of Washington right-wingers and other species of conservative think tanks, like Freedom House, to demonize this political trend, the Pink Tide was a natural reaction to pressing trade, security, and social justice issues of paramount concern for the region, even though such concerns seemed to have dropped off Washington’s agenda. The Bush administration, now led by the State Department’s Secretary Rice and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, had no problem accusing these left leaning governments, led by Hugo Chávez, of being threats to the U.S. national interest and of being destabilizing factors to other Latin American countries, even though they could never quite identify the source of that threat. In fact, the reforms enacted by these pink new populist left-leaning leaders turned out to be far more reminiscent of New Deal reformation than any mythic reemergence of a grand neo-Stalinist era. The strength mainly stemmed from the rejection by a new wave of enlightened Latin American leaders of the faux democratization which was being offered by various U.S.-backedgovernments as a miracle cure for the maladies of underdevelopment, but which upon the next dawn, turned out to be only pure snake oil.

New Players

The recent re-awakening of the indigenous population of regional civilizations has started to profoundly reshape Latin America’s political landscape. As this new awareness peaked, indigenous communities began to retroactively say “no” to presidential candidates who, once in office, reneged on their glib commitments and proceeded to repudiate campaign pledges to their Aymara and Quechua-speaking altiplano constituents. They then countered these acts of treachery by ousting leaders in Ecuador, Argentina and Bolivia after the presidents had revealed themselves to be anything but bona fide servants of the people. This process ran conterminously with the increasing political involvement of those indigenous groups, who, with an increasingly powerful voice, began rejecting neoliberal reforms with roadblocks and other rejectionist public manifestations. As Latin American populations were spurning traditional politicians and their dusty programs, different actors emerged to capture the discontent by offering new solutions. These were most visible in 1998 with Hugo Chávez’s victory in Venezuela, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s 2002 triumph in Brazil and in Evo Morales’ defining victory in Bolivia last March. While the May 28 triumph in Colombia of Álvaro Uribe, Washington’s favored South American leader, produced great joy at the State Department, it had to be disheartened by the strong showing by left-leaning candidate Carlos Gaviria. Even with Uribe’s big vote, Washington is still a bit disenchanted by his strong sense of nationalism and his querulous reaction to any display of U.S. sentiments of mastery over Colombia’s public policy, the war against drugs or Uribe’s desire to maintain close business-like ties with Chávez.

But just as it appeared that this pink tide was spreading to Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia and had gained credence and political voltage in Peru, Ecuador, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and some of the Caribbean islands, two developments could be discerned: first that Chávez had come to be seen by huge numbers as being the movement’s spiritual leader, as well as its sage, just as the staccato-like peppering of the political scene by Chávez’s ADS-like interventions in other countries weakened thereby their already only loosely common front. Chávez is sometimes belied by what his critics see as his buffoonish outbursts and raffish personality, and could well be seen as perhaps the most dynamic leader in the region today – though is power is more with the streets than the diplomats of other Pink Tide countries.

A Hero for the Poor

As both a committed democrat, (having been confirmed by popular vote three times; twice in national elections and once more in a recall referendum) and seen by the majority of Venezuela and much of the rest of Latin American chambers, as an inspired social activist, Chávez appears to embody the region’s greatest hope for the future and the growing despair over his irrepressible style. His myriad social programs, ranging from medical services for the nation’s poor through an innovative oil exchange arrangement with Cuba, to a meaningful land reform and educational project, to a broad pattern of disconnected oil sales to many neighboring countries as well as directly to deprived neighborhoods within countries, have given luster to his revolutionary credentials. In exchange, he has not asked for tribute, but merely called upon other leaders to do what is best for their own countries. Chávez has also been the region’s chief proponent of increased integration in the case of social justice, as well as promoting discounted oil for the Caribbean islands with strained economies, and poor neighborhoods in Boston and the Bronx, while spearheading the effort to construct a gas pipeline running between Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina, with an extension to Bolivia. In spite of the State Department’s most benighted efforts to caricature him as a human right’s abuser, a bully and an anti-democrat, Chávez has demonstrated that he has an incontestable record for transparency and for obeying the law far more clinically than much of the leadership of his middle class detractors within Venezuela or Washington’s hypocritical salvos who helped to finance a coup to oust him in 2002.

A New Model Dares to Emerge

Furthermore, Chávez and now Morales may, if they politically survive, represent a historic development in Latin America. As longas they survive, they are the first democratically elected leaders espousing a mixed economy containing socialist values that the region has witnessed since Salvador Allende came to power in Chile in 1970. Clearly up to this point, due to open market competition and the denigration of a mixed economy featuring a vigorous role for the public sector, a sense of civic responsibility has not been available for the average Latin American. The UN has stated that the region has the highest level of concentrated wealth in the world. The result is that the process produces few “winners” and a plethora of “losers” throughout the region.

The values shared by Chávez and now Morales are not without their detractors: The Venezuelan President is meeting the same portion of Washington-backed subterfuge that eventually led to the coups that overthrew Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, and Allende in 1973. The Bush administration has employed a range of strategies against its Venezuelan nemesis as part of an intensifying campaign to ridicule, pillory, and perhaps eventually arrange for the demise of his government. Themes ranging from Washington providing strategic funding to nominally, if heavily compromised, “democratic” bodies such as Súmate, to allegedly encouraging acts of espionage and attempts to foment anti-Chávez unrest within the Venezuelan military, are almost daily events. All sense of proportionality has now fled the scene in Washington, when Chávez expels a U.S. embassy military attaché (a relatively junior officer) for trafficking documents with Venezuela military personnel, and the U.S. retaliates by expelling the second in command at the Venezuela embassy in Washington. It’s as if in return for Chávez launching a rhetorical gonzo jab against President Bush – his beloved “Mr. Danger”- the “Decider” readies the B 3’s to bomb Caracas. Meanwhile, in its totally discredited annual certification reports regarding drug trafficking, human trafficking, human rights abuses and a respect for religious freedom and the war against terrorism, the administration shamelessly manipulates data in order to come forth with preordained findings, with Venezuela being the target of choice for such protesting.

The Advantages of a Full Leader

Chávez, of course, has had the sort of leverage that Allende grievously lacked: with oil at over $70 a barrel, the Venezuelan leader is not only flush with petrodollars but ready and able to fund revolutionary domestic and regional projects. He holds the additional trump card of an increasingly important strategic resource that has yet to be exploited on a major scale the heavy crude yielded from the Orinoco’s tar sands. Furthermore, with a widening slate of regional allies, theoretically including venues like Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Bolivia, with several other potential candidates in the wings and Mercosur as his bride, Chávez, theoretically has the geopolitical heft to stand up to U.S. machinations. At the same time, the already fragmenting loose knit Pink Tide alliance is suffering from some important viperous tendencies, including Chávez’s lamentable habit of self destructively intervening in the local affairs of other Latin American countries.

Standing up to Washington is a theme that has gained widespread currency elsewhere in South America, as part of a leitmotif of the pink tide movement, which in reality may be more apparent than real. The resounding defeat of both U.S.-backed candidates in the OAS Secretary-General race a number of months ago, indicated that the region was no longer willing to docilely follow the diktats coming from the north. Additionally, Brazil’s decision around the same time to deny the U.S. even token observer status at the Arab-Latin American Summit in Brasilia represented a momentous, if symbolic, shift in U.S.-Latin American relations – something like the dog being ready to bite the hand of its owner.

A Rush of New Development

As one of the more dynamic aspects of a fast moving scenario, Evo Morales in Bolivia has emerged as a particularly plucky figure,unwilling to allow his country’s traditional bended knee posture to the U.S to continue unchallenged. He insists that while wanting to have a good relationship with the U.S., it must be not one based on “submission.” Underscoring this escape from the “Latin American ghetto,” Morales’ travels after winning the presidency, included quick visits to Caracas, Europe, South Africa, Brazil and China, but conspicuously left out Washington, suggesting that the emperor’s ring no longer needed to be kissed. The trip also highlighted another phenomenon of the pink tide, which is an increasing propensity to turn towards multilateral ties with non-traditional partners in order to achieve diversification. Trade between South America and the EU is quickening as the region seeks to construct new economic and political ties around the world, and as Washington becomes an increasingly problematic partner. Nascent bodies such as the Ibero-American Summit and the IBSA (India-Brazil-South Africa) South-South alliance seek to integrate Latin America into a world that looks and acts more like them, and as a way to escape the imperial ukases, traditionally emitted from the State Department.

The forward, if fitful, motion of the pink tide has the potential to profoundly reshape the internal politics of Latin America and grant the region a new and enhanced place in the global pecking order. For Washington, which has been wholly unable to constructively engage this movement and still clings to the disabling vision of a wholly U.S.-dominated “back yard,” sustained more by manipulation than by collective regional interests, the pink tide, whatever its centrifugal tensions, presents a serious diplomatic dilemma. Rumsfeld almost divisively indicates that the Pink Tide could be dealt with by a series of U.S mini military bases (FOLS) or “lilly pads” throughout the region, along with a beefed up and entirely complaisant Latin American military establishment. If the White House continues to return to a now poisoned well to draw from its legacy of past arrogant initiatives that have helped create the disastrous conditions that have so frayed bonds of the current distressed relationship, the rest of the hemisphere can be excused for becoming increasingly alienated from a diplomatic hegemon which has so lost its way that it risks finding itself pushed aside, as an outdated and rather useless relic.

From Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Peace in a Gas Pump or Bringing Pharaoh's Armed Madhouse Home

Wed, 31 May 2006 01:43:00 +0000

5-30-06, 9:13 am

This evening {May 28] here in Virginia, Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band jammed for hours at an outdoor pavilion, leading tens of thousands of us in protest songs, including a powerful rendition of 'Bring Them Home.' The concert was held at the Nissan Pavilion, a characterless monument to automobiles surrounded by an ocean of the things, cars and trucks and SUVs which spent hours creeping in and out before and after the show. Many of us devoted 8 or 9 hours to hearing 2.5 hours of music and paid $90 for the privilege. Imagine if Springsteen were to announce a free concert on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. The traffic jam alone would spare us a week's worth of work by Congress. The voices raised in song for peace and justice would have articles of impeachment introduced by the end of the evening, and if the Capitol Police locked us all up we could spend several hours getting out of jail much more enjoyably than getting out of a parking lot. That we congregate for entertainment rather than political change is not entirely true. Seventy activists were arrested in Nevada today protesting a proposed bomb test. But there should have been seventy thousand arrests, not 70. Public opinion is overwhelmingly against our current government, or – rather – for restoring the rule of law and the system of democracy laid out in our Constitution. A lot of people at tonight's concert complimented me on my 'Impeach Bush and Cheney' shirt. One guy with a Tennessee accent told me that he worked in a factory in east Tennessee, and that the die-hard Republicans he worked with were turning against Bush because the Weapons of Mass Destruction weren't there and because gas prices were so high. That's an interesting pair of complaints against Bush. I wonder whether publicizing the intimate relationship between the two would lead to further enlightenment in Tennessee and across the country. If the war was not fought for WMDs or because of ties to 9-11, if Bush lied about all of that, then why DID he launch this war? Increasingly people seem to be acknowledging that it had something to do with oil. But if it was about getting our hands on the oil, it seems to have been bungled quite badly, because Iraq's oil has not paid for the reconstruction of the country as promised, and our gas prices keep climbing. How incompetent, we're told. Bush is so incompetent! Or so we're told. Unless he launched this war in order to control Iraq's oil and clamp down on production in order to boost the profits of oil companies. Can you imagine the political ramifications if Republicans upset about both war lies and gas prices understood that the war was, in fact, launched in order to raise the gas prices? Such an understanding could lead to a healthy skepticism toward war, or even, if we're really lucky, a widespread demand for a shift to renewable energy. It could also produce such landslide elections that the results could not be rigged. Greg Palast's new book documents the control the oil companies have had over Bush's war policies, and the desire they had to remove Saddam Hussein, because he was jerking the price of crude up and down. One week he'd cut off shipments, and the price would jump. The next he'd pump all he could, and prices would plummet. As a Council on Foreign Relations report put it, Saddam was a 'destabilizing influence…to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East.' Let's face it, a crowd of middle-class white folks just sang a bunch of songs with Bruce about the hard times poor people face, largely oblivious to the fact that a few very wealthy people from Houston sent our poor men and women to die so that they could become even wealthier. It wasn't enough for them to take that wild-card Saddam out of the picture and seize illegal cartel-like control over the price of oil – they also had to immediately raise it. The oil companies are now in the position Wal-Mart is in the day after the last Mom and Pop store in town closes. They can't resist gouging us, the people who gave the money and blood to put them where they are. Now, of course, it's also true that the maniacs over at the Project for a New American Century wanted to control Iraq's oil and are now installing in Iraq massive bases and air strips to be used in conquering Iran and Syria. The urgency of ending the war and 'Bringing Them Home' is heightened by the fact that our men and women are in Iraq to facilitate more illegal wars. But back here in the states, perhaps the most effective thing any one of us can do to exploit this teachable moment would be to hang out at a gas station with a poster reading 'The War Was for Oil Profits: Bush and Cheney's Friends Are Happy: Are You?' There should be some long lines of cars getting gas as Memorial Day weekend winds to a close. It's May 29th now, as I finish writing this, Memorial Day. This would also have been a birthday for Cindy Sheehan's son had he not been killed by a criminal president. But Cindy's nephew is two months old today. And Tennessee is one of 48 states in which a majority disapproves of Bush. Hope is very much alive. Honor our dead. Demand the truth. Bring them home. From

The Iran Issue: Reconfiguing the NPT

Wed, 31 May 2006 01:41:00 +0000

5-30-06, 9:11 am

THE Iran issue is now reaching a flash point with a number of reports coming out of the Bush administration of a military strike and even a possible nuclear “bunker” bomb to “destroy” Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Even if the nuclear scenario is discounted, the move to bring Iran under Chapter VII in the Security Council and then legitimise unilateral military action under the fig leaf of a UN resolution brings a sense of déjà vu to the whole issue. Once again we have unsubstantiated reports of weapons of mass destruction and ratcheting up of war hysteria on a future threat to the “civilised world” from a nuclear-armed Iran, followed by another possible US military misadventure in West Asia. The case against Iran is that it has installed a cascade 164 of centrifuges in Natanz for enrichment of uranium, which opens the way for an Iranian bomb. This is the argument that the US and the European Union has been advancing for some time. What they do not say is that Iran has the right to enrich uranium for their nuclear power program under the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT). As we shall see, under the guise of “Iran’s threat to world peace”, the US is trying to introduce fundamental changes to the basic structure of the Non Proliferation Treaty itself. Even if we accept that Iran may have long-term plans for the production of nuclear weapons, the number of centrifuges it has installed is too insignificant to be a real threat. Iran needs at least 1,500-2,000 centrifuges to make enough weapons grade uranium for a couple of bombs per year. By all accounts, they are at least 5–10 years away from such a scenario. Iran has repeatedly stated that it is willing to give up uranium enrichment except for laboratory scale and to have their supply of enriched uranium for the nuclear power program come out of Russia. Instead of negotiating on this, the US is attempting – in collusion with the Europeans – to push them to a position where they either walk out of the NPT or state that they will go ahead with full-scale enrichment. In either case, the US could then launch a military strike against Iran claiming future security risks. MANUFACTURED CRISIS a la IRAQ If we look at the last three years of manufactured crisis on Iran, it will become clear that it has little to do with the actual violations that Iran might have committed, but to use such allegations to deny Iran of its right under NPT to the nuclear fuel cycle. Since such a denial would be patently illegal under the NPT, the case put before the IAEA is that Iran did not make full disclosure earlier about its nuclear program and therefore the onus of proving that there is no continuing clandestine program is on Iran. If they cannot prove this, they should be denied this right. It is important to register here that what the US and its European allies are asking Iran to prove is impossible. To prove you have done something is simple; you can always show the evidence of what you have done. But if you are asked to provide evidence that you have not done something, this is impossible. How do you furnish a negative proof? What kind of proof will suffice? This is exactly the strategy that the US adopted in Iraq too. Day in and day out, the demand was that Iraq should disclose that it had weapons of mass destruction. Denying this itself constituted proof that Iraq was not cooperating with the weapon inspectors. In other words, whether in Iraq earlier or Iran now, the only proof that will satisfy the US is proof they are guilty: they must confess to their guilt or be bombed. The possibility of not being guilty is not an option and only proves that they are not willing to make full disclosure. This is what lies behind the US and its insistence that Iran must prove that it is not in violation of NPT. Before the IAEA resolution referring Iran to the Security Council, the IAEA inspectors had unfettered access to Iran’s nuclear facilities. Instead of continuing with the inspections, which would have made more and more certain that Iran was not hiding anything, the US and its European allies precipitated a referral to the Security Council. The provision for such a referral is finding some evidence of clandestine activity. IAEA chief, El Baredei, instead of presenting such evidence, issued a report that though such evidence had not been found, Iran had not been able to prove the impossible negative that it had disclosed everything. This is in line with the series of reports that IAEA has produced on Iran earlier that the IAEA is “unable to confirm the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities inside Iran”. On the basis of this negative finding, the matter was referred to the Security Council, with the Indian government also conniving with what was patently an illegal move. Here again the parallel to Iraq is striking. Contrary to the myth that the western media has propagated, it is not Saddam who asked the weapon inspectors to leave. The IAEA inspectors withdrew when the UK and US had decided on a prolonged bombing campaign in Iraq and explicitly at their request. In Iran also, Iran had agreed to stop enrichment and voluntarily accepted the much more intrusive regime of inspections under Additional Protocol of NPT while negotiating with the EU on the future course of its nuclear program. Iran had also made clear that any referral to the Security Council would mean that Iran would walk out of this self-imposed restraint regime it was accepting. It was only after being referred to the Security Council that Iran resumed enrichment and pulled out of the Additional Protocol obligations. If we look at what the US has done, it will become clear that its intention was always to push Iran beyond the brink. It had no intention in a negotiated settlement in which Iran gives up certain rights it currently has under NPT for security guarantees as well as assured supply of enriched uranium fuel. From the beginning, the attempt was to force Iran into a path of confrontation, after which the US could declare, “All options including the nuclear option are on the table”. While the agenda is obviously one of regime change in Iran, there is also another longer term US agenda –– that the current NPT regime should itself be reconfigured to deny a number of countries their right to the nuclear fuel cycle. PERPETUAL NUCLEAR BULLY If we look at the nuclear scenario of the 60’s, it will become clear why the NPT regime had accepted that all countries would have unfettered right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Negotiating that all non-nuclear weapon countries should give up nuclear ambitions was not easy. In fact the US used its Atom for Peace program then as enticement to get more countries to support the NPT regime. The non-proliferation contract was simple; all countries that had yet not produced the bomb would give it up in lieu of unfettered access to scientific knowledge, technology and materials for the nuclear energy program. The only agreement that they had to make was that they would not make the bomb. This is the compact that the US and other nuclear weapons states now would like to change. We are not addressing here the other part of the compact that the nuclear weapon states would negotiate in good faith for total nuclear disarmament. What the US and its allies are now asking is despite their not fulfilling their part of the nuclear bargain, the non-nuclear weapon countries should give up their right also to the nuclear fuel cycle. Only a few countries defined as advanced countries should have this right. To quote George Perkovitch, one of the leading US non-proliferation ideologues, “The Non Proliferation Treaty's vague Article IV right 'to develop research, production, and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes' should not be interpreted to endorse additional states’ acquiring uranium enrichment or plutonium separation facilities” (Yale Global, March 21, 2005). This is what underlies the proposal that Iran give up enrichment completely and rely on Russia to enrich uranium for its nuclear power program. The US believes that it can continue to keep nuclear weapons for itself in perpetuity, threaten other countries with pre-emptive nuclear strikes, build new generation of nuclear weapons and then deny other countries the right to even manufacture its own fuel. It is currently spending more than 6.5 billion dollars for nuclear weapons –– 50 per cent more than it did on the average during the cold war. The new generation of nuclear weapons include low-yield bunker busters, precisely the kind of weapons being proposed to be used in Natanz. It is comparatively easy today to start manufacturing nuclear fuel. Once a country has this capability, going the extra distance to convert this to nuclear weapons is not a major technical challenge. Thus, it is easy for countries to build nuclear bomb-making capability under the guise of a nuclear energy program. The process of enrichment is same whether a country wants to make Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) or Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU). Uranium Hexaflouride Gas is passed through a set of centrifuges in a cascade, each of which produces a higher concentration of the fissile Uranium 235 isotope. While the power program requires enrichment to about 3-5 per cent, the bomb program demands an enrichment level of 90 per cent. As the number of stages that the material undergoes in this concentration process decides the level of enrichment, once the requisite number of centrifuges is in place, it is only a matter of time before a country – if it wants – can acquire weapons grade fissile material. However, running a large cascade of centrifuges is a complex operation and Iran will take some time to master this technology, if it wants to use its enrichment facility to develop the bomb. TOWARDS A NEW COERCIVE NPT REGIME The strategic shift that the US wants in the NPT regime was that the earlier NPT was a voluntary giving up of the bomb by the non-nuclear weapons countries: it was a matter of political will. The new NPT regime contemplated would add a highly coercive regime to it by which either the technology or the knowledge to make the bomb would be denied to most of the countries. This also explains the far more intrusive inspection regime that the Additional Protocols in IAEA call for, which is now sought to be made mandatory, as also the desire to add clauses by which NPT signatories cannot walk out of NPT. Ring fencing the fuel cycle is another element in this new NPT scenario. In lieu of giving up the right to enrich uranium, these countries then would get the assurance of a supply of nuclear fuel from the same countries that have not kept their earlier promise to introduce nuclear disarmament. Interestingly, the interlocutors in the earlier negotiations with Iran, the E 3, consisting of France, Germany and U.K. would all be a part of this new monopoly. In the US scheme, the nuclear weapon states plus Japan, Germany and Netherlands, the three other countries who also have uranium enrichment facilities, would become the new OPEC with complete monopoly of all nuclear fuel. If nuclear energy does become more popular, and there is evidence that it is becoming more attractive with the rise in oil prices and global warming from the greenhouse gases produced from fossil fuel, then these countries could dictate to the rest of the world their price for nuclear fuel. This has already made even countries such as Brazil and South Africa, who have given up nuclear weapons, quite uncomfortable, a discomfort that India also should share if it were not so enamoured of a strategic alliance with the US. The problem with such a duplicitous policy is that not only is it immoral – you cannot tell the rest of the world to give up nuclear weapons while keeping them for yourself – but also it is foredoomed to failure. Year by year, the technology of producing centrifuges and other supportive technologies are becoming easier and more accessible. As the technologies become easier to acquire and their costs also drop, ring fencing the nuclear fuel cycle, as a part of a new NPT regime is unlikely to succeed. The unfortunate part of the current Iran crisis is that IAEA and the UN are implicitly accepting elements of the new NPT scenario as legitimate objectiveseven if they are not in the NPT. The Iran case can then be used as the new international standard by which all non-nuclear weapon countries would be held to in the future. This is why most of the non-aligned countries in the IAEA have opposed the attempt to deny Iran the nuclear fuel cycle, with India proving the dishonourable exception. The problem with a preoccupation with the non-proliferation agenda is that it does not address the reason why non-nuclear weapon states are attracted to nuclear weapons in the first place. If Israel has a monopoly of nuclear weapons in West Asia and the US demands the right to use nuclear weapons in “preventive” wars even against countries that do not have nuclear weapons, it should not surprise any one that nuclear weapons start to look more and more attractive. With the enormous superiority in conventional arms resting with the US and its ability to punch through conventional defences in any future conflict, weaker countries also look to nuclear weapons as “equalisers”. We may condemn them for doing so, but cannot deny that it is a response to what they perceive as threats of war. Condemning them is not enough; we need also to address their legitimate security concerns. Any attempt to impose a long-term non-proliferation regime on others without the nuclear powers disarming themselves is unlikely to hold indefinitely. It is a matter of time before nuclear weapons technology will be within the reach of any nation willing to go this route. Armed interventions by the US, local bullyboys such as Israel will only help to tip the world into the hot bed of nuclear weapons and make this world an infinitely more dangerous place. STOP THIS MADNESS The recent revelations coming out of Washington makes it clear that there are plans being made of a possible military strike against Iran. Such a military strike is unlikely to be a one-of affair as was Israel’s strike on the Iraq’s Osirak plant. A simple war game would show that such a strike must be followed up by continuous aerial bombardment of the type we saw in Yugoslavia and a complete destruction of Iran’s industrial and military capabilities. Otherwise, Iran could inflict heavy damage to the US interests in West Asia and on Israel. For the sane, this is a horrifying scenario. The world is already dealing with the collapse of Iraq as a country, a major humanitarian disaster, along with the loss of oil that it used to supply to the world economy. An attack on Iran could conceivably lead to Iran blocking the straits of Hormuz through which 70 per cent of world’s oil passes. At the very least, it will mean Iran’s supply dwindling for the foreseeable future and oil prices climbing well beyond $100 per barrel. The global economy, already on a knife-edge, could go into a catastrophic tailspin causing untold miseries to the people all over the world. In all such economic downturn, as so often happens, the poorer countries and the global poor would be hit the hardest. India’s record on the Iran issue has been one of hypocrisy and subservience to the US. Already, the Indian government is visibly dragging its feet over the Iran pipeline, while jumping on to the US initiative over a new pipeline through Afghanistan. The Indo-US nuclear deal also seeks to tie India permanently to the US strategic interests. There is real threat that if there are military strikes on Iran, the Indian government will be seen to be complicit in such an attack, with long-term consequences for India. Even now it is not too late. India must join other non-aligned countries to stop this madness of military action that the US is contemplating. It must intervene positively so that Iran’s slide towards nuclear weapons is stopped as well as its rights to security and the nuclear fuel cycle retained. It is not only a moral necessity but in our national interest that such a confrontation and possible military action are averted.

From People's Democracy

Public Transportation: Less Stress and Pollution

Wed, 31 May 2006 01:37:00 +0000

5-30-06, 9:06 am

EARTH TALK From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine Dear EarthTalk: Where I live in Connecticut, our highways are “parking lots” many times a day. Isn't this an ideal situation for public transit? Why isn't it happening? -- John Moulton, Stamford, CT An increasing number of public transit options are coming online throughout North America, but those of you idling alone bumper-to-bumper in your cars might not know it. Indeed, lack of knowledge about public transportation options may be the largest impediment to widespread acceptance of more efficient ways of getting around. Driving your own car back and forth to work every day is not as convenient as it once was, and public transit options are now faster and undoubtedly generate less stress and pollution. In Connecticut, the state-owned CTTRANSIT moves 27 million people a year on well-appointed local and express buses serving all metro areas. And two full-service commuter rail lines, Metro-North and Shore Line East, routinely take riders longer distances. Similar services are available in many urban and suburban areas across the U.S. Municipal websites are the best place to find transit options, routes and schedules. The best thing to happen to encourage public transit usage has been high gas prices. Over the last year the average price of regular unleaded rose in the U.S. by 76 cents, with prices now $3.00 or more almost everywhere. And transit agencies report a correlation between high gas prices and increased ridership. The Utah Transit Authority says ridership is up 50 percent from last year on a 19-mile light-rail system in Salt Lake City. And Washington, DC’s Metrorail has seen some of its busiest days ever during the last few months. In Canada, ridership has risen as much as 10 percent in cities like Vancouver and Winnipeg in step with rising gas prices, though cars remain the travel option of choice in the country’s eastern cities. According to the American Public Transportation Association, 14 million Americans use one or another form of public transportation every weekday, while about 17 million people drive their cars instead. The organization estimates that public transit ridership has grown by as much as 22 percent--faster than highway or air travel--since 1995. And a recently conducted Harris Poll concluded that the American public would like to see rail-based public transit “have an increasing share of passenger transportation.” Meanwhile, Canadians have embraced public transit even more than their neighbors to the south. An estimated 12 million Canadians--including more than a fifth of all commuters in Toronto--use some form of public transit. Transportation analyst Paul Schimek found that public transit use is almost twice as high per capita in Canada as in the U.S. Also, car use in Canada is almost 20 percent lower per capita. Schimek attributes the differences to traditionally higher gas prices as well as more compact urban development than in the U.S. Analysts point to the strength of the American “highway lobby” as the reason why Americans have been slow to embrace public transit. It has worked directly with lawmakers over the years to encourage road building and private automobile use to achieve, in the words of a General Motors ad of days gone by, the “American dream of freedom on wheels.” Back in Connecticut, some urban planners have been pushing the idea of turning crowded Interstate 95 into a double-decker highway in places to ease congestion. CONTACTS: American Public Transportation Association, www.apta.com; Canadian Urban Transit Association, www.cutaactu.ca. GOT AN ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTION? Send it to: EarthTalk, c/o E/The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; submit it at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/thisweek/, or e-mail: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php.

Abstaining from Sex Education Politics

Mon, 29 May 2006 02:25:00 +0000

5-28-06, 9:55 am

Earlier this month the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) held a conference on sexually transmitted diseases. The conference was slated to include a panel discussion entitled “Are Abstinence-Only Until Marriage Programs a Threat to Public Health?” However, Indiana’s Republican Congressman Mark Souder complained to the Health and Human Services Department about “the controversial nature of this session and its obvious anti-abstinence objective.” Consequently, the title was changed to “Public Health Strategies of Abstinence Programs for Youth,” and advocates of abstinence-only sex education replaced two members of the panel. It’s troubling that a conservative Republican was able to wield so much influence over a federal agency at the expense of science. A spokesman for Rep. Souder said he was concerned that the panel would promote nothing positive about abstinence-only education. Apparently, that was because one of the panelists was scheduled to address the evidence linking abstinence-only education and rising rates of sexually transmitted diseases. This panelist and another individual were removed from the panel and replaced by Dr. Patricia Sulak and another physician, both of whom are proponents of abstinence-only programs. Although the other panelists went through a peer-review screening process, neither of these individuals did. And while the other panelists had to pay their own way to attend, the CDC used taxpayer dollars to pay for both abstinence proponents. Dr. Sulak is the director and author of a pseudo sex education program entitled “Worth the Wait.” This program is used in grades six through high school in 31 school districts in Texas. According to a review of the program by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, Worth the Wait relies on messages of fear, discourages contraception, and attempts to make students feel guilty rather than educating them. The Worth the Wait program discourages any meaningful discussion of contraception. An entire lesson is entitled “Why Contraceptives are not the Answer for Teens.” Dr. Sulak apparently believes that if contraception is presented as improper, teens will simply choose not to have sex. Yet studies suggest that almost half of all teenagers are sexually active. By refusing to discuss contraception, this program leaves teenagers more likely to engage in sex without contraceptives, making them susceptible to pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. And the program provides misleading information by encouraging students to take so-called virginity pledges. Students are asked to sign a pledge that they will not have sex until marriage. And it advises students, “Research has shown that teenagers who sign abstinence pledges are much less likely to have intercourse.” This has been proven false many times over. Studies have shown that at best, abstinence pledges simply delay the onset of sex. And studies have demonstrated that teenagers who take such pledges are less likely to use contraceptives when they become sexually active. A 2005 study of abstinence-only sex education programs in Texas, where Worth the Wait is used, found that they had “little impact” on teenagers’ behavior. The study by the Texas Department of Health determined that girls in the ninth-grade were five percent more likely to engage in sex after taking abstinence-only programs. And boys in the tenth grade were 15 percent more likely to engage in sex after participating in abstinence-only classes. The study’s lead researcher concluded, “We didn’t find strong evidence of program effect.” Ironically, the day before the CDC panel on abstinence-only programs was held, Harvard University released the results of a comprehensive study on abstinence pledges. The National Institute of Child Health and Development conducted the government-sponsored study. Over 14,000 teenagers were interviewed between 1995 and 2001. The study found that 52 percent who took the pledge had sex within one year of doing so. Conservative Republicans have aggressively funded abstinence-only education programs since President Bush took office. Over 100 such programs have been funded in recent years. Congress allocated $168 million for abstinence programs in last year’s budget. This year, $182 million was funded for abstinence-only education, and $204 million has been allocated for 2007. But it isn’t benefiting our nation’s teenagers. In 2004 the House of Representative’s Government Reform Committee issued a report on federally funded abstinence-only sex education programs. The report determined that out of the 13 most popular programs, 11 contained “unproved claims [and] outright falsehoods.” Some of the false statements included assertions that a man can get a woman pregnant by merely touching her, that women who have abortions are prone to suicide, that AIDS can be spread through sweat, and that condoms cannot prevent sexually transmitted diseases. Clearly, these programs supplanted science with political ideology. It was inappropriate for Congressman Souder to exert so much influence over a federal agency. And it’s offensive that the Bush administration allowed him to do so. Science should remain free from political persuasion and ideology. The health and welfare of the country’s teenagers depend on abstaining from sex education politics.

A Portrait of the Current International Juncture in Broad Strokes

Sat, 27 May 2006 02:56:00 +0000

5-26-06, 10:26 am

On the third anniversary of United States aggression against Iraq, the world is on the verge of another international political crisis and a new war waged by the world’s biggest superpower against another sovereign nation, Iran. Fierce economic, political and social contradictions are being manifested in a concentrated manner, especially in the Middle East and in Latin America. A scenario of rapid degeneration and crisis is becoming more evident, painted in very strong and vivid colors, one that is distinct in every manner from the soft and fuzzy reality as viewed through the lenses of reformist social democracy, which continues to dream of the world stability that would supposedly result from US economic hegemony and the ability of its system to regenerate. On the other hand, it is a worldview that counts on the appearance of a new international balance of powers, a kind of 'assertive multilateralism' that would mitigate the devastating effects to world order which have emanated from President Bush’s unilateralism, as well as from his policy of preemptive war. But these are unfeasible hypotheses, in some cases the illusions of intellectuals who are disconnected from reality, in others the self-interested propaganda of those in the service of imperialism - a new kind of ideological Trojan horse in the ranks of the left.

The government of President Bush chose the third anniversary of the war to define its ideological position both in theory and practice. The days that preceded the this anniversary of war and occupation were days of horror for the civilian population of the Iraqi city of Samara, an exercise in terror with which the occupation forces intended to display their capacity to control the situation and further their objective of keeping Iraq under US rule. To do so, they perpetrated further crimes against humanity, as they had already done during the genocidal assault on Fallujah, and in countless other raids that have massacred the Iraqi civilian population. For this they will one day be judged as the worst terrorists of all, without compare in the annals of human history.

During these very days, Washington issued a new document entitled 'The National Security Strategy of the United States.' It is an updated version, in fact a reiteration, of the strategy adopted in 2002 a few months before the offensive against Iraq was unleashed, one which Communists have tirelessly denounced as a plan for ruling the world by means of wars of aggression, a strategy which puts at risk democracy, the national independence of peoples, security and peace, and in fact the very survival of humankind. The most recent document, issued in March 2006, reaffirms that the Bush administration's mission is to defeat terrorism and tyranny by means of endless war and 'preventive wars.' The document begins with the affirmation that 'America is at war,' and that 'such is the strategy of national security in times of war demanded by the serious challenges we are facing now,' in a clear demonstration of the militarist and belligerent option taken by United States imperialism.

To say that conduct of modern international relations and diplomacy that began with the 17th-century Peace of Westphalia is facing its demise in the Bush era is not a figure of speech, not a mere sectarian departure, and by no means dogmatic nonsense. The death toll for the United Nations and 'multilateralism' began to ring when former Secretary of State Colin Powell characterized the UN as 'irrelevant,' since it had 'failed in its responsibilities' by not authorizing the attack against Iraq. The epilogue to this attack on the United Nations was the Azores Summit, in which the right-wing Portuguese government served as an accomplice. From then on, the farcical character of the so-called Pax Americana and the multilateralism of the imperialist powers became completely evident as a way of achieving an international balance in an era of globalization.

United States imperialism has turned into a formidable war machine. The superpower's annual military budget is now nearing $500 billion. Its troops and military bases are scattered throughout every corner of world. There are more than half a million soldiers, technicians and instructors outside US national borders in 725 bases and military missions, officially acknowledged, in 38 countries. As normally happens when it is a matter of putting the machine into action, theorizations about humanitarian war, the fight against terrorism, unseating tyrannies, assertive multilateralism, balance of power, etc. begin to surface. But what matters in practical terms is the use of force.

The belief that it is possible to build a world order based on transparent rules, global cooperation, progressive administration, effective and efficient multilateral organizations, solid and applicable juridical institutions, and self-regulating political and economic mechanisms is but a feeble illusion, or in other words it is obvious propaganda. Such a world does not and cannot exist and exist except by means of a revolutionary break with the current state of things.

Another issue is the objective appearance of new national economic and political centers, either in the camp opposing imperialism or within the context of inter-imperialist contradictions. From a Leninist perspective, depending on the political situation and the character of the regimes involved in the competing countries, the current situation is characterized either by the presence of inter-imperialist contradictions, or by contradictions between antagonistic social and political systems. The launching of a new national security strategy by the United States demonstrates that, three years after the occupation of Iraq, the world is no longer safe, for we are yet again on the eve of a new world crisis. 'We face no greater challenge than Iran, a country that sponsors terrorism, threatens Israel, peace in Middle East and provokes the rupture of the democratic process in Iraq', reads the White House document. At this very moment Washington is taking moves to first isolate and then attack Iran. It invokes the 'nuclear threat' supposedly deriving from that country, as it pushes the approval of an anti-Iran resolution in the UN Security Council, mobilizes its allies, and directly links management of the Iraq crisis to the objective of attacking Iran.

The hypocrisy of the Bush administration speaking out against nuclear threats is revealed by the recent US-Indian nuclear agreement, a key effort in acquiring strategic allies to promote the objectives of us imperialism in Asia. Laying the groundwork for an attack on Iran is viewed by Bush as a chief part of his second-term mandate, proclaimed both at the Republican Party convention and at the presidential inauguration: the plan to restructure the Middle East according to a clear neocolonialist pattern. Washington either needs governments that are completely submissive or it must engage in direct intervention in the region. This also explains the threats against Syria, unconditional support for Israel, and the sabotage against the new Hamas government leading the Palestinian National Authority. What the Bush administration is presenting is nothing new. It is merely reiterating the rhetoric and behavior that pose threats to countries and peoples in the Middle East, stimulating an environment of war.

None of these developments were unforeseeable. Such strategies have been outlined previously, and the preemptive wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, the 'war on terrorism,' and other steps taken by the Bush administration lie within their scope. The recently issued document reiterates that 'winning the war on terrorism demands winning the battles in Afghanistan and Iraq.' The current episode involving Iran and other threats of intervention point to an escalation and a persistent policy of war. What is new and unforeseen, at least for the strategists in the White House, is that their plans are failing. The Bush administration will enter history not only as the most aggressive in US history, but also as the one that faced the most defeats. The Bush administration pushed the idea that the war in Iraq would cost little in view of the proclaimed objectives: the ousting of a tyrant and the elimination of weapons of mass destruction. Its troops would be seen as those who freed the country and saved humankind. It is up to the American people to take the opportunity. Three years after Bush's war against Iraq, his defeat is a hard fact. An armed, multifaceted resistance has emerged in the country and begun a long-lasting war of national and popular forces, which inflict defeat after defeat upon the invading army. The media at the service of the invader broadcast the idea that they are facing terrorist and religious groups that are against the West. Today it is not possible to disguise that it is the people, by means of a myriad of political and military organizations, who are fighting a bloody resistance and defeating the United States' plans. Iraq, as Palestine has done, is showing that there is no future for a neocolonialist policy based on military occupation. The 20th century, with its experience of revolutions and liberation struggles, has left a great legacy to the people: the awareness that it is imperative to defend the interests of the nation by revolutionary means, and that this task is the responsibility of the most advanced forces in society, the working class and its fundamental allies, who are politically represented by anti-imperialist, revolutionary, and anti-capitalist political trends that struggle to attain the strategic objective of socialism.

It is the perception of impending defeat that forces even sectors of the United States right wing to demand the immediate end to the 'lunacy in Iraq.' The failure in Iraq is coupled with the fiasco of the Bush administration's plans regarding the Palestinian issue. The 'Road Map,' marred by Israeli intransigence and their Zionist persistence in a repressive and expansionist policy, has utterly failed, just as every peace plan will likewise fail that does not stipulate total withdrawal from the occupied territories and the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

The National Security Strategy launched by the White House insists on the concept of 'rogue states,' which become the focus of aggressive action by the United States. Besides the aforementioned Iran and Syria, the United States' government has its sights on North Korea, 'which keeps defying the region and the international community,' as well as Zimbabwe, Byelorussia and Myanmar, where it promises to oust 'despotic governments,' and issues awkward insults against Russia and China, accusing the great Asian socialist nation of practicing a 'closed economy,' 'violating human rights' and developing military programs in secrecy.

Latin America is also the focus of a United States offensive. The rhetoric and gestures of the Bush administration are particularly threatening to socialist Cuba and revolutionary Venezuela. In regard to Cuba, the document states that 'a dictator keeps oppressing his people,' in an undisguised show of bitterness caused by the realization that after more than 40 years of blockade and countless attempts at destabilization and assassination they have not been able to destroy the Revolution, which displays political and ideological health and the capacity to overcome economic difficulties.

Today Venezuela is of special concern to the White House: 'A demagogue full of oil money poses a threat of regional instability,' reads the document. A few weeks earlier, Condoleezza Rice exhorted the countries in the region to take action against Venezuela, and made laughable statements denying the democratic character of the recent Venezuelan elections, which were successfully carried out and resulted in undeniable victories for Chávez and the political forces of the Bolivarian Revolution.

The evolving political situation in Latin America is an eloquent sign of the defeat of United States imperialism. Besides the consolidation of the Cuban Revolution and the triumph of the Bolivarian Revolution, the electoral victories of democratic, patriotic and popular forces constitute a very progressive sign, with promising political results in several countries on the continent, the most outstanding recent example being the new government of Bolivian Indian leader Evo Morales. One should not take too monolithic a view of the political process now taking place in Latin America, since national peculiarities have enormous influence, being very different among such varying realities as the Venezuelan, Brazilian, Bolivian, Argentinian, and the Uruguayan. However, there is no doubt that, in general terms, what is taking place throughout the region has a strongly anti-imperialist character. Therefore, it is a grave mistake to counterbalance these processes and support one and condemn another. Any right-wing victory, especially if it takes place in a country as important as Brazil, will have a serious negative effect on the whole anti-imperialist movement on the continent. Acknowledging that phenomenon with acuity, President Chávez, before the social movements gathered in Caracas during the polycentric World Social Forum that took place last January, made an important assessment of the progressive character of the evolving movements, not only in Venezuela, but also in President Lula's Brazil, in President Tabare Vázquez's Uruguay, and in President Kirchner's Argentina, among others, although the objective and subjective limitations of the evolving processes in the region are clear.

It is a significant fact, with extraordinary historical meaning, that United States imperialism is being contested in such a sharp manner in a region it has always considered its backyard, and that was presented in the very recent 1990s as the symbol of a 'new renaissance,' a phrase coined by one of the most pro-American and pliant statesmen of that time, former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Likewise, it is of great importance that the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), a gigantic neocolonialist scheme, has been firmly rejected up to now, as a result of the peoples' struggle, the anti-neoliberal resistance of social movements, the firmness of Chávez's Venezuela, which said NO to the FTAA from the very first moment, and the dexterity of the political and commercial diplomacy of the Lula administration, which skillfully dismantled one of the most perverse inheritances it had received the FTAA negotiations. Thus, the 'Peoples' Summit' in Mar del Plata, which was characterized by the 'FTAA's burial,' enters history as a great event signaling a bitter defeat for the United States' plans. It is at the same time an important experience from which we can draw important lessons. If the people can achieve a similar victory against the proposed neoliberal policies of the World Trade Organization (WTO), as put forward by the great economic powers in the so-called Doha round, the process of neoliberal globalization will be adversely affected in regard to the two things it holds most dear: 'Free trade' and deregulation

The evolution of events in the Middle East and Latin America, with the defeats suffered by United States imperialism and the increasing resistance of the peoples, is evidence that there are alternatives and that imperialism is not invincible. During a decade and a half (the 1990s and the first half of the current decade), the popular movement was indoctrinated by hegemonic left-of-center forces with the thesis that imperialism and neoliberalism was inexpugnable due to their immense powers of destruction and the control of the world economy by financial capital. This myth of nonexistent alternatives was promulgated in order to provide cover and justification for an ideological posture of adaptation and, in the end, capitulation. The remarkable events that have occurred in France in recent months (which deserve an individual analysis in another article) constitute another good example that there are other paths of resistance that can be taken to fight against and defeat neoliberal right-wing policies.

Three years after the beginning of the preemptive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the world is less safe and imperialism is more threatening. On the other hand, the peoples are more experienced and willing to fight. The anti-imperialist struggle, the most pressing issue of current times, will be a long-term struggle. It will steadily gather momentum if it is accompanied by a broad-based radicalism that raises banners bright enough to mobilize the creative energy of the peoples, such as the banners of peace opposing imperialist war, along with the banners of political and social freedom, unfurled against the anti-social, anti-democratic offensive of neoliberalism. These are the proud flags that champion the sovereignty of every nation, unfurled against the policies of neocolonialism and imperialist domination.

-- José Reinaldo Carvalho is an international politics specialist, journalist and writer, author of 'International conflicts in a globalized world' and 'The anti-imperialist struggle versus the United States' hegemony.' He is the International Relations Secretary of the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) and Director of Cebrapaz, the Brazilian Center of Solidarity to the Peoples and Struggle for Peace.

Immigration Solutions Lie Beyond Our Borders

Sat, 27 May 2006 02:42:00 +0000

5-26-06, 10:09am

The whole gamut of immigration proposals that have been bandied about in the past month have one thing in common. From the muscular plans to deploy National Guard and build extra fencing on the border to the softer guestworker visas and paths to citizenship, they are all purely domestic measures. Nowhere in the debate has there been any acknowledgment of the fact that reducing poverty and joblessness abroad is the only real solution to immigration concerns in this country.

Giving people the opportunities to stay in their home countries is no small task. And for U.S. politicians, it has the distinct negative aspect of being unachievable before the mid-term elections. However, if we don't start developing a long-term strategy for lifting up living standards in our neighboring countries now, we can expect the same excruciating debate, ridden with knee-jerk remedies and crackpot xenophobia, for years to come. And how many more discussions of whether the Star Spangled Banner should be English-only can we really endure?

U.S. leaders can find some lessons on narrowing the gaps from Europe. Today it is taken for granted that a citizen of any European Union country has the right to live and work in any other member state. Achieving this open-door policy wasn't easy. When Spain and Portugal wanted to join the EU in the 1980s, there was widespread fear that migrants from these poorer countries would flood northward, stealing jobs and straining public services.

In response, the EU postponed lifting borders for five years after both countries were accepted as members in 1986. What happened during that transition is key. Determined to narrow the gaps with their southern neighbors, the richer countries poured in aid for infrastructure and workforce training. They also encouraged Spain and Portugal to strengthen their social safety nets.

These efforts helped level the playing field so that when borders were lifted, there was no exodus. If anything, the migration flows went in reverse, as thousands of Spaniards and Portuguese who had been working in northern Europe went back home to take advantage of new job opportunities.

In 2011, the EU will be opening borders to 10 additional countries in Eastern Europe, most of them quite poor. The income gaps between Germany and Poland, for example, are nearly as vast as those between the United States and Mexico. And yet once again, the EU is making sizeable investments in its neighbors to level the playing field.

How much can we learn from the EU experience? First, it's important not to over-romanticize a region that has its own xenophobia problems. Nor should we attempt to simply copy the EU approach. A massive aid fund is a political non-starter in the U.S. political context. Fortunately, there are other creative ways to help cash-strapped nations.

One good step would be to expand the U.S. commitment to liberating impoverished countries from the stranglehold of extreme debts. Last year, President George W. Bush joined other leaders in wiping away the foreign debts of 18 countries, most of them in Africa. Others should now be included, particularly the heavily indebted countries that are leading sources of undocumented migrants.

One beneficiary should be El Salvador, which is second after Mexico as a source of undocumented migrants. This small nation is strapped with more than $7 billion in foreign debts, accumulated in part under a brutal military government. Lifting that burden would give El Salvador a better chance of providing the basic services and opportunities that would reduce migration pressures.

Honduras, the fifth-largest source of undocumented migrants, has even more staggering debts, amounting to 83 percent of GNP. That country has used effectively the limited debt relief it has already received to provide three extra years of public education for its children. But more help is needed.

Mexico's some $140 billion foreign debt is one of the worlds largest. Although the government has made some progress in managing this burden, further debt relief would go a long way towards helping our neighbor reduce the grinding poverty that drives so many to risk crossing the border. Abolishing or renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement could also help. That deal has been devastating for Mexican farmers who have had to compete with a flood of heavily subsidized corn imports. It also prevents the Mexican government from putting conditions on U.S. investment that would benefit the domestic economy. For example, it is illegal under NAFTA to require that investors use a certain amount of local supplies in production processes.

Once migrants arrive in the United States, they deserve respect for the contributions they make to American society. Given a choice, however, most people would prefer to stay home. Helping to create the opportunities that will give more people that choice is a far better solution than building a Fortress America.

Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, and is the co-author of Field Guide to the Global Economy (New Press, 2005).

Slaves to the 'Free Market' Unite: Can Humanity Make a Stand Against Capitalist Imperialism?

Sat, 27 May 2006 02:14:00 +0000

5-26-06, 9:41 am

Relentlessly delivering the triphammer blows of a youthful Mike Tyson, America’s imperialist ruling class of wealthy and corporate elites has been pummeling the poor, minorities, and the working class with impunity for years.

As some of my readers have aptly pointed out, America and its White Christian patriarchy do not have a historical monopoly on abuse of power or exploitation of “lesser people”. It is also true that Anglos have been victimized at various points in history. Yet the United States exists and thrives almost solely because it obscenely exploited Africans to attain economic power and committed genocide against North America’s indigenous people to obtain and expand its territory.

While other nations and races have committed similar atrocities throughout history, Anglos have suffered persecution, and slavery and the Native American genocide are in the past, the actions of the United States and its White patriarchal society were still morally reprehensible. Furthermore, many of the beneficiaries and descendents of the perpetrators remain unrepentant. Recent polls and events also indicate that about a third of Americans still support an entrenched American power structure which flourishes by practicing exploitation and conquest.

The United States is not the only nation currently committing brutalities and injustices, yet Washington is home to a government which claims to be the ultimate moral authority on the globe. While invading and occupying nations which posed no threat to them, slaughtering innocent civilians, and torturing suspected enemies, the United States continues to mouth empty platitudes about spreading freedom and democracy, pompously lecture other nations on human rights, and hypocritically determine which nations are too “evil” to be trusted with nuclear technology.

In his recent book, Overthrow, Stephen Kinzer wrote:

There is no stronger or more persistent strain in the American character than the belief that the United States is a nation uniquely endowed with virtue…..This view is driven by a profound conviction that the American form of government, based on capitalism and individual political choice, is, as President Bush asserted, “right and true for every person in every society.”

Time and again the United States has acted on this pathological belief, almost always spreading suffering and misery rather than democracy and freedom.

Little deters them

Despite remarkable strides toward social justice achieved by powerful leaders like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eugene Debs, and Martin Luther King, Jr., the advent of international humanitarian laws like the Geneva Conventions, and the addition of amendments to the US Constitution expanding civil rights, the relentlessly acquisitive individuals manning the bulwarks of the Corporatocracy at Wall Street, Capitol Hill, Langley, and 1600 Pennsylvania Ave have continued to find myriad means to advance their malignant agenda on both the foreign and domestic fronts.

They are employing direct intervention through invasion and occupation in Iraq as I write. Indirect intervention by the CIA has brought many ruthless dictators to power because they were friendly to corporate America’s interests. Multi-national corporations devastate weaker nations by grossly exploiting labor and resources. The World Bank and IMF enable the ruling elite of the United States to enslave developing nations economically. Nuclear intimidation rounds out the vast array of weapons at the disposal of the power mongers at the helm of the United States.

Consolidating power into the Executive Branch, nullifying several Constitutional Amendments with the Patriot Act, packing the courts with “their people”, and conducting pseudo-elections are currently at the forefront of the domestic arsenal of America’s ruling elite.

Tell me lies....tell me sweet little lies

Utilizing the corporate domination of the mainstream media and educational textbook producers, the patrician class of the United States continues to white-wash history and current events to perpetrate one of the biggest hoaxes in the history of mankind. They have managed to convince many of their plebs of the virtuous, benevolent, and “democratic” nature of America, to the degree that some violently reject the truth when confronted with it.

The under-funded No Child Left Behind legislation ensures that educators lack the resources they need to prepare their students for mandatory tests which emphasize rote memorization and basic skills. Teaching critical thinking, history, literature, and politics falls by the wayside in the mad scramble to prepare students to pass government-mandated exams. Wouldn’t it be wonderful for those atop the food chain in the American Empire if they could virtually eliminate domestic dissent without resorting to mass arrests or torture?

Despite the widening wealth gap, the Wal-Martization of the economy, Katrina, Iraq, stolen elections, an $8 trillion national debt, tax cuts for the wealthy, and increasingly rapacious acts by corporations, many Americans are still oblivious to our descent into fascism. Sucking on the pacifier of conspicuous consumption, they “shop til they drop”, lining Corporate America’s pockets and freeing the ruling elite to pursue world domination, as outlined in the Project for the New American Century and the Bush Doctrine.

Certainly there are some decent human beings who hold great wealth or positions of power in the United States, but their voices and actions are readily neutralized by the far more numerous spiritually hollow individuals whose existence is predicated on attempting to fulfill their insatiable lust for money and domination of other people.

Slaves to 'human nature' we are not

Some argue that avarice, hatred, cruelty, territorial instinct, and deceit are inescapable aspects of 'human nature' and define the human condition. Large scale human-inflicted injustice, misery, and suffering would indeed be inevitable if one accepted the notion that we are slaves to 'human nature', our ids, and our Shadows.

I refuse to accept this hypothesis for several reasons. Human beings possess highly developed frontal lobes and opposable thumbs so that we can problem solve and avoid subjugation to our animal impulses. As Scott Peck astutely observed in The Road Less Traveled, it defies human nature to use a toilet or a toothbrush, yet most people learn to do both.

I spent some time acting on the dark side of my nature in the past, yet I managed to undergo a profound moral transformation over the last thirteen years, choosing to live a life based on basic human decency, dignity, non-violent assertiveness, and compassion. My life is full of family and friends who share similar values. While it is impossible to completely deny one's id or Shadow, it is possible to manage them and live a reasonably ethical life.

There are also numerous examples of extraordinary people like Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama who achieved the peak of human moral development.

The masters' kingdom would collapse without the slaves

One of the wealthy ruling elite’s most poignant victories against progressive, humane forces has been their crushing blow to working people around the globe. Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the birth of the prevailing virulent form of Capitalism, the working class has been a festering thorn in the side of their masters, motivating them to devote a great deal of energy to keep them subdued.

Representing a necessary evil, workers in America and abroad are the engine of the Corporatocracy, as both the producers and consumers who power the Capitalist economy. While monstrous men like Henry Kissinger would move to shrink their numbers through starvation (or perhaps carpet bombing) if permitted, they still recognize that these “beasts of burden” are indispensable.

Not surprisingly, political ideologies which seek to empower the poor and working class have been heavily vilified by those who hold a vested interest in keeping wealth and power in the hands of a few. Americans are inculcated with the belief that men like Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Salvador Allende, and Evo Morales are (or were) our enemies. It is anathema, we are taught, to our “free market system” and “democracy” when leaders of other sovereign nations end the persistent grip of an entrenched oligarchy and raise a majority of their people out of abject poverty. With such beliefs, perhaps America’s moral deficit exceeds its fiscal one.

Can I interest you in selling Amway?

American Capitalism is the ultimate Ponzi scheme. For each of the four remaining Walton heirs to enjoy their billions, millions of human beings have to suffer abysmal poverty. Certainly, there are the occasional members of the Proletariat who infiltrate the exclusive world of the Bourgeoise, but they are so few and far between that they pose little threat to the dominance of the filthy rich resting at the pinnacle of the pyramid. Besides, thanks to Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy and the inevitable repeal of the inheritance tax, America’s wealthy elite will be further insulated from threats to their virtual monopoly on excessive wealth.

As a member of the working class, I am weighing in against the status quo multi-level marketing scheme. Despite my lower middle class upbringing and opportunity to obtain a college education, I went through hard times and quit school. For the next six years, I faced under-employment, unemployment and serious economic struggles. Intermittently working as an unskilled laborer in various manufacturing and service jobs, I received wages as low as $5 per hour, had limited or no benefits, endured miserable conditions, and suffered severe burns on my legs in an industrial accident. I experienced life in the lower stratus of the pyramid of American Capitalism first-hand. In a nation as wealthy as ours, it is a travesty that some people remain trapped in such wretched circumstances throughout their lives.

Today my wife and I are fortunate enough to generate a middle class income together, enabling our family to live a modest lifestyle and for me to engage in my avocation of researching, writing dissident essays, and publishing my blog. However, as members of the middle class, we are part of a dying breed in America, balancing precariously on the edge of an economic abyss.

Ethics, laws, justice? Who cares...

Consider three examples of the fates of laborers who dared to defy the primary beneficiaries of America’s predatory economic system.

During a peaceful pro-labor rally in May of 1886, anarchists were exposing the recent Chicago police slaying of two laborers striking against McCormick Harvesting. An unidentified individual detonated a bomb in the midst of the crowd, killing eight police officers and three demonstrators. In an effort to turn public opinion against the labor movement, the Land of the Free committed state-sponsored murder against four of the anarchists, publicly hanging them. The Illinois governor later concluded the executed men were innocent, the Haymarket Martyr’s Monument was raised in their honor, and wide speculation emerged that the bomber was a corporate agent provocateur.

In 1894, when workers became fed up with rail car manufacturer George Pullman’s “welfare capitalism” (a euphemism for indentured servitude), they went on strike. Eugene Debs led a sympathy strike amongst thousands of railroad employees, whose refusal to handle Pullman cars seriously interfered with national rail traffic. President Grover Cleveland broke the strike with US Marshals and the military, leaving thirteen strikers dead and Debs in prison.

It is small wonder that so many of America’s elite genuflect to Ronald Reagan and want to see his countenance emblazoned on the ten dollar bill. Reagan dropped a nuke on labor in the ongoing class war when he fired the PATCO air traffic controllers in 1981. When Reagan took office, union membership was 23%, down from its 35% peak in the 1950’s. However, his withering blow greatly accelerated the precipitous decline of organized labor in the United States. By 2005 only 8% of America’s private sector workforce was unionized.

Brute force, propaganda, illegal firings, and state-sponsored murder imposed by the ruling class in the United States were not enough to deter the American labor movement from its diligent efforts to improve the lot of the working class. We can thank them for the eight hour work day, an end to child labor, increased safety in the work place, higher wages, and health and retirement benefits.

Since the majority of the population is a part of the working class, a majority of people benefited from labor’s gains. Sounds like a logical outcome in a nation which espouses democratic values. However, the minority in the ruling plutocracy was not pleased. Determined as they were to protect their interests, the modern day Money Changers discovered new ways to impose their economic brutality. (Imagine what Jesus would do on the floors of the stock exchanges).

Welcome to McDonald’s! Would you like fries with that?

Arguing that American workers are overpaid, corporate elites have slashed pay, health benefits, and pensions. They contend that to stay competitive in the new “global economy”, they need to cut labor costs. Working people are to sacrifice with a smile since it is in their best interest to enable their masters to stay in business. Throughout the 80’s and 90’s, massive layoffs pushed millions of middle class blue collar workers into service sector jobs which cut their incomes in half. According to Louis Uchitelle of the New York Times, 30 million Americans were laid off between 1984 and 2004.

Starting in 2000, Silicon Valley and the telecom companies began a trend of massive white collar layoffs. Other industries have followed suit. In short, “overpaid” front line American workers have become highly expendable.

Corporate America doesn’t care what color your collar is. Human beings are commodities to them, and if an employee’s existence is too costly, they eliminate them. Illegally firing employees who try to unionize, hiring temps to replace full-time employees (to eliminate paying those damn benefits), replacing seasoned employees with fresh college grads, and “off shoring” American jobs to exploit cheap labor in other nations exemplify the new paradigm in American business. While corporate profits soar at an annual clip of 30%, employee wages crawl upward at an average of 2%. Meanwhile, CEO’s earn an average of over 400 times that of their employees.

While American workers struggle, multinational corporations, which are often guided by American executives and extremely wealthy share-holders, have introduced human beings in developing nations to the profound misery of Dickensonian Capitalism. When laws in the United States began making it prohibitive for the Social Darwinists to exploit employees and the environment to the extent that it engorged their bank accounts, they began moving their operations to countries which did not have these “harsh constraints”.

It is time for labor to unite on behalf of humanity

In a 1978 letter of resignation from his position of president of the UAW, Douglas Fraser wrote:

I believe leaders of the business community, with few exceptions, have chosen to wage a one-sided class war today in our country --a war against working people, the unemployed, the poor, the minorities, the very young and the very old, and even many in the middle class of our society….I would rather sit with the rural poor, the desperate children of urban blight, the victims of racism, and working people seeking a better life than with those whose religion is the status quo, whose goal is profit and whose hearts are cold. We intend to reforge the links with those who believe in struggle: the kind of people who sat down in the factories in the 1930's and who marched in Selma in the 1960's.

Unfortunately, Fraser’s inspiring words have gone largely unheeded. The two party American Duopoly continues to represent the interests of their wealthy and corporate benefactors. Grass roots mobilization and efforts to advance the interests of social and economic justice for the poor and working class have virtually fallen from the radar screen of organized labor. The larger labor unions continue their close ties with the Democratic Party, apparently believing the fiction that Democrats have the spine or the will to advance the interests of the working class.

In July 2005, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) president Andy Stern took his 1.8 million members and broke ties with the AFL-CIO, an organization which has achieved few tangible advances for labor or the working class in recent years. A former social worker and present activist for social causes, Stern was recently profiled on 60 Minutes. Organizing workers, many of whom are minorities and women, in previously under-unionized industries such as day care and janitorial, Stern has created an agenda of global worker cooperation to end the disturbing trend of corporate exploitation.

Stern and his followers have set out to rectify the gross economic injustices facing the working class and humanity in general. They recognize that collectively, the working class wields great power. Unionizing, strikes, and boycotts are the potent weapons they employ against the seemingly overwhelming forces of Capitalist domination.

Last week, I asked SEIU’s online campaign manager, Anders Schneiderman, to share his thoughts on labor taking the lead in advancing the causes of social and economic justice.

He responded:

SEIU members believe that the only way we can build a better world for all of us is if we unite with workers across the globe. When corporations move around the world looking for opportunities to maximize their profits by driving down pay and benefits standards, no one is safe unless we work together. That's why school bus drivers, are joining together on both sides of the Atlantic to hold First Service accountable, and why on June 15 janitors from around the world will be celebrating International Justice Day and discussing where their campaigns to raise standards should go next.

While the ruling elite have done an exceptional job of employing the concept of divide and conquer in human society (gay vs. straight, pro-life vs. pro-choice, red state vs. blue state, Christianity vs. Islam), a majority of the global population shares at least one common interest. Almost all of us need to trade our labor for our means of sustenance. A global unification of working people of all stripes is what we of the poor and middle classes need to overcome the tyranny of the moneyed ruling class. These modern day monarchs thrive by keeping their peasants in a perpetual state of unnecessary poverty, ignorance, war, and human suffering.

Contrary to the lies of the elite, human nature does not doom us to high degrees of injustice and misery. Human beings are blessed with free will. As individuals, and ultimately collectively, we can choose to act in mostly reasoned, honest and just ways. We can avoid resorting to impulsive, reactionary responses to primal emotions like fear, lust, and anger (feelings propagandists love to trigger and manipulate). No one will make reasoned, fair choices all of the time, but I know from my own experience that through conscious effort, it is possible to do so much of the time.

A revitalized labor movement on a global scale could very well be our means to snatch victory from the pitbull-like jaws of Capitalist Imperialism and to forge a reasonably just and humane society.

Jason Miller is a 39 year old sociopolitical essayist with a degree in liberal arts and an extensive self-education (derived from an insatiable appetite for reading). He is a member of Amnesty International and an avid supporter of Oxfam International and Human Rights Watch. He welcomes responses ator comments on his blog, Thomas Paine's Corner, at

New Estimate of Venezuela's Total Oil Reserves Makes It the Grandest of Grand Prizes for US

Sat, 27 May 2006 02:04:00 +0000

5-26-06, 9:31 am

I just finished reading an important new book the author's publisher sent me, which I'll shortly be reviewing for publication. The book is investigative journalist (and in his words 'forensic economist') Greg Palast's latest foray into exposing the hidden from view crimes and wrongdoings of the Bush administration. I'm very familiar with Palast's important work and can only wish many others of his profession did the same sort of it he does - his job. Sadly most don't, but luckily we have some who do, and we should pay close heed to what they tell us. They're our window to the dangerous world around us, and the information they provide is our protection from it.

Palast's book is almost encyclopedic in detail, but I only want to focus here on one part of it that relates to Venezuela. In it Palast provides information showing the country may be of far greater strategic importance to the US than we likely realized. It all relates to a somewhat arcane theory called Hubbert's peak that many readers may not know about or understand well if they do. Before reading Greg's book, I knew about it but didn't understand it as well as I do now.

M. King Hubbert was a well-respected geologist of his time who on March 7, 1956 published a research paper explaining his notion of 'peak oil,' the amount of total reserves likely to be available, when production would peak, and when we would likely exhaust a finite supply. Ever since his report came out, it's been held up as gospel by many who follow the oil market. The essence of the Hubbert theory, whether we accept it or not, was that 'peak oil' would be reached around this year. However, in fact, production rose every year since Hubbert's prediction and new discoveries of oil have so far kept pace.

A New Interpretation of 'Hubbert's Peak'

M. King Hubbert may have been a fine geologist deserving of the his reputation. But today we know much more than Hubbert did in his time, and it's currently believed by some savvy analysts that we're nowhere near peaking or running out of oil. Palast sides with that view and concludes that we have enough oil left untapped to last many decades into the future. Why? Because there's oil and then there's oil - there's the easy to find and refine kind called 'light sweet' like what's abundant in the Middle East, and there's also the harder to find, more expensive to refine so-called 'heavy crude' and oil available from tar sands. When the latter two categories are added in, the amount of total oil available skyrockets to off-the-chart numbers.

Palast makes a key point related to the price of crude. At $10 a barrel the supply is low because only the easy to extract and refine kind are economically feasible. But at $70 a barrel it's a whole new oil market. The heavy stuff and tar sands then become economical to extract and refine, and a new far higher finite supply is realized almost magically. In short, it's just a question of supply and demand and how the price of a commodity depends on how much of it consumers want. Too little demand and the price is low, but when it's high like now and rising, then so does the price.

How This Relates to Venezuela

From what we know for sure plus what we think we may know about Venezuelan 'total' oil reserves, I suggest the reader first take a seat and buckle up. In previous articles, I reported Venezuela may have reserves of about 350 billion barrels if all their known heavy and light crude are counted. That total is far more than is now officially recognized by OPEC which means unofficially the country has greater reserves than Saudi Arabia by that number alone.

But wait, there's more, a lot more. Palast reports a US Energy Department expert believes Venezuela holds 90% of the world's super-heavy tar oil reserves - an estimated total of 1,360,000,000,000 (1.36 trillion) barrels. Let me repeat that - 1.36 trillion barrels. That alone is more oil than Hubbert believed 50 years ago lay under the entire planet.

Again, back to the key issue. Whatever the true highest estimate of reserves is from all varieties of oil, those reserves are only available at a price. If it ever gets too low again, which looks unlikely, those heavy reserves and tar sands oil will again go off the charts and be uncounted. However, with today's heavy demand and the likelihood of it continuing to grow in the future, the price of oil may continue to rise and all reserves from all sources may be needed and used to supply the market.

So with a report like this coming from an apparent credible source (according to Palast) in the US Energy Department, it takes little imagination for VHeadline readers to understand more than ever that Venezuela is likely viewed by any US administration as the world's most important source of future oil supply. And to readers who understand US imperial intentions, it takes even less insight to realize the Bush administration intends to go all out to get its hands on it even if it takes a war to do it. The US goal isn't access to the oil. It's control of the supply and its price, what countries get it and how much and which ones don't, what companies profit from it, and overall how this ocean of oil can be used as a strategic resource and weapon. Beyond question, the stakes are enormous, and the battle lines are now drawn more clearly than ever.

I've reported before on VHeadline that the US is now planning a fourth attempt to oust Hugo Chavez by whatever means it has in mind. I think the wheels of its plan are now in motion, but we won't know what will unfold until the fireworks begin. With the information now available and published here, I feel more certain than ever that US instigated serious trouble is heading toward Venezuela and maybe harsher than we might expect. Venezuela's likely total oil reserves are potentially so great that the country has to be the grandest of grand prizes for the US. It's a virtual certainty the US will do anything it takes to try to seize and control it. For those of us who respect the sovereign rights of all nations and the obligation their leaders have above all else to serve the needs of their people, we can only hope Hugo Chavez is prepared for what he knows is coming and will again succeed in deterring it.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at

Cuba: Scholars to Provide Hemingway Papers to US Library of Congress

Sat, 27 May 2006 01:51:00 +0000

5-26-06, 9:21 am

Without asking for a penny... Copies of Hemingway's important documents will be delivered to the John F. Kennedy Library of the US Congress

Cubanow.- The careful work by Cuban specialists to preserve documents belonging to the Ernest Hemingway archive will make it possible for the delivery of copies of over 22,000 pages of writings by the author to the John F. Kennedy Library of the US Congress.

The section of that library specializing in the life of the Nobel Prize winner will be receiving an invaluable heritage on Hemingway's life in Cuba between 1939 and 1960, recovered thanks to a conservation, restoration and digitalization process, said Marta Arjona, the president of Cuba’s National Council for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage.

Among the copies that will be handed over to the US cultural institution are letters where Hemingway, as a journalist, dealt with topics like the Spanish Civil War and the World War II, as well as reproductions of 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' (1940) and 'The Old Man and the Sea' (1952).

The Bush administration has torpedoed the cooperation agreement signed in November of 2002 between the US Social Science Research Council and the Cuban National Heritage Council, to begin the initial phase aimed at the recovery of more than 11,000 letters, booklets and books kept at the Hemingway Museum in Havana.

However, Cuba will comply with its part of the agreement and will make this first contribution to the Kennedy Library despite the fact that it has not received the materials and equipment that was agreed with the US organization.

The original Hemingway documents will remain at the 'La Vigia' farm in the San Francisco de Paula neighborhood, northeast of Havana, where the Museum is located.

The US technicians - that have worked at La Vigia for short periods - are very highly qualified, and describe the effort so far as successful. According to Arjona, they can testify to the fine work being done by Cuban architects, engineers and construction workers. She also noted the sincere interest to help shown by Congressman James. P. McGovern (D-Mass)

Without a doubt the results of this very serious effort influenced the decision by the US National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) to exclude the La Vigia museum from the list of 11 historical sites in need of urgent attention, according to the criteria issued by that non-governmental organization last year.

The only site outside US territory that was selected to cooperate with the main entity in charge of the protection of cultural heritage in the US was precisely the Hemingway Museum on the outskirts of the Cuban capital.

Richard Moe, president of the NTHP, said recently in Washington that the work 'is not yet completed, but it will be finished in the near future,' in a statement that evidently shows the trust in the quality of the restoration work done by the Cubans. In that same meeting, Moe presented the 2006 list of the historical sites under risk.

Cuba has gone ahead with the total restoration of the museum with its own resources. No funds have been requested from anyone to revive this colonial mansion, the bungalow, the El Pilar yacht, the tower, the garage, the swimming pool or the lawn areas, Marta Arjona underscored.

Henry Moss, an American architect and a very respected professional in his field, assured in a recent conversation with Cuban engineer Rafael Ibañez, from the Cuban Forestry Research Institute, that the restoration effort ranks among the 100 highest quality ones done in the world.

La Vigia was repaired between 1982 and 1984, but not in such a complete way as is being done now, architect Enrique Hernandez Castillo told Granma.

Hernandez is the expert in charge of the general project. He noted that when the Americans came for the first time in 2004, 'we had already dismounted the two roofs of the residence, there was a clear idea on how to proceed, and a contract had been signed with the Office of the City of Havana Historian’s Monuments Restoration Enterprise for phase one.' (The decision to place a second roof on top of the original one was first conceived by Hemingway, to eliminate the leaks, and avoid big expenditures in demolishing the basic structure, or polluting the environment with the movement of rubble.)

Work on the house is going ahead well. Cedar brought from the Escambray mountains, twice cured to repel termite attacks, was used in the replacement of frames, doors and windows. A detailed study of the floor tiles that belonged to the writer's room made it possible for the restoration in color and texture as close as possible to the original ones. The plaster finishing of the walls, together with the analysis of the tones of the paint that is going to be used in the residence, and the retouching of its outside walls, will contribute to the residence recovering its charm.

The men and women involved in the careful restoration of the Hemingway Museum are not pressed for time. When they receive pressure regarding a specific date for the completion of the job, they take you by the hand to show the extreme degree of precision and dedication required to recover everything to its original state, even in its most minute detail.

From Cuba Now

RNC Line on Impeachment: Verily, This Is That

Sat, 27 May 2006 01:37:00 +0000

5-26-06, 9:07 am

Black is white. War is peace. Impeachment is good for Republicans. Haven't you heard? The Republicans say so. The Democrats say so. It just must BE so. And yet there isn't a shred of evidence to support it. Usually when we hear that a minimum wage is bad for low-income workers or tax cuts for billionaires benefit the poor, or any such apparently upside-down fantasy, we are at least given semi-plausible theories for how those lies could be truths. In this case, all we've been offered is the idea that a threat of impeachment will cause Republicans to vote in defense of a party they otherwise wouldn't bother voting for. But I've not seen a single poll to suggest that's true, much less that it could be true to an extent that would outweigh the benefits to Democrats of promoting impeachment. Don't get me wrong. I consider it inexcusable on the part of either party to be placing electoral concerns ahead of protecting our democracy from a President who routinely violates the law. But the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that making the coming congressional elections a referendum on impeachment of Bush and Cheney would result in landslides for Democrats and Independents. In the latest Harris poll, 90 percent of Democrats and 81 percent of Independents disapproved of Bush, numbers that continue to rise. Meanwhile 67 percent of Republicans, and falling, approved of him. In fact, some Republican candidates are avoiding appearing in public with Bush or Cheney, even at their own fundraisers. Here's a graphic display of results from Harris and every other major poll on approval of the President from January 2001 through the present: http://www.pollkatz.homestead.com/files/pollkatzmainGRAPHICS_8911_image001.gif A recent poll by Zogby International asked people what would restore their trust in government. Their number one response was 'Personnel changes / impeachment proceedings.' A Zogby poll conducted in January (that is, three or four scandals ago) in Pennsylvania (the only place this has been done) asked whether voters would prefer pro-impeachment candidates. Among Democrats 84.9% said yes. Among Independents, 49.3% said yes, versus 40.6% who said no. Among Republicans, 90.4% said no. Overall, impeachment support has a majority. And it's a passionate majority: almost all of the Democrats and Independents who supported pro-impeachment candidates said they were not just 'likely' but 'very likely' to prefer such candidates. Numerous national polls have found strong support for impeachment. Polls by Ipsos, Zogby, and American Research Group have found support between 43% and 53% overall. Of course, support is always much higher among Democrats and Independents than among Republicans. Support for impeachment and removal from office is lower (33% according to the Washington Post), though that's significantly higher than it ever was for Clinton. But for impeachment to have anything close to majority support despite opposition by both political parties and almost no positive coverage in the media is remarkable. Among Democrats, impeachment tends to have 80 to 90 percent support. Among Independents, it tends to be supported by a majority. And all of these numbers are trending upward, with six months remaining before the elections. An off-year election is usually won by turnout. If more Democrats are inspired to turn out and to work to turn their neighbors out, it doesn't matter what Independents or Republicans think. If Independents who support a Democrat turn out in higher numbers as well, it really doesn't matter what Republicans think. The polls on support for the President and support for impeachment suggest that if the elections are about Bush and Cheney and impeachment, Republicans will lose. Anecdotal evidence that can help us gauge the degree of passion behind people's support for impeachment suggests the same. An unfunded, un authorized, grassroots movement has begun passing pro-impeachment resolutions at Democratic Party conventions, and in town and city governments, as well as forcing the introduction of such resolutions in state legislatures. Events and organizations focused on the war and other issues have been compelled to promote impeachment. And I have never seen any other word capable of generating standing ovations in rooms around the country the way 'impeachment' does today. Very little will inspire voters to turn out and vote against a Republican as well as advocacy for impeachment. Any candidate who backs impeachment is unlikely to lose a lot of votes to a third-party candidate from the left. A political action committee aimed at backing pro-impeachment candidates has been flooded with money: www.impeachpac.org , and pro-impeachment candidates are running ads together to boost their campaigns, including primary campaigns that are threatening Vichy-Democrat incumbents: www.impeachteam.com . Events promoting impeachment will be organized by numerous groups all over the country this summer and fall. The issue will not go away. But the only way Republicans will be able to capitalize on it will be if Democrats run from it, if they join the Republicans in telling people, based on no evidence, that impeachment is a reason to fear Democrats. When something is said over and over and over again, even if it's 'Up is down,' people will tend to believe it. If it's denounced as nonsense, however, and truth is spoken plainly and fearlessly, the power of that can be overwhelming. Can you imagine the pressure Republicans in moderate districts would feel if every Democrats in Congress now backed impeachment? Forget the elections. We'd get to impeachment before November. Democrats in Congress are not promoting impeachment, secretly or otherwise, but a minority of them (37 Members) are promoting a call for an investigation of possible crimes. While I have yet to hear any Congress Member of either party oppose H Res 635 on the grounds that an investigation wouldn't find anything, I've heard many Democratic Congress Members oppose it because (as Leader Pelosi has instructed them to say) impeachment is good for Republicans. OK. But wait a minute. Even if that were true, H Res 635 will only lead to impeachment if Bush and Cheney are guilty of impeachable offenses. And if you believe they are, then you have a sworn duty to impeach them. If you set that aside in an attempt to win an election, you'll look like the one thing voters like less than cruel corporate thieves and warmongers: spineless cowards.

From

Colombia: Uribe’s Race Against Himself

Sat, 27 May 2006 01:30:00 +0000

5-26-06, 9:01 am

Speculation over whether incumbent Alvaro Uribe will continue as Colombia’s president has long disappeared. After winning an extremely controversial high court decision allowing him to stand for reelection – a move which appeared to many as an act of overweening ambition – Uribe has found few obstacles in his path. Recent polls show he will likely best his closest opponent by a margin of over 30%, potentially sealing his victory in the first round. This is not to suggest he is coasting to victory, however, as his support has steadily flagged since last summer. At one point, Uribe’s approval rating had been as high as 80%, but reports of fraudulent balloting in the last election and controversial free trade talks with the U.S. have tarnished his stature. Pressing questions about the ability of Uribe’s Washington-backed Democratic Security policy to end the country’s brutal civil violence have significantly weakened his mandate. As such, the election is not about if he will retain office, but whether Colombians will register much enthusiasm over four more years of the same. The vote is, in effect, a referendum on Uribe’s mounting failings, with abstention and protest votes nibbling away at his prospective mandate for a second term.

Running Alone

Uribe’s buoyancy going into this weekend’s election is owing to the paucity of worthy adversaries willing to challenge his standing. Of the five contenders hoping to dethrone him, none appear to have a realistic chance at this point. Horacio Serpa, runner-up in the 2002 elections, barely managed to win his party’s primary (pulling in less than 50% of the vote), and thus seems unlikely represent a serious threat against Uribe. Carlos Gaviria, after a surprising upset win in his party’s primary, is the only other candidate that could hope to mount a credible run at Uribe. Other candidates appear as simply names on a ballot, and pose no real threat to the incumbent.

Uribe’s Legacy

Uribe’s ascendance to power in the 2002 elections saw him rise from being a minor candidate – at less than 2% of the vote in one poll – to a clear victory, following an increase in the country’s tempo of violence that left cease-fire agreements between rebels and the government in shambles. The turmoil surrounding the peace process led to a collapse of then-incumbent Horacio Serpa’s campaign (peace negotiations were at the center of his candidacy). Uribe won wide support by promising to come down hard on the leftist rebel group, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), and to create a more stable and secure nation. He also cultivated national sympathy by playing on personal experience: his father had been killed by the FARC in 1983.

Following his election, Uribe responded by immediately cracking down on FARC activities, and used the threat of extradition to the UnitedStates to cajole members of the rightwing Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) paramilitary group into laying down their weapons. According to COHA Senior Research Fellow and Colombian specialist John Green, it has been Uribe’s success in securing the country’s roadways from armed rebels that has earned him continuing support – largely from middle and upper-class urban Colombians thankful for the opportunity to travel safely for the first time in decades. Statistically, the security emphasis has been significant: since 2002 homicides are down 37% and kidnappings have decreased by 73%.

Promises Not Delivered: Part 1

Recent events in Colombia may be undermining that image of peace and stability, however. A recent upswing in guerrilla violence, which is now extending into urban areas, presents a troubling development, and casts doubt on Uribe’s claims of progress. His aggressive policies towards rebel groups – particularly the intransigent FARC, which adamantly refused to negotiate – seemed to achieve modest success in their initial phases, albeit at a certain social cost. The centerpiece of this anti-FARC campaign was a military offensive known as Plan Patriota which, while loosely connected to the U.S.-backed Plan Colombia anti-drug campaign, operated under the primary objective of defeating the leftist guerrillas militarily.

Yet, despite lavish funding, Plan Patriota may have only provoked the FARC into staging highly visible attacks ahead of the elections. A series of April bombings in and around Bogotá killed several people, and shook a city that had grown increasingly accustomed to relative tranquility. Other attacks, such as a bold daylight assault in February on a city council meeting in Huila that killed 11, suggest that the FARC is far from ready to capitulate in the face of the government’s crackdown, a conclusion supported by the guerrillas’ successful April 20 attack on a government anti-drug team which killed 10 officers.

Perhaps recognizing the limits of military solutions to the conflict, Uribe recently expressed a willingness to negotiate with the FARC, as he is already doing with the country’s other leftist movement the, Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN). Nevertheless, finding a resolution to the FARC insurgency has to be one of the most pressing issues on Uribe’s agenda after election day. The April 27 kidnap and murder of Liliana Gaviria, an action which was officially attributed to the FARC, suggests that lawlessness may be on the rise in general, and could provide even more formidable problems for Uribe. His image of being invincible is at serious risk.

Promises Not Delivered: Part 2

Further weakening the heft of Uribe’s purported accomplishments have been the innumerable questions about the legitimacy of his paramilitary strategy. Uribe’s AUC demobilization plan – under the auspices of the Justice and Peace Law – has been rife with problems, and has resoundingly failed to achieve its stated goal of stabilizing the nation.

Uribe has invested a great deal of political capital into his ability to staunch the country’s internecine violence. Yet the effectiveness of his flagship program to remove one group of combatants from the field – the paramilitary demobilization project – has proved unconvincing. The AUC, famous for both its ruthless brutality and fraternal ties with cocaine traffickers, has received alarmingly lenient treatment under the terms of Uribe’s over-heralded Justice and Peace Law. Members of the paramilitary group who offer empty confessions, pay token reparations, and make a show of disarming and standing down, are subject to only symbolic jail terms. Equally concerning is the fact that large numbers of AUC members never leave the drug trade, and many others are still involved with fighting the FARC and terrorizing innocent civilians in the process.

While over 30,000 AUC members demobilized under the government’s framework, their conversion to peaceful civilian life has been fitful and incomplete. Reports abound of paramilitary weapons caches, and since the demobilization did not effectively dissolve the institutional structures of the AUC, many suspect that the Justice and Peace Law merely provides a cloak of impunity under which the group’s illicit activities – primarily narcotics-related – will continue unimpeded. This is to say nothing of the moral ambiguity inherent in Uribe’s willingness to forgo prosecution on some of the worst human rights offenders in the Western Hemisphere.

Marked by Scandal

Misgivings over the demobilization framework have been compounded by a series of scandals that have clouded Uribe’s integrity. The highest reaching and broadest scandal involves the head of the DAS (Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad), a presidentially-controlled organization which has been accused of collaboration with the AUC, under the direction of a close Uribe associate, Jorge Noguera. The alleged ties between the groups have included intelligence sharing, and may have even involved warning the paramilitaries of pending government raids. Still more damaging have been the accusations that the DAS, in league with the paramilitaries, conspired to commit electoral fraud in the 2002 election, obtaining a substantial number of votes in favor of Uribe.

These scandals, while themselves somewhat problematic, have been compounded by the president’s prickly response to the media’s coverage of them. Uribe’s strident criticism of the news outlets left many Colombians uncomfortable. According to a Reuters report, when the highly regarded Bogotá news magazine Semana published reports on the scandals, “Uribe dismissed Semana as ‘frivolous’ and portrayed its editor as a high society fop,” This haughty response has included suggestions that coverage of the scandal was resulting in “harm…to the legitimacy of Colombian democracy, to a country that for the first time is beginning to see a bonanza of investment.” With this attitude, Uribe has perhaps shown a troubling autocratic bent and certainly a formidable capacity to wiggle out of an uncomfortable situation. This troubling emphasis on self-interest and disregard for public criticism reflects little concern for the health of Colombian democratic institutions.

In Bed with Bush

Uribe’s record has been equally tarnished by his close ties to the Bush Administration, a relationship solidified by Bogotá’s compliance to Washington’s model for the war on drugs, and its willingness to sign onto Washington’s grossly unpopular free trade model. The United States more than doubled aid going to Colombia in 2002, the year in which Uribe was elected. It is estimated that roughly three quarter of a billion dollars makes it to Colombia every year, yet little of this aid ultimately benefits the Colombian people. According to the Center for International Policy, in 2005, $602.6 million of U.S. aid went towards strengthening the Colombian police and military forces. The remaining $138.5 million was channeled to the vague classification of “International Narcotics Control,” an allocation which does nothing to help the country’s poor, hungry, and under-educated.

Colombians have perhaps begun to notice that being cozy with the Bush administration has done little for the general populace. Opponents criticize Uribe “for failing to address the health and education needs of poor Colombians displaced by the conflict.” In fact, it would be within Uribe’s authority to request U.S. aid for “Emergency Drawdowns” to help people displaced by his battle against the FARC, but he has failed to do so at any point in his presidency.

Additionally, the Bush-administration’s intervention in the country has been focused on the war against drugs and the anti-FARC campaign, rather than the huge underlying problems of a skewed distribution of wealth and a lack of social justice. The White House’s efforts have included labeling the FARC a terrorist organization, and claiming that up to 60% of the world’s cocaine is from areas in Colombia controlled by the group. Nevertheless, such outlandish rhetoric rarely rises above the level of propaganda, and has not significantly advanced Washington’s goal of defeating the insurgency or combating the drug trade. The ongoing anti-narcotics effort has likewise been ineffective, despite the channeling of millions of dollars into the Colombian military and police force to fight both the FARC and narcotraffickers. In both instances, social costs have been high, as coca eradication efforts via crop spraying have had profound environmental and physiological repercussions, and human rights abuses have spread.

Uribe’s willingness to pursue a free trade agreement with the U.S. has also proved controversial. Although it is predicted that free trade will boost tariff revenues for both countries, it also seems likely that Colombian poultry and agricultural businesses will be devastated as they are forced to compete with imports that are subsidized by Washington. In one poll, only 42% of those Colombians surveyed approved of the FTA talks. There is ardent disagreement about the wording and exact interpretation of the proposed pact, and as a result its ratification has been pushed back until August 2006, in order to minimize its impact on the election. Demonstrations in Colombia against the agreement have been widespread. The local media reported that these protests were FARC-inspired, and as a result the security forces violently quelled them. In actuality, no hard evidence exists to support this claim, and the repressive police response has been a contributing factor in the slow downward slide of Uribe’s popularity.

A Clearly Defined Agenda

Uribe’s political dominance over Colombia may be petering out. Unless he achieves solid results in the decades-old war against the FARC and spends more of his budget on long neglected social justice and welfare programs, Uribe may continue to see his approval rating slip. The uncertainties concerning the effects of the pending Free Trade Agreement also weigh heavily on Uribe’s future. Although little question exists over whether he will win the upcoming election, the manner in which he does so is likely to reflect a growing tide of uncertainty surrounding his leadership. Whether Uribe will recognize and accept his ebbing status, and seek to address the numerous reservations about his administration’s approach, is uncertain. But doing so could help stabilize a country badly in need of inspired governance, as well as perhaps preserve Uribe’s flagging reputation.

From Council on Hemispheric Affairs

June 2006

Fri, 26 May 2006 03:11:00 +0000

Why Class Isn’t Just Another 'ism'

Fri, 26 May 2006 03:02:00 +0000

What is class and what role does it play, if any, in the US in the 21st century? These are two questions raised in a recent book titled Class Matters compiled by a handful of New York Times journalists and other commentators. Is class an issue of status or education, or is it even relevant, the editors wonder in the introduction. Despite excellent, readable articles that handle a wide range of aspects of the class divide from access to education, income, geography and the gender gap, the answers provided by the book are less than satisfactory. For this reason, taking some time to define class seems as important now as ever.

People with Marxist, socialist or even radical democratic and liberal viewpoints often talk and write about class, class struggle and class consciousness as if shared definitions of these terms are well known, or as if experiences of class are common enough that working definitions aren’t needed. You know it when you see it, right? Unfortunately, this assumption may lead to misunderstandings and inaccurate analysis.

We can safely dismiss right-wing claims that class does not exist. Halliburton’s access to the highest levels of political power and billions in profits that enrich its owners, while 750,000 people live on the streets every day is but one example that puts that lie to rest. Indeed, during the 2004 election, the most politically engaged – or class conscious – workers were trade unionists (both white and non-white), people of color, women and others who fought the election of George W. Bush vigorously, whose political base, as he admitted openly, was the rich and powerful. Aren’t these facts indications of the reality of class?

So what is it exactly? In left US academic circles it is common to refer to the basic trinity of race, class and gender (some add sexuality, ability, nationality) that governs social life. While this is useful for explaining why people live their lives the way they do and the choices they make or are forced to make, these categories are often equated as “identities” that have similar causes and effects. Class is sometimes reduced to its effects – income, education, status or attitudes. The term, “classist,” has even been invented to describe the prejudices of middle- and upper-class people against the poor. In a society that usually pretends class isn’t real and that all experience is individual, the reintroduction of some version of class, no matter how thin, is a dramatic improvement. Still, boiling class down to feelings or to its effects is unsatisfactory for Marxists.

Let’s look at some of the classic literature on the subject. For Marxists, class in general always results from specific historical conditions in which it is developing. In other words, to speak of class today, we must speak of classes under capitalism. Prior to capitalism, the definition of class was different. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels use terms like “social rank,” “orders” and “gradations” to name social classes. Before capitalism, classes were defined by non-economic factors such as “divine right” or kinship.

In his essay “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific,” Engels examines how classes under capitalism were formed. He argues that “the products now produced socially [under capitalism] were not appropriated by those who had actually set in motion the means of production and actually produced the commodities, but by capitalists.” In other words, private property and political power allowed capitalists to own and control all of what workers made. Capitalism changed the “means of production of the individual into social means of production only workable by a collectivity” of people. In this way, “social rank” and “orders” of pre-capitalist days were transformed into a capitalist class structure. This new situation “brought out the incompatibility of socialized production with capitalistic appropriation,” Engels adds. Laborers were turned into permanent sellers of labor power for wages, the previous order of social classes was eroded and the social system of capitalism began to produce two great economic groupings, “the capitalists on the one side, and the producers...on the other.” The antagonism between workers and the class of private appropriators (the capitalists), shared conditions of labor (or not) and dispossession (or ownership) turned workers and capitalists into distinct classes.

(It should be noted that Engels’s division of society into only two classes was a simplification of actual conditions. He made the generalization for the purposes of explanation. In other books and articles, both Engels and Marx would speak of classes outside of this two-class concept, for example, peasants or small business owners. Lenin would even argue that multiple modes of production with competing class structures could exist side by side in a single society, especially those in transition. Engels’s point here, however, is that a single mode of production comes to dominate over others, and when it is capitalism, the general trend is toward the elimination of other classes outside of the worker-capitalist class structure.)

In his own discussion of capitalism’s origins and development, Marx regarded class in general as a dynamic relationship of groups. What shapes class, Marx argues in Capital Vol. III, is “always the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers.” This relationship produces antagonism at the point of production and in society in general, transforming individuals, by necessity, into something greater than themselves. Individuals form a class, he notes in The German Ideology, only “insofar as they have to carry on a common battle against another class.” This relationship also creates distinct class cultures. In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx argues that class conditions forcibly separate one group’s “mode of life, their interests and their culture from those of other classes.”
Once this relationship exists and antagonistic interests form, Marx states in The German Ideology, The class in its turn achieves an independent existence over against the individuals, so that the latter find their conditions of existence predestined, and hence have their position in life and their personal development assigned to them by their class.

Marx qualifies this generalization to say that other factors also influence class and the determining role it has for people. In Capital Vol. III, Marx argues that class, “due to innumerable different empirical circumstances, natural environment, racial relations, external historical influences, etc.,” could show “infinite variations and gradations in appearance.”

In other words, important non-class factors (we might add gender, sexuality, nationality, ability and more to Marx’s list) affect class, how it functions, what effects it has on the individuals living it out.

Here, Marx doesn’t insist that class determines these other non-class factors. In fact he was arguing that they condition class – how it “appears.” Marx also was not implying that non-economic factors mystify or distort class’s true appearance. He meant that certain non-economic factors cause class to operate in different ways under historically specific conditions. While the basic truth of the general concept of class remains, other factors make the lived experience of class unique to each society or sections of a society. For example, in a predominantly African American city like Detroit with an unemployment rate of 15 percent and a poverty rate of 28 percent, class experiences are infused with institutional racism. Things like racist “criminal justice,” uneven access to health care, environmental racism, limited political power and unequal distribution of public resources make the experience of class dramatically different from those of people who live in the predominantly white working-class communities that border that city.

Several decades later, in the wake of the Russian Revolution, Lenin echoed Engels and Marx in his 1919 pamphlet titled “A Great Beginning.” “Classes are groups of people,” he argued, “one of which can appropriate the labor of another owing to the different places they occupy in a definite system of social economy.” But more than simply groups of people, Lenin argued two years later in Left-wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder, class is a “division according to status in the social system of production.” Note that status is an effect of class, which itself is a “division.”

Lenin builds on his view of class as a “division” in his 1919 speech “The State.” Class is “a division into groups of people” he remarks, “some of whom are permanently in a position to appropriate the labor of others, when some people exploit others.” More than being simply a division, class is a device for exploitation, or a relationship of power and dominance that permits one group to exploit another.

Lenin amplifies this concept in his 1921 speech on “The Tasks of the Youth League”: “Classes are that which permits one section of society to appropriate the labor of another section.” Here again, class is not simply equated with a “group” or “section” or “division.” In fact, Lenin regarded class as a power relation that propels capitalist production forward. Class, in other words, is the engine of the whole system.

Lenin viewed classes in their dialectical relation to the different sides of production. “Classes are large groups of people,” he argued in A Great Beginning,

differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production by their relation...to the means of production, by their role in the social organization of labor, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it.

In other words, Lenin defined class within a complex of relationships involving all sides of production. It is a process that includes performance of labor, as well as the methods of appropriation and the distribution of products.

To sum up, Marx, Engels and Lenin defined class from three sides. It is an economic community affected by non-class factors, the defining relationship(s) at the heart of any mode of production (other than communism), and a process that makes up and conditions the process of the production and reproduction of capital.

Is it still worth viewing class this way, as opposed to how it was undertaken by the New York Times journalists? Yes. If class is viewed only as the effect of a glitch in capitalism that decreases opportunities for some people and creates poverty and unemployment, the race to the bottom in wages, benefits and worker protections, the lack of access to education, health care and political power, the solution is to increase opportunities or create programs that ease social ills. Tweak the system. This approach is worthy; indeed, working people should fight for social programs that improve their lives, strengthen their collective hand for long-term battles and unite them in common struggle. But this approach doesn’t eliminate a few sticky questions: why do sections of the capitalist class oppose those types of reforms? Are they just mean, or is there another motive? If glitches in capitalism can be solved with reforms, why haven’t they? Why haven’t reforms worked? Is it just bad management?

A Marxist view of class addresses the issue better because it allows us to see capitalism as a system that always reproduces these “glitches.” Class antagonism – competing interests, not on an individual, but a social scale – is inherent to the system and disproportionate political power ensures that the interests of the minority override the interests of the majority. Profits are put before people’s needs. Wars for oil based on lies rage. Environmental catastrophe looms. People die of treatable illnesses.

Class understanding shows us that the power and wealth of the minority, in fact, depends on increasing the exploitation of the majority. All of the reforms we fight for that alleviate exploitation will not be permanent until the class that makes up and unites the majority successfully implements democracy and controls the system it has created by its labor and transforms it into something new and just.

Driven to the Brink: A Discussion of the Crisis in Auto with Lew Moye

Fri, 26 May 2006 02:58:00 +0000

5-25-06, 11:15 am

PA: First, tell us a little about your self and your history in the labor movement.

LM: Well, I’ve worked at the Chrysler plant here in St. Louis for almost 42 years. It has about 3,500 UAW members. I currently hold the position of shop chair of UAW Local 110, and have been involved in the community for most of those 42 years.

I’ve organized community-labor coalitions and fought for African Americans to be included in various industries here in St. Louis. I helped the first African American in Missouri get elected to Congress back in the 1960s. I’ve worked on local political campaigns. I’m a founding member of the St. Louis area Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU) and have served as its president for over 25 years.

I’ve worked on health care campaigns, tenants rights organizing and the Free South Africa movement. During the Vietnam war I was very active in the peace movement. I was active in the farmworkers’ movements, going all the way back to the grape boycotts. I’ve been all over the country supporting workers’ rights to organize.

PA. Things have changed a lot over the years. How does the Bush administration and its policies compare to other previous administrations?

LM: First, and this shouldn’t surprise anyone, the Bush administration doesn’t care about working-class people. Its policies support the wealthy, those who already have money. Its policies are designed to weaken the working class. And we can see this in a lot of ways: various trade policies that erode unions in this country, the appointment of antiunion, anti-worker politicians to government posts, tax breaks for the rich, among other things.

The Bush administration doesn’t make policy with workers in mind. They do things and make decisions that devastate communities and workers. They make decisions without regard to human suffering. The Bush administration is continuing those policies of the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations, while working-class people suffer.
The US is a very wealthy country, the wealthiest in the world. But we have people here that don’t have a roof over their head, don’t have health care, can’t find a job, don’t have basic education. We’re the wealthiest country in the world and that’s the way things are done here.

PA: Recently Ford announced its intention to layoff 30,000 employees by 2008. The Hazelwood plant here in Missouri, which employs close to 2,000 people, is closing soon. Ford says it’s a “capacity problem.” But when the layoffs were announced, Ford’s stock jumped up. Can you explain this?

LM: Bad news for workers is good news for some people. When companies layoff people it’s good for investors. It’s kind of hard to figure out. Why would stocks go up when we impoverish workers and devastate communities?

In a market economy – and we see this over and over again, and it really illustrates a problem of the market, a market problem, not a worker problem – workers pay the price for problems in the market.

This is a larger, systemic problem. The auto industry as we know it is changing. We’re seeing a shift. People are buying cars. There’s no shortage of consumers buying cars. More cars are being sold than ever before. The question is, who are consumers buying cars from? And are those cars made by union members, in a union shop, with union benefits, health care, pension, seniority? So while union workers at Ford are getting layoffs, non-union Toyota is building new plants. The automotive industry is growing at the expense of the unionized work force.

One of the biggest expenses the auto industry faces is the cost of health care. GM spent almost $6 billion on health care. In 2004 they spent $5.2 billion. Ford spent $3 billion. Chrysler spent $1.9 billion. Health care in this country is based on who you work for. How well they do in the market has a big impact on your health care benefits. Fortunately, the UAW has negotiated some of the best health care packages in the world.

Now with the non-union competition weakening the UAW, health care is becoming even harder to get. Bush could pick up the tab for health care. That would free-up capital for technology and enable US car manufacturers to continue business and provide jobs. He ain’t going to do that though. The big three will eventually have to take on the health care lobby. It’s clear that Toyota doesn’t have the health care policies. They don’t have retirees. They haven’t been in business long enough to have half a million retirees.

This shift has to be a cause for alarm. It is affecting the organized labor movement in more ways than just the obvious. There was a time when most of the cars sold in this country were union made, but now we have seen a shift. More non-union cars are sold now than union made cars. Right now, there are just as many non-union auto workers as there are union auto workers. And the trend is towards more non-union.

Most of the new auto plants being built are notoriously anti-union. They build plants in areas less likely to have union support. They recruit heavily against the union. They work at it. They make it into a science. Every move they make is part of a plan to keep the union out. The decision on where to locate, how the plant is built, what’s in the plant, its all part of an anti-union plan. They don’t just oppose the union one day and forget about it the next.

As a result of anti-union policies and as the market share shifts away from the big three – GM, Ford and Chrysler – union jobs decrease. Toyota is expected to supplant GM as the number one auto manufacturer sometime this year. So people are still buying cars, but they are shifting from GM, Ford and Chrysler – and Chrysler is doing better than the others – to non-union cars. This is something we couldn’t have imagined 15 or 20 years ago.

The question is, what affect will this shift have on the working class here? What affect will it have politically? What affect can a weakened organized labor movement have on the direction of our country? What affect will it have in a civil rights, human rights capacity? If there were no unions around to support the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, where would that movement be?

The UAW has gone from 1.5 million members in 1979- 80 to about 500,000 active members today. We’ve lost about one million members. And we’re still on the slide. So we’ve got big problems. The Toyotas, Nissans and Hondas need to be organized. That’s the challenge that faces the UAW.

In my opinion, we aren’t fully utilizing all of our forces. Most new plants are being built in the south. The state of Alabama is going to look like Michigan soon. If you want to organize in the south, you have to build coalitions. The Black community should be a key focus in organizing efforts in the south. They are our natural allies. But I don’t think we are fully utilizing those forces. But they should be engaged in a major, national effort to organize non-union plants. We’ve dropped the ball.

PA: What about the crisis at Delphi?

LM: The unionized parts industry has been weakened by outsourcing over the years. We saw the start of this 20 years ago when parts plants first started closing and moving to southern states. This set off a competition. We call it a race to the bottom now. But generally speaking, parts plants compete for bids. Plants that have moved to non-union areas have an unfair bid advantage. They can under bid union plants because their costs are lower. They don’t provide health care, pensions or union wages, which all costs money.

As non-union parts plants spring up they produce parts for GM, Chrysler and Ford. The result: the market for Delphi parts shrinks. Union members get layoffs. You got non-union parts companies all over the place, who are in the game, manufacturing parts much cheaper because they can exploit workers and communities.

It started with the parts suppliers and now it is in the assembly plants. There wasn’t as much alarm as there should have been. I can remember going to a UAW convention 20 years ago when members from the parts division were marching out side trying to warn us about this. They were loosing jobs then. Companies were leaving places like Ohio and Michigan and going to Arkansas and Alabama. The assembly plants were secure then. But now the assembly plants are no longer secure. The technology has improved so much that it costs less to build new plants than to update old plants. It started as suppliers, now its the whole industry. So we have major challenges. PA: Internationally, how are US unions, especially the UAW, dealing with the increasingly global economy where plants are closed just to be opened somewhere else where workers are paid a fraction of what union workers here are paid?

LM: The UAW has always maintained some kind or relationship with auto workers in other counties. I’ve been to every UAW convention as a delegate since 1977, and we’ve always had some international representative from other unions. We’ve always had those relationships, but we haven’t had the unified, collective power of those organizations. We haven’t had a unified, international strategy or an international show of force. To deal with the problems that workers are facing now, that’s what we need.

Unions all over the world should send representatives to other countries to see how those workers are being treated and to find ways for our unions to work together.

In my opinion, the unions in the auto industry need to call a world summit, or some sort of industrial unions’ summit. Auto workers in Mexico have a lot in common with auto workers here. Auto workers in Korea, Japan, France, Brazil, Russia, elsewhere need to be working together more. We have to face these problems together. Capitalism is global in nature. Labor has to be global. We aren’t going to solve all of our problems here.

PA: Is the industrial union organizing model loosing its relevancy now that we are moving into a service and information based economy?

LM: People are saying, “we will no longer be builders, others will build for us.” It’s kind of scary. If we are able to purchase all of our needs from others, if we are becoming a service based society, if all of that is true (and I’m not sure it is), sooner or later we won’t be able to build cars. We won’t know how to do anything.

We should help other countries build up their infrastructure and industrial base so that they can benefit from it, not so that multinational corporations can make more money. We need to help others so that they can develop their own industry, their own economy. And we have to organize against those who take the wealth and concentrate it into the hands of the few. Multinational corporations only care about making more money.

All countries should have an industrial base. There is no question about that. There is enough of a need here for workers here to build and stay busy for years and years. Our infrastructure, our streets, highways, buildings, schools, hospitals, are all crumbling. We have to rebuild New Orleans. If Katrina has taught us anything, it’s that our infrastructure has been neglected. There is plenty of industrial work to do. The Bush administration has other priorities though.

As far as organizing the service sector; it is easier to organize in the service sector. Their jobs aren’t being shipped to other places. We need to engage in a worldwide fight to organize the industrial sector though. I’m not against organizing the service sector. We’ve got unions that are structured for that. But more and more we see industrial unions organizing in the service sector. The industrial union organizing model is still relevant today. There are still plenty of industrial jobs in need of organizing. But we have a long way to go.

Recognizing Indigenous America in Times of War

Fri, 26 May 2006 02:54:00 +0000

5-25-06, 11:15 am

… Wars are no longer waged in the name of a sovereign who must be defended; they are waged on behalf of the existence of everyone; entire populations are mobilized for the purpose of wholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity.… The atomic situation is now at the end point of this process.… Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Volume I, 137.

I am only a simple gringa writing today from a small native community north of Chicago, near that “other” border, between the US and Canada. But I speak without hesitation in asserting to you that the US cannot be located in a global scene in these times of war without reference to the inseparable, irreducible geopolitics of indigenous America.

Such a proposal could not be further from the tired plotlines circulating in the US regarding indigeneity; the exhausted narratives whose force lies precisely in their manners of construing Native America as inconsequential on every national front and irrelevant, really unthinkable, in a global scene. But if we must surely resist co-optation in the face of national silence, we would do well to read this national hush as a sign of “the potency of the insignificant” in US imperial politics. Indeed, it seems vitally and potently “insignificant” that, as I write, Blackhawk and Apache helicopters are aiming Tomahawk missiles armed with depleted uranium on Iraq and Afghanistan.

The local always being essential in indigenous scenes, let me begin by saying that I write today from one of several native communities to which the US has affixed the name Chippewa, one of several Chippewa communities that have just emerged victorious on the other side of decades of violent struggle over rights to harvest native foods, medicines and other resources off of their reserved lands, in large parts of three US states. While that struggle unfolded in the media and courts as a local (i.e. nationally and globally irrelevant) “Indian-white” conflict, it was fueled not least by mining multinationals with fears of the limits such “Indian rights” might place on their unfettered access to underground riches. Indeed, as in nearly any genealogy we might trace the dichotomy of “Indian and white” hardly suffices. This simplistic racial formula and its partner concept “settler colonization” are chief among the plotlines that obscure the complex positions native peoples have occupied in webs of globalized trade and war over natural resources that are as old as colonial modernity.

To be clear about this let me now tell you that Chippewa is an English and US derivation of the French name Ojibwe – the French having been the first Europeans to have encountered these people who reside today in three Canadian provinces and five US states, and who, thus, dramatically exceed US and Canadian boundaries and imaginaries. In the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, first the French and then the English were utterly dependent on these Ojibwe peoples, who were saavy middlemen in the globalized trade in animal furs and hides that played an extraordinary role in the colonization of North America. First the French and then the English, consciously positioning themselves against the specter of Spanish Cruelites, entered into great native-nonnative alliances and wars, and verbal but recorded trade and war treaties, that constituted a violent but reciprocal form of other-than-settler colonization.

But, of course, alongside most Americans you have likely never heard of these peoples who call themselves Anishinaabe, and who, with over 150 communities in the US and Canada may well make up the largest indigenous peoples in North America. Nor have you likely heard of the treaties where Anishinaabe “reserved” rights to strategic swaths of North America, or of similar treaties entered into by the Colville Confederated Tribes, from whose lands I also often write. The very name, Colville Tribes, can be taken as an icon for the “other-than” or “more-than-settler” forms of colonial relations toward which I am struggling to gesture in a few words. For this “American Indian” name derives from one Andrew Colvile, a 19th century “big wig” in the British fur trade. Thus, the Colville Tribes bear the distinction of being the only native peoples named by the US after a non-native who was, ironically, among the CEOs of a Britain-based multinational corporation. But it is other more-than-settler colonial rhythms that go directly to America’s continuing dependence on indigenous America and which bring us directly to Iraq that I want to draw your attention to with mention of the name Colville. For this name must evoke, above all, the specter of the Grand Coulee Dam that is located on the Colville Reservation, which was until recently the largest hydroelectric dam in the world. US Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, Carter and others literally fueled World War II and the Cold War, and constituted contemporary forms of US and global power, vis-à-vis the Grand Coulee Dam. Beyond its significant role in establishing Boeing and other players in the military-industrial complex that emerged on the Pacific Coast in response to World War II, Grand Coulee’s “greatest” claim is to have powered the long-secreted state-sponsored Hanford Nuclear Reservation, which is today the single most toxic waste dump in the global West.

Located on Wanapum lands downstream on the Columbia River from Colvilles, it was at Hanford that uranium mined largely by Navajo-Dine men on their reservation was processed before being installed in weapons that were then tested on Shoshone lands. In the ebb and flow of “things US” in a global scene, Grand Coulee, Hanford and many other locales in indigenous America are not only the sources of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They are sites of origin for much of the now recycled uranium with which the US arms its Tomahawk missiles and other weapons … the so-called safe depleted uranium that is settling, as I write, on the bodies of Iraqi and Afghan men, women, and children, and the multiracial US and coalition forces waging wars “against terrorism.”

There are, then, direct other-than-romantic genealogical links from US killing machines bearing idealized native names to the bodies and destinies of US indigenous peoples, their nonnative neighbors, US soldiers, and Iraqis and Afghans. And yet I challenge you to identify one among recent left critiques of the war in Iraq and the “US as empire” that locates itself with reference to these or any other relevant genealogy from indigenous America. I challenge you to name one account that recalls, for instance, that it was in the midst of oil frenzy in 1923 that the US first overtly entered the business of regime change, when a democratically recognized Navajo-Dine religious leadership refused to sign a contract with Standard Oil. It was at this moment (nearly simultaneous to US clandestine efforts to undermine the post-World War I nationalization of Iran’s oil industry) that the US unilaterally intervened, installed a new Navajo Council (that signed the Standard Oil contract), and established an interim constitutional regime. Out of this scene hundreds of native constitutional governments have been wrought across the US premised on a religious-secular divide.

Bearing no small linkage to “regime change” and constitutional developments in Iraq, the point in invoking this scene is not that “it happened first in Native America.” Important works have reconnoitered that terrain – have tracked American “Indian fighters” into the Mexican-American and Spanish-American Wars, and followed the political-legal-military discourses of “uncivilized foreigners” and “territorial acquisition” with which the US first encountered indigenous Americans into Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Vietnam – all the while leaving indigenous America utterly in the past.

The point is: it matters in the present tense that a dramatic (if completely unreported) movement of constitutional reform is afoot today across indigenous America that is being played out to no small degree through a religious-secular divide. The point is that the destiny of much more than indigenous Americans is at stake in these struggles for reform, and in ongoing struggles between local native communities (often not their governments) and marauding multinational corporations and state institutions.

The point is that it matters that members of the Colville Tribes and nonnative allies, drawing on Colvilles’ legally reserved rights to hunt and fish, recently scuttled plans for a cyanide-leach gold mine off of their reservation, which means hundreds of tons of cyanide won’t be transported across US highways. It matters that Anishinaabe north of Chicago recently forever closed a proposed cyanide-leach copper-zinc mine adjacent to their reservation on the basis of their recent treaty rights victories and, finally, by purchasing that mine site with Indian casino profits. It matters too that Anishinaabe leaders, many of them veterans of US wars abroad, moved seamlessly in their struggle borne of a consciousness that mining is everywhere directly related to generating global wars. And it surely matters in the face the “god-fearing” Bush regime’s newly hatched plan to violate international treaties by developing and testing new “smart” nuclear weapons, that Dine veterans of US wars and natural resource wars recently outlawed uranium mining on their reservation, and that Shoshones, who have been said to constitute the world’s most bombed nation under the regime of US nuclear testing, scored recent treaty victories against the US in the Inter-American Court.

These so-called local (but also national and global) stories far exceed narratives about “settler colonization,” Indian victims, national guilt, and the shape of dominant discourses of the right and left discourses about Iraq. They would count for much more in a mass-mediated global scene if the left in and beyond the US would refuse its ongoing complicity with the forgetful, romantic and dangerous consumption of indigenous America. Surely, in this atomic age in the history of our constitutional democracies, and these times of war, we can at least begin to revolutionize and attune our consciousnesses to the potent colonial-postcolonial simultaneities at work across indigenous America and the US as I write today.

Made in China? The Crisis of US Imperialism

Fri, 26 May 2006 02:51:00 +0000

5-25-06, 11:15 am

Recently, Francesco Sisci, Asia editor of the popular Italian daily La Stampa, wrote an article entitled “Why the West Must ReOrient” for his mass audience: it no doubt sent shock waves through Europe. In it, he argues that the EU and US must change “because China’s growth has brought a systemic change to the world at large.” China is fueling growth in Asia that, Sisci claims, “foreshadows a different world, where for the first time in at least two centuries the West will become an economic minority.”

Reverting to history, Sisci recalls how William Shakespeare, in writing Othello, The Merchant of Venice and Romeo and Juliet, viewed Venice – as did many others – as the “most advanced country in the world,” though “in reality” England “was the country leading the changes in Europe and Venice was in decline.” The lesson he says is that “we rule out things we don’t like; often when it’s too painful to accept our reality we misread it.”

Something similar is happening today as the EU and US, whose combined population is less than China’s, confront the rise of this largest of all nations, which happens to be ruled by a Communist Party. Ironically, the US spent trillions to bring down the former Soviet Union by allying with Maoist China, not to mention “Islamic fundamentalism.” Now it is precisely that fateful decision, which involved the opening of China to massive foreign investment, that has placed China seemingly in the passing lane with consequences so immense for imperialism, white supremacy and global development generally that they have yet to be fully assessed.

Still, it would be silly to assume that world imperialism is supinely accepting its fate, though there is a palpable split in the US ruling elite about how to proceed vis-à-vis China with those with massive investments there counseling moderation and those without seeking destabilization. Meanwhile, Washington hawks continue trying to stir up anti-Beijing antagonisms in Taiwan, the rebel province off the coast of China, whose present regime has been making noises about independence. But more cautious voices are warning that the gigantic arms transfers to Taiwan may wind up in China’s arsenal, since economic ties between Taipei and Beijing have become so substantial that present momentum is moving toward the ouster of Taiwan’s anti-Communist regime and the ascension of a pro-China government.

This dilemma is indicative of the knotty problem faced by Washington as it confronts Beijing. Thus, the well-informed analyst, Henry C.K. Liu, writing in the influential Asia Times, observes that “the US Navy is now dependent on Asia, and eventually China, to build its new ships, and eventually the economics of trade will force the US Air Force to procure planes made in Asia and assembled in China.”

Such grim and stark realities have not stopped some in Washington from seeking to halt China’s peaceful rise. For example, the bipartisan duo of liberal Democrat Senator Charles Schumer (NY) and conservative Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (SC) have introduced the China currency bill calling for a 27.5 percent tariff on Chinese exports unless it revalues its currency upward by 27.5 percent within 180 days of passage of the bill. This bill has attracted a stunning array of bipartisan supporters and a companion bill has been introduced in the House by a similar duo, conservative Republican Duncan Hunter (CA) and liberal Democrat Tim Ryan (OH).

Yet, Liu argues forcefully that soon “the day will come when this technical issue” of the value of China’s currency “will become moot, when the Chinese yuan will naturally become a reserve currency for trade, reflecting the reality of changing global trade patterns,” challenging the current hegemony of the dollar. When that day arrives, the entire monetary and financial edifice of US imperialism will be subject to a major shock. The US will be unable to resort so easily to the printing press to deal with its pressing economic problems but, like most nations, will have to earn foreign currency the old-fashioned way – by working and producing. Moreover, taxing Chinese exports will simply drive up inflation in this nation, particularly for consumer goods, and will hamstring corporations like Wal-Mart, KMart, Sears Roebuck and many more.

In fact, the Schumer-Graham bill will hasten the day when the Chinese yuan will be “pegged to a basket of currencies of which the dollar is only one among several,” writes Liu. Thus, “China will have less of a need to hold dollars,” hindering Beijing’s present huge purchases of US Treasury bills, which keeps the US government afloat in light of the tax-cutting mania that grips the dominant Republican Party. If China is compelled to retreat from this market for US Treasury bills, either taxes would have to rise, or programs in defense, health, education, etc. would have to be slashed.

Liu warns that similar pressure on Japan two decades ago led to the “1985 Plaza Accord,” which “destroyed the Japanese export economy and brought stagflation to the US that led to the 1987 crash.” The Schumer-Graham bill “may well be the spark that will ignite a raging forest fire in the US debt-infested economy in the coming years.”

Still, attempts to sideline China continue. Recently, the Chicago Tribune issued a shrill warning about the Chinese-owned auto parts maker Wanxiang Corporation, which has opened up shop in Elgin, Illinois. It now has a “sleek 168,000 square-foot US headquarters off Interstate Highway 90” and is emulating the Chinese oil giant Cnooc, which tried to buy out US oil giant Unocal, and the Chinese appliance maker Haier, which has tried to purchase its competitor, Maytag. Wanxiang is challenging Delphi for a bigger stake of the auto parts business with General Motors. Delphi has been spending considerable time stiffing its workers and attaining obscenely high earnings through the manipulating of bankruptcy laws, rather than competing with this formidable Chinese company. In any event, the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank has warned that the Midwest faces major job loss in the auto market, not least since “Asian car-makers” like Toyota and Nissan “have set up manufacturing plants in the south in recent years.” This “poses the most likely structural threat to the region’s economy,” says this instrument of finance capital, ignoring its own complicity in this process. Kia, Hyundai and Samsung – all based in South Korea and all formidable trans-national corporations – have also been competing strongly with their US counterparts of late, and this has raised eyebrows in Washington.

An earth-shattering shift in relations between the US and South Korea has accompanied these new economic developments. Though US hawks would like to target North Korea for regime change, South Korea’s president has warned that relations between his nation and the US would suffer if Washington were to try to execute such an overthrow. In part, China is a factor here also since dramatically improved relations between Seoul and Beijing have influenced South Korea to put distance between itself and US imperialism. Recently, US ambassador to South Korea, Alexander Vershbow, caused an uproar among South Koreans when he called North Korea a “criminal regime.” He had to cancel a meeting in a central Seoul office after the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, which also has offices in the building, formed a blockade and refused to guarantee the ambassador’s safety.

So moved, the Pentagon has withdrawn nearly a quarter of the roughly 37,000 US troops stationed in South Korea. Indeed, a January 2004 poll conducted by a Seoul-based firm indicated that South Koreans now consider the US a greater threat than North Korea. Such sentiments have caused the Bush White House to tone down the rhetorical excess that caused Pyongyang to be deemed a central pole in the “Axis of Evil.”

No doubt China is pleased with the lessening of tension on its northern border, as Beijing insists on peaceful development. Certainly, eased tensions allow Beijing more latitude in deepening relations with Cuba, which has witnessed an influx of Chinese-made buses and trains and consumer goods, not to mention a series of high-level military visits from the People’s Liberation Army.

US imperialism also seeks to enlist India in an anti-China bloc, and, for this reason, Bush visited New Delhi in March. India, however, has been in the forefront of nations resisting US hegemony. New Delhi was one of the closest allies of the former Soviet Union during the cold war and suffered grievously as a result, as Pakistan and Washington sponsored “Islamic fundamentalists” to provoke violence in India’s northern province of Kashmir. In any case, it will be difficult to turn India against China, not least since India contains two militant Communist parties hostile to alliances with Washington. Thus, the major oil companies of India and China have just joined forces to buy Petro-Canada’s 37 percent stake in Syrian oil fields for a whopping $573 million dollars, which is slated as the first of a number of future collaborations between the world’s most populous nations.

A nation weaned on the poison of white supremacy as the US has been will have difficulty, in any event, in forging closer ties with a nation like India comprised overwhelmingly of the darker-skinned. Just ask Neelima Tirumalasetti, a US national of Indian origin, who has just filed suit in a federal court in Texas against a US firm. She was subjected allegedly to repeated racial harassment and discrimination after the company for which she worked, Caremark, decided to outsource work to India. Already a pressing problem in India is the abusive and racist outpourings by US customers who phone Indian call centers for technical assistance with computers and other items. Thus, Tirumalasetti was called a “brown-skinned bitch” and “dirty Indian” by her coworkers in Texas. Before that, the Indian-born president of Pepsico, Indra Nooyi, one of the most powerful businesswomen in the US, was subjected to even more racially tinged harassment after she gave a speech in Manhattan criticizing US global policies. Web sites can be found that teach US nationals the choicest words in the Indian language of Hindi that can be used against Indian workers during calls to service centers.

If enlisting India in an anti-China bloc is unpromising, there is always Japan, whose relations with Beijing are quite complicated, not least due to Tokyo’s historic plans stretching back to the late 19th century to exploit Asia’s largest nation in the way that Britain particularly exploited Africa and the Americas in order to gain global supremacy. Analyst Tim Shorrock argues, however, that “the rapid expansion of Sino-Japanese trade and the surprising evolution of cultural ties between Japan and the Asian mainland are softening anti-Japanese feelings within China and convincing many Japanese that closer ties with China may work to their benefit.” Citing one example, Shorrock notes that “an important milestone reached last year, Japanese trade with China reached $168 billion, allowing China to replace the United States as Japan’s largest trading partner for the first time since World War II.” A testament to the grim prospects of US imperialism is that its continued hegemony is heavily dependent on exacerbating tensions between China and Japan, which seems unlikely right now. Moreover, like the use of a skin cream that worsens the blemishes it is designed to obliterate, the devious stratagems deployed by US imperialism are precisely undermining its position globally. The criminal and illegal invasion of Iraq should certainly be seen in this light. Recently, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz (see josephstiglitz.com) has estimated that the real cost of this war is likely to be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion, up to 10 times more than previously thought. This spending has occurred, as taxes continue to be cut, borrowing, particularly from Japan, China and South Korea, proceeds apace and the military remains bogged down in a quagmire, unable to respond in the aggressive manner to other global trouble spots.

Withdrawal or redeployment plans have fallen on deaf ears. Thus, the military is consistently unable to meet its recruitment goals though it continues to target rural areas with depressed economies and working-class neighborhoods. The word is out, however, and the sight of soldiers returning maimed or in body bags is not the ideal recruiting broadside. A Zogby Poll in March revealed that 72 percent of US troops serving in Iraq favor US withdrawal within one year. They have been joined by two retired high-ranking military officials, one of whom describes the war in Iraq as “the most strategic foreign policy disaster in US history.” Even right-wing ideologues such as Brent Scowcroft, former aide to President George H.W. Bush, William F. Buckley Jr. and Pat Buchanan have criticized the war.

Moreover, the various scandals that have afflicted the US military have harmed the US profile in the international community. A recent United Nations report proclaimed that the detention center run at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba should be closed because treatment of detainees amounted to “torture.” The report concludes that combinations of interrogation techniques, brutal force-feeding and excessive violence in transporting prisoners violated their right to physical and mental health. Nearly 500 individuals have been held as “enemy combatants” at Guantánamo since 2002. Likewise, Amnesty International charged the US and its allies with similar atrocities in Iraq. There, 14,000 prisoners are subjected to various forms of abuse. Human Rights Watch chimed in, asserting that Washington is pursuing a deliberate strategy of abusing prisoners that is not a “failure of training, discipline or oversight but a deliberate policy choice.”

Increasingly desperate, US imperialism has begun to seek to ratchet up tension with Iran, as a way to deflect attention away from the Iraqi debacle. Besides, Iran too sits atop a lake of oil and natural gas, which Texas oilmen have been lusting after for some time now.

Here again, China is a potential stumbling block to US designs as its state-owned energy firm has just completed a $100 billion deal to take a leading role in developing a vast oilfield in Iran. China also is complicating US relations with its traditional ally as it has just agreed to a deal with BP of Great Britain that would make this energy firm Beijing’s biggest overseas partner. Then during a landmark visit King Abdullah, the aging 82-year-old monarch of Saudi Arabia, traveled to Beijing to ink a comprehensive energy cooperation agreement. This was a Saudi shot over Washington’s bow, warning the hawks that Riyadh has options beyond kowtowing to US imperialism.

At the same time Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhoxing visited Cape Verde, Senegal, Mali, Liberia and Nigeria, deepening ties with the planet’s poorest continent – ties that have led to a quadrupling of China’s trade with Africa over the past five years. Perhaps the most significant aspect of these important visits was the trip to Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer and most populous nation, leading to China’s acquisition of a 45 percent stake in an oil block off the coast of Nigeria at a cost of $2.5 billion. Li also invited African leaders to the China-Africa summit to take place later this year in Beijing. Forty-five African nations participated in the first such forum in 2000, hiking China’s trade with the continent. This tie between China and Africa is an emblem of “South-South” cooperation with Beijing leading the way.

In sum, US imperialism faces an all-sided challenge, which provides context for the controversy concerning the attempt by Dubai Ports World of the United Arab Emirates to take over operation of a number of US port facilities. Little was said during this flap about the basic principle of public goods being privatized; instead, an orgy of Arab-bashing was unleashed.

Yet, as one writer opined in the Financial Times, “the next phase of globalization, in the words of the US National Intelligence Council, will most likely have an Asian face. Americans and Europeans will not find it comfortable.” This is probably too broad a formulation, though it contains a fundamental truth. Nations forged on the principle of white supremacy, e.g. the US, will have difficulty in adjusting to a 21st century reality where nations like China and India assume a role as global leaders. Moreover, the “Islam-phobia” that has erupted in the wake of the tragic attack on Manhattan in September 2001, ill equips the US to grapple with the fact that with oil prices stuck in the $70-$80 barrel range, perhaps a half trillion dollars will land in the coffers of oil producers like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, etc. These nations often recycle these dollars in the US – e.g. the Dubai ports deal – and if such efforts are blocked, this only complicates the trajectory of US imperialism.

One example of this may be Iran which under such assault by Washington partially is because it has decided to shift to the euro and away from the dollar. Iran’s plan is to begin competing with New York’s Nymex and London’s IPE with respect to international oil trades, using a euro-denominated international oil-trading mechanism. This will be an obvious blow to US dollar supremacy in the global oil market that could spell the beginning of the end for the world’s only reserve currency. This has only heightened the bloodlust that now drives Washington’s tense relations with Teheran.

China is also moving to strengthen ties with Russia, whose own relations with Washington are also in a nosedive. Former vice-presidential nominees Jack Kemp and John Edwards co-chaired a blue-ribbon panel that issued a report denouncing the Putin regime, raising questions about Moscow’s energy policies in particular. Others in Washington have called for freezing Russia out of the so-called Group of Eight, which is slated to meet this summer in St. Petersburg. For its part, Moscow is concerned with the US-backed military alliance, NATO, creeping ever closer to its borders and sponsoring regime change in its neighbors, e.g. Ukraine and Georgia. This has led directly to an entente between Beijing and Moscow.

Thus, be it Europe or Africa or Latin America or Asia, it is China that is standing in the way of unrivalled US hegemony and domination. Is it too early to suggest that instead of being marked as a stroke of genius, Nixon’s trailblazing visit to Beijing some 35 years ago may be marked as the beginning of the end for US imperialism?

--Gerald Horne is a contributing editor of Political Affairs. Send your letters to the editor to

No One Is Illegal: The Fight For Immigrants’ Rights

Fri, 26 May 2006 02:46:00 +0000

5-25-06, 11;15 am

Background of Undocumented Immigration

Undocumented and documented immigration to the United States is at a record high in absolute numbers. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that there are as many as 12 million undocumented.

Worldwide, workers and farmers from poorer countries migrate to wealthier industrialized countries in search of better-paying jobs. They often do so illegally because there is no legal way. In the United States, work-related visas are only given to people with education or vocational skills in high demand. Undocumented immigrants from Mexico, Latin America and the Caribbean work in agriculture, services, hotels and restaurants, construction, meat cutting, gardening and landscaping. Every year, the United States government gives out only 5,000 occupationally-based permanent resident visas (“green cards”) to people in these job categories. With the huge number of jobs being offered, and the huge numbers wanting jobs, thousands inevitably continue to come illegally.

Since 1982, successive Mexican governments have found themselves increasingly pressured into adopting the “neoliberal” program free trade, privatization, and austerity. These policies are supposed to produce increased foreign investment and access to the rich countries’ markets, which in turn is supposed to create new jobs. But in the case of Mexico and many other countries, the reality has been a disaster for the masses and a bonanza for the transnationals. Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) came into force in January 1994, at least six million Mexicans have left farming, because Mexican grain producers cannot compete with cheap, government-subsidized wheat and maize from the United States and Canada. Real wages of Mexican workers have plummeted, while the social safety net has been left in tatters. This is what “pushes” immigration.

No other explanation for mass migration from Mexico or other poor countries is needed. Yet bourgeois politicians, journalists and theorists conceal this, because it places the responsibility squarely on our own ruling class and government. The high level of immigration has galvanized both pro- and anti-immigrant campaigns.

Immigrants’ rights groups, churches and various organizations have more and more followed the initiative of organized labor since the beginning of this decade, when the AFL-CIO came out openly for a new pro-immigrant program including amnesty or legalization of the undocumented, an end to employer sanctions (which hurt workers more than bosses), and a rollback of anti-immigrant legislation that, since California’s Proposition 187 in 1994, has made life increasingly difficult even for legal permanent residents.

By 2003, SEIU, in coalition with churches and community groups launched the “Reward Work” campaign to build up popular support for legalization. The following year, the AFL-CIO and member unions created an unprecedentedly broad coalition with religious, immigrants’ rights, community and ethnic organizations, to carry out the highly successful Immigrant Workers’ Freedom Ride. The ultra-right media and advocacy groups began to smear Mexican and Latino immigrants as the source of all social ills. In 2004, the Save Our State organization got a referendum passed in Arizona which would force all health care and social service workers to check the immigration status of their patients or clients and turn them in if they turned out to be “illegals.” The Minutemen began their anti-immigrant activities on the borders. The 2005 Legislative Program

In May, a bipartisan group in both houses of Congress introduced the Secure America bill, S 1033 and HR 2230, known as McCain-Kennedy for its chief Senate sponsors. This bill presented a process whereby undocumented immigrants could gain a conditional legal status that would last six years, then transition to permanent residency and eventual access to citizenship. They would have to pay $2,000 in fines, pay back taxes, learn English and civics, and pass a security screening. In addition, McCain-Kennedy increased legal resident visas for new immigrants. But it had in it major concessions to business and the Republicans. It proposed a guest worker program of about 400,000 people per year. Workers would come for a three-year stint, would be allowed another three years, and then might have to go back. But after two years, their employer could petition for the guest worker to be given a green card, and after four years the worker could do that him or herself. This immediately became very controversial, as did a toughening of employer sanctions and border enforcement.

Supporting McCain-Kennedy were important unions with large immigrant memberships, including SEIU, Unite-Here, the United Farm Workers, as well as the Conference of Catholic Bishops and many other religious, community and immigrants’ rights groups. Laborers’ International President Tim O’Sullivan stated that his union could not sign onto the guest worker aspect, but supported progressive aspects of the bill.

Also supporting McCain-Kennedy were major business interests, grouped in the Essential Workers Coalition. While the labor and community supporters of McCain-Kennedy accepted the guest worker program as a concession to get Republican votes in Congress for legalization, business clearly saw cheap, easily controllable labor in the form of guest workers as the major attraction. Another pro-immigrant bill, HR 2092, the Save America Comprehensive Immigration Act, was introduced in the House by Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX). It provided for a more generous legalization program, no guest worker program, and vocational training programs for African American and other poor and minority workers possibly displaced by immigration. It also included language protecting immigrant workers’ rights on the job from government interference. The Jackson-Lee bill garnered the support of many members of the Congressional Black Caucus, but could not find a sponsor in the Senate.

On the right, corporate-linked Senators Cornyn (R-TX) and Kyl (R-AZ) introduced S 1438, the Comprehensive Enforcement and Immigration Reform Act, which included big crackdowns in border and internal enforcement, a large guest worker program with no access to full permanent residency, and expulsion of the 12 million undocumented.

Not to be outdone, Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO), organizer of a 70 person extreme anti-immigrant caucus in the House, introduced HR 3333, the Real Guest Act, which entailed internal and border crackdowns, expulsion of all undocumented immigrants, a large no-rights guest worker program, increased employer sanctions, and denial of citizenship to US-born children of the undocumented. (Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NB) also introduced a package of four bills that took a position approximately between the McCain-Kennedy and the Cornyn-Kyl approaches).

Early in his administration, President Bush had talked about working with Mexico to resolve the immigration issue, and hinted that this would entail some sort of guest worker approach. After Mexico refused to support the US invasion of Iraq, everything was put on hold. But indications are that the White House’s goal is a guest worker program, which would serve the interest of Bush’s major corporate backers.

For much of the year, though there were many demonstrations in favor of immigrants’ rights, including one that brought out at least 20,000 people to the streets of Chicago on July 1, things were not going well in Congress. Dennis Hastert did not let any pro-immigrant legislation advance. Propaganda on the public airwaves was viciously anti-immigrant. Organized labor split, with a number of unions with large immigrant memberships leaving the AFL-CIO. The AFL-CIO leadership, while continuing to support legalization and immigrants’ rights, came out openly against the McCain-Kennedy bill, because of its guest worker program.

The Sensenbrenner Bill, Hr 4437

With little advance warning, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), tossed all the anti-immigrant elements in a new bill (HR 4437) which he rammed through the House floor by a majority of 239-182 on December 16. HR 4437 lacks either a guest worker program or legalization for the undocumented, and includes draconian repressive elements. Mere unauthorized presence in the United States would become a felony, forever precluding legal permanent residency or US citizenship. All persons who helped an undocumented immigrant to come into the United States or stay here would have committed an aggravated felony entailing hard prison time. This would potentially include not only smugglers, but friends, relatives and neighbors, landlords, priests or ministers, job counselors, health care professionals and landlords.

Employers would have to use an error-prone government online system to check the eligibility for employment of all employees. Union hiring halls, worker centers, and community job agencies would be covered. Employer sanctions would be significantly increased.

Due process rights of people in the clutches of the immigration cops would be severely curtailed. Local and state police would be deputized to do immigration enforcement, leading to a vast racial profiling. A 2,000 mile fence would be built along the US-Mexican border. The extreme nature of HR 4437, its quick passage, and the fact that President Bush stated he supported it, upped the ante for both pro-and anti-immigrant camps.

The Action Moves to the Senate

On February 23, Senator Arlen Specter, chair of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, issued a revised “chairman’s mark” document. A “chairman’s mark” is a draft bill used in Senate committees as a working document to be discussed and amended. The mark was a big step in a right-wing, anti-immigrant direction. Both the undocumented and people who helped them would be criminalized. Much repressive language was imported from HR 4437, and there was no permanent legalization program for the undocumented, only a sort of “permanent temporary worker” status. There was a large guest worker program without any firm labor safeguards. The only positive item was that the mark created more “green cards.”

Senate majority leader, Bill Frist (R-TN) declared that if the committee did not produce a bill by March 27, he would introduce and push his own repressive “enforcement only” bill. On March 27, after several weeks of little progress (at the end of which Frist introduced his bill, S 2454, as threatened), the Committee on the Judiciary, in a frenzy of activity, made important progressive changes to Specter’s mark:

The McCain-Kennedy language allowing most undocumented immigrants to become permanent legal residents was inserted. But they would have to wait to be fully processed until prior applicants for green cards had their turn.

Senator Durbin (D-IL) succeeded in amending the mark to remove language criminalizing mere unauthorized presence in the country, and charitable aid to undocumented immigrants. Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) succeeded in incorporating the AgJobs bill, which would allow for the eventual legalization of some 1.5 million undocumented immigrants in agriculture. The McCain-Kennedy language on guest workers was substituted for the Specter language, allowing guest workers to eventually become permanent residents and citizens. The Dream Act to help undocumented immigrant youth raised in the United States to get affordable college education was added.

This package, now called Specter-Leahy, passed 12-6, with 4 Republicans (including Chairman Specter) joining all the Democrats on the committee to send it to the Senate floor.

What caused this sudden change of direction? Millions of immigrants and their supporters had staged disciplined, dignified demonstrations against HR 4437. Three hundred thousand marched in Chicago on March 10, and over a million in Los Angeles on March 25. This direct intervention of the working class, which caused the shutdown of hundreds of workplaces, made a huge difference. Forces which had disagreed over specific legislation, now found themselves united in actively supporting the mass mobilizations for immigrants’ rights.

Downside of the Specter-Leahy Bill

Many immigrants’ rights groups, especially those who had supported McCain-Kennedy from the start, hailed the Judiciary Committee’s action as a great step forward. And compared with Cornyn-Kyl, HR 4437, Specter’s Mark, or the Frist bill, it certainly was. But there were still major problems with this bill. Here are a few of many:

• The language removing criminalization of people who help immigrants was too narrow to include everybody who might be impacted. • Though the guest worker program is better than in other proposals, but it would still be abused. • The bill would still require all employers to check the legal status of all employees through a flawed government database, leading to unjust firings. • Employers receiving Social Security “No Match” letters would have to report to the government what they have done to resolve the discrepancy, also leading to firings. • Undocumented immigrants applying for legalization would be forced to waive their right to challenge government decisions in court. • All immigration cases would be shifted to a federal court in Washington DC, complicating the issue of legal representation. • There would be a great expansion of the category of “aggravated felonies” leading to deportation. • There would be a huge increase in the number of immigrants held in detention. Immigrants under deportation whose countries of origin refuse to take them back could be detained forever without trial. • There would be draconian penalties for document infractions like failing to file a change of address form within 10 days of moving. • It was hoped that some of this could be resolved by floor amendments. However, this proved impossible. Senator Frist immediately tried to move his bill, S 2454, forward, but supporters of the Judiciary Committee bill, now called Specter-Leahy, managed to get it put forward as a substitute.

Then the Republicans right began to offer amendments that, in the words of Senate minority leader, Harry Reid (D-NV), would “destroy the integrity” of the bill. One, for example, would have blocked any legalization of the undocumented until it could be “certified” that the border was “secure.” So Reid blocked these amendments. On April 6, a bipartisan group of senators, including the major supporters of the Specter-Leahy bill, announced that they had reached an agreement with Frist on a new compromise. This bill, called Hagel-Martinez (for Republican Senators Hagel of Nebraska and Martinez of Florida) would incorporate most of Specter-Leahy, with the following changes. The size of the guest worker program would be reduced from Specter-Leahy’s 400,000 to 325,000, and the undocumented immigrants would be split into three groups. Those who have been here more than five years would get a legalization deal as under McCain-Kennedy and Specter-Leahy. Those who had been here from two to five years would have to go back to their countries of origin but would be able to come back in, entering the legalization pipeline. Those who had been here two years or less would have to leave, and the only way they could come back would be through the new guest worker program. This was hailed by some who had originally supported McCain-Kennedy and then Specter-Leahy, because they got most of what they expected to get, except that the newest immigrants would be tossed to the sharks. However, the grassroots forces whose mass rallies had moved everything forward so far, were not pleased with the deal, which would split the immigrant base. The next day, the whole deal fell apart. Press reports suggest that Reid wanted some procedural assurances about the conference committee, and these were not forthcoming. The Democrats moved for cloture on the Hagel-Martinez compromise, but were defeated, 38-60. Frist then moved for cloture to vote on his original bill, but the motion also failed 36-62.

So no Senate bill was finished by the April 10-24 recess. The Hagel-Martinez compromise will be taken up again after the recess, however.

Where Are We Now?

Some see this as a reverse, but there is another way of looking at it. In the first place, the Hagel-Martinez compromise is a very mixed bag, containing all the repressive mechanisms that the pro-immigrant Democrats were unable to remove from the Specter-Leahy (Judiciary Committee) bill. And when it got to a House-Senate conference committee, whose members would be named by Republican reactionaries Frist and Hastert, there would be strong efforts to purge it of its progressive elements and pull it even more in the direction of HR 4437. So we have a lot of work to do. If we continue to organize, mobilize, agitate and lobby, this can be a valuable purchase of time.

Of course, the other side will agitate also, but on what basis? Hate speech and lies? Over time, hate speech antagonizes the public and lies get exposed.

Originally claiming that undocumented immigration represents a terrorism threat, the anti-immigrant ideologues now assert that Mexican immigrants are an army sent to recapture for Mexico the Southwestern states seized by the United States from 1836 to 1853.

Nobody who has any contact with Mexican immigrants can take seriously a claim that they are a secret conquering army. So the openly racist, over-the-top anti-immigrant and anti-Mexican rhetoric will backfire. And indeed, public opinion polls are turning the other way.

What about the claims that immigrants take jobs, depress wages, use up public services, increase petty crime, contribute to the health care insurance coverage crisis, damage the environment or endanger public health? These arguments can be shown not to hold water, and now we have two extra weeks to prove it. Certainly, many employers hire undocumented workers because they think they can get away with paying them less. It is precisely the vulnerability of the undocumented workers that makes this possible. Take away this vulnerability by legalizing the undocumented (to permanent legal residency, not to a shaky “guest worker” status), and you take away the advantage that these employers have in hiring them. That is why all workers should support legalization with full rights for undocumented workers.

The dignified spectacle of millions of working-class immigrants marching through our cities’ streets shows what the potential is for the immigrant “giant” that is now awakening. Those who march for immigrants’ rights today, will march tomorrow for labor rights for all, for a raise in the minimum wage, for a national health care system, for quality schools and all the other things that all workers want.

And when they can vote, they can do us all a favor by removing the likes of Sensenbrenner, Frist, Tancredo and Bush from office. In the meanwhile, we ourselves must end Republican control of Congress in November, so that we can get off the defensive and promote positive legislation on immigration and every other issue.

--Emile Schepers is a contributing writer for Political Affairs. Send your letters to the editor to

Working America Comes to Rochester, Minn., and Allentown, Pa.

Fri, 26 May 2006 02:32:00 +0000

5-25-06, 9:59am

Working families in Rochester, Minn., and Allentown, Pa., and the surrounding areas who want a powerful voice in critical political and legislative debates now can turn to the AFL-CIO’s community affiliate, Working America, to help make themselves heard. The grassroots group opens offices in both cities today.

Working America gives working families that lack the benefits of union membership the opportunity to join forces with the AFL-CIO’s 9 million members in the fight for good jobs, health care, retirement security and more.

Rochester, in southeastern Minnesota, is the state’s third largest city behind the “Twin Cities” of Minneapolis and St. Paul, where Working America launched its Minnesota operations in February. Some 125,000 Minnesotans are expected to sign up with Working America by the end of the year and play a major role in this year’s elections.

Along with the new Allentown office, Working America has operations in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and expects to top 285,000 Pennsylvania members by the end of the year.

Launched in 2003, Working America is more than 1 million members strong and the nation’s fastest growing organization for working people. Working America members already have had significant impact in local and national political action—from mobilizing to pass a Seattle hospital levy that helped fund emergency responders and helping elect Tim Kaine as Virginia’s governor in 2005 to delivering more than 60,000 hand-written letters to U.S. senators urging them to oppose Social Security privatization.

Working America members set the group’s priorities by voting online. Last year, members tapped health care, good jobs and retirement security as their top three issues.

If you live in the Rochester area and want more information, call 507-292-1112. Allentown-area residents can call 610-797-1859.

Along with its national headquarters in Washington, D.C., and its Minnesota and Pennsylvania offices, Working America has locations in Ohio, Oregon and Washington State.