People Before Profit blog

Univ. of Calif. Students Occupy Buildings to Protest Fee Raise

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:13:00 +0000

BERKELEY, CA (11/20/09) -- Students occupied Wheeler Hall on the University of California campus in Berkeley, protesting a decision by university regents to raise fees (the equivalent of tuition) by 32%, bringing them to $10,302 per year for undergraduates.

At the beginning of the occupation the students made several demands, including the rehire 38 laid off custodial workers, and amnesty for protesting students.

The hall was surrounded by hundreds of supporting students, faculty, campus workers and community members.

The day before the occupation, two university unions - the University Professional and Technical Employees and the Coalition of University Employees - together with students and members of campus faculty mounted a campus-wide strike.

After a day of occupation, students voluntarily left the building, and were cited for misdemeanor trespass.

On other campuses, including at Los Angeles, Santa Cruz and Davis, students also occupied buildings and in some cases were arrested.

Puck Lo, a student at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and one of those occupying Wheeler Hall, told the LA Times that the protests were taking place during a period in which students also had to study for coming final exams.

'This strike is really inconvenient,' she said. 'But this seems the honorable thing to do for future students.'

Capitalism’s Failures and the Struggle Forward

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:05:00 +0000

Editor’s note: The following are excerpted remarks of Scott Marshall, Vice Chair, Communist Party USA to the 11th International meeting of communist and workers’ parties held in New Delhi, India, Nov. 19th. The meeting was hosted by the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

In this terrible time of global economic crisis it is most timely that we seek ways to expand and broaden our slogan 'workers and oppressed peoples of the world unite.' While our slogan has been around for many generations, today it has more meaning than ever. Today global economic integration has reached new incredible levels. Today global finance capital roams the world pillaging and profiteering on a scale unimaginable in Marx's day.

First let me say a few words about how the crisis is affecting working people in the United States. Just this month the percentage of workers in our country who are long-term unemployed has reached levels not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the beginning stages of this crisis we were losing 700,000 jobs or more a month. Today, when some mainstream economists are declaring the recession over, when obscene banking profits are on the rise again, when the stock market is rising again, when finance capital is returning to its unregulated predatory ways with a vengeance, we are still losing around 200,000 jobs a month.

Among young people in the US the unemployed figures are staggering. In the age group of 16 to 24 only about 45 percent have jobs. And that number is much worse for African American, Latino and other racially and nationally oppressed youth. Racism in the US takes an even more terrible toll in this kind of an economic crisis. In the communities of the racially and nationally oppressed the crisis strikes with a particular violence and vengeance.

At the same time, experts who follow the housing markets, say that 2010 will see a whole new rash of home foreclosures with workers and their families being evicted and thrown into the streets. 40 million people are without health care and every month that number rises because in the US many people get their health care through their employer. In what is supposed to be the richest country in the world, because so much of the world's finance capital is centered there, hundreds of thousands of children go to school hungry every day. In many hard hit working class communities, the schools and medical clinics are crumbling and closing. The streets and bridges, the sewage and water systems, the basic infrastructures are neglected and decaying. And vital public services at all levels of government are being cut back and stopped.

The list of capitalism's failures in this crisis is very long. And of course we know that the crisis hits many in the developing world much harder than it hits the developed countries.

There are always two sides to the class struggle. Two major events are now turning the tide of working class struggle in a more militant and fighting direction in my country. The first is the rise of the movement that defeated the ultra-right Republican Party in the 2008 election and elected Barack Obama. That same movement also defeated many ultra-right members of the U.S. Congress. I know that internationally there are some mixed feelings about the role of president Barack Obama. Let me be clear, he is not a communist, he is not a socialist, and on some issues he is quite a moderate liberal. At the same time, after eight years of George Bush, the worst warmongering president and administration in US history, the election of Barack Obama opens a whole new terrain of struggle for the working class in the US and in the world. And after 30 years of vicious neoliberal attack on the US labor movement, on the working class and on the people's movements in the US, the election of Barack Obama opens the door for a whole new fight for economic justice, peace and equality.

Barack Obama, as I said, is no revolutionary – it’s true. But he doesn’t have to be a revolutionary to do some pretty important things to support labor and the working class. I won’t go into a whole domestic list but it is significant for those of us who work for a living in the US. He did inspire a movement and mobilize a broad coalition of democratic forces to defeat McCain and the ultra right. And, more importantly for our meeting here – he has taken some steps to curb some of the worst features of the international policies that he inherited from the previous administration. As on the domestic scene, in international affairs it will be the mobilization of the peoples forces and labor that will be decisive in shifting US policy even more – the left and the people’s forces had very little affect on the Bush administration – we can help move the Obama administration in a better direction.

The movement that elected Obama was, and continues to be, a broad coalition of social forces including even some sectors of capital. But at its heart is what we like to call the core social forces, the working class and its organized sector the labor movement, the racially and nationally oppressed, women, youth, and the gay rights movement.

The other major event that is helping to turn the tide was the September 2009 convention of the AFL-CIO, the largest labor federation in our country. I believe history will record that convention as a major turning point for our working class. This convention was the culmination of changes and developments that began in the mid-1990s. The AFL-CIO convention in 1995 was a major break with some of the worst features of class collaboration and the Cold War that began with the anti-Communist witchhunts of the early 1950s. In the mid ‘90’s the labor movement began to develop a more class struggle approach. After the '95 convention US labor began to develop its own independent political apparatus. It became more militant in the economic struggle. It increasingly began to see the global nature of capitalism. Further it even began to understand that the labor movement had to be more than just the defender of its own members, it had to become the voice and movement of the whole working class.

The 2009 Convention of the AFL-CIO, which I attended, deepened these trends and was remarkable in many ways. It elected a new leadership, more militant and more rooted in the fighting industrial union traditions of my country. Richard Trumka the new president comes out of the militant traditions of the mine workers union. On the day after his election at the convention he went straight to Wall Street and blasted the banking and insurance industries for causing the economic crisis both at home and abroad. He called for strong new regulatory steps to curb their reckless speculation and for breaking up those banks deemed “too big to fail.” The federation has vigorously pursued a “break up the big banks” policy and mobilized it’s member unions to fight for sharp new limits on finance capital. In another first for our labor movement the convention also elected two women, one African-American, to the other two top leadership positions of the AFL-CIO.

There are way too many examples of labor’s new policies for me to list now but I would like to mention one that I think is important to our international movement and illustrates a new direction and new possibilities for international labor solidarity. I have with me a letter, well publicized in the labor press in the US from Richard Trumka to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In it he says that the AFL-CIO believes that the coup government in Honduras to be totally illegitimate. The letter says the coup’s repression of the trade unions and democratic movements in Honduras make it impossible for there to be free and fair elections this November. And the letter strongly calls on the US State Department to stop all aid to Honduras until the coup is overturned and President Zelaya is returned to power. The letter also says that the position of the AFL-CIO was taken in consultation with the Honduran labor unions.

This is but one dramatic example of the new thinking in US labor on international questions. US labor also strongly opposes the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. (And I should mention here that labor has unprecedented access to President Obama and can be a significant voice in helping to move him.) The convention also passed a resolution calling for an end to travel and monetary restrictions against Cuba and for better relations. These are examples of US labor breaking with the US State Department and US imperialism on international issues for the first time since the cold war began after World War II. We think this opens a whole new world of possibility for rebuilding and strengthening world labor and working class solidarity. And we think that Communist and Workers parties have a critical role to play in helping to take advantage of the new possibilities. It is really time for labor, on all sides of the old cold war political divide to reconsider and rethink labor unity.

Comrades, in our opinion the global economic crisis continues unabated. According to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund the world nation’s produce somewhere in the neighborhood of $65 trillion in goods and services each year. At the same time, according to the International Bank of Settlements, over $515 trillion is speculated in derivatives, credit default swaps and similar forms of exotic finance schemes. Think of it – such incredible imbalance. It’s staggering – think of the stolen surplus value represented in this deadest of all parasitic finance capital. Think of the problems of the world’s people that could be solved with that kind of money.

We think it is also important to look at the splits in capital in this period. In the US there is growing evidence of splits between manufacturing capital and banking capital. This is not just splits between big and small business and may open up serious lines of attack for regulating and reigning in some of the most predatory practices of speculative finance capital around the world.

We have much to discuss and think about. But I would like to end with a paraphrase of something Fredrick Engels once said, “an ounce of actions is worth a pound of theory,” something to that effect. We are most interested in how our parties can play a concrete role in helping to bring about real organized struggle along the lines of “workers of the world unite.” This needs to begin with what we can do to help unite and broaden the global labor movement. Marx and Engels did not say, “Workers of the World – unite to share information.” It was clear that they meant workers of the world unite for struggle. How can we make that a reality in today’s real world. What are our first concrete steps. We hope our meeting and deliberations can move us closer to making it happen.

Would Asia Lead a Global Recovery?

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:56:00 +0000

Original source: People's Democracy (India)

As the world looks to full stabilization and a rebound from the crisis due to the efforts of governments, it is clear that it is finance rather than the real economy that has benefited more from those initiatives. In fact, the turnaround in the financial sector, which was responsible for the crisis in the first instance, has been faster and more noticeable than that in the real economy. What is more, as the popular concern about swelling bonuses for financial managers illustrates, the recovery of finance is seeing a return to practices that generated the imbalances that underlay the crisis.

This is not true just at the level of individual institutions or countries, but globally as well. Thus, the financial recovery has resulted in a revival of capital flows to emerging markets since March 2009, even while the flow of credit to the real sector in the developed countries is still limited. Much of these flows are concentrated in Asian emerging markets that have been less adversely affected by the crisis than other countries, and therefore promise quick returns to a financial sector that is yet to write off a large volume of bad assets. The surge is clearly feeding on itself inasmuch as it has generated an asset price boom in recipient countries, encouraging further speculative flows. As the International Monetary Fund’s Regional Economic Outlook released in October reports, “emerging Asia … has especially benefited from equity market inflows, which have not only exceeded those to other regions, but have also returned to levels prevailing before the crisis. External equity and bond issues by emerging Asian economies have also returned to pre-crisis levels, a much stronger rebound than in other regions. Even inflows of syndicated loans have resumed to emerging Asia—unlike elsewhere, primarily reflecting the healthier state of banks in the region.”

This turnaround is worsening an imbalance that was seen as being a medium-term influence that triggered the crisis of 2008: the imbalance in the distribution of global reserves. The surge in capital inflows to Asian emerging markets puts upward pressure on the currencies of these countries, which can ill-afford currency appreciation at a time when they are just recovering from the decline in exports that the recession generated. Such appreciation makes their exports more expensive in foreign currency terms and erodes export competitiveness.

Not surprisingly, central bankers have stepped in to manage exchange rates and stall or dampen appreciation by buying up dollars and adding it to their reserves. According to the IMF, from March through September 2009, emerging Asian countries accumulated US$510 billion in reserves, compared with US$69 billion in emerging Europe and US$17 billion in Latin America. Cumulatively, emerging Asia’s stock of reserves has risen from about US$3.4 trillion at end-August 2008 to about US$3.9 trillion at end-September. This makes the stock of reserves in Asia much higher than in other emerging markets in absolute dollar values and as a share of GDP.

When reserves accumulate rapidly, central banks look for liquid and safe assets. And since the dollar remains the world’s reserve currency and the US the world’s leading political and military power, the flight to safety is biased in favor of dollar denominated assets. In the case of Asia this seems to be true even when the dollar is weak and depreciates. Data from the US Federal Reserve relating to US Government agency bonds held by foreign official institutions shows that while they increased by $119 billion in 2007, in the wake of the crisis they fell by $31 billion in 2008 and by another $31 billion in the first seven months of 2009. However, not only was the contribution of non-oil exporting Asian countries even more significant, it actually continued to be positive even in 2008. Asian holdings of US public bonds increased by $131.6 billion in 2007 and by $32.4 billion in 2008. Even in the first seven months of 2009, total Asian holding of US government bonds remained largely stable, with a small increase of $2.3 billion for Middle Eastern oil exporters and a small decline of $2.5 billion for all other Asian countries.

This reverse flow of capital from developing to developed countries had in the past been held responsible for the excess liquidity, credit and consumption in the US, which was seen as absorbing the excess savings from Asia. Thus a significant part of the blame for the debt-financed consumption that led to the crisis of 2008 was placed at Asia’s door. In particular, it was argued that some Asian countries were using undervalue exchanged rates to generate the trade and current account surpluses that accumulate as reserves and then flow to US.

II

What the recent Asian experience illustrates is that financial rather than trade flows often generate the imbalances reflected in the uneven distribution of global balance of payments surpluses and foreign exchange reserves. If those reserves are seen as contributing to a process that leads to a financial and economic crisis, then the fault possibly lies in the structures created by the financial policies of the developed countries rather than in the exchange rate policies of the developing.

What is more the revival of financial flows has been accompanied by tendencies the full import of which has been ignored in the complacence generated by the recovery in Asia. It is now well accepted that the recovery of the world economy from the worst recession since the Second World War is being led by Asia, which thus far has display a V-shaped short term growth trajectory. The sharp rebound has many causes to it, including the fiscal stimulus in countries like China, which has played a role nationally and regionally. But one that has been important, at least in some countries, is the effort of central banks and governments to reduce interest rates and push credit. Besides opting for a fiscal stimulus to combat the recession that was imported into Asia from the developed industrial countries, policy makers in Asia have persuaded central banks to pump liquidity into the system and stimulate credit offtake by cutting interest rates.

Not surprisingly, the IMF reports that evidence for the year since September 2008 indicates that unlike the developed countries where bank credit flows froze in the wake of the crisis, bank credit growth in Asia has only slowed and that in some cases such as China it has in fact risen sharply. There are many benign explanations for this, including the strong balance sheets of the banks that have recapitalized themselves since the 1997 crisis and been more cautious in their practices. As the IMF puts it: “Unlike in Europe, Asian banks had little exposure to U.S. toxic assets, and the rise in domestic nonperforming loans has been modest, so the damage to their capital positions from the crisis has been relatively small. Moreover, they have been quick to replenish their buffers, raising more than US$106 billion in capital since fall 2008. As a result, the declines in their capital-asset ratios have been negligible; in some countries, capital ratios have even risen compared with pre-crisis levels. So as liquidity conditions improved, Asian banks were in a strong position to resume lending.” To this we must add the lower leverage in a restructured corporate sector that had burnt its fingers in 1997.

III

There is, however, some danger. Whenever credit remains high or surges because of easy liquidity, some of it flows into risky assets. This is visible in China, which was not a victim of the 1997 crisis and had not seen restructuring of the kind noted above. The evidence suggests that credit growth in China has accelerated since the beginning of 2009, facilitated by the government’s decision to relax informal quantitative limits on bank credit growth as a response to the growth slowdown resulting from the deceleration in export growth. The resulting credit boom raised the level of net new bank credit by 50 percent compared with its level 2008 as a whole.

Such credit has financed a surge in public investment which when mandated by government is not constrained by expectations of market demand and profitability. But it has also hiked private consumption and also private investment, particularly in real estate. According to estimates about 40 percent of the private investment undertaken in the first eight months of 2009 went into real estate. There is reason to believe that this is true in other Asian countries as well, where the liquidity resulting from the return of capital that had initially exited the country has helped sustain a regime of easy liquidity and credit with low interest rates.

Needless to say, a credit surge of this kind encourages speculation, leads to asset price inflation and runs the risk of fuelling a bubble based on loans of poor quality. This not only questions the sustainability of the resulting recovery but makes the growth process partially one that rides on a bubble. As and when governments seek to reduce their fiscal deficits and exit from the fiscal stimulus they chose to provide, this aspect of the growth process could come to dominate. If that happens, Asian growth would increasingly take on characteristics similar to those displayed by the developed industrial countries in the years before the onset of their financial crisis with real economy expansion being driven by debt-financed private (particularly housing) investment and consumption. Such growth is obviously vulnerable, since a credit surge cannot be sustained for long without undermining the confidence of lenders and of those willing to carry risk on their behalf.

It is in this background that statements of the role of Asia in leading a recovery need to be assessed. Even if a revival of domestic demand is reducing Asia’s substantially dependence on the markets of the developed world for its growth, that revival is based on a combination of debt-financed public and private expenditure. Fiscal conservatism may reduce the first, while the unraveling of a speculative boom may end the second. In which case the crisis may still be with us.

High Hopes for the International Climate Change Meeting

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:37:00 +0000

EarthTalk® From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: What do organizers hope to accomplish at the upcoming (December 7-18, 2009) United Nations Climate Change Conference being held in Copenhagen? -- F. Rojas, Oakland, CA

The upcoming COP15 meeting in Denmark—so named because it is the 15th such international gathering of the Conference of the Parties (COP) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—is the world's next big chance to take decisive multi-lateral action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions substantially enough to ward off cataclysmic climate change.

Negotiators from all over the globe hope to come to terms on a binding agreement regarding emissions reductions that both developed and developing nations can agree to. The stakes are high: This conference represents the final step in negotiations years in the making—and the results could chart a course toward success or failure in human efforts to control the carbon beast we set free in the industrial revolution.

Officially, the stated goal of COP15, according to United Nations organizers, is 'to stabilize the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a level that prevents dangerous man-made climate changes.' They add that 'this stabilization must occur in such a way as to give the ecosystems the opportunity to adapt naturally' without compromising food safety or hindering sustainable social and economic development around the world. Organizers, delegates and a wide range of other participants—some 10,000 people are expected to attend—are still holding out hope for the establishment of an ambitious, legally binding global emissions reduction agreement to take effect beginning in 2012. That is when initial commitments made under the Kyoto Protocol, an earlier international climate treaty that the U.S. refused to join, expire.

One sticking point is whether or not the Obama administration will risk agreeing to major emissions reductions without the prior consent of Congress. The most promising U.S. climate legislation, the so-called Kerry-Boxer Bill, is currently under consideration in the Senate but likely won’t be voted on until February 2010 or later; traditionally the American government likes to iron out its policy legislatively at home before agreeing to international commitments. But bi-partisan backers of the bill in the Senate say they can agree on terms now that will be acceptable to enough to their colleagues for later passage, enabling American negotiators at Copenhagen to have some guidelines at the COP15 bargaining table.

China and much of the developing world would like to see industrialized countries cut their greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, but analysts say such drastic cuts are unlikely to fly with U.S. politicians. Climate champion Al Gore is urging COP15 delegates to create a binding legal framework where commitments can be ratcheted up with time as governments begin to realize the benefits of switching to larger amounts of renewable energy and participating in the development of green technology.

Beyond the big question of U.S. participation, COP15 negotiators will be trying hard to forge a consensus on a wide range of related issues, including: what year should be set as the baseline against which specific reduction targets will be measured; the duration of the emissions reduction commitment period; whether or not to call for curbs on deforestation, especially in developing countries’ tropical rainforests; and whether or not to tighten rules governing the methods used to reduce emissions.

CONTACT: COP15, www.cop15.dk.

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

Senate Moves Health Reform Debate Forward

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:30:00 +0000

The Senate voted 60-39 this weekend to begin debate on its version of the health care reform bill. According to early analysis, the Senate bill would impose new regulations on the health insurance industry and create regional insurance exchanges that include a public insurance option.

The bill would outlaw insurance company policies that deny coverage based on preexisting conditions, gender or lifetime caps on claims. In addition, the bill would allow laid-off workers to keep the insurance they have.

The bill would pay for reform through a combination of new taxes on the richest Americans and on insurance companies with the most expensive insurance plans. The $849 billion price tag would also be covered by ending huge government payouts to the privatized Medicare plans created by the Bush administration.

The bill, known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, would require everyone to buy health insurance. It would assist low and moderate income Americans to do this with new subsidies.

It also mandates employers in larger firms to buy insurance for their employees. Small businesses would see new tax credits and subsidies to buy coverage.

The Senate bill would give consumers the choice among insurance that either include or exclude abortion coverage, but would deny federal funds to pay for abortions.

The bill would also provide new protections for America’s elderly against abuse and neglect, a measure sought by Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark.

In a statement, Debra L. Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, applauded the release of the Senate bill. “The introduction of the Senate's health insurance reform bill puts us closer than ever to providing families in America with insurance coverage they can count on,” she said.

The Senate bill “would prevent insurance companies from denying or dropping coverage based on gender, age, or a pre-existing condition,” Ness added. “It also triggers some badly needed changes to the way we pay for and deliver health care that would result in both quality improvements and cost-savings.”

Director of White House Office of Health Reform Nancy-Ann DeParle expressed strong optimism about the final passage of the bill. “The challenges facing our health care system aren’t new,” she told reporters late last week. “We know they’ll get worse if we fail to act. “

A letter from 20 leading health economists to President Obama this week praised the Senate bill because “it will reduce long-term deficits, improve the quality of care, and put the nation on a firm fiscal footing.”

In an e-mail to constituents, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said that bill will go through a dramatic amendments process before final passage. “At the end of this process,” she explained, “I hope to support legislation that stops unfair practices by insurance companies, makes health care affordable for families and small businesses, and protects Medicare for years to come.”

Sen. Mary Landrieu, in a floor speech before the vote to begin debate, said that her support for reforms centers fixing the impact of the current broken health system on small businesses. “The unpredictable and unsustainable and skyrocketing cost of healthcare to small businesses in America is damaging their ability to grow,” she noted.

A White House Council of Economic Advisors report last summer indicated that small business owners pay an 18 percent premium on health insurance plans for themselves and their employees. Small business owners say that rising premiums have made health coverage unaffordable.

President Obama lauded the release of the new bill and urged quick action. “From day one, our goal has been to enact legislation that offers stability and security to those who have insurance and affordable coverage to those who don’t, and that lowers costs for families, businesses and governments across the country,” the president said in a statement Nov. 18.

On the eve of the vote to begin debate, the Obama administration declared its full support for passage of the Senate bill. “This bill provides the necessary health reforms that the Administration seeks – affordable, quality care within reach for the tens of millions of Americans who do not have it today, and stability and security for the hundreds of millions who do,” a White House statement read.

According to Majority Leader Harry Reid's office, the bill would reduce the federal deficit, control the growth of health care costs and provide nearly universal coverage. A CBO score of the bill agreed. In the first decade the reform package would reduce the deficit by almost $130 billion and another $650 billion the next decade.

A majority of Americans appear to support major provisions in the new bill. A recent poll by the Associated Press showed that almost six in 10 Americans support raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans to pay for health reform. Several other polls show that a majority of Americans want health reform to include the choice of a public insurance plan.

Reid’s office said that the bill should be ready for amendments after the Thanksgiving recess.

Women Ski Jumpers and the Rule of Law

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:47:00 +0000

Original source: Edge of Sports

Here's a sentence I never thought I'd write: if you care about democracy and the rule of law, you need to care about women's ski jumping. This juxtaposition, straight out of a Hunter S. Thompson acid trip, relates to a court ruling in Canada that is both frightening in its scope and outrageous in its implications. A coalition of women's ski jumpers have sued the International Olympic Committee for the right to compete at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. They argued that by preventing their entry in the games, the IOC was in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that prohibits discrimination based on gender. For women ski jumpers, its struggle for recognition that is years in the making. But it's the ruling that should both shock and awe whether or not you could care less about the wacky niche world of winter sports.

The judge ruled that yes, the IOC was in violation of the Canadian Charter, but that was an irrelevancy since the IOC--not Canadian law--actually had jurisdiction in this matter. The IOC's rule that ski jumping remain, as it has since 1924, for men only, takes precedence over the laws of Canada. Olympic law, designed by a coven of aging aristocrats, holds the ultimate power. Forget for a moment that women are some of the best ski jumpers in the world. Forget that the person who holds the record on Vancouver's jump site is actually American woman Lindsey Van. Forget that the International Ski Federation (FIS) voted 114-1 in 2006 to recommend inclusion of the women's ski jump. Forget even the blatant sexism of FIS president Gian-Franco Kasper who said in 2005 that ski jumping 'seems not to be appropriate for the ladies from a medical point of view.' Forget that the Olympic charter reads that the IOC's mission is 'to encourage and support the promotion of women in sport at all levels and in all structures with a view to implementing the principle of equality of men and women,' and 'Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement.' Forget all of that and consider that a judge ruled that the International Olympic Committee effectively has legal jurisdiction over the Canadian Government. The logic of this decision continues a process where the people of Vancouver have been smashed by the stateless, mobile dictatorship of the IOC.

As Harsha Walia, member of No One Is Illegal and Olympic Resistance Network said to me, 'In the lead-up to the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games, we have witnessed and been subjected to an increasingly fortified police state, including intimidation and harassment of activists by security and intelligence forces as part of an unparalleled $1 billion security and surveillance network. In contravention of basic rights, police have stated their plans to set up checkpoints, search people without cause, and erect security exclusion zones. There is even a proposed by-law to allow officials to enter homes to seize anti-Olympic signs, for which violators would be fined up to $10,000 a day. And these are just some of the many negative legacies of the five-ring circus of oppression.'

The dynamic Harsha describes has played out in other cases over recent years. In 2004, Greek officials actually overrode their own law by 'allowing' thousands of armed-to-the-teeth paramilitary troops from the U.S., Britain, and Israel to patrol the country in anti-terrorist battalions. In other countries, treasured laws governing civil liberties or the right to protest have been trampled in the name of peace on the IOC's terms. Only in China did the IOC find the symbiosis desired between order and corporate control.

As for the ski jumpers, Deedee Corradini, president of Women's Ski Jumping USA, said in a statement that their fight will go on. 'I'm still in a state of shock and somewhat numb because we were so optimistic,' Corradini said. 'But we have to keep going to support these women. They earned it. They deserved it and it's just wrong.'

It is wrong and it is in absolute violation of the Olympic charter, which has proven itself to be a fraudulent document, only as strong as those in sports willing to hold the IOC to their word. But constitutions should be an even higher authority. The athletes plan to join with the activists to make sure that the 2010 games are worthy of the sentiments used to sell them to the public.

Germany: Can the SPD Lion Add Bite to Its Roar

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:39:00 +0000

It recalled ancient Greek tragedies. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), founded in the 19th Century, is the country’s oldest party, and now its saddest one. On September 27th it suffered its worst election defeat since 1897, losing six million former voters and ending up with only 23 percent of the vote. It had been in government office for eleven years, as boss with the Greens under Gerhard Schroeder and as junior partner under Angela Merkel since 2005. Now it must share the less glorious opposition seats in the Bundestag with the Greens, as rivals, and the frequently despised and feared Left party. What a disastrous comedown for a once proud party!

What caused this loss and how does the SPD plan to stem the hemorrhage of members and voters? The first question is easy to answer. It betrayed its traditional base, the working people and the underprivileged. Cutting deep gashes in a once exemplary health system, pushing the retirement age up to 67, passing Draconian measures against the millions who lose their jobs, raising consumer taxes while cutting taxes on the wealthy and spending billions on weapon systems and armed expeditions to the Mediterranean, the Horn of Africa and Afghanistan, it either initiated such measures as government leader or continued them as Merkel’s junior partner. Any timid doubts by its rickety left wing were dispatched with Schroeder’s fabled “Basta” – “Enough of that” - and threats to withdraw needed support in the next elections. The habit of many SPD cabinet ministers, including Schroeder, to get top positions in big companies when they left office, added additional color to the picture. Even a political imbecile could predict the backlash, if not its magnitude. In September it was the voters’ turn to say “Basta”!

How can the catastrophe be overcome? A recent congress in Dresden aimed at a new road plan. There were dozens of critical speeches about past sins and calls for a complete overhaul and return to the militancy of some nearly forgotten past. Indeed, it was a tradition to make strong demands when out of office. Again, it was proclaimed that it was not such a bad party after all and had a new program to win German hearts and minds as a party of the left! Or was it, after all, the center-left?

Among philosophers, “Buridan’s ass” refers to an undecided donkey standing halfway between two equal bales of hay and starving to death. If the SPD verged leftward it approached the positions of The Left, the very party it had ridiculed, denounced and, whenever possible, ostracized. But keeping in the right lane (known as moderate) meant losing even more members and voters to the young party, which had already overtaken it in four out of five East German states, now in Berlin as well, if only by a few noses, and was beginning to challenge it in the western states as well. But if it were to become a genuine opposition party, more or less leftish, it must further adopt – or plagiarize – the positions of The Left, without seeming to approach it too closely or losing its identity as a supporter of the “social market economy”. It feared being exposed to nasty red-baiting from the governing Christian Democrats and pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) as an ally of The Left. Then, too, it could not ignore the hundreds of thousands of Euros from golden sponsors like Daimler, BMW, Porsche or the Deutsche Bank.

The congress in Dresden seemed to indicate that its new leaders, many of them carryovers from the past, will continue to act like a toothless old lion, making loud roaring noises, but not all too loud. For example, when worried grass roots voices demanded that the SPD reverse its policy of postponing retirement pensions from 65 to 67, a key issue in unemployment-plagued Germany, the party’s new Secretary General, Andrea Nahles, who still has the progressive-looking smile she once adopted when she was really on the left in the party, but little else than the smile, warned that “a quick change toward switching from 67 back to 65 would be completely unconvincing” and added vaguely, “We must develop a policy which hinders poverty in old age.” To switch feline metaphors, it did not seem likely that this leopard could change its spots.

Meanwhile the new government of Angela Merkel and Guido Westerwelle, the clever FDP boss, vice-chancellor and foreign minister, was busy hatching out plans for its attacks on welfare. There was some debate on the issue of taxes – how soon and how much the wealthy should get away with, how best and how soon health care could be cut, whether the retirement age could be raised even further – and other such goodies. On most issues it appeared that the FDP is even further to the right than the Christian Democrats. It also appears that the worst is yet to come – after the crucial May elections in North-Rhine-Westphalia, the state with the biggest population and worst rust belt in western Germany. Merkel’s party needs to keep control there, the SPD must not lose even more bitterly in what was once its main fortress and The Left must try to establish itself in the industrial heart of Germany.

After the elections the government will most likely wield its axe in earnest. To oppose it, and despite all former animosities, some kind of unity between the three opposition parties, the SPD, the Greens and The Left, would seem more urgent than ever. Only in Berlin and now in Brandenburg, surrounding Berlin, have the SPD leaders been willing to form a coalition with The Left. This question will continue to occupy the minds of politicians in both parties, and there are not a few on the Left, who fear that in such coalitions, with the SPD as senior partner, it would be the SPD which, like Dracula, could gain new strength by tapping the blood of an all too compromise-happy left.

Oskar Lafontaine played a key part in bringing together the older left in Eastern Germany and militant leftwing forces in Western Germany to form The Left and help it win an unprecedented 11.9 percent vote in September, largely because of new additions from West Germany, most dramatically in Saarland, his home state. He warned urgently, not against any possible coalition compromises, but against dangerous, unprincipled compromises, and was an unruffled, knowledgeable voice in the Bundestag and in rare talk show opportunities. There was amazement when he quit his leadership job in the caucus of The Left in the Bundestag. Now we know: he was hit by cancer and will be operated upon today. His future depends on the medical results.

Above and beyond personality issues, however, so important they can be, will the economic situation and government attacks on the welfare of most Germans be enough to achieve some kind of unity in opposition, not only with political parties but with student, ecology, gay, anti-globalization and above all the labor movements? The question is crucial for everyone, but above all for the battered SPD. Some say that its 23 percent vote marked rock bottom, and now look to an upturn. Others fear an even deeper abyss.

Peace Groups Make Push Against Afghanistan Surge

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:34:00 +0000

United for Peace and Justice joins Veterans for Peace in their Call to Action

It is possible that any day now President Obama may decide to escalate the war in Afghanistan. Here in the U.S. and no doubt around the world, people will react in pain, anger and sorrow, knowing what tragedy and suffering will follow.

We call on you to act NOW to pressure the President to choose otherwise and at the same time plan actions if he does decide to send more troops.

An escalation will mean at a very minimum that the U.S. will occupy Afghanistan for several more years, sending home dead and wounded soldiers while killing and wounding many times more Afghans. The suffering in Afghanistan today will grow by orders of magnitude and the U.S. will be that much less secure in direct proportion. In addition, the U.S. economy today still teeters at the abyss. Escalating the Afghanistan war will not just be the ruin of desperately needed domestic programs but may very possibly destroy the entire economy.

For these reasons and many more we call upon our members and every U.S. citizen with a love of humanity in their heart to pledge to at least the following actions:

1. Within the next few days, conduct any of a wide range of local activities -- from calling Members of Congress to nonviolent civil resistance and everything in between -- demonstrating our opposition to and disgust with any decision to widen the war in Afghanistan. To show unity of purpose, we suggest local 'March of the Dead' to Federal Buildings, local Congressional offices and government buildings of any sort. Post your events on the UFPJ calendar.

2. Flood the White House with calls! 202-456-1111 Call today and again next week as a part of the National Call-In Days on Monday, Nov. 23 - Wednesday, Nov. 25. 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. eastern time.

3. On the day of or the day immediately following an announcement to escalate the war in Afghanistan, respond again in a variety of ways. To show unity of purpose, we suggest

a. Reach out to a group in your community -- a church, union, civic group, etc. -- and make an appointment that day to go and speak with them about the war.

b. Return to the streets with vigils, demonstrations, nonviolent civil resistance and be prepared to comment to the news media about the escalation of the war. Post your event here!

Endorsed by: United for Peace and Justice, Veterans For Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, the A.N.S.W.E.R Coalition, National Assembly, National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, Pledge of Resistance, Voices for Creative Nonviolence and World Can't Wait.

Keep Up the Momentum for Strong Health Care Reform Now

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:30:00 +0000

Resolution of the National Committee, CPUSA, adopted November 15, 2009

As the historic fight for health care reform passes to the Senate next week, and then to conference committee before final vote, a continued and expanded push is needed to prevent blockage of this key legislation, to insure a strong public option with no taxation of health benefits, inclusion of immigrants, and to eliminate measures that restrict coverage for women's reproductive rights. Messages to the Senate are needed in favor of health care reform that is affordable, accessible, portable and universal.

The outcome of the monumental battle for health care reform will affect every other issue on the labor and people's agenda. As the extreme right-wing teamed up with the medical industrial complex to stop passage at all costs, they drew a line in the sand, threatening to bring down the Obama Administration on the issue of health care.

To date, a huge mobilization has taken hold with labor at the center, involving African American, Latino, women, senior and youth organizations, small business, the faith community and many others, complimenting the role of the Progressive, Black, Hispanic and Asian Pacific Congressional Caucuses working together.

The key to passage of positive health reform is phone calls, letters, rallies and public expressions of support to every member of the US Senate. Several members of the House who were undecided stated publicly that they voted in favor because of the huge volume of calls and messages from constituents.

The union workplace sticker and call-in day, giant rallies in California, sit-ins and vigils in Connecticut, and protests at insurance companies in Chicago are great examples of the creativity that this movement has sparked. The pressure cannot be let up if health care with a public option is to become law.

Passage will give millions of people coverage they do not have, and will save countless lives. But passage will not be an end. It will create forward motion toward the single-payer national health service our country needs. It will provide new experience in organizing and mobilizing at the grass roots.

It will open the door to the fight for the right to form a union and many other key battles that lie ahead coming into the 2010 elections.

The Military and the Left

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:33:00 +0000

As a Veteran of Operation Iraqi freedom, and a veteran of sorts of the anti-war movement within the US, it seems to me that the left as a whole has done a poor job of speaking to veterans over the last ten years. This is unfortunate considering they are an extremely important resource, and could be great allies in our fight for democracy and freedom for the people of America and for the world. We neglect them at our own peril. As workers themselves we must find a way to communicate with them without parroting the same tired rhetoric that is frankly inapplicable to today's military and today's war.

When we protest war, what do we say? Do we protest the war itself, the warrior, or the people who truly started the war in the first place? For some who are on the other side of that fence no-doubt it feels like all three are being protested at once. After all, how can we separate the war from the warrior? It's like trying to dissociate a shoe from a shoemaker, or an exterminator from their poison. The job they do requires a specialist with lots of training, as well as a certain personality type. This is so, particularly since we have an all volunteer force that requires a certain type of person and a technological level which requires a high level of training and skill. It also requires a type of person who value's honor, self sacrifice, duty, and loyalty- something we can all agree are noble values. Even those of us on the left look up to people with these same values – albeit for different causes. Humanity generally recognizes honor, sacrifice, courage, and loyalty as universally positive traits. We must communicate to them that these are values we admire as well.

However, we have failed to recognize these positive traits in US soldiers.

Often it is in our rush to remain contrary that we neglect the reality and the humanity in these situations. We generalize and dehumanize. For instance, we can all agree that most soldiers are certainly not psychotic killers who enjoy the death and suffering they must endure day in and day out. If that was the case then why are our veterans’ hospitals filling up with people horribly traumatized with PTSD, scarred within and without? Their very humanity and consciousness has been scarred, and those scars validate their humanity in the most horrible way possible – by permanently engaging guilt, horror, terror, confusion, and anger for the rest of their life. They are good people who have been put through hell. By all accounts they should be considered victims-although their pride would never let them accept our pity.

So why do they fight unpopular wars? It is simple. It is the soldiers themselves who correctly point out that they did not choose the war; therefore we cannot hold them responsible for the facts of the war. They have no control over where they go, who they fight, and when they return. They can literally do nothing about their lot, and, despite the screeching on the far left it is delusional for us to believe that one, ten, or even one-thousand soldiers committing mass disobedience against this or any war is either forthcoming or going to have any recognizable effect except for the military to start clamping down on civil rights within the military itself and possibly cutting us off from them completely. This would be extremely unfortunate.

We must face the fact that massive disobedience is simply neither practical nor possible in an all volunteer military. They have too many rules, and have been trained too well, for this to ever occur. We must therefore be sure to separate them from the war.

But what do we tell a soldier who has just come back from Iraq- who has seen combat for three years and has had many friends killed for what feels like no reason, and comes home to a lukewarm welcome and a broken down VA system that leaves them out in the cold? How do we reach them? How can they trust us when they have been inculcated to believe that we hate them because we dislike the war they fight? That they have been told that we somehow by proxy 'hate America' because we dislike its leaders and major aspects of its economic structure? How do we address this fundamental alienation from the society they once belonged to?

As we speak right-wingers from extremist groups are feeding off that dissatisfaction. They thrive on doubt and hatred. They are recruiting these alienated and troubled soldiers and Marines and twisting them into foot-soldiers of hate and death. Or else they are tricking them into foolish quixotic crusades for unrealistic candidates-like Ron Paul and his 'libertarian' circus. This is a horrible trend that may have terrible consequences for the future of this country, as we see ourselves moving toward a very similar situation as happened post WW-1 Germany when legions of disaffected German soldiers were recruited by fascist thugs to fight against progressive reforms and turned Germany into what it did. We can see this today with the myriad 'tea party' groups the anger, no doubt to some large degree fueled by closeted racism, at any kind of progressive reform, which is feeding the feelings of victim-hood already present in many soldiers and could possibly lead to violent confrontations. We cannot allow this to continue unchecked.

We must clearly communicate the nature of war, this one in particular, and their role in it without compromising their honor or their dignity else we lose their ear. We must therefore be sure to separate them from the war without lying to them, nor talking down to them.

We must explain the truth:

- that soldiers fight and die in wars to secure natural resources and captive markets for capitalists to exploit.

-We must tell them that less then 5% of the wars fought worldwide over the last two-hundred years have had anything to do with 'freedom' or 'democracy', and that in those that did, we were simply fighting rival powers that were seeking those resources for themselves to exclude other capitalists.

-We must tell them that there is simply no quantifiable difference between them and anybody else in the world, that as a working-class American they share a common brotherhood with 90 percent of the world, that they share a deeper brotherhood with the average Iraqi then almost 9/10ths of the US congress by this simple class division. It is a class division which sends young men and women to kill, fight, and die so that they can secure profits for large multinational corporations and the 'defense' industry.

We must do this without the conversation devolving into liberalism or pacifism. It is not enough for them to think 'killing is wrong' and leave it at that. This would be ignoring the bigger picture and doing them a great disservice. They must be told about the nature and origin of war and imperialism truthfully and scientifically so they can make the decision for themselves about war and why they feel so much doubt and alienation.

Most importantly we must communicate that we do not 'hate America' when we disagree with the policies of its leaders and their marriage to big business. We must communicate the class roots of warfare, and their role in it. We must tell them that it is morally right to use their freedom of speech to talk about their experiences to others. We must overall convince them that we are on the 'right' side in this, that we are fighting FOR them if not WITH them, and that most of all if we are to win we will need those values of honor and courage to help us fight; fight for Democracy and freedom here at home. We will need them to help us build a better future for America, and peace at last for the rest of the world.

Supreme Court Fumbles Native American Mascot Challenge

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:30:00 +0000

The US Supreme Court refused this week to hear a case involving a lawsuit by Native American activists seeking to revoke the federal trademark status for the name 'Washington Redskins.' The decision came without comment and in the middle of Native American Heritage Month.

At least four justices must agree to hear case in order for it to be on the court’s agenda.

The refusal to hear the case essentially holds in place a federal court decision last May and another lower court ruling in 2003 to overturn a 1999 decision by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. In the 1999 ruling, the federal agency agreed that the 'Washington Redskins' brand was too offensive to trademark.

A law governing trademarks prohibits registering names that 'may disparage ... persons, living or dead ... or bring them into contempt, or disrepute.' Passed in 1946, this law, known as the Lanham Act, was written to combat trademark infringement, false advertising and abuse of intellectual property rights.

Both subsequent decisions in federal court overturning the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board's ruling were based not on the merits of the case, however. In each, federal judges gave a victory to the NFL team based on the technicality that the plaintiffs waited too long to file their suit.

The owners, supporters and lawyers for the NFL franchise have claimed that the name causes no harm to Native Americans. They also insist that as a private entity, the team’s owners can name it anything they want.

Of course this argument implies that a private corporation can also dump nuclear waste anywhere or abuse workers or put salmonella in your peanut butter. After all, they’re a private entity and should be free of community or public controls, right? Buyer beware.

Native Americans responded to the team owners’ argument, however, by saying what may seem like harmless fun for some is painful and humiliating for them. In a brief filed on behalf of the plaintiffs, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) described the name as 'patently offensive, disparaging, and demeaning and perpetrates a centuries-old stereotype.'

The NCAI added that the term 'redskins' refers to a horrific time in US history when Native American body parts, skins and scalps were prized possessions for European settlers and military members. Such items were often bought and sold as commodities.

Approval of the trademark on the term 'redskins' is nothing more than a rubber stamp approving the genocide of Native Americans.

Sportswriter Dave Zirin remarked, 'The name 'Redskins' is a vestige from a segregationist owner, George Preston Marshall, who longed for a segregationist past. The idea that the Supreme Court would not even hear the case is little more than political cowardice.'

The lawyer for the plaintiffs asked the Supreme Court to consider the argument that disparaging trademarks could be overturned at any time.

Over the past two decades 11 high schools and two universities have dropped the use of Native American mascots as part of their team logos. Others such as the University of Florida, the College of William and Mary, Central Michigan University, the University of Illinois, as well as major professional teams like the Atlanta and Cleveland baseball teams, have refused to alter their team logos or change their names.

Activists insisted they will continue to pursue other legal measures against the Washington-based NFL team.

Globalization Unchecked: How Alien Media is Suffocating Real Culture

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:26:00 +0000

A Muslim family sits across of me in café, in a largely Muslim Asia country. An older woman shyly hunches over and desperately trying to avoid eye contact with the giant plasma screen TV, blazing loud music on the popular music video channel, MTV. The scantily dressed presenter introduces her ‘top song’ for the week. Beyonce, dressed in so very little, annoyingly reiterates that she is “a single lady.” The old woman’s son is mesmerized by what he sees. He pays no attention to his mother, young wife or even his own son who wreaks havoc in the coffee shop. The man’s T-Shirt reads: “what the fxxx are you looking at?”

Respecting the message on his T-Shirt, I try to keep to myself, but find it increasingly difficult. The wife is completely covered, all but her face. The contradictions are ample, overwhelming even.

The attire of the family, the attitude of the ladies and even the man with the provocative T-Shirt are all signs of the cultural schizophrenia that permeates many societies in the so-called Third World. It’s a side effect of globalization that few wish to talk about.

It’s almost always about trade, foreign investment, capital flow and all the rest. But what about culture, identity, traditions and ways of life; do these things amount to anything?

True, Globalization has various manifestations. If viewed strictly from economic terms, then the debate delves into trade barriers, protectionism and tariffs. Powerful countries demand smaller countries to break down all trade barriers, while maintaining a level of protectionism over their own. Smaller countries, knowing that they cannot do much to hide from the hegemonic nature of globalization, form their own economic clubs, hoping to negotiate fairer deals. And the economic tug-of-war continues, between diplomacy and threats, dialogue and arm twisting. This is the side of globalization with which most of us are familiar.

But there is another side of globalization, one that is similarly detrimental to some countries, and profitable to others: cultural globalization - not necessarily the domination of a specific culture, in this case Western culture, over all the rest - but rather the unbridgeable disadvantage of poorer countries, who lack the means to withstand the unmitigated takeover of their traditional ways of life by the dazzling, well-packaged and branded ‘culture’ imparted upon them around the clock.

What audiences watch, read and listen to in most countries outside the Western hemisphere is not truly Western culture in the strict definition of the term, of course. It’s a selective brand of a culture, a reductionst presentation of art, entertainment, news, and so on, as platforms to promote ideas that would ultimately sell products. For the dwarfed representation of Western culture, it’s all about things, tangible material values that can be obtained by that simple and final act of pulling out one’s credit card. To sell a product, however, media also sell ideas, often one sided, and create unjustifiable fascinations with ways of life that hardly represent natural progression for many vanishing cultures and communities around the world.

Recently in some Gulf country, a few Turkish teenagers turned an Internet café into a shouting match as they engaged one another in some violent computer game. I desperately tried to mind my own business, but their shrieks of victory and defeat were deafening. “Kill the Terrorist”, one of them yelled in English, with a thick Turkish accent. The “Rs” in “terrorists” rolled over his tongue so unnaturally. For a moment, he was an “American”, killing “terrorists”, who, bizarrely looked more Turkish than American. As I walked out, I glanced at the screen. Among the rubble, there was a mosque, or what was left of it. The young Turkish Muslim was congratulated by his friends for his handy work.

There is nothing wrong with exchanges of ideas, of course. Cultural interactions are historically responsible for much of the great advancements and evolution in art, science, language, even food and much more. But, prior to globalization, cultural influences were introduced at much slower speed. It allowed societies, big and small, to reflect, consider, and adjust to these unique notions over time. But the globalization of the media is unfair. It gives no chance for mulling anything over, for determining the benefits or the harms, for any sort of value analysis. News, music and even pornography are beamed directly to all sorts of screens and gadgets. When Beyonce sings she is a ‘single lady’, the whole world must know, instantly. This may sound like a harmless act, but the cultural contradictions eventually morph into conflicts and clashes, in figurative and real senses.

More, it makes little sense, for example, that Asian audiences are consumers of Fox News and Sky News, while both are regarded as rightwing media platforms in their original markets. And what can Nepali television, for example, do to control media moguls and morphing media empires all around? Young people grow, defining themselves according to someone else’s standards, thus the Turkish teenager, temporarily adopting the role of the “American”, blows up his own mosque.

Globalization is not a fair game, of course. Those with giant economies get the lion’s share of the ‘collective’ decision-making. Those with more money and global outlook tend to have influential media, also with global outlook. In both scenarios, small countries are lost between desperately trying to negotiate a better economic standing for themselves, while hopelessly trying to maintain their cultural identity, which defined their people, generation after generation throughout history.

The Muslim family eventually left the coffee shop. The husband watched MTV throughout his stay; the young wife, clicked endlessly on her iPhone, and the older woman glanced at the TV from time to time, then quickly looked the other way. One is certain that a few years ago, that family would have enjoyed an entirely different experience. Alas, a few years from today, they might not even sit at the same table.

Fashion's Deep Environmental Footprint

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:55:00 +0000

EarthTalk® From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: Can you enlighten on the environmental impact of the fashion industry? As I understand it, the industry overall is no friend to the environment. -- Tan Cheng Li, Malaysia

According to the non-profit Earth Pledge, today some 8,000 synthetic chemicals are used throughout the world to turn raw materials into textiles. Domestically, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that one-quarter of all pesticides used nationwide go toward growing cotton, primarily for the clothing industry. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers many domestic textile manufacturing facilities to be hazardous waste generators; and lax standards and enforcement in developing countries, where the majority of textiles are produced, means that untold amounts of pollution are likely being deposited into local soils and waterways in regions that can hardly stand further environmental insult.

Luz Claudio, writing in Environmental Health Perspectives, considers the way Americans and Europeans shop for clothes as “waste couture”: Fashion is low-quality and sold at “prices that make the purchase tempting and the disposal painless.” Yet this sort of so-called “fast fashion” leaves a pollution footprint, with each step of the clothing life cycle generating potential environmental and occupational hazards.

According to Technical Textile Markets, a quarterly trade publication, demand for man-made fibers such as petroleum-derived polyester has nearly doubled in the last 15 years. “The manufacture of polyester and other synthetic fabrics is an energy-intensive process requiring large amounts of crude oil,” reports Claudio. In addition, she says, the processes emit volatile organic compounds and solvents, particulate matter, acid gases such as hydrogen chloride, and other production by-products into the air and water.

“Issues of environmental health and safety do not apply only to the production of man-made fabrics,” says Claudio, citing subsidies to the pesticide-laden cotton industry that keep prices low and production high.

In an effort to green up the industry, Earth Pledge launched its FutureFashion initiative in 2005 to promote the use of renewable, reusable and non-polluting materials and production methods. Besides putting on its own FutureFashion showcases, the group organized the January 2008 New York Fashion Week, encouraging designers to create and showcase greener clothing on their runway models. Green-leaning designers can also pick through Earth Pledge’s library of 600 sustainably produced textiles, including organic cotton as well as exotic materials such as sasawashi, pina, bamboo, milk protein, and sea leather.

Another effort underway to speed the fashion industry into a carbon-constrained future is the Ethical Fashion Forum, which provides a variety of tools and resources and runs training sessions and networking events to help facilitate moving the industry towards more sustainable practices.

One stumbling block to the greening of fashion is that only a small number of consumers—some analysts say less than one percent—will pay more for a greener shirt. But if the industry itself can improve its footprint from the inside and drive the costs of more eco-friendly materials and processes down, the benefits will trickle down to consumers, whether they are bargain-conscious or fashion-conscious.

CONTACTS: Environmental Health Perspectives, www.ehponline.org; Earth Pledge, www.earthpledge.org; Ethical Fashion Forum, www.ethicalfashionforum.com.

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

National Leaders Call for Urgent Action on Jobs

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:03:00 +0000

Original source:: Economic Policy Institute

A coalition of six major national nonprofit organizations today issued a joint statement calling on the President and Congress to take urgent action to address the U.S. jobs crisis. The leaders of the organizations will appear together at a forum convened by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., where they will talk about their forthcoming efforts to encourage the passage of a jobs creation plan. The signatories to the statement are the AFL-CIO, Center for Community Change, EPI, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, NAACP, and National Council of La Raza. The full text of the statement is below.

***

The U.S. unemployment rate exceeded 10% in October for the first time in a quarter century. Nearly 16 million Americans who are able and willing to work cannot find a job. More than one out of every three unemployed workers has been out of a job for six months or more. The situation facing African-American and Latino workers is even bleaker, with unemployment at 15.7% and 13.1%, respectively.

These grim statistics don’t capture the full extent of the hardship. There are another 9 million people working part time because they cannot find full-time work. Millions of others have given up looking for a job, and so aren’t counted in the official unemployment figures. Altogether, 17.5% of the labor force is underemployed—more than 27 million Americans, including one in four minority workers. Last, given individuals moving in and out of jobs, we can expect a third of the work force, and 40% of workers of color, to be unemployed or underemployed at some point over the next year.

Despite an effective and bold recovery package we are still facing a prolonged period of high unemployment. Two years from now, absent further action, we are likely to have unemployment at 8% or more, a higher rate than attained even at the worst point of the last two downturns.

Joblessness on this scale creates enormous social and economic problems—and denies millions of families the ability to meet even their most basic needs. It also threatens our nation’s future prosperity by casting millions more children into poverty, foreclosing educational opportunities for many, limiting the investment and innovation that will fuel future growth, and dimming long-term labor market prospects, especially for younger workers.

The president and the Congress have already taken significant steps to stop the economy’s nosedive. Their efforts have already created over a million jobs and led to renewed economic growth in the third quarter of 2009. But it’s clear that much more must be done to generate millions more jobs to assure a robust recovery that reaches all Americans.

We, the undersigned, representing a broad cross-section of Americans, urgently call on President Obama and members of Congress to take action to address this severe job crisis. If we act swiftly and decisively, we can create millions of jobs and provide urgently needed relief to American families.

A first step is to provide relief through continued unemployment benefits and COBRA. This directly helps the State and local governments that are putting the brakes on growth as they curtail programs in order to balance their budgets.

Second, extending substantial fiscal relief to state and local governments will not only preserve needed services, but will also provide millions of jobs in both the public and private sectors (as many private firms deliver public services from health to infrastructure).

Third, we can directly create jobs that put people to work helping communities meet pressing needs, especially in distressed communities facing severe unemployment. These initiatives are critically important and can be carefully crafted so they do not displace existing jobs or undermine labor standards.

Fourth, there are opportunities to invest in infrastructure improvements in schools, transportation, and energy efficiency that can provide jobs in the short run and productivity enhancements in the longer run.

Last, we should explore spurring private-sector job growth through innovative incentives and providing credit to small and medium-sized businesses.

These initiatives will cost money, and we will need to tolerate higher deficits in the next few years. However, a jobs initiative can be coupled with a revenue stream, such as a financial transactions tax, that can take effect in the third year and more than pay for these efforts over a 10-year period.

Americans are confronting the worst jobs situation in more than half a century. This is not a situation we must continue to tough out. A robust plan to create jobs in transparent, effective, and equitable ways can put America back to work.

signed:

Lawrence Mishel, President of the Economic Policy Institute
Richard Trumka, President of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations
Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director of the Center for Community Change
Wade Henderson, President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
Benjamin Todd Jealous, President and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Janet Murguia, President and CEO of the National Council of La Raza

Georgia: State Lawmakers Talk Fulton, Dekalb Issues at Townhalls

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:02:00 +0000

Original source: The Atlanta Progressive News

(APN) ATLANTA – State lawmakers representing parts of Fulton and DeKalb Counties this week discussed key local issues sure to come before the 2010 Session of the Georgia General Assembly in January.

Lawmakers held open meetings to discuss issues like the Grady Health System, MARTA, the City of Atlanta, and education while residents had a chance to share their thoughts and ask questions during town hall forums.

GRADY HEALTH SYSTEM

Grady Health System CEO Michael Young appeared before a joint meeting of the Fulton and DeKalb delegations on Thursday, November 12, 2009, during which he outlined some of the system’s improvements during his 14-month tenure.

Of the $250 million the Woodruff Foundation promised to Grady in May 2008, Young said the hospital has spent $90 million of that on capital improvements like beds, medical equipment, and a computer system for electronic medical records.

Young noted overall admissions, ER visits, and neighborhood clinic usage are all up while length of stay and pharmacy and testing wait times have all dropped significantly.

Despite these improvements, Young warned that Grady is on track to provide $320 million in free care in 2009 and unless the system starts receiving some kind of proper reimbursement, the hospital will have to close its doors.

He suggested State lawmakers go after federal dollars called Upper Payment Limit (UPL) funds, which over a dozen states use to fund safety net and public hospitals like Grady.

Young estimated there is potentially $40 million in UPL funds for Georgia’s hospitals, $16 million of which could go to Grady and would be eligible for a matching grant.

'There is no downside to the state,' he said. 'That would be a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth inning for Georgia’s hospitals.'

When State Rep. Elly Dobbs (D-Atlanta) asked Young if there is a way to make other counties that utilize Grady’s services reimburse the system, he responded, 'legally, we haven’t found a mandatory way to pay.'

Young said it would take State legislation to force other counties other than Fulton or DeKalb to 'pay to play.' He noted Grady officials are working with an unspecified lawmaker on such legislation for 2010.

The General Assembly passed HB 160 this year, legislation that levies extra fines for so-called 'super-speeders' that is expected to generate $23 million for all of Georgia’s trauma hospitals, including Grady.

But that $23 million is far less than the $80 million HB 148 would have raised through a $10 fee on all car tags.

State Rep. Harry Geisinger (R-Roswell) hinted Thursday he would revive the car tag tax idea in 2010.

MARTA

Dr. Beverly Scott, CEO of MARTA, used her time Thursday to discuss the public transit agency’s importance to the City of Atlanta and the region as a whole.

She noted over 500,000 people ride MARTA everyday, with 46 percent of those considering their trips 'essential lifelines.'

Scott said MARTA removes 185,000 cars from the road everyday, creates jobs, encourages tourism and employers, and represents a $6.4 billion asset for the region and state.

But even though MARTA is the ninth largest public transit agency in the United States, it receives minimal state support and has struggled for the last decade to balance its budget.

Since 1998, Scott noted, MARTA has routinely used its operating reserves to balance its budget. State restrictions on how the agency can use its capital reserve funds make it even more difficult.

The Assembly had a chance to lift this '50/50' restriction in 2009 with SB 120, a bill that easily passed the Senate but stalled late in the House.

State Rep. Edward Lindsey (R-Atlanta) said Thursday he favors letting MARTA use capital funds to make up operation shortfalls but only on a limited basis, such as when the economy is poor as it is now.

Faced with a deficit in the tens of millions this year, MARTA raised fares from $1.75 to $2.00 per trip, reduced services, increased parking fees, and instituted mandatory furloughs. Without $45 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds, including a $25 million 'swap' with the Atlanta Regional Commission, the agency may have been forced to cut service one day a week.

State lawmakers helped future revenue when it passed SB 89, legislation that allows MARTA to sell food and beverages in its rail stations, in 2009.

Scott lamented Thursday that the poor economy will continue to keep sales tax revenue collections in Fulton and DeKalb, a crucial lifeline for the agency, flat at least until 2013.

She urged the State to finally act on some kind of regional transportation funding bill in 2010 after failing to act the last three Sessions.

CITY OF ATLANTA

Representatives from the City of Atlanta presented its massive 2010 legislative package which the City Council’s Finance/Executive Committee approved and the Full Council is expected to vote on Monday, November 16.

The top priority is new revenue through raising the wholesale alcohol excise tax, increasing the alcohol by the drink tax, and allowing local governments to impose a beer and wine by the drink tax, which could raise $11 million.

The City also wants a real estate transfer tax to fund green space.

In order to get the best deal for the city on the private sale of city-owned surplus property, the Council wants a city broker who can negotiate such deals.

The package goes on to highlight other specific bills that are likely to be in play in 2010: HB 641 that would create a gaming authority and allow a gaming excise tax; HB 838 that would suspend drivers’ licenses for failure to pay fines; and HB 287 that would provide speed detection cameras in school zones.

IDEAS FROM THE PUBLIC

Delegations from Fulton and DeKalb held a series of town hall forums all week across the counties so citizens might share what is on their mind.

At the forum on Wednesday at the State Capitol, John Sherman, President of the Fulton County Taxpayers Foundation, expressed his opposition to legislation that would allow North Fulton County to split off and form Milton County.

Sherman characterized HR 21, sponsored by State Rep. Mark Burkhalter (R-Johns Creek), as 'a serious problem.'

'HR 21 states that only the residents of North Fulton will be able to vote on this,' Sherman alleged, though an APN examination of the text of the legislation did not find that to be true.

'It would be a clear disadvantage to the remaining residents of Fulton County,' Sherman added.

The loss of North Fulton’s taxes would put South Fulton residents in a bind. Sherman said taxes would have to rise by '30 to 40 percent' to pay for services that remain static such as the county court, the sheriff’s department, and family services.

'I have to represent my District too but I’m not going to do it to the extent that it would destroy the County,' State Rep. Roger Bruce (D-Atlanta) said. 'You don’t want to split the county up because what is left would be dismal.'

Burkhalter introduced the bill last year but it never got out of committee. Sherman said Burkhalter’s argument for Milton County is that North Fulton residents are tired of sharing their resources with South Fulton without proper representation on the Fulton County Board of Commissioners.

Sherman suggested Thursday taking away the two at-large posts on the nine-member board and create two extra districts for North Fulton out of those.

But when Sherman suggested to Fulton Commissioner Tom Lowe recently that he meet with Burkhalter, Lowe allegedly said 'not in a million years.'

If HR 21 passes, then it would be up to the voters next November to decide if they want to amend the State Constitution. Sherman said his group would take legal action to stop it.

Other speakers included the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda member Leonard Tate, who spoke of the need for prison reform; and Former State Rep. Paul Bolster, who spoke of the need for more supportive housing and a reform of Georgia mental health facilities.

For more, please visit www.atlantaprogressiveblog.com.

--Jonathan Springston is a Senior Staff Writer for Atlanta Progressive News and is reachable at jonathan@atlantaprogressivenews.com.

A New Ice Age on the Way?

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:54:00 +0000

EarthTalk® From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: It has been said that global warming will bring a new ice age. Is this true or only fiction? -- Nitisha Jain, Delhi, India

While no one can be sure what and how severe the effects of global warming will be, it is entirely possible that one outcome of our profligate use of fossil fuels could be an ice age. The theory goes that a warming-induced influx of cold, fresh water into the North Atlantic from melting polar ice caps and glaciers could shut down the Gulf Stream, an underwater channel of warm ocean water that winds its way north from the Caribbean and moderates temperatures in the northeastern U.S. and Western Europe.

The result, some scientists speculate, would be a return to ice age conditions. In the extreme, glaciers and freezing temperatures would render large swaths of the civilized world uninhabitable and would kill off untold numbers of species unable to move or adapt. A less dire version would still cause bitterly cold winters, droughts, worldwide desertification and crop failures, and trigger resource wars across the globe.

Of course, over the history of geological time the planet has endured vast shifts in temperature and many ice ages and subsequent warm-ups. The last major ice age peaked about 20,000 years ago, when extensive ice sheets covered large parts of what we now call North America, Europe and Asia. Many climate scientists believe the planet oscillates between warmer and colder periods without human intervention due to various factors related to its orbital path and also variations in heat output from the Sun on a millennial scale—and that we are naturally heading toward another ice age, regardless of greenhouse gas emissions, over the next several dozen millennia.

But others believe those very emissions might just save us from the freezing throes of another ice age. In a study published in the September 4, 2009 issue of the Science magazine, researchers report that human-induced climate change is quite possibly fending off what had been presumed to be an inevitable descent into a new ice age based on data collected across various Arctic regions in recent years.

The study found that after a slow cooling of less than half a degree Fahrenheit per millennium as a result of a cyclical change in the orientation of the North Pole and the Sun, the Arctic warmed by some 2.2 degrees just since 1900, with the decade from 1998 to 2008 the warmest in 2,000 years. Without human intervention, researchers would expect summer temperatures in the Arctic to cool for another 4,000 years or so as the North Pole gets further from the Sun, but in fact, researchers believe, global warming is reversing this trend.

“The slow cooling trend is trivial compared to the warming that’s been happening and that’s in the pipeline,” reports the study’s lead author Darrell S. Kaufman of the University of Arizona. Of course, only time will tell whether our relatively short-term flood of pollutants will have a pronounced long-term effect on the planet’s geological-scale warming/cooling dynamic. In the meantime, most responsible individuals and governments are working to lower their carbon footprints to try to take man back out of the climate equation once and for all. Hopefully our grandkids’ grandkids will be around to thank us.

CONTACT: Science Magazine, www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/325/5945/1236.

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

Big Business Splits Over Healthcare

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:49:00 +0000

In its ongoing campaign to pass health reform, the White House last week highlighted a new report from the Business Roundtable (BRT) on healthcare costs.

The BRT, which is an organization for CEOs, concluded that on the issue of healthcare, 'the status quo is not sustainable.' It found that the policies in the health reform bills pending in Congress could control the cost growth of employment-based insurance plans. Without health reform, the BRT report argued, the cost of employment-based insurance premiums could grow by almost $3,100 per employee over the next 10 years.

In her assessment of the report, the Obama administration's top economic advisor Christina Romer noted that such a rapid growth in insurance costs would translate into lower wages for workers and harder times for businesses of all sizes. On the other hand, with reform in place, reduced costs in the employment-based markets would improve the competitiveness of businesses and would hopefully result in better wages for workers, she added.

'We would expect workers to have more money in their paycheck as a result of slowing these healthcare costs,' Romer told reporters.

The BRT report also highlighted payment reforms in Medicare and other major changes included in the legislation as key to meaningful reform. Notably, while it expressed some reservations about the public insurance program, the report stated, 'They are also not a justification to halt health care reform.'

On the public option, Romer reemphasized the administration's belief that the public insurance program would aid in controlling costs as well as ensuring expanding affordable access to the uninsured.

Troubling aspects of the BRT report included praise for a proposed Medicare Advisory Board, which would move the process of reforming Medicare outside of the legislative arena. Proposed changes to the program, including privatization schemes or benefits cuts, could be fast-tracked without requiring real debate in Congress, critics of such a plan say.

In addition, the BRT report called for medical liability reform that could reduce the penalties from lawsuits and legal settlements against doctors for malpractice. Romer reminded reporters that President Obama, as he stated in his speech on health reform to a joint session of Congress earlier this year, is open to talking about medical liability reform. 'He's always said it’s a balancing act,' she emphasized. 'He cares deeply about patients and making sure their rights are protected, but wants to make sure doctors can focus on patients and not just on being defensive.'

In a statement released as he prepared for his current trip to Asia, President Obama said, 'The potential benefit for America’s businesses is just another reason why we can’t afford delay or political games as this process moves forward. I look forward to working with our business communities and their partners in Congress to pass reform by the end of the year.”

With its positive perspective on health reform, the BRT report signals a major departure by many in the business community away from hard-line opposition to health reform led by conservative business lobbies such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufactures. Both of the latter organizations have expressed outright hostility to the health reform bills pending in Congress.

Will We Ever Stop the Killings?

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:38:00 +0000

Every time the young stick-up man tugged at my companion’s purse with his left hand, she would pull back, causing the muzzle of the pistol he held in his right hand to swing back and forth. Its line of fire each time was directed across my chest and if he accidentally or deliberately squeezed the trigger this piece might never have been written.

“Give him your purse!” I insisted, meaning that hanging on to it wasn’t worth our lives. Still, she refused and the tug-of-war in the parking lot of my apartment building continued.

“Here!” I said to the gunman, pitching my wallet to him, “take this!” He caught the wallet, turned and fled across a wide, deserted ballpark. Even in the darkness, we could follow him running for a long way, silhouetted in the lights of the U.S. Capitol, lit up at night ahead of him like a giant white cake.

A few days later I received a call from a Maryland department store inquiring if I had sent a young man to buy a TV set on my credit card. A store detective arrested the youth and I dutifully showed up in court on the day of the trial only to learn he had skipped.

Not long afterwards, a judge who lived in my building made page one of the Washington Star for resisting the gunmen who jumped him in the same parking lot. From his hospital bed he told reporters we Americans had to “stand up” to armed robbers, a noble sentiment spoken through his pain, considering all the bullets they pumped into his body.

We were lucky, my friend and I. We could have been killed, as so many others are being killed each day. As Jill Lepore writes in the November 9th “The New Yorker,” the U.S. “has the highest homicide rate of any affluent democracy, nearly four times that of France and the United Kingdom and six times that of Germany.” UK averages about 60 gun homicides annually and Germany averages fewer than 200. More Americans are being murdered on our city streets than in all our foreign wars.

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert last April 24th estimated 12,000 Americans are shot dead each year, 2,000 of them children, and 70,000 more are wounded but, like the D.C. judge, survive. Do the math: the total number of Americans shot dead each year is three times that of all U.S. troops killed in Iraq in six years of fighting. There is rage in our hearts; there is war in our streets.

A big factor in the homicide rate is the availability of guns. In a typical year, guns are responsible for two of every three murders. There are 238 million privately-owned firearms in USA. Big city mayors and police chiefs favoring curbs on hand guns and automatic weapons seem unable to overcome the clout of the gun lobby in Congress. Americans have modified or ignored much of the U.S. Constitution over the years yet the National Rifle Association insists that the 2nd Amendment phrase “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” is sacrosanct, even as innocent people are mowed down by the thousands.

Wayne LaPierre, NRA executive vice president, writes, “One of the ugly truths about many gun-control advocates is that they're more concerned about pushing for gun control than they are about reducing violence.” Note how LaPierre disparages their motives, when, in fact, some people become gun-control advocates only after the murder or wounding of a family member or friend. It’s quite likely that if homicidal waves of handgun violence did not occur nearly every day, as they do, nobody would bother chalking the slogan “Gun Control Now!” on the NRA wall.

“A vastly disproportionate number of murders and murder victims are young adult men,” writes The New Yorker’s Lepore. “When baby boomers reached that age bracket, the homicide rate soared. Now that they’ve aged out of their most lethal years, the rate has fallen.” Fallen, yet still unacceptable. Marcus Baram of ABC News reported last April 23 that teenagers in Chicago are 10 times more likely to be the victims of gun violence than their counterparts outside the city limits. Between 2002 and 2006, more than 650 Chicago teens were shot and killed! This is nearly as many as all U.S. troop deaths since the start of the war in Afghanistan. Are defenders of “gun rights” blind to the fact we have a war raging in our city streets?

Surely, one factor contributing to the homicide rate is poverty. How many times have you read about youths from affluent suburbs arrested for armed robbery? Can you think of one? Not only are children in blighted cityscapes---where supermarkets and chain retail outlets fear to tread-- deprived of legitimate job opportunities but if they commit crime, do time and are set free, their criminal past makes it tough for them to find gainful work. It’s not uncommon for six or seven out of every ten ex-cons to be returned to the Big House within three years of their release, the Justice Department reports. Worse, as “economy measures,” legislators right now are closing down prison drug rehab, educational, and vocational programs that would give ex-cons a fighting chance to succeed. There’s money for wars in three countries in the Middle East and money to operate a thousand military bases around the world but we short-change our own.

Another contributing factor to the high homicide rate may be the stiff sentences politicians’ mandate, enacting laws that limit the sentencing discretion of judges. In his treatise “On Crimes and Punishments,” published in 1764, Italian nobleman Cesare Beccaria wrote, “The countries and times most notorious for severity of punishment have always been those in which the bloodiest and most inhumane of deeds were committed.”

Famed Chicago lawyer Clarence Darrow argued harsh laws did zero to deter crime. In 18th Century England, he noted, pickpockets worked the crowds at public hangings even though picking pockets was punishable by hanging. Today, stiff sentences have contributed to putting a record 2.3 million Americans behind bars, so many that judges from Alabama to California are ordering governors to make their prisons livable. Legislators are considering paroling oldsters rather than building more lock-ups.

In Congress, bills are being debated (1) to require criminal background checks for all would-be buyers at gun shows, reversing the no-questions-asked practice; (2) to limit bulk sales of handguns; and (3) to ferret out that small minority of reckless licensed gun dealers whose sales account for 60% of crime scene weapons. Such laws can work. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D.-N.J.) claims since enactment of his bill preventing domestic abusers from buying a gun, more than 150,000 attempted gun purchases have been blocked.

In California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger recently signed a law obligating sellers of handgun ammunition to record the names of buyers and other information about their purchase. A similar law in Sacramento from mid-January, 2008, through August, 2009, helped police find 229 prohibited people who had illegally bought ammunition---173 of them with previous felony convictions. And by matching ammo purchases with names on the state’s prohibited persons file, the Sacramento D.A. could charge 181 illegal ammunition buyers with felonies, according to an article on the Huffington Post.

Californians are reacting to a series of horrific shooting murders. For one, there was the Los Angeles city worker on Feb. 25, 2005, who sprayed his boss and another employee with AK-47 bullets after being reprimanded for showing up late for work. For another, there was the murder at a traffic stop of four Oakland police officers last March 21 by a shooter with a long criminal record. Other states need to follow California’s initiative.

Another anti-violence step would be to pay children to stay in school. This could put money into the pockets of young males who might otherwise pull stick-ups, such as the one in Washington referred to above. One organization, the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, (NIF-ty for short) advises public school children on how to earn money buying and selling, and many trained kids open their own retail outlets. NFTE founder Steve Mariotti, a former Ford auto executive, got the idea after he was mugged jogging in Manhattan by some youths for the few bucks he was carrying. His outfit reports it has helped 230,000 young people run businesses in 22 states and 13 countries.

Beyond these steps, educators need to press for courses to teach non-violence in our public schools. After all, American children are deluged with violence-filled Hollywood movies and video games where killing is trivialized. The Non-Violence Project USA Inc., whose symbol is a handgun with a knotted barrel, is one non-profit that engages teens in pro-social activities, recognizing the wisdom of Mahatma Gandhi’s observation, “If we are to achieve real peace, we shall have to begin with children.”

Executive Director Diane Landsberg of the Miami chapter in Coral Gables, Fla., says, “We have become a very rude and impatient society. We are taught to rush but not to wait. Courtesy and politeness matters. In order to get respect you’ve got to give respect.” One positive action might be for the NRA’s LaPierre to show his critics some respect, to give their ideas a chance, as in Sacramento, to make a difference.

Think First About the Unemployed, Not the Politicians ... and Act

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:30:00 +0000

Original source: BlackCommentator.com

There are two mantras trotted out frequently when the subject of unemployment comes up that President Obama would best not repeat. The first is that, yea, things are getting worse but not as fast as they were. The second – one that he seems taken with – is that joblessness is expected to be a 'lagging indicator,' that is, the 'recovery' will, by its nature, come quicker than improvement in the jobs picture.

The decline in the economy has, indeed, slowed down and that is one of the accomplishments of his administration. It can be directly attributed to the economic stimulus package put in play last year. But that looks to be temporary and as the project winds down, the future appears at best uncertain.

The lagging indicator argument - which both Obama and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis cited again last week – is not an iron law of economics. Saying something happen one way in the past is no guarantee it will do so in the future. Indeed, current commentary on the economic crisis contains constant references to the potential of a 'new normal,' that is a jobless recovery that lasts a long time. A reoccurring theme in economics writing these days is that we are in danger of creating a category of workers who have either been jobless for so long, or have not been able to even enter the workforce, that they will lose the skills and habits necessary to successfully work in the future.

It goes without saying that the burden of this situation falls heaviest on African American and Latino workers, especially the young.

'The country also needs a program that would create jobs for teenagers – ages 16 to 19 – whose unemployment rate is currently a record 27.6 percent,' the New York Times said editorially last Sunday. 'Deep and prolonged unemployment among the young is especially worrisome. It means they do no have a chance, and may never get the chance, to acquire needed skills, permanently hobbling their earnings potential.'

African American unemployment reached 15.7 percent in October (17.1 percent for black men). It's been climbing steadily for the past two years. It was 11.3 percent a year ago and 12.6 percent in January. A similar picture emerges for Latinos: 10.4 percent in October 2008, 12 percent in January and currently running at 15.5 percent.

The Labor Department Household survey indicates that black teenage unemployment was 41.3 percent in October; it was 30.9 percent this time last year. Latino youth unemployment reached 35.6 percent in October, up from 28.3 percent a year ago. About a quarter of white teens were reported out of work in October. That's bad enough but I suspect if it had risen to half, someone would have called for a state of emergency.

There appears to be general agreement that unless something drastic is done soon the jobless figures will just continue to rise. How high will they go? Most economists seem to think unemployment will start to decline sometime next year. 'In all likelihood, the economy will continue to shed jobs, at least through the rest of the 2009, and probably into the first months of 2010. The unemployment rate will probably not peak until the spring of next year, at close to 11.0 percent,' writes Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. 'As dreadful as they are, the headline numbers understate the severity of the problem,' says the Times. 'They also obscure an even grimmer fact: Unless there is more government support, it will take several years of robust economic growth – by no means a sure thing – to recoup the jobs that have been lost.'

I guess it was to be expected that the 10.2 percent overall unemployment figure, coming as it did on the heels of the November 3 election, would prompt a lot of commentators to speculate and draw conclusions about what it all means for the Obama Administration and the Democratic Party. Times columnist Charles Blow put it pretty succinctly: 'Job creation has dropped from top priority to one of many, and President Obama has been remanded to pandering for patience and offering excuses.' On the one hand, he argues the tortured rationale that there is good news in the awful numbers: Things are still getting worse but at a slower pace. On the other, he incessantly reminds us that he inherited the crisis. The implication: 'Don't blame me, blame Bush.'

'But this president can't keep deflecting to the last one,' wrote Blow. 'Pain is presently felt. The crisis that took form on Bush's watch is being experienced on Obama's. Fair or not, finger-pointing is not effective policy.'

It's a refrain we've heard quite a bit over the past week. Somehow it moves me little. What's happening to the lives of the legions out of work - particularly the young men and women – has to take second place to the fortune of the President and his party. The human crisis would be real regardless of who is in the Oval Office and is what should move the President and the Congress to do the right thing.

'The Administration's biggest economic mistake so far was to badly underestimate last January how bad the employment situation would become by fall,' Robert Reich wrote in his blog last week. 'As a result, it low-balled the stimulus – settling for a plan that, while avoiding even worse job losses, didn't go nearly far enough.'

It's alarming to think that the high powered brain surgeons the President brought in to stop the hemorrhaging on Wall Street couldn't get the job projections right. But then again, maybe they did and just didn't want to tell us because we might object even stronger to their putting banks and bankers first. In any case, Reich says now, 'Obama has to return to Congress, seeking a larger stimulus.'

'Everything else on the table – a new jobs tax credit, more loans to small businesses, more help to troubled homeowners, another extension of unemployment insurance, another round of subsidies to first-time home buyers – are small potatoes relative to the importance and likely effect of a larger stimulus. Some of these initiatives may do some good, but even combined they'll barely make a dent in the growing numbers of jobless Americans,' wrote Reich, even before the latest statistics were release, when it wasn't certain the jobless rate would even hit 10 percent.

`Meanwhile, the states are slicing their budgets, laying off workers, and ratcheting up taxes. That's because state tax revenues are falling off a cliff, and almost every state is barred by its constitution from running a deficit. That means the states are actively implementing an anti-stimulus plan.'

The Times editors concur with Reich's prescription, saying, 'We know that more stimulus spending and government programs are a fraught topic. But they are exactly what the country needs. It may be the only way to prevent a renewed downturn. And the only way to create the jobs needed to put Americans back to work. Those are the essential – and missing – ingredients of a sustained recovery.'

Last Sunday, Washington Post Staff Writer Alec MacGillis talked about another kind of medicine that needs to be taken off the shelf, and which a lot of people seem to want to keep under wraps. 'Why has a White House that talks so much about boosting employment steered clear of the most direct strategy that could keep Americans on the job?' he wrote.

'Since taking office, the Obama administration has studiously avoided paying people to go to work, which could be accomplished by subsidizing workers' private-sector employment or by creating new government-paid jobs,' wrote MacGillis. 'There are programs in a handful of states that financially compensate employees who cut their hours to prevent broader layoffs at their companies – an approach that costs relatively little, since it results in lower payouts of unemployment benefits, and that has helped Germany keep unemployment under 8 percent despite the deep slowdown there. But the Obama administration has so far opted not to expand this initiative. And aside from a small summer employment program for young people, it has not sought to create jobs on the public payroll, something the country did in the 1930s and 1970s.'

Of course, we know well what the response that kind of program would evoke. The 'Blue Dogs' would start screaming about the federal deficit and passing on the debt to our children and grandchildren just as they did during the healthcare debate. The 'tea party' people would start jumping up and down and yelling about a 'government-run jobs program.' The administration is 'scared of [any plans] seeming like old-fashioned make-work, but that's what it is: You're giving [people] jobs because they have nothing left to do,' Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told MacGillis 'Giving people a shot at a job has to be worth a little bad publicity ... but as in a lot of areas, they proved more cautious.'

Yes, Depression era New Deal programs, like the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps, should be put on the table. Not necessarily the same programs. Much of the country's infrastructure is in dire need of repair and reconstruction. We need new energy efficient transportation systems.

There is a pressing need to accelerate the development of new 'green jobs' programs to meet the challenge of climate change and fossil fuel depletion.

John Russo, co-director of Youngstown State University's Center for Working-Class Studies, told MacGillis that the Obama administration shows little indication of lifting the taboo against public works projects because 'Neo-liberalism continues apace even though it's been thoroughly discredited.' The White House, he said, 'has held back, and it has hurt. People were looking for a more aggressive approach; they did a political calculation and said, ‘This is all we can do.' '

'The alarming news that unemployment has hit double digits should be a wake-up call to sleepy politicians,' said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka November 6. 'The nation's jobless rate worsened yet again last month, with 190,000 jobs lost and the unemployment rate climbing to 10.2 percent. A total of nearly 16 million can't find work.

'It is of great concern that there is still little sign of a sustainable private sector recovery, even more jobs will be lost in the coming months. Despite Wall Street celebrations of what they see as a recovery based on GDP growth of 3.5 percent in the third quarter, American workers know there can be no recovery unless everyone who wants to work can find a good job.

'The nation's jobs situation would be even worse without the Obama administration's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Nearly one million jobs have been saved or created because of the stimulus plan and the White House says the nation is on track to meet the president's goal of 3.5 million by the end of next year. Additionally, the extension of unemployment benefits by Congress is an essential and welcome step.

'Every day, it becomes more urgent that the federal government step up to the plate with bold actions to boost job creation. Those actions should include urgently needed fiscal relief to state and local governments, community jobs programs, additional investments in infrastructure and green jobs and credit relief to small and medium-sized businesses. Failing to act puts us at very real risk of a lost generation – of hard-working Americans who can't put food on the table and bright young people who never realize their potential.

'We must do better.'

Authoritative Rejection of Afghanistan War

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 05:39:00 +0000

11-14-09, 11:05 am

Original source:

The last time I was on Laura Flanders's GRIT tv I argued that the American public opposed the occupation of Afghanistan, but another guest -- some Washington, D.C., 'progressive' -- argued that this had no relevance, since the American public didn't know anything about Afghanistan.

When the RAND Corporation held a forum on Afghanistan recently on Capitol Hill, Zbigniew Brzezinski claimed that it was uncontroversial that US troops had to stay in Afghanistan. I pointed him to polls of Americans, and he replied that Americans get fatigued and don't know any better.

When I spoke to a philosophy department at a university this month, a number of the professors objected to my advocacy of majority-rule on the grounds that experts often know best.

Let's set aside for a moment the ludicrous propaganda that maintains that the reason we occupy other people's countries is to impose democracy on them. Let's assume we're imposing the rule of elite experts. Even so, even on those terms, here are some possible responses to this line of thinking.

1.-While spokepeople for the U.S. military (including television news experts) are certainly the experts at war, they are not the experts at peace. If the question is one of choosing between war and peace, or deciding whether warlike or peacelike means will best reach some desired end, then why only include one type of expert opinion?

2.-While U.S. experts on war and peace could provide two different views, there are experts, including historians, from around the world whose knowledge should be utilized. And the experts on Afghanistan ought, by any understanding, to include the Afghan people. If the US public is irrelevant because it does not know Afghanistan (and somehow this is an argument for bombing the place rather than refraining from doing so), surely the Afghan public knows something about their nation. And they want the occupation ended. How can we so easily dismiss THAT expert opinion?

3.-Don't trust Afghan opinion? Want to save Afghanistan from the Afghans? Well, what about this: Howard Hart, a 25-year CIA veteran who ran operations in Afghanistan for three-and-a-half years during the Cold War, spoke at the University of Virginia yesterday and argued that the United States should withdraw from Afghanistan. He said that the original goal had supposedly been to destroy al Qaeda, which had long since left, and that creating a legitimate government (something most people and the law hold that a foreign occupation can NEVER do) would require hundreds of thousands of troops, cost “umpteen billion” dollars, and still be next to impossible. Watch three former high-ranking CIA officials say the same thing, and a lot more worth watching, at http://rethinkafghanistan.com

4.-Too out-dated for you? The current U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, General Karl W. Eikenberry, who was responsible for building and training the Afghan security forces from 2002 to 2003, and who was top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007, has told President Obama he opposes sending more troops. He argues for sending civilians to assist with agriculture and other useful projects that would give Afghans an alternative to violence. This is a direction supported by US activist groups that have visited Afghanistan and studied the problem, such as http://jobsforafghans.org

5.-New York Times reporter David Rohde was held hostage for seven months by the Taliban in Afghanistan, and upon release reported on what motivates Afghans to engage in violence. The reasons he provided suggested that (as with most foreign occupations in any other time or place) the occupation was motivating the violent resistance to it rather than helping to ease unrelated tensions:

'Some of the consequences of Washington’s antiterrorism policies had galvanized the Taliban. Commanders fixated on the deaths of Afghan, Iraqi and Palestinian civilians in military airstrikes, as well as the American detention of Muslim prisoners who had been held for years without being charge. . . . They said large numbers of civilians had been killed in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Palestinian territories in aerial bombings. Muslim prisoners had been physically abused and sexually humiliated in Iraq. Scores of men had been detained in Cuba and Afghanistan for up to seven years without charges. To Americans, these episodes were aberrations. To my captors, they were proof that the United States was a hypocritical and duplicitous power that flouted international law. When I told them I was an innocent civilian who should be released, they responded that the United States had held and tortured Muslims in secret detention centers for years. Commanders said they themselves had been imprisoned, their families ignorant of their fate. Why, they asked, should they treat me differently?'

6. The senior U.S. civilian diplomat in Zabul province, a former Marine Corps captain with combat experience in Iraq named Matthew Hoh, not only agrees with the U.S. Ambassador that escalating the war in Afghanistan makes no sense. He resigned in September in protest of the continued occupation. He wrote in his resignation letter:

'The U.S. and NATO presence and operations in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police units that are led and composed of non-Pashtun soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against which the insurgency is justified. In both RC East and South, I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul. The United States military presence in Afghanistan greatly contributes to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency. In a like manner our backing of the Afghan government in its current form continues to distance the government from the people. . . . Our support for this kind of government, coupled with a misunderstanding of the insurgency's true nature, reminds me horribly of our involvement with South Vietnam.'

7. A career diplomat and former Army Colonel who helped reopen the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Ann Wright, similarly resigned in protest of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. She now agrees with Hoh's assessment on Afghanistan. It is to such authorities, who have been right years ahead of any permissible schedule, that we should turn for guidance. Also of note, the United Nations has withdrawn much of its international staff and threatened to withdraw entirely from Afghanistan. NATO allies are scheduling the end of their participation as well.

8. U.S. President Barack Obama's national security adviser, James Jones, says there is no guarantee that sending troops to Afghanistan would accomplish anything useful, and that they could just be 'swallowed up'. Is the National Security Advisor's advice worthless? What about Vice President Biden who never saw a war he didn't like? He doesn't like this one and wants to move it somewhere else (like Pakistan).

9. Mikhail Gorbachev has some experience with occupations of Afghanistan. He advises withdrawal.

10. Increasingly, U.S. military veterans are advocating for withdrawal, and -- in small but rapidly growing numbers -- active duty soldiers (in the UK as well as the US) are refusing to comply with the illegal order to participate. If the military is an authority, are its members -- rather than its top commanders alone -- not a part of that authority?

11. The money to pay back the loans and the interest on those loans that are used to fund this war must come from the American people. There is no higher authority on where the American people choose to spend their money than the American people. So, at some point we must return to them as the rightful deciders.

12. Those who opposed attacking Afghanistan in the first place, including Congresswoman Barbara Lee, and those who opposed attacking Iraq as well, included long-time diplomats, historians, public commentators, journalists, bloggers, activists, politicians, and scholars. The extraordinary degree to which they got things right is routinely treated as reason to exclude them from public debate. We take as authoritative the opinions of people who are usually wrong, but censor the latest views of those who are usually right. We do this at our peril. Instead, we would be well advised to get some real news from RealNews.com: http://tr.im/ETuV And if we have to watch television, watch Bill Moyers who says he would support a draft if it would end these wars. Or listen to Norman Solomon, Ray McGovern, Tom Hayden, Gareth Porter, and all the valuable reports not shown on Fox or MSNBC: http://afterdowningstreet.org/taxonomy/term/110

13. Ought not the highest authority for non-criminals to be the law? It is illegal to invade and occupy other nations. It is illegal to target civilians. It is illegal to use depleted uranium. It is illegal to imprison people without charge or trial. It is illegal to torture. An unelected government supported by a foreign occupying army has no legitimacy. The damage we are doing to the rule of law cannot be overstated. The United Nations has warned the United States about its ongoing illegal use of drones.

14. Just ask some of the more courageous members of the Afghan Parliament, who have been locally elected. Ask Malalai Joya.

15. Ask experts on occupations and insurgencies like William Polk, who says the United States should withdraw.

16. Ask Congress, where members are speaking out for withdrawal, signing bills in support of exit plans and against escalation, and committing to voting No on any funding bills to continue the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq: http://afterdowningstreet.org/whipwars Even former Congressman Charlie Wilson says: Get out of Afghanistan. Even Congressman David Obey has expressed concern, and he chairs the committee that writes the checks.

17. Shouldn't reverse experts be considered as well? Those pushing to continue and escalate our wars have been endlessly wrong and indisputably dishonest. Shouldn't any elite in-the-know expert think twice before agreeing with Dick Cheney?

I'm not accepting the notion of just rule by experts. I favor majority rule, with minority rights protected, and freedom of the press made real. My point is that even on its own terms defending the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq as validated by experts is a miserable failure.