People Before Profit blog

Letters - April 26, 2008

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 08:20:00 +0000

Rebuff ‘gotcha’ politics

Just a personal info piece on the whole thing the ultra-right started and Hillary Clinton is now joining into regarding Barack Obama and Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn. This is an even more dishonest smear than the one about Jeremiah Wright. It is red-baiting by association with people who are not even “reds” any more.

Anybody who has played any kind of leadership role on social justice issues in the Chicago area has found themselves on panels, in meetings and conferences, on not-for-profit boards or in similar contexts with either Ayers or Dohrn. I certainly have with both.

Ayers has been involved in issues of education reform in Chicago and has been appointed to positions related to education by Mayor Daley Jr., hardly a flaming radical.

Ayers and Dohrn participated in tactically foolish actions during the movement against the Vietnam War. They came from rather privileged backgrounds and followed the pattern of those in the protest movement who come from privilege with such self-destructive folly. The phenomenon is older than Lenin’s “Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder.”

But that was a long time ago. Today, they are not seen as part of the radical left in Chicago, but more as liberals working to reform the system.

A big deal is being made of Obama being on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago (formerly Woods Charitible Fund) along with Ayers. But the Woods Fund, like every other charitible foundation, is wary of stuff that seems to them to be politically radical.

This sort of “guilt by association” or “gotcha” politics, whereby you try to find some association of a political candidate with someone who you can make out to be dangerous or controversial, and then you create a whole McCarthy-type, scare-and-smear campaign about the supposed association, has to be forcefully countered.

Emile Schepers

Northern Virginia

Teach your children well

Labor and community leaders will join together with 500 students from the Tilden Middle School at Elmwood Park in Philadelphia on May 1 to celebrate the long forgotten International Labor Day.

During the fight for the eight-hour day in the 1880s, four men were shot to death on the picket line in a strike for a shorter working day. Later four were hanged for organizing a rally in Haymarket Square in Chicago to protest the killing of the four picketers. Someone (who was never identifired) threw a bomb at the end of the rally and a policeman was killed. Police opened fire into the crowd, killing several people including members of their own force.

This rally, referred to as the Haymarket Riot, led to the conviction of eight men who organized the rally. Four were hanged, and all eight were later pardoned by the governor of Illinois. The eight men are referred to as the Haymarket Martyrs and on May 1 in countries all around the world — as diverse as South Africa, Australia, India, Scotland, Mexico and Sweden — organized labor recognizes, celebrates and honors the Chicago Martyrs.

But we are denied an important part of our heritage by not celebrating May Day. We can be grateful that another generation of immigrant workers, demanding their rights, should have reminded us of that fact. Now we can all move to reclaim what is collectively ours.

Jim Moran

Philadelphia PA

Jim Moran is a board member of the Penn. Labor History Society. For more info: www.MaydayUSA.org.

May 1 greetings

The world’s capitalist economy is in crisis. This is the end of an economic cycle where the capitalists have plundered working families. Now the capitalists are finding growing difficulties for going on with that plunder and increasing their profit rate. Some people are wondering: if almost everything has been stolen from us, is it possible that they can steal even more? The answer is yes, it is possible. That is because if any difficulty appears in the bank accounts of the rich, the international financial bodies come into action: the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, etc. These are a true gang of international robbers who manage the world’s economy to guarantee that the rich can be richer.

In order to clear up any doubts about the dimension of the huge robbery and plunder of the working classes, we can take a look at last year’s profits from the main Spanish companies which are at historic records and in the billions of euros.

Those billions come directly from the work of the working classes and from the plunder of economies and raw materials of developing countries. On the other hand, the economies of the working families in advanced capitalist countries are getting worse month after month.

Our future is on our hands. The future depends on our capacity for struggling. And we know that when we struggle, we win.

Quim Box

Madrid, Spain Quim Box is international secretary of the Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain.

Knowing Debs

Much enjoyed Tim Pelzer’s article reviewing “The Eugene V. Debs Reader: Socialism and the Class Struggle” (PWW 4/12-18). It is certainly time more people paid attention to those like Debs, and the debates that they were part of.

However, I must point out that there was no such organization as the “International Workers of the World.” I suspect that you refer to the IWW or Industrial Workers of the World. We may have made some mistakes but certainly verbal redundancy of this kind was not one of them. Nor were we ever “anarchist led.”

Certainly as an organization that recruited on the basis of class position rather than ideological affiliation we certainly had our share of anarchists as members, and still do. I think it also fair to say that there was a certain resonance between the IWW and various anarcho-syndicalist groupings in Europe with an exchange of ideas taking place. That is, however, about as far as it went.

Miek

Albany, Australia

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May Day 2008

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 08:06:00 +0000

Workers of the world unite! That visionary call, issued 160 years ago, is being answered today in new and powerful ways.

As capital has gone global, using workers around the world as pawns in the transnational corporate profit grab, labor unions are going global too. They are forming unprecedented international alliances to fight the global assault on wages, benefits, living standards and worker rights.

• The United Auto Workers and France’s metalworkers federation (FTM-CGT) are developing a joint strategy for organizing at employers they have in common. They have agreed to share information and assist each other.

UAW Vice President and Organizing Director Terry Thurman said, “We are very pleased to work with our French brothers and sisters. … The corporations cross national borders for their self-interest, and our unions need to do the same thing.”

FTM-CGT includes the shipbuilding, aircraft and rail, electrical and electronic, mechanical equipment, metal, agricultural machinery, jewelry making and automobile industries.

• Earlier this month, the Communications Workers of America and Germany’s largest union, Ver.di, launched the first union ever to represent workers in both the U.S. and Europe. The new union, called T-Union, will support T-Mobile workers trying to win collective bargaining rights in the U.S. and other countries. It will also represent German union members who work for T-Mobile in the U.S.

• Last year, the United Steelworkers signed an agreement with Britain’s largest manufacturing union, Amicus, and the British Transport and General Workers’ Union to move toward a merger. Amicus and the T&G have since joined into one mighty union with 2.1 million members, called, appropriately, Unite.

• The AFL-CIO has just formed a new partnership with Enlace — a network of 21 worker centers, unions and organizing groups representing approximately 300,000 low-wage workers in the U.S. and Mexico — to work together to promote and enforce worker rights in the two countries.

All this indicates that labor is beginning to step onto the global stage as the advocate for the world’s people. It gives every reason for optimism as we celebrate May Day, the international workers’ holiday.

Worldnotes - April 26, 2008

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 07:14:00 +0000

Egypt: Protest food shortages

Six months of strikes by Egyptian textile workers and others culminated in demonstrations April 6 against rising prices and food shortages in the delta textile city Al-Mahalla. The UN’s IRIN news agency said police arrested over 500.

In Cairo, long breadlines and the reported deaths of 11 people from exhaustion as they waited in line prompted opposition organizations to call for a general strike.

The World Food Program has refused to augment Egypt’s subsidized bread system, saying resources are potentially available through natural gas exports and an economy growing at seven percent. Bakers have been widely accused of selling state-supplied wheat at a profit.

Further strikes are planned for May 4, President Hosni Mubarak’s 80th birthday.

Brazil: Continent-wide defense proposed

Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim is touring South American countries to prepare for a May 23 meeting of the Union of South American Nations at which a South American Defense Council would be established.

Nations attending an energy summit last year had backed Venezuelan President Chavez’ original proposal. Brazilian President Lula da Silva revived it recently in response to Colombia’s March 1 military incursion into Ecuador.

Jobim told Prensa Latina the council would draft defense policies, hold joint exercises, exchange personnel, promote “military industrial integration” and provide for regional security. Neither a multinational force nor consultation with the U.S. is planned.

Nepal: Maoists win election victory

In April 10 elections for an assembly to write a new constitution and govern the country, the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist has won at least 118 out of 240 seats, with a few districts re-doing the vote. The Nepali Congress Party won 36 and Communist Party of Nepal-UML 32. Both were part of the former seven-party governing coalition, and both have now withdrawn from government.

The Indian newspaper The Hindu predicted the Maoists were not likely to gain a majority in the 601-seat assembly, as they were winning a smaller portion of the 335 seats decided through an indirect system giving marginalized groups a greater role. Another 26 seats are appointed.

The Maoists had engaged in armed struggle before embarking on a two-year transition to coalition politics.

Nepal’s King Gyanendra is expected to resign soon; the monarchy’s future has been a major issue.

Italy: Rightist back in power

Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom, a coalition of two center-right parties, swept Italy’s April 14 parliamentary elections, vanquishing the newly-formed Democratic Party alliance, 47 to 38 percent.

His government, successor to Romano Prodi’s left-center coalition, is allied with the autonomist Northern League which took 8 percent of the vote while unleashing anti-immigrant rhetoric.

A recently improvised Rainbow Left coalition won 3 percent. No communist party delegate will serve in Parliament for the first time in decades.

Speaking to La Repubblica, Oliviero Diliberto, secretary of the Party of Italian Communists, blamed the defeat on the Democratic Party’s marginalization of its former leftist coalition partners and the Rainbow Left’s failure to highlight its members’ left credentials.

Iraq: Short term oil pacts OK’d

In early April, Iraq’s Oil Ministry designated 35 foreign oil companies, including seven U.S. corporations, as eligible to negotiate two-year contracts to provide equipment and expertise to boost Iraq’s daily oil output by 500,000 barrels over the present 2.5 million barrels.

Foreign corporations have been denied production rights in Iraq since nationalization in the 1970s.

While democratic forces in Iraq, including the labor movement, oppose production-sharing agreements (PSAs) and there is a major effort to block such deals, the progressive forces do support limited contracts for technical services, which Iraq needs to develop its oil industry.

Kurdish authorities have already signed PSAs with 20 foreign companies, much to the dismay of Baghdad’s Oil Ministry.

World Notes are compiled by W.T. Whitney Jr. (atwhit@roadrunner.com)

Letters - April 19, 2008

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 06:55:00 +0000

American Axle coverage

I just wanted to say I enjoyed reading John Rummel’s piece on the on going struggle at American Axle in PWW 3/29-4/4 issue. This is an important event with no coverage in the mainstream media. I believe that the strike is an important example of unity among workers. I loved reading about how the company called back 140 laid-off workers only to have those same workers join their sisters and brothers on the picket line. Thanks again PWW and John Rummel for covering this important event.

B. Cline

Romeoville IL

I usually don’t take the time to write or to blog about articles. But since my husband has been on strike at American Axle & Manufacturing, it seems that’s all I do. Blog, email AAM and write as many letters to anyone who may listen. Anyway, I just have to tell you that I agree wholeheartedly with the article, “American Axle workers and the 2008 elections” by John Rummel (PWW Online http://www.pww.

org/article/view/12882/). I could not have said any of it better myself. I pray for an agreement with AAM and the UAW and I pray for a change in this country. If the country keeps as it is we will be in financial trouble regardless of the outcome of our strike. Something needs to be done and it needs to be done NOW! Thanks for listening.

A reader

Michigan

Appalled

I would not normally write a second letter to you on the same subject, but I must say I was appalled to read Teresa Albano, in an otherwise excellent article, referring to “alleged repression in Tibet” (PWW 4/5-11). The reality of Chinese government repression in Tibet is well substantiated from a variety of sources; it cannot be dismissed as an invention of imperialist propaganda. In the past, we did ourselves and socialism no favor by denying the reality of repression and wrong in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. Let’s not make the same mistake again.

Hank Millstein

Novato CA

Note from India

I’d like to thank your delegation for spending time with our television channel known as Aakash Bangla, during your tour in India for 19th Congress of Communist Party of India (Marxist).

I hope you share your experience and understanding of the fight and struggles of communist movements in the Indian context. I express my gratitude and solidarity towards your movement in the USA, as well as whole world. We believe our next destination is socialism when workers of the whole world will be united and fight for humanity and better living for the whole human race.

Let’s keep connected. The future of the earth is communism and the future is ours.

Tridib Bhattacharya

West Bengal, India

Tridib Bhattacharya is a senior journalist for Aakash Bangla, a Bengali-language TV station based in Kolkata (Calcutta).

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Wed, 16 Apr 2008 04:12:00 +0000

Letters - April 12, 2008

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 08:47:00 +0000

Cuba myths

Almost every major news agency is carrying the top story in the minds of capitalists: the possibility of capitalism returning to Cuba!

They cite, as their evidence, that Cuban stores have begun carrying items such as DVD players, electric motorbikes, pressure cookers, cell phones, etc., most of which are from China. Does this mark the beginning of the end for socialism?

The answer is a resounding no! Throughout the “special period,” the Cuban economy was in very precarious shape. Battered by a U.S. blockade and the Soviet collapse, the government struggled to provide basic necessities, let alone electric motorcycles. The Special Period, however, at least by measure of GDP growth, is over. In 2006, Cuba’s economy grew 12.5 percent, and in 2007, it grew 7.5 percent — tremendous rates.

As a result, the average Cuban’s buying power has increased. In response, the Cuban government has begun to stock stores with goods that would previously have been a bad investment. There was no law saying you’d be imprisoned for owning a microwave. There was simply no reason to stock stores with unaffordable goods.

Some are claiming that another departure from socialism begins in distributing unused state land to small farmers. Establishment of farms on unused state land in the form of workers’ cooperatives is a phenomenally socialist act! Workers’ control, anybody?

Socialism is by no means over in Cuba. If anything, these reforms showcase the speed and efficiency with which Cuba is solving its problems. Raul began his presidency promising to streamline things and that’s precisely what he’s doing.

Martin Droll Philadelphia PA

Musharraf

Musharraf, a leech of a dictator, a huge liability, must be immediately kicked out.

Dictators are surely a shameless bunch but Pakistani dictator Musharraf is made of some of the lowliest stuff. He and his collaborators have been soundly defeated, making it very clear that the people want to get rid of him, but he continues to cling to power.

It is amazing that Pakistan’s armed forces, despite the fact that he has brought a bad name to them, would still support him in his office that he has illegally occupied since October 1999. It is even more disgusting to see the behavior of Pakistani politicians who are busy politicking but are dillydallying in reinstating the pre-Nov. 3 judiciary and taking a stand to dislodge the dictator from his usurped position.

Political leaders must understand that they have been elected to bring a real change in the country and not to continue with their old games, corruption, forgiving and forgetting each other’s crimes and taking everybody on board — even the people and the groups involved in heinous offenses. The leaders must also understand that the people are not as ignorant today as they were some time back and that they don’t have an unbounded or limitless patience. They could soon rise against their inaction, disregard for the mandate, corruption and inability to provide good governance. They should fear the day.

Aziz Narejo Texas

Cyprus

The article on the Communist electoral victory in Cyprus (PWW 4/5-11) shed light on several important points. This historic victory is part of a worldwide trend of democratic victories for socialism which has taken place in Venezuela, India, South Africa, Nepal and Bolivia. The Communist Party of Cyprus is the only one that represents the interests of the workers, and that has any hope of bridging the centuries-old divide between Turk and Greek. On a side note we should also remember Cyprus’ sister party in Greece which played a historic role in battling fascism during World War II and the U.S.-military junta afterward. If the democratically elected government had been allowed to stay in power by Truman, the bitter civil war in Cyprus could have been avoided.

A Reader Geneseo NY

‘Shock Doctrine’

For Americans who deeply care what is happening to our great nation, Naomi Klein’s new book “The Shock Doctrine, The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” is surely a must-read.

As she so eloquently documents, we are experiencing the ultimate culmination of economist Milton Friedman’s capitalist dream.

Its success requires a severe disaster, either natural or man-made, to trigger mass hysteria and fear among the people, whereupon widespread government actions to “protect” them are accepted and welcomed.

Enter 9/11. Enter the Patriot Act, the Homeland Security Act and a host of others. Enter massive privatizations of new government agencies and new responsibilities, and masses of billions to fund them, many in no-bid, cost-plus contracts. Countless new security-oriented firms are founded, eager to mine the ready bonanza. In 2001, there were two such lobby firms working in Congress. By 2006, there were 543.

We know well where corporate America fits in this picture.

Where do you and I fit in?

Who profits, who loses?

How long can America survive?

Isn’t Friedman’s dream our nightmare?

Bud Deraps St. Louis MO

More on Tibet

Your editorial on Tibet (March 22-28), while making some valid points, is too one-sided. First: although the violence wrought by protesters is unacceptable, and has been condemned by the Dalai Lama, it appears that the Chinese repression has cost more lives than the protests themselves. The violence of protesters and government repression should not be equated, as your editorial appears to do. Second: while imperialism undoubtedly seeks to turn the Tibetan situation to its own advantage, the unrest in Tibet should not be attributed simply to imperialist machinations, as the editorial (and especially the headline) seem to imply. Tibetans have long-standing and legitimate grievances, apparently stemming from the Chinese government’s failure to follow genuinely Leninist principles on national self-determination. We must not make the same mistake in this situation that we made with the Soviet Union, where, in our eagerness to defend socialism, we overlooked and denied real and serious violations of Communist democratic principles. Legitimate criticism of Chinese government policies is not “China-bashing;” it is standing up for the principles and integrity of the Communist movement.

Henry Millstein Novato CA

McCains Iraq Kool-Aid

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 08:41:00 +0000

Sen. John McCain reminds us of the cowboy pilot in the 1964 Stanley Kubrick movie (“Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”), who jumped on a nuclear warhead and rode it whooping and hollering as it plummeted to doom.

Like Major Kong, the delusional B-52 pilot in “Dr. Strangelove,” McCain has jumped onto President Bush’s disastrous Iraq war policy and is looking to ride it up to the White House. But for the American and Iraqi people, that’s exactly the wrong direction.

This past week, the Bush administration’s Iraq commander, Gen. David Petraeus, and ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker once again tried to sell Congress and the public on staying in Iraq open-endedly — no deadlines, no timetables.

Posturing at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, McCain seemed to be reading from Bush’s cue cards, blithely speaking about “building on successes” even as news reports showed armed attacks in Iraq more than doubled in the past month. How out of touch can he get?

By contrast, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, reflecting the overwhelming end-the-war sentiment of the American public, declined to drink the McCain Kool-Aid. The two Democratic presidential candidates took the opportunity to emphasize that they would promptly begin bringing our troops home. For the American and Iraqi people, that’s the right direction. If you want to end the war, work your heart out to win a landslide victory for this direction in November. It’s clear that this is now the essential starting point.

But there’s something else. The one deadline Petraeus and Crocker did talk about was a July timetable to seal a backdoor deal with Iraqi leaders that would lock in U.S. military, political and economic “presence” in Iraq for decades to come. Bush officials insist this would be just an “agreement.” Because it is not a treaty, they claim, there is no constitutional requirement for Senate “advise and consent.”

Fearing a Democratic victory, the current administration wants to help its oil buddies and hobble the next administration with this long-term stealth commitment of American troops and funds. Stopping this is an important, urgent battle in which everyone ought to get involved.

Cuba innovates

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 02:53:00 +0000

For Mariela Castro, interviewed recently in Italy, Cuba is “a country in revolution, in constant change.” The daughter of Cuba’s former president and head of the National Institute for Sex Education added, “Space exists to discuss and make proposals within the framework of socialism.”

Changes have been coming, notes one observer, at “what amounts to lightning speed by Cuban standards.”

In two major speeches, one on July 26, 2007, the other in late February, President Raul Castro called for reforming food production, increasing wages, getting rid of “excessive prohibitions” and instituting structural economic change. In the intervening months, Cubans responded massively to his invitation to debate and propose.

With food production dropping, 80 percent of the basic foods Cubans consume are imported at a yearly cost of over $1.6 billion. Half the country’s productive land is underused or idle, while half its food production comes from 20 percent of the arable land.

New guidelines have transferred agricultural decision-making from ministries to local agencies. Prices paid farmers have increased, with dairy and meat prices doubling. Private landowners, already accounting for half of Cuba’s domestic food production, now benefit along with cooperatives from expanded credit, settling of debts, free fertilizers and animal feed, and free choice as to crops.

They are now allowed to sell directly to local consumers, hospitals and schools, and to buy equipment and supplies directly from state stores. And importantly, private farmers and cooperatives now have the green light to expand operations onto unused state-owned land, in what one official described as a “massive distribution of land.”

“This is just the beginning,” declared one economist, adding that “Decentralization and more individual initiative will slowly spread from agriculture to the entire economy, it’s inevitable, [and] this would strengthen, not weaken the Communist Party and state.”

Other innovations are directed ultimately at wage increases. The background is that the convertible Cuban peso (CUC) is worth 24 times more than the Cuban peso. The former, exchangeable for foreign currency, is prized as the means for purchasing relatively expensive consumer items. But most domestic transactions are carried out using pesos. Unused Cuban pesos have accumulated in savings banks to the extent of $1.1 billion. The intention is to draw the pesos back into the economy by encouraging Cubans to convert pesos into CUCs. They are then encouraged to spend CUCs on goods and services newly made available for that purpose.

In state hands, both pesos and CUCs will be used to fund projects giving rise to jobs and production. Further, as currency moves from private hands to the state, the Cuban peso will supposedly gain in value, in effect making for wage increases. Some 60 percent of Cubans have access to convertible pesos, with ten percent of Cubans holding the great majority of them and farmers accounting for a sizable portion.

Rules have been relaxed. DVDs, flat televisions, microwaves, electronic appliances, electric bicycles, cell phones and computers are now available to all who can pay. Past restrictions on renting automobiles and using tourist hotels and restaurants are ended.

Non-economic changes are also in the works. Cuban television will be introducing a new channel presenting foreign material including films and news analyses. Under Mariela Castro’s leadership — and building on the espousal of diversity awareness by her mother, Vilma Espin — Cuba’s National Assembly will soon pass legislation recognizing same-sex unions, inheritance rights of gay people and the right of transsexual people to obtain free sex-change operations.

Cuba has eased transportation complaints, putting hundreds of new buses from China in service with hundreds more to be added this year. Authorities have announced plans for new telecommunications services in underserved areas as well as construction of a major water supply and distribution system affecting nine provinces.

Complaints and suggestions emanating from the just completed four-day congress of the National Association of Cuban Artists and Writers testify to flourishing debate and discussion. For example, author Graziella Pogolotti, the association’s president, stressed the need to recover the lead role of the teacher in Cuba’s educational system. Author Marilyn Bobes noted that “On television there is still an excess of frivolity, boredom that confuses relaxation with banality and education with didactics.”

atwhit@ roadrunner.com

Torture memo fuels calls to close Guantanamo

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 02:24:00 +0000

Advocates for hundreds of detainees in George W. Bush’s “war on terror,” many held for years without criminal charges, are escalating their demands for fair trials or release of the prisoners and for closing Guantanamo and secret CIA prisons elsewhere.

Many are citing a newly released Justice Department memo, dated March 14, 2003, that upheld President Bush’s authority to order torture of “enemy combatants.” The memo implied that confessions obtained through torture would be admissible in the detainees’ trials. This would include military tribunals scheduled for this summer of the “Guantanamo Six,” whom prosecutors describe as “high value” detainees implicated in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Legal experts say the 2003 memo, disclosed this April 1, violates Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination, the Fourth Amendment protection against “unreasonable search and seizure” and the Eighth Amendment protection against “cruel and unusual punishment.”

The memo claimed the president has the sole right to regulate interrogations of “enemy combatants” and, amazingly, declared that, “any effort by Congress to regulate the interrogations of enemy combatants would violate the Constitution’s sole vesting of the Commander-in-Chief authority in the President.”

The memo, written by then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, also asserted that “customary international law is not federal law and that the President is free to override it at his discretion.”

Marjorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild, said Yoo defined torture so narrowly that the “interrogator must nearly kill the person to constitute torture.” She told the World via email, “Yoo’s definition violates the definition of the Convention against Torture, a treaty the U.S. has ratified and thus part of U.S. law.”

This memo and another that Yoo co-authored in August 2002 “provided the basis for the administration’s torture of detainees,” Cohn said. She pointed out that the memos exempt the president and his minions from the federal “maiming statute,” which makes it a crime to “cut, bite, or slit the nose, ear, or lip … cut out or disable the tongue, a limb … throwing or pouring upon another person scalding water, corrosive acid, or caustic substance.”

Jennifer Daskal, senior counter-terrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch, said the detainees’ cases should be moved to the federal courts. “The Bush administration should end this failed experiment with military justice,” she said in an April 10 press release. “Even the commission’s former chief prosecutor, Col. Morris Davis, has now said that full and open trials are not possible under the current system.”

Daskal told the World, “The military system is so fundamentally unfair it is essential to transfer these cases to the federal courts. It is essential that these trials have credibility and that will never happen in these military tribunals.”

Human Rights Watch has studied the 81-page 2003 memo, she added. “It appears to be a legal justification for the most abusive practices possible” in the interrogation of detainees.

Frida Berrigan, executive director of Witness Against Torture, said release of the memo “is exposing the crimes of the Bush administration in real time. It is not just the abuses at Guantanamo. It is the lies that got us into the Iraq war. They cannot keep the lid on all this. The support for closing Guantanamo is growing every day.”

The trials of the six Guantanamo detainees, she continued, “will be moving forward in the lead-up to the November elections. It will be important to have all the candidates on the record.” Republican John McCain is running as a “get tough on terrorism” Bush loyalist. “Both Clinton and Obama … want to see Guantanamo shut down,” Berrigan said, calling it a “huge” first step to ending torture and abuse.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers on April 4 announced an $8.5 million project to provide a team of 11 defense attorneys to defend the “Guantanamo Six” in the upcoming trial. Former Attorney General Janet Reno is a member of the team. ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero accused the Bush administration of seeking to guarantee conviction of the defendants by allowing hearsay evidence and confessions obtained through coercion. The ACLU is focusing on defense of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, identified by the administration as the “mastermind” of the Sept. 11 attacks. “Whether or not they are able to convict Mohammed under these rules may well determine the fate of almost 300 other men who are detained at Guantanamo,” Romero said. The CIA has admitted that it subjected Mohammed to waterboarding, or simulated drowning, in forcing a confession from him before his transfer to Guantanamo. Many experts say confessions obtained under torture are highly unreliable.

Thus far, Guantanamo trials have been a fiasco. The Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that a tribunal there violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions. Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 to try to get around that ruling. But only three cases have been taken up by the new commissions. Not one defendant has been found guilty of terrorism. David Hicks admitted to a misdemeanor and went home to Australia. Outrage over his treatment led to the fall of the Conservative government there.

Letters - April 5, 2008

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:43:00 +0000

Not the jobs we wanted

Dallas just received the news that we’re getting 140-odd new job openings over at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The bad news is that they’re in the department that reviews bank failures!

Gene Lantz

Dallas TX

The ‘people’s surge’

Re Sam Webb’s op-ed on the “people’s surge” (PWW 2/16-22):

Please keep developing the understanding of the people’s surge taking place in the Democratic Party.

I remember the 1930s when everyone was being brutally educated about economics and the Republican Party. Dad had learned hard lessons about the AFL and was in the grass roots of building the CIO. The 1932 elections gave everyone the chance to vote for change. The aristocratic Franklin Roosevelt was an unlikely candidate. When mother and dad argued about the election, mother said, “But Herbert Hoover is such a good Christian man.” Dad said, “It’s not the man that matters, it’s who is behind the man.”

So, when millions voted for Roosevelt, we became a force he couldn’t help but recognize. We got public works, the Wagner Labor Act, welfare, Social Security.

Many of us stayed in the Democratic Party. More should have. As Wellstone said, “the democratic wing of the Democratic Party.” No one agrees with everything it does. But we should be there, pushing.

A big danger now is that the right wing has learned so much since those days — they are gathering all their ammunition, all their money, their newspapers and TV, their voting machine manipulation, even their assassins. If ever there was a need for left-wing savvy it’s now.

Keep up the good work.

Marie B. Cadenhead

Union City CA

Protect our youth from recruiters

Our work of local resistance to the Iraqi invasion and occupation goes right on. As this government ignores us and continues to violate international law and our own in perpetrating these tragic inhumanities, we can choose to do what is possible here, in enacting local laws, particularly concerning the lives of our young.

Right now in Eureka and Arcata there are circulating petitions which are initiatives to prohibit military recruitment of any person under the age of 18 within our city limits. It’s a beginning. If our young are counted as not fit to vote and obviously more vulnerable because of their limited exposure and choices in life, why is it worthy to teach them to kill and be victimized in turn, especially under unlawful command?

Jack Nounnan

Humboldt County CA

Tibet

I feel that as a subscriber of your paper I would be derelict if I were not to respond concerning Tibet (“Tibet: What’s behind the protests?” PWW 3/22-28). Although I often agree with the PWW on labor and social issues, this is where I must travel the road that would secure the people of Tibet basic freedoms. When the PWW chooses to ignore the outcry of a people I must not only question your judgment but also motives. Not all things supported by America are bad and not all things communist are good and I wish often that your reporting would reflect that.

Dale B. Johns

Westville IN

Flying is scary

Why only now are the airlines worrying about their planes? (“Flying the frightful skies, PWW 3/29-4/4.)

If Congress had not started an investigation on the Southwest incident no one would be the wiser, because the FAA was not going to make them take planes out of service because it would have made their numbers for delays and cancellations worse than it was last year. Why are we letting the fox watch the henhouse? The fox (FAA) doesn’t care anything about lives, only money.

Hope C. Gramlich

Coconut Creek FL

Great reading

Re “Blogging from India # 1 Hyderabad: Great advances, great challenges” (PWW Online Extra):

This is great reading. It makes a reader feel like you’re there. It should be a daily feature on the web site.

Armando Ramirez

El Cajon CA

Nonviolence is the way

I’ve become a total pacifist. Violence is futile for stopping injustice. To prevent murder and stop it, only nonviolent methods should be used. I have made a promise not to kill nor wound anyone even in self-defense.

In the past there have been stories of fighting for just causes. However. now we must utilize all our strength to use nonviolent action to bolster our lives.

The Pastors for Peace U.S./Cuba friendshipment to send goods to defy the harsh U.S. embargo has given sustenance to socialism for Cubans. When deliveries of medicines, computers, school buses and food were held up at the U.S. border, civil disobedience was employed. Then the items flowed.

An Israeli of Jewish faith became a citizen in Palestine. In Costa Rica they don’t have an army or did not have for a period of their history. Provocateurs have sought to discredit the labor union movement, the most honorable component of countries.

Steven Goldberg

Philmont NY

Dirty campaigns

In Tim Wheeler’s fine article in the March 1-7 issue (“Corporate lobbyists drive McCain’s campaign”) he failed to mention that Lee Atwater, architect of the Willie Horton attack ad, did, on his deathbed — literally! — apologize to the American public for this “strategy.” Could not frequent reminders of his shame over his actions, in this dirty campaigning election year, serve a useful purpose?

Bill Ramsay

Clifton CO

Help free the innocent

I saw in the March 15-21 PWW a letter from an old cellmate of mine, Charles Solo Harris, now in Pontiac prison.

I sit in prison framed for a murder, armed robbery and burglary. On June 7, 1989, at the age of 19, I was taken into police custody and tortured by one of the same officers that tortured Aaron Patterson. I was made to confess to these crimes which I know nothing about.

In 2006 the Innocence Project (Barry C. Scheck’s office) in New York agreed to take my case pro bono. A DNA test would prove my innocence. I have been going to court in Chicago to try to get this DNA testing done.

There is no eyewitness or evidence against me, just a confession that was obtained by torture.

I want to hurry up and get out so I can enjoy my life with my two brothers — we are triplets. Help free the innocent.

Kevin Bailey

Menard IL

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Letters should be limited to 200 words. We reserve the right to edit stories and letters. Only signed letters with the return address of the sender will be considered for publication, but the name of the sender will be withheld on request.

CPUSA: Mobilize for 2008 landslide

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:27:00 +0000

NEW YORK — A landslide victory over GOP presidential nominee John McCain and Republican congressional candidates is essential to “realign the political balance of forces and set the stage to move in a new direction with a new agenda and with a new sense of hope.”

This was the theme expressed by Sam Webb, national chairman of the Communist Party USA, in his main report to a meeting of the CPUSA’s National Committee at Winston Unity Center here March 29-30.

Webb hailed the Democratic turnout, twice that of Republicans in the primaries. He praised Clinton and Obama supporters for vowing to vote for the Democratic nominee in November. But Obama is leading the insurgent movement, uniting African Americans, Latinos and whites, people of all faiths, immigrant and native born in the biggest voter upsurge in decades, Webb said. Obama’s call for unity, most recently in his “More Perfect Union” speech, “strikes a deep responsive chord far and wide. After three decades of acrimonious rancor and division, people yearn for a kinder, gentler and more just country.”

Clinton is “playing a dangerous game” in suggesting that she and McCain are fit to be “Commander in Chief” but not Obama, Webb continued. Clinton supporters should demand that she redirect her fire at McCain and the Republicans.

Webb called on the Communist Party’s members and friends to be fully engaged in the electoral process.

Joelle Fishman, who chairs the party’s Political Action Commission, branded McCain “a favorite of the military industrial complex ... of Wall Street” who must be exposed. She also urged focus on House and Senate races to create a “veto proof” Democratic majority on Capitol Hill.

A drive is under way, she said, to register African American voters. In states like South Carolina and Georgia, a maximum Black vote “could flip those states from ‘red’ to ‘blue,’” she added. Latino voter organizations seek to enroll 11 million new voters, while “Women’s Voices. Women Vote” is targeting 15 million unmarried women who do not vote.

Fishman also called for fightback against GOP attempts to railroad through the repressive SAVE Act, a clear election ploy to whip up fear of immigrants.

Erica Smiley, national coordinator of the Young Communist League, said the youth vote has “tripled and quadrupled. Young people are simply fed up and ready for change.” She said the YCL has joined a Youth Voter Collective seeking to maximize youth turnout in November.

CPUSA Organization Secretary Elena Mora called for combining work in the elections with building party membership.. “I think our focus must be on the forces, organizations and sections of the people coming together around the election campaign,” she said.

Judith LeBlanc, an antiwar leader, said the peace movement’s seven years of struggle against the Bush-Cheney regime helped set the stage for the current upsurge. Peace activists are popularizing the slogan, “Obama is for peace,” she said, helping draw these forces into the election.

Art Perlo, who heads the party’s Economic Commission, said Congress must enact a moratorium on foreclosures and extend jobless benefits, the SCHIP children’s health program and food stamps to deal with the “economic tsunami” engulfing the people. These battles expose Bush, McCain and GOP lawmakers who block these measures and bolster Democrats who vote for them, Perlo said.

Marc Brodine, chair of the Washington State CP, delivered a special report on global warming. The problem is not individuals with little control over sources of greenhouse emissions, he said, “but a system that privileges profit over people and nature.” The earth has already passed “tipping points” and immediate, drastic action is needed, he said.

Scott Marshall, chair of the CPUSA Labor Commission, reported on a CPUSA-sponsored conference on the collapse of manufacturing. The stress was on creating “green jobs” that also reduce carbon emissions and other greenhouse gases.

Later, Marshall paid tribute to veteran party leader George Edwards on his 90th birthday. Edwards was a founder of the United Steelworkers of America and is now a leader of the USWA retiree group, SOAR. Many younger comrades learned trade unionism from George Edwards, Marshall said. Edwards stood. “Look after yourself,” he told the crowd, “because life just keeps getting better and better.”

Worldnotes - April 5, 2008

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:17:00 +0000

South Africa: Financial ties with China

The Standard Bank of South Africa joined last month with China’s Industrial and Commercial Bank (ICBC) to create a $1 billion fund to develop mines, energy projects and metal manufacturing in Africa, China and elsewhere. China’s largest overseas investment institution already owns 20 percent of Standard Bank.

The two banks will each contribute $200 million to the fund, the remainder to come from outside sources. Nairobi’s Business Daily said the fund is expected to yield a 20 percent return on investments in private rather than government projects, the latter typified by ICBC’s recent $5 billion loan to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in return for access to minerals.

Argentina: Agricultural strike divides nation

The 44 percent hike in taxes on food exports imposed by the 100 day old government of President Christina Fernandez provoked a nationwide strike by farmers and distributors that started March 13.

The strike resurrected class divisions, rural-urban tensions, and memories of financial collapse and shortages from Argentina’s recent past.

Taxing soy, wheat and corn exports, source of half the government’s income, had been crucial to Argentina’s financial recovery, Reuters said.

Social movements marched in Buenos Aires March 26, protesting agribusiness’ spurning of national interests and profiteering from rising food prices. Food shortages brought middle-class consumers into city streets for noisy anti-government demonstrations.

Afghanistan: Money disappears

A report released March 24 by the Agency Co-coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (representing 94 agencies) charges that since 2001, foreign consultants and private contractors have consumed $6 billion out of $15 billion in foreign aid. Official records can’t account for $5.3 billion.

Additionally, some $10 billion pledged as foreign aid has not materialized, including half of the U.S. $10.4 billion commitment. The Daily Telegraph quoted an Afghan member of Parliament: “In every dollar, only 11 cents is going to Afghans.” A refugee asked, “Every Afghan should be a millionaire, but where is the money?”

Around 90 percent of public outlay in the occupied country derives from foreign sources.

Indonesia: No free ride for international corporations

Protests involving unionists, students and women’s groups have engulfed Indonesia. Demands center on sovereignty over natural resources, food and access to education.

Workers demonstrated outside Exxon’s Jakarta offices March 12 for nationalization of oil production.

In the eastern city of Ternat, labor activists joined the Coalition for Women’s Concerns in rallying for state control of mines. Five students were wounded.

In Makassar in Sulawesi, students confronted the PT Inco Company, notorious for land evictions and pollution of land and waters.

Hundreds demonstrated in North Sumatra, Maumere, and Palu City during March. The Reuters report attributes a leading role in the protests to the National Liberation Party of Unity and the National Student League for Democracy.

Greece: Anti-worker pension plan passes

A motion to censure the right-wing government of Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis over pension reforms Parliament passed last month failed, 138-152 with 10 abstentions, March 28. The motion, introduced by Socialist leader George Papandreou, opposed the government’s plan to merge 130 pension funds into 13, cap some pensions and eliminate most early retirement plans.

Re-elected on a promise of pension reform last September, Karamanlis has since faced dozens of work stoppages and three general strikes, the last involving millions the day before the final vote.

A union-sponsored opinion survey suggests 71 percent of the Greek population oppose pension reform, which, according to The Associated Press, has been urged by the European Union.

Cuba: Reports favorable on development, energy use

At a press conference in Havana last week, Susan McDade, representative in Cuba of the UN Development Program, said that according to that agency’s annual report for 2007, Cuba ranked 51st among 177 nations, and sixth in Latin America. Criteria included life expectancy, literacy, secondary school completion and gross domestic product.

Cuba got high marks for “rational use of energy,” a theme emphasized in the report, along with plans relating to climate change.

Speaking at a recent energy conference, Jose Manuel Presa, deputy minister of basic industry, said Cuba has cut oil use by one million gallons over two years.

World Notes are compiled by W.T. Whitney Jr. (atwhit@roadrunner.com)

May Day ads

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 08:28:00 +0000

The May Day issue of the People’s Weekly world will be the April 26 edition. We plan on another great issue and invite your participation.

Celebrate people's struggles, victories and heroes — past, present and future!

Please reserve your space NOW for May Day ads.

Ad rates: $1000 for a full page, $500 for a half page, $250 for a quarter page, $125 for an eighth page, or $20 for your name or organization listing. E-mailto reserve your space.

Deadline: The final deadline for copy, photos and other images for the April 26 edition is Thursday April 17. E-mail to ads@pww.org.

Payment: Send your check or money order to Long View Publishing, 235 W 23 St, New York NY 10011.

To pay by credit card e-mail Dan Margolis dmargolis@pww.org.