People Before Profit blog

Letters

Fri, 27 Aug 2004 07:45:00 +0000

Republican convention

Today in Tucson, 8/29/04 Freedom of speech stands on the street in boldface, alliteration and rhyme

SIGN UP (while syllables stressed and unstressed dressed in camouflage count off in mindless cadence)

SLOGANS floating on banners and dancing on poles clamor for peaceful revolution:

WAR IS SUICIDE

Gretchen NielsenTucson AZ

Double standard on Cuba

I’m a union carpenter. I have been observing the intrigue between the Bush “war on terrorism” and its connection with the liars, thieves and vultures of the Cuban Liberty Council (CLC).

According to the National Lawyers Guild new restrictions on travel to Cuba from the U.S. are illegal and unconstitutional. The U.S. Constitution forbids any discrimination against citizens and legal residents of our country. The 14th Amendment prohibits discrimination based on age, sex, national origin, race, religion or political belief under the law.

Cubans are the only ethnic group limited in travel and trade opportunity. The federal government does not intervene in relations within other ethnic communities; Irish-American, Italian-American, etc. Isn’t this called a double standard?

People-to-people exchanges with Cuba are based upon mutual interests and friendship. The longstanding myth that U.S. democracy is the only model of justice and fairness in the world is a distorted ideology permeated with arrogance, contempt and paternalism. The recent administration attack on the status of Cuban Americans is cruel and unusual punishment solely because the Cuban people chose to erect their own path to self-determination.

Restricting family visits are reckless moves against a legally constituted government and sovereign independent nation. They did not work 45 years ago and will not work today. Ask your Congresspersons to use the power of their office to educate fellow members that human rights belong to all. Send Bush back to Texas!

Richard GrasslAuburn WA

Good question

I have a fundamental question: while you undoubtedly are well versed in what the Communist Party in the USA stands for and advocates, I and I suspect many others really do not. I think it would be useful to run a series of update articles on this subject and see if they can get some distribution beyond preaching to the choir. The time may be ripe for recruitment of those disillusioned with capitalism who are searching for a new political system with which to affiliate. Somehow, the stigma of being a communist/socialist must be erased.

Willard ShapiraMinneapolis MN

Editor’s note: We agree. We plan to begin just this kind of series shortly.

More about McCarthyism

About “McCarthyism Rears Its Ugly Head” (PWW 7/31-8/6): Could I get more information on atrocities in the McCarthy era backed with evidence? I am debating often about U.S. repression of thought being worse than Cuban.

Thanks,

Martin A. DrollCambridge OH

Editor’s reply: A good place to begin is Anne Fagan Ginger and Robert Christiano, eds., “The Cold War Against Labor,” 2 volumes. Gil Green’s “Cold War Fugitive” and Lester Cole’s “Hollywood Red,” the experiences of Communists, are also very good. Also, since you are debating about Cuba, you might look at the chapter on U.S. imperialist involvement in Cuba, from the Spanish American war to the many attempts to murder Fidel, in Ed and Regula Boorstein’s “Counter-Revolution,” and make the point that this is what successive U.S. governments did to Cuba: what did the Cuban government ever do to the U.S.? Ellen Schrecker’s work on McCarthyism, while it contains criticism of the party and its leadership with which we don’t agree, has a great deal of valuable material.

A new low

The satanic Bush/Karl Rove dirty tricks gang has reached a new low. Unlike G.W. Bush, who found safe haven in the Texas Air National Guard, John Kerry enlisted in the U.S. Navy, put his life on the line in Vietnam, earned the Bronze Star, Silver Star for valor and received three Purple Heart awards and, let’s not forget, he was never AWOL.

Bush has lied and cheated his way through life! Why should we believe him when he pleads nolo on the Swift Boat sailor political ad? He and his fellow corrupters will lie, cheat and, if they can get away with it, steal the 2004 election!

A vet for Kerry.

Tom TullyVia e-mail

Lives lost

37,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the start of the U.S. invasion, according to a study by the People’s Kifah, an Iraqi citizen group. The study involved interviews with hospital officials, grave diggers and witnesses who saw Iraqis die as a result of U.S. fire. It is reprehensible that the story of Iraqi civilian deaths is not considered “news that’s fit to print.” When the 3,000-plus victims of 9-11 are referred to, they are always described as heroes and patriots. I figure they were like the rest of us that morning: they woke up, went to the office and proceeded to go about their day. Except, unlike the rest of us, they were killed by the actions taken by a few ideological fanatics. I guess had I been there and died I’d be a hero too. Well what about the 37,000 Iraqi children, women and men who were also in the wrong place at the wrong time while an ideological fanatic attacked their country? Are they heroes? Are they patriots? What meaning does their death have? The U.S. military has a name for them — collateral damage. To the American establishment: they are disposable people, whose deaths have no meaning. How can a nation so mourn the death of their fellow citizens while at the same time be so callous to the deaths they cause to others?

Charlie AtkinsVia e-mail

Editorials

Fri, 27 Aug 2004 07:34:00 +0000

Safeguard the vote

In 1964, Fannie Lou Hamer made her famous, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired” speech at the Democratic Party Convention. She called for the seating of the integrated Mississippi Freedom Democrats and removal of the segregated Mississippi delegation.

In that speech Hamer described how the state police had arrested and brutally beaten her. Her crime? She wanted to register to vote. The racist terrorists, who stood in the way of progress 40 years ago, took the lives of many innocent people and fighters for freedom, including Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman.

In 1964, the battle for voting rights was really a battle for democracy for all. That battle goes on today.

Forty years later and in the best tradition of Fannie Lou Hamer, another southern African-American woman stood before the Congress of the United States. Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.) rose to support a bill to invite the UN to send monitors for our November elections. In 2000, she said, 27,000 ballots of predominantly African American voters where thrown out in her district alone. She pointed out that the leadership of Congress had participated in a coup by helping to steal the 2000 election.

For telling the truth, Brown was shouted down. Her remarks were stricken from the record and she was censured and silenced for the rest of that day. Her colleagues told her “to get over it.”

The struggle of Fannie Lou Hamer and Corrine Brown is no minor political misunderstanding. It is a struggle for the soul of our nation. We, as a nation, must never “get over it” until full equality and fair elections are a reality.

After the failure to count all votes in Florida in 2000, our elections do need to be monitored by outside observers. On Nov. 2, we also need grass-roots people’s election watchdog committees at every polling place to make sure that every vote is freely cast and counted.

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Retirement with dignity: all hands on deck

It’s cannibalism. Airline workers, coal miners, steelworkers, their families and their communities are being eaten alive by hit-man bankruptcy court judges carrying out a contract ordered by the largest corporations in the country.

United Airlines, US Air, Bethlehem Steel, Horizon Resources and 34 others took workers’ hard-earned money invested in their pensions and health care, ran into bankruptcy court, and walked out the door with treasure. Did any of the $1,000-dollar-an-hour lawyers, judges, CEOs or corporate board members ever fly a plane, operate mining machinery or pour a heat of steel? As one miner put it, “What gives this judge the power to take everything we ever worked for, give it to a tiny group of people who don’t know what work is?”

Stealing retiree health care benefits is a death sentence, especially for coal miners afflicted with Black Lung.

The unions are leading this fight to protect working families. In West Virginia and Kentucky, in Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Chicago, Baltimore, Cincinnati, and Minnesota, they have marched, fought in the courts and lobbied for their members’ lives.

They are up against the corporations’ best of all possible worlds — Republican control of all three branches of the federal government. The Bush administration stands firmly on the side of the rapacious corporations.

Damning the Aug. 8 decision by bankruptcy judge William Howard which trashed union contracts and legalized Horizon Resources’ theft of health care, pensions and job rights for 3,100 coal miners, United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts thundered, “If this decision doesn’t cause America’s working families to start looking around at who is running this country — and which direction we are headed — then I fear for our nation!”

No one is secure. No wages, overtime, health care or retirement fund is safe. The only power we have is how much we are able to take. All hands on deck Nov. 2. Let’s answer the call of coal miners, airline workers and steelworkers for economic security and justice.

Letters

Mon, 23 Aug 2004 04:52:00 +0000

Gospel according to John

The Lord has a way of revealing those of us who really know him, and those who don’t! Think about it! Bush gave a big speech last week about how his faith is so “important” to him. In this attempt to convince the American people that we should consider him for president, he announced that his favorite Bible verse is John 16:3. Of course the speechwriter meant John 3:16, but nobody in the Bush camp was familiar enough with scripture to catch the error. And do you know what John 16:3 says? John 16:3 says: “And they will do this because they have not known the Father nor Me.” The Holy Spirit works in strange ways. Pass it on. VOTE, VOTE, VOTE!!

Serena D. Bell, Via e-mail

Campaign of fear

The last presidential election was stolen. The next might very easily be canceled or “postponed,” especially if an “October surprise” happens by way of a new terrorist attack.

Bush and his selected cadre know things aren’t looking good for his re-election and have planned accordingly. It has been revealed that secret and not-so-secret meetings have been held to develop a contingent strategy to forego the scheduled election through an ongoing “campaign of fear” (reminiscent of Hitler’s method). This will insure the continuity of Bush rule in a wartime capacity.

Fortunately most people are wise to his schemes and underhandedness, but have no doubt, danger is lurking. Underhandedness and treachery are the hallmark of Bush and the Republican Party. If an opportunity presents itself, they will move to cement their power over the objections of the workers and middle class.

Throughout our country’s turbulent history — through strife, civil war and world wars, through depressions, calamities and assassinations — we have not canceled any major elections and now is definitely not the time to allow it to happen.

All progressive, democratically inclined people (and parties) must unite this time and soundly defeat the reactionary right-wing and restore in their place a new hope for true democratic rule.

Michael R. Langdon, Humboldt County CA The author is chair of the Mother Jones Club/Humboldt Communist Alliance of the Communist Party USA.

False promises

I am a registered Republican. I have voted Republican since President Reagan got elected, and would continue to do so if after looking into my heart I could justify us going to war in Iraq. In Iraq we have oil — we have already pre-negotiated a price on Iraq by giving out contracts to our most corrupt contractors such as the bankrupt MCI, and of course our good friends at the Carlyle Group and Halliburton. I personally benefit from the tax cuts and the big business, but the kids that are out there dying for the false promises and the fake patriotic symbols that the Bush administration has created do not. Bush has shown the registered Republicans like myself that he has no conscience. I grew up in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where half the kids where Black and the other half were Latino. In my junior high school my science teacher would tell us, “Only one out of 10 of you will make it to college. Most of you will end up in jail, on welfare, or dead.” This was the influence I grew up with, so please don’t tell me about knowing history. If it was not for outspoken individuals like a Rev. Al Sharpton or a Rev. Jesse Jackson or someone you may have forgotten to read about in history, Dr. Martin Luther King, you would still be riding in the back of the bus, or going to “Black-only” restaurants or coffee shops. Please do not ever be mistaken that the Republicans had anything to do with the equality of Blacks in this country. Even today as a Black person, a Latino, an Asian, you have to work twice as hard to be recognized for any position in this country.

Anthony Martinez, New York NY

Stories on Cuba

Thank you for the stories on Cuba. The article on the school for autistic kids was wonderful. (PWW 7/3-9 “58 students, 57 teachers: Cuba tackles autism” by Terrie Albano.) When my husband and I were in Cuba we visited a school for mentally retarded kids. It was both a beautiful and a heartbreaking experience. The comparisons that Albano made I remember making — except that I’m such a sentimental old thing I ended up unable to keep from crying. I couldn’t get my mind off the kids here with the same problems. They deserve the same care and concern — as do all children everywhere. The article will help make folks aware how much Cubans value their children. Cuban education and health care would undoubtedly be even better if not for the blockade.

Also the article on the Cuban Five and their families (PWW 7/17-23 “Heroes in the war against terrorism”) made a good point. Though people in Cuba are well aware of the situation, folks here aren’t. The article gives the case publicity it needs. The list of their addresses was good information; I hope people will write to them.

Keep up the good work.

Julia Lutsky, Queens NY

Photos wanted

I am working on a story on Hawks Nest Tunnel tragedy, 1930-33. Rinehart & Dennis Company, Charlottesville, Va., contracted from Union Carbide to build the almost 4-mile tunnel — it went through silica rock — an undetermined number of workers died.

Do y’all have any photos I could use? The first stories about Hawks Nest Tunnel were published in The Masses and Daily Press in 1934 or 35. A story was written by Albert Maltz, “Man on the Road”. Contact me at Lewis_betty @ hotmail.com.

Betty Dotson-Lewis, Via e-mail

Editorials

Mon, 23 Aug 2004 04:47:00 +0000

The Olympic Games

The 2004 Olympic Games opened in Athens Aug. 13 with pageantry befitting the return of the games to the land of their birth (in 776 B.C.). Athens last hosted the Olympics in 1896 when the modern games began.

The teams of 202 nations marched into the stadium. North and South Korea walked together, symbolizing the spirit of peace embodied in the games. The Greek crowds welcomed all, including the U.S. contingent, with warm ovations. It prompted a television announcer to comment that although the Greek people overwhelmingly oppose the war in Iraq, they distinguish between the U.S. government and its people.

Results in certain events have been a shock to some with delusions that U.S. superpower status extends to sports. South Africa’s swim team took the gold medal in the 400-meter relay, defeating the U.S., which has “owned” that event since the modern Olympics began. Puerto Rico’s basketball team trounced a U.S. “Dream Team” that included NBA players, proving that unity and teamwork can beat individual talent. Although the U.S. still had the most overall medals at press time, China was a close second and had more gold medals.

These could be signs that decades of U.S. dominance are giving way to greater equality in the world of sports.

But there are other lessons too. Mohini Bhardwaj, a leader of the U.S. women’s gymnastics team, told an interviewer that while training a few years ago, she was forced to live on Power Bars because she had no money to buy food. Contrast that with the flood of ads from corporate America, most of them using the glory of these athletes to peddle beer and expensive cars.

Enough with the corporate stranglehold on everything that is great about the Olympics and sports in general. It’s high time that the federal government provide funds to insure physical fitness for all its people. But that would mean slashing the trillions squandered on weapons, using the money to help our youth run faster and leap higher, while helping all of us be healthier.

Chilling dissent

The FBI is at it again. In the 1940s and 1950s, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI used to harass Communists and other dissidents by sending agents over to visit them. Usually, the FBI already knew everything they needed to know and the “home visit” was intended only to intimidate.

In an atmosphere in which people were being sent to prison for their beliefs and associations, the arrival of FBI agents at your home or place of work was frightening. Worse, agents would go and visit one’s relatives or interview one’s employer, with the purpose of getting people fired or putting a strain on their relationships.

After a huge uproar about these practices — and other worse ones such as actual FBI frame-ups — we were promised that the abuses would cease. But certain people have never given up the idea of using the FBI as a political police to suppress those who would question the government and the ruling class.

Starting with the passage of the USA Patriot Act, the Bush administration has made it crystal clear that they see the FBI in this way.

Now, the FBI is reported to be visiting people who plan to participate in protests at the Republican National Convention. The purpose is again to frighten young activists and discourage them from speaking out publicly against the reactionary, warmongering policies of Bush and his friends.

We urge our readers not to be frightened by the FBI, because that is what they want. While lying to a government agent is a felony, you don’t have to talk to the FBI without a lawyer present. The FBI has a history of twisting people’s words, and what you say could get your friends in big trouble, if not you yourself, even though you contemplate no illegal acts. We all should be outraged by the Bush administration’s partisan misuse of public resources and its nonstop attacks on our constitutional right to dissent publicly.

Canada phone strike solid after 4 months

Sat, 21 Aug 2004 08:14:00 +0000

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia – In towns and cities along Canada’s Atlantic coast, 4,300 telephone workers have been walking the picket line since April 23 to save their jobs and to win livable pensions and a better prescription benefit from their employer, Aliant. Aliant is 53 percent owned by BCE Inc., Canada’s top telecom company. During a vacation in Nova Scotia in mid-August, this reporter and his family drove through one little town after another where members of the Atlantic Communications and Technical Workers Union (AC&TWU) were walking the picket line. In New Brunswick, the phone workers are represented by the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada. The joint strike is coordinated through the Council of Atlantic Telecommunications Unions. In the little farm town of Middleton in the midst of the fertile Annapolis Valley, the pickets circled with a hand-lettered banner that read, “AC&TWU: Proud to be union!” Motorists honked in solidarity as they drove by. We stopped to chat and one of the pickets told us he has worked 30 years as a phone worker and would not be able to live on the $20,000 pension offered by Aliant. “You know the CEO’s of these giant telecommunications corporations walk away with millions when they retire,” he said. “We deserve a pension that gives us a decent life in our senior years.” Aliant, he said, refuses their workers’ demands for a guarantee that jobs will not be outsourced to Mexico or India where workers are paid meager wages with no benefits. “We are fighting to save our jobs,” he said. He spotted my “Bush out the door in 2004” button. “We know about Bush, all for the CEOs. In Canada, more than 75 percent of the people oppose Bush’s war in Iraq. We wish you good luck in your election.” Later we drove up the Atlantic coast to Halifax where we found 20 or more workers picketing the Aliant offices. Dean MacDonald of AC&TWU later told the World by phone that members of his union voted by more than 90 percent to reject Aliant’s offer and to authorize a strike. “Contracting out is a huge issue,” he said. “We’re trying to keep the economy of Atlantic Canada vibrant. Look at the cod industry. It’s practically gone. The unemployment rate in Newfoundland is 20 percent and here in Nova Scotia, about 11 percent.” Aliant, he charged, wants to outsource jobs and force the remaining local workforce into part time jobs with no benefits. He accused Aliant of taking $50 million in wages out of the economy of the maritime provinces in the past year. “They joined with the conglomerate Bell to beat the workers up. … They took the profits and ran. That money is filling the pockets of the CEOS. It’s the result of corporate greed.” Public support for the strike has been strong throughout the four months despite scattered instances of vandalism to telephone lines and Aliant property. MacDonald flatly rejected the smear campaign that the strikers were responsible. “Atlantic Canadians are loyal people. Our senior citizens have been among our strongest supporters. They built the labor movement. They understand that this is not about wages. The people of Atlantic Canada want better jobs for their sons and daughters. They know that is what we are fighting for. Aliant won an award for volunteerism, but who were the volunteers? It was the telephone workers, these good, solid, members of their communities.” The author can be reached at greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com.

Marriage equality fight continues

Sat, 21 Aug 2004 08:00:00 +0000

The fight for marriage equality took a disappointing turn Aug. 13 when the California Supreme Court nullified the nearly 4,000 marriage licenses issued to same-sex couples in that state. The 5-2 decision was met with both concern and a renewed pledge to continue the battle for equal marriage. Human Rights Campaign spokesman Marc Shields called the decision “a small setback in a much larger national discussion, debate and movement.” Shields said the ruling doesn’t address “the real issue … the much larger issue of equal protection under the law.” The California decision followed Missouri voter approval of adding a ban on same-sex marriage to the state’s constitution. However, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) groups remain optimistic. Assemblyman Mark Leno, a San Francisco Democrat, plans to re-introduce a bill into the state legislature that would make same-sex marriages legal. “Time is on our side,” Leno said. Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, the first same-sex couple married in San Francisco last February, expressed the concern felt by many couples who have been put in limbo by the court’s decision. “Del is 83 years old and I am 79,” Lyon said. “After being together for more than 50 years, it is a terrible blow to have the rights and protections of marriage taken away from us. At our age, we do not have the luxury of time.” The court ruled that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom violated a 1977 law by issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, but the mayor stood by his actions. “There is nothing that any court decision or politician can do that will take that [wedding] moment away,” Newsom said. Measures similar to the Missouri ban will be voted on in Louisiana on Sept. 18, and in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah on Nov. 2. While Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry has stopped short of supporting same-sex marriage, LGBT rights groups say his stance is far better than that of President Bush, who is pushing a federal constitutional amendment banning such marriages. In remarks to the Democratic National Convention, Human Rights Campaign President Cheryl Jacques pointed to Kerry-Edwards’ support for LGBT equality. “They know that the Constitution is a vessel of freedom, not a tool for discrimination.” The author can be reached at jbarnett@pww.org.

Letters

Fri, 13 Aug 2004 07:12:00 +0000

Unequal school funding

In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court addressed only racial segregation, accepting the constitutionally obvious, that U.S. public education must be equal for all.

And obviously, unequal funding cannot produce equal public education. Funding a child’s school as presently — proportional to the price of his or her family’s home — ignores the “given” in Brown, that constitutionally, U.S. public education must be equal.

Single-payer universal health care is a popular demand. Why not single-payer equally funded public education? Present public education funding should be challenged in court; it is as unconstitutional as racial segregation.

Judith Segard HuntBerkeley CA

Lovely ad

I’m so sorry I let my subscription lapse for the first time in 40 years. My daughter Peggy kept calling me each day to ask if I’d seen the PWW and I hadn’t. I think all the hoopla and hubbub about my 85th birthday threw me off track.

Anyhow, Peg brought me her paper to see the birthday ad. It’s just great — you did a lovely job — even a friend in Chicago called me about it. I’m the only one who hadn’t seen it! Here’s my check. Please renew my sub.

Ruth GoldmanSouthfield MI

Anti-communism is not progress

The following is adapted from a letter sent to MoveOn.org.

While I wholeheartedly support your campaign around FOX News and its absurd claim of objective reporting, I am very disturbed by the use of anti-communism in your July 20 New York Times ad. (“The Communists had Pravda. Republicans have FOX.”)

Our country has its own homegrown Communist Party — a history that consists of struggling for a peaceful world, equality, justice, workers’ rights and socialism. That history also includes truth telling about who does the work in our country and who profits, about who starts the wars — and why — and who dies in them.

Anti-communism has done terrible damage, and not just to those who espouse socialism, but to every movement for progress and democracy. During the McCarthy period, thousands of people in the labor, peace and other movements — really, anyone who challenged the status quo — were persecuted, fired, deported, silenced.

We’ve all seen the similarities between those dark years and the present. There are many people who consider themselves “left,” socialists and Communists, among the millions of Americans who are working to defeat Bush and his ultra-right gang. MoveOn has done groundbreaking work. I admire your unifying and broad approach. But you shouldn’t use anti-communism, even in small doses, to advance that work.

Elena MoraBronx NY

The author is the chairperson of the NY State Communist Party.

Critique and renewal

Please re-enter my subscription. Check for $30 is enclosed. I found the July 24-30 issue to be excellent with clear facts about environmental issues and space militarization, which I know a good deal about but have not been able to condense effectively. Your writers are unusually good on a regular basis.

I continue to be upset with your criticism of third party or independent party voices. There is a need to bring strong voices against the corporatization of our country’s elections to a larger audience, not squelch dissent to the Democratic Leadership Council positions.

I also think the AFL-CIO must be held accountable for accepting and cooperating with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which is funding U.S. involvement in the overthrow of Central American governments. Investigative reporting on the use of NED funds would be welcomed by many. Unfortunately, the AFL-CIO leadership has not been cautious about the motivation of the NED and harm has resulted.

Rosamund EvansAlbuquerque NM

Disappointed reader

I was disappointed in your story about the crisis in Sudan (PWW 7/17-23) where you refer to attacks by Arab Sudanese on “Black Africans” in Darfur. Please consider that all the Sudanese people are Black and African. When I read the same mistake in my corporate-owned daily I assumed they were trying, once again, to demonize Arabs.

Joe BernickTucson AZ

Freedom Summer

I am a student participating in the New American Freedom Summer program. I was delighted to find the article “Activists prepare for ‘freedom summer’” by Rosalio Muñoz (PWW 7/3-9). Other press organizations do not understand how important or historic the work is, as well as enduring over six weeks of summer in the hot, 100-degree-plus Arizona sun, or the intense humidity of Florida to help empower communities.

Mr. Hollis Watkins [a participant in the 1964 Freedom Summer] was a fresh breath of inspiration for many of us and hearing his stories gave us a stronger sense of determination for the mission.

Again, I thank People’s Weekly World and Rosalio Muñoz for the press coverage we received.

Gabriel CruzGlendale AZ

Soldier’s story

Great article: “Soldier’s mom reveals Iraq nightmare,” by Susan Webb (PWW, 4/24-30). Too bad we do not read about this in our local papers. I am forwarding the article to others. Please tell this mother my heart goes out to her and the family.

President Bush talks about serving our country, but I do not see any of his daughters or Jeb Bush’s sons joining the reserves or fighting in Iraq. Nor did the sons of the first President Bush serve in war. Disgusting how our boys are being taken care of and lied to.

SueSarasota FL

Editorials

Fri, 13 Aug 2004 06:48:00 +0000

Bloody quagmire

The June “handover of power” to an interim Iraqi government has not stopped the bloodshed. The count of U.S. soldiers killed in George W. Bush’s Iraq debacle is heading toward the 1,000 mark. Bush doesn’t want us to see their coffins coming home. He also wants to keep hidden the wounded and traumatized soldiers at Walter Reed and other military hospitals.

Some 13,000 Iraqi men, women and children have been killed and thousands more maimed since Bush launched this reckless war 17 months ago. Iraqi homes, neighborhoods and livelihoods have been destroyed. The continued aggressive U.S. military presence is fueling anger and resentment.

Instead of bringing democracy, freedom and stability, as claimed by Bush, Cheney & Co., the U.S. military/corporate invasion has destabilized and devastated Iraq, and fanned the flames of fundamentalism and terrorism.

The discredited “coalition provisional authority” has given way to a new U.S. embassy in Baghdad headed by Ambassador John Negroponte. In the 1980s, Negroponte was a key player in the Reagan administration’s covert operations to crush the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

The new embassy has a staff of 1,000. We can be sure they are not out laying brick to repair schools shattered by U.S. bombs and tanks. Nor are they cleaning up the sewage running in the streets or stringing electric lines to get the lights back on. And we know they’re not nursing the sick and injured Iraqis victimized by the endless violence the invasion and occupation has unleashed.

Bush’s Iraq policy has been driven by ultra-right, “neo-con” retreads from the Reagan and Bush I administrations. Their Iraq record involves decades of secret wheelings and dealings, working hand in glove with mercenaries and oily corporate profiteers like Dick Cheney’s Halliburton. Iraq is being destroyed and our soldiers’ lives, our communities, and our very security are being sacrificed for their crazed schemes of global control.

The only way to bring peace to Iraq is to get U.S. military/corporate/covert operations out. Enough is enough.

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These numbers count

Something’s stirring. The explosive growth of the crowd size at the Kerry-Edwards rallies is becoming a bigger story than the candidates themselves: Twenty-five thousand in Harrisburg, Penn., on July 31; 15,000 in Milwaukee on Aug. 2; 23,000 in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Aug. 3; and on Aug. 9, 10,000 in the Arizona town of Flagstaff (population 50,000).

These hundreds of thousands of Americans are not just coming out to see and hear Kerry and Edwards. They are coming out to be heard. Suddenly working-class Americans — desperate over bread and butter issues like jobs, overtime pay, education, war and peace — see the real possibility for positive change.

Not surprisingly, the momentum represented by these rank-and-file numbers is not being widely reported in the corporate press. The corporate media give little attention to the everyday crises faced by the millions of out-of-work, out-of-pension, out-of-insurance, out-of-options American families, while lavishing attention on the tiniest minutia about the candidates.

Keep your eyes open for the real story unfolding Sept. 2, the opening night of the GOP convention. It’s likely to be a hot, sticky summer night across the land, but 25,000 union members will be marking the event that Tuesday evening by leaving the cool comfort of their living rooms, even after a hard day’s work, to climb their neighbors’ porch steps and knock on their screen doors registering voters and giving out information. Work-to-worker, neighbor-to-neighbor, they will be laying out the stark differences the two candidates’ programs will make in the lives of Americas people for years to come.

While record millions are being spent this season on television ads and campaign paraphernalia, in 2004 it’s the millions on the street who are making the difference and making history.

Texas crime lab crimes

Fri, 13 Aug 2004 05:06:00 +0000

HOUSTON — Nanon Williams was arrested here in 1992 when he was 17 years old for the crime of capital murder. He was sentenced to death in 1995. He is on death row today because of the testimony of the Houston Police Department (HPD) crime lab.

In 1998, the court allowed independent firearms testing, which conclusively proved that the bullet that killed the victim was not fired by Williams. In 2000 the trial court recommended relief for him due to ineffective counsel, since his attorney failed to perform any ballistics testing. In 2002 the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected the recommendation. Williams’ case is now on appeal in federal district court.

About 40 people held a “Free Nanon Williams” protest at the Houston City Hall reflection pool Aug. 1 to observe Williams’ 30th birthday. One speaker declared that “it is an atrocity to sentence minors to death row.” She also pointed out that Williams was an indigent African American teenager at the time of the conviction. She noted that the “execution machine is constantly killing people” and “children are beaten out of reason and starved” while in prison. She reported, however, that while on death row, Williams’ “revolutionary spirit has grown.”

Another speaker declared, “The [police department] crime lab is the criminal in this case.”

Protesters read birthday greetings from Williams’ supporters around the world, and ate birthday cake and ice cream. The participants, both children and adults, “beat the justice” out of a Texas-shaped piñata intended to represent the HPD crime lab.

Williams’ case has captured the attention of Amnesty International, which has publicly opposed his execution. They point out his punishment violates a fundamental principle of international law. The Convention on the Rights of the Child is a treaty that bans the imposition of the death penalty against child offenders. Only the U.S. and Somalia have failed to ratify this treaty.

The HPD crime lab has come under increasing scrutiny and criticism lately. Forensic experts have characterized the HPD’s findings in a number of cases as “scientifically unsound.” An Aug. 8 editorial in the Houston Chronicle posed the question, “How many cases of incompetent analysis must come to light before an independent inquiry is made to detect and correct miscarriages of justice?”

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org.

Contractor probed on Guantanamo deal

Fri, 13 Aug 2004 02:50:00 +0000

A former division of one of the nation’s largest outsourcing contractors, Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), is under investigation for violating federal procurement regulations because it allegedly supplied interrogators and intelligence analysts to the Defense Department under false pretenses.

According to the Springfield, Va.-based Federal Times, ACS in 2002 provided 30 intelligence analysts and 15 to 20 interrogators for the U.S. Navy’s prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where prisoners captured during the war in Afghanistan and described as “enemy combatants” by the Bush administration are being held.

However, it appears that the U.S. government and ACS were trying to keep this deal secret because the $13.3 million contract states that ACS was to provide technology services to the government, not interrogators and intelligence analysts.

Because the services provided by the Dallas-based ACS are outside of the scope of the original contract, the General Services Administration is conducting an investigation. If the GSA finds that ACS helped draft a false statement of work in the contract, it could be barred or suspended from future government contracts.

In November 2003, about a year after the contract was finalized, ACS and Lockheed-Martin, the nation’s largest defense contractor, completed a deal in which Lockheed-Martin acquired ACS Government Services, the division of ACS with the contract now under investigation.

According to the Federal Times, the U.S. Southern Command contacted the GSA in October 2002 for help in hiring interrogators for the prison at Guantanamo Bay. The GSA put the contract up for bid, but not as an intelligence-gathering contract. Instead, the contract stated that that GSA was seeking information technology workers to assist with a project that the U.S. Department of Interior was overseeing at Fort Huachuca, Ariz.

ACS Government Services won the contract and promptly provided the Pentagon with interrogators and intelligence analysts for Guantanamo Bay, not with IT workers for Fort Huachuca.

GSA terminated the contract in 2003 when internal auditors found that services purchased from ACS were not covered by the contract. The Interior Department subsequently agreed to take over the contract’s administration, but continued to use ACS for intelligence services.

When investigative reporters revealed the torture and abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq at the hands of interrogators, including those working for private companies, the GSA reopened its investigation into the contract with ACS.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org.

Antonio Gades dies

Sun, 01 Aug 2004 05:51:00 +0000

Recognized as the greatest Spanish male dancer of his generation and an even greater choreographer, Antonio Gades died of cancer in Madrid on July 20. He was 67.

Gades’ father, a building worker and communist, left home when Antonio was a baby to fight fascism on the Madrid front in the Spanish Civil War. After the war, the family reunited in Madrid, where Antonio had to leave school at 11 to become a messenger.

Later, dancing in a bar for a few pesetas, he was seen by Pilar Lopez, who ran Spain’s leading dance company. Within a year, at 16, Gades was the lead dancer in her company.

In the 1960s Gades escaped Franco’s Spain and studied classical ballet in Rome and became leading dancer at La Scala in Milan. In 1969 he formed his own ballet company in Paris.

In 1975 he dissolved his company in protest against the dictatorship, and only returned to dancing in Cuba two years later at the urging of Alicia Alonso. From 1959 until his death, Gades was an outspoken supporter of the Cuban revolution. His ashes will be scattered in Cuba.

– Excerpted from The Guardian

Letters

Sun, 01 Aug 2004 05:18:00 +0000

Uptown youth

Recently the Uptown Club of the Young Communist League went to the Catskill Mountains for the 2nd Uptown Ideological Retreat. It was a great success. Leaders from the Communist Party led the classes for the three-day school with a focus on race, gender and youth. We rotated cooking and cleaning. There was also a game of “capture the flag”!

The combination of the classes, the games, the groups and the serenity of the location helped us create an agenda for the next six months, including the RNC and the Books not Bombs youth convergence, gathering signatures for the Ujima Build Me project registering folks to vote and getting voters to the polls in November.

Peace.

Que A., Bronx NY

China and socialism

Recently I have been reading an interesting excerpt from the book “China and Socialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle” by Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett, published as a special issue of the socialist magazine Monthly Review. The authors present a great deal of evidence to support the view that the market-socialism policies pursued by the leadership of the People’s Republic of China have served to steadily erode the foundations of socialism. Instead of “using capitalism to build socialism” (as the Chinese leadership had originally argued), the authors maintain that it is now evident that they have “used socialism to build capitalism.”

I recall reading in PWW a year or two ago about a CPUSA delegation to the People’s Republic of China. The general tone of the article was one of friendship between peoples, and a basic respect for the Chinese Communist Party, but tempered by a wait-and-see attitude on the developments there. Or so it seemed to me. I think it was a prudent course to take at the time. However, new scholarship should not be ignored. Will we be seeing a review of this book in a future issue of the People’s Weekly World or its sister publication Political Affairs?

Wally Brooker, Toronto, Canada

Editor’s note: The Monthly Review article has certainly made some splash. Volunteers do most of our book reviews so we’d like someone to volunteer for this review. Editorial Board member Marilyn Bechtel has just returned from a journalist’s tour of China and will be writing a series on her observations and experiences.

Insecurity

Thanks to sloppy security at its Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab, the Energy Department has shut down dozens of the nation’s atomic weapons research and production facilities, until it can be discovered what happened to some missing top-secret computer disks. For the time being, thousands of scientists won’t be working on re-inventing and perfecting the hydrogen bomb.

This is an unusual opportunity. We’re better off without these diabolical laboratories. It’s time to reconsider this dangerous, expensive and technically illegal research. Surely, one thing we don’t need is a “better” H-bomb. Yet, tens of billions of dollars are currently in the pipeline to push Bush’s plan to build so-called “usable” nuclear weapons.

We have for decades demanded that our nation’s WMD programs be permanently scrapped and resources re-directed to sustainable energy research and development. There’s not a single crisis in our troubled world that can be effectively resolved by our possession of nuclear weapons. Their continued existence, in fact, makes us all less secure.

Cord MacGuire, Boulder CO

Communists and religion

I read Bea Lumpkin’s article “Hattie Lumpkin: mother and fighter for socialism” (PWW 7/10-16). I very much enjoy these articles about people who were members of the CPUSA. So many of them come from different strata of society, different experiences and are so diverse!

I am somewhat drawn to the Communist Party. I admire their work in civil rights, labor rights and almost all progressive struggles here in America.

I am what most socialists would call “a religious person.” I believe in God, go to church, read the Bible and pray. This is a big part of my life as it is for millions and millions of other working-class Americans. I am sure you are familiar with this.

I noticed in your article that Mrs. Lumpkin was active in her church. May I ask if she continued to be active in the church and to believe in God? If so did the Party give her a hard time about this? May I ask which denomination she belonged to?

I am wrestling with this issue quite a bit right now and your open and honest answer would be of great value to me.

Bill Jones, Via e-mail

Author’s reply: My mother-in-law was also a deeply religious person, active in the Baptist Church. She used to say, “God is Love!” I believe that is what led her to join the Communist Party – her love of people. I met Hattie before I met my husband Frank. The story of the Lumpkins is in the book, “The Story of Frank Lumpkin, Steelworker,” available from International Publishers, (212) 366-9816. Yes, Hattie remained active to the end in her church and as a member of the New York State Executive Committee of the Communist Party USA. Neither she nor her comrades ever saw a conflict between the two.

Editorials

Sun, 01 Aug 2004 05:11:00 +0000

Not another Hiroshima

“There were children screaming ‘It’s hot, it’s hot!’ and infants crying over the body of their mother who appeared to be already dead. I tried to pull myself together … but when I looked in the finder, the object was blurred by tears.” So said Mr. Matsushige, a Japanese news photographer in Hiroshima, Aug. 6, 1945.

The Japanese civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (bombed on Aug. 9) are the only people in the world to have been victims of an atomic bomb attack. And the United States of America is the only country in the world to have used this weapon of mass destruction. Approximately 300,000 people died as a result of those deadly August days.

The Japanese peace movement hosts an annual international peace conference with the survivors of those ghastly attacks. The movement works tirelessly for an end to nuclear weaponry because they know the catastrophe of nuclear war.

The Dr. Strangeloves at the White House and Pentagon are itching to develop and actually use “new and better” nukes. The Department of Energy is spending $6.5 billion on nuclear weapons this year, and Bush is requesting $6.8 billion more for next year and a total of $30 billion over the following four years. This does not include his beloved missile-defense program.

Marry this insatiable appetite for nuclear weapons with the Bush policies of using them in a first-strike, preemptive war and what do you have? Billions of dollars wasted, and possibly millions of people obliterated in a nuclear Armageddon.

On the lie that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons, the Bush administration took the U.S. to war. Nuclear-armed Israel just announced it has complete military plans for a preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear power facility at Bushehr. This insane cycle is bringing humanity to a point of no return.

U.S. has to kick the nuclear habit and immediately end all development of new nuclear weapons. But the Bush group won’t do that. So the American people have to. First step: fire Bush on Nov. 2.

Unruly women

Continuing their twisted hatred of bold, independent women, the ultra-right has zeroed in on Teresa Heinz Kerry. They assail her for “unruly” hair, for wearing the same clothes “over and over” (horrors!), and especially for speaking her mind.

They are on her case because she told a reporter for the right-wing Pittsburgh Tribune to “shove it,” saying he distorted her remarks. (The ultra-right had no problem with Dick Cheney telling Sen. Patrick Leahy, “Go f—- yourself.”) The Tribune is owned by ultra-right millionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, who has long used the paper to smear moderate Republicans and Democrats, including Heinz Kerry.

Undeterred, Heinz Kerry told the Democratic convention, “My right to speak my mind, to have a voice, to be what some have called ‘opinionated,’ is a right I deeply and profoundly cherish.”

“My only hope,” she continued, “is that one day soon, women, who have all earned the right to have their opinions, instead of being labeled opinionated, will be called smart or well-informed, just as men are.”

Heinz Kerry is a billionaire, but sexism cuts across class lines. It is used to silence women, and to divide the all-people’s movement for democracy and social progress.

Heinz Kerry grew up in Mozambique under Portuguese colonialism and participated in anti-apartheid demonstrations in South Africa. She told the convention, “I learned something then, and I believe it still. There is a value in taking a stand, whether or not anybody may be noticing it, or whether or not it is a risky thing to do.”

We celebrate our country’s unruly women, like Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Margaret Sanger, Mother Jones, “rebel girl” Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, Dolores Huerta, and the countless unheralded women who have fought like hell for their rights, their dignity, their families, and a myriad of progressive causes. A feisty new generation of young women is continuing that “we can do it!” tradition.

We say to the Fox/Limbaugh women-haters, shove it! We need more unruly women.

Sacramento hears Cuba report

Sun, 01 Aug 2004 04:49:00 +0000

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – “Defeating George Bush in the November election is the highest priority in building solidarity with Cuba,” Juan Lopez told a standing-room-only crowd of 50 people at a community center here July 26. Lopez, the chair of the Northern California District of the Communist Party USA, was speaking about his recent trip to the socialist island as part of a three-person CPUSA delegation.

Cubans are worried that the Bush administration will engineer a military provocation before the November elections, Lopez said.

Besides new restrictive laws on travel and remittances to Cuba, the White House has published plans to institute a “transitional government” in Cuba to privatize the economy and all the public services that have been developed since the Revolution. Lopez called for putting pressure on Congress to demand that the new regulations be overturned, and that no provocations be conducted.

Lopez told the audience that Cuba is overcoming the worst aspects of the “special period” brought on by the overthrow of the socialist countries of Europe and the tightening of the U.S. trade embargo. As an example, he cited free school lunches that have been instituted for 200,000 Cuban students, providing 25 percent of their protein and 50 percent of the their daily caloric intake, thereby ensuring that no child will be malnourished.

In 2000, the year of the struggle to return young Elian González from Miami to his Cuban father, the Cubans initiated a “battle of ideas” to elevate everyone’s political and cultural level. The aim is to fully involve the people – and especially the youth, who never experienced the harsh capitalist reality of pre-revolutionary Cuba – to expand the gains of the Revolution.

Young people who are not in school or working are being paid to go back to school, finish their education, and begin a career, Lopez said. The government has educated thousands of social workers to work with these youth and their families to address their needs.

Sixty thousand laid-off sugar workers are also being paid to continue their education and find new careers, now that the cost of producing sugar is more than what it can bring on the world market. “Not only is no child being left behind, but no human being is being left behind,” Lopez said.

Tourism, the largest source of foreign exchange, brings 2 million visitors to the island each year, but if the U.S. blockade ended, Cuban economists estimate there would be twice as many visitors. “The blockade has cost Cuba $70 billion in lost income,” said Lopez.

The delegation was also hosted by one of the numerous Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs). “The CDRs are a cross between a neighborhood watch and a neighborhood improvement association,” said Lopez. Of the 2.2 million people in Havana, 1.2 million are active in the CDRs, he said.

Lopez will speak again on Cuba at 7 p.m., on Saturday, July 31, at the Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. For more information, call (510) 251-1050.

The author can be reached at pww @ pww.org.