People Before Profit blog

Labor opposes Alito nomination

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 07:47:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) — The nation’s two labor federations have formally joined the broad coalition of foes of GOP President George W. Bush’s nomination of federal appellate judge Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney cited a wide range of anti-worker rulings on family and medical leave, OSHA, union representation and even grievance processing.

Alito’s rulings and dissents as an appellate judge in the Philadelphia-based Third Circuit Court of Appeals “reveal a disturbing tendency to take an extremely narrow and restrictive view of laws that protect workers’ rights, resulting in workers being deprived of many vital protections” on health and safety, wage and hour laws, anti-discrimination laws and retaining pensions, Sweeney’s letter to senators stated.

The Change to Win federation also formally opposed Alito.

Anna Burger, chair of Change to Win, said, “Alito’s workplace would be one where worker rights would be severely curtailed. Alito’s record indicates he would side with those who would deny workers a real voice on the job.”

Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Alito open Jan. 9.

The AFL-CIO documented 25 Alito case opinions and sent them, with Sweeney’s letter, to the Senate. They included the following:

* A 1994 case where Alito argued against overtime pay for reporters for a chain of suburban Pittsburgh newspapers because the Fair Labor Standards Act exempts workers at “small” newspapers. Alito was the minority opinion in this case.

* A 1997 Pennsylvania case where Alito’s majority opinion said corporate officers of bankrupt firms could not be held liable for unpaid wages of the workers.

* A 2002 case where Alito ruled a company had not had enough prior notice — despite 13 old job safety and health violations — of 33 new OSHA charges that it “failed to abate” on-the-job hazards. Alito threw out OSHA’s new charges.

* A 1997 case where Alito said a coal processing plant wasn’t a “mine” subject to federal health and safety rules.

* A 1991 Alito opinion overturning a National Labor Relations Board ruling that the employer involved “discriminatorily failed to recall union supporters from layoff.”

* A 1993 ruling throwing out the union election in Indiana Hospital in Indiana, Pa. The NLRB had upheld the vote and rejected the hospital’s objections, but Alito sent the case back to the board on technical grounds.

* In 1997, Alito invoked the Taft-Hartley Act in arguing against a provision in the UAW-Caterpillar contract which allows employees to perform grievance handling while on the clock. In dissenting from the majority of an 11-judge court, Alito said this “no docking” provision violates Taft-Hartley, “which criminalizes the payment of things of value by employers to labor organizations.”

* In 2000, Alito spoke for the circuit court in ruling state workers could not sue their states for violating the Family and Medical Leave Act. Alito ruled that the FMLA was a “disproportionate solution” to the problem of discrimination by the states. The AFL-CIO pointed out, “The Supreme Court later decided otherwise with respect to the family leave provisions of the FMLA,” in a decision written by the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

Sweeney’s letter noted Alito’s fellow appellate judges criticize his “excessively narrow view of worker protection and civil rights statutes.”

Besides Alito’s “disturbing tendency to take an extremely narrow and restrictive view of laws to protect workers’ rights, resulting in workers being deprived of wage and hour, health and safety, anti﷓discrimination, pension, and other important protections,” the letter said, “Alito holds federal agencies to an unrealistically high standard when they seek to enforce worker protection laws, often reversing them on hyper-technical grounds and depriving workers of important protections as a result.”

“We are also very concerned about Alito’s views on the scope of congressional power, given some of his rulings in this area, and his views about voting rights, given his criticism of the Warren Court and its reapportionment decisions,” the AFL-CIO said.

Annals of anti-Cuba terrorism

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 07:46:00 +0000

News Analysis

Five Cuban nationals came to Florida in the mid-1990s to defend their nation against terror. What they were trying to prevent is illustrated by the recently reported misdeeds of three men from Miami.

Santiago Alvarez is a Bay of Pigs veteran and Miami construction mogul. He gained publicity in August 2004 by sending two airplanes to fetch terrorist Luis Posada and three others from Panama, where they had been jailed since 2000 for preparing to kill a visiting Fidel Castro. The Panamanian president released them prematurely and Posada, no U.S. citizen, was delivered to Honduras.

Posada arrived in Miami from Mexico last March, reportedly on Alvarez’s yacht. Alvarez provided him with lawyers and talked with the press on his behalf.

Santiago Alvarez is now in jail. On Nov. 18, Broward County police confiscated 20 automatic weapons, plus grenades, a grenade launcher, ammunition, gas masks, and a silencer, all belonging to Alvarez. As employee Oswaldo Mitat was also being arrested, he blurted out, “I love the United States … these guns weren’t meant to be used against this country.” The two men face seven charges of illegal weapons possession and twice have been denied bail.

Right-wing Cuban Americans have been demonstrating against the arrests and, on Dec. 8, hundreds of them rallied inside a church. They were joined by elected officials. Alvarez’s supporters are incensed because he will be tried in Fort Lauderdale, not Miami. Prosecutors are apparently looking to convict him.

Former prosecutor Kendal Coffey told a reporter that it’s difficult to find a Miami jury “that will hand down a guilty verdict on defendants presented as freedom fighters.” Coffey is now Alvarez’s lawyer. He added, “An administration that relies so heavily on Cuban American votes shouldn’t have to flee from Cuba American juries.”

The case of Santiago Alvarez is good news for the Cuban Five. It demonstrates that bias shapes the outcome of Miami trials relating to Cuba. Last August, appeals court judges overturned the trial of the five, basing their decision on quite similar views of Miami prejudice. The U.S. is appealing that decision.

Posada, who entered the U.S. illegally, is being held in El Paso and Alvarez’s difficulties may dash his hopes for parole. Washington refuses to extradite him to Venezuela, where he is wanted for downing a Cuban airliner in 1976, and has yet to find another country to take him in. Now Posada takes on guilt by virtue of association with Alvarez.

Hector Pesquera’s terrorist proclivities put him, too, on the other side in the good fight waged by the Cuban Five. A Nov. 10 report in the Miami-based El Nuevo Herald placed the former head of the Miami FBI office, now retired, in Darien, Panama, on Sept. 3-6, 2003. He apparently joined Venezuelans, Colombians and a CIA operative to plan the killings of Venezuelan leaders, and the alleged scheming led to the assassination of Danilo Anderson on Nov. 18, 2004. Anderson, a Venezuelan prosecutor, he had been preparing to try plotters who took part in the failed April 2003 coup attempt against President Hugo Chavez.

Pesquera had led the pre-trial investigation of the Cuban Five, and news photos showed him joining Miami extremists in celebrating their initial convictions. Later on, Pesquera allegedly fixed an investigation of several Miami gunmen heading for Venezuela in a yacht, thereby derailing their trial on charges of planning to kill Fidel Castro there.

On Dec. 6, Jose Basulto, head of the Brothers to the Rescue organization, provided some inadvertent education as to the need for what the Cuban Five did in Florida. He told Miami television, “In 1962, I fired a cannon at a hotel in Cuba and so far no one has come to question me. The U.S. authorities themselves trained me in the use of the cannon and they supplied me with weapons on another occasion.” Basulto fired from a speedboat about 200 yards offshore, hitting the hotel.

Here’s a New Year’s wish, or perhaps fantasy. The Cuban Five have a new trial. Alvarez — and maybe Posada? — is a witness. The defense asks Alvarez about his reported presence aboard a speedboat in 1971 from whence issued gunfire that maimed two Cuban girls.

And was that Alvarez’s voice on the telephone four years ago, as the Cubans allege, instructing an underling, then in Cuban police hands, about bombing Havana’s Tropicana nightclub?

NYC transit workers moved MTA with 3-day strike

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 09:27:00 +0000

Gains seen, membership to vote on contract

NEW YORK—Surrounded by dozens of transit workers and his top officials, Roger Toussaint, president of Transport Workers Union Local 100, announced Dec. 27, shortly after 11 p.m., the results of his union’s Executive Board meeting: They voted overwhelmingly to accept the new contract offered by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

“By a vote of 37 in favor, four against, and one abstention, we voted overwhelmingly to approve the contract that was presented and to forward the contract to the 33,000 members of Local 100 for ratification,” Toussaint told the press.

This comes after the union struck against the MTA for three full commuting days after the authority put its “final offer” on the table. That proposed contract differed in many ways, but the main issue over which the union struck—and won—was around the issue of pensions.

“They wanted 30-62 for newcomers; we still kept it at 25-55,” explained Ronnie Santobello, who drives the B65 bus in Downtown Brooklyn. “You would had to have 30 years of service, aged 62, to retire at 100 percent. Now it will remain as 25 years of service, and you can retire at age 55.”

Also, the MTA wanted new hires to pay six percent of their salary towards retirement, but keep the rate at two percent for current workers. Local 100 saw these as life-or-death issues, fearing that such a two-tiered system would be a weapon the transit authority would use to divide and, ultimately, to destroy the union.

“They were trying to divide us,” Santobello continued. He said that current workers would still have been doing as well, but that he did not want to see new hires worse off. “That divides us … there’d be fighting within the union. I think with our new contract we’ll remain strong.”

The contract also provides for other gains: Over the next three years there will be a raise of three, four and three-and-a-half percent, respectively. Also, one of the members on hand explained, there would be a rebate to workers who paid into their pension at an old rate of 5.3 percent. This rebate, which can amount to thousands of dollars in some cases, will cover more than half of the workers.

“It provided for medical coverage, health benefits coverage … so that retirees don’t lose coverage when they move from active life to retired life,” Toussaint said. “We did agree on the establishment of a premium for health benefit contributions of 1.5 percent of wages.”

Toussaint added that the contract establishes Martin Luther King Day as a paid holiday, provides state disability insurance to workers, additional pay for workers who are assaulted on the job. For the first time ever, he said, the contract establishes paid maternity leave, and additional benefits to the spouses of those who are killed or die while working for the MTA

“It provides for widows of members who die … health benefits, and to helping improve the relations between transit workers and the Transit Authority, and establish a greater degree of respect and appreciation for the sacrifices that our members undertake in this city every single day, moving over 7-8,000,000 riders every day; waking up every day at three or four o’clock in the morning to make sure that the city moves,” Toussaint continued.

“We’re definitely in a better place. Everybody thinks it was just about the wages, but it wasn’t. It was about respect, the pension, and health care,” Santobello said. “We made a stand—not just for us—but for all unions, because as everybody knows the cops, the teachers, the firefighters, they kind of got a raw deal on their contract. That’s why … all the other unions were behind us: Because if we take a bad contract, they’re going to move it onto all the other state and city workers, like a chain of dominoes. It’s not that we wanted to strike, but they gave us no alternative.”

The next and final step is for the contract to be put to the vote of all members.

“I think it will be an overwhelming majority to ratify,” Santobello said. “I think the lifetime benefits and leaving the pension where it is alone makes it worth it.”

Santobello and other workers acknowledged the fines they might still face under the Taylor Law—which prohibits public employees from striking. The union could still be fined a million dollars for each day its members were out, and individual members could still lose two days pay for each day they did not work. Most said they were glad nonetheless, that the strike was worth it.

“It was! We had to do what we had to do. Transit didn’t believe that we were even qualified to do that, but we showed them. We showed them that we believe that we should be treated fair and equal as employees,” said Jaynelle Williams, a station agent at the Utica Avenue stop of the 4-train.

Williams continued, “That loss brought a hundred years of gain! We made history and we’re gonna be there all the way down the line.”

Urgent appeal to protest jailing of Iranian trade unionists

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 08:06:00 +0000

Iran’s Tudeh Party announced last week that the security forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran arrested a number of leaders and key activists of the Tehran Public Bus Transportation Company Trade Union on Dec. 22-23.

The transit union, which was formally launched in the nation’s capital last June, is widely regarded as the first independent trade union to be established in Iran since the early 1980s. The government has officially recognized only “Islamic Labor Councils,” organizations that operate on the basis of ideology and religious affiliation, as legal representatives of the country’s workers.

The Tudeh Party said the arrested trade unionists were charged with “attempting to disturb public order through industrial action and strike and attempting to form an illegal trade union.”

Such charges have no legal basis, the party said. At the same time, it said, “The arrest of trade union activists, who have formed a legal and open trade union in order to pursue their natural and legal rights and who have not committed any action violating the laws and regulations of the country, is not an isolated event.”

The party said the arrests were part of a broader repressive pattern: “This oppressive move against progressive trade unionists is a part of the present government’s general plan to gain control of and suppress the trade union movement in Iran. This follows the government’s recent harassment and intimidation of progressive writers, journalists, intellectuals and student activists, including their detention and arrest. The attack against the trade unions is part and parcel of the government’s oppressive moves against all social movements.”

It said all of the country’s progressive and democratic forces have condemned the regime’s actions and have joined the campaign for the release of the jailed trade unionists. It called for a mass, worldwide campaign to win their freedom, and urged “all political parties and trade union organizations across the world and international organizations defending trade union rights to raise their voices against these anti-worker and anti-democratic actions of the Iranian government.”

It called on all democratically-minded people to call or otherwise contact the embassies and diplomatic missions of the Islamic Republic of Iran in their respective countries to demand “the immediate release of all arrested trade union leaders and activists and a guarantee of freedom of activity for all independent trade unions campaigning for the rights and demands of their members.”

In the United States, protests can be directed to the Interest Section of the Islamic Republic of Iran at 2209 Wisconsin Ave. NW, Washington D.C. 20007, phone (202) 965-4990, fax (202)965-1073.

White-collar blues and the vanishing American dream

Thu, 29 Dec 2005 08:08:00 +0000

Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream By Barbara Ehrenreich Henry Holt and Co., 2005, Hardcover, 237 pp., $24

After writing her book-length description of surviving on a minimum wage in “Nickel and Dimed,” Barbara Ehrenreich has now turned her attention to the plight of unemployed middle-class white collar employees in “Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream.”

The author explains that around 2002 she first heard stories of unemployed white-collar employees in dire circumstances. She adds that these were persons who had been “members in good standing of the middle class,” who had done everything right, i.e., achievers who had earned higher degrees in management and finance and their salaries rose to the point where they became “a tempting cost cut.” Now, many have become losers who have fallen into poverty and become “a rude finger in the face of the American dream.”

Today, white-collar insecurity grows as jobs are cut, either for budget reasons, or shifted overseas to lower-paid white-collar workers in Third World countries. Many workers here who retain their jobs are subject to fewer benefits, longer work days, 10 to 12 hours in some cases, and the threat of layoffs, which are “like a perverse form of natural selection, weeding out the talented and successful as well as the mediocre.”

In an attempt to better understand their plight, Ehrenreich undertook a job search. Her goal: $50,000 per year and health benefits and no restriction on location. The author actually looked forward to an easier time than living on a minimum wage and was rudely surprised. She rapidly discovered an entire industry that has grown around white-collar unemployment, including job coaches, some charging as much as $200 per hour.

Questionnaires and tests abound, nearly all without any scientific basis, and are used by job search counselors and employers alike.

Ehrenreich chastises the “blame the victim” philosophy that permeates career workshops, seminars, counseling, and job search literature. The line says that we are responsible for “everything that occurs to us,” and the unemployed are told that they need a winning or positive attitude. The author exclaims, “It seems mercilessly cruel to tell the people who have reached some kind of personal nadir that their problem is entirely of their own making.” This viewpoint, she adds, is very convenient for those with power who occupy the high-paying jobs. It is a “flattering way” to explain the success of the so-called winners while “invalidating the complaints of the losers.”

The above approach is used nearly everywhere that she went. On one occasion, Ehrenreich explains how persons came to a session prepared to blame their misfortunes on different factors such as the economy, inhumane corporate demands on their time, etc. They were steered away from such a discussion and thinking, and they were told, “It’s not the world that needs changing … it’s you” — the pro-corporate way of viewing their situation. “It is their fault, no one else’s.”

Ehrenreich discovered a rather ominous aspect of the modern job search — the active role played by fundamentalist religion. In recent years, there has been a massive growth in the overlap between business and religion, and thousands of businesses reportedly now have prayer groups and ministries. The author discovered that some churches were using networking events for the unemployed as opportunities for proselytizing. She concludes that maybe one of the functions of the religious revival sweeping America “is to conciliate people to an increasingly unreliable work world; you take what you can get, and praise the Lord for sending it along.”

Ehrenreich describes the futility and lack of return for most of her job search efforts. It is rare to even be contacted about a job. She laments about the “unshakable, godlike, magisterial indifference of the corporate world — that drives my fellow job-seekers to despair.” Finally, the author is offered a job, an insurance sales job with AFLAC, the company with the television commercials featuring an AFLAC-quacking duck. With the job, the insurance company offers the following: no salary, no benefits, no office, and no phones. She reports that AFLAC’s offer is somewhat standard for a “non-standard” employment market that employs over 30 percent of the American workforce. The author also reports that there are tens of thousands of jobs “like this available to corporate rejects and malcontents.” These jobs without benefits and with weak bonds to employers are being filled by a growing number of former corporate employees, managers, and professionals.

She finally throws in the towel after seven months and two job offers: AFLAC and a cosmetics firm. Ehrenreich describes herself as being “overwhelmed by a sense of futility,” and later learns that most of her fellow job seekers she had encountered gave up and settled for minimal survival jobs. And as the book describes it, a formerly upward mobile American middle-class continues its slide downward, and in many cases, into poverty-level existence.

In concluding, the author describes briefly what she learned from her experience and observes, “Something has happened that cuts deep into the social contract that holds us together.” Americans have been raised to believe that “hard work will be rewarded with comfort and security,” but this is no longer true. Many middle-class Americans are sinking into the ranks of those with lower income. Ehrenreich concludes, “If anyone can testify credibly to the disappearance of the American dream, it is the white-collar unemployed — the people who ‘played by the rules,’ ‘did everything right,’ and still ended up in ruin.”

The downward cycle of the U.S. economy

Wed, 28 Dec 2005 09:46:00 +0000

“Free traders are resurrecting class war, not because they are Marxists but because they confuse free trade with global labor arbitrage. ... Committed to a 200-year-old theory that they no longer understand, free traders are cheering on the destruction of middle-class jobs and the dismantling of the ladders of upward mobility that make large income disparities politically acceptable.”

That’s not the view of a radical academic. It’s the opinion of Paul Craig Roberts, former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury during the Reagan administration in the Sept. 5 edition of CounterPunch. Robert analyzes the “vicious downward cycle of the American economy.”

Unlike Communists and other revolutionaries, Roberts does not draw the conclusion that this process is an intrinsic feature of capitalism. But when even establishment economists fear for the future of the U.S. economy, the system is indeed in grave crisis.

As Marx, Engels and Lenin stressed, capitalism is a system that, over time, necessarily leads to the concentration of ownership and wealth in fewer and fewer hands, and to growing mass poverty.

These trends do not proceed at a constant pace. For periods of time, various factors can obscure the long-term pattern. In the U.S. and Canada, for example, the powerful upsurge of militant working-class action starting in the late 1930s helped achieve broad gains in living standards and wages for millions of working people. Those gains began to be reversed under the impact of a ruling-class counteroffensive since the late 1970s.

That reversal is evident in many ways, such as the decline in wages for young workers reported by a recent Canadian Labor Congress study.

Roberts gives other examples, such as the “extraordinary increase in income inequalities” in the U.S. “Not so long ago CEOs were paid 20 times more than the average employee,” he writes. “Now some are paid hundreds of times more.” Median household incomes in the U.S. declined for a fifth straight year in 2004, mainly because of “ongoing weakness in the job market.” The U.S. poverty rate has climbed from 11.3 percent in 2000 to 12.7 percent in 2002, adding 5.4 million more persons to the poverty roll.

The majority of new U.S. jobs in the coming decade will be in domestic services that do not require a college education, Roberts says. “This is a strange job outlook for a high-tech economy allegedly benefiting from free trade. Domestic services are non-tradable. The U.S. economy has not created a net new job in tradable goods and services in the century.”

From his perspective, “free trade” has failed to stabilize U.S. imperialism by improving the lives of “native born American” workers and their families. Instead, he argues, the U.S. is declining into the status of a Third World country. “When capital and technology flow from the U.S. to China and India, the productivity of labor in China and India rises. In the U.S. it falls. Outsourcing is eliminating entire American occupations in engineering and information technology (IT).”

Roberts lays the blame on “libertarians and free traders (who) are so emotionally enamored of the market that they have forgotten that markets can as easily work against a country as for it.”

But is the problem simply “emotional”? Or is it the capitalist drive for maximum profits? As Roberts himself observes, “U.S. firms have learned that they can pay foreigners on H-1B and L-1 work visas lower salaries, force their American employees to train their foreign replacements, and then discharge their American workers. Consequently, there is double-digit unemployment among American software engineers, IT professionals and computer programmers.”

In fact, the U.S. Department of Labor is currently reserving some 52,000 high-tech job openings in U.S. firms for H-1B visa holders. They have granted over 600,000 new visas during the last five years, 39 percent of these for workers in computer-related occupations.

Noting that school systems are hiring teachers from the Philippines, India and Jamaica, Robert says, “This practice raises many questions: Does the money saved on teachers salaries go to administrators as bonuses for cost cutting? How can foreigners from outside our culture enculturate American students? What happens to enrollment in U.S. education and nursing curriculums as imported foreigners fill available positions? What happens to the laid off U.S. engineers and technical people who are displaced again, this time from teaching math and science in our schools?”

Roberts is right to warn, “Eventually, all Americans will be working for less, except the fat cats at the top.” But his questions reveal a racist outlook, denying the reality that U.S. imperialism has been built through the exploitation of generations of immigrant workers and slave labor and by using the “big stick” of military might to plunder the resources of the Third World.

Instead of arguing for policies to favor “native born Americans” (or Canadians) over Mexicans, Filipinos or Indians, as Roberts does, working people need to unite with out brothers and sisters around the planet. Rather than fearing the “dangers of class war,” we need to build a powerful, global labor fightback. And instead of shoring up U.S. imperialism, we need to fight for genuine national sovereignty, and for a global economy based on cooperation rather than the domination of a handful of transnational corporations.

Reprinted from Peoples Voice (www.peoplesvoice.ca), newspaper of the Communist Party of Canada.

An antidote to disinformation about North Korea

Wed, 28 Dec 2005 09:45:00 +0000

North Korea: Another Country By Bruce Cumings The New Press, 2004 Softcover, 241 pp. $15.95

Bruce Cumings, a history professor at the University of Chicago and a former Peace Corps volunteer in South Korea, has given us a badly needed antidote to the lies and disinformation about the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (North Korea) being spread by the media and the Bush administration. The author has observed “the deafening absence of any contrary argument” and cuts through this smokescreen of ignorance in his well-researched historical study of North Korea.

Cumings directs his book to “the reader who wishes to learn about our eternal Korean enemy.” He believes that North Korea is a nation that cannot be understood apart from its historical past, including the “terrible fratricidal war (Korean War) that has never ended”; the 1930s guerrilla struggle against the Japanese and North Korea’s eventual emergence as a state in 1945; its relations with the South; its reaction to the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union; and “its interminable daily struggle” with the United States.

The author claims to have no sympathy for the North Korean government, but instead he admits to empathy for the underdog, “which is something I can’t help.” Cumings charges the U.S. with a significant responsibility “for the garrison state that emerged on the ashes of our truly terrible destruction of the North a half a century ago.”

Yes, the “history” spoon fed to Americans completely omits the holocaust from the air carried out by U.S. bombers and fighter planes against North Korean cities during the Korean War.

American planes dropped tens of thousands of bombs and many hundreds of tons of napalm on cities in North Korea. Even Winston Churchill criticized the savagery of the American attack when he commented, “When napalm was invented in the latter stages of World War II, no one contemplated that it would be ‘splashed’ over a civilian population.” Three million North Koreans died during this conflict, and 18 out of its 22 largest cities were 50 percent to 100 percent obliterated.

Cumings notes that by 1952, most of the survivors living in central and North Korea lived in caves. North Korea continued to burrow underground, and today it has over 15,000 underground facilities, many made of hardened concrete to survive nuclear attacks and American bombs. These include factories, plane hangars, and many other kinds of installations. The author again emphasizes that North Korea is a garrison state “because of the holocaust the North experienced during the Korean War.”

The 50th anniversary of the armistice ending the Korean War came and went on July 27, 2003, and 40,000 American troops remain in South Korea, where they have been since occupying the country in September 1945.

Cumings bitterly criticizes U.S. policy towards North Korea. On human rights issues, he points out how the U.S. has been fast to criticize the Communists “while ignoring the reprehensible behavior of our allies, that is, U. S. support for dictators who make Kim Jung Il look enlightened (the Saudis, for example).”

In addition, Cumings blames American confusion on an “irresponsible media” which lacks good investigative reporters, and is often “egged on by government officials.” He also blames South Korean security forces who “have succeeded for decades in getting Americans to stare blankly at one side of the Korean civil conflict, like a pigeon with nystagmus such that its head turns only to the left.”

The author stridently criticizes and blames the Bush administration for the ongoing crisis with North Korea. He accuses Bush of walking away from groundwork laid by Clinton for the resolution of the crisis. Cumings compares the foreign policy of the Bush administration to “amateur night at a halfway house,” and fears a real danger from “a mix of situations in which Bush’s preemptive strike doctrine could trigger war.”

He also castigates the radical right for their predictions of North Korea’s imminent collapse; they are “wrong-wrong-wrong,” he says, and cites a 1999 speech by CNN International President Joe Eason, a frequent visitor to the North, who stated “these guys (North Koreans) will tough it out for centuries, just the way they are.”

Part of the book is devoted to North Korean society and its development under socialism. Modern Korea had emerged from a class-divided, highly stratified society in which a long-standing system of chattel slavery had only been abolished in 1894.

North Korea experienced what Cumings terms a “smooth” transition to socialism following World War II. He partially attributes the transitional change to a long-time Korean tradition of “sharing and mutual aid of all kinds.”

Agricultural land was collectivized while farmers were able to keep their own homes and small garden plots. He credits the gardens as greatly helping farmers during the famine of the 1990s. North Korean farmland was worked communally, and farmers received a share of the harvest based on the number of hours of work they had done.

Formally low- and middle-class families now occupied favored social positions, and formally wealthy families who remained in the North could work and earn their way back up the social ladder. Only the very bottom rung was permanently reserved for Japanese collaborators.

Cumings pays careful attention to the weather and crop disasters of the 1990s. North Korea experienced record-breaking floods (1995 and 1996) followed by an equally severe drought and famine (1997). The author believes that the food shortage problem “has provided little evidence of a collapse of state power, except for breakdowns at the local level.” And Cumings adds, even at its worst, “the famine only began to approach India’s year-in, year-out toll (in proportionate terms) of infant mortality and deaths from malnutrition or starvation which I only mention because the media’s recent habit of depicting Kim Jung Il’s frolicking among a heap of starved cadavers.”

Finally, Cumings describes a declassified CIA report on North Korea, and a part of that report which describes the achievements of that society. The report says “North Korea provides compassionate care for war orphans in particular and children in general; ‘radical change’ in the position of women (there are more college-educated women than college-educated men); genuinely free-housing; preventive medicine on a national scale accomplished to a comparatively high standard; infant mortality and life expectancy rates comparable to the most advanced countries until the recent famine; ‘no organized prostitution’ and ‘the police are difficult if not impossible to bribe.’”

Cumings book provides a valuable service with its informative and truthful portrayal of North Korea. This book is valuable for combating the inevitable lies of the Bush administration in its imperial quest for global domination. North Korea faces the very real danger of war and more suffering at the hands of a bellicose Bush administration — a very good reason for this work to be widely read and passed on to other interested persons.

NYC transit workers go back to work stronger

Sat, 24 Dec 2005 05:16:00 +0000

NEW YORK—After a three-day strike by bus and subway workers that brought NYC to a virtual standstill, Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint announced Thursday afternoon that the strike would end. Toussaint spoke after a meeting of the union’s Executive Board, which voted overwhelmingly to accept the recommendation of the New York state mediators.

“Local 100 had to walk out to stop the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s 11th hour pension ambush. We walked out strong, and we walk back stronger,” reads a statement on the Local 100 website. The strike was receiving widespread support from both labor and the general public, despite the national news spin.

In keeping with the terms of the agreement, Toussaint delivered a terse statement, saying only that the workers would return to their jobs, and thanking the city’s commuters for their patience. While both sides agreed to a media blackout as part of the conditions for going forward, there has been speculation that the union was able to force movement from the MTA on its key demands.

While Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Pataki launched an anti-union public relations blitz, most of the city’s community organizations, clergy, elected officials and a united labor movement, supported the transit workers.

New York City Council members and African American clergy denounced attacks on the majority Black and Latino union by Bloomberg, Pataki and former Mayor Ed Koch as racist and inflammatory. The mayor characterized the strikers as “thugs” and Koch compared them to terrorists.

Bloomberg repeatedly talked about the illegality of the strike under the anti-union Taylor Law (which prohibits strikes by public workers). The union countered that what was illegal was the MTA’s hard line position, especially its demand to create a “two-tier system,” where new hires would pay six percent of their salary towards retirement, while current workers would still pay two percent.

A New York 1 opinion poll showed that a majority of New Yorkers think the demands of the transit workers are fair, and a majority are also unhappy with the way the situation was handled by both the mayor and the governor. Sixty nine percent of New Yorkers say that Gov. Pataki has handled the situation poorly. Also, while forty percent of New Yorkers say the situation is both the fault of the union and the MTA, more blame solely the MTA than the union. New York 1 also broke down the poll by race, with high levels of support for the union among African American and Latino New Yorkers. The poll did not do any kind of class/income breakdown.

Another poll, by WNBC and the Marist Institute, had similar results, showing that nearly 60 percent of New Yorkers agree that the MTA was not doing enough to end the strike.

At a Dec. 21 press conference supporting the strikers, city union leaders told their stories of dealing with the city and state governments, and said the state law is biased against unions and the TWU should “stick to its guns on the pension issue.”

The union stayed unified throughout the strike: Out of some 34,000 workers, only a few hundred scabbed—despite MTA advertisements urging them to do so. Picket lines were strong and picket captains reported high morale and turnout.

Members of the city council reflected the public sentiment, with twenty-one signing on to a letter authored by Council member John Liu, chair of the transportation subcommittee, demanding the MTA and Bloomberg resolve the strike.

“It is absolutely within your power to do so,” the letter said. “If you do not, we will demand that the MTA reimburse the city for all costs incurred by the city due to the transit disruption. If the MTA does not make the reimbursement, we will work to withhold the amount of the reimbursement from annual payments made to the MTA by the city. It’s only fair.”

Support came in to the TWU office from every municipal union, including the police, who were widely reported as friendly to the strikers and whose president walked the picket line. Firefighters, called by MTA managers to put out picket line bonfires, refused to do so.

Strikers interviewed at picket sites in the Bronx, Manhattan and Brooklyn all talked about the overwhelmingly positive response of passers-by, of contributions of pizza, donuts and coffee, and of people coming to walk the picket line with them during lunch hours and after work.

The city’s central labor council was setting up a Fund for Striking Families and a separate Legal Defense Fund, to solicit donations from member unions in the city and around the state. Offers of financial and moral support also came in from unions around the country and world, according to TWU Local 100’s web site.

dmargolis@pww.org, Elena Mora (emora@cpusa.org) is the chair of the New York State Communist Party.

U.S. seeks to deny Cubas right to play baseball

Sat, 24 Dec 2005 03:18:00 +0000

The U.S. government is trying to deny the Cuban national baseball team the right to play in the inaugural World Baseball Classic that is scheduled for March 3-20, 2006. Once again the U.S. embargo is closing doors to the Cuban people, and this time in the name of baseball. Perhaps the real reason for the denial is that the U.S. government is intimidated by the powerhouse reputation of the Cuban team.

The U.S. Treasury Department told Major League Baseball of its decision on Dec. 14, and the Office of Foreign Assets Control confirmed the announcement. The move came after Cuban American members of Congress urged the Treasury to veto the license application and asked MLB to drop the Cuba team from the tournament. Participating teams are expected to gain some financial benefit, rightfully so, during the series. Therefore the Cuban team is required to apply for a license from the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which enforces the U.S. embargo against Cuba.

Treasury’s decision came as the Bush regime continues to tighten trade and travel sanctions on Havana over the past year in a declared bid to deny resources to the people of Cuba. In recent months, several Cuban music groups, academics and scientists have been denied U.S. visas.

Earlier this month, Cuban President Fidel Castro told the Panamanian press that he looked forward to the baseball games. “We will participate and demonstrate that we know what to do in baseball,” he told reporters.

The World Baseball Classic is the sport’s first World Cup-style tournament, consisting of an 18-day match up. It was originally organized to include 16 teams of mostly professional players from North and Latin America, Asia, Europe, Australia and Africa. Coordinated jointly by the commissioner’s office and the players’ union, the games are set to take place in Tokyo, Puerto Rico, Florida, Arizona and California.

“We are very disappointed with the government’s decision to deny the participation of a team from Cuba in the World Baseball Classic,” said Paul Archey, senior vice president of Major League Baseball International, and Gene Orza, chief operating officer of the major league’s Baseball Players Association. “We will continue to work within appropriate channels in an attempt to address the government’s concerns and will not announce a replacement unless and until that effort fails.”

Puerto Rico is also making an effort to reverse the decision. Fernando Bonilla, Puerto Rico’s secretary of state, told the Associated Press, “We are going to directly participate in helping so the (Cuban) delegation can come to the games in Puerto Rico.”

In Havana, Cubans on the street expressed disappointment and frustration with the unsportsmanlike behavior of the U.S. government.

“Enough already!” declared Antonio Mayeta, brother of a baseball player in Cuba. “Its unbelievable. This is about sports, not politics. In Cuba, baseball is our culture. Everyone was so anxious to see these games.”

“Everyone from Fidel to little boys are born with a bat in their hands,” explained Victor Renglon to a reporter, while sitting on a park bench in Havana.

Cuban defectors to the U.S., such as Orlando Hernandez, Livan Hernandez and starting pitcher Jose Contreras of the World Series champions, the Chicago White Sox, would most likely not be included in the Cuban national team.

Molly Millerwise, spokeswoman of the Treasury Department, told The Associated Press, “It is our policy that we do not confirm, deny or discuss licenses. Generally speaking, the Cuba embargo prohibits entering into contracts in which Cuba or Cuban nationals have an interests.”

On the other hand, Rep. Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.) has begun circulating letters to be sent to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Treasury Secretary John Snow, asking that Cuba be allowed to play.

“Lets leave the politics out of this,” Serrano said in a statement. “The World Baseball Classic should not be tainted by our grudge against Cuba’s government. Cuba produces some of the finest talent in the world and they deserve to participate.”

In a news conference last week in Dallas, the BPA’s Orza was optimistic that the Cubans will play in the tournament. “I do not think that is a serious impediment,” he said, adding that he was “very, very confident that the Cubans will play.”

Six and half years ago, Peter Angelos, a former city councilman and long time supporter of the Democratic Party, helped organize Cuba’s national baseball team visit the U.S. They played the Baltimore Orioles, the team Angelos owns, in an exhibition game, after nearly investing three years in coordinating one game during the Clinton years.

Angelos said he was not sure if baseball officials would be able to persuade the Bush administration to alter its decision. “This is a directive from those people who are running the country now,” he said. “Part of their pitch to the American people is the continued isolation of people in Cuba. I think its wrong. I think its stupid. I think what’s worse is that, once again, the U.S., this huge colossus, the strongest country in the world, is picking on this tiny, little country of 11 million. The main thing is celebrating and enjoying the game of baseball and bringing these nations together. Why should this cause a disturbance? It’s unnecessary.”

In other news, according to an International Olympic Committee, bids to host future Olympic Games in the U.S. will be damaged by this move to prevent Cuba from playing in the inaugural competition.

“It’s for baseball to decide, but if they don’t make a stand on something like that, then they will have big problems down the road,” said Dick Pound, and IOC member from Canada. “If not reversed, it would completely scupper” any bid by the United States to stage a summer or winter Olympic Games, he said.

Sen. Boxer mulls impeachment

Sat, 24 Dec 2005 03:16:00 +0000

BOXER ASKS PRESIDENTIAL SCHOLARS ABOUT FORMER WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL’S STATEMENT THAT BUSH ADMITTED TO AN ‘IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE’

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Senator_says_shes_asked_for_opinions_1220.html

Washington, D.C.– U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) today asked four presidential scholars for their opinion on former White House Counsel John Dean’s statement that President Bush admitted to an “impeachable offense” when he said he authorized the National Security Agency to spy on Americans without getting a warrant from a judge.

Boxer said, “I take very seriously Mr. Dean’s comments, as I view him to be an expert on Presidential abuse of power. I am expecting a full airing of this matter by the Senate in the very near future.”

Boxer’s letter is as follows:

On December 16, along with the rest of America, I learned that President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to spy on Americans without getting a warrant from a judge. President Bush underscored his support for this action in his press conference today.

On Sunday, December 18, former White House Counsel John Dean and I participated in a public discussion that covered many issues, including this surveillance. Mr. Dean, who was President Nixon’s counsel at the time of Watergate, said that President Bush is “the first President to admit to an impeachable offense.” Today, Mr. Dean confirmed his statement.

This startling assertion by Mr. Dean is especially poignant because he experienced first hand the executive abuse of power and a presidential scandal arising from the surveillance of American citizens.

Given your constitutional expe rtise, particularly in the area of presidential impeachment, I am writing to ask for your comments and thoughts on Mr. Dean’s statement.

Unchecked surveillance of American citizens is troubling to both me and many of my constituents. I would appreciate your thoughts on this matter as soon as possible.

Sincerely, Barbara Boxer United States Senator

Transit workers urge calls to MTA, Gov. Pataki

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 13:19:00 +0000

In a statement released this week, Transport Workers Union Local 100, the union representing New York’s bus and subway workers, called on the public to telephone the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Gov. George Pataki to urge them to “get things rolling” and settle with the union.

The TWU Local 100 statement reads as follows:

The MTA and the governor forced this strike. Call them to stop it.

For generations, a job in New York’s subways and buses was the first step on the road to the American dream. The MTA is telling us Not Any More. That’s what this strike is all about. We know how hard things are for New Yorkers. It’s hard to get around New York when the trains and buses aren’t rolling. It’s hard for us and our families too. We are losing wages, and the Mayor wants every transit worker to pay fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Easy for a billionaire. But we’re working people like you. So why is the strike still on? Ask the MTA and Governor Pataki. They are the ones who shut down New York’s lifeline. They came in at the last minute with a take-it-or-leave-it 10-year 4 percent pay cut for all future hires. They risked your livelihood and the whole NYC economy over a proposal that top legislators in both parties say is illegal. (New York Times, Dec. 20.) It’s up to the Governor and the MTA to get things rolling. Call them. Tell them to stop it. We need real leadership to get the buses and trains rolling again.

MTA: (212) 878-7274 Gov. George Pataki: (518) 474-7516

Transit workers show determination, high morale

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 05:09:00 +0000

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — All 34,000 New York City’s bus and subway workers, represented by Transport Workers Union Local 100, walked off the job in the early morning hours of Dec. 20, beginning NYC’s first transit strike in 25 years.

According to TWU workers picketing in the cold at the Coney Island subway terminal, they were there for themselves, for future transit workers and for all working-class families.

At 3 p.m., exactly 12 hours after Local 100 leadership called the strike, nearly a hundred workers picketed the Coney Island terminal. According to Edwin Kippins, a motorman for the B and Q lines, over 60 pickets — some of them much larger — were going on at train and bus yards and terminals all over the city’s five boroughs.

Hazel Daley, the picket captain, said that she was proud to be out, and that she felt there was “very good morale” from the workers and the public alike. “We haven’t seen too many people walking by — Coney Island is sort of isolated when the trains and buses aren’t running — but people driving by are showing more support than we expected.”

As if to emphasize her point, a line of cars went by moments later, all honking their horns, some with drivers giving the “thumbs up” sign.

“Other drivers asked to take some of our [picket] signs, so that they could display them in their car,” Daley said.

No one wants to strike, but everyone interviewed felt it was necessary. The transit workers said that they needed to stand up to the transit authority, which, they say, treats them with contempt.

Although it is running a $1 billion surplus, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the agency that controls the trains and buses, demanded a two-tier pension system, where new workers would pay more toward their pension than current workers for their first 10 years of service.

“It’s a divide-and-conquer strategy that [the MTA] is pulling,” Daryl Ramsey, motorman on the Q and D trains told the World. “How can you have a worker paying 6 percent of his salary to his pension, while another worker, hired only two months before, is paying only 2 percent? That’s going to be divisive.” Ramsey also said that such a disparity is simply unjust.

Another picketer named Sterling held up the back of his digital camera for this reporter to view. “Look at that,” he said, pointing to an image that showed a filthy, overflowing toilet. “That’s the toilet we’re supposed to use at the 145th street station [on the B line] in Manhattan.” Pointing out another picture, which showed a room with a filthy layer of slime on the ground, the worker explained that it was their lunch area at the same station. The slime on the ground, he explained, was raw sewage that came out of the toilet in the previous picture, when it backed up.

Kippins said this strike, if successful, would benefit all workers. “They are slowly chipping away at the benefits of everyone, especially public employees,” he said. “The fire department, the police department — if we lose, they’re the next to get hit, and they know that.”

Daley said that she sensed a lot of support from other sections of labor. This support was on view the night before, at a rally of thousands of people to support the TWU. At the rally, leaders of public and private unions, including the City University professors, the building trades, Unite Here, the Screen Actors Guild, the Teachers Union and others all came out to pledge support in the event of a strike.

Daley pointed to a group of police officers who were there and said that they had been very friendly and supportive. Their union, the Patrolman’s Benevolent Association, supports the TWU. One of the officers, when questioned, said that he was on duty, and was not allowed to say he supported the strike.

The workers are under fierce assault. The mayor, the governor, and many others are demanding that the Taylor Law be enforced. This law fines public workers two days pay for every day on strike.

“There are some things higher than the law,” TWU President Roger Toussaint told the previous night’s demonstration. “One of those things is justice. If Rosa Parks had obeyed the law, many of us who drive the buses would have to sit in back of them.”

One of the Coney Island workers said that he was willing to pay the fines, if “push came to shove.”

“It’s worth it,” he said. “I’ve been working for the MTA for eight years. I have decades to go. It’s worth it. We have to draw the line.”

NYC transit workers forced to strike!

Wed, 21 Dec 2005 09:20:00 +0000

NEW YORK CITY - With a one billion dollar surplus, contract between the MTA and Transport Workers Union Local 100 should have been a no brainier.

Sadly that has not been the case.

Our contract expired midnight on Dec. 15. In an attempt to save Mass Transit and in deference to our riders, we postponed our deadline and attempted to continue talking to the MTA.

From the beginning, the MTA approached these negotiations in bad faith, demanding arbitration before even trying to resolve the contract. Hours before contract expiration, the MTA got rid of its one billion dollar surplus -- a surplus which we believe continues to be understated by some one hundred million dollars.

The MTA knew that reducing health and pension standards at the authority would be unacceptable to our union. They knew there was no good economic reason for their hard line on this issue - not with a billion dollar surplus. They went ahead anyway, supported by the Bloomberg administration which wants to overrun Municipal Labor Unions and all City workers with down pressed wages and gutted health benefits and pension plans.

This has been combined with continued attempts by the MTA, joined by the Governor and the Mayor, to intimidate and threaten our members and their families.

This is a fight over whether hard work will be rewarded with a decent retirement -- over the erosion or eventual elimination of health benefit coverage for working people. And it is a fight over dignity and respect on the job. A concept that is very alien to the MTA.

Transit workers are tired at being under appreciated and disrespected.

The Local 100 Executive Board has voted overwhelmingly to extend strike action to all MTA properties effective immediately.

All Local 100 representatives and shop stewards are directed to report to their assigned strike locations picket lines or facility nearest you immediately.

To our riders, we ask for your understanding forbearance. We stood with you to keep token booths open, to keep conductors on the train and oppose fare hikes. We now ask that you stand with us. We did not want a strike. Evidently the MTA, governor and the Mayor did.

We call on all good will New Yorkers, the Labor Community, and all working people to recognize that our fight is their fight, and to rally in our support with solidarity activities and events. And to show the MTA that TWU does not stand alone.

- Roger Toussaint, President, TWU Local 100

Germany: Another step toward left unity

Wed, 21 Dec 2005 09:19:00 +0000

BERLIN — There was virtually untroubled joy in September, when the new “Left,” consisting of two cooperating parties, received 4.2 million votes, 8.7 percent of the total, enabling it to send the unprecedented number of 54 representatives to the Bundestag. But the road to unity of the two had many bumps to overcome, and the weekend congress of the Left Party-PDS in Dresden aimed at overcoming many of them. The going was not always smooth, but a big step forward was taken all the same.

The Dresden gathering involved one party to the desired unification, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), which had re-christened itself “The Left” (or, in the East, “The Left-PDS”), a step demanded by the other party, the Electoral Alternative for Jobs and Social Justice (WASG), if it were to agree to support a single slate in the past elections.

Up till now, this unity for one slate had been basically an election strategy, a very successful one, as it turned out, for it led to the large united caucus in the Bundestag. But from the beginning the ultimate aim was to form a single party, incorporating the PDS, now called the Left Party or Left Party-PDS, with its firmly-established apparatus and strong voting support in East Germany (about 25 percent), and the newer, smaller, largely West German WASG, with its angry union men and women, its disgruntled Social Democrats, and an assortment of left-wing groupings. Both parties are vital ingredients.

In early December, key leaders of both sides signed an agreement on complete unification by July 2007. The main function of the Dresden Congress was to approve this agreement. It did just that, with enthusiasm, by and large, for this should firmly establish a strong left opposition on the German political map. Several top leaders of the WASG, including its very popular spokesperson Oskar Lafontaine, head of the Social Democratic Party until he quit in disgust at its turn to the right, were given a very warm welcome in Dresden.

But the bumps in the process cannot be overlooked; some could be quite hazardous. According to German electoral law, if two parts of one electoral slate oppose each other in even a single state election, then their joint presence in the Bundestag must be ended. And the small but persistent WASG group in the city-state of Berlin, with about 800 members, wants to do just that. In next year’s state election it wants to oppose the Left-PDS, as this party is called in Berlin, where it has 10,000 members. If the WASG members stick to this position they could scuttle the entire unification plan in all Germany. A somewhat similar situation threatens in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania.

A big policy debate is involved. Those are the only two states where the Left-PDS is in a ruling coalition, in both cases together with the Social Democrats. Especially in Berlin, as part of the government, the PDS has been able to fight through a number of improvements like cut-price tickets on public transportation and cheap theater tickets for the unemployed or for keeping some state-owned enterprises like child care centers and public transportation from being privatized. But it was also forced to join in many unpopular decisions aimed at balancing the budget of the bankrupt city: increasing hours and cutting wages of city employees, for example.

The 800 WASG members, or most of them, oppose such compromises and want the Left-PDS to quit the coalition government if they are to support it next year. The PDS leaders say this would lead to a far more conservative government in the city with far worse conditions. Many personal animosities are also involved; some WASG members had quit the PDS because of its position on making compromises.

Complicating the problem is the fact that within the Left-PDS, many members also oppose membership in coalitions with the Social Democrats, who were responsible for so many harsh laws during their government years with the Greens from 1998 until this fall, and who are evidently continuing the same anti-labor, anti-jobless, anti-pensioner policies with their new right-wing partners led by Angela Merkel.

Leaders of the Left-PDS like Gregor Gysi and its chairman, Lothar Bisky, seem to be speculating on the unified new “Left” party joining with Social Democrats and perhaps the Greens in a new “socially-minded” German government after the 2009 elections — or before then if the present “grand coalition” falls apart. There is a definite split between those who say we should “get along as well as possible under the prevailing circumstances in Germany, improving conditions where we can — and when possible from government positions” while others, basically the left-wingers, say we must continue fighting against such “prevailing circumstances,” in other words, fight for improvements but also keep fighting capitalism, which can never solve basic problems.

This division is not between the WASG and the Left-PDS but rather within the latter, and was clearly visible at Dresden, though differences were largely patched up for the time being. Indeed, it was Lafontaine from the WASG who asked, “Since when are the Social Democrats socially-minded?” We can never join with them, he insisted, until they are willing to scrap their whole program of soaking the poor, aiding the wealthy and sending German soldiers all around the world where they don’t belong.

This issue was not and could not be resolved in Dresden, but did not lead to any serious split. There were signs of discontent, however, including calls for more transparency on the part of the leadership, which, it was said, inclines to present ready-made decisions for congresses to give their OK to, rather than debating them democratically.

The job of party manager, a key post, was assigned to Dietmar Bartsch, for example, although many held his weak strategy responsible for the party’s election disaster in 2002. He was voted in despite these reservations, but with a vote of only 64.3 percent. An even bigger embarrassment was the executive committee’s choice for party treasurer, a man, till then relatively unknown to the membership, who turned out to have had connections with the “Stasi” when working in GDR foreign trade offices. Better leadership should have made a less controversial choice. In the end, although he got 68.5 percent of the vote, he asked to have his position suspended until the records could be checked so at least temporarily to avoid further embarrassment.

Differences among the members certainly remained, but in the end many improvements were promised and positive decisions were made on issues about which everyone agreed: German soldiers must leave Afghanistan and clear out of the German base in Uzbekistan; the tuition fees soon to be charged at colleges and universities in what had been free college education must be opposed; cooperation must be sought with the many non-governmental organizations fighting on a variety of issues — globalization, the rights of labor, the unemployed, the pensioners, the environmentalists; and young members must be sought and brought into leadership. The Left-PDS already has many positions as mayor or town and city councilor, especially in eastern Germany. It must increase this number and gain more seats in coming elections in six German states in 2006, and must learn to fight for people’s rights in these positions even when financial support from the government is sharply decreased.

Above all, the two parties, the Left-PDS and the WASG, with their joint caucus of 54 seats in the Bundestag and in alliance with many a battle outside the government, must be ready for rough new attacks on the living standards of most Germans. This, it was stated many times, will cement their sense of togetherness and make complete unification by 2007 a success.

Sailor, peace activists outraged by Pentagon spying

Wed, 21 Dec 2005 09:19:00 +0000

Navy sailor Pablo Paredes and San Diego peace activists said they were outraged to learn of the domestic spying by the Department of Defense. NBC News revealed the Pentagon spying last week. A rally in support of Paredes, who was denied Concientious Objector status, court martialed and later received a general discharge, for his opposition to the Iraq war, was one of the events targeted for spying by the Pentagon.

In its Dec. 13 report, NBC reported that it had obtained a 400-page database collected by the military that focused on anti-war protests and demonstrations aimed at countering military recruiting. NBC made available an 8-page excerpt of the database that included one entry from San Diego: a report about a planned support demonstration for war resister Pablo Paredes during his Court Martial at 32nd Street Naval Station here last May.

“The idea that support for a person who objects to war as a matter of conscience is considered by the military to be a ‘threat’ is really an admission that there is no ‘noble cause’ to support the war. I think the military is afraid, not because my supporters are a threat in a military sense, but because they know that the justifications they use to motivate people for war do not stand up to scrutiny,” Paredes said in a press statement, Dec. 20.

Local activists and organizations involved in supporting Pablo Paredes and in ‘counter-recruitment’ work at schools issued a joint statement that characterized the database as “…one more thread in a fabric that includes planted ‘news’ leaks, ‘news’ articles written, paid for and planted in newspapers, intentional misinformation, and other ‘psy-ops’ techniques that have been used to shore up war policies that cannot stand on their merits.”

Speaking on behalf of the San Diego Coalition for Peace and Justice, Carol Jahnkow said, “This intelligence effort by the Pentagon is aimed at people who are engaged in political speech—exactly the kind of activities that are protected by the Constitution. The reason for that protection is to make sure that the power of government isn’t used to intimidate free expression of opposing points of view. But we will not be intimidated. We worked to support Pablo, and we are working to make sure that school-age kids know that they have the right to keep their schools from giving personal information about them to the military, and that they have access to facts that will allow them to assess the moral issues involved in war in general and in the Iraq war in particular. We will continue to call for an end to this illegal and immoral war until all of our troops are home.”

Kate Yavenditti, of the National Lawyers Guild said, “This shows the danger to civil rights posed by legislation like the USA PATRIOT Act that is rife for misuse. Have local authorities been asked to aid or participate in this kind of surveillance? Would they if asked? [San Diego] Mayor Sanders and Chief Lansdowne should speak up and assure our community that they will defend and protect our rights, and will not participate in spying on political activists.”

For more information: http://www.defendpablo.org/

NYC heads for a transit strike

Tue, 20 Dec 2005 11:02:00 +0000

On the evening of Dec. 15, just one hour before the contract expiration deadline, MTA board chairman and billionaire real estate developer Peter Kalikow arrived at the negotiations. Kalikow presented what he later characterized as a “final offer” to 34,000 NYC transit workers. This offer provided for a wage increase of 3 percent in each of the contract’s three years, but included give backs aimed, primarily, at new hires. Under the MTA proposal medical co-pays would increase, and, new hires would have to pay 1 percent of their salary as a premium for basic benefits that are now free. New hires would also receive an inferior pension that would increase retirement age from 55 to 62.

Following post midnight bargaining with Kalikow, TWU Local 100 President Roger Toussaint presented the MTA’s offer to the union’s executive board. Characterizing Kalikow’s offer and his late entry into the talks as provocations, Toussaint proposed, and the executive board approved, a resolution authorizing a strike at two Queens bus lines to begin at 12:01 a.m. on Monday Dec. 18, to be followed by a strike of the entire system beginning the following morning, should no agreement be reached.

Over the life of the last contract health benefit costs have been considerably less then the budgeted amount, the pension system covering most transit workers is sound, and the MTA is running a budget surplus that is reportedly as high as $1.5 billion. In addition, the city, state and national economic pictures are all showing modest improvement. Why, then is the MTA demanding that the workers accept give backs and lousy wage increases?

Many analysts believe that the MTA’s intransigence is ideologically driven, part of an agenda that goes way beyond the 34,000 NYC transit workers immediately affected.

In this view, the MTA’s hard-line position is part of a nationwide drive by the forces of capital, under the aegis of the likes of Kalikow, NYC Mayor Bloomberg, President Bush, et al, to drive down the living standards of working people and thus direct more and more of the working people’s money into their own pockets. In short, it is a basic fight over how society’s resources will be allocated. If transit workers in New York City, members of what is widely acknowledged to be one of the most militant and influential unions in the nation, are forced to accept this it will be a major achievement for the employing class, whose aim is to force working people to abandon the notion that the conditions of living and working for themselves and their families will continuously improve, and instead accept the inevitability of the decline in these conditions.

TWU’s leaders, however, see this struggle in similar terms and fully understand what is at stake, their careful and deliberate planning and the elegant strategies now being played out bear witness to this.

The union’s leaders have expressed their determination to avoid a strike and are exhausting every single legal means at their disposal before calling one, system-wide. NY Governor George Pataki and Bloomberg, who are seen by many observers as putting their political agendas ahead of the public welfare, have responded provocatively; threatening the transit workers and their union with stiff sanctions for violating the anti-strike provisions of New York States Taylor Law. For its part the union has declared that if there is a strike it will have been started by the MTA’s law-breaking, including its demand for new pension tier, in violation of the Taylor Law, and its bad faith bargaining.

Meanwhile, the union is gearing up for the fight. Top TWU leaders have been conducting intensive strategy sessions with the leaders of New York City’s major unions. Funds are being marshaled to build a war chest, and the broader NYC labor movement is weighing in with moral, political and material support. Union organizers are working round the clock on final preparations, detailed instructions for system shutdown have been issued and members in the field are already receiving their strike duty assignments.

Everyone should realize what is at stake here, and what the cost of defeat will be, not just for transit workers but for all working people.

Gary Bono (gbono@cpusa.org) is a transit worker and member of TWU Local 100.

Chilean Communists hold election balance

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 10:39:00 +0000

After its central committee met on Dec. 14, the Communist Party of Chile (CPC) put forth a number of minimum demands to the plurality-winning candidate Michelle Bachelet as a condition for support. Bachelet, candidate of the Socialist Party, got 46 percent of the vote, followed by the millionaire center-right candidate Sebastián Piñera, whom she will face in a second round in January 2006, with 25 percent.

The other two candidates, extreme right Pinochet-supporter Joaquín Lavín and left candidate Tomás Hirsch, received 23 percent and 6 percent, respectively.

The CPC’s first demand is a commitment to reform the electoral system from a two-coalition, winner-take-all system, to one of proportional representation. Hirsch, chairman of the Humanist Party and presidential candidate of the Junto PODEMOS Más coalition, which include the CPC, said after the Dec. 11 elections that if Chile had a real proportional representation system, the PODEMOS coalition would’ve gotten eight seats in the national parliament.

The system in place today, which was put in place by the Pinochet dictatorship, forces smaller parties to join the center-left or right-wing coalition. The ruling center-left Coalition of Parties for Democracy, dominated by the Socialists and Christian Democrats, has rejected a broader left-center coalition with the Communists.

In the area of labor, the Communists are arguing for labor law reform which would give “the right to collective bargaining to all Chilean workers,” the right of unions to represent workers in more than one company and “the effective right to strike.”

The CPC wants the government to use the budget surplus to raise to raise the pensions of retirees that get the minimum amount by 100 percent as well doubling the supplemental pensions for seniors and the disabled.

The Communists are calling on Bachelet to oppose a mining project that would adversely impact on communities and environment of the original peoples of the Southern Cone of South America.

Lastly, they want a commitment from the Socialist candidate to work closely with the human rights organization to truly address the issues of the victims of the Pinochet dictatorship. The victims and families of those disappeared and killed want a full accounting and punishment for those guilty of human rights violations during the 17-year dictatorship, starting with Augusto Pinochet. Some forces from the right all the way to Socialist Party leaders have pushed for a policy of “putting it all behind us, and moving on.”

The two rightist candidates, who have now joined forces, polled 185,000 votes more than Bachelet. She will need the 372,000 votes of the PODEMOS coalition to win the presidency.

Political pundits are saying that there is little difference in the policies of the center-left Bachelet and the center-right Piñera. Both candidates support neoliberal economic policies. Lavín, who now heads Piñera’s campaign, came to fame as one of the “Chicago boys” — the group of economists who implemented neoliberal, trickle-down policies for the Pinochet dictatorship, which included outlawing trade unions and the minimum wage, as well as privatizing the country’s social security system.

Hirsch announced shortly after the elections that his Humanist Party will cast a “null vote” in the January elections. Guillermo Teillier, chairman of the CPC, said that he was saddened the Humanist Party took that position without consulting the rest of the coalition, but agreed that “neither candidate gives us any guarantee of anything.”

U.S. Senate rejects reauthorization of Patriot Act; a huge defeat for Bush

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 10:38:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate on Friday rejected attempts to reauthorize several provisions of the USA Patriot Act as infringing too much on Americans' privacy and liberty, dealing a huge defeat to the U.S. administration and Republican leaders. In a crucial vote early Friday, the bill's Senate supporters were not able to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a threatened filibuster by Senators Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and their allies. The final vote was 52-47.

President George W. Bush, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Republicans congressional leaders had lobbied fiercely to make most of the expiring Patriot Act provisions permanent, and add new safeguards and expiration dates to the two most controversial parts: roving wiretaps and secret warrants for books, records and other items from businesses, hospitals and organizations such as libraries.

Feingold, Craig and other critics said that wasn't enough, and have called for the law to be extended in its present form so they can continue to try and add more civil liberties safeguards. But Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert have said they won't accept a short-term extension of the law.

If a compromise is not reached, the 16 Patriot Act provisions expire on Dec. 31.

Human Rights Week around the nation

Fri, 16 Dec 2005 03:33:00 +0000

What follows is but a small sampling of the scores of actions that took place across the country the week of Dec. 3-10. Look to “Online Extra” on the PWW’s web page, www.pww.org, for additional reports.

Philadelphia — Union members and community activists welcomed AFL-CIO President John Sweeney at a Dec. 6 event sponsored by the Philadelphia Central Labor Council, and focusing on the Employee Free Choice Act (HR 1696). “Unions lift up the standards for all workers and 50 million workers would join a union if given the opportunity,” said Sweeney.

Boston — Thousands of unionists and supporters braved bitter cold Dec. 8 to march from Boston Common to a rally on the State House steps, highlighting anti-worker attitudes of Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, President Bush, corporate giants Wal-Mart and Verizon Wireless and the Harborside Nursing Home in Wakefield.

Arizona — In Tucson, Jobs with Justice activists held a picket line Dec. 10 in support of workers harassed by management at Desert Diamond Casino. The Border Action Network led a march and rally of over 150 demanding immigration reform, an end to persecution and deaths of migrants, a halt to militarization of border communities, respect for workers’ rights, and fair trade. BAN also held actions in Douglas and Nogales. In Phoenix, the Arizona AFL-CIO held a spirited rally of over 200 at Phoenix College, supporting HR 1696 and a new voter initiative to raise the minimum wage.

San Francisco — At a City Hall press conference Dec. 5, S.F. Labor Council head Tim Paulson called for citywide actions to uphold workers’ rights on the job, while Peter Olney of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union urged support for over 600 almond workers facing an aggressive anti union campaign at Blue Diamond Growers.

Oakland, Calif. — Over 200 gathered at the First Unitarian Church Dec. 6 for a Workers’ Rights Hearing followed by a march to City Hall, where the City Council pledged to take up a proposed ordinance to assure Comcast workers’ labor rights.

Wichita Falls, Texas — A Dec. 9 rally sponsored by UAW Local 2157 demanded justice for Delphi workers. Delphi seeks to join a growing list of major American companies using bankruptcy to void their contracts with workers, both active and retired, while rewarding the mismanagement of top executives.

Washington, D.C. — Thousands of workers and their allies descended upon the White House for a Dec. 8 march and rally organized by the AFL-CIO. Demonstrators demanded that President Bush and the Republican-run Congress support U.S. workers’ rights. “The right to organize has been destroyed,” said AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson, adding, “Right-wing politicians cut back the law to nothing. And corporations trample on our freedom like it’s their personal doormat.”

Berkeley honors longtime City Councilmember

Fri, 16 Dec 2005 03:32:00 +0000

BERKELEY, Calif. — It was like a big, loving family reunion as community leaders and activists streamed into St. Paul AME Church Dec. 10 to pay tribute to Maudelle Shirek, now 94, who left the City Council last year after 20 years of service. Speaker after speaker recounted the ways Shirek had profoundly affected the course of their lives.

“She taught me why my life had to be for social justice,” Rep. Barbara Lee told the crowd as she described how Shirek had mentored her during Lee’s years as a UC Berkeley student and in her earliest forays into social activism.

Of Shirek’s effect on former Congressman Ronald Dellums — now a candidate for mayor of Oakland — Lee observed, “Ron would never have gone to Congress and served so brilliantly for 27 years without Maudelle’s inspiration.”

“I have grown into who I am largely by watching her,” said Berkeley Citizens’ Action co-chair and long-time friend Jesse Anthony. “The Maudelles of the world are the ones who help us understand that a new day is coming, that the world can be better and we have a responsibility to make it so.”

A surprise participant was Robert Chambers, candidate for the U.S. House from Iowa’s 5th Congressional District. Chambers is running to replace Rep. Steve King, the extreme right-wing Republican who last fall blocked Lee’s motion in Congress to name the Berkeley Post Office after Shirek, citing her association with progressive causes. Saying that King doesn’t speak for all of Iowa, he said, “I extend an apology to Maudelle, to Barbara Lee and to the people of Berkeley.” The crowd burst into applause.

Shirek herself drew a standing ovation as she declared, in the powerful, resonant voice for which she is noted, “The reports of my demise are greatly exaggerated. Like Santa, I’m watching who’s good — like working for affordable housing — and who’s not.”

Among several proclamations and certificates was one presented by Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates declaring Dec. 10 “Maudelle Shirek Day.” The City Council has voted unanimously to name Old City Hall for her. A mural is being commissioned for the building, depicting the history of African Americans in the city, with Shirek as the central figure.

The program was chaired by Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson and Berkeley City Councilmember Max Anderson. Outstanding performances were contributed by vocalist Anna de Leon, writer/performer Aya de Leon, the Roots of Unique Awareness Children’s Choir and singers of the Young Adult Project.