People Before Profit blog

Bringing democracy to Cuba: chocolate and perks

Sat, 23 Dec 2006 07:56:00 +0000

Between 1996 and 2005, the U.S. government handed out $75 million for exporting Washington’s version of democracy to Cuba. Because Cuba has laws against citizens taking money from hostile foreign powers, the funds, authorized by the Helms Burton Law of 1996, have had to be dropped off on this side of the Florida Straits.

Grants have gone to political organizations, nongovernmental organizations and universities to support opposition groups in Cuba, provide political information and “humanitarian aid,” and train librarians and journalists. Funding was made available for Cuban young people to study in the United States.

However, Representatives William Delahunt (D-Mass.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), critics of Bush restrictions on Cuba, asked the General Accounting Office to review operations within what some supporters of Cuba in South Florida refer to as a “cottage industry.” A 63-page report issued Nov. 15 points to negligible results, wasted money or worse.

The U.S. Agency for International Development awarded 17 grants over nine years totaling $37.3 million to 12 Cuba-specific NGO’s, grants worth $20.5 million to 12 regional NGO’s, and $7.6 million to seven universities. USAID on its own initiative continued 28 of 40 grants, augmenting initial funding by an average of 800 percent and extending completion dates. Tellingly, 95 percent of the grants, totaling $61.9 million, were awarded without competition.

The State Department did utilize competitive processes as it divided $8.1 million among four organizations. Grants awarded by the National Endowment for Democracy were off limits for the GOA because of the purportedly private nature of that entity.

The report found that staff and grant managers benefited from extra stipends, lavish reimbursement for travel and meetings, and the selling off of goods intended for Cuba. Bush administration proposals to spend $80 million over two years under its Assistance to a Free Cuba plan add urgency to further investigation.

Rep. Delahunt, soon to be chair of the House International Relations Investigation Subcommittee, has promised to use the GAO findings as a take-off for early congressional hearings. According to William LeoGrande, professor of government at American University, “The money that Congress has allocated [for political change in Cuba] has almost always been spent more in the U.S. than in Cuba, and has really been more a form of political patronage than anything else.”

USAID, for example, awarded Miami’s Florida International University $1.6 million over seven years to train journalists. Some 214 Cuban students began correspondence courses or video workshops but only four of them completed a course, according to the Miami Herald’s Oscar Corral. Georgetown University received $400,000 and anticipated $400,000 more to admit 20 students from Cuba. In three years only one Cuban student has enrolled, at an annual cost of $112,000.

Loyola University in Chicago received $425,000 from USAID in 2004 to teach English to Cubans. No students materialized. In 2005, USAID gave Creighton University $750,000 to devise a model court for property claims in post revolutionary Cuba. Law professors at Nebraska University reportedly know little about property arrangements in Cuba, but Adolfo Franco, director of USAID’s Latin America program, graduated from Creighton.

Florida’s “Group for the Support of Democracy” spent some of its $7 million largesse on computer games for personnel at the U.S. Interests Section to hand out in Cuba. “I’ll defend that until I die,” said executive director Frank Hernández-Trujillo. “That’s part of our job, to show the people in Cuba what they could attain if they were not under that system.”

“Cuban Democratic Action” in Miami sent mountain bikes, leather coats, cashmere sweaters, crabmeat and Godiva chocolates to Cuba. Juan Carlos Acosta, the group’s director, explained, “These people are going hungry. They never get any chocolate there.” He bought a chainsaw with taxpayer money to remove a downed tree in front of his office.

Noting that government money is used to pay travelers up to $20 per pound to carry material to Cuba, Rep. Flake told reporters that it would be cheaper instead to get rid of the travel restrictions.

“Our concern is the program’s efficacy,” said Rep. Delahunt at a news conference. He took pains to condemn the repression that supposedly prevails in Cuba and conceded the “challenge” in getting literature and educational material to the island.

UN upholds rights of disabled

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 11:27:00 +0000

UNITED NATIONS — The UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the first human rights treaty of the 21st century, here Dec. 13.

Outgoing UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said through a spokesperson that the day was a dawn of “an era in which disabled people will no longer have to endure the discriminatory practices and attitudes that have been permitted to prevail for all too long.”

Annan added that the treaty, “the most rapidly negotiated treaty on human rights in the history of international law,” was pushed forward by disabled people themselves.

The treaty, which defines disabled people as those with “long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments,” will go into effect as soon as 20 state parties ratify it. The treaty has 50 articles covering virtually all aspects of human rights.

There have been separate, somewhat opposing camps internationally in promoting human rights. “Country-specific resolutions,” most notably favored by the United States and Europe, single out certain states and examine their human rights records. Multilateral treaties provide a different approach: Nations are convinced to sign them and to ratify them. States are then required, by their own agreement, to abide by international human rights law.

dmargolis @ pww.org

Dangerous schemes

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 10:53:00 +0000

If I believed in conspiracies, I might say that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s rightist president, was a CIA agent, working to isolate his country from the civilized world and set the stage for a military attack on it.

Ahmadinejad’s government held a “conference” on the Holocaust, as the World War II fascist genocide perpetrated against Europe’s Jewish people is universally known. It was advertised as an event that would present “both sides” on the issues — which is like saying that one might have a conference assessing both sides of slavery in the U.S. that featured only praise of slavery’s “positive accomplishments” and denial of its critics and the millions who perished under its brutal sway.

The Tehran meeting included no one defending the indisputable historical facts — that the Hitler regime and its allies organized a war of extermination against all Jewish people whom they could hunt down in their occupied areas, that the methods they used ranged from roaming murder detachments, to mobile poison gas vans, to what became the major and most efficient means of slaughter: poison gas chambers in concentration camps in which millions were exterminated and cremated after gold teeth and anything else of possible value was taken from their corpses.

That is history. Its causes and consequences may be debated, but not the fact that it happened.

The number 6 million, which derives from analysis of the Nazis’ own records, may if anything have been an underestimation, since recent figures on the Soviet Union have raised the death toll from 20 million to 27 million.

But numbers aren’t the central point. Neither are “interpretations” that the gas chambers could not have been constructed and other absurdities that Hitler fascist supporters have subsidized for decades and which were again paraded in Tehran.

The point rather is that Ahmadinejad believes he can influence world public opinion by bringing to Tehran KKKer David Duke and others of his ilk rather than U.S. and global peace activists (some of Jewish background) who have actively opposed Bush administration maneuvers to launch a war against his country.

If he were interested in helping the Palestinian people, why did his government block the attendance of Khaled Kasab Mahameed, who directs the Arab Institute for Holocaust Research and Education in Nazareth, which studies the effects of the Holocaust on Israeli-Palestinian relations? Mahameed was prepared to challenge directly the motley crew of Holocaust deniers from Europe, Australia and the U.S.

Instead Ahmadinejad greeted and tried to legitimize thinly disguised racists and fascists from many countries as if he were their patron and supporter, even though most of them espouse “theories” that would portray virtually all Muslims, including his own people, as racial inferiors.

In 1953, the CIA with British support overthrew Iran’s elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, and in effect made the Shah into an all powerful dictator, savagely suppressing the Tudeh (Communist) Party and all secular center and left forces. In the political vacuum created by the dictatorship, a section of the Islamic clergy became a center for opposition, and when the Shah was overthrown in 1978, a clerical Islamic Republic was established.

What would Iran be like today if Mossadegh had not been overthrown and the nation’s oil wealth had been used for social development? What if the Reagan administration had not supported Saddam Hussein’s war of aggression against the clerical regime after the overthrow of the Shah? It is very doubtful that the Iranian people would be suffering today under the unpopular regime of Ahmadinejad, which has imprisoned labor leaders and suppressed student dissent.

Like David Duke, for whom anti-Jewish and anti-Black racism has been a racket for 30 years, Ahmadinejad has invested in anti-Semitism to try to distract his people from their deepening economic crisis and perhaps to “corner the market” in this niche of the racist business. In the process, he has given the Bush administration a major propaganda victory and insulted his own people, all Jewish people regardless of their views, and all anti-fascists and progressives of all backgrounds and nationalities.

In a sense, Presidents Bush and Ahmadinejad need and reinforce each other. The American and Iranian peoples need neither one.

Norman Markowitz is a history professor at Rutgers University.

Striking Goodyear workers seek global support

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 07:09:00 +0000

CLEVELAND (AP) — Birgit Birgersson-Brorsson, a union officer for IF Metall in Sweden, spent an afternoon recently with strikers on a Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. picket line. Wood scraps burning in a barrel helped keep them warm.

She came a long way to do that.

“I think it’s very important,” she said. “Companies seem to move plants to Baltic countries and China. Companies are working together worldwide and we need to work together, too.”

Strikers against Goodyear are trying to use their union’s international ties to raise awareness of their two-month strike. The Pittsburgh-based United Steelworkers on Dec. 5 brought a friendly seven-member labor delegation from Sweden to visit strikers in Akron, where Goodyear is based and where it has a small manufacturing plant.

In all, about 12,000 Goodyear workers are on strike in North America, including at a plant in Fayetteville, N.C.

Birgersson-Brorsson, 46, used the visit to show support.

“We don’t have many strikes in Sweden. I would like to tell them don’t give up. It’s about human rights, really,” she said.

Since the strike began, Goodyear has been making tires at some of its North American plants with nonunion and temporary workers as well as some managers. The company is counting on production at its international plants to help supply North American customers.

Goodyear has said it intends to close its Tyler, Texas, tire plant by next year. The union wants all plants protected from closing. The USW also strongly objected to a company proposal for creating a retirees’ health care trust, which the union argues shortchanges retirees.

Goodyear executives have said they are seeking a contract that will help the company be globally competitive.

In 2005, about $9.1 billion of Goodyear’s $19.7 billion of net sales, or about 46 percent, came from its North American Tire segment. Goodyear has operations in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia.

“It’s a global customer base,” Goodyear spokesman Ed Markey said. The company has about 80,000 employees globally.

That’s not lost on the Steelworkers.

“To win this fight, one of the things we have to do is engage other unions internationally. It’s an opportunity to alert other unions about the struggle here,” said Gerald Fernandez, assistant to the USW president for international solidarity.

The USW has recently signed strategic alliances with unions in Australia, Brazil, Germany and Mexico to coordinate bargaining and organizing with common employers, to support each other during strikes and disputes with common employers and to develop activities and policies.

“It’s a way of expanding a fight for our members and retirees outside the borders of the United States. It’s kind of difficult to fight a corporation exclusively here when it’s certainly got the ability to generate money in other countries,” Fernandez said.

He said the union will have other international delegations come to the United States and will send groups of Goodyear strikers to Europe and South America, where Goodyear has operations. A delegation recently was in Brazil.

The post-abundance era

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 10:51:00 +0000

Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, foreign policy analysts have struggled to find a term to characterize the epoch we now inhabit. Although the “post-Cold-War era” has been the reigning expression, this label now sounds dated and no longer does justice to the particular characteristics of the current period. Others have spoken of the “post-9/11 era,” as if the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were defining moments for the entire world. But this image no longer possesses the power it once wielded — even in the United States.

I propose instead another term that better captures the defining characteristics of the current period: the Post-Abundance Era.

If there is one thing that most inhabitants of the late 20th century shared in common, it was a perception of rising global abundance in virtually all fields: energy, food, housing, consumer goods, fashion, mass culture and so on. Yes, there were pockets of poverty in many areas, but most people in most places around the world were seeing a rise in their personal income and an increase in the number of things in their possession, along with the supply of energy with which to move or power their many personal goods.

At least some strata of the global population will continue to experience an increase in personal wealth in the 21st century, but the sense of abundance that characterized the late 20th century is likely to evaporate for the great majority of us. One day affordable luxuries like overseas vacations and meals out will become unattainable, and even basic necessities like energy, electricity, water and food are likely to become less plentiful and more expensive. This global austerity will produce great hardship for the poor and will force even lower-middle-class families to choose between long car trips, restaurant meals, air conditioning in summer and high thermostats in winter.

Less supply, more demand

Lying behind this historic shift in global fortunes is a fundamental reversal in the balance between resource supply and demand. For most of the 20th century, global stockpiles of vital materials like oil, natural gas, coal and basic minerals expanded as giant multinational corporations (MNCs) poured billions of dollars into exploring every corner of the Earth in the drive to locate and exploit valuable deposits of extractible materials. This permitted consumers around the world to increase their consumption of virtually everything, safe in the knowledge that even more of these commodities would be available next year and the year after that, and so on infinitely into the future.

But this condition no longer prevails. Many of the world’s most promising sources of supply have been located and exploited, and all of the additional billions spent by MNCs on exploration and discovery are producing increasingly meager results. Ever since the 1960s, the most fruitful decade in the worldwide discovery of new oilfields, there has been a steady decline in the identification of new deposits, according to a recent study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Even more worrisome, the rate of oil field discovery fell below the rate of global petroleum consumption in the 1980s, and since then has fallen to approximately half the rate of consumption. This means we are increasingly relying on deposits found in previous decades to slake our insatiable thirst for petroleum — a pattern that cannot continue for much longer before we will begin to experience an irreversible and traumatic decline in the global supply of oil.

The same is true of other vital resources, including natural gas, uranium, copper and many minerals. There may be adequate stocks of these materials on global markets today, but the MNCs are not finding enough new deposits of these commodities to replace what we’re consuming. So future shortages are inevitable.

Water is somewhat different, in that we receive a fresh supply of it each year through evaporation from the oceans and precipitation on land — but even this precious resource will become scarcer in the years ahead due to population growth, urbanization, industrialization, the over-exploitation of underground aquifers and global warming (through persistent drought and the accelerated evaporation of rivers and lakes).

This contraction in the global supply of vital resources will affect our lives in myriad ways. On a personal level, it will force us to consume less — for example, by buying smaller, more fuel-efficient cars and smaller, more energy-efficient homes. We will have to make other accommodations as well: fewer long-distance trips to the seaside or distant amusement parks, fewer long-distance airplane rides, lowered thermostats in winter and so on. These cutbacks will be minor inconveniences for some, but significant hardships for others — especially the poor, the elderly and others on a fixed income. Farmers will have a particularly hard time, as the cost of virtually everything associated with modern, mechanized agriculture — diesel fuel, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, food supplements — will become far more expensive.

Less stuff, more conflict

At the national level, we can expect a significant change in foreign policy. As supplies of energy and other basic necessities become scarce, senior officials will come under enormous pressure to “solve” the problem by any means necessary, including the use of military force.

In the case of energy, this could lead to future wars over oil. Even if oil were not the only motive for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the United States has long sought to maintain a dominant position in the oil-rich Persian Gulf area, and a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq will facilitate American efforts to seize the oil of Iran and neighboring countries if a decision were ever made to do so. The Department of Defense is also beefing up its capacity to “project” military power into the oil-producing areas of Africa and the Caspian Sea basin. No one in official circles will admit that “guarding foreign oil fields” is the ultimate objective of Pentagon war plans, but it is becoming increasingly evident that the American military is being reconfigured to accomplish exactly this task.

Nor is the United States alone in thinking along these lines. China also seeks to enhance its capacity to project power into foreign oil-producing areas. And Russia, with a surplus of energy, seeks to exploit its advantageous position in order to extract concessions from less privileged nations.

Future shortages of water are also likely to prove a source of international friction and conflict. Egypt, which relies on the Nile River for virtually all of its water, has threatened to attack Sudan and Ethiopia if they proceed with plans to dam the Nile and divert some of its waters into irrigation schemes desperately needed to feed their rapidly growing populations. Israel has also threatened to go to war with neighboring Arab states if they move ahead with plans to dam the Yarmuk River (one of the tributaries of the Jordan) or otherwise jeopardize Israel’s already over-stretched water supply. Such threats — and possibly actual outbreaks of conflict — are likely to become more common as the demand for water rises and global supplies dwindle.

The gestalt of austerity

The end of abundance is not the same thing as outright scarcity. Some commodities, like oil, may become truly scarce in later decades of the 21st century, but they will not disappear altogether. Those with means will still be able to purchase gasoline and air conditioning and other soon-to-be luxury items. But the end of abundance will create a new international environment — a new gestalt, if you will — in which expectations are lowered and struggles over what remains become fiercer and more violent.

Ideological, political and ethnic differences will have their place in this new environment, but increasingly these will be infused with or subordinated to resource pressures. The growing edginess evident in Sino-American relations, for example, can be traced at least in part to a perception that the United States and China are becoming bitter competitors in the global hunt for new sources of petroleum. Likewise, the growing frostiness in U.S.-Russian relations can be attributed in part to Moscow’s heavy-handed use of its natural gas monopoly to browbeat neighboring countries like Ukraine and Georgia. This is exactly how we would expect international affairs to evolve in a Post-Abundance Era.

Prediction is always risky, and it is entirely possible that some unanticipated event on the scale of 9/11 or World War II will come along and redefine the current epoch. But such a calamity aside, the end of global abundance and the resulting scramble for resources is likely to prove the most conspicuous feature of the emerging international landscape.

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world-security studies at Hampshire College and the author of “Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum.” This article originally appeared at Foreign Policy in Focus popuplink www.fpif.org www.fpif.org> and is reprinted by permission of the author.

Making connections on terrorism

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 10:40:00 +0000

Charged with possessing deadly weapons, Santiago Alvarez of Florida plea-bargained, dodged a potential 50-year sentence, and now goes to jail for four years. Alvarez, like some other right-wing Cuban Americans, has paid for, organized and carried out deadly attacks against Cuba.

It seems highly likely that Alvarez’s activities and his light sentence are related. The U.S. government, complicit in anti-Cuban terrorist assaults, protects people like Alvarez.

His arsenal and the 1,500 rifles found last April in the possession of Californian Robert Ferro are signs that dangers still exist for Cuba. Ferro said his purpose was war against Cuba and that the U.S. government knew.

Options for a small island nation to protect its sovereignty and people’s lives are limited. Knuckling under was not one of them, at least for five Cuban men incarcerated in U.S. jails for eight years now. To protect Cuba, Gerardo Hernando, Francisco Gonzalez, Ramon Labinino, Rene Gonzalez and Antonio Guerrera went to Florida, joined private terrorist groups, and reported on what they learned in hopes of preventing more terrorist attacks.

In appalling contrast to Alvarez’s slap on the wrist, the Cuban Five experienced pretrial abuse, a biased trial and cruel and disproportionate sentences. Two of them received 15 and 19 years for failing to register as foreign agents. Three were sentenced to life in prison for conspiracy to commit espionage. Hernandez received a second life sentence for conspiracy to commit murder.

They paid the cost for standing in the way of U.S.-sanctioned terror. They were never accused of spying, or of harming U.S. agencies, installations or personnel.

U.S. hypocrisy on terrorism is, of course, nothing new. But now there is a new outrage, and it relates to Luis Posada Carriles, arch-terrorist and former CIA functionary. Official Washington has turned a blind eye to his bombings of an airliner and hotels, his assassinations and his attempted murder of Fidel Castro.

Posada, a citizen of Venezuela and Cuba, arrived in Miami last year, conveyed from Cancun, Mexico, on Alvarez’s yacht. He’s been in jail, but charged only with illegal entry. Murder and mayhem are off the table, as is Venezuela’s request for extradition so that his interrupted trial for the airliner bombing might resume.

A federal judge ruled Nov. 4 that Posada must go free by Feb. 1 because deportation, the usual fate for “illegal” immigrants, is not an option. No country will take him in. But world opinion may keep the Bush team from turning him loose. A criminal investigation reportedly is under way.

That’s a problem: his FBI files are empty, and new evidence of cozy relations with U.S. officials has come to light. Author Ann Louise Bardach has recently reported that in 2003 Miami FBI chief Hector Pesquera authorized the destruction of evidence on Posada requested by Panamanian prosecutors. Evidently Pesquera and his Miami intimates wanted to protect the terrorist, then in a Panama jail, from further investigation. Posada had been in jail there since 2000, when police unearthed his and others’ assassination plot against the Cuban president.

Pesquera had also headed up the prosecution team in the case of the Cuban Five.

The action of the FBI chief seems to have added a heavy dose of corruption to the steady dose of terrorism handed out to the Cuban people. Cuba’s supporters and defenders of the Cuban Five can only be outraged.

Outrage, loud and clear, surely helps to build support for the Five. Yet the movement to free the Five is still not large enough to achieve mainstream visibility. What else can be done?

Many who might join in the fight for the five prisoners are heavily involved in other issues. The movement is divided, and many don’t see the connections.

Here’s a modest suggestion: Focus on threads common to the good causes, particularly common factors that explain and diagnose.

The conversation could turn to ideas like class conflict, or the necessity for capitalism to exploit and expand, or more. From there it’s a short step to naming the names: imperialism in the world and capitalism at home. The message comes across that a blow against one manifestation of an unjust system is a blow on down the line. Thus empowered, activists can realize that fighting for the Five is part of a larger struggle, that work for the Five doesn’t detract from but rather is part of causes like opposition to the U.S. occupation in Iraq or work toward universal health care.

Making these connections, many more can join in this cause with enthusiasm.

W.T. Whitney Jr. (atwhit @ megalink.net) is a retired pediatrician active in the Cuba solidarity movement in Maine.

Shameful anti-Semitism

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 08:46:00 +0000

“Shameful!” That summarizes reactions — in Iran and around the world — to the Tehran-hosted conference debating whether the Holocaust happened or not. Iran’s Jewish community called it a “huge insult.” Iranian student protesters called it “shameful” and many “ordinary Iranians were embarrassed,” news reports said.

Conference speeches were reminiscent of the early days of Nazism. Leading European and U.S. Holocaust-denying and fascist ideologues, including Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, joined with Iran’s reactionary leaders to cloak their anti-Semitism in pseudo-anti-imperialist garb.

Former KKK Grand Wizard Duke proclaimed, “The Zionists have used the Holocaust as a weapon to deny the rights of the Palestinians and cover up the crimes of Israel.” With “friends” like this, Palestinian rights will never be won.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad added his own mix of reactionary ideology to the brew, saying, “The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon, the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom.” He referred to the Holocaust as a “myth” used to impose the state of Israel on the Arab world.

Such anti-Semitic rantings — under any guise — set back the just struggle for a Palestinian state, for a two-state solution with Israel and Palestine living side-by-side in peace.

Anti-Semitism is a ruling-class ideology that weakens and divides the working-class and people’s struggles. It strengthens the hand of reaction everywhere — in the Middle East and in the U.S. It helps the Israeli far right justify the occupation of Palestinian lands as “self defense.” It helps the U.S. ultra-right continue warmongering toward Iran and support for Israeli militarists. Iran’s reactionary leaders use it to pretend they are fighting U.S. and Israeli war machines, while they increase repression of democratic movements and fuel hatred.

Anti-Semitism in any form is vicious and divisive. It must be firmly repudiated.

Death of a mass murderer

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 08:44:00 +0000

The death of Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, criminal dictator of Chile from 1973 to 1990, aroused mixed feelings among human rights defenders. While rejoicing that this incredibly evil person is gone from this Earth, they also wanted this mass murderer tried and convicted in a Chilean court.

Under Pinochet’s brutal rule, thousands of workers, students, artists, progressives and their leaders were murdered, kidnapped and disappeared. Tens of thousands were tortured and 10 percent of the population forced into exile.

Pinochet did not commit these crimes without help. President Richard Nixon, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and big corporations like ITT helped engineer the 1973 coup that overthrew the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende. The 1975 Select Committee Report by Sen. Frank Church revealed, “On September 15, 1970, President Nixon informed CIA Director Richard Helms that an Allende regime in Chile would not be acceptable to the United States and instructed the CIA to play a direct role in organizing a military coup d’etat in Chile.” This document also showed that the U.S. role in the coup was illegally kept secret from Congress. It adds, “In the end, the whole of U.S. policy making may be affected.”

Pinochet set up “Operation Condor,” a terrorist alliance that killed Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier and his associate Ronni Moffett, in a 1976 car bomb in Washington, D.C.

This shameful period of our history has lessons for us today. We are living under another president known for his secrecy, disregard for the Constitution, use of terror and “improperly close” relations to multinational corporations.

Pinochet did not totally get away with his crimes. He bragged in 1975, “There will be no elections in Chile during my lifetime nor in the lifetime of my successor.” But popular uprisings in Chile forced him to put his rule to a referendum vote. He lost, and elections have returned to Chile. Michelle Bachelet, a Socialist and the first woman president of Chile, now leads the country.

Latin America is seeing a popular, left and progressive rebirth, with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez leading the way. Other Latin American progressive presidents elected are Evo Morales in Bolivia, Nestor Kirchner in Argentina, Tabare Vasquez in Uruguay, “Lula” da Silva in Brazil, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Rafael Correa in Ecuador.

Chilean heroes, like martyred President Allende and Communist Party leader Gladys Marin, will be remembered long after humanity forgets the nightmare of Augusto Pinochet.

EDITORIAL: Human Rights Day

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 07:52:00 +0000

Many urgent opportunities for action vie for attention on the eve of International Human Rights Day, Dec. 10.

Besides speedily ending the Iraq war, two areas where the new Congress can make major progress are passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, and ending the Bush administration’s vile treatment of post-Sept. 11 detainees.

The Employee Free Choice Act now before Congress has implications far beyond the workers benefiting directly from its passage. Communities and families will benefit too from a law that can help workers collectively win good union wages, benefits, job security and human rights.

In an era of ever-more vicious corporate union-busting campaigns, EFCA would expand democracy and let workers freely choose whether to form unions by signing cards authorizing representation. It would provide measures for first-contract disputes, and impose stronger penalties on law-breaking employers. Some 57 million Americans say they would like to join a union but too often run into firings, anti-worker laws and boss scare tactics.

In the present Congress, 215 House members and 43 senators are co-sponsors. Organized labor is gearing up for the next steps with a summit this weekend.

Meanwhile, the latest gruesome detainee photos to surface feature a U.S. citizen, Jose Padilla, seen in chains, eyes and ears covered, herded by guards in riot gear. Padilla, held for three and a half years without charges, has told of severe torture, and now suffers so much mentally that he cannot aid his own defense.

Of course, Padilla is only one among thousands held and tortured at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and other U.S.-run prisons, or shipped to prisons run by others.

The administration’s latest attempt to establish legal cover for such treatment is the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Sen. Chris Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut, has already introduced a law to restore basic rights to military detainees. The new Congress can now act to end the illegal and inhumane abuse of detainees.

These changes are possible, but only if the American people keep up the pressure that won a new Congress last month.

Eyewitness Venezuela: We saw it all

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 06:09:00 +0000

CARACAS, Venezuela — When Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez trounced his U.S.-backed opponent to win a second six-year term on Dec. 3, we were there.

The alarm went off at 2:45 a.m. It was election day, and it was time to head to the polls. We were 16 labor and peace activists from the United States, including a six-member delegation from the Communist Party USA, who were among the hundreds of official and unofficial international observers of Venezuela’s presidential election. Tim Yeager from Illinois and I had volunteered for the early shift.

We arrived at the voting station at 3 a.m. with Roraima Segura, a young mother of two who was assisting our delegation. She had wanted to ensure she’d be near the front when the polls opened at 7, and she was — but several hundred people were already in front of her. Some had begun their wait at 9 p.m. the previous evening, 11 hours before the polls opened.

By the time we left at 5 a.m., well over a thousand people were already in line. Why did they arrive so early? Alirio Jose Perez, directly in front of Segura, said it was because under Chavez a “democratization of Venezuelan life, along with mass education and health campaigns, has given people a stake in their country.”

As we talked, a flatbed truck full of youthful members of the Communist Party of Venezuela, with their party flags flying, drove by. Their calls for the election of Chavez were met with spontaneous cheers from the crowd. The Communist Party had its own line on the ballot with Chavez as its presidential candidate. We later learned that in Caracas the CPV was the third largest vote-getter, and in the nation it was fourth. Chavez’s name appeared on the ballot of at least 23 parties.

The polling station where we were, near the Bellas Artes Metro station, is one of the largest polling places in the city. Altogether, it was expected that over 12,000 people would vote there.

“We are at a special point in the history of Venezuela,” said Daniel Leonard, a bank worker who was about 100th in line. “This election will change the history of Venezuela and all of Latin America. The missions [social service agencies initiated by the Bolivarian government that work to meet people’s needs such as education and health care] benefit all of the people and they have changed people’s thinking,” Leonard said. He added, “The oil wealth of the country is now being used for the people.”

Leonard predicted a big margin of victory for Chavez. He observed that people think the good intentions of Simon Bolivar in Venezuela and George Washington in the U.S. were lost by presidents who came after them, and that in Venezuela they are returning to Bolivar’s concept of putting the interests of the poor before the rich oligarchy.

As we neared the front of the line, we met Daniel Televera Montero, a restaurant worker, who had arrived shortly after 9 p.m. the night before. Televera comes from Zulia, the state where Manuel Rosales, Chavez’s opponent, had been governor until he stepped down to run for president. Although his parents still live in Zulia, Televera said his “entire family is voting for Chavez.”

At the front of the line and showing great enthusiasm — though they had already been standing for many hours — were a group of young women. As we talked, a large convoy of cars and pick-up trucks went by with people clapping and singing for Chavez. The voters responded with their own set of cheers.

“The people today are very happy,” said Fina Garcia, who works in the office of Caracas Mayor Freddy Bernal. She told us she had participated in many peace demonstrations against the Iraq war in Caracas. “I did not give birth to a son so he can die in war,” she said. Garcia said the Venezuelan people love the people of the U.S. and understand that a majority opposes the policies of President Bush.

Our delegation spent the day studying the mechanics of democracy in Venezuela. We familiarized ourselves with every point of their electoral process. As evening came, the polls closed one by one as the lined-up voters completed their task.

We rejoined Roraima Segura and her family as they settled around the television to watch the results. As soon as the election commission announced Chavez’s landslide victory, 61 percent to 38 percent, the day’s general merriment reached an ecstatic climax. From Segura’s window, we watched fireworks going off all over town and listened to the horns honking and the whistles of celebrants on the rainy streets below.

The discipline of the Venezuelan people in exercising their hard-won voting rights is more than impressive, and their enthusiasm is irresistible. Amid bugle calls and rumba music, the Bolivarian Revolution is advancing steadily.

jrummel @ pww.org

Building people-to-people solidarity

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 07:24:00 +0000

SALEM, Mass. — It was in April of 2002 that a group of people here first learned that our power plant was importing coal from the Cerrejón mine in Colombia, then owned by Exxon.

Two representatives of local communities affected by the mine were coming to the United States to speak at the Exxon shareholders’ meeting about the mine’s abuses against the people in the region. They were eager to come to Salem to meet with people who were using coal from the mine.

So we scrambled to put together an ad hoc committee to organize their visit. To our surprise, the issue piqued the interest of many.

When she arrived, indigenous Wayuu leader Remedios Fajardo told Salem’s mayor, its city council, and others: “We want to tell the people of Salem that this coal has its origins in violence. Our communities have suffered greatly. Their human rights have been violated, their territory has been usurped, their houses destroyed and demolished, and they have had to shed their blood in order for this coal to arrive in Salem and other parts of the world.

“We beg the city of Salem to express their solidarity with us, because we have a relationship with them because of this situation,” she said.

Since that day, we’ve been trying to do just that.

Our campaign has mushroomed over the past four years. We’ve invited activists from La Guajira to the U.S. and Canada to bring their stories to coal-consuming communities. We linked up with solidarity groups in London, Switzerland and Australia, where the three companies that bought the mine in 2002 have their headquarters. We started attending their shareholders meetings and asking tough questions.

Here in Salem and in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, Canada, our organizations have been pressuring the coal importers to press the mine on human rights issues. A Danish investigative report last spring led to DONG Energy in Denmark cutting off its purchases of coal from the U.S.-owned Drummond mine in Colombia, where three union leaders were killed in 2001. The New Brunswick Power Company recently wrote to the mine asking it to negotiate in good faith with the union and the affected communities, and to respect the communities’ right to collective relocation and reparations.

High levels of violence against unionists in Colombia have helped mobilize unions in the U.S., Canada and Europe to join the campaign.

When the Sintracarbón union at the Cerrejón mine decided to prioritize its relationship with communities affected by the enterprise, workers at the Ekati diamond mine in Canada’s northwest territories noted the similarities: the two mines are partially owned by the same Australian company, BHP Billiton, and both have usurped indigenous land and displaced communities.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada, which organized the Ekati mine in the country’s Northwest Territories two years ago, sent two representatives on our recent delegation to express their solidarity and to have a chance to exchange experiences.

Both the union and the communities have told us repeatedly that only international attention will pressure the mine owners to respect their rights. We hope we can bring the attention they need and deserve.

Aviva Chomsky teaches history at Salem State College in Massachusetts.

Colombia: blood on the coal

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 07:17:00 +0000

LA GUAJIRA, Colombia — Cerrejón, the world’s largest open pit coal mine, materialized 25 years ago in the midst of the Afro-Colombian and indigenous Wayuu peoples living in this northeast corner of Colombia. The region is named after La Guajira peninsula, which juts into the Caribbean Sea.

Since 1981, 400 million tons of coal has been taken out of La Guajira’s subsoil.

Despite this economic “success,” the communities living here — situated on coal reserves estimated at 3 billion tons — are slated for destruction by the company and government of President Alvaro Uribe.

The unequal contest between giant multinational corporations and La Guajira’s communities plays out in an arid landscape marked by scrub-covered plains and distant mountains.

The forced exit of one community already, and the suffering of the remaining people living in half-empty, decrepit villages, has outraged activists and labor unions worldwide. This is nowhere more evident than in the countries that consume Cerrejón’s coal. Solidarity actions with the peoples of La Guajira are picking up.

A giant energy complex

Cerrejón, once the property of the Colombian state and Exxon, is now owned by multinationals BHP Billiton, Anglo-American, and Glencore (Xstrata). It generated $1.2 billion in earnings last year.

The companies operate a 90-mile-long railroad, a highway and their own seaport. The mine, 30 miles long and 5 miles wide, sells 22 percent of its coal to North America, 59 percent to Europe and 19 percent elsewhere. Last year the mine exported 25 million tons of coal.

Solidarity

Leaders of Sintracarbón, the national union representing Cerrejón workers, have taken up the cause of the beleaguered communities as they begin their own contract negotiations with the company. The union has over 3,100 members. Leaders of both the communities and the union are counting on a boost, however, from international public opinion.

The power of international solidarity was apparent earlier this year when the nation of Denmark banned coal from Alabama-based Drummond Company, a notorious anti-labor energy company, pending a U.S. court’s decision about Drummond’s possible complicity in the murder of three Colombian labor leaders in 2001.

The Dutch power generating company Essent indicated recently that it, too, would not be signing new coal supply contracts with Drummond, pending the court’s decision.

‘Blood coal’ in Salem

History professor Aviva Chomsky learned that a power plant in Salem, Mass., where she lives, was using Cerrejón coal. She and other activists there and in Nova Scotia, Canada, another consuming region, have turned Cerrejón into a symbol for “blood coal.”

This year, Chomsky recruited labor and human rights activists, physicians and academicians from Canada and the United States to visit La Guajira from Oct. 29-Nov. 3 to learn, carry out a requested health survey and prepare for solidarity work on their return.

Sintracarbón and organizations representing Wayuu and Afro-Colombian communities had invited them to Colombia. When the delegation arrived, its members were greeted by union and community leaders, who subsequently accompanied them on the tour. The present writer joined the group’s medical contingent.

A solemn declaration

Responding to the owners’ plans for continued mine expansion, Sintracarbón leaders issued a declaration on the communities timed for the visitors’ departure. What it describes mirrors some of the impressions they took back to North America.

The declaration notes, “These communities are being systematically besieged.” The company has denied them access to employment, grazing land and rivers. The communities “do not have even the most minimal conditions necessary for survival,” it said.

The document continues: “The multinational companies that exploit and loot our natural resources in the Cerrejón mine are violating the human rights of these communities.”

Sintracarbón, the union, aims to “help unify the affected communities, to participate in their meetings, to take a stand with the local and national authorities ... to begin a dialogue with the company.”

Meeting with the communities

Interviewing residents of four communities, the North Americans learned that local schools and health facilities are virtually non-existent. To secure food and work, Wayuu people have to trek over mountains into nearby Venezuela. Harassment from company police and the national army is rampant.

Government officials have denied indigenous and Afro-Colombian people rights guaranteed them under the nation’s 1991 constitution. They refuse the official certification that would place the communities into protected categories.

Displaced former residents of the Afro-Colombian community Tabaco, living nearby in cruel circumstances, recalled the bulldozers, soldiers and company police that on Aug. 9, 2001, evicted them, destroying their village. Neither Cerrejón nor neighboring Hatonuevo municipality has complied with a Supreme Court ruling May 2002 to provide homes for the victims.

Before and later, some residents did settle individually with Cerrejón. Others, members of “Tabaco in Resistance” led by Jose Julio Perez, demand collective negotiations, collective resettlement, and reparations for loss of livelihood and community integrity.

U.S. and world solidarity

Richard Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, and Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, have called upon the company to honor labor and human rights. Gerard wrote the mine’s owners, “We applaud Sintracarbón union’s courageous and unprecedented step in including in its bargaining proposal demands that the collective rights of the Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities affected by the mine are recognized and addressed.”

Chomsky reports that solidarity groups are active in Massachusetts, Nova Scotia, London and Switzerland. She and others have formed an international commission to monitor developments in La Guajira, including union negotiations for a new contract.

For more information, visit

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W.T. Whitney Jr. (atwhit @ megalink.net) writes on international affairs for the People’s Weekly World. He lives in rural Maine.

Building people-to-people solidarity

Aviva Chomsky

SALEM, Mass. — It was in April of 2002 that a group of people here first learned that our power plant was importing coal from the Cerrejón mine in Colombia, then owned by Exxon.

Two representatives of local communities affected by the mine were coming to the United States to speak at the Exxon shareholders’ meeting about the mine’s abuses against the people in the region. They were eager to come to Salem to meet with people who were using coal from the mine.

So we scrambled to put together an ad hoc committee to organize their visit. To our surprise, the issue piqued the interest of many.

When she arrived, indigenous Wayuu leader Remedios Fajardo told Salem’s mayor, its city council, and others: “We want to tell the people of Salem that this coal has its origins in violence. Our communities have suffered greatly. Their human rights have been violated, their territory has been usurped, their houses destroyed and demolished, and they have had to shed their blood in order for this coal to arrive in Salem and other parts of the world.

“We beg the city of Salem to express their solidarity with us, because we have a relationship with them because of this situation,” she said.

Since that day, we’ve been trying to do just that.

Our campaign has mushroomed over the past four years. We’ve invited activists from La Guajira to the U.S. and Canada to bring their stories to coal-consuming communities. We linked up with solidarity groups in London, Switzerland and Australia, where the three companies that bought the mine in 2002 have their headquarters. We started attending their shareholders meetings and asking tough questions.

Here in Salem and in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, Canada, our organizations have been pressuring the coal importers to press the mine on human rights issues. A Danish investigative report last spring led to DONG Energy in Denmark cutting off its purchases of coal from the U.S.-owned Drummond mine in Colombia, where three union leaders were killed in 2001. The New Brunswick Power Company recently wrote to the mine asking it to negotiate in good faith with the union and the affected communities, and to respect the communities’ right to collective relocation and reparations.

High levels of violence against unionists in Colombia have helped mobilize unions in the U.S., Canada and Europe to join the campaign.

When the Sintracarbón union at the Cerrejón mine decided to prioritize its relationship with communities affected by the enterprise, workers at the Ekati diamond mine in Canada’s northwest territories noted the similarities: the two mines are partially owned by the same Australian company, BHP Billiton, and both have usurped indigenous land and displaced communities.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada, which organized the Ekati mine in the country’s Northwest Territories two years ago, sent two representatives on our recent delegation to express their solidarity and to have a chance to exchange experiences.

Both the union and the communities have told us repeatedly that only international attention will pressure the mine owners to respect their rights. We hope we can bring the attention they need and deserve.

Aviva Chomsky teaches history at Salem State College in Massachusetts.

‘We are compañeros and friends who are forever united’

Following the delegation visit, Jairo Quiroz of the Sintracarbón union sent the visitors these reflections:

“This kind of experience is what brings us the strength and conviction that we need to continue our struggle against the social inequalities in our country. Our experience with you allowed us to come close to these uprooted and displaced communities that are suffering from desperation and depression because of the way they are humiliated and assaulted by the strength of foreign capital, with the blessing of the Colombian state.

“Their fundamental rights have been violated. Beginning now, we as a union are proposing that just as the company has a social responsibility for the way it runs its business, our union, seeing the destruction that the Guajira communities are suffering at the hands of Cerrejón, has a moral and political responsibility.

“The company generates huge profits through the misery, poverty, and uprooting of these populations. The communities have to pay a very high price for the company’s profits.

“We are convinced that only the unity among the different peoples of the world can allow us to confront these economically powerful and inhuman multinationals in the name of the communities that have the misfortune to be located in the path of the mine’s expansion.”

Quiroz had been asked the meaning of compañero. He explained by quoting Che Guevara: “We are not friends, we are not relatives, we don’t even know each other. But if you, as I, are outraged by any act of injustice committed in the world, then we are compañeros.”

Quiroz adds, “We also now consider all of you to be our friends and our relatives. Forever united.”

W.T. Whitney Jr.