People Before Profit blog

Announcing the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2002

Thu, 23 Jan 2003 11:14:00 +0000

For more than a decade now, the P.U.-litzer Prizes have gone to some of America’s stinkiest media performances each year. The competition was fierce as ever in 2002. Many journalistic pieces of work deserved recognition. Only a few could be chosen.

While making the selections, I have relied heavily on research by the staff of the media watch group FAIR (where I’m an associate). However, the responsibility for bestowing the latest P.U.-litzers is entirely mine.

Here are the eleventh annual P.U.-litzer Prizes, for the foulest media achievements of 2002:

“KICKING OUT HISTORY” AWARD – Multiple winners

Dozens of esteemed journalists and major media outlets qualified for this prize by reporting that the Iraqi government had ejected UN weapons inspectors four years ago. Actually, the inspectors left Iraq in December 1998 under orders from UNSCOM head Richard Butler just before the blitz of U.S. bombing dubbed “Operation Desert Fox.”

With notable disregard for historical facts, many reporters at leading news organizations flatly asserted that Saddam Hussein had “expelled” or “kicked out” the U.N. inspectors. Among the purveyors of that misinformation were Daniel Schorr of National Public Radio (Aug. 3), John Diamond of USA Today (Aug. 8), John McWethy of “ABC World News Tonight” (Aug. 12), John King of CNN (Aug. 18), John L. Lumpkin of the Associated Press (Sept. 7), Randall Pinkston of “CBS Evening News” (Nov. 9), Betsy Pisik of the Washington Times (Nov. 14) and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post (Nov. 17).

Some outlets were repeat winners, as when USA Today claimed in a Sept. 4 editorial that “Saddam expelled UN weapons inspectors in 1998.” Other prominent newspapers also made the false information a centerpiece of the positions that they espoused. The New York Times declared in an Aug. 3 editorial: “America’s goal should be to ensure that Iraq is disarmed of all unconventional weapons. ... To thwart this goal, Baghdad expelled United Nations arms inspectors four years ago.” On the very next day, the Washington Post editorialized: “Since 1998, when UN inspectors were expelled, Iraq has almost certainly been working to build more chemical and biological weapons.”

GOLD STANDARD PRIZE – NBC News

Too savvy to go along with the theory that TV news producers are professionals who should edit stories without fear or favor, the decision-makers at “NBC Nightly News” devoted 69 minutes of coverage to the Winter Olympics, which aired in early 2002 on NBC. It just so happened that competing news shows on other networks saw much less news value in the games – “ABC World News Tonight” gave them 30 minutes, and the total on “CBS Evening News” amounted to 10 minutes.

MEDIA DARWINISM PRIZE – Barry Diller

As a longtime media tycoon now at the top of the Vivendi Universal conglomerate, Barry Diller isn’t shy about depicting his success as part of an upward evolutionary spiral. “Media is going to continue its trend of consolidation, which mirrors the ongoing globalization,” Diller told The Los Angeles Times in March. “This is a natural law. It is inevitable.”

FABRICATION-OF-EXONERATION AWARD – Cokie Roberts

Commenting on George W. Bush’s dubious role as a member of the board at Harken Energy, reporter-turned-pundit Cokie Roberts dismissed the idea that Bush might have been involved in corporate malfeasance during his corporate endeavors. “The president was exonerated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, saying he didn’t do anything illegal or improper on insider trading charges,” she said on July 8. “But the Democrats won’t let it go.” Roberts did not mention that Bush’s lawyers asked the Securities and Exchange Commission for a statement that he had been cleared – and the SEC responded that its initial letter “must in no way be construed as indicating that [Bush] has been exonerated or that no action may ultimately result from the staff’s investigation.”

SELF-SLANDER PRIZE – Ann Coulter

Coulter is a best-selling author who likes to attack the news media for supposed left-wing bias and irresponsibility. During an August interview with the New York Observer, she said: “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.”

SELF-SATISFACTION PRIZE – CNN anchor Jack Cafferty

On CNN’s “American Morning” program Aug. 5, Cafferty mixed candor with exemplary media arrogance: “This is a commercial enterprise. This is not PBS. We’re not here as a public service. We’re here to make money. We sell advertising, and we do it on the premise that people are going to watch. If you don’t cover the miners because you want to do a story about a debt crisis in Brazil at the time everybody else is covering the miners, then Citibank calls up and says, ‘You know what? We’re not renewing the commercial contract.’ I mean it’s a business.”

Norman Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and is co-author (with Reese Erlich) of Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn’t Tell You, published this year by Context Books. He can be reached at mediabeat@igc.org

An Iraq war will cost us more than blood

Thu, 23 Jan 2003 11:10:00 +0000

As the Bush administration prepares for war in Iraq, the American people should demand a complete assessment of the costs of the war-which go beyond potential military and civilian casualties.

As President Dwight Eisenhower famously noted, the costs of militarism are not limited to the battlefield. They include the budget sacrifices that must be made in order to support a war effort or military buildup. In the case of the Iraq war, these costs will be substantial, most likely requiring our nation to forgo spending on domestic and international programs that are vital to our security.

Putting a price tag on human casualties is impossible. And even those costs that are quantifiable are hard to predict. Nonetheless, it would be irresponsible not to estimate-as well as we can-the costs of war before deciding to wage it.

Most likely, the Iraq war would last about three months as the United States moves from a lengthy air attack to a ground war in Iraq’s major cities, followed by a lengthy occupation. Our nation would undoubtedly prevail in the end. Assuming that the war would last three months and that America would have to occupy the country for one year, the Iraq war would cost $90 billion, based on figures from the Congressional Budget Office.

That’s a lot of money. It’s more than the federal government spends on K-12 education, the Environmental Protection Agency, housing assistance and humanitarian foreign aid combined.

For $90 billion, America could invest in programs that have a far better chance of enhancing our long-term national security needs than an ill-conceived war with Iraq.

For $90 billion per year, America could do everything on this list and more:

* For a decade, double current research funding for clean and renewable energy-to end our dependence on risky foreign oil. Cost: $12 billion.

* For five years, double the budget for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. This would lessen the threat of smallpox, anthrax, plague and more. Cost: $20 billion.

* For two years, double the humanitarian foreign aid budget. As President Bush has acknowledged, part of the war on terrorism involves fighting poverty, which breeds it. Cost: $20 billion.

* Double federal spending on K-12 education. A one-year influx of federal money would be a down payment on our nation’s bill to renovate public schools. Cost: $34 billion.

* For two years, provide public financing of federal elections as an experiment to see if we can make our democracy work. Cost: $2 billion.

Clearly, $90 billion is a lot of money, even for our rich nation. The $90 billion figure highlights how important it is for America to carefully consider the costs and benefits of waging war. We need to strike a balance between relying on military action and using all the diplomatic and humanitarian tools that we have available to make the world more secure in the long term. The federal budget is not limitless. We should make sure our spending priorities are clear before the bombs start falling.

Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan (USN, ret) is a former commander of the U.S. Second Fleet and is a military advisor of TrueMajority (www.TrueMajority.com), a project of Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities.

A new standard for U.S. foreign policy

Fri, 17 Jan 2003 04:05:00 +0000

News Analysis

“U.S. ASSAILS NORTH KOREA,” screamed the headlines of The New York Times a week ago when the North Korean government announced its decision to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

That headline may sell papers, but it is inaccurate. A more appropriate headline would have been, “Bush administration furious with North Korea’s decision to walk away from treaty obligations.”

Not surprisingly, Asian governments and people around the world reacted differently. While they are deeply concerned about decision of the North Korean government to abandon the treaty and support the demilitarization of the Korean Peninsula, nearly every government attached the main responsibility for the present crisis to the Bush administration.

Had the Bush people pursued a policy that accented negotiation, cooperation, treaty compliance and mutually beneficial relations, the Korean peninsula would have never turned into a potential flashpoint of confrontation.

For some time the government of North Korea has sought to break free of the isolation imposed as a result of the Cold War. It desires to normalize relations with neighboring countries and the U.S. And in recent years other governments in the region – especially the South Korean – have expressed a similar desire.

None of the Asian governments want to continue the seemingly endless cycle of hostility and recrimination, sanctions, military buildup and all the attendant dangers that have been embedded in the fabric of interstate relations in their region for the past half century.

Instead, what they prefer is a policy grounded in reciprocity, reconciliation and demilitarization.

This makes eminently good sense in an age when the production of weapons of mass destruction has become much easier – and much more deadly.

What impedes this transition is, you guessed it, the Bush administration.

From its first days in office, Bush policymakers have been hostile toward the Pyongyang government. First, it reneged on commitments made by the Clinton administration. Then it walked away from the ABM treaty and announced its intention to build a $60 billion missile defense system in Alaska, not far, as the crow flies, from the borders of North Korea.

Then in his 2002 State of the Union address, Bush designated North Korea as a member of the “axis of evil. And if this wasn’t bad enough, the administration declared that it would preemptively strike North Korea, including with weapons of mass destruction.

At the same time, Bush showed contempt for the reconciliation steps of the two Korean states. But most ominous for the North Koreans is the U.S.’s relentless push for war against Iraq, another member of the “axis of evil.”

Against this background, is it surprising that public officials in Pyongyang are thinking “we’re next” or are considering reactivating their nuclear weapons program although it has not done so yet?

Herein lies the bitter fruit of Bush’s foreign policy. Rather than creating the conditions for a world without weapons of mass destruction and terrorism, this policy heightens tensions and the danger of war to the extreme, encourages the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and brings closer the unthinkable and unimaginable – a nuclear holocaust.

It also makes individual terrorists’ acts much more likely.

In recent days, spokespeople for the Bush administration has toned down its saber-rattling rhetoric about North Korea. But, the North Koreans must wonder whether the change is substantive or is it just temporary, designed to give U.S. imperialism breathing space while it zeroes in on Iraq.

We will find out in time, but in any case, the easing of tensions buys time to find a negotiated and peaceful solution to the crisis. Such a solution is in the interest of all of the states in the region and all of humankind.

The world must move away from the use of weapons of mass destruction and pre-emptive strikes. But its journey should not be a backward one to the days of deterrence and confrontation, but rather forward to a world in which the renunciation of force in international relations, broad scale disarmament by all governments, beginning with our own, respect for the sovereignty of big and small states alike, and equitable economic relations between rich and poor countries are the standards governing the world community.

Sounds utopian? Not really because the conventional wisdom of the past century of securing peace through military strength and the waging of war is literally a dead end. In this era of weapons of mass destruction, a new wisdom must arise that says that a peaceful world can only be won by peaceful means.

During the long night of the Cold War, nuclear weapons were employed only once, when the U.S. military dropped, to our everlasting shame, atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, instantly vaporizing tens of thousands and killing over time nearly 200,000 innocents.

In the 21st century, the loss of human life could be on a much vaster scale. We must close down that possibility. Another world is possible. Let’s take our first steps by winning a peaceful resolution to the crisis on the Korean Peninsula as well as in Middle East.

Sam Webb is the national chairman of the Communist Party USA. He can be reached at swebb@cpusa.org

Lobby takes control of Texas government

Thu, 16 Jan 2003 10:25:00 +0000

Opinion

The headline over a recent article in the Economist proclaimed: “The Future is Texas: If you want to know where America is heading, start by studying the Lone Star State.” It went on to gush about the state’s “incredible ability to make something out of nothing,” its “openness,” (?) and its “creativity.”

It also noted that Texas “is the land of low taxes, weak trade unions, a shriveled public sector and a paltry welfare state.”

What it didn’t point out, and what it probably should have, is that the state is in the midst of taking crony capitalism to new heights because the business lobby has taken unprecedented control of state government.

Their aim is to channel more public funds into the hands of favored businesses, privatize as much wealth as possible, and give business a free rein to maim, loot, and pollute without regard to the public interest. If the Bush cartel and the Republican National Committee have their way, what is happening in Texas today could well be the future of the U.S.!

The cozy relation between state government and business has been on gaudy display since the Republican sweep of all state offices in last November’s election. As Andrew Wheat said in the Texas Observer, “rather than having corporations pay lobbyists millions of dollars to influence government, the state’s new leaders recruited some of Texas’ most powerful lobbyists to run the government directly.”

Tommy Craddick, a veteran right-wing Republican back-bencher poised to become the Speaker of the House when the legislature convened Jan. 14, appointed three business lobbyists to manage his transition team: Bill Miller, Bill Messer, and Bill Ceverha. They represent clients from the pharmaceutical, property insurance, and health insurance industries.

Gov. Rick Perry tapped Mike Toomey to be his chief of staff. Toomey is a lobbyist for, among other companies, Reliant Energy, Texas’s largest private energy company. These new public servants also represent some of the state’s major polluters: ARCO, Koch, Eastman Chemical, Rohm & Haas, and Alcoa.

This new lineup in state government has the access capitalist crowd salivating. The Texas Association of Business (TAB) recently issued its legislative agenda, which calls for more privatization of government services, an end to dues checkoff for public employees, stifling any new laws that may interfere with the right of bosses to bust unions and maintain absolute control over their workers, and no new taxes for businesses (even though Texas is facing a $5 billion to $12 billion budget dollar shortfall).

There’s a good chance that TAB may get its wish list fulfilled because its executive director, Bill Hammond, has been mentioned as Speaker Craddick’s new chief of staff.

The privatization of Texas government took another leap with the ascendancy of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. This right-wing think-tank out of San Antonio has been a major proponent of school vouchers and an opponent of the right to choose, unions, and affirmative action. It gave substantial contributions to the right-wing Republicans who now control state government. The foundation used its connections to encourage new and returning members of the legislature to attend its legislative seminar in Austin prior to the legislature’s convening. The purpose of the seminar was to build support for its agenda of no taxes for the rich, cutbacks in government services, and privatization of education and government services.

Texas has always been known as a business-friendly state. It’s a right-to-work-for-less state, it has a regressive tax structure that imposes the biggest tax burden on low- and middle-income families, it has huge loopholes that allow companies such as Dell and SBC to avoid paying any franchise taxes, and its unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation programs are among the least generous of all states. It’s hard to imagine how things could get worse, but the business lobby and their friends in public office are certainly going to give it a try!

John Lane is a writer from Austin, Tex. He can be reached at pww@pww.org

United, we can win

Thu, 16 Jan 2003 10:16:00 +0000

Opinion

As we celebrate the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King this week, tens of thousands of U.S. troops are being deployed to the Persian Gulf for war on Iraq and our country is rocked by an economic and civil liberties crisis.

King’s stand against the war in Vietnam linked that war with the denial of the urgent needs of poor and oppressed people here at home. Today, the U.S. people in the millions are beginning to question the wisdom of war with Iraq and its relationship to the crisis hammering every aspect of our daily life.

The horrific events of Sept. 11 have caused many in the U.S. to think deeply about security, foreign policy and the use of weapons of mass destruction by our own government as well as others. Many are saying, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” This week a Knight-Ridder poll showed overwhelming opposition to unilateral U.S. military action despite a right-wing/media pro-war blitz. Polls are consistently showing that most people do not want war and favor continuing UN inspections to avoid the deaths of American soldiers as well as Iraqis. With the Bush administration’s continued assault on civil liberties, fears about an endless war on terrorism are growing. There is increasing suspicion about who will profit from a war, starting with the oil companies. International cooperation to safeguard the planet from war, terrorism and destruction is increasingly seen as not just a good idea but a necessity.

Peace sentiments among the American people are bolstered by mounting international anti-war feeling, leading governments that have been Bush’s staunchest supporters to express hesitancies about his drive for war.

Reflecting the mounting international and domestic pressure, differences in the Bush administration are surfacing, although the differences revolve around how and when to go to war, not on whether to go to war or not. Nevertheless, these differences can provide opportunities for the peace movement to win victories in delaying and ultimately preventing war. The belief that the war can be stopped is the strongest foundation for organizing a winning peace majority.

Broad new elements are emerging daily in the rising peace tide, invigorating the traditional peace movement. The most dramatic upsurge is seen among the religious community, in the labor movement, in the fight to defend civil liberties, and in cities across the country.

The National Council of Churches, U.S. Catholic bishops and new ecumenical coalitions have led vigils, lobbies, peace services and delegations to Iraq. Their moral leadership sharply challenges the Bush administration’s demagogy.

Over 100 resolutions have been passed by labor bodies, and a national labor peace group has been formed, U.S. Labor Against the War.

More than 30 city councils have adopted resolutions against war, showing a growing awareness at the community level of the direct connection between the human and financial costs of war and the spiraling economic crisis besetting cities, counties and states.

The future rests on bringing these millions together into a mighty peace majority that can stop war and turn back the ultra-right policies of the Bush administration. Coordination of all these voices to maximize the movement’s clout is on the agenda. The emergence of United for Peace and Justice is an important step in that direction. But we cannot be satisfied yet. To build a winning popular movement for peace, the left and activists must involve the vast numbers of people in the political center whose thinking has been shaped by Sept 11 and who are worried about the mounting economic and civil liberties crisis.

Coordinating the peace initiatives of labor, communities of color, women, youth and students, faith-based groups, environmentalists, immigrant rights groups, civil libertarians and others will require patience, sensitivity and receptiveness to the multiplicity of forms and spontaneous expressions. Most important, it will take a commitment to mobilizing the full fighting power of the entire labor movement, communities of color and other people’s movements alongside traditional peace groups in united grassroots action to stop the war and defeat the ultra right agenda.

The Communist Party is dedicated to helping build a broad nationally coordinated people’s movement for peace. At the same time, we place special emphasis on activating people at the grass roots, in neighborhoods, union halls, places of worship, campuses and wherever people can come together to give voice to their yearning for peace.

An all-people’s peace majority is emerging that can stop the Bush warhawks in their tracks. In the process, a broad people’s movement is coming into being against the waste and destruction of militarism, and for a foreign policy of peace and cooperation and a humane, just and democratic society. United, we can win!

Judith Le Blanc is a vice chair of the Communist Party and works with United for Peace and Justice. She can be reached at jleblanc@cpusa.org

Zionism what it does and does not mean

Thu, 16 Jan 2003 07:42:00 +0000

Opinion

Emile Schepers’ Nov. 16 column about the relationship of Zionism and anti-Semitism presented some useful history that stopped just before the founding of Israel under a UN resolution the Soviet Union sponsored in 1947. The resolution took into account that on the territory of the British mandate colony of Palestine existed two numerically substantial peoples, the Palestinian Arabs and the Jews. The Soviets said the preferable solution would have been a single bi-national state with full equal rights for both peoples but in view of their inability to agree, partition and two equal states side by side was the only feasible just solution.

Given the existing situation of large numbers of both peoples in Palestine, deciding which of the two had a historically prior claim could not be the basis of a peaceful solution. Before the end of World War II, Jews from Europe began joining the long-resident small Jewish community in Palestine. Some new arrivals were influenced by the Zionist ideology that Jews could never achieve full equality where they lived, and required their own country. But most Jews came because the war and the holocaust had destroyed their homes and made them fearful and in need of a place to live. At that time the primary enemy of Jews and Arabs in Palestine was British imperialism, which had to be compelled to surrender its control. The British worked to pit the two peoples against each other and sought to end up with domination through local puppets.

Ever since, and especially during Ariel Sharon’s premiership, Palestinian Arabs have been prevented by armed force and ruthless repression from attaining their own state alongside Israel in accordance with UN resolutions 242 and 338. Sharon represents the most reactionary section of Israeli Jewish big capitalists which has been in cahoots with U.S. transnational capital, especially its ultra-right section, playing the role of regional gendarme to keep U.S. domination of Mideast oil.

Zionism was originally a particular form of Jewish bourgeois nationalism, conceived by Theodore Herzl in Austria. It argued the Jewish people would always be subject to anti-Semitism until they moved to a land of their own – originally Uganda, then Palestine. Zionists sought a deal with imperialism to secure such a homeland where the Jewish bourgeoisie would have a free hand to exploit its own people. There were other trends of Jewish bourgeois nationalism, including assimilationism – gaining equality and ending persecution by giving up being Jews. Marxists, particularly Lenin, argued that anti-Semitism was a form of national oppression of the Jewish people, in a religious garb. The way out was unity of Jewish, Russian and all other working people who did not benefit from national oppression, to end Czarism and capitalism, which did benefit from it.

Generally, Jews are no longer an oppressed people anywhere in the world, though they continue to suffer anti-Semitic actions in most capitalist countries, including the U.S., especially when the ultra right gets stronger. In Israel, the Jewish people under the Sharon government have become an oppressor people of the Israeli Arabs and the Palestinian Arab people. It is important to understand, however, that such oppression is not fundamentally in the interests of the Jewish working people, only the Jewish ruling class. In other countries, a very small top layer of Jews has become a small part of the ruling big capitalist class, while the masses of Jewish working people are in the same basic position as other working people.

For years, many groups of the Jewish big bourgeoisie and the Jewish right opposed the Zionist theory and organization that advocated that all Jews should move to Israel, but often joined Zionists in policies antithetical to the interests of Jewish masses and Arab peoples. For example, Chasidic and other Orthodox Jews in the U.S. and fundamentalist religious Jews in Israel, U.S. Reform Jews and the American Jewish Committee, and extreme right-wing Jewish political organizations in the U.S. and Israel opposed Zionism. Sharon still says his extreme right-wing bourgeois nationalist policies do not stem from either Zionism or religious belief.

Today, virtually none of the U.S. Jewish organizations that have “Zionist” in their name or self-description believe Jews should emigrate to Israel, yet they and some other national Jewish organizations support the Sharon government’s reactionary policies. Some major national groups, however, are somewhat critical of Sharon’s policies. Others say they do not feel bound to support the policies of any given Israeli government. And a growing number oppose Sharon’s policies and say they are for a two-state solution, including some small groups that consider themselves left labor and/or socialist “Zionist.”

Most U.S. Jews, if asked if they are Zionists, respond “we guess we are, if you mean by that ‘are you in favor of the right of Israel to exist free of violence?’” Many of the U.S. and Israeli Jewish groups that were anti-Zionist no longer would describe themselves that way and many, but not all, support the Sharon government policies to one extent or another.

In the fight to achieve two equal states, to make it easier for Israeli and U.S. Jews to oppose government policy and to compel the Bush administration to genuinely support that solution and pressure the Israeli government to do likewise, we need tactics that will help move U.S. Jews. The Bush administration has been playing to right-wing Jewish bourgeois nationalism. But 78 percent of Jewish voters voted against Bush in 2000.

In the U.S., broadside attacks on “world Zionism” make it harder to influence the mass of Jewish working people and non-Jews who support Bush’s policy of backing the Sharon government. Many Jews who are not Zionists identify with that label and feel they and the existence of the State of Israel are being attacked. They are sensitive because “world Zionism” recalls the old anti-Semitic charge of a “Jewish conspiracy to control the finances and politics of the world,” only substituting “Zionist” for “Jewish.” This echoes the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which claimed that Jewish bankers and rabbis had been meeting secretly to plot such a takeover. The Czarist secret police added “Communist, socialist, and liberal Jews” to the supposed conspirators. In this form, Henry Ford published hundreds of thousands of copies of the “Protocols.” Hitler took the “Protocols” over from Ford, the man he admired so much.

Also, “Zionist conspiracy” lets transnational capital, headed by its U.S.-based dominant sector, off the hook.

Therefore it is not helpful for some on the left and in Arab liberation circles to use the label “Zionist” loosely. Other characterizations are more accurate. Pointing to right-wing Jewish nationalist groups as among those who caused the defeat of Cynthia McKinney in the Georgia Democratic primary is clearer than saying “Zionists” caused her defeat. We do not want to hand the bulk of the U.S. Jewish population and their many non-Jewish supporters over to U.S. and Israeli reaction.

Danny Rubin is a member of the National Education Commission of the Communist Party USA. He can be reached at pww@pww.org

Looking at the past and fighting for the future

Thu, 09 Jan 2003 11:26:00 +0000

Fortunately for me, my strength to survive is derived from my knowledge of dialectical materialism. Dialectical materialism has proven time and again that when the chips are down, historical events and movements make history turn things around.

My life goes back to the days when the Republican and Democratic parties were so much alike that they looked like identical twins. Over ten million workers were out of work. People were on relief, collecting a pound of butter, a peck of potatoes, a loaf of bread and other commodities once a month to keep them alive. To keep warm, men collected coal from the steam engine boiler remains found on railroad tracks. People sold apples on street corners and kids sold newspapers – earning two-thirds of a cent for each paper sold.

Organizations such as the Workers Alliance, the Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born and the Communist Party took to the streets in a tremendous fight for jobs, civil liberties for the foreign born and demands for our government to represent the working class and not big business. In 1928, Republican Herbert Hoover and Democrat Al Smith did not address these important class issues.

In 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt became the Democratic Party candidate against Republican Herbert Hoover, who had promised that every family would have two cars in every garage and a chicken in every pot. Instead, millions were thrown out of work.

Roosevelt came forth with the New Deal, promising workers employment and new programs such as the Works Project Administration (WPA), Public Works Administration (PWA), Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), National Recovery Act (NRA) and other efforts to bolster the economy.

A new era had begun in American history and politics. At this point the dialectical materialist view comes into the picture. Prior to Roosevelt’s election everything looked hopeless. However, as the struggle intensified against reaction, things began to change. But it took struggle by many organizations and people to make things change. This dialectical process is a spiral, which pushes back reaction and catapults progressive change. But it takes unity of the people’s struggle. The trade union movement pushed forward with organizing the unorganized with the Communist Party playing a leading role. The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was born, and progressive legislation brought forth Social Security, unemployment compensation, workers compensation and many other benefits for the people.

Since the 1930s, accompanying the emergence of progressive forces within and independent of the Democratic Party, many struggles have taken place against wars, McCarthyism, racism and other reactionary policies. Even though the Democratic and Republican parties have great similarities, especially in foreign policy, the struggles by minorities, women, youth, seniors and the labor movement have been able to stem the tide against monopoly capitalism in many areas, including foreign policy. The mass struggle against the Vietnam War is an example. The mass sentiment that led to the Clinton administration returning Elian Gonzalez to his home in Cuba completely shattered U.S. foreign policy towards Cuba.

Two years ago, when Bush was the Republican presidential candidate and Al Gore was the Democratic candidate, some people in the peace and progressive movements supported Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, arguing that there was no difference between the Democrats and Republicans.

The AFL-CIO, National Organization for Women, NAACP and large segments of the people’s movements argued that there was a great difference. But in spite of past differences, and even present or future ones, we must find common ground, unite and organize with all forces for peace and progress. Because now what we have in the White House is a pack of political wolves.

These wolves increased the military budget from $288 billion to $368 billion in less than a year. Following 9/11, they created a psychosis of fear among the American people. Using this fear, they have campaigned for war against Iraq and pushed a union-busting Homeland Security Act. They are violating the civil liberties of the American people. Their main aim is to guarantee security for corporate America, allowing the Bush wolves to invade and take over Iraq, Iran, and other countries, and completely ignoring the protests of much of America and people the world over.

Progressive America has its work cut out for it. Things may look bleak but we must not despair. It is a natural phenomenon for the forces of peace, prosperity and security to struggle for a better life. History is turning things around. Once the majority of the American people learn the truth, justice and progress will prevail. This is part of the dialectical process.

John Gilman is a frequent contributor to the People’s Weekly World. He can be reached at Johngilman@aol.com

Global warming: Smog belches from Bush administration

Thu, 09 Jan 2003 10:09:00 +0000

The New Year began with environmentalists pressing two separate lawsuits charging the Bush administration with gutting the Clean Air Act and pushing policies that have accelerated global warming that poses a long term threat to life on earth.

The lawsuits underlined that George W. Bush and his minions pose the gravest threat to the global biosphere of any administration in history. It is driven by their unwavering allegiance to maximum profits for the giant oil corporations, the gas and electric utility companies and the auto-makers.

The administration is pushing for expanded drilling for oil even in areas already protected by votes in Congress, such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the National Forests. Of course, oil is also the overriding factor in the war policy against Iraq, which has the world’s second largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia, and their covert schemes to destabilize Venezuela, which provides a million barrels of oil each day to the U.S.

A war in the Persian Gulf will mean other environmental threats, including the Pentagon’s heavy reliance on depleted uranium warheads. The ultimate environmental threat can no longer be discounted now that Bush has proclaimed a doctrine of preemptive use of nuclear weapons.

Extraction and burning of fossil fuels is belching tens of millions of tons of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere each year. However, the Bush-Cheney administration studiously ignores proof that such greenhouse gases have pushed global temperatures one degree Fahrenheit higher over the past century. While that may seem a small increase, it has already triggered worrisome changes in climate, more violent storms and droughts while pushing many species onto the endangered list.

New York Attorney General Eliot L. Spitzer and the attorneys general of eight other states in the Northeast filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia charging that rules approved by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will permit utility corporations to evade Clinton-era rules aimed at forcing them to bring their old coal-fired power stations into compliance with the Clean Air Act. “The Bush administration has taken an action that will bring more acid rain, more smog, more asthma and more respiratory disease to millions of Americans,” Spitzer said. He accused the administration of “the most serious effort at rolling back the landmark Clean Air Act since it was enacted more than 30 years ago.”

Sulfur dioxide and other toxic emissions from these plants is blamed for acid rain that has destroyed forests, fish and other wildlife in lakes and streams throughout the Northeast while also causing an epidemic of asthma and other respiratory illnesses in the region. The nine states joining in the lawsuit were Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.

Meanwhile, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, together with the cities of Boulder, Colo., and Oakland, Calif., are pressing ahead with a lawsuit they filed last summer against the Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) charging that they “illegally provided over $32 billion in financing and insurance for oil fields, pipelines, and coal-fired power plants over the past ten years without assessing their contribution to global warming” and their impact on the environment as required by the National Environmental Policy Act.

Brian Dunkiel, a leader of the northeast regional chapter of Friends of the Earth (FOE), is a lead attorney in the global warming lawsuit. “The Bush administration has made very clear where they stand on global warming,” Dunkiel told the World in a phone interview from his office in Burlington, Vt., “George W. Bush promised during the 2000 election campaign to support limits on carbon dioxide emissions, the main factor in global warming. Once he came into office, he broke that promise. He also rejected the Kyoto Protocol, unilaterally, which requires reduction of greenhouse gases. The Bush-Cheney energy policy strongly favors reliance on fossil fuels.”

Yet, he pointed out, the Bush administration released a report last year that admitted that human consumption of fossil fuels is the main factor in generating carbon dioxide (CO2), the main culprit in global warming. Bush has openly ridiculed this report by his own scientific experts. “They actually acknowledged in that report that climate change is taking place because of human activity but their answer is voluntary compliance and adaptation.”

Their policies, he charged, stand in the way of a real solution to the crisis of global warming.

With Bush-Cheney and the U.S. Congress controlled by rightwing, pro-oil lawmakers, FOE and Greenpeace opted for the lawsuit to force action, he said. “These two agencies, the Ex-Im Bank and OPIC are not in compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act,” he said. “This lawsuit is an opportunity for grassroots people to get involved, to send a signal on where the people stand and to demonstrate strong support for clean, renewable energy.”

The urgency of environmental degradation was brought home by a flurry of reports at the end of 2002. Earth Policy Institute (EPI) released its annual report on global warming, Dec. 11, proving that 2002 “will likely be the second warmest on record exceeded only by 1998” with global temperatures averaging 58.37 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Studying these annual temperature data, one gets the unmistakable feeling that temperature is rising and that the rise is gaining momentum,” wrote EPI’s Lester R. Brown. “Each year since detailed recordkeeping began in 1959, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has climbed to a new high, making it one of the most predictable of all global environmental trends.”

It is, he added, “the result of massive fossil fuel burning that has simply overwhelmed nature’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide.”

The accelerating rise in temperatures, Brown said, is triggering “deadly heat waves, scorched crops, and ice melting” around the world. “In May 2002, a record heat wave in southern India with the temperatures reaching 114 degrees Fahrenheit, claimed more than 1,000 lives in the state of Andhra Pradesh alone.”

Food production is at risk, he continues. “Farmers may now be facing higher temperatures than any generation of farmers since agriculture began 11,000 years ago. Crop yields have fallen as temperatures have climbed in key food-producing countries such as the United States and India.” The world grain harvest in 2002 of 1.8 billion tons was well below projected consumption of 1.9 billion tons.

EPI’s report echoed two ominous reports in the Jan. 2 edition of the journal, Nature, proving that many species of plants and animals are already struggling to adapt to global warming. In some cases, species ranges have shifted 60 miles or more, mainly toward the poles to escape hotter temperatures, the report by teams at the University of Texas, Wesleyan, Stanford, and other universities found.

Egg-laying, migrations and pollination is coming earlier in the season “with the danger that some species may be separated in both time and place from their sources of food,” states the report. Already some varieties of penguins and polar bears are threatened because of the rapid melting of ice caps and early breakup of ice fields in the Arctic Ocean.

In the synopsis of their article headlined, “Fingerprints of Global Warming on Wild Animals and Plants,” one team of biologists reported, “These analyses reveal a consistent temperature-related shift or ‘fingerprint’ in species ranging from molluscs to mammals, and from grasses to trees. Indeed, more than 80 percent of the species that show changes are shifting in the direction expected on the basis of known physiological constraints on species.”

Consequently, the report adds, “the balance of evidence from these studies strongly suggests that a significant impact of global warming is already discernible in animal and plant populations. The synergism of rapid temperature rise and other stresses, in particular habitat destruction … could easily disrupt the connectedness among species and lead to a reformulation of species communities, reflecting differential changes in species, and to numerous extirpations and possibly extinctions.”

The report continues, “Clearly, if such climatic and ecological changes are now being detected when the globe has warmed by an estimated average of only 0.6 degrees centigrade, many more far-reaching effects on species and ecosystems will probably occur in reponse to changes in temperatures to levels predicted by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) which run as high as 6 degrees centigrade by 2100.” (That translates to a whopping 11 degree Fahrenheit rise in global temperatures. Some environmental biologists forecast extinction of half the species on earth if global temperatures reach those highs).

The report continues, “Projected future rapid climate change could soon become a more looming concern, especially when occurring together with other already well-established stressors, particularly habitat destruction. … Research and conservation attention needs to be focused not only on global warming and each of the other stressors by themselves, but also on the synergism of several pressure that together are likely to prove to be the greatest challenge to animal and plant conservation in the 21st century.”

Gary Skulnik, a Washington representative of the Sierra Club working with the Global Warming and Energy Program told the World, “These reports are just more proof that global warming is a very real threat to the natural environment and the future of our planet. It is not a question of the science any more. It’s a question of whether we have the political will to implement solutions to global warming. Each day that we delay action is really an irresponsible procrastination, leaving the problem for our children to clean up. Bush Junior has embraced policies eerily similar to those of his father, to turn back the clock.”

The guiding principles on energy policy, said Skulnik, should be efficiency, clean energy and conservation. “Automakers now have the technology to make cars that get 40 miles per gallon. That would be the single biggest step to slow down global warming,” he said.

Instead, the Bush administration and Congress continue to lavish billions in tax subsidies for the production of enormous, unsafe, gas-belching Sport-Utility Vehicles. Those tax incentives should be terminated.

“There are also bills pending in Congress that promote clean energy in the industrial sector,” Skulnik said.

While the threats to the global environment are accelerating and could reach a point of no return, Skulnik stressed that there is still time if a coalition movement is strong enough to force federal and state governments to act. “We like to focus on the positive solutions that are at hand,” he said. “Clearly, global warming is the single largest threat to our environment. But people have to understand that there are realistic solutions. We have a challenge, no doubt about it. This is not an administration that is open to our views. But it doesn’t mean we are going to give up. We are going to redouble our efforts.”

The author can be reached at greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com

**************************************************************************************************************************

States get dirty over Clean Air Act

The Environmental Protection Agency Tuesday issued changes to the Clean Air Act. Nine states are filing suits in response – New York, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Vermont. The states charge that the changes violate federal law by allowing companies to pollute more without having to install new emission controls.

Key elements of clean air rules issued by the EPA include:

* Companies are given greater flexibility to modernize or expand without having to install new pollution controls, although the changes may lead to greater air emissions.

* Plants with installed stateof-the-art pollution controls are assured exemption from having to install more effective equipment even if they expand operations.

* Plants with numerous pollution sources may increase pollution from some sources as long as overall, plantwide air emissions are not increased.

* Companies are given greater leeway in calculating pollution to reduce the likelihood that new pollution controls will be required.

The budget First congressional battle

Tue, 07 Jan 2003 10:03:00 +0000

The federal government has been operating on stop-gap spending measures ever since Oct. 1 because the House and Senate could not agree on a budget for fiscal year 2003. Instead, Congress passed several “continuing resolutions” that extended 2002 spending levels to Jan. 11, 2003.

This means that the budget will be one of the first orders of business when Congress reconvenes in early January with plans calling for work on the 2003 budget to be completed before President Bush’s State of the Union address. It also means that with the Republicans now in control of both houses of Congress, the battle with be much more difficult.

We begin with the fact that the Bush budget imposed a $750.5 billion ceiling on discretionary spending – spending that must be approved by Congress – for fiscal year 2003. So far Congress has acted on only two of the 13 spending bills it must approve, eating up $365 billion in military spending while leaving $385 for domestic programs. At the same time, Bush proposes cutting funding for low-income programs by nearly 5 percent compared to 2002 levels, adding more misery to these households in the midst of an economic slump.

While the 2003 budget was put together at a time when big surpluses were giving way to sizable deficits, the 2002 budget was developed in a very different climate – one of apparent peace, prosperity, and projected surpluses so large that a rather massive tax cut was considered affordable. But there was a common thread in both: Each saw low-income programs cut by nearly 5 percent in real terms.

For bookkeeping purposes, the federal government maintains 36 “accounts” from which come the funds that provide services to families or individuals with low or moderate incomes. The administration’s 2003 budget would cut funding for 26 of these accounts – nearly three quarters of them – below their 2002 level adjusted in real terms. With the exception of spending for education, discretionary spending for programs affecting low-income families in Bush’s 2003 budget average 4.6 percent below the 2002 level, measured in real terms.

These cuts are particularly mean-spirited during a period where the Congressional Budget Office forecasts that the unemployment rate will not begin to decline much until the second half of calendar 2003, after some nine months of fiscal year 2003 have passed.

In recent weeks a new element has been added to the budget equation as the White House and congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle have been talking about a “stimulus” package. And once again we find Bush’s 2003 solution to be further tax cuts on corporations and the rich.

The fact that it is inconsistent to fashion dubious stimulus measures that may take months to implement, while imposing immediate cuts in services and benefits for low-income families and individuals doesn’t matter to Bush and his new economic team. Bush has been remarkably consistent in pursuing policies of cutting funding for programs affecting low-income families while implementing tax cuts for affluent investors that are both expensive and ill-designed to spur the economy.

But there are ways of lessening the pain, first of all by extending federally-funded unemployment benefits for nearly two million workers who were set to lose those benefits on Dec. 28.

This fight can be won. There is no guarantee that Bush will get his way on budget questions. Although they no longer control the Senate, Democrats still have the power of the filibuster where a stand by 41 senators can block passage of any legislation. The challenge is to generate the mass pressure that will give them the courage to make that stand.

The author can be reached at fgab708@aol.com

Media again duped by Pentagon

Tue, 07 Jan 2003 09:28:00 +0000

The Federation of American Scientists has pointed to a startling revelation by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that mainstream media have missed: In remarks during a recent press briefing, Rumsfeld suggested that though the controversial Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) no longer exists in name, its programs are still being carried out.

The OSI came under scrutiny last February, when The New York Times reported that the new Pentagon group was “developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations.” The news was met with outrage, and within a week the Pentagon had closed down the OSI, saying that negative attention had damaged the office’s reputation so much “that it could not operate effectively.”

The plan was troubling for many reasons: It was profoundly undemocratic; it would have put journalists’ lives at risk by involving them in Pentagon disinformation; and it’s almost certain that any large-scale disinformation campaign directed at the foreign press would have led, sooner or later, to a falsified story being picked up by U.S. media.

At the time, Rumsfeld claimed that he had “never even seen the charter for the office,” but according to The New York Times, Thomas Timmes, the OSI’s assistant for operations, said that Rumsfeld had been briefed on its goals “at least twice” and had “given his general support.”

Now, in remarks made at a Nov. 18 media briefing, Rumsfeld has suggested that though the exposure of OSI’s plans forced the Pentagon to close the office, they certainly haven’t given up on its work. According to a transcript on the Department of Defense website, Rumsfeld told reporters:

“And then there was the Office of Strategic Influence. You may recall that. And ‘oh my goodness gracious isn’t that terrible, Henny Penny the sky is going to fall.’ I went down that next day and said fine, if you want to savage this thing fine I’ll give you the corpse. There’s the name. You can have the name, but I’m gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have.”

A search of the Nexis database indicates that no major U.S. media outlets – no national broadcast television news shows, no major U.S. newspapers, no wire services or major magazines – have reported Rumsfeld’s remarks.

Rumsfeld’s comments seem all the more alarming in light of analysis presented by William Arkin in a recent Los Angeles Times opinion column, in which he argues that Rumsfeld is redesigning the U.S. military to make “information warfare” central to its functions.

This new policy, says Arkin, increasingly “blurs or even erases the boundaries between factual information and news, on the one hand, and public relations, propaganda and psychological warfare, on the other.” Arkin adds that “while the policy ostensibly targets foreign enemies, its most likely victim will be the American electorate.”

It is essential that media follow up this story, particularly now, as the country faces a possible war with Iraq and reporters rely even more heavily than usual on Pentagon information.

Rachel Coen is a media analyst with FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting). She can be reached at fair@fair.org

Resignation fever a whole Lotta shakin goin on

Tue, 07 Jan 2003 09:24:00 +0000

“I just looked around, and they were gone, Henry, Bernard and Trent.” Oops, doesn’t have the same ring as the classic song about Dr. King and President Kennedy, does it?

The hit parade these past weeks has rung with the actual resignations of Henry Kissinger and Archbishop Bernard Law, and, as we went to press, innumerable calls for the resignation of Trent Lott, the Mississippi oldie and moldie.

About those resignations: Henry “why-was-he-ever-nominated” Kissinger deserves any public shame, humiliation and war crime accusation that comes his way. Check out the new film, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, if you have any doubts on that score. Ditto Bernard Law, the Catholic leader from Boston, who covered up innumerable sex scandals by hiding the priests who committed them, promoting them sideways to other posts.

As for Trent “Segregation Man” Lott, most interesting is reading the calls for his resignation from conservative to reactionary columnists, who gush over how far we as a country have come from the bad old days. They condemn the Trent-man not so much for bigotry as for poor judgment in speaking out loud about his retrograde politics.

These are the same people who only weeks ago were talking about Strom Thurmond themselves as if he was a symbol of change in the South, since he went from segregationist to voting for more civil rights bills than Trent Lott. However, that’s not saying much.

But look at the battles today. If Dr. King were here, he’d be in the streets protesting against the much-announced war against Iraq, he’d be demanding that our country do the right thing and provide more benefits for poor people during a time of economic depression rather than cutting all benefits to the bone, he’d be fighting to extend voting rights that would help defeat Bush and his ilk. If he were here today, those same pundits who trot out faint praise for Dr. King once a year would be calling for his arrest yet again.

The problem with Trent Lott, for all the conservatives and Bush-men, is that he embarrassed himself and, in so doing, is making it harder to pass Bush’s right-wing policies through Congress. Here they were, basking in the glory of a big win in November, when Trent goes and exposes himself and them too.

Trent would like to turn back the clock to 1948, and support Strom Thurmond’s “State’s Rights” program, code words for racism and reaction. And he has the bad judgment to admit it, not once but multiple times over the years. Trent still hasn’t apologized for voting against civil rights legislation for many years, or for his role leading a fight in the early 1960s to keep his national fraternity as all-white as his alma mater, Ol’ Miss, before federal troops were sent to back up the courage of James Meredith, who had the temerity to expect to attend that public institution.

The reactionary pundits want us to ignore the disconnect between their too late and too little support of the civil rights movement and the current policies they advocate. They were racists then, and though they’ve learned to wrap their racism in a threadbare cloak of civil-rights rhetoric, they are racists now.

Even the anti-affirmative-action icon, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, learned enough as a child in the South to be willing to speak out against cross-burning as terrorism against a whole community, against democracy and justice. He votes against almost every effort to improve the actual conditions and rights of African Americans today, but even he doesn’t want to go back that far, to segregation, lynching, and state-sponsored terrorism against African Americans.

The contradictions abound. Bush condemning Lott for not having the sense to shut up about “the good old days!” Kissinger resigning after only a few days, refusing to expose his list of clients, the people whom he tries to change government policy for, all the while posing as an “elder statesman!” Bernard Law, deep in prayer about whether or not to confess his sins, and whether or not to do any penance!

Some of the senators coming to the defense of Trent Lott damn him with faint praise – saying in effect that he’s said similar things before and gotten away with it, why shouldn’t he get away with it this time? They avoid the question of whether any of these upstanding citizens should have gotten away with their crimes the first time!

If Kissinger wasn’t a war criminal who continues to sell his smarmy expertise to the highest bidder, if Law hadn’t done the unconscionable by in practice helping child molesters continue their molestation, if Lott hadn’t many times proven he supported segregation and opposed civil rights, then they wouldn’t be in trouble today.

They should have done the right thing the first, second and third times around. Since they chose to do the wrong thing repeatedly, resignation is the least we can demand of them. Trent, have you gotten the message yet?

And if Bush was really sincere in his criticism of Lott, shouldn’t he set an example and resign himself? His record is nearly as bad as Trent’s, he is proposing to commit war crimes like Kissinger, and his moral leadership is no better than Bernard’s – so can we look around and find him gone? Our country would be a better place.

Marc Brodine is chair of the Washington State Communist Party. He can be reached at marcbrodine@attbi.com

The fight for water. A fight for human rights

Tue, 07 Jan 2003 07:42:00 +0000

Water. We see it everywhere. (see related story below)

Many of us take water for granted. All we have to do is open a faucet and this life-sustaining liquid just pours out into our glass to quench our thirst. But in many places it is not so simple to get that clean glass of water.

Over 70 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered with water. But, fresh potable water is fast becoming a scarce commodity for many people. Of all the water in the world only about 1 percent is available for people’s needs. The rest is either sea water or frozen in polar icecaps.

About 1.1 billion people lack access to clean, safe drinking water. Another three million lack adequate sanitation for their water supply. This results in the deaths of a minimum of five million people a year.

Currently we are using half of the available water supply. By the year 2025 we need to be able to use at least 70 percent of that supply. Experts fear a water shortage in the next 20 years that will impact two-thirds of the world’s population. Even countries like the U.S. are expected to face water shortages for 30 percent of its people.

The United Nations Environmental Program, in its Global Environmental Outlook 2000 (GEO-2000), calls the coming shortage of water a problem second only to global warming.

Aging water infrastructure, droughts and floods, population growth without adequate expansion of the infrastructure, wars and political upheavals have conspired to affect the ability of many people to get safe drinking water.

Disasters also hurt the local and national economic life beyond the health issues, furthering the problems. The recent droughts in Brazil and Mozambique have hampered or reduced the economic growth of those countries. In Zimbabwe the floods of ten years ago led to a Gross Domestic Product that was half the previous year.

The combination of water shortages, the need for infrastructure repairs and the fact that 95 percent of local water systems in the public sector and, especially in poor developing countries, local authorities may not have the necessary monies for capital improvements. This has given many transnational corporations the opportunity to make billions in profit. The corporations buying up public water supply are now not just the traditional companies engaged in that activity but other transnational corporations such as Enron, Bechtel and Monsanto.

A report in the Independent of

London said that Monsanto had made “plans to make billions of dollars out of the world’s water crisis” according to an internal document. The document stated that besides the potential for “vast economic opportunities” in making billions in profits, getting into the water business and spinning it as helping the world solve an environmental problem would also improve “Monsanto’s image as a more sustainable and environmentally positive company.” Monsanto has been strongly criticized for its genetically engineered foods by environmental, health and other activists.

Both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are including privatization and “full-cost recovery” conditions on countries getting loans form these institutions. “Full-cost recovery” means that governments are no longer permitted to use tax monies to subsidize water.

From the 1960s to the 1980s it was a standard practice to give governments loans that were supposed to help them develop and upgrade their water and wastewater systems. The thinking behind this was that this would provide one of the conditions that would aid in the economic development of those countries.

Water was considered a natural monopoly of local governments insulated from competition from other sources. However, both the World Bank and the IMF have begun to look at water as a marketable commodity instead of a natural resource.

The World Bank claims that “the introduction of new models” is necessary to alleviate the water crunch and plan for future water expansion. They say “the urban water supply and sanitation sector must be reformed in order to improve sustainable access to adequate services. The needed reforms in service provision usually require a radical change in legal, regulatory, and institutional frameworks. Such reform often result in the introduction of some sort of private sector participation.” The World Bank identifies three issues that they say need changing: poor local management, too many workers and low prices.

This “private sector participation” includes a number of different privatization schemes. Besides the outright buying of local water authorities, there are also leasing plans where the private water company runs the local water system for profit.

These corporations either buy the water system outright or sign any kind of various contracts where they operate and manage the public water supply for a profit. These contracts run for periods of from five to 30 years (more frequently on the high side).

Today many loans have conditions to privatize all or parts of the water delivery system and/or to raise prices. The IMF is pushing Angola, Nicaragua, Sao Tome and Principe, and Yemen to “reform” their pricing and raise the cost of water to people.

It is also forcing Benin, Guinea-Bissau, Nicaragua, Niger, Panama, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania and Yemen to privatize their water supply.

The experience of people in countries where the governments have either bowed down or have been forced to accept the World Bank/IMF reforms have not been too encouraging nor has it been in countries where the government has adopted neoliberal economic policies. The privatization schemes have resulted in the local population taking almost all the risks while the transnational corporation get the benefits in profits. Approximately $60 billion is invested in water systems in the underdeveloped countries of the world.

As a condition for a new structural adjustment loan for Ghana, the World Bank has required that African country to raise the cost of its water to its citizens and will be leasing its Ghana Water Company to multinational corporations. The price of water doubled. Rudolf Amenga-Etengo, a leader of the National Coalition Against the Privatization of Water, said that the price of water “that the government of Ghana and the World Bank think are ‘below market rate’ are already beyond the means of most of the population of Ghana.”

The people of Argentina have also fared badly from the privatization of water as shown in the following two examples.

The Azurix Corporation, an Enron subsidiary, won the right to run for profit the water system in two regions of Buenos Aires province. The quality of service provided by Azurix was poor, they cut corners in the treatment of wastewater and violated environmental regulations. But, did Enron fix the problems? No! After having to pay fines of $1 million they decided to pull out of their 30-year contract leaving the people without water.

In the Argentinian province of Tucuman, a French water company took over the running of the public water supply and doubled the rates. After a payment boycott throughout the province the Compagnie Generale des Eaux decided to leave Tucuman three years later. This company went before the World Bank in an attempt to get Argentina to pay for their losses.

Compagnie Generale des Eaux is a subsidiary of Vivendi, the largest water company in the world. Vivendi has recently joined Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen and other companies charged with cooking the books. Vivendi management have been charged with giving out false financial information with the goal of artificially raising its stock prices.

In Puerto Rico the Authority of Aqueducts and Sewers has been fined over $6 million dollars for violation of environmental regulations since Vivendi took over that U.S. colony’s water system.

Another case where the World Bank forced through its terms on the national government and where the people fought back was in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Cochabamba, the third largest city in Bolivia and situated in the Andes with a population of 800,000 people, had their local water supply sold to a consortium of private foreign companies, including the U.S. transnational corporation Bechtel, by the government of the then president Hugo Banzer in 1999. Many readers of this newspaper may be familiar with the name Hugo Banzer. He was the military dictator of that South American country in the 1970s.

The water company was sold for $20,000 even though it is worth millions.

The new privately-owned water company, Aguas del Tunari, then proceeded to raise the water rates an average of 50 percent with many paying more than twice the previous rate in January 2000. This prompted the population to stage a general strike with marches and demonstrations which brought the city to a complete halt for the better part of a week forcing the government to announce that it would bring down the rates to make them affordable for the people.

After weeks of no movement a coalition of community, labor and other organizations staged another demonstration which was attacked by police and soldiers brought in from outside the area. This two day attack, however, did not deter the coalition and the people. They continued the fight, not just in Cochabamba but in the whole country, and finally forced the government and Bechtel to rescind the buyout and return the water company to the local people, but not before the government had declared a national state of emergency and suspended constitutional rights in order to stop the protests.

Recognizing that community organizations may protest and fight against the privatization proposals, the World Bank attempts now to co-opt the civil sector and “include” community organizations in the planning of privatization schemes of the local water supply.

The water crisis, the attempt to control the water market by the transnational corporations and the fight back against privatization, have prompted a movement to consider access to clean, safe water a human right.

Just recently the United Nations Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights announced that water is a human right. In their statement announced on Nov. 26, they said, “Water is fundamental for life and health. The human right to water is indispensable for leading a healthy life in human dignity. It is a pre-requisite to the realization of all other human rights.”

In South Africa where there have also been fights against the water privatization, the right to water has been enshrined in the constitution’s Bill of Rights Chapter 2, Section 27.

Shortly after the end of the racist apartheid system in South Africa, the South African Communist Party (SACP) had launched a campaign for the health of the people including the right to clean, safe water. Chris Hani, the murdered General Secretary of the SACP, spoke of socialism being, in part, “about water for those who have no safe drinking water” and not just about “big concepts and heavy theories.”

The concept of water as a human right is gaining ground here in the United States.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) has come out in favor of water as a human right for people’s use and not for profit, in a statement released last August.

The author can be reached at jacruz@attbi.com

****************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Excerpts from statement by Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich

The current effort to increase access to clean water, however, is driven by private motives, which do not guarantee access, and do not guarantee affordability. Seen as a business, the global market for water will soon be worth over one trillion dollars according to World Bank estimates. With the collapse of the technology sector, Fortune magazine identified the water industry as the most profitable for investors. In this global market, water is viewed as a commodity to be traded, as a market to be captured, as a substance to be priced at whatever price the market will bear. In this water market, corporations can, as privateers, sail the bounded main and own all the water they can see.

In this market, international trade agreements, as exemplified by NAFTA, GATT and the WTO, guarantee corporations access to water anywhere in the world, and seek to make government resources and, tax dollars, available to those who wish to privatize water systems and other public service facilities. American tax dollars support multilateral financial institutions, and these are the same tax dollars that are used to guarantee profits to private companies for water privatization programs. Loan packages often guarantee a set rate of profit, such as 35 percent profit for a Suez project in Chile.

World Bank policies and International Monetary Fund policies are linked to increased cost recovery and water privatization. Last year, nearly 81 percent of World Bank Water and Sanitation loans contained cost recovery measures, and more than half contained privatization measures. We must work to ensure that water privatization does not continue.

We must declare that water is a human right, and agree to an international framework that water be kept outside the purview of the WTO. IMF and World Bank loans should not impose conditions that mandate full cost recovery and water privatization, and the United States bears a responsibility to ensure that its tax dollars given to multilateral institutions do not fuel more water privatization failures. We must pursue the goal of ensuring clean, affordable and accessible water for all people.

Organizing an all-peoples coalition

Tue, 07 Jan 2003 07:17:00 +0000

The following is an excerpt from opening remarks to the National Committee of the Communist Party which met on Nov. 16, 2002 in New York City.

Some of you may be wondering about the relationship between the concept of the all-people’s coalition against the Bush administration and the most reactionary groupings of transnational capital, and concepts like the leading role of the working class and labor, left-center unity and left unity, socialism and fascism.

Let me briefly respond to these concerns, beginning with the struggle for left and left-center unity.

Greater cohesion of the broad left is absolutely necessary. A more organized left will bring political clarity, militancy, a mass sense and an appreciation of the need for unity into the broader people’s coalition.

This presumes, of course, that the left has an orientation towards the center forces and the immediate battles against the Bush administration.

Unfortunately, some on the left underestimate the right danger, are dismissive of the Democrats, and are a little jaded about the labor movement. They prefer “advanced forms of struggle.”

Such an approach may titillate the mind and give some people a warm feeling, but in the end is sterile. The struggle for left unity only makes sense if it is closely connected to the immediate struggles against the Bush administration and the center forces in labor and among African-American, Latino and other racially and nationally oppressed people, women and other social groupings.

In some ways the main challenge for the left is to shed long-held sectarian concepts of struggle. If it does, it will find itself in the midst of and influencing the great struggles of our time. If it doesn’t, it will continue to hang on the margins of political life.

As for left-center unity: this is a concept of unity and a concept of struggle. It is a point of departure rather than an endgame in constructing unity. In the labor movement, for example, our aim should be to unite every section of labor against the policies of the Bush administration – not just the left and center forces, but the entire trade union movement. Admittedly, divisions and conflicting interests do exist and, not surprisingly, the Bush administration is painstakingly trying to win sections of labor to its side.

Nevertheless, these divisions can be overcome. With patience, creative tactics, and pressure from below, every section of the labor movement can be moved to join the battle against the administration. Another objection to the concept of the all-people’s front is that it dilutes the role of the working class and labor. Just the opposite is the case. Never did Marx, Engels, or Lenin envision that the working class should live a solitary political existence.

Instead, these giants of our movement saw the working class as friendly lads or lassies who, in order to secure their own class interests, had to become the most consistent fighter for the democratic rights of other sections of the people. Without such an orientation the highway to a people’s government and socialism would be forever closed.

This leads me to the question of socialism. Even though socialism is not on the people’s action agenda, it doesn’t follow that “mum’s the word.” It is a question of propaganda and we should bring it into the broad people’s movement.

Given the dangers of nuclear annihilation, irreversible environmental degradation, and mounting economic and social crises in many regions of the world, our accent should be on socialism’s necessity rather than its inevitability.

This is much more likely to resonate in people’s thinking. We are about to issue a discussion document on socialism, which we hope will provoke a lively discussion in the Party and beyond.

Finally, some say that the anti-fascist front better fits today’s political circumstances than the all-people’s front. On the surface, it may appear that fascism, U.S.-style, is here or nearly here. But I don’t think that we are at that stage yet. While we don’t want to ignore the fascist danger, neither should we announce its arrival prematurely. There are strong anti-democratic pressures and we are concerned about the direction of this process, but this doesn’t mean that fascism is here or even imminent.

Fascism is the substitution of one form of capitalist rule – bourgeois democracy – for another - terrorist dictatorship. Fascism, in other words, closes down democratic space and requires methods of struggle that are less open, less mass, and largely underground. To adopt such methods now would clearly be a mistake.

Even from the standpoint of the most reactionary sections of transnational capital, fascism would entail considerable risk insofar as it would strip away and remove an essential ideological component of capitalist class hegemony.

Despite the erosion of democratic rights since September 11, there are still channels and space for broad, mass political action, and the task of the left, progressive, and center forces is to draw millions into open struggle against the Bush administration and to defend and expand democratic space. That is the way to respond to the fascist danger.

The author is the national chair of the Communist Party and can be reached at swebb@cpusa.org

From 2002 to 2003: The struggle continues

Tue, 07 Jan 2003 06:28:00 +0000

Editorial commentary

George W. Bush must have expected clear sailing for his right-wing agenda of war abroad and giveaways to the rich when the Republicans regained majority control of the U.S. Senate and added to their majority in the House in the Nov. 5 elections.

Despite the GOP’s attempt to spin the election as a landslide, a shift of fewer than 40,000 votes gave the GOP majority control of the Senate. The vote was split down the middle with only 40 percent of the electorate casting ballots. Bush did not win a mandate for his right-wing corporate agenda.

So it should not be surprising that the administration faced mounting grassroots opposition and suffered a series of setbacks in the waning days of 2002. It ranged from protests against the worsening economy to the unexpectedly fierce opposition to his threat of unilateral, preemptive war on Iraq. There is a growing sense that despite the bluster, the Bush administration is in disarray as evidenced by the firings and resignations of his top economic advisers.

Nothing highlighted Bush’s predicament more clearly than “Lott-gate” – the angry upsurge that forced Sen. Trent Lott to resign his post of Majority Leader.

Lott’s resignation is unlikely to quell the firestorm created by his racist remark at Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party that it would have been better if Thurmond had won the presidency in 1948 when he ran on a “segregation now, segregation forever,” platform. It has expanded to include charges that Bush and his minions pay lip service to racial equality while enforcing policies that trap African Americans, Latinos and other people of color in segregated communities through red-lining, racial profiling and massive job discrimination, today.

Peter Montgomery, a spokesperson at People for the American Way (PFAW) told the World, days before Lott’s resignation, “Its clear there are people in his own party who are looking for a way to get rid of him. This will have an affect on discussion of issues like civil rights enforcement. More questions will be asked about where judicial nominees stand on the issue of segregation and the protection of people’s civil rights.”

The Lott crisis, he said, has strengthened the position of those battling Bush’s plan to pack the judiciary with ultra-right ideologues like the crony Judge Charles Pickering.

Scott Lynch, a spokesperson for Peace Action, said the surging anti-war movement has slowed Bush’s drive toward war on Iraq. He cited a Los Angeles Times poll showing that a significant majority of the people do not believe Bush has made a case for going to war.

The Bush-Cheney policy of preemptive war “is the dying gasp of the old national security paradigm,” Lynch said. “They want to enforce their vision of the world using weapons we spent trillions of dollars to purchase. Support for the U.S. government is drying up around the world. We are no longer viewed as a beacon of democracy but as a danger to be contained. We have so much potential to do good in the world if we abandon war as an instrument of foreign policy.” The peace movement is mobilizing for anti-war demonstrations around Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday and in New York City Feb. 15.

Jeff Chapman, a researcher for the Economic Policy Institute, told the World that in a year when the economy plunged deeper into recessions with millions unemployed or pushed into poverty, “the one bright spot was the living wage movement.” In an article for Movingideas.org, Chapman points out that 10 cities, five counties, a port, a university, a school board, a road commission and a library system all passed living wage regulations, in 2002, “signaling that the recession, the state and local fiscal crisis, the war on terrorism and conservative control of government have failed to thwart the movement.”

Although it benefits a relatively small percentage of the workforce, he said, “it sends a message that public dollars should not subsidize poverty wages.” Chapman called the living wage movement “a model of successful coalition building between community, labor and religious groups” and predicted it will keep rolling ahead in 2003.

Congress adjourned without voting to extend jobless benefits for 800,000 unemployed workers who were set to lose benefits Dec. 28. Although Bush may attempt to distract attention from this human crisis with his war on Iraq, the AFL-CIO plans to confront the lawmakers with the hardships their negligence has caused for millions of unemployed when Congress reconvenes.

The determined resistance of the grassroots labor and people’s coalitions has blunted and slowed the Bush-Cheney right-wing offensive. Nevertheless, it is a dangerous juggernaut that is resorting to tactics of repression and mass intimidation at home while continuing to mobilize for war on Iraq.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service launched a dragnet roundup of hundreds of Middle Eastern and Muslim boys and men, Dec. 18. The American Civil Liberties Union denounced the sweep. “Given the evidence, there is no alarmism in saying this is a round-up,” said Lucas Guttenberg, director of the ACLU’s Immigrant Rights Project. “Attorney General Ashcroft is using the immigrant registration program to lock up people. … By Jan. 13, immigrants from an additional 13 countries must submit to registration, a move that could push the detentions into the tens of thousands.”

The author is the editor of the People’s Weekly World/Nuestro Mundo and can be reached at greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com