People Before Profit blog

Edwards ends presidential bid. Obama, Clinton praise ex-rival

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 13:05:00 +0000

John Edwards withdrew from the race for the presidency Jan. 30, saying in New Orleans, where he had launched his campaign, “it is time to step aside so that history can blaze its path.” He was referring to a campaign that could put Hillary Rodham Clinton, the first woman, or Barack Obama, the first African American, in the White House.

Speaking in the still devastated Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans he said, “With our convictions and a little backbone we will take back the White House in November.” Edwards had embraced New Orleans as the symbol of what he described as a system that didn’t hear the cries of the downtrodden.

Edwards told reporters he would meet with Clinton and Obama before deciding whether to make an endorsement and he set no timetable for deciding when he might endorse either candidate.

Clinton and Obama both praised Edwards.

“John Edwards ended his campaign today in the same way he started it – by standing with the people who are too often left behind and nearly always left out of our national debate,” Clinton said.

Obama praised Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth. At a rally in Denver, he said the couple has “always believed deeply that two Americas can become one, and that our country can rally around this common purpose.

“So while his campaign may have ended,” Obama said, “this cause lives on for all of us who still believe that we can achieve that dream of one America.”

The Edwards campaign, which had significant labor backing, helped point the campaign debate in a progressive direction by focusing on issues important to working people and the poor. He garnered endorsements from significant industrial unions such as the steelworkers, miners, transportation and dockers.

The impact of Edwards’ withdrawal will be felt in less than a week when Democrats hold caucuses across 22 states, with 1,681 delegates at stake.

Estimates of who will benefit most from his withdrawal vary widely.

In South Carolina exit polls, a majority of Edwards voters said Obama was their second choice.

In an informal MSNBC poll taken on the day of the Edwards withdrawal, 65 percent of respondents said they thought Edwards should back Obama. Four in 10 Edwards supporters said their second choice in the race is Clinton, while a quarter prefer Obama, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo poll conducted earlier in January.

Edwards had amassed 56 national convention delegates, most of whom will be free to back either Obama or Clinton.

An immediate result of the withdrawal will be six additional delegates for Obama, giving him a total of 187, and four more for Clinton, giving her 253. (Edwards won 26 delegates in the Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina contests. Under party rules, 10 of those delegates will be automatically dispersed among Obama and Clinton, based on their vote totals in those respective contests. The remaining 16 remain pledged to Edwards, meaning his campaign can re-assign them.)

The overall totals for Obama and Clinton, 187 and 253 respectively, include the delegates they each won in the caucus and primary states so far, and the “superdelegates” they each have at this point.

“Superdelegates” are party and elected officials who automatically attend the convention and can support whomever they choose. Three superdelegates had already switched from Edwards to Obama before the news of the Edwards withdrawal. A big trend in the popular votes on Feb. 5 can cause even more shifting among this group. A total of 2,025 delegates are needed to secure the Democratic nomination.

There were a number of progressive platforms that Edwards put out before any of the other major candidates. Only Kucinich beat him to the punch, in this regard.

He was the first of the three to call for a plan for universal health care and, aside from Kucinich, the only one to call on Congress to pull funding for the war. He was the first to charge that lobbyists have too much power in Washington and needed to be curbed.

In some ways this reflected a trend that showed itself among numerous candidates. He had evolved since 2004 from a moderate southern Senator into a pro-union, community and political activist by 2008. Clinton, too, shifted significantly in a progressive direction on numerous issues and both her campaign and the Obama campaign have increasingly taken on the populist and anti-corporate themes stressed by Edwards.

Even Mitt Romney, the Republican, in some ways tried to echo the Edwards campaign in its strong condemnation of special interest politics in Washington.

Milton Wolff, last Lincoln Brigade Commander

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:08:00 +0000

Milton Wolff, a perennial symbol of U.S. working-class internationalism, died Jan. 14 in California at age 92. Born in Brooklyn of immigrant parents, the last commander of the Washington-Lincoln Brigades that fought fascism in Spain was a man of charisma and intelligence.

His was a life marked by action. Wolff joined the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1933, worked in the garment industry, joined Young Communist League, and in 1937 volunteered to fight in Spain.

Defying U.S. nonintervention laws in company with thousands of other young Americans, he joined international contingents and Spanish resistance forces attempting to halt the military assault begun in 1936 by Spanish reactionaries against an elected Republican government. He began as a medic, but soon became a combatant, surviving deadly engagements from Brunete, Teruel, Belchite, to finally the Ebro River disaster of 1938, when the international brigades left Spain.

By then, Wolff had become the ninth and last commander of the Lincoln Brigade. Predecessors had been killed or wounded. Author Ernest Hemingway described the 23- year-old leading columns in retreat: “tall as Lincoln, gaunt as Lincoln, and as brave and as good a soldier as any that commanded battalions at Gettysburg.”

Wolff served with U.S. forces during World War II, later in Italy with Army intelligence services. From 1938 until the death of Franco in 1975, Wolff led in protests against U.S. ties to the dictatorship. For decades, he headed advocacy efforts in behalf of both exiled Spanish republican refugees and Lincoln Brigade veterans victimized by post-World War II, red-scare hysteria.

“After the war,” Wolff recalled, “I went to art school. I participated in the Civil Rights Congress, traveling the South to solicit support for framed Blacks, Willie McGee, the Martinsville Seven, and others. I also worked briefly against the Smith Act, and appeared before the Subversive Activities Control Board and the House Un-American Activities Committee as a hostile witness.”

Later, under Wolff’s leadership, the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade protested against the war in Vietnam, campaigned to send ambulances to Nicaragua during the U.S. backed Contra war, sent humanitarian aid to Central American countries, and organized donations for Cuban hospitals. Reminiscing in 1995, he reported that “My latest action was joining the Travel Challenge to Cuba, and linking our post to the Lift the Embargo on Cuba movement.”

Wolff got into trouble. Speaking out against conditions leading to a friend’s death caused the Civil Conservation Corps to drop him. In New York, he was jailed for 15 days in 1940 for taking part in street protests outside the French consulate against threats to send refugees back to likely death in Spain. Later, the U.S. Army returned him stateside when his involvement with Spanish partisans in Southern France morphed into preparations for fighting the Franco regime, in Spain.

Milton Wolff authored many articles and reviews. His books include the autobiographical “Another Hill” – “The best book about war since All Quiet on the Western Front,” - Howard Fast; “A Member of the Working Class,” a depiction of growing up in Brooklyn; and “The Premature Antifascist”, a novelistic account of left-wing politics and love under the cloud of impending war.

Wolf also wrote movingly of Paul Robeson who the founding convention of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade made an honorary member. Robeson had visited the International Brigades in 1937. Writing April 10, 1971 for the “Daily World,” predecessor of the People’s Weekly World,” he recalled,

“It was the first of only three stars that we gave to men who had been with us, but not in the Brigades. It was the only one we gave without reservations of any kind, for in some way that it is impossible to define, he had become one of us. And it was more than that; for when I stood beside him to pin the star on his lapel, up there on the stage at our first convention, all the veterans gathered sitting quiet, watching, I had this feeling that Paul Robeson was not so much becoming a member of the Lincoln Brigade, as that we were becoming a part of Paul Robeson, that Robeson joining us in this way was all the medals, ribbons and honors that any organization could want to have. And still have.”

LETTERS: Jan. 26

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 09:35:00 +0000

Cost of war What taxpayers are spending for the Iraq war this year: $155.5 billion.

What $155.5 billion could pay for: health care for 44,330,909 people.

Source: National Priorities Project

Torture This is a highly tardy response to Paul Hill’s article “Psychologists equivocate on torture” (PWW 9/29-10/5). I’ve had the clip in a file and only now managed to get organized enough to respond. I am a long time American Psychological Association member. Despite this appearance of conventionalism, I am an unconventional left-wing person. In the long decades of being a shrink, the field seems to have become more and more of a business. Journals reflect this with numerous ads for how one can run an office and make more money. The motivations and efforts that some made in the 1940s seem to have disappeared. Still, I have never considered that my resignation would make a bit of difference, and might close down what small amount of information that I do see in the Oregon Psychologist. “Life status” means that none of the connections cost a cent and I buy nothing and go to no meetings. I agree that all progressives must struggle. Any more specific suggestions as to how to raise that red flag of warning against political and professional participation and support of heinous activities (call it torture or fascism) would be helpful. What you had to say was greatly appreciated.

Jean Anderson Via e-mail

Vote ‘yes’ on VA health care On Feb. 5 (and on all the early-voting ballots), voters in Cook County and 21 other Illinois counties will have the chance to vote for full mandatory funding for veterans’ health care. We strongly urge all voters to turn to the last page of the ballot and vote for this important advisory referendum. Veterans’ health care funding—already earned by their service to their country, often at risk of their lives—is not currently assured. In fact, it is funded on an annual discretionary basis like highway funding and pork barrel projects. The funding that does exist is not sufficient to cover all veterans and makes many veterans pay for their Veterans Administration health care. A recent Harvard study showed that there are 1.8 million veterans in this country go without health care. Excluded from the VA, these veterans do not or cannot get coverage elsewhere and are among the 47 million Americans without care. This travesty must stop! We hope all Illinois voters in these 22 counties will vote for veterans and for full mandatory funding of VA health care.

Bruce Parry Chicago IL Bruce Parry is the chair of the Coalition of Veterans Organizations.

The Philippines and the Pomeroys It was good to hear from Bill and Celia Pomeroy of London, England (PWW 01/12/2008). Bless them! Recently I read Bill’s “The Forest, A Personal Record of the Huk Guerilla Struggle in the Philippines” having bought a copy in a National Book Store in Manila. I was visiting Luzon to do research for a Ph.D. dissertation I am pursuing at Walden University. The study involves mental health consequences on Filipino Amerasian children and adolescents, many now teenagers and young adults, abandoned in 1992 by American servicemen when the U.S. military withdrew from the bases at Subic Bay and Clark air base. I would also recommend Pomeroy’s “The Philippines: Colonial, Collaboration and Resistance!” published in 1992 by International Publishers which I plan to cite in my dissertation as an informative reference. This account provides valuable insight and explanation into many of the reasons for the sharp class divisions and grinding impoverishment facing America’s former colony today. P.C. “Pete” Kutschera Albany NY

Nevada results In your recent article covering the Nevada vote “A quick look at the Nevada caucus results” (Online eXtra, www.pww.org). Teresa Albano wrote, “Mitt Romney, the only GOP candidate to campaign in Nevada, won.” However, Ron Paul was also campaigning in Nevada and finished second, ahead of John McCain.

Jamey Rutschilling Via e-mail

King legacy is for everyone When Colorado Springs schools were invited to send 50 students each to the City Auditorium program honoring Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy, some schools chose by lottery or by the first 50 to return permission slips. But one middle school principal specifically chose only Black students. An anonymous parent objected saying “the school denied 90 percent of the students the opportunity to enrich their lives, learn about leadership and how the vision of one man can change history. Dr. King’s birthday is not a Black event and offends the dream he had.” The school principal has apologized and in the future will send all students. The fact that space limited the attendance shows the need to increase the size of the venue chosen for holding the event. Honoring and understanding the ideas and legacy of King is for all children to learn about and should not be another segregated event. Children (and teachers) need to learn the history and struggle for civil rights included many brave people of all races and religions. One way to end racism and segregation is to teach everyone to feel a part of King’s legacy and to proudly identify with him and his teachings.

Vivian Weinstein Colorado Springs CO

LETTERS: Jan. 19

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 07:30:00 +0000

‘Right to work’ scam

I sent this letter to the Oakland (Mich.) Press:

The far-right is on the move again. These are people with heavy pockets and bulging bank accounts. And, by gosh, they are never satisfied with all the gold and glitter, and want to add to their misbegotten fortunes by further exploitation of the American working family.

So, lo and behold, they are trying to collect enough signatures to place the proposal for the “right to work” on the November ballot in Michigan.

If there ever existed a misnamed, deceptive and fraudulent proposal, this is it. It is a lie, a false statement deliberately presented as being true, and a total hoax. It is first and foremost an attempt of the far-right to destroy the unions and the labor movement and everything that the working population has achieved in over a century of struggle.

What is the “right to work?” Do these fat cats guarantee everybody a job? The answer is a resounding no.

Does it mean that they will have the right to work you for less? The answer is yes.

When these fat cats’ foot soldiers come soliciting your signatures to put this question on the November ballot, please ignore them.

Saib Shunia White Lake MI

Photos of Sam Kushner

I was a close friend and associate of Cesar Chavez from 1963 to 1973. In my retirement years, I am the founder/director of a website dedicated to Chavez and his farmworker movement from 1962 -1993 at .

I wish to include photos of Sam Kushner. The site already contains his book, “The Long Road To Delano,” and a Kushner interview with Chavez entitled “Cesar Chavez: Pacifica Radio Archives.”

I came to know Sam when he visited Delano to cover the Delano grape strike and invariably, as a good working reporter, he had a camera slung around his neck. It is these photos that I am looking for.. The web site already contains more than 7,000 farmworker movement-related photos but, in my view, it is still incomplete without the photos of Sam Kushner.

Can you help me by casting a net far and wide among Sam’s many friends and colleagues? If you uncover other photographers who have movement photos, of course I would be interested in publishing those as well. (This is not a commercial venture, but solely for historical educational purposes, and for my part, it is a labor of love — a tribute to the dedication and commitment of Cesar Chavez and his movement volunteers, and I include Kushner in that category.)

Contact me at or at 5131 Pleasant Drive, Sacramento CA 95822.

LeRoy Chatfield Sacramento CA

Kucinich

I found it troubling when reading articles by John Wojcik and Jose A. Cruz (PWW 1/12-18) that there was only a brief mention of Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich is the Democratic candidate for workers, not Clinton or Edwards or Obama. My question is why the People’s Weekly World wouldn’t cover the candidate that is actually out campaigning for what your organization is campaigning for? I feel like credibility is lost when Kucinich and his policies are excluded in any coverage of the election.

Ben Schreiner Eugene OR

$201,000 – Thank you!

We finally have all the numbers tallied: the 2007 PWW Fund Drive went $1,000 over its goal of $200,000 — the most we’ve raised in years. And more money is coming in, giving us a few thousand dollars to jumpstart the 2008 drive.

States that had not met their goal in years, like New Jersey, Washington, D.C., and Maine, made a big turnaround this year, bringing in 108, 145 and 210 percent of their goals respectively. Most states met or exceeded their goals, and of those that didn’t, many hit more than 90 percent.

Next we can finish our drive for 1,000 new subscribers by Jan. 31. We are already more than halfway there.

You made sure the PWW remained financially viable because you know its value in the struggle for peace, democracy, equality and socialism. Help us make sure that at least 500 more people read it every week in 2008. Consider getting a friend to subscribe, or buying them a subscription!

This is a year that may go down in history as the time when the American people beat back the ultra right, and that is more likely with each new reader of the PWW.

In solidarity, Teresa Albano

P.S.: All donors should have received Thank You notes and gifts by now—if you have not, please e-mail subs@pww.org.

Plumbers, Unite Here endorse Obama

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 06:50:00 +0000

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama won the backing Jan. 9 of the 60,000-strong Culinary Workers Union in Nevada. The endorsement followed announcements by the 450,000-member parent union, Unite Here, and the national Plumbers and Pipefitters Union that they were backing the Illinois senator.

The decision by Culinary Workers Local 226 was significant because, as the representative of hotel, restaurant and laundry workers in Nevada’s casino industry, it is the largest and best organized labor group in the state, and 45 percent of its members are Latinos. Unite Here nationally, too, has an enormous Latino membership.

The union’s endorsement of Obama creates a basis for unity not only among labor, Latinos and African Americans but also among Asians, Native Americans, whites and women. All are significant components of the state’s workforce. This is seen as a welcome development when some in the race are promoting divisions.

One such divisive effort was made by supporters of Hillary Clinton in the Nevada State Education Association.

Caucuses in Las Vegas are held at casinos, allowing workers to vote without having to leave their jobs. The state education association filed a last-minute lawsuit to move the caucuses out of the workplace, stating it would give an unfair advantage to Culinary Union members. Apparently some Clinton supporters feared that allowing people to vote near their jobs would hurt their candidate because the union backed Obama. But many in the labor movement see pitting union against union (in this case culinary vs. teachers) as a harmful tactic in the overall fight to defeat the Bush agenda.

Over the past year, as part of an unprecedented effort by labor to impact the 2008 elections, the Culinary Workers have registered thousands of Latino voters. Latinos make up 25 percent of Nevada’s population but are under-represented on voter rolls.

Unite Here is the first major national union to endorse Obama. It signals that some in the labor movement see support for his campaign as important to building labor’s leverage in the elections.

The Plumbers union, an influential building trades union, is the first AFL-CIO union to back Obama. It is a multi-craft union with 340,000 members in 300 locals.

Obama has also picked up the endorsement of the Nevada chapter of the Service Employees International Union.

“What we have to make real is the ideal that in this country, we value the labor of every American,” Obama said as he accepted the union endorsements at a speech in Las Vegas. “We must respect that labor and reward it with a few basic guarantees — wages that can raise a family, health care if we get sick, a retirement that’s dignified, working conditions that are safe.”

The large vote for John Edwards also shows the importance of labor support not just in those states but across the country. Edwards continues to emphasize a strong anti-corporate message.

Clinton, who has significant union support including several big national unions, has strengthened her populist message against corporate greed. In addition she has support among women of all races and among Latino elected officials, especially in the delegate-rich state of California.

Unions are expected to register millions of voters this year, with special emphasis on African American, Latino, women and youth voters. The AFL-CIO registered 1.5 million voters in the off-year 2006 elections.

Although Clinton, Edwards and Obama are backed by different unions, labor is expected to unite behind the eventual Democratic nominee in a get-out-the-vote effort that surpasses past campaigns.

jwojcik @pww.org

Illegal immigrants, or undocumented ones?

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 08:51:00 +0000

Minneapolis artist Ricardo Levins has a bumper sticker that reads, “An injury to Juan is an injury to Al.” In a lighthearted way, that twist on the classic labor motto captures the meaning behind a resolution adopted at this year’s convention of the International Labor Communications Association.

Delegates to the New Orleans convention discussed the way language is being used in the current debate about immigration and how labor media can play a role in both educating union members and building solidarity.

The resolution notes that phrases such as “illegal immigrant” and the grammatically incorrect usage of “illegals” as a noun promote divisiveness and bigotry. In our resolution, ILCA urges all ILCA members and labor communicators in general to instead use the terms “undocumented immigrant” and “undocumented worker.”

The resolution was introduced by Workday Minnesota, which has long followed this practice.

Why is this important? It’s not just a matter of semantics. As the National Association of Hispanic Journalists notes, “illegals” and other pejorative language “crosses the line by criminalizing the person, not the action they are purported to have committed.” Millions of people in the United States have engaged in illegal acts, from failing to pay a parking ticket to committing murder, but they are not referred to as “illegals.”

As the NAHJ also notes, “Under current U.S. immigration law, being an undocumented immigrant is not a crime, it is a civil violation. Furthermore, an estimated 40 percent of all undocumented people living in the U.S. are visa overstayers, meaning they did not illegally cross the U.S. border.”

While it’s important for labor communicators to be accurate, it’s equally important we get the whole story. Our publications, websites, radio and video productions provide a perspective on the issues that is woefully lacking in the corporate-owned media. That’s why avoidance of terms like “illegal immigrant” is particularly important.

Remember the heavily hyped myth of the “welfare queen” in the Reagan era? She’s disappeared — replaced by those “illegals” who are trying to take your job. As long as workers of different backgrounds view each other with suspicion and even hatred, we can’t get together to solve our problems.

The constant drumbeat about “illegal immigrants” by politicians, talk radio, CNN’s Lou Dobbs and thousands of others also clouds the real issue that working people need to address. Despite the rhetoric, immigration is not the central question. It’s globalization.

We live in a global economy where millions of people are forced to leave their homes and their countries to find work to feed their families, while millions more are witnessing steep declines in their wages, benefits and working conditions. Meanwhile, corporations pile on the profits, destroying communities, the environment and people’s lives with impunity.

Is this the kind of world we want? As long as working people stay mired in name-calling, they’ll never ask that question.

Barb Kucera, editor of Workday Minnesota, is also a member of the Executive Council of the International Labor Communications Association. The complete text of the ILCA resolution and guidelines from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists are available at www.ilcaonline.org. This article is reprinted from The Guild Reporter, published by The Newspaper Guild-CWA.

Letters: Jan. 12, 2008

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 08:40:00 +0000

New Year’s greeting

Unfortunately I am now totally blind, and am not able to do any more than to dictate this to you: A happy new year to you and all our comrades.

Celia and I do little more than endure our present existence. However, our spirits remain high and we maintain our vision of a socialist future.

Bill and Celia Pomeroy London, England

Bill and Celia Pomeroy are in their 90s. Bill was a correspondent for the PWW and its predecessors and wrote several books, including “The Forest, A Personal Record of the Huk Guerrilla Struggle in the Philippines.” During this Filipino nationalist struggle in the 1940s he met Celia Mariano, who became his lifelong comrade and spouse. Bill, a U.S. citizen, and Celia were forced into exile in the UK by the U.S. government because they were Communists and participants in the Huk struggle.

View the You Tube video: Balitang Europe: Bill & Celia Pomeroy, London exiles at

Torture

Who could but be outraged and feel sadness for humanity after reading the article “Waterboarding: Torture or mere interrogation technique” by Paul Hill (PWW 12/8-14)? Who indeed.

There are of course those we would not expect to harbor such feelings. From that lickspittle lawyer John Yoo who aided and abetted Bush and Cheney in their quest for power — he is currently a law professor at UC Berkeley — on up to Bush himself, who added his name to history’s list of degenerates when he proudly declared he was the “first war president of the 21st century.”

Hill touches upon the “who” question when he discusses the “desensitizing’ effect on the U.S. public of a TV show that regularly shows torture being used to save the day for the hero and the country.

I don’t disagree. But I would point my finger at a cause of much longer standing and deeper pervasiveness — the criminal justice system with its racist, dehumanizing treatment of prisoners and its obsession with the death penalty — both forms of government-sponsored torture.

That penal institutions are geared toward punishment desensitizes the public to the expectation or possibility of rehabilitation.

I cannot imagine any action by a government more numbing to the public’s sensibilities than to watch it take frightened, defenseless human beings and crush the life out of them.

Bill Appelhans Chicago IL

Robeson season

April 9 will mark the 110th anniversary of the birth of Paul Robeson, artist and fighter for freedom, peace and social justice. The Bay Area Paul Robeson Centennial Committee and others will celebrate the occasion in several ways over the next few months.

A January display of Robeson books, CDs, videos, DVDs at the Rockridge Branch, Oakland Public Library, will later move to the Cesar Chavez Branch (February) and then the West Oakland Branch (April).

On Feb. 27, “Paul Robeson, Words Like Freedom,” a CD compilation of Robeson’s spoken word, will have a release party at La Pena, Berkeley.

On March 30, Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade will dedicate the newly installed monument to the anti-fascist fighters on The Embarcadero, San Francisco (www.alba-valb.org.). The monument includes a 6-foot image of Robeson, with text about his support for the democratic forces during the Spanish Civil War.

It is hoped that PWW readers in other locations will be inspired to organize tributes to the 110th birthday of this people’s hero.

April will also see an exhibit on Robeson’s life and legacy in the Rotunda of Oakland City Hall. Readers who have Robeson memorabilia to contribute to our collection should write to

research@bayarearobeson.org.

Bonnie Weiss Oakland CA

After Iowa

Happy New Year and congratulations on a job well done. These have been trying times when the hyenas of war have again been turned loose on humanity by a greedy ruling class.

Now, beyond all the optimism I was capable of mustering, Mr. Obama won Iowa! He won in a political arena 95 percent white. It was a resounding defeat for the manipulations of the ultra-right and their right-liberal fellow travelers. Also it was a hard lesson for liberals who underestimated the political fury of the masses in these troubled times.

Obama’s victory was more than a progressive move; it was a dialectical leap ushering in a qualitatively new era of struggle. Marx once compared revolutionary struggle with the work of the mole, who sometimes burrows so far beneath the ground that he leaves no trace of his movement on the surface. This is the old revolutionary “mole,” not only showing his traces on the surface but also breaking through.

The old pattern of politics as usual has been broken. It may not have happened as we expected it to happen but what matters is that it happened. The message is clear: we can and must defeat the ultra-right, by uniting the broadest possible coalition that will represent an overwhelming majority of the people in a new political dynamic. We must quickly shed yesterday’s political perspective and get in step with the march of events.

Frank Chapman Via e-mail

$100 a barrel

It is now almost a year since the American people began to experience the highest costs of gas and oil ever. There is no end in sight. The question is why? People are caught in the free market hypocrisy of an unregulated domestic oil industry. An industry that has not upgraded its processing capacity in order to keep prices inflated. An industry that receives billions in government subsidies, grants and loans while the people are faced with increases in everything that requires gas or diesel fuel for delivery. The economy is slowing down, real estate prices are falling, while mortgage costs are rising and foreclosures are reaching epidemic proportions. Now we are facing a “winter of discontent” with dropping temperatures.

The oil industry monopoly folks are so greedy and rich we could fund the U.S. budget several times over. There was even enough to purchase a U.S. presidency. Anyone who becomes president cannot have the kind of connections George W. Bush has to any national and global monopoly. We need to nationalize the oil industry lock stock and barrel. Whenever industry is allowed to run unregulated it can lead to destroying the entire economy.

Thomas Siblo Via e-mail

Apology

Re: Hussein Ibish’s comments re: my recent letter about the Annapolis conference (PWW 12/22-1/11, 12/15-21). Recently, I’ve seen documents showing Mr. Ibish is correct (the PLO was represented; Mahmoud Abbas is PLO chairman). This does not change the substance of my criticism, that the process is excluding major segments of the Palestinian people and their elected representatives, censoring crucial issues and being used to drive wedges in the Muslim world.

I, too, hope that somehow this process can bring about a just peace. However, the U.S. and Israel are engaged in manipulations that, unchallenged, will lead to a divided and dependent Palestinian state and, indeed, an expansion, rather than a cessation, of violent conflict from Iran to Gaza and beyond. Under these circumstances, protest, rather than muted enthusiasm, is called for. I want to apologize to Sue Webb and the editors for the last paragraph of my letter which did not further my argument, but made unfair attacks regarding their commitments to fairness and justice.

James Jordan Tucson AZ

Tribunals examine U.S. role in Colombia

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 06:11:00 +0000

In Colombia, four million people have been forced from their homes and land. Poverty is rampant: almost 24 percent of Colombians earn less than two dollars a day; 65 percent, less than three dollars daily; 40 percent of the children don’t attend school.

Contributions by multinational corporations and the U.S. government to turmoil and suffering in Colombia, unmatched in Latin America, are well documented.

Left wing guerrillas there are still potent after four decades of struggle. Abusers of human rights count on impunity. Their relations with government leaders are cozy.

Yet, underlying all of this is an economic/political model imposed on Colombia, according to an international eight-person panel that heard testimony in Bogota, the capital, Nov. 20-23.

“Forced displacement in Colombia owes above all to the neo-liberal model of development.” Belgian academician François Houtart, president of the Tribunal of International Opinion (TIO) on forced displacement.

The Bogota tribunal was remarkable for its emphasis on human displacement and the out-sized role of military force. Modeled on Bertrand Russell’s tribunals on the U.S. war in Vietnam, this TIO reviewed three studies on population displacement and heard testimony from 28 victims. Over 400 other victims had previously testified before five regional tribunals. Colombian human rights groups sponsored the tribunals.

According to witnesses, during the 1980s paramilitaries forced peasants off land sold for a pittance to drug traffickers intent upon laundering new wealth. Left-wing political opponents and suspected sympathizers were removed to give landowners free rein. The paramilitaries opened up land for mining, agribusiness and construction projects. Witnesses described terrorist assaults. They cited the complicity of courts in legitimizing new proprietors. They described landowner and corporate financing of paramilitary terrorists. Now, they claimed, natural resources are stolen, and agriculture is given over to profitable monoculture operations costly to the environment.

The TIO condemned Colombian government officials for indulging crime, multinational corporations for depending on paramilitaries, and industrialized nations for permitting corporations to “finance the military and paramilitary operations that displace millions of Colombian women and men.”

Proposed remedies included returning land to peasants and communities, financial compensation, acknowledgement of past crimes, guarantees against new ones, removal of impunity, and reconciliation.

Acknowledging his tribunal’s lack of jurisdiction, Francois Houtart assured an interviewer that its legitimacy derives from the visibility it gives to crimes against humanity, especially those perpetrated or neglected by states. The tribunals represent “the ethical conscience of humanity expressed through distinguished personalities in the judicial world, from scientific, religious, artistic, and political fields.”

Beginning in 1979, 33 Permanent People’s Tribunals (TPP) have taken place throughout the world. From October 2005 through July 2008, Colombian human rights groups are staging TPPs to “judge crimes committed against the Colombian people by national economic groups and by transnational corporations.”

In Cacarica, Colombia, Feb. 24-27, 2007, one TPP ruled on transnational military corporations. A lawyers’ collective catalogued charges against the U.S. DynCorp company: its fumigation flights cause terror and suffering, DynCorp enjoys bi-national judicial immunity, and Colombian authorities remain oblivious to its operations.

A major beneficiary of Plan Colombia, DynCorp “has been most implicated in the commission of crimes in this country as well as violations to human rights caused through its aerial spraying operations,” according to the tribunal.

Indeed, Washington’s lead card in Colombia is military action. Under Plan Colombia, Washington has underwritten Colombia’s military and police to the tune of $4.46 billion over eight years.

Introducing Plan Colombia in 1999, then-U.S. Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson spoke of U.S. investments “in the areas of mining and energy, and to secure these investments, we are tripling military aid to Colombia.” (Quoted by Francisco Ramirez). U.S. concerns, however, range far beyond investment safety. Writing in Argenpress, Alberto Pinzón depicts Colombia’s Army as “a true armed anticommunist party.”

Through its 1947 Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, Washington sought to shape the Colombian military into a bulwark against an “internal enemy.” Colombian dictators readily complied with the worldwide U.S. anti-communist agenda.

Pinzon explains that the army “irregularization” prescribed by counterinsurgency experts from the “U.S. Southern Command ended up in the total take-over of state power by the present narco-paramilitary regime.” That in turn led to “the terrible happenings that destroyed Colombian society during this period.”

W. T. Whitney Jr. is a member of the People’s Weekly World editorial board.