People Before Profit blog

How globalization threatens democracy in India

Fri, 25 Jul 2003 05:21:00 +0000

Ending the colonial rule of British imperialism, India won its independence and established itself as a sovereign, socialist, democratic republic on January 26, 1950. In the last half century India experienced three wars, two year-long national emergencies and severe natural and man-made calamities. Yet, India’s maturing democracy and its multi-ethnic, pluralistic character weathered those 50 years.

Independent India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, put forward the still relevant idea of “unity in diversity.” His socialist credentials and pro-Soviet Union stance had great influence among India’s poor and working masses. Nehru even adopted a five-year plan for development projects and public sector enterprises. The public sector flourished. Money from these enterprises went to the development of social services.

This scenario lasted until 1991, when the Congress Party government under Prime Minister P.V. Narasimharao and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh adopted “neo-liberal” globalization policies dictated by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The private sector was touted as the only remedy for the ailments of the Indian economy. Without any public debate or discussion, even in Parliament, they opened the doors for foreign, as well as Indian, monopoly corporations to dominate the economy. The role of the public sector became minimal and public enterprises began to close. “Profit” became the slogan for not only business but the government as well.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was another reason for this drastic change. Indian rulers tossed out any ideas of socialism and swung to the other extreme – market capitalism. The ruling parties, who once administered the national economy on the basis of socialist thinking, turned “reformers.”

Successive governments continued these policies. When the extreme far right Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) forces jumped into the government driver’s seat, “reform” gave way to a more extreme situation where huge amounts of kickbacks from multinational corporations began to flow. Politicians and ministers became middlemen for corporate and private interests.

While they demagogically linked their policies with “democracy,” preaching the benefits of a “global economic village,” the minimal hard-won democratic rights of workers and the people began to decline. Democracy suffered at the altar of private profit, although Indian democracy “experts” have failed miserably to realize the situation.

As a result of these “reform” policies, states and regions are now competing against each other. Regional political parties have taken on new importance, but many are using caste, religion and language as their main weapons to divide the Indian people.

Some, like the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Dravida Munnetra Kazhakam (DMK), and Dalit Panthers preach “new love” towards dalits (the lowest caste, formerly referred to as “untouchables”) to capture power. But, for example, in Uttar Pradesh, one of the large states in India, these “dalit parties” and the far-right hindutva forces work hand in glove. They will not resolve any discrimination that dalits face, only safeguard multinational corporate interests.

The Indian people still largely depend on the agricultural sector for their livelihood. Agricultural growth leads to rural prosperity, which in turn leads to more buying power, and that triggers higher industrial growth. But during the current corporate globalization process agriculture has seen negative growth, despite campaign promises by many bourgeois political parties to help the agricultural sector. Capital invested in Indian agriculture has declined from 17 percent in 1980 to 9 percent now. This trend has had a negative impact across the economy.

The displacement of rural and tribal peoples – as in the case of the anti-people Narmada dam project, where hundreds of thousands of people will be displaced – is also part of the neo-liberal picture. Although the movement of the people of Narmada carries considerable moral power, this alone is unable to get them redress. Their democratic resistance is often brutally attacked not only by the ruling class but in particular by right-wing political organizations.

Democratic rights of students – from pre-school to university – are also in question. The education sector is rapidly being privatized. Before 1991, education was public. Now universities are being told to privatize. Poor students cannot get access to higher education even if they are academically qualified. The neo-liberal pressure to privatize also affects curriculum. One prominent report claimed there is no need to teach humanities and social sciences at the university level, and recommended that students learn only business-oriented subjects.

These are just a few examples of how neo-liberal (or, as some may call it – neo-colonial) globalization endangers democracy and the yearnings of poor and working people.

M.K.N. Moorthy is the publisher of a progressive Malayalam-language publication in Kerala, India, and a freelance correspondent for the World/Mundo. He can be reached at pww@pww.org

Behind Californias recall lies a Bush

Fri, 25 Jul 2003 05:15:00 +0000

The current drive for a recall of California’s Democratic governor, Gray Davis, has this financially strapped state – the seventh largest economy in the world – in a political tizzy. But with all the rhetoric over the reasons Davis should or should not be recalled, one factor has been pushed to the side: the shadow of political opportunism and political doublespeak that has emanated from the Bush White House.

It has been clear from the beginning that Bush’s usurpation of the presidency of the United States and the weak Democratic response gave a green light to Corporate America and its political allies on the right to try to throw all rules, laws and decorum in U.S. politics out the window. If the Republicans could bully their way into the White House despite losing the election, and the Democrats failed to respond, it gave the Republican Right a clear message that they could get away with anything, and so far they pretty much have.

Start with the California energy crisis that the Republicans now blame on Davis, despite the fact that deregulation was passed during their watch in the State House. The wholesale ripoff of the California consumer by the mostly Texas-based energy giants (Bush’s friends all) was a direct result of the “we can do whatever we want” attitude prevailing following Bush’s ripoff of the White House. The message was, it’s OK to lie and cheat and steal, and if you get caught, well maybe you will get a slap on the wrist – like Enron, for example, and Ken Lay, Bush’s buddy and political backer.

When the Bush-controlled Federal Energy Regulatory Commission refused to act in the interests of the people of California it was clearly a sign that the Bush administration was after California. And why not? California, the only major state in the union with a Democratic-controlled legislature and governor, overwhelmingly rejected Bush’s “selection” to the White House.

Of course, the “dot-com” disaster contributed to the state’s economic woes, but billions have been lost on the energy fiasco, and the Bush administration has merely shrugged.

Without a doubt, the right wing is on the attack with the green light coming from the White House.

It would be far-fetched to blame the economic crisis on the Bush administration, but it is safe to say that the Bush policies are clearly aimed at using the crisis to destroy government services and privatize them – a long-standing policy of the right-wing neocons. And so, when California got itself caught in the quagmire of the crisis, Bush and his friends helped it along.

It would be misleading to say the recall is a conspiracy hatched in the White House. In fact, the state GOP steered clear of it until conservative Rep. Darrell Issa dumped a million bucks in the drive and it began to look like the recall would get enough signatures to make the ballot. But, at that point, the head of the state GOP galloped to Washington, met with neocon guru Karl Rove and came back in full support of the recall.

And what if Davis is recalled and a Republican takes over? (With a possible list of as many as 10 or more candidates and no run-off, a winner could get in with a small minority of the popular vote.) Would anything change? The fact of a huge budget deficit would remain – but a Republican would sit in the state house and promote the very policies that caused the crisis in the first place.

What the recall does do is take attention away from the continuing war in Iraq, the military budget that is going out of whack thanks to the war, the paranoia hype about “terrorism,” while Bush’s “voodoo economics” are swept from the public’s attention.

We cannot blame Davis for the economic crisis in California, and it is clear that the recall is merely a dirty trick on the people of the state. The California Democratic Party, the state AFL-CIO and other mass organizations are strongly opposing it.

All progressives should fight the recall.

Lincoln Smith has been a labor editor in the Bay Area for over 25 years. He is currently the editor of the Journeyman newspaper, the official publication of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Alameda County. He can be reached at linczs@comcast.net

Berlusconi and totalitarianism

Fri, 25 Jul 2003 05:08:00 +0000

The New York Times reports that Italian students and teachers are protesting the inclusion in high school graduation exams of an essay question about “terror and repression in totalitarian systems,” which the question defines as “communism, Nazism, and fascism,” highlighting communism. The exams come from the education ministry of Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing government, which includes the neo-fascist National Alliance.

Berlusconi, who owns or controls six of Italy’s seven TV networks, is a sinister and cartoonish billionaire who named his right-wing party “Go Italy” (the slogan of a soccer team he owns) and has made red-baiting his stock in trade. His government has also been mired in corruption scandals. The dismantling and division of the Italian Communist Party and the general weakening of the Italian left in the 1990s enabled Berlusconi to come to power, just as Benito Mussolini used the retreat and division of Italian socialists and communists in the early 1920s to establish a fascist dictatorship with the support of Italian capitalists and rural estate owners.

An Italian student is quoted in the Times saying, “I didn’t do the one [question] on the dictatorships because it seemed skewed and based on a distorted historical vision. ...We have to do something.”

One thing all anti-fascists can do is join in condemning the Berlusconi government’s attempt to indoctrinate Italian students with anti-communist propaganda in place of real history.

Italian communists and socialists were the core of the 20-year resistance to Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship. After the war, the Communist Party of Italy (PCI) emerged as the second strongest party in the country. It was the leading force in the trade union movement and in the arts and sciences. Much of what the Italian people gained in wages, benefits, and social services can be attributed to the PCI and the broad Italian left.

For 45 years, the U.S. government did everything it could to keep the PCI and the Italian left from coming to power through elections. It used CIA alliances with Mafia gangsters, economic warfare, military threats, integration of Italy into NATO, and support for coup plans when the PCI increased its electoral strength in the 1970s.

The “totalitarian” theory became a major prop of American cold warriors, who portrayed communists and the Soviet Union as comparable to fascists and Nazi Germany. Now the Berlusconi government is trying to justify its anti-democratic and anti-working class policies by dredging up this lie.

The exponents of the “totalitarian” theory to fight communists after World War II never wanted to fight fascists before the war. They had no trouble using Nazi criminals, like Klaus Barbie, wartime Gestapo chief of Lyons, France, or Reinhard Gehlen, head of Hitler’s counter-intelligence service, as agents in their postwar anti-communist crusade. Throughout the cold war period, the U.S. government allied itself with the fascist-like apartheid government of South Africa and with military dictatorships.

Anti-communist union leader James Carey’s 1945 comment – “In this war we fought with the communists against the fascists. In the next war, we will fight with the fascists against the communists” – was a much better guide to what the cold war was about than the proclamations of John Foster Dulles and other cold warriors that the “free world” was fighting “communist totalitarianism.”

The idea of a total state comes from Italian fascists and was picked up by German and other fascists. It is the idea of an all-powerful party and leader organizing society around racist and chauvinist principles, in the interest of ruling classes. Whatever errors, abuses, and crimes took place in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, they had nothing to do with the totalitarian idea and were distortions and betrayals of the Marxist-Leninist principles of internationalism, democratic participation of the masses in all areas of life, and socialist law. When personality cults and repression manifested themselves, they were byproducts (although not excusable) of attempts to develop socialism in a context of capitalist economic, political and military encirclement.

But militarism and racism were the very essence of fascist states, central to their aim of solving the general crisis of capitalism by terroristic destruction of all working-class and democratic forces and by wars of aggression.

Berlusconi and his education ministry are using “anti-totalitarianism” to support the anti-communist politics of the fascists who established the “total state” idea to begin with. Hopefully, the Italian people can drive him and his anti-democratic government from office.

Norman Markowitz is a history professor at Rutgers University. He can be reached at pww@pww.org

Splits in the powers that be on Iraq

Fri, 25 Jul 2003 04:59:00 +0000

I never thought I’d agree with Zbigniew Brzezinski on much of anything. (For those who may not remember, he was Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser and a leading cold war ideologue.)

But consider this recent exchange between CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Brzezinski. Blitzer was interviewing Henry Kissinger and Brzezinski on the crisis over Bush’s State of the Union speech. Kissinger basically did a mealy-mouthed apology and tortured defense of Bush and Company. On the other hand:

Brzezinski: “And the larger problem is that the United States stated, at the highest level, repeatedly, without any qualification whatsoever, that Iraq was armed with weapons of mass destruction. Not just nuclear, but bacteriological and chemical. And that was stated without any ambiguity. In fact, it was hyped. It was stated that Iraq is armed with the most dangerous weapons that man has ever devised.

“And that’s why we went to war. This is what we said to the world. This is what we said to the American people.”

Blitzer: “Well, do you have any doubt about that?”

Brzezinski: “Well, it’s clear that they weren’t armed with these weapons. They didn’t use them. We defeated their army in the field. We have control over their arsenals. We haven’t found them. We’re now maintaining that they may be hidden somewhere, which is kind of comical, actually.”

A few seconds later Brzezinski, speaking about the need to resolve the question of whether it was an intelligence failure or hyping by the Bush administration, said, “I think the credibility of our system, domestically and internationally, depends on that issue being resolved.”

That statement highlights the differences between Kissinger and Brzezinski. There is a growing divide in the political and corporate establishments and in the military about the war and occupation of Iraq – what Marxist shorthand pegs as “splits in the ruling class.”

Kissinger (in Republican administrations) and Brzezinski (in Democratic administrations) are both hardened cold warriors. Both have spent years fashioning and leading foreign policy for the benefit of U.S. corporate, financial and military interests. Both remain ardent supporters of U.S. imperialism and global domination. Yet they are seriously divided on how best to achieve their goals.

Kissinger, in full support of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war, takes the “might makes right” approach of the ultra-right wing. This approach disdains world and domestic opinion and arrogantly advocates naked military might to achieve its ends.

Brzezinski and some others in the establishment question a “go it alone” approach, mainly for practical reasons, because it won’t work. For example, they questioned the Bush administration’s projections for a post-war Iraq. They feared that the U.S. military would be spread too thin and that installing a new “U.S.-friendly” government would be a long and difficult matter.

It’s true, neither trend questions that the U.S. should “plant the flag” of power and control in the Mideast and, as icing on the cake, establish control over one of the world’s largest oil reserves. Neither side seriously questions the “right” of U.S. imperialism to police the world, topple governments, and develop and use the most dangerous weapons of mass destruction known to humankind.

Still, there are two things about this split that are important for the working class and people. First, this tactical struggle in the political and military establishments is not isolated from mass pressure and public opinion. It was the massive peace movement that forced this split in the ruling class into the open in the first place.

Second, the split opens all kinds of possibilities. The exposure of the hyping and lying in Bush’s State of the Union speech has opened up a crack that, with continued mass pressure, can defeat George Bush in 2004. Now even conservative commentators and some Republicans in Congress are questioning the truthfulness of other claims by the Bush/Cheney hawks, and the White House is clearly in disarray.

Watergate was an issue for many months before it finally drove Richard Nixon out of office. At first many dismissed the Watergate spying by saying “they all do it.” But the American people, concerned about ending the war in Vietnam, the abuses of domestic spying and attacks on civil liberties, and the corporate attack on living standards and economic justice, turned the Watergate scandal into a mass movement to defeat the ultra-right, and they won. We can do the same.

Scott Marshall is a vice-chair of the Communist Party USA and chair of its Labor Commission. He can be reached at scott@rednet.org

False claims: patient rights under attack

Fri, 18 Jul 2003 05:10:00 +0000

Opinions

In 1989, Michael Hatch, then Commerce Commissioner of Minnesota, released an investigation of two medical malpractice insurance companies finding that each had increased doctors’ malpractice premiums some 300 percent. Yet the number of claims against doctors had not gone up, the amount paid out by insurance companies had not increased, and the number of frivolous claims had not increased.

In response to a question by ABC’s Nightline as to how this could happen, Hatch responded, “Because they had the opportunity to do it. There was a limited market. People need coverage. The companies knew they had a corner on it, and they raised their rates accordingly.”

Have we learned nothing from the past?

Apparently not. Today, doctors are striking around the country, asking Congress and state legislatures to limit the liability of malpracticing physicians and hospitals who injure or kill patients. Many states are succumbing to this pressure and enacting cruel limits on compensation for seniors abused in nursing homes, quadriplegic workers and even brain-damaged children who suffer for a lifetime.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill in March to do just that, and the Senate may take up the measure at any time [Editor’s note: On July 9 Senate Democrats successfully blocked a vote on the bill]. And President Bush is aggressively stumping for this legislation.

Much of the juice for this campaign comes from the American Medical Association, a shameful organization that has chosen to lie down with a profiteering industry instead of protecting patients. The AMA and state medical societies have created a “crisis” atmosphere in many states by encouraging doctors to strike until caps are enacted. Among the states where doctors have staged these sham strikes are New Jersey, Florida, Illinois, Texas and West Virginia.

Yet in AMA “crisis” states, claims against doctors are actually falling or have held steady. Rather than leaving, doctors are flooding into many of these states. Moreover, in states where the AMA’s extortionate tactics have been successful, forcing lawmakers to restrict patients’ rights, rates have continued to climb and doctors are still struggling to find affordable insurance. This is the case in Nevada, Mississippi and Ohio, for example.

On June 2, 2003, Weiss Ratings, an independent financial-rating agency, released a study finding that over the last decade, states with caps on non-economic damage awards saw doctors’ malpractice insurance premiums rise faster than in states without caps. There’s only one thing that caps are sure to do, according to Weiss – boost insurance industry profits.

Weiss’s conclusions are consistent with those of every credible, independent body which has studied this issue, finding that interest rates, the economy and the economic cycle of the insurance industry are the cause of severe sudden rate hikes for doctors, which happen periodically irrespective of legal limits imposed in a particular state.

But many lawmakers either aren’t listening, or they don’t seem to care.

Take Kentucky, for example. Republicans there, to the outrage of Democrats, have refused to “accept” a report done by the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Research Commission. This report also found that doctors’ insurance premiums are not lower in states with caps on non-economic damages, and that limits on punitive damages resulted in higher premiums for some.

Like President Bush, Kentucky Republicans have decided to ignore the insurance industry’s responsibility for price-gouging doctors, focusing instead on limiting the rights of our most vulnerable citizens to hold hospitals and HMOs accountable in court – laws that will cause untold suffering, economic devastation, and for some, the destruction of family life.

One thing is for certain. These laws are sure to make insurance companies richer. But as major donors to the Republican Party, maybe that’s the point.

Joanne Doroshow is executive director of the Center for Justice & Democracy, www.centerjd.org. This article originally appeared on TomPaine.com.

More thoughts on affirmative action

Fri, 18 Jul 2003 05:03:00 +0000

Opinions

The morning of the affirmative action workshop at the Rainbow/PUSH coalition conference last month was the very same morning that the Supreme Court released its controversial and divided decisions in the twin University of Michigan affirmative action cases. By now, most readers know the court ruled dividedly that race-based affirmative actions, criteria, and programs are acceptable in some cases.

No matter how divided the Supreme Court’s decisions were, the divisions among us “Black folk” who attended that workshop were at least double the depth.

On one side stood those who believe that affirmative action programs must be continued at all cost even if they are threatened by a slow curtailment. In that view affirmative action provides the only way for some to break free of a discriminatory world. On the other side stood those who believe that even a vibrant affirmative action agenda is nothing more than “aggravated tokenism,” designed to continue the oppression of the masses by offering only carrots to those who are economically oppressed.

So, an esteemed panel of scholars, activists, and lawyers fought it out in Chicago, outlasting the workshop’s scheduled time limits, and ending the discussion just as divided as it began. The debate over affirmative action is the same today as it was generations ago: Will the accomplishments of outstanding individuals up lift an entire people or should the movement focus on the collective rights of communities to define themselves?

Janice Mathis, Esq., of PUSH’s Atlanta Bureau, moderated the discussion, putting the problem bluntly. She described how few gains America’s Black population has made in the past 30 years: economically, unemployment reaches more than 10 percent in most Black communities, nearly one in five Black men have been incarcerated, and barely adequate systems of health care and education are decaying throughout urban and rural America.

Ron Daniels, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said it succinctly: “We have to be careful not to over-celebrate [the fact] that there is [only] a vestige of affirmative action left,” he said, noting that the Supreme Court has set an implicit 25-year timetable for the complete dismantling of affirmative action. LaShawn Warren, a legislative counsel for the ACLU, said, “We are calling a victory what we have succeed to hold on to rather than what we have gained.”

Ron Walters, a professor at the University of Maryland, remarked, “They have been organizing for a long time to push us to this point. There really is a right-wing conspiracy, which has taken over the judicial branch” of our government, undermining the entire basis of affirmative race programs. Walters maintained that the demise of affirmative action is not coincidentally linked to right-wing think tanks, which argue for the elevation of an individual-centered First Amendment above the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Walters declared that “the only apparatus for individuals to rise in social status is for their entire social group to rise.” Thus, by undermining the collective-focused Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments the right wing has really undermined the entire legal basis of social equality.

Along with worries about the diminishment of group rights and the dangers of cultural assimilation, Walters also addressed the negative effects of standardized testing. “We are entering an era of ‘testocracy,’” he said. “They will test our kids and our teachers, and [by that] wash many of our Black teachers out.” But a majority of the audience ridiculed Walters’ way of thinking, declaring the undeniable need of Black communities to ensure that our youths get the education they need to perform well on tests.

According to many, affirmative action would not be as needed if it were not true that all levels of education are being re-segregated.

In the end there were some points of agreement about the future of the struggle for equality. These centered on the emergence of a new youth-led civil rights movement, which has already stemmed the tide of the racist backlash. Tanya Troy, representing By Any Means Necessary, a youth advocacy group which has taken the lead in the battle over affirmative action, referred to the huge numbers of youth who have suddenly flexed their political muscle so powerfully and successfully. These are “young people organizing themselves,” she said. “There is a new movement building and young people are its leaders.”

The question remains how this new movement will reconcile the age-old question of whether to focus on outstanding individual accomplishments or the fundamental limits forced on masses. Perhaps they will see room to focus on both.

Brandi Lea Kishner is a young writer living in Chicago. She can be reached at bkishner@pww.org

Where is Smedley when we need him?

Fri, 18 Jul 2003 04:58:00 +0000

Opinions

Official publicity surrounding the Iraq War gives no indication that military people might harbor dissenting views or be reluctant to obey orders. But the voices of soldiers who said “no” crop up in the historical record.

In 1898, the U.S. government extended its imperialist reach to foreign venues, and joining the Marines in Cuba in 1898 was an eager 16-year-old volunteer from Philadelphia, Smedley Darlington Butler, the son of a future congressman. Not only would Smedley become a superb military leader, a major general and recipient of two Medals of Honor, but his hard work and egalitarianism gained him the devotion of his troops. He was inclined occasionally to leave the insignia of his rank behind, or carry the packs of lagging soldiers.

He chafed against the military bureaucracies. Advocating for efficiency and his troops’ safety, he took little guff from military superiors and became the target of reprimands and penalties. With U.S. troops in the vanguard of a commercial empire spreading through the world, Smedley Butler, obeying orders, led troops in China, Haiti, Honduras, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and in France during World War I. But he began to question the rationale for poorly paid U.S. troops risking their lives overseas. And when he learned who got rich from all his campaigns, he spoke out.

He gave a speech in 1929 while on active duty in which he told about rigging a Nicaraguan election in 1912 at the orders of the State Department. At the time, the Senate was investigating military bullying in Latin America. In early 1931, while still on active duty, he told an uncomplimentary story about Mussolini during a speech in Philadelphia. He was arrested for offending a foreign leader. Later that year, not yet retired, he reviewed his career before an American Legion convention. “I was a racketeer for capitalism,” he said, and then went on to give the specifics.

What discourages U.S. soldiers from speaking out against today’s expanded version of U.S. imperialism? The huge military establishment demands loyalty, and preaches the ideology of capitalist virtue. In this context, the Nuremberg prescription for refusing wrongful orders may seem quaint or impossible. And the U.S. imperial job description now seems unchallengeable to many. In Smedley Butler’s day, the question of a republic versus an empire was still an open one. An empire is now upon us, and its soldiers serve as functionaries rather than as citizens.

General Butler learned that the high priests of capitalism stop at nothing. In 1933, a group of bankers, investors, and lawyers asked him through an intermediary to assume command of half a million adoring veterans. He was to take over national leadership from a despised, said-to-be ailing, President Franklin Roosevelt. The plotters admired Hitler and Mussolini and longed for order and the gold standard. Butler heard them out long enough to learn the particulars of a proposed fascist coup and then spilled the beans in testimony before a House committee headed by Rep. John McCormick.

It looks like the extreme right wing again may be inclined to stop at nothing. Among the straws in the wind are these: a stolen presidential election, falsehoods presented as intelligence, preemptive war, tactical nuclear weapons, intelligence on terrorism disregarded, violations of individual rights, future generations burdened with debt, subversion of the United Nations, and international treaties down the drain. One waits for military people in the know to speak out and cast light on dark places. These would be the ones for whom the ideal of citizenship in a democracy is not dead. One hopes a latter-day Smedley Butler may yet come to the fore.

W. T. Whitney Jr. is a part-time pediatrician in rural Maine. He can be reached at (To learn more about Smedley Butler, read Jules Archer, The Plot to Seize the White House, Hawthorn Books, NY, 1973.)

Questions on Cuba

Fri, 18 Jul 2003 04:52:00 +0000

Opinions

Who can deny that there are a great number of prisoners in Cuba suffering the most severe jail conditions existing in today’s world? For them there is neither day nor night because they are blindfolded and in complete darkness. Their ears are also plugged and they remain in complete silence. They are deprived of all tactile sensations because their hands are covered with a kind of gloves. There are hundreds of prisoners whose names have not been published and nobody knows what they are accused of. They have not been put on trial much less sentenced. Furthermore, they have no attorney and are serving limitless terms.

These prisoners in Cuba are not in jail because of Fidel Castro but are instead prisoners of President Bush in Guantanamo (U.S. Naval Base). They are in individual cells and dressed in red suits that we have all seen, but we know no more about them. Since they are Bush’s prisoners and not Fidel Castro’s, the U.S. press says nothing about them. And I ask if the European Union has protested on behalf of these people imprisoned in Cuba. Has the European Union demanded the U.S. release them, as it has demanded Cuba immediately release 75 prisoners?

Another question I ask is if terrorism is protected in Cuba, and I answer it saying, by all means. Terrorism is protected in Cuba by President Bush through the Cuban Adjustment Act, which is not Cuban but North American and is only implemented for Cuba and not any other country. According to this law, those who arrive in the U.S. after having hijacked a Cuban plane or ship are immediately given the right to residency and receive immediate employment. The Cuban people do not receive visas to enter the U.S. normally but if they do it illegally they are awarded a prize. Doesn’t this promote terrorism in Cuba? However, Bush, not Fidel, is the one who promotes it. Those who reach the U.S. to live from any other part of the world are called immigrants, but those who come from Cuba are called exiles.

A common practice of the U.S. government is to falsify language, fabricate words, changing one name for another – in fact openly lying. For example, instead of using the word “conquer” they use the word “liberate.” Now they have invented a new word used in relation to Cuba, the word “dissident.” The real sense of this word is disagree, think differently. But the word is used for those involved in conspiracies that promote subversion and try to overthrow the Cuban regime. “To promote transition” is another way to say it. I ask: Who protests when in another country (not Cuba) those who want to overthrow the regime are put in prison?

A short time ago, I read in the newspaper that six people were condemned to death in Guatemala. It was a very small, 6-column-inch article. After that news appeared, there was no protest in that newspaper nor in any other. My other question is the following: To what extent is the opposition to the death penalty sincere if six people were shot by a firing squad in Guatemala and nobody says anything, but if three people are shot in Cuba, there is a worldwide scandal of incredible proportions? Maybe the world press is not mobilized against the death penalty but against Cuba and Fidel Castro? And what about the intellectuals who should be aware – don’t they realize it?

According to the 2002 Amnesty International report, death sentences last year totaled 1,560 worldwide. None of them was in Cuba. How many protests took place because of those 1,560 executions? Now that there were three in Cuba there was an avalanche of protest. Haven’t those intellectuals realized they were used by the anti-Cuban campaign? The three executions in Cuba and the arrest of 75 persons happened in special circumstances and honest people could not ignore them. We are talking about a country on full alert, facing the danger of being invaded. At the moment when the U.S. was waging war on Iraq, the Bush government declared that Cuba is on the list of military objectives for possible invasion and mass destruction. Meanwhile, the anti-Castro Cubans in the United States launched the slogan “Iraq today, Cuba tomorrow.” Those accusing Cuba of human rights violations were the ones committing in Iraq the greatest violation of human rights that the world has seen since the times of Hitler. And those who condemned Cuba for shooting three people by firing squad were destroying Baghdad in a way that had not occurred since the 13th century when the Mongols invaded. And they also declared that they were willing to do the same in other countries including Cuba. My questions are merely those of a newspaper reader.

Ernesto Cardenal is a noted poet and former minister of culture in the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. This is a translation of an essay that originally appeared in El Nuevo Diario, Managua, Nicaragua.

Thoughts on the Supreme Court rulings

Fri, 11 Jul 2003 03:36:00 +0000

Opinion

NAACP President Kweisi Mfume hailed the Supreme Court’s June 22 ruling upholding the University of Michigan law school admissions program, calling it a “major victory” for affirmative action.

“The Michigan model now becomes the operative model for both graduate and undergraduate affirmative action programs,” Mfume said, noting that the decision invalidated the University of Texas so-called “color-blind” admissions plan. It also set straight a 2001 appeals court ruling that rejected a University of Georgia affirmative action plan. Mfume was one of many civil rights leaders who hailed the court’s 5 – 4 ruling, written by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, in it, she gave a ringing endorsement of “racial diversity” as a “compelling state interest.”

Yet some say the court gave with one hand and took away with the other in ruling 6 – 3 to throw out the University of Michigan’s undergraduate admissions program. That program automatically awarded points to African American, Latino, and Native American Indian students. O’Connor and Justice Stephen Breyer switched and voted with the right-wing bloc to kill the undergraduate plan.

In a sharply worded dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg defended the point system. Youth of color “continue to experience class-based discrimination to this day,” she wrote. “The stain of generations of racial oppression is still visible in our society and the determination to hasten its removal remains vital.”

Ginsberg saw no defect in the undergraduate plan’s concrete goals and targets. Without those objective criteria for measuring gains, we will never overcome discrimination, she said. She cited statistics showing that African Americans die younger than whites, and suffer infant mortality, poverty and unemployment rates nearly twice those of whites.

Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP National Board of Directors, said, “The Supreme Court’s rulings on affirmative action are a mixed blessing, at best. The supporters of justice and equity should be sobered by the narrow margins in both cases. We should recall how we celebrated Bakke as a victory 25 years ago, despite its obvious retreat from the goal of insuring fairness in American life. For now, let us reaffirm our commitment to affirmative action as a remedy for past and present day discrimination and celebrate the Supreme Court’s endorsement of diversity.”

Bond is arguing that there is a difference between diversity and equity. A society can be diverse and still practice discrimination that leaves people of color in conditions of economic and political subjugation. An argument could be made that plantations were “diverse” in that both masters and slaves were found there.

Nevertheless, the Supreme Court’s rulings, no matter how limited and circumscribed, were a huge blow against the extreme right and a victory for the democratic movements of the people. We should not forget that George W. Bush used a speech at the University of Alabama on Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday to call on the Supreme Court to use the University of Michigan case to kill affirmative action as unconstitutional. Attorney General John Ashcroft filed a legal brief calling on the court to strike down affirmative action. Instead, the court heard the outcry of 50,000 people, including many NAACP members, who rallied outside its chambers April 1.

The court’s affirmative action rulings were followed two days later by its 6 – 3 decision upholding the rights of gays and lesbians to the same privacy rights as heterosexuals. Justice Antonin Scalia raved that the court majority was “taking sides in the culture wars” and “advancing the homosexual agenda.”

Remember Pat Buchanan’s “culture war” tirade at the 1992 Republican convention in Houston? The ultra-right GOP, he vowed, would fight “street-by-street” to defend America from the rising tide of immigrants, people of color, liberated women and homosexuals. Buchanan’s bigotry was so outrageous, the GOP was forced, hypocritically, to distance itself from his views, spouting clichés about “diversity” while in practice working to destroy affirmative action and, in Bush’s case, stripping Black voters in Florida of their right to vote in the 2000 election. These extremists have sent word to Bush that only fanatical ultra-rightists like Scalia are acceptable when a vacancy occurs on the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court affirmed that we are a multiracial, multicultural society. We are Black, Latino, American Indian, Asian, and white, gay and straight, men and women. I agree foursquare that diversity is a “compelling state interest,” a view embraced even by retired military officers and some corporations. But we should go beyond diversity, seeking to build multiracial unity in the struggle for full equality. One of the great advantages of socialism is that it would lay the basis for the eradication of all forms of discrimination and the creation of a truly egalitarian society.

But, for now, the main line of defense against the right wing’s corporate agenda is to oust George W. Bush from office in November 2004.

Tim Wheeler is Washington correspondent and a member of the editorial board of the People’s Weekly World. He can be reached at greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com

CEO pay still outrageous

Fri, 04 Jul 2003 04:55:00 +0000

Opinion

You know CEO pay is still out of control when Fortune magazine puts a smiling pig in a suit on the cover and headlines its pay roundup, “Have they no shame? Their performance stank last year, yet most CEOs got paid more than ever.” Fortune, remember, is a leading business magazine, not a union publication.

Median CEO pay at the 100 large companies in Fortune’s survey rose 14 percent last year to $13.2 million. Half earn more than the median, half earn less. Median CEO pay at the 365 large companies measured by Business Week rose 6 percent to $3.7 million, including salary, bonus and long-term compensation such as exercised stock options.

CEO pay went up in 2002 while company revenues, profits, stock value and employment went down. The S&P 500 stock index dropped 21 percent last year. Total revenues for the Fortune 500 fell 6 percent and profits plunged 66 percent. Another 1.5 million Americans lost their jobs. Personal bankruptcy filings set a new record.

While most CEOs did better, average CEO pay dropped because the highest paid CEOs could not cash in as much stock option loot in a down market. Still, average CEO pay in Business Week’s survey was $7.4 million. It would take 241 years for an average worker paid $30,722 to make that amount.

Since 1980, average CEO pay has skyrocketed 442 percent, adjusting for inflation, from a mere $1,364,524. Average worker pay has inched up just 1.6 percent from an inflation-adjusted $30,244 in 1980. If CEO pay had grown at the average worker pace since 1980, it would be $1,386,065. If average worker pay had grown at the CEO pace, it would be $164,018. CEO pay is outrageous compared to workers and outrageous compared to CEOs from other countries. According to the Towers Perrin worldwide pay report, U.S. CEOs are paid more than twice as much as Canadian CEOs, nearly three times as much as British CEOs, and four times as much as German CEOs.

Number one on Business Week’s 2002 pay scoreboard was financial giant MBNA CEO Alfred Lerner with $194.9 million. Lerner died in October 2002 and was succeeded in November by Charles Cawley, who managed to place number six on the list with total pay of $48.6 million. Two more MBNA executives who weren’t CEOs also got megabucks. John Cochran III got $36 million and Bruce Hammonds, $28.6 million. You would think a company paying four people a combined $308 million must have had a great year. MBNA shareholders know otherwise. MBNA’s total return to investors was negative 18 percent.

The stock market has been down for three years and counting. Business Week ranked CEOs who gave shareholders the least for their pay during 2000 to 2002. Number one was Oracle’s Larry Ellison who hauled in $781.4 million; shareholder return was negative 61 percent. Cendant’s Henry Silverman got $184.5 million; shareholders got negative 61 percent. Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers took $157.6 million; shareholders lost 76 percent. Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy got $53.1 million while shareholders were nearly wiped out with a negative return of 92 percent.

For a longer-term picture of what Fortune dubbed “The Great CEO Pay Heist,” look at the treasure paid to Disney CEO Michael Eisner in the ten years ending in 2002. Eisner collected $954 million, by Business Week’s count, an average of $95.4 million a year – more than $1.8 million a week.

Talk about pay for nonperformance. Disney shareholders got an annual rate of return during 1992 to 2002 of just 1.9 percent, compared with the Fortune 500’s median annual return of 9.1 percent. Fortune observes, “Up through the 1970s, a chief executive’s pay was generally linked to that of his underlings in a geometrically proportional relationship known as the ‘golden triangle.’” Now CEOs have their own alchemy triangle of golden handshakes, golden parachutes and golden retirements.

Back in 1980, CEOs made 45 times the pay of average workers. Last year, they made 241 times as much. By contrast, British CEOs made 25 times as much as workers, Canadians 23 times as much and Germans 13 times as much.

Whether measured against our own past or other countries, CEO pay should fall and worker pay should rise to bring us to a reasonable relationship.

Holly Sklar is coauthor of “Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies That Work for All Of Us” (www.raisethefloor.org). She can be reached at hsklar@aol.com. This article is copyright 2003 Holly Sklar.

Affirmative action victory? Affirmative action victory?

Fri, 04 Jul 2003 04:52:00 +0000

Opinion

I have come across much news coverage that has been hailing the recent Supreme Court rulings as civil rights victories. However, like the decision, I am split on this. The Gratz and Grutter v. Bollinger decisions were harmful and helpful in more than one respect.

It is true that in today’s political climate our ability to sustain any rights that help the advancement of minorities and working class people is a victory. But how much of a victory? To me, victory means progress, not just being rescued after being dangled off the edge of a cliff. While the decision in respect to affirmative action was upheld, the means to implement it was denied, leaving colleges and employers to act simply on a voluntary basis. What policy toward diversity do we really have if we simply respect the ideology without providing the ability to enforce it?

The ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger – upholding the University of Michigan Law School’s affirmative action program – sets legal precedent, arming Texan students with grounds to insist that the state universities implement a real affirmative action plan. On the other hand, the ruling in Gratz – overturning the University of Michigan’s undergraduate admissions affirmative action procedures – does not look at all the other reasons – besides race – why points are awarded to applicants, i.e., parents who are alumni, military service, and gender. Ironically, two of the plaintiffs in these cases were women. In fact, women have been among the main beneficiaries of affirmative action.

Lastly, the largest horror committed throughout these trials was President Bush’s blatant disregard for the entire judicial process. During the judicial proceedings, he spoke out against affirmative action policies and even went so far as to file a brief against the University of Michigan admissions policies. Legally speaking, it is the duty of the judiciary branch of government and the Supreme Court to uphold the law. This is to be interpreted based on a combination of previous case findings and the Constitution or what is referred to as “black letter law.” The executive branch of government had no grounds to interfere in the Supreme Court’s deliberations and the Bush administration’s public opposition to affirmative action should be reprimanded as this could have been highly detrimental to the outcome – not to mention that this was an attempt to single-handedly overrule the Bakke decision.

In an article in the March edition of Political Affairs, I wrote: “Historically, America has responded inadequately to its shortcomings, whether they are health issues, race-related, or civil rights-related. We have very few programs that address the root of the problems or make up for any past and current racial discrimination or inequalities. Affirmative action is the only program that even remotely resembles any form of reparations, yet is still only limited to a select group of future generations while ignoring disadvantaged groups as a whole. Without affirmative action we only have our past to look forward to.”

Where does that put us now, in the past or the future? I would say we have one foot in each. When asking people their opinions of the rulings one person told me a story of a fox who was so deft and quick that while being shot at he got away with only the tip of his tail being lost to the gunshot. I ask you, was the fox victorious?

Melissa Chadburn is a law student from Los Angeles and member of the Young Communist League. She can be reached at pww@pww.org

Counting the dead in Iraq

Tue, 01 Jul 2003 09:24:00 +0000

Opinion

On an almost daily basis, U.S. casualties in the invasion of Iraq continue to mount, one by one, as families grieve for their loved ones who are not coming home. Thus far, there have been more than 50 U.S. military deaths since May 1, the day White House Resident Bush declared the war over. We know those numbers (if the mainstream press isn’t lying again) because those lives are deemed, rightly so, important enough to report on. But what about the lives of Iraqi civilians? Are the Iraqi dead being counted accurately?

The Associated Press reported June 11 that “at least 3,240 civilians” have been killed so far. But reports by others such as iraqbodycount.net (IBC) reveal a much greater toll. AP called its June 11 report the “first attempt to gauge the scale of such deaths from one end of the country to the other.” Again, the U.S. corporate media gets it wrong. AP was not first.

IBC has maintained an incident-by-incident tally of Iraqi civilian deaths beginning before the brutal invasion. It counts a minimum of 5,567 civilian deaths and a maximum of 7,240, as of June 22.

The U.S. military doesn’t think we need to know the depth and breadth of the crime they are committing. General Tommy Franks, U.S. Central Command, said “We don’t do body counts,” much as Secretary of State Colin Powell stated during the Persian Gulf War that he wasn’t “terribly interested” in body counts. Well, some of us are interested in the great human cost to the people of Iraq because we owe it to them, as residents of the invading country, to know exactly (to the extent possible) what this war has cost them. Our ignorance of their suffering will compound the tragedy of capitalist aggression and allow it to repeat its crimes unchecked.

AP admits its numbers are based on records from only 60 of Iraq’s 124 hospitals. The news agency’s stated reason for its low figure is that many of the other 64 hospitals were not visited because they were in “dangerous or inaccessible” areas.

Additionally, AP excluded hospital figures when the written record didn’t distinguish between civilian and military deaths, although the agency admits that “possibly thousands” of civilian deaths were not counted because of that exclusion. But there’s another way of looking at civilian versus military casualties: those defending their own land from invasion are just as much victims as civilians without a gun.

A new story from the lie-masters is that U.S. troops are in Iraq as liberators. The “liberators” added to the body count in Falluja, 35 miles west of Baghdad, on April 28 when 17 civilians were killed and 70 wounded by U.S. troops during a protest calling for the U.S. military to leave Iraq. Two days later, in the same town, an additional 3 civilians were killed and 17 injured when a U.S. military convoy opened fire. Human Rights Watch is calling on U.S. authorities to investigate the “apparent use of excessive force.” No matter how the capitalist propaganda machine twists things, being shot dead is not liberation.

Scotland’s Sunday Herald reports, “The impact of war and regime collapse on top of 12 years of stifling sanctions has turned Iraq into a wasteland.” In this “wasteland,” Iraqi civilians are burying their loved ones, victims of U.S. imperialism.

What is being done in our names is a crime, and we need to know the magnitude of the crime. Each murder must be counted and called what it is.

Barbara Jean Hope is a reader in Philadelphia. She can be reached at Bjhope2000@cs.com

The ties that bind democracy, the courts and you

Tue, 01 Jul 2003 09:18:00 +0000

Opinion

“Roe v. Wade hangs by a thread,” said National Organization for Women (NOW) President Kim Gandy, at a press conference announcing a historic march on Washington for reproductive freedom, April 25, 2004, called by leading women’s rights groups. Hooray for these women’s groups for having the foresight to call for a national demonstration in an election year! What better way to change the atmosphere away from the far right’s fear-, war- and hate-mongering than a big, broad, unifying demonstration? Voter registration and education alone won’t defeat these guys. We have to have some mass demonstrations to help change that atmosphere.

We’re all in this together. The same guys that go after Roe v. Wade go after Iraq, labor, civil rights, affirmative action, voting rights, civil liberties and immigrants. In a nutshell, they go after “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The “thread” that Roe v. Wade hangs by is the tie that binds all of us who worry about the Bush administration’s power hungry grab for domination and unfettered exploitation. The old working-class folk-wisdom applies: an injury to one is an injury to all.

A semi-secret counterrevolution is going on in this country, in an area somewhat opaque for most of us. It’s attacking the “checks and balances” established by the American Revolution. It often uses code words, but those words can have an impact that will last for a generation. The area I’m talking about is the courts, and who gets nominated as a judge. The far-right Bush administration is working overtime to subvert our country’s legal structure and undo the Constitutional gains won in the last 100 years. Checks and balances – who needs them, they ask.

I keep getting e-mails from important organizations about opposing certain Bush nominations to various federal courts. And I keep thinking – how long can we keep this up? The Dems are holding tight on the Estrada filibuster, but there are probably enough right-wing nuts with a law degree to keep them busy indefinitely.

And just when you think the Bush administration can’t get any lower in its court nominees, it nominates William Pryor. Pryor is the Alabama attorney general whose unapologetic stance against American democratic values, won through good old-fashioned struggle, is shocking to say the least. The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, American Association of People with Disabilities, People for the American Way and Planned Parenthood are just a few groups opposing Pryor’s nomination.

Civil rights, women’s reproductive rights, gay rights, separation of church and state, the Americans with Disability Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act – a Pryor appointment to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals would place these democratic measures at risk in cases originating in Alabama, Florida and Georgia. Pryor called Roe v. Wade the “worst abomination in the history of constitutional law,” and compared being gay to incest, necrophilia, pedophilia, prostitution and adultery. Put it this way – he’ll never be on your side.

He’s so far out in right field that even the Republican gay and lesbian group – Log Cabin Republicans – in a rare move, had to come out against this nomination.

With a nominee like that for the federal court, many Americans are very worried about a Bush nominee to the Supreme Court, already packed with right-wingers. Rumors have it one to two vacancies will be announced in the next months. This administration’s drive to change our basic legal structure by stacking the courts with far-right, pro-corporate ideologues is a big issue for the 2004 elections.

At the recent American Federation of State, County, Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Presidential Town Hall meeting in Iowa, six prepared questions were posed to the candidates. They were on tax cuts for the rich; health care; funding for first-responders under Homeland Security; corporate greed and corporations that avoid taxes by locating off-shore; how they would resolve the states’ budget crises; and how they would use the bully pulpit to promote the right to organize.

Then the floor was opened for union members to ask their own questions. Delegates lined up at six floor microphones, many holding scraps of paper with their question jotted down. One woman, wearing a black shirt with red chili peppers on it (she was part of the delegation from New Mexico – and they all wore the same shirt), asked the presidential candidates about their views on Supreme Court nominees and the Justice Department’s erosion of the Constitution. This question sparked an incredible round of responses by the candidates – all of them very concerned about the far-right attacks on these underpinnings of our society. Concerns were raised about the Patriot Act, defense of Roe v. Wade, affirmative action, civil and immigrant rights.

The delegates responded with lots of applause to these answers. As it turned out, the Iowa focus group put together by the union rated this issue among the highest, along with health care.

Democracy and the courts – for the labor and people’s struggles it’s one to focus on.

Terrie Albano is associate editor of the People’s Weekly World. She can be reached at talbano@pww.org