People Before Profit blog

Letters

Fri, 20 Jun 2003 03:45:00 +0000

Change U.S. foreign policy

The war is, for the most part, over. Iraq has been “liberated,” the country is in a shambles, but Halliburton is on hand to rebuild. With apparently overwhelming public support, why were those pesky demonstrators out there? After all, isn’t Saddam Hussein the most evil man on earth, a blight on the planet? Well, yes he is, as are Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, Manuel Noriega. All bad, bad men, with one thing in common – 20 years ago the U.S. armed, trained and financed them.

Osama bin Laden first surfaced in Afghanistan in 1979 with the U.S. armed trained and financed Mujahideen, a violent group of Islamic fundamentalists. They overthrew the Soviet-supported government in Kabul and replaced it with a number of successive theocracies notorious for their human rights abuses and treatment of women and girls. They evolved into the Taliban.

There are many more examples of similar U.S. conduct and foreign policy over the past half century. A change is needed. A change in which mutual respect, mutual benefit and compassion are paramount.

I’m proud to be an American, but many of our political leaders should be ashamed of themselves. Whether it were Nixon and Kissinger or Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld they should do the right thing, not the avaricious thing.

Brian McAfeeMuskegon MI

Marxist news analysis

I want to thank all the contributers to the People’s Weekly World for explaining the current situation in the world through Marxist ideas. The academic prose of Capital is coming alive before my eyes. There is a world to win.

I am planning on teaching a course in Marxist thought to a group in Brooklyn. Please give me suggestions.

I am currently working on an analysis of [NYC Mayor] Bloomberg’s “perestroika” in the Board of Education in N.Y. It follows up basically on the data presented by the Philadelphia School Worker’s Committee detailing the Edison takeover of Philadelphia Public Schools. Would you be interested in such an article?

Kim BroadieBrooklyn NY

Editor’s note: Thanks for the compliment! We haven’t reported on this in the pages of the paper, but the Communist Party is conducting a “book club” which might be helpful to your study group. The readings are Left-wing Communism by Vladimir Lenin and Against War and Fascism by Georgi Dimitrov. Both are available through International Publishers: (212) 366-9816.

Articles on the privatization of public education and other attacks are always needed. You can email submissions to pww@pww.org. While article word counts vary, 500 words is our favorite recommendation.

Hang your head ‘W’

As a follow-through to Ken Biggs’s suggestion for a song (PWW, June 7) here goes.

The Ballad of B-2 (i.e. Bush and Blair)

(Tune: Tom Dooley)

REFRAIN Hang down your head George Dubya Hang down your head Tony Blair Hang down your heads you liars ‘Cause the weapons were never there.

We were lying to the people Lying all the time Lying to the people To cover up our crimes.

REFRAIN

Damn all those people Who shouted, marched and sang If it hadn’t of been for those millions We’d now be in Pyongyang.

REFRAIN

Heard them shouting: support our troops! Support them all the way! Support the troops right and proper! Bring them home today!

REFRAIN

This time next year We’ll be the only ones waving the flag As they bundle us into an airplane To the Courthouse in The Hague.

REFRAIN

Gary HicksBoston MA

Editorials

Fri, 20 Jun 2003 03:34:00 +0000

UN blue helmets needed in Israel, Palestine

The death of American peace activist, Rachel Corrie, run over by an Israeli army bulldozer Mar. 16 as she attempted to stop the destruction of a Palestinian home in Gaza, has become a symbol of the struggle for a just Israeli-Palestinian peace.

In putting her life on the line, she challenged the world community to intervene on the side of the majority of Israelis and Palestinians who favor peace based on “two states for two peoples.”

The intervention force must be seen as fair, impartial, with the authority of the world community. Only the United Nations fits the bill. The Palestinians have long advocated bringing in UN monitors or a team of UN peacekeepers. A UN Human Rights rapporteur delivered a report on the Israeli-Palestinian crisis last year stating: “The need for an international presence either in the form of monitors or of peacekeepers is surely imperative to reduce violence, restore respect for human rights and create conditions in which negotiations can be resumed.” A UN force would bring new life to UN Security Council Resolutions 181, 194 and 242, which call for Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, recognition of Israel and the creation of a Palestinian state.

The World Council of Churches recently stated, “The time has come for international peacekeepers in Israel and Palestine. … Conditions in the occupied Palestinian territories have worsened to desperate levels.” Amnesty International “strongly supports” the deployment of an “independent, impartial team of expert monitors” to stop the bloodshed and restart the negotiations. The idea is also supported by the overwhelming majority of UN member-states, including the Arab states. What, then, is the obstacle to this timely, urgent proposal? The right-wing Israeli government and the Bush administration who want to force an unequal peace on the Palestinians. Take that path and the vaunted “road map” will lead to another dead end. The key is involving the UN, starting with a force of “blue helmets.”

* * * * * *

Another blow to civil liberties

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ran rough-shod over the First Amendment when it ruled that the Justice Department has a legal right to withhold the names of nearly 1,200 people – nearly all of them Muslims – who were detained on various charges in the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The decision went even further, upholding the Justice Department’s right to with hold the names of plaintiffs’ attorneys and the locations where the detainees are held.

In language that has become the hallmark of high-ranking White House officials, Attorney General John Ashcroft claimed – and the Court agreed in a decision written by Judge David Sentelle – that secrecy is necessary out of deference to national security.

In a stinging dissent, Judge Davi Tatel said the majority of the court was just agreeing with what he called the Bush administration’s demand to “trust us.”

The ruling, which came within days of an internal report by the Justice Department documenting the wholesale denial of the rights of detainees, is further evidence of a frontal attack on constitutional liberties by the Bush administration.

Worse yet, this decision is the latest surrender by the courts to that attack. Recent decisions have upheld the right of the Immigration and Naturalization Service to conduct immigration hearings in secret, and have denied detainees at the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp the protections of the Constitution.

The protections of the First Amendment are not limited to individual rights – to freedom of speech, the right to assemble or to join unions. It also is a guarantee of transparency – that people have a right to know what government is doing. As Judge Daman Smith wrote in another case dealing with the right to know: “Democracy dies in the dark.”

Martin Dooley, the cracker-barrel philosopher, once said the Supreme Court reads the election returns. That’s one more reason to defeat George Bush in Nov. 3, 2004.

U.S. agribusiness seeks global control

Fri, 20 Jun 2003 02:08:00 +0000

A wide range of organizations, from the Sacramento Central Labor Council to Action for Social and Ecological Justice of Burlington, Vt., will converge on Sacramento, Calif., in late June to protest a move by U.S. agribusiness to take over the agriculture of the world.

From June 23-25, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture is hosting an international meeting in Sacramento. Ministers of agriculture, environment and trade have been invited from more than 180 nations.

Agribusiness and industrialized agriculture will be showcased to the officials in preparation for the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting scheduled for September in Cancun, Mexico. Corporate agribusiness leaders hope to finalize in Cancun an Agreement on Agriculture that will enable them to sell agricultural chemicals and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to farmers in developing countries.

Many third-world countries have resisted U.S.-style agriculture because their trading partners in the European Union (EU) refuse to import GMO food products. But the U.S. and some other countries are attempting to use the WTO tribunals to force the EU to accept the genetically altered foodstuffs. The U.S. reportedly has also been tying AIDS relief to acceptance of GMO agriculture.

Industrial agriculture is highly profitable for huge companies that dominate the food system, like Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland, but disastrous for consumers, public health, the environment, farmers and farm workers. Contrary to the corporate lies, small-scale sustainable farming works better for everyone, except big agribusiness.

Labor and the public have not been invited to participate in the Sacramento meeting, and their concerns, such as the effect of industrial agriculture’s use of toxic chemicals and genetically altered plants and animals on the health of farm workers, food processors (cannery workers, grocery clerks, etc.) and consumers, are not being presented. Worldwide, 40,000 workers are killed annually by exposure to pesticides. Agricultural workers are twice as likely to die at work as in any other employment sector.

The exclusion of workers’ concerns from these discussions is another example of how labor has been excluded from trade negotiations and other U.S. international policy talks. NAFTA has already eliminated nearly one million well-paying jobs, created a significant drag on growth and encouraged union-busting and depressed wages and benefits, as companies threaten to move overseas. It is certain that the passage of an Agreement on Agriculture will further damage jobs and the U.S. economy.

Everyone should have the right to know what they are eating, but the importance of labeling food products with genetically altered ingredients will not be discussed either.

The Sacramento Coalition for Sustainable Agriculture (SCSA), which is leading the mobilization to protest this exclusion and educate the public about the issues, has planned many activities, including a rally and march, teach-ins, debates, educational film showings and a Family Safe Food Festival.

Bill Camp of the Sacramento Central Labor Council and Dolores Huerta of the United Farm Workers have been invited to speak along with national and international environmental and organic agriculture leaders at the rally on June 23. The rally will culminate in a march through downtown Sacramento.

For more information on the SCSA activities, check out their web site, www.sacramentoministerial.org or call (916) 456-9435.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org

Rudy Lozano, 20 years later

Fri, 13 Jun 2003 04:03:00 +0000

Opinion

On the morning of June 8, 1983, Rudy Lozano, chief Midwest field organizer of the old International Ladies Garment Workers Union, was murdered in cold blood in his house in the Little Village neighborhood on Chicago’s southwest side. The forces behind his killing have never been conclusively identified.

Rudy was one of the most important political figures in Chicago at that time, even though he was seldom seen on the evening television news or on the front pages of the big newspapers. This young Mexican American, born in Harlington, Texas, had grown up in Chicago and contributed much to the city’s progressive politics.

It was Rudy, more than anyone else, who united Chicago’s Mexican and Puerto Rican communities behind the campaign to elect Harold Washington mayor of Chicago in 1983. Washington won the election and became Chicago’s first African American mayor and the most progressive mayor in the city’s history. Rudy himself, just a short time before, had fallen just seven votes short of entering a runoff election for a seat in the Chicago City Council. Had he won, he would have been the first Mexican American alderman and one of the few not controlled by machine patronage politics.

Furthermore, Rudy was doing pioneering work in the effort to bring union recognition and justice on the job to immigrant workers, including the undocumented. He was an effective organizer of low-paid workers in the city’s tortilla factories, among other places.

Twenty years have passed since the tragic day of Rudy’s murder. Have we advanced in the causes for which Rudy Lozano fought and with which his name will always be identified?

We have to acknowledge that there have been many retreats, defeats and disappointments, particularly in politics. Harold Washington died in office in 1987 and Chicago politics has generally taken a turn for the worse. On a national level, the Bush administration is even more ferociously reactionary than Ronald Reagan was in 1983 — something that Rudy would have probably found hard to believe. The Soviet Union and many other socialist countries are now capitalist backwaters. This would have distressed Rudy, who was an ardent fighter for socialism.

But there have been advances, too. There are now eight Latinos in the Chicago city council, seven in the Illinois House, and four in the Illinois Senate.

One thing stands out that would have made Rudy very happy: organized labor in the U.S., from local unions all over the country to the top leadership of the AFL-CIO, has now embraced the cause of the undocumented workers 100 percent. What at the time was a controversial, difficult position for Rudy to take has now become a major priority for labor.

Last year, Sin Fronteras, an organization in Chicago headed by Rudy’s sister Emma Lozano and modeled on his example, turned in 12,000 “Reward Work” cards in the campaign for immigrant legalization coordinated by the Service Employees International Union. This year, Sin Fronteras and any number of other organizations, churches and unions are working even harder to support the “Freedom Ride” for immigrant rights that has been initiated by the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union.

As Emma Lozano points out, it was the diligent and patient work by Rudy and others like him within organized labor that made possible the historic move of the AFL-CIO Executive Committee in 2000 to make legalization of the undocumented a supreme objective of organized labor — an objective that will be won.

Rudy would also be happy that his parents, Guadalupe and Anita Lozano, his wife Lupe, his sons Rudy Jr., Pepe and David, his sister Emma and many more members of his family and of his old circle of friends and comrades have not let the torch go out. Rudy Lozano, Presente!

Emile Schepers is an activist in Chicago. He can be reached at pww@pww.org

Letters

Fri, 13 Jun 2003 03:48:00 +0000

New film on Venezuela coup

PWW readers are now able to purchase, on video, the highly acclaimed documentary film “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”

Made by a group of Irish filmmakers, the film is a history of the brief coup that attempted to overthrow the elected president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, in April 2002. The filmmakers were filming in the Presidential Palace at the time of the coup and remained to film the mobilization of millions of Venezuelans who succeeded in restoring Chavez to power in just one day. Copies can be purchased, at http://www.artshapes.com/chavez.html or by calling 888-604-3423.

Walter TillowNew York NY

Good coverage on Iraq

Susan Webb’s article (PWW, 5/17) on the British official who resigned, International Development Secretary Clair Short, and the background information on what’s happening now in Iraq was very interesting.

Great information. I know I’ll be using information from the article as ammunition in the talk-radio wars here in Philadelphia. Thank you.

Barbara Jean HopePhiladelphia PA

PWW readers in prison

I am writing to say thank you for sending me your newspaper. I enjoy every issue as do about a dozen other prisoners here who read it also.

I’m getting out soon and will be subscribing to PWW as soon as I get home.

JimChester PA

Bush’s lies

According to an article in my paper, The Chronicle, by Robert H. Reid of the Associated Press, the government started the war with Iraq not to find and destroy weapons of mass destruction but to get troops out of Saudi Arabia. The WMD issue was simply an issue government people could agree on. This means our troops and many Iraq citizens were killed over a lie. President George Bush lied to the citizens of the United States, and also the rest of the world. I have read that the elder George Bush had decided that they (the government) wanted a regime change in Iraq. Was this what our military died for?

Max RaderChehalis WA

The rich should pay

The rich benefit from the exploitation of labor. The workers produce profit with their labor, and the rich keep the profit. Therefor the rich should pay the taxes.

People want to buy. They just do not have the money. That is why the economy is doing so poorly. We need a mass redistribution of income. That will raise corporate earning and corporate profits. Too much income is being concentrated into too few hands. Many rich people have so much money they cannot possibly spend it all.

Anthony DePalmaBronx NY

Veterans’ protest

Enjoyed talking to Tim Wheeler in D.C. at the veterans’ protest. You supplied the only media coverage. Thank you for that and for quoting me correctly.

Gene GlazerBloomfield NJ

New stamp to fight breast cancer

It would be wonderful if 2003 were the year a cure for breast cancer was found.

As you may be aware, the U.S. Postal Service recently released its new “Fund the Cure” stamp to help fund breast cancer research. The stamp was designed by Ethel Kessler of Bethesda, Md. It is important that we take a stand against this disease that kills and maims so many of us, our mothers, sisters, extended families, and friends.

Instead of the normal 37 cents for a stamp, this one costs 40 cents. The additional 3 cents will go to breast cancer research. If all stamps are sold, it will raise an additional $35 million for this vital research. Just as important as the money, is our support. What a statement it would make if the stamp outsold the lottery this week. What a statement it would make that we care.

Kathy Showaltervia e-mail

Editorials

Fri, 13 Jun 2003 03:31:00 +0000

Rx: Make three calls now

The Medicare prescription drug scheme being promoted by the president along with Republican and some Democratic congressmen is not just a lousy drug program. It’s the front end of a steamroller that is revving up to crush the whole Medicare system and pave it over with private insurers.

In order for seniors to get any real help with paying for the prescription drugs, they will have to opt out of the traditional Medicare system and into Medicare HMOs and PPOs. The sham prescription drug plan would funnel federal dollars to these private insurers to enhance their drug coverage. But for the 88 percent of seniors who so far have stuck with the traditional single-payer style Medicare plan, the sham plan offers only the stingiest of benefits.

How stingy? In a communiqué to its retirees, the United Auto Workers (UAW) points out “Under the proposed plan in the Senate, a senior who now spends $1,000 on prescription drug coverage would spend $1,057.50. It would actually cost them MORE money. A senior with high drug costs, $5,000, would still have to pay $3,695 for prescriptions.”

The legislation delays the start of the sham plan until 2006, allowing the president and his supporters in Congress to run in 2004 claiming they passed a prescription drug bill before people on Medicare realize they’ve paid an awful price for a terrible benefit.

There’s not much time to stop the perpetration of this fraud – votes in both the House and Senate are expected any day now. Americans of all ages need to burn up the phone lines to Washington D.C. to stop this outrage, called the Grassley-Baucus “Bad Deal” plan, after the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate finance committee who are sponsoring it. Contact your congressperson and both of your senators today by calling toll free (877) 331-2000.

* * * * * *

Honor Medgar Evers

June 12 marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Mississippi’s fearless NAACP leader, Medgar Evers, who was cut down by Klan gunmen when he stepped from his car in front of his home.

Evers became an NAACP leader in 1954, after the University of Mississippi, then all-white, rejected his law school application. Through the NAACP, Evers mobilized the masses of Black Mississippians to fight for equality. He pushed to increase Black voter registration, led boycotts and helped bring attention to murders like the 1955 slaying of Black teenager Emmett Till.

The civil rights movement became an irresistible force that pushed through the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. During the Johnson administration, affirmative action programs were implemented, opening to African Americans, other people of color and women skilled and highly paid jobs they had been excluded from. Thousands of Black, Latino and women candidates were elected to high office.

Now the ultra-right is scheming to roll back the gains Evers died for. On Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, the Bush administration declared war on affirmative action when they filed a brief with the Supreme Court in support of a lawsuit seeking to overturn the University of Michigan’s admissions program, falsely claiming it is a “racial preferences.” They seek to rollback society to the days of legal discrimination, like what Evers faced, while a broad coalition of forces support the U-M’s policies, including other colleges, labor unions, civil rights and women’s organizations and even the military.

The most effective way to honor Evers memory is to get active in the growing labor, civil rights and people’s movement against the Bush agenda. This includes the 2004 elections, which is only 18 months away. If it is a close vote, Bush will steal the election again. That is why we must register millions of new voters and make it an anti-Bush landslide election.

Steel union sounds alarm on jobs

Thu, 12 Jun 2003 09:15:00 +0000

“Unless there is a strong Democratic (Party) case for revitalizing manufacturing, there’s a good chance George Bush will clean the Democrats’ clock,” declared Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA). Gerard was speaking at a press conference held during last week’s Take Back America conference in Washington, D.C.

Gerard, joined by John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, announced the results of an extensive poll of voters in the key industrial battleground states for the 2004 elections. The poll found that among all voters, 75 percent feel that “creating new manufacturing jobs should be the president’s top domestic priority.” With Democratic voters, fully 84 percent agreed.

Gerard pointed out that since January 2001 well more than 2 million jobs, mostly in manufacturing, have been lost, the worst losses since 1934. This includes 50,000 steelworker jobs and the loss of health care benefits for more than 208,000 USWA retirees and their spouses.

The poll also found that 90 percent of the voters favor negotiating and enforcing fair trade agreements that protect “environmental standards and workers’ rights.” The poll sampled voters in nine heartland states, including Pennsylvania and West Virginia, key states that Al Gore lost in the 2000 elections.

Leo Gerard also endorsed a 10-point program for energy independence that would create a million new manufacturing jobs. It is the program of a newly forming coalition called the Apollo Alliance, and includes unions, greens and consumer groups. The program includes developing renewable energy sources and new technologies, conservation, and preserving regulatory protections.

“Obviously,” Gerard said, “voters in the industrial heartland understand that the federal government’s priorities should be in creating manufacturing jobs, providing health care reform, and strengthening workers’ rights, and environmental standards in trade agreements. Any Democrat who fails to understand that message better understand that George Bush is likely to clean his clock.”

The author can be reached at scott@rednet.org

Colombian rural union leader describes struggles

Thu, 12 Jun 2003 08:55:00 +0000

CHICAGO – Liliany Obando is an official of the National Federation of United Agricultural Workers (FENSUAGRO) in Colombia. On a recent visit to Chicago she made several presentations, and was interviewed by the World.

Obando gave a vivid description of the way Colombian farm workers have to fight against the twin forces of neo-liberal, NAFTA-like economic policy and brutal governmental repression, both instigated by the U.S. government.

Obando’s federation is active all over Colombia, organizing small farmers, landless agricultural workers and those who, having been pushed off their farmland by aggressively expanding estates, have been forced to cultivate illicit crops on the margins of the jungle. The federation is part of the CUT, the main Colombian union federation, and also works with other kinds of farmers’ organizations. Obando says that its main task right now is to help farmers to unionize and to link hands with sectors of society that are resisting the reactionary and repressive policies of Colombia’s right-wing president, Alvaro Uribe.

“Conditions in the agricultural sector are getting worse and worse,” she explained. Since the presidency of Cesar Gaviria a decade ago, “neo-liberal policies such as the free market and privatization” have been pushed by the Colombian government, at the instigation of the U.S. and the International Monetary Fund. President Uribe has continued this process, and backed it with a great increase in repression. Colombian farmers have not been able to compete with subsidized imports from wealthier countries, and are being ruined.

Under the U.S. promoted and financed Plan Colombia, Uribe has instituted a program called “Democratic Security,” which Obando compares to the USA Patriot Act in the U.S. “He has created ‘zones of rehabilitation and consolidation,’ where authority is given to military-appointed mayors.” In these areas, the whole population is controlled and scrutinized, leading to massive violations of human rights. This policy is used to protect the investments of foreign corporations, which also are implicated in paying right-wing paramilitaries to displace the local population.

Obando described in detail the way in which the U.S.-sponsored drug eradication programs have backfired. In cavalier disregard of the warnings of its own scientists, the Colombian government has allowed spraying of vast areas supposedly to get rid of poppy, marijuana and coca leaf fields. These crops are grown by desperate Colombian farmers who have been pushed off better quality land (where they used to grow food) by the expansion of big landholdings and by means of the violent tactics of the AUC, the right-wing paramilitary death squads. But studies show that some of the illicit crops actually increase after the spraying, while food crops, the environment and the health of adults and children in the affected areas are severely damaged.

Obando explained that President Uribe is a big landowner himself and comes from the sector of society that finances the right-wing paramilitaries and is most highly implicated in the drug traffic. She scoffed at recent news that Carlos Castano, head of the right-wing AUC death squads, had agreed to a peace agreement with the Uribe government. “The government and the paramilitaries are two aspects of the same things, so you can’t talk about a ‘peace agreement’ between them,” she said.

The Colombian people, with agricultural workers playing a key part, are fighting hard against the Free Trade Area of the Americas. On Sept. 16, 2002, there was a huge national mobilization against the pact, which was followed by increased repression against peasant and trade union leaders all over the country.

Although 76 percent of the billions of dollars the U.S. is sending under Plan Colombia is being used for repressive military action, Obando has a positive message for the people of the U.S., and for U.S. workers in particular: “We Colombians are profoundly anti-imperialist, and we always will be. However, we make a distinction between the U.S. government and its intelligence agencies on the one hand, and the U.S. people and the role they can play on the other. We want to develop a relationship of solidarity with the people of the United States, and for them to understand our struggle.”

Emile Schepers can be reached at pww@pww.org

Film review: Carlo Giuliani, A Boy

Fri, 06 Jun 2003 04:45:00 +0000

Carlo Giuliani, 23, was wearing his swim trunks under his sweatpants when he left home in Genoa, Italy, around noon on July 20, 2001. He still hadn’t decided whether he’d spend the day at the beach with a friend or take part in the anti-globalization protest outside the G8 summit in Genoa that day. By 5:20 that afternoon Carlo was dead, shot in the head by a policeman, who twice ran him over with his jeep and then left him to die in the street.

In Carlo Giuliani, A Boy, directed by Francesca Comencini and winner of honorable mention at last month’s Tribeca Film Festival for Best Documentary Feature, Carlo’s mother, Haidi, matter-of-factly reconstructs her son’s last day, hour by hour. Her sober testimony is interspersed with corroborating filmed images of the day’s events.

Comencini had been in Genoa that day, along with 33 other Italian directors, making the film, Another World Is Possible. She came back to interview Haidi because she thought Italian news accounts, calling Carlo a “vagabond,” slandered his memory.

Although the demonstration had been completely peaceful until the police began lobbing tear gas and beating protesters, Time magazine pontificated: “One man died in Genoa; a man, we must presume, who was swayed by the false promise that violence – not peaceful protest, not participation in the democratic process – is the best way to advance a political cause.” The Houston Chronicle said, “It was tragic, but he was asking for it, and he got it.”

“What first gave birth to the film was the need to give counterinformation about Carlo Giuliani,” Comencini said. “The way he was killed and then how he was defamed I found unbearable ... I wanted to find out who this young man really was.”

Comencini, herself a mother, immediately felt a kinship with Haidi. “The story of Carlo Giuliani belongs to all of us,” she said. “My film is a political film, which through the voice of one woman, speaks profoundly to people precisely because we get to know one person closely.”

It will soon be the anniversary of Carlo’s death. Carlo Giuliani, A Boy is a fitting tribute to the complex young man and gentle poet that he was. “In Italy the death penalty doesn’t exist,” Haidi notes near the end of the film. “Yet Carlo was condemned to death, executed, tortured.”

– Carolyn Rummel (Crummel@cpusa.org)

Letters

Fri, 06 Jun 2003 03:31:00 +0000

Concerns for Cuba

I am a regular reader of the PWW and noted your concerns about the growing aggressive stance of the Bush Regime in its relationship with Cuba. I want to ask your help in moving your readers towards a plan of action should an outright attack occur, or should local subversion receive increased support in counter-revolutionary activities. I feel strongly we cannot wait much longer as this Administration clearly has the defeat of the Cuban Revolution as one of its primary goals.

I am equally worried for the safety of the Cuban Five being held across the U.S. Here in California the treatment of Rodrigo Hernandez is nothing short of barbaric, and again, we must prepare a strategy to help them and bring their situation to public attention. Your articles in the PWW have done much, but we need to involve both national and international organizations in the effort.

Dave Dixon

San Clemente CA

Where’s the debate?

What’s always concerned me is the lack of debate in the Letters to Editor. It appears as a fear of criticism. Nothing is more boring and unconstructive than having all the letters agree with the paper. I look to the Letters to be stimulating, instructive, informative and democratic, allowing anyone the right to agree or disagree with anything relevant to the paper. I also find it informative and more personal when the “Editor” actually responds to certain questions that beg an answer, rather than leaving it hang. This actually attracts readers.

I am always hesitant to complain about anything about this newspaper, knowing the dedication and sacrifice of its workers, for very little pay. The paper is far superior than other journals on many issues, I only wish it could be circulated more widely.

Bill Meyer

Detroit MI

Editor’s note: We agree and hope this letter helps stimulate some working-class debate. Send letters to the editor toor 3339 S. Halsted, Chicago IL 60608. Letters should be no more than 200 words.

Hang you head

I wonder how many of your readers remember a song popular in the 1960s called “Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley.” It’s catchy if rather melancholic tune (the said Mr Dooley was due to be executed the next day) makes it an ideal vehicle for anti-war songbirds, since the lyric just cries out for updating in light of current US and British difficulties in Iraq. I suggest the following adaptation:

Hang down your head, George Dubya,

Hang down your head, Mister Blair,

Hang down your heads, you con-men,

The WMDs were never there.

Ken Biggs

Prague Czech Republic

The author is the editor of Postmark Prague, an English-language monthly.

Glad to see you

I started receiving PWW news alert in my e-mail box recently and visited your site. I feel a lot of comfort knowing that you exist.

My solidarity and respect,

Ivan Castaner

San Juan PR

Swindler Bush

A few weeks ago I came across a headline in the local newspaper that said Bush was going to “improve overtime pay” for workers. I did not spend much time reading it and it didn’t “read well.” Now today I came across your treatment of the same news item: it shows when it comes to workers – Bush is a swindler and a carbuncle on the working class – and needs to be removed.

Sam Yates

Minneapolis MN

Extreme right government

I wrote this letter to my local paper, The Arizona Daily Star. They of course wouldn’t print it.

We seem to have a system of government that advocates the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership together with an ideology of belligerent nationalism. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck – call it what it is – fascism.

Damon Miller

Tucson AZ

Editorials

Fri, 06 Jun 2003 03:19:00 +0000

Thank you Glenn Fine!

In a report released on June 3, Glenn A. Fine, inspector general of the Department of Justice (DOJ), said the mass arrests of immigrants in the aftermath of Sept. 11 was plagued with “significant problems” that often were in direct conflict with Constitutional safeguards.

“[W]e found significant problems in the way the detainees were handled,” Fine wrote in his report. He said many faced a “pattern of physical and verbal abuse” from some guards and “unduly harsh” detention policies: A 23-hour lockdown in brightly-lighted cells; phone calls limited to one per week; and prisioners being forced to wear handcuffs, leg irons and heavy chains whenever taken from their cells.

Other criticisms leveled against Attorney General John Ashcroft and other DOJ officials included:

• An official DOJ “no bond” policy that prevented immigrants from accessing the justice system;

• The “indiscriminate and haphazard manner” in which immigrants “who had no connection to terrorism” were labeled as possible suspects;

• Early in the 9/11 crisis, hundreds of immigrants were held without being charged within the prescribed three-day window;

• The Justice Department actively sought to limit detainees’ access to attorneys, to other detainees and to family members; prison officials were told, “don’t be in a hurry” to assist immigrants in finding attorneys or contacting their consulates.

The report is a welcome recognition that these policies threaten the Constitution and Bill of Rights – something the civil rights and liberties community has been saying and struggling on.

As welcome as the report is, now is not the time to let down our collective guard. Rather, we should be mindful that, with George Bush in the White House and Ashcroft heading the Justice Department, the old saying that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” is as valid today as ever. This report provides another arrow in the quiver for those of us fighting to retire both Bush and Ashcroft in November 2004.

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Freedom of the press under siege

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruling loosening restrictions on media monopolization has “serious repercussions for our democracy and the value Americans place on a free press and free speech,” the Communication Workers of America said in a press statement. The ruling opens the way for media conglomerates to control the news and information available to communities across the country.

The passage of the 1996 Communications Act spurred corporate media monopolization, with six companies now controlling most of the industry. A free press, serving as watchdog on the government, plays a vital role in protecting democracy. Instead of fulfilling that important role, the corporate media – with Fox and Clear Channel in the lead – has obediently toed the White House and Pentagon line every step of the way. Media giants are censoring our news and “brainwashing” the public as never before. The new FCC ruling adds fuel to the fire by allowing even more media consolidation, further limiting the availability of diverse points of view and shredding our treasured constitutional freedom of the press.

Over the last eight years, media corporations have wined and dined FCC members to the tune of nearly $2.8 million, according to the Center for Public Integrity. Now, with the Bush administration and far right in control, the media moguls saw an opportunity and seized it. Having Michael Powell, son of Colin, in charge of the FCC didn’t hurt. Sure enough, the FCC voted 3-2 along partisan lines for the rule change.

More than 150 years ago Karl Marx identified the trend toward monopolization as one of the general laws of capitalism. Today we see this trend in every aspect of life. But this media fight is not over. More than 100 members of the House and about 20 senators opposed the FCC action. A broad people’s movement against media monopolization is shaping up. It can push Congress to undo the rule change and block the Bush administration assault on democracy and freedom of the press.