People Before Profit blog

An important step forward

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 05:37:00 +0000

I agree with the assessment that the most important differences in the Communist Party’s preconvention discussion center on the proposed adoption of the main strategic line of defeating the ultra-right section of transnationals and the Bush administration by building the broadest possible all people’s coalition led by labor allied with racially and nationally oppressed peoples, women and youth and others.

Objective conditions have changed in such ways as to warrant a new program to guide our tactics, policies and slogans. The party’s draft program makes that change, substantiates the need for it, lays out the main lines of carrying it out and points to how it links to future stages. The draft program is an important step forward in playing our leading (or vanguard if you like) role as a working-class party nationally and internationally. In pointing out the class nature of the ultra-right threat and mapping out the key steps from here to socialism, it enhances our ability to give more revolutionary fervor to the quantitative steps necessary for the next possible qualitative changes.

I disagree with those who would retreat from the advances made in the draft program. I think the draft program, with positive improvements based on our preconvention and convention discussion, should be approved and the incoming national committee prepare its publication in good order.

Here in Southern California, the draft program has been very valuable in recruiting and consolidating new members, strengthening the involvement of current members, and bringing many former members and others closer to our orbit. There has been some hesitance from some in disagreement, but the overall direction is towards growth, greater activism and greater respect.

While building a town meeting event in Los Angeles about Social Security with the Californian Alliance for Retired Americans, one of the group’s officers handed me an application for affiliation, asking why we weren’t members yet. Our district is now an affiliate member of CARA.

We have made our renovated building more open to progressive Salvadoran community groups, among whom we gave out the People’s Weekly World and draft documents. A PWW distribution in a community college close to a large Salvadoran area was started. When the Spanish versions came out we distributed them to key contacts. We now have a new club developing in the Salvadoran community.

As the re-assembling of the anti-Bush coalition has accelerated in recent weeks, more and more opportunities to participate meaningfully are opening up. During the lunch break at the East L.A. Villaraigosa for Mayor headquarters on Election Day, May 17, scores of volunteers were reading the PWW edition I had handed out. We all celebrated together at the victory party that night.

In such activities I have found more and more opportunities to speak to other activists about how the most dangerous corporations behind both Bush and Schwarzenegger are the key thing and that the point is not just about replacing the Republicans. With some I can talk of anti-monopoly and socialist perspectives for better future solutions even while walking precincts or picket lines.

While conditions are opening people up to more activism, to new more radical thinking, the most common, and correct, concern is for greater, more effective action against Bush and the right wing. The bigger, more focused and effective the action, the greater the growth in consciousness.

As to slogans, tactics as always are key. What moves people forward in greater numbers and depth, not how advanced the concepts are ideally, is what is key to raising class struggle and consciousness.

In this period some of our slogans for mass action may not be as advanced ideally as in some past times. This is because of the changed relations of class today. One of many observations of Lenin that are relevant on this score is this one:

“Strictly differentiating between stages that are essentially different, soberly examining the conditions under which they manifest themselves, does not at all mean indefinitely postponing one’s ultimate aim, or slowing down one’s progress in advance. On the contrary, it is for the purpose of accelerating the advance and of achieving the ultimate aim as quickly and securely as possible that it is necessary to understand the relation of classes in modern society….”

With proliferating WMDs monopolized almost entirely by imperialism and its most reactionary sectors, led by our government, the word “securely” above should not be taken lightly.

Rosalio Muñoz (rosalio_munoz@sbcglobal.net) is an organizer for the Southern California district of the Communist Party USA.

Hunger strike for justice for Iraq

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 05:08:00 +0000

Leisa Faulkner, a Sacramento mother of five, is participating in a 15-day, international hunger strike in Geneva, Switzerland, in support of economic justice for Iraq.

The hunger strike, planned to last until June 30, is being staged at the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC) meeting in Geneva. The UNCC is currently determining how much of a remaining $65 billion in war reparations claims (relating to the 1990-91 invasion of Kuwait) imposed against Iraq will have to be paid.

According to Faulkner, the fasters’ June 16 press conference was joined by Hans von Sponeck, former director of the UN food-for-oil program. Von Sponeck resigned from the post because he said the program failed to meet the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people.

Faulkner quoted Von Sponeck’s statement that, as a result of UN policies inflicted on Iraq, the infant mortality rate rose from 56 deaths per 1,000 in 1990 to 132 per 1,000 by 1999, according to UNICEF reports.

The fasters are presenting four key demands: cancellation of all reparations imposed against Iraq; elimination of all odious debt incurred by Saddam Hussein’s regime (debt not to individuals but to corporations that knowingly financed his atrocities); no imposition of economic conditions through such organizations as the International Monetary Fund; and full funding for the reconstruction of Iraq, which benefits the Iraqi people, is directed by them and has no strings attached.

The fasters from the U.S. are members of Voices in the Wilderness, Jubilee USA and Progressive Democrats of America.

Portuguese Communist leader fought facism

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 05:07:00 +0000

Alvaro Cunhal, former general secretary and president of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), died June 13 at the age of 91.

“The best homage we can pay to Alvaro Cunhal is to carry on the struggle he led to the last days of his life,” the PCP said in a statement. The PCP said Cunhal always fought for the interests and rights of workers, for a free society, for the welfare of the people and country, for the PCP as the party of all exploited people and for a socialist society.

Active in the PCP for more than 75 years, Cunhal played a leading role in the anti-fascist resistance, the struggle for freedom and democracy, and the revolutionary changes that followed the defeat of the fascist dictatorship in 1974. He served 12 years in prison and worked underground for many years.

Alvaro Cunhal was born in Coimbra in 1913. He began his revolutionary activity as a student at the Law Faculty in Lisbon. He joined the PCP in 1931 and was elected general secretary of the Portuguese Communist Youth Federation in 1935.

Arrested in 1937 and again in 1940 and subjected to torture, Cunhal returned to the struggle as soon as he was released. He was a member of the PCP’s secretariat from 1942 to 1949, when he was arrested again.

To the tribunal deciding his case, he delivered a scathing denunciation of the fascist dictatorship and a sweeping defense of the Party’s policy. He then spent 11 continuous years in fascist jails — eight of them in total isolation.

On Jan. 3, 1960, he escaped from the prison-fort of Peniche, together with a group of high-ranking Communist militants. Once again named to the secretariat, he was elected PCP general secretary in 1961.

After the overthrow of the dictatorship in April 1974, Cunhal served as minister-without-portfolio in successive provisional governments. He was elected deputy to the Constituent Assembly in 1975 and to the Assembly of the Republic six times between 1976 and 1987. He was also a member of the Council of State.

While Cunhal’s oratorical gifts were widely recognized by friend and foe alike, only later in his life did he disclose some of his other extraordinary talents: using a pseudonym, he wrote four best-selling novels and created several celebrated works of engraving and sculpture.

On Chicagos Labor Trail

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 05:06:00 +0000

Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders – Carl Sandburg, “Chicago,” 1916

Although much has changed since Carl Sandburg penned the classic description of Chicago, the echoes of that tremendous multiracial, working- class history can still be heard and felt today.

“Even as global commerce has replaced manufacturing,” writes University of Illinois at Chicago Professor Leon Fink, “a distinctive egalitarian, ‘blue-collar’ ethic still dominates Chicago’s civic culture.”

Fink was the project director of Chicago’s first comprehensive labor tour guide and map, “The Labor Trail: Chicago’s History of Working-Class Life and Struggle,” released in February. Produced by the Chicago Center for Working Class Studies with support from numerous partnerships and grants, “The Labor Trail” highlights the many generations of dramatic struggles and working-class life in the City of the Big Shoulders.

The trail’s neighborhood tours acquaint its reader with places, and people — often unsung — who have made the city what it is today. The map also includes a smaller insert of selective, statewide labor sites to encourage the public’s discovery and discussion of Illinois’ rich labor heritage. All told, 140 sites are highlighted on the map.

Chicago’s labor history is punctuated by three famous struggles, according to Fink. “The first occurred in the ‘Battle of the Viaduct’ as part of the nationwide Uprising of 1877; when Bohemian, German, Swedish, Polish, and Irish laborers attempted to support the German Furniture Workers Union, some 30 workers were killed by the combined forces of the Illinois National Guard and Chicago police.

“More famous, of course, are the ‘Haymarket’ events of 1886,” Fink says of the nationwide strike and struggle for the eight-hour day, which led to the founding of the international workers ‘ holiday, May Day.

The third epic event was in 1894, “when corporate paternalist, George M. Pullman, locked out union workers after cutting their wages but not their rents amidst industrial depression,” writes Fink. The Pullman strike saw American Railway Union leader Eugene V. Debs emerge as the nation’s most prominent labor leader and socialist of that time.

However, as Fink points out, “Chicago labor history has been less a tale of dramatic confrontations than of quieter struggles by immigrant and migrant families to better themselves and the lives of their children. Aside from the workplaces themselves, working-class life in Chicago occurred in cottages and bungalows, churches and ethnic community centers, parks and public baths, and taverns and neighborhood clubs.” And these places are also shown on “The Labor Trail.” From the stories of a people struggling against racism and segregation, “The Labor Trail” showcases Bronzeville, where Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines tutored Benny Goodman on jazz, and the founding headquarters of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the all-Black union that A. Philip Randolph led to a collective bargaining victory over the Pullman Company in 1937. It also profiles to the diverse working-class and immigrant neighborhoods of Pilsen, Back of the Yards and Polonia Triangle.

One piece of history is absent from the trail. However, The founding of the Communist Party in the U.S. took place in Chicago in 1919. The trail does mention the contribution of socialists and communists in some of the struggles highlighted.

The trail points out more recent history, like the election of Chicago’s first African American mayor, Harold Washington, and the community commemoration of union organizer and Mexican American activist Rudy Lozano. “Chicago offers a living museum to some of the most dramatic, as well as some of the most enduring, aspects of American labor history,” says Fink, citing Chicago’s new immigrants from Mexico, South Asia, and Eastern Europe.

Hypocrisy is the least of their crimes

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 05:04:00 +0000

George Bush gets a bum rap. If you match words and deeds, his hypocrisy is undeniable. But judged on actions alone, he and his crew are models of consistency.

Their words on fighting terrorism are familiar, but what counts are civilian deaths in Iraq, the leveling of cities, and thousands jailed, humiliated, tortured and killed. What counts too is the sanctuary they provide for archterrorist Luis Posada Carriles.

U.S. authorities were silent for two months about his well-advertised arrival in Miami, and then, having detained him on May 17, they politely charged him with a minor immigration offense. He is, of course, both an assassin and a servant of the U.S. government.

His misdeeds are well known. He worked for the CIA for three decades. He killed and tortured for Venezuelan state security services, bombed a Cuban airliner — killing all 73 persons aboard, helped out with the murder of a Chilean ex-diplomat in Washington, organized supply operations for Nicaraguan Contra rebels, bombed hotels in Havana — killing an Italian tourist, and plotted to kill Fidel Castro in Panama. For the Cubans, he is the “Osama Bin Laden of Latin America.”

Posada escaped from jail in Venezuela, where he is a citizen, in 1985. Now Venezuela is demanding his return. So far, the U.S. government is refusing delivery. An extradition treaty between the two nations has been in effect for many years.

The U.S. government not only inflicts terror and protects the terrorist, but also attack those who fight terrorism. Five Cuban men joined Florida paramilitary organizations that kill and commit sabotage against Cuba. They passed on advance knowledge of anti-Cuban plots to their government. The Cubans shared the intelligence with the FBI, because for a moment in time Washington was promising to crack down on the Florida terrorists. Instead the U.S. arrested the five men. After a trial filled with irregularities, three of them received life sentences.

“From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” President Bush said on Sept. 20, 2001. Clearly Bush’s words and deeds do not square. It’s our duty to spread the word about Bush hypocrisy.

We need to highlight a few facts. The Cuban anti-terrorists are fighting U.S. imperialism. In Chile, Pinochet terrorism, urged on by Washington, undid the elected, anti-imperialist Allende government. Kissinger gave the go-ahead that allowed Suharto’s massacre of half a million Indonesian communists in 1965. And the list is growing.

The Bush government would like political struggle to wither away. In a fear-ridden U.S. society with a fetish of anti-terrorist rhetoric, the field is left to demagogic notions of revenge and politics of cultural divide.

In an earlier era, Lenin noted, “Calls for terrorism … are merely forms of evading the most pressing duty now resting upon the Russian revolutionaries, namely the organization of comprehensive political action.” For mainline politicians today, no less than for revolutionaries, the sway of politics by terror limits their possibilities.

Lenin advised revolutionaries to “go among the population as theoreticians, as propagandists, as agitators, as organizers.” In doing so, attention to objective realities is essential. The message to progressive and left activists and organizers is twofold: the U.S. government itself superintends terrorist operations that cover the world, and the purpose of terror is empire. To fight terror and defend the anti-terrorists is the same as contending with imperialism.

What Lenin prescribed for a revolutionary political process happened in Cuba. Perhaps that’s why the Cubans don’t frighten easily. Elements of the Iraqi opposition use terrorist tactics. Maybe that’s one reason why, so far, they have not organized “comprehensive political action.” They are different in that regard from Vietnamese anti-imperialists.

W. T. Whitney Jr. is a pediatrician in rural Maine.

Are we stronger if were divided?

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 05:03:00 +0000

Our labor movement and people are under the greatest assault in the history of our movement. The attacks are coming from the combined forces of the Bush administration, Congress, corporations and the ultra-right. Labor, as never before, is struggling to find answers. How can we grow our unions? How can we build a wide enough coalition to change the direction of our nation in favor of working people? How can we stop the attacks on our rights and living standards and obtain real rights for workers to organize?

It is a time of anger and deep frustration within our movement.

In the past few years we’ve developed wide coalitions and launched new initiatives to organize millions of workers not now in unions. We built and led the huge alliance that nearly defeated Bush and the ultra-right in the last election.

But, bottom line, we didn’t! Our enemies are still in power. Labor continues to lose numbers. Why aren’t we winning? There is real frustration and a searching for answers.

Some have suggested that the time has come to split our labor movement. Some have even gone so far as to compare this time with the birth of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), saying labor grew then, why not now?

The analogy is way off base.

First off, let’s not ignore the obvious. Bush is president, not FDR (the president who stated publicly that “If I were a worker, I’d join a union”). Instead of the New Deal, which passed the Wagner Act to help workers organize, we have Bush and Congress working to destroy unions.

The political and economic ground we stand on today is different from the 1930s. During the CIO period, a huge labor-led movement swept the country, against fascism, for jobs, unemployment compensation and Social Security. Today, while labor is building movements, the ultra-right also has a base and is working against us. This very different economic picture includes transnationals, outsourcing, etc. These conditions call for more, not less, unity on our part.

More importantly, the CIO came into being as the Committee of Industrial Organizations, within the old AFL, in order to strengthen the whole labor movement by organizing industrial workers. The CIO only became independent when the AFL, under William Green, refused to organize industrial workers, even kicking CIO affiliates out of the federation. Nothing even remotely close to that is present in today’s labor movement. All agree that we must organize and grow. If we have different experiences and face different conditions in organizing, we need to learn from each other, not cut ourselves off.

We should examine what actually works when we organize. In the ’30s and now a common thread has resulted in success: a reliance on building wide coalitions and combining mobilizations with political action. During the ’30s labor worked successfully to elect Roosevelt and pro-labor candidates who supported workers’ right to organize. At the same time they mobilized workers and coalitions in support of union drives.

While our successes are fewer at this time, the same formula has resulted in success. Our big public worker organizing efforts have been successful only when combined with grassroots mobilizations and the election of pro-labor officials who were able to pass laws to recognize public workers’ rights to organize. In local strikes and organizing drives, the combination of mass mobilization with coalitions pushing for support from progressive representatives has been a winning combination.

Some of those talking of splitting our labor movement have condemned labor’s political efforts. Logic tells us that abandoning the fight against our main enemy, as tough and frustrating as it can be, cannot be a winning approach.

We should look at what our enemies are saying about splits in our ranks. Last week Ohio papers carried reports that Republicans are rejoicing at the prospect of a split in labor’s ranks. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Chamber of Commerce called a split in labor “a boon to businesses facing organizing drives by unions or upcoming contract negotiations.” When our enemies rejoice, we aren’t on the right path!

What do we agree on? All in the labor movement agree that we must organize masses of new workers into unions and grow our labor movement. We all agree that we need to build coalitions to support a new progressive direction for our nation. We all agree that we need to defeat anti-labor treaties like CAFTA, defeat Bush and his buddies and replace them with progressive representatives.

Most important, our real litmus test must be: What will best help us win the next struggle in our hometown? When the rubber meets the road, and we have our next fight over privatization or union-busting, our next strike support battle or organizing drive, will it be easier to win if we’re divided?

The answer is obvious.

United we stand, divided we fall. An injury to one is an injury to all.

Bruce Bostick, a 30-year Steelworker union member, works on special projects for the USW.

Weaknesses in partys draft program

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 05:00:00 +0000

In response to Daniel Rubin’s article, “On critics from the ‘left’” (PWW, 6/18-24), I agree with his statement that it is important to avoid misstatements of facts and sweeping characterizations that are not supported by evidence. Unfortunately, his article displays those very flaws.

Rubin indiscriminately lumps together all critics of the Communist Party’s draft program, implying that they all have the same views and have all misstated facts and made sweeping characterizations.

Rubin writes, “The most important difference is revealed in the proposal to return to the previous program.” Perhaps some critics of the draft have advocated that, but I think most have said we should develop a program that retains more of the best features of the old program.

Personally, I think there are some good things in the draft program. For example, I think it is very good that, unlike our current program, it explicitly speaks in support of gay and lesbian rights. I also think the analysis of the ultra-right is generally good.

However, I think that, compared to our current program, there are some serious omissions and weaknesses. For example, unlike our current program, the draft program does not say one word about the Jewish people or anti-Semitism. The anti-monopoly program in the draft is much weaker than in our current program. For instance, unlike our current program, the draft does not call for nationalization of key industries.

Rubin asserts, “While saying they are for defeating the ultra-right, the critics reject this strategy….” Again, that is the kind of sweeping characterization that Rubin correctly criticizes. As a critic of the draft program, I cannot help wondering: If I really rejected the strategy of defeating the ultra-right, why did I spend five to eight hours a day working in the Democratic Party’s campaign office?

Rubin says, “Apparently the critics severely doubt the possibility of a ‘peaceful transition’” to socialism. Speaking for myself, I do not doubt the possibility of a peaceful transition, but I do question its likelihood.

There is a difference. Our current program says, “The entire history of the United States demonstrates it is naive to think that monopoly capital would be restrained by constitutional scruples from resorting to violence to stop even the most democratic majority mandate for a socialist solution. No ruling class has ever voluntarily relinquished its power.” I think that is true.

Rubin denies that the draft has a classless approach to democracy, but I think that, compared to our current program, it does. For example, our current program says, “A socialist government would ... outlaw the dissemination of racism, chauvinism, anti-Semitism, religious or national hatred and incitement to war or violence.” Why is that not stated in the draft program?

Rubin writes, “On our attitude toward the Bill of Rights, all nine party program editions since World War II have called it a popular achievement to build on under socialism, as distinguished from anti-democratic aspects of our history.” No one is denying that the Bill of Rights was a popular achievement to be built on under socialism. That is not the point of contention. The point of contention is the formulation “Bill of Rights Socialism.” It is interesting to note that Rubin points to all nine party programs since World War II — without acknowledging that none of them used the formulation “Bill of Rights Socialism.”

Rubin argues that to say that the U.S. Bill of Rights is part of a bourgeois-democratic document is to “dismiss” it. That does not logically follow. I think most Marxists would agree, for example, that the American and French Revolutions were bourgeois-democratic revolutions. Does that mean that we dismiss their importance? Of course not.

In his implicit defense of the formulation “Bill of Rights Socialism,” Rubin cites the “third law of dialectics, the ‘negation of the negation,’ showing that development is not circular but progressive.” But what he seems to ignore is another law of dialectics, that quantitative changes eventually produce qualitative changes. Socialism is qualitatively different from capitalism, and a socialist constitution will naturally be qualitatively different from a bourgeois-democratic constitution. Using our bourgeois-democratic Bill of Rights to describe socialism obscures that fact. Saying that in no way dismisses the fact that bourgeois democracy was a great leap forward in history.

It would be helpful if supporters of the formulation “Bill of Rights Socialism” would explain what they think it means. Does it mean that a socialist constitution will enumerate rights? Of course it will. Every socialist constitution has done that.

Does it mean that socialism in the U.S. will be more democratic than socialism elsewhere because we have had a bourgeois-democratic Bill of Rights for 216 years? If so, I think that is chauvinistic. In fact, I think a strong argument could be made that most West European countries are more democratic than the U.S. Certainly, workers have more rights in most West European countries than in the U.S. (e.g., the right to paid vacations).

Yes, let us avoid misstatements of facts and sweeping generalizations, but that admonition should apply to both critics and defenders of the draft program.

Kevin Kyle is a PWW reader in Illinois.

Editorial: Verdict is just a beginning

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 04:56:00 +0000

After more than four decades, former KKK member Edgar Ray Killen has been convicted of masterminding the Klan murder of James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, three civil rights workers in 1964 Mississippi.

On June 21, a jury — in the same town where everything went down, Philadelphia, Miss. — convicted Killen as the ringleader of a mob that attacked and murdered the three heroes. The 81-year-old murderer now faces 60 years in prison.

Many have cheered, and newspaper editorials around the country are touting the progress that has been made. But while this news is to be welcomed, and some progress has been made — due to the struggles of the African American people, the civil rights movement and young people like Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner — this victory should never be used to obscure the simple fact: America today is still smeared by a virulent racism.

Killen was convicted on manslaughter charges, not for first-degree murder, as he should have been. The trial itself revealed much about current attitudes. The recent mayor of Philadelphia referred to the Klan as a “peaceful organization” that had “done a lot of good.” And, it should be noted, Mississippi’s Trent Lott was not amongst the senators who voted to issue a recent apology on behalf of the entire Senate for not enacting an anti-lynching law.

The problem isn’t just in Mississippi, or even amongst certain individuals — it’s nationwide and systemic. Institutional racism is being pushed and used by those in the very top levels of our nation’s leadership. If it wasn’t racism, what was it that allowed so many African Americans to be denied the right to vote in Florida, Ohio, and elsewhere around the country? Why do African Americans and other people of color have worse health conditions, higher unemployment rates, and lower pay, on average, than whites? The list goes on.

While there are still people like Killen, and, more fundamentally, while there is still an administration and a system that generates racism, this country will need millions more to carry on the traditions of fighting for freedom and equality so personified by Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner.

Somos el partido de esperanza We are the party of hope: the Colombian Communist Party

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 04:54:00 +0000

BOGOTA, Colombia — The office of the Colombian Communist Party (PCC) is on a pleasant residential street in this nation’s capital.

On June 3, it’s a beehive of activity leading up to the party’s 19th Congress. Delegates arrive, some right from work, others after long bus and plane rides from all corners of this, South America’s second most populous country.

Inside, the corridors are lined with portraits and photos of beloved departed leaders. It’s shocking to see, not old men, but the still unwrinkled faces of leaders shot down in their prime gazing out at arriving delegates.

Twenty years of unrelenting waves of assassination of communist, trade union and rural leaders have taken an unimaginable toll. More than 3,500 labor leaders have been assassinated or “disappeared” since the onslaught of what Colombians call “the dirty war.”

Nevertheless, the party forges ahead, drawing its optimism from its deep roots among Colombia’s indomitable working people.

Campo Elias Puentes proudly wears his union jacket to the congress’ opening session; he’s attending his first party congress.

He works for the government-owned telephone system where he operates the hydraulic lifts that boost the linemen high on the poles. It’s tough for a young rank-and-file activist to learn to be a union leader; there are few veterans. He explains simply, “The older generation was assassinated.”

Roots of the conflict

Carlos Lozano, a member of the party’s executive board and the editor of its weekly publication Voz, explains that the absence of land reform lies at the root of the conflict.

An oligarchy of landowners, latifundistas, who made up only 4 percent of the population, controlled 70 percent of the land. Since the 1940s, Lozano says, the campesinos, the rural farmers and farm workers, have fiercely fought for their land. They won political control of many rural districts. But the landowners funded private armies, “paramilitaries,” to terrorize the campesinos and their political supporters.

“The party’s slogan is that the land should belong to the people who work it,” says Lozano. Leading members of the Communist youth went to the countryside 20 years ago to work with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), determined to help the campesinos organize to defend themselves against the aggressions of the latifundistas.

Today FARC is a separate organization, with its own structure and policies, but still has fraternal ties to the party due to their common roots.

“The population is different today than 50 years ago when everything was centered around the production of coffee,” Lozano continues. “Today Colombia is more or less industrialized and most people live in urban centers.” But under new conditions, the paramilitaries and their death squads continue to terrorize the populace.

Delegates speak

The party congress is held June 3-6 over a long weekend in a large meeting room at the YMCA near the party’s headquarters. The hall is barely large enough to hold the more than 400 delegates.

Delegates represent a rainbow of Colombia’s diverse population, from the Pacific and Caribbean coasts to the Andean mountains and Amazon region.

Martin Louiza, a 36-year-old mechanic, is a member of the indigenous community in Tolima. He describes a growing struggle by indigenous people to regain their culture and language as well as their lands. Afro-Colombians, who make up close to 20 percent of the population, also have a strong presence at the congress.

Elsida Rojas, 39, is one of 10 delegates from Cartagena. Women seem to constitute about a fourth of the congress, but Rojas is impatient.

“We have made a lot of progress,” she says, but doesn’t hold back on her opinion that more needs to be done to bring in women. She is a secretary who works in the human rights field and also runs a program to feed undernourished children.

The cost of ‘free trade’

The “free trade agreement” being pushed by Colombia’s right-wing President Alvaro Uribe, in partnership with U.S. President George W. Bush, is “oriented to intensifying the exploitation of the work force through the reduction of wages, lengthening the workday, reducing union rights, cutting social security, moving production,” says the PCC congress’ 40-page thesis.

Assassination!

During the next day’s plenary session, rank-and-file delegates are lining up to speak on the political report when someone interrupts from the floor to make an announcement. The brother of one of the delegates was assassinated that morning!

The roar of collective grief and rage lasts only seconds, then a call goes out for a moment of silence. But the delegates come back with a well practiced response, “Ni un momento de silencio!” Then with thunderous clapping and a cry that is more a promise than a lament, they shout, “He who dies in the struggle lives on in every compañero. Somos el partido de esperanza, somos el partido comunista colombiano — We are the party of hope, we are the Colombian Communist Party.”

Plan Colombia

A U.S.–Colombia military pact, a corollary of the free trade agreement, is already in effect. Named “Plan Colombia,” it was enacted in 1999 under the pretext of a war on drugs. Its real purpose is to channel billions of dollars of U.S. military aid to the legions of paramilitaries who work in the service of an unholy alliance of the old landowner oligarchy with the transnational corporations and the U.S. military. The Bush administration has just raised the cap on the number of military “advisers” in Colombia from 400 to 800, with 600 civilian contractors also employed.

Narco-traffickers also enter into this toxic formula, taking over land to use for drug cultivation. Thus, there is even more concentration of land ownership than before, as narco-traffickers and paramilitaries join with the armed forces to force campesinos off the land.

Paramilitary groups themselves have become important players in the drug business and its profits provide even more funds for their deadly activities. Through Plan Colombia, the U.S. government has poured gasoline on the embers of the armed conflict in Colombia’s countryside.

A major facet of Plan Colombia is the poisoning of the countryside, supposedly to destroy the coca crops which supply the illegal drug market in the United States. But subsistence farmers and their children, crops and animals have been the targets of massive spraying of glyphosate, sold by Monsanto Chemical.

The result is respiratory damage, birth defects, cancer and skin rashes, and the contamination of banana, coffee, and other crops and water sources which affect the entire Amazon area.

Three million of Colombia’s 40 million people have now been displaced, driven from their homes to faraway cities with no means of support, fleeing the violence, theft of land and toxic spraying.

The ideological component of Plan Colombia is an international campaign to portray FARC and the campesinos defending their land as terrorists and drug dealers, and the paramilitaries as defenders of law and order.

How effective in fighting drug use is the $2 million a day that U.S. taxpayers pour into Plan Colombia? Critics call the program a “costly failure.”

After six years, the National Drug Intelligence Center reports cocaine availability in the U.S. as “stable or slightly increased.” A 1994 RAND study concluded that treatment for cocaine users is 23 times more effective than drug crop eradication.

Paramilitaries

Not only the latifundistas but also transnational corporations moving into Colombia’s economy have been quick to use paramilitaries as their private armies, murdering thousands of the country’s militant trade unionists.

According to a suit against Coca-Cola Corp. filed in U.S. federal court by the United Steelworkers union, during local contract negotiations a Coke bottling plant manager in Carepa gave the order to paramilitaries “to carry out the task of destroying the union.”

The paramilitary troops gunned down union leader Isidro Segundo Gil at the plant gates, rounded up the plant’s workers and forced them to quit the union. They drove 27 workers out of the region under threat of their lives. That ended contract negotiations.

The plant manager and local paramilitary leaders were arrested, then released without charges, but five union leaders who protested the incident were locked up for six months.

Why Colombia?

Why has the U.S. government made Colombia the third-biggest recipient of its military “aid”? Like recipients one and two (Israel and Egypt), Colombia anchors an important oil-producing region, says PCC International Secretary Alfredo Holguin. Colombia is the seventh-largest U.S. oil supplier.

But the U.S. also wants to use Colombia as a launching pad against Venezuela, with which it shares a border, and against the rest of Latin America. Making Colombia into a beachhead for U.S. military and political power in Latin America would provide a base for disrupting the new networks of solidarity being launched by progressive governments in Brazil, Venezuela, Uruguay and Cuba.

The Uribe government

Alvaro Uribe, elected in 2002, is a close ally of the Bush administration and a champion of both Plan Colombia and the free trade agreement still under negotiation. While condemning in words the activities of the paramilitaries, Uribe’s administration allows them to carry out their death squad activities with impunity — fewer than a dozen charges have been placed in the thousands of assassinations.

The Uribe government has also sought to undermine the militant class-conscious labor movement both ideologically and through “labor law reform.” Uribe claims his programs are aimed at creating a classless pais de propietarios or a “society of owners,” an eerie echo of Bush’s “ownership society.” In practice, where workers previously had contracts guaranteeing their jobs, they now can be fired “at will,” and social security benefits — which in Colombia include health care — have been slashed.

Ending the violence tops the agenda of the Colombian people. The PCC sees the defeat of Uribe as critical to the goal of achieving a negotiated settlement of the armed conflict. Uribe’s government refuses to negotiate even the most elementary questions, such as humanitarian prisoner exchanges, insisting on only a military “solution.”

Gran Coalición Democratica

Colombia’s largest labor federation, Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT), has brought together and is leading an unprecedented array of organizations and social movements called the Gran Coalición Democratica, which will put forth a candidate for president in 2006. The coalition includes other labor federations, several left parties, including the Communist Party, and organizations of indigenous people, as well as civic and community groups.

The second day of the congress culminates in a public event at a convention center. Featured speakers are PCC General Secretary Jaime Caycedo and Sen. Carlos Gaviria, whom the party is supporting to be the GCD’s candidate for president. Gaviria is a member of the Alternativa Democratica, a coalition of left parties in the Parliament.

The 5,000 Colombians who jam the hall include many members of organizations in coalition with the PCC. Inside is a riot of color from the streaming red banners and glorious flowers of Colombia which bedeck the speakers’ platform.

Caycedo stresses that the upcoming election is critical to all of Latin America. Its outcome will be decisive to blocking the intervention of the North American military. “The people in Venezuela can count on the people and workers of Colombia,” Caycedo vows.

Soon the delegates return to their homes, armed with plans for unity and struggle, nourished with solidarity, full of hope and fight for this beautiful country.

Roberta Wood (rwood@pww.org) is the People’s Weekly World labor editor. She represented the Communist Party USA at the recent Colombian Communist Party congress. Cristóbal Cavazos contributed to this story.

Cheney offers to transfer detainees to his underground lair

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 04:53:00 +0000

Veep fires new salvo at Gitmo critics

The debate over the future of the detention center at Guantanamo, Cuba, was ramped up another notch today as Vice President Dick Cheney offered to transfer all detainees held there to the secure undisclosed location he calls home.

The vice president, whose underground lair is believed to be located thousands of feet beneath the earth’s crust, said that his subterranean home is well equipped to hold thousands of detainees, adding that he would “relish the task” of interrogating them.

“If crybabies like Joe Biden think the detainees are being treated too roughly at Guantanamo, I say ship them down to Camp Cheney,” the vice president said in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Tax Shelters in Gstaad, Switzerland. “A couple of days with me and those enemy combatants will be singing like canaries.”

The vice president’s extraordinary offer immediately raised legal questions in the human rights community, who argued that Cheney was trying to evade the Geneva Conventions against torture by holding detainees in a subterranean bunker that does not have a mailing address.

In response to those arguments, however, the vice president offered a terse rebuttal: “Tough.”

Cheney, acknowledging that tormenting hundreds of detainees was “too big a job for one man,” said he would seek the assistance of John R. Bolton, President Bush’s nominee to be ambassador to the United Nations.

“We’re a great team,” Cheney said. “We’re kind of bad cop, worse cop.”

Elsewhere, a new poll shows that less than half of all Americans approve of the way Dick Cheney is handling President Bush’s job.

Andy Borowitz writes a daily humor column at borowitzreport.com.

New wave of support for HR 676

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 04:51:00 +0000

“America’s trillion-dollar health care system would be far more efficient if all the money spent on administrative costs and insurance profit went directly to health care. There’s only one way to do that effectively: single-payer coverage administered by the federal government.” Thus spoke the Roanoke Times and World News in a May 7 editorial. The newspaper joins New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Charles (W. Va.) Gazette, and the Des Moines Register and many other papers in calling for single-payer health care.

Universal coverage for all medically necessary care

Activism for single-payer health care is rising. The Baltimore and Erie, Pa., city councils passed resolutions calling on their state’s congressional delegations to work for HR 676. Gloria Steinem put “contacting your congressperson to urge support for HR 676, Expanded and Improved Medicare for All” on her feminist to-do list.

HR 676, introduced by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), would extend coverage to everyone in the country, include payment for all medically necessary care including prescriptions, mental health, vision, dental, nursing home, rehab, home health, hospital, diagnostic, physical therapy and physician care. It would save $300 billion per year in unnecessary administrative costs — more than enough to extend coverage to the 45 million currently uninsured. It would end co-pays and deductibles, thereby removing financial barriers to preventive care. This would end the delays that cost so much in suffering and lives as well as money.

New labor endorsements

Endorsements of HR 676 are growing within the union movement. New endorsers in recent months include the American Guild of Musical Artists, Chicago/Midwest Region; the National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 84, Pittsburgh; International Association of Machinists Local Lodge 794, Albuquerque, N.M.; the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council, San Jose, Calif.; Local 1375, United Steelworkers; Warren, Ohio; and United Auto Workers Community Action Programs in Southern Indiana and 3rd and 4th areas of Kentucky.

Single-payer health care advocates are getting some traction, and a nation hurting from lack of insurance and care is listening. Vermont’s House of Representatives has voted for a single-payer bill. California state Sen. Sheila Keuhl (D-Santa Monica) is gaining support for her single-payer bill SB 840. The Campaign for a National Health Program NOW, a national group supporting HR 676, has launched citizen/congressional hearings planned for more than 70 cities. Fifty members of Congress have signed on to HR 676, including 11 new co-sponsors.

Insurance industry fights back

But a group of 24 self-designated “health care leaders” has been meeting secretly since last October to come up with alternative proposals to cover the uninsured, according to a New York Times report. The group includes America’s Health Insurance Plans, UnitedHealth Group, the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant, together with a few liberal organizations.

E. Neil Trautwein, assistant vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, said the group assumed that health care would continue to be provided through a mix of private insurers and public programs and was “not biased in favor of big government solutions.” That means they are biased in favor of maintaining private, profit-making health insurance and HMOs.

Trautwein is the last person the nation should consult for health care solutions. He once stated, “There is no right to health care. If this issue gets cast that way, it’s unfair, and it kind of makes us look like the bad guys.”

One of the initiators of the group of 24 is William W. McGuire, president and CEO of UnitedHealth Group, Inc. McGuire, who raked in over $42 million in total compensation in 2003, has good reason to push private insurance solutions. So does America’s Health Insurance Plans. But the vast majority of us have every reason to shun any alliance with the insurance industry and to make common cause with the rest of our community to win universal single-payer health insurance.

Tennessee cuts services to disabled

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 04:50:00 +0000

NASHVILLE — Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen has sentenced persons with disabilities who require ventilators to “life imprisonment” in a nursing home, according to a statement issued by a civil rights organization for persons with disabilities.

The state has recently made cuts to its health care program, called TennCare. There are approximately 100 persons with disabilities who are dependent on ventilators funded through the TennCare program, but who live independently in their own homes or with family members.

Bredesen was responding to questions put to him at a recent media event by Randy Alexander of the Memphis Center for Independent Living.

Bredesen said the TennCare cuts will not affect these services, but they would be provided in a nursing home setting. Alexander asked the governor if he plans to institutionalize people because they have a disability. “Yes,” he responded. “I care about these people. I’m not going to cut their services [but] I’m going to provide their services in a nursing home.”

Alexander challenged the governor’s statement, “Are you going to sentence them to prison for the crime of having a disability?” he asked. “A nursing home is an institution, an institution is imprisonment and you are saying today, right now, you are willing to sentence them to prison for the crime of having a disability.”

Bredesen responded, “The state cannot afford to pay for the services of these 100 people” as he walked away, according to the statement issued by Alexander.

Tennessee has a troubled history of addressing civil rights concerns of individuals with disabilities in the state. Recently, Tennessee’s attorney general brought action before the United States Supreme Court to declare the Americans with Disabilities Act unconstitutional, following a lawsuit filed against the state by a state employee with a disability. The Supreme Court rejected Tennessee’s claim and found the ADA to be constitutional.

Further actions are planned by the Memphis Center for Independent Living in cooperation with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today (ADAPT).

Union pension funds exercise clout

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 04:49:00 +0000

People Before Profits

DETROIT (PAI) — Union investment money is doing the talking — and in some cases, the walking — as organized labor is moving into a renewed strategy of using pension dollars to win work for members, improve their standing, and further union political goals.

Brokerage houses that openly support privatization of Social Security assets are being put on notice that unions will pull their money if such support continues.

Significantly, unions are putting their own houses in order, seeking to consolidate financial and insurance services offered to members. Labor is also moving to influence or get friendly directors nominated to corporate boards and advance other corporate accountability reforms.

Labor’s financial clout is considerable. Business Week reported there is $2.6 trillion in U.S. public employees’ pension funds, and there are another $400 billion-plus in multi-employer pension funds, which cover groups like building trades unions.

The renewed activism by union pension fund managers is drawing howls of protest from the business community and the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, along with their allies in politics.

On March 31, under the headline “Pension Fund Blackmail,” the Journal’s lead editorial said: “The result is what one observer has termed ‘the new politics of capital’ in which liberal activists attempt to turn entire corporations into lobbyists for their social and political goals, their campaigns all neatly disguised as ‘shareholder activism.’”

For example, the Journal noted the pension fund manager for California state union workers (CalPERS), directing some $180 billion in assets, used its investment in Safeway to demand it soften its stance against union workers forced to strike the grocer over its demands for health care cost-shifting and cuts.

Another example: last year, a New York state pension fund manager wrote a letter to the Sinclair Broadcasting Group, suggesting that airing a controversial documentary on John Kerry’s Vietnam war record could hurt shareholder value. The pension fund held shares of Sinclair, which ultimately agreed not to air the show.

And on March 31 and afterwards, unionists picketed corporate offices — notably those of stockbroker Charles Schwab & Co. — targeting firms that joined Bush’s privatization-for-Social Security coalition.

Labor’s protests over the conflicts of interest inherent in brokers’ support for Social Security privatization sent two financial services companies, Edward Jones & Co. and Waddell & Reed, scurrying out of a coalition supporting Bush, said the Journal.

The AFL-CIO targeted Schwab, one of the nation’s largest brokerages, because Schwab officials have been outspoken in speaking for and financing the pro-Bush coalition. The federation also launched a new website, www.wallstreetgreed.org, spotlighting 28 financial firms’ ties to the pro-Bush coalition. The conservative University of Chicago Business School calculates brokers would earn $934 billion from privatization.

“Working families are putting financial firms on notice: They will not allow firms that handle their savings to promote a scheme that will put their hard-earned money at risk,” AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney said.

According to a University of Notre Dame Higgins Labor Research Center study, “Unions may only represent 9 percent of the private sector labor force, but they submitted 28 percent of all shareholder resolutions in the 2002 proxy season and 18 percent in 2003 — far more than any other institutional investor. Through their pension funds, unions influence nearly one-quarter of all equities and one-half of bonds in the U.S. economy.”

The study said the success of a union-backed mutual fund is “coincident with classical trade union strategies to improve the working lives of their members.”

Through proxy votes and other pressure, unions also seek lower executive salaries, act as watchdogs on foreign investments and have managed to pull investments from companies accused of fiscal fraud.

No doubt corporate pressure will be brought on the Republican Congress to find a way to outlaw such union activism. Right-wing House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Boehner (R-Ohio) and a colleague demanded the Labor Department probe unions’ role in lobbying the investment firms in the Social Security fight. The two claimed such pressure could violate the fiduciary responsibility of union pension fund trustees.

And in response to CalPERS’ activism, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to change public employee pensions there to the equivalent of 401(k) accounts. And he named new board members who forced out CalPERS’ activist top manager.

Marty Mulcahy is managing editor at The Building Tradesman.

World Notes

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 04:46:00 +0000

Pakistan: Troops jail workers

Pakistani security forces took over Pakistan Telecommunication Co. Ltd. (PTCL) June 12 and arrested more than 300 workers and union leaders after they called a strike against the company’s privatization, The Hindu reported. The government threatened to try strike leaders as “terrorists.”

The government had earlier postponed privatization of the country’s largest telecommunications firm to end a 10-day standoff with 55,000 PCTL workers. It then announced that bids would be taken June 18 for a 26 percent share of the national firm.

“We have asked the staff to perform their duties as usual,” said an army officer in the central city of Multan. “However,” he added, “we would not let them switch off or discontinue the telecom system in any case.”

Said union leader Shahid Ayub, “This is a profit-earning organization. There is no ground for it to be sold.” He said thousands of its workers would lose their jobs.

Finland: Paper strike/lockout continues

Talks between the Paperworkers’ union and pulp and paper manufacturers to end a strike and lockout in effect since mid-May broke off June 15 with the two sides still far apart, negotiators said. If the dispute is not resolved soon, the Hensingin Sanomat newspaper said, a government working group will take over.

The biggest sticking point is the use of outside subcontracted labor. In particular, the union is upholding the job rights of 900 cleaners whom the companies want to replace with contracted workers. Paperworkers’ union chairman Jouko Ahonen dismissed the employers’ claims that the cleaners are causing economic hardship to the industry, pointing out that the pay they earn “corresponds to that of just 18 executives of the pulp and paper industry.”

Meanwhile, other unions have taken solidarity actions against the Finnish Forest Industries Federation.

Venezuela: Int’l oil firms owe big tax bill

A preliminary audit of the first three private firms running fields for Venezuela’s state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, shows they owe nearly $300 million in taxes, the Houston Chronicle has reported. Venezuela’s Tax Superintendent Jose Vielma made the announcement at a June 8 news conference in Caracas. Nineteen companies are still to be audited, he said.

Vielma said the overall tax bill from the 22 companies “could be higher than $3 billion.” Private oil firms manage 32 of Petroleos de Venezuela’s fields, for a per-barrel fee.

Energy and Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez had warned May 25 that private companies, including Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips, must put their operations in order if they expect to stay in the country.

In April, Venezuela raised the companies’ income tax rate to 50 percent, from 34 percent, retroactive to 2001.

China: Boost developing countries role in UN

Amid the growing debate about reform of the United Nations, China earlier this month issued a position paper emphasizing that changes should heighten the organization’s attention to developing countries’ needs.

China called for increased Security Council representation by developing countries, which amount to more than two-thirds of UN members, with emphasis on small and medium-sized countries.

The paper also suggested that all the regional groups should first of all reach agreement on reform proposals concerning their respective regions.

A few days before the document was released, Chinese UN Ambassador Wang Guangya told reporters that China opposes putting to a vote the G-4 (Germany, Japan, Brazil, India) proposal that the G-4 and two African countries should have permanent Security Council seats.

Angola: Desperate plight of children

Three years after the end of the country’s 27-year civil war, Angola still has one of the highest rates of child mortality in the world, UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Country Representative Mario Ferrari told the UN’s IRIN news agency last week.

“The long period of war had the effect of dismantling the social services,” Ferrari said. “The effect is that this country has a child mortality rate of 250 per 1,000.”

Many children are not in primary school and very few go to secondary school, he said.

Ferrari said some progress has been made. Campaigns against polio have continued and there have been no new cases since 2001. An effective anti-measles campaign was waged in 2003 and there have been number of other health-related measures, especially benefiting children and women.

But, he emphasized, aid agencies and the government have “a long road ahead of us” to reduce the child mortality rate.

World Notes are compiled by Marilyn Bechtel (mbechtel@pww.org)

Rigged election blocks Irans path to reform

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 04:44:00 +0000

News Analysis

Iran’s ultraconservative clerical establishment has denied millions of voters the chance to continue on the path of reform by rigging the results of the June 17 presidential election.

While all opinion polls showed solid support for Mostafa Moin, the pro-reform candidate supported by the country’s main democratic and progressive forces, the regime’s vote tally placed him in fifth place with only 13.8 percent of the vote.

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the candidate favored by the U.S. and the European Union countries, won the top spot with 21 percent. But the most astonishing result was the sudden elevation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Tehran’s ultraconservative mayor, to second place with 19 percent.

Ahmadinejad, 49, who was almost invisible during the month long campaign, has risen in the ranks of “Revolutionary Guards Corps,” the armed forces loyal to the clerical establishment. A shadowy figure, he has been implicated in attempts to assassinate prominent leaders of the progressive opposition, and once remarked that democracy is alien to Islam and Iran.

Since the late 1980s, the Guards Corps has consolidated its position in the country’s economic and political infrastructure, and in the last two years has attempted to win complete control of the government and parliament.

Iranian democrats are furious about the regime’s blatant attempt to rob the nation of the opportunity to continue the path of reform and put an end to the profound social and political crisis that has plagued Iran since the 1980s. They have called for an organized campaign against the regime’s vote-rigging and falsified election results.

Neither one of the candidates in the runoff election has any credibility among the progressive opposition. Ahmadinejad is allied to the fascistic forces organized around the “Supreme Religious Leader.” Rafsanjani, 70, is well known for his corrupt practices during the period since the 1979 revolution, including his role in the infamous “Iran-Contra Affair” of the mid-1980s. He is also remembered for his eight ruinous years as president (1989-97). During that time he brought the country to its knees by carrying out an “Economic Adjustment Program” prescribed by the International Monetary Fund.

Reacting to the attempts to steal the election, Moin, 54, a former minister of higher education, warned against the rise of “militaristic and fascistic” tendencies within the regime and said that what happened “is a threat to the people’s vote and free elections.”

Ebrahim Yazdi, leader of the influential Freedom Movement, questioned how Ahmadinejad, “who did not run an effective election campaign and according to all opinion polls and the exit polls was in the lowest position, could suddenly rise and assume the highest position during the counting.”

In a June 19 statement, the Tudeh Party of Iran said, “The difficult and heroic struggle of millions of Iranians to carry out their demand for the continuation of the reform process and protest against the ruling dictatorial regime has entered a new phase in the face of organized and widespread attempts and open interference by the armed forces of the regime as well as massive vote rigging in most cities.”

Referring to the widespread popular support for Moin’s pro-reform candidacy, Tudeh said, “Fearing the success of the candidate of the Front for Democracy and Human Rights, the ruling reactionary forces employed everything in their power to prevent the realization of the popular verdict.”

The party has called for a mass campaign against the regime’s attempt to steal the election, with the aim of forcing the regime to “nullify the result of the elections.” It said that, in view of the massive vote rigging, “the second round of the election is illegal.”

The statement by Iran’s best-known and oldest political party called for “progressive forces in Iran and internationally to raise their voices of protest against the unpatriotic, antidemocratic and antipopular actions of the regime.” It continued, “We should not allow these falsified election results to undermine the clear wish of millions of Iranian people for realization of democracy, freedom and social justice.”

Navid Shomali is a correspondent from the Tudeh Party of Iran.

Education gets huge boost in Venezuela

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 04:43:00 +0000

Revolution, suggests radical educator Paulo Freire, is “the ultimate teacher … giving first place to the indispensable role of education in the process of forming the New Woman and the New Man.” Although Freire wrote these words almost 30 years ago, in his preface to Jonathan Kozol’s book “Children of the Revolution,” he could have been writing about Venezuela today.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez devoted a May 15 call-in television program to education. Attending the inauguration of a new high school, he presented a “new educational model for a new citizen.” Competition and individualism in schools, he said, must give way to unity, brotherhood and solidarity. “We are all a team, going along eliminating little by little the values or the anti-values that capitalism has planted in us from childhood.”

Chavez noted the country’s new constitution calls for a democratic, free education characterized by “inclusion, activism, participation and opportunities.” Article 103 of the Constitution states, “Every person has the right to a full, high-quality, ongoing education under conditions and circumstances of equality.” Education, Chavez said, is a “human right and a fundamental social duty.”

Crediting Education Minister Aristobulo Isturiz for defining the nation’s educational philosophy, Chavez went on to say that education is more than “Isturiz’s responsibility [and] not only the responsibility of the government, but is everyone’s.”

Isturiz, also at the ceremony, talked about “co-responsibility” as an alternative to paternalism. “The democracy that we are constructing is a participatory democracy,” he said. “We would not have been able to teach 1 million people to read and write if we had not had the help of 100,000 volunteers.”

Until now, Isturiz said, education in Venezuela has been “responding to the neoliberal model,” which he called “profoundly elitist and exclusive.” The new curriculum includes gender equality from preschool onward, and today Venezuela boasts more women than men with a university education.

In an April interview with venezuelanalysis.com, Isturiz described the process of setting up “Bolivarian schools,” free public education, meals for all students and increased educational funding. Over the past five years the educational segment of the Gross Domestic Product rose from 2.8 percent to 7 percent. The government now devotes 20 percent of its spending to education.

In their new schools, children learn actively and collectively. Practical experience and academic instruction are joined. Families participate as classroom helpers, food providers and community advocates. Teachers receive a 70 percent add-on to their salaries to encourage nearly full-time involvement with students — eating, playing and sharing.

Nearly 1.4 million children are enrolled in mandatory preschools, the “Simoncitos.” Isturiz said that early education works to overcome social inequalities and promotes self-esteem and language skills. The curricula of Bolivarian high schools now group academic subjects in “areas” as a means of helping students correlate information and solve problems. The recently formulated Decree 3444 aspires to transform Venezuelan universities, and the education ministry is developing a system of “small university villages” in outlying areas.

Over 1 million children are enrolled in 3,780 new Bolivarian schools, among them 350 secondary schools. The government has refurbished 8,750 of the nation’s 20,000 schools, and has built 700 new elementary schools and 80 technical schools.

An outreach program called “Mission Robinson,” which has received Cuban support, has enabled almost 1.4 million people, including prisoners in Venezuelan jails, to read and write in less than two years. Over 1.2 million people, mostly adults, are studying to complete the sixth grade, and in another program, 800,000 adults are studying at the high school level.

These programs have enabled millions of poor and uneducated Venezuelans to improve themselves. The United Nations predicts that in 2007 Venezuela will meet its millennium goal of elementary education for all, eight years ahead of schedule.

The name Mission Robinson comes from Simon Robinson, who served as director of education in Bolivia under Simon Bolivar, the 19th century South American revolutionary. Robinson’s message resonates in Venezuela today: “We have to educate everybody, with no distinctions of race or color. We are not off in the clouds: without popular education there will never be a true society.”

Bush aid to Africa called crumbs

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 04:42:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — Aid groups blasted President George W. Bush for refusing additional development aid for Africa, branding his offer of $674 million during a meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair “crumbs.”

Salih Booker, executive director of the Washington-based Africa Action, pointed out that most of the money Bush offered is famine relief that had already been approved. Bush, he said, “seeks to promote a ‘compassionate conservative’ image by repackaging old money for Africa and — once again — greater scrutiny reveals this image to be disingenuous.”

Jonathan Glennie, senior policy analyst for London-based Christian Aid, said, “The $674 million is a drop in the ocean compared to what Africa really needs.” His comments were echoed by Action Aid spokesperson Ramilly Greenhill, also based in the UK. “Africa deserves more than crumbs from the richest country’s table,” Greenhill said.

Blair, on a visit to Washington, was asking Bush to double U.S. aid to Africa. Blair, for his own political reasons, hopes to double to $100 billion the combined aid provided to the 34 nations of Africa, most of which are struggling with enormous debt and poverty.

But Bush gave Blair a stiff arm. “It doesn’t fit in our budgetary process,” Bush said.

The Rev. Eugene Rivers of Boston was one of hundreds of African American pastors who signed a letter to Bush asking him to agree to Blair’s request. “If we can give a $140 billion tax cut to the richest of the rich, who are not infrequently white, we can give $25 billion to the poorest of the poor, who are not infrequently Black,” Rivers said. He pointed out that Blair backed Bush’s war on Iraq “at enormous political cost to himself” but “did not appear to be receiving the same level of support when it came to Africa.”

As a consolation prize, Bush did agree to debt relief for 18 African nations totaling about $16.7 billion. European nations agreed to cancel $40 billion in debt a few days later. But critics said debt relief, while needed, is no substitute for development assistance.

Debayani Kar, a spokesperson for Jubilee USA Network, a group that advocates debt cancellation, told the World the Bush-Blair deal is only “a first step.” She said grassroots pressure must be exerted to force wealthy nations to vastly expand debt cancellation with “no strings attached.’

Bush and Blair spoke of their plan providing “100 percent debt cancellation.” But it “cannot be called 100 percent cancellation if it does not include debts owed by impoverished nations to the International Monetary Fund,” said Jubilee USA National Coordinator Neil Watkins. Thirty percent of the debt of poor nations is owed to the IMF, he said.

Poor nations devote as much as 50 percent of their national income to interest on these debts. Collectively, they have repaid hundreds of billions and are still mired in unpayable debt.

Speaking at the Take Back America conference here, the day after the Bush-Blair meeting, economist Jeffrey Sachs said, “There are 750 million Africans, the poorest people on this planet. And of the $2 billion in U.S. aid for Africa, more than half goes for U.S. consultants. Our aid is less than a dollar per person per year in Africa.”

Sachs had just returned from Africa where he saw children dying from preventable diseases. “If we made the slightest effort, we could do so much to end the suffering and waste of human potential,” he said. “The profoundest irony is that for $50 per person, their lives could be turned around, medicine, food, fertilizer, seed. Seventy cents per child to provide nets to protect children from malaria as they sleep [and] Bush says it ‘does not fit the budgetary process.’ What a disgrace!”

Touching on Iraq, Sachs said, “We are a militarized society crazed with fantasies of military empire. People do not want to be colonized. They will not be colonized. The people of the world do not want to be occupied by the United States or any other nation. We can’t run the world.”

The U.S., like other developed nations, signed a pledge to increase aid to 0.7 percent of GDP to provide aid to the poorest nations, Sachs said. “We are paying one-fifth of that. We sign pledges and ignore them. That 0.7 percent is exactly equal to what we are spending in Iraq right now.”

UAW resisting GM onslaught

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 04:41:00 +0000

The United Auto Workers union is digging in its heels to protect its members, their families and communities from General Motors’ drastic job cuts.

It would be a “huge mistake” for the multinational corporation to take any unilateral action against 25,000 employees or retirees, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said June 16.

Gettelfinger and UAW Vice President Richard Shoemaker answered media speculation about the union’s stance. “As we have said consistently, the UAW does not intend to reopen the UAW-GM National Agreement,” they said. “We have been just as consistent in saying that we are willing to work with GM to find mutually agreeable ways to reduce costs in health care and other areas.

“By working together, the UAW and GM have done a lot of important things over the past several years, including making dramatic improvements in workplace safety, productivity and product quality. It would be a huge mistake for GM to throw all that away by taking any unilateral action on health care benefits or other matters covered by our national agreement,” they said.

The contract expires in September 2007. The last time the UAW agreed to reopen a contract was in 1972, as part of the Chrysler bailout. The last strike at GM was in 1998.

On June 6, GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner announced that the multinational corporation would slash 25,000 jobs by 2008 and loot the health care and pension benefits for 1.1 million retired autoworkers.

The corporation claims it “lost” $1.1 billion in the first quarter of 2005. Its plan to increase its profits is not to cut Wagoner’s $4.8 million annual salary, about the size of a small town’s budget, or other executives’ paychecks. Instead, GM is aiming at autoworkers, active and retired.

Tony Fransetta is Florida president of the Alliance of Retired Americans. A former Ohio resident, he retired after working 34 years at Ford’s Brookpark, Ohio, complex.

“Just because the company wants to reopen the contract does not mean reopen it,” Fransetta said in a telephone interview. “During the ’80s and since then, the union met with the company and reconfigured the health care, changed procedures, but kept the Medicare pattern. We are blessed, because we do not have to cut pills in half or skip taking them, like some of the proud people of our generation have to.”

Fransetta wanted to clear some public misunderstandings about the autoworker retiree benefits that GM is so quick to trash. “Those benefits are not a promise,” he said, his gentle voice rising. “We earned them — every nickel, dime and quarter. The company doesn’t give them as a goodwill offering, a promise. The pensions and health care were all part of bargaining. They are an entitlement.”

Two high ranking union officials told the Detroit Free Press that GM is demanding $2 billion in health care concessions a year. The union offered $200 million to $400 million to restructure health care.

The union is critical of a deal GM tried to make with Fiat, but that failed, resulting in a $4.4 billion loss. Autoworkers say they shouldn’t have to pay for GM’s bad management.

Schwarzeneggers popularity sinks after special election call

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 04:39:00 +0000

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s declaration of a Nov. 8 special election is apparently not doing him any good with voters. In a poll taken after his June 13 announcement, the governor’s approval ratings plunged to new lows. The Field Poll found a mere 31 percent of California adults and 37 percent of registered voters approve of Schwarzenegger’s job performance. Support among Republicans is now 66 percent, down from 84 percent three months ago. Most important: backing of nonpartisan voters has sunk to 35 percent from 48 percent in February.

When its $45 to $80 million cost to taxpayers is cited, support for the special election stands at 28 percent.

Perhaps in response to the bad news, Schwarzenegger veered last week from his focus on the evils of deficit spending to allege that Democrats are seeking to weaken Proposition 13, the 1978 ballot measure limiting property tax increases, and to raise car and sales taxes. But observers noted that the absence of such measures in the Democrats’ budget proposal raised the specter of a credibility gap.

Besides the estimated cost of the special election to taxpayers, estimates of total donor funds to be spent by all sides go as high as $200 million. Unions have raised over $8 million to date. The California Teachers Association just approved a temporary $60 dues hike to raise a total of $50 million for political activity over three years, and the union representing corrections officers is expected to follow suit.

Pharmaceutical firms have raised over $10 million to oppose a discount program for 10 million low- and middle-income Californians that would require drug companies to participate if they wish to sell drugs to the Medi-Cal program. They are campaigning for their own much weaker “voluntary” discount program.

While relentlessly repeating that California nurses, teachers and other public workers are “special interests,” the governor has traveled the country raising $15 million so far — largely from wealthy individual and corporate donors. This week the Los Angeles Times revealed that a nursing home company owned by Emmanuel Bernabe, who has given Schwarzenegger over $67,000, faces a 13-count neglect complaint. Though state regulators have cited 11 of Bernabe’s nursing homes over 51 times since Schwarzenegger took office, and levied fines of nearly $300,000, the governor’s office claimed to be unaware of Bernabe’s difficulties.

Civil rights groups contest FBI on Lodi arrests

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 04:38:00 +0000

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights have filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to get records related to the arrest of five Lodi, Calif., men on terrorism charges.

The groups are seeking FBI records about the procedures used during the questioning and detention of dozens of Muslims in Lodi following the arrest of the five, who are being held without bail in the Sacramento County Jail.

The civil rights groups say the records being sought relate to “the loss of substantial due process rights,” such as individuals’ rights to access to attorneys, translators, medical attention and freedom from inappropriate government surveillance.

Media reports have carried allegations that 23-year-old Hamid Hayat attended a terrorist training camp in Pakistan and that his father, Umer Hayat, a 47-year-old ice cream truck driver, was the mastermind of a terrorist cell.

However, the government has charged the Hayats only with lying to federal investigators about Hamid Hayat’s itinerary during a recent visit to Pakistan. Three other Lodi-area Pakistanis were detained on suspected immigration violations. None of the five have been charged with carrying out or planning to carry out any violent act.

“The Muslim community in Lodi has been living in fear,” said Basim Elkarra of the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Sacramento Valley (CAIR-SV) at a press conference on June 16. “Many have stopped attending the mosque for daily prayer because of helicopter surveillance of the mosque, and agents around it,” he added.

Several speakers referred to the FBI invading the home of the arrested men with guns drawn, although they knew that only women and children were present. When an 11-year-old girl passed out, the agents refused to allow medical personnel to have access to her.

“The FBI has told witnesses that they don’t have any right to an attorney,” said Mark Schlosberg of the Northern California ACLU. ACLU members in Lodi were also followed and photographed by the FBI, he said.

A CAIR Town Hall “Know Your Rights” meeting on June 11 in nearby Stockton was also spied on by FBI agents in cars circling the building and taking pictures, said Shirin Sinar, an attorney with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights.

Marwa Elzankaly, president of the Bay Area Association of Muslim Lawyers, said she had spent the last week in Lodi. “People were interrogated for hours at a time without access to their lawyers. At the same time, the FBI told the lawyers that their clients were not there,” she told the press.

One Muslim was threatened with arrest for jaywalking if he did not consent to be questioned without an attorney. Many in the Muslim community don’t have financial resources and don’t speak English, she said.