People Before Profit blog

Contradictory China

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:37:00 +0000

Almost everything you’ve heard about China is true — at least, that’s my impression from a short week-and-a-half visit to Beijing at the end of May. The scale of everything in China is hard for anyone to wrap their mind around. China is the world’s third-largest country, has the largest population in the world by far (about 1.2 billion people), features extreme variation in climate and geography from low-lying coastal agricultural regions to almost the highest Himalayas to vast deserts, and exhibits a wide variation in economic development from the poorest subsistence farms to the most modern skyscrapers. Not least of all, China is making widespread and important efforts toward socialism, alongside capitalist development with extreme exploitation and environmental pollution and devastation. It’s all true. Just looking out the window of a bus driving through Beijing and environs, you can see the impressively modernistic “Bird’s Nest” Olympic National Stadium, pervasive advertising in the Beijing business district, walls surrounding massive city blocks behind which you can glimpse everything from gigantic apartment complexes to run-down slums to the imposing and impressive remains of Imperial China to the ever-present construction cranes building skyscrapers, hotels, apartments and national institutions. You can see well-tended garden plots next to large-scale agricultural production next to rapidly expanding urbanization and highway construction. Revolutionary symbols clash and compete with advertising for the latest luxuries for the super-rich. The crowded main streets bustle with regular buses, tourist buses, Mercedes and Toyotas, bicycles and scooters, and pedestrians (who don’t seem to have the right-of-way but must proceed at their own peril, which they do by ignoring lights and crosswalks as often as the cars and buses ignore them).

Tour guides boast of the increase of trees and ground cover in Beijing from 9 percent 20 years ago to more than 35 percent today. Flowerbeds are ubiquitous in many parts of the city. The steps being taken by the government to improve Beijing in advance of the Olympics are obvious, intense and impressive — from tree planting, subway expansion, shutting and moving factories, and recycling to campaigns against spitting in public, a long-standing Beijing habit. Equally impressive are the pervasive pollution and smog, the sewage smells from inadequate or non-functional sewer systems in old Beijing neighborhoods, the rampant commercial construction and the market-driven consumerism. There are also many symbols of a proud country struggling to keep up with its own development.

The contradictions include commonly held views about China’s own history. The same person will tell you that the Mao-initiated Cultural Revolution led to “10 wasted years,” and also that his family members have photos of Mao on their walls. Others object to what they see as the descent into capitalism by clinging to the most ultra-left aspects of Maoism. Most seem to matter-of-factly accept the realities of socialist goals of equality alongside capitalist excesses and inequalities, since in many respects life for the majority is improving.

These contradictions are the field of intense struggles. There are good laws and policies in many fields, and widespread evasion of those same laws and policies due to inadequate funds for enforcement. There are struggles over environmental policy, over the new labor law (designed to adjust to unions in capitalist enterprises, opposed by most of the big U.S. corporations in China — who lobbied hard against its recent adoption), over the evasion of laws such as building codes in Sichuan Province, the site of the recent catastrophic earthquake.

While that earthquake exposed many problems with the building boom, it also provided a stark contrast both to Bush’s inhumane reaction to Hurricane Katrina and to the current disgraceful actions of the Myanmar military government preventing or obstructing international aid to cyclone victims. China’s emergency mobilization of people from rescue workers to replacement teachers, the welcome given to many international aid efforts including portable hospitals, emergency housing, food and clothing, the daily news conferences informing the entire nation about details of the rescue and recovery activities — all are examples of proper government response to a crisis.

Another truth we can’t ignore is that some of the problems in China are caused by rapacious capitalist corporations based in the U.S., some of the pollution in China (likely at least 25 percent) is the result of production for export to the U.S. and Europe, and some of the rush to development is caused by the overwhelming task of feeding a nation of 1.2 billion. China’s rapid development is almost entirely responsible for the total world improvement in lifting hundreds of thousands out of abject poverty in the last 20 years — no other country has been as successful in actually accomplishing such goals, not on anywhere near the scale.

Those looking for simplistic understanding or easy choices or answers will not find them. Without much trouble, you can find obscene hucksterism combined with nationalistic boosterism, and you also find much sincere commitment to socialist goals, equality, improving life for all. As the many contradictions in China meet the challenges of the future, we need to support their positive efforts as well as examine their shortcomings and failures. China’s problems, limitations, opportunities, and potential combine into an irreducible complex whole.

Marc Brodine (marcbrodine @inlandnet.com) is chair of the Washington State Communist Party and co-authored the second edition of the CPUSA environmental program, “People and Nature Before Profits.”

Letters - June 21, 2008

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 03:54:00 +0000

Stimulating!

I finally got my stimulus check, which is G.W. Bush’s answer to the recession that he denies that we are in.

I will be doing something with my stimulus check that Bush does not approve of. I will be using part of my stimulus check to help stimulate the PWW.

Now the credit card company has already laid claim to a big part of my check but I can send in $50 for the PWW fund drive. I would like to suggest that readers use a part of their stimulus checks to stimulate the newspaper that is working to stimulate people for the upcoming elections.

Kenneth J. BeSaw Bronx NY

Start with regulating Big Oil

You’re angry and you’re frustrated at the gas pump. Meanwhile, it’s all smiles at Exxon (and the other petroleum kingdoms) as it looks around at record profits — $40 billion and a return of 32 percent! The profits for the five largest oil companies have been $585 billion since 2001, as the price at the pump has soared.

Oh yes, Congress calls them in to testify about their “excessive profits” and wags its finger at them. But in the end, nothing happens.

And, therein lies the crux of the problem: greedy corporations and a free market government whose interests lie more with corporations than with the American people.

Surprise?

I wonder how many shares of oil company stock Sen. Arlen Specter and friends have in their stock portfolios.

What to do? For a start, their profits should be regulated by law similar to gas, electric, water and phone companies because their products are essential to our lives.

If the companies were limited to a 10 percent profit vs. the 30 percent-plus they suck out of our pockets now, we could have seen lower prices at the pumps. And the oil companies would have taken a hit on their multi-million-dollar salaries, bonuses and stock options.

Of course, for every action there is a reaction. The oil “plantation” executives would bemoan “big government” and even worse, “creeping socialism.” They would inundate the air waves with messages like “the free market works,” “hands off oil” and “keep America free.” And they would probably cut back on their token contributions to concerts and nature shows on public television.

Truckers all over the world are taking to the streets. Isn’t it time something started happening here?

Lawrence H. Geller Via e-mail

Don’t let capitalism off the hook

Except for three years of military service in World War II, I have regularly read the PWW and its predecessor, the Daily Worker, since 1932 for its indispensable socialist perspective.

Therefore, it was something of a disappointment to read the June 14-20 editorial, which stated that the current financial disaster “is the result, not of ‘cyclical’ or ‘random’ events but of Bush administration policy beholden to corporations and lobbyists.”

There is no doubt that fiscal policy based on greed and militarism made matters worse, but the basic problem is that capitalism is a dog-eat-dog system whose only purpose is to produce wealth for the few without any concern for the many.

Even now in the midst of a “financial disaster,” the real victims are the working majority while the privileged few are still eating regularly. Bush’s policies definitely made things worse but he is not responsible for NAFTA or for corporations replacing workers with machines, exporting good-paying union jobs and downsizing the rest. Bush didn’t cause the 1929 depression, and Clinton, not Bush, is responsible for NAFTA.

Defeating Bush and his militaristic policies is an important goal but it doesn’t require letting capitalism off the hook.

Bill Hagel Queens NY

Can we abolish war?

We should try harder! Whereas disastrous floods, tornadoes and earthquakes cannot be prevented, the war system can and must be prevented and abolished. Abolishing war, said Gen. Douglas MacArthur, isn’t just a dream but a necessity.

Every normal person wants to live without danger to self and loved ones. It is a few insane, monstrous, crank, homicidal maniacs and bad leaders who mislead all the rest and drive counties to resort to war.

Let’s all pursue a more reasonable path for the country. We can do it! Continue the fight for good!

George Gaylord Anaheim CA

Thoughts about art and class

Culture has the power to shape not only our view of the past but also the way we see ourselves today. Art exhibitions result from a process of selection and the selection leads to the assembling of a collection necessarily based upon beliefs about art and the world it reflects.

Classism was clear when patrons preferred genre paintings based upon a self-serving lie. The lie was that the world, which had made a few wealthy, is happy and free from conflict.

Women appear as wives, debutantes or idealized visions. Myths were perpetuated by repeated appeals to emotion: flags, American eagles, 4th of July, Yankee Doodle, etc. The patriotic myth survives because it serves to affirm and justify the present social system as it is.

John Singleton Copley’s portraits were filled with nostalgia for the presumed gentility of colonial society, wearing expensive clothing and having beautiful furniture.

Thomas Eakins was the teacher of Thomas Anshutz. They both painted with scientific objectivity, depicting experiences without subjective emotion. Anshutz’s “The Ironworkers’ Noontime” shows workers as individuals rather than a laboring class in cooperation with each other.

Today, with art under control of corporate money, how can it explain the lives of working people? Does this explain why it has no message? Art is displayed in isolated, enclosed, expensive, structured buildings.

June Krebs Philadelphia PA

Indiana Jones survives!

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 09:37:00 +0000

Movie REVIEW

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of

the Crystal Skull

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Paramount Pictures, 2008

124 min., Rated PG-13

If we hadn’t seen it with our own eyes, my movie buddy and I would not believe all the amazing things that happened to Indiana Jones and his friends during his big adventure with the crystal skull. Indiana was blown up, shot at, and dropped from great distances, not just once or twice but for most of the entire two-hour film experience!

There have been several comments as to whether or not Harrison Ford, at his present age, should continue to play the agile and durable adventure hero, but whom else would you have? And, if you wanted a love interest, who could be better than Karen Allen, who was Indie’s first love interest when he battled the Nazis in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

Just to handle some of the more difficult aerial stunts, why not throw in a new youthful sidekick? And what actress, of all the actresses in Hollywood, would you pick to play the insidious villainess besides Cate Blanchett?

Younger viewers, who never read the comics or saw the Saturday Serials for a dime at the Saturday movies might think “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” is a little bit over-the-top. Another group that might not like the new movie is political progressives who would just rather not be reminded of 1957 America, when the movie takes place.

It was indeed an ugly year, when America distinguished itself with atomic bomb tests and the nastiest secret police in the world. And, if there were villains in the movies, they were Communists. Progressives also might not want to see the script preserve the lives of almost all the Caucasians while treating other races like so much Kleenex.

Lastly, it’s an embarrassment to all of us to find out that Indiana Jones, archeologist and general hero of all trades, was, in 1957, a Republican!

But those who loved the earlier films, as well as other Lukas-Spielberg collaborations, especially “Close Encounters” are going to be glad they saw this one in the theater with the loud sound. It’s reassuring to note the continuity in this series of socially empty but exciting films.

flittle7@yahoo.net

Letters - June 14, 2008

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 09:11:00 +0000

Something smells

Word has it that Sen. John McCain is receiving $59,000 a year in benefits from the Veterans Administration for a 100 percent disability. Something just doesn’t smell right. Either he is 100 percent disabled and should not be running for president (since “great health” matters) or he received the diagnosis from a friendly doctor in order to get maximum benefits. Either way, somebody is lying. This from a man who claims to be the veterans’ best friend who would continue to send troops to Iraq no matter how long it takes, and who voted against a bill that increases both financial and medical benefits for veterans. And, in 2007, he voted 100 percent with Bush. This from a man who wants to be president?

Bill Mackovich

Chicago IL

Ready for the challenge

I am all for the trade unions fighting on behalf of their members. Throughout history both in the United States and Europe the trade unions have made sacrifices to win a lot of concessions for ordinary working people.

But in the U.S. they have not done as well as in Europe.

Now there is an opportunity for you all to do better than Europe by presenting a nonviolent economic model which will ensure real growth in the real economy as opposed to speculative growth in the capital markets which leads to only boom or bust.

Are you ready for the challenge: a paradigm shift not only for the U.S. but also for the rest of the world?

David Soori

London, UK

David Soori is a lifetime member of Unison, the largest public service union in the United Kingdom.

Update on Mumia case

There apparently is still confusion regarding the March 27 federal decision. A new jury trial was ordered on the question of whether the penalty should be life or death. The court did not rule that Mumia should receive a life sentence as some have stated. The penalty phase was reversed because the trial judge gave misleading and unconstitutional jury instructions. Nonetheless, I expect far greater gains.

There was a lengthy dissenting opinion on the issue of racism in jury selection. It found that there was evidence of the prosecutor engaging in racism. He removed prospective African American jurors for no reason other than the color of their skin. That violates the United States Constitution. This extraordinary dissent goes to the core of our effort to secure an entirely new trial.

Mumia remains on death row. The prosecution has vowed to appeal and continue its quest to see him executed. I will not let that happen.

This case can be won. In over three decades of successfully defending people in capital murder cases, I have not seen one more compelling. Racism is a thread that has run through the case since its inception. My objective remains to obtain a new jury trial in which Mumia will be acquitted by a jury so that he can return to his family, a free person.

Robert Bryan

San Francisco CA

Robert Bryan is lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Fact check

Wasn’t Coubertin (“Olympic creed: not the triumph but the struggle” PWW 5/24-30) suspected of being a fascist sympathizer? I read that the Nazis nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Sean Mulligan,

Alpharetta GA

Editor’s note: Pierre, Baron de Coubertin, (founder of the modern Olympics) was a minor French aristocrat who was deeply affected by the French defeat in the 1871 war against Prussia, and the popular uprising in Paris that followed. That seems to pre-date the Nazis.

According to the Wall Street Journal’s recently published history of the Olympics: “France, in [Coubertin’s] view, had become a decadent country, which needed invigorating. Organized sports were the proper way to do this. Coubertin was a great admirer of the British public school system, with its stress on games and physical prowess. Sports, he believed, would restore national health, and not only in France. Vigorous competition would make people everywhere more industrious and less rebellious. Wars would become obsolete. And so in 1896 the modern Olympics were born, appropriately enough in Athens.

“For a nobleman of his time, Coubertin actually had a relatively liberal disposition. His brand of patriotism was never militant. Following the British public school style, his motto for the Games was that the important thing was not to win, but to take part.”

Burma, not Myanmar

You used Myanmar for that designated nation in your editorial “Responding to disasters” (PWW 5/17-23). Of course only symbolic, it does say something. The country of Burma, so named by its British colonial conquerors was then renamed Myanmar by the military junta that took charge in 1989. After that, even a semblance of freedom for the proletariat class was discarded.

But since words do have meaning, the PWW, as a progressive medium, should make it clear that we stand with the oppressed Burmese people and work for the day when that nation, whatever it is then called, will stand proud in its peoples’ freedom, both politically and economically.

I urge the PWW editors to tell its readers that we stand with the Burmese people, and will furthermore use “Burma” to identify that nation seeking its freedom.

Don Sloan

New York NY

Editor’s note: We stand with the Burmese workers and people. Many democratic and civil society organizations refer to themselves as Burmese or with Burma in their name. In the 5/10-16 issue we publicized the call by the Federation of Trade Unions of Burma for solidarity and aid.

We have done a little research on this and found, for example, the United Nations recognizes Myanmar, not Burma. And most English-language media outlets – around the world – use Myanmar. Despite the opposition towards the military rulers, Myanmar has been so named and we don’t think it’s our job to rename their country.

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Worldnotes - June 14, 2008

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 08:16:00 +0000

Germany: The Left Party sets course

“The wind of history is in our sails,” Oscar Lafontaine proclaimed as 500 delegates of the Left Party, Germany’s third largest political party which evolved from the Socialist Unity Party that had ruled the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), convened May 25–26 in Cottbus.

This party is the product of the union last year between the Party of Democratic Socialism and Social Democratic Party dissidents. The anti-war party opposes the European Union constitution and would work to remedy Germany’s 18 percent poverty rate. Lafontaine, once leader of the Social Democrats, shares party leadership with Lothar Bisky who was a leader in the Party for Democratic Socialism.

The convention called for tax increases, a crack down on business crime and massive funding for job creation and education. Analysts say that center parties, pressured by the Left push, now support taxes on the wealthy, a minimum wage, and paid maternity leaves.

For a fuller story see Victor Grossman’s “Three contrasting congresses meet in Germany” at www.pww.org.

Peru: U.S. military intervenes

U.S. troops arrived June 1–2 in Ayacucho, Peru. Air Force Link enthused that 139 members of task force “New Horizons Peru” will build classrooms and clinics; 990 more are expected.

Writing of “Gringos and Cubans” on erbol.com, Ricardo Bajo contrasts U.S. soldiers carrying “long range M-16 rifles and machine guns” within range of Shining Path insurgents with 2,000 Cubans in Bolivia doctoring and teaching literacy. The latter “only want Bolivia and the world to be a more just place to live,” he adds.

Amidst fears of an eventual U.S. base in Peru, the Ayacucho Defense Front is planning a general strike for July 8. Opposition leader Ollanta Humala notes that armed foreign troops are illegal in Peru.

For further discussion go to the May 29 post “1,000 Marines in Peru worry opposition parties.” on

peoplesweeklyworldblog.blogspot.com.

South Africa: Revival of alliance

The labor federation COSATU recently elected nurse Sdumo Dlamini, seasoned by 20 years of public sector unionism, as president. A Business Times interviewer asked him June 5 about the recent tripartite alliance summit involving COSATU, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and the Communist Party. There, neoliberal policies were rejected in favor of egalitarian initiatives propelled by the alliance.

Dlamini promised COSATU electoral support for the ANC, but opted for an ANC “inclined towards working-class aspirations.” He rejected calls for President Thabo Mbeki, no longer the ANC head, to resign.

Dlamini sees successor Jacob Zuma, a likely presidential candidate, as “part of our experience ... born of the working class.” Dlamini himself is “a Christian who has grown to become a communist.”

Australia: Unions respond to migrant workers

Australia’s Guardian newspaper reports that employers are pressuring the Kevin Rudd labor government to convert the country’s guest worker program, under which 46,680 overseas workers arrived last year, into a source of cheap labor.

Unions, led by the Australian Workers Union, have made proposals aimed at improving the lot of visa-authorized foreign workers and, indirectly, Australian workers. They are seeking assurances that “market wages” are paid, that collective bargaining be available, and that employers certify labor shortages as bone-fide.

Julius Roe, president of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, charged recently that employers cheat by taking excessive deductions from workers’ pay to cover health, accommodation and migration costs.

Gaza: Abbas promotes reconciliation

Addressing the Palestinian people on June 4, President Mahmoud Abbas called for dialogue to end internal divisions. Discussions would be based on Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s proposals last March for early elections, respect for Palestinian law, reconstruction of security systems and restoration of earlier power arrangements.

Prime Minister Ismail Haniyya of Gaza’s dissolved Hamas government welcomed the initiative, calling for Arab League supervision.

Abbas also met with leftist groups. Afterwards, according to IMEMC news, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Palestinian People’s Party declared jointly, “Our unity is our power, our means for liberation, independence and the right of return.”

World Notes are compiled by W.T. Whitney Jr. (atwhit@roadrunner.com)

Letters - June 7, 2008

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 07:55:00 +0000

Israel at 60

We were disappointed by Ari Goldman’s opinion piece “Israel at 60 — Why celebrations are muted” (PWW5/24-30). Goldman claims that Israel has enjoyed “unparalleled success at assimilating a majority immigrant population from all corners of the globe, many arriving as desperate refugees.” However, he is completely silent on the “desperate refugees” that the Israeli state will not assimilate: namely the Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed from their homeland by the events of 1948 and 1967.

His vision for resolving the conflict between the state of Israel and the Palestinian people calls for “compensation for the forfeiture of settler homes” on one hand and mere “acknowledgment” of Palestinian losses on the other. Goldman seems to be suggesting that Palestinians should be happy with a two-state solution that ignores the right of return of millions of Palestinian refugees. What will Palestinians get for their acquiescence: a few commemorative plaques?

While it may be true that the one-state solution to the conflict is still a minority position, it does not mean that it is a “utopian” position. A strong case can be made that the two-state solution is utopian, having been rendered historically obsolete (ironically) by the West Bank settlements that have permanently altered the demographic situation in Palestine-Israel.

A two-state solution that does not include the Palestinian right of return is a racist solution. Goldman asks us to accept this oppressive situation because “given a 2,000-year history of exile and oppression, most Jews will not abandon their national homeland.” Are Palestinians supposed to wait for 2,000 years in order to have the moral authority to return home? This is absurd.

Sara Barker and Wally Brooker

Toronto, Canada

Author Ari Goldman responds: You raise important issues which I could not begin to probe more deeply in a very brief commentary. The 20th century (indeed every century) is full of population shifts, mostly forced, with awesome human consequences, and in the end there is no pure, complete justice. Our entire Western Hemisphere is “a racist solution,” but still we talk in terms of “national” sovereignty in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, etc. I believe we have to start from where we are now. I purposely used the open-ended term “acknowledgment” to include any solutions and compensations the Israelis and Palestinians see fit to agree upon. History may well prove you correct if a unitary nonsectarian state does eventually emerge, but practically speaking I don’t see either population in the area, or any of the Arab states, or the international community favoring this idea at present. Personally, I wish we could get beyond nationality and talk about class, but that’s not so high on the historical agenda right now either.

Incomprehensible

Yes, it’s good that Americans are talking about class, and the PWW, with its special charge of offering a Marxist-Leninist outlook, wisely chose to make an editorial comment on the discussion’s shortcomings (PWW 5/24-30). How strange, then, to discover the editorial’s identification of working class as “employed by a company that makes profits from your work.” Where does that leave the postal workers, teachers, police officers, file clerks and millions and millions of others who work for government entities? Is the People’s Weekly World now calling these workers “middle class?” I always thought working class meant people who must sell our ability to work (labor power) in order to survive; as the editorial points out, “working class describes the overwhelming majority in this country.” Have you discovered a new class? Or are all these millions de-classed?

Another perplexing omission from the editorial’s concerns is women. Not only is corporate media’s treatment of class racist; it’s also sexist! It’s incomprehensible that the PWW editorial went to press omitting half the class in its analysis.

With never-ending hope for better,

Lucy Fried

Los Angeles CA

Editor’s note: Good points, especially on women, although the context of the editorial was about the media punditry talking about “white working class” people, including women. And no we’re not calling public workers “middle class” or “declassed.” You have just proven “none of us is as smart as all of us.”

On Sean Bell

I just finished reading the article entitled: “Sean Bell verdict outrages New Yorkers” (PWW 5/3-9) with great sadness. I have viewed videos concerning police brutality recently, and would like to offer a possible solution to this ongoing issue.

In my opinion, positive progress might be made by changing the psychological tests (the actual criteria) by which a community’s police force is hired. This will take time and money, and obviously several PhD psychologists and or psychiatrists to give their input on the new tests, but it would mean real change.

I remember when police were known as peace officers, not law enforcement officers. I hope this suggestion helps. My deepest sympathy goes out to Sean’s family and friends. Thank you for letting me voice my feelings on this subject.

Veronica Ruth Haskin

Via e-mail

We want to hear from you!

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Worldnotes - June 7, 2008

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 04:28:00 +0000

Czech Republic: Resistance grows to U.S. bases

In Prague, Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg told Jan Tamas and Jan Bednar not to expect their hunger strikes to keep U.S. missile tracking systems out of the Czech Republic. The same day, May 27, Russian General Yevgeny Buzhinsky warned of “asymmetrical” steps if Washington persisted with missile deployment in Poland.

Hunger strikers in Europe and Australia, as well as Sung-Hee Choi and Bruce Gagnon in the U.S., joined Tamas and Bednar whose fasts began May 12. Bednar has been hospitalized.

Surveys document overwhelming national rejection of U.S. bases. One proposed site is Visky. There, Mayor Lubomir Fiala blames corporate profiteers and adds, according to Z Magazine, “I can’t stomach American expansionism.”

Brazil: New security alliance formed

In Brasilia, 12 Latin American nations created a continent-wide military alliance when they signed the Union of South American Nations into existence May 23. Conspicuously absent were the U.S. and Colombia.

The founders agreed on a permanent secretariat to be located in Quito, Ecuador; a council of heads of state and a council of foreign ministers.

Analysts see sharpening of conflicts between Colombia and its neighbors as impetus for the multinational agreement. For Bolivian President Evo Morales, quoted in the Colombia Indymedia report, “This is the dream of our ancestors, the struggle of our leaders that defended unity and bet on independence.”

Iraq: Unions urge end to anti-union measures

At its meeting in mid-May, the General Federation of Iraqi Workers, representing 15 unions, coupled assent to a recent governmental call for union elections with progress on key worker demands, chief among them abolition of a Saddam Hussein-era decree barring public sector workers from joining unions.

The International Trade Union Confederation’s web site says most workers affiliated with the Federation actually belong to public sector unions.

In Basra, the conferees also called upon the al-Maliki government to discard “Decree No. 8750,” issued by occupation forces in 2005, authorizing confiscation of union funds and preventing dues collections.

“We agree with the format for union elections, but with reservations,” said GFIW International Representative Abdullah Muhsin. “Full freedom of association and common recognition of free and democratic trade unions inside Iraq must come first.”

Egypt: Textile strikes snowball

Prosecutors in Mahalla are investigating five unionists jailed following a failed strike in early April at the state-owned Ghazl El-Mahalla spinning factory.

That strike, violently suppressed, coincided with demonstrations against rising food prices. Defendants Kamal El-Fayyoumy and Karim El-Beheiry have embarked on hunger strikes to protest information withheld on charges against them. Claiming prosecutors’ subservience to police agencies, defense lawyer Ahmed Ezzat sees the case as “clearly political,” according to labourstart.org.

Meanwhile a wildcat strike broke out May 26 at Alexandria’s Al-Amiriya Textile Company. Workers there were demanding a one-month bonus equal to that awarded the Mahalla workers to entice them to end their strike.

Puerto Rico: Primary highlights colonial status

In a June 1 Democratic Party primary marked by boycotts and protests, the real winners were the voters who chose not to participate. Only some 385,000 Puerto Rican voters — about 16 percent —went to the polls. In the last general election, 87 percent of the electorate voted. Independence groups boycotted the voting and activists marched “for decolonization and for dignity.” Politicians, sports figures, religious and trade union leaders joined the protest.

Democratic and Republican parties do not exist in Puerto Rico and politics there are Puerto Rico — not U.S. — oriented. Puerto Ricans living on the island also aren’t allowed to vote for U.S. president.

Juan Dalmau, general secretary of Puerto Rico’s small Independence Party, called the contest “a carnival of assimilation [that] has no real significance.” Dalmau complained that this year’s primary cost Puerto Rican taxpayers $2.5 million. Before it was a caucus paid for by Democrats.

Cuba: Amnesty International raps U.S.

Every year Amnesty International surveys the state of human rights in the world. Pointing out that “injustice, inequality and impunity are the hallmarks of our world today,” its recently issued report for 2007 took note of five Cuban men persecuted for investigating anti-Cuban terrorists in Florida — a first during their nearly decade-long imprisonment.

Their case was one of three included in a section on the U.S. “Justice System.”

AI focused on the prisoners’ appeals and cited both delays and defense allegations of insufficient evidence and prosecutorial misconduct.

Again this year, the report condemned U.S. refusal to allow two wives to visit their husbands in prison.

World Notes are compiled by W.T. Whitney Jr. (atwhit@roadrunner.com)

Cuban Five lose appeal, protests build

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 06:23:00 +0000

Almost ten months after defense attorneys presented oral arguments, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals June 4 delivered bad news to prisoners Gerardo Hernandez, Fernando Gonzalez; Rene Gonzalez; Ramon Labanino; and Antonio Guerrero, collectively known as the Cuban Five. The three judge panel reaffirmed all five convictions plus the sentences imposed on two of the men. However, the Appeals Court did revoke life sentences for Labanino and Guerrero, also Fernando Gonzalez’ 19-year term. The judges noted that “no top secret information was gathered or transmitted.” Their cases go back to the Miami court for resentencing.

The five Cubans had come to Florida in the 1990s to monitor impending attacks by counter-revolutionary groups in Cuba and warn authorities there. They had been arrested on numerous charges in September 1998 and convicted in 2001.

Gerardo Hernandez’ two life sentences stand, one for conspiracy to commit espionage, the other for murder conspiracy, as does Rene Gonzalez’ 15-year sentence. Hernandez was charged with contributing to the 1996 downing by Cuban aircraft of two planes flown over Cuban waters by the Miami-based Brothers to the Rescue. Four flyers died.

A three judge panel of the same appeals court had reversed their convictions in August 2005, ruling that prejudice had fatally infected their Miami trial. Exactly a year later, the full court reversed that decision. Defense lawyers based their appeal this time on other grounds: neglect of due process, insufficient evidence for conspiracy, “sovereign immunity” and inappropriate sentencing. The 99- page opinion, written by Judge William Pryor, characterized all of them, save the last, as “meritless.”

No public commentary from defense lawyers was available immediately following the announcement of the decision, yet the North American movement in solidarity with the Five moved quickly into action. Within hours, demonstrations were set for June 5 in Vancouver and Detroit, for June 6 in New York, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago, Winnipeg, and Toronto.

Analyst Jane Franklin noted that media bias surrounding the case was continuing. A banner headline in the Miami Herald proclaims, “Espionage!” That paper and others have long failed to specify that the most serious charge on which the Cuban Five were convicted was conspiracy to commit espionage – murder conspiracy in the case of Gerardo Hernandez – not actual spying, which, according to defense lawyer Leonard Weinglass, the government never tried to prove.