People Before Profit blog

Opinion: The morally bankrupt family values Republican leadership

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 09:30:00 +0000

This week, second term Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina disappeared for six days, leaving the state without a chief executive who could make decisions in an emergency. His Republican lieutenant governor didn’t know where he was, and had not been given any authority to make decisions in his absence. The state police said they had not been informed. His wife told the Associated Press (AP) she didn’t know where he was, and thought he was “writing something and wanted some space to get away from the kids” over the Father’s Day weekend. His senior aides said he was walking along the Appalachian Trail to “clear his head.”

But it wasn’t his head that he was clearing. When he returned, after first lying to a reporter who caught up with him on his return to the Atlanta airport, he finally admitted he went to Argentina to meet with a long-time lover. His wife later said she and the governor had separated two weeks earlier. The State later produced e-mail love letters it had been keeping since December.

The rising young star of the Republican party who was seen as a presidential contender in 2012, the man who was head of the Republican Governors Association until the day after he acknowledged his extramarital affair, the man who had wanted to deprive his state of $700 million in federal stimulus funds as a political message to President Obama, the man who had established himself as a beacon for the sanctity of marriage and the values of the oh-so-pure Religious right, who a decade earlier as a congressman had strongly condemned Bill Clinton’s extramarital affair, was not only an adulterer, but for at least the second time had left his state at risk since there were no contingency plans of how to reach him in an emergency.

Alas, Gov. Sanford isn’t the only “family values” philanderer. Slightly more than a week earlier, Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) admitted he had a nine month extramarital affair with one of his campaign staff. Ensign, who was contemplating a run for president in 2012, had been chair of the Republican Policy Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Like Gov. Sanford, Sen. Ensign only admitted to the affair after information had been leaked to the media.

This is the same John Ensign who, as a congressman, had curled his lips in revulsion at Bill Clinton’s affair, and demanded he either resign or be impeached. Later, as a senator, Ensign supported a federal ban on same sex marriages by declaring, “Marriage is the cornerstone on which our society was founded . . . . and the sanctity of that institution, predates the American Constitution and the founding of our nation.” Ironically, Ensign is active in Promise Keepers, a Christian evangelical ministry “dedicated to uniting men to become ‘godly influences’ in the world.”

Also vigorously calling for President Clinton’s impeachment, while having had their own extramarital affairs and covering them up or lying about them, were:

● Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), chair of the House judiciary committee and the “house manager” for the impeachment, who lied about his own four-year affair with a married woman and then when a newspaper published details in 1998 called the affair in the 40s nothing more than a “youthful indiscretion.” He retired in 2007 after 17 terms in the House.

●Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), who was the first legislator in Congress to call for Clinton’s resignation and then became one of the leaders of the impeachment movement. Barr’s background, however, wasn’t family values pure. He never denied committing adultery with his second wife, and later, while married to his third wife, was photographed at what passed as a charity event licking whipped cream off the breasts of two women. Barr left office in 2003, after four terms.

● Rep. Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho), who was one of the first to call for Clinton’s resignation, told the Spokane Spokesman-Review that God had pardoned her sins for her six-year extra-marital affair. Chenoweth left office in January 2001 after keeping her promise not to serve more than three terms.

● Fourteen term Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind), chair of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, who not only had a long-time affair with a state employee but had fathered a son from that affair. His website once screamed, “Above all, Dan Burton believes the people have a right to principled leadership and that character does matter.”

● Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), House speaker from 1995 to 1999, who may have had an affair while his first wife was in the hospital recovering from cancer. Gingrich later cheated on his second wife with the woman who became his third wife during the time he was pushing for Clinton’s resignation.

● Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.), who was Gingrich’s designated successor until he admitted his own infidelities and eventually resigned from the House.

● Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), who was elected to Livingston’s House seat and served three terms before being identified in a prostitution scandal in Louisiana. In 2004, he was elected to the Senate, three years before Hustler magazine linked him as a client of a prostitution service in Washington, D.C.

● Rep. Don Sherwood (R-Pa), who had a five year affair with a woman who later charged that Sherwood had assaulted her several times. He eventually settled for what AP reported was about $500,000. Among those who supported Sherwood during his primary re-election were Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), one of the leaders of the conservative coalition who in November 2005 said that “Compassionate Conservatism relies on healthy families,” and President George W. Bush who went to northeastern Pennsylvania to help raise funds for Sherwood. However, in the general election of November 2006, Sherwood was defeated for a fifth term.

● Rep. Vito Fossella Jr. (R-N.Y.), who, as a first term congressman with a 100 percent voting approval record from the Christian Coalition, was morally outraged at Bill Clinton’s personal conduct. A decade later, he was arrested for drunken driving in May 2008. Upon intense media scrutiny, he also admitted that while still married he had fathered a girl, now four years old, with an Air Force congressional liaison officer who was the woman who came to his assistance the night of his DUI arrest. After six terms, Fossella chose not to run for a seventh term.

● Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who had delivered a passionate plea to the Senate on why he planned to vote to convict President Clinton, citing legal issues. However, McCain had previously acknowledged his own several extramarital affairs in the 1970s, and had accepted the blame for the deterioration of his first marriage and estrangement from his children.

Republican leaders aren’t the only ones who commit adultery, nor are conservatives or members of the Religious Right, including preachers, solely the ones to have violated the seventh and tenth Commandments. Democrats also have a litany of their own scandals. But, it is the “family values” Republican leaders, who have led the party of right wing moral indignation; it is the Religious Right that has overtaken the party and wears the now-tarnished shield of righteousness to protect itself against anyone who doesn’t share their own views of the world, including moderate and liberal Republicans, and anyone belonging to another political party.

The Obama administration and the struggle for gay rights

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:35:00 +0000

CHICAGO -- On the heels of extensive protests by gay activists and many progressive groups and individuals the Obama administration has, in the recent period, taken some major steps that move in the direction of solving some of the injustices the LGBT community lives with every day.

The president has signed a memo that extends some limited benefits to partners of gay federal employees. Healthcare and inheritance rights are not covered by the memo, with the president saying legislation is needed so these rights can also be included.

He has also restated, in no uncertain terms, the administration’s intent to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and he said he supports legislation that, in the meantime, would give healthcare benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.

Then, only yesterday, the administration announced it is rewriting rules that allow discrimination against transgender people -- people who list their sex as other than how it is listed on their birth certificates.

The moves followed angry protests that erupted earlier this month when the Justice Department filed a brief that defended the Defense of Marriage Act.

The protests erupted, in part, because victims of discrimination are never happy when they are told it will take a while to end the discrimination they suffer from and that the issue of their discrimination is 'part of a bigger political process.”

For many in the LGBT community it was particularly difficult to deal with this type of reasoning coming from a president whose position on gay rights they see as having once been very strong.

When Obama was running for the Illinois Senate, “Outlines,” a gay community newspaper in Chicago conducted a survey on where candidates stood on the issue of gay marriage. At that time, in 1996, not one state allowed same-sex marriage. Obama sent in a written response that read, “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.”

During his 2004 U.S. Senate race Obama came out strongly for domestic partnerships and civil unions, rather than for same-sex marriage. Many gay activists here say that when he spoke to gay audiences he presented the shift as a strategic one -- meaning that there was broader support for the civil unions. Still, there has been widespread support for Obama in the gay community. As a senator and as a candidate for president he won the majority of support in the LGBT community.

During the campaign Obama strongly called for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act and for the repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

While the LGBT community understands that the struggle for full equality is just that -- a struggle -- they feel they have the right to expect the president to move boldly on this front. Even short of that, however, they were not about to accept the June 12 Justice Department brief defending the Defense of Marriage Act by comparing same-sex marriage to incest and pedophilia.

Many could not reconcile this with an administration that is so connected with the struggles for human rights and justice. If the idea is that the White House must avoid a push on gay rights so as not to endanger other parts of its agenda, the idea is one gay activists will not accept.

The gay community is saying that the time for equivocation is over and that the time for action is now.

Six states have made gay marriage legal. Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) has announced that he is switching his support of civil unions to support for gay marriage.

Governors are taking the same position.

For weeks, now, Gen. John Shalikishvili, President Clinton’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been appearing on MSNBC with a lineup of other military leaders, demanding an end to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Pride at Work, the AFL-CIO constituency group that mobilizes mutual support between the organized labor movement and the LGBT community for social and economic justice , has published numerous reports on polls that show overwhelming public backing of equal workplace rights for lesbians and gays. Gallup poll results show the support level at 89 percent.

Even John McCain’s campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, and former Vice President Cheney have announced support for gay marriage.

Just before the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), has introduced into Congress a stronger version of the Employment Non Discrimination Act. A previous version passed the House in 2007 but was killed by a threatened Republican filibuster. The legislation will give both the Congress and the president the chance to move the country closer to that “more perfect union.”

EDITORIAL: ACES is aces

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:53:00 +0000

The U.S. House of Representatives can take the first step towards saving our planet and reviving our economy by passing the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES).

This bill has the broad support of labor and environmental coalitions, including the Blue-Green Alliance, SEIU, Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters and many more.

The bill, if implemented, would do three basic things.

First, it would create an auction system for selling carbon emission credits to companies that emit the most greenhouse gases that are known to cause global warming.

Much like the successful 17-year-old auction system on acid rain-causing pollution that has reduced sulfur dioxide emissions by 50 percent, this new system would help reduce carbon emissions by an estimate 17 percent over the next decade and much more further down the road.

The auction system would generate billions in revenue designated for investment in renewable energy alternatives and green jobs. The Center for American Progress estimates that with investments in ACES and in the president’s recovery act, an estimated 1.77 million jobs in the renewable sector could be created.

With 6 million jobs lost since the Bush recession began in December 2007, these investments are needed to put Americans back to work. Many of these jobs will be in the manufacturing and mining sectors. Auto plants closed in the Midwest could be easily converted to build solar panels, wind turbines, new energy efficient batteries and the various parts for the industry. A single wind turbine, for example, has approximately 8,000 parts, much of them steel.

Third, the bill reduces U.S. dependence on oil and other fossil fuels, weakening Big Oil and Big Coal’s monopoly on energy. The investments in renewable energies will speed up the manufacture of green vehicles. With new energy efficient batteries, for example, plug-in hybrids might rapidly replace gas-guzzling cars. Wind and solar power generated electricity would reduce reliance on coal-fired electricity plants.

In the end, a diversity of energy resources reduces the threat of global warming and provides for investments in new, innovative economic activity. It would also make the United States more energy self-reliant, making the imperialist tactic of securing energy sources with military interventions overseas increasingly obsolete.

Health care mess: how we got into it, how to get out of it

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:45:00 +0000

In 1979, the newly elected mayor of Chicago, Jane Byrne, at the recommendation of some labor union officials, named me to be a “consumer commissioner” on the City of Chicago Health Systems Agency (HSA) Board of Directors. I remained in that position for three years. I can’t say that either I, or the HSA, accomplished much, but it certainly was an educational experience.

The HSA was part of a national network of health planning agencies established by federal law. Their purpose was to keep down the cost of health care and rationalize its distribution to all sections of the population, by putting the brakes on unnecessary capital expenditures which did not help patients. We were also supposed to promote the prevention of disease. The local boards were composed of “commissioners” representing the health care industry, the insurance industry, government and the general public. I was one of the public, or consumer, representatives, who served without remuneration. The City of Chicago Health Systems Agency had an able professional staff who helped educate us about health care finance.

Mayor Byrne had come to power in the years after the death of longtime Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, father of the city’s present mayor. She did so by, among other things, denouncing the behavior of major private health care providers, and promising to defend the beleaguered Cook County Hospital, the major publicly owned charity hospital in Chicago. She had been particularly critical of Rush Presbyterian St. Luke’s Hospital, across the street from the old Cook County Hospital building.

But on the day we all trooped into Mayor Byrne’s office to be sworn in as HSA commissioners, I was shocked to hear Byrne ask us to be especially kind to those wonderful people at Rush Presbyterian St. Luke’s!

When we began to do our work for the HSA, we found that the health care providers (hospitals and long-term care facilities) were completely resistant to any idea of cooperating to provide services.

Cook County Hospital needed more access to scanning equipment, but Rush, across the street and connected by heated underground passages, resisted sharing its ample equipment, forcing Cook County to apply for duplicative machines. Hospitals submitted proposals to us for capital expenditures, such as fancy new office facilities, which had little to do with improving the quality of health care to their patients, and everything to do with institutional empire building. The HSA staff would then work out mathematically exactly how much each of these capital expenditures would increase the per diem, i.e. how much the patient, or the patient’s insurance company, would have to pay for a day in the hospital. The hospital’s representatives would have to appear before us to justify their capital expenditures, and on occasion the HSA board would deny a request. On at least one occasion, the hospital’s representative tried to influence us by red-baiting the highly professional HSA accountants.

The provider representatives on the HSA were a solid front in opposition to any change that might control expanding costs (health care was 11% of the GDP at that time; now it’s 17%, far higher than any other country on the planet). Insurance was supposed to be represented by a Blue Cross/Blue Shield official who hardly ever came to the meetings, but who did brag to the world about how much the Blues were doing to control health care costs. Some of the consumer commissioners, including myself and one union representative, tried to be conscientious in the interest of the public and patients. Others were clearly in the pocket of the industry. But whenever we managed to get a decision favoring the pubic, it was sure to be shot down at the level of the Illinois Health Planning Facilities Board, the state-level planning agency which was packed by Republican Gov. Jim Thompson with industry hacks.

As I say, we accomplished nothing, and the Reagan administration did away with federally coordinated health planning agencies entirely. But what did I learn?

* That the drive for profits by finance capital, not improvements in patient care, constitutes the moving force behind the increases in health care costs. The capital projects which some of us tried to limit but which were rammed through at the state level were paid for by state of Illinois bonds, even when the hospitals were privately owned. The more bond issues, the more investment opportunities for the kinds of people who buy bonds in lots of tens of millions — finance capital, in other words. Our efforts to control costs were blocked by the institutions, but more by the political power of finance capital.

* That health care institutions — in those days mostly nonprofit — were the instruments whereby major capitalist interests made use of health care to increase their profits. Though one of our original benchmarks for health planning was to get rid of excess bed capacity, i.e. duplicated and uncoordinated hospital services, and though the hospital administrators fought us tooth and nail, many hospitals, especially in poor minority neighborhoods, were eventually left bankrupt by this system, because their patients, uninsured and underinsured, could no longer afford to pay for the inflated hospital bills.

But the bondholders did fine.

* That improvements to patient care had little to do with the increase in health care costs, and that in fact, sometimes quality of patient care often suffered because so much money was being siphoned off to pay off bond issues and to pay for expensive construction and other capital projects. So big pharma, the construction industry, the hospital equipment industry and of course finance capital were profiting mightily, while health care was being driven more and more out of the public’s reach.

* That the insurance industry, supposedly an ally of patients in the effort to control health care costs, was nothing of the kind, but rather simply joined in the cannibal feast, and passed on the inflated costs to the public in ways that are hard for the average individual in our society to detect.

The present situation is dire, with 47 million people without health insurance, millions more with inadequate coverage, and poor quality care which becomes more expensive with every passing year. People in Canada and Europe, not to mention Cuba, think we must be crazy for not having put a stop to this state of affairs long ago. But whenever someone tries to do it, they run into a perfect storm of extremely powerful special interests who work together with the corporate media to stop any reasonable changes.

These are the same special interests we had to fight against in the Health Systems Agency, who are now more bloated for having fed themselves for so many years at the expense of working people and especially the sick.

We now have the best chance to move forward that I have seen since I was on the HSA board. We will not be able to get everything done at once, but we can get our collective foot in the door for a strong public option in whatever Congress passes. The efforts of the right wing and the ruling class are now focused on removing a public option from the table.

On June 25, labor and its allies descended on Congress in their thousands to demand a public option and also to oppose the idea of taxing existing employee health benefits. It was clear from the speeches and comments by the participants that the American people are not going to let the special interests, especially the insurance industry, get away with it this time.

We need an all-out effort in this struggle.

LETTERS: Iran, furloughs, apologies & right-wing deprogramming

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:41:00 +0000

It’s Iran now

Some Americans, too many I’m afraid, open up their newspapers or turn on the 6 o’clock news to find out what country or foreign leader our government wants us to be angry at, quickly followed the blitz of the media

Today and for sometime it has been Iran, the latest in a long list to include Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Vietnam, and Cuba. There was even France for a little while over their opposition to our invasion of Iraq. Remember that?

I don’t know who won that Iranian election. But then I don’t know who won the U.S. election in 2000 either. Remember Bush-Gore?

What I do know is that Iran has been on our hit list ever since the Iranian people overthrew our oil “buddy,” Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, otherwise known as the Shah of Iran, 30 years ago.

The Shah wasn’t the “buddy” of his people. He was the “hated one” for his dictatorial, heavy-handed, no-nonsense oppression of any kind of dissent. Elections? Think again.

But articles critical of “our man in Iran” were few and far between. Instead we were fed features of him and his beautiful wife skiing in Switzerland or attending a state function with one of our presidents. You can look up the handsome picture of JFK and Jackie along side the Shah and his lovely. You can be sure many Iranian people remember it.

Likewise, articles of our other long-standing “buddy” in the Middle East for 27 years to the tune of two billion dollars annually, Mousani Bubarak’s dictatorial regime in Egypt, are few and far between.

Oh, and our other client state over there, Israel, recently bombed Syria without provocation. Ho-hum. No big deal in the press.

So read your papers, watch the nightly news, and let’s get Iran!

Lawrence H. Geller Philadelphia PA

I have read many conflicting accounts from different progressive sources on many aspects of the Iranian election. The sources are saying different things about whether or not the election results are accurate, the class composition of the protesters and the relationship between the protesters and U.S. imperialism. I am very confused.

Sean Mulligan Via e-mail

Editor’s note: We hope the background briefing by the Tudeh Party on page 5 of this week’s issue helps clear the confusion. Many other articles with working-class, solidarity analyses are on www.pww.org.

President Obama is being criticized for not more forcefully supporting the Iranian people who were probably in the majority in choosing Mousavi as president to oust Ahmadinejad from office. Though Obama sympathizes with the people who voted for Mousavi, he has decided on a policy of non-intervention and permitting Iran as a sovereign nation to determine its own internal affairs.

Since when have Obama’s Republican opponents ever cared about or championed the Iranian people? When the Republicans were in power under President Eisenhower, Iranian democracy meant nothing as Mossadegh was overthrown by the CIA.

When Jimmy Carter was president, the Republicans and Reaganites criticized Carter for not supporting the government of the Shah along with the Iranian secret police, Savak, who terrorized opponents of the Shah. Carter was accused of sympathizing with the people who were revolting in the streets of Teheran against the Shah.

The Republicans can currently have their anti-Obama, pro-Mousavi policy if they want, but also ought to admit their inconsistency, blatant hypocrisy and outright political nonsense.

Raymond Daugerdas Pittsburgh PA

No to furloughs

California State University (CSU) is facing a $583.8 million dollar budget cut for the 2009-10 fiscal year. CSU faculty are being asked to take 10 percent less pay by accepting two days of furloughs per month for 2009-10. Justification for this request is to protect 3,700 full time equivalent lecturer positions (9,000 instructors) from lay-off. CSU faculty, like state workers, is being asked to bail out the state by accepting less pay because of massive budget deficits. Giving concessions undermines the wages for working people across the board. It also means protecting the incomes of the rich and most powerful corporations in California.

The budget crisis in California has been artificially created by cutting taxes on the wealthiest people and corporations.

Tax cuts enacted in California since 1993 cost the state $11.3 billion dollars annually. Had the state continue taxing corporations and the wealthy at rates from fifteen years ago we would not have a budget crisis today. Even though a budget crisis was evident last year, in February California income tax laws were changed to provide corporations with even greater tax savings equal to over $2 billion per year.

Half of all state revenue comes from personal income taxes paid by working people, and another third comes from sales and use taxes. Corporations only pay for about 1/10 of the state budget. The rest of us are bailing out the rich by accepting massive budget cuts at a time when less spending will only exasperate the economic situation.

Unions and working people need to say no to massive state budget cuts, and fight for every service and job possible. We must say no to voluntary furloughs and push for new taxes on the wealthy and largest corporations. CSU professors should be the leaders for working people in the State. We must stand firm on no concessions, no furloughs and no cuts in classes for our students.

Peter Phillips Via e-mail Peter Phillips is professor of sociology at Sonoma State University.

Right wing deprogrammer

I am a very staunch liberal (on most issues). Although I’ve been referred to by my ignorant conservative friends as a “commie,” I am not. Ever since I saw my first of only two communist newspapers that actually stated that they wanted to control my whole life, I was stunned and turned off.

However I would choose communism over right wing, racist, unfettered, protect the rich capitalism any day. I truly hate them.

With what little money I had (I’m a musician) I developed a product in 2008 as my patriotic duty. I’ve had some success but I could really use new outlets. Please check my website: and let me know what you think. I do believe that you are closer to Christ’s teachings than anyone else.

Jim Donnelly Via e-mail

Apology is right

The U.S. Senate did the right thing by passing a resolution apologizing for slavery and “Jim Crow” laws. The House of Representatives passed a similar resolution last year. The Supreme Court should issue an apology as well. Slavery should never have been constitutional in the first place.

Chuck Mann Greensboro NC

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PEOPLE BEFORE PROFITS False hope on the economy unless

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:04:00 +0000

In March, Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke saw 'green shoots' in the economy. Since then, various economists and government officials have seen signs that the recession may be bottoming out, with hopes that economic growth may start later this year. And many journalists in the business media are joining in, acting like paid touts for the stockbrokers.

This chorus has been fueled by a series of reports. Some banks are showing profits again. The stock market is up. Job losses in May, while horrific by any previous standard, weren't as bad as earlier this year. Housing starts in May were a little higher than in April.

There are more than a few skeptics. Much of the 'good' news is really 'slightly less bad news' or reflects temporary factors. And even in the most optimistic scenarios, unemployment will continue to rise well into next year.

I am more than skeptical. There are major economic obstacles to even a weak recovery. Without decisive government action, these will continue to depress the economy, pushing unemployment to a post-World-War-II record and devastating more families than 100 years’ worth of hurricanes. Four of the obstacles to recovery:

1) One-third of all home mortgages are under water — the homeowners owe more than the house is worth. We are in for another year of record foreclosures and many years of depressed purchasing power, as the banks try to squeeze every last penny out of working class homeowners. Federal and state initiatives are providing some relief, but the majority of homeowners who are in trouble are headed for eviction, and their communities are headed to further decline.

2) The collapse of the auto industry and its ripple effects are devastating the part of the economy — manufacturing — which actually produces things that people need. The layoffs, plant closings, and loss of tax revenue are just beginning. As suppliers and support services cut back, the effects will be felt far beyond the Midwest. Michigan's unemployment rate of 12.9% (and rising) could be headed to your state, too.

3) State and local government fiscal crises are already causing layoffs and cutbacks, overwhelming the positive effects of February's federal stimulus package. This will only worsen as local revenues continue to decline and governments run out of reserves and accounting tricks.

4) For nearly 30 years, there has been a growing gap between rising productivity and stagnant real wages. This has translated into extra corporate profits and extra income for the super-rich. Part of this wealth has been loaned back to the working class to finance homes, cars, education, medical care and daily expenses. Result: financial crisis for working families, instability for the financial system. Part of the wealth has been invested in the unproductive, speculative financial sector, or in real “development” projects (homes, shopping malls, resorts) that outstrip the demand from cash-strapped consumers. Result: more overcapacity, corporate bankruptcies, layoffs, and instability.

These problems — and others — could result in a new wave of financial and industrial crises, with the economy declining into a full-blown depression. It will require radical action to protect working families, and to reorient the economy, not only for growth, but for meeting the needs of people and the environment.

The stimulus package enacted by the Obama administration in February contains many positive features that are only beginning to kick in. But they are inadequate in the face of the developing global depression.

A people's economic program would have two essential features. 1) Return to the working class a greater portion of the wealth it creates, wealth that now lines the pockets of the very rich. 2) Directly meet real needs of the nation and its working families, instead of relying exclusively on the magic of a broken corporate system.

This means higher taxes on the super-rich, on corporate profits and financial transactions, to ease the burden on the working class, especially at the state and local level. And it requires that government play an active role in developing energy, transportation, health, environment and infrastructure policies. It would take direct measures where necessary to put the millions of unemployed to work meeting these vital needs.

Winning even part of such a program requires challenging the entrenched corporate and financial interests that, until now, have been able to shape and plunder the U.S. and global economies as they will. This will not be an easy fight. The huge movements for a national single-payer health plan (or at least a strong public option) and the Employee Free Choice Act are only the start of what is needed to win the kind of change we really need.

econ4ppl @ cpusa.org

Background on the Iranian uprising

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 05:29:00 +0000

The following is a brief by the Tudeh Party of Iran sent to international workers and communist parties to help explain the background of the ongoing struggles for democracy in Iran.

Background to the election Iran entered the 10th presidential election in difficult socio-economic conditions. Four years of Ahmadinejad's government and the neo-liberal policies it pursued (dictated by the IMF and World Bank) meant that the overwhelming majority of the Iranian working class and working people were suffering from unprecedented hardship and poverty. Examination of the policies of Ahmadinejad’s administration reveals the specific characteristics of the direction taken by this government, which is affiliated to grand mercantile capitalism and the bureaucratic bourgeoisie of the country, and some of the reasons behind the people’s mass movement against this reactionary regime. The principal direction of the socio-economic policies of Ahmadinejad’s government and some of its consequences can be summarised as follows:

Neo-liberal privatisation Debate about the economic path the country should take was one of the most important battle-fields between the reactionary and progressive forces, right from the first day after the 1979 revolution. Inclusion of Article 44 in the constitution was one of the accomplishments of the February 1979 revolution. [Editor’s note: According to Article 44, the Iranian economy consists of three sectors, the state, cooperative and private sectors, but “all large-scale and mother industries” of the country are entirely owned by the state. This article was amended to allow for privatization.] It was revoked by Ahmadinejad’s government, following an executive order issued by the Supreme Leader of the regime. The consequence of these policies is to bring the macro policies of the regime more than ever into line with the policies and prescriptions of the IMF and World Bank, as already tried out in various countries. The disastrous consequences of these policies could be clearly observed in the developing countries of the world. The executive order of the Supreme Leader in 2007 regarding Article 44 was warmly welcomed by the IMF. In a report about the economic prospects of Iran, the IMF stated: “Recently the government has been pursuing privatisation more seriously. According to the executive order issued by Ayatollah Khamenei regarding Article 44 of the Constitution, more than 80% of state-owned enterprises must be privatized in the next 10 years. The executive order on Article 44 revitalized privatization plans. Privatisation of state-owned enterprises will be completed by the end of the 5-year plan.”

Mounting foreign debts and destruction of national production Another key political decision by the Ahmadinejad government has been the opening of domestic markets to the import of consumer goods more than ever before, damaging domestic production and swelling Iran’s debts. According to reports published by Iran’s Customs, in the first 4 months of the current Iranian year from spring of 2008 (in parallel to the increase in value and weight of imported industrial raw material as a result of the imposed sanctions), the import of luxury consumer goods like cars, fully automatic washing machines, fridges, cigarettes, audio equipment, decorations, cosmetics and the like, has drastically increased. The other important economic indicator is that despite the enormous increase in oil revenue, Iran’s foreign debt not only failed to decrease during Ahmadinejad’s term, but soared at an increasing rate. Kargozaran newspaper, 9 March 2008, quoting from ISNA wrote: “Business Monitor International stated in its latest report that Iran’s foreign debts would increase in excess of $8 billion in 4 years. In its 2nd quarter report of 2008, BMI estimated Iran’s foreign debt in the last year at $23.3 billion, which would increase by $500 million this year to reach $24 billion. BMI believes that Iran’s foreign debts in the coming years will grow; in [Iranian] years 1387 (2008) and 1388 (2009) it will increase to $26.3 and $28.1 billion, respectively, and following the same increasing trend, it will soar to $29.2 billion in 1389 (2010). A one billion dollar increase will mean a total national debt of $30.2 billion in 1390 (2011). In 1391 (2012) Iran’s foreign debt will hit $31.6 billion which is $8.1 billion more compared to national debt in 1385 (2006).”

Growing mass hardship and poverty Although finding accurate and acceptable statistics regarding poverty in Iran is very hard, reading between the lines of existing statistics, the concrete conclusion can be drawn that poverty and destitution has exacerbated during Ahmadinejad’s government. For instance, recent studies by the Central Bank [of Iran] indicate that the number of people living under the poverty line increased during the first two years of the ninth government, from 18 percent to 19 percent. Based on these figures, currently between 14 and 15 million people are living under the poverty line. Noandish website on May 8, 2008, quoted Ali Asgari, Economic Deputy of President Office of Planning and Strategic Control, as saying: “according to the published economic index, about 20 percent of the population lives under the poverty line. The dimensions of the escalation of poverty and unemployment are clearer when inflation numbers and the rise of cost of living are considered. This past summer the central bank of the regime reported that “the price of some food items shows an increase of 40 to 45% in just about a month.”

Working class under attack Our Party’s Central Committee in its enlarged plenary meeting of December 2008, highlighted the issues listed above and paid particular attention to the plight of the working class and the increasing attacks of the regime against progressive forces. The document of party’s meeting stated:

“Clearly, the harsh living conditions of working people will trigger a growing discontent and dissent among them. Last year we witnessed tens of labour protest movements, demonstrations by educational workers, vast protest movements by students, and also a continuation of women’s struggle against the government and its policies. The working class of Iran was also faced with a hard challenge last year. One of the important arenas of the trade struggle of the workers is to fight against temporary contracts, which were promoted by Ahmadinejad’s administration and its anti-labour Ministry of Labour and have had an unprecedented growth. According to statistics released earlier this year, 80% of workers in factories and in manufacturing industries are working under temporary contracts covering a working term from only 2 months and 10 days up to 6 months. A large portion of temporary workers that are covered under the Labour Law, work under the most harsh slavery conditions. This situation has had an adverse impact on the efforts of labour activists to form and brace independent labour organisations. Furthermore, in the past few months, Ahmadinejad’s administration and the reaction's parliament started talking about changes to the Labour Law and taking away the rights of the workers more than before. Labour organizations and activists swiftly reacted to this stance. In recent years, our party has repeatedly stressed that dispersion among workers and labour movement, for whatever reason it may be, will impede the growth of the trade union movement in the country at the moment, and ultimately will give the chance to the regime to divide the struggles of the workers and suppress them one by one. The efforts of labour activists to form independent labour organizations have been faced with brutal and suppressive action from the security forces of the regime. Due to arrests and further pressures on labour movement activists, efforts in this area have been faced with ever increasing difficulty.”

Our party’s plenary meeting went on to conclude that: “The regime, faced with the discontent of the masses across the country, parallel to having adopted anti-popular economic and social policies, and in order to prevent harmonisation and synchronisation of the protests of working people and ultimately escalation and expansion of these protests, has intensified its pressure and suppression policies. However, continuing pressures and organised attacks against The Syndicate of Workers of the Tehran and Suburban Bus (Vahed) Company and keeping Mansour Osanloo [Chair of its Board] detained in the regime’s torture chambers, and also intensifying the activities of suppression forces, even in the “Islamic Associations of Labour”, and a rise in firing labour activists, are all part of policies that the regime is pursuing in order to suppress the labour movement in the country. Suppressive policies of the regime are not limited to the labour movement, but are also equally enforced against the student movement and the women’s movement. Last year, the student movement was faced with extensive confrontation by the regime’s security forces.”

Imperialist intervention and Iran’s progressive and democratic movement Iran has had a long and painful history of imperialist intervention and indeed one of the goals of the great Iranian Revolution of 1979 was to put an end to the US-British intervention in our country’s affair. In recent years the world has witnessed the constant stand–off between the Bush administration and the Iranian regime.

In the final year of the Bush presidency and with the growing threat of military intervention in Iran by U.S. imperialism, the progressive forces in Iran, including our party, joined the growing social forces in mobilizing a nationwide peace movement comprising the national, democratic and progressive forces. This peace movement which aimed to mobilise against the risk of war and the U.S. attack against Iran, was systematically suppressed by the regime. This movement encompassed largely the same forces that are currently fighting the regime against the election frauds and includes: a relatively wide spectrum of political forces, the women’s movement, the students’ movement and the labour movement. It is also important to reiterate that the growing tension and imperialist interventionist policies against Iran was supposedly linked to Iran’s nuclear policy. It is imperative to reiterate that the issue of nuclear crisis and the resulting international tensions, which led to issuing a number of resolutions by the security council of the UN against Iran, and escalation of friction in the Persian Gulf region between Iran’s regime and Bush administration - while Iran’s neighbouring countries are burning in war, bloodshed and occupation of foreign forces, and are facing an immense human disaster - truly concerns the national and patriotic forces. In recent years, the Tudeh Party of Iran has consistently insisted on defending the national rights of the country, including the right to peaceful use of nuclear energy, and has asserted its strong opposition to any foreign interference in Iran’s domestic affairs. We have, at the same time, stated that promoting and taking advantage of these policies by the Supreme Leader [Velayat-e Faqih] regime is used as a disguise to suppress the rights of people and to distract public opinion from the escalating domestic problems and to intensify repressive policies. The aggressive and destructive policies of imperialism in the region, which have led, under various guises, to a total military occupation of two neighbouring countries, and its unprecedented military presence in the Persian Gulf, are other concerning issues that cannot be neglected.

Election and current crisis Therefore the Iranian presidential election on 12th June took place against a background of growing hardship and poverty for the masses, increasing suppressive policies against the working class movement, students and women’s movement and against the intelligentsia.

The four candidates approved by the “Council of Guardians”, the reactionary watchdog body controlled by the right, were all dedicated personnel and leading figures of the regime over the last thirty years.

Mr. Mousavi was Iran’s Prime Minster during the eight-year long imperialist-imposed Iraq-Iran war, and was quite often referred to as the “red Prime Minster”. He was credited for introducing tight state control over all private institutions and creating a “ration” system to support the poor. He was also Prime Minster during the crack down on the political forces including our party. It is a historic fact that during his tenure as Prime Minster he had significant clashes with Khamenei (the current Supreme Religious Leader) who was the President of the Republic at the time. The main policy clash was the desire by Khamenei to move towards neo-liberal policies and mass privatisation of industries which, Mousavi opposed. The clashes were so intense that Khamenei openly stated that he did not want Mousavi as his Prime Minster, but this was overruled by Khomeini the leader of the Islamic Republic at the time. Following Khomeini’s death, the new pact between Khamenei and Rafsanjani abolished the post of Prime Minster and created the post of executive presidency, which was given to Rafsanjani with Khamenei appointed as the Valyi-e Faqih (Supreme Religious Leader).

The other candidates are also well known. Karoubi was a leading and senior figure during the Khomeini era, acting as the Speaker of Parliament for years. Mohsen Rezaie, the fourth candidate, was the commander of the revolutionary guards in 1980's and was seen as one of the most reactionary figures in the guards responsible for savage suppression of the democratic forces in Iran. Ahmadinejad was a little unknown figure, in the Special Forces unit of the intelligence gathering of the revolutionary guards, accused as being part of the terror team that assassinated the Kurdish leader Dr. Gasemlou in Vienna and brought to fame, when during the last presidential elections in 2005, Khamenei openly backed him.

Election results There has been much dispute about the election results and there are detailed complaints lodged by all three candidates about the fraudulent nature of the election. The fact that the election results were announced within two hours of polls being closed (with some 40 million votes to count) speaks volume. Furthermore the regime itself has come to confess that at least in 170 ballot boxes there are more votes than voters, as well as the fact that, having analysed the result of every ballot box, it transpires that for every Mousavi vote there are two Ahmadinejad votes with an error margin of 0.1 percent speaks volumes about the validity of the results that are in dispute.

The mass protest movement that has engulfed the streets of Tehran and all major cities against the regime's shameless attempt to steal the election is a natural phase of the movement of Iranian people for peace, democracy and social justice.

As has been feared since Friday 19th June, when the regime's unelected Supreme Religious Leader stated that the falsified election results will be enforced, the full military and repressive might of the regime has been deployed to regain political control and silence the popular movement. Well known political leaders and prominent journalists and student leaders have been arrested and transferred to unknown detention centres, universities are declared close, non-governmental media including the newspapers and internet sites have been closed down, military and security forces are deployed in the main squares of Tehran and other main cities. There are reports that the some detained leaders of the reform movement are subjected to inhumane treatment and psychological pressure to 'confess their misdeeds'. But the fact is that those who are demonstrating in the streets of Tehran, Tabriz, Shiraz and other cities in Iran are the workers, women and youth of Iran and they are challenging the rule of the reactionary, dictatorial and free market clique who has ruled Iran by brute force. The regime has driven the country to social and economic ruin. And the people are calling for change of course. They are calling for the true enactment of ideals of the Iranian popular revolution of February 1979, which were betrayed by the theocratic regime. People are trying to achieve their goal through the democratic process and by peaceful means. During the presidential election campaign people called enthusiastically for change and against Ahmadinejad's government that has brought unprecedented levels of unemployment, sky-high inflation, full scale privatisation of the economy, corruption and widespread suppression. In the June 12 election people voted against advocates of neo-liberal economic policies and the free market. The people who voted for change in the presidential election on June 12 were protesting against censorship, against attacks on trade union and workers movement, against the suppression of national, ethnic and religious minorities and the full scale onslaught against the left, communist and progressive movement. They voted in millions for the pro- reform candidate, Mir Hussein Mousavi. As is the case with all despots and corrupt dictators, the regime's leaders are desperately trying to portray the mass movement of women, youth and working people as being a product of external orchestration. Unable and unwilling to accept that what people are demanding is progressive change and reform, that the people want the fulfilment of independence, democracy and social justice, the ideals of 1979 revolution, that were not fulfilled, the regime blames external forces for the protest movement, exactly as did the Shah's regime on the eve of the 1979 popular revolution. The regime's response to the popular demand to respect the true result of the election is in effect a declaration of war against the working people who are campaigning for peace, democracy and social justice. On Saturday, June 20 the regime unleashed security and military forces against peaceful demonstrators in all major cities. There are confirmed reports of security forces shooting at un-armed demonstrators, killing scores of demonstrators and in effect imposing an emergency situation in Tehran and major cities, prohibiting the peaceful gathering of people. The Tudeh Party of Iran is fully supporting the struggle of the Iranian people against the dictatorial regime. Our cadres, members and supporters have these days been demonstrating in the streets of Tehran and major cities in Iran and helping to organise this noble struggle for change, for peace, democracy, and social justice. We are calling on your fraternal party for prompt and urgent action. We would urge you to consider issuing a statement of solidarity with the people of Iran and their demands for:

Condemnation of the regime's attempt to steal the election;

The annulment of the fraudulent results of the election of June 12 and a re-run of the ballot;

Condemnation of the use of brute force against the demonstrators which has already resulted in the murder of scores of innocent peaceful protestors;

Immediate and unconditional release of those arrested during the recent demonstrations peace, democracy, human rights and social justice in Iran.

You can access other recent publications of the party about the recent events and in particular the analysis of the party about the situation in the country at the English pages of our website at: .

We rely on your continued international solidarity and standing with the Iranian working class in defence of peace and progress in Iran.

COMMENTARY Slime covers GOP Senators Cornyn, Ensign

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:44:00 +0000

Texas Sen. John Cornyn, head of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, is scrambling to distance himself from Texas financier R. Allen Stanford arrested and awaiting trial on charges of bilking people of $8 billion in a Ponzi scheme.

Stanford bankrolled a four-day junket for Cornyn and his wife, Sandy, to Antigua, where Stanford’s company, Stanford Financial Group (SFG) is headquartered. SFG picked up the entire tab, $7,441, to pay for the Senator’s lavish digs at the island resort.

“It was strictly a fact-finding trip,” explained Cornyn spokesman Kevin McLaughlin, describing SFG as an upstanding corporate citizen. “They have offices in Houston and they were doing a lot of business out of Antigua. There was nothing untoward or unseemly about the company five years ago.”

Yet just last week, Cornyn wrote an op ed piece denouncing President Obama’s bill aimed at clamping down on corporate offshore tax shelters of which Antigua is one of the most notorious. Cornyn complained that Obama’s attempt to close this gaping tax loophole that costs the American people millions in lost jobs and hundreds of billions in tax revenues could “put the United States at a competitive disadvantage” adding, “The populists and protectionists want to demonize American businesses that invest overseas.”

Cornyn received $19,700 from R. Allen Stanford’s firm making him the fifth largest recipient of SFG largesse. The New York Times reports that Stanford focuses his campaign contributions “particularly on legislators considering bills that would change off-shore banking rules.” Cornyn, this year, became a member of the Senate Finance Committee that oversees banking regulations.

The Times of London posted an article this week in its online edition headlined, “Caribbean Playground that Allen Stanford Helped Turn into an Offshore Tax Haven.” Stanford-owned businesses in Antigua have abruptly laid off 200 workers since he was indicted. The article reports that Stanford controls the Bank of Antigua. His $2.2 billion personal fortune “is larger than Antigua’s Gross Domestic Product.” He bankrolls political parties in Antigua. He had himself knighted by the Queen of England and owns sports teams.

Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer called Stanford, “haughty, arrogant, and obnoxious” and charged that he “has a lien on the whole country….This is not a looming crisis. The fallout threatens immediate and catastrophic consequences” for the people of Antigua-Barbuda.

Cornyn’s junket to Antigua is described in his legally required disclosure report as a “financial services industry fact-finding mission hosted by constituent company with substantial operations on site.” Translated into plain English, this means that Cornyn considered Stanford and SFG, with major operations in Texas, as his “constituents” and he was rendering “constituent services.”

But what facts did he uncover in his “fact-finding mission?” Didn’t he discover any hint that Stanford had a “lien” on the entire country? Didn’t he catch a single whiff of something corrupt about Stanford’s operations?

TPM Muckraker points out that Cornyn went on the junket “right after the November 2004 election during which Cornyn was working hard for George W. Bush.” This begs the question: Was it a fact-finding mission or a little rest and rehabilitation from the hard work of stealing an election? Currently, Cornyn’s chief preoccupation is stealing the U.S. Senate seat in Minnesota by blocking the duly elected Democrat, Al Franken, from being seated. Cornyn has boasted that the defeated Republican Norm Coleman will continue appealing the election for “years.”

Stanford and SFG joined a long list of disgraced or defunct Texas corporations including Enron, and Halliburton that recently changed its name to conceal its trail of crime. Cornyn, a former Texas Attorney General, is the author of the “Public Corruption Prosecution Improvement Act,” which he brags would help ferret out corruption in high places.

Cornyn’s colleague, U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions, R. -TX, was the second-biggest recipient of SFG cash, collecting $41,375, nearly all of it in the final weeks of the 2004 race that unseated Democratic Rep. Martin Frost, of Dallas, a veteran, pro-labor member of Congress. The drive to unseat Frost was one of the Republican’s dirtiest campaigns ever. Sessions now chairs the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee.

Republican Senator John McCain, and Senators Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and Bill Nelson, D-Fla., were also in the top five SFG recipients.

The Grand Old Party’s other embarrassment of the week is Nevada Sen. John Ensign, heir to a fortune in the Las Vegas casino industry and a rising star of the Republican right. Ensign was on the short-list of likely candidates for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012 until he admitted June 16, to having an extra-marital affair with a former treasurer of several of his campaign committees. The woman’s husband was also a top Senate staffer who reportedly attempted to extort hush money from Ensign. After leaving his Senate position, the husband, Doug Hampton, got cushy jobs from companies tied to Ensign, according to the Washington Post. He was hustled into the position of Vice President for Government Affairs at Allegiant Air, a Las Vegas-based airline that has poured $86,000 into Ensign’s election campaigns.

Ensign was loud in demanding that President Clinton resign when his sexual misconduct with Monica Lewinsky came to light. There are now demands that Ensign resign to prove he is not just a “sanctimonious blowhard” as one website described him.

Albany coup dtat: Whos to blame?

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 08:49:00 +0000

Last year, New Yorkers elected a Democratic-majority state Senate, the first time in more than 40 years, bringing an end to Republican-control of all three branches of state government. Hopes for reform were dashed — or at least severely curtailed on June 8 — when two Democratic Senators, Pedro Espada, D-Bronx, and Hiram Monserrate, D-Queens, announced they would join with the Republican caucus in the Senate, giving the Republicans a 32-30 majority.

It’s impossible not to be disgusted by the mess in Albany. The greed, opportunism and self-serving nature of some state senators is mind-numbingly unbelievable.

But here’s the thing: The operative word is “some.” Much of the mainstream press have been painting all the state senators with the same brush: They are, according to New York City’s tabloids, a bunch of lowlifes who have stayed out of work (i.e. the Senate has not been in session for a couple weeks), but who are still getting paid. They’ve directed rage at the senators in general, and, in doing so, deflected it from the real villains.

While there are lowlifes in our State Senate, there is a real, principled reason for the Senate to not be in session. And half the senators are in the right—as far as what’s in the interests of regular New Yorkers—while others are way off into the field of wrong.

The reason that the chamber is deadlocked is the unreasonable set of demands from the coalition of Republicans and Pedro Espada, the turncoat Democrat. They argue that the vote they took June 8, when Queens Democrat Hiram Monseratte was also working as a turncoat, should stand. This vote “elected” Pedro Espada as the Senate’s President Pro Tem and Republican leader Dean Skelos as the majority leader. The legality of this vote is dubious at best—was the Senate even technically in session when the vote occurred?—and is even less valid ethically, given that Monseratte later returned to the Democratic fold.

Now there’s an even split: There are 30 Republicans plus Espada (the DINO, or Democrat in name only), and 31 Democrats. The Republican/Espada coalition has no majority, yet it wants the leadership of the chamber. Usually, the lieutenant governor would, in case of a tie, cast a vote. But since Paterson was made Governor after the Elliot Spitzer sex scandal, there is no one to break the tie. In a strange twist of logic and the law, the Republican/DINO coalition now argues that Espada should have two votes in case of a tie—one as a senator, and a second as President Pro Tem of the Senate.

A situation in which the Republican Party has control of the chamber would be disastrous. Pro-tenant legislation, which was advancing through the Senate (though, Espada, as head of the housing committee had been stalling the bill as much as possible) would almost certainly be completely derailed. The gay marriage bill? Forget it. A bill introduced by Diane Savino to extend the right to strike to public workers? No way, labor. Some fix for Bloomberg’s school dictatorship—a.k.a. “mayoral control of the schools”? Sorry. A bill that would allow people raped by priests to sue? Nope.

Given this situation, it would be a crime against New Yorkers for the Democrats to return to the Senate, go into session, and allow the Republicans and Espada to take control. The best thing to happen would be for the will of New Yorkers—expressed when they voted to elect the first Democratic State Senate in more than 40 years—to be respected. The Democrats have been fighting for this, but Espada doesn’t seem to care: He’s more interested in his own power and prestige. And, of course, we can’t expect the Republicans to be any less intransigent.

The best option is some sort of power sharing deal. The Democrats have offered this, but the Republicans rejected it several times. In this kind of situation, the Democrats have a choice: stay far enough away so that there is no quorum while working to make some kind of deal, or come back and let the Republicans wreak havoc. Currently, they’re doing what’s right.

In their politics and support for working New Yorkers, the members of the Republican caucus range from truly horrible to very bad, while the members of the Democratic caucus range from pretty bad to really good. On issues of labor rights, women’s rights, and civil rights, there is no comparison. Obviously, the Democrats are far from perfect, but it is clear that the real enemy here is the Republican Party/DINO caucus, which, unhappy that it lost power in 2008, has tried to seize control of the State Senate. Any talk about all the senators being clowns in an Albany circus, or that paints all the senators in the same way, obscures this real issues.

Dan Margolis is chair of the New York State Communist Party.

Letters: Union-busting, Guantanamo Bay, Co-op not the same

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:03:00 +0000

It’s still union-busting

When a union becomes very strong, the powers that be look for a way to be completely rid of it. The United Packinghouse Workers was very strong in the Chicago stockyards and other packing centers. The big packers announced that they were moving their operations to the country to be closer to the supply. They also mentioned in passing that they wanted to escape the unions. In 1969, the Chicago stockyards closed. It had been there for 100 years.

Now the teachers’ unions have become strong in Chicago and other cities. They have been able to get better pay and other benefits, as well as lower class size. Under a screen of cries of poor public education, charter schools are multiplying. They are supposed to be non-union and teachers will be paid at different rates according to a magic standardized test of students, or perhaps favoritism from supervision.

Oppose charter schools. Support unionization in charter schools.

Pammela Wright Via e-mail

Guantanamo Bay

Dear Mr. & Mrs. North America:

I know you’ve seen my name, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, recently and in the last several years, where I house people you call “terrorists”. But I would guess there’s little else you really know about me.

First, my real family is the sovereign nation of Cuba. But I was “adopted” by your country in 1903, not that I was looking to be adopted. You see, I was part of the “spoils” coming out of the Spanish-American War of 1898, when you “liberated” Cuba and my cousins, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, from Spain.

But “liberation” was only one side of the coin flipped by the United States, as the Cubans, Puerto Ricans and the Filipinos can attest to. And here is just a sketch of what happened to Cuba and to me, in particular.

The U.S. invoked the Platt Amendment giving your country “the right to intervene” in my homeland of Cuba at any time. The U.S. also has, through the original agreement of 1903 and the Treaty of 1934, a perpetual lease on all 28,000 acres of me, Guantanamo Bay. And here’s the kicker. This “lease” is capable of being voided only by you deciding to leave or by mutual agreement between you and Cuba.

Thus, under the terms of the lease forced upon us, you, the U.S., can continue with the present status for as long as you like. “As long as you like.” Sounds kind of one-sided, don’t you think?

So next time you hear my name, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, you’ll have a fuller understanding of who I am, who I really belong to, and with whom I should and want to be.

Sinceramente, Guantanamo Bay Cuba

Translated by Lawrence H. Geller of Philadelphia PA.

Greetings

I hope my letter finds you all bereft of illness, progressively well, and in an optimistic frame of mind. I am a joyous frequent reader of the People’s Weekly World. It brought back memories of the terrible days for 10 years that I lived as a prisoner in the bowels of the beast at San Quentin and religiously read the People’s World.

On Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday in 1983 I was paroled from prison. I have done a lot with my life in the last 26 years as a civil rights activist and prison reformer. I hope I am respected and loved by you all now. Keep up the good work. La lutta continua.

Tyrone James Sacramento CA

Right stuff

So glad you re-ran the little ad featuring a photo of a homeless man accompanied by the very bold statement, “Spread the wealth”? Damn Right! Communist Party USA,” in direct response to the fear-mongering opportunists who would attempt to divide us. Researching CP placards and slogans of the past, I see a direct connection to the statements in earlier times of struggle. This ad is a powerful, perhaps riveting pronouncement of our current voice as well as pride in the party history. So when does this become available as a sticker and poster?

John Pietaro Beacon NY

Highly recommended reading

“Health Insurance Profits Soar as Industry Mergers Create Near-Monopoly” on the AFL-CIO Now blog is a great article! It brings real clarity to the issue of real health care (not insurance) reform and on the need to expand the public sector in order to get real care to the people.

Here is the direct link:

Bruce Bostick Columbus OH

Co-op not the same

The following is a letter to MoveOn Political Action members on the fight for real health care reform.

President Obama has spoken forcefully about the need for a public health insurance option that would lower costs and keep the insurance companies honest.

But the Washington Post is reporting that a new health care proposal may be gaining support in the Senate that could defeat his plan.

The proposal would create a series of small, regional “co-op” insurance plans that would be too weak to really compete with private insurers and bring down prices. And these “co-op” plans would mostly be privately run, so they wouldn’t be accountable to voters or Congress. A “co-op” is not an acceptable substitute for a strong public health insurance option.

Can you call your senators today? Tell them: Voters want a strong, national public health insurance option. Please oppose the “co-op” proposal and other half-measures.

Patrick Schmitt Via e-mail from MoveOn.org Political Action

Improvement

I don’t know how this came to be, but I just noticed that when I did a search of pww.org site for “public education,” the list that was returned was in this format:

“People’s Weekly World - Rally: Stop closing schools, education is ...Feb 26, 2009 ... Their school is one of 16 public schools the Chicago Board of Education has recently decided to close, consolidate or revamp next fall.”

The description of the article starts with the date. I LOVE it!

Deb Wilmer Tucson AZ

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EDITORIAL Iran in crisis

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:04:00 +0000

Iran’s clerical rulers are maneuvering to contain and suppress massive protests that continue to rock that country.

This unprecedented mass uprising was sparked by outrage over the government’s rush to declare Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the absolute winner in the June 12 presidential elections, before votes could have been adequately counted, and despite every indication that his leading opponent, Mir-Hossain Mousavi, was headed either for outright victory or a runoff with Ahmadinejad.

Although corporate media have focused much of their attention on the mass uprising of Iran’s students, many reports show that this is a multi-class movement involving not only students but also workers, women of all classes, intellectuals, business people and even sections of the clerical establishment itself.

Clearly, the election battle is a reflection of wide unrest that has been fermenting for some time. The Ahmadinejad government’s economic policies are a focal point of discontent, with the country experiencing electricity rationing, mass unemployment and rampant inflation. Iran’s trade unionists have battled stepped-up repression. Iran’s women have been fighting the regime’s efforts to send them back to medieval-type subjugation. Reports indicate wide dissatisfaction with a foreign policy based on adventurist provocation that has isolated the country and empowered reactionary elements elsewhere.

American working people have an interest in supporting Iran’s working class and democratic movements in their struggle against reactionary clerical forces, who are using militia violence and other repressive measures to try to stem the tide for progressive change in their country.

At the same time, the crisis should not be used as an excuse for military actions or other steps to sharpen tensions with Iran. Only a U.S. foreign policy of diplomacy and regional and international cooperation can secure both peace and social justice.

COMMENTARY Iran, elections and protest: the roots of reform

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 03:47:00 +0000

The fact that Iran is not a democracy and that all candidates in the recent presidential election were “cleared” to run by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei should not blind us to the significance of the election outcome and the response of the people to it.

As an exercise in mass engagement the 10th presidential election in Iran puts many in the West to shame. It has been clear from the nightly rallies in the major cities across the country that the Iranian population are desperate to make their voices for change heard.

Over the four years of the Ahmadinejad government many have had time to reflect. The reformist period of the Khatami presidency, 1997-2005, is remembered as something of a liberal oasis in the 30-year existence of the Islamic Republic. Not that Khatami was by any means perfect. Iran's prisons still housed political prisoners, trades unions were unable to organize freely and women's rights remained restricted. However, the Khatami years did see a relaxation of the stricter social mores in Iran, a more critical press, less belligerence in foreign policy and the prospect, however slight, that reformist gains once consolidated would be hard to take back.

Indeed, it is the latter point in particular which exercised the hardline clerics and security forces prior to the 2005 elections. Further steps in the direction of reform might have meant that the genie would truly escape the bottle and that the Islamic Republic's sham democracy would have been exposed as a hollow charade. In a theocratic dictatorship the president cannot exist or act independently of the Supreme Leader.

The rigging of the 2005 election to bring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to office was a well timed maneuver. The reform process had run out of steam. After two terms Khatami was both tired and frustrated. There was no energy left for a final push on the real power in the Islamic Republic and no real indication that mass support would have been strong enough to effect it.

The apathy of many voters combined with a populist, “man of the people” approach in the conservative rural heartlands gave the security forces enough leverage to ensure that Ahmadinejad was safely “elected” and that any steps towards liberalization were halted.

True to expectation, the president has delivered on behalf of the reactionary forces in Iran. The imprisonment of women's activists, students and trades unionists has been stepped up. Iran flouts international conventions on human rights. Oil revenues have been wasted as a resource-rich country is plunged into periods of darkness through electricity rationing, mass unemployment and rampant inflation. Economics, proclaims the president, is for donkeys.

The international face-off with the U.S./Israeli alliance has not, it is true, been entirely of Ahmadinejad's making. The situation has been exacerbated, however, by his failure to negotiate and achieve a balance which does not give the U.S. or Israel the excuse for a first strike.

The fear of war, social conservatism and economic uncertainty has combined to persuade many Iranians that change is necessary. The limitations of Iran's electoral system do not permit that change to be significant and Mir Mousavi is by no stretch a social or economic radical. The desire for change in Iran is such, however, that even such an unlikely candidate as Mousavi, conservative by nature, can become the focus for major expressions of dissent and discontent with the status quo.

There can be little doubt that the proclaimed result of the 2009 election, Ahmadinejad 63 percent, Mousavi 34 percent, has been rigged. Apart from the very unlikely eventuality of the other two candidates polling a mere 3 percent between them, all indications from within Iran and external observers suggested a Mousavi victory or, at the very least, a close outcome. That voters should turn out 2:1 in favor of Ahmadinejad frankly beggars belief.

The extent of the demonstrations on the streets of Tehran and in other major cities suggests that this is a view shared by many in the country. Four more years as an international pariah, an economic under achiever and as a byword for the most restrictive social conservatism is not what most Iranians want. The ruling clerics have been out of touch with the aspirations of many in Iran for many years. The younger generation in particular desires less social restrictions. Workers demand the right to organize. Women demand respect and equality. The 2009 elections may have finally let the genie out of the bottle and however hard they wish, Iran's rulers may not be able to force it back in.

Jane Green is the national campaign officer of CODIR, Committee for the Defence of the Iranian People's Rights, .

EDITORIAL Rejecting the vast right-wing (and deadly) conspiracy

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 02:13:00 +0000

Gunmen carried out two assassinations in the United States in 12 days proving that “home-grown” terrorists are ready to act out their hatred of women, African Americans, Latinos, immigrants and people of Jewish background.

On May 31, Dr. George Tiller was shot to death while worshipping at his Wichita church. Tiller’s accused assassin is Scott Roeder, a violent, anti-abortionist who had made repeated death threats against Tiller. He was the fifth physician assassinated, victim of a 35-year campaign of terrorism against women’s reproductive rights. Tiller’s Wichita clinic has now been closed.

Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly routinely referred to Dr. Tiller as “Tiller the Baby Killer” and once stopped just short of blurting what he would do “if I could get my hands on” Tiller. His rabid incitements reflected the extremist ideology of Fox owner, Rupert Murdoch. In an interview with AP, Roeder boasted, “I know there are many other similar events planned around the country as long as abortions remain legal.”

The shooting death of Security Guard Stephen T. Johns, a Black man, at the Holocaust Museum in Washington has also been traced to the extreme right. Arrested in the murder was anti-Semite, James von Brunn, who had resided with the Aryan Nation white supremacists at Hayden Lake, Idaho. In his car, police found a notebook with a handwritten note, “You want my weapons—this is how you’ll get them. The Holocaust is a lie. Obama was created by the Jews.”

The federal government spends billions of tax dollars deporting undocumented workers, not one of them a “terrorist.” But law enforcement at all levels has been AWOL in protecting against domestic terrorism.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano that the “economic recession, the election of America’s first Black President and the return of a few disgruntled war veterans could swell the ranks of white power militias.”

Republican right denounced her timely report as an “attack” on veterans, anti-abortionists, and anti-immigrant crusaders. Some even called for her resignation.

The latest venom comes from actor Jon Voight who denounced President Obama at a GOP fundraiser as a “softspoken Julius Caesar” that America must be “freed” from. “Bring an end to this false prophet, Obama,” Voight ranted, sounding like Brutus. It is a federal crime to threaten violence against the President.

The accused assassins should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Abortion clinics, doctors, their staffs, and their patients must be protected. But the best answer is to defeat the hatemongers politically. Boycott Fox News. Demand Senate confirmation of Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, latest target of hate. Build maximum unity to win healthcare for all, employee free choice, “green” jobs, immigrant reform, an end to wars, and a more inclusive, tolerant democracy in our country.

COMMENTARY A Coup in Albany

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 01:19:00 +0000

The mess in the New York State Senate would make for a relatively enjoyable reality show—if the living standards of so many New Yorkers weren’t put at stake.

The actions of Sens. Pedro Espada, D-Bronx, and Hiram Monseratte, D-Queens, are as disgusting as their explanations are ridiculous. After New Yorkers voted overwhelmingly for a Democratic Senate, these two ethically challenged individuals have taken the state hostage at a time when there is essential work to be done.

Espada and Monseratte say that they acted because the Democratic caucus was too opaque. Both say they wanted to bring openness and more democracy to Albany. A noble concept, but the idea that this is what they’re doing would be laughable if it weren’t so infuriating. Or maybe infuriating if it weren’t so laughable; it’s hard to say.

Are we really supposed to believe this? That a Republican controlled Senate will be somehow more open? The Republicans held power for 30 years, and all they did was attack working people. The problems with Malcolm Smith’s Democratic caucus in the Senate are nothing compared with those of the Republicans. The recent tax increases on the rich would have been impossible had the Democrats not won control last fall.

What would the Democrats’ loss of the Senate mean?

Firstly, it would be a victory for the billionaires, specifically Tom Golisano, who masterminded the coup. Golisano is, of course, the businessman who campaigned against the Fair Share tax increases and then moved his legal residence to Florida after it was passed. Also, it would mean a victory for the Republicans, the party of racism, inequality and union-busting.

All of the pro-people bills currently in the State Senate could be killed.

Of particular importance are two bills on tenants’ rights: One would repeal the “Urstadt Law,” which took control of rent-control regulations away from New York City’s council and made them the domain of Albany. The other bill would mandate that any buildings leaving the Mitchell-Lama or Section 8 programs would have to be placed under rent regulations.

The loss would mean, then, a huge victory for the landlords of New York, and a loss for tenants.

In fact, some are speculating that the coup was, at least in part, pushed and coordinated by big landlords who do not want to see these bills passed. It’s likely that Espada receives a lot of money from landlords—but no one knows that for sure, because he’s never filed the legally required paperwork on campaign contributions.

It looks like Espada was bought by the landlords and sold to the Republican Party.

Diane Savino, D-Staten Island, has introduced a bill that would weaken the state’s anti-union Taylor Law, which bans public employees from striking. This bill would have been hard to pass with a 32-30 Democratic majority—but with the Republicans in charge? Forget it.

The loss would mean ending the possibility of actually bringing New York State into compliance with international labor law, under which workers are supposed to have the right to strike.

There are other bills as well, but the point is clear: Republican control is bad for working people.

Some are saying that this debacle is the result of animosities between the African American and Latino communities, and that the coup d’état will somehow help empower Latinos. This nonsense should be rejected outright. It is true that Latinos in New York’s leadership have been under-represented, and any democratic-minded person must be in favor of the empowerment of the growing and diversifying Hispanic community.

The idea that Latino advancement could or should come at the expense of the African American community is preposterous: Unity between African Americans, Latinos, and the working class is essential to the advancement of all three groups, none of which are mutually exclusive, of course.

But the idea that ceding control to the Republicans will help Latinos? Please. Let’s come back to the real world. The above mentioned bills would help to empower both the African American and Latino communities, as well as working-class white people. How is killing them a benefit to anyone who has to work for a living?

In any case, most people aren’t buying it: Editorials in much of the New York City Spanish-language press have condemned the right wing power grab, and rallies against Espada and Monseratte have been united. It seems pretty clear that there are others, behind the scenes, who would like to sow division between the two communities.

For example, one thing Mayor Bloomberg, the “independent” mayor of New York City, needs to win the 2009 municipal elections is a major split in the Latino and African American communities. Bloomberg has been specifically targeting people with Latino names to receive mailings addressed to them. There have been no major breaks among Latinos for Bloomberg.

The idea that either Espada or Monseratte is that altruistic is hard to believe. Espada has been fined thousands of dollars refusing to show from where his donations come. On top of that, though he “represents” the Bronx, he really lives in suburban Westchester County.

And Monseratte? He’s been indicted for allegedly stabbing his girlfriend with a glass bottle.

These are the great reformers?

We still don’t know how things are going to pan out. As of this writing, Monseratte is in discussions with the Democratic caucus, and seems to be on the verge—possibly—of returning to the fold. But even then, the house would be divided 31-31, and since we have no Lieutenant Governor to break a tie, that’s a bad situation. The Republicans want to see Espada as president of the chamber. And they are arguing, quite ridulously, that if Monseratte goes back and the chambers are evenly split, Espada should have two votes to break a tie: one as a state senator, and one as the chamber’s president. This, in the words of one lawmaker, is sending the state “lurching towards a constitutional crisis.”

Both Espada and Monseratte should end their betrayal of working New Yorkers and come back into the Democratic fold so that the business of working people can get done.

Try paying for your dialysis with 50 shares of bankrupt auto stock

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 00:51:00 +0000

Once upon a time, when a company went bankrupt, everyone took a hit: workers lost wages, stockholders got killed and the creditors got only tiny bits of what was left. The law guaranteed that it would work this way.

Once upon a time, what workers did not lose was their pensions. Because their pensions were already taken out of their wages and held in their names for them it seemed only fair. Again, the law guaranteed that it would work this way.

“But not this time. Stevie the Rat has a different plan for GM: grab the pension funds to pay off Morgan and Citi,” wrote Greg Palast, the economist and journalist, recently.

Palast, the author of The New York Times bestseller, “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy” was referring to Steven Rattner, Barack Obama’s ‘Car Czar’ — the man who basically designed the GM bankruptcy plan.

The Rattner scheme involves insisting that the court erase GM’s obligations to the health insurance fund for its retirees. A percentage of the cash in the insurance fund could be replaced by GM stock. “The percentage may be 17 percent or 25 percent. Whatever, 17 percent or 25 percent is worth, well just try paying for your dialysis with 50 shares of bankrupt auto stock.”

The Rattner plan is not bad news for everyone, however.

Two privileged GM lenders, Morgan and Citibank, get 100 percent of their loans to GM paid back in cold hard cash — cash in the amount of $6 billion.

One of the most important points Palast makes is that almost any fiddling around with pension funds is illegal.

He notes that in 1974 Congress passed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act which makes it illegal to seize workers’ pension funds (whether monthly payments or health insurance) any more than you can seize their private bank accounts. “And that’s because they are the same thing: workers give up wages in return for retirement benefits,” said Palast.

He pointed out that the law explicitly requires that companies hold retirement funds as “fiduciaries.”

“The primary responsibility of fiduciaries,” it reads, “is to run the plan solely in the interest of participants for the exclusive purpose of providing benefits.”

“Every business in America that runs short of cash would love to dip into retirement kitties, but it’s not their money any more than a banker can seize your account when the bank’s a little short,” said Palast.

He noted that, in effect, money is transferred from pension funds into the coffers of Morgan and Citibank. “The money for an elderly auto worker’s spleen is siphoned off to feed the TARP babies. Workers go without lung transplants so Dimon and Rubin (Morgan and Citibank CEO’s) can pimp out their ride.”

The argument he makes is that filching GM’s pension assets doesn’t become legal because the cash due the fund is replaced with stock.

The Congress actually anticipated such schemes when it wrote a clause into the original law that said, “fiduciaries must act prudently and must diversify the plan’s investments in order to minimize the risk of large losses.”

Putting 100 percent of workers’ funds into a single busted company’s stock, Palast said, is not diversifying for safety.

And, he said, it can open the floodgates to other big companies seeking to drain health care investment funds.

Palast reserves some of his strongest anger for Citibank and Morgan.

He castigates them as recipients of “corporate welfare.” (Together they have gotten a third of a trillion in aid from the U.S. Treasury.) And he asks why only they come out profiting from the GM bankruptcy.

“Is the forced bankruptcy of GM,” Palast asks, “the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs, just a collection action for favored financiers?”

Health care for all means immigrants, too

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:48:00 +0000

Any health care legislation being drafted in Congress should meet the goal of covering all people in America, including immigrants who are not citizens and immigrants who are undocumented. People in these categories make up a significant portion of the nation’s 50 million uninsured.

Immigrants are productive members of countless communities who help build viable local economies all over this land. They pay taxes. Many pay into a Social Security system from which they will never be able to collect any benefits.

On an economic level, denial of health care coverage to immigrants is a shortsighted and, frankly, stupid policy.

Unable to avail themselves of a comprehensive system of decent medical care, immigrants will continue to struggle to get what they can from hospital emergency rooms, which will pass the cost of providing treatment on to everyone else.

More fundamentally, however, denial of health care to immigrants is a denial of the most basic human impulses of common sense and decency.

It denies common sense because it endangers the health of the entire population. In the event of a flu epidemic, for example, will the virus limit itself to uninsured immigrants in a particular city? No. Viruses do not ask for insurance cards or residency papers.

And it denies all norms of simple decency. What kind of people would turn away a sick mother or her child because they lack the correct set of papers?

These questions don’t seem to bother the Republicans, however. They oppose medical care for immigrants for the same reason they oppose putting a public health care option into the new bill being drafted. Both would mean that private health insurance profiteers might have to pocket a little less money for their “services.”

We support extending health care coverage to every man, woman and child in America. In doing so we, as a nation, will be standing up for decency, for our common humanity and for our common health.

Racism: Look whos talking

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:42:00 +0000

Right-wing commentators and politicians have been railing against racism. Have they finally seen the folly of their ways? Are they criticizing their fellow right-wingers for spreading racist pollution via talk shows and corporate suites? Sadly, no. Instead, they are attacking Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

Former GOP Congressmen Tom Tancredo and Newt Gingrich and talk show bloviator Rush Limbaugh called Sotomayor a “racist” because she acknowledged what everyone knows to be true: that people’s experience has an impact on what they do and think. In a 2001 speech, Sotomayor said she hoped that “a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her life, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

The Tancredo-Gingrich-Limbaugh “racism” charge was so outrageous that Gingrich later had to back off.

Their attacks seem to be a calculated tactic to try to whip up a racist and anti-woman backlash against Sotomayor’s appointment and the Obama administration.

But the politics of hate and division are not working. The election of the first African American president underlined that fact. Polls show majority support for Sotomayor. While it should be obvious, it bears emphasizing that the majority of those polled are white Americans.

More and more, Americans of all races and backgrounds are realizing racism hurts everyone. Racism is more than a collection of individual prejudices. It is a system of keeping people of color socially, economically and politically unequal. This inequality is used to hold all working people back, as pointed out by AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka (see page 9).

And there are big profits in racism. Case in point is featured on our front page. Subprime loans and racist targeting of Black homeowners by the big banks hurt not only those homeowners but all homeowners, sparking one of the biggest financial crises in decades.

Sotomayor said in her 2001 speech, quoting Yale law professor Steven Carter, “In any group of human beings there is a diversity of opinion because there is both diversity of experiences and of thought.”

As Supreme Court justice, Sotomayor will reflect the experiences of a Puerto Rican working-class woman, bringing that vital “diversity of opinion” into the decisions that are important for our country for years to come.

BOOK REVIEW: Painting, poetry and song combine for breathtaking read

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:33:00 +0000

BOOKREVIEW

Wandering Star

Translated by C. Dickson

Curbstone Press, 2008, 360 pp. If a Romare Bearden painting, a Pablo Neruda poem and a Billie Holiday blues song were by means of an arcane alchemy combined to form some rare and breathtaking thing, it might be called “Wandering Star,” a stunning novel by the 2008 Noble Prize-winning French author J. M.G. Le Clezio, reprinted for the second time in English last year by Curbstone Press.

A sometimes odd patchwork of lyrical prose, experimental structure, novel juxtaposition of time along with a starkly devastating study of the nature of being, “Wandering Star” tells the story of Jewish daughter and mother fleeing the Nazis in France and Spain at the end of World War II and a chance encounter with a young Palestinian woman amidst the fire, smoke and famine that accompanied the founding of Israel.

In this rite of passage tale of things lost and found, Le Clezio traces the journey of Esther toward womanhood, spiritual kinship and human identity amidst exodus, ethnic cleansing and the now almost casual irony of genocide precipitating still other genocides. Death lingers long and hard in the southern hills and valleys painted by this French master, first as shadow and premonition and soon becoming palpable, industrial, driven on by a crazed capital fueled by a technology of hate. And yet Le Clezio manages to give the Grim Reaper air and light if not grace, as it emerges if not naturally then almost effortlessly from the pastoral landscape of war-torn France.

It enshrouds and educates Esther, daughter of a communist partisan fighting a mountain war forcing itself upon her first as presentiment and then when her farther disappears and mother and daughter flee, as shadow, just over there, lingering in the smiles, flowers and wind blowing through the mountain passes, combining giving rise first to fear, then flight, and finally into the arms of an almost certain fate.

The mountains are the occasion for Esther’s first blush with spirit felt but not understood in hymns and prayers of the Jewish refugees. Neither encouraged nor forbade by her atheist father and mother, religion, begins as curiosity for the young exile and then an almost physical need as she becomes drawn over and over to its call. And yet it is not a religion of tomes and dogma, for Esther cannot understand the language of the prayers but one of rhythm, heart and desire, a search and a yearning. Le Clezio returns to it over and again, sometimes numbingly so, as the mother and daughter pair arrive first in Italy, then France and then across an ocean and into a Zion torn from the flesh of long suffering people.

It is there that a chance encounter on a dusty road with another refugee, Nejma, a Palestinian girl, leaves a mark on Esther that will last her a lifetime. Nejma become a major if almost completely separate character in this unusual novel.

She too undergoes a rite of passage and travail as the war follows God’s chosen. Like Esther, she too falls from the grace of paternal embrace as tactics learned in the forests and ghettos of the European theater are now visited upon God’s country. Fleeing plague, wild dogs and wilder men she too sets out on journey that seems without end, literally for she is left by Le Clezio wandering in the desert, hanging like the reader, on what appear to be the author’s loose ends.

Experimental, beautiful, terrifying, sad, numbing, revealing, curious, and with a few loose threads, “Wandering Star” is a story whose end all must strive to tell.

Joe Sims (joesims@politicalaffairs.net) is publisher of Political Affairs.

COMMENTARY Obama at Buchenwald buries Reagan past

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:44:00 +0000

Original source: PoliticalAffairs.net

President Obama is back from his trip abroad. It was a remarkable tour, during which he spoke of peace, democracy and progress, and then, in Germany, he confronted some of the greatest crimes against humanity ever perpetrated, crimes that were the direct result of fascism and war.

During his visit to the remnants of the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald, President Obama stood with conservative German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor whose oft-translated writings on the Holocaust, have earned him the Nobel Prize.

Twenty-four years ago President Ronald Reagan stood with another conservative Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Helmut Kohl, at a cemetery in Bitberg, Germany. Even before Reagan's visit, the trip had stirred enormous controversy.

For Reagan, then deep into the largest military buildup in history, the trip was planned as a gesture to the Kohl government which had supported his Cold War revival policies. In essence, it was a not-so-subtle hint to the German and European right wing that we could completely forget about World War II in order to prepare to fight World War III against the Soviet Union.

The Reagan administration's 'official' explanation for the visit to Bitberg was that both German and American troops were buried at the Bitberg cemetery, and Reagan would come to remember and honor them both. Even if that explanation were true, Reagan apparently had forgotten entirely what they were fighting for. His amnesia was not unlike those conservative politicians in the U.S. at the end of the 19th century who proclaimed the Civil War a 'brothers' war' and sought to honor equally Union and Confederate dead, forgetting the causes of the war and winking at segregation and disenfranchisement of African Americans in the former Confederate states.

Reagan's explanation rang false, however. There were no American dead buried at Bitberg. Also, there were Waffen SS troops buried there – Nazi special forces who had committed atrocities throughout Europe and the Soviet Union, including in the last months of the war they murdered captured American POWs.

White House Director of Communications Patrick Buchanan responded angrily when Elie Wiesel called on Reagan publicly to stay away from Bitberg.

Reagan did go to Bitberg, tacking on a brief visit to a concentration camp as a cover. The Ramones, a progressive punk group, recorded a song, 'My Brain is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitberg),' alluding to the film that marked the zenith of Reagan's acting career, 'Bedtime for Bonzo.' Frank Zappa even recorded a song, 'Reagan at Bitberg,' as artists used satire to express their anger.

What Reagan said about his trip to Bitberg wasn't funny. For anti-fascists, it bordered on being obscene. After criticizing the Waffen SS as 'villains' who 'conducted the persecutions and all,' Reagan went on to say, 'I don't think there is anything wrong with visiting a cemetery where those young men (the soldiers buried) are victims of Nazism even though they were fighting in the German uniform, drafted into service to carry out the hateful wishes of the Nazis. They were victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps.'

If everybody is a victim, then no one is guilty of anything, except Hitler and a few top leaders. In Reagan's logic, one can return to business as usual. This distorted system of justice probably helped Reagan to justify his 'contra' wars in Nicaragua and Afghanistan, while supporting regimes in Chile and South Africa which at the time had much more in common with Hitler fascism than anything else.

Obama at Buchenwald spoke to and for a different world and reflected a different moral universe. Obama remembered his uncle who had helped to liberate the camp and 'the painful memories that would not leave his head' from that experience.' He told the people of the world that Buchenwald was 'the ultimate rebuke' to those fascists and racists who have sought to deny that the Holocaust happened. He invoked the spirit of internationalism as he said 'we must reject the false comfort that others suffering is not our problem and commit ourselves to resisting those who subjugate others to serve their own interests.'

Most of all, he suggested the trauma that the Holocaust represents especially for Jewish people through the world should increase Israel's capacity to empathize with the suffering of others and those achieve a just and lasting peace with the Palestinian people.

President Obama increased respect for the U.S. through the world with this trip. He spoke in and for the best anti-fascist, anti-racist traditions of the American people. And he went a long way to expunge what Reagan and his handlers did at Bitberg.

Hopefully, Israel will respond and express the empathy that he spoke of toward the Palestinian people, which is not only in its best interests as a nation but also the best way to honor all of the victims of fascism in World War II.

Norman Markowitz is a contributing editor of Political Affairs.

Obama in Cairo a profound message for Americans

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 07:51:00 +0000

“Americans have been constantly redefining their national identity from the moment of first contact on the Virginia shore,” historian Ronald Takaki wrote in his landmark 1993 book, “A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America.”

“Our diversity has been at the center of the making of America,” Takaki said. “America’s dilemma has been our resistance to ourselves — our denial of our immensely varied selves. But we have nothing to fear but our fear of our own diversity.”

What we need to do today, he wrote, “is to stop denying our wholeness as members of humanity as well as one nation.”

Takaki, a founder of multicultural and ethnic studies, died on May 26, just 9 days before our first African American president addressed the Arab and Muslim peoples of the world in, as the president noted, “the timeless city of Cairo.” I think the Japanese American historian would have been deeply moved by the president’s compelling “redefinition” of America’s identity.

Most of the commentary about President Obama’s June 4 speech at Cairo University — a speech televised and YouTube-ized across the globe — has focused on its immediate foreign policy implications and what Obama or others are going to do next week or in the coming months about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.

But equally and perhaps more noteworthy for its longer-term implications was what Obama said about America itself.

As he did in March 2008 in his extraordinary speech on race in America, delivered at Philadelphia’s Constitution Center, President Obama in Cairo deepened and broadened what it means to be an American. It was a message of enormous significance, not just for the people of the Middle East and Muslims around the world, but also for Americans.

In Philadelphia last year, then-candidate Obama said, “I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together — unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction — towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.”

In Cairo, President Obama added another dimension. “Islam has always been a part of America's story,” he said. “And since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States. They have fought in our wars, they have served in our government, they have stood for civil rights, they have started businesses, they have taught at our universities, they've excelled in our sports arenas, they've won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building, and lit the Olympic Torch.”

There are nearly 7 million American Muslims in our country today, he noted.

Citing the 2006 election of Keith Ellison, an African American Muslim, to represent Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, Obama continued, “And when the first Muslim American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same Holy Koran that one of our Founding Fathers — Thomas Jefferson — kept in his personal library.”

“As a student of history,” Obama said, “I also know civilization's debt to Islam. It was Islam … that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation. And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.”

As he has so many times, Obama on the world stage redefined America and American patriotism much as Ronald Takaki did, as historians Boyer and Morais did in their “Labor’s Untold Story” and Howard Zinn did in “A People’s History of the U.S.,” as the American Social History Project did in “Who Built America?”:

“Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype,” the president said, “America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire. The United States has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known. We were born out of revolution against an empire. We were founded upon the ideal that all are created equal, and we have shed blood and struggled for centuries to give meaning to those words — within our borders, and around the world. We are shaped by every culture, drawn from every end of the Earth, and dedicated to a simple concept: E pluribus unum — ‘Out of many, one.’”

Like those historians, he defined America’s history as an ongoing struggle for equality and social justice.

Last year in Philadelphia, Obama rejected “a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism.” He declared, “The real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.”

In Cairo last week, the president linked Americans’ fears with those of people around the world. “I know that for many, the face of globalization is contradictory,” Obama told his worldwide audience. “The Internet and television can bring knowledge and information, but also offensive sexuality and mindless violence into the home. Trade can bring new wealth and opportunities, but also huge disruptions and change in communities.”

“In all nations — including America — this change can bring fear,” he said. “Fear that because of modernity we lose control over our economic choices, our politics, and most importantly our identities — those things we most cherish about our communities, our families, our traditions, and our faith.”

“But I also know that human progress cannot be denied,” he said. “There need not be contradictions between development and tradition.”

Development, he said, cannot be “sustained while young people are out of work.”

If he did nothing else with his Cairo speech, if these observations — and the words and images of the American president paying respect to the ancient civilizations and cultures of the Arab and Muslim peoples, a tall skinny American standing dwarfed by the Sphinx and the pyramids at Giza — cause Americans to come to a wider and deeper view of what it means to be American and our place in the world, then his speech will have accomplished something quite profound.

suewebb @ pww.org