People Before Profit blog

CPUSA urges support for affirmative action

Fri, 28 Mar 2003 05:07:00 +0000

Statement

This statement was issued by the National Board of the Communist Party USA after hearing a report on affirmative action at its Jan. 30 meeting

The Communist Party joins with a broad array of people and organizations in expressing our strongest opposition to the current legal challenge to the University of Michigan’s admissions policy. Arguments for and against this policy, which considers race as one – among many other – factors in the admissions process, are to be heard in the U.S. Supreme Court in early April.

A decision in favor of the university’s policy will constitute a major setback for right-wing extremists in our country whose deepest desire is to reintroduce a system of education in the nation’s schools, akin to apartheid.

On the other hand, a court decision in favor of the plaintiffs would be a body blow against affirmative action, already reeling from unfavorable court decisions in Texas and California.

To no one’s surprise, the Bush administration – an administration that speaks for the most reactionary and racist groupings of big business – has thrown its weight behind this obscene assault. In an act of racist treachery, White House lawyers not only filed a “friend of the court” brief opposing the University of Michigan admissions policy, but also cynically called it a “quota” policy, even though they knew full well that this isn’t the case.

In doing this, the Bush gang made it unmistakably clear that, while it may have distanced itself from the racist rhetoric of former Republican Senate leader Trent Lott, it has not dumped his crude ideas and racist policies.

As much as Bush and other Republicans – and more than a few Democrats – would like to remove the subject of race from our nation’s discourse, it cannot be simply filed away as an historical artifact from a benighted and bygone era that ended with the modern civil rights revolution of the 1960s.

While court rulings and legislation did strike down the most egregious forms of legal discrimination three decades ago, racism continues to affect in multiple, massive, and negative ways the life chances of whole groups of people, namely African American, Latino, Asian American, and Native American Indian peoples, and plagues our entire country.

It also damages the political and economic interests of working people of all races and nationalities.

Affirmative action, contrary to what right-wing ideologues claim, is not “reverse” discrimination, but rather is a practical remedy that addresses present as well as past discrimination. It brings racial, ethnic, and gender diversity to our schools and universities – not to mention other institutions in our society. It enlarges opportunities in the workplace, including apprenticeship programs, to women as well as Black, Brown and white workers. It is a cornerstone of a just, moral, and democratic society.

That such a legal challenge would surface at this moment comes as no surprise. It is part of a larger offensive by the most reactionary circles of our ruling class whose aim is to roll back a broad all people’s coalition challenging Bush’s reactionary agenda at home and worldwide.

Indeed, the same small political grouping that is seeking to eliminate affirmative action is behind the re-nomination of right-wing judges to the federal courts, the illegal roundup of immigrants, the steady hollowing out of abortion rights, trillion dollar tax cuts to the richest people and corporations, spending reductions in people’s programs, and, above all, the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Thus the fight to defend affirmative action policies at the University of Michigan is part of and essential to a broader struggle to reverse the many-sided, anti-working class, anti-people assault of the Bush administration and its war drive.

It would be understandable if the American people stood paralyzed by the sheer scope of the right-wing offensive. But that isn’t happening. Instead, millions of people of peace and goodwill are joining hands to transform our country into a society that is just and at peace with the world.

We will join with others in Washington D.C. to march for affirmative action and equality on April 1, when oral arguments to the Supreme Court are scheduled to be heard..

We urge elected officials at the national, state, and city level as well as leaders from all walks of life to publicly express support for the University of Michigan’s admissions policy. We join with the many democratic organizations like the AFL-CIO, NAACP, National Organization for Women (NOW) and National Council of La Raza, to name a few, which have condemned the Bush administration’s stance on affirmative action. We call on people of conscience across our land to join this democratic and just struggle.

For more information about the Communist Party go to www.cpusa.org or call (212) 989-4994.

Tax scams, but not for you and me

Fri, 28 Mar 2003 05:00:00 +0000

Opinion

George W is pushing his latest tax giveaway to the super-rich as an “economic stimulus.”

Well, I’d be “stimulated,” too, if I was going to get $16,000 out of the deal. That’s how much Bush himself would gain. Or how about Dick Cheney, who’d get $104,000 under this scam?

Meanwhile, there’s an even richer group that’s lined up to get more special tax giveaways from George: Corporations. Talk about your tax dodgers! Corporations already enjoy more government subsidies and benefits than people do, yet they pay the least in taxes. Forget the basic corporate tax rate of 35 percent; these outfits have hordes of lobbyists, lawyers, and accountants to “Enron the system,” creating loopholes and tax gimmicks that whittle their formal tax log down to a toothpick... or less.

For example, there’s the scandalous (but still legal) tax dodge known as the Bermuda Loophole. It lets corporate sharpies pretend to be headquartered offshore, even though they’re physically right here in the USA. Bottom line is that they can use Bermuda to escape paying their taxes to the Red, White, and Blue!

Here’s my thought on this scam. I say that all CEOs playing the anti-American Bermuda card have to wear Bermuda shorts everywhere they go so we regular taxpayers can know who they are, grab ‘em on the streets, and give them noogies.

Speaking of corporate moochers, guess who’s one of the slickest? John Snow! Yes, Bush’s new treasury secretary, the guy who’s now in charge of our nation’s tax policy. Snow had headed CSX Corporation and had leapt through so many loopholes that in three of the past four years, CSX paid zero in federal income taxes, even though it had banked nearly a billion dollars in profit. Even trickier, CSX got $164 million in tax rebates during those years.

To fight these scams, contact Citizens for Tax Justice at: (202) 626-3780.

Radio talk-show host and author Jim Hightower is a former agriculture commissioner of Texas.

Villaraigosa struck a blow for justice in Los Angeles

Fri, 21 Mar 2003 05:08:00 +0000

Opinion

Antonio Villaraigosa struck a blow for justice when he won his bid for City Council in the 14th Council District in East Los Angeles on March 4.

This victory begins to turn around a painful page in our city’s history in 2001 when Villaraigosa’s race to become the first Mexican American mayor in over 100 years was torpedoed because of racism. Then candidate for mayor – James Hahn and his supporters used racist campaign ads and vicious personal attacks to defeat Villaraigosa.

Villaraigosa didn’t give up that election day. Instead the former Speaker of the California State Assembly and organizer for the United Teachers of Los Angeles successfully united a progressive coalition and grassroots campaign that came back to make history. They defeated an incumbent councilman in the city’s primary election, a feat never achieved in Los Angeles before.

There was a deep sense of justice realized on election night at the Villaraigosa victory party. Hundreds jam-packed the hall of the Plaza del Sol in Boyle Heights. Supporters chanted “Si Se Puede,” with tears filling many eyes when they heard that Villaraigosa had beat the odds.

Like his mayoral bid in 2001, Villaraigosa inspired a massive number of grassroots volunteers to work on the ground in precincts. Hundreds of homes had Villaraigosa signs on their front lawns.

On election day 31 percent of voters showed up at the polls in the 14th District—well over twice the 13 percent turnout citywide. Many precinct poll workers reported being kept busy by the largest turnout ever. By the end of the day voters had given Villaraigosa a whopping near 17 point win with 56 percent of the vote. The incumbent Councilman Nick Pacheco received 40 percent and a third candidate 3 percent of the vote.

Although the incumbent councilman is a Mexican American, this race became about raising the bar for Latino representation. Voters in this very working class district decided that they wanted a Mexican American warrior for workers rights and equality instead of a moderate.

Villaraigosa is a charismatic leader whose political agenda is closely allied with the labor movement, civil rights, immigrant rights, educational opportunity and economic gain for working people and the poor. He has a history in the peace movement and is opposed to the war on Iraq. Villaraigosa is also an experienced coalition builder who will not only fight for his constituents’ needs, but will reach out to improve the city for everyone.

The labor movement saw the Villaraigosa campaign as a crucial piece of their goal to transform Los Angeles into a stronger union city.

A labor umbrella organization spent $187,500 for organizers, phone banking and five different mailers in the effort to elect a champion. Members of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) Local 11 played a phenomenal role. The Service Employees International Union Local 1877, the United Farm Workers and other unions were rallying members onto the phones and into the streets daily.

Adding to labor’s win is that on election day African American Martin Ludlow, the former political director of the Labor Federation and former staff member of Villaraigosa when he was in the Assembly, made it into a runoff for City Council District 10. If elected Ludlow will join Villaraigosa as a strong voice for labor and a progressive agenda in the council. That potential is why the Labor Federation is now focused on that runoff race.

Another notable election result is that African American Bernard Parks, the former chief of police, handily won his bid for City Council representing South Los Angeles. This was the African American community’s protest response to Mayor Hahn’s slap when he refused to heed their call to continue Parks’ contract after African Americans gave Hahn their overwhelming support in his race for mayor.

Villaraigosa and Parks have been in communication with one another every day since the election. The alliance building there and the potential election of Ludlow could become a turning point in the healing of a rift between Latinos and African Americans after the mayoral race when, African Americans voted by majority for Hahn instead of Villaraigosa. The important progress is that the extended hand is present on both sides.

The walk to justice and equality is not easy. Antonio Villaraigosa, his family and coalition partners took on the challenge. They walked the walk. Now Councilman-elect Villaraigosa, along with his allies, are in a position to shape the political direction of our nation’s second largest city.

Like the Villaraigosa campaign songs says “ain’t no stopping us now!”

Evelina Alarcon is the Coordinator of the Cesar E. Chavez National Holiday Campaign and lives in the Los Angeles 14th City Council District. She can be reached at EvnAlarcon@aol.com

Without French solidarity, would there be a U.S.A.?

Fri, 21 Mar 2003 04:50:00 +0000

Opinion

Republican House leaders, enraged that France refuses to back George W. Bush’s Iraq war, have decreed that from now on french fries served in Capitol Hill dining halls are “freedom fries.” France is denounced as an “ingrate” ignoring the role of U.S. troops as “liberators” of France in World War I and World War II. In fact, while staunchly opposing war on Iraq, the French people revere the Americans who stormed the beaches of Normandy to defeat Hitler fascism.

But little is said in Congress about the role of France in helping the Americans win the 1776-1781 War of Independence against British King George III. Consider that midway through the war, the Continental Army was bogged down, starving, freezing, unpaid, at Valley Forge, stalemated in a seemingly endless war against a numerically stronger and better equipped British army. Conditions were so atrocious that soldiers mutinied, demanding food, shelter, and pay. The Continental Congress was flat broke. France came to the rescue, providing over $9 million in financial assistance. The Encyclopedia of American History, edited by Richard B. Morris, Henry Steele Commager, and Jeffrey B. Morris, reports that “a timely subsidy from France … and French backing for a large loan from the Netherlands” pulled the rebellious colonists from the brink of bankruptcy.

French financial backing for the revolution actually began in 1775 when a five-member “Committee of Secret Correspondence” was appointed by the Continental Congress to visit France. In May 1776, two months before the Declaration of Independence, the French government set up a fictitious company, Roderigue Hortalez et Cie, which secretly delivered one million livres (French currency at the time) worth of French munitions to the Americans. Spain, too, agreed to supply arms and, according to the Encyclopedia, “From these sources the American armies were to receive over 80 percent of their gunpowder, to mention but one type of military supplies, throughout 1776-77.”

France and a delegation from the Continental Congress signed two treaties in 1778, the first establishing “most favored nation” status between the two nations, and the second creating a formal alliance to “maintain effectually the liberty, sovereignty, and independence” of the United States. It was an enormous diplomatic coup for the infant United States to be recognized by the strongest continental power in Europe.

A few months later, France declared war on England and deployed 15,000 troops to fight in America at a time when the Continental Army had only 32,899 soldiers. The British Army had 39,637 troops in the U.S., not counting thousands of Hessians. Thus French combat troops tipped the balance against the British Redcoats and their hired mercenaries.

French solidarity is legendary in American history. The Marquis de Lafayette was a trusted commander of American troops. When John Paul Jones and his crew sank the British man-of-war Serapis in the North Sea, it was in a ship with the very French name Bonhomme Richard, an old French merchantman outfitted with cannons in the port of L’Orient, France.

The decisive battle of the war was at Yorktown, Va., in which 7,800 French soldiers under Gen. Rochambeau joined forces with 9,000 American soldiers under Gen. George Washington to lay siege to 8,000 British troops dug into heavily fortified positions. The battle raged from Aug. 30 to Oct. 19, 1781. British Gen. Cornwallis’ hopes for reinforcement were dashed when the French fleet under Admiral Comte de Grasse imposed a blockade. Cornwallis surrendered Oct. 17, 1781. A total of 2,113 French soldiers died fighting for American independence together with 6,118 American soldiers who died in that same cause.

That victory over the “divine right of kings” had a profound influence on the French, who in 1789 waged their own war against the Bourbon tyranny. When the British monarchist Edmund Burke wrote his scurrilous Reflections on the Revolution in France, Thomas Paine, who stirred the American people to revolution with his Common Sense and Appeal to Reason, fired back with the eloquent Rights of Man, a radical rejection of titled aristocracy and unearned wealth and a defense of human equality.

Later, France doubled the territory of the United States when it sold all its colonial possessions west of the Mississippi to the U.S. for $15 million – the “Louisiana Purchase.” In 1886, the French people sent the Statue of Liberty to New York as a gift.

It’s useless to expect House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), a cockroach exterminator, to remember France’s solidarity or the real values of liberty and equality brought closer by the revolutions in the U.S. and France. He is a Tory who bends his knee to a would-be King George.

Tim Wheeler is Editor of the People’s Weekly World. He can be reached at greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com

Iraqi CP: War will not bring democracy

Fri, 21 Mar 2003 03:52:00 +0000

In an appeal issued last week, the Iraqi Communist Party (CP) warned of the terrible suffering a new war will bring to their country’s people, and called on anti-war movements around the world to develop peaceful alternatives to express solidarity with the Iraqi people’s aspirations for a democratic future.

“Among such alternatives, which deserve serious consideration by the United Nations to avert the course of war, is the proposal of convening an International Conference on the Iraqi issue,” the appeal said. A conference, the ICP said, would provide the opportunity to resolve the crisis based on international legitimacy, by dealing with issues such as weapons of mass destruction together with issues of human rights and democracy.

“This conference can discuss all issues, including humanitarian issues, but first and foremost the role of the UN in empowering the Iraqi people and allowing them to decide their political future with their own free will, through democratic elections supervised by the UN,” the ICP statement said.

The ICP emphasized that war will not bring democracy to Iraq and that the U.S. plan to occupy post-war Iraq is not in the interest of the Iraqi people.

“There is no doubt that the overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people want to get rid of the bloody dictatorial rule of Saddam Hussein and his clique, and to bring about a genuine democratic change which allows them to exercise their right to decide their destiny with their own free and independent will,” the ICP said. “But war, invasion and foreign military occupation cannot be the means to achieve this legitimate desire for change ... The path of war cannot lead to true democracy, and is fraught with grave consequences for the future of the Iraqi people.”

The terrible suffering of the Iraqi people as a result of two wars – the Iraq-Iran war of 1980-88, and the 1991 Gulf War – plus the devastation of over 12 years of economic sanctions, would not be relieved with a new war, the statement said.

The Appeal particularly cited UN Security Council Resolution 688 (April 1991), which called for an end to repression against the Iraqi people, as well as General Assembly resolutions regarding human rights in Iraq, as providing “a proper basis, in line with international law and legitimacy,” for organizing the conference. The ICP also urged lifting the economic sanctions which have had a devastating impact on ordinary people.

Abe Magil: A tribute to a working class, Marxist journalist

Thu, 20 Mar 2003 09:54:00 +0000

Marxist journalist and pamphleteer. Devoted family man and friend. Poet. Editor. Political leader. All of these describe Abe Magil, who died in January. Writing as A.B. Magil, he was among the many people of talent and conviction who, starting in the mid-1920s, devoted themselves to the cause of working people and socialism. Over decades, these ideals took Magil to four continents, introduced him to leading artists, cultural and political figures, and involved him in the most important struggles of the day.

Born into a poor Jewish immigrant family in South Philadelphia, he was the youngest of four children. His three sisters went to work before finishing high school and that, in part, enabled Abe to finish. He then won a scholarship, and earned a degree in journalism and a Phi Beta Kappa Key at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1926, soon after graduating, he moved to New York and joined the Communist Party (CPUSA) and the staff of the Daily Worker. His association with the paper would last 32 years.

During the height of the Great Depression, Magil was sent to Detroit (1933-35) to found a Michigan Edition of the Daily Worker. His pay was $2 a week. Joining thousands of jobless workers, he ate most of his meals in “penny cafeterias,” where for 3 to 5 cents you got eggs and bread for breakfast, and soup and bread for lunch. Communist Party members often invited him to their homes so he could have a third meal.

When Magil arrived in Detroit, the Chief of Police called him in. He asked Magil what he was doing there, then demanded Magil’s press card and tore it up, saying, “I can’t wait till the showdown with you reds.” Magil replied, in a calm voice, “And I can’t wait either,” and walked out of the building.

The Michigan Edition soon faltered for lack of money. Magil then took on the job of editing the Auto News for the Auto Workers Union, a left-led predecessor of the United Auto Workers. But its funding also ran dry, so Magil became the Michigan correspondent of the Daily Worker. Now that he was making $10 a week, some of the Michigan communists, then led by William Weinstone, joked about the “well-paid New Yorker.”

This was a period not only of great hardship for working people, but also of great upsurge, especially in Detroit, and Magil was there to cover it. There was also a growing threat of fascism around the world, and at the center of it in the U.S. was Father Coughlin. Speaking to millions of radio listeners every Sunday morning from his church just outside Detroit, at first Coughlin hid his extremism and anti-Semitism in his broadcasts, but not in his church sermons.

With some trepidation, Magil began attending Coughlin’s sermons, and wrote the first exposé of Father Coughlin’s neo-fascist, vitriolic anti-Semitism for the Daily Worker. His pamphlet, “The Truth About Father Coughlin” (Workers Library, 1935), sold 150,000 copies. Another pamphlet, “The Real Father Coughlin” (1938), was also popular. By 1940, Coughlin was publicly disgraced and forced from the airwaves.

With Henry Stevens, Magil also authored a book on U.S. fascism – The Peril of Fascism: The Crisis of American Democracy (International Publishers (IP), 1938) — that covered such organizations as the Klu Klux Klan, the Black Legion, the Silver Shirts, the German American Bund, and the American Liberty League, and examined their relationship to big business and to Roosevelt’s “New Deal.”

The book contains lessons pertinent for today: “First finance capital curtails democratic rights, narrowing the scope of democracy and paving the way for the open and violent dictatorship of fascist rule. ... [T]he victory of fascism is by no means inevitable. Fascism is opposed to the interests of at least nine tenths of the people ... It cannot come to power when the working class is united and has cemented a strong alliance with the other strata of society whose interests would suffer from the open terrorist rule of the financial oligarchs ... Unity is the pressing need of all who hate fascism and war.”

Magil’s booklet, “The Battle for America: 1776-1861 – 1941,” was published in 1943 (IP). One of A.B. Magil’s proudest products was the popularly written pamphlet, “Socialism – What’s In It for You?” (1946), which sold over 100,000 copies.

Magil was also active in the left intellectual and cultural ferment in our country in the 1930s and ’40s. He worked alongside Joe North at the head of The New Masses, a weekly magazine of political commentary, cultural criticism and creative writing, which was held up as the iconic prototype for this kind of publication from the 1960s on. Nearly all the great left arts figures of that period appeared in its pages. Novelist Theodore Dreiser wrote for it regularly, as did Ruth McKenney, author of the novel, My Sister Eileen, which was adapted for stage and screen.

One Saturday in 1940, poet Carl Sandburg dropped into the office to chat with North and Magil. He expressed disagreement with some of the magazine’s political positions, but said he generally appreciated and respected the magazine’s work. Sandburg mentioned that he had read Magil’s long poem on the death of the great Soviet poet Mayakovsky, calling it “a good poem.” (Some of Magil’s poetry appears in the 1938 Anthology of Proletarian Literature in the United States, edited by Granville Hicks.) In 1942, Helen Keller sent to New Masses a portrait of herself with the inscription, “To Mr. Abe Magil with fraternal greetings.”

Magil was executive editor of New Masses in 1948, when the Cold War and McCarthyism forced it to close.

Soon after, the Magils – Abe and his wife Harriet Black Magil, a psychiatric social worker who had been National Treasurer of the American Women’s Congress, and their five-year-old daughter Maggie – went to Palestine. As a correspondent for both the Daily Worker and the Yiddish-language Morning Frieheit, Magil was assigned to cover the struggle to replace the British Mandate colony of Palestine with two co-equal states – Israel and Palestine.

While there, Magil renewed his friendship with cousin Matja Lessem Wolff and her husband, Dr. Willi Wolff, who became the first Israeli minister of health. Magil had met them in Berlin in 1930 on his way back from the World Congress of Revolutionary Artists and Writers, held in the Soviet Union. The Wolffs moved to Palestine in 1934 just ahead of the start of the Holocaust.

The UN supported the two-state solution, a resolution introduced by the Soviet Union. However, Britain resisted through stand-ins and there was intermittent fighting. The Trans-Jordanian Arab Legion was commanded by British officers, including a British general calling himself “Glub Pasha.” The situation was complex, with results both good and bad. According to the Israeli Communist Party, the struggle against Britain to establish Israel was just, but land beyond the partition line was unjustly seized, and many Arabs were driven from their homes on both sides of that line.

Magil was there for six months, including on May 14, 1948, when independence was declared. Several times he was under fire. On one occasion he went to report a military action of the Palmach, a special military unit of the Haganah composed primarily of left-wingers, including Communists. He interviewed its commander, Yigdal Alon, who later became Israeli military chief of staff, and his second in command, Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli Prime Minister assassinated in 1995 by a Jewish extremist. Returning to New York, Magil wrote the book, Israel in Crisis (1949, IP).

Getting to Palestine had not been easy. When Magil applied for a passport, the State Department refused him on grounds that “it would not be in the interests of the United States.” Magil organized a protest, and approached the U.S. delegation to the UN’s World Conference on Freedom of Information being held in Geneva. The head of the delegation was editor of the Christian Science Monitor. Magil soon got a letter stating that his passport would be issued “at the request of the U.S. delegation” to the conference.

During the height of McCarthyism, Magil was asked to move to Mexico with his family. More than 150 Party leaders had been imprisoned or were in hiding, some in Mexico. Magil worked there as a correspondent for the Daily Worker and supplied Party leaders with information on the political situation both in the United States and in Mexico.

In Mexico, Magil developed acquaintance and friendships with political refugees from Latin America and the U.S., as well as with the great Mexican Communist artists, David Siqueiros, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. This circle of people included Pablo Neruda, Chilean Nobel Laureate poet; Cuban poet Juan Marinello; Carlos Raphael Rodriguez, the poet and journalist who later became Vice President of Cuba under Fidel Castro; and Hollywood Ten victims Albert Maltz, Ring Lardner, Jr. and Dalton Trumbo.

The Magil family had a particularly close relationship with Frida Kahlo. When Magil was recalled to New York in 1953, as going-away presents, Kahlo took a ring off her finger and put it on eight-year-old Maggie’s, then gave the child a Mexican dress and pressed a sheet of paper against her lips to produce a lipstick farewell kiss. Kahlo also gave the Magils an original painting and inscribed it with the words, “Don’t ever forget me,” in Spanish.

When the Magils returned from Mexico, McCarthyism was still in full swing. With many still in prison or hiding, Betty Gannett and Pettis Perry were leading the CPUSA. Gannett asked Magil to join the Administrative Committee and establish a National Peace Commission, among other things. Magil also continued to write for the Daily Worker.

In June 1954, a CIA-engineered coup overthrew the first progressive president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz, triggering one of the greatest bloodbaths in Latin America, which is hardly over today. Six weeks before, Magil interviewed Arbenz for the paper. Arbenz expressed concern about a possible coup, but thought the democratic forces could prevent it. Magil made it across the border just ahead of the death squads, only to be taken into custody in Mexico illegally by the FBI and returned to the U.S. There he co-wrote the pamphlet, “What Happened in Guatemala,” with Helen Simon Travis.

The CPUSA’s elected leaders began returning from prison and exile in 1955-56, and Magil served on the editorial board of the quarterly publication Mainstream and its successor, the monthly Masses & Mainstream. A period of internal turmoil ensued, from 1956 to 1958, during which Magil became editor of the Sunday Worker and then foreign editor of the Daily Worker.

In 1958, Magil concluded that he needed to provide more security for his family and entered the field of medical journalism. While no longer a full-time political worker, Magil served as a member of the editorial board of the progressive monthly Jewish Currents and participated in a Communist Party club of writers led by Si Gerson.

In early 1992, during the crisis of the world Communist movement, Magil reluctantly left the CPUSA with many others and became a member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. In his final years, Magil read the major reports of the Communist Party and agreed with the CPUSA’s position on the need to build democratic unity to defeat the far-right Republican Party and Bush administration, as well as other CPUSA positions. Magil participated in a Marxist discussion group until shortly before his death at age 98.

Magil was known not only for his skill as a journalist and writer but also as good to work with. To friends and relatives he was known as a lovely person, always kind, considerate and soft-spoken, but firm in principle. He remembered to phone tens of relatives every birthday to wish them well. The home of Abe and Harriet, his wife of 63 years, was filled with love. They were famous for hosting frequent social gatherings attended by many of the country’s left cultural figures.

Daniel Rubin is the nephew of Abe Magil and the editor of a forthcoming collection of Marxist writings on anti-Semitism and Zionism. Rubin is a member of the Communist Party’s education commission and can be reached at pww@pww.org

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H2O worth more than oil

Fri, 14 Mar 2003 06:17:00 +0000

Opinion

Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink.

– Samuel Taylor Coleridge,

“Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

Quick – what is the most valuable liquid in the Middle East? Go to the back of the class if you answered the obvious – black crude. There is only one answer – water – two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. Every known liquid, without exception, starts with a water base. Water and air are the only ingredients that distinguish our planet from other bodies in the solar system. There can be no animal, vegetable or even mineral life as we know it anywhere without those two substances. None.

Poet Coleridge described his parched sailor groping for water while floating in the middle of the briny deep, and there are regions in the world for which his sailor is a metaphor – countries on the seacoast or not very far inland that have scant water resources. While Iceland, Suriname and Guyana, for example, are relatively abundant, Kuwait, Egypt, Libya and Jordan head the list of those with the least water on tap.

Scientists are hard at work devising methods to make drinkable water from the seas that cover three-fourths of the planet’s area. The closest thus far to achieving this is China, one of the world’s largest countries with the most people and with serious concerns over potable water supplies despite its mountains, deserts and seacoast. To date, the costs of such purification and desalination in both money and environmental harm have made them impractical.

When UNICEF sought to substantiate its use of the Under-Five-Mortality-Rate (U5MR) – the number of children at age five per any country’s 1,000 live births – as a barometer of a nation’s well-being, it found two other measurements that corroborated the U5MR – the literacy rate and the percentage of its population that had access to potable water. The literacy rate indicated the role of a society’s education system as a mark of social progress; the clean water supply indicated the standing of its health authorities.

What UNICEF was saying is: if you show me a country with an acceptable U5MR, I will show you one run by a reasonably people-oriented government with meaningful health and education services. The U5MR, literacy level and drinkable water availability match up in all 189 UN member nations.

When oil supply is compromised, we turn to coal or other energy substitutes. Eventually, when the wind and sun are harnessed, fossil fuels will become dinosaurs and be limited to quieting a squeaky hinge somewhere. But water will never lose one iota of its importance. Like sleep and air, there are no substitutes.

But most significantly, water has now become a political and economic trophy.

For eye-opening and thought-provoking data, read Blue Gold by Maude Barlow and see what is happening. Bad enough that we have come to a point where privatization is taking over health care and education. Water is now on the agenda.

As Barlow and others are warning, water, taken for granted by most of us, is now known to be finite. If privatization plans of the cabal that sets economic policy in the world do not change, the dry well will come sooner rather than later.

Corporate and factory farming, urbanization, ever-increasing pollution and uncontrolled waste-dumping by the industrial powers onto the Third World coastlines are all depleting potable water supplies as we speak. And there is no relief in sight. Under NAFTA, GATT and the WTO, all acronyms for the mechanisms of capitalist global expansion, the transnationals are plotting daily to use more of the earth for their avaricious plans, which translates into less drinkable water.

Barlow notes that, at the present rate, by 2025 the world’s thirsty people could actually be buying their daily water supplies from some conglomerate that has “bought up” the sources and the people would have to queue up with empty pails and filled purses just to stay alive.

Water’s significance has gotten lost in the Middle East shuffle. But an astute analysis of the conflict cannot deny or exaggerate the importance of water.

The Israeli occupation and retention of the Golan Heights, for example, has been nonnegotiable for every administration in Tel Aviv. One reason surely is that the Heights has one of the largest water reserves in the region.

The peace process in the Jordan Basin cannot be meaningful unless the deliberation includes access to potable water supplies. For without this, whatever land, borders and rights to exist are won, the victory will be Pyrrhic indeed.

The next time you turn on the tap, remember that the people must stay alert in the struggle for our rights, our freedoms, our privacy … and our water.

Don Sloan is assistant editor of Political Affairs. He can be reached at donsloan@whereitis.com

Build the mass movement against war

Fri, 14 Mar 2003 06:03:00 +0000

Opinion

At some point in the development of all things, quantitative change gives way to qualitative change. This is evident in the transformation of water (liquid) into steam (gas). Heat is added to the water (quantitative change). The temperature of the water rises, but the water remains liquid. It remains liquid, that is, until its temperature reaches that critical point where its essence is transformed – it becomes steam (qualitative change). Thus the water has actually changed in quality from liquid to gas because of the increase in the quantity of heat applied to it.

This transformation can also be observed in the development of society. For instance, when televisions were first invented, few people could afford to own one. But as the price of TVs went down (quantitative change) and enough people’s disposable income went up (quantitative change) that TV ownership became commonplace, the Age of Television was born (qualitative change). Thus our society went from a time when radio was king to an era when the television became the primary means of mass communication due to a decrease in cost and an increase in income.

These transformations are occurring constantly. We are part of one right now. As the masses of people opposed to war against Iraq continue to increase (quantitative change), there will come a critical point in time when our peace thinking and growing demonstrations transform us into a material force on the world stage (qualitative change). No longer just disparate groups of protesters, we will become the global material force that has the power to stop this war and end all wars. To end all exploitation. To end all injustice. We will become the force to ensure a sane and just future, for all of the people of this planet, not just the privileged few.

The Tucson Club, Communist Party USA, can be reached at pww@pww.org. This article is from a flyer the club handed out at the annual Tucson Peace Fair.

Voice from the dark corners: We will fight pre-emptive strikes

Fri, 14 Mar 2003 05:58:00 +0000

Opinion

These are hard times we are living in. In recent months, we have more than once heard chilling words and statements. In his speech to West Point graduating cadets on June 1, 2002, the United States president declared: “Our security will require transforming the military you will lead, a military that must be ready to strike at a moment’s notice in any dark corner of the world.”

That same day, he proclaimed the doctrine of the pre-emptive strike, something no one had ever done in the political history of the world. A few months later, referring to the unnecessary and almost certain military action against Iraq, he said: “And if war is forced upon us, we will fight with the full force and might of the United States army.”

That statement was not made by the government of a small and weak nation, but by the leader of the richest and mightiest military power that has ever existed, which possesses thousands of nuclear weapons, enough to obliterate the world’s population several times over – and other terrifying conventional military systems and weapons of mass destruction.

That is what we are: dark corners of the world. That is the perception some have of the Third World nations. Never before had anyone offered a better definition; no one had shown such contempt. The former colonies of powers that divided the world among them and plundered it for centuries today make up the group of underdeveloped countries.

There is nothing like full independence, fair treatment on an equal footing or national security for any of us; none is a permanent member of the UN Security Council with a veto right; none has any possibility of being involved in the decisions of the international financial institutions; none can keep its best talents; none can protect itself from capital flight or the destruction of nature and the environment caused by the squandering, selfish and insatiable consumerism of the economically developed countries.

After the last global carnage in the 1940s, we were promised a world of peace, a reduction of the gap between the rich and poor and the assistance of the highly developed to the less developed countries. It was all a huge lie. We had imposed on us an unsustainable and unbearable world order.

The world is being driven into a dead end. Within hardly 150 years, the oil and gas it took the planet 300 million years to accumulate will have been depleted. In just 100 years, the world population has grown from 1.5 billion to over 6 billion people, who will have to depend on energy sources that are still to be researched and developed. Poverty continues to grow while old and new diseases threaten whole nations with annihilation. The world’s soil is being eroded and losing its fertility; the climate is changing; the air that we breathe, drinking water and the seas are increasingly contaminated.

Authority is being wrenched away from the United Nations, its established procedures are being obstructed and the organization itself destroyed; development assistance is being reduced; there are continuous demands on the Third World countries to pay a $2.5 trillion debt that cannot be paid under the present circumstances, while 1 trillion dollars are spent in ever more sophisticated and deadly weapons. Why and for what?

A similar amount is spent on commercial advertising, sowing consumerist longings that cannot be satisfied in the minds of billions of people. Why and for what? For the first time the human species is running a real risk of extinction due to the insane behavior of the very same human beings, who are thus becoming the victims of this “civilization.”

However, no one will fight for us, that is, for the overwhelming majority; only we will do it. Only we can save humanity ourselves, with the support of millions of manual and intellectual workers from the developed nations who are conscious of the catastrophes befalling their peoples. Only we can do it by sowing ideas, building awareness and mobilizing global and North American public opinion. No one needs to be told this. You know it very well. Our most sacred duty is to fight, and fight we will.

Fidel Castro is president of the Republic of Cuba. This is an edited version of the speech given at the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Feb. 25.

PDF version of 'Voice from the dark corners: We will fight pre-emptive strikes'

Behind Korean crisis is a New World Order

Fri, 14 Mar 2003 04:42:00 +0000

Commentary

George W. Bush and White House foreign policy are following the overall strategy of establishing a “New World Order” in which U.S. imperialism will dominate the world through war and military control. The crisis in the Korean peninsula is part of this overall strategy.

During its early days, the administration stirred up the region by invading China’s airspace. And now, through a media assault, lies and military threats. it is trying to destabilize North Korea to such a point that it can be used as a platform to extend U.S. domination into the region, beginning with the dismantling of these two socialist states. Having suffered horrific economic damage during the past decade due to the destruction of the Soviet Union, natural disasters and imperialist sanctions, North Korea is viewed as a weak link among the countries struggling for national sovereignty. The present crisis has its roots in the overall policy of the U.S. toward North Korea and goes back many decades. The last crisis, which had the two countries at the brink of war, ended with the intervention of former president Jimmy Carter and the signing of the “Agreed Framework” (AF) in Geneva in October of 1994.

In the AF, North Korea agreed to stop its graphite-moderated reactors and permitted the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to monitor the facilities. In return, the U.S. agreed to build a light water reactor (LWR) by the year 2003. An LWR can produce 2,000 megawatts of electricity, satisfying North Korean needs for electric power and, unlike a graphite-moderated reactor, which produces plutonium, an LWR cannot produce nuclear weapons material. The LWR was not a gift from the U.S.; it was to be financed by Japan and South Korea with stringent financing guidelines. The U.S. also agreed to deliver heavy crude oil until the completion of the project. Furthermore, the U.S. agreed not to threaten North Korea with nuclear weapons and to enter talks for normalization of relations. But, for a project that takes eight years, only the first layer of concrete has been poured. In effect, the U.S. intentionally has extended and expanded North Korea’s crisis for at least 16 years.

With Bush in office, administration officials stated they would never accept the AF and stopped all contacts. In his 2002 State of the Union address, Bush labeled North Korea, along with Iraq and Iran, as nations forming the “axis of evil.” Three months later, the Pentagon delivered its Nuclear Posture Review to Congress, naming North Korea as well as Russia, China, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya as countries targeted by nuclear weapons.

Under pressure from the region, a year and half later Bush sent Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly to make contact with North Korea. In the meetings, Kelly arrogantly accused the North Koreans of building nuclear weapons and violating the “Agreed Framework.” He demanded that North Korea stop its nuclear weapons programs, saying until these demands were satisfied there would be no room for talks.

Addressing the nuclear concerns, North Koreans presented Kelly with three demands: 1) the U.S. recognizes the sovereignty of North Korea; 2) the U.S. does not impose economic sanctions; and 3) the U.S. does not attack North Korea.

First Deputy Foreign Minister Kang Sokju reminded Kelly that North Korea was entitled to have nuclear weapons to ensure its security if the U.S. continued threatening it. In fact, Article X of the Non-Proliferation Treaty states that “each party shall in exercising its national sovereignty have the right to withdraw from the treaty if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country.”

In response, Kelly repeated his demands and continued his rude behavior. A few days later, the Bush administration filled the airwaves with the lie that the North Koreans admitted to having nuclear weapons. The facts are North Korea, as confirmed by the IAEA, had complied with the AF.

Last November, Kelly told China and South Korea the U.S. intended to exert maximum pressure on North Korea and it would not construct the LWR power plant. He pressed Japan and South Korea to completely abandon the project. While Kelly was in Asia, another U.S. representative, John Bolton, traveled to France, Britain and Russia trying to lay the groundwork for economic sanctions.

Having reached a dead-end, Bush started to push the crisis to a new climax by pressuring Japan and South Korea to stop the shipment of heavy oil. The three countries could not reach an agreement and postponed a decision until the meeting of the Korean Energy Development Organization (KEDO) scheduled for Nov. 14, 2002. But the night before, Bush ordered the shipments to be halted and in doing so forced the other two countries into submission and put the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings at risk of freezing and starvation.

North Korea asks for direct talks with the U.S., a peace treaty, and normalization of relations. But peace and friendship are not parts of Bush’s “New World Order” strategy.

Adel Rasheed is a peace activist andcan be reached at pww@pww.org

Women and capitalism

Fri, 07 Mar 2003 10:30:00 +0000

One hundred twenty-eight years after the first protest of New York city’s women garment workers, against sweatshop work, the life and working conditions of women in most parts of the world are still the same and thanks to capitalism have worsened in some ways.

In recent years, due to World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund and World Bank regulations and various free-trade agreements that are being forcefully imposed upon nearly all nations, exploitation and modern slavery is rampant and hits more vulnerable parts of society – women and children – harder.

For instance, in Quebec (Canada), some women workers are forced to work ten-hour workdays and are harassed during work time. This has caused stress, body and back pain and other side effects.

For another example, due to the detrimental effects of unemployment on women and particularly on single-parent mothers, many of them are forced to become homeless and hence abandoned.

In December, ABC News reported that many new homeless people are women and children. The report showed women participating in a draw every night to win a place in a shelter. Those who do not win are those who die in the streets in cold weather. In Minneapolis, 92 such people died in the streets last fall, and this merely in autumn weather conditions.

In eastern Europe and the so-called developing countries, living conditions of many women are really sad. A BBC report last year told how unemployment and poverty are making many girls and young women easy prey for cheap labor and sex-traders. A United Nations report says that each year more than one million young girls are sold to multi-billion dollar sex-trade operators, ending up in prostitution.

These are only a few examples of the ever-worsening human life under capitalism. To restore and promote a decent life for all humankind, we have to unite and struggle against capitalism, the main culprit in endless human misery.

H. Salari is a doctor and a member of the Communist Party of Canada (Quebec). He can be reached at pww@pww.org

Memo from a wannabe messiah

Fri, 07 Mar 2003 10:26:00 +0000

To: Dick, Don and Paul

From: W.

Re: Ruling the world

I am very confused. I am also very angry. You promised me that I would get to rule the world. That I am good and those who aren’t with me are evil. You said we were on a mission to spread my good and I could be the new messiah. But things aren’t going that way.

First that German guy gets elected by saying he isn’t with me, and calls me Hitler-like. So then you tell me to ignore him – we would get him back later. Then that snotty French guy says our plans are not good, but evil. You told me we would stop buying French wine and that would get them.

Now these Turks say we can’t put our soldiers over there. What are we supposed to do now? Stop eating turkey?

I don’t understand – it was all supposed to go like the song: Onward Christian soldiers, marching off to war, with the cross of Jesus … that’s how it’s supposed to work. That’s what you told me. And I get to lead it all, because I’m the chosen son. But I think dad likes Jeb better right now.

And how about that terrorist and evil-lover Dan Rather? I can’t believe he’s from Texas. What does he think he’s doing interviewing evil Saddam. That man tried to kill my daddy. I am so angry I could bomb something. Don – can you get on that? What kind of bombs can I use on CBS headquarters? After all I am the messiah-in-chief.

This is the best job I have ever had. All these people around me bringing me things, telling me things I never knew – like Brazil having Black people. That was a new one to me. I love that airplane I get to fly around in. I love going around and making speeches about good versus evil and having people clap for me. I don’t like it when people don’t do what we tell them to do. I get so angry.

Don’t people know that I just want to bring the good news of how my faith changed my heart? I can’t stand this idea that government shouldn’t promote my faith. Whoever thought up separating the two?

I also don’t like people making fun of how stupid I am. Can we get John on that? I think anyone who makes fun of the President should go before those cool military tribunals that we talked about. Jokes about me just aid the terrorists. Whoever thought up the joke about me and my library only having two books, one of them I wasn’t done coloring, should be shot. That is giving terrorists too much information.

Some people say I have never worked a day in my life, and that I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Don’t they know that I work hard at the ranch? Posing for those photos is hard work.

And even all those areas that voted for me – those big red spots on that map – are complaining about what I’m doing. I’m going to ignore those special interest groups that demonstrate – what are they called again? Oh yeah, the American people, I’m just going to ignore them. But calling me, Dick and Don the axis of evil really makes me mad. I’m getting Karl on that right away.

I’ll keep listening to you guys because you have a lot of smarts and know important people who help us out. All those CEOs, and those folks from the Christian Coalition – they seem really nice and good. But can you do something about all these people who aren’t going along with us? All these churches? I may have to stop going to that Methodist church. Don’t they understand I am good and those who don’t agree are evil and with the terrorists?

I also want the FBI to watch the prayers at the Cabinet meeting. I want to know who doesn’t have their head down low enough or isn’t praying hard enough. I think I saw Colin look up once.

Terrie Albano is the associate editor of the PWW/Mundo and wants to learn how to write comedy. She can be reached at talbano@pww.org

Steel fencing is not the answer on the border

Fri, 07 Mar 2003 10:19:00 +0000

Opinion

I live less than 100 miles north of the border with Mexico. All my life I’ve experienced U.S. Immigration efforts to control the migrant stream of Mexican workers traveling north across the border looking for jobs and the benefits those jobs are able to provide – things like better working conditions, better education for their children, better health care and housing. These are the things our America is about. Is there anything criminal about such activity? No. What is criminal is to be denied privileges or rights.

The freedom to travel, to search for a better job and a better life, is what our America is all about. When these things are denied or subverted by U.S. employers, American workers organize and form unions to enable themselves to exert collective power in order to obtain all of the above.

Once upon a time immigrants were welcomed with open arms. In fact all kinds of devices and methods were developed to make sure the young country being built had a sufficient source of labor power at hand. The Statue of Liberty which stands in New York City’s harbor is a testament to the welcome given to arriving immigrants. Inscribed on the statue are these words of appreciation: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free!”

There are no such statues on our west coast, our northern border with Canada, or our southern border with Mexico. However this does not mean that the poor and huddled masses have not been coming across the north, west or southern borders. Millions were brought in by the trainload from Mexico in years past when our young country was expanding in all directions. Workers were recruited worldwide once upon a time!

In the early 1900s, spurred by American Nativism and anti-immigrant phobia, the U.S government initiated immigrant control legislation. This led to the formation of the present Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Militarization of the agency was soon to follow. Today the U.S. Border Patrol uses extensive military tactics to enforce its control, especially heavily on the border with Mexico, with steel fences, trenches, surveillance cameras, searchlights, sensors, databases, all-terrain vehicles, helicopters and other military paraphernalia. Instead of welcome statues, it’s more like the appearance of the military-constructed line that separates North and South Korea!

Is this democracy? Does this symbolize an open democratic society that President Bush boasts about when he appears on our TV set? If it is, God forbid, then what is the future for our children and grandchildren?

Are metal fences strung for miles upon miles across the deserts and mountains on our southern border symbols of democracy? Is the ever-increasing militarization of the INS a symbol of democracy? Does democracy come from the barrel of a gun? No, I don’t buy it. I never have.

Rather than symbols of democracy they are symbols of oppression, severe oppression. The kind of oppression that has already caused us 165 deaths in the Arizona deserts. All are symbols of a closed society! They are symbols of fear and xenophobia! Finally, they are symbols of a desperate dying society.

No! Steel fences and extensive militarization will not do the trick.

They will not stop the natural flow of human beings – workers – in search of a better life. Workers will not submit passively to dying of hunger. They will fight back even if they lose their life in the process.

What is needed is a radical change in foreign policy, a good neighbor policy designed to eliminate poverty, disease and hunger. A good start in that direction is to dismantle the steel fences!

Lorenzo Torrez is chair of the Communist Party of Arizona. He can be reached at LpTorrez@aol.com

Neighbors on the corner: Skip the war

Fri, 07 Mar 2003 10:11:00 +0000

Opinion

It is one thing to protest the Bush war stampede in Washington D.C., San Francisco or at a city – or county-wide march; it is quite another to demonstrate on a street corner on your home turf – before family, friends, neighbors and local businesses. Street corner peace vigils are popping like microwave popcorn.

Just up the street from our house is a major Pittsburgh intersection, Forbes and Braddock Avenues. It started with a couple of young women and now is a steady group of about 20. There are no meetings, no permits – all are welcomed. There are just announcements on poles, a squib in the newspaper and word of mouth. For about an hour, every week, we encourage motorists to “Honk for peace” and they do. It is loud.

One thing about the peace sentiment, there is no vehicle demarcation. BMWs, mini-vans, police cars, buses, cabs, pickup trucks, salt trucks and plows, Hondas, Chevys, Escorts, Saturns, semis, late model cars and those from the last century lean on their horn, flash the peace sign, wave, hold up their fist or give a thumbs-up. Only once in a great while does a motorist get ugly.

“Skip the war,” shouts a group of students as they skip through the intersection when all traffic is stopped for pedestrian crossing. Motorists smile, laugh and envy youthful energy in the cold and flurries. The students high-kick and someone counts heads to make sure all are safely back on the sidewalks. There are patches of ice on the street.

The “impeach Bush” signs are popular.

We are just getting to know one another. For an hour we hold up our signs and banners, focused on opening an outlet to the people to proclaim peace. At the end, we just hurry off to get warm. Slowly, faces nestled deep in scarves and hats are becoming familiar, names exchanged. There are new people every week, veterans of the intersection and folks who miss and return. This week a Methodist minister and a Catholic priest took their spots on the corner. We look like a neighborhood.

Neighbors and friends stop, roll down their windows for a second to “Say Hey!”

This week, there was a minor kickback. Some guy showed up wearing a box, apparently just a large cardboard box, with nasty name calling printed on it. He ran through the group and people just stepped out of his way, ignoring him. He looked grim. He started yelling and someone reminded him that children were present and there is a noise ordinance. He got bored and left.

Meanwhile, horns blew and motorists waved, not knowing what to make of the man in the box.

Like thousands in Savannah, Ga., and Minneapolis, Minn.; Las Vegas, Nev., and Nashville, Tenn., and Tampa, Fla., and Kansas City, Mo., we are staying on the corner, in the neighborhood, for all to see, until the troops come home and the Bush war drive ends.

Denise Winebrenner Edwards is a member of the Editorial Board of the People’s Weekly World and a Wilinsburg Borough City Council member.

She can be reached at DWinebr696@aol.com

In Presque Isle, Maine, a child speaks for peace

Fri, 07 Mar 2003 10:07:00 +0000

Opinion

When people think about bombing Iraq, they see a picture in their heads of Saddam Hussein in a military uniform, or maybe soldiers with big black mustaches carrying guns, or the mosaic of George Bush Sr. on the lobby floor of the Al-Rashid Hotel with the word “criminal.” But guess what? More than half of Iraq’s 24 million people are children under the age of 15.

That’s 12 million kids. Kids like me. Well, I’m almost 13, so some are a little older, and some a lot younger, some boys instead of girls, some with brown hair, not red. But kids who are pretty much like me just the same.

So take a look at me – a good long look. Because I am what you should see in your head when you think about bombing Iraq. I am what you are going to destroy.

If I am lucky, I will be killed instantly, like the three hundred children murdered by your “smart” bombs in a Baghdad bomb shelter on February 16, 1991.

The blast caused a fire so intense that it flash-burned outlines of those children and their mothers on the walls; you can still peel strips of blackened skin – souvenirs of your victory – from the stones.

But maybe I won’t be lucky and I’ll die slowly, like 14-year-old Ali Faisal, who right now is on the “death ward” of the Baghdad children’s hospital. He has malignant lymphoma (cancer) caused by the depleted uranium in your Gulf War missiles.

Or maybe I will die painfully and needlessly like 18-month-old Mustafa, whose vital organs are being devoured by sand fly parasites. I know it’s hard to believe, but Mustafa could be totally cured with just $25 worth of medicine, but there is none of this medicine because of your sanctions.

Or maybe I won’t die at all but will live for years with the psychological damage that you can’t see from the outside, like Salman Mohammed, who even now can’t forget the terror he lived through with his little sisters when you bombed Iraq in 1991.

Salman’s father made the whole family sleep in the same room so that they would all survive together, or die together. He still has nightmares about the air raid sirens.

Or maybe I will be orphaned like Ali, who was three when you killed his father in the Gulf War. Ali scraped at the dirt covering his father’s grave every day for three years calling out to him, “It’s all right Daddy, you can come out now, the men who put you here have gone away.” Well, Ali, you’re wrong. It looks like those men are coming back.

Maybe I will make it in one piece, like Luay Majed, who remembers that the Gulf War meant he didn’t have to go to school and could stay up as late as he wanted. But today, with no education, he tries to live by selling newspapers on the street.

Imagine that these are your children – or nieces or nephews or neighbors. Imagine your son screaming from the agony of a severed limb, but you can’t do anything to ease the pain or comfort him.

Imagine your daughter crying out from under the rubble of a collapsed building, but you can’t get to her.

Imagine your children wandering the streets, hungry and alone, after having watched you die before their eyes.

This is not an adventure movie or a fantasy or a video game. This is reality for children in Iraq.

Recently, an international group of researchers went to Iraq to find out how children there are being affected by the possibility of war. Half the children they talked to said they saw no point in living any more. Even really young kids knew about war and worried about it.

One 5-year-old, Assem, described it as “guns and bombs and the air will be cold and hot and we will burn very much.” Ten-year-old Aesar had a message for President Bush: he wanted him to know that “A lot of Iraqi children will die. You will see it on TV and then you will regret.”

Back in elementary school I was taught to solve problems with other kids not by hitting or name-calling, but by talking and using “I” messages. The idea of an “I” message was to make the other person understand how bad his or her actions made you feel, so that the person would sympathize with you and stop it.

Now I am going to give you an “I” message.

Only it’s going to be a “We” message. “We” as in all the children in Iraq who are waiting helplessly for something bad to happen. “We” as in the children of the world who don’t make any of the decisions but have to suffer all the consequences. “We” as in those whose voices are too small and to far away to be heard.

We feel scared when we don’t know if we’ll live another day.

We feel angry when people want to kill us or injure us or steal our future.

We feel sad because all we want is a mom and a dad who we know will be there the next day.

And, finally, we feel confused because we don’t even know what we did wrong.

Charlotte Aldebron, 12, attends Cunningham Middle School in Presque Isle, Maine. She gave this speech Feb. 15 at St. Mary’s Church in Presque Isle. Comments may be sent to Charlotte’s mom, Jillian Aldebron: aldebron@ainop.com

Marx and critics

Fri, 07 Mar 2003 06:52:00 +0000

In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx warned that Communism was haunting Europe. While many writers have proclaimed the death of Communism, Karl Marx continues to haunt intellectuals. Two recent articles – one in The Economist (Dec. 21, 2002) and the other in Foreign Policy (Nov.-Dec. 2002) – grudgingly concede the continued interest and respect for the thinking of Karl Marx.

But it is not just intellectuals who hold the old master in high esteem. The same article from The Economist cites a BBC poll to determine the greatest thinkers. Marx won over Einstein, Newton and Darwin. Not bad for a fiercely independent thinker who never sought the approval of the rich, powerful and respectable.

Marx’s persistent popularity and influence are even more remarkable in light of the almost total absence of his name and works from the television studios, the news magazines, and the daily press. Despite every effort to marginalize, trivialize, or simply ignore his thought, Marx’s ideas continue to inspire and move masses of people.

Working often with his close collaborator, Frederich Engels, Marx left a remarkable body of work that covers an enormous field of research. Marx’s critics – often hired intellectual assassins – typically parody his thought, ignoring the subtlety of his arguments.

For example, Joshua Muravchik, in the Foreign Policy article, mocks the idea that Marx’s method or his views were “scientific.” What he fails to point out is that Marx viewed his theories as scientific because they were not inspired by moral indignation like the views of utopian socialists, but were grounded in a careful study of history and laws of human development that Marx believed that he had exposed.

Drawing upon the most advanced science of the time – the works of anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, biologist Charles Darwin and others – Marx and Engels located their approach in the same tradition. Though we may dispute – in light of subsequent research – many of the conclusions of Morgan and Darwin, no one but a fool would challenge their stature as scientists. And likewise for Marx.

To further bolster his attack upon Marx’s method, Muravchick caricatures Marx’s view of scientific prediction, labeling it “prophecy.” He writes Marx and Engels “believed they had discovered a pattern to history that would produce socialism regardless of human will or ingenuity.”

This gets it exactly backwards: Marx and Engels believed they had discovered a pattern to history that would produce socialism because of human will and ingenuity. They believed that they had discovered the laws of social development that would impel people to make decisions and innovate. Muravchick confuses fatalism with scientific determinism. Marx didn’t.

And the author of the article in The Economist, though less shrill in tone, equally takes Marx to task: The class war is over thanks to “private property, liberal political rights and the market.”

Maybe, maybe not. Though I think the old man would view that statement as a leap of faith and not grounded in an understanding of the laws of social development. Instead, he would point to class conflict in Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Palestine, Southern Africa, and every other place where workers struggle against exploitation and oppression.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org

Kill the subway fare hike with kindness

Fri, 07 Mar 2003 06:44:00 +0000

Worker’s Correspondence

BRONX, N.Y. – It all started when my family was visiting New York. They wanted to see all the sights: Times Square, Coney Island, the Staten Island Ferry, Chinatown; so we got them unlimited Metro passes. But, as we were leaving Chinatown headed to FAO Schwarz, we got stuck.

We went through one of those revolving cage door turnstiles, the kind that goes from head to foot to thwart would-be turnstile hurdlers. But as my uncle swiped his Metrocard, he hesitated, as many people do when approaching a revolving door, and let the cage door turn empty.

There we were: aunt, cousin and tour guide on one side of the bars, ready to catch the uptown train, and my uncle alone on the other side. Even though he had an unlimited-ride card, it would not work again for 17 minutes. A New Yorker, seeing our predicament, took out his unlimited card and handed it to my uncle, who swiped through.

It was then that I realized that this act of kindness could be expanded and spread everywhere. I began offering strangers a free pass as I exited the system for all the buses that never showed up, all the stuck trains and trains out of service, all the crowded, sweaty trains, all the transfers I never used because service was too slow.

As a Communist, I believe public transportation should be free since it contributes to the economy, reduces congestion and pollution. Subway and bus fares are really a hidden tax on working people. What makes this tax burden worse is that government often does not provide the funds for quality service. Since mass transit insures that workers are able to quickly and efficiently get to work, let the employers pay.

It wasn’t easy, at first, for New Yorkers to accept kindness from a stranger. They were wary, looking for my angle, then pleasantly surprised when there was no catch. Now, I’m an expert at sharing. At the end of the week, when my unlimited card is about to expire, I hand it to someone as I’m leaving.

But now the MTA is pushing to increase the fare to $2 per ride. This from a country that is giving huge tax breaks to the wealthiest and paying billions for war on Iraq. We must fight this tax on working people in every way, even killing the increase with kindness, until our subway system is free. Until then, New York might get the reputation of having the most considerate working-class in the world. Hey, under Communism anything is possible.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org