People Before Profit blog

Houstonians say fund human needs, not war

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 10:03:00 +0000

HOUSTON — About 300 activists for justice gathered at City Hall in downtown Houston on March 24 to demand full funding for human needs programs and an end to the war in Iraq.

During a march through downtown Houston, the diverse group of participants chanted, “What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Right now!”

The Coalition of Working People and the Poor called the action. It was supported by a broad coalition of labor, civil rights, religious and peace organizations, including the NAACP, AFL-CIO, Justice for Janitors, Children’s Defense Fund and Houston Peace and Justice Center. The coalition is led by Bishop James Dixon II of the Community of Faith Church.

Herb Rothschild of the Houston Peace and Justice Center told the crowd, “We need a minimum wage raise so working people can support their families.” He also called for health care and quality education for children.

Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) told the audience that we need a policy to bring the troops home safely from Iraq. He said he and Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, both of Houston, voted to bring the troops home safely in the recent bill that passed in the House of Representatives.

Green said, “We must not allow the well-off, the well-heeled and the well-to-do to fare well at the expense of the least and the last and the lost.” He called for a raise in the minimum wage so that people can say, “farewell to welfare!”

Bishop James Dixon II acknowledged the “rainbow” nature of the coalition. He quoted John Edgar Wideman in his introduction to the book “The Souls of Black Folk” by W.E.B. Du Bois: “America’s pretensions to greatness will remain just pretensions until the benefits of freedom, democracy and opportunity are enjoyed by all of our citizens.”

Dixon said, “We are not going to be quiet until freedom, democracy and opportunity are accessible on an equal basis to all of America’s citizens.”

phill2 @ houston.rr.com

Tickets too high, Cuban singer cancels in Chile

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 08:48:00 +0000

Hours before he was to have gone on stage in Talca, Chile, renowned Cuban singer Silvio Rodriguez announced the cancellation of a concert set for March 9. He now faces legal action for allegedly violating consumer protection laws. The incident resurrects the unsolved problem of providing culture for all when access is bought and sold.

Over four decades, Rodriguez, now 60, has come to epitomize the combination of folk music and the symbolic, politicized lyrics known as “nueva troya,” which has become widely popular in Latin America.

The concert would have been Rodriguez’ fifth in Chile during March, completing his tenth tour of the country. Letters to the city government complaining of high ticket prices appeared in newspapers, one referring to “shame and mockery of the people.” Plans had emerged for a street demonstration outside the theater during the concert.

Tickets for the sold-out concert cost the equivalent of $80 to $112 apiece. According to Santiago activist Elizabeth Henríquez, “that amount of money represents half of a monthly wage for any average worker.” Observers say that over 30 percent of the people in the Talca region live in poverty.

Rodriguez offered to reimburse Multimusica, organizer of the concert, for administrative costs that included paybacks to ticket holders, who received an apology from the singer. The office of Chilean President Michelle Bachelet offered to stage a free concert in another city. Rodriguez turned that down because of legal and scheduling considerations.

Multimusica wants Rodriguez to return to Talca to carry out the concert obligation. A few admirers, even some who protested the high prices, criticized him for lack of flexibility.

The singer-songwriter first toured Chile in 1972 when he sang several free concerts. He returned in 1990, after the fall of the Pinochet dictatorship, to give a concert with Chucho Valdés in Santiago’s National Stadium before 80,000 people. He has provided other free concerts, one of them a tribute to Che Guevera.

Rodriguez claims that in February he asked tour organizers to set up a free concert, a plea he reiterated at a press conference on his first day in Chile and later at a meeting with Chilean cultural and political figures. He had introduced the idea at a meeting with President Bachelet in February.

This time Rodriguez arrived in Chile after a successful concert in Lima, Peru, where he received an honorary degree from San Marcos University. Referring to a “media flurry” over protests first against high prices and later over the cancellation, he seemed to suggest that his popularity and honors had generated hostility. “Now I believe that they wanted to politicize this visit with the Chilean people,” he told La Nacion after he left, but the “politicization is not against me but is against Cuba.”

Manuel Jacques, head of Chile’s Christian Left, praised Rodriguez’s decision as an example of “ethics and humility,” adding that “access to culture and recreation” is “one of the fundamental rights. It’s a duty of the state to honor that right.” For Communist Party leader Juan Andrés Lagos, Silvio Rodriguez was teaching that “one lives not only by money, but also out of dignity and decency.”

Rodriguez plans to return to Chile in 2010 for the 20th anniversary of his landmark National Stadium concert. Asked if that concert would be free, he said admission fees would be necessary because of rental costs, but that doing a free concert in a public plaza might be possible. He pointed out that “in capitalism the selling is always possible, but they make the giving-away part difficult.”

atwhit @ megalink.net

Personal favorites in a cinema wonderland

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 08:44:00 +0000

Over the past several months I’ve reviewed a wide spectrum of movies that appeared at last September’s Toronto International Film Festival. This is my final installment, and it features my personal favorites.

“Primo Levi’s Journey” is a documentary that follows the same eight-month route Primo Levi took upon his release from the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1945 before returning home to Turin, Italy. He wrote about it in his book “The Truce,” which was later made into a movie of the same title.

The journey takes the audience through Eastern Europe and several former Soviet republics, and allows us to compare what life was like immediately after World War II with the current post-Soviet experience.

With a narrative voice-over of excerpts from Levi’s writings, including his classic memoir “If This Is Man,” the viewer is drawn to the ironies of the region and the changes that have taken place over the decades. It’s a fascinating study of a bygone era and remarkable man — an Italian Communist and a learned survivor of the Holocaust.

“A Few Days In September” is a French thriller featuring John Turturro, Juliette Binoche and Nick Nolte. Nolte plays a former CIA agent. The plot takes us on a wild romp through Europe, chasing insider-trading deals, political intrigue and cold-blooded murders by a psychotic Turturro.

It all fits into the pre-9/11 timeframe, focusing on the days before the attack on the World Trade Center. Nolte plays a mysterious agent with secret information who urges major Arab investors to pull out of the market as soon as possible. The strong performances and political implications in the plot make this film a cut above your average thriller.

Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, “After The Wedding,” tells the story of a disenchanted Dane who leaves for India to run an orphanage. In his attempt to gain funding for the orphanage, he is drawn back to Denmark to seek financial support from a flamboyant industrialist. He discovers the industrialist’s wife is the woman who scorned him years ago and led to his flight from home.

It sounds like a soap opera, but the role of the industrialist, rendered in an extraordinary performance by Rolf Lassgard, is so well developed and so loaded with political innuendo that the movie turns into a powerful study of the corruption of wealth and the abuse of power, especially in the area of funding for vital social agencies. And actor Mads Mikkelsen, better known as the new James Bond, puts in a stunningly controlled performance as the headmaster of the orphanage.

“The Caiman” is by progressive Italian director Nanni Moretti, who has been absent from the screen for too long. Here he offers a political satire of the Silvio Berlusconi regime, which, for a change, does not feature Moretti as an actor.

Loaded with hilarious scenes featuring Silvio Orlando, the film offers a scathing indictment of the right-wing media magnate Berlusconi. Incorporating some of Moretti’s signature quotes from previous films, and utilizing his “film within a film” technique, this production might go over the heads of those with little knowledge of Italian politics. But it can still be rewarding on a purely entertainment level.

“The Italian” is a bleak but heartrending film from present-day Russia, featuring the amazing 6-year-old actor Kolya Spiridonov.

Vanya, played by Spiridonov, has known nothing in life except the dismal existence of life in an orphanage that time has forgotten. Vague memories of his mother form the background of his decision to either accept a future with an adoptive Italian family or pursue the possibility of finding his real family. In the process of his escape from the gang-ridden orphanage, which sustains itself on questionable adoptive procedures and the exploitation of children, Vanya’s journey allows us to see the dreadful collapse of a system that once held such promise. Powerfully acted and directed, this movie is reminiscent of the best Soviet social realist dramas.

“Mon Colonel” attempts to bring the lost history of the Algerian War of Independence to light. France, the colonial occupier, is guilty of torture in the Algerian war. With a screenplay by noted filmmaker Costa-Gavras, this feature is yet another examination of war crimes perpetrated by soldiers who are only “following orders.”

This political thriller is an indictment of the abuses and war crimes created by the French “war on terrorism” in Algeria, and the parallel with our current situation is unmistakable. It’s not to be missed.

As the many reviews that I’ve written over these months make clear, there is a wonderland of world cinema for progressive viewers out there. They only need to be sought out.

Film festivals are often the only venue to experience works of art that may never be seen at mainstream U.S. theaters. So check out your nearest festival and, if you ever have the chance, take a trip to Toronto to experience the Western Hemisphere’s greatest presentation of films.

Father of Marine fasts for peace

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 08:42:00 +0000

SAN DIEGO — Four years ago, March 27, 2003, Jesus Alberto Suarez, 20, became one of the first casualties of the invasion of Iraq. Since then, his father, Fernando Suarez del Solar, has dedicated himself to protesting the war and bringing it to an end, declaring “Bush killed my son. I blame him.”

On March 27 this year, Suarez began a two-day fast outside the Federal Building here, in remembrance of the two hours his son, a Marine in Iraq, bled to death while waiting for medical assistance after stepping on a cluster bomb fragment. Fernando said, “I cannot bleed for two hours but I can fast for two days in order to protest the deaths of our young soldiers and marines as well as those of innocent Iraqi children. I also fast to oppose the sending of more U.S. troops.”

Interviewed during the fast, Suarez told the World his son was raised in an activist family in Tijuana, Mexico, where Fernando, who now lives in San Diego, worked for the rights of immigrants and Mexico’s working poor. When Jesus was aggressively recruited by the U.S. military at the age of 17, he was developing a strong sense of social justice and a commitment to serve, with an interest in studying law to defend the rights of those most vulnerable, his father said.

Suarez said he saw changes in his son over his short time in the military, watching a formerly happy and caring young man become arrogant and develop a sense of superiority from military training. At the same time, the father said he struggled to help Jesus overcome feelings of guilt over his participation in violence against innocent people.

Jesus’ last letter indicated that he was finding his way and still held to his humanity, Suarez said. Jesus wrote that he was proud to serve the U.S. as a Marine, but felt he and his fellow soldiers were being used and would discourage anyone from joining this effort. Fernando said he wanted his son’s message to reach young people: that it is ok to want to serve this country, but to serve through social and community service, with books and education.

During the two-day fast Suarez was joined by community members for vigils and rallies. Janie Jordan, a drug counselor with Project Star, said she came “to help expose the big lie.” Rio Mezta, who participated in the fast along with Suarez, said she greatly admires his efforts to end the war and was there in support. Jeeni Criscenzo, the 2006 Democratic candidate for Congress from north San Diego County, also extended her support to Suarez during the fast.

More information about Fernando Suarez del Solar and his Guerrero Azteca Peace Project is available at , or by phone: (760) 746-4568.

In an earlier version of this story Mezta was incorrectly quoted as connecting the war protest to her work against corporate gentrification of her neighborhood. We regret the error.

CARTOON

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 08:32:00 +0000

Can you be too rich?

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 08:24:00 +0000

I wish that billionaires were a declining breed rather than a growing demographic group.

A few decades ago, that statement might have evoked some controversy — but no longer. In fact, the conventional wisdom today (notwithstanding Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and the other bullies of talk radio and TV) is that the accumulation of unconscionable wealth by a small sliver of society has gotten way out of hand.

While billionaires and multimillionaires have become almost as common as “Law & Order” reruns, the vast majority of Americans are treading water. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, after-tax family income for the top 1 percent climbed 201 percent from 1979 to 2000, while the bottom 20 percent rose only 9 percent. And the picture is even worse for African American and Latino families. Plus, vital public services have been gutted over the last quarter of a century. And this has been done brutally and cynically.

Let’s face it, the bank and train robbers of the Old West were small potatoes compared to today’s thieves, who live in upscale neighborhoods, send our children off to war and employ thousands of lobbyists to promote their financial interests in the corridors of government. Certainly, Californians haven’t forgotten the damage done by Enron’s Kenneth Lay and his posse in Houston and Washington.

In the 1980s movie “Wall Street,” the main character, Gordon Gekko, exclaims with great self-confidence, “Greed is good.” At the time, this idea enjoyed some currency. In the Reagan era, the effects of a new stage of capitalist globalization were still to be fully felt and solemn speeches claiming that wealth creation for the wealthy was in the best interest of all of us were still taken seriously.

It was a hoax then; it is a tragedy and outrage now. It is capitalism on steroids!

Thankfully, the jig is just about up. Since November, President Bush and his gang no longer have the wind at their backs. We are reclaiming our land and insisting on a nation that is just, democratic, decent and at peace with the world.

The Los Angeles Times Sunday “Current” opinion section recently asked Princeton bioethics philosopher Peter Singer; an economist affiliated with Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Russell Roberts; and the national chairperson of the Communist Party USA, Sam Webb, to “share their thoughts on the subject of income inequality.” Their views were published in the LA Times March 18. Reprinted here with permission of the author is Webb’s response. All three views are online at .

EDITORIAL: Apologize for slavery? What took so long?

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 08:08:00 +0000

That is a logical question as state legislatures across the country weigh resolutions apologizing for their states’ role in perpetuating slavery, abolished in the United States 140 years ago. Maryland’s General Assembly, voting March 26, became only the second state after Virginia to officially express “profound regret for Maryland’s role in instituting and maintaining slavery.”

Now Georgia, Delaware, New York, Missouri, Massachusetts and Vermont are considering similar measures. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) has introduced a resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives. Atonement for slavery has been a theme in Great Britain’s celebration this month of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade.

Some argue that these apologies pre-empt actions such as reparations by the federal government for the unpaid labor of millions of slaves that generated capital to make the U.S. a world economic powerhouse today.

But we agree with Edward DuBose, president of the Georgia NAACP: “How can you understand the disparity around us without understanding the reasons for it?” After an apology, he said, “the next logical step could be reparations for slave descendants.” The apology does not close the door on an “inconvenient truth.” It opens up the issue of how best to make whole an entire people who continue to suffer the lash of the racist whip.

In an article on the apology movement, Time magazine reminds us that “slavery gave way to Jim Crow, lynchings, poll taxes, redlining and education and job discrimination. Although illegal now, those tools perpetuated a racial hierarchy that affects every American today no matter how subtly. Just compare any rates of achievement, poverty, imprisonment by race; Blacks are nowhere close to catching up.”

We would add that the reason it is so difficult to eradicate racism and discrimination is that, under our capitalist system, it is a source of hundreds of billions in corporate superprofits every year. Hopefully, the debate over apologies for slavery will shine a spotlight on deeply institutionalized racist discrimination and the need for radical measures to end that oppression.

BP cost-cutting caused worker deaths

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 06:51:00 +0000

HOUSTON — Federal investigators concluded in a report issued on March 20 that the longstanding disregard for safety by BP management resulted in the catastrophic explosion at its Texas City oil refinery on March 23, 2005.

According to the investigation, the worldwide oil giant hoped to save 25 percent in costs through budget cuts in 1999 and 2004. Fifteen people died and 180 were injured as a result of the company’s drive to increase profits. Immediately after the disaster, BP attempted to place the blame for the blast directly on the workers themselves.

BP has spent $1.5 billion cleaning up the aftereffects of the explosion, which is more than 45 times the amount of money they saved in their first round of cuts, according to the report. BP’s strategy was to beat its competitors at cost-cutting and thereby boost profits. It slashed training and safety programs as well as equipment in this effort.

Murdered by ‘money and profits’

Refinery workers and their families responded to the report. Eva Rowe, who lost her parents in the explosion, stated she believes they were “murdered” by BP’s “culture of greed.” She said, “Money, money and profits” caused her parent’s death. Rowe and others spoke at a hearing of the House Education and Labor Committee.

Witnesses at the same hearing pointed fingers at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for not inspecting the refinery frequently enough and failing to enforce workplace safety standards. Carolyn Merritt, chair of the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, told the hearing that BP had a “broken safety culture.” The company received numerous warnings from OSHA that their equipment was dangerous and should be replaced. Merritt maintains that the “broken safety culture” is not limited to BP and exists in workplaces everywhere in this country. Merritt has called for an increase in resources and funding to allow OSHA to fully inspect the nation’s workplaces. “OSHA simply lacks enough trained inspectors,” she said.

Erosion of safety

AFL-CIO analysts have concluded that there has been an erosion in federal job safety programs since the Bush administration took office in 2001. In real dollars, the Bush administration has slashed OSHA’s budget by $25.4 million when the 2008 budget is compared to the budget in 2001. AFL-CIO blogger James Parks wrote, “The Bush administration also is proposing to totally eliminate funding for worker safety and health training and education programs. Every year since taking office, the administration has sought to slash or eliminate funding for worker training. But each year, Congress rejected these proposed cuts and maintained funding for worker safety training programs.”

The Chemical Safety Board has recommended that the United Steelworkers union work with the American Petroleum Industry to develop new safety standards. They asked, “Who knows better about the daily problems and how best to deal with them than the people who work there?”

phill2 @ houston.rr.com

Racism opens eyes in Paris, Texas

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 06:46:00 +0000

Worker's Correspondence

I honestly thought racism was on the outs, especially in my little town of Paris, Texas. I live in one of those little Southern towns where everyone waves to everyone and everyone is a neighbor. “Howdy neighbor, how are the kids?” Things like this are not so unusual. But lately, I am seeing things a little more clearly.

There has been quite a racial stirring lately surrounding an African American girl named Shaquanda Cotton. Young Shaquanda, a 14-year-old freshman at the local Paris High School, was sentenced to seven years for “assault on a public servant.” The public servant in question was a hall monitor who refused Shaquanda early entrance in the school building, despite the fact that she had permission to enter the building to access the nurse’s office to take medicine.

Shaquanda was sentenced by the same court that, just last year, sentenced a 19-year-old white boy to one year’s probation for killing a 54-year-old Black woman and her 3-year-old grandson with his truck. Shaquanda was sentenced by the same judge who, just three months prior, sentenced a white female teenager to probation after being convicted of arson in the burning of her family’s house.

What a shock! I knew there was still racism around, but I thought it was all covert. So I looked around. After attending an anti-racism committee sponsored by the YWCA last year, I found that my small town was notorious for Black lynchings, even past the banning of such things. Yet another surprise!

I guess it’s been easy for me. It has been easy for most white people who have never experienced racism or discrimination. But it sure doesn’t take much, once your eyes are open, to see that racism is far from dead. My eyes are open, and my spirit is ready to fight against such gross injustice to humans.

For others with eyes opened, why not send Shaquanda a letter, a bit of encouragement? Here is her contact information:

Shaquanda Cotton 1125308 Ron Jackson Correctional Complex Unit 2 Dorm 4 P.O. Box 872 Brownwood TX 76804

Ben Wheeler served as a soldier in Iraq in 2003.

Employee Free Choice Act heads to Senate

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 06:33:00 +0000

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee began hearing testimony on the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would make it easier for unions to organize workers, on March 27.

The bipartisan bill, called HR 800, passed the House earlier this month. More than half of America’s unorganized workers say they would form a union tomorrow if given the chance, according to recent opinion research.

But, as workers will testify at the Senate hearing, companies routinely harass, coerce and threaten workers to keep them from forming unions, and the law is helpless to stop it. One out of five union activists is likely to be fired when they try to form unions, according to a new study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Republicans claim to go “nuclear” if EFCA reaches the Senate floor. Going nuclear means using the filibuster to prevent a vote by the whole Senate. A filibuster can be ended only upon a successful “cloture” motion. Such a motion must be signed by 16 senators. Sixty votes (three-fifths of the entire Senate) are required for a cloture motion to be successful.

Senate Democrats — who hold a slim two-vote majority margin — hope to see EFCA out of committee and on the floor before April’s Easter break. But, analysts say, it is certain that Republicans will offer amendments to try to tie the bill up in committee.

Some experts say that in order to get the bill out of committee and passed by the Senate, Democrats would be willing to compromise on card-check and arbitration. These possible moves are seen not as an abandonment of those provisions, but to get the bill through the Senate to a conference committee where differing House and Senate provisions of companion bills would be debated and where a single legislative vehicle could be agreed upon. Labor’s supporters would likely reinsert the compromised provisions during the conference debate, experts say.

Labor’s push in the weeks ahead includes meetings with senators, delegations to senators’ home offices and a week of action on college campuses from March 31 to April 4. The labor movement is urging its supporters to call their senators to support EFCA.

THIS WEEK IN LABOR

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 06:21:00 +0000

Union love

Kenneth Hill, a member of the Boilermakers Local 693, got married to Sonja McGruffin on the picket line outside the main gate of Northrop Grumman’s Ingalls shipyard, March 23, in Pascagoula, Miss. The wedding party and guest list was made up of fellow strikers, Black and white, who watched as Kenneth and Sonja exchanged vows.

Hill works as a welder at the shipyard. The couple wanted to get married, but couldn’t afford the expenses. So other strikers donated the tux, food and money to pay for the ceremony. Hill says his wedding on the picket line symbolizes the solidarity of the unions.

The Boilermakers is one of 15 unions representing nearly 8,000 workers who shut the plant down March 17 when they walked off the job after the company offered only a meager salary increase that would be wiped out by proposed hikes in health insurance co-payments. Half the workers in the shipyard still live in trailers after almost all of them lost either a home or a car when Hurricane Katrina swept through the area almost two years ago. Hill was among thousands of workers, many of whom worked in deep floodwaters, who protected equipment in the plant as the storm ravaged the area. The price of a gallon of milk in Pascagoula is now almost $5 and housing costs have doubled since the storm.

For a glimpse of the picket line wedding, visit www.pww.org.

Las Vegas workers demand piece of the action

Thousands of members of the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 rallied for a new contract for casino workers on the Las Vegas strip on March 23.

Proving once again labor’s strengthened muscle in the arena of electoral politics, they were joined by Democratic presidential hopefuls Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.), Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) and Christopher Dodd (Conn.), and Gov. Bill Richards (D-N.M.). Fifty thousand members of the culinary union are covered by collective bargaining agreements that expire on May 31.

“Our members have come from across the country and around the world because of the opportunity available in Las Vegas,” said Don Taylor, secretary treasurer of the culinary union. “The workers who keep this great city and resort going are entitled to a decent life for themselves and their families.”

AFL-CIO condemns raids on Iraqi unions

Workers trying to organize are apparently as much or even more of a threat than “terrorists,” as far as the Bush administration is concerned.

“On behalf of the 10 million working men and women of the AFL-CIO, I am writing to express my grave concern regarding reports of an armed raid by American soldiers on the headquarters of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW),” wrote AFL-CIO President John Sweeney in a letter to Robert Gates, secretary of defense, last week.

The GFIW reported that U.S. soldiers arrived at their offices on Al Rashid Street in Baghdad on Feb. 23 and arrested the security guards. “The soldiers then entered their office with force,” Sweeney wrote, “leaving broken furniture and equipment in their wake and confiscating computers and fax machines. At no time did the soldiers offer any form of explanation to the GFIW.”

The letter also condemned a prior U.S. raid Feb. 19 on the Baghdad offices of the Iraqi Journalists’ Syndicate.

The AFL-CIO president demanded that the Defense Department investigate both raids “which violate the rights of Iraqi workers to form and operate free and independent trade unions and undermine our country’s support for democracy in Iraq.”

— John Wojcik (thewritergdr @ europe.com)

House strips Bush of authority to appoint U.S. attorneys

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 06:16:00 +0000

In a 329-78 vote March 26, the House of Representatives followed the Senate and stripped President George W. Bush of the authority to appoint U.S. attorneys on an interim basis, ending the ability of the Bush administration to do an end run around the Senate in putting controversial U.S. attorneys in office.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), places a 120-day limit to the term of a United States attorney appointed on an interim basis. Democrats allege that the previous authority to appoint interim U.S. attorneys on an unlimited basis, inserted stealthily into the 2006 reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, was used as a “loophole” to insert Bush administration political loyalists into office.

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the “awesome powers” of the U.S. attorneys required Senate confirmation of their appointments.

“The bill before us today ... will restore the historical checks and balances to the process by which interim U.S. attorneys are appointed,” he said.

The Senate measure passed on a 94-2. The measure will proceed to the White House for approval after being considered in a House-Senate conference.

All of this comes in the wake of targeted firing of eight federal prosecutors because they didn’t fully embrace the far-right legal and political agenda.

A senior aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has decided she won’t testify before lawmakers about her role in the ousters, the latest flare-up in the controversy surrounding the Justice Department.

Gonzales has said he participated in no discussions and saw no memos about plans to carry out the firings on Dec. 7 that Democrats contend were politically motivated.

His schedule, however, shows he attended at least one hour long meeting on Nov. 27 where he approved a detailed plan to execute the prosecutors’ firings.

“How much scrutiny do we have to put behind everything the attorney general says?” the House Judiciary Committee chairman said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I know he’s busy, and he could have done things that he didn’t remember, but we’re going to give him as much rope as he needs,” said Conyers.

Gonzales’ arrival in Cincinnati was greeted by an editorial in The Cincinnati Enquirer urging him to resign. “Misstatements, mismanagement and a misunderstanding of the role of the attorney general have made Alberto Gonzales’ continued service a liability for the United States,” the newspaper said. “He should resign, now.”

A day earlier, Gonzales said he was “really pained” by Republicans and Democrats who say he has lost his credibility in dealing with the firings. A growing number of critics say the dismissals were politically motivated.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said March 27 that Gonzales has been “badly weakened” by conflicting Justice Department stories on the firings including his own.

“The explanation has been absolutely abysmal,” Hoekstra said on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal.”

Sources: Raw Story and The Associated Press.

WORLD NOTES

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 06:06:00 +0000

Japan: Accord with Australia seen as targeting China

Visiting in Tokyo, Australian Prime Minister John Howard signed an agreement on March 13 with his Japanese counterpart described by the BBC as a “Security Declaration.”

A free trade agreement with Japan, which is Australia’s largest export customer, is expected in April. A columnist in The Australian, owned by Rupert Murdoch, sees Australia as entering into “three-way security arrangements with Japan and the U.S. to include India in a four-way security agreement that would encircle China.”

Vice President Dick Cheney apparently rehearsed the scenario with Australian leaders during his visit earlier in March. Australia’s Guardian regards last year’s Lombok Pact between Indonesia and Australia as directed against China. It accuses the Howard government of colluding with Washington in designs upon cheap labor and natural resources in China and Asia, and to undermine Chinese socialism. In 2006 Australia signed a treaty of “amity and cooperation” with other Asian nations, including China and Russia.

Poland: Anti-gay law threatens teachers

Human Rights Watch has informed Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski that proposed legislation to remove teachers who speak about homosexuality “would threaten civil and political rights.”

EFE News reports that Poland’s education minister, Roman Giertych, who also heads the League of Polish Families, part of the governing coalition, declared on March 15 that “teachers revealing their homosexuality would be dismissed.” At a recent meeting of EU education ministers, he exhorted European governments to prohibit abortions and “homosexual propaganda.”

Critics see the measures as distracting Polish attention away from problems of unemployment and emigration, both of which are mounting.

Afghanistan: U.S. Marines face probe on massacre

Marines accused of shooting and killing civilians after a suicide bombing in Afghanistan are under U.S. investigation, and their entire unit has been ordered to leave the country early, The Associated Press reported March 23.

Army Maj. Gen. Francis H. Kearney III ordered the unit of about 120 Marines out of Afghanistan and initiated an investigation into the March 4 incident, said Lt. Col. Lou Leto, spokesman at Kearney’s command headquarters. Another spokesman, Maj. Cliff Gilmore, said that the unit is already in the process of leaving.

In the March 4 incident in Nangahar province, an explosives-rigged minivan crashed into a convoy of Marines that U.S. officials said also came under fire from gunmen. As many as 10 Afghans were killed and 34 wounded as the convoy made an escape. Injured Afghans said the Americans fired on civilian cars and pedestrians as they sped away.

U.S. military officials claimed some of the civilian casualties may have been caused by the militants.

Hundreds of Afghans held a demonstration against the U.S. massacre afterward, and President Hamid Karzai condemned the incident.

Leto said the Marines, after being ambushed, responded in a way that created “perceptions [that] have really damaged the relationship between the local population and this unit.”

“The relationship you have with the local population while conducting counterinsurgency operations is very important, and because the perceptions damaged that, it probably degraded the [Marine] unit’s ability to fulfill those kinds of missions,” Leto added. “So the general felt it was best to move them out of that area.”

Uganda: President delivers land to corporations

President Yoweri Museveni’s Cabinet recently announced its intention to hand over 17,531 acres of Uganda’s Mabira forest reserve to a corporate sugar producer owned by the Mehta Group, a multinational corporation. Parliamentary approval is the next step.

Mehta Group spokespersons point to the prospects of increased employment, replenished sugar stores and export income. But environmentalists and previously evicted Ugandans don’t buy it.

“The government’s recommendation is a slap in their face,” said Achilles Byaruhanga of Nature Uganda, referring to those who were evicted.

The National Forestry Authority sees the reserve as a tourist resource — it received 62 percent of Uganda’s tourists in 2005-2006 — and sanctuary for endangered species. Conflict between evicted communities and the government is likely, environmentalists say. Portraying himself as locked in an “ideological struggle,” President Museveni in February denounced “people who lack the vision to see into the future.” He promised that similar measures are forthcoming. Critics complain that he has handed over other forestlands, prison and hospital land, and a Kampala school to private interests, according to AllAfrica.com.

World Notes are compiled by W.T. Whitney Jr. (atwhit @ megalink.net).

Palestinians await lifting of U.S.-Israeli siege

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 06:04:00 +0000

Despite last week’s flurry of diplomatic activity around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including visits to the region by Ban Ki-moon, the UN’s new secretary general, and by Condoleezza Rice, President Bush’s secretary of state, the Palestinian people have seen virtually no improvements on the ground.

Hopes that the recent formation of a Palestinian national unity government, made up of representatives from both Hamas and Fatah, would end the U.S.-backed Israeli siege of the Occupied Territories have so far remained unfulfilled.

Palestinians continue to face an acute humanitarian crisis and mounting internal stress, especially in the Gaza Strip.

About 34 percent of Palestinians can no longer afford a balanced meal, according to a report last week by the UN’s World Food Program (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization. The problem is most severe in Gaza, where 51 percent of the population suffers from “food insecurity.”

“The poorest families are now living a meager existence totally reliant on assistance, with no electricity or heating, and eating food prepared from water from bad sources,” said Arnold Vercken, the WFP director in the territories, in a statement quoted by IRIN, a UN-related news agency.

The report says Palestinian households are using “several coping mechanisms, such as reducing food portions, eating only one meal per day, buying lower quality food, and eating less fruit, vegetables and meat.” Many families have taken out loans or sold personal assets, like land and jewelry, to buy food.

Women and children are among the hardest hit. A related study shows that “chronic malnutrition is rising steadily,” and that iron and vitamin A deficiencies are reaching alarming levels.

Hospitals and clinics, most of which are run by the Palestinian Authority’s health ministry, are still coping with critical shortages of medicines and supplies, insufficient electricity (the Gaza Strip’s main power plant was destroyed by Israeli bombs in June 2006), and staff who in some cases have not received wages in over a year.

The World Bank estimates that about 70 percent of Gaza’s population lives below the poverty line, and 44 percent of the able-bodied population is unemployed.

Israel’s closings of key entry points, including the Karni cargo crossing, remain frequent, starving Gaza of much-needed trade and supplies. While the problem has eased slightly, with truckloads moving at the rate of 51 a day compared to 30 a day during most of 2006, they remain far short of the 400 a day envisaged by a deal struck with Condoleezza Rice in November 2005, according to The Associated Press.

Karen Koning AbuZayd, the commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, told an IRIN reporter last week that the humanitarian crisis in the West Bank and Gaza is “worse than ever.”

She said the needs are “much greater [now] than they were during the intifada,” the last Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation that started in 2000, “and that’s mainly because of the boycott of the Palestinian Authority over the past year” by Israel, the U.S. and other nations.

“We’re hoping now, with the national unity government having come into being [sworn in March 17], that there will be a change on the part of the international community — at least some of it — to lighten this boycott and to begin to deal with this government, and to give people their salaries back.”

The Israeli government has refused to deal with the new government, just as it spurned the democratically elected Hamas government over a year ago.

Ghassan Khatib, vice president of Birzeit University and former planning minister for the Palestinian Authority, writing at miftah.org, said, “The platform of the [new] government includes an explicit commitment to respect previously signed agreements between the PLO and Israel. It also expresses respect for the relevant resolutions of the UN and international legality. Finally and most importantly, Hamas recommitted itself to the ongoing cease-fire with Israel in Gaza and promised to expand it to the West Bank.”

Norway, not part of the European Union, recognized the new government at once. On March 19 its deputy foreign minister, Raymond Johansen, met with Palestinian officials. He called upon “European countries, and even other countries, [to] support this unity government.”

A meeting March 20 in Ramallah between Palestinian Finance Minister Sallam Fayyad and Jacob Walles, the U.S. consul general in Jerusalem, represented the first official U.S. contact with a member of the new government, although Washington’s recognition of the entire Palestinian Cabinet is regarded as unlikely.

malmberg @ pww.org

Zapatistas vow to remake Mexico

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 05:52:00 +0000

MEXICO CITY — The Zapatista Army of National Liberation Army (EZLN) has vowed to continue its campaign to change Mexico’s political and economic system.

The Zapatistas, as part of a larger movement known as “The Other Campaign,” say that they will renew their efforts to organize “a civil and pacifist insurrection” across Mexico to transform the country’s political and economic system. The Other Campaign is a loose coalition of individuals and groups that includes the Party of Mexican Communists, one of the country’s left-wing parties.

The primary goals of The Other Campaign are to abolish capitalism, which it says has led to widespread poverty, and to dismantle the country’s repressive political system.

According to EZLN leader Subcomandante Marcos, in a recent interview posted on the web site Radio Zapatista, while armed struggle to change the economic and political system is still an option, The Other Campaign has ruled this out. He predicted that the Zapatista-led campaign could succeed in transforming Mexico before 2010.

Zapatista commanders, including Marcos, have launched a new tour of Mexico to build opposition to the government of President Felipe Calderon. The EZLN is also initiating a solidarity campaign, in Mexico and worldwide, with the indigenous communities in Chiapas, an impoverished state in the country’s southeast.

Marcos said, “We [the EZLN] do not want to take power and from there decide the transformation of society.” He said the Zapatistas reject the traditional Mexican and Latin American revolutionary model of popular movements overthrowing repressive states, taking power and then “imposing another tyranny.” The EZLN only wants to initiate a grassroots movement to overthrow the existing order, he said.

Unlike other left-wing guerilla groups in Latin America, such as FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia), the EZLN and The Other Campaign operate openly with little apparent fear of arrest. The masked, pipe-smoking Marcos and other masked Zapatista commanders travel across Mexico, speaking openly at public meetings. EZLN supporters set up information tables in open-air markets to distribute campaign material and sell Zapatista memorabilia.

After Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s center-left movement, The Other Campaign is the second largest opposition group working for change in Mexico. However, both movements are bitterly opposed to each other.

During the 2006 election campaign, Subcomandante Marcos toured the country urging people not to vote for either the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) or Lopez Obrador’s coalition For the Good of All (now called the Broad Progressive Front). Marcos charged that Lopez Obrador and his coalition, if elected, would pursue the same right-wing policies implemented by PAN and PRI.

As a result, a bitter rift has emerged between supporters of the EZLN and Lopez Obrador, some of whom charge that Marcos helped PAN and PRI secure more votes by encouraging people who might have been inclined to vote for the left to abstain from voting. Given the history of election rigging in Mexico, The Other Campaign refuses to take part in electoral politics.

The EZLN first emerged on the world stage in 1994 from the jungles of Chiapas in an uprising aimed at rectifying injustices suffered by the indigenous people, fighting the Mexican army to a standstill. The military maintains a cordon around Zapatista-controlled territory in eastern Chiapas, where 100,000 indigenous people reside. Zapatista-controlled local governments run the region.

Since 1994, there has been no further fighting. Recently, the EZLN charged that paramilitary forces are encroaching on Zapatista territory and trying to drive farmers off lands seized by Zapatistas 13 years ago. The EZLN announced it will resist the paramilitaries with force if necessary.

The EZLN, named after Mexican revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata (1879-1919), represents a long tradition in Mexico of people taking up arms to overthrow the government. Other smaller guerilla movements such as the Popular Revolutionary Army continue to operate in states such as Guerro. The Other Campaign came out of a Zapatista-organized conference in Chiapas in June 2005.

tpelzer @ shaw.ca

Growing promise of Cuban oil deposits

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 05:47:00 +0000

“Cuba could be a major regional player in oil,” Jorge Piñon, Amoco’s former Latin American head, told reporters last week. Two international conferences opening in Havana on March 20 testified to the high visibility of oil these days in Cuba.

Technical issues were on the agenda at the First Congress on Oil and Gas, “Petrogas 2007,” items like “deep water exploration” and “transport and refining of heavy crude.” A parallel convention on earth sciences unfolded nearby with geologists, mining experts and geophysicists from 20 countries.

Interest in oil stems from the discovery recently that Cuba possesses extensive oil deposits lying off its northern coast. And onshore production, centered in adjacent inland areas, has increased sevenfold from 1990 to a current rate of 85,000 barrels a day, according to Cupet, Cuba’s state oil company. Geologists predict that by 2010 Cuba will be producing 5 million tons annually, or at least 100,000 barrels a day.

The U.S. oil industry is watching. A Forbes magazine article earlier this month sees “the beginning of a Cuban oil rush.” The excitement began in 2004 when data from explorations by Spain’s Repsol Company became available. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists called the offshore deposits a “significant find.” The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the total to be from 4.6 billion to 9.3 billion barrels — two-thirds the amount deposited in northern Alaska.

According to Cupet geologist Rafael Tenreyro, “We have just recently started and we are seeing the tip of the iceberg. Our intent is to continue to explore and discover great oil fields.” Cuba also possesses large deposits of natural gas.

This year a consortium of Spanish, Norwegian and Indian companies will start drilling in the Florida Straits. Production will begin in three years. The Cuban government has awarded exploration rights to Malaysian, Chinese and Venezuelan companies. China’s Sinopec company has contracts to sell drilling equipment to the involved companies.

Ernesto Plasencia, a Cuban commercial attaché in Washington, announced, “American energy companies and investment are welcome in our country.”

The National Petrochemical and Refiners Association represents 450 U.S. companies. Last week spokesperson Charles Drevna called upon Washington to remove restrictions imposed by the U.S. economic blockade on oil operations in Cuba. He derided Washington’s “Alice in Wonderland approach,” pointing out that Cuban missiles are gone and that Cuban oil resources “will be developed and produced — the question is by whom.”

Senators Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and Bryon Dorgan (D-S.D.) will be reintroducing an amendment to a Senate energy bill that exempts U.S. oil operations in Cuba from embargo regulations. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), an outspoken critic of U.S. restrictions on travel to Cuba, may soon introduce a congressional bill permitting sales of U.S. services and equipment to oil companies working in Cuba.

True to form, the representatives of right-wing Cuban Americans in Congress are not budging. On March 14, Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) introduced a bill targeting Cuban development of oil and natural gas resources. Under the bill, foreigners involved with Cuban oil projects would be denied visas for U.S travel. Foreign companies investing over $1 million would be sanctioned.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) is expected to introduce a similar bill in the House.

As of 2006, Cuba’s internal oil needs amounted to 170,000 barrels a day. Venezuela is supplying almost 100,000 of the total. More than 90 percent of Cuba’s own crude oil, which is heavy, is used directly as boiler fuel in the electrical power, nickel and cement industries. The remainder, diluted with Venezuelan oil, is sent for refinery processing.

Cuba has embarked on campaigns of energy conservation and the use of alternative fuels that officials say will be expanding. Agricultural products, for example, are converted into alcohol as a source of energy. Ulises Rosales, minister in charge of sugar production, announced March 19 that all but one of Cuba’s 49 sugar mills supply waste material for electricity generation.

Participants at the earth sciences conference learned of a Canadian-Cuban joint venture that collects natural gas during the process of crude oil extraction, removes pollutants and uses the gas to generate 15 percent of Cuba’s electricity and to provide cooking fuel for 1 million people.

atwhit @ megalink.net

Palestinian activist ends prison hunger strike

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 05:39:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — Dr. Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian activist, ended his 60-day hunger strike at a federal prison hospital in North Carolina March 24, bowing to his children’s pleas that he not risk death protesting his unjust imprisonment.

His wife, Nahla, and daughter, Laila, were at his side during a prison news conference when he announced an end to the water-only fast. He lost 54 pounds, or 25 percent of his body weight, during the two-month ordeal.

Mahdi Bray, executive director of the MAS Freedom Foundation, told the news conference, “Dr. Al-Arian was never convicted by a jury of his peers of any wrongdoing or crime. It is time that our government respects the jury’s verdict and release him. The sacrifice that Dr. Al-Arian and his family have made in the cause of justice compels us to work more intensely for his unconditional release so that he can be reunited with his family.”

In a telephone interview, Nahla Al-Arian told the World, “We visited him in the prison hospital and insisted he stop the hunger strike because he had reached a very critical, dangerous phase of the fast.”

She said the younger children, ages 13 and 16, “were horrified when they saw their father. They told him they needed his love. They needed him alive. We convinced him that everyone knows about his situation. He received messages of support from everywhere in the world as well as from across the U.S.”

Al-Arian, a former computer science professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa, began the fast at a county jail in Virginia to protest Justice Department efforts to force him to testify before a grand jury. He argued that it violated an agreement in which he pleaded no contest to charges he had assisted a Palestinian group, Islamic Jihad, and the government agreed to release him and deport him on April 13, 2007.

When he refused to testify, Federal Judge Gerald Lee sentenced him to 18 months for contempt. Al-Arian was recently transferred to the federal prison hospital when he fainted from weakness in the Virginia jail.

Nahla Al-Arian said a 12-member jury refused in December 2005 to convict Al-Arian of any of the 51 charges leveled by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. The sensational case was a centerpiece of the Bush administration’s hysteria-mongering “war on terror.”

The Tampa jurors found Al-Arian innocent of eight criminal charges, including belonging to a “front group” funneling financial contributions to “terrorists” in Palestine. But two jurors refused to join the majority in acquitting Al-Arian and three co-defendants on nine lesser charges. Judge Lee then “aborted the jury’s deliberations.” Ever since, the Bush Justice Department has flagrantly violated the “innocent until proven guilty” rule by holding Al-Arian in prison.

Nahla Al-Arian, a U.S. citizen, has waged a determined struggle to win her husband’s freedom. “I could not have held up without the support of my fellow Americans,” she said. “The people have given us support throughout, rallied for us, written to the Justice Department and their congressmen. I am so grateful for all they have done.”

There is misunderstanding about the plea agreement, she said. “Look at the ‘Statement of Facts’ in that plea. There was no crime committed. They exploited the climate of fear to silence political activists and to prevent them from exercising their political rights, freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly. The government targeted Palestinian activists who need those rights more than anyone else in the world.”

Nahla Al-Arian said she is resigned to going into exile with her husband and two younger children when her husband is freed. Her three older children, two in graduate school and the third a journalist, would remain in the U.S.

The next step, she said, is to convince Judge Lee to lift the 18-month contempt sentence. “Sami and his lawyers will tell the judge that Sami is not going to change his mind. Ordering him to testify is contrary to the plea agreement we signed last year.”

She concluded, “People who want to help us win justice can go to our web site freesamialarian.com. You can read about our case and look for what you can do to help.”

greenerpastures21212 @ yahoo.com

Communists see a new landscape for struggles

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 05:27:00 +0000

NEW YORK — Heading the agenda as members of the Communist Party’s national committee gathered here March 24-25 were new developments in the people’s movements to end the Iraq war, win labor and immigrant rights, gain health care for all and uphold democracy. The meeting brought together activists from around the country to analyze developments since the November elections and project the CPUSA’s work to help build the movements for change in the new political landscape.

Featured during the weekend were panel discussions on the antiwar movement and on building the Communist Party and press.

When CPUSA leaders last gathered, shortly after the November elections, it was not yet fully clear how profound a shift had occurred in the country’s political landscape, said CPUSA national chairman Sam Webb. “Now, four months later, it may be a stretch to say a sea change in political relationships has occurred, but it is not too far off the mark.”

Congress is now “a site of real debate, contending forces and sharp struggles,” Webb said. He cited passage in the House of Representatives of the Employee Free Choice Act, a nonbinding resolution against escalating the war and a supplemental spending bill setting deadlines for troop withdrawal from Iraq.

While the far right “retains considerable power and muscle,” Webb said, “its power is far more circumscribed” as the administration’s past sins come home to roost, and millions of Americans are embracing ideas of peace, justice and decency and rejecting preventive war and gross economic and social disparities.

A new progressive political culture is emerging, Webb said, with growing cooperation among forces including the labor movement and organizations for racial and gender equality, and the emergence of new single- and multiple-issue organizations.

Webb and other speakers emphasized the fundamental importance of the House passage of deadlines for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Webb called the action by a vast majority of House Democrats and two Republicans “a major victory.” The House bill and a similar one heading for a vote in the Senate — the only such measures with a chance to pass in Congress — give legal expression to people’s desire for withdrawal and are creating a new political dynamic to end the war, he said.

Despite its continuing drumbeat against Iran, the Bush administration’s policies in the international arena have shifted toward more “traditional” positions of U.S. imperialism, Webb said. At the same time, he added, the administration has given up many of its domestic priorities, though it will continue to strongly resist all efforts for positive change.

People’s Weekly World labor editor Roberta Wood called the AFL-CIO’s executive council meeting in March “a watershed moment,” with its passage of a powerful new antiwar resolution and its call for universal health care coverage and a trade policy based on international solidarity. The November elections laid the basis for labor to move forward on issues vital to all working people, she added.

Panelists from different parts of the country and different aspects of the antiwar movement emphasized the urgency of supporting meaningful partial demands in Congress as well as comprehensive measures to end the Iraq war. Though some peace organizations don’t see it that way, the vast majority of participants in the broad antiwar movement “feel as we do, that every meaningful piece of legislation to end the war must be supported,” said CPUSA vice chair Judith Le Blanc. Many organizations beyond the traditional peace movement, such as unions, immigrant rights and economic justice organizations, can be brought into the antiwar struggle, including building stronger links with economic issues and working for resolutions in city councils and state legislatures, she said.

Another panel, also featuring activists from around the country, highlighted the importance of grassroots work by Communist Party clubs to help build opposition to the war and support for workers’ and immigrant rights, universal health care and other social and economic issues. They emphasized that growing the party and its press is an integral part of helping to build the people’s movements for change.

mbechte l@ pww.org

New immigration bill introduced

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 04:43:00 +0000

On March 23, Reps. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) introduced a new comprehensive immigration bill, the “Security Through Regularized Immigration and a Vibrant Economy” (STRIVE) Act, HR 1645. The bill has 29 initial co-sponsors, including both liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans.

The general approach is similar to that of last session’s “Secure America” bill, also called the McCain-Kennedy Act, in that it trades off the legalization of the 11 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants against new and beefed-up immigration control measures, plus a guest-worker program, as a way of getting bipartisan consensus for passage.

The November elections brought Democratic majorities insufficient in themselves to override a presidential veto or to prevent a filibuster by Senate Republicans; hence the bipartisan approach.

Though House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and a number of organizations that support immigrant rights expressed guarded praise for the measure as a “good beginning,” others in the immigrant rights movement expressed worry that the concessions on the “security” concerns of the Republicans and on the guest-worker item went much too far.

Undocumented immigrants would, as under the McCain-Kennedy Act, have to stay in a provisional status for six years, pay $2,000 in fines and fees (from which children would be exempted), learn English, keep working and not have a criminal record in order to qualify for permanent residency. In addition, they would have to step outside the U.S. and then legally re-enter to apply for citizenship.

Persons who had committed serious crimes would not be allowed to participate, but this would be waived for mere immigration offenses. Some people under deportation orders could participate.

The sponsors suggest the law would increase the number of job-based and family-unity-based permanent resident visas so as to create enough green cards to absorb people transitioning from this provisional status to permanent residency. However, whether this would actually happen will require more detailed analysis of the numbers.

In any event, this program could not begin until the government “certified” the border as “secure,” which many consider an impossible condition.

The new guest-worker program, with an initial 400,000 slots, would be almost the same as under McCain-Kennedy, except that participants would be able to switch jobs, but only if the new job was also with an employer certified with the program. They could not stay unemployed for more than 60 days without being forced to leave the country. Their employers could petition for them to join the permanent resident stream, and after five years they could petition for this themselves, but the “sign-ups” are for three year stints, so they could only petition for themselves during their second stint.

New control mechanisms include heightened criminal penalties for future undocumented immigrants who evade orders to leave or present false information to get a job, for employers of undocumented workers and for immigrant smugglers. Employers would be forced, in stages first involving the largest enterprises, to participate in the highly flawed and much criticized system of computer checks of the Social Security numbers of job applicants. State and local police would be explicitly authorized to help with immigration enforcement work. Enforcement resources would be beefed up.

The new legislation incorporates the DREAM Act, which would permit undocumented immigrant students to get a college education, and the AGJobs Act, providing a legal basis for immigrant workers to do agricultural work.

Meanwhile in the Senate, the media are reporting that negotiations between the co-sponsors of McCain-Kennedy in the last session have broken down, and that Sen. Kennedy is going to introduce his own bill. Other legislation might also be introduced in both houses.

Many immigrant rights organizations are gearing up for more mass actions, including marches, protests and boycotts in order to try to push the congressional debate in a progressive direction.

CARTOON

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 08:31:00 +0000