People Before Profit blog

Earths last best hope

Fri, 25 May 2007 05:27:00 +0000

Last week’s column examined why capitalism has not stopped environmental destruction, despite protests, local victories and treaties like Kyoto. Profound economic, political and social forces make capitalism incapable of doing so, just as they block its ability to end hunger.

Deepening poverty in most capitalist countries, an inherent inability to plan and organize on the necessary scale, and a refusal to fund or insure unprofitable remediation projects (many essential projects will not be profitable) are among the factors behind capitalism’s inability to solve the problem.

If not the capitalists, then who? Our confidence is in the workers of the world and their organizations. Socialist revolutions have provided glimpses of environmental accomplishments possible after workers take power. Because capitalism has a profound interest in undermining workers’ confidence, it denies and mocks such achievements.

The Soviet Union took (and China and Cuba, among others, are still taking) steps that demonstrate their capacity to scientifically and comprehensively address environmental problems. Examples of achievements include integrated ecological agriculture in Cuba, urban planning and mass transit in the former USSR, and reforestation and development of ecological housing in China.

There is no need to exaggerate these accomplishments, or deny problems and limitations. On the contrary, we must learn from all three.

Many necessary tasks follow a socialist revolution — environmental tasks as well as addressing poverty, gender and national oppression, and defending socialism against hostile world capitalism. These are not in automatic harmony. After the working class takes power, it needs to learn to govern and effectively harmonize these necessary tasks.

Important lessons can be learned from Soviet weaknesses and the resulting counter-revolution. Not only did the government disintegrate, but so did the Communist Party, the trade unions, youth groups, and organizations dedicated to equality, peace and environmental protection.

To be effective and develop their strength, these organizations needed relative independence from the government and from each other. Simultaneously, mechanisms had to be developed to periodically harmonize their respective emphases. Such harmony is possible among organizations that share, even in continual discussion and struggle, the aim to strengthen socialism.

History teaches us that planning and execution are only effective with corresponding interest and control from below. Capitalism by nature is hostile to control from below. After a socialist revolution, control from below is possible, not automatic, and difficult to achieve and sustain, especially in the face of poverty, inequality and constant threats from capitalism. The alternative, a relapse into capitalism, is far worse, as attested by the human and environmental disaster following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Limitations of domestic environmental achievements are also evident. Pollution does not stop at borders. Global pollution affected Lake Baikal, and today endangers China’s remarkable reforestation efforts. In ecology as in political economy, the forces, equilibria, and solutions are global.

Workers can face the truth. The capitalists cannot — they must hide the real source of their wealth. Their system is profoundly hostile to whole-system science. Capitalism sponsors one-sided development of fragmented disciplines that are rational at the level of the laboratory, but irrational at the level of science as a whole. Capitalism sees science as a business opportunity, and as a means for exerting control and waging war. It views people and the environment as resources to be exploited, while denying any responsibility for social and environmental harm.

Within the world communist and workers’ movement, clarity on the severity of environmental damage, clarity on capitalists’ incapacity to stop this damage, and work on winning other classes to unity on the necessary tasks are essential.

Communist parties in power, and scientific and environmental organizations in states such as China, Vietnam and Cuba, have the organizational and scientific potential to achieve clarity and take leadership on environmental tasks. This power is generally unavailable to workers and their parties under capitalist rule.

The working class has a direct interest, along with the potential, to align the interests of society, science and the environment. Such alignment can bring unimaginable progress on the environment as well as on hunger.

Workers of the world, unite!

economics @cpusa.org Richard Levins, Marc Brodine and Sandy Rosen contributed to this column.

Wolfowitz ouster reflects bigger problems

Fri, 25 May 2007 04:31:00 +0000

The scandal that led to the forced resignation of Iraq war guru Paul Wolfowitz as head of the World Bank “is just the tip of the iceberg,” Nadia Martinez, who co-directs the Institute for Policy Studies’ Sustainable Energy and Economy Network, wrote earlier this month. The looming iceberg, in her view, is “doubts about the World Bank’s credibility, legitimacy and capacity to fulfill its stated mission of eradicating world poverty.”

Wolfowitz’s role in arranging a controversial pay and promotion package for his companion set the scandal in motion, but his troubles “reflect much bigger problems” at the bank and its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund, Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research wrote recently.

“The appearance of nepotism at the highest levels of an institution that lectures poor countries about governance was apparently too much for many people, including World Bank staff, to ignore,” Weisbrot said, but the concerns go much deeper.

“The majority of the world, in developing countries, have fewer votes than the United States and almost no voice within the IMF or the bank,” he said. This reflects the bygone world of 1944, when the two institutions were created. “At the time, the United States was practically the only power in the developed world, and many of the countries now included in the Word Bank were still colonies of Europe.”

Today, said Weisbrot, “the World Bank is thus seen in much of the world as a neocolonial institution, and all its preaching about ‘governance’ seems little more than a way for the bank to cover for the failure of its own economic policy prescriptions. The bank has little to show for its tens of billions of dollars of development lending. The vast majority of the countries that have followed its policies have suffered a sharp slowdown in economic growth over the last 25 years, and a resulting decline in progress on social indicators such as life expectancy and infant and child mortality.”

The failed policies he cited include insistence that developing countries indiscriminately open themselves to foreign trade and investment and prioritize the needs of foreign corporations. Others cite World Bank/IMF pressure on governments to cut social spending and slash their public sector.

Wolfowitz’s resignation, announced May 17, drew a sharp response from critics of the bank.

“Paul Wolfowitz, now exposed as a corrupt liar, has been an invaluable asset in exposing the fundamental illegitimacy and institutional corruption of the World Bank,” Sameer Dossani, executive director of the 50 Years Is Enough Network for Global Economic Justice, said in a statement.

The network calls for transforming the bank and IMF to end their imposition of neoliberal economic programs on developing countries, and to make the development process “democratic and accountable.”

Kenyan activist Njoki Njehu, executive director of Daughters of Mumbi Global Resource Center, commented: “Just as Wolfowitz plunged the bank into disrepute and refused any accountability, so the bank has been damaging our peoples and walking away without a scratch. The failures of the World Bank’s neoliberal ideology, such as privatization of basic services, user fees for primary education and health, and the rapid deregulation of trade and investment, have been measured in death, marginalization and impoverishment.”

Weisbrot noted that the German government joined the call for Wolfowitz’s resignation, in a rare break with Washington.

Bush’s appointment of Wolfowitz in 2005 was “deeply offensive to the Europeans,” Weisbrot said. “Here was an architect of the Iraq war, which most of Europe considered an illegal and extreme manifestation of the Bush administration’s unilateral arrogance. Making him head of the World Bank was a public display of how little the Europeans’ opinion mattered.”

An open letter circulated by the New Rules for Global Finance Coalition says, “Paul Wolfowitz’s problems at the World Bank stem in part from a widespread perception that he disproportionately represents U.S. interests rather than objectives that command a global consensus.”

The coalition, which includes nongovernmental groups and think tanks, called for ending the practice in which the U.S. president picks the World Bank president and a handful of European finance ministers names the IMF head.

Otherwise, the letter warns, “the leadership crisis at the World Bank is unlikely to be fully resolved” even with Wolfowitz’s departure.

suewebb @pww.org

Michael Moore draws govt wrath re Cuba trip

Fri, 18 May 2007 06:54:00 +0000

Michael Moore has joined the ranks of victims of U.S. trade and travel restrictions against Cuba. His organization reported that the filmmaker received an inquiry from the U.S. Treasury Department about a trip Moore took to Cuba in March to film segments for his upcoming release “Sicko.”

Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sent a “request for information” letter on May 2 suggesting that Moore may be subject to civil penalties. The Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker had applied last October for authorization to go to Cuba under the U.S.-approved category of full-time journalist. OFAC had not replied by the time Moore left in March.

Many recipients of similar OFAC letters eventually learn that they are obligated to pay a $7,500 fine. They are invited to submit an appeal to an administrative judge with whom they often negotiate lower payments. Very often, however, those replying to OFAC letters of inquiry never hear from that office again.

Moore visited the island to film the experiences of 10 U.S. citizens as they received treatment under Cuba’s socialist health care system. He took emergency workers there whose respiratory problems developed after they participated in rescue work at the New York World Trade Center site after Sept. 11, 2001. He says they were suffering from inadequate and sporadic health care.

He outlined his purpose in involving these Sept. 11 workers, whom he characterizes as “heroes,” in an open letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that appears on www.michaelmoore.com. Moore says he went to Cuba primarily to highlight the profiteering that permeates the U.S. health system and its neglect of people’s needs, the main theme of “Sicko.”

In his open letter, Moore suggests the Bush administration is engaging in vindictive, self-protective behavior. Such motivation is evident, he says, from the timing of the OFAC letter, which arrived just prior to the film’s May 19 premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and its nationwide release on June 29.

Moore condemns the OFAC investigation as the “latest example of the Bush administration abusing the federal government for raw, crass, political purposes.”

For five and a half years, Moore says, “the Bush administration has ignored and neglected the heroes of the 9/11 community. These heroic first responders have been left to fend for themselves, without coverage and without care. I understand why the Bush administration is coming after me.”

His open letter focuses on financial support bestowed upon right-wing Republicans by health care moguls worried about possible fallout from “Sicko.” Ironically, many commentators noted that, by casting Moore as David to the Treasury Department’s Goliath just as his film is being released, Bush administration officials are likely helping to boost the film’s box office success.

The travel regulations in question are aimed at enforcing U.S. policies against Cuba in place for 45 years. Restrictions imposed as part of the economic blockade against Cuba and tightened by the Bush administration have eradicated all but a few categories of legal travel to Cuba. Media coverage of Moore’s run-in with the Treasury Department largely skirted the issue of U.S. policies toward Cuba.

Hundreds of travelers to Cuba over the past three years have received similar OFAC letters. They were, in most cases, expecting them, some with open arms.

Activists with the Venceremos Brigade and Pastors for Peace Friend-Shipment caravans have over decades purposefully defied U.S. travel restrictions. They have protested U.S. hostility toward Cuba and say they will not comply with what they consider inhumane, unjust economic sanctions.

Both groups are sending delegations to the island again this summer. For information, e-mailor cucaravan@igc.org.

atwhit @megalink.net

Capitalism incapable of reversing environmental crisis

Fri, 18 May 2007 04:59:00 +0000

After decades of international conferences like Rio and Kyoto, despite local victories and major protests, the destruction of humanity’s environment continues. The land, air and seas are getting more polluted, forests are shrinking, coral reefs are dying and climate change is accelerating.

Don’t the capitalists who control most world production care about human survival — even their own? Can’t they see where this is leading? Or are they incapable of stopping it? This column, second of three, argues that for profound social, economic and political reasons, they are incapable of reversing course.

One major reason is deepening poverty under capitalism. The tripling of oil prices since 1998 alone has significantly worsened poverty and environmental damage. Too poor to afford oil and gas, hundreds of millions of people around the world have no choice but to cut trees for heating and cooking. This damages the biosphere, while wasting humanity’s time and health.

A few Wall Street families in control of oil and banking are suffering with “too much money,” while expensive oil negatively impacts most businesses and governments. Businesses stressed by rising oil prices and debts inevitably take more shortcuts, dumping waste and introducing untested chemicals, seeds and drugs into the environment.

Governments are reducing or privatizing their already skimpy environmental oversight of businesses, and cutting back on infrastructure, education and research. Experts speak of the “collapse” of global public health. In most capitalist countries, the physical infrastructure, including waste treatment, is declining. Functional illiteracy is leaping even in the U.S. Hurricane Katrina lifted the veil on social and individual poverty and inequality in the richest capitalist country.

Deepening poverty also precipitates wars, and wars destroy environments. There were some 40 wars and significant armed conflicts in the world last year.

According to a major mid-1990s study by economic historian Angus Maddison, income per person fell about 1 percent per year in 143 (capitalist) countries between 1973 and 1995. This result, so damning of a system, has been hushed up even by Maddison.

Many indicators point to worsening global poverty. Agricultural producers are committing suicide in India in unprecedented numbers, while its “economy” is supposedly booming. Wages fell over 10 percent in Sri Lanka last year, while GDP grew 7.5 percent.

Capitalism is incapable of halting the damage for other basic reasons. Unprecedented long-term planning, organization and implementation are essential to address environmental damage and deal with the dislocations humanity faces in coming decades.

For such planning to be effective, profound control and interest from below is essential. Capitalism, however, is a top-down system. (The Pentagon is promoting top-down proposals to cool the earth by further polluting it.) Capitalist crises also overturn plans, halting necessary scientific studies, public works projects, etc.

Pollution does not stop at borders. Capitalism must maintain borders to divide and rule the masses, while it insists on international freedom for capital movement. The number of borders worldwide grew sharply after capitalist restoration in the USSR. Borders are major blocks to effective international planning and execution of environmental remediation.

Debt service is another reason for capitalism’s paralysis. Debt service — primarily income security for the richest of the rich — is claiming an ever-growing share of the worker-created surplus, blocking its use to meet human needs, including environmental needs. Interest payments by federal and local governments in the U.S. alone claimed $388 billion in 2006 — enough to end all malnutrition worldwide. As Marx explained, under capitalism the weight of the past suffocates the present.

Furthermore, capitalism will not “invest” in environmental remediation if it is not profitable. But many essential environmental projects will not be profitable. Projects that may be profitable in the U.S., which consumes over 85 percent of the world’s savings, are not possible in poorer capitalist countries.

Private insurance, that other arm of finance capital, simply will not insure many necessary projects. Yet such insurance is required against inevitable mistakes and failures. Private ownership of land and speculation in land are profoundly hostile to environmental health.

Leadership by the working class is necessary for environmental remediation. For those who may disagree with this general condemnation of capitalism, let us work together on necessary environmental tasks. We will rejoice where we succeed. When we hit immovable walls, let us work together to replace capitalism.

economics @cpusa.org

Marc Brodine, Richard Levins and Beatrice Lumpkin contributed to this column.

Marx hoy

Fri, 11 May 2007 08:42:00 +0000

En ocasión d el 189º aniversario de su natalicio, este 5 de mayo.

Cada vez que en alguna parte del mundo brota un movimiento orientado por ideas socialistas, como el que estamos viviendo ahora en Venezuela y que hemos convenido en denominar revolución bolivariana, surge casi de modo inevitable la interrogante sobre el tipo de socialismo al cual se refiere en concreto ese movimiento.

Pues lo que sí ha estado claro, hace ya mucho tiempo, es que en sus aspectos teóricos el socialismo admite interpretaciones muy diversas, y desde los utopistas iniciales para acá, en verdad abundan los ejemplos de tales casos y los nombres de notables pensadores dedicados a la elaboración de modelos de una nueva sociedad.

Pero por encima de toda la confusión existente todavía en relación al camino a seguir para la construcción de una sociedad socialista, creo yo que se ha hecho prácticamente universal el respeto y la gran admiración que rodea la figura de Karl Marx.

Del nombre suyo, como es obvio, proviene el vocablo marxismo que es de uso cotidiano en la terminología de las ciencias sociales, en todos los idiomas, y compite ahora ciertamente con denominaciones de tipo religioso, como son cristianismo, mahometismo y budismo. Cosa que Marx seguramente habría rechazado, y no sólo por razones intelectuales. Su pensamiento, en buena medida, tiene orígenes en la revolución francesa, uno de cuyos principios básicos es el laicismo, o sea la tajante separación que debe haber entre el Estado y la religión. Algo que, por cierto, igualmente está en la base del pensamiento bolivariano.

Tomando todo esto en cuenta, me parece que es oportuno salirle al paso a planteamientos que actualmente se oyen aquí, en bocas revolucionarias, que pretenden hacer un menjurje ideológico de elementos marxistas y unas concepciones cristianas. Y lo que resulta más pintoresco aún, se añaden unas gotas de indegenismo al gusto del consumidor.

En cambio, los comunistas venezolanos ya desde los años ’40 del siglo pasado hemos venido insistiendo en que la revolución en nuestro país ha de basarse en la conjunción del marxismo con el pensamiento bolivariano.

Asimismo, vemos que mucho se argumenta a favor de la necesidad de un nuevo socialismo, dando así a entender que ya hubo uno anterior a éste que se nos propone ahora, y el cual supuestamente fue un fracaso. De allí el antisovietismo que exhiben, por lo general, los expositores del llamado “Socialismo del Siglo XXI”, a quienes yo califico simple y llanamente de “neo-revisionistas”. Todos ellos tienen un rasgo en común, y es el permanente y más acentuado anticomunismo.

En otras palabras, no se atreven a denigrar abiertamente de Marx, y hasta le llegan a reconocer cierto mérito en el plano de la teoría de la revolución proletaria, pero de seguidas pasan a recalcar el hecho — más que evidente — de estar nosotros ahora viviendo en un mundo que ha cambiado enormemente. Y concluyen diciendo, por ejemplo, que la clase obrera ha perdido peso con la revolución científico-técnica y por lo tanto ya no tienen los proletarios el papel de vanguardia que Marx y Engels les atribuyeron.

Y menciono a Engels con igual importancia que la de Marx, ya que es una gran injusticia la que se ha cometido con Friedrich Engels cuando se le ha dado únicamente el nombre de Marx a esa inmensa creación de un verdadero socialismo científico, realizada conjuntamente por ambos.

En fin, socialismo puede haber de muchas formas y maneras, en el papel, pero hasta hoy el único que se ha visto funcionar en la práctica es el que está fundamentado en el materialismo dialéctico, es decir, en lo que llamamos marxismo. Pienso que es bueno recordarlo, de modo especial en fechas como estas del 1º y 5 de mayo, para que los revolucionarios en todo el mundo actual valoricemos justamente lo mucho que significa Marx hoy.

Jerónimo Carrera es presidente del Partido Comunista de Venezuela.

Talking about a revolution: Calls for action on global warming, inequality

Fri, 11 May 2007 04:26:00 +0000

The latest report of a world scientific panel on global warming has called for what amounts to a social revolution, one of the report’s authors said.

“Here, in the early years of the 21st century, we’re looking for an energy revolution that’s as comprehensive as the one that occurred at the beginning of the 20th century, when we went from gaslight and horse-drawn carriages to light bulbs and automobiles,” Tufts University professor William Moomaw told The New York Times.

The report, issued May 4 by the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, detailed steps that can and must be taken immediately to prevent catastrophic global consequences. Both developed and developing countries must cut heat-trapping carbon emissions and shift away from oil to non-polluting energy sources, the report said.

On May 7, Steelworkers union President Leo Gerard threw down a working-class challenge, telling a labor conference on the climate crisis that the global emergency cannot be solved by giving giant corporations the right to emit carbon pollution and make immense profits by trading and acquiring those rights, without ever addressing global inequalities.

“We need to use regulation of global warming and trade to lift 2 billion people out of poverty around the world,” Gerard said. “To do that, we’ll need to regulate a lot of economic activity — from power plants to fuel efficiency to energy efficiency — and we’ll need to use this regulation as a powerful tool to improve workers’ lives, both here in North America and across the globe.”

“Don’t think this won’t come about without a fight,” he warned. “It will be the defining struggle about the future direction of the global economy.”

That fight is evident in the battle over raising fuel efficiency standards for U.S. cars and trucks, something long resisted by the Big Three automakers. Vehicle exhaust is one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, and pressure is building to raise the federal standard, which has been stuck at 27.5 miles per gallon for cars since 1975. A new Senate bill would raise the standard to 35 miles per gallon by 2020, but it contains “very significant loopholes that could prevent us from actually getting there,” Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope said in his blog.

The struggle is also surfacing around measures to cap national carbon emissions and shift the U.S. toward clean energy sources.

Environmental advocates consider the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act, S 390, introduced by Senate Democrats Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Barbara Boxer (Calif.), to be the most advanced. It calls for cutting carbon emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 with a combination of mandatory emissions reductions and incentives to develop clean alternative energies. A House companion measure, the Safe Climate Act, has been introduced by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.).

These bills set marks that “we have to reach,” said Ian Kim, policy director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights’ “green jobs” initiative in Oakland, Calif. But they face an uphill battle in Congress because concern about global warming “still has not mainstreamed” among the American people, he said in a phone interview. “Until it has become the No. 1 or No. 2 or No. 3 issue, it will be hard to push.”

Democrats in Congress “want to do the right thing,” but in addition to powerful industry lobbying, they hear from workers who have real concerns about the possible impact of such measures on their jobs, Kim noted. “We can’t ignore or be cynical” about these concerns, he said. This underscores the importance of initiatives in cities and states that can build a base for national action. “Here in Oakland, there are ample opportunities to be involved and test out policies” that can both create jobs and protect the environment, he said.

Kim also coordinates the Oakland Apollo Alliance, a local chapter of the national labor-community-environmental-business coalition for “good jobs and clean energy.” “It’s like a dream team” of groups that are “not famous for getting along,” Kim said. “We are trying to find a win-win that unites these four groups.” He pointed to the “huge low-hanging fruit” of readily achievable solutions that are “good for the environment, good for the economy, and will bring people out of poverty.”

Kim sits on a city task force that is working on steps Oakland can take to dramatically reduce reliance on oil as quickly as possible.

Environmental justice means both “protection from the peril” and “promise for the future,” including opening up “access to the promise” for working- class people and people of color, he emphasized. “We are a blue-collar town working to become a green-collar town.”

Such initiatives, Kim believes, create grassroots momentum for strong environmental action in Congress and by a new Democratic president whoever he or she turns out to be.

suewebb @pww.org

Kevin Pina on tour with his latest documentary: Haiti: We Must Kill the Bandits

Thu, 10 May 2007 03:10:00 +0000

Acclaimed filmmaker Kevin Pina is touring with his latest documentary, “Haiti: We Must Kill the Bandits.” The documentary exposes the disinformation campaign that covered up one of the greatest human rights travesties in the history of Latin America and the Caribbean. Thousands of Haitians were killed, jailed and forced into exile after the Feb. 29, 2004 ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. (For a full review, see the Nov. 4, 2006, edition of the PWW .)

Pina, a journalist and filmmaker, lived and worked in Haiti for seven years, including during the period before and after the overthrow of Aristide and the installation of a U.S.-backed government. He reported extensively from Haiti on Flashpoints, a radio program heard daily on the Pacifica radio station KPFA. He is an associate editor of the Black Commentator online magazine and founding editor of the Haiti Information Project, an alternative news agency operating in Port au Prince, Haiti.

To arrange a showing in your area, or for more information, visit or e-mail HIP@teledyol.net.

Schedule of showings: Detroit – Sat., May 12 at 6:00 p.m. 5922 Second Avenue, near WSU Campus Info: (313) 680-5508; e-mail: info@mecawi.org,

London, Ont. – Sun., May 13 at 7:00 p.m. King's University College, 266 Epworth Ave., in Room 100, Labatt Hall

Windsor, Ont. – Tues., May 15 at 9:00 pm University of Windsor, 401 Sunset Ave. in the Moot Court (Law building at the corner of University Ave. and Sunset Ave.) Special guest: former Lavalas Legislator Jean Candio

Seattle – Sun. May 20 at 12:00 noon Bethany UCC Church, 6230 Beacon Ave. South

Olympia, Wash. – Sun., May 20 at 7:30 p.m. Capital Theater, 206 E. 5th Ave.

Olympia, Wash. – Mon., May 21 - 2:00 p.m. South Sound Community College, 2011 Mottman Rd. SW

Portland, Ore. – Wed., May 22, 7:00 p.m. Liberty Hall, 311 N Ivy St.

Olympia, Wash. – Thurs., May 24, 11:30 a.m. Evergreen State College, 2700 Evergreen Pkwy NW

Portland, Ore. – Thurs., May 24 Clinton Theater, 2522 SE Clinton St.

New York/Manhattan – Fri., June 1 Millennium Theater, 66th E. 4th St. Info: www.fanmilavalasny.com; (908) 472-5362/6464-236-6861 Co-sponsored by: GREFPOM Fanmi Lavalas Haiti

Brooklyn, N.Y. – Sat., June 2 Erasmus High School, 911 Flatbush Ave. Info: ; (908) 472-5362/6464-236-6861 Co-sponsored by: GREFPOM Fanmi Lavalas Haiti

Washington, D.C. – Tues., June 5 Festival Center 1640 Columbia Rd. NW (close to Green Line, Columbia Heights metro stop. Also, 5-2 or 5-4 metrobuses along 16th Street to Columbia Road) Info: (202) 277-8252

Boris Yeltsin and Jenny Lopez

Fri, 04 May 2007 08:13:00 +0000

A few days ago, according to Pravda (the former paper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union now specializing in National Inquirer-like gossip), a newly rich 35-year-old Russian billionaire banker, Andrei Melnichenko, paid Jennifer Lopez $3 million to perform at a birthday party for his wife Aleksandra at their Berkshire, England, estate. Great for Jenny Lopez! But what a sad commentary on the extravagance of gangster capitalism amongst Russia’s ruling class, a class brought to power by the late but not so great Boris Yeltsin. What a tragic coincidence of death and outlandish opulence, symbolic of Yeltsin’s enduring legacy.

The week began with an announcement of Yeltsin’s death, occasioning much commentary on his role and legacy as he lay in state awaiting burial. Not surprisingly much of it has praised him as a great liberator and troubadour of justice, democracy and the American way. The praise is so excessive it almost echoes a strain of super-Yeltsin, reminding me of a conversation I once held with a Young Communist League of the Soviet Union (Komsomol) staffer who described Michael Gorbachev in a similar cult of personality way: “He’s no ordinary man.” Well neither was Mr. Yeltsin.

The New York Times described him as leaving a “giant if flawed legacy.” Tracing the development of what even they call “buccaneer capitalism” and the “usurping of political power by a new class of oligarchs,” they go on to commend his actions which insured that there would be no return to socialist property “that reduced a talented and cultured people rich in natural resources to a beggar among nations.”

Huh? A beggar among nations? The former Soviet Union? The country that defeated three-fourths of Hitler’s army and achieved strategic military parity with the U.S.? The country whose industrial might came, prior to the collapse, close to equaling many developed capitalist countries?

Clearly revealed in this single phrase is the deep class hatred of U.S. imperialists for the former USSR, a hatred that has blinded them from all sense of objectivity and balance when considering the legacy of Yeltsin and his descendants, a hatred that has led them to elevate a hopeless drunk and manic depressive to the level of superstar. No wonder, then, that they overlook his trampling over democracy and the will of the former Soviet people in the name of free markets. It should be remembered that Yeltsin defied Soviet elections and law by:

• ignoring the national plebiscite in which a majority voted for retaining the USSR;

• outlawing the Communist Party;

• blowing up Parliament with rocket and tank fire with defenseless legislators inside.

This is how the Times shamelessly portrays him: “a democrat who often ruled in the manner of a czar. He showed no reluctance to use the power of the presidency to face down his opponents as he did in 1993 when he ordered tanks to fire on a Parliament dominated by openly seditious Communists.”

Oh really? Now one can see it clearly: this is the kind of thinking that led to arming of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the support reportedly given the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, the aid rendered the late Jonas Savimbi in Angola, and a host of other dictators and petty tyrants. All and anything in the name of fighting communism and for free markets.

And for this Yeltsin has been bestowed a mantle of greatness.

Yeltsin’s legacy lies in the greatness of his betrayal of the hopes and aspirations of the Soviet people. It is he who reduced the country to a beggar among nations, raised the infant mortality rate to Third World levels, lowered the life expectancy rate and created extreme poverty and wide-scale hunger for millions. How this could have happened in a country that boasted of “developed socialism,” how it was that the working class and people sat aside and were at best neutral while these events took place, remains a huge question. However that in no way excuses the legacy of Yeltsin or the opulent excesses of his followers, who romp in billions while their countrymen and women starve.

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

Forget the meat! Why an animal-based diet is hazardous to your health

Fri, 04 May 2007 07:30:00 +0000

Slowly the truth is emerging that diet is decisive to health. Out of a fog of deliberate confusion and fierce resistance put up by the food and pharmaceutical industries and their allies in government, academia and big medicine, the idea is winning support in the public mind, and a fundamentally new picture is becoming clear. That picture is that a diet centered on animal products — meat, dairy and eggs — is actually toxic and promotes all the main chronic diseases — cardiovascular, cancer, diabetes, obesity and autoimmune — that cause death in the United States and other industrialized countries.

The scientific evidence is overwhelming and has been assembled in “The China Study,” a marvelous, popular account by T. Colin Campbell, one of the world’s leading experts on nutrition and epidemiology, and his son, Thomas Campbell II. The book draws on Colin Campbell’s own lifelong research at Cornell University as well as his role as director of what has become known as The China Study — the most comprehensive nutritional study ever conducted, carried out in mainland China in the 1980s in conjunction with Oxford University and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine.

Profits over health

In addition, the book surveys and summarizes the vast literature connecting diet with what the authors call “diseases of affluence.” It gives a prescription for a healthy, whole foods, plant-based diet and provides a devastating critique of the role of those with vested interests in the status quo who “are intentionally misleading the public.”

After years of testifying as an expert witness in Congress and serving on numerous official nutrition panels, Colin Campbell sadly concludes: “The entire system — government, science, medicine, industry and media — promotes profits over health, technology over food and confusion over clarity.”

A scientific look at diet

The China Study, which the New York Times called “The Grand Prix of Epidemiology,” was one of the first U.S.-Chinese collaborative efforts after diplomatic relations were established. It followed up on a massive Chinese survey of cancer death rates and other diseases in 2,400 Chinese counties. The survey found two very striking results — cancer was far less prevalent in China than in the U.S. and within China there were enormous geographic differences in its occurrence.

Given the genetic homogeneity of the Chinese population, these results cried out for a study of the environmental factors. An international team of experts was assembled with U.S., British and Chinese funding which studied 6,500 adults in 65 rural counties by conducting blood and urine tests and measuring dietary intake.

The experts found massive dietary differences between the U.S. and rural China. The Chinese diet has more calories, less fat, less protein, more fiber and much less animal foods.

All the chronic diseases afflicting Americans are far less prevalent in China. The death rate from cardiovascular disease, which kills 40 percent of Americans, for example, is seventeen times less in rural China and is virtually nonexistent in some counties. Blood cholesterol levels, one of the strongest predictors of heart disease as well as cancer, diabetes and other “Western diseases,” is far less than in the U.S. and far below the “safe levels” officially sanctioned in our country. It was further found that animal protein raises blood cholesterol even more than dietary fat and cholesterol, while plant-based foods and nutrients lower blood cholesterol.

More meat, more disease

While the “diseases of affluence” are far less prevalent in rural China, there were significant variations in different counties and higher incidence was closely connected with higher consumption of animal foods. That is, even a small amount of animal food consumption increased heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Otherwise, mortality in China is connected with “diseases of poverty,” such as pneumonia, tuberculosis, parasitic diseases and diseases of pregnancy, which are often associated with poor sanitary conditions and public health standards.

Initially published in 1990, the data in the China Study is the basis of ongoing research, but the overall implications are stunning: plant-based food is healthy; animal-based food is harmful. This becomes even more striking from the book’s survey of diet-related studies of all the “diseases of affluence.” The authors show that the same pattern can be found in all these diseases — cardiovascular; obesity; Type 2 (adult) diabetes; breast, colorectal and prostate cancer; autoimmune diseases, especially Type 1 (juvenile) diabetes and multiple sclerosis; osteoporosis; kidney stones; macular degeneration and cataracts; and Alzheimer’s and cognitive impairment disease. In every case the incidence and severity of the disease is linked to animal-based food, while plant-based diets prevent and in many cases reverse the disease.

“What has become so convincing about the effect of diet on health,” the authors write, “is the breadth of the evidence. While a single study might be found to support almost any idea under the sun, what are the chances that hundreds, even thousands, of different studies show a protective benefit of plant-based foods and/or harmful effects of animal-based foods for so many different diseases? We can’t say it’s due to coincidence, bad data, biased research, misinterpreted statistics or ‘playing with numbers.’ This has got to be the real deal.”

It’s about the human body

It seems to me that the human body, with its anatomy and physiology derived from plant-eating primates, is not equipped to process animal-based food. The book cites both experimental and epidemiological studies that give reasons why animal-based food, especially animal protein, is harmful. For example, animal protein is necessary for some carcinogens to be incorporated in human DNA, thus initiating various forms of cancer. Plant protein does not have this capability. If they eat a plant-based diet, people as well as laboratory animals exposed to even high levels of some potent carcinogens do not develop cancer.

Because it is similar to human protein, animal protein has the capability to set off autoimmune processes. This is the reason, the authors say, that Type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis have been linked to consumption of cow’s milk.

Surprisingly, dairy products are also linked to osteoporosis. While milk is promoted as necessary for strong bones and teeth, in fact, the incidence of bone fractures is highest in precisely those countries, like the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Scandinavia, where milk consumption is high. The reason seems to be that milk protein increases blood acidity causing the body to deplete bone calcium to neutralize the acid. Plant protein does not have this effect.

Alzheimer’s, cataracts and macular degeneration are linked to another harmful property of animal protein — the formation of highly reactive free radicals, while plants, which are often loaded with anti-oxidants, protect against this damage.

The conclusion is clear and simple. People should avoid eating animal products, while a whole foods plant-based diet prevents and in many cases reverses all the main chronic diseases.

Whole foods diet

The authors stress whole foods because as information linking plant foods to health has gained acceptance, a whole new industry of vitamin and other dietary supplements has sprung up with the message: continue eating the same diet, just add our supplements.

But, the authors stress, nutrition is inherently very complex and cannot be reduced to a few individual molecules. With the possible exception of vitamin B12, which is needed in extremely low amounts, every needed nutrient is present in ample amounts in ordinary plant-based nutrition. There are no nutrients in animal-based food, including protein, that are not better provided by plants. And while animal-centered diets are linked to many diseases, except for allergies, there are no known harmful effects of plant-based nutrition.

There is also a common belief that genetics is a big factor in chronic diseases, but the evidence from many sources shows that this can account for no more than a few percent of the cases. For example, Chinese and other Asians who immigrate to the U.S. continue their traditional diets and disease patterns. Their grandchildren with the same genetics, however, develop the same chronic diseases as other Americans as they adopt an animal-centered diet. The prominence of these diseases and their continued rapid growth in industrialized countries has occurred in far too short a time period to be explained by genetic changes in the population.

The food-drug industrial complex

The final section of the book lays out the politics of nutrition and exposes the shameless efforts of the food industry and its lackeys in government and academia to promote the toxic American diet as well as the efforts of the pharmaceutical and medical establishments to protect the dangerous but highly profitable reliance on drugs, devices and extremely expensive surgery to treat chronic disease.

Because of his professional connections and insider status, Colin Campbell is able to expose corrupt practices of some highly respected institutions including the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the National Cholesterol Education Program, the Cleveland Clinic and the Federal Food and Nutrition Board.

Industry groups, such as Dairy Management, Inc., play a particularly harmful role. Like their counterparts in the tobacco industry, Dairy Management has a huge advertising and “educational” budget, much directed at schoolchildren, to create general acceptance of the idea that milk is wholesome, healthy and necessary for proper nutrition. “Obviously,” the authors write, “neither kids nor their parents are learning about how milk has been linked to Type 1 diabetes, prostate cancer, osteoporosis, multiple sclerosis or other autoimmune diseases, and how casein, the main protein in dairy foods, has been shown to experimentally promote cancer and increase blood cholesterol and atherosclerotic plaque.” The current issue of Scientific American reports that milk is linked to yet another disease — autism.

Wielding political influence

The dairy as well as the candy industry have gained control over the federal Food and Nutrition Board, a group of supposedly objective academics, who set recommended daily allowances (RDAs) found on food labeling. After George W. Bush came to office, this board issued a new and radically different set of nutritional guidelines removing any reality from the upper limits to the amount of protein and added sugar that should be in the American diet. The new guideline issued in 2002 set an upper safe limit for protein intake at 35 percent and added sugar of 25 per cent of total calories. Even people on the high protein Atkins diet consume no more than 21 per cent of their calories as protein. Within the context of the U.S. diet, protein means animal food. You could eat a pound of steak every day and be within the federal safe upper limit.

Since there is no scientific evidence to support such high guidelines, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine got a court order exposing that the majority of the board’s members were on the payrolls of the dairy, candy and pharmaceutical industries.

The guidelines, however, stand and determine the food provided in federally funded nutrition programs, including the Women, Infants and Children Supplemental Feeding Program, Child Nutrition Programs, such as the school lunch program, and Medicare-reimbursed meals in hospitals and nursing homes. Thus a toxic animal- and sugar-centered diet is being unloaded on tens of millions of school children and other poor and politically weak people in our country.

Campbell calls the report “an irresponsible and callous disregard for American citizens” and “the most sweeping, regressive nutrition policy I have ever seen [that] will indirectly or directly promote sickness among Americans for many years to come.”

The RDA guidelines are the basis for food nutrition labels as well as public and professional education programs. The authors note that there is very little nutrition education in U.S. medical schools and virtually no government funded research. Medical students are inundated with educational materials as well as trips, meals and other perks provided by the food and pharmaceutical industries.

Scandal at the Cleveland Clinic?

The book tells the story of Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, one of the most respected physicians at the Cleveland Clinic, who in 1985 was the first to give a group of patients with advanced heart disease a strictly plant-based diet and was subsequently able to provide dramatic proof of arrest and reversal of the disease in every patient. Senior staff physicians and trustees have gone to Esselstyn for treatment, but the clinic has blocked his efforts to expand the program to the general public.

The clinic is world-renowned for intricate angioplasties and by-pass surgeries which usually cost $50,000-$100,000. Cardiologists readily acknowledge that these risky procedures provide only temporary relief of symptoms and in no way address the underlying disease of atherosclerotic plaque. The procedures, however, account for two-thirds of the clinic’s income.

Based on his 10-year cardiovascular health study, Lewis Kuller, professor of Medicine and the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health, states, “All males 65 years of age or older who have been exposed to the traditional Western diet have cardiovascular disease and should be treated as such.” But it is not just elderly males. Studies of U.S. soldiers killed in Korea and Vietnam, as well as of young civilians killed through accidents and homocide, found that heart disease was clearly evident in most American youth. Arterial plaque is ubiquitous.

So here we have a disease — clogging of the arteries — affecting nearly everyone in the United States, which is the leading cause of death, and a cure has been discovered at the Cleveland Clinic, which is being used by some of its top officials, but the clinic is trying to keep the news under wraps.

The book quotes one of the clinic’s trustees as saying, “I think, if the word gets out that Esselstyn has this treatment that arrests and reverses this disease at the Cleveland Clinic, and it’s been used by senior staff and he’s treated senior trustees, but he’s not permitted to treat the common herd, we could be open for a lawsuit.”

Esselstyn has recently published a book, “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease,” and his discoveries have been confirmed and extended by others, including Dr. Dean Ornish and Dr. John MacDougal.

Americans should have a choice

Many cardiologists are well aware that a plant-based diet can cure the disease and make the costly and dangerous angioplasty and bypass procedures unnecessary, but their argument is Americans will not change their diet.

This is highly questionable and at the very least untested as people who see doctors about heart problems are not given this alternative. If they were told they could avoid heart surgery by switching to a plant-based diet, it seems unlikely many would choose to have their chests cracked open, go through a six-month recovery, risk cardiac arrest and loss of cognitive abilities and still face the same risk of future problems since the underlying disease has not been addressed.

As health care costs skyrocket, driven by expensive drugs and procedures and inflated salaries of physicians, hospital administrators and insurance executives, a mass movement is growing among labor and the general public for national health care. As it turns out, another major form of relief may be something as simple and cheap as a plant-based diet.

Rick Nagin is the district organizer of the Communist Party of Ohio and has a Ph.D. in biology.

Mississippi on the mind and Cuba

Fri, 04 May 2007 07:20:00 +0000

In a front-page story April 22, The New York Times reported that infant mortality rates (IMR) in Mississippi and other Southern states are rising. The IMR measures the number of first-year infant deaths per thousand births. It reflects social indicators such as access to care, food availability, family income and education levels.

The Times attributed the rising mortality to decreased Medicaid assistance, health insurance, provider availability and public clinics. Mississippi’s Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican, has trumpeted tax cuts (for the rich) that have inevitably reduced public services.

Earlier, the proliferation of maternal and child health programs under Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” had been crucial to a reduction of Mississippi’s IMR for Black infants from 57.8 in 1963 to 29.8 in 1975.

Alluding to obesity among Black women, motivation problems and difficulties in keeping appointments, the Times casts undue blame on victims.

As a pediatrician, I have followed IMR figures in the United States and in Cuba. Cuban babies survive, despite a U.S. economic blockade that cruelly and illegally targets medical supplies and, until 2000, food. Cuba’s IMR continued its decline even after the fall of the Soviet bloc, when Havana lost 85 percent of its overseas trade and 50 percent of its oil imports.

I left New Hampshire in 1975 to teach pediatrics in Mississippi. Touring New Hampshire that year as a presidential candidate, former Oklahoma Sen. Fred Harris heard about these plans and told me, “They need you down there in Mississippi.”

What Mississippi really needed was Peter Boolens. He’d gone to medical school to become a medical missionary, and in 1972 founded a health center in Cary, Miss., in Sharkey County, one of the state’s poorest. When I knew Peter, he was doctoring all comers and helping set up cooperatives.

The Times noted one exception to the bad news from Mississippi. Death rates for mostly Black infants in Sharkey County were low. The Cary Christian Center, where Boolens was a physician for 25 years, got credit for those results. He and I joined other physicians during the 1960s and 1970s in wanting to actually practice public health.

In 2004, Mississippi’s IMR was 9.7-14.7 for Black babies and 6.1 for white infants. In 2005, the state IMR rose to 11.4-17 for Black babies, 6.6 for whites. Since 1991, the IMR for babies in Sharkey County has been 5.0, and most of their mothers attended Dr. Boolens’ health center.

In Cuba, the IMR fell from 41.7 in 1963 to 13.6 in 1986, to 5.3 in 2006. Varying estimates place the U.S. IMR for 2004, the last year for which numbers are available, at more or less 6.8. The death rate for Black infants was 14.0.

What might Cary and Cuba have in common to account for low IMRs? The Cubans attribute advances in education, health care, international solidarity and energy to their “battle of ideas.” According to the Cuban side, there is a better way of living than putting profits first.

Boolens, too, had ideas about the common good, as did many physicians heading for Mississippi at that time, buoyed along by the civil rights movement and initiatives like the War on Poverty.

His ideas were about putting ethics into practice. He wanted Sharkey County families to have health care and jobs. Health workers in Cary, relying upon public health methods that are standard worldwide, encouraged people to participate in their own health care. Boolens’ colleagues trained mothers to visit other mothers, especially during pregnancies. They taught about prevention, provided emotional support, helped out with appointments and talked about food.

Expectant mothers received prenatal care, became aware of early signs of trouble and what to do, and learned about babies. They grew in confidence and awareness.

In parallel fashion, Cuba’s battle of ideas puts the ethics of the Cuban Revolution into practice, some of them articulated by Jose Marti. “Humanity is the homeland,” he said, also “from all for the good of all.” Aspirations like these opened doors to creativity and innovation.

Cuba recently introduced radical changes in education. Ideas are flourishing on energy issues. In health care, the education of physicians from throughout the world and taking medical care to 68 countries, including disaster situations, are built upon sophisticated specialty services, an exemplary primary care system, and biomedical research and manufacturing capabilities.

Stories from Mississippi and Cuba suggest that working for the common good may not, after all, be all that complicated. Creativity and thinking are used to serve higher values. Alternatively, when profiteering, weapons systems and inculcation of fears are pushed as the agenda, likely as not the category of disposable people is resurrected.

atwhit @megalink.net

Faulty economics and the French elections

Fri, 04 May 2007 07:03:00 +0000

The elections in France demonstrate the power of faulty economic analysis, and more generalized problems with arithmetic, to shape ideas and possibly the future of not only a nation but a continent.

The United States has faced similar problems with its debate over Social Security, in which the majority of Americans were convinced — based on verbal and accounting trickery — that the program is facing serious financial problems when the baby boom generation retires. (It isn’t).

In France, Nicolas Sarkozy, the right-wing candidate, took the lead after the April 22 election with 31.2 percent of the vote, against Ségolène Royal, the left-of-center candidate of France’s Socialist party, who garnered 25.9 percent. They face a runoff on May 6.

The ‘competitive’ argument

The general theme that has propelled Sarkozy into the lead is that the French economy is somehow “stuck” and needs to be reformed to be more like ours. It is also widely believed that France needs to be made more “competitive” in the global economy.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has been the most popular proponent of the idea that French workers must lower their living standards because of the global economy. “All of the forces of globalization [are] eating away at Europe’s welfare states,” he writes. “French voters are trying to preserve a 35-hour workweek in a world where Indian engineers are ready to work a 35-hour day.”

There is no economic logic to the argument that the citizens of any rich country need to reduce their living standards or government programs because of economic progress in developing countries.

Productivity, which is based on the country’s collective knowledge, skills, capital stock and organization of the economy, typically increases every year. To the extent that international competition is being used by special interests to push down the living standards of French or German or U.S. workers — and it is — it just means that the rules for international commerce are being written by the wrong people. It is not a problem inherent to economic progress.

Another mistake that is commonly made in this debate is to compare France’s income or GDP per person to the U.S., by which France lags: $30,693 for France versus $43,144 for the U.S. (these are adjusted for purchasing power parity). But this is not a fair comparison, because the French do not work nearly as many hours as we do in the U.S. Economists do not say that one person is worse off than another if she has less income simply due to working fewer hours. A better indicator of economic welfare in such a comparison is therefore productivity, which is as high or higher in France than it is in the U.S.

Youth unemployment

Now for some arithmetic regarding France’s notoriously high unemployment rate among young people, which shaped politics there and influenced world opinion during the youth riots in 2005. The standard measure of unemployment puts the unemployed in the numerator, and unemployed plus employed in the denominator (u/u+e). By this measure, French males age 15-24 have an unemployment rate of 20.8 percent, as compared to 11.8 percent for the U.S.

But this difference is mainly because in France, there are proportionately many more young males who are not in the labor force — because more are in school, and because young people in France do not work part time while they are in school, as much as they do in the U.S. Those who are not in the labor force are not counted in either the numerator or the denominator of the unemployment rate.

A better comparison then is to look at the number of unemployed divided by the population of those in the age group 15-24. By this measure, the U.S. comes in at 8.3 percent and France at 8.6 percent. Both countries have a serious unemployment problem among youth, and in both countries it is highly concentrated among racial/ethnic minorities. But the problem is not much worse in France than it is in the U.S.

Differing programs

Sarkozy proposes making it easier for employers to fire workers, cutting taxes (including inheritance taxes), pushing back against the 35 hour work week, and other measures that will favor upper-income groups and owners of corporations. These measures will certainly redistribute income upward, as we have been doing in the U.S. over the last 30 years. But once again, there is little or no economic evidence that these measures will increase employment or economic growth.

Royal proposes a series of measures to boost economy-wide demand, including raising the minimum wage, unemployment benefits and state-subsidized employment. These make some economic sense, since they at least have a chance — mostly by boosting aggregate demand and spending power of consumers — to create more employment.

If France makes a historic shift to the right in this election, it will be largely due to economic misinformation.

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. . This is an abridged version of an article that originally appeared in PostGlobal and is reprinted here with the author’s permission.

Black leaders probe rights violations on border

Fri, 04 May 2007 06:29:00 +0000

TUCSON, Ariz. — A 14-member delegation of African Americans investigated human rights abuses of immigrants, Mexican Americans and indigenous communities on the U.S.-Mexican border, in an April 26-29 fact-finding tour here.

The “Braving Borders Building Bridges: A Journey for Human Rights” tour was sponsored by the Black Alliance for Just Immigration in partnership with Coalicion de Derechos Humanos and the National Network for Immigrant Rights.

The delegates, from six states and 10 cities, included ministers and representatives of faith-based organizations, labor leaders, academics, political leaders and community activists.

They met with people on both sides of the border, including migrants, human rights activists, members of faith communities, labor organizations, county officials and representatives of Native American nations.

At the federal court building in Tucson, delegation members observed trials of migrants charged with illegal entry into the U.S. They then heard reports from the Pima County Medical Examiners Office on increased migrant deaths during passage through the desert. The group then traveled to the border towns of Douglass, Ariz., and Agua Prieta and Altar in Sonora, Mexico, to hear testimonies of local people impacted by increased border crossings and militarization of the border. The tour ended with visits with leaders and activists of the Pascua Yaqui and Tohono O’odham Native American communities also affected by the border militarization.

“The increasing numbers of those who have died is a direct result of U.S. policy funneling migrants to cross through the desert,” said the Rev. Phillip Lawson, a delegation member who is interim pastor of Jones United Methodist Church in San Francisco.

Migrants typically crossed into the U.S. through urban areas till 1994 when the government adopted the “prevention through deterrence” policy, sealing off urban-area borders and forcing migrants to risk life by crossing through deserts and mountains.

“The image that does not leave my head is of 12 men in orange suits and women in pink, handcuffed and with shackles on their legs,” Lawson said. “Their only crime was risking their lives in search of a better life.”

The delegation heard firsthand accounts of racial profiling and abuses by border patrol agents, including harassment of Mexican Americans drivers, Mexican American homes broken into without warrants, physical abuse of migrants caught crossing in the desert and harassment of Native Americans traveling to and from religious ceremonies in Mexico.

“We came to investigate human rights abuses, and we found significant evidence that there are widespread violations caused by the U.S. militarization of the border and immigration control,” said Gerald Lenoir, coordinator of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. “These policies are racist attacks on the most vulnerable members of society: immigrants of color.”

Isabel Garcia, co-chair of Tucson-based Coalicion de Derechos Humanos, concurred, saying, “The criminalization of Latinos and immigrants matches what has been done to African Americans historically. Already 60 percent of the people in federal prisons are Black and Latino.”

The Rev. Kelvin Sauls, a Bay Area United Methodist Church leader, said the delegation was struck by the devaluation of human life at the border, and the need for a new border policy. He called the Bush administration’s approach “a policy of economic exploitation and racial discrimination,” adding that the harsh burden borne by Native Americans was a particular revelation to the group.

The delegates committed themselves to help build a movement for an immigration policy that is both comprehensive and just.

pwwinaz @webtv.net

Castro blasts Bush administrations ethanol program

Wed, 02 May 2007 01:12:00 +0000

Fidel Castro has blasted the Bush administration’s plans to meet the energy and global warming crises by its promotion of a massive international program to convert food into ethanol fuel. His March 29 op-ed in the Communist Party daily Granma was titled “More than 3 billion people in the world are being condemned to a premature death from hunger and thirst.”

The Cuban leader wrote: “The sinister idea of turning foodstuffs into fuel was definitely established as the economic strategy of U.S. foreign policy on March 26.” On that date President Bush met with the heads of GM, Ford and Daimler-Chrysler, who agreed to double their production of “flex-fuel” vehicles and to boost their manufacture of E-85 ethanol-capable vehicles to at least half of their total output by 2010.

Ethanol production consumed 20 percent of the 2006 U.S. corn crop and will consume an even higher percentage this year. There are 114 U.S. ethanol refineries, with 80 more under construction.

This program affects the food supply and prices in a number of ways. First, on the day of Castro’s editorial, the price of corn itself was $3.94 a bushel, which is almost twice the $2 a bushel price that it had been for years before the ethanol boom. Corn is a major ingredient in many foods from corn syrup to tortillas.

Second, corn is the main feed for livestock, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently reported that corn for ethanol is driving up prices for animal feed, e.g. chicken feed is 40 percent higher. The prices of meats will rise dramatically.

Third, and not usually noted, increased acreage for corn plantings will decrease available land for other agricultural crops and destroy natural ecosystems such as forests and wetlands.

In late March the Agriculture Department projected that 90.5 million acres of corn will be planted in 2007, a 15 percent increase over 2006 and the most acreage since World War II. But this surge could come at the expense of soybean acres, which are expected to drop by 11 percent, and by cotton production, expected to be down by 20 percent. For example, Arkansas farmers intend to plant 66 percent more acres in corn but decrease cotton acreage from 1.2 million acres to only 740,000 acres.

This new industry is causing ecological devastation in many parts of the world. Brazil has destroyed vast areas of the Amazon rainforest to plant “hundreds of miles” of sugarcane for ethanol, and Malaysian and Indonesian rainforests are being destroyed for palm oil plantations. Palm oil gives the highest yield of any crop that can be used to produce biodiesel. Yet loss of forests can lead to soil erosion and flooding, and contributes to global warming by removing carbon “sinks” (which absorb carbon dioxide and store carbon).

Here in the U.S., the Bush administration recently announced it will shrink the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) so as to permit the conversion of protected lands to corn planting. The $2 billion per year CRP has paid farmers to forego cultivation on 37 million acres. Since its inception in 1985, the CRP has protected 2 million acres of wetlands, planted trees and grass to reduce 450 million tons of soil erosion per year, while increasing duck populations. Conservation groups are up in arms over destruction of these ecologically sensitive areas.

Thus, the diversion of food crops to provide increasing demands for fuel will have dire consequences, especially for the poorest billions of people who live in chronic hunger and for the ecology of the planet. Furthermore, the projected impact on energy conservation is minimal and could be met many times over by a comparable investment in renewable sources of energy.

The only winners will be the multinational agrochemical corporations.

kennell @borcim.wustl.edu