People Before Profit blog

Imperial divisions

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 08:02:00 +0000

On Sept. 14 the U.S. House of Representatives, in the spirit of election-year politics, passed HR 6061, the “Secure Fence Act,” which calls for construction of 700 miles of fencing along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border.

The Secure Fence Act will join “Operation Gatekeeper,” “Operation Hold the Line” and “Operation Wetback,” among others, as attempts to secure a border area created in 1848 and fueled by “white man’s burden” and “manifest destiny” racist, imperialist ideology.

This border, which cut Mexico in two, has served to control resources, settlement and security over the occupied territory, and subjugated Chicano and native American peoples in what is now called the U.S. Southwest.

The bill exemplifies the class division, paranoia, racism and bigotry inherent in bourgeois neo-liberal democracy, as all over its “free world,” shameful walls and blockades are erected for imperialism’s preservation and expansion.

The Berlin Wall was trumpeted around the world by the bourgeois press as the epitome of repression and bondage, a “wall of infamy.” However, calls ringing out from the world’s oppressed for world imperialism to tear down its own walls — walls much vaster and affecting many more lives than the “iron curtain” — fall only into silence.

Israel’s West Bank wall — which in a matter of years will be much longer than the Berlin Wall — perpetuates Israeli apartheid and imperial occupation in Palestinian lands.

Spain’s double razor wire fences around its enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla continue legacies of Spanish imperial dominion in North African Berber land.

The little heard-of Moroccan wall, 16 times greater than the Berlin Wall, says Eduardo Galeano, “continuously mined and surveilled, for 20 years has perpetuated Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara” — and the subjugation of the Saharawi people in this resource-rich land.

Finally, the U.S., the greatest imperialist power — with its Cuba blockade enacted to counter the Cuban Revolution waged for self-determination and social justice, its former Mason-Dixon line designed to preserve slavery and subjugation of African Americans, and now its “Secure Fence Act” — has historically been a nation of blocks and barriers, of privatization (from the Latin “privare” — to withhold, deny) and of appropriation of the territory, resources and sovereignty of others.

The oppressed and their oppressors will never live together in peace. “Pax Americana” therefore must divide, neutralize, keep out or destroy class, nationality and race foes that it cannot or will not assimilate.

Writes Black and Brown unity advocate John A. Imani, “The lie is that there are borders, nations, divisions. The truth is that we are all one. The lie is that there is too little. The truth is that there could be so much. And all it takes is work.”

As the walls go up around us and across the “free world,” of capitalist neo-liberalism and its “free trade,” dividing and segregating working class allies, the international sea of oppressed across borders and nation-states must work to tear down ideological and physical barriers of racism, xenophobia and false patriotism — walls that consolidate imperial rule, walls whose color is the green of corporate greed.

Cristóbal Cavazos is a Chicano activist and graduate student who lives in the Chicago area.

The new culture war

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 07:54:00 +0000

In the ongoing battle over immigration, conservative rhetoric continues to escalate. It’s racist, and it gets results. This year, more than 30 states have passed 57 laws banning the undocumented from receiving social services or pledging National Guard troops to patrol the southern U.S. border. House Republicans in Washington staged a hearing about “cracking down” on undocumented immigrants. Republicans have been told to move ahead but avoid pissing off Latinos — their lesson from Proposition 187 in California — but a little decoding of the symbols, sound bites and economic arguments they use exposes their fear of a browner nation.

Here, then, are the six racist myths driving the immigration debate dispelled.

Immigrants are not animals. Rep. Steve Katz (R-Ariz.) presented a proposal to Congress for a “super fence” along the border. “We could electrify it,” he said, “not enough to kill somebody but enough to make them think twice. We do that with livestock all the time.” If the problem eased, he suggested, we could open it up again and “let the livestock run through.” Enough said.

Neither are they terrorists. In Colorado, a dramatic series of debates ended with the state Legislature passing a law requiring adult applicants for public services to prove citizenship. Republicans complained about being beaten down in a “Friday night massacre” because the law didn’t go far enough, according to State Rep. Debbie Stafford (R-Aurora). She wanted a ballot measure writing the ban into the state’s constitution and also applying it to people under 18.

“We’re helping to create the next generation of terrorists,” she told the Rocky Mountain News. There is no documented connection between immigration and terrorism. When making the flimsy argument that immigration threatens our national security, conservatives like to cite the example of the 9/11 hijackers. Yet, they forget that all 19 hijackers entered the country legally.

Tent cities at the border would be 21st-century concentration camps. Don Goldwater, Arizona’s leading Republican gubernatorial candidate, wants to arrest border crossers, imprison them in tents and make them build that coveted super fence. All those National Guard troops sent to the southern border would be kept busy guarding the camps.

There’s no invasion. In Idaho, Canyon County Commissioner Robert Vasquez, modeling himself after Tom Tancredo, accused his opponents in a Senate race of “collaborating with the unarmed enemy invading America.” His grandparents were Mexican immigrants, but he fears the consequences of letting in more of their kind, calling this a war: “Either we protect and defend Old Glory at every challenge, or we all learn Spanish and get used to the chicken and worm on the Mexican flag.” (Vasquez has joined the National Advisory Committee of Protect Arizona Now, whose chair Virginia Abernethy describes herself as a “white separatist.”) There’s no evidence, however, that the Latino population will surpass whites anytime soon. The Census Bureau projects that by the year 2030, whites will be 24.4 percent of the population; Latinos 20.1 percent. Even in 50 years, Latinos won’t outnumber the white majority.

They speak English, just not “English only.” Mayor Tom Macklin of Avon Park, Fla., pushed for a new law based on a Pennsylvania precedent that makes English the city’s official language — in addition to fining landlords and denying business licenses to those who accommodate the horde. The city will remove Spanish from all documents, signs and automated phone messages. In Bogota, N.J., Mayor Steve Lonegan, generally a free-market libertarian, is campaigning to force McDonald’s to remove a Spanish-language billboard. Of course, he’ll have to change the town’s name too.

As an immigrant child, I can testify that all this is unnecessary. Although my parents allowed no English at home, I still get to experience the pleasure of white people complimenting my English. Funding for English as a Second Language classes would be far more helpful — and very likely less expensive — than prohibiting multilingualism.

They do not drain public coffers. Lamenting the strain the undocumented impose on our public services is a favorite straw man erected by nativist politicians. Yet, once again, the facts don’t support the argument. Studies in state after state show that immigrants pay their fair share of taxes. Even the undocumented pay into Social Security through false numbers. According to a 2005 study by Physicians for a National Health Program, immigrants, including the undocumented, use fewer health care resources than native-born citizens. Immigrants accounted for 10.4 percent of the U.S. population, but only 7.9 percent of total health spending, and only 8 percent of government health spending. Their per capita expenditure is less than half that of non-immigrants. Thirty percent of immigrants used no health care at all in the course of a year.

These stereotypes generate real consequences. They drive the entire policy debate rightward, so that neither Republicans nor Democrats are willing to decouple immigration and national security. Even the Senate’s “good” immigration bill includes an English-only provision that could prevent FEMA and other federal agencies from serving limited English speakers.

At the local level, racism, coded or not, drives all immigrants underground and enables bigots. It won’t take a genius landlord to decide that simply avoiding brown skin altogether beats paying a $1,000 fine per person. A woman in Avon Park, the new English-only city, reported that a bartender refused to serve her sister who had a Puerto Rican driver’s license, saying, “I can’t read that.”

In another example, the Idaho Community Action Network reports that Robert Vasquez’s polarizing language has created so much fear of roundups that immigrants hole up at home and send the kids to do the grocery shopping. Vehicles carrying day laborers there have been forced off the road by others. Refugees have woken up in the middle of the night to someone banging on their doors telling them to get out of the country, and the white supremacist group National Alliance set fires at the local university to “defend” the flag. Their flyers said: “Stop Immigration! Non-Whites are turning America into a Third World slum … They are messy, disruptive, noisy and multiply rapidly. Let’s send them home now!”

Lest we believe this is only about red states, note that a woman wrote in to The New York Times after seeing the same flyer on a window in the Upper East Side.

Racism is the wedge conservatives use to distract us from real questions that need answers. If they are so upset with people draining the public treasury, they should protest real drains like the $70 billion of corporate tax income lost in offshore tax havens annually.

Politicians and immigration foes are trying to manufacture a new culture war. But the majority of Americans don’t want one and must speak up now to drown out the subtle racism dominating this debate.

Rinku Sen is executive director of the Applied Research Center and publisher of ColorLines magazine.

A radical, yet necessary position

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 07:40:00 +0000

The Bush administration and the extreme right have been ruthless in their attacks on youth and our quality of life. They have shown us that capitalism offers no real future. As they continue to dismantle everything that our parents and grandparents fought for and won; as they offer up our generation to die in an unjust war; as they turn a blind eye to hurricane-ravaged communities that have already been torn apart by racism, poverty, police brutality and unemployment — we have a choice to make.

Will we sit back and allow the far right to destroy our future or will we stand up together to build another world?

The answer is obvious. It’s our future they’re playing with, and youth must unite with the broader democratic and labor-led struggles to defeat the far right — particularly cronies of the Bush administration currently occupying Congress!

We know that it is only through socialism that we can secure real, lasting democracy, equality and peace. But in order to get there, we have to first play our part in defeating the most reactionary policies that threaten all we have won. Youth have a powerful role in this coalition, and it is this decisive victory that will put all of us in a better position to fight for and win a real people’s agenda.

Yes, we can condemn Bush, meticulously repeating our frustrations over and over to an empty U.S. Capitol building at yet another Saturday afternoon demonstration. But talking about our demands alone never got us anywhere. We must also act, taking strategic advantage of opportunities to widen our struggle and increase our chances of winning our broader goals.

The 2006 elections are one such opportunity, encompassing more than the usual back-and-forth between spin-doctors and not-so-charismatic candidates. Indeed, this year’s elections provide us with a strategic opportunity to turn Congress into a voice of opposition against the extreme right and the Bush administration. And surprisingly, doing this does not require that much of a shift, according to recent congressional floor votes. It was only by two votes that Congress cut prescription drug coverage for seniors dependent on Medicare, and by only two votes that Congress passed the biggest cut in student aid for higher education in U.S. history. Likewise, local and state elections are just as important in winning better schools, jobs and lasting peace, including important school board and gubernatorial races — kicking the far right out of our backyards.

Not convinced? Well consider this.

If the radical right wing of the Republicans were to return to office on Nov. 8, we can imagine more youth being sent to war overseas, more tax breaks to the rich while social programs are eliminated, more erosion of labor laws, more empty mandates like No Child Left Behind, and increased privatization of our public schools — starting, of course, with those in New Orleans.

With a Democratic majority in Congress, John Conyers would chair the Judiciary Committee, bringing forward bills for impeachment and for expansion of the Voting Rights Act. Sheila Jackson-Lee would chair the Immigration Subcommittee. She is the author of one of the better immigration bills. Charles Rangel would chair the Ways and Means Committee, strengthening consideration of Medicare for All and expanding Katrina relief. George Miller would chair the Education and the Workforce Committee, bringing the Employee Free Choice Act to a vote and halting the congressional attacks on public education, opening the doors for a real No Child Left Behind law. Such an altered climate of struggle would give us increased room to organize youth, our parents, our teachers and others to fight for comprehensive education reform, expanded affirmative action, and good jobs and fair wages.

Is it enough for us to simply “call” for these things?

Again, the answer is clear. Another world is necessary — so necessary that we cannot pass up any one fight sitting down — including the fight for Congress! It’s time for us to go on the offensive! As communists, we know that capitalism will not fix itself, and that, in fact, this is one of the many steps along the road to socialism. Thus, all youth must engage in the 2006 elections with intentions of winning, turning Congress into a voice of opposition to the far right and preparing for the future stages of our fight. It is the only way to win back our schools, good jobs and a lasting peace. It is the only way to real democracy and full equality. We invite you to join the struggle to beat back the extreme right through the elections. Youth demand a future, and we demand it right now!

Erica Smiley (smiley@yclusa.org) is national coordinator of the Young Communist League USA. Jessica Marshall (jessie@yclusa.org) is a member of the YCL National Council and former national coordinator.

EDITORIAL: Unacceptable treatment

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 07:19:00 +0000

World leaders and diplomats departed New York following the 61st UN General Assembly without incident, except for one. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro was detained at JFK Airport for 90 minutes by U.S. officials who seized his travel documents. Port Authority agents tried to frisk him, ordered him strip-searched and threatened to handcuff him. Maduro refused to submit to this indignity and his travel documents were returned. When State Department officials arrived, they too ordered him frisked and again he refused. Finally he was released.

At a later press conference in New York, Maduro asked reporters, “Is this how U.S. authorities treat a foreign minister? What won’t they do to Arab people for wearing a turban? It’s a Nazi government, a racist government.”

The State Department later apologized. But when the airport security officials first saw Maduro’s diplomatic passport, surely they consulted the State Department. The bullying of the Venezuelan foreign minister undoubtedly came straight from the top.

Leave it to the Bush administration to further inflame relations between the U.S. and Venezuela. Venezuela’s growing international standing and opposition to U.S. imperial policies are a burr under the Bush saddle. This mistreatment by U.S. officials comes as the White House is trying to block Venezuela’s bid for a seat on the UN Security Council. But Venezuela was not the only country in the world to criticize the Bush administration at the General Assembly. Nor is it the only country with whom Bush has strained relations.

“Vulgar provocation,” is how Cuban President Fidel Castro described the incident. Cuba heads the 118-nation Non-Aligned Movement which is playing a growing role at the UN.

The United Nations headquarters is on U.S. soil. But the members of the United Nations are not U.S. property and world leaders who differ with the occupant of the White House are not “suspects” to be “profiled” or otherwise abused.

The Bush administration, with its pre-emptive unilateral militarism, torture of prisoners and scorning of the UN and international law, has done untold harm to our country’s image in the world. Insulting mistreatment of world diplomats pours oil on the fire. It’s unacceptable.

Alarming election results in Germany

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 05:42:00 +0000

NewsAnalysis

How would the national coalition between Social Democrats and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats fare in her home state, Mecklenburg-West Pomerania (often known as Meck-Pom) or in the nation’s capital, Berlin. How would the Left Party make out, the former Party of Democratic Socialism, which, in both states, had been the junior partner in a coalition with the Social Democrats? Finally what success could be achieved by the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party, represented till now only in the southeastern state of Saxony?

Neither of the two members of the governing coalition did well. The government has accomplished very little nationally, and what it has accomplished, or promises to achieve in the months ahead, is directed against the non-wealthy section of the population. Merkel proved not to be her state’s favorite daughter, while in Berlin her Christian Democrats obtained their worst results since 1945, little more than 20 percent.

The Social Democrats also took losses in both states. Their victory in Meck-Pom was by a thin margin. It was much larger in Berlin, in no small measure because of the continuing popularity of its mayor, Klaus Wowereit, the jolly, well-spoken and proudly gay Social Democrat.

And the Left Party? It just managed to hold its own as third party with about 17 percent, well under the hopes of its leaders.

The Left Party was a partner in coalition governments in these two regions. Its few cabinet ministers tried their best to do a good job, which in both states meant primarily trying to ease the bitter results of unemployment and financial difficulties that have prevailed since German unification.

Meck-Pom, traditionally one of the poorest, most backward sections of Germany, had been built up in a planned way to relative prosperity during the German Democratic Republic years. The productive agriculture, food processing, fishing and shipbuilding industries were lost when the GDR went down the drain, and despite gains in the tourist industry along its very attractive lake regions and Baltic Sea coast, it is poverty-stricken once again. A large number of its skilled workers, and much of the youth have left a patchwork of desolate villages, small towns and modernized but over-aged cities.

In Berlin, however, the results for the left can only be called catastrophic. All credit for gradually pulling the city out of bankruptcy was given the Social Democrats under Wowereit, while the many cuts and difficulties were blamed on the left, especially in former strongholds in East Berlin where losses came to an alarming 20 percent (in West Berlin almost 10 percent). Many left voters just stayed home.

In Meck-Pom the neo-Nazis were able to get about 7 percent of the votes, which gives them seats in the state legislature. They had already achieved this in southeastern Saxony, also a part of the old GDR. Although they did not reach the goal of the required 5 percent in Berlin, they were able for the first time to get into several borough councils, where only 3 percent of the vote is needed. The neo-Nazis won support from many of the 15- and 17-year-olds who voted for the first time, giving the party a foothold for future gains.

Their leader in Meck-Pom has been quoted more than once praising Hitler, but on the whole the neo-Nazis conducted a clever, well-financed campaign, building on the widespread dissatisfaction in a state with the worst unemployment figures in Germany (between 20 and 30 percent). They suspended the more frightening Nazi-type marches, clothing and violence, at least during the election campaign, for a policy of social gatherings, left-sounding slogans against war and the rotten policies of the government, and nationalist anti-foreigner appeals to young people facing joblessness. The party can now sound off with its threatening propaganda in the state legislature, with all the media coverage, financial support and perks that that affords.

A crucial question in the years ahead will be whether the left can offer alternatives to the disappointed and dispossessed in both eastern and western Germany and win over the increasingly apathetic voters. The shadows of a sharp and dangerous move to the extreme right, as once before in history, have certainly darkened as a result of these elections.

CHANGE CONGRESS ACTION ALERT 9/25/06

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 15:20:00 +0000

CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVES AND SENATORS TODAY TO OPPOSE THE REPUBLICAN LEGISLATIVE ASSAULT ON IMMIGRANT RIGHTS, VOTING RIGHTS, CIVIL LIBERTIES

The House and Senate Republican leadership is racing to ram through bills before Congress adjourns that will create a smokescreen of fear, hatred and smear tactics to influence the elections. Telephone calls, e-mails, visits, vigils and other actions are urgently needed to oppose this offensive.

IMMIGRANT RIGHTS A draconian package of racist, anti-immigrant bills includes: HR 6061, “Secure Fences Act” to erect a 700-mile fence along the U.S. Mexican border. (Approved by the House Sept. 14 and now before the Senate.) HR 6094, the “Community Protection Act” and HR 6095 together would strip immigrants, including legal permanent residents, of due process rights clearing the way for mass deportations. The GOP leadership will attempt to attach them as appropriations bills to the Homeland Security spending bill. Urge members of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security to block these amendments in committee.

VOTING RIGHTS HR 4844, the so-called “Federal Election Integrity Act of 2006” requires a government-issued, current photo ID proving citizenship in order to vote, starting in 2010. (Approved by the House and now pending in the Senate.) Court rulings in Georgia and Missouri overturned photo IDs requirements which would suppress the votes of poor and working class voters and people of color. Urge your senators to block this assault on voting rights.

CIVIL LIBERTIES Legislation authorizing massive Federal wiretapping without warrants is under debate. Also, after denouncing the Bush bill, Senate Republicans agreed to legislation authorizing military tribunals at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo, Cuba. These measures are flagrant violations of U.S. and international law. Democratic Senators have been mostly silent. It is time they speak out. For more information contact: Center for Constitutional Rights; Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights; ACLU.

VICTORY IN MISSOURI Missouri voters recently won a historic voting rights victory. On September 14, Judge Richard Callahan of the Circuit Court of Cole County, struck down section 115.427 of SB1014, the MO Voter Protection Act (otherwise known as the photo i.d. law). He called the law unconstitutional. The Act requires voters to show a federal or state issued photo i.d. at the polls. Over 200,000 MO voters do not have a state issued photo i.d. (like a drivers license), including many people of color, the elderly and the disabled. Denise Lieberman, an attorney with the Stetin Law Center for Social Change said that photo i.d. laws send a clear message. “This is a right-wing attempt to legally disenfranchise voters, especially working class voters. MO is a testing ground. They want to disempower voters. ‘Don’t bother!’ That’s their message.” Similar laws are being fought in Arizona, Georgia, Indiana and Michigan and could greatly impact voters’ participation during the upcoming Congressional elections. The MO Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal on October 4. Their ruling could come just before Election Day. We have been setting up voter education workshops with our members and allied organizations. We plan to commit some volunteers as voter protection poll watchers in targeted wards on Election Day. - Tony P.

TRUE MAJORITY ACTION ANIMATION Click and enjoy this animation by True Majority Action. While they focus on only 30 Congressional Districts, while we would include more, the animation is fun and effective to pass along.

Flim-flam financing in the housing Industry

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 09:14:00 +0000

It’s 2004. You are finally doing OK. You have good credit, your family has two incomes and together you are grossing over $100,000 a year as you cruise into the 2004 election. The ’90s boom has been pretty good for you, and you have high hopes. Sure, there are rising child care costs, commuting expenses, college funds to think about. You think: maybe the Republicans were right about “middle class” tax relief.

You find yourself gazing with real interest at those magnificent McMansions blossoming all over the outer limits of suburbia. Just out of curiosity, you stop into one of the mall real estate offices. There, as if some astral entity had read your mind and leaked it onto the Internet, the friendly agent takes one look at your preliminary application, notices exactly which half-million-dollar home photo you had been staring at, and says, “So, when do you want to move in?”

The agent is actually in pretty much the same boat as you. She too had been doubtful how she was going to move these high-priced properties until her boss unloaded some dark secrets of the modern real estate market to her.

Now suppose, before you walked into the agent’s office, you had used a mortgage calculator to find out your monthly payment for a 30-year $500,000 mortgage. Your payment, at a 7.0 percent interest rate, making minimal homeowners insurance and tax assumptions, would be: $3,511.51. Assuming you had minimal external debt (like a car loan) of $450 a month, you would have to make at least $150,000 a year to qualify for the loan.

Why is the agent smiling?

Then the agent lets you in on the first secret: the “interest only” loan. Under this kind of loan, you never own the house. Your equity consists only of the speculation that the home’s value will rise in the housing market. A risky loan over the long term, the ordinary person might think — what if prices go down? “Never,” asserts the real estate business! Unfortunately, you are still $20,000 short in annual income. But in reality, you just dodged a bullet.

But the “interest only” mortgage is not why the agent is smiling. It turns out she can get you in your dream house for only $1,500.00 a month! It’s called the “option adjustable rate mortgage” or “option ARM.” This gimmick allows you to defer a big chunk of ordinary interest payments and make minimum payments. What happens to those deferred payments? Well, they get added on to the mortgage principal. But, she says, seeing the worried look in your eye, you don’t really have to worry about this down the line because home values are rising faster than the amortized interest.

You’re hooked. You’re in the dream house. You voted for Bush to get the tax cut too.

Then, 29 months later, the bill for not reading the fine print of both decisions (the mortgage, and Bush) comes due. The interest added to your mortgage principal from paying the minimum is now $50,000. The lender has exercised his right to “reset” your loan. Your new payment is $4,100 a month. Looks like the tax cut won’t cover that! Oh, and that Bush tax cut — well, if you earn between $100,000 and $200,000 a year, the Alternative Minimum Tax rate kicks in and your taxes go up, not down.

Chickens are now coming home to roost in the housing market. Option ARMs have risen from under 1 percent of deals in the ’90s to at least 12.5 percent in 2005. Business Week likens option ARMs to the neutron bomb: the people are blown up but the houses are still standing.

This observer submits that it is largely due to the culture of corruption spawned by the Bush era that economic forecasters do not have the true state of housing market affairs in their figures as they estimate the impact of the already acknowledged coming downturn.

jcase@steuber.com

Blitzkrieg effort to ram new anti-immigrant bills through Congress

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 07:54:00 +0000

NewsAnalysis

The Republican leadership of the House of Representatives is pushing hard to get HR 4437, Rep. James Sensenbrenner’s vicious anti-immigrant bill which spurred this year’s huge immigrant rights marches, approved piecemeal by the House and Senate and signed into law before the November elections.

Immigrant rights advocates are denouncing this maneuver as a Republican electioneering fear tactic, to rush votes without giving the public time to understand their implications, and to “wrong-foot” the Democrats into seeming to oppose national security.

But there is a real possibility that the Republicans could succeed in getting their agenda approved in the Senate by means of amendments to spending bills.

The Senate also passed an immigration bill, S 2611, in May. However the Republican House leadership refused to convene the usual conference committee to reconcile HR 4437 with S 2611. They complained that the Senate bill gave too much away to immigrants by creating mechanisms whereby some undocumented immigrants could be legalized (at great effort and expense for themselves), while adding a guest worker program.

Instead, the Republicans spent the summer holding dozens of “field hearings” around the country. Witness lists at these hearings were heavily skewed toward a repressive enforcement-only approach.

On Sept. 7, the Republican House leaders announced that they were going to bring in new legislation aimed at increasing border security.

Then the “Secure Fences” bill, HR 6061, was introduced on Sept. 13 and passed on Sept. 14. It went straight from drafting to the floor and was rammed through at high speed before there could be any mobilization against it, on a partly party-line vote of 283 ayes and 138 nays. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) announced he would push it through the Senate. The Senate has voted to close debate on the measure, greatly increasing the likelihood of passage.

The bill orders the construction of 700 miles of fences on the U.S.-Mexico border, and requires the Homeland Security secretary to create a “virtual fence” of electronic sensors and other gizmos for the other 1,200 miles of borderland. This may cost taxpayers $7 billion. Objections by immigrant rights activists have been joined by Native American communities bisected by the border, such as the large Tohono O’Odham tribe in Arizona.

More bills derived from HR 4437 have now been introduced and will be handled in the same way: HR 6095, the “Immigration Law Enforcement Act,” and HR 6094, the “Community Protection Act.”

Together, these bills constitute an assault on due process rights of immigrants (including legal permanent residents) and a giant power grab by the Bush administration. They would:

• Encourage state and local police to carry out immigration enforcement activities, leading to vast racial profiling.

• Authorize creation of an official federal list of “criminal gangs,” whose non-citizen members would be subject to summary deportation even if they were legally in the country and individually had committed no crime.

• Permit the federal government to detain indefinitely non-citizens subject to deportation, if the government decides they are not cooperating with deportation efforts or under some other circumstances.

• Reverse a court injunction which limited the forced return of Salvadoran refugees to their homeland because of the danger they would be tortured or murdered by the regime there.

• Severely limit the rights of immigrants under detention or facing deportation to have their day in court to oppose the government’s decisions in their cases. This would vastly increase the power of the Department of Homeland Security over non-citizens.

This is a cynical election-year ploy that should be defeated by active lobbying of both House and Senate members.

Rosalio Muñoz, Communist Party USA Southern California organizer, noted, “Mass pressure on the Senate to block HR 6061 is needed immediately, to stop the House right-wing Republican enforcement railroad in its tracks.” The same applies to the other bills.

Brooks swings and misses

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 08:02:00 +0000

New York Times columnist David Brooks weighed in on the origins of inequality in his column recently. While he wants to assure readers that inequality is not a serious issue, and not caused by policy, he gets almost everything in his article wrong.

Briefly, here are the highlights:

• He claims that the labor compensation share of GDP has not fallen due to rising profits. Actually, the labor compensation share of net income in the corporate sector (this is the place to look for redistribution — there are no profits in government or nonprofits) fell by 1.7 percentage points from the profit peak of the 1970s cycle (1977) to last year. This redistribution is equal to 5.9 percent of the family income of the bottom 60 percent of the income distribution. (Think of this as a profit tax.)

• He assures readers that globalization has not been a problem because outsourcing accounted for only 1.9 percent of layoffs. I’m not sure what this means. The biggest impact of outsourcing would be on jobs not created and also the threat effect (as in, “give us a pay cut of 20 percent or we move your jobs overseas”). So I’m not really sure what we are supposed to make of the fact that only 1.9 percent of laid off workers are told that they lost their jobs due to outsourcing.

• He tells us that job tenure hasn’t changed over the last 40 years. This is a bit tricky. Job tenure has gotten longer for women, because they are entering and staying in the labor force in higher numbers. But, if we look at the situation for men, there is very sharp fall in tenure since 1983, the period for which we have reliable data. In 1983, median job tenure for workers ages 35-44, 45-54 and 55-64 was 7.3 years, 12.8 years and 15.3 years, respectively. By 2004 (the most recent survey), these numbers had fallen to 5.2 years, 9.6 years and 9.8 years.

• He assures readers that income mobility has not declined. His unsupported assertion contradicts a recent study by Mary Corcoran and Jordon Matsudaira (cited in “The State of Working America”) showing that whites born in the bottom quintile between 1962-1969 were 40 percent less likely to end up in the top quintile than their counterparts born a decade earlier. For Blacks, the figure was 45 percent.

• He assures us that the weakening of unions only accounts for 10-20 percent of the increase in inequality. We will call this 10-20 percent share on the increase in inequality a “de-unionization tax” for workers at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution. If we say that income has fallen by 20-30 percent for these workers due to rising inequality, this de-unionization tax amounts to between 2-6 percent of income. I suspect that Mr. Brooks would be concerned if we proposed to increase taxes on high-income people by between 2-6 percentage points.

• He assures us that for most workers wages still rise over their working lifetime. Well yes, wages for workers in their peak earning years (ages 45-54) are typically 50 to 80 percent higher than in their entry years (ages 18-24), with the rise depending on gender and education. Things have not gotten so bad as to reverse this pattern, but it’s not clear what this shows.

• Brooks tells us that the wage for typical male worker with some college rose from $34,000 in 2000 to $40,000 today. This refers to nominal wages; serious people adjust wages for inflation. According to “The State of Working America,” the average hourly wage for men with some college fell from $17.95 in 2000 to $17.76 in 2005 (in 2005 dollars).

To sum up, David Brooks comes up with almost nothing in his column that would contradict the vast body of evidence showing that most workers have not been benefiting from the economy’s growth over the last quarter century — and that this is the result of deliberate policy decisions.

You can get the real story in “The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer,” a free downloadable e-book at www.conservativenannystate.com.

Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. This is reprinted from Baker’s blog at www.prospect.org/deanbaker/.

Campaign to free Cuban 5 presses forward

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 06:02:00 +0000

News Analysis

The legal struggle for the freedom of the Cuban Five continues, despite a recent adverse appeals court ruling. Defense lawyer Leonard Weinglass, however, has called for enlarging the political fight.

Weinglass is confident that someday the five unjustly imprisoned men will go free. But “this is an essentially political trial and, in particular, a trial of U.S. policy against Cuba,” he told the Florida-based Progresso Weekly, Aug. 28.

“The United States cannot be an accomplice to a crime and at the same time try the people who oppose it,” he said.

The crime here is U.S. terrorism against Cuba’s sovereignty and its socialist revolution. The Cuban Five were defending their homeland and the people of the U.S. against repeated acts of terror organized by right-wing extremists in Miami. While doing so, they were arrested by federal agents and charged with a variety of conspiracy-related crimes.

The “Worldwide Days of Action in Solidarity with the Cuban Five,” now in progress, are all about exposing how terrorism has been used to further Washington’s political ends. The days run from Sept. 12, the day eight, years ago when Gerardo Hernández, Fernando González, René González, Antonio Guerrero, and Ramon Labañino were arrested, through Oct. 6. On that day, 30 years ago, Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch bombed a Cuban airliner, killing 73.

In between falls Sept. 21, the 30th anniversary of the murders of ex-Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and Roni Moffitt in Washington on orders of the Chilean dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, with the connivance of Posada and others.

On Sept. 23, supporters of Cuban Five will march to the White House. They will be coming from throughout the nation. Other actions are taking place in San Francisco, Detroit and New York.

Meanwhile, new revelations about the anti-Cuba, right-wing terror network have surfaced.

• In June, Jose Antonio Llama revealed that he and other Cuban American National Foundation leaders spent $1.5 million in the 1990s on 11 aircraft, seven boats and weapons to mount attacks on Cuban leaders. He was confessing to crimes. Law enforcement officials are silent.

• Santiago Alvarez was jailed November 2005 for possession of weapons intended for use against Cuba. Alvarez, a wealthy Miami developer, brought Posada to Florida illegally in March 2005. Faced with a trial outside Miami and deprived of a supportive Miami bias, Alvarez pleaded guilty Sept. 11 to a reduced charge carrying minimal jail time.

• Former CIA agent and past plotter Robert Ferro was jailed April 14 in Upland, Calif., for possession of 1,571 automatic weapons. He claimed membership in the terrorist group Alpha 66 and alleged that the U.S. government had supplied the weapons for use against Cuba. His trial date is still pending.

• Orlando Bosch, instigator of death and destruction, received a pardon from the first President Bush. Living unmolested in Miami, he recently boasted to the Vanguardia of Barcelona, Spain, about a 1971 assassination attempt against Fidel Castro and the destruction of the Cuban airliner.

• Luis Posada is still detained, charged only with illegal entry, despite a lifetime of crime. Treaties exist and court proceedings are pending in Venezuela, but Washington rejects Venezuela’s request for extradition. Six countries have refused to take him in as a deportee. Posada has applied for U.S. citizenship based on his CIA service.

• The story of Hector Pesquera, who as FBI prosecutor kept the Cuban Five in solitary confinement for 17 pre-trial months, exemplifies U.S. government complicity in terror. In 2004 he attended planning sessions in Panama for the killing that year of Venezuelan prosecutor Danilo Anderson. In August, his role as “consultant” to Guantanamo torturers in 2002 and 2003 became public knowledge.

Richard Klugh, defense attorney for Fernando González, one of the Cuban Five, told reporters that the new revelations of terrorist plotting could back up demands for a new trial.

Solidarity activists say the new reports bolster the political fight for the five prisoners by showing why they were doing what they were doing. They say the jailing of the Five, who were trying to stop terrorism, exposes the hypocrisy of the Bush administration’s “war on terrorism.”

For more information on the Five or the days of action, visit .

atwhit@megalink.net

Key Senate races could turn on immigrant rights

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 05:53:00 +0000

NewsAnalysis

With precious little else to run on, the GOP has decided to base its midterm election campaign largely on the bogey of “illegal immigration” as a domestic equivalent to Bush’s pro-war and fear propaganda.

But there is no force that does not generate a counterforce. And the counterforce has been awesome. Immigrants and their allies have carried out demonstrations of unprecedented size. With new demonstrations scheduled for September and this week’s National Latino Congress in Los Angeles, there will be no letup in the immigrant rights pressure until Election Day.

One slogan has been “Today we march, tomorrow we vote.” Although undocumented immigrants can’t vote, naturalized citizens can, as can their U.S.-born co-workers, neighbors, relatives and friends.

If Republicans lose at least six seats in the Senate, their majority grip would slip out of their hands. The six Republican seats most in danger are Pennsylvania (Santorum), Montana (Burns), Missouri (Talent), Rhode Island (Chafee), Ohio (DeWine) and Tennessee (seat being vacated by Frist). Now Virginia (Allen) may be becoming competitive.

Conventional wisdom has it that the Senate Republicans are “more moderate” than the House ones on immigration. But many GOP candidates in these races have been using anti-immigrant demagogy to try to energize the right wing.

Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania is one of the worst. He opposes legalization and favors harsh measures like HR 4437, the viciously anti-immigrant bill passed by the House in December. He has supported the town of Hazleton, Pa., for passing a law penalizing anybody who so much as sells a cup of coffee to someone who turns out to be “illegal.” His opponent, Democratic State Treasurer Bob Casey, takes a much better position.

GOP Sen. Mike DeWine of Ohio is considered a “moderate” by some, but on the other hand he helped to sabotage Democratic efforts to have the Senate “compromise” bill cover all undocumented as eligible for legalization, as opposed to only some. His Democratic challenger, Sherrod Brown, endorsed the aims of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride: a path to citizenship, family reunification, and rights at work and in the community.

For Republican Sen. George Allen of Virginia, anti-immigrant demagogy may end up backfiring to the point that his seat is jeopardized, and his presidential ambitions seriously dampened. Allen was considered a shoo-in for re-election after the popular former Democratic governor of Virginia, Mark Warner, decided not to run for the seat. The Democrats nominated newcomer Jim Webb, who has come out against the Iraq war.

Then Allen called one of Webb’s Asian American campaign workers a “macaca,” which is a kind of monkey, and told him sarcastically, “Welcome to America,” even though the man was born in Virginia. When this became big news, Allen tried to apologize but the cat was out of the bag: reporters went after his record on racial justice, revealing his penchant for Confederate and segregationist symbols.

Allen’s positions on immigration are hard-right: No legalization or amnesty, harsh repression, and denial of U.S. citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants. That this may not be a winning strategy is indicated by last year’s gubernatorial election, where loudmouth anti-immigrant Republican Jerry Kilgore went down to defeat against moderate Democrat Tim Kaine. History may repeat with Allen this year.

Arizona’s Sen. John Kyl has been a moving spirit behind anti-immigrant legislation in the Senate. Thus votes for his Democratic opponent, Jim Pederson, who tends toward a comprehensive approach including legalization, will help the immigrant worker rights cause.

Democrats also have to defend seats that are not cinches for them in Minnesota, Maryland, Nebraska, Washington and New Jersey. On the average, the Democratic candidates are more favorable to immigrant rights than the Republicans.

The Democratic candidates are not necessarily portraits of courage. Many of them have concluded that immigration is a “Republican issue” and that they had best avoid it. This is a dangerous tactic, especially when it leads them to fail to criticize the Bush administration’s attacks on immigrants.

But nevertheless, the defeat of anti-immigrant Republicans will encourage those who are cautiously positive on immigrant rights to be bolder, while serving as a sharp check against the entire anti-immigrant movement.

Sudanese strive for peace despite U.S. schemes

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 06:01:00 +0000

NewsAnalysis

The United States may be the world’s only military superpower, but attempts by the Bush administration to get its way in northeastern Africa are meeting with resistance.

The latest rebuke to U.S. imperialism is taking place in Sudan, where the Khartoum government has rejected a proposal by the U.S. and Britain to send in a UN peacekeeping force to restore order in Sudan’s western Darfur region.

The Bush administration has proposed a 17,000-member-strong force to take over from what they claim is an ill-equipped and underfunded African Union mission, which has proven unable to prevent killings, rape and internal displacement of civilians in the region. The Sudanese government proposes instead to deploy 10,500 Sudanese soldiers to restore peace in Darfur.

In recent weeks the U.S. has stepped up pressure on Khartoum through diplomatic channels and by asking the UN Security Council to approve a UN military intervention with or without Sudanese approval.

Last week U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer traveled to Khartoum to cajole the government into accepting the UN force, but she left essentially empty-handed. All she obtained was a letter addressed to President George W. Bush in which Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir reiterated his firm opposition to the deployment of UN troops.

Meanwhile, the UN Security Council, which is meeting on Darfur as the World goes to press, has been deadlocked on the deployment. The U.S. accused China, Sudan’s largest trading partner, of blocking the proposal.

In a letter made public on Aug. 24, Bashir urged the Security Council to be patient and not to be in a hurry to adopt a new resolution on Darfur, and to allow Sudan to resolve the situation and to concentrate on implementing the peace agreement which was signed last May between his government and the largest of the Darfuri rebel organizations. He also urged greater international support for the peacekeeping forces of the African Union.

Many in Africa and the Arab world fear that the proposal to deploy UN troops is a cover for U.S. designs for the permanent stationing of NATO forces in Darfur. Sudan is a significant oil producer, producing over 330,000 barrels a day, and U.S. oil companies seek greater control of this vital resource. A NATO-led force would undoubtedly strengthen U.S. domination of the area.

U.S. imperialism is also reeling from the failure of the Somali people to accept the U.S.-backed “national government” with very limited representation set up in the town of Baidoa.

After 13 years of near-anarchy in southern Somalia, the warlords were driven out of Mogadishu by an Islamist movement, the Union of Islamic Courts, which has been consolidating its hold over most of the South. The UIC grew from the grass roots, from ordinary people who rejected the constant strife and yearned for stability, peace and the resumption of basic government services. The U.S. and Ethiopia are accusing the movement of having terrorist ties, thereby justifying an Ethiopian military intervention.

Meanwhile, peace talks in Asmara, Eritrea, between the Sudanese government and eastern Sudan rebels, aimed at finding stability, have made progress on development issues, officials said. Negotiators from Khartoum and the Eastern Front rebel group recessed the latest round of negotiations in Asmara after coming to a “basis of agreement” on sharing of wealth and power.

The Eastern Front was created last year by the region’s largest ethnic group, the Beja, and the Rashidiya Arabs, and has similar aims to its better-known counterparts in Sudan’s western Darfur region: greater autonomy and control of resources.

And after 20 years of bloodshed, peace is imminent in northern Uganda, where the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army on Aug. 28 ordered its forces to prepare for a truce with the government under which they will move to neutral camps in southern Sudan while negotiations proceed for a permanent resolution of the conflict.

It is hoped that the talks in Juba, in autonomous southern Sudan, will end northern Uganda’s conflict, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced nearly 2 million people since the LRA took leadership of a regional rebellion in 1988.

pwwinaz@webtv.net