People Before Profit blog

Cyclists to ride for the Cuban 5 in Italy

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:53:00 +0000

On May 5, there will be a 40-mile bike ride through various towns around the Lake Como area in northern Italy as part of the worldwide movement calling for the release of "The Cuban Five." The Ride For The Five in Italy is only one of many activities planned in many countries on the 5^th of each month by those that understand the injustice done to these five Cuban patriots. Of particular interest to us in the U.S. is that there will also be two young American riders participating in the Lake Como bike ride.

GARIBALDINA BICYCLE RIDE 2013 for the Five Cuban patriots

The local Italy/Cuba Friendship Circle, part of the national organization in Italy, will co-sponsor the bike ride. There are more than 250 bike riders expected and all will receive "Free the 5" t-shirts.

The men know as the Cuban 5 were legally in the U.S. monitoring ultra-right Cuban exiles here who, with the support of successive U.S. administrations, committed acts of terrorism against Cuba and its citizens that Cuba says have resulted in 3,400 deaths in that country.

In the late 1990s, the Cuban government had presented evidence gathered by the five to the U.S. government. Instead of following up on the evidence U.S. officials arrested the five! They were indicted for conspiracy to commit espionage, and one of them, Gerardo Hernandez, was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder,

Since then, Rene Gonzalez, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez, Ramon Labañino and Gerardo Hernandez have been condemned in what international observers have described as a biased trial.

They have been incarcerated in various prisons while their appeal process drags along. Authorities have denied two of the five, Rene Gonzalez and Gerardo Hernandez, the right to receive visits from their wives, Olga Salanueva and Adriana Perez, respectively.

Rene Gonzalez has now been released with the requirement that he stay in the United States for an additional three years, and that he not frequent areas where terrorists might be found. The original judge in the trial granted him permission, over the objections of the federal government, to go to Cuba temporarily to visit his critically ill brother.

Starting at the end of May and through the first week of June culminating on June 5, there will be other activities in Washington D.C. Friends in solidarity with Cuba and people of good will from the U.S. and from abroad will be part of this series of actions, including a number of parliamentarians, lawyers, trade unionists, activists and supporters of the Cuban 5 from all over the world and the United States.

Among those participating in the week in Washington D.C are: Angela Davis, legendary activist, scholar and author; Dolores Huerta, co founder of the United Farm Workers (UFW); Danny Glover, activist and actor; Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, former General Secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States; Saul Landau, filmmaker and author; Martin Garbus, American lawyer member of the legal team of the Cuban Five; Wayne Smith, former Chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba, and many more.

For more information and the agenda, click here.

Photo: Creative Commons, Flickr.

Bangladesh disaster: Who pays the real price of your clothing?

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:28:00 +0000

This article was reposted from The Progressive

Seven hundred workers have died in factory fires in Bangladesh since 2005, the most recent being the 112 who burned or jumped to their deaths at the Tazreen factory on November 24th. Now hundreds more bodies are being pulled from the rubble of the Rana Plaza building, in an industrial district 18 miles from Dhaka.

At Tazreen the owners didn't build fire escapes. They'd locked the doors on the upper floors "to prevent theft," trapping workers in the flames. At Rana Plaza, factory owners refused to evacuate the building after huge cracks appeared in the walls, even after safety engineers told them not to let workers inside.

Workers told IndustriALL union federation representatives they'd be docked three days pay for each day of an absence, and so went inside despite their worries. As a result, the death toll is already over 250 and more are still trapped under debris.

Perhaps the building codes at Rana Plaza were not enforced, and permits never even obtained, because Sohel Rana, the building's owner, is reportedly active in Bangladesh's ruling party, the Awami League. At Tazreen the company was cited by fire inspectors, but never forced to install safety equipment.

But Bangladesh's development policy is based on attracting garment production by keeping costs among the world's lowest. Safe buildings that don't collapse or trap workers in fires raise those costs. So do wages that might rise above Bangladesh's 21 cents per hour -- not a livable wage there or anywhere else.

The beneficiaries of those costs are the big brands whose clothes are sewn by the women in those factories. They give production contracts to the factories that make the lowest bids. Factories then compete to cut costs any way they can.

Tazreen made clothes for Walmart, among other big brands. The Rana Plaza building held several factories where 2500 women churned out garments. According to the International Labor Rights Forum, "one of the factories in the Rana complex, Ether-Tex, had listed Walmart-Canada as a buyer on their website." Labor activists found other documents in the rubble listing cutting orders from Benetton and other labels.

Workers have been trying for years to organize militant unions to raise wages and enforce safety codes. If they'd been successful, they would have had the power to make the factories safe. The morning after the Rana collapse, 20,000 poured out of neighboring factories in protest - other factory owners had ordered them to keep working as though nothing had happened.

Meanwhile, the giant companies controlling the industry insulate themselves from responsibility for the conditions they create. And their most important accomplice is the corporate social responsibility industry.

According to a report just released by the AFL-CIO, Responsibility Outsourced, just before a fire at the Ali Enterprises factory in Pakistan killed 262 workers in 2012, clothing manufacturers hired an auditing firm, Social Accountability International, to certify it was safe. SAI then subcontracted inspection to an Italian firm, RINA, which subcontracted it yet again to a local firm RI&CA. Ali Enterprises was certified that August. "Nearly 300 workers died in a fire two weeks after," the report charges.

Certifying factories that kill workers has become an $80 billion industry that "helped keep wages low and working conditions poor, [while] it provided public relations cover for producers," Responsibility Outsourced says. "Manufacturing work has left countries in which there were laws, collective bargaining and other systems in place to reduce workplace dangers," it says, while "jobs instead have gone to countries with inadequate laws, weak enforcement and precarious employment relationships."

This transfer was enabled by corporate-friendly trade agreements guaranteeing the products of these factories unfettered access to U.S. and European markets. They simultaneously put pressure on developing countries to guarantee the rights of foreign corporate investors and an environment of low wages, lax enforcement of worker protections, and attacks on unions.

In Bangladesh, after the Tazreen fire, a binding agreement was developed by IndustriALL, the ILRC and other labor NGOs, that seeks to prevent fires and increase safety by guaranteeing workers' right to organize and enforce better conditions. Some companies, including PVH and Tchibo have signed on. Walmart and Sears, however, not only refused, but would not even pay compensation to the Tazreen fire victims.

As Bangladesh workers pull the bodies of their friends from ruin of Rana Plaza, people half a world away wearing the clothes they sew should not turn their faces away. They need real knowledge about how their shirts and blouses are produced, and who produces them. Rather than the image manipulation of Social Accountability International and its competitor, the Fair Labor Association, they should demand the truth, and then use their power as consumers.

They should drive companies guilty of industrial homicide out of the world's markets.

Photo: AP

The White House's flawed Korea policies

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:21:00 +0000

This article has been reposted from Dispatches from the Edge.

In the current crisis on the Korean Peninsula, the Obama administration is virtually repeating the 2004 Bush playbook, one that derailed a successful diplomatic agreement forged by the Clinton administration to prevent North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons. While the acute tensions of the past month appear to be receding-all of the parties involved seem to be taking a step back- the problem is not going to disappear and, unless Washington and its allies re-examine their strategy, another crisis is certain to develop.

A little history.

In the spring of 1994, the Clinton administration came very close to a war with North Korea over Pyongyang's threat to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, expel international inspectors, and extract plutonium from reactor fuel rods. Washington moved to beef up its military in South Korea, and, according to Fred Kaplan in the Washington Monthly, there were plans to bomb the Yongbyon reactor.

Kaplan is Slate Magazine's War Stories columnist and author of "The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War."

"Yet at the same time," writes Kaplan, "Clinton set up a diplomatic back-channel to end the crisis peacefully." Former President Jimmy Carter was sent to the Democratic Peoples' Republic of North Korea (DPRK) and the Agreed Framework pact was signed, allowing the parties to back off without losing face.

In return for shipping their fuel rods out of the country, the U.S., South Korea and Japan agreed to finance two light-water nuclear reactors, normalize diplomatic relations, and supply the DPRK with fuel. The U.S. pledged not to invade the North. "Initially, North Korea kept to its side of the bargain," say Kaplan, "The same cannot be said for our side."

The reactors were never funded and diplomatic relations went into a deep freeze. From North Korea's point of view, it had been stiffed, and it reacted with public bombast and a secret deal with Pakistan to exchange missile technology for centrifuges to make nuclear fuel.

However, the North was still willing to deal, and DPRK leader Kim Jong-il told the Clinton administration that, in exchange for a non-aggression pact, North Korea would agree to shelve its long-range missile program and stop exporting missile technology. North Korea was still adhering to the 1994 agreement not to process its nuclear fuel rods. But time ran out and the incoming Bush administration torpedoed the talks, instead declaring North Korea, along with Iran and Iraq, a member of an "axis of evil."

Nine days after the U.S. Senate passed the Iraq war resolution on Oct. 11, 2002, the White House disavowed the 1994 Agreed Framework, halted fuel supplies, and sharpened the economic embargo the U.S. had imposed on the North since the 1950-53 Korean War. It was hardly a surprise when Pyongyang's reaction was to toss out the arms inspectors, fire up the Yongbyon reactor, and take the fuel rods out of storage.

Kaplan points out, however, that even when Pyongyang withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty in early 2003, the North Koreans "also said they would reverse their actions and retract their declarations if the United States resumed its obligations under the Agreed Framework and signed a non-aggression pledge."

But Bush, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and Vice-President Dick Cheney, banking that increased sanctions would eventually bring down the Kim regime, were not interested in negotiations.

Ignoring North Korea, however, did not sit well with Japan and South Korea. So the White House sent U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs James Kelly to Pyongyang, where the North Koreans told him they were willing to give up nuclear weapons development in return for a non-aggression pact. Bush, however, dismissed the proposal as "blackmail" and refused to negotiate with the North Koreans unless they first agreed to give up the bomb, a posture disturbingly similar to the one currently being taken by the Obama administration.

But "the bomb" was the only chip the North Koreans had, and giving it up defied logic. Hadn't NATO and the U.S. used the threat of nuclear weapons to checkmate a supposed Soviet invasion of Europe during the Cold War? Wasn't that the rationale behind the Israeli bomb vis-à-vis the Arabs? Pakistan's ace in the hole to keep the vastly superior Indian army at bay? Why would Pyongyang make such an agreement with a country that made no secret of its intention to destabilize the North Korean regime?

North Korea is not a nice place to live and work, but its reputation as a nuclear-armed loony bin is hardly accurate. Every attempt by the North Koreans to sign a non-aggression pact has been either rebuffed or come at a price-specifically giving up nuclear weapons-Pyongyang is unwilling to pay without such a pledge. The North is well aware of the fate of the "axis of evil": Iraq was invaded and occupied, and Iran is suffocating under the weight of economic sanctions and facing a possible Israeli or U.S. attack. From North Korea's point of view, the only thing that Iraq and Iran have in common is that neither of them developed nuclear weapons.

Indeed, when the U.S. and NATO overthrew the Gadaffi regime in Libya, a North Korean Foreign Ministry official told the Korean Central News Agency that the war had taught "the international community a grave lesson: the truth that one should have the power to defend peace." Libya had voluntarily given up nuclear weapons research, and the North Koreans were essentially saying, "We told you so."

There are a number of dangers the current crisis poses. The most unlikely among them is a North Korean attack on the U.S. or South Korea, although an "incident" like the 2010 shelling of Yeonpyeong Island and the sinking of South Korean warship, the Cheonan, is not out of the question. More likely is a missile test.

All of the parties-including China and Russia- know that North Korea is not a serious danger to the U.S. or its allies, Japan and South Korea. Which is why China is so unhappy with the U.S.'s response to Pyongyang's bombast: deploying yet more anti-missile systems in the U.S. and Guam, systems that appear suspiciously like yet another dimension of Washington's "Asia pivot" to beef up America's military footprint in the region. Russia and China believe those ABM systems are aimed at them, not North Korea, which explains an April 15 accusation by the Chinese Defense Ministry that "hostile western forces" were using tensions to "contain and control our country's development."

While the western media interpreted a recent statement by Chinese President Xi Jinping as demonstrating China's growing impatience with North Korea, according to Zackary Keck, assistant editor of the Asian-pacific focused publication The Diplomat, the speech was more likely aimed at the U.S. than at Pyongyang. Keck argues that China is far more worried about growing U.S. military might in the region than rhetorical blasts from North Korea.

The Russians have also complained about "unilateral actions...being taken around North Korea." Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, "We believe it is necessary for all not to build up military muscle and not to use the current situation as an excuse to solve certain geopolitical tasks in the region through military means."

Tension between nuclear powers is always disconcerting, but the most immediate threat is the possibility of some kind of attack on North Korea by the U.S. or South Korea. Conservative South Korean President Park Geun-hye told her military to respond to any attack from the North without "political considerations," and the U.S. has reaffirmed that it will come to Seoul's defense in the event of war. It is not a war the North would survive, and therein lays the danger.

According to Keir Lieber of Georgetown University and Daryl Press, coordinator of Dartmouth's War and Peace Studies, current U.S. military tactics could trigger a nuclear war. "The core of U.S. conventional strategy, refined during recent wars, is to incapacitate the enemy by disabling its central nervous system...leadership bunkers, military command sites, and means of communication." While such tactics were effective in Yugoslavia and Iraq, they could prove counterproductive "if directed at a nuclear-armed opponent." Faced with an overwhelming military assault there would be a strong incentive for North Korea to try and halt the attacks, "a job for which nuclear weapons are well suited."

Council of Foreign Relation's Korea expert Scott Snyder says, "The primary danger is really related to the potential for miscalculation between the two sides, and in this kind of atmosphere of tensions, that miscalculation could have deadly consequences."

The demand by the Obama administration that North Korea must denuclearize before serious talks can begin is a non-starter, particularly when the Washington and its allies refuse to first agree to a non-aggression pledge. And the White House will have to jettison its "strategic patience" policy, a fancy term for regime change. Both strategies have been utter failures.

There are level heads at work.

South Korea recently praised China for helping to manage the crisis, and Seoul has dialed back some of its own bombast. The U.S. canceled a military maneuver, and a "senior administration" official warned about "misperception" and "miscalculation," remarks that seemed aimed more at South Korea than at the North. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry also says Washington is open to talks with China and North Korea.

But such talks are predicated, according to the U.S. State Department, on Pyongyang proving "its seriousness by taking meaningful steps to abide by its international obligations." In short, dismantling its nuclear program and missile research. Neither of those will happen as long as the North feels militarily threatened and economically besieged.

In a way, the Korean crisis is a case of the nuclear powers being hoist on their own petard. The 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was not aimed at just stopping the spread of nuclear weapons, but, according to Article VI, at eliminating those weapons and instituting general disarmament. But today's world is essentially a nuclear apartheid, with the nuclear powers threatening any countries that try to join the club-unless those countries happen to be allies. North Korea should get rid of its nuclear weapons, but then so should China, Russia, the U.S., Britain, France, Israel, Pakistan, and India.

As far as ending the current crisis, one could do worse than follow up on what basketball great Dennis Rodman said North Korean leader Kim Jong-un told him: "Obama should call me."

Good place to start.

Photo: stephan/Flickr (CC)

Rightist wins Paraguay presidency, Left advances in Congress

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 10:06:00 +0000

On June 21, Paraguayan voters elected Horacio Cartes Jara, candidate of the right wing Colorado Party as president. However, the left made some modest but significant advances in legislative seats, especially in the Senate. All neighboring states immediately recognized the results of the election.

Cartes is a wealthy tobacco farmer and businessman who had not even voted until 2008, and at one time or another has been under investigation for involvement with drug traffic and financial offenses. His Colorado Party was for decades the political base for General Alfredo Stroessner, who ruled Paraguay from 1954 to 1989 as a repressive dictator.

Cartes decided to run as a way of countering the left-wing political trend that has been sweeping many Latin American countries in recent years, and has been noted for his lurid homophobic statements. In Sunday's election, he got 1,095,469 or 45.8 percent of the vote. Far behind him was Efrain Alegre of the "Paraguay Alegre" (Happy Paraguay) Front, which includes the Liberal Party of the incumbent President Federico Franco with 36.94 percent of the vote, Mario Ferreiro of the left-center Avanza Pais (Forward Country) alliance with 5.88 percent, and Anibal Carillo of the left-wing Guasú Front, with 3.32 percent. The Guasú Front is a group of 11 parties including the Communist Party of Paraguay, and was supported by former President Fernando Lugo. Six other parties also competed. Guasú representatives complained that they were not allowed full access to media and that their poll watchers were impeded in their work.

The death of another right-wing candidate, former General Lino Oviedo, in a helicopter crash in January probably helped Cartes to win; Oviedo's voters evidently swung over to the Colorado candidate.

In the 45 seat Senate, Cartes' Colorados failed to achieve a majority, though they did get 19 seats. The Liberals (Authentic Radical Liberal Party) which in Paraguay is a conservative party, got the next highest number of seats with 12. The leftist Guasú front made an important advance, winning 5 seats, or 9.6 percent of the Senate vote. One of the Guasú seats will be held by former President Lugo. Ferrerio's Forward Country will have 2 to 3 seats. The left-center Democratic Progressive Party will have 3 seats.

In the 100 member Chamber of Deputies, or lower house, seats have not yet been distributed among the parties pending a finalization of the vote counting. According to preliminary results, the Colorados have won 37.3 percent, the Liberals 13.0 percent, National Union of Ethical Citizens 8.8 percent, Beloved Fatherland Party 8.8 percent, Forward Country 8.1 percent and the Guasú Front only 2.8 percent.

The lead up to this election began in June of last year when the Paraguayan Congress impeached the leftist President Fernando Lugo and removed him from office.

The reason given was that earlier that month, there had been a clash between landless laborers and police at an estate at Curuguaty in the East of the country, in which 17 laborers and police lost their lives. The laborers had been occupying an estate owned by Blas Riquelme, an important Colorado Party politician, which they claimed (it would appear, correctly) had been acquired illegally. Many people think the Curuguaty incident was a provocation or setup designed to discredit the Lugo government.

Lugo was elected in 2008 on a platform which included defense of the rights of poor farmworkers. However, he never had a supportive Congress and had to rule through shaky alliances with the Liberal Party and others well to the right of him. Wikileaks cables show that important figures such as the late general and arch-conspirator Lino Oviedo had been planning for a while to find a pretext to remove Lugo.

The Liberals immediately ditched Lugo and set the impeachment process in motion. It went forward with lightning speed; Lugo was given only 24 hours to prepare his defense against the charges and was removed from office by the Senate with only 4 votes dissenting. Many Paraguayans as well as the governments of neighboring countries felt that this was a coup d'etat with a thin veneer of constitutional legality, and Paraguay was suspended from the MERCOSUR trade group pending a clean new election. Ironically the suspension Paraguay made it possible for MERCOSUR to approve the application for membership of leftist Venezuela, the outcome that the Paraguayan right least wanted.

Paraguayans are now wondering what kind of president Horacio Cartes will turn out to be. His platform called for increasing direct foreign investment by the implementation of neo-liberal methods, including especially reducing employment in the public sector. His election will come as pleasant news to those foreign based monopolies that have already been grabbing up properties in Paraguay, specifically the Monsanto agri-business giant which is eager to turn even more Paraguayan farmland over to vast soybean production, and the Canadian mining giant Rio Tinto-Alcan, which is also eagerly expanding its Paraguay operations against considerable popular opposition.

The neo-liberal program of President elect Cartes (who will be sworn in in August) and the projected plans of Monsanto and Rio Tinto-Alcan translate into more displacement of poor farmers and more environmental damage. This will create more uproar in the Paraguayan countryside, as urban citizens find that Cartes' promises of more jobs brought by foreign investment turns out to be the pipe dream that other poor countries have already experienced. But the leftist Guasú Front promise that with their increased representation in the Senate they are ready to fight for the interests of the poor.

Paraguayan farmers protest the use of transgenic soy and herbicides during a march organized by the National Farmers Federation's (FNC) in Asuncion, Paraguay, March 21. The FNC demands the government prohibit transgenic soy and herbicides. President Federico Franco approved the use of transgenic soy and herbicides in Oct. 2012 by presidential decree. Jorge Saenz/AP

U.S. must recognize Venezuela's elections

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:06:00 +0000

The United States is refusing to recognize the results of the Venezuelan elections, insisting that Venezuela conduct a re-count of 100 percent of the votes in light of the narrow margin of victory for Nicolas Maduro. The facts surrounding the voting process and election outcome in Venezuela, the U.S.'s own experiences with close presidential elections, and the U.S.'s recent recognition of coup governments in Latin America demonstrate that the U.S.'s position in regard to Venezuela has nothing to do with the U.S.'s alleged concerns for democracy, but rather, its complete disdain for it.

I just returned from Venezuela where I was one of over 170 international election observers from around the world, including India, Guyana, Suriname, Colombia, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Scotland, England, the United States, Guatemala, Argentina, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Jamaica, Brazil, Chile, Greece, France, Panama and Mexico. These observers included two former presidents (of Guatemala and the Dominican Republic), judges, lawyers and numerous high-ranking officials of national electoral councils. What we found was an election system, which was transparent, inherently reliable, well run and thoroughly audited.

Indeed, as to the auditing, what has been barely mentioned by the mainstream press is the fact that around 54 percent of all votes are, and indeed have already been, audited to ensure that the electronic votes match up with the paper receipts which serve as back-up for these electronic votes. And, this auditing is done in the presence of witnesses from both the governing and opposition parties right in the local polling places themselves. I witnessed just such an audit at the end of election day on Sunday. And, as is the usual case, the paper results matched up perfectly with the electronic ones. As the former Guatemalan President, Alvaro Colom, who served as an observer, opined, the vote in Venezuela is "secure" and easily verifiable.

In short, the observers' experience this past week aligns with former U.S. president Jimmy Carter's observation last year that Venezuela's electoral system is indeed the "the best in the world."

And so, what were the results of the election? With an impressive 79 percent of registered voters going to the polls, Nicolas Maduro won by over 260,000 votes, with a 1.6 percentage point margin over Henrique Capriles (50.7 to 49.1 percent). While this was certainly a close race, 260,000 votes is a comfortable victory, certainly by U.S. election standards. Thus, recall that John F. Kennedy beat Richard Nixon in 1960 with 49.7 percent of the vote to Nixon's 49.6 percent. In addition, George W. Bush became president in 2000, though losing the popular vote to Al Gore, with 47.87 percent of the vote to Gore's 48.38 percent, and with the entire race coming down to several hundred votes in Florida, with the Supreme Court actually blocking a hand recount in Florida. In none of these cases, did any nation in the world insist upon a recount or hesitate in recognizing the man declared to be the winner. Indeed, had a country like Venezuela done so, we would have found such a position absurd. The U.S.'s current position vis à vis Venezuela is no less absurd.

The U.S.'s position is all the more ridiculous given its quick recognition of the coup government in Paraguay after the former bishop-turned president, Fernando Lugo, was ousted in 2012, and its recognition of the 2009 elections in Honduras despite the fact that the U.S.'s stated precondition for recognizing this election -- the return of President Manuel Zelaya to power after his forcible ouster by the military -- never occurred. Of course, this even pales in comparison to the U.S.'s active involvement in coups against democratically-elected leaders in Latin America (e.g., against President Árbenz in Guatemala in 1954, against President Allende in Chile in 1973, and against President Aristide in Haiti in 2004).

And, the U.S.'s failure to recognize the Venezuelan elections is having devastating consequences in Venezuela, for it is emboldening the Venezuelan opposition to carry out violence in order to destabilize that country. Unlike Al Gore in 2000 who stepped aside for George W. Bush in the interest of his country and the U.S. Constitution, the Venezuelan opposition, being led by Henrique Capriles, clearly wants to foster chaos and crisis in Venezuela in order to topple the Maduro government by force (just as the same forces represented by Capriles forcibly kidnapped and briefly overthrew President Chavez, with U.S. support, in 2002). Thus, reasonably believing itself to have the backing of the U.S. and its military, the opposition is causing mayhem in Venezuela, including burning down clinics, destroying property, attacking Cuban doctors and destroying ruling party buildings. In all, seven Venezuelans are dead and dozens injured in this opposition-led violence.

There is no doubt that the U.S. could halt this violence right now by recognizing the results of the Venezuelan elections, just as the nations of the world recognized, without question, the results of the elections which put John F. Kennedy in power in 1960 and George W. Bush in power in 2000. The reason the U.S. is not doing so is obvious: It does not like the Venezuelans' chosen form of government, and welcomes that government's demise, even through violence. The U.S., therefore, is not supporting democracy and stability in Venezuela; it is intentionally undermining it.

Originally published in the Huffington Post.

Photo: Supporters of Nicolás Maduro rally in Caracas, April 11, before the presidential elections (LuisCarlos Diaz/CC).

Japanese workers fight Sony "downsizing room"

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 12:04:00 +0000

(Japan Press Weekly) - As a result of a union's struggle, a Sony's subsidiary company in Tagajo City, Miyagi Prefecture, gave new job assignments to all 14 workers who had been transferred to a so-called "downsizing room," Akahata reported on April 14.

The Sony workers' union Sendai branch stressed that their efforts finally resulted in action. However, the union branch points out that Sendai Technology Center (Sendai TEC) has not given up its restructuring plan.

A so-called "downsizing room" is used by large corporations as a humiliating pressure tactic to force their employees to quit their jobs. Targeted workers who keep refusing to accept early retirement offers at individual meetings with management are transferred to a "downsizing room" where they sit without work to do.

The union stated that some of the new job assignments offered to the workers are hardly acceptable. For example, some were ordered to move to a distant office, and a worker who had had a heart attack was told to work the night shift.

Large companies often give workers such harsh job transfer offers as a way to press them to choose either the transfer or retirement. This is a well-known tactic of large companies to bully targeted employees into leaving their workplaces.

The union branch expressed its determination to fight until the Sony subsidiary abolishes the room and provides its workers with decent working conditions.

It is estimated that more than 250 workers of the Sony Group are confined in "downsizing rooms" at group companies in Miyagi's Tagajo City, Tokyo, and Atsugi City, Kanagawa Prefecture.

The "downsizing room" problem has provoked public attention as it tramples on workers' rights. The Japanese Communist Party has repeatedly taken up the matter in the Diet and urged the government to instruct large companies to refrain from using such a cruel tactic in carrying out their retirement schemes.

Photo: (xsix/CC)

U.S. taxes support Venezuelan right-wing opposition

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 11:32:00 +0000

In media accounts of last Sunday's Venezuelan election, the loser, Henrique Capriles, is portrayed as an underdog with none of the resources of the incumbent and winner of the contest, Nicolás Maduro.

In the Guardian (4/14/2013), for example, Virginia Lopez reported Capriles' complaint that Maduro had special advantages, including support from official news channels, use of presidential aircraft for the campaign, and "resources and personnel" from state owned enterprises. But she never mentioned the substantial support that the Venezuelan opposition receives from United States taxpayers.

Our tax dollars, funneled through the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Department of Defense, and nominally "non-partisan" organizations like the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), have trained, supported and equipped members of the Venezuelan opposition, including Henrique Capriles, for at least a dozen years.

Take, for example, the National Endowment for Democracy, a "nonpartisan" foundation that spends 1.5 million tax dollars on projects with virtuous and wholesome goals like: "creation of a new generation of political leaders with a deeper understanding of democratic values" and "promote dialogue among Venezuelan youth on the importance of freedom of expression." One can imagine how a deeper understanding of democratic values is conveyed with pro-U.S. messages of allegiance toward the United States, and "freedom of expression" that doesn't include expressing support for Hugo Chavez.

Just how these programs actually work on the ground can be gleaned from other reports. Almost $400,000 of the NED's budget went through the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), a nonprofit affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which, in turn, invested in its "partner," (as local organizations are referred to in contemporary development-aid-speak), the Center for Dissemination of Economic Knowledge (CEDICE), a Venezuelan "free-market think tank" which claims alliances with ultra-conservative organizations like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation and sponsors events with titles like "The Antidote to XXI Century Socialism - Overthrow is Constitutional."

CEDICE's mission statement states clearly and openly its opposition to the government and programs of Hugo Chávez. In the pages of Forbes magazine, CEDICE's vice president, Alejandro Chafuen, recommends allying with his organization and doing business with its affiliated companies as something that U.S. firms can do to undermine the programs begun by Hugo Chávez. Chafuen also remarks that his organization has had ties with Henrique Capriles since 1999.

The International Republican Institute is chaired by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and purports to "advance freedom and democracy worldwide." It has been at work in Venezuela since 1994, seeking "to enhance healthy competition in Venezuelan politics" with "building assistance, technical training and organizational assistance to political parties." Since 2009, according to its website, it has begun a program at the local level across Venezuelan municipalities, "encouraging citizen participation in the decision-making process." The goals of the donor agencies, USAID and other government entities, have been so clearly anti-Chávez for so long that we can be sure that only certain forms of citizen participation are encouraged. Engagement on the municipal level is another strategy to gain audiences for their messages of discontent with Chávez and now, Maduro.

The virtuous mission statements promulgated by these organizations serve to conceal the U.S. connection with the decidedly anti-democratic outcomes that their programs cause. U.S.-affiliated agencies use extreme caution and circumspection when describing their own actions. When chaos or violence breaks out under their influence, American diplomats can disavow any connection and claim that they are completely innocent of any wrong-doing. In 2002, when a coup attempt against Hugo Chavez was launched by the "new generation of leaders" that U.S. tax dollars helped to train, the U.S. proclaimed that none of its agencies had broken any U.S. law.

Right now, the Venezuelan opposition doesn't seem to know that the first characteristic of a democratic process is rule by the people. Instead, the U.S. hand-picked presidential candidate Henrique Capriles refuses to concede that he lost the election. How deep can his understanding of democratic values be if he cannot accept defeat at the polls?

Photo: Image depicts the "out of control" right-wing opposition, in some cases violent, and a thoughtful, calm young Bolivarian Revolution supporter.

Battling crisis, Iraq’s communists remain optimistic

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:10:00 +0000

Ten years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, pretty much no one is optimistic about the prospects for democracy and a decent life for the people in that cradle of civilization. No one, that is, except for Iraq's communists. Amidst a society hobbled by corrupt power struggles and parasitic oil millionaires, the tenacious Iraqi Communist Party sees the seeds of positive social change emerging at the grassroots. "This is why we are optimistic," said Communist Party spokesman Salam Ali in an April 12 phone interview. "This is not a bleak situation."

The challenges are formidable.

Iraq's politics today are dominated by a group of well-financed self-serving power blocs. This is one legacy of the U.S. occupation, which from the start adopted policies that fanned religious sectarianism, shunned democratic and left groups, and instead anointed opportunistic self-styled leaders deemed cooperative with U.S. interests. While the country is safer now than a few years ago, continued violence - including almost weekly bomb attacks - is largely linked to power struggles among these dominant groups over influence and access to Iraq's enormous oil wealth. The violence has been intensifying in the lead-up to April 20 provincial elections, the first nationwide elections since the U.S. withdrawal in December 2011. These elections are seen as a dress rehearsal for national elections in 2014.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who heads a Shiite Islamic alliance, is pursuing "divisive politics - a heightened level of sectarian agitation - to divide his opponents, whether among his own Shiite allies or others, and to stir up his base" said Ali. Other major blocs, Sunni or Shia, are doing likewise.

Although oil revenues are booming, Iraq has over 25 percent unemployment - with the real rate being closer to 50 percent. Youth unemployment is rampant. Oil production actually produces relatively few jobs. But agriculture and non-oil industries account for no more than 4 percent of the gross national product. Except for oil, major national industries are at a standstill, operating at 20 percent of capacity, at best. Electricity is still irregular at best. Agriculture, in the former global "breadbasket," has huge potential, but most of Iraq's food is imported today. Iraq has become increasingly dependent on imports from Turkey and Iran, in particular.

But oil wealth and corruption has led to the emergence of a new parasitic class of millionaires who have no interest in rebuilding Iraq on a sound basis - not even a working market economy, Ali said. Instead their main concern is retaining their status.

"Sectarian politics is being used to divert attention from immediate problems," Ali said. "But it is pushing Iraq to the brink of war. It's a very dangerous situation."

The Maliki government has responded harshly to legitimate protests over lack of democracy and economic issues, and at the same time has moved very slowly, if at all, to address the real problems. This in turn has provided an opportunity for al-Qaeda-type groups and other ultra-reactionaries including Saddam Hussein supporters to mobilize and ramp up more extreme slogans and actions - even calling for taking up arms and setting up a Syria-type "Free Iraqi Army."

Iraqi commentator Seerwan Jafar has analyzed Iraq's homicide statistics and finds that the violence is confined to just half of Iraq's 18 provinces. The other half have homicide rates lower than Western countries including the U.S. Why? "Many of unsafe Iraq's provinces are former bases for extremist Sunni Muslim groups like al-Qaeda." Violence there "comes because of the clash between them and Iraq's federal government forces," he writes.

"[T]he perpetrators of extremist and violent acts are a mixture of religious radicals, both local and foreign, die-hard elements from the former regime headed by Saddam Hussein, former army officers, unemployed youth without prospects, random criminal elements that emerged in the post-2003 chaos and which have yet to be subdued and more generally, violent elements that are supported by Iraqi political groups to utilize violence to advance their own political agendas."

For the first time since some U.S. officials floated the idea several years ago, some in Iraq talk of dividing the country along sectarian lines - Sunni, Shiite and Kurd. So far, said Ali, the idea has not gained traction. But the crisis in Syria is growing increasingly sectarian, and could have a destabilizing impact on Iraq.

Hanaa Edwar, a prominent Iraqi women's advocate who heads the nongovernmental Iraqi Amal Association, said recently that women's status has suffered from "a fabricated sectarian hatred which started in 2006 and which has been imposed and boosted from the highest levels to divide and rule through violence and fear."

For example, she said, domestic violence crimes are on the rise and women not wearing the hijab - the Islamic veil - are being discriminated against.

"The lack of dialogue between the leading political parties, and the ever growing role of religion is choking our society," she said.

Yet there is considerable push-back against efforts to repress women, Ali noted, and the government has been forced to pay lip-service to women's rights. Other protests have compelled the government to retreat on a number of regressive measures. At Basra University, students are waging an ongoing campaign against a ban on graduation celebrations. Human rights organizations are active throughout the country. Unions are resisting government efforts at repression. A new Journalists Union was formed earlier this year. And a broad Iraqi Democratic Current coalition of left and liberal groups is organizing Iraqi people to oppose sectarian politics.

The Iraqi Communist Party's membership is growing. Last month it held a lively celebration of its 79th anniversary in a public park in Baghdad, attended by representatives of Iraq's president and leading political figures from Maliki's bloc and others. The party has gained recognition for holding mass forward-looking events like this, and is seen as a party of "clean hands" amidst the surrounding corruption.

This is why Iraq's Communists remain optimistic.

Photo: Supporters of the Iraqi Communist Party march in Baghdad, July 14, 2011. The demonstrators marked July 14, 1958 coup that toppled the Iraqi monarchy and brought to power left-leaning nationalist Abdul Karim Qassem. AP

Right-wing push to destabilize Venezuela after close election

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 13:27:00 +0000

Violence, instigated by the right wing opposition, has broken out in Venezuela after leftist candidate Nicolas Maduro narrowly won the special election necessitated by the death of Hugo Chavez.

Revised figures show Maduro, the candidate of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), beating the right wing candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski by 50.75 percent to 48.9 percent.

Capriles demanded a recount, as did the United States, Spain, the European Union and the Organization of American States. The White House, which did not congratulate Maduro as winner (it also did not congratulate Chavez on his election victory in October, and USAID funded NGO's have been working to defeat "Chavismo", according to Wikileaks reports) said that a recount would be "prudent and necessary".

Maduro quickly agreed to this "audit" of results on principal, but electoral authorities are reluctant according to reports. Many governments worldwide, including those of most Latin American countries, even those with relatively conservative governments such as Mexico, Haiti and Colombia, have congratulated Maduro on his victory. Most election observers, including a multi-party team from Spain, gave the elections a clean bill of health.

Venezuela uses a sophisticated electronic voting system which also provides voters with paper receipts for their votes. This system has been praised by many outside observers, including former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.

This did not prevent Capriles from calling on his supporters to "take to the streets" to protest the results. In well off neighborhoods and right wing strongholds, demonstrations developed which in some cases have turned violent.

In several areas, right wing mobs set fire to installations belonging to the PSUV and government agencies, including health facilities.

The headquarters of TELESUR, the international TV channel based in Venezuela, was besieged by a right wing mob.

Rioters tried to burn the house of Adan Chavez, governor of Barinas State, who is also the brother of the late president. Another PSUV state governor was shot at, among many incidents reported.

President Maduro angrily denounced these actions and accused their masterminds of trying to initiate a coup.

A rumor was started that Cuban doctors, thousands of whom provide health services in Venezuela in exchange for discounted supplies of Venezuelan oil for Cuba, were involved in destroying ballot materials. No evidence has surfaced about any ballot materials being burned.

During the election campaign, Capriles denounced Cuba and engaged in red-baiting the gist of which was that Maduro is a Cuban puppet. He swore that if elected, he would cut off the supply of discounted oil to Cuba. Capriles was involved in attacks on the Cuban embassy in Caracas during a 2002 coup attempt against Hugo Chavez, and has connections with right wing Cuban exiles in the United States. Latest reports are that a medical center where Cuban doctors were working was targeted by right wing demonstrators demanding that the Cuban doctors be expelled from Venezuela.

According to local reports, at least four people have been killed in these disturbances. All were pro-Maduro people shot by anti-Maduro protesters.

Earlier, the Venezuelan government had warned that violent destabilization efforts were being planned, involving mercenaries from El Salvador connected with the U.S. right.

More demonstrations by both pro-Maduro and pro-Capriles groups are scheduled for today, Tuesday.

Diosdado Cabello, the PSUV President of the Venezuelan parliament, denounced the actions and said that he will call for a parliamentary investigation of Capriles' role in instigating the violence.

Photo: Residents wait in line to enter a polling station to vote in the presidential election in Caracas, Venezuela, early Sunday, April 14. Ariana Cubillos/AP

Leftist Maduro wins Venezuela election

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:16:00 +0000

On Sunday, Nicolas Maduro, Acting President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela since the death of President Hugo Chavez on March 5, was elected for a full term as president. His mandate runs until 2019 and he has promised to continue the socialist policies of his predecessor.

The margin of victory over Henrique Capriles Radonski, candidate of the unified M.U.D. (Table for United Democracy) alliance of the Venezuelan opposition, was much smaller than anticipated by many polls and forecasts. According to election officials, Maduro got about 50.6 percent of the vote, while Capriles garnered 49.07 percent, with a turnout of nearly 79 percent of eligible voters. http://laradiodelsur.com/?p=162769 Voting is not mandatory in Venezuela.

Maduro won in 16 of Venezuela's 24 states, and also in the Capital District surrounding Caracas. Capriles won eight states, including wealthy Miranda, of which he is the governor.

Capriles immediately refused to recognize the results of the election and demanded a complete audit, or vote-by-vote recount. This is normally done with a 54% sample, but Maduro immediately agreed to a 100 % recount. Voting machines in Venezuela are electronic but also provide printed receipts, which will make the audit relatively easy.

Left wing regional governments that have cooperated with Venezuela in projects of mutual aid and regional integration congratulated Maduro on the victory. There is no word yet from the U.S. State Department or the White House.

The election campaign was very intense and confrontational. The Venezuelan government had expressed the fear that right wing elements in the United States might try to disrupt it. Maduro had accused two former Bush administration officials, Roger Noriega and Otto Reich, of plotting to disrupt the election. However, election day incidents were comparatively minor. While Maduro had reminded Venezuelans of the many economic and social achievements of the Chavez administration, Capriles harped on worries about crime and inflation, and added a red-baiting note by claiming that Maduro was a puppet of Cuba.

But what was at stake in the election was immense. Capriles had made vague promises to continue Chavez's progressive social programs, but had also sworn to stop providing subsidized oil to Cuba via the PETROCARIBE program. Support for Capriles from abroad included help from U.S. government agencies and also from right wing Cuban exile circles in Miami and elsewhere.

PETROCARIBE includes 16 other countries besides Venezuela and Cuba. A number of them, such as Haiti and Jamaica, are among the poorest and most economically fragile countries in the hemisphere. The U.S. right has complained that by helping them with subsidized oil, Venezuela is protecting them from the need to permit greater penetration of their economies by international monopoly capital, and to implement austerity programs which would cut back and/or privatize social services and the public sector.

PETROCARIBE is part of a series of "Bolivarian" initiatives to integrate the Latin American countries and reduce their dependence on the United States. At the center of these is the Bolivarian Alliance, or ALBA, consisting of Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Antigua, Dominica and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Honduras briefly joined, but after President Manuel Zelaya was ousted in a coup in June of 2009, withdrew. Zelaya's wife, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, is now running for President of Honduras and doing well in the polls, so it is not impossible that Honduras re-join ALBA.

However, with Capriles as president and Venezuela out of its current central role as lynchpin of the Bolivarian integrationist movement, it is not clear how ALBA and its many aid and cooperation projects could survive. In spite of his claim to be the "new Chavez" and his demagogic promises to keep Chavez's domestic projects going, he has also indicated that he would stop using his country's legendary oil wealth to support social projects at home and abroad.

The Venezuelan left will now embark on an analysis of why the vote margin for Maduro turned out to be so much lower than anticipated. There have been complaints about inflation and the high crime rate, but a serious analysis cannot be pulled like a rabbit out of a hat.

Photo: Nicolas Maduro was elected for a full-term presidency. Enric Marti/AP

Stumble stones are for German hearts and minds

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:09:00 +0000

BERLIN - The late, late snow has finally disappeared from Berlin's streets. Visible once again, here and there, are the "stumble stones" -"stolpersteine" in German - with their brief, tragic messages.

Many Berlin tourists will enjoy the night life. They may also look upwards - at the giant TV tower, the Brandenburg Gate, at ancient and less ancient churches. There is a wide assortment of memorial monuments, some impressive, some uninspiring.

But those who look downward, to the pavement where they walk, may glimpse a very different kind of memorial - the stumble stones.

They are small concrete blocks in the ground, 10 x 10 centimeters square (about 4 x 4 inches), topped at sidewalk level by a brass plaque of the same size. Most are placed at entranceways to houses where people once lived - people seized by the Nazis and sent to die in a multitude of death sites in all the conquered territories.

Some were suicides. The message on the little plaque contains a name, a year of birth, the date of deportation and, if known, the place and date of death. There is room for little else. But the scant facts can tell a tragic story.

Sometimes there is only one plaque. Often, most movingly, there are two, three, four or five, placed neatly next to one another. As in Oranienburger Strasse, for example, near the impressively rebuilt, golden-domed synagogue; a group of five small squares, all for a family named Kozower, each with a name and year of birth: Philip, 1894; Gisela, 1901; Eva Rita, 1932; Alice, 1934; Uri Aron, 1942. And under each birth year: "Deportiert Theresienstadt 1943" and "In Auschwitz ermordet" (In Auschwitz he or she died).

These small memorials are placed wherever local people - those now living in the house, perhaps church groups, anti-fascist organizations, very often schools - decide to hunt up the facts and collect 120 Euros to pay for each plaque.

Then they can turn to Gunter Demnig, now 66, who had the idea for the stumble stones, and who makes every block, each and every letter by hand, and who mixes the concrete, attaches the brass plaque and secures it between the small paving stones so frequent in German streets. He has recently begun to train two apprentices to assist him.

Demnig, born in Berlin, became an artist and industrial designer in West Germany and began work at restoring monuments. Like so many students in those years he was a political person; he spent some hours in jail for hanging out an American flag with skulls instead of stars as a protest against the killing in Vietnam.

In 1990 in Cologne he painted a long white line of letters through the town, forming the words, over and over: "May 1940 - 1000 Roma and Sinti." Fifty years earlier this group, the "Gypsies," defended by almost no one, had been forced along this line to the railway station as a test for far larger deportations soon to follow.

Then, in Cologne in 1995 and a year later in West Berlin, he started his project of making one stone for each individual, retrieving them from the anonymity of large memorials visited, all too often, solely on special occasions.

At first he placed the stones without official permission, but Germany made it legal in 2000 and he was soon called upon by people in one town and city after another. He has personally placed almost 38,000 such stones in over 650 German towns and cities, nearly 5000 in Berlin alone. He has also been invited to place stones in over a hundred places in the countries surrounding Germany, as far as Norway and the Ukraine.

Gunter Demnig, in his denim work clothes and broad-brimmed hat, carefully anchors each stone solidly in the ground. There is always a ceremony, in all weather, usually with music and poetry, almost always with flowers, and often organized by the school classes which did the necessary research - in local archives or as far as Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Sometimes - rarely - a grateful grandchild or other surviving relative can be present.

Despite the name, no one stumbles over these stones; they are no higher than sidewalk level. Asked about this, Demnig likes to quote a schoolboy who once participated: "No, no, nobody stumbles and falls, you stumble with your mind and with your heart."

Demnig feels that even the bending needed to read the messages on the stones is, in a way, a symbolic bow of quiet respect to those whose names he wishes to rescue from forgetfulness.

Above most names are the words: "Here lived..." and the site is the last voluntary home of the person named - or where the house was once located. But Demnig also varies the pattern: "Here worked..." or "Here studied" or "Here taught" - several are near the Humboldt University building on Berlin's central Unter den Linden boulevard.

Most stones recall Jewish victims. But some years ago this was broadened to include, along with Roma or Sinti, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses or handicapped victims, also those who fought and died as active anti-fascists.

The names, the locations of the stones, and more biographical notes wherever possible are now available on the Internet. So it is possible to know more about some names on the stones, now scattered so widely around the country.

For example, we can learn just a little more about two young men from Hoechst on the Main River. Friedrich Schuhmann, machinist and hobby mandolin player, was a Communist. The plaque says: Born 1906, fled 1933 to the Saarland, (not yet German-ruled at the time, VG), 1936 Spanish Civil War, Thälmann Battalion; Died July 6 1937, Brunete. We can read that he joined the fight in Spain even before the International Brigades were formed, and that he was one of fourteen men who died in that first day's battle for Brunete. Surviving relatives learned the facts only through this research.

The other from Hoechst, Fritz Hartmann, born a year earlier, was a Social Democrat.

After two arrests by the Nazis for his resistance he fled in 1933, also to French-occupied Saarland. When it voted to join Hitler-Germany he fled to France, continued fighting, but was caught in 1940 and sent to Mauthausen Concentration Camp. On April 13th 1945, only weeks before war's end, he was murdered. The other stones in Hoechst, over 50 of them, are for Jewish victims.

Not everyone supports Demnig's project. In Cologne a court decided to tax the stones with a severe 19 percent value added tax, since the lower 7 percent rate is permitted only for "creative works." The many thousands of stones being placed in Germany, the court ruled, amounted not to "creative work" but to "mass production."

But Demnig was able to prove that every letter on every plaque was carved by hand and so was able to win the case.

In Munich, a serious objection came from the head of the Jewish Congregation, who found it "insufferable" that the names of Jews killed by the Nazis should be on plaques over which people walked back and forth every day.

Her objections, though not shared by all Congregation leaders, were backed up by the mayor, and the stones in Munich, still prohibited on public sidewalks, are restricted only to private property. A large number are in storage.

But Demnig and many, many others, while they may understand these objections, are convinced that this way of personalizing the fates of individuals who once lived at these places, with birthdates and death dates and places, helps to preserve their memories, while making clear that those who lived here must have known very well what was happening to their next-door neighbors. They see this as an urgent reminder for the present, a stimulus to thinking and often necessary re-thinking.

And indeed, it is not only snow or foot steps which render them temporarily less legible. Last year, in Greifswald, an area hard hit by neo-Nazis, eleven stones were torn out and stolen.

A few weeks ago in Berlin newly-placed stones were smeared with tar during the night. Those which disappear are soon replaced and, as Demnig says, "With a little benzine and a spatula the tar is gone." Red lacquer was once used. "I got rid of it with a solvent. Some color remained in the letters, making them easier to read."

One night last September in Wismar nine stones were covered over with a steel plate marked with the birth and death dates, even the rank and decorations of German Wehrmacht soldiers, some from the most murderous SS divisions.

The struggle with the forces of darkness is by no means a settled affair. Perhaps these little stones, combined with the efforts and research of pupils in the schools and people in those houses, will affect this on-going struggle. As the pupil said, the stumble stones are something for hearts and minds.

Photo: Wikipedia/CC

Ultra right plotting dirty tricks for Venezuela election?

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 14:23:00 +0000

Venezuelans go to the polls Sunday to vote in the special presidential election required by the Venezuelan constitution to replace President Hugo Chavez, who died of complications of cancer at the beginning of March.

No campaigning will be allowed on Friday, Saturday and Sunday so there were intense dueling rallies and marches earlier this week. President Chavez's "Bolivarian" standard is carried by Acting President and former Vice President Nicolas Maduro, supported by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) and six other political parties. The candidate of the opposition M.U.D (Table for United Democracy) is wealthy right-wing businessman Henrique Capriles Rodonski, who is currently governor of Miranda state. Maduro promises a continuation of Chavez's policies. Capriles calls for a cut off of discounted Venezuelan oil to Cuba and other poor countries in the region, among other things.

Public opinion polls are showing Maduro with a solid lead of at least 11 percentage points. The strategy of the opposition appears to be to accept that Capriles will lose, but to question the legitimacy of the election and call for U.S. pressure to somehow have the results overturned, or to strengthen opposition to Maduro going forward.

Ultra-rightist political figures from the United States appear to be working with people connected to the Capriles' candidacy to achieve this. The president of the Venezuelan Parliament, Diosdado Cabello of the PSUV, has revealed intelligence information which strongly suggests a plan for Capriles to not recognize the election.

Furthermore, on April 10, Foreign Minister Elias Jaua stated that right-wing mercenaries have been sent to Venezuela from Central America. One of the people named is David Koch Arana, a retired Salvadoran colonel who has connections to Cuban exile terrorist Luis Posada Carriles and to Roberto D'Aubuisson Jr., son of the ultra right Salvadoran leader who is generally considered to be responsible for much violence in the Salvadoran Civil War, including the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980. In recorded conversations, Koch and D'Aubuisson appear to be talking about disruptive actions on election day, to be coordinated with the Capriles campaign.

Assuming that Maduro will win, the question will be what will be the reaction of the U.S. government. President Obama had been frosty to Chavez, not congratulating him on his December 2012 election win, nor sending a sympathy message upon his death. People in the United States get a very skewed picture of the situation in Venezuela from our media, even supposedly "liberal" sources such as NPR, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Yet objective statistics on quality of life in Venezuela show that Chavez' government can claim many advances for poor and working people. That is why so many will vote for him.

It behooves all progressive people in the U.S. to reject the negative spin on Venezuela and to speak out against any U.S. interference, and especially against support for the right wing elements that are bent on thwarting the will of Venezuelan voters.

Photo: Vice president Nicolas Maduro is the United Socialist Party of Venezuela's candidate running to replace Hugo Chavez. He is seen here with Diosdado Cabello, president of Venezuela's National Assembly. Ariana Cubillos/AP

Chile opens new probe into death of poet Neruda

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 14:31:00 +0000

ISLA NEGRA, Chile - The body of the Nobel laureate poet Pablo Neruda is being exhumed in an effort to clear up four decades of suspicion about how he died in the days after Chile's military coup in 1973.

A team of investigators is digging at Isla Negra, a rocky outcropping on the Pacific Coast where Neruda lived.

But forensic experts say there's little hope that the exhumation will answer the question of whether one of the greatest poets of the 20th century died of natural causes as was recorded, or if he was poisoned by the military dictatorship as his driver and many others believe.

Judge Mario Carroza approved a request by Chile's Communist Party for the disinterment, but did not permit the use of independent experts.

Neruda won the Nobel prize for literature in 1971. He was also a communist leader who backed the socialist government, a diplomat and a close friend of socialist President Salvador Allende, who died during the Sept. 11, 1973, coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet and supported by the Nixon administration in the U.S.

In the days after the coup, Neruda's home in Isla Negra was raided by authorities and a Chilean warship was stationed off the coast, its cannons pointed directly at the house, Araya said. "They're going to blow us up," the poet told his driver, then 26 years old.

Neruda, 69 and suffering from prostate cancer, was said to be traumatized by the coup and the mass persecution and killing of his friends and tens of thousands of progressives.

"I write these quick lines for my memories just three days after the indescribable acts that led to the death of my great friend President Allende," Neruda wrote in the last page of his autobiography: "I Confess I Have Lived."

Neruda planned to go into exile, where he would have been an influential voice against the dictatorship. A day before he planned to leave, he was taken by ambulance to the Santa Maria clinic, however, where he was being treated for cancer and other ailments.

Officially, Neruda died there on Sept. 23 from natural causes related to the emotional trauma of the coup. But suspicions that the dictatorship had a hand in his death have lingered long after Chile returned to a democracy in 1990.

Former President Eduardo Frei Montalva died at the same clinic nine years later. Although doctors listed the cause of his 1982 death as septic shock from stomach hernia surgery, an investigation almost three decades later showed that the vocal opponent of the Pinochet regime had been slowly poisoned to death.

Araya said he believes that agents of the dictatorship injected poison into Neruda's stomach at the clinic. "Our mistake was leaving Neruda by himself on Sept. 23. If he hadn't been left alone, they wouldn't have killed him," Araya told The Associated Press.

Proving Araya's theory will be daunting.

Neruda's remains have been buried for years in soil that receives intense coastal humidity. Once they are exhumed, investigators will then have to work with what experts say is outdated technology and equipment.

"No big or false hope should be made about the exhumation and the analysis of the remains of Neruda yielding a cause of death" said Dr. Luis Ravanal, a forensic specialist.

Chile's legal medicine laboratory "lacks basic equipment for the analysis of toxics and drugs that even the most modest labs own," he said. "Technically there's a big limitation; there is no sophisticated equipment to detect other substances, so they'll invariably have to seek other labs."

Ravanal also said that Chile lacks expertise in analyzing bone remains.

Chilean Communist Party lawyer Eduardo Contreras, who is overseeing the exhumation, said he was disappointed that outside experts were not allowed.

"There's no ill doing or trickery, but I think this not rigorous enough," Contreras said.

Mexico's ambassador to Chile at the time, Gonzalo Martinez Corbala, had arranged to send the poet into exile after the coup and the poet sent Araya to Isla Negra to collect some clothes, books, cash and the original manuscript for his autobiography before leaving for Mexico.

Martinez said he saw the poet at the hospital on the day before he died. "He seemed normal to me ... nothing could make you think that he was going to die," he recalled.

On Sept. 23, Martinez was ready to take Neruda to the airport, where a DC-8 airplane waited with more than 100 exiles aboard. But at the last minute, the poet decided to postpone his departure by 24 hours. Those aboard agreed to wait on the plane, afraid that if they got off they would be arrested by Chilean authorities.

Araya thinks the delay might have cost Neruda his life.

"Neruda calls us at 4:00 p.m. on Sunday the 23rd ... and says: 'Come quickly because I was sleeping and a doctor gave me a shot in the gut, I'm in a lot of pain and I'm boiling!' Araya said.

The driver said that when he arrived at the clinic, Neruda had a high fever and a nurse told him that a doctor named Sergio Draper ordered a shot of dipyrone to bring the temperature down.

But Contreras, the Communist Party lawyer, said that Draper has testified that he left the clinic before that and "Neruda was left in the hands of a doctor with a surname Price, whose existence has not been able to be confirmed by anyone."

Chile's investigative police, the local equivalent of the FBI, searched through yearbooks of medicine graduates, but never found one named Price.

When Araya left the clinic to buy medicine for Neruda, he was seized by four men who beat him, shot him in a leg and took him to Chile's national stadium, where many leftists were held, tortured and killed during the dictatorship.

The driver was later released with help from Cardinal Raul Silva Henriquez, an outspoken human rights defender, and he fled into exile.

Araya gave Neruda's autobiography to Martinez, who kept the manuscript for many years at his home in Mexico. Neruda's widow fled to Mexico with other exiles in the plane that had been readied for the poet.

In the last pages of the autobiography, Neruda characterized Allende's death as a murder.

Neruda wrote that Allende "was buried secretly; only his widow was allowed to accompany that immortal cadaver... that glorious figure was shattered by the bullets of Chile's soldiers, who once again had betrayed Chile."

Photo: This Feb. 14, 1952 file photo shows Chilean poet Pablo Neruda in Capri, Italy. Chile's Communist Party asked to exhume the remains of the late Nobel literature laureate following allegations he may have been poisoned. Officially, Neruda died of cancer only days after the 1973 coup toppled his close friend, socialist President Salvador Allende. Mario Torrisi/AP

Venezuelan elections down to the wire

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 12:51:00 +0000

On April 14, Venezuelans will elect a new president replacing Hugo Chavez Frias, who died on March 5. Although acting president Nicolas Maduro, of Chavez' own United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) has a strong lead in polls over the rightist United Democratic Movement (MUD) of Miranda State Governor Henrique Capriles Radonski, there is still enough time for a dirty tricks effort to try to block Maduro's victory.

Venezuelan election law requires that if a president dies in office, a new election for the presidency has to be held within 30 days. The government decided to run the elections on April 14. Official campaigning started on Tuesday April 2, and is supposed to stop on April 12.

The worry on the Latin American left is always "what will the United States do?" This worry was awakened again this time when U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson commented that she did not see how Venezuela could have a fair election under existing circumstances.

The far right in the United States had been blasting Chavez in intemperate terms in his lifetime, and has now trained its guns on Maduro. In response to this, Maduro had sharply criticized several U.S. right wingers, including Otto Reich, Roger Noriega and John Negroponte, who were important figures in the Reagan, Bush I and Bush II administrations and who are particularly close to the anti-Castro Cuban scene in South Florida.

Maduro claimed that Capriles was in direct contact with these elements and is receiving funding from them.

In Latin America, it will not be forgotten that these people were involved in the attempted military coup against Chavez in 2002 and the coup in Honduras in 2009.

Seeing himself behind in the polls by about 54 to 37 percent, Capriles is trying out different tactics that would either produce a last minute turn around, or, failing that, would delegitimize the election and induce the United States not to recognize its results.

One tactic is to present himself as a moderate. His supporters in the United States represent him as a "good" socialist on the lines of ex President Lula da Silva and incumbent President Rousseff of Brazil. But the Brazilians have been fully supportive of Chavez and his policies. To drive the point home, Lula made a public statement of support for Maduro. Capriles' campaign then tried to claim that Lula's position on Venezuela is different from that of the current president, Ms. Rousseff, but everybody knows that it is not.

A second line of attack for Capriles is to denounce Venezuelan solidarity with Cuba. He has claimed, on the basis of the fact that Chavez received his treatment for cancer there, that the Maduro government is a Cuban puppet. He has promised to cut off subsidized oil supplies to Cuba if he is elected.

Through the PETROCARIBE program, Venezuela has been selling oil on very generous credit terms not only to Cuba but also to 16 other countries, including some of the poorest in the region: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Belize, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Granada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, St. Kitts and Nieves, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Surinam.

In addition, the Bolivarian Alliance for our America (ALBA) has financial aid programs for poor countries in the region.

Venezuela's oil generosity has not been confined to left wing governments, but it has infuriated monopoly capital worldwide, because it has allowed these countries to make economic advances without being forced to accept the "Washington Consensus" of neo-liberal policies including free trade rigged to benefit international monopoly capital, austerity and privatization. Critics of the Venezuelan trade and aid policies demand that they end so that countries like Jamaica and Haiti "face up to reality" and accept "tough choices" which always mean more suffering for their poor inhabitants. Another aim of attacking Venezuelan oil diplomacy is to break up the Bolivarian process whereby, under the leadership of Venezuela and Cuba, the whole Latin America region has been moving away from economic and political domination by the United States.

Perhaps forgetting that PETROCARIBE largesse has been made possible because of the high price of petroleum on international markets, which is in part a product of Venezuelan actions within OPEC, Capriles has hinted that he might not eliminate PETROCARIBE entirely, but would definitely kick Cuba out of the arrangement and force other countries to pay more for Venezuelan oil.

Now Capriles has opened another front which is to try to undermine the legitimacy of the CNE, the National Elections Council. This suggests that Capriles and his advisors perceive that they are going to lose on April 14, and want to appeal to the United States to put pressure on Venezuela to annul the results, or even to intervene.

But former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who has made a second career of analyzing and evaluating election procedures worldwide, has stated that the Venezuelan election procedures are some of the best and cleanest in the world.

The corporate press in the United States, meanwhile, has been darkly hinting that the elections will not be fair, and demanding that international observers oversee them.

This comes from a country whose Supreme Court has ruled that wealthy corporate interests can basically buy elections and candidates, because "corporations are people."

Students target cleric after food poisoning

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 11:38:00 +0000

Hundreds of Egyptian students angered by a mass outbreak of food poisoning at a Cairo university stormed the offices of the country's top Muslim cleric today.

The Monday outbreak at al-Azhar University forced the hospitalisation of 479 students, Health Ministry official Khaled el-Khateib said.

It occurred after a meal served at the university dormitories in Cairo's Nasr City district.

The university is affiliated with al-Azhar mosque - the world's foremost seat of Sunni Muslim learning - and awards degrees in sciences and humanities as well as in religious studies.

Ahmed el-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, whose offices were attacked, is the university's ultimate authority.

Egypt's top prosecutor has ordered an investigation into the outbreak.

In today's protest, thousands of al-Azhar students blocked the Salah Salem road.

The students had also protested on Monday, blocking roads outside their dormitories and chanting slogans against the university management.

This article was reposted from Morning Star.

Photo: Students in Cairo protest the recent outbreak of food poisoning. Some of the signs read, "Down with the administration of negligence." Mostafa Darwish/AP

Peaceful resolution of Korea confrontation is needed

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 10:54:00 +0000

In recent weeks, a war of rhetoric and provocative actions has flared up between North Korea on the one hand, and South Korea and the United States on the other. We have heard much about the hostile language of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. But the American people should also understand that provocative actions by the U.S. and South Korean governments have contributed mightily to the tensions. These include U.S. and South Korean joint military maneuvers, including trial bombing runs by U.S. B-2 Stealth bombers.

There is no sign of troop movements in the North that could indicate Kim's words are about to be backed up with military action, but there is nevertheless a real danger that the tensions might lead to an armed incident, with tragic consequences.

The corporate media has concentrated on bellicose statements by Kim Jong-un, who has talked about massive retaliation against South Korean and U.S. targets if his country is attacked. Although these over-the-top statements and nuclear posturing have contributed to tensions and cannot be condoned, irresponsible rhetoric and actions are not a monopoly of the North.

South Korean President Park Guen-hye also said, "I believe that we should make a strong and immediate retaliation without any other political considerations if [the North] stages any provocation against our people." A "provocation" could be any small-scale incident.

Some context is helpful to understand these developments.

The Korean War of 1950-1953 ended with an armistice only; technically, the war has never ended. Since that time, the North has been a poor and isolated state (population 24 million), which considers itself threatened on a daily basis by South Korea (population 50 million) and by the 28,000 U.S. troops and much military hardware stationed south of its border.

Unfortunately, North Korea seems to be using nuclear weapons as a way of redressing the balance of power. This brinkmanship has led to economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations, especially after North Korea's atomic test in February and recent rocketry tests. Using nuclear weapons like this is a dangerous and slippery road. The international peace movement has, correctly in our view, urged a nuclear-free Korean peninsula for many years.

The U.S. has a great deal of responsibility to bear for creating this current mess. Not only the provocative ongoing military exercises and our own use of nuclear weapons, but the recent interventions in Libya and elsewhere contribute to the tensions on the peninsula.

It is in the interest of the American people and the worldwide peace majority that all parties - on all sides - publicly commit to a peaceful resolution. China, Venezuela, Ecuador and other countries, as well as Pope Francis in his first Easter message, called for a reduction of tensions and a peaceful resolution of the Korea confrontation.

The U.S. should not use military maneuvers in Korea to try out new weapons and make political points, but instead should coordinate with China and other countries to calm down this dangerously overwrought situation.

Photo: U.S. Army soldiers conduct room clearing procedures as part of joint command and field training exercises in South Korea in 2007. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Daniel N. Woods.

Germany’s finance minister: The most dangerous man in Europe?

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:57:00 +0000

BERLIN - German Chancellor Angela Merkel's face usually displays a rather friendly, almost benign expression. She displayed a very hard visage recently, however, when she said Cyprus was "exhausting the patience of its euro partners."

Yes, Angela is losing "patience" with irresponsible lands and leaders to the South, reluctant to bear the required share of their burdens.

According to Angela and the people behind her they should be much more willing to slash wages and government salaries, to amputate pension rights, to let prices on staples rise, to watch joblessness soar while they cut the means of helping those afflicted, and to privatize key elements of the economy, selling them off to the best or most-favored bidders.

Health care, childcare and education must be cut if an economy is to be "rescued" within the "framework of the euro." Austerity is Merkel's magic code word for economic revival in Germany but even more so in the southern European countries.

To those southern nations at the receiving end this "cure," however, is often worse than the supposed peril it purports to avoid. That is why furious people from Lisbon in Europe's far west to Nicosia in easternmost Cyprus, including Rome, Athens, and even some in northern Dublin, are painting nasty comments about Germany on posters or even scribbling ugly Hitler mustaches over Angela's face.

A Cypriot banking official recalls a meeting in Brussels in 2011 when Merkel, French President Sarkozy, International Monetary Fund boss Christine Lagarde and right-wing European Union leaders Juncker and Barroso made decisions on Greece and even more helpless Cyprus which determined developments up to the present.

As the International Herald Tribune put it:" In the three years since Europe's rolling debt crisis first exploded in Greece, governments and citizens in the hardest-hit countries have fumed that decisions taken in Brussels paid little heed to their interests and were dictated instead by the economic concerns and election cycles of Germany."

Speaking of such treatment, above all by Germany, one Cypriot expert grumbled: "It was very brutal - like warfare."

Giant demonstrations prevented the original plan of taxing everyone's bank account, even the poorest, to pay off bankers' debts. But the modified plan, though less extreme, is expected to cut Cypriot living standards for years. Fear and anger is on the increase.

True, Euros make life easier for people traveling in much of Europe; no currency exchange, no figuring, mentally or electronically, what that meal or pair of shoes cost in one's own money. But by preventing each country from altering exchange rates to fit its own situation, the euro forces them, weak or strong, into one baking mold, its shape a very Germanic strudel.

The stable euro is good for big exporters like Germany, not for the others. And not for every German either. Whether it's VW cars, tanks or Bayer chemicals, developing exports that undercut competitors in price requires keeping down wages and benefits at home. While the German jobless average is low at 5.4 percent, three million are still jobless, and a large number of "employed" are in uncertain, temporary jobs, often "lent out" by private agencies whose business it is to cheat them, or working at wages so low they must still apply for state assistance to survive. Aside from those private agencies, another institution is doing a tragically brisk business: the network of food pantries for the poor usually filled to capacity - with hungry people. Regular, steady jobs at decent pay are getting harder and harder to find.

Easy to find tough guy

Not at all hard to find in TV newscasts, however, is the man in the wheelchair, Wolfgang Schäuble (pronounced Shoy-bleh). A tough character, who survived an insane murder attempt in 1990 that left him paralyzed from the waist down, he almost holds the longevity record in German politics and has had a wide variety of key right-wing jobs.

As Minister of Finance since 2009 and Merkel's shadow in international negotiations, he has been called "the most dangerous man in Europe." He is a main shaker and maker of merciless agreements deciding the fates of Greece, Cyprus or any country in trouble. Many blame his policies for the disasters in both countries.

When Schäuble stated that the Cyprus agreement he helped push through might be a "business model" for other countries, even placid Foreign Minister Asselborn of stable little Luxembourg took umbrage: "I have the greatest difficulty stomaching that term 'business model'", he said; he wanted no-one to instruct him as to what he should do, and least of all German Finance Minister Schäuble.

Within Germany, Schäuble's efforts are directed at balancing the budget, come what may. To achieve this he wants to cut 3.5 billion euros from the health fund, 1.5 billion more than originally planned. "Consistent, long-term economizing and growth do not exclude one another," he said, adding: "That is a strong signal for Europe." (Rather like rep. Ryan in the U.S.!)

His main aim, according to an interview in the New York Times in November, 2011, is a political union in Europe, and with this intent "he views the unrest in the markets 'not as a hindrance but as a necessity'." - "We can only achieve a political union if we have a crisis."

Two things in Schäuble's past are worth recalling. In 1999-2000 he was caught up in a giant scandal about large sums donated secretly (and illegally) to his party, the Christian Democratic Union, by a powerful, very crooked arms dealer.

No sewage dump could equal the cubic meters of dreck that were unearthed; as a result Helmut Kohl, totally compromised, had to give up the party chairmanship. Schäuble took over but soon also had to quit and make way for a still-untarnished woman from the "East," young Angela Merkel. Schäuble was never tried or punished for all the bribery, perjury and libel involved. Today, since Merkel need fear no rivalry from him (he is already 71) they are, at least outwardly, a team.

Schäuble's star also shone ten years earlier - or was it less a star than an all-devouring "black hole"? In 1990 it was he who negotiated the incorporation of the German Democratic Republic, the GDR, into the West German state and, with the aid of corrupt eastern accomplices, made certain that every trace of nationalized industry, every remnant of the once so generous social system, also the entire media, academia, administration, judicial system, yes, anything and everything with the least whiff of socialism was sucked up and eliminated.

There were nearly ten million GDR jobs in 1989; four years later only a little over six million remained. Schäuble's formula for the GDR has been modified for European Union neighbors.

True, none of them can be suspected of being socialist in any way. But they had better not even dream of moving in that direction! That, in my view, is this organization's basic function, with sharp-eyed teams like Merkel-Schäuble in the watchtowers. Portugal, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Italy - and any others: There's to be no dancing out of line!

Photo: Germany's finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble is being called "the most dangerous man in Europe." European University Institute/AP