People Before Profit blog

Women in combat: A deeper look into women’s equality

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 11:58:00 +0000

With the ending of the ban on women in combat, the discussion on women's equality is taking an interesting turn.

As women we find ourselves thinking more deeply about the question of women's equality, and whether these types of opportunities are needed.

Now those women who choose the military as a career have at least the legal right to be promoted and reach the highest rank available to men. As women, is this not what we want? To be able to reach the highest levels of the career we have chosen for ourselves?

But then I ask, do I really want to fight arm-in-arm with men whose strength may be greater? Do we want to be alongside male soldiers, confined inside a Humvee, having to relieve ourselves in front of them as they do now in front of each other?

What would happen if I became romantically involved with one of them? Would that cloud my ability as a member of my unit and compromise my mission, as some have pointed out?

According to reports women have already fought alongside their male counterparts in the line of fire and confined to Humvees while on missions. Based on interviews with male and female soldiers, both genders have adapted and missions were not compromised.

Ending the ban is a step towards women in the military being seen by their job performance first, not their gender. Despite the variations in strength and height, there are women who can perform equally, and at times out-perform, their male counterparts. That they do not compete alongside men in sports, as some have noted, does not mean they cannot. It only points to societal norms not yet changing in this area.

Will lifting the ban help move women's equality forward? I am not saying women are no different than men. Of course we are; we give birth, they do not. But brute strength has nothing to do with it.

I have seen a slender indigenous woman lift a large tank full of propane gas, swing it over her shoulder and walk up a flight of stairs. I have witnessed women use wheelbarrows to run 100-pound sacks of flour up a steep hill.

I have also known of women who have fought in their countries' civil wars, alongside men and under the worst conditions. So the argument that women cannot be beside men in war does not convince me that as women, we don't have what it takes.

I ask: what will it do to the mindset of many men to see women protecting them and looking out for their safety? One soldier reported that he did not see any difference.

Of course, ending the ban may be a step toward true women's equality, but let's not take it overboard and believe we have landed. We cannot ignore that taunting, rape, pay inequities, being passed over for positions because of your gender, still exist. Many men still see us as inferior, and as objects.

As a woman I welcome any action that will move our gender closer to full equality. But would I want to be drafted? No! I am against soldiers of any gender being sent out to fight for capitalist greed, but lifting the ban has caused me to think more deeply about what true equality for women looks like and what is needed to get there.

Rossana Cambron is former national board member of Military Families Speak Out, an organization of people who have relatives or loved ones in the military, who support our troops but oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Photo: Female U.S. Army soldiers talk on Jan. 24 about the decision announced to open combat positions to service members regardless of gender. Ted S. Warren/AP

A hunter speaks out for gun control

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 16:30:00 +0000

The National Rifle Association and like-minded groups supporting free unregulated sales of guns no longer speak for, nor do they represent, the millions of hunters who love hunting for being a challenging, wholesome, and essential activity for themselves and their families.

The NRA has tragically abandoned the true spirit of hunting as a sport, and in 1977 was taken over and is now controlled by the profiteers making mega-bucks from the sale of armaments and munitions.

At this time a well-financed and aggressive effort was launched to undo all gun control laws. By misrepresenting the real purpose and meaning of the Second Amendment in our Constitution, to cover their real intentions, they falsely charge that any and all forms of gun control is an attack on our constitutional rights.

In 2008, this led to a 5-4 Supreme Court decision written by Antonin Scalia, a Reagan appointee, that reversed two centuries of decisions on gun control and stated for the first time that the Second Amendment protected unrestricted personal ownership of firearms.

Previous Chief Justice Warren Burger, a Nixon appointee, stated in 1991 that the Second Amendment "has been the greatest piece of fraud-I repeat the word 'fraud'-on the American public that I have ever seen in my lifetime."

This statement by Burger, an honest conservative jurist, correctly expresses the outrageous and dangerous ramifications of the current effort to legalize the flood of weapons of mass destruction throughout our country. Many of the very same people who are hysterically stoking the fears of our people against gun control are the very same forces who attack the fundamental basis of our democracy by enacting voter repression laws.

Personal ownership of guns has rocketed to 300 million. Ten of the deadliest mass shootings in American history have occurred since 1984, six within the last five years since the Scalia decision. There have been 65 mass shootings since Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford was shot in 2011. Guns kill 30,000 Americans every year.

That is 300 times as many as in every other industrialized country, where the same mental health problems, films and video games exist, but where guns are strictly regulated.

I, like millions of young people who grew up in farm families, learned to love hunting and accepted it as part of rural life, as natural as milking the cows, slopping the hogs, brushing down the horses. A rifle or shotgun was a necessary and well cared for tool of the trade, as was planting and harvesting machinery, and when the farms became mechanized, the tractor.

As Dale Sunderlin, in his marvelous Star Beacon columns has said, hunters prize their ability to learn the habits and physical attributes of their prey, and to be able to bring down their game with one well-aimed shot. These wonderful animals and birds then take their place in the food chain as naturally as your friendly well cared for beef cow, and other farm animals and fowl.

Those of us who love and honor the great traditions and history of hunting cannot stand idly by and watch the cynical and dangerous fraud being perpetrated on our country by armament and munition profiteers. Their paid merchants of hate must be answered by showing massive support for words of wisdom and leadership coming from President Barack Obama and all who are joining in support of his reasonable and fair proposals for gun and ammunition restrictions.

I, being a WWII veteran, and among the first of those of our armed forces to occupy Germany, have witnessed and know full well the tragic results that come from allowing the merchants of hate to go unanswered.

Click here to read Burger's 1990 Parade Magazine article on The Right to Bear Arms.

Photo: (CC)

U.S. policy on Asia could spell disaster

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 13:05:00 +0000

In March 1990, Time Magazine titled an article "Ripples in The American Lake." It was not about small waves in that body of water just north of Fort Lewis, Washington. It was talking about the Pacific Ocean, the largest on the planet, embracing over half of humanity and the three largest economies in the world. Time did not invent the term-it is generally attributed to Gen. Douglas MacArthur, U.S. Pacific commander during WW II-but its casual use by the publication was a reflection of more than 100 years of American policy in this immense area.

The Asia-Pacific region has hosted four American conflicts-the Spanish American War, the Second World War, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War-and is today the focus of a "strategic pivot," although that is a bit of a misnomer, by the Obama administration. The Pacific basin has long been the U.S.'s number one trade partner, and Washington deploys more than 320,000 military personnel in the region, including 60 percent of its navy. The American flag flies over bases in Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, the Marshall Islands, Guam and Wake.

It is one of the most perilous regions on earth right now, and, for the first since the collapse of the old Soviet Union, two major nuclear powers are bumping up against one another. As volatile as the Middle East is, one of the most dangerous pieces of real estate on the planet are a scatter of tiny islands in the East China Sea, where China, Japan and the U.S. find themselves in the kind of standoff that feels distressingly like the Cold War.

Tension over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, however, is just one of several foreign policy challenges in the Asia-Pacific region, each with its own characteristics and history. Japan and South Korea are in a faceoff over an island that Tokyo calls Takeshima and Seoul calls Dokdo. Moscow and Tokyo are at loggerheads over the Kurile islands, Beijing is throwing its weight around in the South China Sea, North Korea just launched a long-range ballistic missile (and is possibly considering a nuclear test), and Washington is recruiting allies against China, sometimes by turning a blind eye to serious human rights violations.

How the Obama administration responds to these issues over the next four years will go a long way toward determining whether the ocean lives up to its name-peaceful-or once again becomes an arena for tragedy. So far the record is not encouraging.

Washington has stumbled badly in the dangerous crisis over islands that China calls the Diaoyu and Japan calls the Senkaku. The dispute over these uninhabited specks in the East China Sea islands goes back to the Sino-Japan War of 1895 when Tokyo wrested them from Beijing. In 1971, the Americans-caught up in the Cold war and refusing to recognize China- made the whole matter a lot more complex by ignoring two WW II treaties requiring Japan to return its conquests to their original owners, and instead handed the islands over to Japan.

When China protested, Tokyo and Beijing agreed to kick the can down the road and delay any final decisions on sovereignty to some later date. That all changed when Japan-pressed by rightwing nationalists-purchased three of the islands this past summer and altered the status quo. To make matters worse, the U.S. declared that it would stand by Japan in any military conflict, thus raising the ante from a local confrontation between two Asians giants to a potential clash between nuclear powers.

China sees the islands as part of its defensive parameter, not an unusual point of view considering the country's history. China has been the victim of invasion and exploitation by colonial powers, including Japan, dating back to the first Opium War in 1839. Beijing is convinced Washington is surrounding it with potentially hostile alliances, and that the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute is part of a U.S. strategy to keep China down. There is an economic dimension to the issue as well. China would like to exploit oil and gas deposits, as well as fishing grounds, in the East China Sea.

Extending the U.S.-Japan mutual support treaty to the islands is a major mistake. China has no intention of attacking its main Asian trade and investment partner, and putting Tokyo under Washington's nuclear umbrella around this issue has helped unleash a powerful current of nationalism in Japan. For instance, Tokyo is debating whether to put Japanese Self-Defense Forces on Yonaguni Island in the Okinawa or Ryukyu chain. That would put Japanese troops squarely in the middle of China's first line of maritime defense. Yonaguni is a long way from Tokyo, but on a clear day you can see the mountains of Taiwan from its beaches. The island's residents are opposed to the Self-Defense Force deployment.

The new Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, has been particularly strident, openly talking of dumping Japan's anti-war constitution and building nuclear weapons. He comes from a long line of military-minded nationalists. His grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, was a member of Japan's wartime cabinet and considered a war criminal. Rather than going to jail, however, Nobusuke was "rehabilitated" after the war and became a prime minister in 1957. Abe has stonewalled demands by China and other countries in the region to apologize for its brutal policies during WW II.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Abe was asked if there was a "possibility that the two Asian powers could go to war." According to the Times, "Mr. Abe just smiled and walked away."

If that exchange does not give Washington pause, it should.

China has a strong legal case for ownership of the islands, and rather than rattling sabers, Washington should encourage the UN and the International Court of Justice to get involved. What it should not do is green light the politics of people like Abe, who might draw Washington into a confrontation with China. In 1914 Austria attacked Serbia. Russia mobilized, and Germany, bound by treaty to Austria, followed suit. That ended very badly.

The disputes in the South China Sea are very different than those in the East China Sea, although some of the actors are the same. Beijing claims that it owns a vast expanse of the Sea, that includes the Paracel Islands, the Spratly Islands, Scarborough Shoal, and numerous reefs and shallows, also claimed by Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, Brunei, and the Philippines. At stake are rich fishing grounds and potential oil and gas deposits, as well as a considerable portion of the world's trade routes.

The Chinese have been rather heavy handed in the dispute, refusing to negotiate with the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and insisting on bilateral talks instead. China vs. Brunei is hardly a level diplomatic playing field. The standoff has given the U.S. an opportunity to intervene as a "neutral broker," a posture that has pushed every paranoid button in Beijing. China has responded by stepping up its patrols in the South China Sea, even sabotaging joint Indian-Vietnam oil exploration near the Paracels. New Delhi-which has its own tensions with China over its northern border-is threatening to send naval vessels into the disputed area.

The crisis is solvable, but a few things need to happen.

China must back off, because its current claim violates the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas. A place to start is for ASEAN and Beijing to work out a "code of conduct" to resolve disputes peacefully. But Washington should stay out of this fight. Given the strong military component of the "pivot," one can hardly blame China for assuming that U.S. involvement is not aimed at resolving disputes.

"If you are a strategic thinker in China, you do not have to be a paranoid conspiracy theorist to think that the U.S. is trying to bandwagon Asia against China," says Simon Tay, chair of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs.

Washington has shifted naval forces into the Pacific and is in the process of putting 2,500 Marines in northern Australia. While 2,500 Marines are hardly likely to tip the balance of power in Asia, it seems an unnecessary provocation. The U.S. is moving air power into the region as well, including B-1 bombers, B-52s, and F-22 stealth fighters. In early November, 47,000 U.S. and Japanese forces carried out joint military exercises.

Washington is also re-negotiating its Mutual Support Treaty with Japan, which will include the deployment of an advanced anti-missile system (ABM). The ABM is ostensibly directed at North Korea, but China is unhappy because it could pose a threat to Beijing's modest nuclear missile force. In general, ABM systems are destabilizing, which is why the ABM Treaty was negotiated between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in 1972. The Obama administration should repudiate the Bush administration's 2002 scrapping of the ABM Treaty and instead focus on ridding the world of nuclear weapons, a promise made in 2008 but ignored ever since.

North Korea may be a threat to its own people, but it hardly poses a major danger to the U.S. or its allies, South Korea and Japan. Yes, the country has nuclear weapons, but any use of them would be tantamount to national suicide, and the North Koreans have always shown a strong streak of self-survival. What about the shelling of the South Korean island and the sinking of a South Korean warship? Certainly dangerous acts, but the North does have legitimate grievances over how its coastal waters were divided after the Korean War, and, while Pyongyang probably sunk the ship, there are some doubts. If North Korea seems paranoid, it is partly because each year the U.S., South Korea, and sometimes Japan, carry out war games aimed at intervening in the advent of "instability" in the north. U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta threatened North Korea with nuclear weapons last year, hardly a strategy to get the Pyongyang regime to give them up.

North Korea mainly serves as an excuse for Japan and the U.S. to militarize the North Pacific and expand their ABM system. But it is a poor, backward country that has trouble feeding its own people. Hollywood's latest version of the 1950s anti-communist classic, "Red Dawn," features North Korean paratroopers invading Alaska. Really.

The White House should take a big deep breath, ignore the bombast, stop threatening North Korea with nuclear weapons, retire the war games, and restart aid programs. The only people hurt by the aid cutoffs are poor North Koreans.

Washington sees Indonesia is a potentially valuable ally in the alliance against China, as well as a source of valuable raw materials, and has thus given Jakarta a free pass on its human rights record. But for an administration that trumpets its support for democracy and says it has a moral view of the world, that real politique is unacceptable. The U.S. should finally own up to its role in the 1965 Indonesian coup that killed up to a million communists, leftists, trade unionists, and progressives. It should also halt all military aid to the Jakarta regime until the Indonesians prosecute those who committed atrocities in East Timor and West Papua. The U.S. should have nothing to do with training Kopassus, the Indonesian Special Forces unit that organized many of the East Timor massacres and is currently trying to crush an independence movement in West Papua.

Some of the White House's actions have bordered on the petty. The U.S. is organizing an 11-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact that was designed to exclude China, the big dog on the Asian-pacific block. In retaliation, China is encouraging the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership that will exclude the U.S.

The U.S. is a Pacific power, but Asia is a very different place than it was two hundred years ago. You can't dispatch "Chinese" Gordon and a couple of gunboats and get your way anymore. Nor can you deal with rivals by building alliances a' la Cold War and threatening to use force. The world is too small, Asia is too big, and war would be catastrophic. The Pacific is no one's "lake," but an ocean vast enough for all.

Photo: Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) members arrive at Yokota Air Base, Japan, from Okinawa, Japan, March 17, 2011. JGSDF members will prepare and team up with American military members to provide support for Operation Tomodachi. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Krystal M. Garrett)

Inaugural address was a massive unity rally

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 13:11:00 +0000

All people of good will had to be moved by the inauguration of Barack Obama. What a beautiful image of the first family and the president guiding our nation to a better place.

A million people of all races and nationalities gathered on the National Mall to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama to an historic second term. This inaugural celebration follows one of the most contentious electoral struggles in our history as a nation. Its outcome was a victory for working people and people of color whose basic rights were under fierce attack from the Republicans.

The outcome has weakened the extreme right and pushed U.S. politics in a more progressive direction. There is a renewed confidence among millions of working people that real change is possible if we fight for it.

The inaugural celebration reflected this renewed confidence. It had the character and politics of a massive unity rally of labor and progressive movements still "fired up and ready to go."

The speech of the reelected 44^th President was a rally of his supporters still united and ready to launch the next stage of the great battle for change.

The invocation was given by Myrlie Evers-Williams, the iconic civil rights leader whose husband Medgar Evers was slain in Mississippi in 1963. She made the connection between the inauguration and the fact that this year marks the 150^th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 50^th Anniversary of the 1963 march on Washington led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

She spoke of the promise of America and called on all present to "act upon the meaning that everyone is included." The fact that the widow of a slain civil rights leader was chosen to speak at the inauguration sent the message that the reelection of Obama is a continuation of the civil rights revolution.

In his speech Obama called for united progressive action against the policies of the extreme right.

Quoting the Declaration of Independence, he reaffirmed it's basic starting point that, "All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

There were many firsts in his speech. For the first time the word "gay" was used in a presidential inaugural speech.

His characterization of Seneca Falls, Selma and Stonewall, as basic struggles that shaped our democracy was also a breakthrough. Of course there were many other decisive events in the struggle for democracy but the use of these three was more than just good alliteration. It raised the historic importance of the struggles for women's equality, racial equality and LGBT rights.

In his speech he effectively refuted many basic concepts of the Republicans. He took on their attacks on the role of government and the refusal to accept the danger of global warming. He rejected the Romney notion that 47 percent of the population are "takers." In defense of Social Security and Medicare, Obama declared, "These things do not sap our initiative, they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers, they free us to take the risks that make this country great."

He declared, "America's prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class. We know America thrives when every person can find independence and pride in their work..."

He insisted that there should be no means test for freedom and happiness. "We do not believe that in this country, freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss, or a sudden illness or a home swept away in a terrible storm.

"We declare today that the most evident of truths is that, all of us are created equal.

"Our freedom as a people is linked to the freedom of every one on Earth."

He laid out a list of strategic struggles that must be carried out, including struggles for women's and LGBT equality, a struggle for a path to citizenship for immigrants, and one for protecting the right to vote.

The Republicans ran one of the most racist national campaigns in modern U.S. history. What they said and did to defeat Obama brought back some of the worst features of Jim Crow.

It was damaging to the national unity and democratic decency of the American people. But most important is the fact that the reaction to this racism was the formation of a new multi-racial, anti-racist electoral majority which holds great promise for the future of our country.

At the same time economic and structural racism has been stepped up and is reflected in the growing unemployment, poverty, homelessness and hunger. We see an increase in the attacks on public workers and on public education. There are the continued uses of repressive police brutality and criminalization, including high incarceration rates, for people of color, especially for African Americans.

I think this administration must be pushed to open the door wider on the need for a massive pubic works jobs program. We need a massive federal program to dramatically raise the minimum wage, end union busting and promote union organizing as part of an overall program to eliminate poverty.

I think President Obama shows he is moving in the right direction but he needs a mass social movement to get there.

Obama concluded his inauguration speech with, "Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for and cherished, and always safe from harm." This is a noble goal.

Despite all of this, I take exception, however, to the President's reference to the United States having defeated communism. During the cold war era, anti-communism was the rationale for colonial oppression, imperialist aggression and war all over the world. Over those years, the people's and nations of this planet, including the American people, paid a dear price in both blood and treasure for this anti-communism.

The use of drone warfare by our military today has taken the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians and it must be stopped. As part of the rejection of perpetual war, which Obama mentioned in his speech, this administration must be pressured to cease its use of drone warfare.

Most peace voters understand that these policies can and must be defeated and they voted for the president in sharp rejection of the right danger represented by Romney and the Republicans.

If Romney had won he would oppose Obama's view on perpetual war and negotiations to end or prevent war. Who knows whether Romney's right wing base would ever have allowed him to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan? Voters understood that there were big differences and that is why the Obama-Biden ticket was reelected.

Obama is right that there is yet a big battle to be fought if we are to see the future of working people and the racially oppressed secured.

But with the new divisions and crises in right wing and Republican circles, there is an opportunity to push things in a progressive direction. The president's call for collective solutions and turning Organizing for America into "Organizing for Action" and detaching it from the Democratic Party structure was a good sign that 2014 will not be a repeat of 2010. The labor and progressive movements were not prepared for the right wing backlash that resulted in Republican victories in the 2010 midterm elections. Signs are that they will be far better prepared for the midterms in 2014.

The enormous problems we face as a nation cannot be attacked without a broad, diverse movement fighting for a progressive program.

The extreme right and the Republican Party are in a crisis because the reelection of Obama shows that the 2008 election of the nation's first African-American president was no fluke and that the country really wants change and that a majority believes change is possible.

The Communist Party's view is that Obama is as strong and progressive as the people's movement is. And the left progressive movement's strength is not only in its ideas and opinions but, most importantly, in its ability to bring its opinions to life.

The right is still pushing its bankrupt program, despite its rejection at the polls. The unity of all the progressive forces is the key to victory. That is a big part of the election mandate. We are not going back.

Photo: The scene on the National Mall during the Inauguration Day events in Washington DC, Jan. 21, 2013. Parker Michels-Boyce, The News & Advance/AP

Hillary Clinton, Benghazi and the real issues

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 15:03:00 +0000

Republican senators and representatives made a spectacle of themselves Wednesday in grilling Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over the killing of U.S. envoys in Benghazi, Libya. last September.

The grandstanding by GOP senators - all men of course - at their Foreign Relations Committee hearing did not improve their public standing. And it did nothing to advance the security of Americans at home or abroad.

One wonders why these same senators or their predecessors did not haul President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld before their committee after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The hypocrisy of congressional Republicans is highlighted by the fact that their House members voted to cut nearly $300 million from the administration's requested U.S. embassy security budget last October. (About $88 million was later restored in negotiations.) In 2009, House Republicans voted to cut $1.2 billion from State Department operations, including funds for 300 additional diplomatic security positions.

Some say the Republicans are eager to harm Clinton's presidential chances should she choose to run in 2016. Others believe these men like to pick on women. But there is more to consider.

Clinton gave an apt response to repeated second-guessing questions from Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., about what happened in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack. She said sharply, "Was it because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator."

By fixating on the details of what State Department officials did or did not know or do in regard to the Benghazi attack, the Republicans have put up a sideshow that dodges their responsibility in pushing an aggressively militarist U.S. foreign policy.

Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican warhawk, used the opportunity to complain that the Obama administration has not done enough "nation-building."

In fact, this administration has, thankfully, resisted the most aggressive war calls from hawks like McCain, on Iran, Afghanistan and other hotspots. But perhaps it has done too much, not too little, "nation-building."

The Republican senatorial interrogators, and Secretary Clinton, did not address key underlying issues of American foreign policy:

* the negative, destabiizing fallout of the U.S. military intervention in Libya.
* the doctrine of "humanitarian intervention" becoming a justification for U.S. military action in other countries with generally harmful effects on the people of those countries and the regions involved.
* the role of the U.S., under the Republican administration of George H. W. Bush, in financing and otherwise supporting the rise of religious fundamentalist terrorism - the birth of al-Qaeda - in Afghanistan in the late 1980s.

To really provide security for Americans, those policies have to be re-evaluated and discarded in favor of a cooperative internationalism that encourages social and economic justice.

Photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Life with a purpose: tribute to Estelle Katz

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 12:45:00 +0000

The following is based on a tribute to veteran CPUSA leader and peace activist Estelle Katz, who died Nov. 23, 2012, at age 96. A memorial to celebrate Katz's life was held Jan. 20, where CPUSA chair Sam Webb delivered this eulogy. Katz was also a long time supporter of People's World. For a full obituary, read "Life of Estelle Katz long on good causes, great friends."

It is a great honor to be a part of a celebration commemorating the remarkable life of my dear friend and comrade, Estelle Katz.

Let me begin by expressing my sympathy and solidarity to Vivian Ann, Sara, Nicola, and the entire family. You feel the loss most deeply, but rest assured that all of us gathered here and many more around the country are profoundly saddened by Estelle's passing as well as inspired by her spirit and legacy.

Her love for her family was deep and always apparent, especially to those of us who heard her recount stories of trips to Cape Cod and San Antonio to spend time with her daughters - not to mention her unconcealed pride in her grandchildren.

Estelle was unique; she was the genuine article. She had a kind heart and generous spirit.

Estelle lived longer and saw more in her lifetime than most people, but she was anything but world-weary. Her spirit was buoyant and contagious; her smile ever-present; her energy and enthusiasm seemingly inexhaustible; and her heart open to all.

Estelle loved life and she loved New York. The fast paced rhythms of the city matched her own rhythms and sensibilities; she was an activist with few peers; indeed she ran circles around many of us who were much younger.

Estelle was also an independent-minded woman long before second wave feminism reshaped the cultural landscape in the 1960s. At an early age, she felt women should be in the public square and their voices equal to those of men.

Estelle was no summer soldier; she was truly a long marcher. She heard the bell of freedom and the hammer of justice -- and socialism -- early in her life.

Indeed, still a teenager and in the midst of the Great Depression, she joined the Young Communist League and then Communist Party to which she devoted much of her time and energy for the rest of her life. We will all greatly miss comrade Estelle, especially when we find ourselves on a picket line or marching in Washington.

Not everyone is lucky enough to live such a long and purposeful life as Estelle. Her genetic pool and good living may explain the longevity, but as for living life with a purpose -- that was her doing. She was the author and agent of a life that touched so many people and made this world a better place.

Of course, the arc of her political life was not always smooth, but she didn't wobble or run when events took a negative turn. Nothing could dim her confidence that better days were ahead, that justice cannot be forever denied.

This tenacity was not the product of some flight of fancy or wishful thinking. It was grounded in an understanding of history and a belief that ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

Which is exactly what Estelle and her comrades did.

They left their unmistakable imprint on the Great Depression, out of which came many of the social benefits and programs that we still enjoy, despite the best efforts of the Republicans to eliminate them.

They didn't flinch or run scared in the face of McCarthyism.

They joined the civil rights and anti-war protesters in the 1960s.

They battled the rise of the right wing in the last decades of the 20^th century.

And they, by now dwindling number, joined the vast movement to elect and re-elect our first African American president.

Last fall, I called Estelle shortly after she had left the hospital. She was obviously in a weakened physical state, having just been released from the hospital. And yet her spirit was unflagging.

Not a word of gloom and doom from her. No waxing on about the good old days, like some of us are prone to do. Her mind was on the future.

The main thing that she wanted to convey to me was that she was not only going to cast her ballot for President Obama in a month, but be back in the office in the spring when she regained her full health.

Upon hearing her, I thought to myself, "She's amazing; she never gives up."

If one's life is measured not by fame and wealth amassed, but by good deeds done then Estelle ranks at the top of the class.

The greatest U.S. people's leader of the 20^th century, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whose life we honor this weekend said in a speech not long before his death:

"[E]very now and then I think about my own death, and I think about my own funeral ... And I don't think of it in a morbid sense.

"I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others.

"I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody.

"I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question.

"I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try, in my life, to clothe those who were naked.

"Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice; say that I was a drum major for peace; I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter ... I just want to leave a committed life behind."

King measured up to this standard and more. But Estelle, on a more modest stage, did too. She loved her family, her friends, and her comrades. She was a drum major for justice and for peace and for a righteous world. The shallow things didn't matter to her. She leaves a committed life behind.

And we are all the better for it. We will miss you, Estelle, more than you can imagine, but your life will inspire us for years to come. Thank you Estelle for gracing our lives with your presence.

Photo: Estelle Katz, sitting on far left, petitions for health care with other senior activists in the heart of her Manhattan neighborhood, Chelsea (via Gray Panthers).

Obama speech heralds new era

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 16:45:00 +0000

President Obama's speech Monday could well signal the inauguration of a new era.

Just as President Reagan's 1980 election foreshadowed nearly 30 years of far-right dominance, Obama's re-election heralds the rise of a center-left coalition that could fundamentally reconfigure the nation's political map for years to come.

With a popular election mandate at his back, the Democratic president laid out confidently - at times defiantly - a list of policy choices anathema to Republicans who stubbornly tried to block every piece of progressive legislation during his first term.

Instead of platitudes that often mark presidential inaugural speeches, President Obama delivered a hard-hitting, eloquent defense of bedrock social programs, civil and immigrant rights, voting rights, gun control and more.

Of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, the president declared, "These things do not sap our initiative, they strengthen us."

Drawing on the democratic gains won and handed down by previous generations, the president hammered away at the refrain, "For our journey is not complete...

"Until our wives, our mothers and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts,

"Until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else ...,

"Until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote,

"Until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants ...

"Until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia, to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know they are cared for and cherished and always safe from harm."

Many had given up hope that climate change would even make it on the legislative agenda this year.

But the president's remarks - no doubt encouraged by the election results and by renewed public awareness after Hurricane Sandy's unprecedented devastation - highlighted society's need to find immediate solutions to the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced.

"We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations," Obama said.

"Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought and more powerful storms," he added.

Not once did the president plead for bipartisanship as he had done during many first-term speeches.

No need for that this time.

Republicans and the right are on the defensive after their trouncing in the elections.

Public opinion has decidedly turned against Republicans, much of their agenda, and their obstructionist tactics.

This time it was more a clarion call for the people to exercise their "power to set this country's course."

"You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time - not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift," he said.

This time the president is taking the fight deep into Republican territory, appealing directly to constituents including Republicans to act in their own self-interest to pressure their congressional representatives.

The movements and organizations that played pivotal roles in the election victory are still in campaign mode.

Despite the holiday season, they functioned that way during the congressional lame duck session.

To no small degree, the mobilization of thousands of members of unions, civil rights and other progressive movements - including in congressional districts represented by Republicans and conservative Democrats - helped force recalcitrant legislators to make concessions on taxing the rich and other things.

Since the New Year, these movements and organizations are mobilizing their bases like no other post-election period in our lifetimes for the coming battles on "sequestration" that threatens cuts to social programs, and on raising the federal debt ceiling.

These include the newly-launched Organizing for Action (Organizing for America's successor with close ties to the Obama administration); a united labor movement, its affiliates and associated formations; civil rights organizations; MoveOn.org and other progressive social movements.

But don't look for miracles overnight.

Gains can be expected to be modest at best, given the Republicans' continuing control of the House and the role played by conservative Democrats.

As for the Senate, archaic filibuster rules requiring a 60 percent majority make it hard to pass legislation opposed by Republicans, sometimes with help from conservative Democrats.

During the lame-duck session the pre-election gridlock was overcome in large measure thanks to the election mandate favoring the center-left wing of the Democratic Party, and the mass outcry and grassroots mobilization.

Don't expect "politically correct," flawless legislation.

The legislative process can be compared to a heavy cargo train, slow to pick up speed, faltering here and there, but hard to stop once it gathers momentum, creating the potential for more fundamental reforms in due time.

Combined with the economic crisis still battering the nation - and especially working-class and middle-class families - this political dynamic opens space for labor and allied progressive social forces to play a more dominant role in an ever-expanding center-left, multi-class coalition against the right.

It will allow labor and the core progressive social movements and forces to put forth more advanced demands with the potential to win, bringing much-needed relief to millions and the prospect of more fundamental societal changes.

Photo: President Barack Obama receives the oath of office from Chief Justice John Roberts as first lady Michelle Obamas and their daughters Malia and Sasha look on at the ceremonial swearing-in at the U.S. Capitol during the 57th Presidential Inauguration in Washington, Jan. 21, 2013. Carolyn Kaster/AP

Philadelphia story: Terrible math of gun violence

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 12:36:00 +0000

Since coming to Philadelphia in 1973, I personally have known at least six parents/grandparents who have lost a total of seven children/grandchildren to gun violence.

Some are close friends, some are people I worked with, or continue to see regularly.

* Two parents' children were caught in crossfire.

* One parent's two sons, ages 13 and 11, were cut down by a young man who robbed them for $7 and change.

* One grandfather's grandson was killed by someone robbing him and his two friends outside a corner store.

* Another grandmother's grandson was shot and killed - I don't know the circumstances.

* One co-worker, a young father, was shot and killed getting into his car to go to work one morning. They think it was mistaken identity.

* Another co-worker's husband was shot and killed on the porch of a VFW or American Legion Hall.

In addition, several students who attended schools where I worked were shot to death:

One was a girl whose friend held an "unloaded" gun to her head and pulled the trigger.

Numerous students were shot, but not killed. Some ended up with lifelong disabilities, often to spend the rest of their lives in wheelchairs.

I started this mental list while trying to fall asleep one night two weeks ago. I was STUNNED by the number. I am not sure why I started the list when I did. Undoubtedly it was brought on by the horror of the Newtown, Conn., bloodbath. Needless to say I didn't get much sleep that night.

I only lost a night's sleep, the victims and their families lost everything.

Yes, I stand with President Obama in tackling gun violence in America.

Photo: The "Wall" in Philadelphia. To Michael "MIC" Ta'bon and his friend Lionel Dunbar, the names are a measure of the social health of the city, and painting them on a wall in the Nicetown section of North Philadelphia is a way to make sure they are not forgotten.The men created a mural on Hunting Park Avenue near 19^th Street known simply as "the Wall." It has no bold colors, no faces, no scenery - just the 406 names and ages of the homicide victims in Philadelphia in 2008. Tony Fisher Photography/CC 2.0

Fight to end gun violence is key to defending democracy

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 15:16:00 +0000

In the wake of the Newtown massacre, polls show the great majority of Americans are now insisting that the ability to live free from the fear or threat of gun violence is a fundamental democratic right - one that far supercedes any so-called personal gun rights allegedly contained in the Second Amendment.

In fact, the right-wing extremists opposing all efforts to curb gun violence are the same forces that rallied behind Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, hoping to undermine every other democratic right as well as the living standards of workers and ordinary Americans. It is for that reason, as well as the need to protect public safety, that the same coalition of labor and its allies that worked so hard and effectively to re-elect President Barack Obama must now go all-out to back his common sense proposals for gun law reform.

As Obama has charged, the extremists recklessly "gin up fear" that the government is coming to take away hunting rifles and personal weapons owned for legitimate self-defense. Led by the hate-mongering leadership of the National Rifle Association, they use a totally fraudulent and only very recent interpretation of the Second Amendment which they falsely claim as necessary for protecting every other freedom contained in the Bill of Rights.

One of their unhinged spokesmen, Texas talk show host Alex Jones, launched a national petition drive to deport CNN commentator Piers Morgan for questioning the Second
Amendment. Jones said the amendment "isn't there for duck hunting. It's there to protect us from tyrannical government and street thugs," and then went on to threaten insurrection "if you try to take our firearms."

Actually, the Second Amendment wasn't enacted with any of these things in mind. The amendment was adopted as a means to enable the new American republic, lacking a standing army or state national guards, to muster militia to put down domestic uprisings, including slave revolts, to repulse any attempted return by the British and to deal with clashes with Native Americans on the expanding frontier.

These issues vanished long ago. The Second Amendment is obsolete and now has been twisted to threaten the basic safety and security of all Americans. There is no basis for claiming this amendment was intended to permit unregulated personal acquisition of firearms, including amassing military weapons and private arsenals for "protection" from the government. No government, especially one that is new and fragile, has ever authorized citizens to arm themselves against it.

Until the Reagan administration, U.S. courts rejected any use of the Second Amendment to prevent rational gun control laws, which prevailed throughout the country for over 200 years.

It was only with the recent rise of right-wing extremism, including its 1977 takeover of the previously benign NRA, that a well-financed and aggressive effort was launched to undo all gun control laws These efforts culminated in a 5-4 Supreme Court decision, written in 2008 by arch-right-wing Reagan appointee Antonin Scalia, that reversed two centuries of court decisions when it threw out a Washington, D.C., restriction on handgun ownership and asserted for the first time that the Second Amendment protected virtually unrestricted personal ownership of firearms.

The campaign leading to this decision was denounced in 1991 by the previous very conservative chief justice, Warren Burger, appointed by President Richard Nixon. Burger said the Second Amendment "has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud - I repeat the word 'fraud' - on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime."

As investigative reporter Steven Rosenfeld has pointed out in an important article, "How the Second Amendment was Hijacked by the NRA and Antonin Scalia," before 1980 only five states allowed concealed weapons to be carried in public. Now it is 44.

Personal ownership of guns now has skyrocketed to 300 million, and 10 of the 12 deadliest mass shootings in American history have occurred since 1984, six within the last five years since the Scalia decision. It is also in this period that the delusional "militia" movement took off, leading directly to the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. According to an Alternet report there have been 65 mass shootings just since Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in 2009. Guns now kill 30,000 Americans every year. That is 300 times as many as in nearly every other industrialized country, where the same mental health problems, films and video games exist but where guns are strictly regulated.

This is the blood and carnage that the NRA leadership, the right-wing extremist movement and Antonin Scalia have on their hands.

Having lost the 2012 election, these forces are now howling for utilizing "Second Amendment remedies" to get their way. They are goaded on, not only by the NRA, but by right-wing talk show hosts and Fox News, where commentators have responded to the president's call to restore Clinton-era restrictions on assault weapons with calls for impeachment and warnings about "civil war" (Arthur Herman), declaring the country to be in a "pre-revolutionary condition" (Pat Caddell) and that states would be justified to secede if the "radicalized, abusive federal government" continues on its current path (Sean Hannity).

At his Jan. 16 press conference President Obama warned that winning the needed reforms will be difficult. "If Americans of every background stand up and say 'enough!'" he said, " only then change will come."

It is not only, as Vice President Joe Biden said, "a moral obligation." We must rally behind President Obama to protect our safety and security and our basic democratic rights.

Immigration reform benefits country, economy

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 15:11:00 +0000

As President Barack Obama is sworn in for his second term, Jan. 21, we should take this moment to consider how our country must come together and achieve a common vision for America.

Any conversation about achieving this vision should include the passage of common sense immigration reform. Voters were clear about the direction in which they want this country to go; they sided with a platform that calls for good jobs and an economy that works for all, insists everybody pay their fair share, and calls for passing commonsense, accountable immigration reform.

Immigration reform is one leg of the stool for creating more good jobs. It would level the playing field for all workers by ensuring that unscrupulous employers cannot continue to take advantage of undocumented laborers, thereby raising the wage floor for all workers.

An overhaul of our immigration system that begins with legalization for the undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States would provide a powerful boost to our economy. It would mean additional $1.5 trillion in cumulative gross domestic product (GDP) over the next ten years. Moreover, the same plan would generate nearly $5.4 billion in additional net federal tax revenue over the next three years - adding to the $11.2 billion paid in state and local taxes by households headed by unauthorized immigrants in 2010 alone.

All of this, of course, against the backdrop of some $18 billion spent on immigration enforcement, (and that is just 2012) - notably 24% more than spending for the FBI, DEA, Secret Service, US Marshal Service and the ATF, combined.

However, for the American people, immigration reform isn't just about revenue. It's about our shared value that if you work hard, and you play by the rules, then you deserve opportunity. It's about fixing our broken system and growing our economy in a way that benefits all of us. And while extreme, right-wing Republicans waste time obsessing over a costly border fence and attempting to politically capitalize on xenophobia, the majority of Americans have decided that a common sense plan is the right approach. Overwhelmingly, Americans believe that reform must include earned legalization with a pathway to citizenship, a plan to address the future flow of immigrants and safe borders.

So, while pundits will continue to argue that immigration reform is about political expediency and the Latino vote, we have a responsibility to debunk that myth. Yes, Latinos overwhelming support comprehensive reform, and yes, Latinos overwhelmingly voted for President Obama in a number of key battleground states. But leaving it there ignores the fact that common sense, accountable immigration reform is popular with voters across party identification, geography and racial and ethnic groups.

As we celebrate President Obama's inauguration, media, pundits, politicians and other leaders will offer suggested roadmaps for a second term. Whether the roadmaps focuses on jobs, economic growth, tax fairness, income inequality or otherwise, ignoring the critical role that common sense immigration reform can play is doing disservice to the future of this country.

For the 2.1 million members of SEIU, passing accountable, commonsense immigration reform is not just about what is best for our economy and our country, but also about ensuring that every worker is respected, every worker is paid fair wages, and that every worker has a voice on the job.

Mary Kay Henry is president of Service Employees International Union.

Photo: Young woman holds a sign for immigration reform at an Immigrant Youth Justice League rally in Chicago, March 10, 2011. (PW/Pepe Lozano)

Four more years: Central and South Asia

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 09:11:00 +0000

From the ice-bound passes of the Hindu Kush to the blazing heat of the Karakum Desert, Central Asia is a sub-continent steeped in illusion. For more than two millennia conquerors have been lured by the mirage that it is a gateway to immense wealth: China to the east, India to the south, Persia to the west, and to the north, the riches of the Caspian basin. Greeks, Persians, Arabs, Mongols, British, and Soviets have all come and gone, leaving behind little more than forgotten graveyards and the detritus of war.

Americans and our NATO allies are next.

It is a cliché that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires, but a cliché doesn't mean something is not true, just that it is repeated over and over again until the phrase becomes numbing. It is a tragedy that the US was "numb" to that particular platitude, although we have company. In the past 175 years England has invaded Afghanistan four times.

Our 2001 invasion was itself built on a myth-that the Taliban had attacked the US on 9/11 was fabricated to lay the groundwork for the invasion of Iraq 17 months later. That both invasions turned into disasters is hardly surprising. Rudyard Kipling and TE Lawrence predicted those outcomes more than a 100 years ago.

Most of all, the war has been a calamity for the Afghan people. The country has staggered through more than 30 years of war. According to a recent UN survey, conditions for Afghans in the southern part of the country are desperate. Some one-third of the area's young children-one million under the age of five-are acutely malnourished. "What's shocking is that this is really high by global standards," Michael Keating, deputy head of the UN mission to Afghanistan, told the Guardian (UK). "This is the kind of malnutrition you associate with Africa, and some of the most deprived parts of the world, not with an area that has received so much international attention and assistance."

The area in question embraces Kandahar and Helmand, the two provinces targeted by Washington's 2009 troop surge. That the provinces have widespread malnutrition and are still deeply restive-both are among the most dangerous areas in the country- is a commentary on the futility of the entire endeavor.

The question is, what now? How the White House answers that will go a long way toward determining whether Afghanistan can begin to extricate itself from its long, national nightmare, or once again collapse into civil war that could destabilize the entire region.

There are a couple of truths the White House will need to absorb.

First, there can be no "residual" force left in the country. Right now the Obama administration is trying to negotiate a status force agreement that will allow it to keep anywhere from 6,000 to 15,000 troops in the country to train the Afghan army and pursue al-Qaeda. Such an agreement would exempt US forces from local laws, and is a non-starter for Afghans from the get go. The Taliban and their allies-in particular the highly effective and quite lethal group, the Haqqanis-will not allow it, and insisting that US troops remain in the country will guarantee the war continues. If there is one truth in Afghanistan, it is that the locals don't cotton to outsiders.

Nor are the regional neighbors very enthusiastic about having the American military in residence next door. Since those neighbors-specifically Iran, China, Pakistan and Russia-will be central to any final settlement, one does not want to annoy them. It doesn't take much effort to derail a peace process in Afghanistan.

As for al-Qaeda, it doesn't exist in Afghanistan, and it is even a specter of its former self in Pakistan. In any case, the Taliban and its allies are focused on local issues, not worldwide jihad, and pose no threat to the US or NATO. Indeed, way back in 2007, Mullah Omar, leader of the Afghan Taliban, pledged that the organization would not interfere in the affairs of any other country.

The White House can get the ball rolling by finally closing down Guantanamo and releasing its Taliban prisoners. Pakistan has already started its prisoner release. Washington must also stop its aggressive use of drones and Special Forces to pursue Taliban leaders. These so-called "night raids" and drone assassinations are not only provocative, but make any final agreement more difficult to negotiate. The US has already decapitated much of Taliban's mid-level leadership, which, in turn, has atomized the organization into scores of local power centers. In fact, that decentralization may make reaching a final agreement much more difficult, because no single person or group of people will be empowered to negotiate for local Taliban affiliates.

In the long run the war will most likely be resolved the way most things end in Afghanistan: in a compromise. For all their war-like reputation, Afghans really excel in the art of the deal. The Taliban will be part of the government, but all the scare talk about Islamic extremists sweeping into power is exaggerated. The Taliban are mostly based in the Pashtun-dominated south and east, and they will remain the biggest players in Helmand, Kandahar and Paktika provinces. But Pashtuns only make up a plurality in the country-about 42 percent-and will have to compromise with the other major ethnic groups, the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras. Even when the Taliban ruled the country it never succeeded in conquering northern Afghanistan, and it has less support today than it did then.

One major danger comes from US support for local militias that do nothing to control the Taliban, but are quite successful at building up provincial warlords and protecting the opium trade (harvests increased 18 percent over a year ago). The Soviets followed exactly the same path, one that eventually led to the devastating 1992-96 civil war.

In short, the US needs to get out, and as quickly as possible. Its NATO allies have already boarded that train-the French are leaving a year early, the Dutch are gone, and the Brits are bunkered down-and prolonging the war is more likely to end in a debacle than any outcome favored by Washington. It is not our country, we don't get to determine its history. That is a lesson we should have learned in Vietnam, but apparently did not.

The future of Afghanistan is linked to Pakistan, where current US policy is in shambles. A recent poll found that 74 percent of Pakistanis considered Washington an enemy. Many attribute those figures to the deeply unpopular American drone war that has killed scores of civilians. The drones have definitely made a bad situation worse, but the dispute goes deeper than missile-toting Predators and Reapers. Pakistan is legitimately worried about its traditional opponent in the region, India, and Islamabad views Afghanistan as part of its "strategic depth"-a place to which to retreat in case of an attack by the much stronger Indian Army. Given that Pakistan has lost four wars with its southern neighbor, paranoia about the outcome of a fifth is understandable.

Instead of showing sensitivity to this concern, Washington has encouraged India to invest in Afghanistan, which it has done to the tune of over $2 billion. India even has paramilitary forces deployed in southern Afghanistan. Further, the Obama administration has taken Kashmir off the table, in spite of the fact that, in the run-up to the 2008 elections, Obama promised to seek a solution to the long-running conflict. Dropping Kashmir was a quid pro quo for a growing alliance between New Delhi and Washington aimed at containing an up and coming China.

But Kashmir is far too dangerous to play the role of a regional pawn. India and Pakistan came very close to a nuclear war over the area in the 1999 Kargil incident, and both countries are currently accelerating their nuclear weapons programs. Pakistani and Indian military leaders have been distressingly casual about the possibility of a nuclear war between the two countries. Rather than actively discouraging a nuclear arms race, Washington has made it easier for New Delhi to obtain fuel for its nuclear weapons programs, in spite of the fact that India refuses-along with Pakistan-to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. As with agreeing to mute concerns over Kashmir, the US's waver of the NNPT is part of Washington's campaign to woo India into an alliance against China. A nuclear exchange between the two South Asian countries would not only be a regional catastrophe, but would have a worldwide impact.

Independent of the dangers Kashmir poses for the region and the world, its people should have the right to determine their own future, be it joining Pakistan, India, or choosing the path of independence. A UN sponsored referendum would seem the obvious way to let Kashmir's people take control of their won destiny.

For starters, however, the US should demand that New Delhi accept a 2004 Indian government commission's recommendation to repeal the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which Human Rights Watch calls "a tool of state abuse, oppression and discrimination." The Special Powers Act was first created to control Catholics in Northern Ireland and then applied across Britain's colonial empire. It is used today by Israel in the Occupied Territories and India in Kashmir. It allows for arrests without warrants, indefinite detainments, torture, and routine extra-judicial killings.

Washington's fixation with lining up allies against China has also seen the US cut corners on human rights issues in Sri Lanka, Burma, and Indonesia. But recreating a version of the old Cold War alliance system in the region is hardly in the interests of Central and South Asians-or Americans, for that matter. India and Pakistan do not need more planes, bombs and tanks. They need modernized transport systems, enhanced educational opportunities, and improved public health. The same can be said for Americans.

There was a time when countries in Central and South Asia were responsible for much of world's wealth and productive capacity. In 1750, India produced 24.5 percent of the world's manufactured goods. England, in contrast, produced 1.9 percent. By 1850, the world had turned upside down, as colonialism turned-or to use the anthropologist Clifford Geertz's term, "de-evolved"-India from a dynamic world leader to an economic satrap of London. The region is emerging from its long, colonial nightmare, and it does not need-indeed, cannot afford-to be drawn into alliances designed half a world away. It is time to bring the 21^st century's version of "the Great Game" to an end.

This article originally appeared in Dispatches from the Edge, the author's blog. Photo: U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, via The U.S. Army.

Walmart: The eyes of the nation are on you!

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 14:26:00 +0000

Gun control advocates massed Jan. 15 at a Walmart store a few miles from Sandy Hook Elementary School to demand the company stop selling rifles of the type the military uses in Afghanistan. Among the protesters were the parents of some of the slaughtered children.

While Walmart was dealing with the bad publicity there, the company's CEO Bill Simon was still busy trying to gin up some positive publicity for the retail behemoth on another front - job creation. Simon said, at a National Retail Federation conference, that beginning Memorial Day, Walmart would offer honorably discharged veterans jobs. He promised to hire 100,000 vets over the next five years but did not say whether the jobs would be full-time or offer any decent benefits.

At the same meeting he tried to shore up the company's reputation for mistreating its workers, made known to the American public over the last two decades through demonstrations, marches and even lawsuits by Walmart workers claiming all kinds of abuse and mistreatment on the job.

Simon announced yesterday that the company would have "more transparency" in its scheduling system "so part time workers can choose more hours for themselves."

On the company's promise to hire more veterans, the labor movement says it has problems with greeting veterans returning to civilian life after defending the nation with $8.81 an hour part-time jobs with no benefits.

"Previous generations of workers returned from service and started careers in manufacturing, construction and/or public service," said James Gilbert, director of the AFL-CIO Union Veterans Council. "They went from defending America to building America.

"The announcement by Walmart to hire 100,000 veterans over the next five years should be applauded, but is in need of context.

"Will these jobs be ones with wages, benefits and workplace rights at a level that matches the skill set and dignity of service of these new hires?" Gilbert asked. "Will these be the types of jobs that afford brave service persons with the ability to own a home, raise a family and retire with dignity?"

Walmart's other promise yesterday to give workers more input into their schedules is also being met by employees with a good deal of skepticism.

A Walmart worker at the new Walmart in Chicago's West Loop said, "Even if they really follow through on that they haven't promised to do anything else about all the other problems - the disgracefully low salaries, the lousy benefits and all the other stuff that goes on all the time."

Christopher Owen, a Walmart worker who served in the U.S. Navy for two years and works now for Walmart in Tulsa, Okla. told the Nation yesterday, "If that's the best that's available for veterans, then there is something wrong."

Owen, like thousands of Walmart workers across the country, has joined OUR Walmart, an organization of Walmart workers struggling to win improved conditions for workers at the chain's stores. OUR Walmart has worked together with unions on a host of issues of concern to Walmart workers.

The anti-gun protests at Walmart stores this week are just another sign that Americans seem increasingly determined not to let corporate giants off the hook for their role in any one or more national crises.

Some 80 protesters at the Danbury, Connecticut Walmart delivered petitions signed by 300,000 people who want Walmart to stop selling rifles like the semi-automatic Bushmaster used to kill 20 children and six adults at the Newtown school on Dec. 14. One of the people outside the Danbury Walmart was Lori Haas, whose daughter Emily was wounded in the April, 2007 Virginia Tech shootings. "The interest and the commitment of the American people to this right now is like a tsunami," she told the Associated Press.

Walmart's list of problems these days are not at all new. They follow close behind recent revelations that the company paid millions of dollars in bribes to officials in Mexico. The U.S. and Mexican governments launched investigations, Walmart stock dropped as a result and top company executives were hit with lawsuits by angry investors.

The company, the largest U.S. private employer with 1.5 million workers, continues to be hit with charges that it doesn't pay fair wages or even cheats workers out of wages earned.

Town councils across the country continue to charge the company with enacting policies that crush small businesses, disrupt transportation and traffic patterns and spoil the local environment.

There are ongoing accusations that by purchasing too much inventory from oversees, the company undermines the U.S. economy.

Several times, over the last few years, the company has been hit with numerous sex discrimination lawsuits, including the largest-ever in 2004. A group of 1.6 million female workers accused Walmart of paying female workers less than male employees. The Supreme Court blocked the suit.

During those lawsuits shares fell 20 percent from early 2005 to an eight-year low of $42 two years later.

Whatever eventually happens on these or a host of other issues regarding the retail behemoth, one thing is already clear to most observers: The eyes of the nation will remain fixed on Walmart.

Photo: From Occupy the NRA Facebook page.

What can today's activists learn from Emancipation Proclamation?

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 15:12:00 +0000

As the country celebrates the 150th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, there may be lessons in the struggle leading up to it - and after - that could benefit today's labor and social justice activists. The Emancipation Proclamation, signed Jan. 1, 1863, freed slaves in states - and parts of states - that were at war with the United States. It was a war- and history-altering order.

But the proclamation was not without compromise. It did not free all Blacks from bondage. The few thousand slaves in the border states of Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware and Maryland, for example, were left as "property," as Lincoln saw other pathways to end slavery there; he did not want to give any encouragement for pro-slavery forces in those states to break from the Union.

Yet the proclamation marked the first time the U.S. government took an intentional action to end slavery. It was a dramatic departure from the beginning of the war and Lincoln's first term when he said he had no intention of abolishing slavery where it existed. The war had begun as a fight to restore the Union to its pre-war status quo: half-free, half enslaved. But with the Emancipation Proclamation, the war became a battle for human freedom and the final end to bondage.

The proclamation changed the course and nature of the Civil War. Frederick Douglass, who was reportedly jubilant over the proclamation, called it a "first step" toward forever ending slavery, and said it would be a "moral bombshell" to the Confederacy.

The proclamation declared that former slaves (and free Blacks) could enlist in the Army or Navy, thereby officially fighting for their own freedom as well as for the country. Close to 200,000 African Americans did just that and bolstered the Union's moral and military capacity.

(Article continues below video.)

Before the proclamation was written, slaves had already taken crucial steps for their own emancipation. They had begun to flee plantations for the perceived freedom behind Union Army lines. There they received an inconsistent response from Army commanders, because Lincoln and Congress had no formal policy on ending slavery, historian Eric Foner writes in "The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. Some commanders sent runaway slaves back to their owners, while others gave them some semblance of freedom, including wages for work.

An abolitionist U.S. general and commander, David Hunter, created a political problem for Lincoln in May 1862. Hunter freed all the slaves in his region and ordered that Black volunteers be allowed to enlist as soldiers. Lincoln publicly revoked the order.

But that didn't stop the slaves, nor the abolitionist movement from pushing for emancipation. Lincoln realized the necessity of such an action. By September 1862, he announced the first draft of the proclamation.

W.E.B. Du Bois writes that slaves running to Union lines were, in fact, conducting a "general strike," withdrawing his or her labor from slave owners and offering it to the Union.

"As soon, however, as it became clear that the Union armies would not or could not return fugitive slaves, and that the masters with all their fume and fury were uncertain of victory, the slave entered upon a general strike against slavery," he wrote, adding that the slaves' "withdrawal and bestowal of his [and her] labor decided the war."

After the proclamation was signed and issued, the nation - black and white - celebrated. Yet some abolitionists complained that the proclamation was issued only for military reasons and didn't, in fact, free a single slave. But that was not the prevailing mood or outlook. What the masses of people saw in the Emancipation Proclamation was a promise of freedom. It would not come without more struggle and sacrifice, as the war would still rage for two more years. But without that proclamation, there would be no promise, no moral victory to sustain the fight, no light at the end of the dark, bloody tunnel.

In the wake of the Emancipation Proclamation victory came a great momentum that led to the Union's war victory, 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments and Reconstruction - all advances for democracy.

Victories matter, no matter how partial or limited they are. They offer confidence, promise - and yes - hope. These feelings are vital to sustain movement makers in the long run.

Victories also open new horizons for struggle and more victories. What was unthinkable before could be on the agenda after.

When the people win a victory, like voters did in 2008 and again in 2012 with the election and reelection of Barack Obama as president, it's worth not only celebrating but realizing that whatever the shortcomings, new horizons and possibilities have opened up. It holds the possibility of putting on the table what was unthinkable if that victory hadn't happened.

Battles are still to be fought. Issues that haven't yet been addressed, like racial inequality from incarceration to unemployment to graduation rates, still need addressing. But without that crucial victory in 2012, 2013 would look very different.

Photo: Watercolor painting of "Black man reading newspaper by candlelight" by American illustrator Henry Louis Stephens (1824-1882). The newspaper headline reads "Presidential Proclamation, Slavery," which refers to the Jan. 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. (Library of Congress/CC)

Is the right-wing era over? Not yet

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 14:02:00 +0000

Is the era of right-wing ascendancy over? I would argue that it is a bit premature to reach that conclusion.

Now don't get me wrong. Right-wing extremism isn't the same animal that it was a decade or two ago. Its "glory days" are behind it. The outcome of the elections last year - not to mention the divisions in the Republican Party that are cropping up now around the fiscal cliff and the president's nomination of Chuck Hagel as defense secretary - reflect a political movement that is no longer in a commanding position politically and ideologically.

That said, it continues to be the main, though not the only, obstacle to social progress.

As the people's movement readies itself for new struggles - on debt, immigration, gun control, jobs and infrastructure, equality, and so forth - in the coming year, count on the well-funded far-right at the national and state level to push the most reactionary measures, while obstructing anything remotely progressive and democratic, especially in Washington.

Of immediate concern is the attempt to use the lifting of the debt ceiling to force the president and Congress to accept massive cuts in, if not elimination of, earned income benefit programs - Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

On this issue, right-wing Republicans have the enthusiastic support of the main sections of the capitalist class (both on Wall Street and on Main Street), whose hooks extend into both parties, Democratic and Republican alike.

Much like the capitalist classes in the advanced capitalist countries of Europe, the U.S. capitalist class believes that capitalism can no longer afford the "welfare state." In its view, programs for the social good should be scaled back drastically if not eliminated altogether.

To complicate matters further, there seems to be some softness among Democrats in Congress and the White House when it comes to protecting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. That is evidenced by their much reported willingness to modify the formula for Social Security cost-of-living adjustments in a way that reduces benefits that are already insufficient, especially with the widespread implosion of job-related pension plans. This is the so-called "chained Consumer Price Index" modification.

In these circumstances, it is imperative to re-energize the diverse multiracial working-class-based coalition that reelected President Obama last fall. While sections of this coalition were active in the year-end "fiscal cliff" fight, a mobilization of greater scope, unity, and militancy will be needed in the coming battle to prevent any weakening of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Just as it took broad-based, mass action of a diverse people's coalition to win these programs in the last century, it will take a similar but even broader, deeper, and more militant coalition to retain (and strengthen) them in the 21st century.

Are we there yet? I don't think so. But in the people's coalition that made the difference in the recent elections we have the makings of a political force that has the potential to stymie and roll back the power of the corporate class and its political supporters.

No small task, but accomplishing it is a worthy resolution for all of us for the coming year!

Image: The Republican House leadership. Left to right: Eric Cantor, majority leader; John Boehner, speaker of the House; Kevin McCarthy, majority whip. DonkeyHotey CC 2.0

2012 “Are You Serious?” awards

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 12:40:00 +0000

Every year Dispatches From The Edge gives awards to news stories and newsmakers that fall under the category of "Are you serious?" Here are the awards for 2012.

Dr. Strangelove Award to Lord John Gilbert, former UK defense minister in Tony Blair's government, for a "solution" to stopping terrorist infiltration from Pakistan to Afghanistan: Nuke 'em. Baron Gilbert proposes using Enhanced Radiation Reduced Blasts-informally known as "neutron bombs"-to seal off the border. According to Gilbert, "If we told them [terrorists] that some ERRB warheads were going to be dropped there and that it would be a very unpleasant place to go, they would not go there."

The border between the two countries is a little over 1,600 miles of some of the most daunting terrain on the planet. And since the British arbitrarily imposed it on Afghanistan in 1896, most the people who live adjacent to it, including the Kabul government, don't recognize it.

Baron Gilbert went on to gild the lily: "I am absolutely delighted that nuclear weapons were invented when they were and I am delighted that, with our help, it was the Americans who invented them." The residents of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were decidedly less enthusiastic.

Runner up in this category is the Sandia National Laboratories and Northrop Grumman for researching the use of nuclear powered drones that would allow un-piloted aircraft to stay aloft for months at a time. Nuclear-powered drones, like the Reaper and the Predator, would not only be able to fly longer and further, the aircrafts could carry a greater number of weapons.

This comes at a time when the Obama administration has approved the use of drones in the U.S. by states and private companies. "It's a pretty terrifying prospect," Chris Coles of Drone Wars UK told The Guardian. "Drones are much less safe than other aircraft and tend to crash a lot." Iran recently claimed to have brought down a U.S. Scan Eagle drone and to have fired on a Predator. Last year Iran successfully captured a CIA-operated Sentinel drone.

Pandora's Box Award goes to the U.S. and Israel for unleashing cyber war on the world by attacking Iran's nuclear industry. The Stuxnet virus-designed by both countries-successfully damaged Iran's uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, and the newly discovered Flame virus has apparently been siphoning data from Iranian computers for years.

But the "malware" got out of Iran-what do these people not understand about the word "virus"? -and, in the case of Stuxnet, infected 50,000 computers around the world. Two other related malware are called Mini-Flame and Gauss.

Iran retaliated this past summer, unleashing a virus called "Shamoon" to crash 30,000 computers in Saudi Arabia's oil industry. Saudi Arabia provides 10 percent of the world's oil needs.

A Russian anti-virus specialist recently told computer expert Misha Glenny that cyber weapons "are a very bad idea," and his message was: "Stop doing this before it is too late."

The Golden Lemon Award has three winners this year, the F-35 "Lightning" fighter, the F-22 "Raptor" fighter, and the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). The F-35 and F-22 are repeat winners from last year's awards (it is not easy to cost a lot of money and not work, year after year, so special kudos to the aircraft's manufacturers Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman).

At $395.7 billion, the F-35 is now the most expensive weapons system in U.S. history, and the costs are still rising. It has constant problems with its engine, "unexplained" hot spots on the fuselage, and software that doesn't function properly. Because the cost of the plane has risen 70 percent since 2001, some of our allies are beginning to back away from previous commitments to purchase the aircraft. Canadians had some sticker shock when it turned out that the price tag for buying and operating the F-35 would be $45.8 billion. Steep price rises (and mechanical problems) have forced Britain, Italy, the Netherlands and Australia to re-think buying the plane as well. If that happens, the price of the F-35 will rise even higher, since Lockheed Martin was counting on U.S. allies to buy at least 700 F-35s as a way to lower per-unit costs. The U.S. is scheduled to purchase 2,457 F-35s at $107 million apiece (not counting weapons). The plane coast $35,200 per hour to fly.

The F-22-at $143 million a pop-has a major problem: the pilots can't breathe. When your traveling 1500 MPH at 50,000 plus feet, that's a problem, as Capt. Jeff Haney found out in November 2010 over the Alaskan tundra. The Air Force had to wait until the spring thaw to recover his body. Since then scores of pilots have reported suffering from hypoxia and two of them recently refused to fly the aircraft. The breathing problems did not stop U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta from deploying two-dozen F-22s to Japan, although the planes are restricted to lower altitudes and have to stay no more than an hour and a half from land. That will require the pilots to fly to Alaska, and then hop across the Pacific via the Aleutian Islands to get to Kadena Air Base on Okinawa.

The cost of operating an F-22 is $128,389 a flying hour. In comparison, the average income for a minimum wage worker in the U.S. is $15,080 a year, the medium yearly wage is $26,364, and average yearly household income is $46,326. Dispatches suggests paddling the planes to Japan and raising the minimum wage.

The LCS is a very fancy, shallow water warship with lots of bells and whistles (at $700 million apiece it ought to have a few of those) with one little problem: "It is not expected to be survivable in a hostile combat environment," according to one Pentagon weapon's tester. Since combat is generally "hostile" that does restrict what the ship can do. And given that cracks and leaks in the hulls are showing up, it might not be prudent to put them in the water. So while it may not work as a traditional ship-floating, that is-according to the LCS's major booster in the Congress, U.S. Rep. Jo Bonner (R-Ala) "It's going to scare hell out of folks."

Particularly the ones who serve on it.

The LCS was originally designed to fight Iranian attack boats, but the feeling now is that it would lose in such encounters. But all is not lost. According to Joseph Rella, president of Austal USA, the company in Alabama that builds the LCS, "If I was a pirate in a little boat, I'd be scared to death." Dispatches suggests that rubber "wolf man" masks would accomplish the same thing for considerably less money.

The Golden Sow's Ear Award to U.S. Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky) for successfully lobbying the Pentagon to buy an oil drip pan for the Army's Black Hawk helicopter for $17,000 a throw. The manufacturer, Phoenix Products, is a major contributor to Rogers' campaigns. A similar product made by VX Aerospace costs $2,500 apiece. But Phoenix does have a strong streak of patriotism: The oil drip pans are discounted from the $19,000 retail price.

The Misplaced Priorities Award to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party for shelling out $28 million to celebrate the bicentennial of the War of 1812-including $6.3 million in television ads-while cutting $5.2 billion from the national budget and eliminating 19,200 federal jobs. The cuts have fallen particularly hard on national parks and historic sites.

Canada was not Canada in 1812, and the war was between the U.S. and the British Empire. Canada did not become a country until 1867.

The Queen of Hearts Award also goes to Harper and his Conservatives for "streamlining" the process of approving new oil and gas pipelines and limiting public comment. "Limiting" includes threats to revoke the charitable status of environmental groups that protest the pipelines and unleashing Canada's homeland security department, Public Safety Canada (PSC), on opponents. The PSC considers environmentalists potential terrorists and lumps them in the same category as racist organizations. Dispatches suggests that Harper and Co. study the works of Lewis Carroll on how to sentence first, try later. Saves time and money.

The Chernobyl Award to the Japanese construction company BuildUp, hired by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) to clean up the Fukushima nuclear plant that melted down in the aftermath of last year's tsunami. A government report found that TEPCO did not issue radiation detectors to most of its workers even though it had hundreds of dosimeters on hand. BuildUp admitted that it had workers put lead plates over the detectors to avoid violating safety thresh holds.

Teruso Sagara of BuildUp said the company only had their employees' best interests in mind and thought that "we could bring peace of mind to the workers if we could somehow delay their dosimeters' alarms going off."

The report also cited the government for refusing to use computer projections on fallout from the crippled plant. In one case, two communities were directed into the middle of the radioactive plume.

The Chicken Little Award to the British government and the International Olympic Committee for approaching the 2012 London Olympics in much the same way the allies did the beaches at Normandy in 1944. The government deployed 13,500 ground troops, 20,000 private guards, plus the Royal Navy's largest warship, along with armed helicopters, armored personnel carriers and Starstreak and Rapier anti-aircraft missiles.

According to Linden Empson, Dispatches intrepid reporter on the scene, the announcement that surface-to-air missiles were going to installed on six housing projects in the city were "delivered via a pizza company." She suggested that was both "terrifying and hysterically funny." One resident of Fred Wigg Tower told the New York Times that the leaflets "looked like one of those things where you get free pizza though the post, but this was like free missiles."

The local residents were not amused and sued to stop the deployment. "Is the government seriously suggesting the answer to potential airborne threat is to detonate it over the city?" a former Royal Artillery officer wrote in a letter to The Guardian. The court eventually ruled against the residents.

The cost of all this security is close to $900 million at a time when the Conservative-Liberal government is slashing social welfare programs, education, and health care.

The Selective Reporting Award to the Los Angeles Times for reporting that the Assad regime was using cluster bombs, which "have been banned by most nations." The newspaper pointed out that more than 100 countries had signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions, but that Syria did not.

Quite true. What went unmentioned was that neither did the U.S., Russia, China, Pakistan, India, and Israel. According to the Cluster Munitions Coalition, the weapons "caused more civilian casualties in Iraq in 2003 and Kosovo in 1999 than any other weapon system." The U.S. also used clusters in Afghanistan. American cluster weapons still take a steady toll of people in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. All of those cluster weapons were made in the USA.

The most egregious use of clusters in the last decade was by Israel, which spread four million submunitions in Lebanon during its 2006 invasion of that country. According to the UN, one million of those "duds" remain unexploded.

But the U.S. also uses the weapon on many occasions. In 2009, President Obama ordered a cluster strike in Yemen that ended up killing 44 people, including 14 women and 21 children. And the White House, according to The Independent, "is taking the leading role "to torpedo the global ban on clusters." The administration argues that clusters manufactured after 1980 have less than a 1 percent failure rate, but anti-cluster activists say that is not the case. The widely used BLU-97, for instance, has a failure rate of 30 percent.

According to Handicap International, 98 percent of the casualties inflicted by clusters are civilians, 27 percent of those children.

This article appeared originally in Conn Hallinan's blog. Photo: London Olympics building. Matt Churchill // CC 2.0

The Second Amendment Is a dangerous anachronism

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 11:22:00 +0000

Three days after the massacre in Newtown, Conn., I was astonished to read a hard-hitting editorial ("Ending Our Love Affair With Guns") in the Sunday issue of the Plain Dealer that ended with the following:

"Any serious discussion of preventing more slaughters has to start with significant restrictions on the availability of high-power firearms and large magazines. But it also has to examine how guns are bought and sold in this country and the terms under which people can own them. It has to be far-ranging and fearless, including the possible repeal or revision of the Second Amendment if that is what it takes to regulate private arsenals and enact meaningful gun control. It's not 1789 anymore. This is not a frontier society. It is a nation where 30,000 people a year die from gunshots. "

Evidently the horror of the event was enough to shake the normally timid editorial writers into breaking from their normal posture of apologizing and providing cover for deeply held convictions of Republican extremism.

So I immediately sent off a letter, which was published along with many others addressing the issue. My letter said:

The Plain Dealer is to be congratulated for having the courage to call for serious consideration of repeal or revision of the Second Amendment as an anachronism that today threatens the safety and security of all Americans.

But the proliferation of assault weapons and high capacity magazines is not the result of a spontaneous popular 'love affair' with guns. It is the result of active promotion by reckless profiteers and right-wing extremists generally holding racist views and often harboring insurrectionist fantasies.

This has nothing in common with owning hunting rifles or legitimate concerns about protecting one's home or person from street crime, which are the only things that deserve protection under the law.

Anyone with the stomach to listen to right-wing talk radio and their frequent discussions about whether the U.S. Army will remain loyal to the government or "take the side of the people when the time comes" will understand exactly what these crazies have in mind.

On Jan. 7 Alex Jones, a well-known talk show hate monger, appeared on the Piers Morgan show to discuss his national petition to have Morgan, a British citizen, deported for questioning the Second Amendment.

Jones immediately launched into a belligerent diatribe stating that "the Second Amendment isn't there for duck hunting. It's there to protect us from tyrannical government and street thugs." From this Jones went on to denounce "globalism" and "megabanks that control the planet" and charged that Morgan was "a hatchetman for the New World Order."

Finally, shouting at the top of his lungs, Jones said, "1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms."

It's not just lunatic talk show hosts. Who can forget Sharron Angle, Republican candidate in Nevada against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid?

"The Second Amendment is the right to keep and bear arms for our citizenry," she said on one occasion. "This is for us when our government becomes tyrannical."

"I hope that's not where we're going," she told talk show host Lars Larson, "but you know if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out."

The fact is, the Second Amendment was hardly enacted to guarantee the right to rebel against the government. Just the opposite is the case. The new nation in 1787 had no standing army and the propertied gentlemen who wrote the Bill of Rights feared the uprisings of citizens, such as had occurred in the Shays' Rebellion the previous year, and wished to give the states power to mobilize citizens to crush them.

George Washington, who presided over the Constitutional Convention, was particularly alarmed at Shays' Rebellion and immediately after its suppression wrote that if the government "shrinks, or is unable to enforce its laws...anarchy and confusion must prevail."

Washington and the Framers were also concerned that domestic turmoil could tempt a return of the British and obviously also wanted to be able to mobilize armed citizens against slave uprisings and frontier conflicts with Native Americans.

That's why the amendment reads: "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Under his presidency in 1794 Washington used the combined militia of several states to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion in Western Pennsylvania.

The concerns that motivated the Framers have long ago disappeared and never in their wildest imaginations did they think the Second Amendment would be the basis for promoting a firearms industry and private arsenals of anti-government fanatics.

We can no longer afford to let Congress be bullied by gun merchants and right-wing insurrectionists hiding behind a fraudulent interpretation of a long outdated provision in the Constitution. We need an aggressive overhaul of national gun laws shaped entirely by the safety and security needs of the American people and, if the Second Amendment as written is in the way, it needs to be revised or repealed.

Photo: Kevin Dooley // CC 2.0

Majority backs higher taxes on the rich

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 15:39:00 +0000

A recent Washington Post poll found that 44 percent of registered voters approve of the "fiscal cliff" deal struck New Year's Day. Additionally, the poll found that 67 percent of Democratic voters approve of the deal, and that 52 percent of Americans approve of President Obama's handling of the deal.

While these statistics are informative on the surface, they also allude to a much larger substantive point. That point is: Increasing taxes on the rich is a majority sentiment, has been for a long time and is good for the economy.

By digging a little deeper into the polling data and other statistics we find a few interesting facts that have been largely ignored.

First, according to the poll, 42 percent of registered voters disapprove of the "fiscal cliff" deal, but they do so for different reasons. Many - a significant portion I would argue - disapprove of the deal because it does not increase taxes enough on the wealthy. This is partly the reason why some progressive democrats in the House and Senate did not support the deal.

In other words, it is not necessarily increased taxes they disapprove of. It's that taxes weren't increased more.

Second, while moderate Republicans in the House and Senate did eventually join with the President and back the "fiscal cliff" deal, it is widely understood that it was their intransigence that brought us to the "cliff" in the first place, which may be why House Speaker John Boehner has a 31 percent approval and a 51 percent disapproval rating in his handling of the deal - the exact opposite of President Obama's.

Keep in mind that during the "fiscal cliff" debate Boehner and the right wing of the Republican Party demanded cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and job-creating infrastructure programs, while refusing to even discuss increasing taxes on the rich.

The disapproval rating reflects a widely understood consensus that the Republicans are NOT serious about deficit reduction, but ARE serious about continuing tax breaks for the rich while throwing seniors, the poor, the unemployed and students under the bus.

Third, according to the Economic Policy Institute, "the Fiscal Cliff exposes that big budget deficits and rising public debt have sustained the economic recovery, and the pace of deficit reduction must now be slowed to keep the economy growing."

In other words, cutting public spending - the Republican plan - would harm the economy and possibly send the fragile recovery into a nosedive. So the main task ahead isn't deficit reduction. It's job creation by-way of increased public spending, which will spur private sector confidence as consumers begin to spend more money. The time to focus on deficit reduction is after the economy has recovered.

Fourth, the tax increases won by the Obama Administration are a huge victory for the working class. The tax increases on individuals making $400,000+ and families making $450,000+ demonstrate a willingness to impose a little sanity in an otherwise insane situation.

What do I mean? Historically, our economy was at its best when taxes were at their highest - the post-WWII period through the mid-to-late 70's. It is no coincidence that living standards, wages, benefits and pensions have all decreased as taxes have decreased.

The recent tax increases won in the Fiscal Cliff debate return the rich to about the same tax rate of the late 1970's. While I would agree that the tax increases on the rich do NOT go far enough, I do think they point us in the right direction.

If we can begin the process of increasing taxes on the rich - similar to the post-WWII period - maybe we can also begin the process of returning hard-won gains back to the working class.

Contrary to popular belief tax increases have historically led to higher wages and better benefits.

Sanity in this context means shared sacrifice. The Working class has given and given over the past 30+ years. If we are serious about economic recovery and deficit reduction, it is time that the rich sacrifice more.

In summary, increasing taxes on the rich is a majority sentiment, has been for a long time and is good for the economy. Anyone who says otherwise isn't serious about economic recovery or deficit reduction.

Photo: CC BY NC 2.0. Madison Guy

The mailman learns from Bob Moore the whole grain guy

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 15:05:00 +0000

There is that familiar smell. It is a combination of melting precipitation, drying sweat, disintegrating paper pulp, and dripping ink. That smell is the scent of victory. I have returned home from another arduous day of delivering the U.S. mails in wintry Michigan. As per my ritual of congratulating myself on another job well done, I pour myself the first malty reward of the evening. It does its job, the warmth of the elixir spreading itself evenly from the brain to the stomach. Life again is good.

A patron of mine gave me a card this holiday season. It read, "Santa delivers everything in his bag in one night in the middle of winter. Big Deal. You do it every day, and you can't even fly!" It is so truly impressive when one of the folks we serve takes the time to recognize the task we do six days a week, 52 weeks a year.

I have done many different jobs in my life, but carrying mail has been the most demanding, mentally as well as physically. And yet I have never had a job that gave back to me the amount of satisfaction and sense of accomplishment this one has. I am the luckiest man I know.

I did not start my career as a letter carrier until I was 41 years old. Before that, I spent the majority of my working life as a self-employed small businessman. I started working in the natural foods business in 1978, and worked in that arena until the day I became an employee of the United States Postal Service in 2000. I began as a cook in a vegetarian restaurant, and then became co-owner of a whole wheat pizzeria called the Blue Mushroom in 1980. These were the burgeoning days of the natural foods movement, and the products and ideas we were peddling were far from the mainstream that we see today. In 1982 I split from my partner and started my own line of whole wheat sandwiches and pizzas called Garden Gourmet. We sold wholesale to area natural food stores and within a few years we expanded our product line to stores in Ohio and the Chicago area. Before the age of 30, I became an "entrepreneur."
The same year I started out in the natural foods biz, 1978, there was another feller in Milwaukee who did the same. His name is Bob Moore and, along with his wife Charlee, he founded Bob's Red Mill Natural Foods. BRM produces stone ground, whole grain flours and mixes that have become one of the sales leaders in America's natural foods revolution. While my entrepreneurial experiment ended abruptly with a motorcycle crash in 1994, Bob's gained momentum, now has 209 employees, and is a worldwide phenomenon. He is obviously a little better at this small business thing than I was.

I had six employees at the zenith of my company's growth. It was always a struggle to pay them what I felt was a decent living wage. I did not pay myself much more than I paid them, and I was always the last to leave and mop the floor at 3 a.m. If someone needed a loan to float them till next paycheck, there was always a way to scrape up a couple of hundred bucks for that. For me, it was the only way to run the shop. It seems that way for Bob Moore, too. In 2010, Bob Moore decided to give his company to his employees. Through a plan called an ESOP, or employee stock ownership plan, any employee with three or more years at Bob's Red Mill becomes vested in the company. Bob is now in his 80s, so naturally he and his wife had to think of the company's future. Offers were pouring in daily from corporations and investors. When it came to thoughts of selling his multi-million-dollar company, he decided, "In my heart, I couldn't. These people are far too good at their jobs for me to just sell it."

Under the ESOP, all vested employees receive company stock to a retirement plan trust. Annual reports are sent detailing their respective stakes in the company. When those employees quit or retire, they receive in cash whatever amount they are due. In 2010, when this plan was instituted, an average payout was estimated at $110,000. Because of all the good press around this story over the last two years and the increased revenue that has followed, this payout amount has almost doubled. As the payouts continue over the years, eventually the employees will own 100 percent of the company.

"There's a lot of negative stuff going on in business today," Moore says. "It's a good old basic Bible lesson: love of money is the root of all evil. And, unfortunately, our entire philosophy today is get all the money you can and whatever way you can. It causes people to do a lot of things for money that they feel in their hearts is not the right thing to do." It is refreshing to hear from a Christian who is not preaching "Supply-side Jesus." To see this real life example of non-hypocritical Christianity is both fascinating and humbling.
For Moore, meanwhile, nothing about the new arrangement will change a thing. He plans to do for the foreseeable future what he has done every day for decades. "I may have given them the company," he says, chuckling, "but the boss part is still mine."

There is also a book about Bob and his life. It is quite aptly titled People before Profit. I hope this story of a good man and woman, and the company they started, will help to send us off into this New Year with hope and inspiration. There are lots of good folks out there; I touch them every day. They far outnumber the nasty ones. Happy New Year to one and all!

Photo: bobsredmill

“Free the Wilmington Ten!” forty years later

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 14:07:00 +0000

Forty years. Damn it's been a long time. When I first heard the news that Gov. Bev Purdue of North Carolina had pardoned the Wilmington Ten, I was so torn. Ecstatic and angry. So glad that finally, finally, forty years of justice denied was being corrected. Most importantly the Governor made it a "pardon of innocence." She said it was a racist and illegal prosecution. Now the record is almost straight.

Still those forty years saw all of the Ten spend years in prison, and they were innocent. There has never been a real investigation into KKK influence in the frame-up and prosecution of the Ten, and they were innocent. Some of the Ten and some of their family members have passed away without ever knowing the "pardon of innocence," and they were innocent.

The fight for the freedom of the Wilmington Ten was a critical part of the civil rights movement of the 1970's. It also helped form a whole generation of young activists, especially in the South.

We registered voters, we petitioned, we marched, we picketed, we wrote letters, and fought the Klan. We learned from great leaders of many different movements, like Angela Davis, like Anne and Carl Braden, like Charlene Mitchel, like Henry Winston and Gus Hall and the Rev. Ben Chavis, one of the Ten.

We learned how to take the case to unions, churches, neighborhoods, campuses, and to rural communities Black and white. We watched and learned as experienced fighters took the case to the world and gathered international support.

As I look around the movement today, I see lots of my old friends from that struggle still fighting the good fight in so many different ways; in labor, in civil rights, in peace, in faith based coalitions, in the environmental movements and more.

Then this victory for the Wilmington Ten really comes home to me. The victory of the Wilmington Ten, for these ten incredible brave freedom fighters, glows in a brighter light.

Dr. King famously said, "the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice." And the Wilmington Ten and their fight for justice has greatly helped it bend in the right direction.

Photo: Archival photo of Wilmington 10: From left, front row, Rev. Ben Chavis, Joe Wright, Connie Tindall, Jerry Jacobs; from left, back row, Wayne Moore, Anne Sheppard, James McKoy, Willie Vereen, Marvin Patrick and Reginald Epps. 1976. News & Observer file photo.

Bring the jobs home

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 13:26:00 +0000

Hooray, hooray oh happy day
Apple jobs in the USA.
The election's over
The people won
Bringing jobs back
Has just begun.
Eight hundred thousand
Or is it nine
Have left our shores
For quite some time.
Sixty thousand plants
Did disappear
Six million jobs
No longer here.
Those greedy bosses fled our land
Just to make an extra grand.

The AFL-CIO has launched a campaign to mobilize unions and other people's forces to compel Congress to enact legislation for the return of those runaway plants. These plants were sent abroad in search of maximum profits.

This 6 million job loss was a major factor in causing the 2007 recession and remains a dagger in the heart in the struggle to overcome the crisis. Bringing jobs home is not tilting at windmills, nor wishful thinking.

Making smartphones abroad that could be made here is not so smart. The same is true for a myriad of products which are now made abroad and brought here for mass consumption. The workers who could be employed here on those production lines would be making substantially more wages and thus have more to spend. This would create job upon job with ripple effect.

Workers' wages in this country have gone down steadily and their skills are being stripped away by outsourcing. At the same time, profits have soared to record levels

The latest most brazen runaway shop is the Sensata Technologies plant in Freeport, Illinois. This plant is 51% owned by Mitt Romney's Bain Capital. The plant had 170 workers. This company reaped nearly a billion dollars a year in profits. It manufactured electronic parts for Ford and General Motors. Its move overseas is a stab in the back of the American people whose money helped save the auto industry from which Sensata now profits.

Tom Gaulrapp, a Sensata worker, said in October: "I thought that at this point in my life, after 33 years of working at the plant, that I'd be headed toward retirement. Now, I'm worried that I'll be competing with my nephew for the minimum wage jobs that are just about all that's left in town." But former AFL-CIO President George Meany had a better idea. He said: "The best anti-poverty program is a good job at union wages with union benefits." This requires outlawing runaway shops and organizing the unorganized shops. The shutdown of Sensata and of all the other runaway plants is a betrayal of the U.S. working class by U.S. capitalism.

Work has already begun on organizing a movement to reverse this runaway process and to bring back jobs that rightfully belong here. There is no need for "Buy American" isolationism in this effort. Workers around the world have no conflict with each other and are not in competition with each other. It is the capitalists, the factory owners, who compete with each other for lowest wages, most production, biggest market share and maximum profits. In fact, it is an imperative that trade unions and worker organizations of all nations speed up mutual discussion and organization with the aim of unity of program and action to stop the pitting of workers of one country against another.
For example the United Steelworkers of America has already succeeded in cooperative and mutually advantageous agreements with metal workers in Mexico, Germany, Australia and Britain.

The AFL-CIO has a tool kit for bringing jobs home which includes tools for organizing. The basic premise is: "We cannot continue to say we want to bring jobs home while rewarding corporations with taxpayers' money when they ship production, jobs and innovation overseas."

Senator Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., sponsored the Bring Jobs Home Act which would end tax breaks for companies that move jobs abroad and give tax incentives to those companies which bring jobs home. Although the bill had majority support (56-42) in the Senate, it was blocked by a Republican filibuster.

Militant action by workers whose jobs are threatened with outsourcing must become a key feature of this struggle. A good example is the recent strike of 70 International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) clerical workers in the maritime offices in California. They refused to give up their jobs. Their picket lines were respected by all West Coast longshore workers. This tied up the port. They won their strike, which has become an example for all workers to fight and protect their jobs from being outsourced and shipped abroad. The unity of the entire ILWU, the International Transport Federation and the community were the combination which made this victory possible.

Virtually every community in the country has been affected by the runaway epidemic. So every community has an interest in the fight back. For example, the City Councils of Jersey City and Bayonne, N.J. adopted resolutions unanimously which called for bringing the jobs home.

One of the main shields protecting greedy corporations who run off with our jobs is patent rights. They are used to deindustrialize the U.S. manufacturing industry. Patents are granted by law and when necessary, the patent laws can be changed to protect the public interest. Patent laws are intended to protect inventors from infringement and theft by others. They were never meant to be used to protect shipping jobs abroad.

The practices of our high tech and pharmaceutical industries in particular show how patents should be applied to protect the developers of new inventions and discoveries but the public as well.

Our country's great universities and research laboratories have produced many of these new developments. These institutions operate with large financial support from federal and state government and nonprofit foundations without which they could not function. The taxpayers of our country have a direct financial interest in the profitability of these products. Under present patent law, taxpayers pay for the research, the patent holders reap the profits.

Patents generally run for 20 years and in some cases can be extended. Thomas Jefferson, first U.S. secretary of state and in charge of the patent office, favored very short patent duration. Jefferson, himself an inventor, reasoned that new discoveries were the product of accumulated past experience and knowledge and the contemporary community in which the inventor lives. He saw inventions as primarily being for the public good and not for the creation of monopoly, as is now the case.

This is an important question today. Remember the attacks on President Obama for saying the same thing that Jefferson said, when Obama said that when we build a business, it is built on the shoulders and experience of those who came before?

Applying Jefferson's reasoning today, corporations would have to think very carefully before leaving the United States. If they do leave, they should lose their patent rights. In that case, any entrepreneur or the government or a combination of the two could manufacture those products in the U.S. Under these conditions, most of Apple's 800,000 overseas jobs would be here as would those of other monopoly corporations that run away with our jobs.

Wherever direct or indirect government money, including tax breaks, is the basis for the development of new products and technologies, we should examine how the government can move to recover its share of the money it put in.

Issuance of new patents should be done under new conditions. First, all production under these patents should be done in the U.S. for the duration of the patent. Second, the public interest must be protected: If such new products result from the use of U.S. taxpayer funds, then the public should receive an appropriate share of the profits.

These are new and changing times. They call for new and changing ideas. Patent laws are not written in stone. In fact they have changed throughout our history. They need changing now, to protect and bring back jobs.

Photo: Cheon Fong Liew // CC 2.0