People Before Profit blog

Veterans need more than flags on Memorial Day

Fri, 24 May 2013 15:30:00 +0000

This editorial was originally published May 28, 2012.

Eighteen veterans each day kill themselves. 18. An average of 950 veterans each month attempt suicide. 950.

Only 1 percent of Americans have served in the military, yet former service members make up 20 percent of suicides in the United States. More veterans have committed suicide than the number of soldiers killed in combat.

Shouldn't this be considered a national emergency?

As President Barack Obama winds downs the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and more soldiers come home and are discharged this tragic trend will only intensify.

Multiple deployments for service members, including national guardsmen, may be one of the major factors for the eye-popping statistics. Almost half - 800,000 - of the more than 2 million Americans who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan have been on multiple deployments.

Writing in The Daily Beast, former Marine Anthony Swofford says despite the lack of research to prove it, being in combat for long periods of time has a profound impact on the human psyche.
"[W]hen you teach a kid how to kill and send him to combat a few times, he will come home mightily changed, with a dependence on weaponry and a tendency to treat violence as a perfectly acceptable way of solving a problem," he writes.

In other words, war is not only Hell, it's a death sentence, even after combat.

There are other reasons cited: post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, economic and financial stressors at home, including unemployment, feelings of uselessness, access to weapons, the military's culture and reluctance to acknowledge psychological problems from war, missing the feeling of cohesion from being with your unit, etc.

For women veterans, the suicide rate is three times more than their civilian counterparts. Women service members have the additional burden of being at least three times more likely to be raped, sexually assaulted or harassed than other American women.

Although far from perfect, the Veterans Administration has responded to the crisis. In the first place, the VA set up a national suicide hotline that receives about 10,000 calls a month from current service members and veterans. That number is 1-800-273-8255.

Tragically, but not surprisingly, in the much-ballyhooed Republican budget with Rep. Paul Ryan's name on it and supported by GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, veterans are totally missing. The word "veteran" doesn't even appear, according to Veterans For Common Sense, a group that also lauded Obama's commitment to veterans, outlined in his budget.

With the Republicans' push for austerity - cutting all programs that help people - the VA will continue to be understaffed and underfunded. Veterans report that VA caseworkers see 20-30 people per shift, and there are no separate facilities for women veterans.

Veterans themselves are organizing to deal with suicides and other issues through support groups, the arts, and antiwar, political or social groups. All approaches are needed to end this national shame.

As politicians make their way through the Memorial Day parades that honor women and men who have served, remember: veterans need more than flag waving. Remember this November who the hypocrites are and who keeps their promises, including to end wars the Republican flag-wavers got us into.

Photo: Ceremony at Riverside, Calif., National Cemetery. (Josh LeClair/CC)

Does it matter who rules: Republicans or Democrats?

Thu, 31 May 2012 10:20:00 +0000

"All that harms labor is treason to America. No line can be drawn between these two. If any man tells you he loves America, yet he hates labor, he is a liar. If a man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool."

- Abraham Lincoln

Does it really matter whether Republicans or Democrats are in charge after the November elections?

Taking a nearsighted view of the political landscape, some have concluded there is little or no difference between Republicans and Democrats.

After all, even in states like California where Democrats now control state government, the dilemma is not whether to cut social services and jobs, but how much.

But a broader view helps us see that it does make a difference.

A Republican takeover of both houses of Congress and the White House in November would mean the dramas in Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan would play out with a vengeance at the national level.

Since their 2010 electoral victory, the Republican-majority legislatures and governors of those three states have been cutting deep into public services and jobs.

Yes, there is still a need to struggle in states like California where Democrats control state government. But cuts to the public sector workforce and services there pale in comparison with those of Republican-controlled state governments. (And California's situation is complicated because Democrats lack the two-thirds legislative majority required to overcome the Republican pledge to block new revenues.)

Anyone who says there's no difference between a pay cut on the job and a permanent job loss has never been unemployed or lived on the margins.

There is another critical reason why it matters who wins in November.

In Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan, the Republican-controlled governments are challenging the very right and ability of working people to fight.

When Republicans move to take away the hard-earned right of public employees to collective bargaining, and decimate union density through massive layoffs, it is that much harder for workers and their unions to fight for their rights and those of the poor.

The Republicans are out to paralyze workers' capacity to fight from a position of collective power through their freely chosen unions.

And that's exactly what we can expect from Republicans if they win the White House and both houses of Congress in November.

So, what does Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney have to say about unions?

Earlier this month at a campaign rally in Lansing, Mich., Romney said:

"Liberalism once taught that unions would ensure lasting prosperity for workers. Instead, they too often contributed to disappearing companies, disappearing industries and disappearing jobs."

Nice work!

Why not blame the victim and absolve you and your cronies from responsibility?

Never mind that in the 1970s the capitalist barons of high finance and industry began turning thriving Midwestern industrial centers into "rust belts."

They moved industry and good-paying union jobs wholesale from states like Michigan and Ohio into "union free" Southern states and abroad.

They accelerated the introduction of job-killing technology and management techniques in their quest for maximum corporate profit (and jacked up CEO pay in the process).

It was in the 1980s, when former Republican President Ronald Reagan loosened up financial regulations and launched the assault on unions that continues to this day, that a new breed of capitalists in the private equity business emerged, among them Mitt Romney.

Former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich bluntly describes private equity firms as "using other people's money to make big bets which, if they go wrong, can wreak havoc on the economy."

It is precisely this and other "financial innovations" that largely contributed to the 2008 Great Recession when the financial bubble that had come to dominate the U.S. economy burst.

President Obama's re-election campaign is now highlighting one of Romney's "bets" that went bad.

Under Romney's leadership, Bain Capital bought steelmaker GS Industries in 1993 and loaded it with debt while paying millions to Bain investors.

After Romney left Bain, GS Industries declined and in 2001 went into bankruptcy, laying off more than 700 workers.

"It was like a vampire came in and sucked the life out of us," said one former worker highlighted in the Obama campaign ad.

At Romney's Michigan campaign rally, he accused President Obama of taking "his marching orders from union bosses."

Perhaps we should ask Romney when was the last time "union bosses" closed down plants and fired workers en masse, foreclosed on their homes and threw them and their families out on the street, in pursuit of maximum private profit?

Meanwhile, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka set the record straight when he told In These Times in March, "Sometimes we have disagreed with the president on strategy, but I know one thing, he's a friend of the 99 percent."

Photo: PW Photo

The trial of Sacco and Vanzetti

Thu, 31 May 2012 09:41:00 +0000

Today in labor history: On May 31st 1921 the trial of Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco began in Dedham Massachusetts. The trial was widely held to be unfair and both were executed. Sacco and Venzetti were both Italian anarchists. The trial unleashed a wave of anti-immigrant and anti-left hysteria. Their case became a cause celebre in the labor and democratic movement in the U.S. and worldwide. On the 50th anniversary of their execution then Governor Michael Dukakis isssued a proclamation declaring August 23 Sacco and Venzetti day. The proclamation decried the unfairness of their trial and removed any disgrace associated with their names.

Long live Sacco and Venzetti and the right to a fair trial!

Historic battle for voting rights is front and center

Tue, 29 May 2012 15:42:00 +0000

When newly elected Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merril, a Democrat, attended her first national meeting last year, she was stunned to discover that her Republican counterparts across the country were all focused on how to keep the number of voters down in their states.

"In my opinion, it is not only a right, it is an obligation for every eligible person to vote," Merrill said at a recent labor luncheon.

Her reaction to that national meeting was to come back to Connecticut and introduce a legislative package that would open up the voting process and make it easier for everyone to participate. She studied what could make it easier for voters with low incomes juggling several jobs, students, and voters with small children, elderly voters, and voters in communities of color.

As a result, in this legislative session Connecticut became the tenth state to enact Election Day voter registration beginning in 2013, and the tenth state to enact an online voter registration option beginning in 2014.

The battle for voting rights is front and center in this presidential election, where turnout will be key. Voters in states representing 70% of the electoral vote will be affected by restrictive laws this year, many requiring specific forms of ID promoted by the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

Other limitations include restricting voter registration drives, limits on when or where people can register to vote, cutting back on early voting and improper purging of voters from voter rolls.

It is estimated by the Brennan Center for Justice that as many as 5 million voters could be blocked from casting their votes as a result of these laws. Those voters most highly impacted will be African American and Latino, low-income, elderly and young.

The Connecticut example of opening up the voting process is a positive push for the Voter Empowerment Act of 2012 HR 5799 introduced in Congress last week by Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., and 130 co-sponsors. The goal is to make it easier for voters to cast their ballots and stay on voter rolls.

Lewis, who was brutally beaten during the march for voting rights from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., in 1965, understands clearly the dangers to democracy that voter suppression represents. This year he re -traced those steps with thousands of labor , civil rights and immigrant rights leaders from around the country.

"The ability to vote should be easy, accessible and simple. Yet there are practices and laws in place that make it harder to vote today than it was even one year ago," said Lewis.

"The sponsors of this act believe we need to take action or risk losing the liberties we have enjoyed. We should be moving toward a more inclusive democracy, not one that locks people out," he concluded.

The Voter Empowerment Act of 2012 would enable online voter registration, Election Day registration and automatic voter registration at government offices. It would also require 15 days of early voting, which many states do not offer. In addition, the bill would automatically restore voting rights to ex-felons after they complete their sentence.

Earlier this month, the NAACP launched "This is My Vote," the largest voter registration, education and turnout project in its history. The 50-state campaign is aimed specifically at communities of color, youth and elderly voters, involving students, civil rights groups and the National Baptist Convention's 10,000 congregations.

"When voter suppression is the problem, voting is the answer. America hasn't seen a coordinated attack on voting rights of this scale in over a hundred years. But we can turn this situation around if we vote," said NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous.

The demographics of our country are rapidly changing. Texas is already a majority minority state. Our nation's population is younger and more culturally diverse, especially with Latino growth. It is also becoming more progressive. Taxing the rich has overwhelming support, as does ending the wars.

Hate groups, the tea party and the Republican right wing are the modern-day attack dogs and hoses attempting to suppress the vote of African Americans, Latinos, women and youth.

Protests have forced ALEC to shut down their "Public Safety and Elections Task Force," which pushed voter-suppression and Stand Your Ground laws through many state legislatures.

A lawsuit brought by Shelby County, Ala., to end Section 5 enforcement of the Voting Rights Act has been rejected on the grounds that instances of voter discrimination were overwhelmingly found in Southern areas.

This week the Advancement Project and five other organizations called on the Department of Justice to take action to halt and investigate a sweep of voter rolls in Florida requiring thousands of voters, mostly Latino, to produce proof of citizenship within 30 days, implying that they were voting illegally.

"What's happening now, is not only illegal but it's inaccurate," said Katherine Culliton-Gonzalez, director of voter protection projects. "There are actual citizens on these lists. So, what's happening is completely counter to the fundamental principles of our democracy."

Just as history was made in Connecticut after many years of attempts to enact Election Day voter registration, the movement is building nationally for a historic voter turnout in 2012 despite all the obstacles.

"We've been dealt a dirty hand but the solution is not just to accept that. We are putting in place a plan to reach, one way or the other, every single person potentially disenfranchised in all these states," says AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker. "That means on the job, online, in the neighborhoods, at their doorsteps, in the churches - everywhere."

Marching in Alabama with Rep. John Lewis as they re-traced the 1965 voting rights route she said, "Together we are one. Together we will make change."

Photo: Creative Commons 3.0 Some of the participants in the 2012 re-enactment of the march from Selma to Montgomery.

A tribute to Philip Levine, poet laureate of workers

Fri, 25 May 2012 14:01:00 +0000

Philip Levine has just completed his year-long term as the U.S. poet laureate. At 85 years old he is not the oldest poet to hold the position (That honor belongs to Stanley Kunitz).

He is not the most educated. He is certainly not rich.

Phil was Detroit-made, through and through: "a deuce and a quarter, babe, with enough chrome to reflect the moon from sea to shining sea."

John Hiatt turned his verse to roots rock.

His poems smell like gasoline, machine shops, foundries, assembly lines, and the neighborhoods take care of each other;

where it's late but everything comes next; where you take a nap after your shift even before your shower;

where rats are always hungry, and the wolverines find boundless devotion;

where the working class line forms apart from the boss class line, and there's not much else in between.

Richard Trumka threw a party for him last fall. Levine is no friend of the labor-despisers, race-baiters and war-hogs.

A poet laureate whose position, as the AFL-CIO noted, gave nationwide attention to a plain and outspoken affinity with working people ...

whose signature poetry collection is "What Work Is.

Let him tell it in his own words:

"The Simple Truth"

I bought a dollar and a half's worth of small red potatoes,
took them home, boiled them in their jackets
and ate them for dinner with a little butter and salt.
Then I walked through the dried fields
on the edge of town. In middle June the light
hung on in the dark furrows at my feet,
and in the mountain oaks overhead the birds
were gathering for the night, the jays and mockers
squawking back and forth, the finches still darting
into the dusty light. The woman who sold me
the potatoes was from Poland; she was someone
out of my childhood in a pink spangled sweater and sunglasses
praising the perfection of all her fruits and vegetables
at the road-side stand and urging me to taste
even the pale, raw sweet corn trucked all the way,
she swore, from New Jersey. "Eat, eat" she said,
"Even if you don't I'll say you did."
Some things
you know all your life. They are so simple and true
they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme,
they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker,
the glass of water, the absence of light gathering
in the shadows of picture frames, they must be
naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.
My friend Henri and I arrived at this together in 1965
before I went away, before he began to kill himself,
and the two of us to betray our love. Can you taste
what I'm saying? It is onions or potatoes, a pinch
of simple salt, the wealth of melting butter, it is obvious,
it stays in the back of your throat like a truth
you never uttered because the time was always wrong,
it stays there for the rest of your life, unspoken,
made of that dirt we call earth, the metal we call salt,
in a form we have no words for, and you live on it.

As with his poetry, in which the workers who fill his poems carry with them the hope and perseverance that belies their often brutal environments, there is one constant that carries him through: I do believe in people.

Poem reprinted with permission. Photo: Philip Levine reading his poems in New York City, September 2006. David Shankbone Creative Commons 2.5

Ten dead, a hundred injured in bloodstained Chicago field

Fri, 25 May 2012 13:30:00 +0000

CHICAGO - Memorial Day in Chicago in 1937 was a hot, sunny day, perfect for picnics, the beach or a trip out to the park or the woods. Workers gathered in the field outside Republic Steel's Chicago plant were, in fact, picnicking. They arrived with their entire families in tow.

They were on strike but the strike was just a week old so people were not yet in the direst of straights. Kids rode on their fathers' shoulders, everybody was having a good time and the holiday atmosphere almost made people forget that bosses and police don't like big gatherings of workers, regardless of the reason for the gathering.

They gathered around Sam's Place, where they had set up a soup kitchen to hear some speeches. It was at Sam's place that food for the strikers was collected. The hot weather was relentless so everyone was glad when the vendors arrived with their ice cream and soft drinks. From time to time people broke out into song with "Solidarity Forever!" being the one heard most often.

And then they began their peaceful march to the plant, a third of the mile away from Sam's Place. Fathers carried their kids and women dressed in their Sunday best walked arm-in-arm with them.

Five hundred Chicago policemen stopped them with the captain shouting through a bullhorn: "You dirty sons of bitches, this is as far as you go!"

Two hundred and fifty yards from the plant the assault began. Cops armed with extra long clubs smashed them down onto the people's heads, into the groins of the men and onto the breasts of the women. Then the cops began pulling their guns out of their holsters.

"We have the right to picket peacefully," the women protested.

"You have no rights, you red bastards, you got no rights," the cops shouted back.

Children were screaming. Then came the tear gas, then grenades and then the awful gunfire. Bullets shot from the guns, bored through human flesh into the legs and the backs of fleeing men, women and children until 100 were injured and ten were dead.

Cops shrieked in excitement, running after fleeing workers, shooting them in their backs. When a woman tripped and fell, four cops surrounded her and smashed her face with their boots until the flesh was gone and only her facial bones were visible.

The police lifted dead bodies off the ground and threw them into vans already loaded with the injured and dying.

The horrific details are with us still today because a few brave souls caught snippets of the action on their cameras. The picnic ground was left a bloodstained field.

Today, 75 years later, the fight for workers' rights is still front and center. After occupying the state capital in Madison, Wisconsin last year workers may be on the verge next week of recalling a right-wing Republican Governor who pushed through a law to destroy the collective bargaining rights the families were demanding back then in 1937. There is no question on whose side Wisconsin's Gov. Scott Walker would have been had he been alive in 1937.

While Memorial Day is traditionally thought of as a day to remember our fallen soldiers, many in the labor movement would like to include fallen workers on that list. American history, they say, has also involved warfare between those who want to expand wealth and democracy and those who want to restrict both to a privileged few.

This incredible day in American history will be remembered on May 26^th, 2012 at Chicago's George Washington High School, 3535 E. 114^TH St., right where the massacre occurred, with a panel discussion at 10 a.m. and a "still fighting back rally" at 1:30 p.m., featuring Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers of America.

The event, sponsored by the Steelworker's Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR), will also feature other labor leaders, elected officials, artists and academicians. And, of course, just like the event in 1937, there will be music, entertainment and food.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons: This file was provided to Wikimedia Commons by the National Archives and Records Administration as part of a cooperation project.

Labor history: "Bonus Army" starts national movement

Fri, 25 May 2012 12:48:00 +0000

Eighty years ago today, the first "Bonus Marchers" arrived in Washington, D.C.

Millions of American veterans had returned home from the war in 1918, only to find out that the benefits the U.S. government had promised them would not kick in until 1945. As the Great Depression sunk in, many became desperate and embittered. A group of veterans in Portland, Oregon, decided to do something. Carrying a bugle and a flag and calling themselves the Bonus Army, they crossed the country, picking up other veterans as they went along.

The idea caught on, and veterans from across the country descended on Washington, the first arriving 80 years ago today, their numbers reaching 20,000 after just a week. There, foreshadowing the Occupy Wall Street movement, they set up camp, the largest shantytown in the country. The people of Washington supported the camp, bringing them food and other supplies, as well as joining in demonstrations. The Hoover administration panicked and sent the active military to break up the camp; a battle ensued.

Photos were seen across the country, and the public, outraged, pressed for action. Instead of waiting until the 1940s, the vets received their bonuses four years after their encampment was dismantled. The memories of the protests helped the next way of soldiers: In 1944, Congress drafted the GI bill.

Photo via Wikipedia.

X-Men presents comics’ first interracial gay wedding

Thu, 24 May 2012 15:45:00 +0000

The pages of Marvel Comics' Astonishing X-Men will feature the first interracial gay superhero wedding, when issue #51 of the beloved comic series hits stores June 20. It will feature the comics' first openly gay hero, Northstar, marrying his longtime boyfriend.

The Canadian mutant hero (a.k.a. Jean-Paul Beaubier) has recently acquired a small fanbase within the LGBT community. He will marry African-American Kyle Jinadu. Northstar was revealed to be a gay character way back in 1992, becoming the first Marvel hero to be recognized as such. That was a big deal for comics everywhere at that time. This new development seems to be the next logical step forward in Marvel's increasingly diverse, pro-equality lineup of stories and characters.

Astonishing X-Men #50, which hit shelves May 23, was the issue in which Northstar proposed to his boyfriend.

Thor Parker, a worker at Midtown Comics in New York's Times Square, said that the issue and the one to come are sure to be hits. "You're seeing people come in and ask for a comic by name and number, which usually only happens when something big is going on." Parker, who is the store's events director and social marketer, added that, in celebration, their store is actively seeking out same-sex couples who want to have an in-store wedding on the day of the upcoming comic's release.

In recent years, comics have taken an immense step forward in terms of promoting racial and gender equality. In 2010, the classic Archie comics added a gay character to its roster. And DC Comics has, for a while, had a lesbian superhero - Batwoman. DC also recently announced that one of its iconic characters would soon come out of the closet as part of a series reboot and a representation of the new direction the comic company is headed with some of its characters.

Meanwhile, the new alter ego of Spider-Man in Marvel's Ultimate Spider-Man comics is half-Hispanic, half-African American. And DC's new Batwing series features an African Batman fighting police corruption in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Clearly, comics are moving in a progressive direction, and at a rate which readers have never before seen.

Herndon Graddick, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, commented, "When a major comic publisher like Marvel not only includes, but publicly celebrates the legal wedding of two of its gay characters, it reflects how supporting same-sex couples has become the new normal. Readers expect to see their realities portrayed in these fictional worlds, and today that includes married gay and lesbian couples."

Cartoonist Tom Batiuk, who is introducing a gay couple who attend their high school prom in a comic strip he writes, commented on how comics' acceptance of LGBT characters coincides with today's youth embracing equality in the real world. "As I sit in on the classes in my old high school," he said, "I see how the younger generation's attitude toward gays is more open and accepting than that of their predecessors."

X-Men titles in particular have always been known for being incredibly bold in depicting racial/gender equality. All races have been heavily represented amongst the main X-Men team (take African female superhero, Storm, or Asian-American member Jubilee, for instance). There have also been Jewish X-Men, bisexual X-Men (like character Mystique), and even communist X-Men.

What is especially fitting and poetic about that is that the "anti-mutant propaganda" that occurs in the world of the X-Men (in which some normal humans fear mutants, and conservative politicians try and introduce anti-mutant legislation) has always served as a metaphor for real world prejudice. Thus, there are few better vehicles to express the need for equality than X-Men.

"The Marvel Universe has always reflected the world outside your window," said Marvel editor in-chief Axel Alonso. "We strive to make sure that our characters, relationships, and stories are grounded in reality."

In a continuing effort to create well-crafted, realistic stories, the upcoming issue will reportedly not turn a blind eye to the controversy surrounding gay marriage, and will examine homophobia by including some characters who do not approve of Northstar's orientation or his choice to get married.

"At least one of Northstar's team members is going to turn down the invitation," said Alonso, "and that's going to make for an interesting dynamic."

Marjorie Liu, the current writer for Astonishing X-Men, commented, "Here are two people trying to live their lives - one mutant and gay, one Black and gay - empowered in their own ways, but also fringe-dwellers. And they're making it happen. They're living life on their own terms. It doesn't matter that it's a superhero comic, the message is: You can do the same thing."

Liu said the wedding would take place in New York's Central Park, where gay marriage is legal. However, she teased, this is still a superhero wedding, and the appearance of some kind of world-threatening trouble is always possible.

"As for the ceremony," she said, "Well, what wedding ever goes off without a hitch?"

Photo: Marvel Official Site

Asia’s mad arms race

Thu, 24 May 2012 13:49:00 +0000

Asia is currently in the middle of an unprecedented arms race that is not only sharpening tensions in the region, but competing with efforts by Asian countries to address poverty and growing economic disparity. The gap between rich and poor-calculated by the Gini coefficient that measures inequality-has increased from 39 percent to 46 percent in China, India, and Indonesia. While affluent households continue to garner larger and larger portions of the economic pie, "Children born to poor families can be 10 times more likely to die in infancy" than those from wealthy families, according to Changyong Rhee, chief economist of the Asian Development Bank.

This inequality trend is particularly acute in India, where life expectancy is low, infant mortality high, education spotty, and illiteracy widespread, in spite of that country's status as the third largest economy in Asia, behind China and Japan. According to an independent charity, the Naandi Foundation, some 42 percent of India's children are malnourished. Bangladesh, a far poorer country, does considerably better in all these areas.

And yet last year India was the world's leading arms purchaser, including a deal that will spend $20 billion dollars on high performance French fighter planes. India is also developing a long-range ballistic missile capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads, and buying submarines and surface craft. Its military budget is set to rise 17 percent this year to $42 billion.

"It is ridiculous. We are getting into a useless arms race at the expense of fulfilling the needs of poor people," Praful Bidwai of the Coalition of Nuclear Disarmament and Peace told the New York Times.

China, too, is in the middle of an arms boom that includes beefing up its navy, constructing a new generation of stealth aircraft, and developing a ballistic missile that is potentially capable of neutralizing U.S. carriers near its coast. Beijing's arms budget has grown at a rate of some 12 percent a year and, at $106.41 billion, is now the second largest on the planet. The U.S. budget-not counting the various wars Washington is embroiled in-runs a little over $800 billion, although some have estimated that it is over $1 trillion.

While China has made enormous strides in overcoming poverty, there are some 250 million Chinese officially still considered poor, and the country's formerly red-hot economy is cooling. "Data on April spending and output put another nail into hopes that China's economy is bottoming out," Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics told the Financial Times.

The same is true for most of Asia. For instance, India's annual economic growth rate has fallen from 9 percent to 6.1 percent over the past two and a half years.

Tensions between China and other nations in the region have set off a local arms race. Taiwan is buying four U.S.-made Perry-class guided missile frigates, and Japan has shifted much of its military from its northern islands to face southward toward China.

The Philippines are spending almost $1 billion on new aircraft and radar, and recently held joint war games with the U.S. South Korea has just successfully tested a long-range cruise missile. Washington is reviving ties with Indonesia's brutal military because the island nation controls the strategic seaways through which pass most of the region's trade and energy supplies.

Australia is also re-orientating its defense to face China, and Australian Defense Minister Stephen Smith has urged "that India play the role it could and should as an emerging great power in the security and stability of the region."

But that "role" is by no means clear, and some have read Smith's statement as an attempt to rope New Delhi into a united front against Beijing. The recent test of India's Agni V nuclear-capable ballistic missile is largely seen as directed at China.

India and China fought a brief but nasty border war in 1962, and India claims China is currently occupying some 15,000 square miles in Indian territory. The Chinese, in turn, claim almost 40,000 square miles of the Indian state of Arunachai Pradesh. While Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh says that "overall our relations [with China] are quite good," he also admits "the border problem is a long-standing problem."

India and China also had a short dust up last year when a Chinese warship demanded that the Indian amphibious assault vessel Airavat identify itself shortly after the ship left the port of Hanoi, Vietnam. Nothing came of the incident but Indian President Pratibha Patil has since stressed the need for "maritime security," and "the protection of our coasts, our 'sea lines of communications' and the offshore development areas."

China's forceful stance in the South China Sea has stirred up tensions with Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei, and Malaysia as well. A standoff this past April between a Philippine war ship and several Chinese surveillance ships at Scarborough Shoal is still on a low simmer.

China's more assertive posture in the region stems largely from the 1995-96 Taiwan Straits crisis that saw two U.S. carriers humiliate Beijing in its home waters. There was little serious danger of war during the crisis-China does not have the capability to invade Taiwan-but the Clinton Administration took the opportunity to demonstrate U.S. naval power. China's naval build-up dates from that incident.

The recent "pivot" by Obama administration toward Asia, including a military buildup on Wake and Guam and the deployment of 2,500 Marines in Australia, has heightened tensions in the region, and Beijing's heavy-handedness in the South China Sea has given Washington an opening to insert itself into the dispute.

China is prickly about its home waters-one can hardly blame it, given the history of the past 100 years-but there is no evidence that it is expansionist. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said in February "No country, including China, has claimed sovereignty over the entire South China Sea." Nor does Beijing seem eager to use military force. Beijing has drawn some lessons from its disastrous 1979 invasion of Vietnam.

On the other hand, Beijing is seriously concerned about who controls the region's seas, in part because some 80 percent of China's energy supplies pass through maritime choke points controlled by the U.S. and its allies.

The tensions in Asia are real, if not as sharp or deep as they have been portrayed in the U.S. media. China and India do, indeed, have border "problems," but China also describes New Delhi as "not competitors but partners," and has even offered an alliance to keep "foreign powers"-read the U.S. and NATO-from meddling in the region.

The real question is, can Asia embark on an arms race without increasing the growing gulf between rich and poor and the resulting political instability that is likely to follow in its wake? "Widening inequality threatens the sustainability of Asian growth," says Asian Development Bank economist Rhee. "A divided and unequal nation cannot prosper."

More than half a century ago former General and President Dwight Eisenhower noted that "Every gun that is made, every warship that is launched, every rocket fired signifies...a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed...this is not a way of life at all...it is humanity hanging from an iron cross."

Americans have ignored Eisenhower's warning. Asian nations would do well to pay attention.

This article originally appeared in Dispatches from the Edge. Photo by Samuelraj - Professional Photographer // CC 2.0

Wisconsin Walker recall battle close to dead heat

Wed, 23 May 2012 14:06:00 +0000

MILWAUKEE (PAI) - With fewer than two weeks to go in the nationally watched recall campaign against right-wing Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker, polls show a near dead heat in the bitter battle pitting labor's legions against Walker's millions.

On one side in the June 5 election is the governor, who spearheaded the national right-wing drive against workers by eagerly jamming through legislation killing collective bargaining rights for 200,000 state and local workers. He's backed by at least $25 million in cash for campaign ads, most of it raised from right-wing and big business ideologues from outside the state. The national GOP threw in $6 million more.

On the other side are the state's unions and their allies. They're upset not just at losing their rights, but also at Walker's tax cuts for the rich, his anti-woman laws, such as killing women's right to sue against pay discrimination on the job, scandals surrounding his aides and his deep cuts to state aid to local schools. And they remind voters that Walker bragged he would bring jobs to Wisconsin, but his policies have pushed the Badger State into leading the nation in job losses.

"Whether you're a Wisconsinite or not, the stakes are too high to sit this election out," Wisconsin AFSCME member Clyde Weiss wrote in a recent blog. "Walker is the poster boy for the anti-union attacks we have faced from coast to coast and has already raised millions of dollars from some of the most anti-union people in the country, including billionaire right-wing extremist David Koch."

But the workers and their allies are have difficulties caused by lack of time to reach every voter. Additionally, Democratic Party gubernatorial nominee, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, is short of campaign cash. He lost to Walker in Nov. 2010 and some unions did not support Barrett in the primary to choose a Walker foe. National Democrats have contributed little in money and nothing in manpower to Barrett's drive, leading to complaints from state Democrats.

Opinion polls vary. Greenberg Quinlan, a Democratic firm, gave Walker a 50%-47% lead, within the margin of error, but said Barrett led among independents, 50%-44%. A GOP-leaning pollster gave Walker a 9-point lead. An independent poll by Marquette University Law School puts Walker up by six. An internal state Democratic tally says Walker and Barrett are in a flat tie. Walker's approval rating is below 50%.

All that has prompted unionists, who are leading the "Reclaim Wisconsin!" recall drive, to campaign even harder, not just for Barrett, but also for his running mate, lieutenant gubernatorial nominee Mahlon Mitchell, president of the state's Fire Fighters Association. He faces Walker's lieutenant governor, whom the petitioners also recalled.

The Wisconsin AFL-CIO had one phone bank running full-time in Milwaukee and opened a second there the week of May 21. AFSCME is distributing a "We Are Wisconsin!" film and videos of rank-and-file workers discussing what the election and Walker's agenda means to them and their neighbors.

IAFF is out campaigning for its leader. Other unions marshaled low-income state janitors and nurses who lost rights.

The state labor federation also came up with an online "Friends and Neighbors" video tool of its own. Besides the positive message it carries about restoring Wisconsin's history of civility and workers' rights, it also has a clip of Walker saying how he was going to use ugly "divide and conquer" tactics to win the recall race.

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee custodian Mark Bussian told the city's labor council - while volunteering a second time - that, "I'm out here to recall Walker because he took away our collective bargaining rights. It is clear that Walker is very much out for himself. He does not care about the needs of the people of Wisconsin."

And Chris Czubakowski, a Postal Workers Local 3 member from Wauwatosa, told the state fed the Walker recall is "a fight to protect middle class workers." That's a theme state AFL-CIOs, national unions and the national AFL-CIO are using on the campaign trail this year to stand up and fight back against GOP-Right Wing-big business policies being pushed everywhere from Congress to City Hall.

"I could go on for hours with people I call about why we need to recall Walker," said Czubakowski. "But since everyone has busy lives I usually stick to talking about Walker's attacks on workers, his attacks on the next generation with his cuts to education and how recalling Walker is about preserving a strong middle class for Wisconsin."

"Walker underestimated the historic opposition from you and hundreds of thousands of other Wisconsinites who worked together in unprecedented ways to stand up to his policies that have hurt working families and our communities," the state fed said. "It is going to be those same grassroots efforts of people like you talking to their friends and neighbors until Election Day that will show Walker he cannot divide and conquer us." Besides Walker and his #2, four GOP state senators also face Democratic foes in recall votes. The state senate, which had been GOP-run, is now a 16-16 tie.

Marty Beil, executive director of AFSCME Council 24 - one of several AFSCME councils representing state and local workers whom Walker stripped of their rights - downplayed pre-primary disagreement among unions between Barrett and other Democratic hopefuls. Unions united about backing IAFF's Mitchell for the state's number two post.

"The ultimate goal has always been to defeat Walker. The grassroots campaign we've built to counter Walker's millions from out-of-state billionaires will be working hard to help Barrett," Beil said.

Photo: Heading out to knock on doors. Wisconsin State AFL-CIO facebook page.

Cory Booker surrenders

Wed, 23 May 2012 12:10:00 +0000

Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, N.J., in his appearance on last Sunday's "Meet the Press," said he was nauseated by the attacks on private capital. He said Mitt Romney's firm, Bain Capital, "has done a lot of good." He added that he was sick of all the political attacks, "Stop the attacks on Jeremiah Wright and stop attacking Bain Capital," he demanded.

Frankly that comparison made me sick.

Everybody knows that the Republicans used Rev. Wright to stoke the fires of racism and division in order to try to defeat Obama in 2008. They are planning to open up a new attack campaign using the Wright issue for this year's election. I agree this racist manipulation of the voters should be stopped.

On the other hand, Booker knows that Romney is playing the race and class card when he says that because of his experience in the private sector he knows how to create jobs and Obama doesn't. This is Romney's core argument. This is why he thinks he should be president. The fact is that his company destroyed a whole lot of jobs too and what it mainly created was huge profits and great personal wealth for him. Which is what firms like Bain Capital do. If the Democrats can't criticize what Romney did at Bain it will be very difficult to defeat him. They have to take on and defeat Romney's core argument if they are to win.

Booker was so openly critical of Obama on "Meet the Press" that David Gregory, the show's host, had to assure his viewers that Booker was a supporter of the president.

The Republicans immediately took Booker's remarks and turned them into an ad for Romney. There was a huge outcry against Booker who then tried to backtrack on his statement.

Obama refused to retreat from his criticism of Bain, in fact, and made the point that Romney's ability to make maximum profits in the private sector does not qualify him to be president. Obama pointed out that the president has to take into account the general welfare of all the people. Romney's profits-before-people approach is what has brought on the severe crisis we are now experiencing.

You can't blame the biggest economic crisis since the 1930s on Rev. Wright. A lot of people understand that the 1percent got rich from exporting our jobs, from war and from manipulating the financial markets. That's why a majority want to curb the power and increase the taxes of the super-rich.

Mayor Booker may have burned a very big bridge this time. He is in effect waving the flag of surrender in the face of the Republicans, who are using this election to qualitatively set back the democratic rights and economic well being of the working class and racial minorities.

Why is Booker doing this? Why does he continually bow at the feet New Jersey's Republican blowhard Gov. Chris Christie every chance he gets? Many good-thinking people know that Booker has the possibility of running for the U.S. Senate and they believe he wants to assure the Wall Street big bucks folks that he's their guy. Booker is a good showman and he loves to play the one who's above it all, whose politics are neither left or right. For the mayor of Newark - a city going through particularly hard times - to surrender to the party of austerity for the workers and prosperity for the rich is shameful.

This time his fake neutrality may have cooked his goose politically.

This is not a time to make nice with the Republican menace. The unemployed, the dispossessed and evicted, the homeless and the bankrupt, the criminalized immigrants, the African American and Latino families that have lost virtually all of their hard-earned assets and are hungry and impoverished, the millions of vulnerable working families - all demand that politicians who say they are on their side show that they are by their actions.

Sam Webb, in a recent People's World article commenting on the huge $2 billion lost at JPMorgan Chase, made an important basic point that applies to the capitulation and vulnerablity of capitalist politicians. He wrote:

"... the struggle for minor and major financial/regulatory reform - not to mention turning Wall Street into a public democratically run utility - cannot be left to the politicians - even the best of them. It must become the business of an aroused people."

This election year and beyond, let the people continue to be aroused...

We must go forward.

Photo: Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker. Anne White CC 2.0

Traveling the road away from war

Tue, 22 May 2012 14:18:00 +0000

NATO's pledge, at its Chicago summit, to turn over the lead in combat operations to the Afghan National Security Forces by the middle of next year, and end the alliance's combat mission by the close of 2014, sets up a new signpost on the road to ending our country's longest war.

But NATO's stated commitment to "enduring partnership" with Afghanistan, and the new U.S.-Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement which could stretch out U.S. military involvement long after 2014, should dampen any optimism that the war is really coming to an end.

What NATO's commitment does reflect is the continued and growing opposition to the war among people in the NATO countries, symbolized by new French President Francois Hollande's decision to withdraw French combat troops a year ahead of schedule.

And, the ever-growing opposition here at home, with over two-thirds of the U.S. people now saying it's time and past time to leave.

A fascinating drama took place in the U.S. House of Representatives last week, as the Republican leadership refused to allow a vote on an amendment to the 2013 Defense Authorization Act.

The bipartisan amendment, introduced by Representatives James McGovern, D-Mass. and Walter Jones, R-N.C., would require President Obama to stick to his pledge to end all military and security operations by the end of 2014, and to get Congress' okay if any troops were to stay beyond that deadline.

A similar measure nearly passed last year, and House Republican leaders reportedly worried that it might actually pass this time. Rep. Jones told CNN his colleagues said another seven or eight Republicans were prepared to vote for the amendment. He said he believed it wasn't brought up because this time it would have passed.

The vote the Republican leadership scheduled instead held its own drama. The amendment first introduced two years ago by Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., to limit spending on the war to that needed for the safe and orderly withdrawal of all U.S. troops and contractors, predictably failed. But for the first time a majority of House Democrats voted for it, by a margin of 101-79.

Tens of thousands of anti-war protesters are surging through Chicago streets this week, led by veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, dozens of whom have thrown away hard-earned medals in protest

As the enormous costs in money and lives continue to soar, it is more urgent than ever to end a war which is only making conditions worse for the Afghan people.

The only way forward lies in bringing all the U.S. troops and contractors home, negotiations involving all parties to the conflict and all countries in the region, and international aid to help Afghans rebuild their country and achieve a viable economy.

It's now the job of everyone among the two-thirds of the American people opposed to the Afghanistan war, to roll up our sleeves for a complete end to the conflict.

The determination and commitment to ending the war that's being shown by the demonstrators in Chicago points the way.

Photo: At a NATO protest, Chicago, May 20, 2012. Teresa Albano/PW

The euro and European disintegration: Should we care?

Thu, 17 May 2012 16:03:00 +0000

Paul Krugman has long been skeptical of the success of the euro. The Nobel Prize winning Princeton economist, New York Times columnist and longtime Keynesian (stimulus) advocate to get the economy out of depression has repeatedly expressed his doubts on the viability of a single European currency in the face of political and fiscal disunity.

The European Union's unwillingness/inability to spend money on expanding employment (in other words, fiscal policy) in managing European business cycles (recession and growth) gives them no tools with which to fight economic depression.

The EU set up a monetary union, but it needs a political union based on the empowerment of working people, not just bankers, to survive this crisis.

The main monetary tool for central banks to spur growth - lowering interest rates - is not possible once those rates approach zero. In addition, central banks without more democratic supervision, respond first to the ways in which economic cycles impact the financial system; they respond first to their most immediate clients - banks. Banks havea powerful and compelling interest to avoid anything which lowers the value of their loan and investment assets. This interest is no less powerful and compelling even if their lending and investment practices were foolish and reckless.

They will shamelessly beg for public bailouts when in trouble, but starve a whole nation before willingly inflating or taxing an additional penny of their wealth to help their fellow citizens. Those citizens, who were so kind to deposit their money in the bankers' trust, or promise to pay back loans - even though many of the contract terms and resets were concealed in misleading language and assurances from lenders - are left ruined. Then they are lectured by the rich and their flunkies that poverty is really in their best interest -- "the hungry dog hunts
harder."

When the financial crisis of 2008 hit, the central bank in Europe and the leading EU countries - France and Germany - adopted a different approach than the U.S. Federal Reserve. The Obama stimulus package, and a fairly aggressive policy of easy credit by the Federal Reserve, was motivated by the mandate to reduce unemployment, not just keep inflation low. The stimulus and the easy money policy were not enough, says Krugman, to fix the depression, but they halted the downward trajectory of jobs and GDP.

European policy has been dominated by banker interests. There is no "reduce unemployment" mandate or obligation in the authority of the European Central Bank (ECB). There is no EU entity which can stimulate growth like a government, as well as absorb bad debt and distribute the losses across the EU. Thus ECB activity has focused on cutting EU member budgets under the now refuted theory that laying off more people will somehow instill markets with "confidence."

Laying off more people in a depression has the opposite effect - it reduces GDP, reduces gross revenues for government, and debt gets worse, not better, after the cuts. This policy now has a global name: "austerity."

Elections in Greece, France and Germany have punished the austerity policy.

In Greece, the political center has collapsed under the waves of layoffs and wage cuts forced upon Greek workers, leaving it currently without any governing coalition, and another election looming. France has rejected austerity with the election of Socialist François Hollande. Angela Merkel's party in Germany suffered serious losses in parliament.

Krugman predicts the following.

1. Greek euro exit, very possibly next month, since previous commitments to pay down debt in exchange for loans were rejected at the polls. Political chaos is already stimulating a run on Greek banks as depositors try to move their money to safety.

2. Further huge withdrawals from vulnerable Spanish and Italian banks, as depositors there try to move their money to Germany, or other "safe" havens.

3. Spanish, Italian, Irish, Portuguese, Greek authorities (the PIIGS countries) may try to ban transfer deposits out of country and put limits on cash withdrawals and/or make huge draws on ECB credit to keep the banks from collapsing.

4. Germany either accepts huge indirect public claims on Italy and Spain (the largest troubled countries), or, the end of the euro.

This sequence of events seems highly likely. Krugman has been predicting it for over two years since the crisis began, and EU leaders have so far rejected the stimulus strategy which was the only hope of escaping this logic.

But it is a terrifying logic! And it is NOT the path to recovery. Disintegration in Europe is the path to aggravated conflict on every level, including peace and security. Recovery means investment, not cutbacks, in a depression. It means greater unity, not divisions, between EU nations and peoples. The working class must lead the way. But the way must be paved with internationalism. The fate of Greek workers will determine the fate of all EU workers. The election wave in Europe shows that working class and many democratic forces have awakened to the grave dangers that austerity forces have set in motion.

U.S. workers have a dramatic stake in the outcome. Another recession on top of the depression now threatens Europe. It will take the wind out of any hope we have of sustaining the anemic recovery we have here. The austerity forces here stopped the Obama recovery program two years ago. Krugman is pessimistic - but despite his brilliance as an economist - he has at times been politically numb. Let's take that as a tonic. The lessons of Europe and the courageous reversal of austerity in the face of persistent threats from bankers and the rich give hope. When working people get moving - anything is possible!

Republicans show they don’t care about Women’s Health Week

Wed, 16 May 2012 15:37:00 +0000

It seems Republicans, continuing their war on women, don't realize this week is National Women's Health Week.

The theme of this year's Women's Health Week is "It's Your Time." The aim is to empower women "to make their health a top priority." It encourages women to get regular checkups and preventive screenings, and to pay attention to mental health, including getting enough sleep and managing stress.

Oblivious to all this, today, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives is expected to approve the watered-down Republican version of the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act (HR 4970), which "not only eliminates important provisions included in the Senate-passed bipartisan bill, S1925, but contains new ones that would actually be dangerous to survivors of domestic violence while shielding abusers from accountability," the National Organization for Women warns. The Republican leadership said it would not allow any floor amendments.

The New York Times notes that VAWA, originally enacted in 1994, has been "key to efforts against domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking." Talk about managing stress!

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Sandy Adams, R-Fla., removes protections for Native American women, immigrant women, LGBT individuals, college students and others.

The Times editorializes: "House members on both sides of the aisle who are serious about combating domestic violence must work to defeat this atrocious bill. If that fails, the Senate will need to insist on fixing it during the reconciliation process."

A "real" VAWA reauthorization bill, HR 4271, has been introduced by Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., but Republican leaders are not allowing this version to be offered for a vote.

Meanwhile, any day now, the Kansas state Senate is about to vote on a bill that would require doctors to give false information to patients to scare them away from having an abortion. The "Omnibus Abortion Restriction and Tax Penalty Bill," SB 313, "forces doctors to lie to their patients," says Planned Parenthood. "There is no scientific evidence that choosing to end a pregnancy increases a woman's risk of breast cancer -- but doctors will be required to tell women seeking abortion that such a link exists."

In addition, the bill provides legal protection for a doctor who withholds information about possible health risks from a pregnant patient if they think the truth might lead her to end her pregnancy.

SB 313 also includes controversial tax measures touted by Republicans and "pro-life" groups as preventing taxpayer money from funding abortions.

The bill already passed the state House on May 7, with an 88-31 vote.

Planned Parenthood is urging letters to legislators in Kansas and other states to "stop playing doctor ... stop interfering with women's most private medical decisions."

Also ignoring women's health, two other recent war-on-women actions by Republican governors.

* On April 13 , Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed the most extreme abortion ban in the United States, banning all abortion after 20 weeks with very limited exceptions.

As a result of a similar although less restrictive measure passed in Nebraska in 2010, Danielle Deaver was forced to continue a pregnancy even after a health crisis meant she was going to lose the baby anyway. She was forced spend 10 excruciating days waiting to give birth to a baby that she knew would die minutes later, because her doctors feared prosecution under her state's 20-week abortion ban.

In a personal appeal to Gov. Brewer not to sign the Arizona ban, Deaver wrote:

"That my pregnancy ended, that choice was made by God. How to handle the end of my pregnancy, that should have been private. But the decision that should have remained mine and my husband's at a very difficult time was decided for us - and it was decided by politicians we'd never met."

* In March, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell signed a bill requiring Virginia women to undergo an ultrasound procedure prior to having an abortion. Opponents charge the aim was to intimidate women from having abortions. The women health's organization NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia told CBS News the bill was "an unprecedented invasion of privacy and government intrusion into the doctors' offices and living rooms of Virginia women."

On the plus side, women's health scored a victory in Texas on April 30 when a federal judge blocked the state from implementing a rule that would have excluded Planned Parenthood from the state's Women's Health Program.

Planned Parenthood is the single largest provider of care in the Women's Health Program which serves low-income and uninsured women. Currently more than one-quarter of Texan women are uninsured, and women in Texas have the third-highest rate of cervical cancer in the U.S.

U.S. policy blamed for keeping American in Cuban jail

Wed, 16 May 2012 10:26:00 +0000

Cuba's ambassador to the U.S. has weighed in on the controversy surrounding Alan Gross, a U.S. contractor currently serving a 15-year sentence in that island nation for illegally distributing satellite communications equipment.

Following a phone interview with Gross by CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Ambassador Jorge Bolaños Suárez repeated an offer to the U.S. government to sit down and discuss the Gross case as well as that of the Cuban Five.

Media coverage of the Gross case gives an opening for action on the case of the Five, a group of Cuban agents whose work involved uncovering plots hatched by terrorist groups in Miami.

They are serving extraordinarily long sentences in American maximum security prisons despite the fact that they were sent to Miami by Cuba to investigate right-wing terrorists who not only blew up a Cuban passenger plane but who continued after that incident to endanger the lives of Americans as well as Cubans.

Blitzer's interview earlier this month opened the door to an interesting and potentially productive exchange with representatives of the Cuban government, including Bolaños who heads the Cuban Interest Section in Washington D.C. and Josefina Vidal Fereira, director of the North America Bureau of the Cuban foreign ministry.

In the CNN interview Gross demanded leave to interrupt his jail sentence to travel to the U.S. to visit his dying mother. He and his supporters assert that Cuba is being ungenerous and hypocritical because René Gonzalez, one of the "Cuban Five" prisoners in the United States, was allowed to visit his critically ill brother in Cuba earlier this year.

But observers note there is no equivalency between Gross's request to be released to visit his sick mother in the U.S. and Gonzalez' visit to his brother in Cuba because it was not the U.S. government that made it possible for Gonzalez to go to Cuba to visit his brother.

The State Department, in fact, had argued that he should not be allowed to go, and only relented when directly ordered to do so by a federal judge.

Furthermore, at the time of his visit, René Gonzalez was already on supervised release, having served 12 years in prison and he is not permitted to return permanently to Cuba until his supervised status is over.

An Associated Press investigation released in February shows that Gross was employed by Development Alternatives, Inc., a private contractor frequently used by the U.S. government to carry out international acts of skullduggery. Gross lied on his visa application for travel to Cuba and, knowing that he was breaking Cuban laws, tried to conceal his activities. The types of electronic equipment Gross brought into Cuba are not just items you can pick up at Radio Shack; rather, some are sophisticated devices used in espionage work designed to send messages without being detected by authorities.

Gross and his supporters, including the U.S. State Department, claim that he went to Cuba merely to help Jewish congregations get Internet access and that he was arrested, prosecuted and sentenced for no reason. But those congregations themselves have countered that they have already had Internet access for quite a while without Gross' help.

Yet the desire of Gross and his family to see him freed and returned to the United States is understandable. The Gross case raises the issue of humanitarianism even though the U.S. government policy toward the Five and their families has been harsh - two of the wives have been denied visas and thus have been unable to visit their husbands for 13 years.

The Cubans have been hinting for a long time that they would be willing to discuss freeing Gross as a humanitarian gesture, if the United States would consider freeing the Cuban 5 on the same basis. The United States has quietly carried out various prisoner exchanges in the past, either as an exchange of humanitarian gestures, or as a simple prisoner swap.

The Cuban 5 have done nothing against the interests of the United States and its people. Unlike Gross in Cuba, the five men were not promoting regime change at the behest of a foreign power. Rather, their assignment was to monitor ultra-right Cuban exile groups in South Florida. For years these groups have carried out terrorist acts against Cuba and Cuban diplomats at the cost of thousands of lives. The terrorist activities the five men were trying to prevent are illegal in the United States, of course. But shockingly, when the Cuban government shared information gathered by these agents with the FBI, rather than curtail the terrorist groups, it arrested the five.

During the trial that followed the U.S. government secretly subsidized mass media in the Miami area who were covering the trial.

The U.S. State Department, headed by Hilary Clinton, claims that Gross's imprisonment is the main obstacle to improving U.S. - Cuban relations. Following that logic, simultaneous release of Gross and the remaining members of the Cuban Five could remove that obstacle.

The fact that this issue has now been covered from both sides on much-watched CNN has put it in the public eye, giving supporters of freedom for the Cuban 5 a chance to raise concerns anew.

Supporters of justice for the Five urge everyone to contact the State Department and the Justice Department to demand full freedom for all of the Cuban Five, and, by the way, for Alan Gross as part of a humanitarian arrangment. They also urge signatures on a petition.

Photo: J G Blanchard Lewis // CC 2.0

The year 2047: a postman's nightmare

Tue, 15 May 2012 15:11:00 +0000

My weary hand grabs the first piece of mail for the day. I open the big brass box to begin stuffing the day's mail into the individual slots when the familiar sound buzzes over my gray, balding noggin. I don't need to look up to know what it is, but I do anyway. The first APD of the day - automated postal drone - zooms 30 feet overhead to observe my work ethic. I want to extend my bird to this electronic avian, but I resist. As they say in this time and place, just be happy you have a job.

I have been doing this gig for 50 years. I started at the nubile age of 28. I loved this job when I began my career as a letter carrier. In 1997 I delivered my first piece of mail to the American public. I knew right away that this profession was my calling. It was a union job with decent pay and benefits. If I gave a fair day's work for a fair day's pay, I could earn a good living and a respectable retirement. I would be able to raise a family and maybe send a kid or two off to college. This is what I signed up for. I give 30 years of my most productive working days to the Postal Service, and in return I get some catching up time in my senior years. It seemed to be a civilized and reasonable arrangement. Fifty years later, folks tell me it was a silly thing to believe in. As they say, just be happy you have a job.

Everything for we letter carriers was great for the first 10 years of my employment. Mail volume hit record levels and the Postal Service was riding the proverbial Wavy Gravy train. The folks at postal headquarters never even flinched when Congress hoisted an unprecedented $56 billion retirees' health care prefunding mandate upon our backs. Just like the stock market at the time, the only future the Postal Service saw was filled with eternal optimism and growth. Light my big, fat cigar and fill my bottomless glass with champagne, old boy! The Great Recession of 2009 popped that bubble. As the economy went into the tank, our unending piles of U.S. mail sank. It was at this time my career as a letter carrier began to unwind. My chosen profession would soon become a job. The distinction became clear over the next few years. Very clear.

A new Postmaster General was appointed; Patrick Donahoe. As the postal unions attempted to find innovative ways to survive those most trying times by expanding products and services to the American public, this guy seemed hell bent on destroying the Postal Service. His remedy was to cut and downsize every aspect of our great institution. And with the help of Congress, he got his wish.

First, half of all facilities and post offices were closed across this land. Then, Saturday delivery and door-to-door delivery were eliminated. By the time he and his minions in Congress were done, the Postal Service delivered only three days a week and hundreds of thousands of good jobs were gone. This all happened by the end of my second decade as a letter carrier, 2017. At the middle age of 48, I had just enough seniority to keep my position. That was the first time I heard a supervisor tell me: Just be happy you have a job.

The next year, the once proud United States Postal Service was privatized, and we found out what a shill this Donahoe character was. The public had enough of the shoddy and lackluster performance standards of every-other-day delivery. We were sold off to a multinational conglomerate called AmeriPost, and our Postmaster General became its CEO. All contracts with unions were abolished and all career employees were given this choice; clear your locker and never come back, or sign on as a new employee of AmeriPost. The pay was half of what we were making, and there were almost no benefits. I stayed on. It was the only job I knew. By the way, unemployment in 2018 was near 20 percent. The elections in 2012, 2014, and 2016 had not gone well for us working folks. One phrase just kept running through my head: Just be happy you have a job.

The following decades saw the end of the American Dream. Along with the Post Office being privatized so were all the public schools, libraries, prisons, Social Security, public works, and national and state parks. The economic power was being concentrated completely into the hands of what us old-timers called the One Percent.

I often wonder how this could have happened to this once great nation. Sometimes you can see things more clearly when they're not there. Most of the great books about human freedom, for instance, were written in prison. It's like the people who see a tsunami coming; by the time you see it, it's too late. Or like my old man used to say about love; by the time she talks about leaving, she's already gone. I wish I would have done more 30 years ago to fight for my job and my way of life. I wish I would have done more to fight for my neighbors' as well. If we all stood together and fought together could we have changed American history? Now, we'll never now.

Some say our democracy was stolen from us. I believe we, as a nation of working folks, gave it away. And I include myself in that equation. I firmly adhere to the notion that when you point a finger at someone, there are three more pointing back at you. I was too busy to get involved in all that activism nonsense. Hell, I had bowling on Thursdays and "Dancing with the Stars" playing on my boobtube every Tuesday. Why would I call a congressman or care about another stupid election. Between the sports channels, my motorcycle, and taking the kids to soccer practice, I didn't give a rat's ass about politics as long as my paycheck showed up every two weeks. Even when I saw my neighbors losing their homes and my friends losing their decent union jobs, I did not think it would ever happen to me. Consumerism and entertainment seduced and deluded me in a way that no Siren wailing from a sea rock ever could.

So here I stand now still stuffing mail into the boxes at the end of a street. At the age of 78, in the year 2047, I have a route with 4,000 stops. After the Second Great Depression of '39 I lost all my retirement savings in the privatized American Security System. I fear death will be my only retirement, and I no longer fear the grasp of the Grim Reaper. On many days I long for it. As the second automated postal drone of the day zooms overhead, I remind myself to pick up the pace, only 3,000 more boxes to fill. And I also remind myself: Just be happy you have a job.

Photo: Lockheed D-21 Drone for Blackbird program. CC BY-NC 2.0

"(Re)Presenting America": Are culturally specific museums a good thing?

Tue, 15 May 2012 12:37:00 +0000

Can oppressed groups resurrect their own suppressed histories through a museum?

What has been the historical role of race and ethnicity in the development of the natural history museum?

Can anthropology, which often provided intellectual cover for white supremacy, play a positive role in the "decolonization" of museum space?

These questions and more were dealt with at "(Re)Presenting America: the Evolution of Culturally Specific Museums," a symposium at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, April 25.

A year ago, the National Museum of the American Latino Commission issued a report entitled "To Illuminate the American Story for All," recommending the establishment of a Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino. A campaign was immediately launched by the Friends of the National Museum of the American Latino to "create a museum in our nation's capital to educate, inspire and encourage respect and understanding of the richness and diversity of the American Latino experience within the U.S. and its territories by highlighting the contributions made by Latino leaders, pioneers and communities to the American way of life."

The American Latino Museum has strong advocates in Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., and Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., who in turn gathered support from 22 other members of Congress and sent a letter calling for inclusion of language in support of the museum in the upcoming appropriations bill.

The "(Re)Presenting America" event was organized by the Smithsonian Institution to provide a forum to address the issues surrounding "ethnic" or "culturally specific" museums - whether they have the potential to provide genuine cultural resources to the represented peoples, and the ability to enrich and enlighten the broader, diverse population, fostering greater understanding.

Speakers addressed the idea that the mushrooming of ethnically diverse museums could lead to cultural "Balkanization" that contributes to isolation of racial and ethnic groups. They observed that traditional museums have not represented the diverse histories of our multicultural population.

The symposium, moderated by PBS' Ray Suarez, began with an interview with an actor portraying the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, Joseph Henry. While this format may be considered corny (think Steve Allen's "Meeting of Minds") the interview was fascinating.

"Joseph Henry" spoke about Smithsonian-sponsored anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan's breakthrough 19^th century study on the development of human culture, "Ancient Society." Morgan, highly influenced by Darwin, expounded a theory of successive stages in social evolution: "savagery," "barbarism," and "civilization." Karl Marx's collaborator, Frederick Engels, elaborated on Morgan's theories in his book, "Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State." Although the names of the stages have been dropped (due to their pejorative nature), Morgan's and Engels' ideas about social development still serve as the basis of anthropological investigation today.

The interview also confronted some of the racial issues surrounding the beginnings of anthropology and the natural history museum.

For example, the author of the Dred Scott decision, the 1857 Supreme Court ruling that slaves or their descendants were not protected by the Constitution, was a chancellor of the Smithsonian. During the Civil War, the Smithsonian didn't take sides, but the Southern states withdrew financial support during the war, nearly bankrupting the Smithsonian. Frederick Douglass was prevented from speaking at the Smithsonian because he was black.

Rutgers University professor Clement Price spoke about the evolution of the natural history museum, and its potential to inform social change. Price took issue with the idea that museums are essentially part of the establishment - "You can't take down the master's house using the master's tools" - and therefore cannot play a liberatory role for oppressed minorities. He said museums could, in fact, counter the "master narrative," with its depoliticized past, by providing a space for "remembering" the experiences of forgotten or marginalized peoples.

Just such a space was realized recently in the opening of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University, in Big Rapids, Mich. The museum serves to "remember" America's white supremacist history: an ongoing, sometimes overt, sometimes covert racism that oppresses all peoples of color. The collection consists of objects, signs, images, and other material that demean African Americans, from slavery days to the present (including racist representations of President Obama).

The Jim Crow Museum could serve as an example of the "anti-museum" suggested by another speaker, David Hurst Thomas, curator of the American Museum of Natural History. It takes "the master's tools" (racist propaganda) and re-contextualizes them to question the white supremacist order. Thomas pointed out that in the past, the natural history museum served as the "ugly edge of Manifest Destiny." For example, relics and remains of Native Americans were displayed next to dinosaur fossils, suggesting that indigenous cultures are vestigial, falling off the map of history.

As racial and ethnic groups organized to fight for equality, many social institutions, including museums, have been forced to change. Native Americans pushed for a civic institution that expressed their living history, instead of a repository for fossils and relics, and the National Museum of the American Indian was born. Thomas advocated, with the affirmation of the symposium's other participants, the concept of a "museum different," not a temple to the solitary voice of the anthropologist, but a forum for an open conversation about the multiplicity of experiences of our diverse people.

Image: National Museum of the American Indian

Jungleland? New Orleans community activist rejects NY Times depiction of Ninth Ward

Mon, 14 May 2012 14:21:00 +0000

NEW ORLEANS -- The New York Times Magazine recently ran a story on my home, the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, a place one of the most powerful newspapers in the world insensitively dubbed a "Jungleland." Contrary to the article, residents of this community are not reconciled to life in the wilderness and we don't live in an untamed mess of overgrowth or in a forgotten wasteland. We are not resigned to anything; we are fighting to revive our community.

While the article cites the city government's futile attempts to improve the neighborhood, it barely mentions the overall lack of government support before and after Hurricane Katrina and the hard work by committed citizens to improve the community. Yes, many parts of the Lower Ninth are overgrown and neglected, but what the article missed is that many are not. Moreover, the untold story is how city, state and federal government abandoned this community.

The Times probably had good intentions - document the bad situation so our community can get help. But while writing about broken people, vacant lots and weeds may be sexy journalism, the community needs the outside world to understand how implicit and unconscious bias caused by a history of racism pummeled us.

After Katrina, millions of dollars flowed into New Orleans, and the Lower Ninth was declared the glaring example of what needed rehabilitation. Yet, nearly seven years later, the French Quarter and other areas of tourism and affluence are sparkling, while few improvements have been made in the Lower Ninth. In fact, most of the decaying properties cited in the article are owned by the City of New Orleans, not the residents.

Each day, a tour bus cruises the neighborhood showing visitors hurricane damage and poor living conditions. So tour companies are making money off our tragedy and lack of support. The people? We have become mere spectacles dehumanized in the process.

We need the media to shine a spotlight on the fact that the city, state and federal governments turned their backs on this community.

We haven't given up. Many local organizations and churches are working hard to revitalize the Lower Ninth. Unfortunately, the Times article mentions only Brad Pitt's Make It Right organization as the silver lining in the dark cloud that is the Lower Ninth. Churches and other groups may not offer the glitter, clout and financial resources of Brad Pitt, but they labor daily to improve the quality of life here. The Times article included more about the varieties of plant and animal life that have moved in than about the people and organizations fighting to rescue this community.

Before the Lower Ninth is judged, consider why it has become a vast wasteland. Before Katrina, nearly 15,000 people lived in this community, which had the highest homeownership rate in the city. The overwhelming majority of these owners were African American. After the destruction, 75 percent of the residents didn't return because staying where they had fled was easier than the struggle and expense of returning to rebuild.

Those who did return discovered very little government support. Without nonprofits and thousands of volunteers, more of the Lower Ninth might actually be "Jungleland."

Perhaps the biggest hurdle to restoration is that this community had fewer resources before Katrina. Like other poor, African-American communities nationwide, it had suffered the results of structural racism. The color of our skin had an impact on our schools, access to health care, employment opportunities, and housing and basic human rights. When resources are scarce to begin with, it's hard to recover after tragedy.

For instance, many Lower Ninth residents had no homeowners and flood insurance. The Road Home program, designed to help people rebuild, provided payments to homeowners based on pre-Katrina property values, not actual repair costs. So whites who owned homes in affluent neighborhoods received payments that allowed them to rebuild, even though many of their homes incurred less damage than those of people in neighborhoods like the Lower Ninth.

A 2008 lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) alleged such discriminatory practices and was settled last year. HUD was to pay $62 million to Louisiana homeowners, but disposition of that money is unclear. In another setback, the city didn't allow Lower Ninth residents to come home and start rebuilding until nine months after other New Orleans citizens returned. Faced with increased uncertainty, chaos and financial burdens, people were forced to find work and resettle in their evacuation locations.

What few services were available also caused concern. The social safety net already had gaps but was completely shattered by Katrina. Elderly residents worried about where they could receive health care, parents didn't know where they would send their children to school and seven years later, the community has no grocery store. Clearly the government didn't want us back because the original master-rebuilding plan had the Lower Ninth slated to become green space.

Rebuilding our community may not be profitable, but it's right. African-American lives in the Lower Ninth are just as valuable as those of whites in the French Quarter or Garden District.

Often overlooked is the role that structural racism played in destruction of our community. If the French Quarter had been in the same area as the Lower Ninth, the government wouldn't have allowed anything as potentially destructive as a barge to remain untethered with a storm coming. Levees would have been built to withstand a Category 4 hurricane so major tourist attractions wouldn't be jeopardized.

The French Quarter wasn't saved because it sits nine feet higher than the back section of the Lower Ninth but because of racism and classism. Black residents of the Lower Ninth were deemed expendable long before Katrina.

With a new mayor in office, there is at least hope for the future. We've had more street repairs in the Lower Ninth, but that's where it ends for now. I've heard promises and seen plans, but the community is naturally skeptical. We have become accustomed to broken promises. So we don't hold our breath. We don't get excited. We wait and see.

Jenga Mwendo is an urban-agriculture, community organizer in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans and founder of the Backyard Gardeners Network, whose mission is to sustain and strengthen the community.

This article is republished from America's Wire, which is an independent, nonprofit news service run by the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education and funded by a grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. The views expressed by the America's Wire Writers Group authors are those of the writers and not the Maynard Institute or W .K. Kellogg Foundation. For more information, visit www.americaswire.org or contact Michael K. Frisby at mike@frisbyassociates.com.

Photo: From New Orleans Lower Ninth Ward. (Musicasalingus/CC)

Obama advances new civil rights revolution

Fri, 11 May 2012 16:03:00 +0000

"I think same-sex couples should be able to get married." That simple statement by President Obama on Wednesday is a historic turning point for our nation. It is both a culmination and a launching point of a new American civil rights revolution.

The movement for gay and lesbian equality in all spheres of life, emerging in the 1970s, has become a mainstream movement, as more and more gays and lesbians have courageously "come out of the closet," often with great personal sacrifice. Same-sex couples too have gone public and, with their compelling stories of long-term loving relationships, moved the nation.

A growing number of states have recognized same-sex relationships, whether through civil unions or marriage itself. And there has been an evolving shift in overall public opinion, with a majority favoring marriage equality.

Yes there has been a backlash by the far-right. Thirty states - with North Carolina the latest - have passed amendments to their constitutions barring same-sex marriage. But the tide is turning toward equality.

This movement, like the women's equality movement, stands on the shoulders of the great civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s.

Actress Tyne Daley said a few years ago, "When I got married [in 1986 to African American actor Georg Stanford Brown], my marriage was illegal in seven states in this country. ... Government can't dictate hearts and minds. But it can decide law, and when laws change, other things change."

Racist Jim Crow laws seemed enshrined forever, but they were overcome - by a mass movement, courageous individuals, and leaders who were able to galvanize the nation and transform public sentiment.

Obama's statement this week was bold, gutsy and the right thing to do. And that's what the American people want. Whether or not they personally support gay marriage or regardless of what they think about homosexuality, most Americans favor fairness and rights. And they will admire a president who stands up for these things.

Photo: (AP)

Supreme Court “rogues’ gallery”: another reason why 2012 matters

Wed, 09 May 2012 17:15:00 +0000

For millions of Americans who are suffocating under the weight of a protracted economic crisis, the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court may not register as a priority, or even as a passing concern.

A job, a living wage, mortgage assistance, or relief from racial harassment probably rank much higher. And that is perfectly understandable.

Jobs are scarce; wages are stagnant; homes are being lost; and racial profiling is commonplace.

Nevertheless, who sits on the U.S. Supreme Court does matter and not only to legal scholars, but to ordinary Americans.

Indeed, the court, through its rulings, can impact either very positively or very negatively on people's struggles and lives.

The present Supreme Court, according to one study, is the most conservative since at least the 1930s. Of the 10 most conservative members of the court from 1937 to 2006, five are serving today: Clarence Thomas (1 on the most conservative list), Antonin Scalia (3), John Roberts (4), Samuel Alito (5), and Anthony Kennedy (10).

Talk about a "rogues' gallery."

Ironically (and ominously), Kennedy is considered a moderate swing vote on today's High Court, which not only indicates how far the court has shifted to the right, but also how far to the right Thomas, Scalia, Roberts and Alito (the "gang of four") are. In fact, to characterize them as "right-wing extremists" may not adequately capture how far out they sit on the political and judicial spectrum.

Worse still, in the coming years the Supreme Court will be ruling on cases that could either considerably enhance or seriously hollow out democracy and the quality of life for tens of millions.

First up is the constitutionality of President Obama's main legislative achievement - health care reform. According to court observers who monitored the hearings, the likelihood of an adverse ruling is high.

Then - not necessarily in this order - the court will turn its attention to the affirmative action program at the University of Texas that allows for race to be considered as one factor among many others in the university's admission's process. It will also reach a judgment on the legality of Proposition 8 which banned gay marriage in California, and on the Defense of Marriage Act. It will render as well a decision on section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act which compels states that are enacting new voting rights laws to clear them with the federal government to ensure that they aren't discriminatory in their impact.

The court will also listen to a legal challenge to Montana's ban on corporate campaign contributions in election campaigns, and to a case involving the indefinite detention of "enemy combatants."

Finally, the court may well hear challenges to Roe v. Wade as well as other broadly accepted precedents in American jurisprudence and democratic rights law.

Any Mitt Romney additions to the Supreme Court would almost certainly guarantee a series of adverse decisions on these and other legal matters over the next four years and beyond.

More fundamentally, with the likelihood of the retirement of some justices - the liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg being the first, a Romney presidency would be the vehicle to consolidate and make impenetrable the power of the extreme right in the judicial branch of government.

If you have any doubts about this, if you entertain the hope that Romney would nominate someone who occupies the judicial center, bear in mind two things.

First, the pressure on Romney from social conservatives - not to mention sections of corporate capital - to appoint "one of their own" to the court would be enormous. Both see the judiciary as an essential instrumentality for imposing a right-wing, socially conservative agenda.

Second, the chairman of Romney's Justice Advisory Committee is none other than Robert Bork.

Some readers may be too young to have heard of Bork. So a little political biography might be helpful. Bork was solicitor general in 1973 and, at the command of then-President Richard Nixon, fired Archibald Cox as special prosecutor in the Watergate scandal, hoping to aid the Watergate coverup.

Later Ronald Reagan nominated him to the Supreme Court, but the Senate, in a bitter fight, rejected him by a vote of 58-42, the largest margin in history.

While the vote reflected a partisan divide, the grounds for rejecting Bork were substantive. He was on the wrong side of many settled judicial issues. He opposed broad protection for free speech; he questioned the constitutional right to privacy; he vigorously opposed integration of public accommodations, calling it "unsurpassed ugliness" - to name but a few of his more noxious views.

Since leaving the federal bench he has been a champion of ultra-conservative causes.

Here we have another compelling reason why the 2012 elections matter. While we don't know who President Obama would nominate to the court if he is re-elected in November, we do know from his earlier appointments that they would in all probability fall on the democratic side of the political and judicial equation.

Photo: "The Guardian" or "Authority of Law" statue by James Earle Frasier in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington. Mark Fischer // CC 2.0