People Before Profit blog

Canada's Conservative Harper continues to push for unlimited spying

Tue, 25 Nov 2014 16:28:00 +0000

VANCOUVER, Canada - The rightwing Conservative government of Stephen Harper is pushing hard to implement legislation that will further undermine privacy rights and give the government unlimited power to spy on people without a court warrant, using recent attacks to justify government spying.

On October 15, the Harper Conservatives used their parliamentary majority to shorten debate and pass Bill C-13, which will allow internet and cell phone companies the right to pass information on to low-, middle- and upper-level government officials without a court warrant. Such officials can include tax agents, sheriffs, reeves (presiding town council officers), justices of the peace, intelligence agents and mayors.

Under current lax rules, telecommunications companies are empowered to pass along users' personal information to the government as long as it's for the purpose of an investigation and no court warrant is needed. Last year, the government requested information 1.2 million times (every 27 seconds), according to Federal Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien.

Bill C-13 will make the situation worse because officials no longer need to conduct an investigation and will only have to be investigating a law, domestic or foreign, establish that the law relates to national security, or otherwise determine that disclosure will help in the "administering of any law of Canada." Under Bill C-13, communication companies cannot be sued for passing confidential information to government officials, which will only increase the amount of information handed over to the government, claim critics.

The Conservatives attached the spying provisions onto a bill addressing cyber-bullying. Bill C-13 is now before the Conservative-dominated Senate, where it will be evaluated and voted on.

Open Media, a coalition of 60 groups across the spectrum, from the National Firearms Association to major unions, is leading the fight to stop Bill C-13. "This extreme legislation will give a range of government authorities the ability to monitor our private lives, often without a warrant or any judicial oversight," charged spokesperson David Christopher. He said the bill would allow government to spy on Canadians anytime without a reason without the victims knowing their privacy had been breached. "We'll continue working with Canadians of every shade of political opinion to overturn this reckless spy bill. The Senate prides itself on being the chamber of sober thought, and if ever a piece of legislation needed a sober rethink it's this one."

Critics also contend that Bill C-13 is unconstitutional because in June the Supreme Court ruled that telecommunication companies cannot hand private information to the government without a warrant. If Bill C-13 becomes law, taxpayers will have to pay for legal efforts to defend the bill in the courts, according to Christopher.

Others, such as the Canadian Bar Association, Ontario Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian, former Conservative cabinet minister Stockwell Day, the Liberals, Greens, New Democrats and Communists have criticized Bill C-13's draconian overreach. Federal Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien said that the bill will violate privacy by allowing government to collect information without a warrant. Before it was passed by Parliament, the New Democratic Party - the official opposition in Parliament - called for Bill C-13 to be split into two parts, so the online spying provisions were removed from the sections dealing with cyber-bullying and dealt with separately.

Critics also complain that 60 pages of the bill were lifted from the earlier conservative spy Bill C-30 that had been withdrawn after public opposition in 2012.

The Communist Party of Canada says that Bill C-13 is part of a larger effort to criminalize and repress legitimate dissident. "Ever since taking office, the Harper Conservatives have directed state security agencies to profile and focus on those they consider 'enemies,' such as environmentalists opposed to the expansion of the tar sands and hydraulic fracking, aboriginal movements which resist the destruction of their traditional territories by governments and resource corporations, or groups the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (Canada's version of the CIA) vaguely labels 'multi-issue extremists,'" charged party leader Miguel Figueroa. "The expansion of police state powers will accelerate this drive to label Canadians as 'potential terrorists,' creating a basis for even more severe police spying and repression against labor and grassroots opposition forces."

So far, the Conservatives have brushed aside criticism of Bill C-13, insisting that it is necessary to pass the bill to stop cyber-bullying and protect children.

Government officials, along with Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Bob Paulson, are already using a spate of recent attacks to justify Bill C-13's passage. On Oct. 20, in the small town of St.-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, Martin Couture-Roleau, 24, a recent convert to Islam, drove his car into a group of three soldiers walking along the road. Police pursued the man, who crashed his car in a ditch. Police then shot him dead when he lunged at them with a hunting knife. One soldier was killed while the other two were injured.

On Oct. 22, Michael Zeha-Bibeau, who also identified as being Muslim, went on a shooting rampage in Ottawa. Armed with an old hunting rifle, he killed a soldier guarding the National War Memorial and then entered Parliament, where he was shot and killed by security guards in a gun battle. Police suggest that the two men acted in retribution for Canada's decision to deploy warplanes to bomb Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

However, according to the Globe and Mail newspaper, the two men were not members of terrorist groups. The man who stormed Parliament had a history of mental illness and drug abuse. Prior to the attack Bibeau was telling people that demons were after him. Several years ago he robbed a McDonald's restaurant in Surrey, BC, with a steel pipe, hoping that he would be arrested and given some help. He was jailed one day and then released.

The Harper Conservatives have been trying since 2006 to introduce legislation that would make it easier for government to collect information on Canadians' private Internet activities. If Bill C-13 passes, they will have succeeded.

Photo: Happily smiling rightwing Canada Prime Minister Stephen Harper, center, visits a Carnival in Quebec. Harper has pushed for a package of bills designed to rollback democratic and worker rights since taking office (Flickr/CC).

New York Times calls for reset of U. S. agenda on Cuba

Mon, 24 Nov 2014 13:40:00 +0000

A series of New York Times editorials calling for new U.S. relations with Cuba is the signal for U.S. organizations and individuals involved with Cuba to launch a unified campaign.

On Dec. 12, 2013 the Times editorial board reminded readers that, "This page has long called for an end to America's embargo. At the time it urged President Obama to "press Congress to end the embargo and overhaul policy toward Cuba." But a year later this influential newspaper launched a full-fledged campaign.

Comprehensive, detailed attention to the record betokened serious purpose, no less so than editorials, one after another, in both English and Spanish. As befits a campaign, a graphic of the island of Cuba with the words "Cuba: a New Start" appeared with the editorials.

The Times seeks Cuba's removal from the State Department's list of nations supporting terrorism. The newspaper wants U.S. agent Alan Gross, jailed in Cuba, to be exchanged for the three anti-terrorist "Cuban Five" prisoners still in U.S. jails.

On Oct. 11 the paper argued that now, what with changes in U.S. and Cuban politics, it's "politically feasible to re-establish formal diplomatic relations and dismantle the senseless embargo." Three days later, new editorial board member Ernesto Londoño celebrated former Cuba president Fidel Castro's published response to that editorial. Castro had recorded criticisms of the Cuban government by the Times and sent the message, "[L]et's talk."

The Oct. 19 editorial broke the mold by praising a Cuban government project. The editors noted U.S. and other nations' confusion in dealing with Ebola in Africa and then extolled Cuba's contributions there. "It is a shame," they suggested, "that Washington, the chief donor in the fight against Ebola, is diplomatically estranged from Havana."

Then on October 25 the Times reviewed attitudes of Cuban - American political and business leaders in Florida who back U.S. outreach to Cuba. The paper lectured right wing die-hards there: "It's time to lift the restrictions and get on with life. More will be accomplished with free trade than anything else."

Ricardo Alarcon, a former Cuban United Nations ambassador and National Assembly president, labeled the Nov. 2 editorial "an event of transcendental importance." That editorial built the case for exchanging Alan Gross for the three remaining Cuban Five prisoners.

It broke the barrier of U.S. media silence on the case of the Five. The editorial condemned judicial flaws in their convictions and sentencing and detailed injustices imposed on prisoner Gerardo Hernandez. The Times uniquely suggested Alan Gross was up to no good in Cuba. Its editorial provided a link documenting Gross' job of anti-government subversion and his high pay as a U.S. agent.

The last two editorials, on Nov. 9 and Nov. 16, survey effects of U.S. policies serving to undermine U.S. purposes and put off diplomatic accommodations. The first one cites the $264 million eight - year U. S. spending spree on interventions in Cuba that is "a magnet for charlatans, swindlers and good intentions gone awry."

The other one denounces the "Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program aimed at persuading Cuban health workers on foreign missions to defect. For Cubans, it's "a symbol of American duplicity," says the newspaper. Besides, why engage in "brain drain (...) at a time when improved relations between the two countries are a worthwhile, realistic goal?"

The Times initiative takes on added significance with the culmination of parallel developments over recent months. Not only have President Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and recent Florida gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist critiqued U.S. policies toward Cuba, but also Florida businesspersons, a wealthy Cuban-exile sugar baron, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce president, and the influential Atlantic Council have done likewise. And European Union representative are negotiating with Cuban officials as the EU prepares to give up its trade - restricting "common position" toward Cuba.

The editorials disregard provisions in the 1996 Helms Burton Law requiring Congress, not the executive branch, to shape basic changes to blockade rules. In a nick of time, however, lawyer Robert Muse published a document titled "The New Normalization" that provides a "roadmap" for presidential actions toward ending U.S. punishment of Cuba.

Some leftists took the Times to task for overlooking certain shortcomings of U.S. policies and accepting the export of U.S. capitalism to the island. But now is the time, it seems, for backers of Cuban independence and true sovereignty to pull together and use this New York Times campaign as the practical tool it is. Through its likely appeal to citizens of varied outlooks, the Times' contribution promises to be useful in building a movement for protecting Cuba from the United States.

Recruits to this cause need not be socialists, of course. Nor are they required to be familiar with every item of pain and injustice Cubans have suffered at U.S. hands.

Photo: The UN has voted for 22 years in a row to condemn the U.S. embargo against Cuba. Last time only the U.S. and Israel voted agaisnt the resolution. Rick Bajornas/AP

Mexico in crisis: Demonstrations against killings erupt worldwide

Mon, 24 Nov 2014 13:10:00 +0000

Thursday, Nov. 20 is normally celebrated as the anniversary of the beginning of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 - 1920, which overthrew dictator Porfirio Diaz, killed up to two million Mexicans and established the outlines of modern Mexican state institutions. But major public ceremonies were cancelled as the country continues to be rocked by massive protests demanding the return of 43 teachers' training college students who were kidnapped by corrupt police on the night of Sept. 26 and have not been seen since.

The teachers from the school in Ayotzinapa, in the southern state of Guerrero, had gone to the nearby city of Iguala to raise funds to go to Mexico City for protests on the anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre. For their return trip, the unarmed students commandeered three buses. These were then stopped by police who shot three of the students and three bystanders. Some escaped, but 43 were allegedly handed over to a criminal gang, the United Warriors (Guerreros Unidos). The Mexican federal government claims that this gang then killed them all, dismembered and burned their bodies, and threw the remains into the nearby San Juan River. The government has blamed the municipal president of Iguala, José Luis Abarca, and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, for ordering this atrocity, and both are under arrest.

The parents and friends of the 43 are not buying the government's line. They point out that the kidnapping of the students took place practically in front of the barracks of the 27th Battalion of the Mexican Army whose soldiers did not intervene but rather harassed the survivors. Now President Peña Nieto has promoted General Saavedra, in command of the military zone where this took place.

They also note that it took an improbably long time for officials of the state of Guerrero to react.

Guerrero state has in recent decades been the site of several armed peasant uprisings, in which students and graduates of Mexico's "rural normal school" teacher training colleges have played a part. Elected in 2012, the current Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) has made it his goal to make the country superlatively friendly to foreign corporate investors. Investors are supposedly demanding that the educational system as well as labor and investment laws be reformed so as to make the country more attractive to them.

On taking office, Peña Nieto ordered the arrest of the politically ambitious Elba Esther Gordillo, head of the main national teachers' union, for corruption, and replaced her with a government sycophant. But the teachers in Guerrero and Oaxaca belong to a different, militantly left-led union branch and have been a thorn in the side of the governments of both Peña Nieto and his predecessor, Felipe Calderon. The teachers fear that educational "reforms" proposed by the federal government are going to destroy the normalista system and its unique relationship with poor rural and often indigenous communities.

There are mining interests. What is potentially one of the biggest gold mining operations in the world is the Canadian Goldcorp mining giant's operation in the municipio (roughly, county) of Eduardo Neri, roughly halfway between Iguala and the Guerrero capital, Chilpancingo. There has been a tense relationship between Goldcorp and local farmers.

Then there is the army, mobilized by President Calderon to fight drug cartels, and having major U.S. material support. Since the Cold War, the army has had a mission of subversive-hunting. In 1961, soldiers and police kidnapped and massacred peasant leader Ruben Jaramillo, who had ridden with the great Emiliano Zapata in his youth, and his entire family, in Morelos state just north of Guerrero. Jaramillo's crime was to have defended local poor farmers' land rights (he also had ties to the Mexican Communist Party). Nobody was ever prosecuted for the murder.

Then came the events of 1968 and others. In June of this year, the army was implicated in the massacre of 22 prisoners in Tlatlaya, State of Mexico. These were young men arrested in conjunction with the government's anti-drug efforts, but apparently they were gunned down while unarmed, and then weapons were planted on them to make it look as if they were killed in a firefight. People going to the Nov. 20 protests in Mexico City have reported harassment by military units, including the 27th Battalion.

Then there is Peña Nieto himself, who, when governor of the large and important state of Mexico, was widely blamed for a shocking incident in the town of Atenco in 2006 when authorities killed two people and beat and raped many more while trying to put down a protest by flower vendors and opponents of the expansion of the Mexico City airport.

So to the existing slogan of the protesters, "vivos se los llevaron, vivos los queremos" (they were taken away alive, we want them back alive") has been added the slogan "Fue el estado" (it was the state).

This and a growing corruption scandal have created a challenge to the Mexican state unprecedented in recent times.

The Nov. 20 protests were huge and extended beyond Mexico to cities around the world, including several in the United States. More protests are scheduled for Dec. 3.

Photo: Demonstrator shouts for the return of the missing 43. Dario-Lopez Mills/AP

The big chill: tensions in the Arctic

Mon, 24 Nov 2014 12:45:00 +0000

One hundred sixty eight years ago this past July, two British warships - HMS Erebus and HMS Terror - sailed north into Baffin Bay, bound on a mission to navigate the fabled Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. It would be the last that the 19th century world would see of Sir John Franklin and his 128 crewmembers.

But the Arctic that swallowed the 1845 Franklin expedition is disappearing, its vast ice sheets thinning, its frozen straits thawing. And once again, ships are headed north, not on voyages of discovery - the northern passages across Canada and Russia are well known today - but to stake a claim in the globe's last great race for resources and trade routes. How that contest plays out has much to do with the flawed legacies of World War II, which may go a long way toward determining whether the Arctic will become a theater of cooperation or yet another dangerous friction point.

This is, in the words of former NATO commander U.S. Admiral James G. Stavridis, an "icy slope toward a zone of competition, or worse, a zone of conflict." There is a great deal at stake.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the Arctic holds 13 percent of the world's oil reserves and 30 percent of its natural gas. There are also significant coal and iron ore deposits. As the ice retreats, new fishing zones are opening up, and, most importantly, shipping routes that trim thousands of miles off of voyages, saving enormous amounts of time and money. Expanding trade will stimulate shipbuilding, the opening of new ports, and economic growth, especially in East Asia.

Traffic in the Northern Sea Route across Russia-formerly known as the Northeast Passage and the easiest to traverse- is still modest but on the uptick. The route has seen an increase in shipping, from four vessels in 2010 to 71 in 2013, and, for the first time in history, a Liquid Natural Gas Tanker, the, made the trip. On a run from Hammerfest Ob River, Norway, to Tobata, Japan, the ship took only nine days to traverse the passage, cutting almost half the distance off the normal route through the Suez Canal.

Which is not to say that the Northern Sea Passage is a stroll in the garden. The Arctic may be retreating, but it is still a dangerous and stormy place, not far removed from the conditions that killed Franklin and his men. A lack of detailed maps is an ongoing problem, and most ships require the help of expensive icebreakers. But for the first time, specially reinforced tankers are making the run on their own.

Tensions in the region arise from two sources: squabbles among the border states-Norway, Russia, the U.S., Canada, Denmark (representing Greenland), Finland, Iceland, and Sweden - over who owns what, and efforts by non-polar countries - China, India, the European Union, and Japan - that want access. The conflicts range from serious to somewhat silly. In the latter category was the 2007 planting of a small Russian flag on the sea-bed beneath the North Pole by private explorer Artur Chillingarov, a stunt that even the Moscow government dismissed as theatrics.

But the Russians do lay claim to a vast section of the North Pole, based on their interpretation of the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Seas that allows countries to claim ownership if an area is part of a country's continental shelf. Moscow argues that the huge Lemonosov Ridge, which divides the Arctic Ocean into two basins and runs under the Pole, originates in Russia. Canada and Denmark also claim the ridge as well.

Canada's organized an expedition this past summer to find out what really happened to Franklin and his two ships. The search was a success-one of the ships was found in Victoria Straits - but the goal was political, not archaeological: Ottawa is using the find to lay claim to the Northwest Passage.

Copenhagen and Ottawa are at loggerheads over Hans Island, located between Ellesmere Island and Greenland. The occupation of the tiny rock by the Canadian military has generated a "Free Hans Island" campaign in Denmark.

The U.S. has been trying to stake out terrain as well, though it is constrained by the fact that Washington has not signed the Law of the Seas Convention. However, the U.S. has locked horns with Ottawa over the Beaufort Sea, and the Pentagon released its first "Arctic Strategy" study. The U.S. maintains 27,000 military personnel in the region, not including regular patrols by nuclear submarines.

The Russians and Canadians have ramped up their military presence in the region, and Norway carried out yearly military exercises - "Arctic Cold Response" - involving up to 16,000 troops, many of them NATO units.

But you don't have to be next to the ice to want to be a player. China may be a thousand miles from the nearest ice floe, but as the second largest economy in the world, it has no intention of being left out in the cold. This past summer the Chinese icebreaker Snow Dragon made the Northern Sea Passage run, and Beijing has elbowed its way into being a Permanent Observer on the Arctic Council. The latter, formed in 1996, consists of the border states, plus the indigenous people that populate the vast frozen area. Japan and South Korea are also observers.

And herein lies the problem.

Tensions are currently high in East and South Asia because of issues deliberately left unresolved by the 1952 Treaty of San Francisco that ended WW II. As Canadian researcher Kimie Hara recently discovered, the U.S. designed the Treaty to have a certain amount of "manageable instability" built into it by leaving certain territorial issues unresolved. The tensions that those issues generate make it easier for the U.S. to maintain a robust military presence in the region. Thus, China and Japan are involved in a dangerous dispute over the uninhibited islands in the East China Sea - called the Diaoyu by China and the Senkaku by Japan - because the 1952 Treaty did not designate which country had sovereignty. If it came to a military confrontation, the U.S. is bound by treaty to support Japan.

Similar tensions exist between South Korea and Japan over the Dokdo/Takeshima islands, between Japan and Russia over the Northern Territories/Southern Kuriles islands, and between China, Vietnam, and Taiwan over the Spratly and Paracel islands. Brunei and Malaysa also have claims that overlap with China. Any ships traversing the East and South China seas on the way north will find themselves in the middle of several nasty territorial disputes.

In theory, the potential of the Arctic routes should pressure the various parties to reach an amicable resolution of their differences, but things are complicated these days.

Russia has indicated it would like to resolve the Northern Territories/Kuriles issue, and initial talks appeared to be making progress. But then in July, Tokyo joined Western sanctions against Russia over its annexation of the Crimea and the Ukraine crisis, and negotiations have gone into the freezer.

Moscow just signed off on a $400 billion oil and gas deal with Beijing and is looking to increase trade with China as a way to ease the impact of Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis. At least for the present, China and Russia are allies and trade partners, and both would like to see a diminished role for the U.S. in Asia. That wish, of course, runs counter to Washington's growing military footprint in the region, the so-called "Asia pivot."

The tensions have even generated some good old-fashioned paranoia. When a Chinese tycoon tried to buy land in northern Norway, one local newspaper claimed it was a plot, calling the entrepreneur "a straw man for the Chinese Communist Party."

The Arctic may be cold, but the politics surrounding it are pretty hot.

At the same time, the international tools to resolve such disputes currently exist. A starting place is the Law of the Seas Convention and a commitment to put international law over national interests. The Chinese have a good case for sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diaoyus, and Japan has solid grounds for reclaiming most of the Southern Kuriles. Korea would likely prevail in the Dokdo/Takeshima dispute, and China would have to back off some of its extravagant claims in the South China Sea.

For all the potential for conflict, there is a solid basis for cooperation in the Arctic. Russian and Norway have divided up the Barents Sea, and Russia, Norway, the U.S., and Britain are cooperating on nuclear waste problems in the Kola Peninsula and Arkhangelsk. There are common environmental issues. The Arctic is a delicate place; easy to damage, slow to heal.

As Aqqaluk Lynge, chair of the indigenous Inuit Circumpolar Council says, "We do not want a return to the Cold War."

This article originally appeared in Dispatches from the Edge.

Photo: Soldiers from 59th Signal Battalion, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska demonstrate ability to perform individual Army Warrior Tasks in an arctic environment, Jan. 26, 2012. U.S. Army

Secret tribunals part of “Trojan Horse” Trans-Pacific trade deal

Fri, 21 Nov 2014 13:58:00 +0000

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a free trade agreement between the U.S. and 11 Asian and Pacific countries that few people have heard of. If enacted, the TPP would encompass nearly 40 percent of the global economy ($27.5 trillion) and affect the lives of 800 million people. The stated goal of the partnership is to eliminate tariffs, and increase the flow of investment capital between signatories. Concealed within this naked move by the global One Percent to squeeze as much profit as possible from the planet is the mechanism for multinational corporations to subvert democracy and legal process through the implementation of secret tribunals.

Last Thursday, CWA president Larry Cohen agreed with MSNBC's Ed Schultz's assessment that regarding the TPP, "the president [Obama] clearly is on the wrong side of the issue." Not only would the trade deal result in the loss of jobs and diminish the power of U.S. workers to collectively bargain it would also grant special powers to multinational corporations. Cohen spoke passionately about the TPP's broad side attack on democracy: "If any of these nations improve standards for workers, if they improve environmental standards, or safety standards that cut corporate profits the TPP allows these corporations to try to stop those moves by suing for billions of dollars."

Candice Johnson, communications director for the Communications Workers of America, explains, "The Trans-Pacific Partnership will give special rights to corporations. It will allow them to challenge any laws that could impact expected future profits." Citing the recent example of a fracking ban passed by the people of Denton, Texas, under the TPP Denton "could be sued for the amount of profit [the corporation] expected." The suit would be filed, not in any U.S. court, but in a "secret tribunal" run by multinational corporations.

Just today Johnson learned that under the articles of the trade deal, "U.S. companies can set up overseas dummy corporations for the sole purpose of suing the United States" for losses of expected profit. In other words, any regulation or limitation of corporate profitability would result in that profit being extracted directly from the citizenry without their consent, or even awareness.

Often referred to as NAFTA on steroids, the TPP is not limited to the manufacturing and agricultural economic sectors like its predecessor. President Obama's proposed trade deal would include the service sector, and according to Johnson, "25 percent of the work done in the United States would be considered 'tradeable'" or eligible for "export."

Considering that of the Communications Workers of America represents 150,000 call center workers whose jobs would be immediately "tradeable" if the TPP is enacted it is understandable why President Larry Cohen has sworn to keep his members mobilized against "the joint efforts of the State Department and The Chamber of Commerce ... to shred our rights."

While the White House has made the Trans-Pacific Partnership a key feature in the President's "pivot" to Asia and many have raised the specter of an ascendant Chinese economy to argue for the necessity of the TPP, Johnson points out that partnering with countries like Brunei is not the way to do it. CWA is not against trade, "there could be a trade deal with Vietnam" Johnson offers, "so long as workers rights have the same attention paid to them as investor rights."

Speaking from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam's embassy in Washington D.C., Chi Dung Le from the economic section agrees that any trade deal must "improve the lives of working people." Le recognizes that "Vietnam is a developing economy" and that while "not on the same level" as all of proposed members of the TPP, "economic integration" is the future of the Socialist Republic.

As one of the proposed partners in the TPP, the low average wage of Vietnamese workers ($.70 an hour) is often cited by organized labor as evidence that jobs currently held by U.S. workers will be shipped overseas. Some say the legitimate concerns of job losses are exacerbated by the thinly veiled chauvinism many unions indulge in. They note that framing the TPP as a struggle between U.S. and foreign workers not only fosters latent racism, it is deceptive. The Chamber of Commerce is the creator, sustainer, and should the White House have its way, the largest beneficiary of the TPP.

Chi Dung Le says Vietnam, like any good union, "is fighting for a well balanced agreement" with its former enemy. He is adamant, "we won't lower standards, or serve an interest... that does not improve the lives and economic position of the people."

CWA has always built broad coalitions to win with their partners what would've been impossible to win alone. Given the powerful, and well funded, interests behind the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it is certain that new alliances must be formed if organized labor hopes to stop the TPP.

Photo: South Korea workers carry their unions' flags during a rally against their government's labor policy in Seoul, South Korea Nov. 9. About 20,000 workers denounced overall policies of South Korean President Park Geun-hye government on the issues of non-regular workers, privatization plans for the utility companies and current government's faulty economic policies, including TPP. | Ahn Young-joon/AP

Crisis in Colombian peace talks: who is responsible?

Thu, 20 Nov 2014 15:45:00 +0000

At a midnight press conference in Bogota Nov. 16, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos announced a halt to peace talks in Havana between his government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Surrounded by military officers, Santos was reacting to the seizure that day in Chocó state of General Rubén Darío Alzate, a corporal, and an army lawyer. Blaming the FARC, Santos declared peace talks as "suspended until there is clarification and the prisoners are liberated."

Government negotiators wouldn't be heading back to Cuba for further negotiations and a military rescue mission was heading to Chocó.

Why, one asks, did a top general defy army rules and move about without a military escort deep inside an area occupied by the FARC? Why were he and the others wearing civilian clothes, Bermuda shorts in his case? Why did the first announcement of his capture come not from the government but from former President Álvaro Uribe, an avid foe of the peace talks?

According to Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzón, the General's party "was surprised by men in civilian clothes with rifles. El Tiempo newspaper heard otherwise from Presentación Palomeque, a community council official in Las Mercedes, population 120, where the encounter took place. Traveling on the Atrato River, Alzate and the two others reportedly arrived by launch and waited nearby for half an hour before three ununiformed, unarmed "subversives" arrived in their launch. The two groups conferred peacefully in front of a church, and then all concerned headed north on the river in one boat.

The possibility exists that the FARC's capture of its highest ranking prisoner ever was contrived. The next day, Uribe, now a senator, called upon "[t]he international community ... to require this terrorist group (the FARC) unilaterally to stop [its] criminal activities." Twice before, in 1992 and in 2002, seizure of a government official by insurgents halted other peace negotiations.

In the two years since the present talks began on November 19, 2012, negotiators have secured preliminary agreements on agrarian reforms, political participation of insurgents during peacetime, and drug trafficking. Discussion was to have continued on victims of armed conflict. The last agenda item, still waiting, is demobilization of combatants.

The stakes for Colombia's majority population are high. As reported recently by Deutsche Welle: "Fifty years of armed conflict have provoked 218,000 murders, 27,000 kidnappings, 25, 000 disappeared persons, and more than 5.5 million internally displaced persons."

Interviewed in Havana recently, FARC negotiator Pablo Catatumbo said, although "we have advanced considerably, we are not at the point of irreversibility [in the talks]." He cited paramilitaries as an unsolved problem. Ex-President Uribe provides the main challenge, however. Candidate Óscar Iván Zuluaga, a Uribe protégée, forced Santos into a second round of presidential voting in May, 2014. Defending the peace talks, Santos won because Colombian leftists came to his rescue.

Uribe enjoys backing from many military leaders. According to a website friendly to the FARC, "While ex-President Álvaro Uribe is on tour mobilizing allies of the extreme international right against the peace process, Colombian military intelligence (...) is carrying out electronic espionage and has implanted a virus in the computer of Humberto de la Calle, head of the government's peace delegation ." Earlier, the mainstream Semana newspaper attributed the electronic intrusions "U.S. intelligence agencies, the Colombian military high command, military intelligence and counterintelligence, and high state functionaries."

FARC peace negotiators confirmed that General Alzate and his companions were in FARC hands. Defending the peace talks, they promised the FARC "will respect the life and physical and moral integrity of our prisoners and we are fully disposed to guarantee this to the extent the state's wrath allows us [to do so.]" They condemned the state's "gigantic [military rescue] operation" for risking prisoners' lives and the peace talks alike.

The FARC labeled the captured general as a prisoner of war rather than kidnap victim. Governmental refusal to let "talks evolve within a situation of truce or armistice contributes, negotiators explained, to the necessity for warlike measures. "[N]egotiating under fire makes very little sense," they said. As inducement for the government to follow suit as negotiations proceeded, the FARC has carried out unilateral ceasefires lasting weeks at a time.

Colombia's left is demanding that henceforth negotiations proceed under conditions of bilateral ceasefire. Comprising almost 2000 political and social organizations, the Patriotic March called for a bilateral truce and also nationwide demonstrations on behalf of the peace talks.

For the first time since its formation in 2012, Patriotic March recently announced it would be engaging in electoral politics, and would do so within a "Broad Front for Peace." This same Broad Front headed street mobilizations In Bogota and elsewhere November 19 in support of the talks.

By that day's end, government and FARC representatives had agreed to conditions for General Alzate's release and that of his companions. Spokespersons for Cuba and Norway, guarantor countries for the peace talks, indicated "liberations will be accomplished in the shortest time possible."

Photo: This Aug. 15, 2014 photo released by Colombia's Army press office shows Colombian Gen. Ruben Dario Alzate in Colombia. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos suspended peace talks with Colombia's largest rebel group after Alzate was taken captive Nov. 16. The U.S.-educated general and two others were allegedly intercepted while travelling by motor boat on a remote river in western Colombia. A fourth soldier allegedly captured said he managed to flee. That soldier said the captors were members of FARC. AP/Colombian Army Press Office

Spanish Civil War vet Almudever is as lively as ever at 95

Tue, 18 Nov 2014 14:54:00 +0000

BERLIN -The German organization "Fighters and Friends of the Spanish Republic" held its annual conference in Berlin in late October, as always with friends from similar organizations in other countries - this time Spain, France, Italy, Russia, Denmark, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands. The group was especially happy to welcome one of the very last International Brigade [volunteers who defended democracy and fought fascism in Spain from 1936 to 1939] survivors, Joseph Almudever, 95, who has lived in France for many years and was known by many from ceremonies in Spain. Almudever was as amazingly vital as ever, both singing and speaking vividly about the history of the war, including his own participation and lucky escape afterwards.

Among other items of great interest were remarks by the Danish visitor, Allan Christiansen, about the first four Danes to fight in Spain and the contribution by Col. Pavel Vranský, 93, who fought not in Spain but in North Africa and with Czech forces flying out of England. As president of the Czech organization of all anti-fascist veterans, he hopes to establish a small group, similar to that in Germany, with descendants of Spanish volunteers and others close to the cause of the Republic.

A highpoint of the conference was the British film "Goodbye Barcelona," a musical about the war and the participation of a young British volunteer and his mother. Most of the audience was curious as to whether a musical could offer love duets and dancing and yet pack in a political message. Many admitted afterwards to having tears in their eyes - and yet were convinced of its clear, strong punch and fair story-line - and hoped it can be shown to many youthful audiences.

In less dramatic but also interesting discussions, participants discussed how best to coordinate activities in the next few years, especially to commemorate the 70 anniversary of the liberation of Europe -- except Spain -- from fascism in May 1945 and then, in October 2016, the 80 anniversary of the founding of the International Brigades, aiming for well-popularized events in many parts of Europe before concluding in Barcelona, Albacete and Madrid.

As every year, there was also a moving gathering, with short speeches and songs, at the statue, plaque and large relief honoring International Brigaders.

Photo: Joseph Almudéver, veteran of the International Brigade, attended the Fighters and Friends of the Spanish Republic's annual Spain Conference in late October in Berlin. The Volunteer.

French CP condemns action to eliminate Ukrainian Communist Party

Fri, 14 Nov 2014 14:08:00 +0000

The French Communist Party gives its backing and its total solidarity to the Ukrainian communists following the shameful declarations of Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, who has clearly advocated the elimination of the Communist Party of the Ukraine in the early legislative elections.

Poroshenko stated the Communist Party of the Ukraine "does not have the right to appear in the Ukrainian political spectrum due to the crimes committed in the past and in our times." Another leading candidate of the Poroshenko Block, Vitali Klitschko, added that "for the first time in its history, anti-Ukrainian forces, including the Communist Party, having always been the Kremlin's fifth column" will not be represented in Parliament.

All of this is done in the name of the European values by which the Ukrainian oligarchs claim to be inspired.

The odious activities of neo-fascist forces are today tolerated and encouraged in the Ukraine and it must be pointed out that they have largely contributed to the governing Block's campaign. Worse, they have engaged in brutalities and intolerable crimes - yesterday as today - against the communists, the democrats, and the Ukrainian people whose real values are particularly marked by the struggle against fascism and Nazism.

The French communists cannot tolerate such declarations while the activists, the leaders and in particular the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Ukraine have been the victims of physical attacks, threatened with being outlawed and their party made incapable of conducting a campaign in normal democratic conditions.

The French communists call on all the democratic forces in our country and in Europe to exercise the greatest vigilance, in particular so that an end will be put to this veritable witch-hunt as of by-gone times.

It is in this sense that they renew their entire solidarity with the Communist Party of the Ukraine and its general secretary Piotr Simonenko.

Reposted from L'Humanité in English

Original French article: Le PCF dénonce la volonté du président Petro Porochenko d'éliminer les communistes ukrainiens

Photo: Relatives of 14-year-old Daniil Kuznetsov grieve at his coffin during funeral at a local cemetery in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, Nov. 7. The rebel stronghold of Donetsk mourned the two teenagers who were killed in an artillery strike on a high school by Ukrainian government forces. Mstyslav Chernov/AP

German election results reflect rightwing hypocrisy on Berlin Wall

Wed, 12 Nov 2014 15:01:00 +0000

BERLIN - American readers are now probably wondering and/or worrying about their own election results. But, different as they may be, there are similarities between there and here. In the U.S. Republicans are loudly jubilant. Jubilation here is about an event 25 years ago.

The joy for most people was justified. But every day and every evening endless hours of TV and op-ed columns treating us to rhapsodic notes about the clefts in the Berlin Wall have a triumphant undertone: "We beat those red SOBs!" Weren't both defeats, of today's Democrats and yesterday's GDR, as much due to the wealth of the winners as to the losers' loss of contact, their neglect of rapport with the feelings and hopes of much of the population?

But is there not, hidden behind the confetti, helium balloons or crowing of the victors in both Germany and the U.S. an occasional jarring note of worried anxiety?

A man with good reason for anxiety, as we shall see later, is Germany's president, Joachim Gauck. A pastor by profession, he is a skilled rhetorician and notable father figure, both suited to a position tailored to New Year's addresses, unveiling monuments and greeting foreign kings and presidents, while Merkel and her cabinet ministers take care of the politics.

The cameras usually show him with a broad paternal smile, occasionally moistened by tears when he recalls the suffering endured under that repressive dictatorial regime in East Germany, where he lived, preached (and actually got along very well) until those crucial changes twenty-five years ago opened wide new horizons - and the portals of a presidential palace in Berlin's Tiergarten park.

But those portals - and all the celebrations - cannot shield Herr Gauck from some anxious worries. For example, a majority of Germans stubbornly oppose foreign military involvement. And he scolded, though with careful words: "We should not use our troops too quickly, but we must not let reservations based on Germany's past history stop us, together with the European Union, NATO and the UN, from sending them in whenever necessary to maintain a world order which permits Germany to coordinate its interests with its basic values."

In GDR days his church, like most dissidents, demanded disarmament. But in 2012 he proudly told officers: "Germany has taken this road since reunification... step by step changing from a beneficiary to a guarantor of international security and order... In the Balkans, along the Hindu Kush Mountains and the Horn of Africa, the Bundeswehr is engaged in confronting terror and pirates. Who would have thought that possible twenty years ago?"

I think of the Balkans, where on May 30, 1999 a NATO missile destroyed a civilian bridge at a Sunday marketplace in the little Serbian town of Varvarin. Another missile minutes later killed those who had run to help. A victim of the first attack was Sanya Milenkovic, a girl of 16, a brilliant mathematics pupil. In all ten died and seventeen were severely wounded.

Or I recall how on Sept. 4, 2009 up to 142 Afghan civilians in Kunduz, many of them children, were killed by a bomber called in by German Col. Georg Klein, again without even the usual warning fly-over. His courage - from a safe distance - was rewarded with a promotion to Brigadier General. But, as Gauck insists, we "shouldn't reject from the start the use of military methods as a last resort."

In September, at Gdansk in Poland, he equated Nazi Germany's attack there 75 years ago with current Russian policy in the Ukraine. In his usual slightly veiled yet menacing language he threatened Putin: "History teaches us that territorial concessions often only whet the appetite of aggressors. Europe will hold to its libertarian values. We will adjust our political path, our economy and our defense preparedness to this new situation." He did not overly stress that his father, like his mother-an early Nazi Party member- had been a loyal captain in Danzig, as Gdansk was then called by the Germans, during World War II before advancing to teach Navigation and Military Law to future officers. Doubtless to his joy, Poland, backed by NATO, is moving more troops to the Russian border, making de-escalation in the Ukraine even tougher.

German uniforms have been deployed in thirteen foreign regions since unification: over Serbia, in Kosovo, Afghanistan, in naval blockades at Lebanon and the Horn of Africa, in Turkey with Patriot missiles at the Syrian border, and in many African countries. But still too few for Joachim Gauck!

This relates to another worry of his. Although a polled majority wants no more military adventures, only one party in the Bundestag opposes past, present and future foreign deployments; that is the Left party. And now these heretics may become, for the first time, the leading party in a German state, Thuringia! State politics are not directly tied to military matters but a Left minister-president, Bodo Ramelow, would automatically become a member and occasional chair of Germany's Upper House (Bundesrat); his position could help legitimize his party in western Germany where age-old anti-Communist prejudices have thus far kept it to a role as despised ragamuffins, with low polling results. But Ramelow cannot easily be red-baited as a "left-over hack from the old GDR, with Stasi connections;" until moving east in 1990 he was a proper, pious, church-going West German.

The Left won this unprecedented opportunity by coming in a close second to the Christian Democrats (CDU) in state elections, and because the badly-beaten Social Democrats (SPD) preferred gaining respect as junior partners with the Left to getting further squeezed as juniors by overbearing Christian Democrats, which had cost them half their votes. This also gave the Greens a chance to join in and get two cabinet seats. The Thuringian SPD leaders voted unanimously to take this path, then put it to a membership referendum to make a final decision. A quick and angry counterattack was immediately mounted; heading the pack was Joachim Gauck:

"People of my age who experienced the GDR (East Germany, VG) will have real trouble swallowing this. We... respect decisions by the people but, all the same, must ask ourselves: Is this party, which is to provide the minister-president, really far enough removed from ideas once held by the ruling Socialist Unity Party (GDR predecessor of the Left, VG) about oppressing its people so that we can now fully trust it? ... What is this party in reality?"

Not everyone was happy about Gauck's interference. SPD Vice-Chairman Ralph Stegner said: "In controversial questions of ongoing party politics it is wise and correct to maintain reserve, for the official authority of the president depends on his maintaining distinct nonpartisanship."

The noted Lutheran theologian and a leading dissident in the GDR twenty-five years ago, Friedrich Schorlemmer, called Gauck's condemnation "completely absurd... Nowhere can I observe that the Left party is acting in any way outside the law of the land."

A commentary in the important Der Spiegel Online stated: "Now he has gone beyond the bounds of his office. Worse yet: He is mixing directly in the process of forming a government in Thuringia, during a referendum among SPD members on whether their party should negotiate a Left-SPD-Green coalition ... In a free election the citizens gave the Left, the SPD and the Greens a slim majority in the legislature. A coalition between Christian Democrats and SPD could also rule by an equally slim majority. The coming suspense-filled weeks will decide who is to become minister-president. That is democracy. Joachim Gauck has done it no service."

The SPD membership has since given the three-way coalition a go-ahead signal with nearly 70 percent approval. Despite Gauck! A special congress of the Left has done the same; the new coalition now seems very likely. This will strike a blow against the worst of German caveman-rightists, but may also raise questions as complicated as anthropologist debates on how many Neanderthal genes remain today in Europeans' cell structures. The SPD, and even more the Greens, will exact a price for joining a Left-led government which they can upset with a single No-vote. They want Ramelow's party not only to vigorously condemn the GDR and join in building monuments and revamping museums in this spirit, but to suppress any members who refuse to reject all the GDR stood for, good or bad.

This reminds me personally of the old red-baiting era of Joe McCarthy and the HUAC. And it brings to mind that it was the SPD and the Greens who nominated Gauck for the presidency, pressuring other parties to back him and almost hysterically denouncing the Left for refusing to do so. As Germany's leading anti-Communist and anti-progressive, he had gained fame as first "Federal Commissioner for Stasi Records" from 1990 to 2000. Hatred of the Stasi - fostered far, far more intensely than any ever directed at Nazi war criminals in leading positions - was constantly enflamed anew by Gauck, and his unceasing witch-hunt against many, many thousands, some undoubtedly nasty, others by no means so, destroyed countless livelihoods and led to not a few suicides. For some Social Democrats and Greens he has become a Frankenstein monster. But not for others, like Katrin Göring-Eckardt, chairperson of the Green caucus in the Bundestag, who also supported military measures against Libya, in Syria and Iraq and went all-out in backing the Maidan coup and demanding pressures against Russia. She said: "Gauck has done just the things we elected him to do."

Such a coalition requires lots of compromising. The promised gains - perhaps changing the whole political map - are tempting indeed. But also worrisome. On the national sphere, the Left cannot forget that both SPD and Greens support Germany's expansive, increasingly military role in the world - as junior partner (if occasionally friendly rival) of the USA - from Kabul to Kiev and maybe Kobani.

Nor dare it forget that while both parties are so outspoken about missing rights and democracy in the GDR, they hardly raise such issues in coalitions with a CDU which supported Generalissimo Franco, the Chilean killer Pinochet and South African apartheid, but never rejected the overwhelming influence of a company like BASF, a main manager and profiteer at Auschwitz and now the world's largest chemical company, or the Deutsche Bank, Hitler's financier, which evicts families as distant as Akron, Ohio with phony mortgage claims, while evading taxes in oases like Luxembourg. Insistence on total rejection of everything in the GDR has little to do with human rights. They hope rather for weak-kneed colleagues who will also retreat from consistent, courageous ideals like a world without exploitation, without yawning income gaps, without destruction of earth, sea and air and without constant military conflicts. Some call this socialism. After their own sad abandonment of such goals, they seek to see them stifled, if possible, even within the Left party, their only important remaining harbinger. Will the Left in Thuringia (and elsewhere) compromise such principles to gain advantages in party politics? Many stubbornly refuse to which, behind the scenes is one key reason for all the helium balloons and other glorious features at commemorations of the opening of the Wall.

As for Gauck, whose smiles will often shine down on the celebrations, it now seems that he himself once worked secretly - and on a friendly basis - with the Stasi. Yet I have a feeling that such incredible hypocrisy - and many such problems of victory or defeat - are by no means restricted to Germany.

Photo: Conservatives and right wingers in Germany, it seems, never tire of celebrating the opening of the Berlin Wall - to the point of de-emphasizing issues of importance to most Germans today. AP

Mexico in crisis: Can Peña Nieto’s presidency survive?

Wed, 12 Nov 2014 12:40:00 +0000

Mexico may be facing a political situation without precedent since the Revolution of 1910-1920. Massive protests are roiling the country while a major corruption scandal is disrupting trade relations with China. Calls for the president, Enrique Peña Nieto, of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) to resign are being heard not only on the street but within the legislature as well.

On Friday, Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam announced to a skeptical nation that remains found submerged in a river in the southern state of Guerrero are probably those of 43 teacher training college students from Ayotzinapa who were violently abducted in the city of Iguala on the night of Sept. 26-27. However, the parents of the missing students refuse to take this as final unless an independent investigation confirms that these were their sons.

Until then they will not retire their battle cry: "They took them away alive, we want them back alive".

Why the skepticism? The suspicion is that the government wants to represent the attack in Iguala as an "isolated incident" and the fault only of some local politicians and corrupt police. More and more Mexicans, however, see the ultimate responsibility as lying much higher up, in an entire system people are beginning to call "narco-gobierno" ("drug trafficker government").

The official story is that the mayor of Iguala, Jose Luis Abarca, of the nominally leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, ordered the attack on the students for purely local reasons. The students were in Iguala to seek funds for transportation to events in Mexico City commemorating the 1968 massacre of Tlatelolco Plaza, where several hundred students were murdered by security forces. Ms. Pineda's brothers are in the leadership of a regional criminal gang, Guerreros Unidos (United Warriors), and local police were supposedly ordered by Ms. Pineda to cooperate with the gang to teach the students a lesson. According to Mr. Murillo Karam, they were captured by police, handed over to the gangsters, and murdered, their burned and dismembered remains thrown into the San Juan River.

While searching for the students, investigators came upon numerous mass graves filled with dismembered and burned bodies. These, they announced, were not the 43 missing students. But then who were they? Everybody in Mexico knows that there are hundreds of such graves. Since President Felipe Calderon of the right wing National Action Party (PAN) decided to unleash the military in the cities as part of the U.S. promoted and financed "War on Drugs," the number of missing has risen beyond 24,000, and many more are known to have been killed.

There has been violence in Guerrero for a long time, and it has involved student teachers (normalistas) before. In 2011, two student teachers from Ayotzinapa were murdered by police. The army has fought skirmishes with guerrilla forces in Guerrero for several decades. A legendary guerrilla leader in the Guerrero mountains, Lucio Cabañas, started out as a normalista teacher from Ayotzinapa. Abusive landowners, crooked political bosses and agents of multinational mining corporations looking to loot Guerrero of its resources fear the teachers. In neighboring Oaxaca in 2006, a revolt involving teachers was never fully quelled.

The teachers in the normalista system are recruited from the poor farm population, including from the many non-Spanish speaking indigenous groups. They stay on in these poor communities, providing not only educational services, but also, frequently, leadership in struggles for social justice. When Enrique Peña Nieto was elected in 2012, he immediately set in motion "reforms" of the petroleum industry, of labor law and of the educational system, which are designed to make Mexico even friendlier to multinational corporations than it already is. His educational reforms were seen as being directed against the normalistas. So, militant action by the grassroots was expected. This may be why the Ayotzinapa students had to be "taught a lesson."

The protesting teachers, students and their allies have taken over town halls all over Guerrero. On Sunday, during a huge demonstration in Mexico City, protestors set fire to one of the massive wooden doors of the National Palace.

Meanwhile, a huge new problem faces President Peña Nieto, whose government has been negotiating with China to build a high-speed rail system between Mexico City and Queretaro. Over the weekend, it was revealed that a property that the president's wife, Angelica Rivera, has said will be their luxurious home after his six-year presidency ends, turns out to be registered under the name of the Higa group, a consortium of companies who stand to make millions from the train project. Facing this mounting scandal on top of the rebellion over the Ayotzinapa issue, the Mexican government abruptly cancelled the bullet train deal, leading to angry objections from China.

Demands are getting more radical and coming from within ruling institutions as well as the street.

Last week, Senator Layda Sansores San Roman, of the Labor Party (PT), electrified the Mexican Senate with a speech in which she damned the whole political and military establishment as corrupt and linked to drug trafficking, and ended by joining the demand that President Peña Nieto resign so that new elections can bring in leadership that will really represent the people.

Photos: New Yorkers hold a solidarity rally, #WeAreAllAyotzinapa, for the 43 missing Mexican students, Nov. 8. (A Jones/CC/Flickr)

Muslims worldwide denounce ISIS - but Islamophobes aren't listening

Mon, 10 Nov 2014 12:59:00 +0000

Authoritative Muslim voices from all quarters are denouncing ISIS, as they have denounced al-Qaeda and terrorism in general for years-but the silence from the mainstream media and from professional Islamophobes is deafening.

Recently, over 100 leading Muslim scholars from every continent, including Australia, issued an open letter to Al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS and now self-proclaimed "Caliph" (supposed leader of the worldwide Muslim community), showing how ISIS' ideology and actions stand in flagrant contradiction to traditional Islamic teachings and morality. Such a statement has special weight in the Muslim world, since scholars such as those who signed the letter are the highest authority in Islam.

Nonetheless, the mainstream media have taken little or no notice of this significant event. Nor have they taken much notice of the many other Muslim denunciations of the terrorist group, including a statement by the Saudi Arabia Muslim clerical council, an invitation by German Muslims to pray with them at their Friday prayers that no youth go to join ISIS (an action in which 2,000 mosques all across Germany joined), a call by British imams to join in prayer for humanitarian workers threatened by ISIS, and many other statements and actions by local, regional, and national Muslim leaders. (For a list of such statements, go here.)

This Muslim outcry is simply a continuation of a long-standing series of denunciations of all forms of terrorism by Muslim leaders and authorities since before 9/11. To find hundreds of such statements, one need only Google "fatwas against terrorism" or go here. (A fatwa is an authoritative legal ruling by Muslim scholars.)

Professional Islamophobes-those organized forces that stir up fear and hatred against Muslims and Islam-have nonetheless had a field day with ISIS' brutality, aided and abetted by the silence of the mainstream capitalist media. Last month, notorious Islamophobe Pamela Geller, founder and head of the absurdly named organization Stop Islamization of America, had ads posted on San Francisco buses claiming that all faithful Muslims were obligated to be violent. The ads were greeted with a vigorous outcry not only from Muslims but also from Jewish, Christian, and interfaith organizations and leaders, including the San Francisco Interfaith Council and the Jewish Community Relations Council which, despite sharp disagreement over Middle East issues, has cultivated relationships with local Muslims.

Such attacks are part of an concerted assault by right-wing forces against the Muslim community in the U.S., organized by a well-funded posse of Islamophobic groups and individuals. Their aim, as usual with such extreme rightist forces, is to sow intergroup division and hostility and to deflect the fears and anxiety whose ultimate source is the capitalist system itself onto a convenient scapegoat. A 2011 report by the Center for American Progress, Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America details the interconnections of these groups and their ties to other right-wing forces.

Among the funders of this Islamophobic network are seven foundations well known for their funding of right-wing causes: the Donors Capital Fund, the Richard Mellon Scaife Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Newton D. Becker and Rochelle F. Becker foundations and charitable trust, the Russell Berrie Foundation, the Anchorage Charitable Fund and William Rosenwald Family Fund, and the Fairbrook Foundation. Other beneficiaries of these foundations include the American Enterprise Institute, a cheerleader for the leading sectors of corporate capital; the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, whose notion of "prosperity" is built on dismantling government regulation of business; the Sam Adams Alliance, which seeks "to raise awareness of free market principles and policy"; and the Heritage Foundation, a leading right-wing think tank.

These foundations support a group of self-proclaimed "experts" on the alleged threat of Islam who are also, not surprisingly, aligned with extreme right-wing Zionist forces. They include the aforementioned Geller, Frank Gaffney at the Center for Security Policy, David Yerushalmi of the Society of Americans for National Existence, Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, and Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism. These individuals and their organizations pour out a stream of misinformation claiming that terrorism is inherent in mainstream Islam and that the American Muslim community is a threat to American values, culture and security. In reality, American Muslims are above the national average in education and income, and not even the Congressional Islamophobe Peter King, R-N.Y., was able to find in his provocative "investigations" of the American Muslim community any significant extremist or terrorist presence in U.S. mosques or other Muslim institutions.

The linkage between the right wing and the current campaign of divisive anti-Muslim propaganda confirms what progressives have long contended: that the right will use any tool to divide and confuse people and divert them from struggle against corporate power. Therefore, as the powerful reaction to Pamela Geller's bus ads in San Francisco shows, stamping out Islamophobia has to be high on the agenda of the people's movement.

Photo: ISIS fighters use captured U.S. military eqipment and guns. AP

Left coalition wins in major German state

Fri, 07 Nov 2014 11:33:00 +0000

The radical Die Linke looks set to take charge of a regional government in Germany for the first time, in alliance with the Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens.

Local Social Democrat and Green leaders backed coalition talks last month and SPD party members in Thuringia endorsed the plan yesterday. Local Green members will be consulted once the coalition programme is agreed. The government could be in place by December.

This would likely see Bodo Ramelow, Die Linke's leader in Thuringia, appointed as the federal state's prime minister after his party consolidated its position as the second biggest group in the state diet behind chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU in September's regional elections.

The party has been in coalition governments at a regional level before in Berlin and Brandenburg, but this would be the first time Die Linke would lead a federal state administration, marking a breakthrough for a party that has been seen as a political pariah by the CDU and many in the centre-left SPD.

These developments have led to plenty of scaremongering.

Die Linke is the heir of the communist-era Socialist Unity Party (SED) of East Germany (GDR), and also includes west German communists and dissident social democrats, including former finance minister and founding member Oskar Lafontaine.

Just before the September election in a region that is situated in the former GDR, Chancellor Merkel warned voters not to "let Karl Marx back into the state premier's office."

Criticism of Die Linke stems from plain old anti-communism, but also the alleged presence in its ranks of former members and informants of the Stasi, the GDR's security police.

Moreover Die Linke is left out in the cold because its hasn't bought into the neoliberal consensus.

It believes in a strong role for the state and public and welfare spending, it opposed a series of anti-democratic, pro-business EU treaties (including the Lisbon and Constitutional treaties) and rejects Nato membership in favour of a new security framework including Russia.

Most recently it was ostracised for criticising Germany's support for what it termed the fascist government of Ukraine.

Crucially, the leadership of the SPD has consistently spurned alliances at a national level with Die Linke, even though in the Federal elections in autumn last year the SPD, Greens and Die Linke together won enough seats together (320 seats in the 631-member Bundestag) to rule the country. Instead the SPD formed a "grand" coalition with Angela Merkel's CDU/CSU, watering down its most progressive policies and assisting her in her disastrous austerity drive across the eurozone.

So why the shift in position?

The 58-year-old Ramelow is a former trade union official from western Germany. He never belonged to the SED but before the fall of the Berlin Wall was spied on by West Germany's intelligence service - the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) - over alleged contacts with the German Communist party (DKP), a party that was legalised after the nazi period but only barely tolerated by the US-backed western German post-war regime.

However, Mr Ramelow "is not a romantic socialist in disguise, but a pragmatic professional, for which what matters is not so much the policies of Die Linke, but rather the principles of good governance," reports Die Tageszeitung newspaper. Also, as the experience elsewhere has shown, centrally set budget constraints on Germany's Lander seriously constrain the opportunities for any radical political experiment.

Another explanation is more simple. The SPD was previously ruling the state as a junior partner of the CDU, but paid dearly for it, winning a meagre 12 per cent of the vote in September. The fear is that any further association with the CDU and its record in Thuringia would be disastrous.

Why? First, the regional government - dominated for 25 years by the CDU - made a name for itself flogging Thuringia to employers as a centre for low wages. Second, Thuringia was also the HQ of the terrorist activities of the neonazi National Socialist Underground (NSU).

Between 2000 and 2010 NSU killed at least 10 people and during the investigation into the murders indications emerged that the German secret services were aware of the terrorist cell. The NSU used its members as informants.

While the CDU still managed to win the most seats in the 91-member assembly in September, taking 34, the SPD won just 12. Die Linke, traditionally gaining the bulk of its support in the former communist East, won 28 seats.

So instead of playing second fiddle to Merkel the SPD could forge a government on a one-seat majority with the Greens, which took six seats, and Die Linke.

This isn't just about local politics. The left-wing of the SPD see a red-red-green government in Thuringia as a model they have been fighting for across Germany, for the SPD to look left for political partners - not right. Not only because it is right, but because they fear being in bed with Merkel and Co is bad for their political health.

Certainly, for Germans and Europeans more generally, the dire state of the eurozone and the economic problems starting to emerge in the bloc's superpower too make a political shift to the left in the country essential.

Reposted from Morning Star.

Photo: Bodo Ramelow. AP

New York Times calls for freedom for the Cuban Five Prisoners

Tue, 04 Nov 2014 13:50:00 +0000

In its third editorial in recent weeks on U.S.-Cuba relations, the New York Times called on Sunday for the United States government to carry out a humanitarian exchange with Cuba whereby Cuba would release government contractor Alan Gross and the United States would release the three remaining members of the "Cuban Five": Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino and Antonio Guerrero.

Two other members of the five, Rene Gonzalez and Fernando Gonzalez, have served out their sentences and are back in Cuba.

The Cuban government, as the editorial points out, has been hinting at its willingness to consider such an exchange for several years now.

The Cuban Five, who had been in Miami surreptitiously observing the activities of Cuban exile groups which had in the past carried out terrorist attacks in Cuba, were arrested in 1998. Their trial took place in a politically overheated atmosphere right after the incident with the Cuban child Elian Gonzalez.

Gross was arrested in Cuba in 2009 when he was caught smuggling in electronic equipment designed to bypass Cuban security's signal blocking mechanisms, a violation of a Cuban law which penalizes anybody who helps to keep the U.S. trade blockade of Cuba going. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The New York Times editorial calls for the Obama administration to begin negotiations with the Cuban government for a humanitarian prisoner exchange, which it rightly notes could be the ice breaker for a further normalization of U.S.-Cuba ties.

The strongest and most original part of the editorial focuses on the case of one of the Five, Gerardo Hernandez, who is serving two life sentences on trumped up charges of murder. Gerardo was the coordinator of the group to which the five belonged. On Feb. 24, 1996 two small aircraft belonging to the Cuban exile political organization Brothers to the Rescue (Hermanos al Rescate) were shot down by Cuban jets after buzzing Havana to drop leaflets which called on the Cuban people to overthrow their government. Four people were killed. Cuban authorities had repeatedly warned the United States that if it did not rein in the Brothers to the Rescue flights, which violated both Cuban and U.S. law, they would eventually take such action. But Gerardo was convicted of murder, and appeals ultimately did not thrive.

The New York Times editorial takes up the tale:

"One of the [appeals court] judges, Phyllis Kravitch, wrote a dissenting opinion arguing that Mr. Hernandez' murder-conspiracy conviction was unfounded. Prosecutors, she argued, failed to establish that Mr. Hernandez, who provided Havana with information about the flights, had entered into an agreement to shoot down the planes in international, as opposed to Cuban, airspace. Downing the planes over Cuban airspace, which the exiles had penetrated before, would not constitute murder under American law.

The United States has refused to make public information it has which it claims proves that the planes were shot down over international waters, raising suspicions about their authenticity.

The editorial correctly points out that when various people have asked U.S. officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, why the U.S. is not receptive to the idea of exchanging Gross for the remaining members of the Five, the reply has been that there is not an "equivalency" between the two cases. The "non-equivalency" claim is based on the conviction of Gerardo Hernandez for murder. But Judge Kravitch's doubts about the validity of the prosecution case against Gerardo suggest that sufficient pressure could cause the U.S. authorities to back off the non-equivalency claim, which they must know is shaky. So it is extremely helpful for the Times editorial to point out this little known item.

There is currently a habeas corpus petition before the courts, in the name of Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino and Antonio Guerrero, based on the many errors in the original trial.

These errors include the subsequently revealed information that the U.S. government had been paying so-called "journalists" in Miami who subsequently whipped up a storm of hatred against the Five during their trial, making it impossible to shield jurors from publicity detrimental to the defendants.

Though the Times editorials, coming from one of the most influential and widely read newspapers in the country, are of great practical importance, the third one does contain some mistakes that need to be corrected. That Mr. Gross' imprisonment is "the chief obstacle to a diplomatic breakthrough" is to be doubted; it more likely the chief pretext. Gross is not a person being held "hostage" or for "ransom or political leverage"; he was convicted in open court of violating a Cuban law he should have known about. The main reason Cubans don't have better access to the internet is that the U.S. economic blockade makes it harder to get both hardware and software. Whether efforts such as the one Mr. Gross was engaged in can be considered "pro democracy" is a stretch, to say the least.

But on balance, the initiative by the Times is very helpful.

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