People Before Profit blog

Sept. 11: Flaming death from the sky

Fri, 11 Sep 2015 12:43:00 +0000

The date was September 11. The airplanes came in at rooftop level. In seconds the great building was ablaze, and many lay dead. In the aftermath, cold-hearted reaction took over power in the country, repressing left, the working class and the minorities. Many years passed before the country emerged from this nightmare.

The Twin Towers? The Bush-Cheney regime?

Actually I did not mean Sept. 11, 2001, but Sept. 11, 1973, and the country was not the United States, but Chile.

While people in the United States commemorated the dead of the Al Qaeda attacks on New York, the Pentagon and Flight 93, which crashed in Shanksville, Pa., people in Chile were commemorating the thousands who died as a result of the bloody 1973 military coup that overthrew the democratically-elected government of Dr. Salvador Allende Gossens, plunging the Chilean people into the long night of dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte.

The connection between our 9/11 and Chile's goes far beyond the coincidence of having occurred on the same date, though 28 years apart.

Both were products of the efforts of the most reactionary sectors of international monopoly capital to suppress the aspirations of ordinary workers and farmers around the world by unleashing on them the most backward and violent elements.

In the case of Chile, it was the armed forces that were the breeding ground of the most anti-democratic elements. When push came to shove, international monopoly capital, the Chilean ruling class and the Nixon administration did not give a damn about constitutions and elections. They were angry that Allende was nationalizing foreign monopoly enterprises. They were furious that Allende had expanded the rights of workers and unions. They were incandescent that Allende had begun to reverse the injustices of centuries to which the Mapuche people, Chile's largest indigenous group, had been subjected. So Pinochet struck, Allende died in the blazing La Moneda presidential palace, and workers, artists, intellectuals, Mapuches and the left all found themselves under the hammer of brutal repression.

In the case of the United States, 9/11 was a semi-direct result of the efforts by the United States and its allies to use the most retrograde form of politicized Islamic fundamentalism to gain control over Afghanistan. Working with the Saudi Arabian monarchy and the reactionary military dictatorship of Pakistan, our government did not care if this meant allying itself with people who threw acid in the faces of women university students, or who advocated the stoning to death of women accused of adultery, or all those other things the right wing tries to scare us with now.

And even though Sept. 11, 2001, was one result of our interference in Afghanistan, the Bush administration was absolutely shameless in its willingness to use the attack as the pretext for invading not only Afghanistan, but also Iraq, in the latter case based on the lie that Iraq had been somehow involved and held weapons of mass destruction. Riding the fear, anger and sorrow that arose from our 9/11 was how Bush and his crowd stayed in power, and how they plan to return to power.

On Saturday in Chile, thousands marched in commemoration of that other 9/11. Unfortunately, a Pinochet associate, right-wing businessman Sebastian Piñera, now occupies the Chilean presidency. His socialist predecessor, Michelle Bachelet, was wildly popular but could not succeed herself, according to the Chilean Constitution, and the coalition by which she ruled was not strong enough to prevent the Piñera election earlier this year.

On Saturday, according to the left-wing Mexican daily La Jornada (http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2010/09/12/index.php?section=mundo&article=028n1mun), Piñera said the 1973 coup was the "natural development" of a "sick democracy." Thus he tried to give the impression that both the Allende government and his own associates on the right were equally to blame for the event which left at least 3,000 people dead, or missing and assumed dead.

Pinochet died in 2006 without ever having to render accounts for his crimes. Post-Pinochet governments have managed, however, to prosecute several hundred of his most violent associates. And the Chilean people, including workers, farmers and especially the Mapuche people who are currently engaged in a sharp struggle for their land and cultural rights, have not given up.

The Communist Party of Chile, many of whose members were killed, imprisoned or exiled under Pinochet, has taken up the cause of the Mapuches, demanding that the government negotiate in good faith with Mapuche representatives, some of whom have been engaged in a long, life endangering hunger strike (http://www.pcchile.cl/index.php?option=com_context&task=view&id=2331&Itemid=2)

Photo: Urban Search and Rescue specialists continue to search for survivors amongst the wreckage at the World Trade Center, Sept. 13, 2001. (Andrea Booher/ FEMA News)

Note: This article was originally posted on Sept. 14, 2010.

Time for U.S. to exonerate Rosenbergs, new book shows

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 10:37:00 +0000

Book Review

"Exoneration: The Trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Morton Sobell - Prosecutorial deceptions, suborned perjuries, anti-Semitism, and precedent for today's unconstitutional trials"
By Emily Arnow Alman and David Alman.
2010, Green Elms Press, paperback, 471 pages, $24.95

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, parents of two young children, were executed by the U.S. government on June 19,1953. But the case has refused to die.

"Exoneration" is to my knowledge the first book on the Rosenberg-Sobell case published since Morton Sobell told The New York Times in 2008 that he and Julius Rosenberg had given non-atomic classified information to the Soviet Union in 1944-45, having to do with radar and other defense technology. That was during World War II, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union were allies in the fight against fascism.

Contrary to the implication of the headline the Times chose to put on its report ("Figure in Rosenberg Case Admits Spying for Soviet Union"), Sobell emphasized that neither he nor, as far as he knew, either of the Rosenbergs had committed the atom spying "crime" for which the couple was tried in 1951 and sent to the electric chair, and for which he served 18 years of a 30-year jail sentence.

In fact, the essential truth that Sobell's interview revealed was that the Rosenbergs "didn't do the thing they were being killed for," as their son Robert Meeropol told the Times.

The fraudulent nature of the case centered, the Almans show, on the prosecution's transposition of the time of the crime from World War II to the Cold War.

The authors write, "The defendants had not actually been prosecuted for conspiring to pass information to a wartime ally in 1944-1945. Their formal indictment described the conspiracy as lasting from 1944-1950, but the last alleged espionage act listed in the indictment was in 1945. The chronological facts were ignored and the formal indictment was replaced by an oral indictment in the courtroom in which the crime was described as having been committed during the Cold War years, at a time when fear of a Soviet atom bomb attack was widespread" - a fear that was propagated by the Cold Warriors themselves.

"The prosecution did not point to any criminal acts committed by the defendants after the Allied victory in 1945," the authors note. Prosecutors "repeatedly described the actions as having been committed on behalf of an enemy nation. The jurors believed the defendants were being tried for committing treasonable acts on behalf of an enemy, and found them guilty of treason."

Meanwhile, the book shows, U.S. Cold Warriors were engaged in "The Great Turnabout," concealing the extent of German espionage in the U.S. and making ex-Nazis our new (and in some cases old) best friends in the war against Communism. The authors detail how some of the most famous names of U.S. capitalism - such as DuPont, Ford, General Motors and Standard Oil (later Exxon) - gave material aid to the Nazis. General Motors, for example, manufactured military planes for the Nazis throughout the war at its Opel plant in Germany. Yet these companies' CEOs were never tried for treason. And after the war, the U.S. rushed to get convicted Nazi leaders released from jail so as not to antagonize our important new ally, West Germany.

"Exoneration" is, I believe, also the first book published on the case since the 2008 release of grand jury transcripts which showed, among other things, that the "evidence" that was used to convict and electrocute Ethel Rosenberg was false, and deliberately so.

The authors were co-founders and leaders of the National Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case, which later became the National Committee to Reopen the Rosenberg Case.

The book tells two major stories.

One, it sheds new light on the case itself. Presenting a careful analysis of the voluminous trial record, grand jury testimonies, and other documents and evidence that have come to public light in recent years, it lays out clear evidence of shocking, deliberate misconduct by the prosecution, judge, and top U.S. officials, all the way to the attorney general and chief justice of the Supreme Court - including collusion, deception, manipulation of evidence and suborned perjury.

Two, it presents a first-hand account of the movement to save the lives of the Rosenbergs. What began as a small group of people in New York who in 1951 formed the Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case became a national and international movement of millions, including figures like Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, and the Pope.

In the dark days of the McCarthy period, Rosenberg committees sprang up in every major American city. Thousands of letters and postcards were sent to Washington calling for a new trial and for clemency.

Beginning in December 1952 and continuing until the execution six months later, a 24-hour vigil in front of the White House, appealing for clemency for the Rosenbergs, was maintained by thousands of Americans, some on their lunch hours or after work, others traveling there from far away.

On the day of the execution, some 12,000 to 24,000 mourners overflowed the funeral hall in New York. The Fur Workers Union provided a 24-hour honor guard for the caskets.

At the height of McCarthyism? How was this possible?

The authors recount a problematic relationship between the committee and the U.S. Communist Party. They relate how early on they had assumed that the CPUSA was providing funds for the Rosenbergs' lawyer, Emanuel Bloch, and were surprised to learn that was not the case. They indicate that the party was "utterly opposed" to the formation of the committee. Later, they relate several incidents in which party leaders met with committee members and urged the disbanding of the committee or curtailing of its activities. They cite an FBI memo reporting that party leader Gus Hall, at the time in jail along with Sobell, criticized some of the committee's efforts. The concern expressed, the authors note, was that the committee's activities would be branded as "Communist" and at the same time hurt the Communist Party, which was battling police-state type repression and was of course the real target of the Rosenberg case in the first place - the effort to label the party, individual Communists and "sympathizers," labor unions, anti-lynching organizations, immigrant support groups, and the like as "un-American," traitors and spies. Read more on the context here.

Yet it is clear from the authors' narrative of the remarkable history of the committee and the massive movement to save the lives of the Rosenbergs that Communists played an enormous role in the growth of the committee and the movement as a whole.

This was a time of fear and confusion, just a few years after a terrifying new atomic weapon first appeared on the world scene. Hindsight suggests that party leaders, in initially distancing themselves from the Rosenbergs and the committee, sometimes in harsh and cruel ways, made some grievous mistakes. But their primary responsibility as they certainly must have seen it then was to protect the party, on behalf of the entire American progressive movement, in the face of overwhelming government terror. Who would like to have been in their shoes?

Even as the party's leaders were being indicted and jailed across the country, with many leaders and activists going "underground," in a wave of anti-Communist terror, Communists who had led the mass union and civil rights drives of the 1930s and '40s continued their activities for social justice alongside of non-Communists, including in the movement to save the Rosenbergs, in what surely was an example of courage and principle. Historian Norman Markowitz comments, "Would the defense campaign have existed at the level that it did both here and internationally without the CPUSA? The answer is no." (For more on the Rosenberg case and the political setting, see Markowitz's 2008 article in Political Affairs.)

This is a topic which merits further consideration. Hopefully some historian will produce an account of the Communist Party's role, warts and all, in battling McCarthyism.

As this book makes evident, the witch-hunters could not kill the American progressive movement. The mass movement to save the Rosenbergs was the forerunner of the great civil rights movement that was already sprouting, and of the other transformative movements that would soon emerge.

The authors emphasize the role of anti-Semitism in the Rosenberg-Sobell case. It was clearly a big factor. But like racism, anti-Semitism is not simply a thing in itself - it is a tool used to accomplish other aims. I think the authors make a mistake by comparing the Rosenberg trial to trials with heavy anti-Semitic aspects in the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia in 1952. It essentially lets off the hook the Cold Warriors at the highest levels of the U.S. who conducted the Rosenberg case in order to destroy the American Communist-progressive movement. Strikingly, the timeline at the front of the book notes that the Soviet government in 1955 exonerated those executed in1952, and the Czech government did likewise in 1963.

The United States has yet to come to terms with the truth about the crimes committed in the persecution and execution of the Rosenbergs. "Exoneration" provides a compelling picture of what those crimes in high places were, and why they matter to us today. Hopefully, it will help bring closer the day when our government exonerates Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Photo: Washington, D.C., White House vigil for clemency for the Rosenbergs, February 1953. (Courtesy of the Daily Worker/Daily World Photographs Collection at the Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University)

Ginning up racism: its winners and losers

Wed, 29 Sep 2010 15:31:00 +0000

Two years into the Obama presidency it is fair to say that racist ideology is the main mobilizing discourse of right-wing extremism. In subtle and crude forms, it has become the main poison to draw white people into the theater of politics on the side of the most reactionary sections of corporate capital.

Its amplifiers are many and well positioned to spread this poison to a national audience. More and more, the discourse of racism has become shrill, threatening, and dangerous.

In this discourse based on sheer invention, the president is a Muslim (as if there is something wrong with that). His birthplace is Kenya, not the U.S. He is Hitler in "blackface," and at the same time a closet socialist (a terrible thing in their view). Stealth and deception were his path to the White House. He hates private enterprise and loves intrusive government. He is tearing up the Constitution.

The latest instance of the right wing's racist imagery of Barack Obama appears in a Forbes magazine article. Authored by Dinesh D'Souza, a well-paid literary pimp, the article's thesis is simple: the president is channeling the anti-colonial, creepy, evil mentality of his "tribesman" father into the Oval Office.

"[I]nstead of readying us for the challenge," D'Souza writes, "our President is trapped in his father's time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. American today is run by a ghost."

Wow! Is this guy for real? How can anybody believe this pseudo-psychological pulp fiction? The rest of the article is no better, full of smoke and mirrors, cobbled together from innuendo and falsehoods.

Truth is the first victim of D'Souza's right-wing extremism. If anybody is a "ghost," it's not Obama, but D'Souza - not of his father, but of the Nazi propagandist Goebbels.

But here's the rub: If it were only a few angry white men, sitting in a coffee shop, who took this stuff seriously, it wouldn't matter much.

But that's not the reality. This racist garbage is resonating with a much larger audience, cutting across class, income, religious and regional lines. It strikes a chord among some wealthy and middle-class people, but it penetrates into white working class neighborhoods (urban, suburban and small town) too. Yes, class-consciousness is growing among white workers as evidenced by the massive labor mobilization for the One Nation rally and the November elections. But its growth is an uneven, contradictory and contested process in which anti-racism among growing numbers of white workers cohabits with a resurgence of racism among some others.

To ignore or minimize the impact of this racist offensive is exceedingly dangerous. Nor should we think that a vigorous response to it is a diversion from "more pressing" economic issues.

If left unchallenged, this ramped up and revamped ideological racist counteroffensive could throw the country back to days long thought gone by or into a future that we long thought could "never happen here."

Many commentators, myself included, have pointed to the role of right-wing extremism in fomenting racist rage in all its versions (Obama is a Muslim, un-American, socialist, father channeling, etc.), but what goes unexplained and needs to be explained is why do so many white people embrace this poison that is so harmful to their well being, why are so many so strident, why are so many so ready to accept the most far-fetched racist pronouncements?

What is the triggering mechanism for this new wave of racism?

One answer is that a stagnant economy and harshly competitive job market have increased racist tensions and divisions between white workers and workers of color as well as between native-born and immigrant workers.

Another is that it is natural to blame the president, no matter who or what color he is, for the nation's ills.

Still another is that the top layers of our society - Wall Street, Big Energy, the military industrial complex, etc. - dismayed with the president's agenda, have turned loose the dogs of racism and political extremism.

Yet another explanation for the surge of vile racism is the power, reach, and spin abilities of right-wing mass media.

Each of these explanations contains a measure of truth. They are part of the mix.

But, I would argue that they are not at the heart of matter. To understand what set into motion this surge, we have to turn our analytic eye to the election of Barack Obama to the highest office in our land and the racial dynamics surrounding that historic event.

The election of an African American president was rich in symbolic meaning and far-reaching in impact on white Americans (and Americans of other races and nationalities), but not in the same way for every white person.

For many white people it was an exhilarating and transformative moment. When the president and his beautiful family walked onto the stage in Chicago's Grant Park on election night, tears of joy poured from their eyes. It felt like an insuperable barrier had been surmounted and a new era worthy of our nation's best ideals and promises was commencing.

But for many other white Americans the president's election was traumatic; their world was turned upside down; their way of life and values were not reaffirmed, but challenged. What was symbolically liberating for some white people was perceived as symbolically a disaster by others.

If an extremely smart, magnetic, young, democratic-minded African American is to sit in the highest position in our land, many must have wondered, what's next?

The election of Barack Hussein Obama to the foremost position in our country was, for a not insignificant minority of white people, an intellectual, emotional and existential challenge to a set of social arrangements and attitudes that assigned African Americans to an inferior and subordinate status on the basis of skin color and nationality.

It upended what seemed like a natural order in which their own status and sense of well being was heavily invested.

More than most of us appreciated at the time, it signified for some the closing of one era and the beginning of another, in which "the last will be first."

Thus I believe that the election of Barack Obama was a powerful psychological blow to a section of white people, triggering an immediate spike in their racial anxieties, insecurities and resentments. Without any prompting from right-wing extremism or a word from the president's mouth, the moment Barack Obama was declared the winner he became in their minds illegitimate, a menace, someone to be brought down "asap."

In this atmosphere, right-wing extremism - ranging from numerous think tanks and foundations to the Republican Party leadership, to radio talk and Fox News, to the tea party, to personalities like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich (with the mainstream media sometimes an abettor) - had (and is still having) a field day. It gave voice to this disaffected and angry grouping of people, repeated ad nauseum its vicious racist lies, and organized this scattered mob into shock troops to obstruct the president's agenda and re-tilt the balance of political power in favor of the most backward elements of the ruling class and its closest allies.

What is more, this racist upsurge and its right-wing enablers combined to aggressively promote and further amplify the whole panoply of right-wing ideological notions that are designed to cause division, hatred and the dumbing down of the American people. If we unpack right-wing ideology - an exceedingly nasty variant of capitalist class ideology - we find multiple, mutually reinforcing, and connected strands (immigrants steal jobs and feast on government benefits; government is too big and out of control; taxes kill jobs and incentives to work and invest; private is better than public; a culture of dependence shapes communities of color; the Democrats, liberal elites, and the left are soft on terrorism, hostile toward religion, and contemptuous of America; gay culture is corrosive of marriage and family values, and so forth). But at its core and winding their way into and giving credibility to each strand are racist ideology and practices, and especially anti-African-American racism.

That there would be this dynamic should have been anticipated. Only a quick glance at some earlier episodes in our history - the Civil War, the Reconstruction period, and the civil rights revolution of the 1960s - tells us that white ruling elites and their supporters were first shocked by their loss of privilege, power and wealth to multi-racial egalitarian movements, but then regrouped and went into overdrive to restore their former unrivaled dominance and re-subordinate the African American people and allied groups. Their weapon of choice was terror combined with a fierce ideological counterattack.

And in another instance of "the more things change the more they stay the same," the Black-led Reconstruction governments in the 19th century and Dr. Martin Luther King and his supporters in the 20th century were also considered illegitimate, inferior, arrogant and incapable of judicious self-governance, much like President Obama is today.

So history repeats itself, but in a new era and with new forces, new obstacles, and new possibilities and dangers.

While the jury is out as to who will win this irrepressible conflict, the political imperative for the broad labor-based coalition that elected this president is clear. The fight against racism has to be the property of every democratic-minded person, and, in the first place, workers in the "white skin" as Marx would say, not as a favor to their brothers and sisters of color, but in their own interests.

The class and democratic struggle is hanging in balance and only a sustained struggle for anti-racist unity will tip the pendulum of power in the direction of progressive change.

A point of departure in this struggle is to rebuff the fierce racist assault on our nation's first African American president.

For anyone to affix to the president singular or even the lion's share of the blame for the present impasse reveals an incredible ignorance of class and, especially, racial dynamics.

To sit on one's hands and make pithy critiques of the administration while the president is the target of racist discourse that we thought was forever buried away in our historical memory gives license to the worst racists as well as opens the door for the extreme right's return to political power.

In earlier periods when racism gained ascendency over anti-racism, the only real winner, regardless of what some historians of "white privilege" claim, was the white ruling classes, slavery-based and capitalist, and their closest allies.

Racism strikes people of color the hardest. About this there is no question. But at the end of the day working people of all colors are scarred. It is an ideology and practice that denies equality to people of color, heightens exploitation of all who labor, and destroys real democracy.

It remains, as the Communist Party has said for decades, the most dangerous and formidable barrier to progress. It has to be contested on every front - none more immediate than the November elections.

Dems keep House and Senate!

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 14:52:00 +0000

"The predicted Republican takeover of Congress failed to materialize yesterday as voters gave somewhat smaller, but clear majorities to Democrats in both the House and Senate.

Pundits, trying to make sense of the results, are attributing them to a variety of causes ranging from ‘the Republicans just peaked too soon' to ‘the tea parties were too successful for their own good.'

"More likely explanations, that earlier polling was done before most people really made up their minds or had a handle on the issues at stake, are noticeably absent from the assessments."

Those first two paragraphs could well be the opening to a story that might appear in the Peoples World on Nov. 3, the day after Election Day. There are many reasons why this is not at all an overly optimistic scenario:

First, the folly of taking the polls as gospel was underlined again today with release of an AP survey that shows the negative view the public has about the Democrats' healthcare reform law is because voters think the reform doesn't go far enough.

About 40 percent of respondents said the law was too timid in overhauling the nation's healthcare system, while only 20 percent said they'd like to see it repealed.

This is not good news for Republicans who first voted unanimously against healthcare reform and have since maintained, incorrectly, that public opposition to it comes from voters who consider it an attack on their freedom.

Republican hopes of taking over the Congress are less likely to be realized also as evidence grows that the Democrats have a fight-back strategy. The president, congressional leaders, and a good number of senators and members of the House are now focusing more on exposing key differences between themselves and the Republicans. There are signs that this is influencing even disaffected voters who may now be thinking twice about electing lunatic fringe candidates.

Polls in both Alaska and Delaware show an increasing likelihood of Democratic wins in both of these states, each of which had been considered safe for Republicans.

There is also evidence that as the extremism of these two candidates becomes better known across the country Republicans generally can expect to suffer. For those who think these assessments are too optimistic - take a look at a new Harris poll just released today:

Their latest survey shows that if the election for the House of Representatives were held today, 40 percent of registered voters would vote for the Democratic candidate and 36 percent would vote for the Republican candidate with 19 percent unsure.

Contrary to the media mantra about an impending Republican "tsunami," the poll shows the parties mostly holding their base voters, with 84 percent of Republicans voting for their candidate and 81 percent of Democrats sticking with theirs'. Independents break down 35 percent for the GOP, 23 percent for the Democrats and 27 percent undecided.

Most worrisome for the GOP is what the poll predicts when you throw in a tea party candidate.

Among registered voters, 41 percent would vote for the Democratic candidate, 23 percent would vote for the Republican, 13 percent would vote for the tea party candidate and 23 percent are not sure at all.

As encouraging to progressives as the Harris poll is, a sustained fight by the Democrats and their allies on several key issues has the potential to yield even better Election Day results than those in the Harris poll.

Democrats stand to gain more, for example, as they fight for tax relief for 98 percent of Americans while the GOP fights for tax relief for the rich.

Getting the word out on Social Security would also hurt the GOP. None of the polls reflect an electorate fully aware that several leading Republicans have openly called for raising the retirement age or cutting benefits. Few realize, for example, that Joe Miller, the GOP Senate candidate in Alaska, has called for Sociaal Security's elimination altogether because it is not in the original U.S. Constitution.

Voters are showing they will not vote for candidates who want to raise the retirement age, slash or eliminate Social Security or privatize it. It is the nation's most popular program. .

100 House Democrats have already signed a pledge not to cut SSI benefits, raise the retirement age, or privatize Social Security in any way. The more voters who learn about the pledge and the more who understand that most Republicans would never sign such a pledge, the lower the GOP vote on Nov. 2.

Emil Shaw, lifelong fighter for justice

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 13:12:00 +0000

Emil Shaw, a lifelong social justice activist, died Sept. 12, 2010, in Albuquerque, N.M. He was 81.

Shaw was born in Vienna, Austria, on March 3, 1929, amidst the rise of the fascism in Europe. Shaw's parents were Jewish and active in the socialist movements in Austria. They were persecuted by the Nazis, who took over the country in 1938. The Shaws were forced to flee to the United States in 1939.

For Emil, this experience forged a lifelong hatred of Nazi ideology, racism and inequality in any form. He strove for a better life for people, becoming a member of the Communist Party USA, and becoming active in peace, civil rights, labor and other social justice movements.

Shaw spent his early years in Michigan and 38 years in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he married Rose Levy, and they raised a family.

Shortly after their marriage, Shaw spent several months in the army during the Korean War, receiving an honorable discharge due to faulty eyesight.

Shaw had many jobs, but worked for a long period of time in a knitting mill and later became a junior high school shop teacher, obtaining a bachelor's degree from City College of New York.

During his 38 years in Brooklyn, Shaw helped to lead tenant strikes and progressive political campaigns. He was active in the labor movement and organized buses to Washington D.C. for civil rights and Vietnam War protests.

When Shaw retired, he and Rose boldly moved out West and settled in New Mexico. Emil -- and Rose - became active in labor, retiree and progressive causes in the state.

His grassroots activities included leading tenant strikes, union work, organizing buses to Washington for civil rights and Vietnam protests, electoral campaigning, and fighting for senior issues. He was a member of SouthWest Organizing Project, American Federation fo Teachers New Mexico Retirees, Gray Panthers of Greater Albuquerque, the N.M. AFL-CIO Retirees Council and Alliance for Retired Americans. Emil Shaw was the former president of New Mexico Alliance for Retired Americans.

Emil was known and loved for his corny sense of humor, commitment, dedication and genuine compassion. He loved the arts and was an avid fisherman. He and Rose celebrated 60 years of marriage this month.

Labor, retiree, civil rights and peace leaders from across New Mexico paid tribute to Shaw and his work at a memorial service & celebration of his life at Congregation Nahalat Shalom in Albuquerque. Moving tributes included a YouTube video by the SouthWest Organizing Project (see below).

On behalf of the Communist Party, Sam Webb spoke at Shaw's memorial and offered Rose, family and friends deepest condolences. Emil was "a beloved person, a genuine article, a real deal, an ever-ready battery and a fount of ideas and opinions, which he had no hesitation expressing," he said.

Speaking on current challenges, Webb said Shaw took his formative anti-fascist years and continued it by fighting "against right-wing extremism and racism, anti-immigrant feelings and repression, homophobia, and other forms of inequality and division."

Shaw was a "doer as much as a talker," Webb said. "Deeds mattered most to him. Words and ideas had their place -- and an important place at that -- but they had to be translated into practical realities."

Shaw loved the People's World/Mundo Popular and their predecessors. He wrote frequently for the newspapers and websites, combining both science-based, working-class political insights and experience. He raised thousands of dollars for the publications, and gave keen editorial advice.

Emil is survived by his wife, Rose Shaw, daughter Rebecca Shaw-Gove, son-in-law Geoffrey Gove, son Nathan Shaw, daughter-in-law Sandra Shaw and grandson Michael Shaw. For a family photo tribute, click here.

His ashes are buried at the Santa Fe National Cemetery. Donations can be made in his name to peoplesworld.org or a charity of choice.

Posted on Alliance for Retired Americans blog:

Carol Oppenheimer, a friend of Emil's, said that the following song "People Like You" by Si Kahn (a union and community organizer) seems an appropriate tribute to Emil - his role in the lives and work of so many.

People Like You

Old fighter you sure took it on the chin

Where'd you ever get the strength to stand?

Never giving up or giving in

You know I just want to shake your hand

And say that

People like you help people like me go on, go on

People like you help people like me go on

Old battler with a scar for every town

Thought you were no better than the rest

You wore your colors every way but down

All you ever gave us was your best

And you know that

People like you help people like me go on, go on

People like you help people like me go on

Old dreamer with a world in every thought

Where'd you get the vision to keep on?

You sure gave back as good as what you got

I hope that when my time is almost gone

They'll say that

People like me help people like you go on, go on

Because people like you help people like me go on

Photo: Emil Shaw (ARA)

“The Pipe” offers antidote to toxic “Superman”

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 15:28:00 +0000

WARNING: "Waiting for Superman," the new film by David Guggenheim ("An Inconvenient Truth"), might be injurious to public education.

The slick corporate answer to fixing the American public educational system was screened at this year's Toronto International Film Festival, followed by a panel including the director and none other than computer magnate and philanthropist Bill Gates. Producers are hoping to make this film the centerpiece for discussion around critical school issues, in the way "An Inconvenient Truth" tackled global warming. The marketing scheme of this well financed "liberal" documentary appears to be to villainize teachers and unions and place hope in the free market system. The Gates Foundation has earmarked $2 billion to create better high schools - not necessarily public schools.

With carefully selected interviews that reinforce the corporate dream, and music, photography, lighting and editing that are state of the art, the viewer is drawn into a work of art with a powerful agenda. The whole film reeks of free market propaganda, supporting the continuation of alternative charter schools, rigid testing and lotteries that pit families against each other for the few spaces available in these special schools.

It isn't only the attack on teachers and their unions but also the lack of a penetrating analysis of the failed No Child Left Behind program that is destroying public schools by underfunding and regimented testing. The conscious attempt to privatize education, bust unions and create a corporate climate in the classroom isn't addressed. The film urges adults to stop politicizing the debate and think of the children. Then it goes on to discuss incompetent teachers, intransigent unions and failing public schools without mentioning that private and charter schools have also failed while their teachers are not held to the same rigid standards.

The film praises the lottery system that allows every family the opportunity to "compete" for the best alternative schools. These schools are run by the likes of Geoffrey Canada, a dynamic educator who earns over $500,000 yearly to promote alternative schooling. Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian Fenty recently lost his bid for re-election partly as a backlash from his appointment of Michelle Rhee as education chancellor. Her ruthless axing of school employees infuriated parents and teachers along with her bravado and insensitivity. But she's the hero in the film while teachers union president Randi Weingarten is seen as an antagonist and impediment to solving the crisis in education.

By contrast, in "The Death and Life of the Great American School System," Diane Ravitch, one of the original architects of No Child Left Behind, directs attention to the fallacies inherent in NCLB and the business community's attempt to privatize education. In clear and concise language, the highly respected Ravitch refutes most of the claims made in the "Superman" movie. Among her solutions to the crisis in education is the suggestion that businessmen get out of the educational "business" and leave decisions on curriculum and schooling to educators who have been trained in the discipline. She reminds us that charter schools were originally conceived to address special need students not to "compete" with public schools. Our schools are definitely in a crisis, and "Waiting for Superman" serves at least one purpose of bringing the debate to the forefront. But walk into the theater informed and knowing that what you see is not all of what you need to see.

It makes one wonder and want to reassess the well received "An Inconvenient Truth," another "liberal" work of art by Guggenheim that brought global warming to daily discourse and lifted Al Gore to sainthood. The plan to spend $250 billion for a hundred years to lower the global temperature just a fraction of one degree is what prompted author and political scientist Bjorn Lomborg to write "The Skeptical Environmentalist." Quickly becoming the devil incarnate, Lomborg's views were reviled and rejected. However, the new documentary "Cool It!" by Ondi Timoner, twice winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, offers Lomborg a chance to present his theories with clarity and reasoned debate. The young and charismatic Danish scientist and former member of Greenpeace, who bicycles to meetings, comes across as a committed activist searching for solutions to the most serious world problems. Although he accepts the need to address global warming, Lomborg's approach has been to offer environmental and economic cost/benefit analyses and provide an alternative list of priorities that also include the urgent need to address HIV/AIDS, malaria, world hunger and poverty. His work with the Environmental Assessment Institute has supported research for alternative energy and the film offers several solutions to global warming, one of them being the splitting of H2O water molecules that create energy and oxygen to counteract the carbon buildup in the air.

Another popular energy alternative presented in the film is the great wind turbines we see placed in the deserts and mountains across the country. However, in another of the great documentaries presented in Toronto, we see residents in a small upstate New York town fighting the placement of these giant intruders in their pristine countryside. We see the other side of the story in the new film "Windfall," by Laura Israel. Fighting the local town council headed by one of the farmers who sold his land to a wind turbine company, the activists present the pitfalls of the new technology. Produced by large corporations who take advantage of farmers suffering form the economic downturn, these windmills create tremendous noise, shadows and safety issues when placed close to homes and farms. The film records yet another campaign by committed activists against abusive corporate power, and duplicitous local officials.

And one more powerful example of people rising up against corporate power is beautifully shown in the new Irish documentary "The Pipe," which chronicles the attempt by Shell Oil to run a pipe overland through the small town of Rossport off Ireland's west coast. Local farmers and fishermen put up a strong resistance to the mighty company, with dramatic scenes of small fishing trollers nudging giant drilling tankers. Farmers were willing to be arrested to protect their land from the dangers of the high-pressure gas pipes that were scheduled to run through their fields without their consent. The feistiness and determination of these small town folks are an inspiration to activists around the world, and the story is dramatically told in this wonderful documentary. Whether they succeed or not is for you to find out when you go out and support great activist films like this one.

Photo: Pipethefilm.com

Lying politicians and the thing that counts

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 14:31:00 +0000

With the 2010 midterm elections right around the corner it is important to understand two things. First, politicians will lie. Second, governing is much more difficult than opposing.

Let me explain!

As November 2 gets closer and closer we will be bombarded with TV ads, radio spots, e-mail blasts, robo-calls and mail pieces. We will be told multiple times - in multiple ways - why one candidate is better than the other. Each side will cite sources. This thank-tank will say that. That think-tank will say this. Long-forgotten quotes and interviews will be resurrected.

The average voter will have absolutely no idea who to believe. The average voter will have absolutely no idea what is true.

For example, here in Missouri, right-wing Republican Roy Blunt is in a hotly contested U.S. Senate race with Democrat Robin Carnahan. They are currently neck-to-neck in the polls. Blunt is a career politician who has already served 14 years in Congress.

In Blunt's numerous commercials, he claims to be a "change" agent. He claims to stand up to Wall Street and the big banks. He claims to be for the little guy - protecting us from "big government" and burdensome "job-killing regulations." He claims that he wants to do nothing short of saving our country!

Sounds good, right? The problem is that there is absolutely nothing true about his commercials, radio spots, mail pieces or e-mail blasts. The problem is that there is absolutely no oversight or regulation governing ethical-information practices when it comes to political commercials, radio spots, mail pieces or e-mail blasts, and the information (or misinformation) they create and perpetuate.

The fact is: politicians like Roy Blunt are able to make the most outlandish, most ridiculous claims - claims that contradict the actual, documented, publicly verifiable record - simply because they paid for the commercial time, time that snuggles warmly right up against our favorite TV shows.

In other words, they paid for the time, and as far as the TV station is concerned, they can say whatever the hell they want! Never mind that it is all lies.

The fact is: Roy Blunt has taken more money from lobbyists - and the big banks, corporations and CEOs they represent - than any other member of Congress.

The fact is: Roy Blunt can't be a "change" agent, as he is an embedded, career politician who has had 14 years in Congress to show Missouri voters what he actually stands for.

The fact is: Roy Blunt wants to save our country - for the rich and wealthy!

The fact is: the "job-killing regulations" he mentions actually protect ordinary Americans from unscrupulous corporations.

Additionally, while Republican politicians will use every opportunity to lie from the right, some from the left feel like it is their job to perpetually criticize any and every move of the Democratic Party - no matter the political balance of forces, no matter what can actually be won, no matter the actual power of the people's movement at any given time and its ability to win change.

Sadly, these folks have confused rhetorical opposition with actually getting stuff done, with actually making things better, with actually holding together a governing coalition of forces that makes change possible.

Those on the left who have nothing better to do than criticize shouldn't be so naïve as to believe that the Obama administration - or the Democratic Party for that matter - is one giant hegemonic whole.

In fact, it is at its base a loosely held together coalition consisting primarily of the labor movement, the African American community, youth and students, and the women's movement, among other forces. And within this coalition there is a wide spectrum of political identities, beliefs and priorities. Within this coalition there are many different spheres of influence and power; and this dynamic is constantly changing.

However, holding this coalition together is of the utmost importance - if we are to win more changes in the years ahead, if we are to move forward as a country. Holding this coalition together may enable us to maintain control of the House and Senate. Consequently, holding this governing coalition together should be the single most important goal of the people's movement.

If this coalition fractures, the right wing may regain decisive power and take our country back to the dark ages. If this coalition fractures we may have another 30 years of right-wing domination.

So as we inch closer and closer to November 2 remember that the politicians will lie to you. However, we have to see past their lies and continue to build, consolidate and expand the coalition of forces that will ultimately enable us to make change.

Lions and tigers and "economic treason:" Oh my!

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 12:47:00 +0000

Some of my steelworkers retiree friends are a little nervous because Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, talked about "economic treason" in a speech this month in Ohio. Actually he's called out corporate America for economic treason on a number of occasions recently. My friends don't disagree, they just think it might be a bit strong for popular consumption.

I looked up the definition of treason online at dictionary.com: "1. the offense of acting to overthrow one's government or to harm or kill its sovereign; 2. a violation of allegiance to one's sovereign or to one's state; 3. the betrayal of a trust or confidence; breach of faith; treachery." (Of course in theory we don't have a sovereign, but hey, we do have a class of folks who bow down to big business. (Dare I say it, "economic royalty.") Anyway, I'll go with definition number 3.

Then I Googled "economic treason." Wow, what a virtual poop storm! Looks like Trumka really struck a right-wing, corporate nerve with that one. From the National Association of Manufacturing "Shop Floor" blog to something called the AK-47-net, they are foaming at the mouth, blog after wingnut blog outraged and ranting about the Trumka quote.
Here's a short quote from what Trumka actually said:

Some of our politicians, and some of America's biggest corporations have given up on America. Companies are sitting on $837 billion without creating jobs. Banks are clutching a trillion dollars in profits without lending to small businesses and consumers. Too many companies aren't investing in the future, or in the country that made them great. All they want to do is scrape every ounce of flesh from our hides -- for their profit. Well I say that is economic treason!

I would add that shutting down factories and destroying whole communities to move operations off shore in order to avoid living wages and labor and environmental regulation also constitutes economic treason.

This form of economic treason is sometimes excused by some on the left with the argument that moving jobs overseas to underdeveloped countries helps develop a working class in those countries and is therefore progressive. And that fighting to keep jobs and factories here in the US is protectionist. (Big business also loves the term "protectionist.") But imperialism is largely based on the fact that capital flows (often with military help) to where it can make the highest profit. And higher profits are based on higher rates of exploitation and super exploitation and working-class misery. General Motors doesn't build factories in India and Indonesia because it's interested in development. Workers, in any country, fighting to save jobs and their communities are showing true economic patriotism and working-class internationalism. Only the capitalists try and pit worker against worker in a race to the bottom on wages, and living conditions.

Giant global corporations are not loyal to any country, no matter where they are headquartered. GM going bankrupt and getting a bail-out from our tax dollars was able to "protect" their huge profits and capital holdings around the world from creditors in the U.S. Yet at the same time they fight to avoid their fair share of taxes, or health and safety or any other kind of regulation here at home. And these giant transnationals trample on labor and human rights around the world.

Now having said all that, I think I do see why some are nervous about the charge of treason. Retirees like me, remember the book "None Dare Call it Treason." It was a bible of anti-communist hysteria and the red scare. The charge of treason was thrown around at anything and anyone who opposed racism, injustice and war or stood up for worker and labor rights. It was not only used against actual communists and socialists, but against any progressive activist or organization. I remember vividly being called a traitor by Klansmen in southern Virginia for organizing support for African Americans to register to vote.

So for many of my generation the charge of treason is associated with extremism. Still just because the far right misused the term in the past doesn't mean it isn't a valid description for what big business and the giant financial institutions are doing today. I agree whole heartedly with Trumka. And let's be clear, The economic traitors are a tiny handful of people who put corporate profits above the good of our country.

Added to Trumka's list should be the union busters, the hate mongers, the giant corporations and banks that use the economic crisis that they created to drive down wages, cut jobs and send millions into unemployment, poverty and misery. They are truly guilty of "betrayal of a trust or confidence; breach of faith; treachery."

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimwinstead/129247349/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Health care law includes no lifetime limits

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 12:56:00 +0000

Lost in the tea party/GOP attacks on health care reform is the sigh of relief millions of Americans gave Sept. 23, as the first elements of the new health reform laws took effect.

Among those millions are the hundreds of thousands, whose lives were first changed when they were struck with disease, and then almost destroyed, when an insurance company told them they could not get coverage.

As of Sept. 23, 2010, denial of insurance to those with a pre-existing condition is illegal.

Also illegal, as of yesterday, is cutting off hundreds of thousands of children of the insured. Companies must keep them on their parents' plans until they are 26. It is illegal to dump them when they turn 18.

Other features that kick in now are:

• Ending rescission. Insurance companies are no longer allowed to retroactively cancel policies because people make inadvertent errors on their enrollment forms. Insurers used this to avoid paying for care when their customers became very ill.

• Preventive care without co-pays. Enrollees need not cough up co-pays or co-insurance. The rule only applies to preventive care delivered by practitioners in an insurer's network.

• More freedom to choose doctors within their insurers' networks and freedom to receive covered care in the emergency room even if they are not pre-approved.

Perhaps the most important piece that kicks in is no more lifetime coverage caps.

In April 2008, Barbara Russum, an administrative assistant who lives in Chicago's Bridgeport neighborhood, learned she had cancer. Since then she has run up medical expenses of $350,000.

"And there is always the chance that my cancer can come back," Russum said.

Russum was one of another group of several hundred thousand who woke up yesterday morning, for the first time, without fearing that a relapse would push her past some lifetime limit set by an insurance company.

"For me, eliminating the lifetime coverage limit is a tremendously important achievement of the Obama administration and all those in the House and Senate who voted for health care reform," she said.

Although the major changes associated with the bill won't happen until 2014, Russum says the immediate improvements are so important to her that she has been energized to get the vote out on Nov. 2.

"Everyone should get out and vote. I know how I'll be voting. The party of no can go to hell," she said.

The 2014 changes will guarantee all Americans can get coverage, and provide millions of dollars in subsidies to help them pay their premiums.

Tax breaks for small businesses that provide coverage to workers have already begun.

Commenting in a Washington Post op-ed, the Kaiser Family Foundation's Drew Altman said, "The federal government that many regard as sluggish and ineffective has turned major elements of the legislation into reality right on schedule.

"It has set up a program to help people with pre-existing conditions get coverage through state or federal high -risk pools; established a program to help employers provide health insurance to early retirees; issued rebates to help pay drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries; provided tax credits to small businesses; and created a consumer-friendly web site, that rivals anything coming out of Silicon Valley."

Public misunderstanding about the new law remains high, however.

A recent study by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation found nearly half the country's seniors wrongly believe the law creates a new government panel to make decisions about end-of-life care for people on Medicare. A reflection of the right-wing's "death panel" lie, many say.

Interestingly, polls show large numbers who are opposed to the new law change their answers when questioned about specifics they don't like. They respond favorably to the actual health care changes when asked about them point by point.

Some Democrats running for reelection say the reform law will pick up support as time goes on. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is one of them. He began running video clips that show the crass response to health care reform by Sharron Angle, his tea party/GOP opponent for the U.S. Senate seat in Nevada.

The video shows Angle mocking health care coverage for autism and maternity leave. "I'm not going to have any more babies, but I sure got to pay for it on my insurance. Those are the kinds of things that we want to get rid of," Angle says.

In a statement yesterday, Reid campaign spokesman Kelly Steele said, "Sharron Angle's extreme and dangerous agenda for Nevada has included some exceptionally callous rhetoric, including calling out-of-work Nevadans 'spoiled' by unemployment benefits and saying that rape victims should 'make lemons into lemonade' by having their attacker's child, but mocking those suffering with autism - and in fact scapegoating their coverage for our nation's health care woes - is exceptionally cruel and represents a new low, even for Sharron Angle."

Photo: bobster855/CC

Republican "pledge": kill jobs, give money to rich

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 12:33:00 +0000

In order to provide new tax cuts for the very rich, the Republican Party has proposed to gut investment in job creation, education and basic human needs for working families. According to a new analysis from the Economic Policy Institute released this week, the Republican Party's plan would kill as many as 1.1 million jobs.

Republicans claim their goal is to reduce the federal deficit. However, data analyzed by EPI reveals that, at best, despite the massive job-killing cuts, the GOP proposal reduces the federal deficit by a mere 5 percent.

According to the Republican plan, to achieve this meager goal without doing away with tax cuts for the rich, non-military spending would have to be slashed by some $350 billion.

The EPI notes that such steps "would result in drastic and politically unrealistic cuts to many human needs and investment programs." Say "goodbye" to investments in expanding broadband access, research and development in clean energy alternatives, improved healthcare infrastructure, improved roads and bridges, new mass transit, improvements in waste management, environmental cleanup, higher quality education, additional community health centers, and anti-poverty protections for unemployed workers and their families.

While the GOP plan would deliver this harsh blow to working families, it would add some $629 billion to the deficit in order to provide new tax cuts for the richest 2 percent of Americans.

By increasing the deficit to pay for a tax cut for the richest Americans, EPI found, the Republican Party's plan would offset savings accrued by gutting programs for working families.

In addition, using data from the Congressional Budget Office, the policy institute found that the GOP would put at risk the economic recovery by shrinking the GDP by at least 1.1 percent.

Because tax cuts for the rich is "the lowest bang for the buck" stimulus plan, it would simply fail to offset jobs lost due to shrinking government investments in the areas listed above.

Simply put, the Republican Party's plan to give tax cuts for the rich is at the expense of working families and would result in a net loss of 1.1 million jobs.

So far the Republicans have refused to get specific about what they would cut. They have refused to do so because they know their ideas would meet massive public resistance. But their proposal for "across the board spending cuts" would mean eliminating schools, roads, railroads, sewers, hospitals, community health centers, energy improvements, and research that would improve our lives, strengthen the economy, and modernize the country.

All in the name of benefiting a handful of rich people.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/daquellamanera/74855552/sizes/z/in/photostream/

The fruits of corporate globalization: a review of “El Traspatio”

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 10:37:00 +0000

Movie Review

"El Traspatio"

Directed by Carlos Carrera

2009, Mexico, Unrated with strong thematic elements

DVD release by Maya Entertainment: October 5, 2010

"El Traspatio," or "Backyard," was interpreted by some U.S. reviewers as nothing more than a ho-hum cops-and-robbers movie. In fact, it is a searing and realistic depiction of what international monopoly capital does to the lives of ordinary working men and women.

The film, directed by Carlos Carrera from a script by Sabina Berman, gives a fictionalized treatment to a horribly true story: the of the murder of hundreds of young women, many of them workers in the maquiladora assembly plants just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico.

Blanca Bravo (Ana de la Reguera) is a homicide detective assigned to investigate the murders. She teams up with a muckraking radio talk show host (Joaquín Cosío) who has been annoying the local police chief, business interests and the wonderfully slimy governor of Chihuahua (Enoc Leaño) by trying to focus public attention on the crimes. The civic leaders would much rather the murdered women be forgotten so that Juarez could continue as a low-wage magnet for foreign investment.

In a subplot, a young indigenous woman from the state of Chiapas (Azur Zagada), has come up to Juarez to look for work in one of the foreig-owned assembly plants that had mushroomed in the city by the beginning of the 1990s. She quickly gets in over her head with the urban sexual norms that are so different from those of the village. She gets involved with an unsophisticated village lad from near her hometown, and the disorientation of both of these young people sucks them into the Juarez nightmare.

Blanca and her colleagues, aided by a women's organization pressing the police to take the murders seriously, follow various false leads and get into sundry kinds of trouble. She arrests an Egyptian immigrant, but the murders continue. She engineers a raid on a night club owned by a slick but disreputable cross-border businessman (Jimmy Smits, of "NYPD Blue" fame), but this just lands Blanca in political trouble.

The depictions of the sex murders and other crimes are horrifyingly explicit (be warned: this is not a film for the overly sensitive). But the most stomach churning scene of all consists of a polite meeting between the governor and representatives of major transnational corporations invested in the Juarez maquiladoras. The governor has called the meeting to try to get the businessmen to contribute more to the local economy so that the city can hire more police and fund new social programs to deal with the murders and the bad publicity they bring. But the foreign business execs smilingly run down the international statistics of exploitation and make the point that Juarez and its people are only useful to them as sources of cheap labor obtainable in part through rock-bottom local tax rates. And if the labor in Juarez is no longer the cheapest and the taxes no longer the lowest, they will take their business to Bangladesh or any number of even poorer countries. In the end, the Japanese owned maquiladora featured in the film decamps from Juarez to do exactly that (as has often been the case in real life).

The film also has fierce things to say about male sexual attitudes and behavior. The corporate system sets up the women to be murdered, but the murderers are men whose sexual orientation leads them to enjoy such atrocities. This is strong stuff, but we need to ask if it is indeed not a reality that transcends borders.

We won't spoil the ending by saying whether or not the actual killer is caught, but whatever the case, the film points out that this type of brutality is going on all over the world. Besides an over-achieving serial killer, the women in Juarez are being killed by a social and economic system that does not value human life, along with patriarchal attitudes that debase women.

Through the whole film, the camera shows the contrast between the glittering skyscrapers of El Paso and the vast dusty slums of Juarez, its "back yard." That contrast is still there, and the death toll for the women of Juarez now stands at over 400, as of this year.

Some think the real toll is in the thousands.

The departure of Lawrence Summers and the fight for jobs

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 17:16:00 +0000

A reality that almost all election polls don't reflect is that, only six weeks before the elections, the public is still not focused on the November vote. Americans are, instead, worrying about the economy and not likely to think about mid-term elections until the last minute, calling into question any of the poll results being churned out now on almost a daily basis.

President Obama has tried hard to convince the public that it is their economic hardships he worries about most, that he is struggling to solve the problems and that the Republicans would stop any progress that has been made so far.

News that Lawrence Summers, head of the president's economic team, is leaving and being replaced signals that the battle between the forces determined to go the route of job creation and those who favor deficit reduction has not been finally decided. Whether and how the Obama economic team shifts after the departure of Summers will reflect much more than simply what the president would like to do.

To begin with, much of the public really does not know what can or should be done to fix the economy.

Some don't realize that massive job creation must be done first and some of those are influenced by the tea party claim that getting rid of Obama will fix everything.

But many who don't know what should be done are people of good will. They continue to feel the president is sincere, because, as he changes his economic leadership team, they feel he is proving he wants to fix the problem.

Thus, when Republicans put together some focus groups in recent weeks, they came away "surprised" and even unhappy about some of the results.

Focus groups of middle-class mothers, for example, expressed "disappointment" with the president, but the same groups expressed the need for "patience" as the president tries to turn things around. Neil Newhouse, the Republican pollster who looked at these groups, told the Washington Post yesterday that he was "struck by these voters' seeming patience with the president."

"I've seen this before," he said, "that people want him to do well. But the clear voicing of sympathy for the guy was a surprise for me."

This good will, while it does not reflect an understanding of the need for a massive government jobs program, is important because it gives the president some room as he mulls over the replacement for Summers.

He has room to consider the argument from progressives that he should not select someone who would be seen as accommodating corporate interests because he would be seen as weak.

He has room, for example, to consider the argument of OurFuture.org's Richard Eskow against Richard Parsons because selection of the head of Citigroup would pose a public perception problem.

With a public believing in his sincerity, the president can be more flexible when considering whether to appoint someone like Ann Fudge, the Young and Rubicam manager. She has some progressive credentials on the one hand but, on the other, she has been a member of the deficit commission whose very creation has been opposed by progressives from the beginning.

Progressives who support massive job creation programs would be thrilled with economist Paul Krugman, and less thrilled with Janet Yellin, president of the Federal Reserve in San Francisco who nevertheless has better job creation credentials than her colleagues at the Fed.

Various reports list among the other possible replacements Rebecca Blank, a Commerce Department official who manages the Census Bureau; Ursula Burns, the CEO of Xerox; and economist Laura Tyson, who has argued long and loud for a second stimulus program.

The rampant speculation over Summers' successor is happening because there is a fight inside the administration, like there is a fight on the outside, between those who want to focus on economic growth and job creation and those who want to focus on cutting the deficit.

As good as it is for the president to have a public that is "patient," it would be far better if the grassroots coalition that got the president elected in the first place was much larger and more powerful than it currently is.

Were it so, struggles within the administration like the one over Summers' replacement would have been settled a long time ago. And, were it so, Republican filibusters wouldn't be an issue, either.

Tea party trying to take New York with a baseball bat

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 11:12:00 +0000

NEW YORK - Most here were expecting this year's gubernatorial race to be bland at best, pitting a George W. Bush-style Republican against a sure-to-win centrist Democrat. But last week's primaries threw that conventional wisdom out the window as "Crazy Carl" Paladino, an extreme right tea party candidate with a penchant for inflammatory rhetoric and racist e-mails, took the Republican Party's nomination for governor.

One of this state's numerous "third parties" has added to the uncertainty, with Congressman Rick Lazio, the losing Republican whose politics mirror those of George W. Bush, vowing to continue his campaign for governor on the state's Conservative Party line.

Consequently, the main contenders fighting to replace Democratic Gov. David Paterson next January range from the proto-fascist to the center-right. Andrew Cuomo, the centrist Democrat who is currently the state's attorney general, is still leading in the polls, but his advantage has narrowed and how the race will play out is anyone's guess.

The biggest wildcard in the race is Paladino and his contradictory campaign. While he seems to go out of his way to offend with crude racist remarks, he has campaigned as an insurgent reformer in attempts to tap into voter anger. The wealthy Buffalo businessman paints himself as an outsider and criticizes a "ruling class" of elected officials in Albany, the state capital, saying that he would fix them "with a baseball bat."

Paladino has alienated many in the Republican establishment. Almost immediately after Republican former Gov. George Pataki voiced support for Paladino as the Republican primary winner, Paladino referred to Pataki as a "degenerate idiot."

Even Brooklyn Assembly member Dov Hikind, a Democrat known for often supporting Republican candidates, has taken offense at Paladino.

Criticizing the well-known dysfunction of the state Legislature, Paladino singled out Speaker Sheldon Silver, saying that "the fish rots from the head." Previously, he called Silver, who is Jewish, an "antichrist" and compared him unfavorably to Adolph Hitler.

"Does he know what Hitler represents?" asked Hikind, an Orthodox Jew who represents Borough Park, an overwhelmingly Jewish neighborhood. "Does he know that Hitler represents ... the murder of six million men, women and children?"

"There's a long history of pogroms and anti-Semitism all over Eastern Europe, relating to us Jews being ‘the Antichrist,'" Hikind added.

Paladino's penchant for racist humor is also well known. A batch of e-mails the gubernatorial hopeful forwarded to dozens of people in 2008 and 2009 was uncovered months ago, including racist "jokes."

While Paladino's antics have offended many, his racism will certainly buoy him in the tea party movement, one of the most energetic mass players on the national scene.

And some of what he says has tapped into a populist anger among some New Yorkers, especially given the level of dissatisfaction with the state Legislature and the economic crisis. His criticism of the "ruling class" seems to echo a feeling of disaffection of some sections of the electorate. He has been working to mobilize the vote outside the five New York City boroughs by routinely bad-mouthing the city, especially Manhattan. And his website notably promises jobs for working people.

But while Paladino criticizes the "ruling class," he himself seems to be part of the real thing, and has benefitted from the very government largesse he campaigns against. As a businessman, he has collected millions of dollars renting office space to state agencies. And while Paladino argues that the only way to restore jobs is to cut taxes, his own companies have benefited from "job creating" tax breaks while adding so few people to Buffalo's employment rolls that they could be counted on a single hand.

Conservative Party nominee Lazio advocates many of the same policies as Paladino, but with a moderate face, and he has therefore been able to pick up the endorsements of a number of Republican leaders and elected officials. Most see Lazio's candidacy as beneficial primarily to Cuomo, insofar as Lazio is likely to draw support away from Paladino.

Cuomo may need all the help he can get. His early promises to attack public workers and cut spending have alienated much of the labor movement, and his all-white slate has alienated the state's minority communities. Still, his campaign has become more attractive to those who have begun to fear an upset victory by Paladino, the extremist Republican nominee. Many note that virtually no one expected Paladino to win a major party nomination.

Cuomo has moved recently to diversify his campaign.

And the Working Families Party recently endorsed Cuomo and gave him their line on the ballot, making it easier for those who take issue with his stances on labor and racial equality issues.

Why is Virginia governor going after immigrant drivers?

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 10:32:00 +0000

Virginia's right-wing Republican governor, Bob McDonnell, has instructed the state's Department of Motor Vehicles to stop issuing drivers' licenses to immigrants who submit the federal Employment Authorization Document (EAD) as their identification.

Persons affected won't mostly be undocumented immigrants, but various categories of non-citizens, including people actually in the country legally but who, for one reason or other, have not been issued a permanent legal resident visa. Some of these cards are issued to people who are very likely to get full legal immigrant status, others to people who will not. Categories of people who frequently ask for drivers' licenses using these cards as ID include those allowed in the country under Temporary Protected Status (TPS) as well as asylum applicants and people granted humanitarian visas.

In announcing the policy change, the governor cited the case of Carlos Martinelly Montero, who was brought to the United States without papers from Bolivia when he was 8 years old. He was in the process of being deported when, driving drunk, he struck a car carrying four Catholic nuns, killing one and injuring three. He was in possession of Virginia driver's license which had been issued to him on the basis of an EAD that he was permitted to have while his deportation case was considered.

Martinelly obviously learned his bad drinking and driving habits here in the United States and not in Bolivia, and the DMV never should have issued him his last drivers' license if he had two previous DUI convictions.. But the case was used to bash immigrants nationwide and especially in Prince William County, Va., where the accident happened and which had already been a hotbed of anti-immigrant agitation.

The Temporary Protected Status category includes a big portion of the Salvadoran and other Central American immigrant communities in Virginia. Immigration attorneys estimate that there may be as many as 20,000 of these in Virginia alone. They are people who were here either without papers or with temporary visas when earthquakes hit El Salvador in 2001. The Bush administration issued the TPS protection in agreement with the right-wing Salvadoran government at the time, and it has been extended every year since. Many Salvadoran immigrants in the Washington area believe that the United States has used this agreement to get political concessions from El Salvador, which was the only Latin American country which sent troops for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In El Salvador's 2005 elections, the Bush administration issued threats that if the left-wing candidate, Shafik Handel, won the presidency, Salvadoran TPS holders might be endangered.

But there is always the possibility that a proportion of TPS holders and others will be able to change their status to that of a permanent resident, and eventually get U.S. citizenship and have children who are U.S. citizens. If there is comprehensive immigration reform, the entire TPS community could be given permanent legal status, putting them on the path to eventual U.S. citizenship and voting rights.

Virginia is a swing state that, in 2008, went for Obama and elected three new Democratic congresspersons. McDonnell's predecessor was a Democrat, and the state now has two Democratic senators. Yet in 2009, hard-right GOP candidates won the positions of governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general, largely on the basis of low Democratic turnout, including by Latinos, African Americans and youth, the very people whose high turnout produced the opposite results the year before. As in other areas of the country, the most right-wing sectors of the Republican Party have used anti-immigrant rhetoric to stir up their base and create an atmosphere of fear going into November 2010.

Many TPS immigrants in Virginia work as gardeners and landscapers or in home repair and construction, and need to drive either their own or their employers' vehicles, because of the nature of their jobs or because there is no public transportation. Immigration attorney Lisa Johnson Firth of Manassas in Prince William County, in a letter to the Washington Post on Sept. 10, points out that "Virginia will experience an exodus of hard working individuals and families that will cripple schools and further damage our sluggish economy." The malicious S1070 law in Arizona has led to the departure of many Democratic-leaning Latino people from that state, and not only undocumented immigrants. The Republican right hopes that its fortunes will be improved thereby.

Could the idea be to achieve the same result in Virginia?

Metal musicians fight for better world

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 14:36:00 +0000

"Remember Katrina and all the ineptitude and lack of initial concern there was by Bush's administration?" asks the Huffington Post. "Exactly," replies Slipknot vocalist Corey Taylor, "and if that didn't really drive home the point, what else was going to? You've got this guy, Michael Brown, heading FEMA, and he has no idea what he's doing. It took five days to get water to the Superdome. What does that tell you? Nobody was at the wheel."

This exchange is not the typical meat-and-potatoes part of a heavy metal interview. However, in recent years, musicians have begun to weigh in on important social, economic, and especially environmental issues.

The above conversation was part of a discussion of the flooding in Nashville that occurred during the recording of the newest album by Stone Sour, Taylor's other band. Since the flooding happened near the time of the BP oil spill, the issue was basically ignored by mainstream media, but Taylor and his band mates did what they could with their time there, trying to get the word out and promote the organizations attempting to help those affected by the flood.

Taylor is not alone. Alternative metal band System of a Down's lyrics often cover important social and political topics: their frontman Serj Tankian is part of The Axis of Justice, an organization that brings together progressive musicians and grassroots political groups to make positive change. Axis is currently raising money to maintain the cultural heritage of New Orleans, and to rebuild that city's music community after the lasting damage from Katrina and the fallout from the oil spill.

Former Pantera vocalist Phil Anselmo told Hard Rock Hideout, "I know people down in the Gulf who have been living off the industry of fish for generations and they are hurtin'." Addressing an unseen problem, the worldwide ripple effect of the oil spill, Anselmo added, "Any food place around the world that imports from the Gulf is gonna be hurtin'."

"I think," says Anselmo, "there's a fact that people in America are not allowed a loud enough voice."

Otep Shamaya, of the group Otep, also felt deeply affected, not only by the oil spill, but by what she views as the lack of human respect for the environment.

"I see all this," Shamaya wrote in her blog, "and am amazed how anyone could live around such beauty and care so little about maintaining it. I remember my home, beautiful Los Angeles, and how sad it is that we do not have skies like those over Arkansas. Our sun rides high above a nicotine-stain of a haze hacked up from millions of cars belching their lower-regulated exhaust into our atmosphere. If we do nothing, we are consenting to the murder of our planet and condemning future generations to endure a reality far worse than this."

The metal community is not a group that seems ready to turn a blind eye to tragedy and disaster, and what better medium for the progressive movement than music?

"If there was a reasoning here," Anselmo said, "there would be pamphlets in the mailbox asking if it's okay to drill a mile into the Gulf. We need to take a step back and look at what we have done. We only have one planet."

Photo: Former Pantera frontman Phil Anselmo. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phil_Anselmo_in_Madrid.jpg

Looking at Cuba in a regional context

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 11:44:00 +0000

Last week the Cuban government announced a bold restructuring of the country's entire economy. A half a million state jobs will be eliminated, and their occupants will be helped to find work in the private sector. The jobs being eliminated, and the private sector opportunities being opened up, are mostly in services and food production. The Cuban government says the rest of the economy will remain under state control, and there is no intention to return Cuba to capitalism.

The corporate media and especially the right in the United States are using this information to "prove" that socialism has only brought poverty to Cuba.

If that were so, Cuba, the only country in the Latin America-Caribbean region which has had a socialist system for 50 years, should be poorer than countries with otherwise similar characteristics. That is not remotely true.

Let's look at a measure called annual "per capita gross domestic product." There are two ways to calculate this important economic measure for various countries: simply the divide the gross domestic product by the population of the country, or adjust it for differences in the cost of living. I prefer the latter, though it is harder to calculate, because it gives a better measure of the actual standard of living in each country. This is usually called "per capita gross domestic product-PPP" (purchasing power parity).

The highest figures for per capita GDP-PPP all apply to the wealthiest capitalist countries. The lowest mostly are found in Africa, plus Afghanistan

In the Latin America-Caribbean area, Cuba is neither in the highest per capita GDP group, nor, remotely, in the lowest. Its estimated per capita GDP-PPP is about $9,500 per year.

The following countries in the region have a higher figure than Cuba (mostly 2008 estimates, and therefore before the current crisis):
Bahamas ($28,600), St. Kitts and Nevis ($19,700), Antigua and Barbuda ($19,000), Barbados ($19,300), Trinidad and Tobago ($18,600), Puerto Rico ($17,800), Chile ($14,900) Argentina ($14,200), Mexico ($14,200), Venezuela ($13,500), Grenada ($13,400), Uruguay ($12,200), Costa Rica ($11,600), Panama ($11,600), St. Lucia ($11,300), St. Vincent and the Grenadines ($10,500), Brazil ($10,100), Dominica ($9,900).

The following countries have lower per capita GDP calculated by the PPP method than does Cuba: Colombia ($8,900), Suriname ($8,900), Belize ($8,600), Peru ($8,400), Dominican Republic ($8,100), Ecuador ($7,500), Jamaica ($7,400), El Salvador ($6,200), Guatemala ($5,200), Bolivia ($4,500), Honduras ($4,400), Paraguay ($4,200), Guyana ($3,900), Nicaragua ($2,900), Haiti ($1,300 before the earthquake).

But the per capital GDP, even with the PPP adjustment, does not really tell us what kind of standard of living exists. For that, we have to look at a thing called the HDI or Human Development Index. The Wikipedia article on this is decent.

This statistic combines a number of quality-of-life measures including life expectancy, health statistics, education and literacy. A perfect score would be 1. The highest current score (2007, before the current crisis) was Norway at 0.971, and the lowest score was Niger (0.340). The HDI figure for the U.S. is 0.956. Cuba comes in at 0.863.

The only countries in the Latin America-Caribbean region that do better than Cuba on the Human Development Index are Barbados (0.878), Argentina (0.863), Chile (0.854), Uruguay (0.840), Costa Rica at (0.38), St.Kitts and Nevis (0.836) and the Bahamas (0.832). All the rest of the countries in the region have much lower HDI figures, with Cuba's close neighbors the Dominican Republic at 0.729 and Haiti at 0.532 even before the earthquake.

The countries that do worst on these measures include the ones that have been most under the thumb of imperialism and international monopoly capital: Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Bolivia etc. Let us remember that.

None of these countries has had to put up with the 50-year economic blockade to which Cuba has been subjected by the greatest military and economic power on earth, the United States of America. I follow the Cuban practice of calling this a "blockade" and not merely an "embargo" because the United States not only prohibits most kinds of trade with Cuba for its own citizens; it works hard to stop other countries from trading with Cuba as well.

Neither the leaders in Cuba nor the average citizens have ever been satisfied with what they have achieved. They are always looking for new ways of doing things that will improve their economy and the life of their people. But the bourgeois media have a class interest in trying to use Cuba's problems to prove that not only the Cubans but we in the United States are all doomed to life under capitalism forever.

Putting Cuba's vital statistics into regional context can be a corrective.

NY primaries fuel hope for fall elections

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 15:06:00 +0000

NEW YORK - While media pundits have been predicting doom and gloom for progressive forces and Democratic candidates in the November elections, last week's primaries here showed a different trend. Progressive candidates either held onto or gained seats. Meanwhile the local Republican Party followed the national trend of becoming more and more dominated by radical right extremists.

In perhaps the most highly watched race, Gustavo Rivera, an insurgent challenger backed by an alliance of labor and community organizations and the Working Families Party, defeated state Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada Jr. for the Democratic Party nomination.

Espada was despised by many for his involvement in corruption and scandals - including his seeming residency in suburban Westchester County instead of the district he represented in the Bronx - as well as his role in helping to keep the state Senate in turmoil. He, along with former Sen. Hiram Monseratte, led a coup d'état in 2009 in which the two senators switched to the Republican Party, thereby flipping control of the Senate. He was made majority leader as part of a deal to restore the Democratic caucus's control.

He also harmed the interests of ordinary New Yorkers. "When a plan to halt MTA fare hikes was on the table," said the Working Families Party in an e-mail after the elections, "State Sen. Pedro Espada shut it down."

"Together," the e-mail continued, "we shut Espada down."

The WFP, working with others, organized volunteers to knock on more than 50,000 doors and brought hundreds of anti-Espada volunteers to the Bronx. That all paid off, as Rivera won with more than 62 percent of the vote.

In other state Senate races, progressives under fire from the right held onto their seats by healthy margins.

State Sen. Bill Perkins, D-Harlem/Upper West Side, was challenge by Basil Smikle, and charter schools were the main issue. Perkins has been an outspoken opponent of the movement for charter schools, arguing that they move the public school system towards privatization. Despite support from this city's tabloid press, Smikle lost overwhelmingly, 24-77 percent.

Another senator, Velmanette Montgomery, D-Brooklyn, who along with Perkins was targeted by candidates put up by Wall Street hedge fund managers, was challenged by Mark Pollard, who took a puny 19 percent of the vote.

Montgomery is well-respected in Brooklyn for her role in the fight to defend the borough from the Atlantic Yards project, which would lead to displacement of thousands of lower- and middle-income people by luxury condominiums built with public money.

Pollard's main line of attack against Montgomery, as was Smikle's against Perkins, was her incumbency. Pointing to the morass in Albany (caused by shady characters like Espada in the Democratic Party as well as the Republican Party overall), Pollard argued that Montgomery was an "insider" and must therefore have something to do with the problems. Voters saw through this in both cases, keeping in office candidates who have long fought for working New Yorkers.

Notwithstanding the records of Montgomery and some others, the Brooklyn Democratic Party machine has long been a hotbed of corruption. With Brooklyn's population of 2.5 million, the party there is the second largest Democratic Party, behind Chicago, in the nation. The former party boss, Clarence Norman, now sits in prison. The current boss, Vito Lopez, has been often accused of using the party organization as a patronage machine. Consequently, a spate of reformers ran insurgent candidacies for the position of Democratic district leader. The machine thought it could use popular anti-incumbent attitudes to defeat progressives and replace them with its lackeys.

Progressive reformer Chris Owens, won a whopping victory in the three-way race for district leader. He received 2,154 votes. Coming in second was Jesse Strauss, with 1,361 votes, while the candidate backed by Lopez received a mere 771 votes. This, combined with reform victories over Lopez-backed candidates in the 2009 City Council elections, suggests a weakening of Lopez's power base.

At the congressional level, Democratic voters rejected what many see as a right-wing smear campaign against incumbent Rep. Charles Rangel, D-Manhattan, in which he has been charged with ethics violations. Many have suggested that while Rangel has done some wrong, the Republican Party has made a much greater deal of the issue than warranted. Voters seemed to agree: in a five-way race, Rangel took 51 percent of the vote.

This is just a snapshot of a few races, but these and others, including the nomination of current State. Sen. Eric Schneiderman for attorney general, suggest that progressive ideas and candidates can win elections - if there is enough mobilization. No one actually expected Schneiderman to win, as conservatives in the Democratic Party and other right-wing forces poured in to support Kathleen Rice. She and Sean Coffey went after Schneiderman for being "soft on crime," while he campaigned to the left and would not back down from his support for labor and minority communities, even going so far as to offer Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network offices in Albany. In the end, Schneiderman beat four other candidates.

Then there's Carl Paladino, who won the GOP gubernatorial nomination. Instead of running for statewide office on one of the major parties' tickets, he seems more like someone clutching anti-government screeds while ranting and tearing at his hair in Union Square. Paladino, backed by the extreme-right tea party, trounced slightly less far-right Rick Lazio, suggesting that the state Republican Party has become as much a haven of fringe radicals as anywhere else in the country.

The overall lesson of the New York primaries can be summed up this way: the Republican Party is even more dangerous than it was in 2008, but Democratic and progressive victories can be won.

Photo: Progressive Chris Owens won a three-way race for Brooklyn district leader, trouncing the machine candidate. (0wensforchange.com)

October 2 and its significance

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 13:48:00 +0000

"We now know the U.S. Senate will not pass climate-change legislation this year. Postmortems have pointed to a number of challenges: the lack of leadership from the White House, unified GOP opposition to the Senate cap-and-trade bill, the structure and rules of the Senate, and the complicated nature of cap-and-trade legislation.

"There has been one major omission in much of this analysis: the absence of pressure from Americans across the country demanding that serious action be taken to address climate change. Few Americans are currently engaged in this great societal challenge in a way that would generate the necessary political will to act. It is the absence of this public pressure, above all else [my italics], that has resulted in the current state of political inaction."

(From "Why did the climate bill die? Because we still don't have a real climate movement," by Kelsey Wirth, Larry Shapiro, Phillip Radford)

Other social justice leaders could make the same observation.

Not since the lead-up to the election of President Obama have the enemies of progress felt the weight and pressure of an aroused public.

The coalition that elected Obama didn't go into hiding, but its level of activity doesn't match the challenges the American people face, with none more important than a stagnant, jobless economy. Nor does its energy and organization compare well with the efforts of the right, and especially its most extreme elements - right-wing radio talk, Fox News, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, the tea party, rich moneybags, and I could go on and on.

Both the protracted economic downturn (with no end in sight) and the comeback of the extreme right beg for a sustained mobilization of every democratic-minded person in our country. At the core of this mobilization should be the multi-racial working class (broadly defined) and its allies.

If there is any other way to keep right-wing extremism and its capitalist class supporters at bay - not to mention undertake large-scale political and economic transformations in a progressive and radical direction - I don't know what it is.

Initiatives and openings of a democratic and progressive character from above - say from the president - are certainly important (for example, a jobs and infrastructure bill), especially if they can be leveraged by the people's coalition to widen and deepen the process of change.

At the same time, initiatives and openings by themselves cannot substitute for mass organization, action and unity at the grassroots level. At every major turning point in our nation's history - the War of Independence, Civil War, New Deal, and the Civil Rights Revolution - a powerful surge of popular action became the material force to power, deepen, and extend out the process of change.

Which brings me to the One Nation rally on October 2 in our nation's capital. Here is an opportunity to reestablish, reenergize, and repower the coalition of people's organization that elected the first African American president in our nation's history.

Opportunities of this kind are rare. But when they arise, they have to be seized. No stone should be left unturned to bring people and their organizations to Washington. This event's success will be measured by its size. A huge turnout will change the political atmosphere and send a message to friend and foe.

Success will also be gauged by the degree to which it gives a new momentum to the struggle for jobs and to punish the Republican right in November.

And finally, it will be measured by the extent that the coalition that has been quiescent since 2008 regains its legs, turns into a sustained force, and powers the struggle for progressive and radical change in the near and longer term.

Tea party wins could kill GOP hopes of re-taking Senate

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 17:10:00 +0000

Tea Party Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell defeated establishment Republican Rep. Mike Castle in the Delaware primary election Sept. 14, jeopardizing GOP chances of taking over the Senate.

The right-wing Tea Party Express spent more than $300,000 on TV ads demonizing Castle, who had the party's backing.

The party's National Senatorial Campaign Committee had recruited Castle for the race, expecting that the moderate Republican's long history in the state would make him a sure bet to take the seat held by Democrat Joe Biden until he became Vice President.

Even the most optimistic projections made by the party thus far suggest a Republican takeover of the Senate is impossible without Delaware. The GOP needs 10 seats to win control of that chamber.

Castle's defeat in the Delaware primary is the eighth time now that a Republican establishment candidate has gone down to defeat because of a growing split in the GOP. Ultra right-wing extremists, making use of a variety of issues but especially an appeal to racism, have turned out enough followers to capture Republican nominations to major offices in various states.

In order to broaden their appeal beyond adherents of the extremist social doctrines they preach, the tea party candidates have often tried to capitalize on certain issues that anger the majority of working people - the bailout of Wall Street corporations and banks with taxpayer funds, being the best example.

They added this issue to their usual campaign to "take back America [from an African American president]" in the Delaware race, in Utah (where they defeated Sen. Robert Bennett), in Texas, where they went after Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson for both lack of ideological purity and for having voted for TARP, and in Alaska, where they defeated Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who they linked to both liberal social doctrine and Wall Street banks.

There are no other issues that polls show are important to working people, however, that tea party candidates have supported. They have not backed any jobs programs and have opposed government aid to the unemployed.

While they often rail against "taxes" in general they have not supported the president's plans which would extend tax cuts for 97 percent of the population.

Fear of the tea party probably helped motivate decisions by Republican Sens. George Voinovich in Ohio and Judd Gregg in New Hampshire not to seek reelection this year.

Just one Republican Senator the group opposed, John McCain of Arizona, has survived a tea party challenge this year. McCain did this by moving even further to the fringe right-wing positions.

The first sign of all of this began back in the spring when, fearing extreme right-wing opposition, Republican Sen. Arlen Specter defected from the GOP to the Democratic Party. Soon after that Charlie Crist, the GOP governor of Florida, quit his Senate GOP primary for the same reason, choosing, instead, to run as an independent.

Tea party leaders like to explain their victories as a sign that people are rising up all over the country against a government controlled by "liberals," "socialists," and even "traitors" to so called "American values."

Most of their victories, however, have been in states where the population is very small and it is easier to win elections or in larger states where the GOP is small, compared to Democratic registration.

Somewhat less obvious than all of this is that major corporate interests have been behind several of the tea party's most important victories.

Big energy companies with an interest in refuting global warming, for example, have, focused on tea party efforts in Kentucky, Alaska and Delaware.

The tea party candidates in each of those states, now the official Republican senatorial candidates, firmly oppose a cap on carbon emissions.

In Kentucky, big coal mining companies such as Massey Energy, responsible for the deaths of workers in their poorly-regulated mines, help bankroll Rand Paul. (national august 2010 rand paul)

Castle in Delaware was one of eight Republicans who actually voted for the House carbon cap bill. His "cap-and-trade" vote wasn't the only thing that bothered conservatives but it was an issue that Christine O'Donnell hammered away at constantly.

In Alaska, the energy companies were angry with Lisa Murkowski despite the fact that she was a reliable vote against President Obama on a wide variety of other issues. Her sin was that she acknowledged global warming was real and she met with President Obama to discuss compromises on a cap-and-trade bill. She had voted for cap-and-trade in the past.

Joe Miller made her "liberal climate record" a major issue in his race against her.

History or tradition explains some of what is at work here. Traditionally, when a party loses the presidency, opponents of the party's leadership tend to do well in the internal party fights over the next few years.

The right-wing purge going on in the GOP, however, is mercilessly claiming many long-time Republican leaders as its victims.

In New York this week, Rick Lazio, a virtual fixture in state Republican politics, also lost his bid for the gubernatorial nomination to tea party-backed Carl Paladino.

In New Hampshire, a Republican senator who voted for the nomination of Sonia Sottomayor to the Supreme Court almost lost to a tea party primary opponent.

Rand Paul, the tea party victor in the Kentucky GOP Senate primary, defeated Trey Grayson, a long-time GOP leader in Kentucky who was the hand-picked candidate of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

In Nevada, Sharron Angle won the GOP primary to challenge Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid.

The quick endorsement of O'Connell today by Mitt Romney's Free and Strong America PAC is likely the first of numerous indicators that the tumult in the Republican Party will push the entire 2012 GOP presidential field to the right.

The results of all these primaries show that the Republican Party of today is a party led by the likes of Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint (GOP senator from South Carolina), Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. DeMint is a leader who has escaped the eye of many of the political pundits but may end up being the leader who should be watched most closely. He is the unofficial leader of the Republican Senate's tea party caucus, which he hopes to expand.

On the flip side, Democrats, the labor movement and its allies, and progressives generally are encouraged that some of the victories by the right-wing extremists in the Republican Party put back in play races they might have lost before.

Polls going into the Delaware primary show O'Connell, in the general election, trailing her Democratic opponent, Chris Coons by double-digit figures.

In Alaska, the Democrats had no chance to defeat Lisa Murkowski. They have a much better chance against Joe Miller.

Murkowski, herself, is still mulling a write-in-bid. "The Alaska Republican Party," she said yesterday, "has been hijacked by the Tea Party Express, an outside extremist group."

In Nevada, polls show Reid on his way to holding onto a Senate seat he was in danger of losing before the tea party's Angle won the Republican primary.

In New York, polls show Paladino, the tea party candidate, way behind Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic nominee for the governorship.

Despite the good signs, however, progressives cannot become complacent. If, after the defeat of Castle in Delaware, the Republicans are to have any chance of taking over the Senate they will have to work harder and funnel more resources into other Senate races. Carly Fiorina in California, Linda McMahon in Connecticut and Mark Kirk in Illinois become more important than ever to them. Labor and progressive forces in those and other states can expect that they will have to fight harder than ever.

Tea party disorients GOP in Delaware

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 12:37:00 +0000

WILMINGTON, Del. -- The results of the Republican primary election for Delaware's Senate seat are now known. In a stunning upset, insurgent Christine O'Donnell defeated Representative Michael Castle winning the Republican nomination for the Senate seat left vacant by Democratic Vice President Joe Biden. The November Delaware election grows particularly distinct as it is a special election, meaning that the winner will be immediately sworn in and will affect the balance of power right away.

The upset shows significant fault lines in the Republican coalition.

For the last couple of months, the mainstream media has been trying to sell America the narrative of a resurgent Republican Party -- a party seemingly invigorated by its opponents being slowly drowned in their un-tempered enthusiasm they had unleashed in 2009. It seemed President Obama and the Democrats' rhetoric had promised too much, the media keeps repeating, with all their accomplishments appearing as Washington machinations, and not the vision that had brought them to power.

However, the victory of tea party-backed insurgent Christine O'Donnell indicates that something quite different is sweeping the nation. As residents of Delaware have seen first hand, this primary was conducted not between two equal members of a party but by the Republican establishment through the proxy of Rep. Castle, who has four decades of political experience including gubernatorial service, versus the emerging dissident tea party conservative orthodoxy through the proxy of Christine O'Donnell. O'Donnell was endorsed by Sarah Palin, Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, and many other right-wing Tea Party Express leaders.

The Republican establishment here denigrated O'Donnell throughout the primary season. They attacked her personal finances and accused her of delusional paranoia. For her part, O'Donnell didn't run a positive campaign either. She accused Castle of being a RINO, (Republican in name only) and alluded that he was a homosexual. Rumors are already percolating of a mass exodus of Republican voters from Delaware's New Castle County GOP Committee and the State GOP committee followed by endorsements for Democratic nominee Chris Coons.

What is truly interesting about this defeat is that O'Donnell is ostensibly unelectable in what is a moderate Democratic-leaning state. Public Policy Polling predicted Democrat Coons would have found it difficult to defeat Castle in the special election, because of Castle's long career in Delaware politics. He was popular with independents and moderates, and positioned himself as an "elder statesman."

However, Castle's loss can probably be attributed to large recent mass conversion of party registrations of moderate Delaware Republicans into independents, therefore making what would have been Castle's Republican base ineligible to vote in the primary. Even if he had defeated O'Donnell, it would have come at the cost of alienating many of those very independents who saw his credibility damaged by his negative ads.

So why are tea partiers running as Republicans if it seems to be destroying their own party apparatus? Ultimately, the tea party cannot envision the practical horizon of their actions. It is not truly interested in traditional Washington bids for power. The tea party movement is fueled by that perennial conservative dream of counter-revolution -- a state intervention onto a society they feel has become disjointed. This primary indicates that there is no political future in this vision.

As November approaches, it is becoming clear that American politics are more divisive than ever. However, the fault lines appear to have changed. What we're seeing is not the Republican coalition of fiscal conservatives, religious right, neo-conservatives and libertarians that ushered in the Bush era, but the breakdown of this tenuous alliance altogether.