~The Cool Earth Party~'s topics - tribe.net

For Socialized Medicine! No To Obama's Reforms!

Steven — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:41:06 GMT

[For various reasons, I support the International Group (IG), League for the Fourth International instead of the Sparacist League (SL) who put out the following article. One of the biggest reasons for this was the IG's correct orientation in pushing for and promoting the May Day dock strike against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008 that shut down all West Coast ports. The SL not only abstained from this real action, but also denounced it. Still, the following article is good on many levels and worth reading. -Steven Argue]

Obama Takes Aim at Medicare, Union Health Plans

For Socialized Medicine!

Expropriate the Health Care Industry!

For Free, Quality Health Care, Including for All Immigrants!

For Free Abortion on Demand!

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/index.html

It would be hard to find a more blatant expression of the capitalist profit system than the plans afoot to “reform” the catastrophe of health care in America. The commodity trade here is in human lives and the life-sucking health insurance giants and drug companies are the ones who will continue to be laughing all the way to the bank. In his September 9 speech to Congress, Obama packaged his health care “reform” plan as a means to provide coverage for the nearly 50 million uninsured Americans. He also claimed his plan would protect those with insurance from being subjected to the tender mercies of the HMOs, which deploy an army of administrators to “insure” that you get the least coverage possible, if they don’t just cut off your benefits entirely—particularly if you have a life-threatening illness.

The Democrats’ posture as “friends” of working people makes them effective political representatives for enforcing the rule of a system that is based on exploitation and oppression. Restoring the profitability and competitive edge of U.S. imperialism, where health care costs are the highest and the health of the majority of the population the worst in the advanced industrialized countries, is the real name of the “health care reform” game. As characterized by Wendell Potter, a former CIGNA insurance executive who is now an industry whistle blower, what’s being put forward today might as well be called “The Insurance Industry Profit Protection and Enhancement Act.”

With the official unemployment rate crowding 10 percent—and double that when the underemployed and those who have stopped looking for work are added in—the number of those with no health insurance increases day by day. Obama invokes the plight of the uninsured, with promises of a level of care not much above a pledge to pick up the dead bodies, in order to massively cut health care costs. Some $600 billion in savings is to come from reducing government spending on Medicare and Medicaid. Also being eyed for the ax by the health reform executioners are the now non-taxable employer-paid health programs won through the hard-fought union battles of the past. What are described as “gold-plated insurance” policies are not those of Wall Street CEOs, who have ready access to the best medical care money can buy, but the coverage available to many union members and their families. The current proposal by Democratic Senator Max Baucus is that the government levy taxes on these plans in the name of funding...health care!

The bitter reality of what is being palmed off as insuring the rights of all Americans to medical care was captured by liberal New York Times columnist Bob Herbert (18 August), heretofore among the more vapid enthusiasts for Obama as “change we can believe in”:

“Insurance companies are delighted with the way ‘reform’ is unfolding. Think of it: The government is planning to require most uninsured Americans to buy health coverage. Millions of young and healthy individuals will be herded into the industry’s welcoming arms. This is the population the insurers drool over.

“This additional business—a gold mine—will more than offset the cost of important new regulations that, among other things, will prevent insurers from denying coverage to applicants with pre-existing conditions or imposing lifetime limits on benefits. Poor people will either be funneled into Medicaid, which will have its eligibility ceiling raised, or will receive a government subsidy to help with the purchase of private insurance.

“If the oldest and sickest are on Medicare, and the poorest are on Medicaid, and the young and the healthy are required to purchase private insurance without the option of a competing government-run plan—well, that’s reform the insurance companies can believe in.”

The liberals, trade-union bureaucrats and reformist left plead for Obama not to abandon his promise of a “public option,” i.e., a minimal government-funded program to compete with the insurance magnates, or maximally to institute a “single-payer” system as exists in Canada and much of Europe. All of this is predicated on the belief that the capitalist state, the very purpose of which is to defend the profits and rule of the bourgeoisie, can be made to serve the interests of those the capitalist rulers exploit and oppress.

The national health care programs that exist in other industrialized countries were instituted to placate combative working classes. While representing real gains, these programs have been consistently whittled away according to both the budgetary considerations of the capitalist rulers and the overhead they deem necessary to rein in working-class struggle. Under capitalism medical care is rationed to all but the few who can afford to buy it. This does not change when the bosses’ state becomes the administrator.

“Big Government”: A Racist Rallying Cry

Free, quality medical care for all should be an elementary right. But achieving that will require a genuine socialist assault by the multiracial working class to rip the “health” industry out of the hands of the profit-gorged insurance giants and drug companies. Only with the destruction of this entire capitalist system of exploitation, which measures human life in dollars, can the wealth generated by those who labor be committed to providing the highest level of medical care for all and eradicating the poverty and hunger that condemn countless millions to a life of misery, disease and early death.

Despite its Stalinist bureaucratic degeneration, the Soviet workers state, with its planned economy, was able to provide all with a job, housing, health care and education. An examination of the tragedy that has befallen the peoples of the former Soviet Union since capitalist counterrevolution in 1991-92 speaks volumes about the “magic of the marketplace.” In capitalist Russia today, millions are starving, more than 40 percent of the population lives in poverty, infant mortality has skyrocketed and life expectancy has plummeted. It is equally telling that Cuba, once a backward neocolony of the U.S., has since the overthrow of capitalist/imperialist rule provided health care to all at a level comparable to that available in the U.S., despite the poverty of the island, enforced by the U.S. embargo and further exacerbated by the 1991-92 counterrevolution in the USSR.

There is plenty of justified fear and apprehension, especially among unionized workers and the elderly, over the current health care “reform” schemes. But the howls of the racist yahoos, bible-thumpers, militiamen and other reactionaries mobilized by the Republican right wing and their media shock jocks that Obama’s plan is a prescription for a veritable “communist” takeover of America are genuine lunacy. At the same time, such lunacy is a very real reflection of the anti-black racism, anti-immigrant nativism and sexual bigotry that have long been wielded by the American bourgeoisie to preserve its class rule.

Obama is branded by the color of his skin, but he is also the top cop of American capitalism, responsible for enforcing a system built on the forcible subjugation of the majority of the black population at the bottom of society. Jimmy Carter—who in the 1970s openly proclaimed the virtues of “ethnic purity”—decried as racist South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson’s “you lie” outburst during Obama’s speech to Congress. Carter’s remarks are an expression of the appreciation by the more rational wing of the U.S. bourgeoisie of the necessity to uphold the credentials of America’s first black president to effectively oversee their plantation, and extract further sacrifices from the working class, blacks, immigrants and the poor.

That the U.S. is the only major industrialized country on the face of the planet without a national health care program is, in large part, testament to how the race/caste oppression of black people has been used by America’s rulers to divide and weaken the working class, furthering the exploitation of labor and the destitution of all the oppressed. In this country, cries against “big government” have long been synonymous with axing social programs such as health care and welfare by painting these as a drain on the tax dollars of “hard-working folks” to benefit the ghetto poor. Black people are always disproportionately hit by unemployment, poverty and lack of health care.

But what was first visited on the most vulnerable—single welfare mothers, desperate immigrants, people with AIDS—is now increasingly the reality for the working class as a whole. Thus, the fight for decent health care must link the fight for black equality with the struggle to end all injustice and exploitation. For full citizenship rights for all immigrants! For free abortion on demand and democratic rights for gays!

The lurid stories of government “death panels” that would order a shot of morphine to end granny’s life are particularly demented in a country where pain-relieving opiates are parceled out in ever diminishing doses for the sick and dying. The same religious fanatics who terrorize abortion clinics and assassinate abortion doctors in the name of “life” are a moving force to ensure that you die in agony in the name of God, with campaigns against the right of those whose bodies are ravaged by incurable diseases to end their misery through assisted suicide. A sector of the Catholic hierarchy, which has been in the forefront in fighting against the right of the dying not to suffer, has been condemning the evils of health care reform as an assault on the “unborn” and on that most sacred right of all for the capitalist rulers of this society, private property.

Nevertheless it needs be recognized that the powers that be have little interest in continuing to fund “excessive” medical care for those reaching the end of their lives. One can be assured that the Brooke Astors of the world will be immune to such cost savings. At the same time, the ruling class plans to raise the retirement age to assure that Social Security is not too burdened by excessive longevity. Simply put, for the ruling class, Americans are living too long.

Obama has made clear that his plan would not provide for “illegal” immigrants and their families and that “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions.” This would be in line with the reactionary Hyde Amendment, signed into law by Carter in 1977, eliminating abortion coverage from Medicaid. Meanwhile, the situation for immigrants, who labor at the most dangerous and debilitating jobs, continues to worsen. In fact, since Obama took office, Homeland Security raids and deportations of immigrants have exceeded those carried out two years ago in a similar period under Bush.

The Labor Lieutenants of the Capitalist Class

Such health care benefits as the multiracial working class has won have been the product of militant class struggle against the exploiters. The dearth of strikes over the past decades helped pave the way for the bosses to butcher health care, pensions and other union gains with impunity. They have overwhelmingly gotten away with it thanks to the acquiescence of the union misleaders, who share the bosses’ concern of maintaining the profitability of American capitalism.

Obama’s election was celebrated as the arrival of the moment when things would be finally turned around in favor of the unions that had contributed $450 million to elect a Democrat to the White House. In fact, in his short time in office Obama has proved far more effective in gutting the unions than his Republican predecessor. Obama’s appeals for “sacrifice” to salvage American capitalism from the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression were readily saluted by United Auto Workers (UAW) leader, Ron Gettelfinger. In the assault on the UAW orchestrated by the White House to foot the bill for bailing out the auto bosses, Gettelfinger accepted worthless GM and Chrysler stock to fund over half the union’s retiree health care trust. That is, he robbed medical care from aging workers whose years of backbreaking labor on the production lines were a serious and chronic detriment to their health, while those still working continue to see their health benefits massacred.

But perhaps the most flagrant expression of the trade-union bureaucracy’s commitment to maintaining the profitability of American capitalism at the expense of the very lives of union members is the role played by Service Employees International Union (SEIU) leader Dennis Rivera. Describing him as Obama’s “point man” on health reform, a New York Times (27 August) article reported that “Washington insiders are impressed and surprised that it was a union leader—Mr. Rivera—who forged a coalition including giant drug makers, the health insurers, the American Hospital Association and the American Medical Association that helped secure their pledges to cut hundreds of billions of dollars in costs.” In bed with the Obama administration and the health industry, the trade-union bureaucrats betray the genuine concerns of their members and leave the field of protest open to the crazed, racist right wing.

Leading accomplices in a “health care reform” package that will mean the massive leveling down of medical care for union members and their families, the SEIU tops also readily acknowledge that these deadly cuts will cost the jobs of hospital workers. For his part, newly installed AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka is “drawing a line in the sand” against Democrats who oppose the now all but dead “public option,” according to the Huffington Post (18 August). Even in the unlikely event that a public option is included, it would be little more than a prescription for a health care ghetto for the most destitute, leaving the HMO and drug company moneybags with the whip hand.

For the Socialist Reconstruction of America!

The situation cries out for a revival of labor struggle to defend and extend the health, pension and other benefits won through the class battles of the past. But that means getting rid of the labor traitors, who long ago junked the very class-struggle means through which the unions were forged. The road forward lies in building a new leadership of the unions, which will lead the vitally necessary battles against America’s bourgeois masters. Such a leadership would lead the fight for free health care for all and for expropriating the health insurance and drug companies without compensation.

An article in the Left Business Observer (25 August) cited a founder of Physicians for a National Health Program who noted that CEOs who might privately support a single-payer health program are “reluctant to embrace it publicly for fear of encouraging would-be expropriators.” The fear as he put it is: “If you can take away someone else’s business—the insurance companies’ business—you can take away mine.” And that is precisely what is needed—the expropriation of capitalist expropriators who have looted the wealth of this country which was created by labor. For that, we need a revolutionary workers party, one which doesn’t respect the property “values” of the bourgeoisie but instead leads a revolutionary assault on and overturns through socialist revolution this decaying system. Only through the establishment of a workers government and a planned economy can the tremendous wealth, resources and medical technology of this society be put to providing for the many, not for the profits of the few.

We reprint below an article originally published in Women and Revolution (No. 39, Summer 1991), journal of the Women’s Commission of the Spartacist League/U.S. Titled “Wealth Care USA,” the article traces the history of medicine for profit in the U.S. and its roots in the class exploitation, racist reaction and sexual bigotry that are the foundation stones of American capitalism.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Debate Over “Socialized Medicine”

Wealth Care USA

(Women and Revolution pages)

In 1948 that conservative bastion of wealth and prestige, the American Medical Association (AMA), smelled Armageddon in the air when Democrat Harry S. Truman won the presidential election. To the horror of organized medicine, prominent in Truman’s platform was a proposal for national health insurance. Outraged by this dire threat to doctors’ income and position, the AMA mounted what was at the time the most expensive lobbying effort in American history, running ads, publishing articles in the bourgeois press and sponsoring public meetings to stop this “creeping socialism.” One pamphlet demanded in a typical flight of reactionary hyperbole, “Would socialized medicine lead to socialization of other phases of American life?... Lenin thought so. He declared, ‘Socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the Socialist State’.” (According to Paul Starr, in The Social Transformation of American Medicine, the Library of Congress could not locate this quotation in Lenin’s writings.)

Harry S. Truman, the imperialist Commander-in-Chief who dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American Cold Warrior who presided over the Korean War, was undoubtedly mighty indignant at being tagged a Communist for a proposal to ensure that “our people would continue to get medical and hospital services just as they do now”—that is, subject to all the class, race and sex biases of this bigoted society. But in 1948 the AMA’s intransigent opposition to any organized health plan perceived as a threat to “fee for service” private practice was already legendary. Since 1920 the AMA had denounced all such plans as the insidious doom of quality health care and had in 1938 attempted to destroy the Washington-based Group Health Association, a nonprofit cooperative providing health care to employees of the Federal Home Loan Bank. For this last the federal government had even moved to prosecute the AMA under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, but the AMA remained intransigent.

Truman’s electoral promises soon foundered in the sweeping tide of anti-Communist McCarthyite witchhunting. Health insurance was “socialism” straight out of the Soviet constitution, according to Republican Robert Taft, who walked out of Senate hearings on Truman’s bill. In 1948 even simple public health measures like fluoridated water were “Communist plots” to the McCarthyites.

Yahoo fears to the contrary, such plans had existed for decades in Europe without threatening the capitalist status quo. Rather, European politicians knew that welfare plans could help defuse class struggle, win votes and cement an alliance with the pro-capitalist “leaders” of the workers movement. Truman, like Roosevelt before him, was a member of that liberal wing of the bourgeoisie that seeks to soften a bit of the jagged edges of exploitation in order to better reap profits and make war.

Access to health care should be a simple democratic right, a necessity just like education, a place to live, a job. Like every other basic right worth having, decent health care must be fought for in hard class struggle. It was no accident of history that Truman made his proposal amid a bitter series of strikes by the United Mine Workers (UMW) for union-controlled health benefits, part of a massive postwar strike wave that swept millions of workers out of the factories and onto the picket lines. Working in the country’s most dangerous trade, miners had been incapacitated by hideous rates of illness, crippled and killed by black lung disease. Notoriously corrupt company doctors had systematically whitewashed the severity of illness and injury. In 1946 Truman seized the mines when miners struck for a health and pension fund; in 1947 Congress passed the union-busting, slave-labor Taft-Hartley law, which specifically forbade union-controlled, company-funded welfare plans. But the miners struck again and again, defying government threats, until they won an unprecedented “cradle to grave” union-controlled health plan. While McCarthyite reaction killed Truman’s insurance proposal, the miners’ historic victory opened the way for other unionized workers to win health benefits. But the miners paid a big price for their victory: UMW head John L. Lewis made a deal with the coal bosses not to protest the loss of thousands of mining jobs to mechanization.

Medicine for Profit in Capitalist America

Today the U.S. crisis in health care is so bad that liberal social critics point out with alarm that the United States and apartheid South Africa are the only two industrialized countries in the world without a national health system of some kind. In America the grotesque inequities in medical care are a symbol of the injustice, inequality and indignity of this society. If you have money, you can get the best health care in the world, right on the cutting edge of the most advanced medical technology; that’s why Saudi princes come to New York for medical attention. But if the bucks aren’t there, and you don’t have really good private insurance, you can suffer lifelong debilitation from treatable diseases like asthma or you can die when treatment could have saved your life.

Health “care” in America means black children in Harlem die of measles and malnutrition, and workers suffer one of the highest rates of on-the-job accidents and industrial disease in the world. Hospitals specializing in the wallet biopsy just throw poor patients out; the paltry Medicaid fee doesn’t pay enough. “Until DeTar [Hospital] pays my malpractice insurance, I will pick and choose those patients that I want to treat,” declared Michael Burditt, MD, when he rejected a seriously ill, pregnant Hispanic woman who had come to the emergency room; she ended up giving birth in an ambulance without a doctor’s attention! But the millionairess Sunny von Bülow (whose story is told in the blood-chilling Reversal of Fortune), comatose for years and not expected to recover, gets a weekly coiffure and manicure in her hospital bed while space-age machines keep her breathing.

Our rulers know they’re sitting on a bomb waiting to go off: for years now health care has been a major issue in strike after strike. Workers and their families are suffering and dying because they’re denied care that touches on the most fundamental and the most intimate parts of life—sickness, birth and death. The health care disaster is having a widening impact on all sections of American society, except for the very rich. Even well-paid people, once relatively secure in a network of employer-provided health insurance, private physicians and well-run private hospitals, are threatened as companies cut benefits, doctors and hospitals raise rates, unemployment results in loss of health insurance.

The current health crisis has its more immediate historic roots in the economic crisis of U.S. capitalism signaled by the 1971 devaluation of the dollar, followed shortly by the U.S.’s humiliating defeat at the hands of the Vietnamese Revolution. Since then the American ruling class has sought to counter its decline by squeezing the population harder to restore profitability; domestically it’s meant rampant union-busting and budget-cutting. Under Democrat Jimmy Carter the miners’ historic “cradle to grave” health system was destroyed when the coal bosses and the government undermined union control in the bitter months-long Great Coal Strike of 1978. And Ronald Reagan opened a decade of union-busting attacks when he fired the PATCO air controllers for daring to strike against the federal government. That defeat signaled a broad capitalist assault on hard-won union benefit programs.

The bankrupt American empire thinks it can solve its economic crisis through military adventures like the bloody imperialist war in the Persian Gulf. While spending billions to bomb Iraq back to a pre-industrial age, our rulers decide this country can’t afford health, education, housing, jobs for American workers and the poor. With the decline in American industry, they don’t need a healthy, literate working class. But even on their own terms, where dollars count more than human lives, the bourgeoisie has a real problem: the anarchic medical system is out of control and costing too much money, so much so that even conservative holdouts like the National Association of Manufacturers are beginning to call for expansion of some government programs to cover the poor. Meanwhile, the U.S. government has announced plans to ration Medicare expenses, inevitably depriving the elderly of access to expensive new procedures.

Capitalist America: Class, Race, Sex Bigotry

Why does the United States have no national health system? Why is public health so feeble and preventive medicine nearly nonexistent? The answer is deeply rooted in this country’s history. In the United States public health began late and remained weak. Until the Civil War destroyed the slaveholding system, the capitalist class, impeded by the slavocracy in its attempts to institute a federal road system and to create a national bank and a protective tariff for industry, was certainly not going to forge a national board of health. Post-Civil War efforts foundered on “states’ rights,” intransigent capitalist opposition to cleaning up working conditions and slum tenements, and “social Darwinist” blame-the-victim bigotry.

Further, the power of the American capitalist class; the race, ethnic and sex divisions in the working class; the vastness of the country with the accompanying regional divisions; the absence of explicit, formal class barriers as in Europe with its aristocratic vestiges—all of these factors have served to vitiate the development of class consciousness in American workers. The same powerful class and social forces stymied the emergence of a mass workers party in this country. In Europe, the development of such a party, like Britain’s Labour Party or the German Social Democracy, went side by side with the institution of national health care.

From 1912 to 1920 a debate raged in the U.S. in reform-minded and medical circles over federal and state proposals for government-organized health insurance. While the American Medical Association was prominent in defeating these proposals, it was only one factor in a complex web incorporating hospitals, insurance companies, the giant pharmaceutical corporations and government officials. The web was spun from the deep-seated class and race divisions in this country. Capitalists seeking to lower wages and benefits, commercial insurance companies reaping cash from insecurity and fear, pharmaceutical companies hungering for profits: in the absence of a powerful, class-conscious labor movement able to fight for basic social needs, which could at least have provided a social counterweight to the moneygrubbing in the health industry, these forces soon established an iron grip over health care in the United States. They used every weapon in the bourgeois arsenal of social reaction: anti-woman bigotry, religious and ethnic hatred, class bias, race prejudice, national chauvinism.

Race-hate, woman-hating, religious bigotry—that was America in the early years of the 20th century. The post-Civil War South, where Jim Crow had crushed the freed slaves into poverty, illness and ignorance, was virtually an impoverished agricultural colony of Northern capital. In 1915 the KKK was reborn in the lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish businessman framed up for the murder of a white woman. In the brutal Northern industrial slums, thousands of mothers and infants died at birth each year. Working conditions were appalling: in 1914, 35,000 workers died in on-the-job accidents; 700,000 suffered injuries like severed fingers and crushed limbs. In 1911, 147 young women, mostly Jewish and Italian immigrants, died horribly in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York City; dozens leaped to their deaths because the bosses had them locked in. Bosses bitterly fought any regulation of safety conditions and the paltry workmen’s compensation plans which had just become law in some states; many of these plans were declared null and void by the courts.

The American robber barons only counted the dollars flowing in as their “divide and conquer” assault on the working people raked in Wall Street profits. By pitting workers against each other, by bringing in desperate blacks as scabs to break strikes, by fomenting chauvinist hatred of the millions of non-English-speaking immigrants on the job, the bosses had succeeded in crippling the workers movement. In the 1910s, less than 6 percent of American workers were members of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The Gompersite labor lieutenants of the capitalist class organized their job-trusting unions against blacks, women, immigrants, feeding into antagonisms consciously fostered by the capitalists.

While the American Socialist Party endorsed health insurance in 1904, it was increasingly a party of middle-class, white “reformers,” alienated from more militant sections of the working class, many of whom were non-English-speaking immigrants. And the militant, class-struggle Industrial Workers of the World renounced “politics” on principle. Their mass base among migrant workers in the West, where they were crushed by the bosses and their government, lacked the potential clout of the industrialized workers in the Eastern cities.

History of the Health Insurance Debate

While working people lived and labored in brutal squalor, medicine was making miracles. When in the last decades of the 19th century Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch began to identify the pathogens responsible for many killer diseases, they began a bacteriological revolution which soon enormously increased medicine’s effectiveness. The discovery of anesthesia and asepsis opened up enormous potential both for the relief of human suffering and for profit in hospital surgery. The demand for doctors’ services and hospital beds—and the expense of medical treatment—soared.

By 1914 many European countries had passed some form of national health insurance. Far from comprehensive and certainly not free—only a fraction of the population was covered and workers had to pay some part of the cost out of their wages—these plans represented a significant reform within the confines of the capitalist system and were won as a concession to the combativeness of the European workers movement. In 1883, shortly after passing the Anti-Socialism Laws to squash the German Social Democratic Party, Bismarck instituted the first national sickness program:

“Chancellor Otto von Bismarck created the German system of social insurance as a dike to hold back the rising tide of socialism. As he told a visiting British observer, he wanted ‘to bribe the working classes, or, if you like, to win them over to regard the State as a social institution existing for their sake and interested in their welfare’.”

—Ronald L. Numbers, Almost Persuaded: American Physicians and Compulsory Health Insurance, 1912-1920

Insurance plans soon spread to Austria (1888), Hungary (1891), Luxembourg (1901), Norway (1909), Serbia (1910) and even backward tsarist Russia (1912). More influential in the United States was the British National Insurance Act, put forward in 1911 by Liberal Party chancellor of the exchequer David Lloyd George, later British imperialist war leader. Consciously seeking to diminish class conflict by integrating the working class into a welfare system and to win workers’ votes to the Liberal Party, Lloyd George summed up his hopes for health insurance with the comment, “You can not maintain an A-1 empire with a C-3 population” (quoted in Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine). When the British Medical Association threatened a boycott, the government succeeded in buying the doctors off with promises of physician control of local health committees and guaranteed remuneration.

Social reformers in the U.S. expected health insurance to sweep the U.S. as it had Europe. It was in tune with the spirit of Progressivism popular in liberal bourgeois circles before World War I. Seeking to “clean up” the worst abuses of capitalist exploitation (but blind to the hideous oppression of black sharecroppers in the Jim Crow South), Progressives argued for woman suffrage and for legislation to protect child and female labor. And they certainly realized that the illnesses of the poor were communicable to the rich; disease was rampant in the fetid working-class slums of the big cities, where tuberculosis, the “captain of death,” spread in dusty sweatshops and filthy tenements without sunlight or fresh air. In motivating health insurance the American Association for Labor Legislation (AALL) emphasized that sickness was the leading immediate cause of “charity cases”; thus social relief enabling a sick person to keep his job would “reduce illness itself, lengthen life, abate poverty, improve working power, raise the wage level, and diminish the causes of industrial discontent.” But despite such appeals to capitalism’s “best interests,” by 1920 health insurance was a dead issue.

Enter the Doctors

In 1847 a small group of physicians had founded the American Medical Association primarily as a means to combat “sectarians,” that is, nontraditional physicians such as homeopaths, who were seen as a threat to the wealth and social position of the medical profession. (The AMA even denounced the Surgeon General of the U.S. for cooperating with a homeopathic physician to save the life of Secretary of State William Seward, when he was shot the night of Lincoln’s assassination!) As a classic petty-bourgeois professional layer primarily engaged in private practice, doctors have no strategic social power in capitalist society. Their economic motive is simple: to charge as exorbitant a fee as they can squeeze out of patients. Their social outlook is to avoid what has befallen teachers: proletarianization, the worst fear of a petty-bourgeois professional. In the key years 1890 to 1920—culminating in the victory of the bourgeois right wing—the AMA consolidated as a conservative force championing “fee for service” and opposed to any “third party” intervention in the “doctor-patient relationship.”

Organized medicine boosted its prestige by becoming rich, white, WASP, native-born and male. Through “reform” of medical education, the AMA succeeded in cutting the number of medical schools from 131 to 95 in 1915 and reducing overall admissions to eliminate a “surplus” of doctors. Only two black medical schools, Howard and Meharry, remained out of an earlier seven. Deliberate policies of discrimination kept immigrants, Jews, blacks and women out of medical schools. By 1920 blacks and foreign-born doctors were almost completely unrepresented on hospital staffs. Ethnic, race and religious discrimination against both doctors and patients was a leading factor in the establishment of religious and ethnic hospitals like Mount Sinai in New York City.

Both North and South, hospitals were strictly segregated against blacks. The AMA itself was almost lily-white. While blacks could join on a national level, most doctors were members through a local medical association. Black doctors in the South were effectively barred; in 1895 blacks had established their own organization, the National Medical Association (NMA), which, reflecting the desperate needs of black patients, had a longstanding position in support of national health insurance. In 1950 the AMA finally moved to put token pressure on Southern locals to admit black doctors. But as Edward H. Beardsley wrote in A History of Neglect: Health Care for Blacks and Mill Workers in the Twentieth-Century South, “there was feeling among some blacks that the AMA was only hoping to strike a deal with the NMA over national health insurance. Earlier, AMA leaders had approached their black counterparts with a vague offer of recognizing black medical societies as AMA affiliates if the NMA would join against Truman’s ‘socialized medicine’ scheme.”

Public Health in America: Stillborn

As Harvard medical historian Paul Starr documents, doctors viewed public health as a threat and defended a “vigilantly guarded border” between private medical practice and public health’s shrinking mandate. “Doctors fought against public treatment of the sick, requirements for reporting cases of tuberculosis and venereal disease, and attempts by public health authorities to establish health centers to coordinate preventive and curative medical services.” Crying “parasitism” and “abuse,” doctors were instrumental in banishing urban dispensaries, “medical soup kitchens” where the poor could be treated for free. Similarly, in April 1902 over 1,000 doctors and druggists denounced New York City’s internationally renowned Department of Health for “unfair competition” and “municipal socialism” because it sold its overstock of diphtheria antitoxin at cost. The department was forced to stop all sale of the antitoxin for this hideous disease, one of the 19th century’s biggest killers of children.

Thus, by 1912 when the Progressivist American Association for Labor Legislation first set forth its proposals for health insurance on the state and national level, the AMA had some experience with getting its way. Interestingly, at first the AMA endorsed the insurance proposal as “inevitable.” But soon doctors learned that its defeat was possible. According to Ronald L. Numbers:

“During this period nothing seems to have played a greater role in molding opinion than money. In the early days of the debate, when poorly paid American physicians believed that they, like their British brethren, might benefit financially from compulsory health insurance, it seemed like an attractive idea.... [But] the incomes of physicians were increasing without insurance. The average income of taxed physicians in Wisconsin, for example, rose 41 percent between 1916 and 1919. Wartime inflation was responsible for much of this, but an unprecedented decline in the total number of physicians undoubtedly had some effect.”

But more important than the position of the AMA was the clout of big business. Organizations like the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Civic Federation opposed compulsory insurance plans. An especially powerful enemy was the burgeoning commercial insurance business. The enormous profits of the Prudential Insurance Co. (founded in 1875) and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. sprang from selling “industrial” life insurance policies to working-class families. These grisly policies of death paid costs for terminal illnesses and funerals only. A huge army of insurance agents visited families weekly, immediately after payday, to collect the 15 or 25 cents premium, a very high percentage of a workman’s pitiful wages. The fear of a pauper’s burial was so great that in 1911 individual Americans spent $183 million on these burial policies—about as much as Germany spent on its entire social insurance program!

The AALL program’s inclusion of death benefits directly threatened the life insurance giants, who proved its most bitter opponents. The chief spokesman for the insurance industry was Frederick L. Hoffman, Prudential actuary and vice president, who churned out pages of propaganda smearing compulsory health insurance as unnecessary, fraudulent and un-American. The insurance industry also financed the opposition of the Christian Science faith healers.

Faced with such powerful enemies, compulsory insurance needed powerful friends. But while some state union federations supported it, AFL head Samuel Gompers denounced it. When in 1916 Socialist Party Congressman Meyer London introduced a bill for compulsory health insurance into the House of Representatives, Gompers was the only witness to testify against it. In a hypocritical diatribe against government paternalism, Gompers claimed that compulsory insurance would stand in the way of the workers’ attempts “to strive and struggle for their own emancipation through their own efforts.” Of course the labor-traitor Gompers (who also opposed legislation for the eight-hour day, the minimum wage and unemployment insurance) did nothing to organize “striving and struggling” for the vast majority of workers, who were still unorganized. The job-trusting, Jim Crow AFL leadership was a criminal obstacle to workers power. The key element of organized class struggle, which both Bismarck and Lloyd George had sought to buy off with their social insurance schemes, was crippled in the United States. When the capitalists looked at the health care equation, they saw only that their bucks would go to premiums and to sick pay which they believed would only encourage “malingering.”

The final blow to the Progressives’ reform plan was the entry of the United States into World War I in 1917. True, when hundreds of thousands of young Americans failed their army physicals, health reformers used military necessity to bolster their arguments for health insurance. But this appeal to chauvinism was swamped in imperialist war hysteria targeting radicals, antiwar militants, women’s rights activists, socialists, unionists—any challenge to the U.S. war drive. Chauvinist reaction killed dead any chances for health care reform, while health insurance opponents reveled in its German connection. (In his 1918 address, the AMA’s president called on AMA members to turn in German doctors to the cops.) The powerful witchhunting Creel Committee on Public Information commissioned a series of articles by Frederick Hoffman “exposing” German sickness insurance as a “fraud.”

The California League for the Conservation of Public Health (an Orwellian name indeed) propagandized in a pamphlet entitled “What Is Compulsory Social Health Insurance?”: “It is a dangerous device, invented in Germany, announced by the German Emperor from the throne the same year he started plotting and preparing to conquer the world.” A front group for California commercial insurers, the Research Society of Social Economics, passed out thousands of copies of a pamphlet displaying a picture of the Kaiser over the caption: “Made in Germany. Do you want it in California?” This disgusting chauvinist barrage turned Californian voters against insurance, which was defeated in a statewide referendum.

The 1917 Russian Revolution, greeted by the working-class masses as a beacon of hope amid imperialist slaughter and exploitation, gave the enemies of health insurance yet another inflammatory theme which only intensified in the postwar upsurge of anti-communist reaction. In 1919 a prominent New York physician-lawyer, John O’Reilly, screamed that health insurance advocates were “Paid Professional Philanthropists, and busy-body Social Workers…Supporters, Defenders, Associates of the Forces of unrest known as the I.W.W. and Bolshevists; the disciples of Lenin and Trotzky whose Gospel is the Destruction of those things worth while for which men and women have given their lives.” Others attacked insurance advocates using nasty anti-Semitic slurs and claims of “sexual license” and “religious hatred.” Thus organized medicine played its small but dirty part to whip up the bloody crackdown on labor struggle after the war. Capitalist reaction spawned the union-busting, the anti-communist Palmer Raids, the mass deportations of foreign-born workers and the vicious race riots of the postwar years.

Bitter Fruits of “Wealth Care”

While the rise of the militant CIO in the 1930s paved the way for the establishment of union benefit plans like the UMW’s, American medicine for profit, born in capitalist reaction, remains locked in to anarchic, limitless greed. When AIDS hit the U.S. in the 1980s, the response of the ruling class and the medical establishment was to be predicted: criminal neglect, outright gloating over a disease that targeted homosexuals as well as increasing numbers of drug users and the poor. Medicine has become not only a source of enormous profit, but a sort of moral priesthood of the arrogant privileged sermonizing against the “guilty” who are sick for their sins; “public health” has turned into a criminal manhunt. In a truly vicious and twisted victimization of a young black woman, recently a Florida appeals court upheld the conviction of Jennifer Clarise Johnson under a law designed to punish drug dealers giving drugs to children: she supposedly delivered cocaine to her baby through the umbilical cord before it was cut after birth!

Today, about 34 million Americans have no health insurance at all—and that’s not counting the tens of millions who have pitifully inadequate coverage like Medicare and Medicaid. Medicaid fees are so low that many doctors simply turn patients away—for a visit to a doctor in New York Medicaid paid $11 in 1989! For years death rates and infant mortality rates for black people have been worsening as poverty lashes them with malnutrition, wretched housing, lack of medical care. Ghettos are devastated by epidemics of diseases supposedly conquered by modern medicine: tuberculosis once again spreading; measles, easily prevented by vaccine, rampant because vaccinations for common childhood diseases, once free, now cost several hundred dollars. In contrast to every other industrialized country on the globe, in the United States sexually transmitted diseases are increasing: syphilis, once almost eradicated, now the cause of thousands of babies born with a terrible, crippling congenital condition; gonorrhea, now spreading in drug-resistant forms.

Just over a year ago in “Excess Mortality in Harlem,” published in the New England Journal of Medicine (18 January 1990), doctors reported that life expectancy for black men in Harlem was lower than for men in Bangladesh, one of the world’s most impoverished countries. The two authors of the report concluded, “A major political and financial commitment will be needed to eradicate the root causes of this high mortality: vicious poverty and inadequate access to the basic health care that is the right of all Americans.” But it has only gotten worse. Harlem Hospital, virtually the only health facility for the 125,000 inhabitants of Harlem (where private physicians are practically nonexistent), is faced with loss of accreditation and withdrawal of federal Medicaid and Medicare funding.

Conditions on the job have deteriorated too as the bankrupt American empire has intensified the exploitation of labor. Some 4,000 coal miners die every year from black lung disease, and 10,000 of the 160,000 miners on the job show evidence of the disease already. In February 1989 the so-called “Labor” Department of the U.S. government discovered widespread and massive cheating by mining companies in testing mine air for coal dust, the cause of the illness. After stalling for months while miners continue to get sick, the government finally announced fines as low as $1,000 per violation, a meaningless slap on the wrist!

The health care “system” in the U.S. shows again and again that the capitalists don’t want to let human life get in the way of their profits. Understandably outraged, ACT UP activists, through militant stunts like blockading Wall Street and protesting at Catholic masses, try to pressure government into putting more money into AIDS care and AIDS research. But only intransigent class struggle has won even the little piece of the “miracle of modern medicine” that workers and the poor now have. And as the miners’ long years of struggle show, even those gains can be reversed by renewed capitalist attack.

Medicine for profit is too locked in for the American capitalists to implement a universal government-provided health system like the one in Canada or Britain. But even if it were possible, it’s no answer either. In Britain, nobody who can afford a private physician’s fees ever goes to National Health, and the already inadequate care is fast disappearing as the government slashes services. While the Canadian system provides better general health care to the population as a whole, many people can’t get access to expensive procedures requiring high-tech medical equipment because there isn’t enough money in the tight budget.

The struggle for decent health care exposes the gaping holes in all the pathetic patchwork reform schemes advocated by liberal social workers, social democrats and officials of the twin capitalist parties. The treacherous U.S. labor bureaucrats, the grandsons of Samuel Gompers, today pass motions calling for a national health system and argue about it at their fancy poolside confabs in Bal Harbour. But such schemes are just bandaids for cancer, more halfway measures guaranteed to ration medical care by class, race and sex. The AFL-CIO executive board couldn’t even pass a motion to support women’s right to abortion, let alone fight for equal rights for blacks, women and gays. The working class must oust the trade-union bureaucrats, the labor lieutenants of the Democratic Party—the party of Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter—and build a revolutionary, class-struggle workers party which will take up all the struggles of the exploited and oppressed, and fight for a workers government.

Free, Quality Health Care for All in a Socialist World!

The crisis of medical care cries out for a socialist revolution which will lay the basis for a society which will end all exploitation and social oppression. Health means much more than shots and pills and surgical knives: it is a decent place to live; plenty of good food to eat; knowledge of human biology; air clean of pollution; safe, decent working conditions; the principles of public health rigorously applied. Medicine can’t save lives ruined by poverty and malnutrition. Right now a deadly epidemic of cholera is spreading rapidly throughout South America, the first since 1895. Its genesis is quite simply the collapse of the sewage system. Groaning under millions of dollars of debt to imperialist banks, Third World countries can’t maintain even a basic social infrastructure.

In this complex industrial society, it will take worldwide planning based on scientific knowledge to establish both public health and the best care for the individual. The AIDS pandemic only underlines the urgency of this truth. What we need is free, quality health care for all—communist medicine, where the wealth of resources on our planet go to the service of the people, not to production for profits.

When we have thrown out the vicious capitalist system which sells human life for dollars, we will be able to build a new socialist society where human life, human worth and human dignity count. Doctors will be servants of the people; hospitals will be havens to heal the sick; research on vaccinations, new medical techniques and improved drugs will be internationally coordinated and to the benefit of all. When the workers of the world are in charge of this planet, the only limits of human health will be scientific—and these will be constantly enlarged by thoughtful, energetic research.

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Urgent: Protest Bloody Repression in Honduras!

Steven — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:31:38 GMT

Mobilize the Workers To Crush the Coup Plotters!
Urgent: Protest Bloody Repression in Honduras!

http://www.internationalist.org/protestrepressionhonduras0909.html

Yesterday, September 21, President Manuel Zelaya Rosales returned to Honduras, 86 days after he was ousted in a civilian-military coup, kidnapped from his home at gunpoint and expelled from the country. The de facto regime installed by the coup plotters, headed by the puppet “president” Roberto Micheletti, was evidently caught by surprise by Zelaya’s return. Hundreds of opponents of the coup rushed to the Brazilian embassy where he is staying in order to greet him and to form a human barrier against the military. The regime declared a 24 hour curfew, to which the population paid no heed.

Beginning at 4 a.m. this morning, the notorious Cobra riot police brutally attacked the unarmed demonstrators with tear gas, injuring many and reportedly killing two with live ammunition, according to Indymedia. Electricity and water have been cut off in the neighborhood, and police are forcing residents from their homes. Hundreds of anti-coup demonstrators are being detained on roads to prevent them from reaching the Honduran capital. Opponents of the coup have issued an “urgent international appeal for solidarity and to DEMAND that the repression cease immediately.”

Radio Liberada in Tegucigalpa reported at 10 a.m. local time that a football stadium and baseball stadium next door are being used as jails, and people are being tortured there. The radio recalled the use of the National Stadium in Santiago, Chile as a concentration camp and torture center during the Pinochet coup of 11 September 1973. Radio Globo, also in Tegucigalpa, reports that the area around the Brazilian embassy is basically deserted, with military and police sharpshooters posted on the surrounding rooftops with orders to shoot to kill if Zelaya should come out. Elsewhere in the city, many explosions have been heard near the airport.

Radio stations in San Pedro Sula and El Progreso have been seized by the military.

The working people, peasants, indigenous and garífuna populations of Honduras have courageously resisted the coup plotters from the beginning. Teachers immediately went on strike, which has continued to this day, and two striking teachers were assassinated. Unions have led the resistance, calling two national work stoppages at the end of July and again in August. Hundreds of thousands have demonstrated in Tegucigalpa in opposition to the dictatorship and demanding the return of Zelaya. But Radio Globo reports that among those demonstrating outside the Brazilian embassy, Zelaya’s call for “dialogue” with the coup plotters was not popular.

The Organization of American States hailed Zelaya’s “courageous act,” while U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton called for the usurpers and Zelaya to “find common ground.” This tacit recognition of the coup regime has characterized U.S. policy ever since June 28. In fact, high State Department officials were up to their necks in discussions with the plotters before the coup on how to “legally” oust Zelaya, due to his ties to Washington’s nemesis, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez. This is the policy of the entire U.S. government, of President Barack Obama.

We call for urgent international solidarity with the Honduran working people resisting the coup and denunciation of U.S. support for the plotters. For a general strike and workers self-defense against the repression! Yankee imperialism, go to hell! No phony “dialogue” with the assassins – For workers action to crush the coup plotters! Fight for a workers and peasants government, in a Central American Federation of workers republics!

Internationalist Group/
League for the Fourth International

22 September 2009, 12 noon

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Honduras: The First Coup of the Obama Administration

Steven — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 06:17:54 GMT

Sweep Away the Coup Plotters, Generals and Capitalists!
Fight for a Workers and Peasants Government!
Honduras: The First Coup of the Obama Administration

An abbreviated version of this article appeared in The Internationalist No. 29 (Summer 2009). This is a full translation of the Spanish-language article from the El Internacionalista supplement (August 2009).

AUGUST 6 – The ouster of President Manuel Zelaya Rosales by Honduran generals at the end of June sent shudders through Latin America. Leftists and trade-unionists bitterly recalled the dark days of the 1970s and 1980s, when much of the region was ruled by military juntas, thousands were murdered, tens of thousands fled into exile and those who remained were terrorized into submission.

Even “center-left” bourgeois governments such as in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and elsewhere felt threatened, as they all have tenuous relations with their militaries. Below a thin veneer of “democracy,” the officers who carried out the “dirty wars” and ran the death squads are still there. The “moderates” looked to the new administration in Washington to solve the problem. Even Hugo Chávez in Venezuela appealed to the U.S.: “Obama, do something.” But more than a month later, the putschists are still in charge in Tegucigalpa, the death toll among the protesters is rising, and Zelaya is cooling his heels at the border.

We warned the day after the military takeover that those fighting against it should beware of U.S. intervention (rather than appeal for it), and demand “Yankee Imperialism, Hands Off!” (see “Honduras: Coup d’État in the Maquiladora Republic” in The Internationalist no. 29 [Summer 2009]). We called on workers to “fight against the coup while offering no political support whatsoever to the right-wing president.” In fact, Honduran unions have played a key role in resistance to the coup. But while protesters call for Zelaya’s return with full powers, the ousted president has agreed to terms that would make him a figurehead. Either way, the coup plotters would still be in place, ready to strike again.

What’s needed is not negotiations but a mobilization of the workers and peasants to sweep away the military gorilas and the capitalists and bourgeois politicians behind the coup, through revolutionary struggle for a workers and peasants government that would expropriate the oligarchs and the entire capitalist ruling class, as part of workers revolution throughout Central America, and beyond.

Today resistance is being organized through bodies such as the National Front Against the Coup d’ État (FNCGE, according to its initials in Spanish). This is a “popular front” formation which unites labor groups and leftists with the Democratic Unification Party, a minor bourgeois formation. Today tens of thousands of Hondurans are courageously protesting in the face of the guns of the military. But should opponents of the coup succeed in any degree in pushing back the coup plotters, this bourgeois opposition coalition will be a barrier blocking any struggle against the Honduran ruling class which spawned the coup. To overcome this roadblock to revolution it is necessary to begin organizing the nucleus of a revolutionary workers party that is politically independent of all capitalist politicians, parties and coalitions.

Washington’s Hand in the Coup

An old joke in Latin America goes, Question: Why has there never been a coup d’état in the United States? Answer: Because there is no American embassy in Washington. Of course, there was the 2000 judicial coup in which the Supreme Court, by a vote of 5 to 4, placed George Bush in the White House despite losing the popular vote.

Whether Republicans or Democrats are in power, U.S. imperialism is still the power behind the most reactionary forces in the hemisphere. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton clucked her tongue criticizing the putsch, but pointedly did not call it a coup d’état, as that would have required a cutoff of U.S. aid to the very forces that carried out the coup. She called on Costa Rican president Óscar Arias to “mediate.” This amounted to de facto recognition of the de facto “government” headed by the puppet Robert Micheletti. Clinton also sharply criticized Zelaya as “reckless” for attempting to go back to Honduras. So the military-backed regime is simply doing nothing, hoping to run the clock out until “elections” this fall.

We wrote in our first article that “the Honduran army doesn’t move a finger without the Pentagon and the CIA knowing about it,” and “at the very least, Washington is tolerating the coup.” Soon information began coming out that U.S. “diplomats” were up to their necks in the coup plotting. The New York Times (30 June) reported that:

“As the situation in Honduras worsened, Assistant Secretary of State Thomas A. Shannon Jr., along with Hugo Llorens, the American ambassador to Honduras, spoke with Mr. Zelaya, military officials and opposition leaders....
“‘There was talk of how they might remove the president from office, how he could be arrested, on whose authority they could do that,’ the administration official said. But the official said that the speculation had focused on legal maneuvers to remove the president, not a coup.”

So Washington was discussing for weeks with the plotters about how to “remove” Zelaya, even “arrest” him ... and then the U.S. acts surprised when, after getting the okay from the Honduran Congress, the Honduran Supreme Court and the Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, the military goes ahead and ousts him! The U.S. just objected that the job was done so crudely.

Then, after the coup, and the wave of denunciations in Latin America, the Obama administration decides it has to do something, so it brings in Arias, an old pal of the Bushes (father and son) and an old hand at dousing conflagrations in Central America that threaten the stability of the empire. When the representatives of coup “president” Micheletti showed up in San José, they brought with them an “adviser,” one Bennet Ratcliff, a San Diego-based political consultant with ties to the Clintons. The New York Times (13 July) reported: “an official close to the talks said the team rarely made a move without consulting” Ratcliff. “‘Every proposal that Micheletti’s group presented was written or approved by the American,’ said another official close to the talks, referring to Mr. Ratcliff.”

In Washington, the Honduran Business Council hired lobbyist Lanny Davis to represent the coup “government,” arranging meetings with Republican Congressmen and testifying before Congress. Davis was Bill Clinton’s personal lawyer during the Monica Lewinsky affair. During last year’s primary elections, he was a surrogate for Hillary Clinton (whom he met at Yale, along with George W. Bush) making some of the harshest race-baiting attacks on Obama. (Davis is also a “senior advisor and spokesman” for The Israel Project, a Zionist PR operation. Israel, incidentally, is the only country to have recognized the coup “government” in Honduras.)

Meanwhile, the U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, is a Cuban gusano exile who was in charge of Andean affairs on the National Security Council at the time of the 2002 coup that briefly seized Hugo Chávez, in which the U.S. was heavily involved. As in that case and the 2004 ouster/kidnapping of Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide by U.S. forces, the Honduran coup plotters produced a supposed “resignation letter” from Zelaya that was quickly revealed to be a phony. On top of this, various long-time Reagan/Bush operatives have been active in Honduras recently, including Otto Reich (another gusano) and John Negroponte (known as The Proconsul when he was U.S. ambassador in the 1980s), both heavily involved with Nicaraguan contras and Salvadoran death squads.

Various leftists have used the Clinton ties to argue that that was “Clinton’s Soft Coup” and an “attempt to torpedo Obama’s effort at détente in Latin America, including with Cuba” (Guillermo Almeyra in La Jornada, 2 August). All this shows is that illusions in Barack Obama are still strongly held in Latin America (and the U.S.). The Honduran coup plotters may have figured they could force the U.S. president’s hand. They are certainly identified with extreme right-wingers. Hillary Clinton may be particularly hostile to Zelaya and Chávez. But this is the Obama administration, not the Clinton administration, and the U.S. government as a whole, not just one putative faction, was preparing the ouster of Zelaya.

Honduras’s Capitalist Oligarchy and the Coup

Frequently in Latin America, reformist leftists refer to the ruling class as an oligarchy, and label repressive regimes fascist. Often there is an implicit political program attached to these descriptions. If it is an oligarchy (rule by a select few), then the struggle against it should be for a democracy (rule of “the people”), they argue. Similarly, if a government is fascist, they seek to organize a popular front along with “democratic” bourgeois politicians and parties to combat it. The purpose is to constrain the struggle to a bourgeois-democratic framework. In contrast, we Trotskyists of the League for the Fourth International fight for a socialist revolution against capitalism.

In contrast to some other, more advanced capitalist countries of Latin America, Honduras really does have an oligarchy, a very narrow ruling circle consisting of a few clans who tightly control the country’s economy and politics. Honduran sociologist Leticia Salomón identified key coup backers as media magnate Carlos Roberto Facussé (former president, palm oil monopolist, owner of La Tribuna), the Continental Group of Jaime Rosenthal and Gilberto Goldstein (owners of El Tiempo), and including the Ferrari, Canahuati, Atala, Lamas, Násser, Kattán, Lippman and Rafael Flores families, who between them control “90% of the country’s wealth” (Público [Spain], 30 July).

But that leaves aside the huge sectors of the economy, producing most of the exports, directly owned by the imperialists: Chiquita Brands and Dole Foods for bananas; U.S. and Canadian mining companies; Nike, Adidas and The Gap for maquiladora (free trade zone) clothing and shoe manufacturers. Their profits and exports have been hard-hit by the two national work stoppages, the constant highway occupations, the curfew and other side effects of the military seizure of power.

The generals who carried out the coup recently went on national television to explain how they were really “defending democracy.” One said of Zelaya’s government: “Central America was not the objective of this communism disguised as democracy.... This socialism, communism, chavismo, we could call it, was headed to the heart of the United States.” It seemed like a throwback to the rhetoric of the anti-Soviet Cold War, when Ronald Reagan warned of a “red tide” washing up from Central America. But the capitalists really did consider that Zelaya was toying with “communism.” After all, he raised the minimum wage by 60 percent. This caused great consternation in the board room of the imperialist fruit monopolies:

“Chiquita complained that the new regulations would cut into company profits, requiring the firm to spend more on costs than in Costa Rica: 20 cents more to produce a crate of pineapple and ten cents more to produce a crate of bananas to be exact.”
–Nikolas Kozloff, “Chiquita in Latin America,” Counterpunch, 17 July

The Honduran capitalist rulers are a clannish, insular, racist lot who have supported military dictatorship, except for the occasional “democratic” interlude, since they hardly have the social weight to dominate the country themselves. An example of their mentality came from one of the top officials of the coup regime, Enrique Ortez, who referred to Barack Obama as a “black boy” (negrito), which is the closest Spanish equivalent to the “n word.” Ortez’s remarks were so racist that the U.S. media glossed over them, and didn’t quote the whole statement. According to El Tiempo (7 July), Ortez said in an interview televised a week before the coup:
“I have negotiated with queers [maricones], prostitutes, with pinkos [ñángaras, an insulting Honduran term for leftists] , blacks, whites. ... I don’t have racial prejudices, I like the black boy from the hood [negrito del batey] who is presiding over the United States.”
And the day after being named “foreign minister” Ortez said on TV:

“The president of the republic [the U.S.], with all due respect to the black boy, doesn’t know where Tegucigalpa is.”

Eventually the coup plotters were forced to withdraw his appointment as head diplomat, and instead named him chief of staff for the dictator Micheletti. Finally, due to pressure from Washington they had to drop him altogether. But the fact that he could say that publicly shows the mindset of the Honduran capitalist ruling class, for whom such renarks are absolutely normal, reflecting their racist contempt toward the substantial black (and indigenous) population of Honduras.

Smash the Coup – Workers to Power!

The Honduran coup was not some local matter but an event of continental importance. It was clearly intended to send a message to the presidents of El Salvador, Mauricio Funes of the FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front), and Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega of the FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front). These former leftist and guerrilla groups have become bourgeois parties carrying out “free-market” capitalist economic policies. Ortega, now a born-again Christian, even outlawed abortion under all circumstances. But that is not reactionary enough for the likes of the antediluvian Central American right. (In El Salvador, ARENA, the party of the death squads, ran a full-page newspaper ad calling to recognize the Honduran regime and telling Funes the same could happen to him.)

For the past month, Honduran trade unions, peasant and indigenous groups have been insistently mobilizing in the streets against the civilian-military dictatorship. The teachers unions have been one of the strongest points of resistance, shutting down schools for three weeks, then participating in two national work stoppages, and now back on indefinite strike following the cold-blooded assassination of two teachers, Roger Vallejo and Martin Riviera, the second stabbed 25 times as he left the wake for Vallejo. The brewing and bottling industry union (STIBYS), has also been prominent, with its union hall acting as an organizing center for protests.

So far the “civic work stoppages” have been largely limited to public sector workers, as the maquiladora operators keep their employees under tight control. A real general strike that shut down the maquiladoras, banana and mining sectors, cutting off Honduran exports would have a considerable impact. But that represents a whole different political orientation, organizing on a program of internationalist class struggle rather than on the bourgeois-democratic and nationalist basis that has dominated so far.

As we have noted, Honduras has a considerable history of leftist and labor agitation. It was in order to crush communist union organizing that the military took power in a previous coup, in 1963, when the liberal Democrat John F. Kennedy was in the White House. Many leftists are taking part in and leading protests. The FNCGD issues appeals to the world working class. Yet their program is to reinstall “Mel” Zelaya in the Presidential House. The demonstrations wave the Honduran flag and chant, “Mel amigo, el pueblo está contigo” (Mel, friend, the people are with you). Yet Zelaya is taking his marching orders from Washington, and if he does return it will be to bury any hopes that poor and working people may have had in his presidency. The referendum on holding a constituent assembly, a key issue that triggered the military takeover, is a dead letter.

Various would-be socialists and even self-proclaimed communists argue that it is necessary to subordinate everything to the fight to restore Zelaya’s presidency, even though he is no radical and certainly no representative of the impoverished working people. (He is a certified oligarch whose father, Manuel Zelaya Ordoñez, was a wealthy businessman who was convicted, and pardoned, for murdering 15 peasants, students and religious leaders and dumping their bodies in a well on his ranch in the 1975 Los Horcones massacre.)

This was not the program of the revolutionary Bolsheviks Lenin and Trotsky, who in the lead up to the 1917 October Revolution called to defeat a coup attempt by the tsarist general Kornilov, without defending the bourgeois government of Kerensky. As Lenin wrote,
“in these circumstances, a Bolshevik would say: ‘Our workers and soldiers will fight the counter-revolutionary troops if they start an offensive now against the Provisionial Government; they will do so not to defend the government . . . but to independently defend the revolution as they pursue their own aim, the aim of securing victory for the workers, for the poor, for the cause of peace, and not for the imperialists or for Kerensky”
–“Rumors of a Conspiracy,” August 1917

It was Stalin, the “great organizer of defeats,” who sacrificed the Spanish Revolution (and murdered the revolutionaries) on the altar of the Popular Front, massacring the Barcelona workers on the grounds that they threatened the bourgeois Republic. Yet it was the Spanish Republican government and its Stalinist-controlled police and army that prevented a victory over the reactionary militarist Franco, by blocking the workers and peasants from carrying through the revolution that had begun to expropriate the capitalists and landowners.

In Honduras today, revolutionary Marxists would mobilize to defeat the coup regime, but on a program of organizing workers revolution, not making political alliances with Zelaya and other bourgeois political forces. The important participation of the unions in the resistance should be used not to restore conditions to what they were on June 27, but to fight against all the capitalist politicians and their system that has condemned 75 percent of the population to a life of misery. Honduras has the lowest wages in Central America, with teachers earning US$130 a month and maquiladora workers US$140 a month (for 12-hour days). That is the main reason the clothing apparel and shoe manufacturers have come there in the first place.

Clearly such a fight takes preparation. It can begin in the course of the present battles, seeking to transform “civic” work stoppages into a nationwide strike by workers and their allies. It is crucial to extend the struggle to the workers in the maquiladora manufacturing plants, the fruit plantations and transport sectors. Working people in El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Costa Rica should mobilize, including with strike action, to oppose the Honduran coup, which is a direct threat to them as well.

Workers outside Central America should seek to implement the call by the International Transport Workers Federation to refuse at this key moment to load or unload Honduran-flag ships, a ban which should be extended to any cargo from or to Honduras. Demonstrations in the United States, Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America should demand release of the hundreds of Hondurans being held in the dictatorship’s jails. Teachers unions should solidarize with their valiant sisters and brothers in Honduras who have risked all to defeat the gorilas. And we must continue to demand that the U.S. government get out of Honduras, that the Soto Cano military base at Palmerola be shut down, and that it cut off all aid to Honduras.

Mobilization against the capitalist coup must be on a class basis, forming councils of workers, peasants and the urban and rural poor, drawing in the oppressed black and indigenous populations. Such councils that can provide the basis for sweeping away the entire class of capitalist exploiters. Above all, what is needed is a struggle to forge the nucleus of a revolutionary workers party in Honduras and throughout Central America. Such a party can only be built on the program of permanent revolution, of Leon Trotsky’s Fourth International, namely that in the imperialist epoch even basic democratic demands including agrarian revolution, national liberal and democracy for the exploited and oppressed in semi-colonial countries like Honduras can only be achieved by the workers taking power, at the head of the peasantry and poor and led by their communist party, to establish their own class rule, and extend the revolution internationally. ■

Article From the Internationalist, Published by the Internationalist Group:
http://www.internationalist.org/hondurasobamacoup.html

Distributed by Liberation News:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

New Taco Bell Green Menu Takes Nothing From Nature

Steven — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:47:47 GMT

New Taco Bell Green Menu Takes Nothing From Nature

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/taco_bells_new_green_menu_takes

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Translated: Mobilize To Defeat the Putsch!

Steven — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 06:43:11 GMT

[We have just received and translated the following article from our members in Latin America. One Hundred thousand workers struck against the coup in Honduras today. -Steven Argue]

Mobilize the Workers To Defeat the Putsch!
Honduras: Coup d’État in the Maquiladora Republic
Yankee Imperialism, Hands Off!
For a Federation of Workers Republics of Central America!

http://www.internationalist.org/hondurascoup0906.html

JUNE 29 – In the early morning of Sunday, June 28, some 200 soldiers of the Honduran army kidnapped the president of the republic, Manuel Zelaya Rosales, at gunpoint and expelled him to Costa Rica. Soon after, strategic points of the capital, Tegucigalpa, and the main commercial center, San Pedro Sula, were occupied by armored personnel carriers. With General Romeo Vásquez (who had been removed by Zelaya as armed forces chief) at the head of the military, and with the backing of the Supreme Court, the oligarchical Congress named the vice president of the House of Deputies as puppet president. This was how the coup played out, the first in the region since the genocidal murderer Efraín Ríos Montt seized Guatemala in 1982 at the height of the anti-Soviet Cold War. This first coup of the presidency of Barack Obama awakened fears of a return to the days of the gorilas (ultra-rightist military thugs) and the “years of blood,” when Honduras served as a launching pad for the Nicaraguan contras and the Salvadoran death squads which sowed terror throughout Central America.

There was a quick but weak response from the population: by mid-morning, several hundred supporters of Zelaya surrounded the APCs, braving the gun barrels and burning tires to block the streets. The teachers union called an unlimited strike. In the afternoon up to 20,000 workers and residents congregated in front of the occupied Presidential House, but they dispersed after a downpour. Military roadblocks on the highways prevented more from arriving. At the diplomatic level, the U.S. president expressed “deep concern” over the coup, while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “condemned” it. The United Nations, the Organization of American States, the Rio Group, the Mercosur (South American Common Market) and other organizations of Latin American governments likewise opposed it. The Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), a group of reputedly “progressive” countries led by Venezuela and including Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua – which Honduras joined last year – met in Managua, Nicaragua. Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez announced that he would “overthrow” the putschists.

But in the concrete, all this has so far had no effect whatever, and the army is still in control of Honduras. Revolutionary Marxists stress that this is a class question: to defeat the coup we can only count on mobilizing the working people, in Honduras as well as throughout Central America, in Mexico and the rest of the continent. Nothing will be resolved by simply reinstalling Zelaya in the presidential seat while the authors of the coup and the bankers and landowners who instigated it remain in place. It will only be a matter of time until there is a new takeover attempt. It is the bourgeoisie itself that overthrew the president, fearing that he was “playing with fire” by making too many concessions to those that they ruthlessly exploit.

Moreover, the Honduran army doesn’t move a finger without the Pentagon and the CIA knowing about it. As protesters chanted, correctly and insistently, at a demonstration of some 150 people in New York on Monday, June 29, “Ejército golpista, instrumento imperialista” (the coup-plotting army is an instrument of imperialism). And don’t doubt for a minute that the top bosses of regional ultra-rightists are involved in the affair. The only way to sweep away the coup plotters is by workers revolution throughout the region, extending into the heart of the empire, the United States.

In contrast to this view, bourgeois liberals and petty-bourgeois reformist leftists see the matter as a question of “democracy” vs. “dictatorship,” and from this standpoint they feed illusions in the new U.S. president. Some are even calling on the Obama administration to reinstall the deposed Honduran president in the Presidential House. Among them is President Zelaya himself. In an interview with the Madrid (Spain) daily El País (29 June), the Honduran leader remarked a day before the coup:

“Everything was ready here to carry out a coup, and if the U.S. Embassy had approved, there would have been a coup.... If I am sitting here right now speaking with you in the Presidential House, it is thanks to the United States.”

But a few short hours later, he was no longer sitting in the Presidential House. If the U.S. had really wanted to prevent the overthrow, the coup plotters would never have dared to carry it out, or they would long since be gone. The reality is that, at the very least, Washington is tolerating the coup. But watch out for imperialists who undo coups d’état: they can also orchestrate them!

After vituperating for years against the awful president Bush, even comparing him with Satan, many now think that with the election of Barack Obama it’s back to the times when the U.S. was a “Good Neighbor,” like under Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They forget that under FDR, occupation by the Marines was replaced by installing puppet dictators in the Dominican Republic (Trujillo) and Nicaragua (Somoza). Honduras under strong man Tuburcio Carías became the quintessential “banana republic,” as he ruled the country from 1932 to 1948 in the interests of the United Fruit Company, known throughout Latin America as El Pulpo (the Octopus, whose tentacles reached everywhere). But despite his replacement after World War II by the “democratic” government of Juan Manuel Gálvez, anti-working-class repression continued ... and imperialist intervention became even more blatant.

This came to a head in the great banana strike of 1954, when workers on United Fruit plantations, on its subsidiary the Tela Railroad Company, as well as Standard Fruit, the ports and even Rosario Mining Company all stopped work. Gálvez, a former lawyer for Tela Railroad, brought out the army against the strikers. They, however, had organized a powerful strike committee that resisted the onslaught. Left-wing newspapers such as Vanguardia Revolucionaria and Voz Obrera (Workers Voice) circulated widely. As Ramón Amaya Amador, the novelist of the Honduran working class, wrote in his novel Destacamento Rojo (Red Detachment):

“He brought to their attention the formation of study groups on Marxism and the problems of the countryside which opened them up to the revolutionary ideology of the working class.... Union organization was spreading, which the government fought against declaring that these were subversive activities by loafers set on disrupting social peace, anarchists who recognized neither god nor the law. They waved the anti-communist flag, applying heavy sanctions against anyone who talked about organizing the workers.”
–quoted in Mario Posas, Luchas del movimiento obrero hondureño (Educa, 1981)

When troops and anti-communist propaganda proved insufficient to defeat the strike, the government appealed to its “Good Neighbor” to the north. This was taking place just as the U.S. was intervening next door in Guatemala, by means of a secret army trained on Honduran soil. Once their subversive work in Guatemala was accomplished, Washington dispatched some “labor advisors” to Honduras to attack the “reds” from within, by forming parallel “unions” which broke up the strike. “Honduras became the test case for a policy to be used throughout the Third World in order to preserve it from communism, for capitalism” (Alison Acker, Honduras: The Making of a Banana Republic [South End, 1988]). This history of anti-communist union wrecking is described in detail in the pamphlet, The AFL-CIO in Central America (1987), published by the Labor Committee on Central America.

In Central America, meddling by the “AFL-CIA” has always gone hand in hand with U.S. military pressure. Following the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua in 1979, the United States shifted the center of its regional military activity to Honduras. They built the enormous military base of Palmerola, which served as operations central for the contras besieging Sandinista Nicaragua, as well as for American “trainers” in the Honduran army. Between 1983 and 1987, some 70,000 U.S. military personnel passed through the country. Honduras in this period was controlled by the American ambassador, John Negroponte, known as the Proconsul, who went on to become U.S. ambassador to Iraq under the administration of George Bush II, and later Director of National Intelligence of the United States. At this time as well, Battalion 316 was formed, a veritable military death squad, which under General Álvarez Martínez tortured and murdered hundreds, if not thousands, of Honduran activists with the supervision of the CIA and fascistic “advisors” from the Argentine military dictatorship.

Despite being a small country, like its neighbor El Salvador, Honduras has been a key piece in the strategy of Yankee imperialist domination. And as we have noted, even though it is the second poorest country in Latin America (after Haiti), with 80 percent of the population living in poverty or extreme poverty, Honduras has a long history of labor struggle. Today it has ceased to be a banana republic and has instead become the country of maquiladoras (free trade zone factories). In the framework of the Free Trade Agreement, with more than 120,000 workers, mainly women, toiling for miserable wages in conditions of semi-slavery, Honduras is today in third place worldwide for maquila production. These workers have a tremendous potential for struggle, but they need the aid of their class brothers and sisters in the United States and Mexico. There are also important unions in Honduras, such as the STIBYS in the bottling plants, which are part of the International Union of Food Workers, to which the UFCW in the U.S. is affiliated.

One of the grounds for the military action ousting President Zelaya was his recent moves toward Hugo Chávez’ Venezuela with Honduras’ entry into ALBA last year, and his visits to Cuba where he had a friendly chat with Fidel Castro. But the trigger for yesterday’s military coup was the holding of a non-binding referendum on a constituent assembly, scheduled for that day (June 28). The then-chief of the armed forces, Romeo Vásquez, refused to cooperate with the civic exercise, and was supported in this by the Supreme Court and the Congress. The bulk of the capitalist class feared that such an assembly could undercut their narrow domination, and like their counterparts in Bolivia and Ecuador, they decided to use every means at their disposal to prevent it. In the latter two cases, the reactionaries failed because the population was mobilized. However, in Honduras the government of Zelaya, a rancher who was elected in 2005 on the basis of a right-wing law-and-order program, has relatively limited roots among the working masses.

After the coup, several organizations of workers and peasants mobilized. The Mexican paper La Jornada (29 June) established contact with various groups of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations (COPIN). Miskito and Lenca Indians and the Garifuna population are also preparing to fight. There is a small liberal party with a social-democratic tint (the Democratic Unification Party) which supports Zelaya. However, Carlos Reyes, the general secretary of the STIBYS union, stated before the coup that the workers movement was prepared to struggle, not to back Zelaya but to support the right of the population to express itself politically:

“President Zelaya received the direct support of much of his party while the three trade-union federations and the Honduran Popular Bloc as well as a whole series of social organizations are supporting the referendum on Sunday, not President Zelaya.”
–“Honduras on the Verge of a Coup d’État,” Rel, 27 June
There is a readiness to fight, and distrust of the bourgeois parties as well. But what is missing is key: a revolutionary leadership capable of organizing the discontent and opposition to the coup among the working people in a powerful class movement.

The League for the Fourth International, which bases itself on Leon Trotsky’s program of permanent revolution, urges workers to fight against the coup while offering no political support whatsoever to the right-wing president who for his own reason has slipped the leash of his buddies in the Honduran oligarchy. The working class, led by a genuinely Leninist vanguard party, must place itself at the head of the poor peasants to establish its own class rule with a workers and peasants government that expropriates the entire bourgeoisie, the industrialists and the ranchers, in order to put an end to the infernal cycle of military coups and oligarchical pseudo-democracies that has repeated itself throughout Latin American history.

At the time of independence, a Federal Republic of Central America was established. Today we struggle for a Central American federation of workers republics, as part of a Socialist United States of Latin America, in close collaboration with the North American working class in the fight for international socialist revolution. ■

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

No to All Wings of the Mullah Regime!

Steven — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 08:17:56 GMT

For Workers Revolution Against the Islamic Dictatorship!

No to All Wings of the Mullah Regime!

U.S. Imperialism Hands Off!

http://www.internationalist.org/iranmassprotests0906.html

JUNE 23 – For more than a week, Iran has been convulsed by mass demonstrations denouncing election fraud. Hundreds of thousands have repeatedly taken to the streets to denounce the government, which is now threatening, and beginning to carry out, a bloody crackdown. This time around, imperialist intervention is veiled: the White House feigns neutrality, the Western media go all out for the opposition, while in the background various agencies provide vital technical aid. In reality, all candidates in the presidential vote swear allegiance to the Islamic Republic, and the supposed moderate reformers are no less butchers and enemies of poor and working people than the conservative “populist” government. The situation cries out for revolutionary leadership independent of all factions of the theocracy, to wage a struggle for workers revolution against imperialism and clerical reaction.

On Friday, June 12, within two hours of the closing of polls, the state news agency announced a landslide victory for “hard-line” incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom they credited with more than double the vote for his main opponent, the “liberal” Mir Hossein Mousavi. A few hours later, the election commission followed suit, declaring Ahmadinejad the hands-down victor by a 64 percent to 34 percent margin. (Another “reform” candidate, Mehdi Karrubi, was given less votes than the number of spoiled ballots.) Mousavi supporters, who had expected to win big, reacted with disbelief and outrage, charging massive vote fraud. Both of the leading contenders uphold Iran’s theocratic regime, but the dispute quickly spilled into the street, where events threatened to spiral out of control.

On Saturday and Sunday protests and clashes between demonstrators and the police and the Basij auxiliary of the regime’s Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards) broke out in the capital city of Tehran. There were burning tires in the streets and buses were torched. A number of critics of the government, including prominent “reformers,” were arrested. Then on Monday, June 15 a massive protest was held in central Tehran bringing out hundreds of thousands of marchers, with some estimates of up to 1-3 million. Curiously, many of the Mousavi supporters carried signs in English saying “Where Is My Vote.” Mousavi, who initially only wanted to petition the clerical hierarchy, finally emerged to address the rally.

The next day there were competing pro- and anti-government mass demonstrations, the former held in the Ahmadinejad stronghold of impoverished south Tehran and latter in affluent north Tehran. Both rallies chanted “Alahu akbar” (God is great), the main slogan of the 1979 uprising that overthrew the hated monarchy of Shah Reza Pahlavi. Anti-regime protesters wore green (denoting Islam), while government supporters waved the Iranian flag. Protest marches continued through Thursday, when Mousavi called a day of mourning for those slain to date (the regime admitted to seven, the actual number is at least several dozen).

Solidarity?

Internationally, there have been various demonstrations and calls for “solidarity” with those fighting the clerical regime in Iran, notably in worldwide demonstrations called for June 26. But beware – many of those who claim to support the demonstrators in Tehran are no friends of the Iranian masses.

In protests in Los Angeles, Washington and London, some carried the Iranian flag with the imperial lion of the murderous shah. Zionists, of course, are also quite prepared to call for “down with the Islamic Republic of Iran.” And some of those talking about “revolution” in Iran and calling for “intervention,” are the same people who only a few months ago were calling to “bomb Iran,” as journalist Stephen Kinzer has pointed out (“Democracy, made in Iran,” guardian.co.uk, 22 June).

Even some of the labor support comes from the likes of the (ICFTU) International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and the American AFL-CIO, who backed the pseudo-unions of the shah while genuine labor militants were being tortured by the SAVAK. Class-conscious workers must make no common bloc against the mullah regime with these supporters of imperialism.

In his much-awaited Friday sermon, “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – who, backed by the “Guardian Council” of high-level Shiite clerics, is the real ruler of Iran – came down hard for Ahmadinejad and read the riot act to dissident leaders: “Nothing can be changed. The presidential campaign is finished,” he declared, threatening that if the “political elite” did not call off protests, “they would be responsible for the bloodshed and chaos” that would follow. At the same time Khamenei threw a sop to clerical factions backing rival candidates by scolding the president for accusing them of corruption.

With this, the battle lines were drawn. The next day, thousands of pasdaran and basiji occupied key squares in central Tehran, chasing out demonstrators. There were dispersed clashes with several thousand hard-core protesters who in different places managed to drive off government forces. Demonstrators and bystanders were shot, with up to 19 reported dead; an amateur video captured the wrenching agony of one young woman as she died from a bullet to the heart. Scores of wounded were arrested in the hospitals while others sought refuge in European embassies. But even this didn’t put an end to the unrest. On Sunday, June 21, there were new marches, this time with the main chant “Mag bar dictator” – Death to the dictator! Two days later, the Pasdaran warned protesters they would face a “revolutionary confrontation” if they continued to demonstrate.

Given the regime’s crackdown on news reporting (sending many foreign journalists home, confining others to their offices and arresting more than two dozen), restrictions on the Internet and sporadic blockage of cellular service, the world has mainly depended for several days on various “new media” for news. This had led to a lot of hype about a “Twitter Revolution.” If one believed the media one would think that every youth in Tehran has a Facebook account on their computer and is incessantly “tweeting” away on their cell phones in English. In reality, all this comes from a small and relatively well-off minority. Yet despite the rumors, speculation and disinformation, the deep fissures within the Islamic regime can no longer be hidden from view.

Election Fraud? Undoubtedly, But
Media Ignored Ahmadinejad Support

So what about vote fraud? While much of the bourgeois press treats it as a given that Ahmadinejad stole the election, some Western leftists (e.g., “Iran: What Fraud?” Workers World, 17 June) and even various geopolitical “experts” (e.g., “Western Misconceptions Meet Iranian Reality,” Stratfor, 15 June) dismiss this. What’s the evidence?

First, there is the timing of the announcement of the 64 percent total for the incumbent just hours after the polls closed, when given Iran’s communications it would be impossible to have vote counts from most of the country. Second, in at least two entire provinces more than 100 percent of registered voters voted. Third, representatives of opposition candidates were not allowed to observe the counting. Fourth, there is far less regional variation in the vote totals than in the 2005 election, with low counts for opposition candidates in their home provinces, even though many regime opponents sat out the last vote but voted this time.

It’s also not a given that Ahmadinejad is popular in the rural areas, as has been argued. A credible report posted to the Tehran Bureau about a village near Shiraz southwest Iran indicates Mousavi clearly beat the incumbent there as well. Iran has become a lot more urbanized in recent years, and the urban poor have been the president’s key constituency. Many are dependent on the commodity subsidies Ahmadinejad introduced. And the sacks of potatoes doled out by his election campaign, just as the Mexican PRI used to do with grain, can go a long way. Many poor youth join the basiji to avoid the draft and get loans and scholarships. But they are being pounded by inflation and unemployment.

There were few reports from plebeian south Tehran on election day, and those were contradictory. One, on the German ARD television network, painted a morose picture of residents complaining about the continuing lack of running water, one venturing to say, “But the parliamentary deputies and this president have done nothing for Islamshahr [a southern suburb of the capital].” Time magazine editorialist Joe Klein, on the other hand, reported: “The lines at the central mosque were every bit as long as they were at the voting stations in sophisticated north Tehran. There was a smattering of Mousavi supporters, but the Ahmadinejad worship was palpable” (Time, 29 June).

Clearly, the Western media barrage focused on the English-speaking upper middle class in north Tehran who led the protests, and just as clearly, this privileged layer is not representative of Iran as a whole. But while Ahmadinejad supporters say there is no evidence of widespread fraud, the opposition presented almost 650 cases of election irregularities. Even the government admits that there were no less than 50 cities in which total votes exceeded the number of registered voters, which could throw at least 3 million votes into doubt. But its cavalier response is so what, it’s not enough to invalidate the election.

A number of observers, including veteran Mideast report Robert Fisk (Independent, 20 June), have raised the possibility that although there was indeed substantial election fraud, “Ahmadinejad might have scraped in, but not with the huge majority he was awarded.” Or won a plurality, in which case there would have been a run-off ballot, which the government was determined to avoid at all costs.

But there should be no illusions. Mousavi is not the soft-spoken debonair liberal architect the media make him out to be. Nor is the contest between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad about “democracy” versus “dictatorship,” whatever some of the former’s Iranian supporters may want. The “reformers” have no intention of ushering in a transition to Western-style bourgeois democracy, no matter what some imperialist pundits pretend. They merely want to streamline the theocracy and make it more palatable to the educated middle class. And just below the surface, this is all about settling of scores among the Islamic rulers: Ahmadinejad’s patron, Ayatollah Khamenei, is bitterly opposed by the force behind Mousavi, Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, notorious as the symbol of the capitalist greed of Iran’s “millionaire mullahs.”

Mousavi himself is no newcomer to the intrigues and power politics at the top of the Islamic dictatorship. While various would-be socialists hail the “movement” for this pseudo-democrat, it should be pointed out that during his stint as prime minister from 1981 to 1989 he oversaw the slaughter of tens of thousands of leftists, members of national minorities, homosexuals and women. When Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued his fatwa calling for the execution of writer Salman Rushdie in 1989, Mousavi was head of the government that offered a bounty for assassinating the author. And Mousavi is no friend of working people. In the presidential debates, he went after subsidies, including for food and fuel, which are vital to the subsistence of Iran’s impoverished millions. In an interview with the London Financial Times (13 April) he called for “targeting” (limiting) “the huge subsidies we give for various commodities.”

This standard-bearer for Iran’s modernizing bourgeoisie and upper middle class is in fact a blood-drenched free-marketeer, which is why many imperialists would like to see him back in office. As for Mousavi’s call for a “return” to the principles of Ayatollah Khomeini, this is an appeal to conservative ayatollahs who consider Khamenei an ignorant upstart (he was jumped from hojatoleslam, a mid-level cleric, to ayatollah in order to be appointed Supreme Leader), and look askance at Ahmadinejad’s claim that the “Hidden Imam”, the Shiite messiah, guides him in running the country. Others are jealous that Ahmadinejad’s power base, the Pasdaran, have grabbed some of the juiciest plums in privatizing Iran’s state-owned industries.

In Iran’s electoral battle, both sides are utterly corrupt, and both are partisans of the most brutal capitalist exploitation. But the explosion of popular discontent is not just about the vote. The lid has come off the pressure cooker of social tensions that have been building up for years. Particularly among youth who have lived their entire lives under the rule of the mullahs, there is a mass desire to be free of the stifling controls of the clerical dictatorship. The question is, where will this outpouring of discontent lead?

What Next in Iran?

Irrespective of the reported vote totals, Iran’s elections were a farce, because the candidates are always hand-picked by the Guardian Council and the country is subject to a mind-numbing system of religious and political censorship. For their part, the demonstrators were careful not to transgress the rules which forbid any kind of “anti-Islamic” gathering. Initially, as Beirut-based journalist Robert Fisk reported in the London Independent (17 June), Iranian special forces police even prevented Ahmadinejad’s basiji from attacking the crowds of Mousavi supporters. But the loyalty of the “forces of order” will now be put to the test as Khamenei decrees what is “un-Islamic” and what is not (as Khomeini before him liquidated one rival ayatollah after another).

With Tehran poised on knife’s edge and information from outlying cities where there have been protests (including Shiraz, Isfahan and Tabriz) sketchy at best, it is impossible to say at this moment what the outcome will be. The regime’s thugs easily overwhelmed student protests in 1999 and 2003. The current protests have been much more broad-based, though still primarily middle-class, and sometimes demonstrators have fought back, torching basiji motorbikes. This means that it will take a much bloodier crackdown to squelch the mass unrest with repression. This prospect could induce various leading clerics in the theocratic “republic” to intervene, thus posing sharply the question of where the police and army stand.

But the one social force that has not entered the fray so far that has the power to upset the calculations of all wings of the rulers is the Iranian working class.

Over the last decade or so, thousands of Iran’s workers have lost their jobs, particularly in the large state-owned industries, as the government privatizes with a vengeance. In the early years of Islamic rule, after independent factory committees (shuras) were destroyed and worker militants jailed en masse, a corporatist “labor” apparatus of Islamic shuras and “labor” organizations was built up. In recent years, some independent unions have managed to establish themselves through tenacious struggle. They are subject to relentless persecution, as this past May Day when more than 150 labor activists (including 30 women) were arrested out of a demonstration of 2,000 in Tehran’s Laleh Park, as were another dozen in Sanandaj in Iranian Kurdistan. More than 90 are still in jail, and we demand their immediate freedom.

The independent unions have won some victories, most recently when workers at the giant Khodro auto and truck plant (workforce 30,000) successfully struck this May to win back wages and the conversion of several thousand temporary work contracts into permanent positions. (The government promised to do so before the election, seeking to defuse worker discontent.) During the election campaign, the militant Vahed Bus Company Union in Tehran and suburbs, while emphasizing that it didn’t support any candidate, posed a series of questions to each, beginning with where they stood on independent workers organizations. Naturally they got no response.

In the post-election turmoil, on June 18 it was reported that both shifts at the Khodro auto plant would strike for a half-hour against the repression. This was followed by a condemnation of the attacks on the protests by the Vahed union. At a rally, Mousavi called for a general strike in the event of his arrest, and the New York Times (22 June) reports that “opposition members were beginning to ask ... whether it was time to shift strategies, from street protests to some kind of national strike.” But would workers heed this call? The pro-free-market Mousavi and the other “reformers” have absolutely nothing to offer the working class, let alone the urban poor who largely remain loyal to Ahmadinejad.

In any case, a strike on behalf of one section of the mullah regime against its rivals should not be the goal. What is needed is independent class mobilization of the power of labor against all wings of the bourgeois rulers, whether they wear clerical robes or not.

The government of Ahmadinejad and Khamenei clearly intends to glue up the cracks in their regime with blood. The intense social pressure to which they are subject leads them to turn even on their own, threatening their rivals Mousavi and Rafsanjani by detaining the latter’s family members, albeit briefly. Protesters are now directly up against the “Supreme Leader” (velayat-e-faqih) who declares that he – and he alone – represents Islam. While up until now, various supporters of reform have become disillusioned with the Islamic system, even the rapid total suppression of the current protests would leave much wider sections of the population embittered. And there is no guarantee that a crackdown will work.

Attempts to reform the Islamic regime have led into a bloody dead-end. The most basic democratic demands – freedom of the press, of speech, of assembly – let alone genuine equality for women, are counterposed to the Islamic order. While the “reformers” call for new elections, so long as the present rulers are in power the result would likely be the same. The demand for a revolutionary, secular constituent assembly is on the order of the day. But this could only come about through an insurrection overthrowing the Islamic regime and its “Supreme Leader” and “Guardian Council.” The sole social force with the possibility of carrying this out is the working class, which must simultaneously create the organs of its own class power – workers councils.

Many Iranian protesters today talk of returning to the “ideals of the Islamic Revolution” of 1979-80. But those “ideals” meant the wholesale slaughter of leftists, national minorities, homosexuals and women who refused to wear the chador. What’s needed instead is to return to the socialist ideals of the 1917 Russian October Revolution led by V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky. Many self-proclaimed socialists and even communists won’t say this, not only out of congenital fear of doing anything that would make them unpopular, but also because like many erstwhile leftists as a result of the betrayals of Stalinism they no longer believe in proletarian revolution. They prefer to drape themselves in Islamic green rather than Bolshevik red.

Yet from the time of Iran’s 1905 Constitutional Revolution against the Qajar monarchy, coinciding with the first Russian Revolution against the Romanov dynasty, there has always been a close connection between revolution and counterrevolution in Iran and Russia. The short-lived 1920-21 Gilan Soviet Republic was established with the aid of the Soviet Red Army, and was crushed by Reza Khan who seized power in Tehran at the head of a White Russian Cossack brigade and then proclaimed himself shah. His son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, was installed as shah in 1953 in a U.S. coup as part of the anti-Soviet Cold War.

Russia’s Red October of 1917 confirmed the Trotskyist perspective of permanent revolution: that in the present imperialist epoch, even achieving basic democratic tasks including agrarian revolution, national liberation and democracy for the exploited and oppressed requires that the working class take power, backed by the peasantry and urban poor and led by a genuine communist party, to sweep away the capitalist state and establish a workers and peasants government to expropriate the bourgeoisie. This program is no less valid for Iran today, and would open the way to international socialist revolution, extending first and foremost to the Iraqi toilers subjected to colonial occupation by the U.S. imperialists.

The Imperialists and the Mullahs

Of course the protests have garnered massive sympathy and support in the imperialist countries, and the pro-Mousavi protesters have their numerous placards with slogans in English for international consumption. With their trademark spring green (as opposed to the Persian green of Iran’s flag), at first glance this looks very much like a U.S.-instigated color-coded “revolution” (orange for Ukraine, rose for Georgia). While the bulk of the reformist left, notably the British Socialist Workers Party and the U.S. International Socialist Organization, has lined up behind the Mousavi “movement,” those groups whose tastes run to “anti-imperialist” Third World despots, such as the Workers World Party, as well as conspiracy-mongering pundits like James Petras, have leapt to the defense of Ahmadinejad.

Certainly, the imperialists are up to their usual dirty tricks, although the White House has been at pains to give the appearance of standing aside. There’s a division of labor. The capitalist media, liberal and conservative alike, have mounted a non-stop propaganda blitz for Mousavi, painting him as a “democrat” and “moderate” as opposed to the dictator and Holocaust denier Ahmadinejad. Under pressure from the Republicans, the U.S. Congress passed a virtually unanimous resolution condemning the repression in Iran. For his part, Democratic president Barack Obama declared, “It’s not productive, given the history of the US-Iranian relationship, to be seen as meddling,” (Los Angeles Times, 17 June). But the key words here are “to be seen as.”

Barely a week earlier, Obama gave a major speech in Cairo, Egypt to declare that “America is not at war with Islam,” even as he continues the U.S.’ occupation of Iraq, escalates the U.S. war on Afghanistan and increases U.S. military strikes in Pakistan. He referred politely to the Islamic Republic of Iran, whereas Bush placed it on the “axis of evil”; conceded Iran had a right to “peaceful nuclear power”; came out in support of women wearing the Islamic hijab (headscarf), even as many Iranian women are chafing at the enforced Islamic dress code; and said that the U.S. would not “presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election” in Iran. Add it all up and this is a diplomatic appeal for a “moderate” government of an Islamic regime in Iran.

Obama’s talk of “history” was referring to the 1953 CIA-backed coup against the country’s nationalist Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq, who had begun to nationalize Iran’s oil industry. (But at that time, the mullahs were used as CIA “assets” against Mossadeq.) The present regime in Washington engages in the same kind of skullduggery, just tries to hide it. The Democratic majority in Congress not only funded the occupation of Iraq, but in 2007 also agreed to Bush’s request for $400 million for a major escalation of covert operations against Iran. This gave the CIA a blank check to organize hit-and-run attacks on Iran. In the case of Jundullah, the Baluchi guerrillas in eastern Iran subsidized by the CIA, these are vicious Sunni Muslim reactionaries (who under other circumstances would simply be branded “al Qaeda”) who are opposed to Tehran merely because the latter represents the Shiite variant of Islam.

So while there is plenty of evidence that U.S. imperialism is still in the subversion and “destabilization” business in Iran, and certainly lots more that is not public, it is not staking everything on overthrowing Ahmadinejad/Khamenei. Washington is prepared to do business with the mullah regime, as it has in the past. Remember the Iran/contra deal, supervised by John Poindexter, now head of the CIA, selling U.S. Hawk missiles to Iran to get funds for Reagan’s mercenaries in Nicaragua. Or the 2001 U.S. invasion of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, carried out in close coordination with Tehran, the Pasdaran in particular. And don’t forget that pro-Iranian Shiites acted as front men for the 2003 U.S. occupation of Iraq to overthrow Iran’s nemesis, Saddam Hussein.

Moreover, as Obama told the press, on a host of issues concerning U.S. imperial interests, there is little to choose from between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi. On economics, the latter’s embrace of free market capitalism would perhaps allow more U.S. penetration, but Ahmadinejad is no less committed to privatization and foreign investment (see below). Under every prime minister and president, the mullah regime has always been a model pupil of the International Monetary Fund (the IMF praised Tehran for its divestment program in its May 2008 review). On foreign policy, while Mousavi attacked Ahmadinejad’s general clownishness and anti-Semitic remarks, the differences are mainly stylistic. In the end, both will talk turkey with the U.S.

The Iranian nuclear program has been the pretext for many imperialist war threats, including by Obama and his secretary of state Hillary Clinton, as well as by his opponent in the 2008 U.S. elections, Republican John McCain, who now feigns concern for the Iranian people while a few months ago his campaign rallies resounded to the chant “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.” On this key issue, the positions of the Iranian contenders are identical. Ahmadinejad, Khameini and Mousavi all insist on building up Iranian nuclear power capacity, which Iran has every right to, and all three say they are not building a bomb (the former two going so far as to insist that atomic weapons are contrary to Islam).

Despite the Iranian leaders’ rhetoric, and decades of U.S. hostility, the Iranian theocracy is not fundamentally opposed to the imperialist system. The history of relations between the mullahs and the West is complex. Israel’s Zionist war hawks and their “neo-conservative” allies in Washington actually prefer Ahmadinejad to serve as a bogeyman, and say so. But the fact that today the Obama administration wants to talk with Iranian rulers, whoever they are, doesn’t mean that tomorrow it won’t revert to coup-plotting or outright military attack. It’s just that for now the imperialist commander-in-chief, who is in trouble militarily in Afghanistan and bogged down in Iraq, doesn’t think it’s “smart” to start yet another war in the region.

In the face of U.S. attack or war threats, while giving no political support to any wing of the mullah regime, revolutionary Marxists are duty-bound to defend Iran as a semi-colonial country, using proletarian methods of class struggle. We demand an end to all U.S./NATO/U.N. sanctions against Iran. And we insist that Iran has the right to obtain nuclear or any other kind of weapons to defend against intervention or invasion by U.S. imperialism – or its Israeli Zionist allies, who have hundreds of nuclear warheads and are crazed enough to use them.

Behind the Islamic Gang Warfare

Imperialist pundits consider it smart marketing that the Iranian opposition has insisted on identifying with the Islamic regime. But Mousavi and his backers – longtime pillars of the Islamic establishment – needed no U.S. coaching for this. In the campaign, Mousavi was confronted by students over his responsibility for the mass executions as prime minister of Iran from 1981 to 1989. At the University of Zanjan (in his home region of Azerbaijan), they disrupted his speech asking, “Where were you in 1988, and how many people did you kill?” One placard read “Khavaran's soil is still red,” referring to the Khavaran cemetery (now bulldozed), where thousands of victims were buried.

So let’s spell it out: the repression began almost from the minute the mullahs took power in February 1979. Women were attacked on the streets for not wearing the chador, the head-to-toe shroud “recommended” by the clerics. Kurdish leftists were shot. Homosexuals were stoned to death (as were women accused of adultery). But the bloodbath really began in earnest as the clerical regime consolidated in the wake of the Iraqi attack in 1980 and clashes with the Islamic Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (People’s Crusaders). Mousavi became foreign minister in August 1981 and prime minister that December. During that period almost 2,000 were executed, mainly Mujahedeen but also Guevarist leftists of the Fedayeen Minority, who broke with Khomeini, and Peykar, a Stalinist split from the Mujahedeen.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of leftists were arrested along with militant workers as the clerics went all out to exterminate independent labor activity in the plants. The estimated number of executions totaled 5,000 by 1985 as the war with Iraq dragged on. Upwards of 300,000 Iranians died in this reactionary war, where the carnage resembled the imperialist World War I. Mousavi bears criminal responsibility for this senseless slaughter and insists to this day that it was right to continue the war after Iran retook Khorramshahr in May 1982 (Tehran Times, 24 May). Partly as a result of his role as head of government during the war, Mousavi has some support among the paramilitary pasdaran (Republican Guard) and even the basiji vigilantes.

With the end of the war in August 1988, a horrific new wave of killings took place as a result of a secret order, in which Rasfanjani reportedly played a key role. After the ceasefire with Iraq, which sealed a defeat for Iran, the mullah regime feared upheaval at home, so it decided to wipe out any possible leadership for the unrest. This time the victims went far beyond the Mujahedeen to include virtually every leftist group in the country. Prisoners who had been in jail for almost a decade had their cases retried and were sentenced to death. Even organizations that had loudly backed Khomeini were not spared, including Tudeh (pro-Moscow Stalinists) and the Fedayeen Majority. An estimated 12,000 were slaughtered, according to Ervand Abrahamian (Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran [1999]).

Then there is the issue of corruption among the clerics. Mousavi’s most powerful backer, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, is chairman of the Assembly of Experts, a body of Islamic jurists which is supposed to monitor Khamenei and theoretically could even depose him. Rafsanjani has been called “the mighty spider in the intricate web of the Islamic Republic” (Andreas Malm and Shora Esmailian, Iran on the Brink: Rising Workers and Threats of War [2007]). He is the key link between the Islamic regime and the commercial capitalists of the Iranian “bazaar,” and is reputed to be the richest man in Iran. The pistachio king’s family interests include a joint venture with Daewoo, one son manages the construction of the Tehran subway, another has been director of the National Iranian Gas Co., etc.

In one of the more notable events of the electoral campaign, Ahmadinejad slammed Rafsanjani by name for corruption during the televised candidates’ debate, which earned him a rap on the knuckles from Khamenei. Denouncing the illicit enrichment of leading clerics has won the incumbent president popularity for years, along with provision of subsidies for the poor. In the debate Mousavi attacked Ahmadinejad’s “charity economics.” But even Khamenei has declared that the sharp fall in oil revenue is going to mean drastic cutbacks. In a speech calling for austerity (March 22), he declared that this would be “Improved Consumption Patterns Year.” Since the Supreme Leader pointed to Iranians “squandering” both bread and water, it is clear whose “consumption patterns” are targeted!

Again, differences on economic policy between the candidates are quantitative rather than qualitative. The Khamenei/Ahmadinejad regime has pressed forward with privatization and lowering barriers to imperialist investment:

“Iran will no longer make a distinction between domestic and foreign firms that wish to purchase state-run companies as long as the combined foreign ownership in any particular industry does not exceed 35%....

“Among the new incentive measures announced, foreign firms may also transfer their annual profit from their Iranian company out of the country in any currency they wish.”

–Press TV, 30 June 2008

The list of firms which have been, are being or will be privatized includes power companies, metals, most airlines, auto, banks and even elements of the oil and gas industry. The potential spoils are immense, and the Pasdaran are a major player. This organization is not only a militia but a far-flung economic empire and machine for dispensing patronage. It has muscled into countless firms in true mafia style, and is also accused of using its mandate to bypass U.S. sanctions in order to dominate the black market in cigarettes as well as the alcohol, narcotics and pornography it is supposedly combating.

Of course, the policing of morals has been an invitation to extortion since the beginning of history. The accusations of corruption hit all of the contending factions among the Islamic rulers. If Rasfanjani is notorious as the billionaire mullah, Ahmadinejad’s third Interior Minister in four years, Sadegh Mahsouli, is known as the billionaire minister. But rapacious as they are, the spoils of privatization do not fully explain why the gangsters of the Islamic regime have broken the “code of silence” and started to turn on each other. They are seeking desperately to either head off a looming social and political explosion, or alternatively to try to crush it in the egg. The two factions are thus oriented to different social clienteles.

In many respects the question of women was at the center of the election campaign. Where Ahmadinejad stands was never in doubt. This is the man who introduced segregation by sex in elevators in municipal offices when he became mayor of Tehran, and who as president has intensified the enforcement of the mullahs’ dress code on women. Mousavi, on the other hand, even though he has the backing of a number of senior clerics, showcased his wife Zhara Rahnavard as a symbol of female emancipation. (Rhanavard, however, although she was known as a leftist in the early years of the Islamic Republic, has declared that “in Islam, women have always worn the veil.”)

The potential clash between Mousavi’s mealy mouthed promises and women’s aspirations was shown by an incident in which a crowd of 1,500 of his female supporters in a south Tehran sports complex chanted “Stop the hijab police!” Mousavi lamely replied that he would “review” laws unfair to women and would “work toward” reining in these regime thugs who harass, brutalize and blackmail women for even the most minor infringements of dress and behavior codes. In the photos of protests, there were many women, but none without the obligatory head covering. Nor were “un-Islamic” signs seen. Secular leftists and liberals, though undoubtedly present, were invisible, having accepted the discipline of an “Islamic opposition.”

In the last phase of the election campaign, various discontented sectors coalesced around Mousavi as the voice of the opposition, however muted, deformed and distorted, even though he actually promised them very little. Indicative of this was a message to the Tehran Bureau web site reporting a conversation with a contact in Sanandaj, the capital of Iranian Kurdistan, who said “that they all backed Mousavi because he had promised that in provinces where there was a second language it could be taught in schools. He said – we are so desperate we are not even bargaining for autonomy or anything, just for our language to be allowed at school… Which I think sums up a lot of Mousavi’s support, he’s not offering a lot but he is the only one offering certain groups anything at all that they can relate to.”

The Iranian Working Class With Its Back to the Wall
The key potential social force that has yet to throw its weight into the balance is one which can expect nothing from either of the two Islamic factions: the 22-million-strong Iranian working class. It has faced heavy repression for decades. As noted earlier, the factory committee (shura) movement was broken in the period 1980-81. Pasdaran sized militant workers inside the plants and whipped them in front of their co-workers, when they were they were not simply dragged off to Evin prison and ultimate execution. It took almost a generation to recover.

But the privatization begun under the government of “reform” president Sayed Mohammad Khatami, from 1997 to 2005, leading to the closure of many factories, forced a series of struggles for sheer survival. These have continued under Ahmadinejad, since, despite his populist airs, the condition of Iranian workers has steadily worsened. Just as in the reviled “atheist”, “materialist” capitalist West, under the Islamic capitalist regime there has been a concerted drive to replace permanent employment with temporary contracts. When top prices for oil fueled inflation, there were continual battles over the minimum wage, which is well below the official poverty line. And profiting from the ferocious repression of every worker protest, many employers don’t even bother to pay the pitiful wages owed.

The current phase of labor militancy began when 15,000 workers demonstrated in Tehran on 16 July 2002 against poor working conditions, low pay and a new labor bill making firings much easier. The following year thousands defied a government ban on demonstrating on May Day. One of the first major actions came in January 2004, when construction workers who had been building a copper smelting plant in Khatonabad in southern Iran were laid off. After having been promised permanent jobs, they blocked the factory. Special police units intervened: up to 15 workers were killed and another 300 were wounded (Malm and Esmaikliam, Iran on the Brink).

There were also strikes by auto workers at Iran Khodro and in textiles that spring. In March 2004, schoolteachers (80 percent of whom are women) struck nationwide. Their salaries have fallen well below the public-sector average, and they are also subjected to temporary contracts. As a result, 70 percent of teachers’ incomes are below the poverty line. An attempt to organize a May Day demonstration at Saqez (Kurdistan) in 2004 was broken up by security forces. It was followed by May Day rallies of workers in other cities during the next two years.

Following May Day 2005 and an attack by state forces on the bus drivers’ union, a national day of transport strikes was organized on 16 July 2005. This movement eventually led to a protest in which bus drivers at the Vahed company in Tehran refused to take passengers’ fares in December 2005, and then a strike in January 2006. They demanded in particular recognition of the bus drivers’ union (Syndicate of Workers and Employees of Tehran and Suburbs Vahed Bus Company) and the freeing of their leader Mansour Ossanlou, who had been arrested after the first protest. Ossanlou was released, and then rearrested. Still in prison, his case has become an international issue. This year, as noted above, May Day demonstrations in both Tehran and Kurdish Sanandaj were again attacked.

The result of all of these hard struggles has been the emergence of a series of clandestine worker networks grouped around two poles. The first, Komiteye-Hamahangi (“Coordinating Committee to Form Workers Organizations in Iran”) puts forward a “council communist” line opposed to political parties and trade unions as inherently reformist; it periodically issues calls for workers councils in the abstract. The second, Komiteye Peygiri (”Follow-up Committee for the Establishment of Free Workers’ Organizations in Iran”), pursues the illusory course of pressuring the Islamic regime for official recognition. It thus may rightly be considered the heirs of the capitulationism of the Tudeh and its allies of the Fedayeen Majority.

Both committees reject the need for a proletarian vanguard party to lead the political struggle to bring down the Islamic dictatorship through workers revolution. For its part, despite left rhetoric and a hard line against the mullah regime, the Worker-communist Party (which split in 2004) never really broke from the two-stage conception of first establishing bourgeois democracy, before going on to socialism. It is thus prone to calling on “democratic” imperialism to sanction the mullahs and has even on occasion raised the possibility of allying with the monarchists against the mullahs. In fact, a WPI spokeswoman recently called on the West to “isolate” Iran:

“What is clear from the protests is that there is a mass movement in Iran that can bring the regime to its knees and break the back of the political Islamic movement internationally. Now is the time for us in the West to exert pressure on our governments to politically isolate Iran’s rulers rather than legitimise them."

–Maryam Namazie, spokesperson, Worker-communist Party of Iran, in the Evening Standard [London], 17 June

So here these self-proclaimed communists offer themselves up as frenetic advocates of even greater imperialist intervention!

Physically decimated and politically discredited, the bulk of the Iranian left organizations did not survive the 1980s, let alone the collapse of the Stalinist-ruled, bureaucratically degenerated workers state in the USSR and the deformed workers states of Eastern Europe. It is clear that those remnants of the left that did hang on are ready to begin the cycle of betrayal all over again. Thus the social-democratized Tudeh called for support to Mousavi and Karrubi [the other “reform” candidate] in the elections, and for unity of all “pro-reform” forces in the protest movement. These “popular front” politics of allying with a sector of the bourgeoisie are precisely what led the Tudeh to sell out the Iranian workers upheaval of 1978-79 and lead it into the deadly embrace of Islamic reaction.

Lessons of 1978-79

In a country where even the most reactionary political forces call themselves revolutionary, it is not enough to call for a revolutionary party. In Iran where the Stalinist/Menshevik program of revolution in stages means binding the working class to a wing of the Islamic rulers, today led by Mir Hossein Mousavi, it is necessary to call explicitly for building the nucleus of a Leninist vanguard party of the working class, based on the Trotskyist program of permanent revolution. This is the policy of the League for the Fourth International. It is not, however, the program of various other groups that falsely call themselves Trotskyist while in practice making political blocs with the bourgeoisie. This is not splitting hairs but a matter of life and death for the Iranian workers revolution.

To understand this question clearly it is necessary to go back to the events of 1978-79. For months strikes had rocked the country, particularly that of the powerful oil workers union led by the Tudeh party, extending from Abadan in the south to refineries in Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz and Tabriz. Joined by rail and steel workers, this became a de facto general strike. The possibility of a workers revolution was clear to all, and to head it off, bourgeois forces began turning to the Islamic clerics led by Ayatollah Khomeini. The February 1979 overthrow of the shah’s regime was in reality a transfer of power to Khomeini and his mullahs by the generals, designed to keep the bourgeois army intact. It was only marred by last-minute resistance by the shah’s Imperial Guard. The clerical-dominated mass marches were a means of pressure to this end.

The tragedy of 1978-79 was that the masses’ illusions in Khomeini and the other ayatollahs were reinforced by the shameful capitulation of the Iranian left to the clergy in the name of “anti-imperialism” and “unity” against the shah. The worst were the Moscow Stalinists of Tudeh, the only party with a working-class following, which came out in support of Khomeini at the behest of the Kremlin (Maziar Behrooz, Rebels with a Cause: The Failure of the Left in Iran [1999]). It’s not that they didn’t know what the mullahs were up to: three weeks before Khomeini’s takeover, the head of the oil strikers protested against the “dogmatic reactionary clergy” and “the new form of repression under the guise of revolution” (Assef Bayat, Workers and Revolution in Iran (1987). But instead of fighting it, he resigned!

Khomeini rejected the left’s “unity” offers with disdain. The day after taking power he ordered the workers back to work, and the leaders of the oil workers union were immediately arrested as “counterrevolutionaries.” The victorious Islamic rulers went on to massacre the left when the time was ripe. The factory committees which arose during the strike waves could have the basis for proletarian power, but since the left rejected the strategic perspective of socialist revolution, the committees were isolated and purged, either turned into or replaced by state organs for the Islamic regime.

At the time, genuine Trotskyists fought against both the shah and the rising Islamic clerical reaction. The international Spartacist tendency, from which the LFI originated, warned well before Khomeini took power that:

“The hundreds of thousands who are now marching behind the mullahs are by no means all Muslim fundamentalists. Many are primarily motivated by hostility to the real crimes of the shah. Many leftist workers have probably joined what they view as a potentially successful opposition to the hated regime. But the masses, particularly the workers, who are now supporting the Khomeinis and the Shariatmadaris can and must be won away from the present Islamic reactionary offensive in favor of a social revolutionary opposition to the shah.”
–“Iran in Turmoil,” Workers Vanguard No. 215, 22 September 1978

The Trotskyists warned that the alternative would be a catastrophic defeat, and raised the call: “Down With the Shah! Don’t Bow to Khomeini! For Workers Revolution in Iran!”

In taking this stand, we not only went up against the Stalinists and Guevarist Fedayeen, but also against those who falsely laid claim to the mantle of Trotskyism, notably Ernest Mandel’s United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USec), whose British followers excluded Spartacists from protest demos because of our opposition to Khomeini. The various pseudo-Trotskyist currents called for an “anti-imperialist united front” with Khomeini (as did the British Workers Power group), or argued that the clerical leadership of the movement would simply disappear, or that even if the mullahs took power their regime would rapidly simply collapse (echoing the disastrous Stalinist response to the Nazis’ rise in Germany, “After Hitler, us!”).1

Many on the left today refer to 1978-79 as a “hijacked revolution,” as if there was first a healthy revolution against the shah that was some time later subverted by the mullahs. In fact, the ayatollahs seized control from the start as the “socialist” and “anti-imperialist” left abdicated. Why? Because their reformist program dictated a political alliance with a section of the bourgeoisie as the first “stage” of the revolution. As usual, it never went beyond that, and ended in a bloodbath of the left. What these opportunists are really doing is amnestying their own failure to oppose Islamic reaction when it could have been defeated. They bowed to their executioners.

With the outbreak of the reactionary war with Iraq, the Iranian groups affiliated with the USec (HKS and HKE) supported Iran. The HKE, aligned with the American Socialist Workers Party, even backed the mullah regime against the Mujahedeen guerrillas. British USec leader Brian Grogan traveled to Iran where he reported marching in a demonstration chanting allahu akbar. The American SWP grotesquely proclaimed the chador to be a symbol of “liberation.” But all this didn’t save their Iranian followers. Those who remained in Iran were arrested, and eventually several were executed. Today the United Secretariat is so discredited that it has no Iranian group. Meanwhile, formally codifying its left social democratic politics, its leading section, the French LCR, has now discarded any reference to Trotskyism, dissolving into a New Anticapitalist Party.

The one ostensibly Trotskyist current that maintains some semblance of activity concerning Iran is the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) founded by Ted Grant and currently led by Alan Woods, which includes a small group of Iranian supporters, the Revolutionary Marxists’ Tendency. Woods’ calling card is a cynical tailism that presents itself as starry-eyed objectivism, forever discovering that some bourgeois force is about to lead the revolution, from Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan to Hugo Chávez in Venezuela (the IMT’s current favorite). On June 15, Woods breathlessly declared: “The masses are starting to move, and the movement will not easily be halted. We are entitled to say with confidence: the Iranian Revolution has begun!”

To explain the fact that this capitalized “Revolution” is under the leadership of a bourgeois Islamic leader, Woods blithely writes of Mousavi “he does not control events. Rather, events are controlling him.” This ignores the fact that while some of the demonstrators may be more militant, the mass of protesters still had political confidence, if not in Mousavi, at least in the possibility of peacefully reforming the Islamic regime – and that slogans against the regime were in fact banned, if only in the vain hope of averting bloody repression. Woods began to dream out loud about how the “movement” would evolve into a revolutionary, socialist one under the force of circumstances.

But the IMT did not leave things totally to chance: its main Iranian spokesman, Maziar Razi, penned an Open Letter to Mousavi, dated June 18, which charged “you have submitted yourself to Ahmadinejad’s government,” as if the question were one of tactical militancy. Razi makes no reference to Mousavi’s free market capitalist program. Neither Woods nor Razi refer to the question of women’s oppression except in passing (as was the case for the opportunist left in 1978-1979), not even mentioning the hated hijab police. Nor have they said anything about the fact that their hero Chávez was won of the very first to congratulate Ahmadinejad on his election “victory.” Opportunists often have trouble keeping straight the forces they tail after, or explaining it when they come into conflict. Ultimately for the likes of Woods & Co., they don’t care – it’s all just one big maneuver. But for the Iranian masses knowing who your friends are and who are your enemies matters, a lot.

In a second article, “The Iranian Revolution: what does it mean and where is it going?” (June 16), Woods trots out a false analogy used by much of the left to dismiss Khomeini, comparing Mousavi to Father Gapon, a figure from the 1905 Russian Revolution. Unlike either Mousavi or Khomeini, Gapon was genuinely incidental, a merely temporary leader. Woods keeps raising the comparison of Iran today with the 1905 Russian Revolution (“Like the Russian Revolution before 1905, the Iranian Revolution is still in its infancy. It has a long way to run...”). Interestingly, the very same argument was raised by Woods’ mentor Grant in 1979, who wrote:

“Support for Khomeini will melt away after he forms a government. The failure of his programme of a Muslim theocratic republic to solve the problems of the Iranian people will become apparent.... Even in the worst resort, reaction would prepare the way for revenge on the part of the masses, at a not too distant date. It would be 1905 in Russia over again.”
–Ted Grant, “The Iranian Revolution” (9 February 1979)

Thirty years on, we can say: it didn’t exactly turn out that way, did it?

Build a Trotskyist Party in Iran!

Among the pseudo-Trotskyists there are certain formulas that keep turning up to cover their adoption of the Stalinist program of two-stage revolution. Back under Mandel in the 1960s and ’70s, it was to declare every left-talking bourgeois government, from Nasser in Egypt to Algeria in 1961 to Burma to be a “workers and peasants government.” The Grant/Woods variant is to join bourgeois parties and “movements” on the grounds that they are leading a “1905 revolution.” The patented slogan of another pretender, Nahuel Moreno, was to label every petty-bourgeois or bourgeois nationalist uprising a “February Revolution.” In each case, what they were saying is that they are not fighting for a new Russian 1917 October Revolution, that is for the working class to take power at the head of the rural peasantry and urban poor.

In Iran today, revolutionary Trotskyists would seek to intervene, where and to the extent possible in repressive conditions, on a series of democratic questions, including demanding an end to enforced Islamic dress codes (no to the veil!); for an end to sexual segregation and for full rights for homosexuals; for an end to all censorship of the press and all media; for full freedom of speech and assembly; for the right of self-determination for national minorities, such as the Kurds, Arabs, Azeris and Baluchis, including autonomy and independence if they so desire; for the right to strike and to organize independent workers unions free from state and religious control; and to free all jailed leftists, labor activists and protesters. Be aware that a serious fight for any of these basic rights and demands would send the Islamic rulers into a murderous frenzy

A key demand is for a secular, democratically elected constituent assembly as part of a revolutionary program to bring down the Islamic dictatorship. This is a demand that is appropriate in feudal or semi-feudal countries where the most basic democratic tasks of the bourgeois revolution have not yet been achieved, or under bonapartist regimes that amount to military/police dictatorships. This latter is the case of Iran under the theocratic “Islamic Republic,” as it was under the pro-imperialist monarchy of the shah.

We have noted elsewhere how many opportunist socialists have raised calls for constituent assemblies just about everywhere, including in countries that have the trappings of bourgeois parliamentarism. In effect, they substitute this democratic demand for the goal of socialist revolution (see “Trotskyism vs. “Constituent Assembly” Mania,” The Internationalist No. 27, May-June 2008). But Iran today, groaning under the rule of clerical reaction, is precisely the kind of dictatorial regime where the demand for a revolutionary constituent assembly abolishing the system of velayat-e-faqih in which a Supreme Leader has the final say on everything, abolishing the unelected clerical councils ban any candidate deemed insufficiently Islamic, abolishing the religious police who terrorize women and youth, can mobilize masses of the oppressed fighting for the overthrow of the mullahs’ rule.

Clearly, the present rulers of Iran would fight to the death to prevent such a democratic body. The Islamic “reformers” around Mousavi would oppose it as well. It is also clear that the only force which could bring about a constituent assembly is the working class, leading impoverished peasants and slum dwellers. However, the workers must fight not just for “democracy” but for their own class rule. Thus proletarian revolutionaries in Iran would simultaneously seek to organize potential organs of workers power, from factory committees (shuras) to workers councils, fighting for a workers and peasants government to expropriate the capitalist class, and for a socialist federation of the entire Near East.

Above all, the Iranian masses today urgently need a genuinely communist party, capable of struggling against the reactionary social program of the mullahs and all bourgeois forces. Under the impact of the current crisis, and Iran’s convulsive history, revolutionary minded militants may be rethinking their outlook and program. The League for the Fourth International seeks to lay the basis for a Leninist vanguard party of the Iranian working class, armed with the program of revolutionary Trotskyism, that alone can point the way forward to the liberation of all the exploited and oppressed. ■

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

NYC Labor: Scab Cookies Are “Too Hot to Handle”!

Steven — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:04:43 GMT

NYC Labor: Scab Cookies Are “Too Hot to Handle”!

Mobilize New York Unions’ Power
to Win the Stella D'Oro Strike!

The struggle of the 136 bakery workers at the Stella d’Oro cookie factory in the Bronx, on strike since last August 15, has reverberated through New York City labor. The company’s use of low-paid ($10 an hour) scab labor to run the struck factory is a threat to unions throughout the city. But paper resolutions expressing fine sentiments of labor solidarity are not enough. The fact is, NYC labor officialdom has not actually done anything to use its power to win the strike. If it had, the strike would have ended in a victory months ago. We need to massively mobilize NYC labor to beat the union-busters at Stella D’Oro!

On May 30, hundreds of unionists and strike supporters were expected to rally and march to the bakery at 237th Street in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx. Among those unions who have participated in earlier rallies are the UFT (teachers), PSC (faculty at the City University), 1199 (health care workers), SEIU (service workers), UFCW (grocery store workers), AFSCME (government workers), RWDSU (retail workers) and others. These demonstrations of labor solidarity are important, as are the checks that several unions have presented to the strikers. But far more is needed to actually win this crucial strike.

The courageous members of Local 50 of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Union walked out when the bakery’s new owners demanded drastic pay cuts (slashing $1 an hour each year over five years), an end to pensions, cuts to health care, the elimination of sick days and cuts to vacation time. For many of the production line workers, a majority of them women, that would have driven their income down from $37,000 to $27,000 a year. A single mother could not survive on those wages. In the face of heavy odds, the workers have stayed strong. Not one striker has crossed the picket line.

Brynwood Partners, an investment firm that bought Stella d’Oro in 2006, specializes in squeezing extra profits by busting unions. This Greenwich, Connecticut-based firm specializes in “flipping” companies: they buy up “under-performing” plants, slash wages and working conditions, and then resell them at a huge profit. These guys are almost caricatures of the ruthless buyout profiteers like the character Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street. They are not going to be defeated by playing nice and being “reasonable” according to established rules. The whole strategy of the Stella D’Oro bosses is geared to destroy the union.

The Bakery Workers have brought a complaint against the employer to the National Labor Relations Board for refusal to bargain in good faith, and have gotten a preliminary ruling favorable to the union. Some strike supporters are fantasizing that with Democrat Barack Obama in the White House, they could even get the NLRB to prohibit the company from hiring “permanent replacement workers” (scabs). But even if the NLRB were to decide against Brynwood, the company would simply appeal it to death in the capitalist courts, dragging the case out for years while workers are without a job. Legal action will not stop these cutthroat labor haters.

The bottom line is: you can’t win by playing by the bosses’ rules. Labor must play hardball to win!

Much effort has gone into building a boycott urging consumers to support the strike by refusing to buy Stella D’Oro cookies. This can be a useful way to build support for a popular and hard-fought strike. But all too often, the union bureaucrats have resorted to consumer boycotts in order to avoid the kind of class-struggle action that is crucial to winning. In some cases, like the Hormel P-9 strike in 1986, consumer boycotts have masked the abandonment of a strike. Using the organized power of the unions is key.

For starters, NYC labor should use its muscle to stop the delivery of Stella D’Oro products to the stores, and get the scab cookies off store shelves NOW! Union truckers and railroad workers should refuse to deliver ingredients and supplies to the struck plant! We have made concrete proposals for an open letter to New York City unionists urging labor, particularly grocery and retail workers unions, to declare that scab products are “too hot to handle” and make sure no one touches them.

To win this strike, it is necessary to shut down the scab operation. One way to do that is by a plant occupation, which cannot be done without careful and systematic preparation. Workers from the Republic Windows and Doors plant in Chicago, who occupied their plant last December, have visited the Stella D’Oro picket lines. The Republic workers’ example electrified labor across the U.S. And in any case, NYC labor should organize repeated mass mobilizations to build picket lines so large and militant that no one dares cross.

Long ago, this was a family owned business. But at the end of the 1980s it was bought out by Nabisco, and in 2000 it was taken over by Kraft Foods. The current owners are notorious takeover artists, but the previous corporate bosses set the stage for this battle by driving out the Teamster delivery truck drivers after a 2003 strike. So instead of leaving the Stella D’Oro strikers isolated, thousands of New York City unionists should march on the plant to stop the scab occupation and win the strike, making it clear that there will be hell to pay if Stella D’Oro workers don’t win.

Impossible? Not at all. As recently as 2005, the 35,000 transit workers shut down the city with their powerful strike. Despite the bosses’ propaganda blitz, the strike enjoyed the support of working people throughout the city. And in 1998, tens of thousands of construction workers turned out to picket the Metropolitan Transportation Authority headquarters for hiring a non-union construction firm, Roy Kay Inc.. The workers marched through Midtown shutting down construction sites and blocking traffic. The NYPD mobilized 1,000 cops, but couldn’t stop them. For Stella D’Oro workers to win, we need to “do a Roy Kay” on a mass scale.

The Stella D’Oro strike is not an isolated local event. From the auto industry to government jobs, the bosses are using the economic crisis of their capitalist system to grind down the workers and take back what few benefits that unions have won. To defeat this onslaught, it is necessary to fight politically. Many unionists look to Obama and the Democratic Party. Yet the Obama White House and Democratic-controlled Congress are ripping up the auto industry, sacrificing tens of thousands of auto workers’ jobs, slashing health care and wages, while channeling tens of billions to the auto bosses and trillions of dollars to bail out the Wall Street banks.

Workers need to break with the Democratic Party and forge our own, class-struggle workers party that fights for a workers government. ■

From the League for the Fourth International
http://www.internationalist.org/stelladorostrike0905.html

To contact the League for the Fourth International or its sections, send an e-mail to: internationalistgroup@msn.com

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Police Commit "Highway Robberies"

Steven — Fri, 22 May 2009 16:51:21 GMT

Police Commit "Highway Robberies"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySjyRpq5tY8

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Pictures Obama doesn't Want You to See

Steven — Fri, 15 May 2009 14:46:45 GMT

Some Pictures Obama doesn't Want You to See:

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/05/here-are-few-of-torture-photos-obama.html

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Organic Agriculture in Cuba

Steven — Thu, 14 May 2009 20:00:48 GMT

Good Article on Organic Agriculture in Cuba
http://www.foodfirst.org/archive/media/news/2002/susagcasestudy.html

Some notes by me:

The counter-revolution in the USSR and Eastern Europe left Cuba in a very difficult situation. Trade from those countries dried up and the U.S. economic blockade continued. The Cubans went into that Special Period with creativity, science, and a continuation of socialist methods of food distribution. Socialist food distribution has been credited by relief agencies for preventing a massive humanitarian disaster. In addition, Cuba's moves to organic farming are indeed inspiring in terms of what is needed for the earth.

An example in the negative was North Korea in this same time period. The North Korean leadership was facing a similar situation to Cuba with the fall of the Soviet Union and a heavily industrialized agricultural sector, but instead turned to capitalist methods of food distribution in 1995 which was a major cause of massive starvation. This combined with a series of floods that destroyed 40% of crops in 1995-96 followed by drought in 1997. An estimated 600,000 or more Koreans died of starvation from 1995-1999. The food situation in North Korea remains precarious. While no capitalist country has been capable of doing what Cuba has done, North Korea as it produces capitalistic reforms has also been incapable of doing what needs to be done to solve their food crisis.

The U.S. government has wanted to overthrow the Cuban government ever since they carried out a land reform against Rockefeller's United Fruit Company, but the Cuban people continue to struggle forward in the face of economic blockade and U.S. sponsored terrorism. In addition to organic farming, Cuba has carried out a major campaign to reduce carbon emissions, which earned mention from the World Wildlife Fund a couple years ago as Cuba being the only country in the world to be doing what is needed on global warming.

-Steven Argue

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Bring Down the Bourgeoisie Through Workers Revolution!

Steven — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:17:22 GMT

Bring Down the Bourgeoisie Through Workers Revolution!

World Capitalism Plunges

http://www.internationalist.org/worldcapitalismplunges0903.html

19 MARCH 2009 – The global economic crisis continues to deepen, month after month. With the financial crisis that exploded in September 2008, the international credit system effectively froze, making it virtually impossible for even the largest firms with the best ratings to obtain new loans. In what amounts to a slow-motion stock market crash, values on financial exchanges worldwide have have been cut in half from their 2007 highs. Since then, the plunge has moved from the realm of what Karl Marx called “fictitious capital” to the real economy. In the past five months, there has been a sharp drop in industrial production, investments, exports, consumer spending, construction and just about every other major indicator of economic activity in virtually every country of the capitalist world. This marks a big difference from all other recent economic crises, where countries could recover by exporting to other markets (notably the United States) or pouring money into new speculative bubbles. Not this time.

Although attention has been focused on the financial crisis – and on the Wall Street bankers, hedge fund operators insurance company execs who have made out like bandits – the economic downturn began almost a year earlier. In the U.S, this is already be the longest recession since World War II, and it’s not ending any time soon. Housing prices fell by 20 percent last year in major markets and 10 percent of all mortgages are in arrears or default; 19 million houses and apartments are standing empty around the country, while homelessness increases. More than 4.4 million jobs have been lost so far, 650,000 in each of the last three months. While the official unemployment rate is at 8.1 percent, the actual rate is considerably higher (the government fudges the statistics by not counting those who have given up looking for work). The broader unemployment count is now 14.8 percent of the workforce, and it’s heading a lot higher. Consumer spending has gone through the floor, especially for big ticket items like automobiles (down 41 percent in February).

One economist quipped that not so long ago people were buying cars, big screen TVs and refrigerators like they were groceries; now they are buying groceries like they are cars. Just as in the 1930s farmers dumped “surplus” milk while people went hungry, today sales of dairy products have dropped so far that there is an “oversupply” of cows so farmers are selling off (and killing off) their herds! Another sign of the times: General Electric, which was considered the gold standard of blue chip stocks because it paid a dividend straight through the 1930s, announced at the end of February it was cutting its dividend by two-thirds. One anguished retiree wrote in response: “We are retired. My husband is 90 1/2 and is not to proud to eat the food I will have to now get us dumpster diving. We needed that dividend for food.”

Recession or Depression? Suddenly the rulers are beginning to mention the dreaded “D-word.” Bourgeois economists have described recent recessions as “V-shaped,” with a sharp decline followed by sharp upturns. They at first said the current crisis looked like a “U-shaped” recession, lasting longer at the bottom before turning up. Now quite a few are saying that this crisis will be “L-shaped”: plunging straight down, and staying there. The CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, said in announcing 5,000 layoffs, the first significant cuts ever for the computer giant: “Our model is not for a quick rebound. Our model is things go down, and then they reset. The economy shrinks” (New York Times, 23 January). Or as John Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia Bank, put it (New York Times, 7 March):

“These jobs aren’t coming back.... A lot of production either isn’t going to happen at all, or it’s going to happen somewhere other than the United States. There are going to be fewer stores, fewer factories, fewer financial services operations. Firms are making strategic decisions that they don’t want to be in their businesses.”

What is to be done? In short, the recession is rapidly becoming a depression, although the capitalist rulers don’t want to say so because they fear that would set off an even worse panic. Generally, “mainstream” economists say a depression (which they used to claim was no longer possible) is just a worse recession. But there is a significant difference. The series of recessions every 5-7 years that one can find at any point in the history of capitalism is an expression of the cyclical nature of the production for profit system. However, when production remains stuck at severely depressed levels for years this is not cyclical but the result of a crisis of the capitalist system itself. In the 1930s, economist John Maynard Keynes analyzed that the economy was caught in a “liquidity trap,” so that governments had to inject large amounts of money to get production going again. It is now admitted even by bourgeois economists that this was insufficient and only World War II put an end to the Great Depression of the ’30s.

The recipe of the monetarist “free market” economists for dealing with an economic downturn was to lower interest rates. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke tried that, driving down interest rates to near zero percent, but the banks wouldn’t lend. Bush’s Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson then tried giving away vast amounts of dollars to the bankers (the $750 billion “bailout”), but they just put the money in their reserves (or gave themselves bonuses). Even free money wouldn’t restart the stalled economic engine. Now Obama is trying the standard Keynesian answer, to pump cash into the economy through public works in the $825 billion “stimulus” bill. But that will only have a limited impact as well, and unemployment will keep soaring. It won’t work because it assumes that the basic problem of the economy is underconsumption: give the people more money, they will buy more, companies will produce more, banks will lend more, etc. But the problem that set off the crisis isn’t that people weren’t consuming – on the contrary, egged on by the banks and credit card companies, American consumers were busy spending money they didn’t have, sinking into debt.

The underlying issue behind both the waves of financial speculation and now the sharp drop in the real economy is the overproduction of capital, and therefore of goods, and the associated falling rate of profit. The rate of real capital formation in the advanced capitalist countries has been extremely low since the late 1980s because investors figure they can’t get a sufficient rate of return on their capital investing in production. So instead they “invest” it in stock market speculation, information technology or housing bubbles, and when those burst they just sit on the cash. Building highways or “green” energy projects won’t change that, the “multiplier effect” of deficit spending will be minimal. Under capitalism, the only way the rate of profit can be restored is through the destruction of capital, by massive bankruptcies producing millions of unemployed, or by imperialist war laying waste to productive capacity. Or, as happened in the 1930s and ’40s, by both. After the bloodbath is over and a “reasonable” profit rate restored, the production cycle will resume ... at a cost of untold mass misery.

The present global capitalist economic crisis is not cyclical or even structural but systemic. Neither monetarists nor Keynesians can solve it. But as Lenin and Trotsky insisted, capitalism will not collapse of its own accord. The capitalist answer to a crisis of overproduction is barbarism: the imperialist war mongers will try to shoot their way out of the mess the capitalists have created. The only way to defend the very existence of the proletariat today is by mobilizing our class power to demand what we need. A series of transitional demands should be raised pointing to the need bring down the bourgeoisie and institute workers rule (see “Exchange on Transitional Demands”). That centrally requires breaking the stranglehold of the capitalist parties and building a workers party that fights for international socialist revolution, which can lay the basis for a planned economy producing to fulfill human needs rather than profit. ■

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Obama seeks $83.4 billion to continue US wars

Steven — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 05:07:53 GMT

Obama seeks $83.4 billion to continue US wars
By Bill Van Auken
11 April 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/apr2009/warf-a11.shtml

The Obama White House Thursday submitted its formal request to the US Congress for $83.4 billion in “emergency” supplemental funding to pay for the continuation of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan launched under the Bush administration.

The funding will pay for the two wars through the current fiscal year, which ends September 30. By that time, tens of thousands more US troops will be deployed in Afghanistan as part of the administration’s escalation there, while the deployment of 140,000 troops in Iraq will remain largely unchanged.

Also included in the funding bill are $350 million for the further militarization of the Mexican border and $400 million in counterinsurgency assistance to Pakistan.

Echoing the “support our troops” rhetoric of the Bush administration, Kenneth Baer, a spokesman for the White House budget office, declared, “We look forward to working with Congress to give our men and women in uniform what they need this year to do the hard work we are asking of them in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

While the White House claimed that beginning in fiscal 2010 the administration will include the war funding in the regular Pentagon budget, the use of the “supplemental,” which comes just days after the unveiling of the $534 billion Pentagon budget, only underscores the fundamental continuity between the policies of the two administrations. Such “emergency” funding bills were a staple of the Bush administration, used to conceal the wars’ real cost and override congressional spending limits.

Between the money for the two wars being sought for the remainder of the current year and the funds included in the fiscal 2010 Defense Department budget, the direct cost to the US Treasury for America’s two wars of aggression will top $1 trillion.

There is no question that the Democratic-led Congress will pass the war funding bill. Under the Bush administration, the Democrats went through the motions of attempting to attach timetables for partial withdrawals from Iraq and other restrictions on war policy before ultimately bowing to the Bush White House and passing the war funding with no strings attached.

Now, with a Democrat in the White House, even this limited show of opposition will largely evaporate. As the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday: “Rep. John Larson (Democrat, Connecticut) suggests Democrats may be less inclined to joust with the current White House on the issue than they were with former President George W. Bush. ‘We have somebody that Democrats feel will level with them,’ said Mr. Larson, the House’s fourth-ranking Democrat.”

In his letter to Congress requesting the funding, Obama stressed the deteriorating situation for the US occupation in Afghanistan. “The Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda threatens America from its safe haven along the Afghan-Pakistan border,” he said.

“This funding request will ensure that the full force of the United States—our military, intelligence, diplomatic and economic power—are engaged in an overall effort to defeat Al Qaeda and uproot the safe haven from which it plans and trains for attacks on the homeland and on our allies.”

By contrast, the president’s letter gave scant attention to Iraq, where he said that “violence has been reduced substantially because of the skilled efforts of our troops and the Iraqi people’s commitment to peace.” Because of this, he added, Washington is “positioned to move forward with a responsible drawdown of our combat forces, transferring security to Iraqi forces.”

All of this amounts to a combination of half-truths and outright lies. The reality is that the bulk of the supplemental will go to fund the continued occupation of Iraq. If Obama conceals that fact it is because he knows that sections of his own party’s leadership, including congressional Democrats, had postured as opponents of the Iraq war, while supporting the supposedly “good war” in Afghanistan.

The claim that the US is doubling the number of troops on the ground in Afghanistan and spending billions of dollars to “defeat Al Qaeda” is preposterous. Just last month, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael Maples, testified before a Senate committee that Al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan is “still at a relatively minor scale.”

Even though his administration has adopted a tactical change in terminology, Obama’s invocation of Al Qaeda as the principal target of the US escalation and his talk of “attacks on the homeland” amount to the recycling of Bush’s repeated “war on terror” justifications for the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The reality is that Obama’s “surge” in Afghanistan is aimed at the violent suppression of popular armed resistance to the US occupation. It is the continuation of a dirty colonial-style war directed at installing a stable US client regime in Kabul as part of Washington’s attempt to assert its domination over the strategic oil reserves of Central Asia and the pipeline routes for extracting this wealth.

Obama’s rosy depiction of Iraq, meanwhile, was belied by the eruption of violence over the past week in which hundreds of Iraqis were killed or wounded in a series of coordinated bombings in Baghdad and elsewhere.

On Friday, just a day after Congress received Obama’s letter, the US military suffered its worst attack in a year, with five soldiers killed in the northern city of Mosul when a suicide bomber drove a truck packed with explosives into a security checkpoint. Two other soldiers were wounded. The city, wracked by sectarian divisions between Arabs and Kurds, is the scene of continuing major combat operations by the US military.

In an interview with the Times of London published Friday, before news of this latest deadly attack, the US commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, said that the violence in Mosul and Baqubah, another city in the north of Iraq, called into question the withdrawal timetable set by the Obama administration. “US troop numbers” in the two cities “could rise rather than fall over the next year,” the Times reported. The interview amounted to a public warning that the military is prepared to veto Obama’s plan.

Under the timeline announced by the administration, US combat troops were supposed to have been withdrawn from Iraqi cities by June. The pullback was the first stage in what the White House terms a “responsible withdrawal” that supposedly would see all US “combat troops” removed by August 2010 and all US military personnel out of the country by the end of 2011.

The term “combat troops” is used to refer to specific units, while others will stay behind continuing to engage in armed repression. Pentagon officials have acknowledged that if need be, some of the so-called “combat troops” will simply be redefined as noncombat units and kept in Iraq. It is estimated that this stay-behind force will number up to 50,000 under the Obama plan.

As for the 2011 deadline, it is written into the Status of Forces Agreement signed between the Bush administration and the US-backed government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and is by no means binding. It is widely anticipated that it will be amended to allow US forces to remain in Iraq and continue their original mission of subjugating the country and placing its oil wealth under Washington’s domination.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis took to the streets of Baghdad April 9 in a demonstration demanding an end to the US occupation. The protest, called on the sixth anniversary of the fall of the Iraqi capital to the US invasion force, was dominated by supporters of the Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr, but also included some Sunni Arabs. A similar protest took place in the predominantly Sunni city of Fallujah, which was decimated by a US siege at the end of 2004.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the US military was compelled to revise its claims about a raid conducted in the eastern city of Khost near the Pakistan border. Following reports by local officials, it acknowledged that the “armed combatants” it claimed to have killed in a nighttime raid Wednesday were actually five innocent civilians. Among the dead, according to Afghan officials, were a seven-day-old infant boy, two women and two men. Another woman, who was nine months pregnant, was wounded and lost her baby.

Afghanistan’s US-backed president, Hamid Karzai, issued a statement protesting the killings and asking that “international forces carry out their counterterrorism in ways that do not cause civilian casualties.” Karzai’s is utterly dependent on foreign occupation forces, and such hollow protests are aimed at deflecting some of the popular anger against his corrupt regime.

According to a report issued by the United Nations in February, a record 2,118 civilians were killed in Afghanistan last year, nearly 40 percent of them by US-led occupation forces. These figures are undoubtedly an underestimation of the real death toll.

In Pakistan, the government released a report showing that out of 60 missile attacks carried out by US pilotless drones in the country’s tribal areas over the past three years, only 10 had struck their actual targets, killing 14 people identified as Al Qaeda operatives. The other 50 claimed the lives of 687 Pakistani civilians, including women and children. This death toll is steadily rising, with 385 civilians killed in 2008 and 152 in the first 99 days of this year alone.

The supplemental funding bill sent to the Congress by Obama will pay for an escalation of this carnage as the Obama administration moves to nearly double the size of the US force currently in Afghanistan to 68,000 troops, while aggressively extending the war across the border into Pakistan.

Less than three months after Obama’s inauguration, the actions of his administration have demonstrated the impossibility of bringing an end to war by means of the ballot box under America’s present two-party system.

While millions of Americans voted for the Democratic candidate last November out of anger and disgust over the eight years of militarism under Bush, it is now clear that not only will the occupation of Iraq continue, but the war in Afghanistan will be escalated and extended deeper into Pakistan.

Obama’s policies are determined not by these mass antiwar sentiments, but by the interests of the financial oligarchy and the agenda of the military, for which he serves as a mouthpiece.

The fight to end war can go forward only as a struggle for the independent political mobilization of working people against the Obama administration and the capitalist profit system which is the source of militarism.

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Arctic sea ice thinnest ever going into spring

Steven — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:06:27 GMT

Arctic sea ice thinnest ever going into spring

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090406/ap_on_sc/arctic_ice

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer – Mon Apr 6, 4:19 pm ET

WASHINGTON – The Arctic is treading on thinner ice than ever before. Researchers say that as spring begins, more than 90 percent of the sea ice in the Arctic is only 1 or 2 years old. That makes it thinner and more vulnerable than at anytime in the past three decades, according to researchers with NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado.

"We're not set up well for summertime," ice data center scientist Walt Meier said Monday. "We're in a very precarious situation."

Young sea ice in the Arctic often melts in the spring and summer. If it survives for two years, then it becomes the type of thick sea ice that is key. But the past two years were warm, and there's more young, thin ice at the top of the world.

In normal winters, thick sea ice — often about 10 feet thick or more — extends from the northern boundaries of Greenland and Canada almost to Russia. This year, the thick ice cap barely penetrates the bull's-eye of the Arctic Circle.

The amount of thick sea ice hit a record wintertime low of just 378,000 square miles this year, down 43 percent from last year, Meier said. The amount of older sea ice that was lost is larger than the state of Texas.

"That thick ice really traps ocean heat; it keeps the planet in its current state of balance," said Waleed Abdalati, director of the Center for the Study of Earth from Space at the University of Colorado and NASA's former chief ice scientist. "When we start to diminish that, the state of balance is likely to change, tip one way or another."

Sea ice is important because it reflects sunlight away from Earth. The more it melts, the more heat is absorbed by the ocean, heating up the planet even more, said NASA polar regions program manager Tom Wagner. That warming also can change weather patterns worldwide and it alters the ecosystems for animals such as polar bears.

The Arctic essentially acts as a refrigerator for the rest of the globe. And the amount of sea covered by ice — thick or thin — has been shrinking at a rate of about 3 percent a decade in the Arctic.

This year, the maximum ice cover of 5.85 million square miles — reached on Feb. 28 — was higher than four of the previous five years. But it was still the fifth lowest since record-keeping began in 1979.

Usually, younger, thin ice accounts for about 70 percent of the ice cover. This year it reached 90 percent, Meier said.

And the problems of global warming caused melt is being seen at the other pole, too.

The U.S. Geological Survey last week released a detailed map of the Antarctic coastline and found dwindling and even disappearing ice shelves.

The map itself was finished in the middle of last year, but the previous Interior Department didn't want to release it and other Antarctic maps, said map co-author Richard Williams Jr., a glaciologist for the USGS. The report with the map bears the 2008 date and the previous interior secretary's name on it.

The map shows found for the first time that an entire ice shelf — the Wordie ice shelf on the western end of the Antarctic peninsula_ has essentially disappeared. In 1966, it was 772 square miles. In addition, about 4,500 square miles of the Larsen ice shelf is gone.

"The map portrays one of the most rapidly changing areas on Earth, and the changes in the map are widely regarded as among the most profound, unambiguous examples of the effects of global warming on Earth," the USGS report concludes.

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Two months on: The class agenda of the Obama administration

Steven — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:18:43 GMT

Two months on: The class agenda of the Obama administration
26 March 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/pers-m26.shtml

Over the past two months, culminating in the events of the past week, the Obama administration has single-mindedly worked to win the confidence of Wall Street. It has sought to reassure the major banks and investment firms that it will not support any policies that threaten the wealth, prerogatives or power of the American financial aristocracy.

The administration, and Obama personally, view the economic crisis entirely through the eyes of the wealthiest 1 percent of the population. All of their actions have had as their central goal covering the losses—dollar for dollar and at the expense of the American people—of those who are responsible for the economic catastrophe.

For the vast majority of the population, the crisis means vanishing jobs, home foreclosures, the collapse of retirement savings. For Obama, its only significance is that it has shaken the confidence of US capitalism and threatened to undermine America's major banks and investment houses.

Hence the efforts of Obama and his top aides to defend AIG against public outrage over the bonuses awarded by the bailed-out insurance giant, and to derail congressional legislation to recoup them. This has coincided with the announcement of the latest scheme to funnel hundreds of billions of taxpayer money to the banks and hedge funds.

The so-called "Public-Private Investment Plan" unveiled by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Monday is so brazen a money-making racket for the banks—which get to offload their bad debts at vastly inflated prices—and the hedge funds and investment firms—which are virtually assured double-digit profits on money provided for the most part by the government—that even the New York Times acknowledged Wednesday, "In the end, it will be the taxpayer who will be largely footing the bill."

Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Award-winning economist, in an interview with Reuters, was more blunt. He said the program offered "perverse incentives" that amounted to "robbery of the American people."

On Wednesday the Times published a report noting that the top 25 hedge fund managers—the very people the administration is courting with virtually free cash and government guarantees to absorb the bulk of any losses—took in $11.6 billion in 2008, even as the household wealth of the American people fell by trillions.

All of the various initiatives of the administration—its bank bailouts, its stimulus package, its housing and health care policies—have been worked out in the closest consultation with the denizens of Wall Street. The nature of the relationship between Obama and the most powerful bankers was indicated in a report published Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal. The article described the process by which Obama arrived at his housing proposals as follows:

"Treasury officials invited executives from Wells Fargo & Co., Bank of America Corp., and JPMorgan Chase & Co., among others. Around the Treasury's biggest conference table, they hashed out how the mortgage plan would work in practice for eight hours, ordering in pizza..."

The article continued: "On March 11, Mr. Dimon [JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon] was ushered into the White House and Treasury Department, where advisers brain-stormed with him about how banks and markets would react to their emerging policies. The following day, at a White House meeting, business executives implored Mr. Obama to get credit flowing again. ‘All right,' the president said, according to a transcript of the meeting. He'd have his people ‘talk to Jamie.'"

Obama will seek to further curry favor with Wall Street by holding an extraordinary meeting Friday at the White House with the CEOs of some the nation's largest banks.

At his Tuesday night press conference, Obama again sought to demonstrate his obeisance to the financial elite and defend a policy of upholding its interests at all costs. He admonished the American people against demonizing "every investor or entrepreneur who seeks to make a profit." It is private profit, he declared, "that has always fueled our prosperity, and that is what will ultimately get these banks lending and our economy moving once more."

In other words, the success of the administration's "stabilization and recovery" program will be defined by its ability to secure the financial interests of the ruling elite.

With breathtaking cynicism, Obama declared, "Finally, the most critical part of our strategy is to ensure that we do not return to an economic cycle of bubble and bust in this country. We know that an economy built on reckless speculation, inflated home prices and maxed-out credit cards does not create lasting wealth. It creates the illusion of prosperity, and it's endangered us all."

This from a president whose policy is to underwrite the fictitious capital of the banks and finance houses and protect shareholder wealth derived precisely from an economic bubble based on inflated home prices.

Further on he said, "Bankers and executives on Wall Street need to realize that enriching themselves on the taxpayers' dime is inexcusable, that the days of outsized rewards and reckless speculation that puts us all at risk have to be over." But, of course, enriching bankers and Wall Street executives "on the taxpayers' dime" is precisely what the administration is doing, while it subsidizes hedge fund speculation and defends the "outsized rewards" of AIG millionaires and Wall Street executives in general.

Obama again sought to assure Wall Street that once its interests had been protected at the cost of trillions of dollars in public funds, his administration would turn its attention to ruthlessly cutting social spending in order to pare back the budget deficit.

Having the day before allocated another trillion or so to bailing out the banks, tripling the previous record for federal budget deficits, he made the astonishing assertion that health care costs were the "biggest driver of long-term deficits." That—not the plundering of the country by the banks—was what "we're going to have to tackle," he declared.

What Obama means by "tackling healthcare costs" is relieving corporations of their health care obligations and forcing workers to accept, at best, third-rate coverage with higher out-of-pocket costs.

Obama was determined to get the message out to Wall Street that his administration was committed to imposing a brutal policy of austerity on the working class. "We are cutting out wasteful spending in areas like Medicare," he said. "We're looking at social service programs and education programs that don't work and eliminate (sic) them. And we will continue to go line by line through this budget, and where we find programs that don't work, we will eliminate them. But it is going to be an impossible task for us to balance our budget if we're not taking on rising healthcare costs..."

In response to a reporter's comment that his budget would leave deficits rising again after the next four or five years, Obama explained that the attacks on Medicare and Medicaid being prepared by his administration were not reflected in his budget proposal. "The biggest problem we have long term is Medicare and Medicaid," he said. "But whatever reforms we initiate on that front—and we're very serious about working on a bipartisan basis to reduce those deficits or reduce those costs—you're not going to see those savings reflected until much later."

He then returned to the basic thrust of his press conference, declaring: "And once we get out of this current economic crisis, then it's going to be absolutely important for us to take another look and say... Are there further cuts that we need to make? What other adjustments are—is it going to take for us to have a sustainable budget level?"

A reporter for Ebony magazine asked the only question that touched on the unfolding social disaster in America. Noting that one in fifty children are now homeless in the United States, he asked Obama "what would you say to these families, especially children, who are sleeping under bridges and in tents across the country?"

Obama had nothing to say, because none of his policies address the mounting social crisis or provide any real relief for the victims of job cuts, wage cuts, home foreclosures or collapsing retirement funds. All he could muster, beyond an utterly unconvincing profession of being "heartbroken" that children in America were homeless, was the claim that "we're going to be initiating a range of programs, as well, to deal with homelessness."

The class character of the Obama administration is emerging ever more openly. It is nothing but a front for the financial aristocracy. Its policies are not only inadequate, they are reactionary.

Despite the attempts of decrepit liberals from the Nation and other "left" publications to portray Obama, despite everything, as some kind of reluctant "progressive" who needs a shove from below to follow his true instincts, the policies of the new administration demonstrate the impossibility of effecting change through the ballot box within the framework of the existing political and economic system.

The stranglehold of the financial aristocracy must be broken and the productive resources of society harnessed to meet the needs of the people, rather than to protect and increase the personal fortunes of the wealthy few.

This requires a break with the Democratic Party and the development of an independent political movement of the working class fighting for a socialist program. Such a program includes the expropriation of the big banks and investment firms and their transformation into public utilities under the democratic control of the working class.

Barry Grey

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

China offers no fix for global slump

Steven — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 20:18:43 GMT

China offers no fix for global slump

21 March 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/pers-m21.shtml

Any prospect that China could be the growth engine to pull the world economy out of deep recession has been laid to rest by the latest World Bank forecast.

At the recently completed annual National Peoples Congress (NPC), Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao promised the regime's policies would ensure 8 percent growth in 2009. The World Bank, however, cut its projection for this year to 6.5 percent, down from the previous 7.5 percent.

With the US, Europe and Japan all in recession, 6.5 percent sounds very positive. Reflecting the generally upbeat tone of the bank's outlook, World Bank country director David Dollar, described China as "a relative bright spot in an otherwise gloomy global economy".

The real situation and the scale of the economic slowdown in China, however, are underscored by the fact that 4.9 percentage points of the estimated growth will come from a massive government stimulus package. In other words, without the stimulus measures, the predicted growth rate would be just 1.6 percent—compared to 13 percent in 2007.

The World Bank's assumptions about China's $585 billion stimulus package are unlikely to be fulfilled. New state bank lending surged to $147 billion in February, up 24 percent from a year earlier, following a 21.3 percent rise in January. Yet industrial growth continues to slow and private investment is virtually stagnant. Lacking confidence about the future, many firms are using cheap loans to speculate on the stock market. The only growth areas are capital expenditure by large state enterprises and infrastructure spending.

These are all signs that much of China's vast export machine—the main motor for its spectacular economic growth—is rapidly grinding to a halt. In February, despite tax breaks and other government assistance, exports plunged 25.7 percent from a year earlier, far worse than the expected 1 percent growth. Moreover, imports fell by 24.1 percent in February, on top of a 43.1 percent decline in January, indicating that businesses regard economic prospects as bleak and are drastically cutting purchases of machinery, parts and raw materials.

The World Bank projection also assumes that China's export decline bottomed in February and will pick up as the global economy rebounds in the second half of 2009. This is little more than a stab in the dark. In its latest forecast for the world economy in 2009, released this week, the International Monetary Fund predicted a contraction of between 0.5 and 1 percent. For the advanced economies, which are China's main markets, the outlook was worse—an overall fall of between 3 and 3.5 percent. It was the fourth time in less than six months that the IMF has issued downward revisions.

For more than a decade, China has been held up as a shining example of the miracle of the capitalist market, particularly for the so-called emerging economies of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Its rise appeared to be unstoppable. In 2007, it became the third largest economy in the world, behind the US and Japan, with huge trade surpluses and foreign currency reserves.

When the sub-prime crisis hit the US in 2007, Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan declared there would be only a "mild effect" on Chinese exports. Last October, as the world financial system appeared on the brink of meltdown, the Financial Times outlined "a master plan" for China to "bailout America" and speculated on the political conditions Beijing might impose.

All this is based, however, on the flawed assumption that "China" functions as an independent economic entity. The Chinese economy is an integral component of the world economy. The globalisation of production over the past three decades transformed the country into a giant cheap labour platform for transnational corporations. A significant portion of China's "exports" simply involves shifting goods geographically within the same company.

On closer inspection, the orgy of financial speculation in the US and the transformation of China into the sweatshop of the world were intimately related—two sides of the same coin. Driven by declining profit rates, US corporations turned to China to cut production costs. In turn, cheap goods from China kept real wages and inflation in the US low and allowed the Federal Reserve to operate a low interest rate regime that was the basis for the vast expansion of speculative profiteering. Consumer debt expanded, maintaining a market for Chinese goods. China's trade surpluses were invested back in the US to prevent the value of the yuan from rising and helped to prop up America's massive debt.

It appeared that the process would go on forever. The US Fed responded to the collapse of each speculative bubble by pumping more money into the financial system, confident that the continuing flow of cheap goods would prevent soaring inflation. Massive profits were made, based on mountains of fictitious capital in the form of exotic financial derivatives and packages. This whole precarious house of cards has now come crashing down.

For China, the collapse has resulted in a disastrous fall in exports as consumer spending in the US and Europe has contracted sharply. And China is not alone. All the export-driven economies of Asia are in the same predicament. The once booming intra-Asia trade, which supplied Chinese factories with components, raw materials and capital goods, is also imploding. Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea are all formally in recession.

Now doubts are being raised about China's huge investments in US bonds and other securities. A new study by the US Council on Foreign Relations estimates that China's foreign currency reserves may be as high as $2.4 trillion—with $1.5 to $1.7 trillion held in various dollar assets. Last week, Premier Wen publicly expressed concerns about the security of China's investments if the US dollar dropped. This week, the US Fed compounded those fears with a plan, in essence, to print $300 billion to fund the US debt.

China is caught in a bind. If the US dollar plunges, Beijing faces losses that will destabilise its own financial and banking system. However, if it winds back its US investments, Beijing could trigger a global stampede to dump US assets, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the US and global financial system.

Addressing the National Peoples Congress, China's leaders attempted to put the best possible face on the deepening economic crisis. Wen assured delegates that 8 percent growth was achievable, promoted the regime's stimulus measures and announced new social welfare measures. Everyone present was well aware that anything less than 8 percent would mean rising unemployment and social unrest. Already 20 million rural migrant workers have lost their jobs and a growing army of urban workers, college graduates and demobilised soldiers are unable to find work.

Buried in the budget presented to the NPC was a significant item—a massive increase in spending on public security, by 20.5 percent to more than $71 billion. The figure is larger than China's total military budget of $70.2 billion for 2009. "We will improve the early warning system for social stability to actively prevent and properly handle all types of mass incidents," Wen blandly told the delegates. The purpose is all too evident—the linchpin of the "Chinese miracle" has been a pervasive police-state apparatus to suppress all criticism, political opposition, protests and strikes.

US, European and Japanese commentators routinely call into question the purpose of China's expanding military spending. None of them had anything to say about the public security budget. It is understood only too well in international financial circles that a social upheaval in China would reverberate around the world—politically and economically.

John Chan

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Demonstrate this Saturday, March 21 on the 6th anniversary of the war against Iraq!

Steven — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:34:54 GMT

Demonstrate this Saturday, March 21 on the 6th anniversary of the war against Iraq!

Freedom Socialist Party message:

The U.S. "Liberation of Iraq" is a total disaster by any measure. Since the invasion in March 2003 over one million Iraqis have died and two million have fled to neighboring countries. Almost 5,000 U.S. troops have been killed and at least ten times that number are wounded. The Iraq economy is in such shambles that four million people have no guarantee of food.

On this sixth anniversary of the invasion, the public is fed up. Nearly two-thirds of voters want the U.S. to withdraw troops from Iraq immediately or within one year. However, President Obama wants to increase troops in Afghanistan and talks openly about keeping huge numbers of troops in Iraq to maintain military bases, protect the U.S. embassy and support corporate interests, and the congressional Democratic Party majority refuses to cut off war funding. Both the Democrats and Republicans are still at the service of corporate war profiteers. If they won't risk alienating the military-industry complex in order to
end the war, they won't challenge big business to improve the economy. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing $10.3 billion a month. This enormous sum, plus the $2.34 billion a year given Israel to brutally occupy Palestine, should instead be used for healthcare, rebuilding New Orleans, helping workers avoid foreclosures, schools, pensions, or public works jobs.

Take a stand on Saturday, March 21 and join the Radical Women and Freedom Socialist Party contingent marching and protesting in San Francisco. Look for our "Stop the War on Working People at Home and Abroad" banner at Justin Herman Plaza (Embarcadero and Market Streets) starting at 10:30am. We will be marching with the Labor Contingent. Also check out our literature table at the Civic Center rally after the march. Bring your noisemakers and picket signs! Call 415-864-1278 or email baradicalwomen@earthlink.net or bafsp@earthlink.net for more details. Everyone is welcome!

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

The AIG bonuses furor: the class issues

Steven — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 02:53:10 GMT

The AIG bonuses furor: the class issues
16 March 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/pers-m16.shtml

The bankrupt insurance giant American International Group (AIG), which has received the most massive public bailout of any US financial institution, is paying out hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to the very executives who oversaw the transactions that bankrupted the firm and threatened to drag down much of the US and world economy with it.

This revelation has sparked genuine popular anger, while providing a graphic exposure of the real class character of the economic policies being pursued by the Obama administration in the face of the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

According to the Wall Street Journal, AIG International is paying out $450 million in bonuses to executives at its London-based subsidiary AIG Financial Products, which was primarily responsible for the company's staggering $99.3 billion loss in 2008.

The bonuses are on top of $121.5 million in "incentive pay" for 2008 going to 6,400 of AIG's employees and another $600 million in "retention pay" going to another 4,000 of them, for a grand total of over $1 billion.

The New York Times reported that seven AIG executives would receive bonuses worth $3 million or more each, while the Washington Post related that $165 million was being divvied up between 400 employees—an average of $412,500 each, or roughly ten times the annual gross pay of an average worker.

Given the de facto bankruptcy of AIG, these bonuses are being paid directly out of taxpayers' funds, a total of $180 billion of which have already been showered on the company. This amount is roughly equal to all of the discretionary spending contained in the Obama administration's anemic economic stimulus package.

In addition to the deep-felt popular outrage of millions who are faced with the daily threat of losing their jobs and their homes while seeing their income slashed as a result of the crisis, the bonus plan also triggered toothless expressions of disapproval from the Obama administration.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is reported to have called the government-installed chairman of AIG, Edward Liddy, telling him that the bonuses were "unacceptable" and demanding that they at least be pared down. Given that in its first $85 billion bailout of the company last September the government took over an 80 percent share of the firm, one might have thought that Geithner's request would have carried some weight.

Think again.

Liddy, a former board member of Goldman Sachs—the investment house believed to have received a large portion of the bailout money after it was "laundered" through AIG's insurance contracts—fired back an extraordinary letter telling the government to get lost.

"Quite frankly, AIG's hands are tied," he wrote, claiming that the bonuses were "binding obligations"—part of the executives' employment contracts—and interfering with them could provoke lawsuits. Moreover, he argued that they were fully warranted, despite the massive losses for which those receiving them were responsible. Without doling out a billion in additional compensation, he claimed, AIG would be at risk of losing "the best and the brightest to lead and staff the AIG businesses." Employees would leave if "their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the US Treasury," he said.

"The best and the brightest?" The executives in AIG's financial division ran an unregulated credit-default swap operation that was just as much a scam as Bernie Madoff's fund, and far more destructive.

The obvious question is: where precisely are these "best and brightest" going to go if they fail to get their hundreds of millions in bonuses? The market for this type of financial parasitism has collapsed, dragging down with it the livelihoods of millions upon millions of working people. Rather than getting bonuses, those in charge of the financial manipulations carried out by AIG and its partners should be on the receiving end of criminal investigations.

In the end, the Obama administration came around to Liddy's position that the bonuses must be paid. This was made clear Sunday by Lawrence Summers, the chairman of the White House National Economic Council, in a televised interview on ABC's "This Week."

"There are a lot of terrible things that have happened in the last 18 months," declared Summers, "but what's happened at AIG is the most outrageous."

Despite his supposed outrage, Summers insisted that the government, its 80 percent ownership of AIG notwithstanding, could do nothing about the bonuses. "We are a country of law," he proclaimed. "These are contracts. The government cannot just abrogate contracts."

The government cannot abrogate contracts? Try telling that to American autoworkers who have seen not only bonus payments, but pay, holidays, pensions, health benefits and working conditions—all part of their contracts—slashed as a condition imposed by the White House for government financing to stave off bankruptcy.

There were no pious statements from Washington about a "nation of law" and the sanctity of the contract as the government backed a vicious assault aimed at driving autoworkers back to the conditions of the 1930s. Rather, these workers were vilified amid the universal demand—seconded by the United Auto Workers union—that they agree to rip up their contracts and be quick about it.

This is the real content of the Obama administration's economic policy. What is sacred is not law or contracts, but rather the principle that the wealth, power and privileges of the top one percent of American society cannot be touched, no matter how deep the economic crisis.

The real concern of Summers and others in the administration is that the AIG bonuses are so provocative that they will interfere with the attempts to carry through policies aimed at placing the full burden of the crisis onto the backs of working people in the name of "shared sacrifice."

This was expressed most clearly by Obama's economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee, who warned that AIG's action would "ignite the ire of millions of people." He added, "You worry about backlash."

It is precisely this development, which the administration and the ruling elite so fear, that points the only way to resolving the deepening economic catastrophe in the interests in the majority of the population. The "ire" and "backlash" of millions upon millions of working people must be mobilized to settle accounts with the financial oligarchy that is responsible for the present crisis and to break its economic and political stranglehold over society.

This means building a new mass socialist movement fighting for the nationalization of the major corporations and banks and their transformation into public institutions democratically controlled by the working class. Only in this way can economic life be reorganized to meet the needs of millions for jobs, housing, health care and education, rather than to generate profits for a ruling elite.

Bill Van Auken

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

White House Forum on Health Reform

Steven — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 09:06:24 GMT

Defending the profits of the health care industry
White House Forum on Health Reform
By Tom Eley
7 March 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/heal-m07.shtml

On Thursday, President Barack Obama hosted a White House Forum on Health Reform. The gathering of politicians, health care industry lobbyists and reform advocates produced no concrete policy proposals. Rather, it advanced broad "guidelines" for reform, all tailored to protect the profits of the major insurance companies, pharmaceuticals and health and medical organizations (HMOs).

The US has the worst functioning health care system of any advanced capitalist country. Currently, nearly 50 million Americans, or one in six, are without health insurance, and a majority of the population carries on with either inadequate or unaffordable insurance plans. Americans pay more per capita for health care than residents of other developed countries, yet generally see worse results. Between private and government spending, health care consumes well over $2 trillion annually. In large measure this money does not go toward providing services, but to line the pockets of health industry CEOs and investors.

The gathering was emblematic of the fraudulent character of Obama's "change." While he ran for the presidency on a promise to "overhaul" the health care system and vastly extend medical coverage, his Forum on Health Reform provided a venue for the major health industry interests to dictate terms for future legislation. Behind Obama's claims of "bipartisanship" and gaining cooperation from all interested parties is a simple reality. His health care reform, like his administration as a whole, will serve the interests of the financial elite.

This message was received by industry representatives and lobbyists, who expressed satisfaction with the forum. Among these were Karen Ignani, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, Rich Umbdenstock of the American Hospital Association, the CEO of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, Jeff Kindler, and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America head Billy Tauzin.

In an article entitled "In Health Plan, Industry Sees Good Business," the Washington Post quoted a pleased Tauzin. "This is a great start," he said. "There are things we don't like about it. But there's time to discuss all that."

Also on board is Chip Kahn, president of the Federation of American Hospital Systems. In 1993, Kahn played a role in crafting the media campaign that helped to turn decisive sections of the ruling class against President Bill Clinton's modest health care reform proposals.

The Wall Street Journal approvingly noted Obama's retreat from the Clinton years. "The very groups—and in some cases, the very people—who were instrumental in blocking the Clinton plan were at the White House on Thursday, vowing to make it happen this time around," it wrote.

As for addressing the pressing health care needs of the population, Obama was full of platitudes but short on proposals, at one point declaring "I just want to figure out what works." He indicated that his central goal would be containing spiraling health care costs—the rapidly rising prices associated with medicine, treatments, and hospital stays. Precisely how this would be done, he did not explain.

Obama did make clear, however, that he intends to retreat from his broader campaign promises on health care. "During the campaign," he said, "I put forward a plan for health care reform. I thought it was an excellent plan. But I don't presume that it was a perfect plan or that it was the best possible plan."

Among these promises was a plan to create a public health insurance provider that would compete with private insurers. This has provoked the ire of the health care industry. In the lead-up to the forum it also drew a warning from five leading Republican senators, including minority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Writing to Obama, they warned that a public health provider, even one based on consumer payments, would chase private insurers from the market. "It would create an unlevel playing field and inevitably doom true competition," the senators wrote. "Ultimately we would be left with a single government-run program controlling all of the market."

Buckling under this rebuke, Obama all but promised to abandon the scheme. "I recognize the fear that if a public option is run through Washington," he said, "private insurance plans might end up feeling overwhelmed."

Obama had originally proposed paying for his health care proposals by closing tax loopholes on the richest Americans. This plan raised objections from powerful senate Democrats, among them Max Baucus, Finance Committee Chair. At a budget hearing on Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner indicated Obama would drop the plan.

In the hearings, Baucus protested that closing tax shields for the rich "has nothing to do with health care." To which Geithner responded, "We recognize there are other ways to do this."

To be sure, there are sections of the ruling class that favor changing the health care system. US manufacturing, for example the auto industry, is unable to meet the spiraling costs of health care benefits that workers won from the Big Three in an earlier era. The auto industry would now welcome a publicly run system that would relieve it of these obligations.

Yet the health care industry is a powerful force in the ruling class, closely tied to finance capital through the insurance industry. The Post describes it as "one of the mightiest political forces in Washington, spending nearly $1 billion on lobbying and contributing $162 million to candidates of both parties over the past two years." Obama's first nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, former senator Tom Daschle, withdrew his candidacy after revelations that he had not paid taxes on what were essentially lobbying payments from major health industry players. The industry gave Obama $19 million in his run for the presidency.

With his health care forum, Obama has set out to achieve the impossible: effect health care "reform" that in no way touches the wealth and power of the health care industry.

In fact there can be no resolution to the crisis in the American health care system that does not take as its starting point wresting away control of the industry from the insurers, pharmaceuticals and HMOs.

The subordination of health care to the profit system costs, quite literally, millions of lives the world over each year. Hundreds of millions more suffer with eminently treatable conditions. In the US, millions forego necessary medical treatment for lack of money.

This is an unnecessary tragedy. Medical science has produced enormous breakthroughs, many of these pioneered in the US. And there are millions of dedicated and talented doctors, nurses and health care professionals. Yet capitalism stands like a Goliath blocking the road to even the most modest improvements.

The hospitals, factories and technology of the health care industry must be taken out of the hands of big business and placed under the democratic control of its doctors, nurses and workers, who will determine how medicine's enormous potential can be best deployed to meet human needs, rather than the profit imperatives of the CEOs and investors.

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

US economy shrinks at 6.2 percent rate

Steven — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 08:25:19 GMT

US economy shrinks at 6.2 percent rate
By Andre Damon
28 February 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/feb2009/econ-f28.shtml

The US economy contracted at an annualized rate of 6.2 percent in the last quarter of 2008, according to figures released yesterday by the Commerce Department. The figure was significantly greater than the department's original estimate of a 3.8 percent decline. The sharpest quarterly decline since 1982, it marks a significant deepening of the recession.

Aside from government spending, every sector of the economy contracted last quarter. The decline was led by exports, retail sales and business expenditures, with falling consumer spending also contributing.

Business spending led the decline. Investment in equipment and software, for example, fell at an annualized rate of 28.8 percent. Overall business outlays fell at a rate of 21.1 percent in the fourth quarter.

Exports also contracted far more than previously predicted, reinforcing the global nature of the crisis. Exports dropped at an annualized rate of 23.6 percent, instead of the anticipated 19.7 percent. According to the Wall Street Journal, the decline in trade shaved one half of a percentage point off the GDP growth rate.

The new figures indicate that inventories contracted by $19.9 billion, instead of increasing by $6.2 billion as previous figures had estimated. Prices fell sharply in the fourth quarter, devaluing the inventories in warehouses. These inventory reductions indicate that companies are cutting production in response to falling demand, which will result in more layoffs and reduced spending.

Spending by the federal government increased significantly, rising 6.7 percent, as compared to an earlier estimate of a 5.8 percent increase. State and local governments, facing budget crises throughout the US, cut their spending by 1.4 percent.

Consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of GDP, fell by 4.3 percent. Previous figures had estimated a 3.5 percent reduction in consumer spending. This decrease came on top of a 3.8 percent decline in the previous quarter. Sales of durable goods—expensive consumer products such as cars—fell by 22.1 percent. This decline will further exacerbate the crisis by forcing producers to reduce production, close factories, and lay off more workers. Consumer confidence this month plunged to its lowest level—56.3—since the Conference Board began measuring it in 1967.

Jobless claims reached their highest level in 27 years last month, leading many economists to expect the unemployment rate to break 8 percent when January figures are released.

The contraction in the fourth quarter comes on top of the half-percentage point contraction in the third quarter. The US economy grew by 1.1 percent in 2008, compared to 2 percent in 2007. Using inflation-adjusted figures, the downturn is the third worst in US history, following 1957, 1980, and 1982, when it contracted by 6.4 percent on an annualized basis.

All leading indicators of economic activity—from housing prices, to investment activity and consumer sentiment—appear to be in free-fall. "We are looking at what is almost certain to be the longest, and quite likely to be the deepest, recession of the postwar era," John Ryding, an economist at RDQ Economics, wrote in a note to clients.

Judged by nominal GDP, this is the second-deepest contraction in postwar US history, and the deepest downturn in over 50 years. Prices contracted rapidly in the fourth quarter, falling between 3 and 5 percent, depending on the index used. The fourth quarter of last year saw the sharpest deflation in postwar US history, raising echoes of the 1930s, when consumer prices fell by one third.

The Obama administration's proposed budget, released Thursday, assumes the US economy will shrink by only 1.2 percent in 2009, and will return to 3.2 percent growth next year, thus estimating a yearly decline five times smaller than the current rate of contraction. Richard Moody, chief economist at Mission Residential, told the Financial Times: "The government is the only game in town, but government spending won't rise fast enough and by a large enough amount to offset contracting private sector spending."

Economists at Goldman Sachs predict the US economy will contract at a rate of 4.5 percent in the first quarter, while the National Association of Business Economists predicts a 5 percent contraction. There is little reason to believe the next quarter will fare any better.

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 1 reply

Colombia rocked by wiretapping revelations

Steven — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 15:07:46 GMT

Colombia rocked by wiretapping revelations
By Bill Van Auken
27 February 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/feb2009/colo-f27.shtml

The Colombian government of President Alvaro Uribe has been rocked by a political scandal involving the wholesale wiretapping of opposition politicians, top judges and journalists by a secret service agency under Uribe's direct command.

The revelations, emblematic of the police state-style methods of Uribe's right-wing government, came at a seemingly inconvenient time, on the eve of this week's trip to Washington by Colombia's defense and foreign affairs ministers for their first meeting with the Obama administration.

Nonetheless, the scandal appeared not to cause even a ripple, as top US officials embraced the Colombian emissaries and made it clear that the Obama administration's policy toward Colombia will differ little from the one pursued by the Bush White House.

Since 2000, the US has funneled some $6 billion in aid to Colombia—the bulk of it military—while counting Uribe as its closest ally in the hemisphere. Shortly before leaving office, George W. Bush awarded Uribe the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The weekly news magazine Semana published details of the illegal domestic spying operation over the weekend, leading to a raid on the offices of the Department of Administrative Security (DAS) intelligence agency by state prosecutors Sunday.

The revelations resulted in the resignations of the DAS deputy director of intelligence Sunday as well as two other deputy directors for operations and analysis on Tuesday.

Uribe has denied any responsibility for his intelligence agency's covert spying, attributing it to a "mafia gang" within the DAS and even claiming that he himself was one of its victims.

"I have never ordered at any time for anyone to monitor the private lives of people," declared Colombia's rightist president. "I am a loyal man, who plays clean with the opposition and isn't involved in any tricks."

Uribe's political record, however, belies the claims of loyalty and playing "clean with the opposition." Ample evidence has linked the president and his closest political supporters to some of the bloodiest crimes committed by the right-wing paramilitary death squads that have claimed tens of thousands of victims in the country's four decades of civil war.

The principal targets of the spying operation were perceived opponents of Uribe, suggesting that the intelligence agency was operating as a political enforcement arm of the presidential palace.

One of the main targets was Iván Velásquez, the principal judge in the so-called parapolítica case that has put 40 members and ex-members of the Colombian national legislature—almost all of them Uribe allies—behind bars for illicit ties with the country's main right-wing paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). At least 70 legislators are under investigation. The president's cousin and close political ally, former Senator Mario Uribe, was one of those arrested, charged with meeting paramilitary leaders to secure their support in the 2002 congressional elections.

According to the latest revelations, the DAS taped some 2,000 hours of Velásquez's telephone calls and had agents follow him as he met with jailed paramilitaries acting as witnesses and as he traveled to and from his home.

In an interview with the Spanish daily El País, Velásquez said that he feared for his life, citing the intense political "polarization" in the country.

Other victims of wiretapping include former Supreme Court president Francisco Javier Ricaurte, who had publicly clashed with Uribe, and opposition senators Piedad Córdoba and Gustavo Petro, as well as journalists from the Carocal and W. Radio networks, who had been critical of the government.

The wiretapping revelations are only the latest scandal to rock the intelligence agency. Just four months ago, the former chief of DAS, Maria del Pilar Hurtado, was forced out over a previous exposure of illegal spying on Senator Petro, who at the time was a key figure in exposing the links between leading pro-Uribe politicians and the paramilitary right.

Her predecessor, Jorge Noguera, is in prison on charges of supplying the paramilitary death squads with lists of union officials and left-wing activists to be assassinated. After these connections were exposed, Uribe sought to protect his secret police chief by naming him as Colombian consul general in Milan, Italy.

The latest illegal spying on Uribe's opponents has been carried out with surveillance equipment supplied and maintained by the US and British security agencies, supposedly for use in combating drug traffickers and anti-government guerrilla movements.

US Ambassador to Colombia William Brownfield openly acknowledged that the US had supplied the bugging equipment. "I don't have any problem in admitting this; I am proud of it, because, humbly, thanks to this collaboration the United States and Colombia are better countries," he told reporters. He added, however, that Colombian authorities should determine if the equipment had been put to illegal use. For its part, the British government remained silent on any connection to the domestic spying operation.

In Washington, the ongoing bugging scandal did not seem to cast any shadow on the meetings between the two Colombian ministers and top members of the Obama administration. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton welcomed Jaime Bermúdez, Colombia's minister of foreign relations, at the State Department, calling it "a real pleasure to have the representative of a country that has made so many strides and so much progress, and we have a lot to talk about because there is so much we have in common to work on."

In addition to Clinton, Bermúdez and Colombia's minister of defense Juan Manuel Santos held talks with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, National Security Adviser James Jones, CIA Director Leon Panetta and several members of Congress, including Democratic Senators John Kerry and Christopher Dodd and Republican Congressman Roy Blunt.

Among the issues discussed were the prospects for a Free Trade Agreement between the US and Colombia. Citing human rights concerns, the Democrats stymied the bill when the Bush administration tried to push it through the Congress last year. But now there are indications that, with Obama in office, they are prepared to reconsider.

In an interview with the Colombian magazine Semana, House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer declared, "The reduction in violence is clearly a positive step, and I continue to believe that a US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement would be beneficial to both nations." Hoyer suggested that the real reason for blocking the agreement last year was the Bush administration's failure to consult with the Democratic leadership in Congress. He added, "President Uribe has been a great partner and a real ally to the United States, and I look forward to continuing to work with him on the issues that are important to both our nations."

As the latest bugging scandal indicates, there are no grounds for claiming an improvement in democratic rights in Colombia. A recent report prepared by Colombian human rights groups indicates a dramatic increase in the number of disappearances. Between January 1, 2007, and October 21, 2008, there were some 7,763 disappearances in the country, 3,090 this year alone. Those most at risk are political activists, union leaders and militants, and leaders of community groups and indigenous communities.

Meanwhile, Colombia's National Labor School reported a 25 percent increase in the number of union leaders killed in 2008, jumping to 49, compared to 39 in 2007.

There has also been the recent exposure of the murder of innocent civilians under a macabre procedure known as "false positives," in which troops were encouraged to lure away young men in rural areas and murder them and then present them as guerrillas in order to get the army's kill numbers up.

The change in administrations in Washington has brought about no change in policy towards Colombia. The Democratic Congress is preparing to pass a foreign aid package that will hand the Uribe government $547.05 million, more than half of that for the armed forces and police. The amount is almost exactly the same as that granted by the Bush administration last year. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is also expected to provide an additional amount of direct aid to Colombian security forces equal to that of last year—$114.26 million—for a combined total of $666.31 million, nearly 63 percent of it for Colombia's repressive forces.

Uribe was among the first foreign leaders called by Obama in the days after his inauguration. The American president was apparently anxious to reassure him that, Democratic election-year rhetoric surrounding the Free Trade Agreement notwithstanding, Washington remained firmly behind his right-wing government.

According to White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, Obama told Uribe that the US would continue backing "Colombia's efforts to improve its security and prosperity."

As in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Obama administration's policy toward Colombia and the rest of Latin America signals not the change promised in his campaign slogans, but continuity based on the defense of the strategic interests of US imperialism in the region. As with the Bush administration before it, it is prepared to defend those interests by means of militarism and mass repression.

The author also recommends:

Colombia's President Uribe implicated in paramilitary death squad probe
[24 April 2008]
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/apr2008/urib-a24.shtml

Colombia's Uribe: US ally in "war on terror" named as drug trafficker
[5 August 2004]
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/aug2004/urib-a05.shtml

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Obama’s multi-trillion-dollar handout to the banks

Steven — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 14:21:16 GMT

Obama’s economic “stimulus” paves way for multi-trillion-dollar handout to the banks
9 February 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/feb2009/pers-f09.shtml

In his weekly radio address Saturday, President Barack Obama endorsed the compromise stimulus plan worked out by a small group of Republican senators, right-wing Democratic Senator Ben Nelson and “independent Democrat” Joseph Lieberman, a fervent supporter of the war in Iraq who backed Republican presidential candidate John McCain against Obama in the November elections.

The deal strips from the House of Representatives’ version of the stimulus plan some $40 billion in aid to states and localities and $19.5 billion in federal aid for school construction, reduces proposed health care subsidies for the unemployed, slashes new aid for the Head Start pre-school program, lowers a proposed increase in food stamps and scales back Obama’s middle-class tax cut, while adding a $70 billion tax break for upper-income families.

Obama’s endorsement of the “compromise” plan is a continuation of the basic trajectory that has emerged in the first weeks of his presidency. His administration’s response to the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression starts from the premise that nothing can be done that infringes on the wealth and prerogatives of the American financial aristocracy and proceeds to capitulate at every point to the demands of the Republican opposition and the most right-wing sections of his own party.

The revised Senate bill, which is expected to pass on Tuesday with the support of three Republicans, removes from Obama’s “stimulus and recovery” package anything that remotely suggests large-scale relief or public works, under conditions of soaring layoffs and home foreclosures and the bankruptcy of state and local governments across the country. Obama’s chief economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, appearing on the Fox television network’s Sunday news program, assured moderator Chris Wallace that any remaining relief measures for the unemployed or other increases in social spending would not become permanent programs, but would be rescinded once the crisis had abated.

In attacking Obama’s economic stimulus package from the right, Republicans have been able to exploit the fact that it is a hodgepodge of spending proposals and tax cuts—including tens of billions for big business—without any internal coherency or rational perspective for resolving the economic crisis. Obama’s purported plan to jump-start economic activity while simultaneously transforming the United States into a “21st century economy” does neither. It testifies to the absence of any serious or comprehensive response to the mounting economic and social crisis.

One of its major purposes is to provide political cover for what is considered within the ruling elite to be a far more important component of the administration’s economic program—a vast expansion of the taxpayer bailout of Wall Street. The Washington Post said as much in its lead editorial on Sunday, entitled “Saving the Banks: The most important steps of the administration’s recovery plan are still to come.”

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who, as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, played a key role in engineering the first stage of the $700 billion bailout of the banks, was expected to unveil the administration’s plan to use hundreds of billions in additional public funds to cover banking losses on Monday. However, Summers let it be known that Geithner would delay his announcement until Tuesday.

One reason for the delay is to soften public opposition to the bank bailout by waiting until the Senate has approved the stimulus plan, so that the massive transfer of wealth to the financial elite can be presented as part of a broader recovery plan to rescue “Main Street.” In the meantime, Obama will hold televised town hall meetings on Monday and Tuesday in cities devastated by layoffs and home foreclosures in order to engage in a bit of campaign-style demagogy.

From numerous reports in the press based on leaks from the Obama administration, the main outlines of the new bank bailout are clear. The Treasury and the Federal Reserve will commit hundreds of billions of dollars to make fresh cash injections into the banks, guarantee the banks’ worthless assets and subsidize private investors who agree to buy some of the “toxic” asset-backed securities weighing down the banks’ balance sheets, while insuring the investors against potential losses.

There will be no serious restrictions on executive pay or on how the banks use the government money, such as requirements that they use it to increase their lending to other businesses and consumers. Moreover, the government will devise the plan so as to avoid taking any significant equity stake in the banks in return for the windfalls they receive, thus reinforcing the private control over the financial system by the very executives and investors who brought the banking system to the point of collapse through speculation in the pursuit of super profits and personal enrichment. The plan will avoid the government having to directly purchase the banks’ worthless assets in order to evade the political problem of paying prices wildly out of line with the actual market value of the securities.

The net result will be to protect the investments of major shareholders and ultimately make them, the top executives and big speculators immeasurably richer at the end of the day.

There is to be no investigation or public accounting of the fraudulent and criminal practices that led to the financial meltdown, or the role of government officials in utilizing the crisis to plunder the public treasury in order to further enrich the financial elite. This is despite the report issued Friday by the congressional panel set up to oversee the first $700 billion bailout which revealed that Bush administration officials overpaid for banks’ “troubled assets” by some $78 billion.

According to the New York Times editorial on Sunday, the new bank bailout “will ultimately put hundreds of billions of tax dollars, if not trillions, on the line.” Meanwhile, the cuts in the Senate stimulus bill to already inadequate federal aid to the states and localities contained in the House version will result in hundreds of thousands of layoffs of teachers and public employees by state governments reeling from the collapse in tax revenues and facing bankruptcy. It means the closure of parks, libraries, hospitals and the decimation of public transportation and other services.

State governments are facing a collective budget shortfall of $47.4 billion this fiscal year and the gap will rise, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, to $350 billion by 2011. Already, the biggest state in the country, California, has held up welfare checks and is closing public offices two days every month as a result of rolling furloughs of state workers. The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday that the only public hospital in the Las Vegas area has closed its outpatient oncology services center because of state Medicaid cuts, affecting hundreds of cancer patients. The Democratic governor of the state of Washington has proposed pay freezes and layoffs for teachers and state employees, a $350 million cut in funding for higher education, closures of 13 state parks and a 42 percent reduction in the state’s health insurance program for the working poor.

American society is being bankrupted as the resources of the country are placed at the disposal of the richest of the rich.

Obama’s economic program underscores the fact that no progressive or rational economic plan to solve the crisis can be developed outside of a massive, independent and revolutionary movement of the working class to break the power and political domination of the financial aristocracy.

The only answer is a socialist program, which includes the removal of the major banks and financial institutions from private ownership and their transformation into public utilities under the democratic control of the working population. The vast financial resources that the banks control must be used to provide decent education, housing, health care, retirements and well-paying jobs for all.

The prerequisite for the nationalization of the banks under the control of the working class and their subordination to the needs of society is a break with the two parties of big business and the development of an independent political movement of the working class. It is a question of state power. No capitalist government can or will carry out this task. What is required is a political and revolutionary struggle to establish a workers’ government.

Barry Grey

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Obama names third Republican to cabinet

Steven — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:10:36 GMT

Obama names third Republican to cabinet
A further bow to the right
By Barry Grey
4 February 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/feb2009/obam-f04.shtml

Barack Obama deepened his extraordinary efforts at bipartisan collaboration with the Republican Party on Tuesday with the announcement of New Hampshire Republican Senator Judd Gregg as his pick for commerce secretary.

Judd’s confirmation by the Senate, which is virtually assured, will bring to three the number of Republicans in Obama’s cabinet, including the unprecedented retention of Bush’s defense secretary, Robert Gates. The other Republican cabinet member is former congressman Ray LaHood, picked to head the Department of Transportation.

Besides naming Republicans to cabinet posts, Obama has elevated three recently retired four-star military officers to top government positions, an unparalleled representation of the military brass in a Democratic administration. He has appointed Gen. James Jones, retired Marine commandant, as his national security adviser; Gen. Eric Shinseki, retired Army chief of staff, as secretary for veterans affairs; and retired Admiral Dennis Blair as director of national intelligence.

The extent of Obama’s bowing before the Republican right is highlighted by his agreement, as demanded by Gregg, to have New Hampshire’s Democratic governor appoint a Republican to assume the vacated Senate seat. By so doing, Obama—with the support of the Democratic leadership in Congress—is foregoing the chance to obtain the 60 Democratic seats in the Senate required to defeat Republican efforts to block legislation by means of filibusters. The Democrats already control 58 seats and Democrat Al Franken is expected to survive legal challenges to his election victory in Minnesota, bringing the Democratic majority to 59.

As the New York Times reported Tuesday: “Even when the possibility of putting a Democrat in Mr. Gregg’s Senate seat dimmed, Mr. Obama pressed ahead, telling his advisers that it was more important to build a bipartisan cabinet than increase his Senate majority.”

In fact, Obama and the Democratic congressional leadership are more than happy to replace Gregg with another Republican. In the run-up to the November election, there were numerous press reports citing Democratic fears that a 60-seat majority in the upper chamber would unduly arouse popular expectations—i.e., that it would remove a convenient excuse for continuing in all essentials the reactionary foreign and domestic policies of the Bush administration.

At his press conference to announce Gregg’s nomination, Obama made a point of stressing the right-wing credentials of his choice to head the Commerce Department. He said Gregg is “famous or infamous, depending on your perspective, on Capitol Hill for his strict fiscal discipline.” Obama indicated that Gregg’s reputation was well suited to his own plans to slash social programs and impose austerity measures on the American people, saying that Gregg “shares my deep-seated commitment to guaranteeing that our children inherit a future they can afford.”

Notwithstanding his fiscal conservative credentials, when it comes to protecting the interests of Wall Street, Gregg is an enthusiastic supporter of massive government bailouts. As the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, he helped draw up the Wall Street rescue plan last year and was one of a handful of Republicans who voted last month to release the second half of the $700 billion package.

In announcing the selection of Gregg, Obama added to his incessant appeals for bipartisan collaboration, saying it was necessary to “put aside stale ideology and petty partisanship and embrace what works.”

This kowtowing before the Republican right goes hand in hand with an extraordinary and unseemly deference to the military. Reporting on Obama’s first meeting with the joint chiefs of staff, held last Thursday, the New York Times noted that the military chiefs “left ‘comforted’ about Obama’s willingness to work with them.”

The article continued: “Pentagon officials say they are relieved that Obama is proceeding slowly on two campaign promises: to pull all combat troops out of Iraq within 16 months and to allow gay men and women to serve openly in the military.”

The Times noted the pains Obama has taken to pass muster with the brass, including carefully practicing his first public salute, executed on inauguration day, laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns and visiting wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the run-up to the inauguration, and speaking by video feed to US troops in Afghanistan at the Commander-in-Chief Ball on the evening of the inauguration.

None of this prevented Gen. Raymond Odierno, the US commander in Iraq, from holding a press conference last week in which he dismissed Obama’s campaign pledge to withdraw one brigade a month and all US combat troops within 16 months—leaving behind tens of thousands of “non-combat” forces—and announced that the speed and level of troop withdrawals would be determined by the military according to its assessment of the security situation on the ground in Iraq.

What accounts for Obama’s extraordinary deference to the Republican right and the military?

Ever since his election, and even more so since his inauguration, Obama’s efforts have focused on assuaging the most right-wing sections of the ruling elite and the military and assuring them that they have nothing to fear from his administration. Despite his decisive election victory and his high opinion poll numbers—attributable to popular hatred for the Republicans, opposition to war and Bush’s right-wing social policies, and a general swing to the left among broad layers of the population—Obama has acted as one who believes his administration cannot survive without substantial Republican support and solid backing from the financial elite and the military brass.

The new Democratic president has managed to refurbish the image of the Republican Party following its electoral rout in November, presenting it as a powerful and legitimate force, not the despised bastion of political reaction that was repudiated by the American electorate. Indeed, Obama has given the Republicans virtual veto power over his administration’s policies.

One reason is that Obama knows that no matter how discredited and unpopular among the broad masses of the people, the Republican Party represents powerful sections of the ruling elite, including the bulk of the military officer corps.

Nevertheless, the contrast between the behavior of the Democrats and Republicans is striking. In power, the Republicans function ruthlessly as the ruling party. Out of power, they function no less ruthlessly as the opposition.

With the Democrats, it is the exact opposite. When they do not manage to throw an election and instead find themselves in power, they temporize and conciliate, cowering before the Republicans and at every point looking anxiously over their shoulders lest they offend the military brass. Out of power, they serve as little more than a rubber stamp for the Republicans.

This has been the pattern at least since the Clinton administration, when the Democrats collapsed in the face of the Kenneth Starr witch hunt of Clinton and followed that up with an abject acceptance of Bush’s theft of the 2000 election. That, in turn, set the stage for Democratic collaboration in all of the crimes carried out in the name of the “war on terror,” which the Democrats embraced and continue to promote.

It is worth noting that Gregg, who will now sit in the same cabinet as Hillary Clinton, voted in the 1999 Senate impeachment trial of her husband to convict and remove him from office.

The different behavior of the two parties, both of which are instruments of the same corporate ruling elite, is bound up with their somewhat different functions in defending American capitalism. The Republicans openly and directly champion the interests of the most reactionary sections of the corporate establishment. The Democrats, by virtue of their specific historical and political role as a lightning rod for popular discontent, tasked with preempting any independent political movement of the working class, are obliged to posture as a party of the “common man” and the “middle class.” The need to maintain this fiction while upholding the interests of the ruling class imparts to their actions their distinctively half-hearted and two-faced character.

As the Democratic Party has abandoned any program of social reform and lurched to the right, in parallel with the decline in the global economic position of American capitalism, the disparity between its populist pretence and its policy and practice has grown increasingly naked. Moreover, its leading personnel have participated in the self-enrichment of the top layers of American society over the past three decades, and their political outlook has accordingly shifted further to the right.

In social and class terms, the Democratic Party and the Obama administration do not represent the millions of working people who voted them into office, but rather sections of the financial elite and the most privileged upper-middle-class layers. Whatever their differences with Bush and the Republicans, these layers want no part of wealth redistribution from the top to the bottom, and they fear an upsurge from below far more than the predations of the Republican right.

Obama himself—the product of the Chicago Democratic Party machine, promoted by multi-millionaire sponsors and the recipient of nearly a billion dollars in campaign cash, the bulk of it from corporate interests—embodies these privileged and politically reactionary social layers.

As the class essence of the Obama administration and its policies emerge ever more clearly in the coming weeks and months, working people and youth, driven by the economic crisis, will enter into struggle against the phony prophet of “change we can believe in.” It is critical that these struggles be consciously prepared through the building of the Socialist Equality Party and the advancement of a socialist program based on the political independence of the working class from both parties of American capitalism.

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Obama orders continue “extraordinary renditions,” secret CIA prisons

Steven — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:53:53 GMT

Obama executive orders continue “extraordinary renditions,” secret CIA prisons
By Tom Eley
3 February 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/feb2009/rend-f03.shtml

Analysis of the executive orders US President Barack Obama signed on January 22 shows that the Untied States will continue to be heavily involved in illegal practices including kidnapping, secret detention and torture. The orders ostensibly ended torture and a network of secret Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) prison camps.

The Los Angeles Times published a report on the executive orders, however, showing that they allow the continued use of "extraordinary rendition" by the CIA, whereby the US secretly abducts individuals it claims are terrorists, sending them to nations that practice torture. (See "Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool.")

Obama is not only contemplating preserving rendition; he foresees using it more than the Bush administration. The Los Angeles Times cites unnamed US intelligence officials who say, "The rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism—aside from Predator missile strikes—for taking suspected terrorists off the street."

The newspaper quoted an anonymous official from the Obama administration defending extraordinary rendition. "Obviously you need to preserve some tools—you still have to go after the bad guys," the official said. "The legal advisors working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice."

The revelations underscore the real content of the three executive orders issued in his first days in office, which were much ballyhooed by the press as a repudiation of the foreign policy of the Bush administration. These orders in fact leave untouched both the framework and the criminal practices justified by the "the war on terrorism."

Extraordinary rendition is among the most infamous practices of US imperialism. Because the US insists that it is not accountable to release the names of those who have been abducted, it is difficult to know how many cases of rendition have taken place. The number is likely in the thousands. An investigation carried out by the European Parliament determined that the CIA operated 1,245 flights through European airspace or made stops at European airports between 2001 and 2005.

Rendition is patently illegal under international and US law, as well as the laws of the nations from which the abducted have been seized. Victims of extraordinary renditions have no means of challenging their seizure, or even knowing the charges or evidence against them. There have been numerous documented cases of mistaken identity. Moreover, it is known that the abductees have been sent to nations where they have been tortured, such as Afghanistan, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Morocco.

In one case, a German citizen, Khaled Masri, was seized in Macedonia in 2003 and handed over to the CIA. Masri described his ordeal in 2007: "I was handed over to the American Central Intelligence Agency and was stripped, severely beaten, shackled, dressed in a diaper, injected with drugs, chained to the floor of a plane and flown to Afghanistan, where I was imprisoned in a foul dungeon for more than four months." Masri's account of his abduction corresponds to how others who have managed to make their way out of the CIA-run gulag have described the process.

In 2002, a Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, was arrested at New York's JFK Airport. According to Arar's web site (www.maherarar.ca), "Twelve days later, he was chained, shackled and flown to Syria, where he was held in a tiny ‘grave-like' cell for ten months and ten days before he was moved to a better cell in a different prison. In Syria, he was beaten, tortured and forced to make a false confession." A Canadian Commission of Inquiry ultimately determined that Arar had been falsely arrested.

In another infamous case, an Egyptian cleric residing in Italy, Abu Omar, was abducted and sent to his native land where he said he was tortured. The CIA agents who carried out the operation are under criminal indictment in Italy, but have fled the country to avoid prosecution.

Meanwhile, Obama's order ostensibly shutting down the CIA's network of secret prisons allows an exception for "facilities used only to hold people in short-term, transitory basis." What constitutes "short-term" is not defined.

This provision will allow the CIA's secret prison system to function more or less as it did in the Bush administration. While under the Bush administration prisoners could be held indefinitely in CIA-run black holes, in many cases the CIA prisons—many of which were located in eastern Europe—acted as way stations for prisoners who were to be shipped off to regimes where the abductees were subjected to torture.

Obama has not challenged the Bush administration's pseudo-legal claim that the president can, without judicial review, claim any individual—US citizen or not—an "enemy combatant," subject to secret arrest and indefinite detention. Nor has Obama undone the military tribunal system of kangaroo-court justice for those caught up in the US dragnet.

In relationship to the use of torture by the US military and the CIA, Obama left himself ample room for maneuver. While one order claimed to end forms of interrogation not sanctioned by the Army Field Manual, Obama has proposed the creation of a task force that would study ways of changing the Manual to allow for new forms of interrogation.

Even Obama's celebrated order ending of the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay changes nothing. The current Guatánamo inmates, as well as future "detainees," may be subject to extraordinary rendition based on executive fiat.

Moreover, Obama has made assurances that his administration will not investigate or prosecute those officials—including former Bush administration officials such as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales—who were responsible for the policies of torture and illegal detention.

The Obama administration is asking a San Francisco federal judge to throw out a case against former Justice Department official John Yoo, who penned the infamous torture memos for the Bush administration. The case has been brought by Jose Padilla, the US citizen who was held in a US naval brig and tortured for several years. The Justice Department is also seeking the dismissal of another Padilla-related case against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and former Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Insofar as the "war on terrorism" continues—and Obama has promised that it will—all the illegal practices bound up with it will continue as well. The war on terrorism is in fact the euphemism given to Washington's intensification of military violence abroad and attacks on democratic rights within the US, carried out in defense of the interests of American capitalism.

Obama's preservation of the criminal elements of the war on terrorism, albeit with somewhat different packaging, should come as no surprise. Torture, extraordinary rendition, military tribunals, secret prisons—these are in fact the consensus policies of the US ruling elite, defended by the Democratic Party as well as the Republicans. All these measures were communicated to, and approved by, leading Democrats in Congress during the Bush administration. The Democrats did nothing to reverse these policies after their sweeping victory in the congressional elections of 2006, and they will do no more now.

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

States fail in latest prairie dog report card

Steven — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 05:28:26 GMT

States fail in latest prairie dog report card

By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN, Associated Press Writer

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090201/ap_on_re_us/prairie_dogs

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – While groundhogs will get all the attention Monday, a report being issued by an environmental group says their cousins, the prairie dogs, are in dire straits across the West.

WildEarth Guardians says in its report to be released Monday that North America's five species of prairie dogs have lost more than 90 percent of their historical range because of habitat loss, shooting and poisoning.

It grades three federal land management agencies and a dozen states on their actions over the past year to protect prairie dogs and their habitat.

Not one received an A.

Most grades even dropped from the previous year, but Arizona improved to a B — the highest grade of all the states in prairie dog country. That state reintroduced 74 black-tailed prairie dogs to a small southeast parcel in October.

New Mexico, home to the Gunnison's prairie dog and black-tailed prairie dog, earned a D — the same as last year — because, the group said, state wildlife officials weren't actively conserving prairie dogs.

"It's hard to see the prairie dogs that are missing when you drive across the West because our modern society has no perception about what it was like before we started poisoning prairie dogs," said Lauren McCain, WildEarth Guardians' desert and grassland projects director.

McCain said prairie dogs are an important part of a grassland ecosystem. They are food for hawks, golden eagles, foxes and endangered black-footed ferrets, and their burrows offer shelter for a variety of other species.

McCain said all the animals need federal endangered species protections.

Of the five species, the Utah prairie dog is classified as threatened and the Mexican prairie dog as endangered. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has issued preliminary findings that the black- and white-tailed prairie dogs may warrant federal protection, and the Gunnison's prairie dog is a candidate for protection in part of its range.

Until Arizona's reintroduction, the animals had not been seen in that state for nearly 50 years.

"We're really pleased with the success to the point where we're getting the process ready to start another reintroduction," said James Driscoll, an Arizona Game and Fish Department biologist.

Many people in the West, especially ranchers, consider prairie dogs varmints that destroy grass and cause erosion.

McCain said misperception has resulted in wasteful government programs. She said various agencies have financed and encouraged the poisoning of prairie dogs for years while other agencies pump millions of dollars into recovery efforts aimed at other species that rely on the prairie dog.

"We're hoping that the report card will highlight some of the these inconsistencies in government management of wildlife," McCain said. "These are species that we really do need to protect instead of wasting taxpayer dollars, which is a big concern for a lot of people."

Of the federal agencies, the Bureau of Land Management received the lowest grade: D-minus, the same as last year. The report accuses the agency of exempting energy development companies from complying with rules that would protect prairie dog colonies and habitat.

Bill Merhege, deputy state BLM director for lands and resources in New Mexico, said the agency takes numerous steps, such as moving well pads and roads to avoid prairie dog colonies and prohibiting prairie dog control on land it manages.

"We do what we can on public lands," Merhege said. "Unfortunately, with interspersed landownership, what you do on one section doesn't necessarily follow through on another."

The group graded the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at C, up from D the previous year, while the U.S. Forest Service stayed at D.

The group gave an F grade to Kansas, Nebraska and North Dakota. Colorado, Montana, South Dakota and Utah got D grades, and Wyoming earned a D-plus.

WildEarth Guardians Prairie dog project
http://www.wildearthguardians.org/Wildlife/ProtectingEndangeredSpecies/PrairieDogEcosystemProject/tabid/122/Default.aspx

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

France: Ruling circles shaken by January 29 protests

Steven — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 18:09:50 GMT

France: Ruling circles shaken by the extent of January 29 protests
By Antoine Lerougetel
31 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/fran-j31.shtml

Ruling circles in France have reacted with considerable nervousness to the massive response to Thursday’s day of action. At least 2.5 million workers and youth took to the streets in protest against soaring unemployment figures and austerity policies that attack jobs, working conditions and the provision of public services.

Nearly 2 million public service workers struck, as well as large numbers of railway, electricity and postal workers. Participation of a significant number of private sector workers could bring the total of strikers up to over 3 million. The conservative Le Figaro wrote that the numbers “make one dizzy.”

Occupations and blockades are ongoing in high schools and universities. Workers on the demonstrations told the World Socialist Web Site that there were plans in their sectors to continue strike action despite the one-day limit imposed by the eight trade unions that organised the January 29 protests. The postal sorting office at Nanterre is being occupied.

Despite public affirmations that he will stay on course with his regressive social and economic policies, privately President Nicolas Sarkozy is said to be nervous of exacerbating the situation and encouraging the continuation and spread of the strike movement. According to the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné, he told aides, “The ground upon which we walk is not so firm. The time for forcing (reforms) through is over. This is no time to wave a red flag at the unions.”

Le Monde January 30 makes clear that the president is relying on the trade unions to help control the situation. Sarkozy issued a communiqué on Thursday evening saying that he would meet in February with the “social partners”—the employers and trade unions—“so as to agree on the reforms to be carried out in 2009 and the methods to achieve them.”

A feature of the protest was the ostentatious presence of Socialist Party (PS) leaders, including party leader Martine Aubry, “in support” of the protests. This was the first such appearance since the unpopularity of the PS, caused by the pro-capitalist policies of the Plural Left government of Lionel Jospin (1997–2002), of which Aubry was a leading member. The SP is clearly positioning itself to be available to form a crisis government in order to head off a mass movement of the working class and youth that might threaten bourgeois rule.

World Socialist Web Site correspondents reported from various French cities and towns:

Paris

Pierre Mabut in Paris reported that demonstrators were mainly from the public sector—postal workers, hospital workers, teachers, local government—and represented a grass roots mobilization. The Socialist Party (PS) was very much in view, as well as the Left Party led by Senator Jean-Luc Mélenchon, formed in December in a split with the SP.

Teachers from a training institute carried a banner reading, “Save teacher training—No to the smashing of public education.”

Parisian hospital workers, members of the FO (Force Ouvrière-Workers Power) trade union, had a banner reading, “General strike by joint unions—No grouping of hospitals—Withdraw the Bachelot [hospital reform] laws.”

The WSWS interviewed several demonstrators:

Iris, a high school student in her final year, was one of a delegation of 50 from Louise Michèle Lycée in Champigny-sur-Marne. She said, “I’m here to protest against the repression of youth; also against the government policy of beating down undocumented immigrants, the destruction of social gains and lack of resources for education.

“Sarkozy’s €360 million bailout of the banks is an illustration of his policy of sacrificing the public sector to the advantage of the private sector. There is not any real opposition to Sarkozy. The unions are under the government’s thumb. They only want a compromise. But we need a real reform of the system. The way to oppose the government is to make way for the youth and to stop the parties and unions from hanging on to power.”

Jack, a student at Paris IV university, said, “I think the €360 million bank bailout is a real stupidity, a rotten compromise. The government does not have a long-term solution to deal with the economic crisis. One-day actions are not enough. We need more unity between public services and the public. Separate actions by unions are just so much demagogy, like the government. People disagree about what to do, but they are against the system and not for any political party.”

Yann, a young postal worker in Nanterre near Paris, said, “I’m here today because we have had 30 years of government destruction of public services.

“Where I work, productivity has increased 30 percent. Forty thousand jobs have been eliminated out of the 300,000 in the post over four years. Sarkozy’s bank rescue, plus the €26 billion economic stimulus, is going to company profits. It’s part of an offensive of capital against workers. They are using Sarkozy’s reforms to push through their own policies. The unions have been integrated into the system since World War II. They are directly subsidized by the state. We need a general strike, but workers must get involved because the unions won’t call it. It must come from the rank and file. There is no national solution to the crisis.”

Frédéric, a postal worker from Paris, said, “We need a general strike over several days. The way to fight Sarkozy is to reconstruct all the left parties. I always vote blank because we have no political representation.

“A lot of workers are obliged to come to Paris to get work as there is nothing in surrounding towns. Many come from far away to work at the post. It’s now being restructured in preparation for privatization.”

Nancy

Reporting from Nancy, Olivier Laurent said this was a big demonstration—25,000 according to the police. One handmade placard read, “Sarkozy is the havoc [chienlit]”—a term used by Charles de Gaulle about the 1968 general strike”— “UMP = Union for the Misery of the People.”

Workers from different public services under attack, such as education and the judicial system, gave out leaflets in defence of their working conditions.

Marseille
Anthony Torres reported that the police counted 20,000 demonstrators, while the unions estimated 300,000.

Valentin, a probationary schoolteacher in Marseille, said, “I’m concerned about the working conditions in public service and purchasing power. It’s shameful handing over that money to the banks and the bosses.

“The unions keep the status quo, they defend their own interests. The one-day strikes against the pension reforms are useless.”

Amiens

Antoine Lerougetel reported that 10,000 people demonstrated here, largely from the public sector. There were strong contingents—of primary and secondary teachers and hospital and social workers—opposing regulations CC 66, which severely reduces wage increment ceilings and working conditions. There was a large delegation of students from Amiens University, many of whom are occupying faculty buildings, as well as high school students who have been in action against cuts in teaching staff and education provision.

A group of science faculty students spoke of a revolt against a reform that creates a two-tier system of elite and poor universities.

Baptiste said he came from a family of miners and he did not want to see rights won over generations destroyed. “The unions are in the bosses’ pockets and they limit their action,” he said.

He thought that there needed to be a fundamental change, and was opposed to the “mega-corporations.”

Yann, 28, has worked for a social-medical NGO for four years. He said that the CC 66 reform meant a loss of €140,000 over a lifetime of work. His work with the most fragile people in society was getting more and more difficult with the loss of rights and jobs. He feared that the consequences of the economic crisis could be similar to that of 1929, and said, “Now we’re in the fight, there’s still time to turn things round.”

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Gloom dominates World Economic Forum in Davos

Steven — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:46:39 GMT

Gloom, perplexity, divisions dominate World Economic Forum in Davos
31 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/pers-j31.shtml

Some 2,500 representatives of the world's business and political elite, including 41 heads of government and scores of cabinet ministers, are attending the annual World Economic Forum, which opened Wednesday in the Swiss alpine resort of Davos. This year's forum, taking place in the midst of a global financial meltdown and economic slump that have shattered the complacent verities about the superiority of the "free enterprise system," presents a picture of deep crisis and disarray among the leaders of world capitalism.

The mood that prevails, according to all accounts, is one of gloom and foreboding. While it is generally acknowledged by the participants that they confront the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression, the speeches and discussions have underscored the lack of any agreement on the basic causes of the crisis or any unified conception as to how it should be addressed.

The Washington Post quoted media baron Rupert Murdoch as saying the participants were "depressed and traumatized," adding that "$50 trillion of personal wealth" had vanished since the crisis worsened last September with the collapse of the US investment bank Lehman Brothers.

The Post went on to quote the billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros, who said, "The size of the problem confronting us today is larger than in the 1930s."

The World Economic Forum was first launched by its founder and still-president, the Swiss economist and businessman, Klaus Schwab, in 1971 in the midst of a mounting financial crisis that led in August of that year to the collapse of the Bretton Woods System, the international monetary framework, based on US dollar-gold convertibility, that had undergirded the post-war economic expansion. In the ensuing years, the forum developed into a semi-official gathering of business chiefs and government officials that discussed and debated both international economic and political issues.

In the more recent period, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has become a venue to affirm the supposed triumph of the "free enterprise system," with American investment bankers holding court, surrounded by a small army of economists and media, complemented by film stars and other celebrities.

One year ago, after the initial collapse of the US housing market and eruption of the credit crisis, concern at the forum over these worrisome developments, which had been almost universally unanticipated, was tempered by assurances from American bankers and politicians that the disorder would be quickly resolved and that, in the worst case scenario, a US recession would be mild and brief. Most of the discussion centered on the widely held notion that the problems in US financial markets would not spread to Europe or Asia, due to the phenomenon of "decoupling."

Robert Greenhill, the forum's chief business officer, set the tone for this year's forum by declaring, "The meeting was founded at a time of division and uncertainty in the 1970s and this year is a return to its roots. People are coming to compare notes on what they need to do to emerge from a serious crisis."

Just how serious and universal a crisis was underscored on the opening day of the forum by the International Monetary Fund's downwardly revised estimate of world economic growth for 2009 of a mere 0.5 percent, including major contractions in the US, Britain, France, Germany and Japan. That followed the previous week's IMF forecast that world trade volumes would shrink 2.8 percent in 2009. Also on Wednesday, the International Labour Organization warned that some 51 million jobs could be lost worldwide this year.

The two dominant and interrelated features of this year's forum are a general sense of shock and near-panic over the inexorable and rapid manner in which the crisis has overtaken the efforts of central banks and governments to shore up the banks and revive economic activity—amounting to trillions of dollars in loans, guarantees and cash infusions—and the devastating loss of American prestige and credibility.

The Financial Times on Wednesday wrote: "Most notably, faith that a mix of globalization, financial innovation and free-market competition would build a better financial system has withered away, as bank losses have piled up. Thus the critical question that now hangs over this year's meeting at Davos is: ‘What, if anything, can replace this creed?' "

Along similar lines, the New York Times on Friday quoted James Rosenfeld, a co-founder or Cambridge Energy Research Associates, as saying, "We've all been building this big, integrated financial system. We didn't consider what would happen when it disintegrated."

As for the position of the United States, the opening day of the forum was given over to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, both of whom lambasted the US, without directly naming the target of their attacks, for precipitating the world crisis, and called for measures to lessen US dominance on world financial markets.

Wen urged an expansion of regulatory "coverage of the international financial system, with particular emphasis on strengthening the supervision on major reserve currencies." He said the financial crisis was "attributable to inappropriate macroeconomic policies of some economies and their unsustainable model of development characterized by prolonged low savings and high consumption, excessive expansion of financial institutions in blind pursuit of profit." He also denounced "the failure of financial supervision."

Putin was, if anything, more blunt. He attacked the concept of a "unipolar world," called for an end to the privileged position of the US dollar as the world's major reserve currency, and noted that "just a year ago, American delegates speaking from this rostrum emphasized the US economy's fundamental stability and its cloudless prospects." He continued, "Today, investment banks, the pride of Wall Street, have virtually ceased to exist. In just 12 months, they have posted losses exceeding the profits they made in the last 25 years."

Alan Blinder, the Princeton economist and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, responded, "The sad thing is that we might have scoffed at this a while ago. But we really dragged the world down."

The Obama administration, for its part, signaled its disinterest in any serious international coordination or financial regulation by failing to send a single high-ranking official to the forum. While an array of government leaders from around the world were in attendance, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, none of the top US delegates who had been advertised—chief economic adviser Lawrence Summers, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, National Security Adviser General James Jones and chief of the US Central Command General David Petraeus—showed up.

The virtual official boycott by the United States underscores the bitter tensions and divisions simmering beneath the diplomatic decorum of the forum. While general statements are being issued at Davos abjuring protectionism, and warnings are being made about the disastrous implications for the world economy of such policies, the reality is a growth of economic nationalism. Less than a week before the opening of the forum, US Treasury Secretary Geithner issued a provocative threat of possible trade sanctions against China, accusing the Chinese of "manipulating" their currency to obtain a trade advantage over the US.

Steven Roach of Morgan Stanley Asia spoke at Davos of a "rising tide of economic nationalism." And delegates from so-called developing countries complained that the massive US deficits resulting from Obama's stimulus program and bank bailouts would suck up the bulk of available private credit on world markets.

"Large economies are accessing international capital markets for themselves," said Trevor Manuel, the finance minister of South Africa. Ernesto Zedillo, the former Mexican president who was in power during that country's financial meltdown in 1994, said, "The US needs to show some proof they have a plan to get out of the fiscal problem. We, as developing countries, need to know we won't be crowded out of the capital markets, which is already happening."

The New York Times cited Lord Adair Turner, the chairman of Britain's Financial Services Authority, as voicing similar concerns, speaking of "the risk of a new mercantilism" centered on credit availability rather than trade.

These tensions erupted into the open on Thursday, when Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stormed off the stage after an angry exchange with the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, during a panel discussion on the Gaza crisis. Erdogan, whose government maintains close political and military ties with Israel, told Peres, "When it comes to killing, you know well how to kill."

The Davos forum underscores the impossibility of developing a rational and coordinated international policy to resolve the economic crisis within the capitalist framework of private ownership of the means of production and finance and the division of the world between rival nation states. Putin, speaking as a defender of capitalism, referred to the financial parasitism that fueled the massive fortunes of the financial aristocracy over the past three decades as a "pyramid of expectations [that] would have collapsed sooner or later," and indicated who is to pay the price for its collapse: "This amounted to unearned wealth, a loan that will have to be repaid by future generations."

Within the existing economic and political system, the only future is one of increasing poverty and repression and the growth of national antagonisms leading inevitably, as in the last great depression, to the horrors of global war.

The specter haunting Davos is the emergence of an independent movement of the working class fighting to put an end to capitalism and build a socialist society based on the satisfaction of human needs, not private profit. The disintegration of the world economy poses with the greatest urgency the development of a unified struggle by the working class on the basis of an international socialist program.

Barry Grey

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

The rising tide of economic nationalism

Steven — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 15:09:57 GMT

The rising tide of economic nationalism
30 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/pers-j30.shtml

As the global economic crisis continues to deepen, the unmistakable stench of economic nationalism is on the rise around the world. Confronted with collapsing industries and growing anger over job losses, governments are reaching for protectionist measures despite the disastrous consequences of such beggar-thy-neighbour policies in the 1930s.

At the G-20 summit in mid-November, the leaders of the world’s largest economies pledged not to raise barriers to trade and investment—even those allowed under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules—for a year. The joint communiqué also promised to restart the failed Doha round of trade talks as a means of boosting world trade.

However, as the Financial Times noted this week: “The solemn pledge intended to bind its signatories for a year lasted less than 36 hours before Russia said it would go ahead with planned increases in car tariffs. Moscow’s violation of the pledge was followed by several other G-20 countries—India, Brazil, Indonesia and Argentina—all pushing for increased protection.” Since then protectionist measures under various guises have been enacted in country after country, including the US and the European Union.

As for the Doha round, WTO director general Pascal Lamy last month called off a planned ministerial meeting aimed at kick-starting negotiations, declaring that there was “an unacceptably high risk of failure which could damage not only the round but also the WTO system”. This week, Lamy tried to sound a more optimistic note. In an interview on British television, he described the completion of the round as “low-hanging fruit” and emphasised that 80 percent of the package had been finished. But there is no sign of any end to the bitter wrangling over the “remaining 20 percent” that led to the collapse of talks last year.

The new Obama administration spurred on the rising tide of protectionism with the comments last week of Treasury Secretary nominee Tim Geithner accusing China of manipulating its currency to boost exports. Designating Beijing as a “currency manipulator” would allow the White House to invoke a broad range of punitive tariffs and other economic penalties against China under US trade legislation.

The Democrats in the House of Representatives went one step further by including a “Buy American” provision in Obama’s $825 billion stimulus package approved on Wednesday. The clause, which requires infrastructure projects funded by the package to use only US-made iron and steel, has provoked protests from European steelmakers. Democrat senator Byron Dorgan is proposing a broader measure to exclude most foreign-made manufactured goods when the package reaches the Senate.

Such measures threaten to provoke escalating retaliation and a full-blown trade war. A comment in the US journal Foreign Policy warned that the “explicitly protectionist language” contained in the package would be “certainly be taken as a bad sign by the rest of the world. The world can deal with a protectionist India or Indonesia. The trading system will have much more trouble if the United States starts to renege on its traditional leadership role.”

Cautions about growing protectionism have been sounded already at this week’s Davos Economic Summit, including by the Chinese and Russian premiers. Igor Yurgens, a senior adviser to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, gave vent to some of the bitterness in Moscow and other capitals over the impact of the various US rescue packages. “Of course, [Mr Obama] expects the Chinese or Russians to buy US Treasury bills [to fund the massive US deficit]. That is pretty selfish and philosophically it is protectionism,” he declared.

Tit-for-tat trade measures and legal challenges are on the increase. In only its second case before the WTO, China pressed ahead this week with a complaint against US measures restricting the import of steel pipes, tyres and woven sacks. After Beijing initiated the dispute last September, Washington began legal action against subsidised Chinese branded goods. China, which is the world’s second largest exporter after Germany, has been the target of seven WTO disputes, all of which involve the US.

There is no shortage of economic commentators issuing dire warnings about the potential for protectionism to catapult the world economy into a depression akin to the 1930s. International trade is slowing dramatically, with the IMF forecasting this week that world trade volumes would contract 2.8 percent in 2009 after rising 4.1 percent last year. Nevertheless, as the global economy shrinks, the capitalist class in every country is driven to foist the crisis onto its international rivals as well as the working class.

In 1930, many foresaw the disastrous consequences of the Smoot-Hawley tariff act, which increased nearly 900 American import duties. Some 1,028 US economists signed a petition pleading with US President Herbert Hoover not to sign the bill into law. The Economist magazine recently cited the comments of Thomas Lamont, a partner of J.P. Morgan, who recalled: “I almost went down on my knees to beg Herbert Hoover to veto the asinine Hawley Smoot Tariff. That act intensified nationalism all over the world.” Nevertheless, Hoover signed the law, provoking an avalanche of retaliation, the collapse of world trade and the formation of antagonistic currency blocs that set the course for the Second World War.

While those promoting “free trade” speak for the bankers, financiers and more globally competitive sections of capital, there is a definite constituency for protectionism among less competitive industries. The whipping up of economic nationalism also serves a vital ideological function in diverting the anger of working people over job losses and the precipitous decline in living standards outwards rather than at the real source of the crisis—the profit system itself.

Those who push this reactionary poison in the working class are the trade unions and their various middle class radical allies. Far from defending jobs and conditions, economic nationalism goes hand-in-hand with the continuing impoverishment of working people. Whether in the US, Europe or any other country, the same union bureaucrats who have presided over the decimation of manufacturing industry over the past three decades now insist on the further sacrifice of wages and conditions as part of the protectionist packages to defend American or European companies.

The bailout plan for the US auto industry backed by the United Auto Workers is conditional on a savage restructuring of the industry that will result in plant closures, layoffs and the systematic lowering of wages. In France, Germany and other European countries, the unions are collaborating with governments and corporations in plans to defend “their” auto industries, using the threat of job losses to enlist the support of workers. The logic of economic nationalism is class collaboration in a dog-eat-dog competition that pits workers in one country against their class brothers and sisters around the world. The end result is trade war and military conflict.

The working class cannot defend its interests under the banner of either protectionism or “free trade”. The precondition for any genuine struggle to defend jobs and living standards is the political independence of workers from all wings of the capitalist class. The natural allies of workers in advanced economies such as US and Europe are workers in cheap labour platforms like China and India who are often exploited by the same global corporations and share a common class interest in abolishing the anarchic profit system and replacing it with a world-planned socialist economy. That is the perspective advanced by the World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International.

Peter Symonds

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Obama’s program of war

Steven — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 07:56:37 GMT

Obama’s program of war
By James Cogan
29 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/gate-j29.shtml

Within days of taking power, the Obama administration has made clear that it will escalate the war to subjugate the Afghan people, intensify US military strikes on targets inside Pakistan and continue the occupation of Iraq indefinitely. What is being prepared is a brutal escalation of US military violence in Afghanistan and a widening of the conflagration in the region.

Obama left a two-hour meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff yesterday pledging to ensure that the military received the "resources and the support" to wage the wars being conducted by the United States. He told journalists he would soon be announcing "some difficult decisions that we're going to have to make surrounding Iraq and Afghanistan."

The essence of those decisions was indicated on Tuesday in the testimony of Defense Secretary Robert Gates before the Senate and House armed services committees. Obama's appointment of Gates marked the new president's unambiguous repudiation of the campaign rhetoric that appealed to broad antiwar sentiment among the American people. Gates served the Bush administration in the same post for the past two years and directed the escalation of the Iraq war from early 2007 to early 2008.

Gates told the senators: "There is little doubt that our greatest military challenge right now is Afghanistan. As you know, the United States has focused more on Central Asia in recent months. President Obama has made it clear that the Afghanistan theatre should be our top overseas military priority."

The war in Afghanistan, he added, would be "long and difficult." The short-term time frame he placed on the conflict was "five years"—at least until 2014. He said an increase in US casualties was "likely" as operations are stepped-up against the anti-occupation insurgency being waged by loyalists of the former Taliban regime and other Afghan Islamist movements.

Gates stressed that as the new administration escalates military action in Central Asia, it has no intention of withdrawing from Iraq. Warning that resistance could erupt again against US forces in Iraq, he said "there may be hard days ahead for our troops." Even if units designated as "combat" are pulled out roughly according to the 16-month schedule promised by Obama during the election, Gates emphasized that a sizeable force would remain and "we should still expect to be involved in Iraq on some level for many years to come."

He told the Senate committee that Obama will send 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan as soon as possible. The first of the four combat brigades requested last year by General David McKiernan, the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has already taken up positions in areas to the east of the Afghan capital, Kabul. The 3,500 troops, from the 10th Mountain Division, have begun operations in the provinces of Wardak and Logar.

Analysts are predicting that Obama will order the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade to deploy to Afghanistan by mid-spring. Another Marine brigade will follow by mid-summer. The final additional brigade will arrive before the end of the year.

The intensified fighting will not be confined to Afghanistan. The predominantly ethnic Pashtun Afghan insurgents have safe havens and derive support among the Pashtun population of Pakistan's Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA). As a result, the US and NATO forces have been unable to prevent the Afghan resistance from launching daily attacks across entire swathes of southern Afghanistan and replenishing both its ranks and weapons. Large-scale US military strikes on the FATA and even more deeply into Pakistan are the logical outcome of Obama's determination to place Afghanistan under US control.

It was "impossible," Gates declared, "to disaggregate Afghanistan and Pakistan, given the porous border between them." He left no doubt that the US military would continue to conduct air strikes inside Pakistan, regardless of the opposition of the Pakistani government and Pakistani people, on the pretext that the targets were linked to Al Qaeda.

The primary motive for the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was not to fight terrorism, but to create a base for the assertion of US influence over the resource-rich former Soviet republics in Central Asia. During last year's presidential election, Obama served as the mouthpiece for factions of the American establishment that had concluded the preoccupation with Iraq had resulted in Central Asia coming too much under the political and economic sway of Russia and China.

The re-emphasis on Afghanistan is intended to reverse this trend. Under the guise of securing supply routes for the increased US military force, intense diplomacy is taking place to establish access rights and military bases in Central Asian states such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Currently, the bulk of US and NATO supplies to Afghanistan move through border passes in the FATA, where they are coming under increasing attack by insurgents. Following a NATO summit on Monday, the Russian government announced that it is prepared to allow its territory and air space to be used to transport US and NATO supplies into Afghanistan.

Gates's testimony also indicated a shift in the relations between the US and the puppet government it has installed in Kabul under President Hamid Karzai. Along with fighting "terrorism," the Bush administration justified the occupation of Afghanistan with constant references to bringing "democracy," "development" and "human rights" to the Afghan people.

Gates dismissed such claims on Obama's behalf, telling senators: "If we set ourselves the objective of establishing some sort of a Central Asia Valhalla over there, we will lose... because nobody in the world has that much time, patience or money, to be honest...."

A brutal real politik will define the Obama administration's policy in Afghanistan. Karzai's government is frequently derided in US foreign policy circles for its endemic corruption and its lack of popular support among the Afghan people. A more important reason for flagging US enthusiasm for its puppet Karzai is the latter's public criticisms of US air strikes that target and kill Afghan civilians. The Obama administration has every intention of escalating the bloodshed and will brook no interference from its client regime.

The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Obama may support a campaign to remove Karzai in the presidential election scheduled to be held in the country later this year. The alternative to attempts to create a strong central government is the Iraq "surge" model. The commander of US forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus—who now heads the US Central Command—authorized his officers in particular parts of Iraq to bribe insurgent leaders to change sides, in exchange for both money and a degree of local power.

In a similar fashion, sources close to the Obama administration told the Times that it "would work with provincial leaders as an alternative to the central government, and that it would leave economic development and nation-building to European allies, so that American forces could concentrate on the fight against insurgents."

The result of this policy could be greater tensions between the US and the European powers. During his testimony, Gates demanded that NATO member-states "step up to the plate" and provide more forces and resources for the war in Afghanistan.

Even with 30,000 extra American troops, the occupation force will still be severely under-manned. In the midst of the ongoing occupation of Iraq and an economic meltdown, however, Gates told the Senate that he was "skeptical" the US military could contribute "additional American force levels beyond what General McKiernan has already asked for."

Under Bush, NATO states, particularly Germany, France, Italy and Turkey, repeatedly rejected US requests that they dramatically increase their involvement in the Afghan conflict. They must now decide how to respond to the Obama White House.

A British Broadcasting Corporation correspondent commented on Tuesday: "If NATO allies falter now, the long-term implications in terms of separating the United States from Europe could be severe... The issue is emerging as a potential troubling one at the 60th anniversary summit [of NATO] to be held in early April."

Millions of Americans were channelled into voting for Obama and the Democratic Party by the illusion that they would implement a decisive shift away from the militarism and neo-colonial interventions that marked the Bush years. Instead, they face an administration that is just as determined as Bush's to use brute military force to secure the economic and strategic interests of American imperialism. Countless thousands of Afghan and Pakistani lives, and those of hundreds if not thousands more American troops, are to be sacrificed in the process.

This reality underscores not only the debased character of "democracy" in the United States, but the necessity for a break with the two parties of US imperialism and a fundamental political reorientation of the working class toward a socialist and internationalist program.

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

New Middle East Culture & Politics Tribe

Steven — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:55:08 GMT

New Middle East Culture & Politics Tribe

This group is open to all who want to discuss Near East and Middle East culture & politics and imperialist intervention in a meaningful way.

Those who want to argue using personal attacks, lies, slander, red baiting, and ridicule instead of addressing the issues will be banned from the group. People with a history of doing so in other groups will not be allowed entry into this group.

In addition, it is fine to question the legitimacy of any and all religions, but racism and attacks on entire oppressed groups such as Palestinians and Kurds is not allowed.

Join Near and Middle East Culture & Politics:
http://tribes.tribe.net/neareast

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Investigate US torture and prosecute those responsible

Steven — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 06:30:42 GMT

Investigate US torture and prosecute those responsible
28 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/pers-j28.shtml

Considerable efforts are being made in various quarters to cover up the record of US torture and prevent the prosecution of military and Central Intelligence Agency torturers and those higher up who ordered them to carry out their crimes.

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are reportedly holding up approval of Barack Obama's nominee for attorney general, Eric Holder, until he promises not to prosecute any former Bush administration officials for their part in approving torture.

Not that the incoming Obama regime needs much encouragement along those lines. The new administration has made a series of cosmetic changes that will in no serious way alter the brutal course of US policy in regard to the "war on terror" and the treatment of detainees. The eventual closing down of the Guantánamo internment camp and illegal CIA prisons, as well as the official requirement that CIA and military personnel follow the Army Field Manual's prohibitions on torture, will resolve nothing.

The ideological and political framework—with its accompanying network of lies and justifications—for wars of aggression and attacks on democratic rights remains intact.

Obama's aim is to repair some of the damage done to America's standing as a result of the Bush administration's policy of abuse and torture carried out in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo and a gulag of secret detention sites, without changing the essence of US foreign policy, the drive toward global hegemony, and the illegal and violent methods employed in the implementation of that policy.

The new president has made clear his administration has no plans to prosecute the perpetrators, whose transgressions, in any case, were carried out with the full knowledge and approval of leading Democrats in Congress. "I don't believe anybody is above the law," Obama told the media. "On the other hand, I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards." This is, for all intents and purposes, a preemptive pardon for torturers.

It is critical, however, that just such an investigation into US torture and associated illegal practices be carried out, and the guilty parties, up to the highest levels of the Defense and State departments and the White House, be prosecuted.

To pretend, as supporters of Obama and the liberal media are now doing, that these criminal policies can be halted without an exhaustive examination of how they were ordered and carried out—and by whom—is a grotesque fraud.

This is a political and moral issue. The aim is not to exact revenge—although those responsible should pay a heavy legal price—but to expose and discredit the policies that have led to war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and threaten even greater crimes and disasters in the future. The American military-intelligence apparatus, the greatest instrument of terror and violence on earth, needs to be uprooted and dismantled. A first step is the careful recording and public exposure of its many crimes.

Bush officials remain confident that they will not be called to account for their actions. They can certainly hold over the heads of the Democrats their own complicity. The Wall Street Journal did just that January 6 in a commentary entitled "What Congress Knew About ‘Torture.'"

The Journal comment points out that leading Democrats—including representatives Nancy Pelosi and Jane Harman and senators Jay Rockefeller and Bob Graham—were briefed more than 30 times, beginning in the spring of 2002, on the "CIA's covert antiterror interrogation programs" and its methods, "including waterboarding and other aggressive techniques."

The article continues: "After September 2006, when President Bush publicly acknowledged the program, the interrogation briefings were opened to the full committees. If Congress wanted to kill this program, all it had to do was withhold funding. And if Democrats thought it was illegal or really found the CIA's activities so heinous, one of them could have made a whistle-blowing floor statement under the protection of the Constitution's speech and debate clause."

The complicity of the Democrats and the liberal media continues. True to form, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen has written a piece justifying the cover-up of the Bush administration's illegal activities.

In keeping with the current motif of Americans' supposed collective guilt for the economic crisis and everything else done by the government and the ruling elite, Cohen sums up the theme of the piece in his headline, "Torture? Prosecute Us, Too." He argues that in "the very different country called Sept. 11, 2001" there was widespread support for brutal measures. George W. Bush enjoyed "an approval rating of 92 percent, which meant that almost no one thought he was on the wrong course."

As always, the assertion of "collective guilt" is used to shield those who are really guilty.

Asserting that "questions about the viability of torture were very much in the air," Cohen points to the support for torture among fellow liberals, including attorney Alan Dershowitz (who "was suggesting the creation of torture warrants—permission from a court to, in effect, break some bones") and Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter.

"The conventional wisdom," writes Cohen, "that torture never works—so counterintuitive as to be an absurdity—was not yet doctrine. Neither for that matter was the belief that the coming war in Iraq was a moral and practical absurdity. Congress overwhelmingly voted for war and the American people overwhelmingly supported it."

This, of course, is a further libel. In the first place, Bush was installed in 2000 by the US Supreme Court, not elected, after failing to win the popular vote. Moreover, a massive number of Americans opposed the looming Iraq invasion and protested in the hundreds of thousands in mid-February 2003. Millions of others were highly skeptical about the government's claims. Under the mistaken impression that the Democratic Party would do something to stop the war, the American people elected a majority of Democrats to Congress in 2006 and voted for Barack Obama in 2008.

Even if one were to accept the premise that most of the population backed the initial attack on Iraq, that would amount, above all, to an indictment of the American media, including Cohen, who supported the drive to war and uncritically transmitted the lies of the White House and Pentagon. Famously, Cohen swallowed whole the falsifications passed off at the United Nations by Secretary of State Colin Powell on February 5, 2003 about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, declaring the presentation to be "bone-chilling in its detail."

Having played his own filthy role in making all the subsequent tragedy possible, Cohen now holds the American people responsible for everything he condoned and legitimized.

"We tortured. So says the incoming attorney general, Eric Holder. We tortured. So says the person in charge of deciding such matters at Guantanamo."

No, "we" didn't. On orders from the White House, the US military and CIA tortured, with the approval of Cohen and the political-media establishment.

"What are we going to do about it?," asks the Post journalist. After first asserting the need to find out how the government came to torture and abuse, otherwise "we will not know how to ensure that the future doesn't wind up looking much like the past," the columnist proceeds to endorse the rationale that led to the criminal practices.

"At the same time, we have to be respectful of those who were in that Sept. 11 frame of mind ... and who, in any case, were doing what the nation and its leaders wanted. It is imperative that our intelligence agents not have to fear that a sincere effort will result in their being hauled before some congressional committee or a grand jury."

Precisely the argument of the Wall Street Journal and the ultra-right.

David Walsh

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

The capitalist market and Obama’s stimulus plan

Steven — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:45:15 GMT

The capitalist market and Obama’s stimulus plan
27 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/pers-j27.shtml

Even before the Obama administration's economic stimulus package comes to a vote, the rapidity and scale of job losses in the US makes it clear that it will be woefully inadequate. On Monday alone, corporations including Caterpillar, Pfizer, Home Depot, SprintNextel and GM, announced 74,000 new job cuts.

Even if the White House were to achieve its aim of creating or saving 3-4 million jobs over the next two years, it would not make up for job losses that could be twice as large by the end of 2010. The pace of job-cutting has sharply accelerated since the end of 2008—a year that saw 2.6 million jobs lost, the highest number since 1945.

The overriding principle of Obama's plan is that nothing will be done that impinges on the wealth and prerogatives of America's financial elite. He made this clear in his inaugural address when he hailed the "free market," saying its "power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched." Meanwhile, the new president has dropped any mention of his campaign pledge to rescind Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy.

Despite the talk of a "21st century New Deal," the $825 billion package includes no proposals for government public works projects, let alone plans to hire the millions who have lost their jobs. Ninety percent of the newly created jobs will be in the private sector. Major corporations are already lining up and licking their chops in anticipation of profit windfalls as private contractors for government-funded programs.

A third of the package will be used to pay for tax cuts, half of which are for big business. The House bill includes $7.7 billion in grants for investors in renewable energy, while the Senate Finance Committee inserted a provision that would give companies tax relief on forgiven debt, a measure for which the US Chamber of Commerce and casino giant Harrah's Entertainment lobbied hard.

Less than a third of the proposal—including just $30 billion for roads and $10 billion for transit and rail—will be used for infrastructure repair, under conditions in which the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that it would cost at least $1.6 trillion to bring the country's crumbling bridges, roads and schools back to "good condition." Robert Yaro, the president of the Regional Plan Association, which has guided civic projects in the New York metropolitan area since 1929, told the New York Times, the infrastructure proposal was a "drop in the bucket."

There is no aid for homeowners facing foreclosure—a number which could rise to as many as 10.2 million in the next four years, according to estimates by Credit Suisse—nor the tens of millions more who owe far more on their homes than they are worth due the sharpest decline in housing prices since the Great Depression. Millions more have seen their life savings wiped out due to the falling value of their 401 (K) retirement plans, but they merit no help either.

The stimulus package provides only minimal relief to the unemployed in the form of extended jobless benefits and money to help laid off workers keep their medical coverage. In addition, there is about $87 billion to help states pay increasing Medicaid health insurance for the poor.

None of these measures are a solution to the crisis because they do not address its source: the decades-long decline of American capitalism and the systematic drive by the corporate and financial elite to starve industry and basic infrastructure of investment in order to reap billions in the most parasitic forms of a financial speculation.

It is striking that the stimulus plan includes no measures to rebuild the shrunken industrial base of the country. This is one more indication of the degree to which it is tailored to the needs of the financial aristocracy. The financial elite has no interest in rebuilding basic industry because it can amass far higher profits from financial speculation than it can from investment in basic production—even as it uses mass unemployment and the threat of bankruptcy to drive down the wages and increase the exploitation of the working class.

Moreover, there is no merely national solution to the crisis, which is a catastrophic failure of the world capitalist system.

In the 1930s, the New Deal measures taken by Franklin Roosevelt put nearly 4 million unemployed workers to work building roads, bridges, dams, schools and other public projects. However, even these measures—possible only in a country with unmatched industrial and financial resources—failed to end the Great Depression. A partial recovery collapsed in 1937, and unemployment once again surged. It took a world war and the deaths of nearly 80 million people to revive the world capitalist economy and create the conditions for the post-war boom.

Unlike the 1930s, however, the US is not the rising economic hegemon, but the world's most indebted nation. Moreover, the American ruling class—which has enriched itself over the last three decades through the systematic dismantling of the reforms of the past—has no intention of allowing any encroachment on its power and wealth. A huge amount of the stimulus money will find its way into the bank accounts of major financial houses, corporations and the wealthiest one percent of the population.

What then are the motives behind the stimulus package?

The first is to stave off a complete collapse of consumer spending and avert a deflationary spiral that would lead to a full-scale depression.

The second is to provide at least the semblance of relief for those facing economic distress in order to contain growing social discontent over a disaster precipitated by the recklessness and avarice of the super-rich.

Finally, the measure is aimed at providing political cover as the White House and Congress prepare to launch another, even more massive bailout of Wall Street and the banks.

The stimulus package pales in comparison to $8 trillion already handed out in loans, grants and financial guarantees to the banks, which have used the public assets not to free up credit for consumers and businesses—bank loans have actually decreased—but to finance a wave of mergers that are further consolidating the grip of financial and corporate monopolies over the economy.

The cost of the bailout will be borne by the American public itself, as Obama and his advisors have made clear in public statements calling for cuts in vital social programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

There is increasing speculation in the media that the Obama administration might be forced to "nationalize" the banks. If carried out, this measure would have nothing to do with exerting public control over Wall Street. Instead, taxpayers would assume responsibility for the worthless assets held by the banking giants so they could take these liabilities off their books and once again become profitable. After a temporary period of government direction, the banks would be turned over once again to private investors, who would buy the now lucrative shares for pennies on the dollar.

As the New York Times noted Monday, "Mr. Obama's advisors say they are acutely aware that if the government is perceived as running the banks, the administration would come under enormous political pressure to halt foreclosures or lend money to ailing projects in cities or states with powerful constituencies, which could imperil the effort to steer the banks away from the cliff."

The stimulus package, like the bailout of the banks, is predicated on the profit interests of the most powerful sections of the capitalist class. There cannot be any rational or socially progressive solution to the crisis within the framework of the present economic and political system.

To assert their own interests working people will have to break with the Democrats and Republicans and mobilize their strength against the Obama administration. Only the creation of a workers' government and the establishment of real democratic rule by the majority can break the power of the financial aristocracy and make possible the reorganization of economic life to meet the needs of society as a whole.

A socialist policy will include the nationalization of the banks and basic industries under public ownership and democratic control by the working class, the input of working people into all economic decision-making, and emergency measures to protect the jobs and homes of workers, including a reduction in work hours with no loss of pay and a ban on all home foreclosures and evictions.

Jerry White

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Crisis in eastern Europe and the lessons of 1989

Steven — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 13:03:57 GMT

The crisis in eastern Europe and the lessons of 1989
26 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/pers-j26.shtml

Twenty years ago in eastern Europe, a broad wave of protests swept aside Stalinist regimes that at the start of 1989 had seemed firmly ensconced in power. In June, Solidarnosc won the parliamentary elections in Poland, and in October, Hungary adopted a bourgeois constitution. In November, the Berlin Wall was toppled along with the Stalinist regime in Bulgaria. The next government to fall was in Czechoslovakia, while in Romania, the Stalinist dictator Ceausescu was shot by a firing squad.

The movements that unleashed these political earthquakes had a broad but diffuse social basis. They were motivated by the desire for more democracy and better living conditions, but lacked any clear idea of how to achieve these ends. The working class, which constituted the overwhelming majority of the population, lacked any independent perspective. Decades of political suppression by the ruling bureaucracy and the perversion of Marxism by Stalinism had severed the working class from the traditions of genuine socialism.

Under these conditions, a minority took the initiative to restore capitalism. The Stalinist bureaucrats sided with them, proclaimed the "failure of socialism" and secured their privileges by appropriating large sections of the nationalised productive forces as their own private property. The majority of the population paid a high price. Social life throughout eastern Europe is characterised by unemployment, mass poverty, the decay of infrastructure and health and education systems, and gross social inequality.

Now, 20 years after the overthrow of the Stalinist regimes, there are indications of a fresh wave of protests. In recent days, sharp clashes occurred in Latvia, Lithuania and Bulgaria.

On January 13, 10,000 gathered in the Latvian capital of Riga to protest against the flagrant incompetence and corruption of the government. Demonstrators threw snowballs and, according to the police, a few Molotov cocktails. The police responded with tear gas, made 126 arrests and injured 28 demonstrators.

A few days later, similar scenes took place in neighbouring Lithuania. After a trade union demonstration in the capital city of Vilnius, protesters tossed snowballs, eggs, bottles and stones at the country's parliament. The police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets.

The European Union fears a chain reaction. The Financial Times wrote: "In Brussels there is growing concern that the public protests could spread across the entire region where many governments depend on narrow majorities or are based on shaky coalitions."

These concerns are entirely warranted. The international financial and economic crisis has massive implications for eastern Europe. It is shattering not only its national economies, but also the ideological conceptions bound up with the restoration of capitalism in these countries.

Relative high rates of economic growth, foreign investment, entry into the European Union and the social rise of a middle class layer encouraged hopes that the economic and social situation would improve after an initial period of economic difficulties.

Now these illusions are being shattered. The international economic crisis has brutally exposed the parasitic and semi-criminal character of east European capitalism. The result of 20 years of capitalist "reconstruction" is a mountain of debts and the looming bankruptcy of entire states.

International concerns that made handsome profits by exploiting cheap labour in eastern Europe are implementing mass redundancies as demand for their goods shrinks. Western European banks that made high returns in eastern Europe are withdrawing their investments. And the ruling elites, who became fabulously rich through the privatisation of state assets, are now making the people pay for the crisis.

They are doing so in close collaboration with the EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The protests in Latvia were a direct reaction to an IMF financial package that was tied to extensive austerity measures. It is expected that the Latvian economy will shrink in the coming year by at least 5 percent with a 10 percent increase in unemployment.

Twenty years of capitalist restoration have left nothing of lasting value or capable of withstanding the crisis. Western European concerns and banks have systematically ransacked eastern Europe, and the native elites, acting as intermediary, have raked in their own share of the booty. Now finance capital is being withdrawn, leaving not only states, but many ordinary citizens as well, with a mountain of debt.

According to a report in the Austrian newspaper Kurier, 30 percent of the income of east European households is tied up with debt repayment. This percentage is even higher in Ukraine, Romania, Hungary and Slovenia. In the euro zone countries, the equivalent percentage stands at 10 percent.

National budgets are also massively indebted. The worst situation is in Ukraine, a country of 46 million. The country confronts bankruptcy and is only able to acquire new loans at horrendous rates of interests. Ukrainian government bonds are yielding a profit of 27 percent, and the currency is in free fall: the Hrywnja has lost 30 percent of its value in the last three months. Industrial production collapsed by 27 percent in the month of December.

In the meantime, western European banks are worried that they could be caught in the turbulence. Analysts currently regard eastern Europe as one of the biggest risks for investors. Austrian financial institutions are particularly exposed. They have loaned €224 billion to eastern European countries—the equivalent of 78 percent of Austrian GNP. But other European banks, including the Italian Unicredit, the German HypoVereinsbank (through its subsidiary Bank Austria), the French Société Générale and the Belgian KBC, are also heavily involved in the region.

Nine major banks have formed a lobby aimed at pressuring the European Union and the European Central Bank into supporting eastern Europe. In particular, these banks are seeking guarantees for their own investments. The peoples of eastern Europe will not see a cent of possible EU money. Instead, they will be forced to pay the bill for the bailout of Western banks through cuts in their living and social standards.

Western European bankers also fear that the gains of capitalist restoration have been lost. "Many of us have fought fifty years in order to free these countries from Communism and now that we have a free market system in the region we cannot leave them on their own," was the comment by Herbert Stepic, head of the Austrian Raiffeisen International to the Financial Times. His bank played the leading role in assembling the lobby of nine banks.

The working class in eastern Europe must draw the lessons from 1989. At that time, the advocates of capitalist restoration were able to prevail because workers lacked their own independent programme. The result is the current catastrophic situation.

At the time, the International Committee of the Fourth International issued strong warnings about the dangers of capitalist restoration. "The working class has not overthrown [the heads of the GDR] Honecker, Mielke, Krenz and the entire Stalinist Mafia in order to hand over the levers of production to Daimler, Thyssen and Deutsche Bank, the same capitalist interests which organised two World Wars and set up concentration camps for the workers." wrote the Bund Sozialistischer Arbeiter (today the German Socialist Equality Party) in a programmatic statement of February 1990.

We opposed the infamous lie that declared that Stalinism was the inevitable consequence of socialism: "The history of Stalinism is the history of the greatest crimes committed against the working class—all in the name of socialism.... The collapse of the regimes in Eastern Europe has refuted not only Stalinists but also all anti-communists: what has failed is not socialism but Stalinism."

We called for the defence of nationalised property and for its organisation under the democratic control of the working class. "The production facilities which were erected with great sacrifice by the working class cannot be left to the whims of the capitalists. State property must be cleansed from the control of the parasitic Stalinist caste and placed at the disposal of the working class.... Workers councils must assume control over the economy and democratically reorganise the planned economy from top to bottom in order to meet the demands of producers and consumers."

Finally, we emphasised that these aims could only be achieved through the unified action of the international working class: "Capitalist restoration in Eastern Europe will have drastic consequences for the working class in Western Europe, allowing the capitalists to utilise cheap layers of qualified workers in the east to massively increase the exploitation of workers in the west.... The current situation poses more urgently than ever the task of uniting workers across all borders in a combined struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and Stalinism."

This perspective is of utmost importance today. The unification of the European and international working class in the struggle for a socialist programme is the only progressive alternative that can prevent Europe from once again being plunged into war and barbarism as was the case in both 1914 and 1939.

Peter Schwarz

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Obama's orders leave torture, indefinite detention intact

Steven — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 06:27:40 GMT

Obama's orders leave torture, indefinite detention intact
By Tom Eley
23 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/guan-j23.shtml

On Thursday, President Barack Obama issued executive orders mandating the closure of the Guantánamo Bay prison camp in a year’s time, requiring that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and military personnel follow the Army Field Manual’s prohibitions on torture, and closing secret CIA prisons overseas.

While the media is portraying these orders as a repudiation of the detention and interrogation policies of the Bush administration, they actually change little. They essentially represent a public relations effort to refurbish the image of the United States abroad after years of torture and extralegal detentions and shield high-ranking American officials from potential criminal prosecution.

In cowardly fashion, Obama staged his signing of the orders in a manner aimed at placating the political right and defenders of Guantanamo and torture and underscoring his intention to continue the Bush administration’s “war on terror.” He was flanked by 16 retired generals and admirals who have pushed for the closure of the prison camp in Cuba on the grounds that it impedes the prosecution of the global “war” and reiterated in his own remarks his determination to continue the basic political framework of the Bush administration’s foreign policy.

The continuation of the ideological pretext for wars of aggression and attacks on democratic rights ensures that the police state infrastructure erected under the Bush administration will remain intact. This is further reinforced by Obama’s assurances that his administration will not investigate or prosecute those officials--including Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales and others—who were responsible for the policies of torture and illegal detention.

The orders signed by Obama do not undo the Bush administration’s attacks on constitutional and international law. They do not challenge the supposed right of the president to unilaterally imprison any individual, without trial and without charges, by declaring him to be an “enemy combatant.” Nor do they end the procedure known as “extraordinary rendition,” by which the United States during the Bush years kidnapped alleged terrorists and shipped them to foreign countries or secret CIA prisons outside the US, where they were subjected to torture.

They do not affect the hundreds of prisoners--600 at the Bagram prison camp in Afghanistan alone—incarcerated beyond the barbed wire of Guantanamo. If and when Guantanamo is closed, the US government will simply ship alleged terrorists caught up its international dragnet to other American-run prison camps.

On the question of so-called “harsh interrogation techniques,” i.e., torture, Obama’s orders leave room for their continuation. White House Counsel Gregory Craig told reporters the administration was prepared to take into account demands from the CIA that such methods be allowed. Obama announced the creation of a task force that will consider new interrogation methods beyond those sanctioned by the Army Field Manual, which now accepts 19 forms of interrogation, as well as the practice of extraordinary rendition.

Retired Admiral Dennis Blair, Obama’s nominee for director of national intelligence, told a Senate confirmation hearing that the Army Field Manual would itself be changed, potentially allowing new forms of harsh interrogation, but that such changes would be kept secret.

Obama also announced a second task force that is to consider the fate of the 245 detainees remaining at Guantanamo. Earlier this week he suspended the military commission procedures at the prison camp, but has not abolished the military commissions themselves.

The new administration has ruled out the only constitutional remedy for those who have been held under barbaric conditions, without due process, for years—either releasing them or giving them a speedy trial in a civilian court, with all of the accompanying legal protections and guarantees. There has been a great deal of speculation that the administration may support the establishment of a special National Security Court within the civilian court system to try Guantanamo prisoners and other alleged terrorists. This would represent yet another attack on civil liberties, setting up a drumhead court system to railroad those charged with terrorism—something that could in future be used to repress political opposition.

According to NBC Nightly News on Thursday, the administration is considering keeping some 20 Guantanamo detainees, including the five alleged 9/11 conspirators currently facing military commission trials, imprisoned indefinitely without charges in a military brig within the US.

Commentators have noted that the Obama administration wants to prevent noncitizens detained as terrorists from being able to exercise habeus corpus rights.

Two separate measures taken Tuesday and Thursday by Obama point to a further major consideration behind his moves to close Guantanamo and finesse the issue of torture. On Thursday the administration requested a stay in the habeas corpus appeal to the Supreme Court by the only alleged enemy combatant now held on US soil—Ali al-Marri, of Qatar, whom Obama has called “dangerous.” Al-Marri’s lawyers are challenging the right of the president to arrest and jail individuals by declaring them enemy combatants, and it was expected that the Supreme Court’s hearing of the appeal would force Obama to reveal his position on the issue.

This followed Tuesday’s request for a stay from the Federal District Court in Washington in similar appeals that could affect the cases of more than 200 Guantánamo prisoners.

Thus, the immediate effect of the new administration’s moves is to halt civilian trials that could prove immensely damaging to the government by revealing systematic torture of the detainees and could potentially entangle high government officials.

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Emergency Protest to Defend the Safety of Leonard Peltier

Steven — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 23:16:15 GMT

Fri., Jan. 23, 11am - 1pm
Emergency Protest to Defend the Safety of Leonard Peltier
New San Francisco Federal Building, 7th & Mission Sts.

Join us in an emergency protest to defend the safety of American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier, who has been unjustly imprisoned for more than 30 years. Leonard was severely beaten upon his transfer to Canaan Federal Prison in Pennsylvania.

Sponsored by: American Indian Movement West

Dear Leonard Peltier Supporters

I am so OUTRAGED! My brother Leonard was severely beaten upon his arrival at the Canaan Federal Penitentiary. When he went into population after his transfer, some inmates assaulted him. The severity of his injuries is that he suffered numerous blows to his head and body, receiving a large bump on his head, possibly a concussion, and numerous bruises. Also, one of his fingers is swollen and discolored and he has pain in his chest and ribcage. There was blood everywhere from his injuries.

We feel that prison authorities at the prompting of the FBI orchestrated this attack and thus, we are greatly concerned about his safety. It may be that the attackers, whom Leonard did not even know, were offered reduced sentences for carrying out this heinous assault. Since Leonard is up for parole soon, this could be a conspiracy to discredit a model prisoner.

He was placed in solitary confinement and only given one meal, this is generally done when you won't name your attackers; incidentally being only given one meal seriously jeopardizes his health because of his diabetes. Prison officials refuse to release any info to the family, but they need to hear from his supporters to protect his safety, as does President Obama. His attorneys are trying to get calls into him now.

This attack on Leonard Peltier comes on the heels of the FBI's recent letter, prompting this attack by FBI supporters as an attempt to discredit Leonard Peltier as a model prisoner. Anyone who has been in the prison system knows well that if you refuse to name your attackers or file charges against them, then you lose your status as a victim and/or given points against your possible parole and labeled as a perpetrator.

It is not uncommon, in fact is quite common for the government to use Indian against Indian and they still operate under the old adage "it takes an Indian to catch an Indian." In 1978, they made an attempt to assassinate him through another Indian man who was also at Marion prison with LP. But Standing Deer chose to reveal the plot to him instead of taking his life in exchange FOR A CHANCE AT FREEDOM. When Standing Deer was released in 2001, he joined the former Leonard Peltier Defense Committee as a board member. He also began to speak on Leonard's behalf until his murder six years ago today. Prior to his murder, Standing Deer confided with close friends and associates that the same man who visited him in Marion to assassinate Peltier, had came to Houston, TX and told him that he had better stay away from Peltier and anything to do with
him.

We are aware that currently, the FBI is actively seeking support for his continued imprisonment of Leonard Peltier and also seeking support from Native People. So please be aware, and keep Leonard in your prayers. The FBI is apparently afraid of the impact we are having. If they will set him up to blemish his record just before a parole hearing, what will they do when it looks like his freedom will become a reality? We need to make sure that nothing happens to him again!

Please write the President, send it priority or registered mail. Email to Change.gov or email President Obama. Call your congressional representatives and write letters, not email, to them. Do what you can to get the word out to insure that Leonard Peltier is receiving adequate medical attention for his injuries.

I am asking you, supporters of Leonard and advocates of justice at this time to help. I don't know what else to do. Please Help!

Thank you
Betty Peltier-Solano
Executive Coordinator
Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee

For contact information to call and write Canaan Prison and other federal authorities, go to: http://www.aimwest.info/

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Who’s who in the Obama cabinet: Internal security

Steven — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 06:26:52 GMT

Who’s who in the Obama cabinet
Internal security
By Tom Eley
20 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/secu-j20.shtml

This is the second in a series of profiles of the major appointees to the cabinet and top White House staff of Barack Obama. Part one, "Who's who in the Obama cabinet—Economic and budget policy" was posted January 19.

President-elect Obama has assembled a cabinet drawn from the upper echelons of American society and the right wing of the Democratic Party. The right-wing character of the Obama nominees is described by the media under the approving labels of "centrist," "moderate," and—most of all—"pragmatic." This terminology signifies that the incoming Obama team consists entirely of individuals who pass muster with the corporate financial aristocracy.

The New York Times reported Monday that Obama has repeatedly discussed his cabinet selections with his defeated Republican opponent, Senator John McCain, and that McCain has told colleagues "that many of these appointments he would have made himself," according to Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and arch-conservative who has also had input into the formation of the new administration.

McCain, Graham and Co. have a far greater role in the selection of Obama's cabinet than the millions of young people and working people who supported Obama in the belief that he would put an end to the war in Iraq and reverse the right-wing, pro-big business policies of the Bush administration.

Today's series of profiles deals with those cabinet and other high-ranking officials in the incoming administration responsible for the Justice Department, intelligence and Homeland Security—i.e., the domestic repressive functions of the US government.

Eric Holder, attorney general

While Holder is being hailed as the first African-American to hold his position, his selection does not represent a reversal of the anti-democratic policies pursued by the Justice Department under the Bush administration. Holder is a trusted defender of both corporate America in general and the American capitalist state, having served as deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration (1997-2001) and then as a high-priced lawyer at Covington & Burling, where he represented an assortment of major corporations.

Most notorious was his role defending the food giant Chiquita Brands International, Inc., whose multimillionaire executives were facing potential charges of aiding terrorism because of their financing and arming of right-wing death squads in Colombia. Using his Justice Department connections—and taking advantage of the Bush administration's sympathy for the Colombian fascists—Holder managed to get Chiquita off the hook with a small fine, despite overwhelming evidence that it had hired gunmen to kidnap, torture and murder Colombian workers, peasants and union officials.

With support emerging from prominent Republicans, it is likely Eric Holder will be confirmed as attorney general in the incoming Obama administration. Holder's nomination has withstood somewhat muted criticism from the Republican right. This related to Holder's involvement, as deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, in the presidential pardon for billionaire fugitive investor Marc Rich, as well as in commutations for 16 Puerto Rican nationalists who had been imprisoned for decades on politically motivated convictions for nonviolent crimes.

Republicans announcing their support for Holder include Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, who serves on the Judiciary Committee; Mel Martinez of Florida; Frances Townsend, President George W. Bush's homeland security adviser; William P. Barr, attorney general under President George H.W. Bush; and Larry Thompson, who served as attorney general in the current Bush administration. After Holder expressed agreement with Sen. Lindsey Graham that the nation is at war with terrorists, Graham responded, "I'm almost ready to vote for you right now."

Republicans may fondly remember Holder's critical role in expanding an independent counsel's investigation of Bill Clinton that ultimately led to his impeachment over his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Holder advised then-Attorney General Janet Reno to allow for the expansion of the investigation's scope.

Under John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales and Michael Mukasey in the Bush administration, the office of attorney general served as a center of conspiracy against democratic rights, authorizing torture, illegal wiretapping, and firing United States Attorneys who did not completely toe the Bush administration line, among other nefarious activities. Holder will attempt to effect a change of image. In congressional hearings, he said that he considered "waterboarding"—that is, drowning—torture. The Bush administration has defended the procedure as a "harsh interrogation method."

However, in other areas, Holder has made clear that he intends to carry on the policies of the Bush administration. He both supported the initial passage of the Patriot Act in 2001 and played a key role in the talks that led to its reauthorization in 2005—when Obama himself voted for it.

As attorney general, Holder would be obliged to investigate the crimes of the Bush administration. In his nomination hearings, he said he would do no such thing. "The decisions that were made by a prior administration were difficult ones," he said. "It is an easy thing for somebody to look back in hindsight and be critical of the decisions that were made." He indicated that, while he favors closing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, this will be a lengthy process in which prisoners' legal status will remain indeterminate.

Leon Panetta, director of the Central Intelligence Agency

Panetta was a surprise selection to be the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the US spy agency and long a center of counterrevolution, because of his lack of hands-on experience in intelligence work. This was almost a requirement for the job, however, under the current circumstances, since Obama was seeking to rehabilitate the image of an agency that has become identified worldwide with kidnapping, secret imprisonment and torture. Obama initially intended to name a CIA veteran, John Brennan, who was the candidate's top intelligence adviser, but Brennan faced criticism over his role in decisions on interrogation during the Bush administration.

Panetta would play the same political role as George H.W. Bush, another "outsider" but a trusted ruling class figure, brought in to refurbish the agency after the assassination scandals of the early 1970s. He began his political career as a Republican working in the administration of Richard Nixon, but switched to the Democratic Party in 1971, and was elected to the US Congress from California in 1976, serving there for 16 years and specializing in budgetary matters. Clinton chose him as his first director of the United States Office of Management and Budget.

In 1994, Panetta became White House chief of staff, serving in that capacity until 1997, the critical years in which Clinton governed in collaboration with the Republican congressional leadership that took control of Congress in 1994. The single "achievement" of those years was the elimination of the federal welfare program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, in a bipartisan deal.

More recently, Panetta has shifted his focus to foreign affairs, working as a member of the Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan establishment group that sought, beginning in 2006, to effect a tactical change in US policies in Iraq. Also serving on the group were Robert Gates, secretary of defense in both the Bush and Obama administrations, and former secretary of state in the first Bush administration, James Baker.

Admiral Dennis C. Blair, director of National Intelligence

Blair is one of a record four retired military officers chosen for high positions in the Obama administration, and the second Navy man in a row, following retired Vice Admiral Michael McConnell, to hold the position of DNI, created to oversee the entire intelligence establishment in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Blair is a career military man who rose to the rank of commander-in-chief of United States Pacific Command, which is the highest-ranking position for all US forces in the Asia-Pacific region. He also served as director of the joint staff in the Office of the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff. After retiring from the US Navy in 2002, Blair has been involved in US military and foreign policy circles, holding a chair at the US Army War College and serving on and holding a chair at a geo-strategic think tank, the National Bureau of Asian Research. He also served as president of the important US-government think tank, Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA).

Blair could be prosecuted for war crimes in relationship to the 1999 East Timor massacres, which took place during his period as head of the Pacific Command. Apparently, Blair disobeyed orders from the Clinton administration on two occasions. As the massacres against the pro-independence movement in East Timor became an embarrassment for the Clinton administration, which presented its simultaneous imperialist adventure against Yugoslavia as a "humanitarian mission," Clinton called on Blair to meet with General Wiranto, head of the Indonesian military, and order him to end support for the pro-Indonesian militia. Blair instead presented Wiranto with an offer of increased military assistance and invited the Indonesian strongman to be his personal guest in Hawaii. Wiranto took this as an American blessing for an escalation of violence in East Timor. When State Department officials learned that Blair had not delivered the message to Wiranto, they called on him to do so again. Again he refused. Only several months later, after many more independence supporters had been killed, did Blair act to cut off US military assistance to the Indonesian army.

Blair's career also highlights the incestuous relationship between the military and the defense industry. In 2006, the US Department of Defense inspector general determined Blair had violated IDA's Conflict of Interest regulations by recommending the US government purchase production contracts for F22 Raptors. Blair served as the president of the IDA, which made the recommendation, and on the board of directors for EDO Corporation, which did subcontracting work on the F22. He received only a slap on the wrist, and there is no congressional opposition to his appointment.

Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security

The two-term governor of Arizona, Napolitano has built a reputation for being "pro-business" and a proponent of increased militarization of the US border with Mexico, much of which lies in her state. In state politics, Napolitano supported Arizona's ban on same-sex marriages, opposed restrictions on gun ownership, and supported the death penalty. Her nomination has been warmly received by the Republican Party, with Arizona's two Republican senators, Jon Kyl and John McCain, lobbying on her behalf.

Napolitano has criticized the "Federal government's failure to fulfill its responsibilities in securing our border," and it is her supposed expertise on immigration that was her prime qualification for the Department of Homeland Security. Napolitano made her political name in Arizona through her opposition to immigration, signing into law reactionary legislation that made possible the prosecution of illegal immigrants as felons. She also deployed the Arizona National Guard along the border with Mexico, winning praise from anti-immigration zealots.

In questioning during Congressional hearings related to her nomination, Napolitano spoke in favor of the militarization of the Mexican border, saying that border fences should be used to separate urban areas from Mexico, but that higher technology should be used in the more remote expanses of the border area. She did not oppose the "Real ID program," which would create an internal passport system in the US, saying only that the financial burden it will impose on states needs to be lessened.

Napolitano leaves Arizona just as the state budget has been plunged into crisis by the economic slump, and in particular the housing crisis. The state faces a current deficit of $1.25 billion and a deficit of $2.65 billion for 2010. Napolitano has proposed major cuts to higher education to lessen the deficits. As part of proposed spending cuts of $975 million, $100 million would be cut from the state's university system and $40 million from community colleges. Also, $145 million will be slashed from the state highway fund.

Also see:

Who’s who in the Obama cabinet
Economic and budget policy

http://tribes.tribe.net/radicalpolitics/thread/edf494d8-e2d7-4f9c-8d05-d9f3e18e62d8

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 2 replies

Obama: Trillions for the banks, austerity for the people

Steven — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:44:49 GMT

Obama pick for treasury secretary tells Senate: Trillions for the banks, austerity for the people
By Patrick O’Connor
22 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/econ-j22.shtml

President Barack Obama's nominee for treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, testified Wednesday at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee. Without providing specific details, Geithner said that he and the White House economic staff were working on a plan involving a handover to the banks of enormous sums, potentially trillions of dollars, in additional public funds.

The treasury secretary-designee's performance was welcomed by Wall Street. Stock indexes closed higher yesterday, clawing back most of the value lost in Tuesday's Inauguration Day market plunge. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose by 3.5 percent to 8,228, the S&P 500 rose by 4.4 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite gained 4.6 percent. Geithner's promise of further bailout measures drove banking stocks higher, with Citigroup, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase all gaining more than 10 percent.

These gains represented a vote of confidence in the Obama administration's pledge to place virtually unlimited public funds at the disposal of the financial elite.

Geithner is expected to be endorsed by the Senate Finance Committee Thursday morning and the Senate proper next week, with both Democratic and Republican support. As president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Geithner was directly involved in the bailout measures taken last year, including the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Speaking before the Finance Committee, he defended the various measures taken by former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, merely suggesting that the previous bailout measures were not "aggressive" enough—that is, did not involve enough money.

Republican senators raised some questions about Geithner's failure to pay more than $30,000 in personal taxes from 2001 to 2004. But, as the New York Times noted, these were "lapses that might have doomed the nomination of a candidate less experienced and less respected among Republicans than Mr. Geithner." The nomination hearing was entirely amiable, with Geithner and the Democratic and Republican senators in agreement on all the central issues.

No one objected from either party when Geithner, in his opening statement, indicated that the Obama administration intends to deal with ballooning budget deficits resulting from government handouts to the banks by slashing bedrock social programs such as Social Security and Medicare. He told the committee, "Our program to restore economic growth has to be accompanied—and I want to emphasize this—has to be accompanied by a clear strategy to get us back as quickly as possible to a sustainable fiscal position." It was necessary to demonstrate, he added, that "we as a nation will return to living within our means."

Marketwatch noted: "He [Geithner] said the budget would have to tamed on a five-year horizon. Along these lines, Obama is looking for a ‘mechanism' to move forward on entitlement reform on a bipartisan basis."

Meanwhile, the banks are being rewarded with a new bailout package involving sums of public money substantially larger than that already committed by the Bush administration under TARP and related programs.

Paul Volcker, former Federal Reserve chief and current chairman of Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, endorsed Geithner's nomination in remarks to the Finance Committee. Volcker said that the banking system was "broken" and fixing it would require "several trillions of dollars"—an estimate that no one challenged.

Geithner refused to give details of Obama's bank bailout program, which is expected to be unveiled in the next few weeks. He admitted, however, that one plan being considered involves the creation of a "bad bank," which would use public funds to buy and quarantine subprime mortgage and other "toxic assets" currently held by the banks. Democratic Senator Charles Schumer told the hearing that economic experts had advised him that such a plan would cost more than $3 trillion.

The "bad bank" option is the preferred course of many in the financial sector because it does not involve the federal government directly purchasing large stakes of the banks' and financial institutions' stock. Fears of such a partial "nationalization," which would largely wipe out the investments of major shareholders, have contributed to driving down the share values of many major banks, compounding their solvency crisis.

An article in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, "Banks Hit By Nationalization Fears," explained: "The common stock of the major banks tracked by the Dow Jones Wilshire US Banks Index has fallen roughly $287 billion in value since Jan. 2, a 43 percent decline in just over two weeks. Banks that have sought further government aid have suffered the most, with Citigroup's market value falling 61 percent and Bank of America's 64 percent. The market value of JPMorgan Chase, which hasn't sought new government aid, has fallen 42 percent."

The accelerating American and world recession, initially triggered by the subprime mortgage market collapse, is in turn rebounding on the financial system.

The latest economic data from the US includes record low homebuilder sentiment, as recorded by the National Association of Home Builders' (NAHB) Housing Market Index. The gauge was 8 in January, down from 9 in December—the lowest level recorded since the index began in January 1985. The NAHB added that it expected the current housing downturn—the worst in more than six decades—will further worsen this year.

General Motors has lost its status as the world's largest manufacturer, with its 8.35 million vehicles sold in 2008 falling short of Toyota's 8.97 million. GM had previously been the largest automaker in every year since 1931. President Fritz Henderson admitted yesterday that GM's January sales were looking no better than the month before, when they plummeted by 31 percent. He also warned that unless the company received the second part of the federal bridge loan next month, it would run out of cash and face bankruptcy.

Major corporate layoffs continue apace. Manufacturer and auto supplier Eaton Corp has announced 5,200 job cuts. Taken together with the 3,400 workers Eaton laid off late last year, the company has eliminated 10 percent of its total workforce. United Airlines announced that it is sacking another 1,000 workers. Mining giant BHP Billiton is to reduce its workforce by 6 percent, affecting 6,000 positions. Most of these are in Australia and Chile, while about 550 workers in Arizona will also reportedly be laid off.

Global economic activity is contracting at an accelerating rate. The International Monetary Fund has warned that it will sharply cut world growth forecasts in a new report due to be released in the next few days. "Things are not improving," IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn told the BBC.

In Japan, the world's second-largest economy, the government has downgraded its assessment of the national economy for the fourth straight month. Also in Asia, Singaporean officials said yesterday they expected gross domestic product to decline this year by 2 to 5 percent, revising an earlier forecast issued just three weeks ago of growth ranging from negative 2 percent to 1 percent. In the fourth quarter of 2008, Singapore's largely export-driven economy contracted by 16.9 percent on an annualized basis.

In Europe, the German government yesterday cut its 2009 GDP forecast to negative 2.25 percent—down from the 0.2 growth predicted last October—marking the deepest recession since World War II. Portugal had its credit status downgraded by rating agency Standard and Poor's—making it the third Eurozone country, after Spain and Greece, to be hit in recent days by revised credit ratings. Other economies are expected to soon follow.

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

The case for nationalizing the banks

Steven — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 05:37:03 GMT

The case for nationalizing the banks
19 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/pers-j19.shtml

Less than four months after Congress passed the Bush administration’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), authorizing the Treasury Department to spend $700 billion in taxpayer money to bail out the banks, the same banks that received the government handouts are reporting massive losses and the incoming Obama administration is preparing to funnel hundreds of billions in additional funds to Wall Street.

In the interim, the financial crisis has deepened and precipitated a global recession that is acknowledged to be the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Millions more workers, told last fall by Bush and Obama that the government bailout, supposedly designed to benefit “Main Street” and not “Wall Street,” would avert a financial meltdown and mass unemployment, have lost their jobs, their homes and their life savings. Meanwhile, the bankers have refused to use their windfalls to lend to businesses and consumers and have instead either hoarded the government cash or used it to buy up smaller firms.

None of the CEOs and speculators whose corrupt and reckless policies brought their own institutions and the global economy to ruin, while they rewarded themselves with seven- and eight-figure compensation packages, and none of the government regulators who colluded in the plundering of the economy have been called to account. The bankers, with the complicity of the government, flatly refuse to reveal what they have done with the money they received from the Treasury.

The vote by the US Senate on Thursday, after intensive lobbying by the Obama transition team, to release the second $350 billion installment of the $700 billion slush fund sets the stage for an even more massive bailout. In a taste of things to come, the day after the Senate vote, the Treasury agreed to hand over another $20 billion to Bank of America as part of a new rescue package that will have the government absorb up to $118 billion of the bank’s losses. Economists and Federal Reserve officials are openly saying that TARP will have to be followed by many more such bailout funds.

All of this adds up to a colossal fraud perpetrated on the American people—who overwhelmingly oppose the bailouts—for the sole purpose of protecting the interests of the financial aristocracy. There is not now, and there never was, a considered, worked-out plan to solve the financial crisis and avert a social catastrophe.

When Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke called an emergency meeting of congressional leaders in mid-September to demand that they sign off on their proposal to authorize the use of $700 billion in public funds to rescue the banks, the document they presented was less than three pages long.

Just three weeks after Congress passed the TARP legislation, Paulson announced that the plan he and Bernanke had put forward as the solution to the crisis was being scrapped. Instead of using the money to buy “troubled” subprime and other asset-backed securities from the banks, he decided to simply hand the banks billions in cash, with virtually no strings attached.

Suddenly a political and media establishment that had for decades lambasted the notion of “throwing money” at social problems and opposed any government intervention into the market spoke with one voice of the need for massive government action to place the resources of the people in the hands of the Wall Street elite. When it came to protecting the wealth of the bankers and big shareholders, the operative phrase was “anything goes.”

The reality of class relations in America is being mercilessly exposed. The cost of the multi-trillion-dollar handout to Wall Street is to be borne by the working class. Obama cites the vast rise in budget deficits and government debt as a result of the bailouts as justification for sweeping cuts in social programs—including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—upon which tens of millions of workers and retirees depend.

The new wave of bank bailouts will do no more to solve the crisis than the last one. None of the measures being devised can seriously address the deepening economic catastrophe because they leave untouched the basic interests of the ruling class, which are rooted in its private ownership and control of the financial system.

For the same reason none of the financial wizards on Wall Street, in academia or in government can give a coherent explanation of the crisis. As defenders of the capitalist system, they dare not acknowledge that the global financial meltdown is an expression of the breakdown of the capitalist system itself.

The current crisis is the inevitable outcome of two inter-related processes: The protracted decline of American capitalism and a crisis of profitability in basic production that is rooted in fundamental contradictions of the capitalist system. Behind the colossal growth of financial parasitism and outright criminality is the attempt by the American ruling elite to overcome the mounting contradictions of its system by shifting investment from manufacturing to ever more exotic forms of financial speculation. Particularly over the past three decades the financial power brokers, supported by the government, have dismantled much of the industrial base of the United States to seek higher rates of profit from various forms of financial manipulation. The creation of wealth for the ruling class has been largely separated from the creation of real value in the production process.

Now the countless trillions of paper values are collapsing, leaving in their wake an economic and social disaster. To even begin to offset these losses the ruling class must intensify its exploitation of the working class, spreading unemployment, poverty and social misery.

No progressive economic plan to solve the crisis can be developed apart from taking the major banks and financial institutions out of private hands. They must be nationalized and transformed into public utilities under the democratic control of the working population. The vast financial resources that the banks control must be used to provide decent education, housing, health care, retirement benefits and well-paying jobs for all.

This should be carried out without compensation to their former owners, while securing the deposits and savings of working people and small business owners.

The books of the major banks, financial firms, insurance companies and hedge funds must be opened to public examination to lay bare their illegal and socially destructive activities.

There must be a public accounting of the fraud and corruption that have fueled the crisis, and those responsible must be held accountable, including by means of criminal prosecution.

The billions of dollars in social wealth diverted into the private accounts of speculators and bankers must be recovered, to be used for the expansion of social programs that benefit the masses.

This is not merely, or even primarily, a technical task. It is a political and revolutionary one. The power of the financial aristocracy must be broken. As with the ancien régime before the French Revolution, the continued sway of the American financial elite stands as an absolute obstacle to any socially progressive and rational economic policy. The financial elite adamantly opposes any measures that impinge on its wealth and prerogatives, regardless of the cost to society at large. Indeed, it is plotting every day, in league with its bribed agents in the Democratic and Republican parties, to exploit the crisis of its own making to monopolize an even greater share of the national wealth.

The prerequisite for the nationalization of the banks and their subordination to the needs of society is an independent political movement of the working class on the basis of socialist policies. It is a question of state power. No capitalist government can or will carry out this task. What is required is a political and revolutionary struggle to establish a workers’ government.

Barry Grey

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

The social paradox in the rescue on the Hudson

Steven — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 06:40:44 GMT

The social paradox in the “miraculous” rescue on the Hudson
17 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/pers-j17.shtml

It is impossible not to be moved by accounts of the crash Thursday afternoon of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River near Manhattan and its aftermath, the successful rescue of all 150 passengers and 5 crew members. A combination of extraordinary professionalism, skill, courage and elementary human camaraderie produced this astonishing outcome.

The odds seemed heavily stacked against a happy outcome. A few minutes after takeoff from New York's LaGuardia Airport, Flight 1549 apparently flew into a flock of birds and lost power in both of its Airbus A320 engines. Pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger and his co-pilot thus found themselves at the controls of a powerless jetliner, weighing tens of thousands of pounds and carrying 153 other human beings, directly above one of the world's major metropolitan areas. The potential for a horrifying disaster was enormous.

Sullenberger indicated to air traffic controllers that he was "unable" to either return to LaGuardia or reach the small airport in nearby Teterboro, New Jersey. Instead, he turned southward along the Hudson River, which separates Manhattan and New Jersey, flew over the George Washington Bridge and landed the aircraft safely in the middle of the river.

Sullenberger and his co-pilot deftly landed the plane in such a manner, "with its nose up, and on its fuselage," that the plane "managed to stay afloat immediately after impact" (New York Times).

The setting down of the airplane was not the last challenge. January 15 was one of the coldest days of the year so far in New York, with an air temperature of 18 degrees Fahrenheit (-8 degrees Celsius) and a water temperature of 35 degrees (2 Celsius). Immersion in water at such temperatures even for a few minutes can be fatal.

With the passengers arrayed on the wings of the sinking plane, within minutes "the water was churned by an ad hoc flotilla of boats and ferries flying the flags of almost every city, state and federal agency that works the waters around New York City. They sped toward the slowly sinking jet, a rescue operation complicated by river currents that kept dragging the plane south" (New York Times).

The passengers too responded with considerable aplomb, calmly aiding one another and exhibiting remarkable unselfishness. A female passenger, a Bank of America executive, told the Washington Post, "The most amazing part was, I saw no pushing, no shoving. I saw nothing but help and compassion."

A passenger on board the first ferry that arrived on the scene explained that as those rescued from the icy Hudson came aboard, "We were holding people, hugging them, reassuring them, holding their hands, warming them with our body heat" (New York Times).

A great deal of the credit, deservedly, has gone to Sullenberger, 57, a resident of northern California. His online résumé indicates a high level of seriousness about airplane safety and related matters. In addition to having spent some 40 years in the aviation industry and flown some 19,000 hours in various aircraft, Sullenberger has pressed for many safety and maintenance innovations and served in the past as an Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) local air safety chairman, as well as the union's accident investigator. He is also a glider pilot, which served him in good stead Thursday.

Interviewed by the media, his wife Lorrie described Sullenberger as "a pilot's pilot" who "loves the art of the airplane." Not an insignificant comment.

Such an incident exposes a social paradox.

Politicians, ever the opportunists, are quick to hail those responsible for operations such as Thursday's on the Hudson as "heroes." New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg offered Sullenberger the key to the city, declaring, "We saw a lot of heroism in the Hudson yesterday.... The perfect landing, the phenomenal response, the rescue of every single person."

The local and national media, predictably, were beside themselves over the "miracle on the Hudson." Anything to distract attention from the endless stream of dire economic news.

US Airways chief executive Doug Parker called the rescue operation "truly a remarkable effort.... I'm honored to thank all of you for all you did."

The hollowness and hypocrisy of many of these comments emerges when one considers the nearly continuous attacks such ordinary "heroes" have faced in recent years and the degree to which such levels of professionalism and skill are being undermined by the policies of the corporate elite and the government.

Airline pilots and flight crews have faced a devastating assault on their income, working conditions and morale. US Airways (a descendant of Allegheny Airlines) has undergone two bankruptcies and shredded workers' jobs, benefits and pensions along the way, while enriching executives like Parker.

A Pittsburgh newspaper reported in 2006 that nearly 9,000 US Airways employees in that area alone had lost their jobs since 2001. In 2003, the airline was one of the first major carriers to rid itself of pilots' pensions in the interests of cutting costs, releasing the pension fund to the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, a move that inevitably results in a reduction in pension benefits. In 2008, the US Airline Pilots Association, bargaining agent for the carrier's pilots, alleged that US Airways, in response to the rising price of oil, was pressuring its pilots to carry less fuel, subjecting those who refused to retaliatory discipline.

A 2006 comment painted a dismal picture of pilots' conditions: "Their pay and pensions have been cut, and they work more hours to earn it. In another concession to the airlines, their days are interrupted more than ever by long hours of unpaid idleness."

Capt. John Prater, ALPA president, told the Christian Science Monitor in early 2008: "Right now, airlines are placing money, productivity—how much work can you get out of a pilot—ahead of safety and having well-rested, nonfatigued pilots at the controls of your airplane."

As for New York's public employees, the city's billionaire mayor, Bloomberg, along with New York Democratic Governor David Paterson, is pursuing sweeping budget cuts and layoffs that will further erode the safety and well-being of residents.

For example, in November 2008, Bloomberg announced an $8.9 million cut in the Fire Department's budget, resulting in the elimination of nighttime shifts at five engine companies and cuts to the firefighting academy reducing the training period for probationary firefighters from 23 to 18 weeks. As the mayor made clear, this was only the beginning.

Ironically, the city's Disaster Preparedness and Response Program of the Human Services Council of New York City, an umbrella group of local nonprofit organizations, was closed down for good in July 2008 as a result of state budget restraints. A Human Services Council representative observed, "Memories seem to be short in terms of what is necessary when there's a disaster in the city of New York. This is not only about a terrorist attack. This is about hurricanes and coastal flooding and things like that."

When media attention is not shining on them, the "heroes" of the Hudson River rescue and their counterparts throughout the country (like those involved in the remarkable rescue operation, captured live on national television last month, when a burst water main flooded a roadway in Bethesda, Maryland) will be treated as brutally and indifferently as every other worker in the US. The elite that runs the US views workers as disposable riff-raff.

And should airline workers, firefighters, city employees or others take action to oppose wage and job cuts, the politicians and media will turn on a dime and denounce them as "greedy," "selfish" and "thuggish," as Bloomberg and the New York tabloids did during the 2005 transit workers strike.

There is one more aspect of this story. One ingredient, seemingly omnipresent in American life, was noticeably absent from Thursday's rescue operation: the profit principle. Americans have been told for decades that the pursuit of private wealth is the highest, if not the only, serious human motive. Official public opinion has held social cooperation, compassion and self-sacrifice up to contempt and ridicule. If it wasn't openly said, it was implied, that these qualities were "socialistic."

As it turns out, the immediate response of everyone involved with the rescue operation on Thursday was solidarity, not self-interest. Selfishness does not come naturally to human beings, especially in moments of calamity. The unfolding economic crisis, impoverishing wide layers of the population and exposing the vast social divide in America, will bring out the best in the healthiest layers of the population and provide favorable conditions for the growth of genuine, conscious "socialistic" thinking.

David Walsh

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Israeli military lays siege to Gaza City

Steven — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 05:58:41 GMT

Israeli military lays siege to Gaza City
By Jerry White
16 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/gaza-j16.shtml

Israeli military forces carried out a ferocious assault on densely populated neighborhoods in Gaza City Thursday, forcing thousands of civilians to flee their homes as ground forces, backed by a steady barrage of heavy artillery, helicopter gunships and tanks made their deepest foray into the city of 500,000 people.

Three hospitals and the United Nations Gaza headquarters were bombed and set ablaze on the 20th day of the assault, which has left at least 1,095 Palestinians dead and more than 5,100 wounded. Nearly half of those killed have been civilians, including 330 children, according to the health ministry in Gaza.

Seven hundred Palestinians were seeking shelter and food at the UN complex when at least three shells filled with white phosphorus, a napalm-like incendiary chemical, struck two buildings, wounding two staff members. Adnan Abu Hasna, a spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), told Al Jazeera that fires continued to rage for hours after the attack, destroying "tens of millions of dollars worth of aid," including food, medical supplies and other emergency material at the warehouse.

Like the previous shelling of the UN school compound in Jabaliya in northern Gaza, which killed at least 40 men, women and children, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), which were given the GPS coordinates of all UN facilities in Gaza, deliberately targeted the headquarters as part of its campaign to cut off all relief to the besieged population. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon was in Tel Aviv discussing a possible cease-fire at the time of the attack.

Christopher Gunness, another spokesman for the UN relief agency, rejected Israeli claims that Hamas fighters had fired from inside or near the compound. "With every false allegation, the credibility of those accusing us is incrementally diminished," Gunness told the New York Times.

The aid group CARE also reported that its warehouses and distribution centers in Gaza were under bombardment and that it had been forced to cancel the distribution of food and medical supplies it had intended to deliver to hospitals and clinics. Martha Myers, CARE's director for the West Bank and Gaza, told the Times "our staff had to drop and run" after bombs rained down near their warehouse Wednesday.

Al Jazeera reported that 500 people were in the Al-Quds hospital in the city's southwestern Tal Al-Hawa district when it was bombed by US-made jets and set on fire Thursday morning. The last hit was on the Red Crescent's operations building, destroying the pharmacy. "There's a hole in the roof and a fire is still burning," Sharon Locke, a hospital volunteer, told Al Jazeera. Two other hospitals, east of Gaza City, were also hit by shells, as was the Al Shurouq Tower, a high-rise building housing Reuters and several other media organizations, wounding a journalist for the Abu Dhabi television channel.

An Israel Air Force strike in Gaza City killed three of Hamas's most senior officials Thursday, Palestinian sources reported. Interior Minister Said Siam, the head of its security apparatus, Salah Abu Shreh, and the head of its military wing, Mahmoud Watfah, were killed in the targeted assassination organized by the security agency Shin Bet. The air strike, which hit Siam's brother's home, also killed his brother and son and wounded six other Hamas members.

Siam was the founder of the Hamas-led police force, which played a key role in defeating the US-backed coup by Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah president of the Palestinian Authority, who sought to depose Hamas after it won parliamentary elections in Gaza in 2006.

In an interview in November 1995, Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted Siam saying, "I do not hate [Israelis] for being Jewish or Israeli but because of what they have done to us. Because of the acts of occupation." In response to a question about whether he saw a chance for change in relations between Palestinians and Israelis, he said, "It is difficult to forget what was done to us. If the reason for the hate will not exist, everything is possible."

The air strike on Siam, the paper wrote Thursday, "was apparently an attempt by Israel to deliver an image of victory in the offensive against Hamas. The Israel Defense Forces understands that Hamas agreement in principle to the Egyptian proposal for a cease-fire in Gaza signals that the campaign is nearing its end."

Hamas representatives announced an agreement in principle on Wednesday to an Egyptian proposal for a 10-day truce. Amos Gilad, a senior Israeli envoy, traveled to Cairo Thursday to review the cease-fire proposal before returning to brief Israeli leaders.

The Egyptians joined the Israelis in imposing a crushing blockade on Gaza after Hamas took control of the coastal strip and ousted Abbas's forces in June 2007. The cease-fire reportedly includes demands for a return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza, in the form of its renewed presence at the Rafah crossing with Israel. The most Cairo is offering, Haaretz reported, "is a timetable for the opening of the crossing points, and even that depends on negotiations due to begin after the cease-fire is reached, and it's tough to know how or when they will end."

The Israeli Defense Ministry and top generals—concerned that sustained urban warfare could lead to a politically destabilizing spike in military casualties—have reportedly expressed reservations about expanding the ground incursion in Gaza and support bringing the war to a quick end.

The thrust into Gaza City is aimed at carrying out as much carnage and damage to the infrastructure of the area as possible before a cease-fire takes hold, in all likelihood before or shortly after the inauguration of the new administration in Washington.

Meanwhile, reports of the impact on the civilian population continue to emerge, despite the efforts of the IDF to silence all but embedded media. Mays al-Khatib, a Gaza resident, was speaking to Al Jazeera on the telephone when her building came under attack. "The shelling is continuous since last night, we are here in this place, we are around 500 families here under bombardment," she said, when the telephone went dead. Al Jazeera sources said she survived, though her building collapsed.

The Arab news agency continued, "Much of the fighting was centered in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood, where some residents fled on foot while others remained in the precarious shelter of their homes as a nighttime attack stretched into the morning.... Tanks and bulldozers rolled into a neighborhood park, apparently seizing it as a kind of command center, witnesses said.

"Residents were seen fleeing their homes in pajamas, some wheeling elderly parents in wheelchairs. Others were stopping journalists' armored cars or ambulances pleading for someone to take them to safety."

The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem received the following statement from the parent of three children in Gaza City. "I swear that tonight I prayed for the Israelis that someone will save them from their leadership. No one is safe. They're not doing a thing to Hamas. Hamas is only getting stronger. After this thing, Hamas will have 50,000 suicide bombers.

"I see children running, fleeing in the streets, these children are one, two, four years old. They are running in the streets. What have they done?

"It was a truly terrible night. Truly. No more than 200 meters from my house. They're failing. Israel is failing. Israel has cursed leadership.... What are they doing? What are they doing? They are not protecting the Israeli nation, they are only harming it. A child whose entire family has been killed will go to commit suicide in a few years. Why not? He has nothing to care about in life. He has nothing to live for."

The bloodletting has provoked disgust and anger in Israel as well. In a rare critical article in Haaretz Thursday, correspondent Gideon Levy wrote, "God does not show mercy on the children at Gaza's nursery schools, and neither does the Israel Defense Forces. That's how it goes when war is waged in such a densely populated area with a population so blessed with children. About half of Gaza's residents are under 15."

Noting that even before the war, the IDF had had already killed 952 Palestinian children and adolescents since May 2000, Levy wrote, "One can say Hamas hides among the civilian population, as if the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv is not located in the heart of a civilian population, as if there are places in Gaza that are not in the heart of a civilian population. One can also claim that Hamas uses children as human shields, as if in the past our own organizations fighting to establish a country did not recruit children.

"A significant majority of the children killed in Gaza did not die because they were used as human shields or because they worked for Hamas. They were killed because the IDF bombed, shelled or fired at them, their families or their apartment buildings. That is why the blood of Gaza's children is on our hands, not on Hamas's hands, and we will never be able to escape that responsibility."

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Sarkozy's “new capitalism”

Steven — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 05:26:34 GMT

Sarkozy's “new capitalism”
16 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/pers-j16.shtml

At an international conference in Paris held on January 8, French President Nicolas Sarkozy lashed out against what he called “finance capitalism.” Sarkozy declared that the dream of globalisation had vanished on September 11, 2001. “One had expected competition and abundance for everyone, but instead one got scarcity, the triumph of profit-oriented thinking, speculation and dumping,” he said.

However, Sarkozy continued, the crisis of “finance capitalism” was not a crisis of capitalism itself. Anti-capitalism was a dead end, he declared, the negation of everything bound up with the idea of progress. One had to morally shape capitalism and not destroy it. The task was to restore the balance between the state and the market. The current crisis represented the end of “the illusion of public impotence.” The most important fact of the present crisis was the “return of the state.”

Sarkozy was speaking to an illustrious audience. Attending the conference, entitled “New World, New Capitalism,” were German Chancellor Angela Merkel, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the heads of the European Central Bank and the World Trade Organisation, three Nobel Price-winning economists and leading trade union functionaries. In general, they all agreed with Sarkozy, although they expressed themselves less graphically.

Chancellor Merkel demanded “new regulation of international financial markets and institutions” and said that this time she would remain firm should financial market players try once again to prevent politicians from implementing new regulations.

There is nothing progressive in Sarkozy’s promise of a morally renewed capitalism. The turn away from the ideology of boundless deregulation is not a step towards greater democracy or equality. The state whose influence Sarkozy intends to increase is the capitalist state. It defends the interests of big business, not those of working people.

By “return of the state” Sarkozy does not mean the subordination of private profit interests to the requirements of society as a whole. He intends to place French corporations under state protection in order to strengthen them in the conflict with the French working class and their international rivals.

This type of state intervention has a long tradition in France, going all the way back to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the finance minister of Louis XIV in the 17th century. Under President de Gaulle in the 1960s, important sectors of industry, such as the automotive and airplane industries, were developed under state direction, while the working class was repressed. In the 1980s, President Mitterrand temporarily nationalised the steel industry in order to implement rationalisation and mass redundancies.

The state capitalism which Sarkozy advocates is closely bound up with protectionism and corporatism. The state extends its protecting hand over national concerns, secures their profits with public funds, helps them dismantle jobs and wages, protects them against takeovers by foreign companies and strengthens them in their struggle against international competitors.

Due to the close interlinking of the state and corporate interests, every economic conflict threatens to expand into a political conflict. This can currently be seen in the gas conflict between Russia and Ukraine. It is then only a further step from a political to a military conflict. It may have been accidental, but it was nevertheless highly symbolic that the conference on a “New Capitalism” took place in the Ecole Militaire, the French military academy.

The multi-billion-euro financial packages which have been made available by the French and German governments to bail out their respective banks and corporations are closely bound up with protectionist measures. France has drawn up a 20-billion-euro state fund to protect major French companies from foreign takeovers. For the same reason the German government has assumed part ownership of Commerzbank and plans to take over Hypo Real Estate.

Following the “New Capitalism” conference, Merkel and Sarkozy met in the Elysée Palace to discuss measures to protect their domestic automotive industries. It was later declared that in light of the aid extended by the US government to the American auto industry, it was necessary to provide comparable aid to European carmakers.

An important aspect of the Paris conference was the sharp attacks made on the US. They were dressed up in the form of an appeal to the new president, Barack Obama, from whom European governments hope for a change of course in foreign policy. Nevertheless, Sarkozy made it quite clear that he is no longer prepared to accept the economic domination of the US.

“In my political life I have always stood for a very close alliance with the United States of America,” he said, “but one thing has to be clear: In the 21st century, there can no longer be a single nation that can say what we should do or what we should think.”

He became even more explicit, openly attacking the economic domination of the US. "We do not accept the status quo, we do not accept the lack of flexibility, we do not accept a return to a uniformity of thinking," he said. "At Bretton Woods in 1944," he continued, "there was one currency (the dollar), the economic prosperity of the world depended on this currency. In 2009 there is no longer one currency, there are many. We should discuss how each of us is managing his currency, his interest rates. It can no longer be the case that one country tells another: 'Pay our debts'. There can no longer be just a single model."

Sarkozy and Merkel are assured of the support of the trade unions for their current course. Amongst the participants at the conference was the general secretary of the European Trade Union federation, John Monks. French union leaders have been regular guests at the Elysée Palace and the Labour Ministry in the Rue de Grenelle since Sarkozy took over the presidency.

In order to defend national companies, the trade union bureaucracies are ready to support and implement every attack on the wages and jobs of their own members. Under conditions of trade war, they stand unconditionally behind their own bourgeoisie. As the state and big business draw closer together, the trade unions close ranks with the state.

Leon Trotsky drew attention to this process seventy years ago on the eve of the Second World War. He wrote: "The capitalist cliques at the head of mighty trusts, syndicates, banking consortiums, etc. view economic life from the very same heights as does state power; and they require at every step the collaboration of the latter. In their turn, the trade unions… have to confront a centralized capitalist adversary, intimately bound up with state power. Hence flows the need of the trade unions--insofar as they remain on reformist positions, i.e., on positions of adapting themselves to private property--to adapt themselves to the capitalist state and to contend for its cooperation." (Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay (1940))

The working class must decisively reject such a nationalist course which can only end in a social and political catastrophe. It can defend its interest only by uniting internationally and struggling for a socialist alternative to the crisis.

Peter Schwarz

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

UAW accepts government ban on strikes

Steven — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 05:22:44 GMT

UAW accepts government ban on strikes
15 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/pers-j15.shtml

It has come to light that the federal bailout of General Motors and Chrysler approved last month by the Bush administration with the support of the incoming Obama administration includes a stipulation that effectively bans strikes or work stoppages by autoworkers.

The clause, which was revealed in a Security and Exchange Commission filing by GM last week, coincides with government demands that the 139,000 workers at Detroit's auto companies agree by February 17 to accept mass layoffs, plant closures and sweeping wage and benefit concessions.

According to the SEC filing, the Treasury Department could declare GM and Chrysler in default and revoke $17.4 billion in loans, throwing the automakers into bankruptcy, if "any labor union or collective bargaining unit shall engage in a strike or other work stoppage."

The effect of this provision is to revoke the legal right to strike, an achievement won by the American working class in bitter struggles against "criminal conspiracy" laws used against striking workers in the 19th century. It was only with the 1935 passage, in the depths of the Great Depression, of the National Labor Relations Act that federal law recognized the right of workers to strike. This concession to the working class was not some freely given gift of the Roosevelt administration. It followed general strikes that erupted in 1934 in Toledo, Minneapolis and San Francisco. Without the strike weapon, workers are reduced to the status of industrial slaves, legally compelled to accept the most brutal conditions of exploitation without any recourse to collective resistance.

Several commentators have questioned the legality of the anti-strike provision in the auto bailout bill. Nevertheless, under the terms of the bailout, the strike ban remains in effect as long as the auto companies have outstanding loans from the government, setting the stage for contract negotiations in 2011 in which workers would not have the slightest leverage to reject demands for even more draconian givebacks.

This confirms the warnings by the World Socialist Web Site that the crisis of the US auto industry is being exploited by the American ruling elite to throw the working class back to conditions not seen since before the UAW and the other mass industrial unions were built in the 1930s.

Just as the 1980 Chrysler bailout and the smashing of the PATCO air traffic controllers' strike in 1981 initiated a wave of wage-cutting and union-busting in the 1980s and 1990s, the current attack on autoworkers is being used to spearhead a fundamental change in class relations in the US and internationally, under conditions of a global breakdown of the capitalist system.

The organization that ostensibly represents GM and Chrysler workers, the United Auto Workers union, campaigned for the government bailout of the Big Three companies, accepting its stipulations for tens of thousands of layoffs and wage and benefit cuts to bring unionized workers down to the level of non-union workers. It has not uttered a word of protest over the provision banning strikes and work stoppages.

Far from opposing this attack on the democratic rights of autoworkers, the UAW bureaucracy welcomes the ban on strikes as a means of crushing rank-and-file resistance to its collaboration with the auto bosses and the incoming Obama administration.

In a joint appearance at the Detroit auto show with General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner last Thursday, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger told the host of NBC-TV's "Today Show" that the union was committed to making the companies "more competitive" by "modifying" the current union contracts in talks with the Detroit automakers that began this week. The UAW president boasted that the union had already accepted wage cuts and work rule changes that made UAW workers more competitive than non-union workers at US plants operated by Toyota.

For his part, Wagoner praised the UAW, saying he was "confident that we'll come together and get the kind of changes that we need." In exchange for further concessions, the UAW bureaucracy is reportedly seeking a seat on GM's board of directors and an increase in the number of GM shares it presently owns.

An organization that accepts a government ban on the most elementary form of workers' resistance demonstrates thereby its fundamental opposition to the interests of the working class. The UAW's complicity in the so-called "bailout" of the auto companies, with its provisions for impoverishing the workers and stripping them of their right to strike, is the inevitable outcome of the entire policy of the UAW and the American trade unions as a whole and the culmination of their trajectory over many decades. To argue, under these conditions, that the UAW bureaucracy presides over a genuine workers' organization is to engage in self-delusion or deliberate deception.

For three solid decades the UAW has concentrated its efforts on suppressing the resistance of autoworkers to the destruction of jobs, living standards and working conditions, under the banner of labor-management "partnership" and "Buy American" chauvinism. It has deliberately sought to extirpate all remnants of class consciousness among its members, in order to facilitate its ever closer integration with corporate management and the government. In the figure of Gettelfinger—a man who cannot even conceive of an independent role for the working class, and who views the world entirely from the standpoint of a junior partner of the auto bosses—one sees a concentrated expression of the degeneration and transformation of the UAW.

The roots of this degeneration go back to the earliest stages of the UAW, when it rejected the fight for socialism—the perspective that animated many of the left-wing militants who led the mass strikes and plant occupations that established the union in the 1930s. Walter Reuther and other UAW leaders resisted popular demands for the building of a labor party and tied the newly established unions to the Roosevelt administration and the Democratic Party, blocking the development of an independent political movement of the working class.

The perspective of class collaboration and support for the profit system found its noxious expression in the anti-communist purge of the unions after World War II, which set the stage for the UAW bureaucracy's subsequent betrayals and the ultimate collapse of the union. Having tied the fate of autoworkers to the continued domination of US industry in the world market, the UAW had no response to the globalization of production and the decline in the world position of American capitalism and responded to the growing challenge of Asian and European manufacturers by becoming an enforcer of management's cost-cutting demands.

For years, various factions of the UAW, from "New Directions" to "Soldiers of Solidarity" —and their supporters within the milieu of "left" opportunist organizations—have insisted that autoworkers confine their struggles within the framework of the UAW. They have drawn no lessons from the disasters inflicted on the autoworkers by the policies of the UAW, and continue to claim that the corporatist and bureaucratized organization can be made, through pressure from below, to fight for the interests of the rank-and-file.

This is a lie. Any struggle by autoworkers to defend their jobs and living standards will immediately pit them against the UAW and pose the necessity to break with it and build new forms of struggle, including factory and workplace committees.

The revival of the workers' movement is possible only on the basis of a radical departure in the practice, politics and philosophy of the working class.

Autoworkers should reject the blackmail of the corporations, the government and the UAW and prepare militant resistance, including mass strikes and demonstrations, against layoffs, factory closings and wage and benefit cuts. This struggle should be broadened to unite every section of the working class in a struggle in defense of jobs and to oppose home foreclosures and the gutting of vital social programs.

The incoming Obama administration, just like its Republican predecessor, will serve the interests of America's financial elite, which is determined to revive the profitability of the auto industry through a permanent reduction in workers' living standards. For working people to advance a solution to the economic crisis that defends their own interests they must break with the Democratic Party and build a mass political party of the working class.

This means building the Socialist Equality Party, which rejects nationalism and fights for the unity of workers in every country on the basis of a socialist program, including the nationalization of the auto industry under the democratic control of working people and the reorganization of the entire economy on the basis of production for human need, not private profit.

Jerry White

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Obama, Bush: another $350 billion for the banks

Steven — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 05:09:58 GMT

Obama, Bush team up behind another $350 billion for the banks
14 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/pers-j14.shtml

First things first. Even before President Bush makes his farewell address on Thursday and Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th president next Tuesday, the outgoing and incoming administrations are engaged in a concerted drive to release the second $350 billion installment of taxpayer funds to bail out the banks.

Obama telephoned Bush Monday morning and asked that he formally request the second half of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) windfall for Wall Street approved by Congress on October 3. Bush complied almost immediately, starting the clock on a 15-day period during which Congress can block the Treasury Department from transferring additional billions to financial institutions only if both houses reject the president's request. Even in that highly unlikely event, the president can vacate the congressional action by issuing a veto, which would require a two-thirds majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate to override—virtually a political impossibility given overwhelming Democratic support for the bailout and Democratic control of both congressional chambers.

Such is the priority given to the bailout money for the banks that Obama and his top economic aides are devoting themselves nearly full-time to meeting with leading Democrats and Republicans and lobbying Congress for support. Obama's $800 billion economic stimulus package, itself tailored to the demands of big business, can wait until mid-February, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has pledged to hold a vote on the TARP money by this Friday at the latest.

The joint Bush-Obama push for the second half of the TARP money has occasioned a flurry of complaints from both sides of the congressional aisle over the refusal of the banks to use the billions they received in the first installment to increase their lending and protests from Democrats over the failure to provide relief for homeowners facing foreclosure—the ostensible purposes of the program. There is also much bluster over the lack of any restrictions on how the banks used the money, the absence of serious limits on executive pay and the fact that the banks were not even required to inform Congress or the public what they did with the government funds they received.

Of the $350 billion already distributed, $250 billion went to banks and financial institutions, including $125 billion to the nine biggest banks. Another $40 billion was added to the $100 billion previously paid out to rescue the insurance giant American International Group, $19 billion went for emergency loans to General Motors and Chrysler, $20 billion went to other firms, and $25 billion was injected into Citigroup as part of a bailout involving over $300 billion in government loans and guarantees.

It is well established that the banks used the money to shore up their reserves and, in the case of some of the biggest firms, to buy up smaller institutions with the aid of a tax break unilaterally enacted by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, formerly the CEO of Goldman Sachs, to facilitate a further concentration of financial power on Wall Street.

Obama himself on Monday noted "the absence of clarity, the lack of transparency, the failure to track how the money's been spent and the failure to take bold action with respect to areas like housing," saying he was "disappointed." He promised to "fundamentally change some of the practices in using this next phase of the program."

This, and similar statements from leading Democrats in Congress, are little more than window dressing designed to placate public anger over the handover of federal funds to shore up the balance sheets of the very institutions whose pursuit of super-profits and financial Ponzi schemes precipitated the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Some political cover is needed to continue placing the assets of the American people at the disposal of this discredited financial elite.

But such demagogy and associated political maneuvering cannot disguise the total subordination of the government and both parties to the most powerful sections of the ruling class. The indecent haste with which both the outgoing and incoming administrations are rushing to satisfy the demands of Wall Street for a new infusion of cash provides an object lesson on the class relations that underlie American "democracy."

One day before Obama requested $350 billion more for the banks, he explicitly affirmed that his administration would seek to impose major funding cuts and structural "reforms" on the bedrock social programs—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—upon which tens of millions of workers and retirees depend. In an interview on the ABC News "This Week" program, Obama was asked whether he would carry out "entitlement reform, including Social Security and Medicare, where everybody in the country is going to have to sacrifice."

"Yes," Obama replied, adding that "what you describe is exactly what we're going to have to do... Everybody is going to have to give."

Everybody, that is, except for the multi-millionaires and billionaires who comprise the financial aristocracy.

There is not even an attempt to explain why it is the critical social programs on which the working class relies that must be cut to offset the explosive growth of budget deficits resulting from cash infusions to the banks and corporations. Indeed, as with the initial passage of the TARP program, there is to be no public discussion or serious congressional debate—no assessment of the failure of the first installment to prevent the economic catastrophe it was supposedly implemented to avert, or explanation of how the second installment will work, whom it will benefit and how it will address the economic crisis any better than the first half of the Wall Street slush fund.

Once again, a proverbial gun is being held to the head of the American people. In a letter to congressional leaders, Obama's top economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, wrote that "President-elect Obama believes the need is imminent and urgent. We cannot afford to wait."

In his letter to Congress, Summers wrote that companies receiving "exceptional assistance" would be subject to "tough but sensible" limits on executive pay and other restrictions. One can judge how much such assurances are worth from the resumés of Summers and Obama's designee as treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, who will head up the TARP program.

As treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, Summers promoted the dismantling of bank regulations and the cheap credit policies that fueled the housing and credit bubbles which imploded 18 months ago. Geithner, as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, played a central role along with Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke in engineering the government loans, cash infusions and guarantees to the banks and financial markets that now total some $8 trillion.

Bernanke weighed in on Monday to push for the additional TARP money. In a speech at the London School of Economics, he endorsed Obama's stimulus plan but added that further taxpayer infusions into the banking system were essential. Bernanke suggested that the second installment should be used to buy up bad mortgage-related bonds and other "toxic" assets weighing down the balance sheets of the banks. This was the plan originally marketed by Bernanke and Paulson, only to be dropped within days of congressional passage in favor of direct cash infusions into the banks.

Whatever form the next transfusion of cash takes, it will not solve the deepening economic crisis. It will not, and cannot, address the fundamental contradictions and deep-seated structural problems of American and world capitalism. No amount of handouts to the banks can resolve the crisis of profitability in basic production and the conflict between globalization and the nation-state system that underlies the crisis, or reverse the massive decay of manufacturing in the US that is the product of decades of financial speculation and parasitism.

Like every other measure taken since the crisis erupted, it will be directed toward defending the interests of the financial elite and leave untouched the foundations of a failed economic and political system.

From its origins, TARP was conceived not as a serious solution to the economic and social crisis, but rather as a means of exploiting the crisis to implement a vast transfer of wealth to the financial aristocracy that would have been impossible under normal conditions. The cost of this plundering of the economy is to be born by the working class.

The united front of Obama and Bush behind the bank bailout is yet another demonstration of the fraud of Obama's pose as the agent of "change" and one more expression of the basic continuity between the outgoing and incoming administrations. More fundamentally, it underscores the fact that government policy cannot be changed in any progressive way by elections or the replacement of the Republicans by the Democrats. Behind the increasingly worm-eaten façade of American democracy, all essential questions of social life, of war and peace, of democratic rights are determined by the class interests of the ruling elite.

This situation can be changed only through the independent political and revolutionary mobilization of the working class in the fight for socialism.

Barry Grey

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Obama signals continuity with US torture regime

Steven — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:45:01 GMT

Obama signals continuity with US torture regime
13 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/pers-j13.shtml

The election of Democrat Barack Obama as president of the United States was driven in large measure by the disgust of broad sections of the American people with the criminal policies carried out in the name of the Bush administration’s “global war on terrorism.” These policies found their most odious expression in the torture and detention without charges of thousands of individuals at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and CIA “black sites” scattered around the world.

One of the pledges that Obama made repeatedly on the campaign trail, something that was supposed to symbolize a break with the past, was that he would close the Guantanamo prison within the first 100 days of his presidency.

Yet, with barely a week to go before he is sworn in as the 44th president of the United States, Obama has even backed off of that pledge, while giving broad indications that his overall national security policy will have far more to do with continuity than with the much promised “change” of his election campaign.

Obama hedged on his Guantanamo pledge in a televised interview Sunday on the ABC News show “This Week.” The interview coincided with the seventh anniversary of the opening of the US penal facility, when the first contingent of prisoners—tortured, drugged, manacled and dressed in orange jump suits—was flown from Afghanistan to Cuba.

On Tuesday, the International Herald Tribune reported that Obama transition officials had said Monday that Obama would issue an executive order on his first full day in office ordering the closing of the camp, but indicated it would take many months, “perhaps as long as a year,” to actually remove the remaining detainees and shut the prison.

At the outset of the ABC News interview Obama was asked about the ongoing massacre of the Palestinian population in Gaza. The program’s host, George Stephanopoulos, played a clip of the then-Democratic presidential candidate’s statement in Israel during the election campaign, in which he told an Israeli audience, “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.” The statement has been cited repeatedly by Israeli officials as a justification of the one-sided slaughter that has killed or wounded some 5,000 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians.

Asked if he would repeat the same statement today, given the subsequent carnage, Obama answered in the affirmative. “I think that's a basic principle of any country—is that they've got to protect their citizens.” He likewise signaled that his Mideast policy would be in continuity with that of the Clinton and Bush administrations, which has played a major role in creating the current catastrophe.

On the question of Iran, he insisted that his administration would pursue a policy of “engagement,” but then went on to repeat unsubstantiated claims that the Iranian regime is “exporting terrorism through Hamas, through Hezbollah” and “pursuing a nuclear weapon” —a charge that the most recent US National Intelligence Estimate rejected. The implication was that an Obama administration would go through the diplomatic motions in order to better prepare a new US war of aggression.

Much of the interview centered on a statement made earlier by outgoing Vice President Dick Cheney, a principal architect of the US policies of torture, extraordinary rendition and aggressive war. Cheney cautioned Obama not to “implement your campaign rhetoric,” but rather to “find out precisely what it is we did and how we did it,” which he said would be vital to “keeping the nation safe and secure.”

Asked for his reaction, Obama responded, “I think it’s pretty good advice.”

He went on to distance himself from Cheney, insisting that waterboarding constituted torture. However, Cheney’s own admission that he helped implement the use of waterboarding, making the former vice-president by definition a torturer, did not diminish Obama’s tone of deference and cordiality towards Cheney and his advice.

Obama went on to affirm his belief that interrogation techniques must abide by the “rule of law, our Constitution and international standards.” However, when asked whether this meant an end to the CIA’s “special program” in which “enhanced interrogation techniques”, i.e., torture, have been utilized, Obama quickly retreated. He said, “I’m not going to lay out a particular program because, again, I thought that Dick Cheney’s advice was good, which is let’s make sure we know everything that’s being done.”

On the proposal to close down Guantanamo, Obama insisted, “It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize.” The problem, he asserted, was that the hundreds who remain imprisoned there include some who “may be very dangerous who have not been put on trial or have not gone through some adjudication. And some of the evidence against them may be tainted even though it’s true.”

The solution to this problem, he indicated, involves “creating a process.” He added, “Our legal teams are working in consultation with our national security apparatus as we speak to help design exactly what we need to do.”

According to most accounts, what the president-elect is talking about is creating some kind of new “national security court” in which “tainted evidence—including confessions extracted through torture—may be used either to try and convict defendants or to continue detaining them without trial, and in which evidence and proceedings can be kept secret.

Such remedies are being advocated as an alternative to swiftly closing down a facility that is seen all over the world as the hallmark of state criminality and either releasing or bringing to trial before a normal court of law those held there. What Obama is suggesting would enshrine in US law the torture regime developed under the Bush administration and create a pseudo-legal framework for further expanding the police-state apparatus of the US government.

Stephanopoulos then asked Obama to reply to the most popular question posted on the president-elect’s web site, change.gov, inquiring whether he would appoint a special prosecutor to “investigate the greatest crimes of the Bush administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping.”

Obama made it clear that he has no intention of holding accountable those responsible for the political and international crimes carried out over the past eight years.

While affirming the general principle that no one is “above the law,” Obama stressed, “I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.” He likewise voiced his concern that any serious investigation would ignite a furor within the US intelligence apparatus, insisting that he did not want the “extraordinarily talented people” at the CIA to “feel like they’ve got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders and lawyering.”

As recently as last April, during the election campaign, Obama declared that he would ask his attorney general to “immediately review” evidence of crimes by the Bush administration. Yet, in his interview Sunday, he said that his nominee for the post, Eric Holder, would be “making some calls,” but reiterated, “my general belief is that when it comes to national security, what we have to focus on is getting things right in the future, as opposed looking at what we got wrong in the past.”

Even in response to whether a toothless coverup like the 9/11 Commission might be mounted by the new administration, Obama responded, “My orientation’s going to be to move forward.”

Given this commitment to granting what amounts to immunity to top officials in the Bush administration, including Bush and Cheney, as well as the intelligence apparatus, Obama’s formal renunciation of torture is as hollow and cynical as Bush’s own repeated assertion that, “The United States does not torture.” It did, it does, and it undoubtedly will continue to do so under an Obama administration.

Under the Geneva Conventions, those responsible for torture, including top political officials, must be prosecuted. Obama’s commitment to what amounts to an amnesty on this question makes him complicit.

All the rhetoric about “moving forward” cannot hide the fact that the incoming administration is determined to cover up these crimes because they were supported not merely by the Bush administration and the Republicans, but by the Democrats as well. Any genuine probe of the torture and detention policies of the last several years would inevitably implicate Democratic congressional leaders who were briefed and signed off on these criminal practices.

Obama’s “moderation” and “non-partisan” approach have won praise from the political right and the establishment media.

The latest issue of Newsweek magazine carries a cover story headlined: “What Would Dick Do? Why Obama May Soon Find Virtue in Cheney’s Vision of Power.”

“Obama, who has been receiving intelligence briefings for weeks, is unlikely to wildly overcorrect for the Bush administration’s abuses,” the Newsweek story states.

The president-elect’s performance on “This Week” elicited a column dripping with cynical satisfaction by William Kristol in the New York Times. Kristol, among the most prominent ideologues of the neo-conservative right, titled his piece “Continuity We Can Believe In.”

Kristol began by noting Obama’s announcement that he had narrowed his search for a White House dog to two “no-drama” breeds, adding, “And he seems to be going for the no-dramatic-change-in-the-White-House alternative as well.”

The tongue-in-cheek presentation barely concealed an unflattering analogy. Obama, marketed to the American electorate as the “candidate of change,” is emerging ever more openly as the lap dog of the same ruling elites that pursued their interests through the Bush administration before him.

Inevitably, to serve these economic, social and political interests, an Obama administration will incorporate much of the same criminal methods that were employed by its predecessor. It is for this reason that even the largely symbolic task of shutting down the US prison at Guantanamo has suddenly become very complicated.

Bill Van Auken

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Washington’s criminal role in Sri Lanka

Steven — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:46:39 GMT

Washington’s criminal role in the Sri Lankan state’s anti-Tamil war
12 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/pers-j12.shtml

The brief interval last week between the US repudiation of the "peace process" and the Colombo government's ban on the LTTE exemplifies Washington's criminal role—as both instigator and facilitator—in Sri Lanka's communal war.

Last Wednesday, the US embassy in Colombo issued a statement that welcomed the Sri Lankan state's recent victories in the war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and urged Sri Lanka's government and military to press forward with the annihilation of the LTTE. The key passage in the statement read: "The United States does not advocate that the Government of Sri Lanka negotiate with the LTTE, a group designated by America as a Foreign Terrorist Organization since 1997."

Within hours of Washington formally renouncing its support for a negotiated settlement to the 25 year-old civil war, the Sri Lankan government banned the LTTE.

The Sri Lankan state has now arrogated to itself the power to jail for up to 20 years those it accuses of "supporting" the LTTE. Since resuming offensive operations against the organization in 2006, the government and military have leveled this charge against virtually anyone opposed to the war or even the government's right-wing socio-economic policies, from socialists and striking workers to the Tamil National Alliance, a 20-strong parliamentary grouping that considers the LTTE the only legitimate representative of the Tamils in negotiations with the government.

Colombo had previously outlawed the organization, but lifted the ban in 2002 when a truce was declared and the Sri Lankan state and LTTE agreed to enter into peace talks.

The brief interval between the US's repudiation of the "peace process" and the Sri Lankan government's ban on the LTTE exemplifies Washington's criminal role—as both instigator and facilitator—in the communal war mounted by Sri Lanka's Sinhalese bourgeois elite.

Washington encouraged Colombo to resume the civil war in 2006 and has aided and abetted every step of the Sri Lankan military's bloody advance. The new-found prowess of the Sri Lanka military is due almost entirely to the support it has received from Washington directly or from key US allies.

The Pentagon admits to having provided counter-insurgency training to Sri Lankan troops, as well as intelligence and "non-lethal" weapons. The latter includes sophisticated maritime radar equipment that has enabled Colombo to disrupt key LTTE supply routes from India. Meanwhile, Israel and Pakistan, whose governments and militaries are close US partners, have provided the Sri Lankan military with an expanded and technologically-enhanced arsenal.

US pressure was critical in getting Canada, the states of the European Union, and other countries to proscribe the LTTE. These bans have deprived the LTTE of financial support from the hundreds of thousands of Tamils chased from their island homes by the civil war.

In January 2006—only weeks after a new government had come to power in Colombo that denounced previous, supposedly excessive concessions to the LTTE—then US ambassador, Jeffrey Lunstead, warned the LTTE that if it did not quickly agree to a settlement on Colombo's terms it would face "a stronger, more capable and more determined Sri Lankan military."

To make the point unmistakably clear, Lunstead added: "Through our military training and assistance programs, including efforts to help with counter-terrorism initiatives and block illegal financial transactions, we are helping to shape the ability of the Sri Lankan government to protect its people and defend its interests."

The quid pro quo for this support has been an Access and Cross Servicing Agreement, signed in March 2007, that allows US warships and aircraft to use facilities in Sri Lanka.

Last Wednesday's US embassy statement joined Washington with the Sinhalese establishment in exalting the "liberation" of Kilinochchi, the city that for a decade had served as the capital of the LTTE-controlled enclave in parts of the island's north and east.

The reality is that the Sri Lankan military offensive, which had been spearheaded by indiscriminate aerial bombing and artillery barrages, produced a humanitarian disaster. Some 300,000 have been rendered refugees. Many of them now face the threat of hunger and disease because the Sri Lanka government, having ordered all aid workers to leave the LTTE-controlled areas in September, has systematically blocked basic relief supplies.

Human Rights Watch, an organization hostile to the LTTE, has condemned Sri Lankan authorities, for detaining and to this day holding in concentration camps "almost all" the ethnic Tamil civilians it has "liberated" since initiating its offensive in the Wanni region ten months ago.

As with the Israeli government's onslaught against Gaza, Washington and the Western media systematically distort the history of Sri Lanka's civil war, denouncing the victims of oppression as aggressors and terrorists, while cynically excusing, indeed celebrating, state terrorism aimed at keeping a people in subjugation.

It is not a justification of the petty bourgeois nationalist politics of the LTTE to recognize that the Sri Lankan civil war was the outcome of the Sinhala bourgeoisie's decades' long and ever-escalating oppression of the island's Tamil minority and that the war has been waged by successive governments with the aim of entrenching the power and privileges of the Sinhala elite.

Unable to provide any progressive solution to the legacy of backwardness bequeathed by colonialism and continuing imperialist domination, the Sinhala bourgeoisie, from the very birth of the Sri Lankan state, has whipped up anti-Tamil chauvinism to split the working class and develop a social base for its rule.

At independence in 1948, the Sinhala bourgeoisie stripped the Tamil-speaking plantation workers, the largest and one of the most militant sections of the working class, of their citizenship rights. Less than a decade later, Sinhalese was declared the state's sole official language. In the 1970s, Buddhism was proclaimed the state religion—the Tamils are Hindus, Christians and Muslims—and discriminatory quotas were introduced to limit Tamils' access to universities. In 1983, three years after smashing a general strike that challenged its turn to a neo-liberal, export-led growth strategy, the Sri Lankan government whipped up pogroms against the Tamil minority.

Similarly, it was the Sri Lankan state that took the initiative in 2006 to re-launch the civil war, having, with Washington's ample aid, used the "peace process" to rearm. The mindset of the Sinhala establishment was well-illustrated by an interview that Army Commander Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka gave to a Canadian newspaper last September. "I strongly believe," declared Fonseka, "that this country belongs to the Sinhalese. We being the majority of the country, 75 percent, we will never give in and we have the right to protect this country. They [the minorities] can live in this country with us. But they must not try to, under the pretext of being a minority, demand undue things."

By any measure, the 25 year-long Sri Lankan civil war has been a disaster for the people of Sri Lanka—Sinhalese and Tamil alike. More than 70,000 people have been killed in a county of just 19 million. As many as 800,000 Tamils have fled the island and another half million have been internally displaced, meaning that a third of the total Tamil population has been uprooted from their homes. The island's economic development has been set back by decades due to the devastation wrought by the war and the billions squandered on prosecuting it. The military now consumes 17 percent of the national budget.

The war has been invoked to demand round-after-round of sacrifices from the working class and justify the suppression of democratic rights. Disappearances and political assassinations are routine. Parliament has increasingly become a façade behind which a small cabal of politicians—the Rajapakse family and its cronies—and the military rule the country.

In the aftermath of the Sri Lankan state's "historic" victory in Kilinochchi, President Mahinda Rajapakse has bluntly warned the population it will have to make further "sacrifices." Furthermore, the government has imposed a sweeping ban on the LTTE, and the editor of a prominent opposition newspaper has been assassinated.

Washington's brazen support for a war of extermination against the LTTE, an organization that emerged as a mass movement in response to the communal persecution of the Tamil people by the Sri Lankan state, is a further chilling example of the US elite's embrace of war and reaction across the globe.

The international working class must oppose Washington's and Colombo's drive to eradicate the LTTE, aimed as it is at strengthening the reactionary Sri Lankan state and perpetuating the oppression of the Tamils and of the working class. To do so implies no support for the politics of the LTTE.

The LTTE, which represents the interests of the Tamil elite, has sought to carve out a capitalist nation-state, by appealing for the support of India, the US and other great-powers. It is organically incapable of making an appeal to the working class in Sri Lanka and internationally—the only force whose class interests lie in ending the war, overthrowing the Sri Lankan bourgeois state, and ensuring the democratic rights of the Tamil population, and which has the social power to do so.

It is for this international socialist perspective that the Socialist Equality Party of Sri Lanka fights. In a statement announcing that it is contesting coming provincial council elections, the SEP (Sri Lanka) declared: "In opposition to all other political parties, the SEP candidates will emphatically oppose the war being waged by President Mahinda Rajapakse and his government against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all troops from the North and East."

"This is not a war of liberation or a war against terrorism, but a war to entrench the power and privileges of the Sinhala ruling elite over the working class as a whole—Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim alike. The SEP calls on all workers to decisively reject the divisive poison of communal politics and to unify in a struggle for their common class interests on the basis of a socialism program."

The SEP statement went on to declare, "The war in Sri Lanka is just the sharpest example of the incapacity of the capitalist class throughout the region to resolve the most basic democratic and national tasks. For decades, religious, ethnic and language differences have been exploited to divide the working class and buttress bourgeois rule, creating a disaster for tens of millions of ordinary people. Once again, India and Pakistan are beating the drums of war in the wake of the Mumbai atrocity. By taking a stand against ethnic and religious communalism and militarism, workers in Sri Lanka will show the road forward for the working class throughout South Asia."

Keith Jones

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Moderator

Steven — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 21:00:22 GMT

Originally I left tribe to do more serious political work. On “Tribe”, all too often I found myself getting sucked into useless debates with angry people who will never lift a finger to change anything for the better anyway. Yet, posting my point of view and struggling to help people understand was also somewhat addicting to me, despite the fact that very little of this resembles the kind of serious political work I should be doing. So I thought the best remedy to stop wasting precious time was leaving “Tribe”.

In addition, it didn't seem like this "Cool Earth Party Tribe" was materializing as a realistic way to establish the needed revolutionary party for the United States.

Yet, now that I've left, I've decided that it would be a better idea to stay active in just a few good groups where the left are not constantly harangued by defenders of imperialism and the status quo.

With that as plan, I’d be willing to also take back the moderator role in this group for the continued promotion of its goals.

Since I deleted my original profile, Tribe rules require agreement from members to make me moderator.

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 8 replies

JUSTICE FOR OSCAR GRANT! JAIL KILLER COPS!

Steven — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 00:26:53 GMT

PROTEST POLICE SHOOTING IN OAKLAND! JUSTICE FOR OSCAR GRANT! JAIL KILLER COPS!

As of this writing (late on January 7th, 09), young people from the Fruitvale neighborhood and around Oakland are in the streets protesting the outrageous shooting of Oscar Grant III, an unarmed man who was LYING ON HIS STOMACH on a BART (subway) platform in Oakland early on New Years day. He died a short time later at Highland hospital. The shooter was a BART cop who stood over the victim and fired the shot into Oscar at point blank range for no apparent reason. Cell phone video footage, now displayed at http://www.ktvu.com/video/18409133/index.html, a local tv station, shows clearly that Grant was flat on the gound and not resisting at the time of the shooting. Protestors have closed three BART stations, attacked police cars, and marched on city hall. The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal (an Oakland-based defense organization), also protests this horrendous, barbarous act of murder. Justice for Oscar Grant! Jail killer cops!

Oscar Grant III was a young black man and father of a young girl, who lived in Hayward and worked as a butcher in an Oakland food market. The cop, who has only been publicly named after a week's delay--Johannes Mehserle--HAS YET TO EVEN BE INTERROGATED ABOUT THE INCIDENT, let alone arrested! But crocodile tears over the "tragedy" continue to rain down from BART officials and the press--no justice there! Famed civil rights attorney John Burris has filed a $25 million damage suit on behalf of the family, to which we say: go for it, but no amount of money can make up for police atrocities such as this.

Forged largely to replace slavery after the Civil War, the criminal "justice" system in this country is so bent with racial and class bias as to make the word "corrupt" sound limp. Torture and murder of black people at the hands of cops has been even more prevalent and longer lasting than the frequent Klan lynchings in the South, which went on for decades. And the infamous beating of Rodney King in LA, also caught on video, resulted in an acquittal of the cops, who were conveniently tried in a white suburb full of police residences. While these crimes go unprosecuted and ignored, now suddenly, in reaction to the Bush administration's criminal "war on terror," we learn that "the US doesn't torture"! What a farce.

The innocent are routinely put to death by a system which values "timeliness" and courtly rules and regulations above evidence. Innocence is no defense in the US! This is what threatens political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal, whose case, now before the Supreme Court, could still result in his execution for a crime he didn't commit. And the same threat hangs over many other victims of this system, such as Troy Davis, whose Georgia frame-up is now before the 11th Circuit Court.

We say: free Mumia, free Troy Davis, and free all class-war prisoners and innocent victims of the death penalty system! And:

NO REPRISALS AGAINST PROTESTORS OF THE OSCAR GRANT MURDER! JUSTICE FOR OSCAR GRANT! JAIL ALL KILLER COPS!

- The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal LACFreeMumia@aol.com

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Brave Woman Stops Israeli Soldiers from Shooting Protesters

Steven — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 06:33:38 GMT

Brave Woman Stops Israeli Soldiers from Shooting Protesters

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQyIKyd2gqA

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Liberation News flyer: Israel Out of Gaza!

Steven — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 05:49:37 GMT

Copies of the following statement were distributed in Santa Cruz:

Israel Out of Gaza! Down with U.S. Imperialist Sponsored Mass Murder in Gaza!

Statement of Liberation News, by Steven Argue:

More than a week of Israeli military assaults on the population of Gaza has left 700 people dead, 200 of them children. In attempt to conceal its crimes, Israel has barred foreign media from Gaza. Yet, many stories of war crimes are still getting out as civilian centers, a school, and aid workers are deliberately targeted by Israeli forces. In areas hit by bombing, Israel has refused rescue operations the ability to operate, leaving many more people to die.

Gaza is a small strip of land that contains 1.5 million people. Most of these people were driven from their land by the Israeli Army’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948. With the birth of Israel, a new homeland was created for one people by removing the original inhabitants through force and violence. Palestinians who were forced to flee are not given the right to return to their homeland. Meanwhile, Jews from any country in the world are automatically given citizenship.

Gaza was seized by Israel in 1968, putting refugees from Israel once again under Israeli occupation. In 2005, the Palestinians of Gaza gained formal independence. Yet, the area to which Palestinians have been confined by Israel has no economic basis for independence. Gaza is more like a reservation for Native Americans in the United States or a Bantustan as they existed in Apartheid South Africa. Imports, exports, and travel are all controlled by Israel.

Ever since 2006, Israel, with the help of the U.S. backed dictatorship in Egypt, has choked off Gaza from needed imports, electricity, exports, and fuel. As a result, the people of Gaza suffer unemployment, malnutrition, problems with the water supply, and poverty.

A condition of the cease-fire was lifting this blockade by Israel. For its part, Hamas dramatically reduced rocket fire coming from Gaza. During this time, not a single casualty resulted from that rocket-fire at a time when Israel continued to kill Palestinians. Israel, however, never made any attempt to uphold its end of the bargain, and continued to force collective misery on the Palestinian people through the blockade.

The war against the people of Gaza is not a defensive action by Israel; it is a continuation of Israel’s policy, since its birth in 1948, to inflict death, terror, and misery on the native people in order to establish a nation ruled by one ethnicity and one religion. Yet, despit all of this, lies are being fed to the American people by the corporate media, and the Democrats and Republicans trying to justify Israeli war crimes and collective punishment of the entire Palestinian people.

While giving no political support to Hamas, Liberation News stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people in demanding an end to U.S. military aid to Israel and Egypt. The U.S. props up these repressive governments with billions of dollars in military aid every year. The people of the Near East will be much better off when they are allowed to decide their own governments without the intervention of U.S. supplied weapons.

Yet, to acieve such a dramatic end to U.S. imperialist intervention will take the building of a socialist party in the United States that struggles to end the economic basis of U.S. imperialism, i.e. the capitalist profit system of exploitation and greed. Liberation News is dedicated to this goal.

Subscribe free to Liberation News: https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

Protest: Santa Cruz Clock Tower, 5 PM, Friday, January 9th.

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Senate Democrats endorse Israeli war crimes

Steven — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 14:20:08 GMT

Senate Democrats endorse Israeli war crimes
By Bill Van Auken
9 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/lead-j09.shtml

As evidence of Israeli war crimes mounted and amid signs that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are launching a new and even bloodier phase of the two-week war against the embattled people of Gaza, the Democratic leadership of the US Senate Thursday led the passage of a bipartisan resolution endorsing Israel’s actions. The resolution passed by a unanimous voice vote.

The resolution begins by “recognizing the right of Israel to defend itself against attacks from Gaza and reaffirming the United States’ strong support for Israel in its battle with Hamas.”

The preamble of the document contains 12 paragraphs vilifying Hamas as a “terrorist” organization and blaming it entirely for the ongoing war in Gaza. It includes one brief mention of the “humanitarian situation in Gaza,” but quickly adds that Israel has “facilitated humanitarian aid.”

It goes on to declare “vigorous support and unwavering commitment to the welfare, security and survival of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state with secure borders” and to recognize Israel’s “right to act in self-defense to protect its citizens against acts of terrorism.”

It then demands that Hamas halt all rocket attacks, renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept all previous Palestinian-Israeli agreements.

That Israel should curtail its blitzkrieg against the people of Gaza, which has claimed the lives of nearly 800 men, women and children and left over 3,200 others wounded, is not even remotely suggested by the Senate resolution.

Speaking before the vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Democrat from Nevada) declared, “When we pass this resolution, the United States Senate will strengthen our historic bond with the state of Israel, by reaffirming Israel’s inalienable right to defend against attacks from Gaza.”

Reid invited his Senate colleagues to “imagine that happening here in the United States. Rockets and mortars coming from Toronto in Canada into Buffalo, New York. How would we as a country react?”

While the absurd analogy must have proved unsettling for Canadians, one might just as well imagine how the population of New York state would react if Canada invaded, seized their homes and land and herded them all into Buffalo, subjecting them and their children to military occupation, near starvation and continuous armed attacks.

Chiming in his agreement, the resolution’s co-sponsor, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, added, “The Israelis … are responding exactly the same way we would.” Indeed, it is no accident that the Israeli media have described the military onslaught against Gaza as “shock and awe.”

Under conditions in which masses of people all over the world are expressing shock and revulsion over the one-sided slaughter that the Zionist military machine has unleashed against the virtually defenseless population of Gaza, this resolution is an obscenity.

It is another telling piece of evidence that the Democratic Party and its elected officials represent not the sentiments or wishes of the American people, but rather those of a narrow ruling elite that is committed to advancing its aims through militarism and is utterly indifferent to the fate of the working class, the poor and the oppressed in Palestine, the US or any other country.

While president-elect Barack Obama has maintained a discreet silence on Washington’s policy toward the bloodbath in Gaza since it began nearly two weeks ago, the resolution backed by his former Democratic colleagues in the US Senate speaks eloquently for him.

There is no question that an Obama administration will maintain US imperialism’s backing for Israeli aggression and repression of the Palestinian people and will continue funneling the over $3 billion in annual military aid that provides the Israeli Defense Forces with the weaponry now being used to massacre innocent civilians.

In another indication that in this crucial foreign policy arena the former candidate of “change” will carry out a policy of essential continuity with that of his predecessor, it was announced Thursday that former US diplomat Dennis Ross has been tapped to serve as the Obama administration’s “ambassador at large” and chief adviser on the Middle East.

The announcement came first from Ross’s present employer, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a pro-Israeli think tank that he joined after leaving the State Department in 2001. WINEP was founded by Martin Indyk, a research director for the American Israeli Political Action Committee who was later appointed US ambassador to Israel.

Ross also became a foreign affairs analyst for Fox News and a supporter of the Project for the New American Century’s campaign for a US war against Iraq in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks. He later joined the steering committee of the I. Lewis Libby Defense Fund, organized to support the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney who was convicted in connection with the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s name in retaliation for her husband’s exposure of the Bush administration’s phony case for the Iraq war.

While Ross was a leading figure in US-brokered talks between Israel and the Palestinians, all of the so-called peace initiatives that he helped push through quickly failed. According to one Arab negotiator quoted in a book on these negotiations, “The perception always was that Dennis started from the Israeli bottom line, that he listened to what Israel wanted and then tried to sell it to the Arabs… He was never looked at … as a trusted world figure or as an honest broker.”

Ross’s role was essentially that of Israel’s attorney, justifying its every violation of previous agreements while demonizing Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat as wholly responsible for the breakdown of the Camp David negotiations.

Speaking at a synagogue in Maryland earlier this week, Ross took the same line as the Bush administration on the ongoing war against Gaza, declaring that the US should support a cease-fire only if it guarantees that Hamas “can’t rebuild.” The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, a New York-based news agency which reported the speech, wrote that Ross added that “Israel left Lebanon and Gaza, and in both instances, ‘things got a whole lot worse’—which doesn’t provide much confidence about a withdrawal from the West Bank.”

Assured of continued backing from both the current and the incoming US administrations, the Israeli government is intensifying its criminal war against the people of Gaza.

The United Nations agency responsible for providing food and other basic necessities to the vast bulk of Gaza’s population announced Thursday that it is suspending operations in the Israeli-occupied territory because of what it described as the “deliberate targeting” of its aid workers, which made it impossible to guarantee their lives and safety.

The action, which threatens to deepen what is already a humanitarian catastrophe, came after Israeli tanks shelled a UN convoy, killing two Palestinian forklift drivers and wounding two other aid workers. They were in trucks headed to the Erez crossing with Israel to pick up food and other humanitarian supplies during what the Israelis had claimed was a three-hour suspension of firing meant to facilitate such distributions.

“They were coordinating their movements with the Israelis, as they always do, only to find themselves being fired at from the ground troops,” John Ging, the head of United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza, told the news agency Al Jazeera.

In another incident, a UNRWA driver was shot to death by Israeli troops near the Kerem Shalom border crossing at the northern end of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli forces also fired on a convoy of three UN vehicles during a Thursday mission to recover the body of another aid worker killed in a previous attack.

UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said that the series of deaths made it impossible to resume operations until “the Israeli army can guarantee the safety and security of UN personnel. Gunness charged Israel with “deliberately targeting” aid workers, stressing that all of the locations of UN facilities and movements by its personnel are communicated to the Israeli military.

This development follows the IDF’s shelling Tuesday of the UN’s school in the Jabalya refugee camp, which killed 45 people in one of the worst atrocities since the Israeli attacks began.

UN officials have stressed that Israel’s so-called “humanitarian corridor,” opened three hours a day between relentless bombardments and killings, is wholly inadequate to distribute food to any significant portion of Gaza’s population.

The attacks on UN personnel represent only one manifestation of a criminal policy of “total war” against Gaza’s population.

One unintentional byproduct of the three-hour suspensions of Israeli bombardments is that they have served to further expose the atrocities perpetrated in the two-week operation as bodies are dug from the rubble and wounded survivors are retrieved from their homes.

In one of the most appalling incidents, the International Red Cross in Geneva reported that on Wednesday its aid workers discovered four starving children lying next to their dead mothers in a house in the Zaytuon neighborhood south of Gaza City. The Red Cross had been trying since Saturday to send ambulances into the area, but only received permission from the Israeli military on Wednesday. The delay was a death sentence for many wounded civilians in the area.

Medical crews from the Red Cross and the Palestinian Red Crescent reported finding 12 corpses lying on mattresses in the house together with the children and their murdered mothers. The children were so weak from hunger that they were unable to stand.

The medical teams were compelled to evacuate surviving wounded on donkey carts because the Israeli military would not allow ambulances into the area. The Israeli troops threatened to fire on the ambulance teams if they did not leave, but the medical workers refused to stop their work until they were actually shot at.

The Red Cross issued a rare denunciation of Israeli actions, calling them unacceptable and charging the Israeli government with having “failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded.” In other words, it accused the Israeli regime of having carried out a war crime.

“This is a shocking incident,” said Pierre Wettach, the Red Cross’s head of delegation for Israel and the Palestinian territories. “The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestine Red Crescent to assist the wounded.”

The Geneva Conventions specify that warring parties must ensure “all possible measures to search for and collect the wounded and sick” and stipulates that the wounded “shall not willfully be left without medical assistance and care.”

Meanwhile, according to press reports, the Israeli cabinet has already voted to move ahead with a “third phase” of the operation, sending Israeli troops into the densely populated streets and alleys of Gaza City and other urban areas. “The next phase is inevitable,” one senior Israeli official told Time magazine.

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

Obama prepares sweeping cuts in social programs

Steven — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 06:32:03 GMT

Obama prepares sweeping cuts in social programs
8 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/pers-j08.shtml

Barack Obama took the occasion of his first press appearance in Washington as president-elect to declare his determination to impose policies of budgetary austerity, including the elimination of entire federal programs and cost-cutting in the entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid that are of vital importance to tens of millions of elderly and poor people.

Obama announced his appointment of Nancy Killefer, a director at the management consulting firm McKinsey & Co., to a new White House post of chief performance officer. Killefer, a Treasury official in the Clinton administration, will be in charge of setting performance standards for federal agencies and enforcing them on agency officials. Those programs that fail to meet these standards will be targeted for reorganization or elimination.

The president-elect made the statement on the eve of a speech Thursday in which he will make the case for a proposed stimulus package. It was a clear effort to appease both congressional Republicans and the sizeable faction of fiscal conservatives among the congressional Democrats, reassuring them that while unlimited funds are to be provided to bail out big business, there will be a tight rein on spending for programs that support the needs of working people.

Obama's remarks on Wednesday shed light on the basic character of his stimulus plan, which is tailored to the demands of the financial and corporate elite and will provide hundreds of billions in additional public funds to prop up corporate profits, while doing little to provide relief for tens of millions of working people facing the deepest slump since the Great Depression.

Obama noted the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate released Wednesday that the federal deficit for the current fiscal year will top $1.2 trillion, without counting any additional spending for the economic stimulus plan that the Obama administration and Congress will enact after his inauguration. "Trillion dollar deficits will be a reality for years to come," he warned, declaring that containing the deficit and putting the lid on federal spending must become "fundamental principles of government."

When a reporter from the Wall Street Journal asked about Medicare and Social Security, noting that these were among the largest federal expenditures, Obama replied, "We are beginning consultations with members of Congress around how we expect to approach the deficit. We expect that discussion around entitlements will be a part, a central part, of those plans." He added that once the stimulus package was adopted, by mid-February, "we will have more to say about how we're going to approach entitlement spending."

These remarks and comments by Democratic congressional leaders are a warning of what is to come: a frontal assault on the most important components of what remains of a social safety net in the United States—the programs that provide at least minimal retirement benefits and medical coverage for tens of millions of elderly people, as well as medical coverage for millions of low-income families.

While both Social Security and Medicare are solvent, currently taking in more tax revenues than they pay out, the Social Security Trust Fund, which represents the accumulated contributions of three generations of working people, has been effectively plundered to pay for the Bush administration's tax cuts for the wealthy, two wars and the immense US military establishment.

Out of $10.7 trillion in total federal debt, about 40 percent, or $4.3 trillion, is borrowed from Social Security. The Trust Fund is the largest holder of federal debt, followed by US private investors, who hold $3.4 trillion, and foreign investors, many of them governments, who hold $3 trillion.

The CBO figure of $1.2 trillion likely underestimates the current year's deficit by a significant amount. It includes nothing for the stimulus package which has yet to be spelled out in detail by the incoming administration, and assumes no emergency spending to finance Obama's promised buildup of US military forces in Afghanistan. Reuters reported Wednesday that Obama's secretary of defense, Robert Gates, a holdover from the Bush administration, is requesting an additional $70 billion for the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not counting the additional cost of a doubling of US forces to some 60,000 in Afghanistan.

The CBO estimates that the US unemployment rate, at 6.7 percent in November, will rise to 9 percent by the end of this year, although many economists project a rate of 10 percent or more. Double-digit unemployment would drive up spending on jobless benefits, food stamps and Medicaid, among other programs, swelling the deficit even further.

The CBO also placed the cost of the Treasury bailout of Wall Street at $180 billion in 2009, although Congress is expected to authorize an additional $350 billion on top of the $350 billion already expended since October. The bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-sponsored mortgage finance companies brought down by the subprime mortgage crisis, will add another $240 billion to the deficit.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, Democrat from North Dakota, echoed Obama's warning of trillion-dollar deficits for several years, as well as his pledge to tackle long-term problems in the financing of Social Security and Medicare. He told the press, "It would send a very healthy message to the markets and the American people if President-elect Obama were to simultaneously announce an economic recovery package and the beginning of a bipartisan process to deal with our long-term imbalances."

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who has close ties to the right-wing faction of House Democrats, the so-called Blue Dogs, added his voice to the chorus calling for long-term deficit-reduction measures, going so far as to suggest that the Obama administration might have to follow the example of the Republican administrations of the 1980s, when White House budget officials engaged in across-the-board budget cuts by executive order, a process called "sequestering."

Congressional Democrats opposed sequestering 20 years ago, pointing out that there was no constitutional authority for such executive action without congressional authorization. It is a measure of how far to the right the Democratic Party has moved that one of its top leaders now embraces such a policy.

Robert Bixby, director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan group that advocates fiscal austerity, provided an indication of what is being contemplated, saying, "I would analogize it to what the government is doing with the auto companies. Congress said, we'll give you the money but you have to show us a plan for sustainability." In return for emergency loans to the US auto companies, Congress demanded tens of thousands of layoffs, the closure of dozens of plants and draconian cuts in auto workers' wages and benefits.

Four years ago, George W. Bush began his second term as president by proposing a sweeping privatization of Social Security, a measure which was never formally introduced in Congress due to overwhelming popular opposition. The plan was quietly shelved after the debacle of Hurricane Katrina demonstrated the Bush administration's gross incompetence and utter indifference to the plight of poor and working class Americans. It has thus been left to Obama, who occasionally postures as the heir of Franklin Roosevelt, to take responsibility for dismantling the last legacy of the New Deal.

Patrick Martin

posted in *~The Cool Earth Party~* - 0 replies

*~The Cool Earth Party~*'s topics - tribe.net

For Socialized Medicine! No To Obama's Reforms!

Urgent: Protest Bloody Repression in Honduras!

Honduras: The First Coup of the Obama Administration

New Taco Bell Green Menu Takes Nothing From Nature

Translated: Mobilize To Defeat the Putsch!

No to All Wings of the Mullah Regime!

NYC Labor: Scab Cookies Are “Too Hot to Handle”!

Police Commit "Highway Robberies"

Pictures Obama doesn't Want You to See

Organic Agriculture in Cuba

Bring Down the Bourgeoisie Through Workers Revolution!

Obama seeks $83.4 billion to continue US wars

Arctic sea ice thinnest ever going into spring

Two months on: The class agenda of the Obama administration

China offers no fix for global slump

Demonstrate this Saturday, March 21 on the 6th anniversary of the war against Iraq!

The AIG bonuses furor: the class issues

White House Forum on Health Reform

US economy shrinks at 6.2 percent rate

Colombia rocked by wiretapping revelations

Obama’s multi-trillion-dollar handout to the banks

Obama names third Republican to cabinet

Obama orders continue “extraordinary renditions,” secret CIA prisons

States fail in latest prairie dog report card

France: Ruling circles shaken by January 29 protests

Gloom dominates World Economic Forum in Davos

The rising tide of economic nationalism

Obama’s program of war

New Middle East Culture & Politics Tribe

Investigate US torture and prosecute those responsible

The capitalist market and Obama’s stimulus plan

Crisis in eastern Europe and the lessons of 1989

Obama's orders leave torture, indefinite detention intact

Emergency Protest to Defend the Safety of Leonard Peltier

Who’s who in the Obama cabinet: Internal security

Obama: Trillions for the banks, austerity for the people

The case for nationalizing the banks

The social paradox in the rescue on the Hudson

Israeli military lays siege to Gaza City

Sarkozy's “new capitalism”

UAW accepts government ban on strikes

Obama, Bush: another $350 billion for the banks

Obama signals continuity with US torture regime

Washington’s criminal role in Sri Lanka

Moderator

JUSTICE FOR OSCAR GRANT! JAIL KILLER COPS!

Brave Woman Stops Israeli Soldiers from Shooting Protesters

Liberation News flyer: Israel Out of Gaza!

Senate Democrats endorse Israeli war crimes

Obama prepares sweeping cuts in social programs

~The Cool Earth Party~'s topics - tribe.net