ACTIVIST NEWSLETTER
Thursday, April 23, 2016, Issue #226
Contact us or subscribe to Newsletter at
jacdon@earthlink.net
The Hudson Valley Activist Calendar (click on) 4-1-16 APRIL CALENDAR
———————
CONTENTS
1. Photo of The
Month
2. The Women
Fighting the Islamic State
3. The Future of
U.S.-Cuban Relations
4. Cuban Party
Congress Looks Forward
5. New Momentum in
Russia-China Partnership
6. Washington Rattles More Sabers at Moscow
7. Neocon War Hawks
Back Clinton, Not Trump
8. Listen, Liberal
9. Verizon Strikers Challenge
Company Greed
10. The New Morality of Pope Francis
11. Washington Protest Says 'No' to AIPAC.
12. New York, California Raise Minimum to $15
13. Global Warming Swiftest Since Dinosaurs
14. Latin American Environmentalists Face Death
15. Rally Against Police Violence
16. Long Live The Easter Rebellion
17. Tough Times For
Endangered Orangutans
———————
1. PHOTOS OF THE MONTH
And still they come
Europe is locking its doors to halt the flow of migrants
escaping war in the Middle East, but still they come, as does this overcrowded
boat off the coast of Greece in mid-April. Under the recent EU-Turkey deal
refugees arriving on Greek islands from the Turkish coast from March 20 onwards
face deportation to Turkey unless they successfully apply for asylum in Greece.
Countries adjacent to Greece are using
force to prevent refugees from crossing the border. Pope Francis visited the
Greek island of Lesbos last week, highlighting the plight of nearly 4,000
migrants who are in waiting to see whether they’ll be granted asylum in
Greece or be deported to Turkey.
Libya is now a favored departure point to Italy for those
escaping poverty in Africa or war in the Middle East. The United Nations has
revived its call for regular pathways for admitting refugees and asylum seekers
to Europe after reporting that 500 people drowned
in the sinking of a boat off the coast of Libya. The U.S. continues to admit
only a pathetic handful of refugees from the Middle East despite Washington's
participation in the wars and regime changes that have set the region ablaze.
Refugees stand around a fire in
the squalid tent city at Idomeni, on the Greek-Macedonian border.
(AP Photo byVadim Ghirda)
———————
2. THE WOMEN FIGHTING THE ISLAMIC STATE
 |
|
Women guerrilla fighters call for release of Abdullah
Öcalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party imprisoned by Turkey since
1999. Female fighters follow Öcalan's leftist ideology
which holds that women
are central to Kurdish independence. (All photos by Diego Cupolo.)
|
By Norma
Costello, reporting from
Sinjar for the Independent (UK), April 10, 2016
"Raping the Yazidi women was part of the Islamic State's plan.
Destroy the women, destroy the culture,” Haveen, a 22-year-old Kurdish fighter
says as she scans the road ahead.
Dressed in the green guerilla uniform synonymous with
Kurdish armed groups, Haveen and her friend Denis keep watch, as two
members of a unit of fighters within the YBS — a Kurdish civil defense militia.
The all-women or “jin” unit based in Kananshor village near Sinjar mountain is
home to a rotating group of female fighters made up of local Yazidi women and
Kurds from nearby Turkey and Syria.
"I have been fighting for a long time now. I was on the
frontline but I was injured by an IED [Improvised Explosive Device],"
Haveen explains, pointing to a scar near her eye.
Denis, an energetic 30-year-old fighter from Turkey, said
the women set up in Sinjar after IS stormed the region in August 2014.
Thousands of women were taken captive as IS seized control of Sinjar in
north-western Iraq, home to hundreds of thousands of members of the minority
religion Isis has labeled as infidels. Isis abducted younger women and children
and murdered men and older women. Those who could not flee were killed and
buried in mass graves.
"After what happened to the Yazidi women it's important
to have all women units here," Denis says.
The YBS is an offshoot of the People's Protection Units
(YPG) — the paramilitary wing of Syria's Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).
The YPG, who have been one of the most effective forces fighting IS, say they
are training Yazidi women to fight against any further incursions into Yazidi
land.
"We have to support these women and help them to
protect themselves. Isis took those women and children because they wanted to
destroy their honor. We help train the Yazidi women to defend themselves and
then they can control their own future. That’s why we’re here" Denis says.
 |
|
Denis said for Kurdish women who grow up
with the ideology of becoming independence fighters
is not unusual. We never played princesses as
little girls," she joked.
|
The women fighters live in separate quarters from the
men, and romantic relationships are strictly forbidden." We live
separately but that’s the only difference," Haveen says. “On the frontline
we are all the same."
The women’s base is adorned with pictures of female martyrs
and brightly colored carpets. It boasts a strategic vantage point, with a clear
view of all cars entering the Yazidi village. Leaning out the window, Denis
erupts into laughter when asked how successful the women’s
units have been in the battle against IS.
"They are so scared of us! If we kill them they can't
go to heaven. It makes us laugh.... We make loud calls of happiness when we see
them to let them know we are coming. That’s when they become cowards,” she
says. Under the strict interpretation of Islam by IS, if a fighter is killed by
a woman he cannot go to heaven, a fact the women clearly relish.
"I like that when we kill them they lose their heaven.
I don’t know how many of them I’ve killed," Haveen says as she takes a
drag of her cigarette. "It’s not enough. I won’t be happy until they’re
all dead."
Three hours away in a predominantly Arab village close to
the Syrian border, Kurdish fighters explain how they retook the village — which
had been held by IS — two weeks ago
“We waited in the mountains for weeks.... We lost 15
fighters, 14 men and one woman,” a young guerrilla who gave his name as Dilsan
explains.
The YBS has attracted young fighters from neighboring Syria.
“I came to kick IS out of these lands,” an 18-year-old
fighter named Rozaline explains. "I came for the Yazidi women. I saw them
cutting women’s heads off in Rojava [what Kurds call the three Kurdish enclaves
just south of the Turkish border in Syria]. I saw so many awful things. I don’t
want to see any more cutting and killing”
The former medical student left her studies to spend three
months training with the YPG in the mountains in Syria. A recent recruit to the
frontline — she arrived four days ago after IS launched an attack to retake the
village — Rozaline says she is there to avenge the Yazidi women.
“I must protect the Yazidi women from those animals…. I hate
them so much but I’m not afraid. Kurdish women sing when we go into battle. We
know they are cowards," she says, while the other "Jin"
fighters let out the shrill celebratory ululation call they use in battle.
"This is why we fight," said young Haveen who is
determined to avenge the Yazidi women. In Sinjar mass
graves are being
discovered on a daily basis.
The women are in high spirits — but Isis fighters are just a
few kilometers over the horizon. Two suicide bombers recently drove a car
loaded with explosives to within 500 meters of the group’s base. Fragments are
scattered all over the village, as our YBS driver weaves his way through
carefully through the sandy terrain littered with recently removed IEDs set by IS.
"They came to destroy our base but one of our fighters
shot them," says Amara, a Syrian fighter.
On the road back to Kananshor the car passes a militia base
where Kurdish fighters are evaluating their last offensive against IS. A small
woman shouts into a microphone, assessing the group's strengths and weakness.
Dozens of young guerrillas sit listening to the speech, a common occurrence
after an IS offensive.
Passing through areas of Sinjar Mountain we see how the
exposed bones of Yazidi women in mass graves are slowly being fenced off by
members of the U.S.-based Yazda group — an NGO which aims to support the
Yazidis. In the nearby city of Duhok the International Commission for Missing
People (ICMP) prepare to exhume the remains of those massacred by IS in order
to build a genocide case — a gruesome task that has enlisted a team of
international experts and forensic anthropologists.
Denis, who has already spent a large part of her life as a
fighter, says protecting the Yazidi women is just one step in their plan to defend
women’s rights globally.
"You and me, we are free, I am a fighter, you are a
journalist but our sisters around the world — they suffer under the power of
men, in Africa, in Asia, in Europe and American women suffer like the Yazidis.
The fight of our women is a fight for all women," she says.
—————————
3. THE FUTURE OF U.S.-CUBAN RELATIONS
 |
| Down with the blockade; it's still being enforced despite "normalization" of U.S.-Cuba relations. |
By Jack A. Smith,
Washington's partial rapprochement with Havana, symbolized
by President Barack Obama's recent visit to Cuba, is more advantageous to the
United States than the neighboring country it has ostracized, sanctioned and
subverted for over five decades.
This is not to say that the small island nation of 11.3
million people has gained nothing from President Obama's efforts to mitigate
over 56 years of Yankee hostility, beginning overtly a year after the 1959
armed revolution that freed Cuba not only from a vicious dictatorship but 467
years of foreign domination — by Spain from 1492, replaced by the U.S. from
1899. It ended with the Cuban Revolution on New Year's Day 1959.
Despite Obama's significant visit to Havana March 21-23, his
cordial dialogue with President Raul Castro, and the declaration that “I have
come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas,” the
principal contradiction between Washington and Havana has not changed
substantially: The Cuban revolutionary government is committed to retain a
socialist system, including a measure of private enterprise and foreign
investment. The U.S. government is committed to eliminating socialism in the
Western Hemisphere, though a modification in methodology now will seek to
attain that goal with honey, not acid. It will take a more leftist White House
and Congress to allow a truly more equal and friendly relationship to develop —
and that's not on the present horizon.
President Castro alluded to U.S. intentions in his opening
report to the 7th Communist Party congress April 16 when he noted:
" We are not naive nor do we ignore the aspirations of powerful external
forces that are committed to what they call the 'empowerment' of non-state
forms of management, in order to create agents of change in the hope of putting
an end to the Revolution and socialism in Cuba by other means."
In this regard, President Obama's Dec. 17, 2014, announcement
of Washington's new attitude toward Cuba is instructive: "I do not expect
the changes I am announcing today to bring about a transformation of Cuban
society overnight." The timing is ambiguous; the transformation to
capitalism remains the goal.
Castro continued: "We are willing to carry out a
respectful dialogue and construct a new type of relationship with the United
States, one which has never existed between the two countries, because we are
convinced that this alone could produce mutual benefits. However, it is
imperative to reiterate that no one should assume that to achieve this Cuba
must renounce the Revolution’s principles, or make concessions to the detriment
of its sovereignty and independence, or forego the defense of its ideals or the
exercise of its foreign policy — committed to just causes, the defense of
self-determination, and our traditional support to sister countries."
U.S. press coverage of the party congress — what there was
of it — was slanted against socialism in many cases. The New York Times article from Mexico City April 20 is a case in
point. It appeared to be entirely based on oppositional points of view. "Despite
a dramatic shift in relations with the United States and tentative economic
changes," one paragraph alleged, "the leaders of the Castros’
generation are in no hurry to make room for new blood. It is a blow to younger
Cubans who are eager for a more pluralistic system led by people closer to
their own ages and unencumbered by socialist orthodoxies." The article
grudgingly mentioned that some younger members "were appointed to senior
Communist Party positions." Associated Press staffers in Havana did a
fairly good job of objective reporting.
 |
| A number of Cubans, including asrtist
Yasser Castellano who created this picture, suspect an ulterior motive may be behind Washington's new policy. Virgil's Aeneid, of course, recounts how the Greeks used a Trojan Horse to defeat Troy after a 10-year siege. |
Carefully charting a future course for a government in
transition and the inevitable integration of a younger generation into
leadership is the party's most important responsibility at this time. Those who
won the revolution and/or who guided socialist Cuba through extraordinary
difficulties imposed over these decades by the depredations of U.S. imperialism
and the implosion of the Soviet camp want to get it right. The party will be
identifying younger candidates over the next five years who will best implement
the medium and long range plans (up to 2030) being worked out during that time.
While most of the top posts of the political bureau were unchanged this time,
the party selected five younger members in a bid to diversify the leadership.
Raul Castro, who will be 85 in June, assumed the presidency
in 2008 when President Fidel Castro resigned due to illness. He will step down
in two years. No successor has been named but it is assumed that First Vice
President Miguel Díaz-Canel, 57, will become the next president. He graduated
college as an electronic engineer and served as Minister of Higher Education
from 2009 to 2012. Díaz-Canel was elected to his present post in 2013. Future
presidents will serve no more than two five year terms. Both Raul Castro and Ramon
Machado Ventura, 85, were reelected to their posts as first and second
secretaries of the party. Raul reported as the congress ended "This
Seventh Congress will be the last led by the historic generation." He also
suggested that by the next congress it would be best for leaders becoming 70 to
relax and "take care of grandchildren."
Fidel Castro, who will be 90 Aug. 13, spoke briefly on the
last day of the four-day congress attended by 1,000 delegates and 260 guests.
Now referred to as "the historic leader of the revolution," Fidel received
an ovation when he said, obviously referring to himself, "everyone will
eventually die, but the ideas of Cuban communists will prevail, as proof that
on this planet, if you work with fervor and dignity, the material and cultural
goods that humans need can be produced, and we must fight relentlessly to
obtain them." (See article below
this for a report on the party congress.)
Fidel Castro placed a wreath at the Lincoln Memorial in April
1959 during an 11-day good will tour of the U.S. three months after revolutionary
forces ousted Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. He sought good relations with the U.S.
but several months later Washington imposed sanctions and plotted his overthrow.
President Obama has relaxed several painful penalties
imposed upon Cuba, but many more remain. Washington may in time terminate over
a half-century of severe economic sanctions, including an international trade blockade,
but it will take an act of congress to do so, and that may not be forthcoming
for many more years, or until Cuba publicly shreds the red flag. A large
majority of Republicans and a lesser number of Democrats are devoted to
retaining sanctions for the time being, but this may begin to change
A majority of the American people (58%) not
only favor reestablishing diplomatic relations
(while just 24% oppose), but 55% favor the United States ending its
trade embargo against Cuba. These polls were taken a few months ago before the
Obama family received a popular welcome Havana. Interestingly, and largely
forgotten, is that the average American was never enthusiastic about
Washington's break in relations with the island. In 1977, for instance, 53% of
Americans told Gallup that diplomatic relations with Cuba should be
re-established. But Washington's prolonged Cold War of choice and indulging of
the wishes of anti-revolutionary Cubans in Florida always took priority.
As we noted when Obama first hinted at reconciliation with
Cuba, An encouraging sign in the end-sanctions argument is the fact that very
large sectors of U.S. business and agriculture desperately want access to the
Cuban market which has been deprived of many goods for decades.
In addition, however, the U.S. propaganda against the island
is continuing. During Obama's days in Cuba the American mass media — which
invariably echoes Washington's true sentiments regardless of diplomatic
camouflage — focused primarily on the
misrepresentation that the Cuban government disparages "human
rights," and that hundreds of political dissidents have been in prison for
years — or "languishing in dungeons
across the island," in the words of Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.
 |
| Raul and Che Guevara in a mountain hideout. |
At his joint press conference with President Castro March
21, Obama introduced this theme when he said: "Wherever we go around the
world, I made it clear that the United States will continue to speak up on
behalf of democracy, including the right of the Cuban people to decide their
own future. We’ll speak out on behalf of universal human rights, including
freedom of speech, and assembly, and religion." American presidents have
been uttering such hypocrisies for decades as they protect and arm dictatorships
and overthrow governments unwilling to serve U.S. interests.
Obama asked for questions from
the press and CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta then addressed Raul
Castro: "President Castro, my father is Cuban. He left for the United
States when he was young. Do you see a new and democratic direction for your
country? And why [do] you have Cuban political prisoners? And why don’t you
release them?”
Castro replied: “Give me the
list of political prisoners and I will release them immediately." It does
not appear that any list was forthcoming. The government denies that dissidents
are being held on political grounds; it says they are there for various
violations of Cuban law.
According to the Cuban
Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation — an independent group
opposed to the Havana government —there were 80 political prisoners all told in
Cuban jails. The Cuban authorities do arrest people engaging in disruptive or
illegal demonstrations — but in virtually all cases they are released in a few
hours.
 |
|
Two guerrilla fighters
(1958), Haydee
Santamaria and Celia
Sanchez, who went on to
become high government officials in Cuba.
|
On March 2, three weeks before Obama's visit, Deputy Secretary
of State, Antony J. Blinken issued a U.S. statement to the UN Human Rights
Council that included a condemnation of Cuba. It said in part: "In Cuba,
we are increasingly concerned about the government’s use of short-term
detentions of peaceful activists, which reached record numbers in January. We
call on the Cuban government to stop this tactic as a means of quelling
peaceful protest."
Last week, police in Washington arrested 1,200 people
who were nonviolently demonstrating and offering civil disobedience for good
causes and no big deal was made of it by the American press. During Obama's
stay in Havana a couple of dozen people were arrested for civil disobedience
(and released within hours) and the U.S. press went wild with charges of
violating human rights.
There are many situations where negative U.S. policies and
actions against Cuba continue, but only one more will be noted for now — the
Cuban Adjustment Act. Cuba is a relatively poor country, hardly least because
of U.S. sanctions. Washington is continuing its long practice of inducing
Cubans to migrate to nearby Florida, legally or illegally, in order to convey
to the world the impression they are fleeing their homeland for freedom. It's
an old Cold War trick. According to an Oct. 1, 2015, article in Florida's
Sun-Sentinel daily paper:
"Unlike other immigrants, Cubans are granted entry to
the United States just by reaching land. The Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966
enables them to become permanent legal residents a year after they arrive, far
faster than any other nationality.... Cuban immigrants are granted immediate
access to welfare, food stamps and Medicaid, a practice that has ballooned from
a $1 million federal allocation in 1960 to at least $680 million a year
today." Many Cubans have migrated since President Obama announced he
sought better relations in December 2014, fearing the program would be
discontinued. In this the U.S. profits from the Cuban brain drain by offering good
salaries to economically struggling doctors, top athletes, college graduates
and many other talented people who were educated and trained at state expense in
Cuba.
Telesur, the leftist Venezuelan news outlet summed up
Obama's trip with these words:
"It was a victory for an unyielding Cuba, whose people
and leaders never surrendered in the face of a decades-long, U.S. onslaught. It
marks the first time in 88 years that a U.S. president has touched Cuban soil.
It's an admission by the Obama administration that U.S. policy toward Cuba has
failed. Yet in spite of all this, some raw wounds in diplomatic relations were
not addressed.
"Cuba insists that before there is a normalization of
relations between the two countries, the U.S. must end its blockade; return the
illegally-held Guantanamo Bay; change its immigration policies toward Cuban
migrants; stop transmitting radio propaganda into the country and attempting to
build an opposition; and finally stop all attempts at regime change. The U.S.
president failed to change policy over the illegal blockade, or apologize for
the crippling financial damage it has caused over more than half a decade."
 |
| President Obama at his two-hour meeting with Cuban critics of the socialist government. |
Just last month, Obama renewed a 20-year-old state of
national emergency to continue to administer the blockade against the Caribbean
island.... It bans ships and planes from the U.S. from entering Cuban waters or
airspace without government permission, and requires the president to annually
renew these emergency powers.
According to the UN the blockade has cost Cuba more than
US$117 billion (a huge sum for this small country), deprived Cubans of
life-saving medicines, and caused extra hardships for millions of Cubans. If
this isn't a massive attack on human rights what is?
The U.S will benefit more quickly and profoundly than Cuba
due to its new relationship, particularly in world "leadership" —
Obama's code word for global hegemony. There are three connected aspects to
this observation:
1. The nations of the world are strongly
opposed to Washington's bullying, sanctions and other expressions of
antagonism toward a much smaller country that has done it no harm. Last
October, for the 24th year in a row, the UN General Assembly voted
overwhelmingly to denounce the U.S. economic, commercial and financial
blockade. The vote was 191 to 2 (U.S. and Israel). By indicating he wanted to
"normalize" relations, Obama sought to rid Washington of the repeated
embarrassment of global condemnation. The vote probably will continue until
Congress scraps all its repressive
sanctions but Obama's gesture will alleviate the pressure.
2. For over 100 years the U.S. essentially
dominated Latin American and Caribbean nations and top hemisphere
inter-regional organizations. This began to change dramatically less than 20
years ago as key governments in the region moved left and more distant from the
Yankee overlord. Although it was a founding member of the Organization of
American States (OAS), Cuba was banned by the U.S. from attending meetings of
this important group for 47 years but was invited to return by a majority vote
of all the countries in 2009. Havana's response was that while Cuba welcomed
the Assembly's gesture, in light of the Organization's historical record
"Cuba will not return to the OAS." Cuba was also banned from the first
six meetings of the Washington-backed Summit of the Americas,
but strong support from Latin America and Caribbean countries made it possible
for Raul Castro to attend in 2015.
Since then, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean
States (CELAC) was formally established in 2011 in Caracas, with the initiative
of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and the support of Cuba. CELAC
includes all 33 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, including Cuba,
and excludes the United States and Canada. Its task is to encourage deeper
integration of the countries in the region. Other important new groups that
reduce Yankee control are ALBA (an alternative to the Free Trade
Area of the Americas) and UNASUR (the Union of South American
Nations).
The Obama administration has long been aware that the U.S. was
losing much of its clout in a crucial region of 640 million people and that the
best way to restore some semblance of authority was to publicly declare that
Washington would scrap the Cold War with Cuba. In December 2014 Obama
announced: “We will end an outdated approach [to Cuba] that, for decades has
failed to advance our interests, and instead we will begin to normalize
relations between our two countries." This 55-year policy not only
intentionally crippled the economy of a small nation; it was major factor in
the loss of U.S. influence in the region. Obama now is working toward regaining
its dominant "leadership" south of the border.
In an article for the April 2016 issue of The Atlantic
magazine, based on various interviews with Obama, Jeffrey Goldberg writes that Obama
"cited America’s increased influence in Latin America — increased, in part,
he said, by his removal of a region-wide stumbling block when he reestablished
ties with Cuba — as proof that his deliberate, nonthreatening,
diplomacy-centered approach to foreign relations is working."
Other factors are involved, of course. Many of these left
governments are suddenly in economic or political trouble. Raul pointed out in
his report to the party congress: "Latin America and the Caribbean find
themselves experiencing the effects of a strong, articulated counteroffensive,
on the part of imperialism and oligarchies, against revolutionary and
progressive governments, in a difficult context marked by the deceleration of
the economy, which has negatively impacted the continuity of policies directed
toward development and social inclusion, and the conquests won by popular
sectors.... This policy is principally directed toward the sister Bolivarian
Republic of Venezuela, and has been intensified in recent months in Bolivia,
Ecuador, and Brazil, as well as Nicaragua and El Salvador. Recent setbacks for
governments of the left in the hemisphere are being used to announce the end of
a progressive historical cycle, opening the way for the return of neoliberalism
and demoralization of political forces and parties, social movements and
working classes, which we must confront with more unity and increased
articulation of revolutionary action."
3. The purpose of
better relations with Cuba is to further weaken left regimes in the region (including
Cuba) and reverse the erosion of U.S. "leadership" in the Western
Hemisphere. Obama feared further withering away of Washington control in Latin
America/Caribbean would negatively impact its strategic global hegemony. Strengthening
U.S. world supremacy is the most important element of Obama administration
foreign/military policy, the highest priority of which is to contain China's
influence in Asia and the world and to isolate Russia. The improvement of U.S.
relations with Iran and Myanmar as well as Cuba is part of this project, as are
the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the proposed Transatlantic
Trade and Investment Partnership pact with Europe, and the ongoing
Pentagon military buildup in proximity to China and Russia.
 |
| The worst human rights abuses, including torture, take place at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo, Cuba. |
Obama's stay in Havana was
welcomed by the Cuban people because it indicated the Yankee Colossus was
reducing its continuous punishment of their country for being socialist and not
willing to follow where Washington leads. His speech to the Cuban nation March
22 was very carefully composed. "I have come here to extend the hand of
friendship to the Cuban people," he said, artfully avoiding extending it
to the Cuban government.
He went on: "Having removed the shadow of history from
our relationship, I must speak honestly about the things that I believe, the
things that we as Americans believe. I can’t force you to agree, but you should
know what I think. It’s time to lift the embargo, but even if we lifted the
embargo tomorrow, Cubans would not realize their potential without continued
change here in Cuba."
The notion that it is possible for a superpower, after
inflicting decades of castigation and pain on a small nation, to remove the
"shadow of history" with a few soothing words and a false smile is insulting
and absurd. Many Cubans were happy to hear him say, "It's time to lift the
embargo," aside from the reality that it's not going to be lifted for many
years. But if it ever is ended, Obama pretentiously informed the Cuban people that
they would not be able to live up to their potential unless they reorganize
their society in a way that satisfies the ever so judgmental and angry Uncle
Sam.
In all Obama's many pronouncements in Cuba about U.S.
dedication to human rights he never mentioned Washington's intrusions on human
rights in Latin America and the Caribbean during the last 63 years. They
include backing the fascist dictatorships in Argentina and Brazil, and
supporting violent regime change in Chile against democratically elected
President Salvador Allende. In addition there were U.S. intrusions, invasions,
CIA changes in regime, and other American abuses in Guatemala, Costa Rica,
Haiti, Guyana, Ecuador, Honduras, Bolivia, Jamaica, Dominican Republic,
Uruguay, Nicaragua, Grenada, Suriname, Panama, Peru, Mexico, Colombia,
Venezuela and of course the CIA-organized and President Kennedy-approved
disastrous invasion of Cuba April 17, 1961. The CIA and Cubans the agency
controlled carried out up to 100 failed assassination attempts on the life of
President Fidel Castro.
Obama removed Cuba from its list of state of sponsors
of terrorism in May. This opened the way toward closer relations. But Cuba
never supported terrorism. It defended itself against U.S. terrorism many
times. Havana opposed fascist
dictatorships in Latin America. It supported those fighting for freedom. Cuba
sent its troops to fight and die against the U.S.-backed South Africa's war
against Angola.
Here is an excerpt from a longer accounting of U.S. crimes
against Cuba compiled by Salim Lamrani a decade ago. He lectures at the Paris
Sorbonne, and has written several books about Cuba (in French).
"U.S. official documents that have recently been
declassified show that, between October 1960 and April 1961, the CIA smuggled
75 tons of explosives into Cuba during 30 clandestine air operations, and
infiltrated 45 tons of weapons and explosives during 31 sea incursions. Also
during that short seven-month time span, the CIA carried out 110 attacks with
dynamite, planted 200 bombs, derailed six trains and burned 150 factories and
800 plantations.
"Between 1959 and 1997, the United States carried out
5,780 terrorist actions against Cuba – 804 of them considered as terrorist
attacks of significant magnitude, including 78 bombings against the civil
population that caused thousands of victims.
"Terrorist attacks against Cuba have cost 3,478 lives
and have left 2,099 people permanently disabled. Between 1959 and 2003, there
were 61 hijackings of planes or boats. Between 1961 and 1996, there were 58
attacks from the sea against 67 economic targets and the population.
"The CIA has directed and supported over 4,000
individuals in 299 paramilitary groups. They are responsible for 549 murders
and thousands of people wounded.
"In 1971, after a biological attack, half a million
pigs had to be killed to prevent the spreading of swine fever. In 1981, the
introduction of dengue fever caused 344,203 victims killing 158 of whom 101
were children. On July 6, 1982, 11,400 cases were registered in one day alone.
"Most of these aggressions were prepared in Florida by
the CIA-trained and financed extreme right wing elements of Cuban origin."
(There are additional official documents but these have not been released to
our knowledge. J.A.S.)
Any major Cuban economic gains resulting from less
antagonism by the U.S. will take some time to materialize, argued Stratfor
March 15:
"The majority of U.S. businesses cannot trade
with Cuba because of the embargo, which is held in place by several
pieces of legislation. The embargo's future will depend on the political mood
in the United States. Both houses of the U.S. Congress — currently
controlled by the Republican opposition — would have to pass legislation
undoing provisions of the previous acts to end it. This is unlikely to happen
during the remainder of the Obama administration, which will not be able to
find the consensus needed to pass controversial legislation during an election
year.
"So the task of normalizing economic relations with
Cuba will fall to the next U.S. president, and it will take several
additional rounds of negotiations before the subject of lifting the embargo
even comes up for serious discussion. The United States and Cuba have
yet to settle major outstanding issues, such as compensation to U.S. property
owners for assets seized after the 1959 revolution. The Cuban government also
does not even minimally meet any of the human rights stipulations laid out in
the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996 for lifting the embargo.
Though new legislation could potentially supersede these requirements, it is
plausible that lawmakers concerned about Havana's treatment of dissidents could
use the topic to stall discussions. Until the embargo is lifted, it is likely
that if the U.S. government wants to boost trade and financial transactions
between specific U.S. business sectors and Cuba, it will have to loosen
existing federal restrictions through the U.S. Department of the
Treasury."
The White House has already taken some steps in this regard
a week before the visit to Cuba, according to the March 15 Wall Street Journal:
"The Obama administration unveiled some of the most extensive changes in
decades to rules on U.S.-Cuba trade, financial transactions and travel, including
a provision that effectively lifts the long-standing ban on American tourists
visiting the country.
"The new measures, presented March 14, ease
restrictions on American financial institutions and significantly broaden
Cuba’s access to the global economy. They allow Cuban citizens to earn salaries
from U.S. companies and to have American bank accounts for limited purposes, as
well as permit the use of U.S. dollars in financial transactions with Cuba
." The White House then voided remaining limits on individual travel to
Cuba, which will be a boon for the tourist industry.
An article in the April 5 Foreign Affairs online, written
from Cuba by Anne Nelson
and Debi
Spindelman, made some useful observations about Cuba that should be considered
by U.S. business leaders who plan to get richer in Cuba:
"With the opening (of the new relationship), there
promises to be a headlong rush to find, or construct, a Cuba that resembles the
United States. But that should not come at the expense of the other Cuba,
mysterious and complex, that’s well worth exploring. To start with, there’s
Cuba’s often overlooked success in indicators of human development. The World
Bank reported that in 2013, Cuba’s life expectancy, at roughly 79 years,
exceeded that of the United States for the first time. [Infant mortality per
thousand live births in Cuba is 4.2. In the U.S. it is 6 per thousand.] The
Cubans are proud of their security, a product of banning guns and severely
limiting narcotics trafficking and drug abuse. The country’s system of
preventive medicine has been highly effective. Every week, teams of medical
students make weekly door-to-door check-ups, effectively curtailing many
infectious diseases across the island. In recent weeks Cuba has mobilized its
army reserves to fumigate every household in the country to limit the spread of
the Zika virus....
"Cubans in both Havana and the rural interior... [are]
aware of the advantages they stand to lose in a transition: cities in which
drugs are rare and gun violence is unknown, a society that is committed to
nourishing and educating all of its children. Cubans are asking how to
integrate the most constructive aspects of the U.S. system without inviting its
attendant plagues. For its part, the United States, as well as U.S.
entrepreneurs seeking to set up shop on the island, should approach Cuba in a
spirit of discovery, with much to offer, much to gain, and much to learn."
They probably won't, of course, but it's
a good idea.
Rafael Hernandez, Cuban political analyst and head of the Temas magazine told China's Xinhua news
agency: "We are not rushing towards a free market economy, nor is our
government taking us there. This is a gradual process of transformation,
economic diversification and development of a nationalist private sector."
According to Xinhua: "Havana must reduce its dependence
on imports and develop a greater capacity to produce goods. Hernandez said 'The Cuban people have very
high expectations and demands from this reform era because their hope is to
restore the quality of life they had in the 1980s just before the Soviet
collapse.'
"He also stressed the next several years will be essential
for Cuba to speed up reforms initiated in 2011 and that the Cuban leadership is
aware of the importance of implementing key reforms such as putting an end to
the country's double currency system, increasing productivity, efficiency and
salaries in the state sector and providing a legal framework for private
businesses.
"At the same time, the party leadership wants to avoid
any chaotic shake-up within its ranks as economic reforms are implemented and
the revolutionary leaders hand over power to the younger generation. In the
next five years we'll see an articulated, gradual and easy-going generational
transition among the top political positions in the country," Hernandez
said.
 |
| Fidel and Cuban troops with captured U.S. weapons just as the CIA-organized invasion collapsed on the beaches of the Bay of Pigs in April 1961. |
President Obama indicated he would like to visit Fidel
during his brief visit if it could be worked out, but it didn't happen. Fidel
has been ill for years but he often meets with visitors and writes a frequent
column for the daily paper Granma. He
went to a children's school and talked to some of the young kids a two weeks after Obama's departure. And just days after Obama and his family arrived
back home Fidel published a 1,500-word column titled "Brother Obama."
which said in part:
"Obama made a speech in which he uses the most
sweetened words to express: 'It is time, now, to forget the past, leave the
past behind, let us look to the future together, a future of hope. And it won’t
be easy, there will be challenges and we must give it time; but my stay here
gives me more hope in what we can do together as friends, as family, as
neighbors, together.'
"I suppose all of us were at risk of a heart attack
upon hearing these words from the President of the United States. After a
ruthless blockade that has lasted almost 60 years, and what about those who
have died in the mercenary attacks on Cuban ships and ports, an airliner full
of passengers blown up in midair, mercenary invasions, multiple acts of
violence and coercion?
"Nobody should be under the illusion that the people of
this dignified and selfless country will renounce the glory, the rights, or the
spiritual wealth they have gained with the development of education, science
and culture.
"I also warn that we are capable of producing the food
and material riches we need with the efforts and intelligence of our people. We
do not need the empire to give us anything. Our efforts will be legal and
peaceful, as this is our commitment to peace and fraternity among all human
beings who live on this planet."
President Obama indicated he would like to visit Fidel
during his brief visit if it could be worked out, but it didn't happen. Fidel
has been ill for years but he often meets with visitors and writes a frequent
column for the daily paper Granma. He
went to a children's school and talk to some of the young kids a couple of weeks
after Obama's departure. And just days after Obama and his family arrived back
home Fidel published a 1,500-word column titled "Brother Obama,"
which said in part:
———————
4. CUBAN PARTY CONGRESS LOOKS FORWARD
 |
| Elderly Fidel and Raul at the party congress as the historic leaders of the Cuban revolution prepare for the future development of their changing society without them. |
By the Activist
Newsletter
[Note: Much of the
context for this article is in "The Future Of U.S.-Cuban Relations,"
above.]
The April 16-19 7th Cuban Communist Party (CCP)
Congress was almost entirely directed toward planning for the future under
complex new internal and external conditions.
Internally, new and younger leadership will begin to take
charge of the state and party at the next party congress in 2021, or perhaps
earlier as revolutionary veterans, such as octogenarians President and First
Secretary of the CCP Raul Castro and historic leader Fidel Castro retire or
pass away.
The most important work of the Cuban party and government
over the next five years is developing the economic, social and political
nature of a mixed economy of socialism with aspects of capitalism. In the
process Cuban leaders have pledged that the non-socialist element will be
contained and secondary. The new economic structure is viewed as a necessity
after over 55 years of crippling sanctions and subversion from the United States
and the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp.
Externally, the Obama administration has declared that
Washington's continual hostility toward Cuba has failed to attain its objective
of destroying socialism and reinstating total capitalism. As the world's
dominant capitalist power the U.S. government still seeks to banish socialism
from the Western Hemisphere but will depend upon more peaceful and patient
methods.
However, the worst subversion of all — the trade blockade —
remains operative, perhaps for many years until the election of a less right
wing congress in Washington. Even so, President Barack Obama's decision to
"normalize" relations removes many obstacles to economic development.
President Raul Castro — who was reelected as First Secretary
of the Cuban Communist Party April 19 — established the parameters of the
anticipated new economy in his major report to the congress:
"Decisions made with regard to the Cuban economy will
never, under any circumstance, mean a break with the ideals of equality and
social justice of the Revolution and much less rupture the strong union between
the majority of the people and the Party.
"Neither will we allow such measures to generate
instability or uncertainty within the population.... The introduction of the
rules of supply and demand is not at odds with the principle of planning. Both
concepts can coexist and complement each other for the benefit of the country,
as has been successfully shown by China’s reform process and the renovation process
in Vietnam, as they call it. We have used the term updating to describe our
process, as we are not changing the fundamental objectives of the
Revolution....
"We reaffirm the socialist principle of the
predominance of the ownership of all the people over the basic means of
production, as well as the need to relieve the State of other activities not
decisive to the development of the nation. Just as we aspire to greater
efficiency and quality in state sector production and services, we also favor
the success of non-state forms of management, on the basis, in all cases, of
strict compliance with current legislation....
"As we safeguard the memory
of the nation and perfect differentiated ideological work, with special
emphasis on youth and children, we must reinforce anti-capitalist and
anti-imperialist culture among ourselves, fighting with arguments, conviction
and resolve the attempts at establishing patterns of petty bourgeois ideology
characterized by individualism, selfishness, the pursuit of profit, banality,
and the intensifying of consumerism....
"Neoliberal policies which encourage the accelerated
privatization of state property and social services, such as health, education
and social security, will never be applied under Cuba’s socialist model."
Although it was not mentioned, a number of these guarantees
— assuming they will define the final economic plan in several years and are
ironclad in practice — retain a relatively larger proportion of socialism than
that of Cuba's Chinese friends.
According to an Associated Press dispatch from Havana near
the end of the congress: "From establishing a model for 'sustainable and
prosperous socialism' to coming up with a strategic plan that will last until
2030, the work of this party congress seems to be continuity.... But even
though Cubans can now buy and sell homes and cars, self-employment has been
expanded to nearly a half-million workers, fledgling private enterprises may
hire workers and there is a new foreign investment law, Castro made it clear that
Cuba isn’t heading toward a return to capitalism: 'The recognition of the
existence of private property has generated honest concerns among not just a
few of the participants in discussions leading up to this congress, who
expressed worries that doing so was taking the first steps toward the
restoration of capitalism in Cuba,' he said. 'I’m obliged to tell you that this
is in no way the goal.'
"Many Cubans are skeptical of free-market capitalism,
wary of American power and cannot envision a society without the free health
care and education put in place by the 1959 revolution. Party member Francisco
Rodriguez, a gay activist and journalist for a state newspaper, told AP that
Obama's nationally televised speech in Old Havana, his news conference with
President Castro and a presidential forum with Cuban entrepreneurs represented
"capitalist evangelizing" that many party members dislike.
 |
| Miguel Díaz-Canel, vice president, |
"Delegates to the last party congress five years ago
agreed on 313 changes in the economy and other areas of society but only 21%
have been fully implemented so far. The current gathering examined the
remaining work to be done and sought to reconcile differences of opinion and
how to accelerate the process.
"Raul (as he is spoken of by Cubans) frankly
acknowledged 'the main obstacle we have faced, just as we had predicted, is the
issue of outdated mentalities, which give rise to an attitude of inertia or
lack of confidence in the future. There also remain, as was to be expected,
feelings of nostalgia for the less difficult times in the revolutionary
process, when the Soviet Union and socialist camp existed. At the other extreme
there have existed veiled ambitions to restore capitalism as a solution to our
problems.'"
A key task of the meeting was
the conceptualization of Cuba’s future socio-economic model of development
which outlines the theoretical bases and essential characteristics of the
social and economic model the party aspires to create. Raul declared "the
conceptualization and fundamentals of the National Development Plan, after
being reviewed by the Congress, [will] be submitted to a process of democratic
discussions by members of the Party and Young Communist League, representatives
of mass organizations and broad sectors of Cuban society." Revisions will
then be made and this extremely important guide to Cuba's future will be
implemented. Raul then asserted: "In socialist and sovereign Cuba, the
ownership of the basic means of production by all the people is and will
continue to be the main form of the national economy and the socio-economic
system and therefore constitutes the basis of the actual power of
workers."
Raul also discussed the
importance of a single-party state: "In Cuba we have a single Party, of
which we are proud, which represents and guarantees the unity of the Cuban
nation, the main strategic arm on which we have relied to build the work of the
Revolution and defend it from all kinds of threats and aggression. It is
therefore no coincidence that we are attacked and demands made of us, from
almost all over the planet, to weaken us, to divide us into several parties in
the name of sacrosanct bourgeois democracy... If they manage some day to
fragment us, it would be the beginning of the end in our homeland, of the
Revolution, socialism and national independence, forged with the resistance and
sacrifice of several generations of Cubans since 1868 [the first uprising
against Spain.]"
The party leader devoted the
last portion of the report to Cuba's internationalism and opposition to
imperialism: "The sister peoples of the Third World which are making an
effort to transform the legacy of centuries of colonial domination, know they
can always count on the solidarity and support of Cuba, and that we will
continue fulfilling our cooperation commitments, on the basis of sharing what
we have, not what we have left over.
"Increasingly more serious are threats to international
peace and security, as a result of U.S. imperialism’s attempts to impose its
hegemonic position in the face of changes in the world’s equilibrium, and of
the philosophy of usurpation and control of strategic natural resources, made
evident by the increasingly offensive and aggressive military doctrine of NATO;
the proliferation of non-conventional wars under the pretext of fighting
“international terrorism;” the sharpening of differences with Russia and China;
and the danger of a war in the Middle East of incalculable dimensions.
"We hold the firm conviction that the Venezuelan people
will defend the legacy of our beloved compañero Hugo Chávez Frías, and prevent
the dismantling of the accomplishments achieved. To the Bolivarian and Chavista
Revolution, to President Maduro and his government, and to the civic-military
union of the Venezuelan people, we reiterate our solidarity, our commitment,
and energetic rejection of efforts to isolate Venezuela while dialoging with
Cuba."
J.A.S.
————————
5. NEW MOMENTUM IN RUSSIA-CHINA PARTNERSHIP
 |
|
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin
drawing closer together.
|
Many observers of the Russo-Chinese relationship continue to
believe that it is merely a marriage or axis of convenience, which will only
last as long as it does not damage its two players’ other rational interests.
This attitude clearly embodies the distinctive belief, particularly prevalent
in the United States, that all governments — Moscow and Beijing included — are
merely calculating Realists with no other motive. However, mounting evidence
shows that this view fails to capture the growing closeness of Russian and
Chinese positions on many global issues. Moreover, proponents of this
perspective fail to see that China continues to make material concessions to
Russia to keep it on China’s side, whereas Russia is also willing to take steps
damaging to its relations with third parties in order to please China.
Notably, Chinese President Xi Jinping recently urged both
governments to strengthen communication and coordination in international
security and on regional issues (presumably Korea, Southeast Asia, Japan, the
Middle East and Ukraine) to achieve political solutions. He also reiterated
that bilateral Sino-Russian cooperation plays a key role in safeguarding peace
and stability in Asia and in the world more generally (China Daily,
Xinhua,
March 26). Beyond that, China’s Deputy Prime Minister Zhang Gaoli recently met
with Gazprom head Alexander Miller and vowed to improve bilateral energy
cooperation (Xinhua, March 22). To mollify Russia, China recently lent Gazprom
$2.17 billion; and it appears that further loans to Russian energy companies as
well as further Chinese investment in them will be forthcoming, thus
representing a tangible manifestation of Chinese support for Russia against the
West. Indeed, China has already become the largest consumer of Russian crude
oil (RT,
March 14).
This cooperation is not only occurring in the energy sphere.
China has now made advance payments for Russia’s high-tech S-400 surface-to-air
anti-aircraft missile system, which it should begin receiving in 2017. While
the specific missile that will be sold as part of the S-400 system has not yet
been conclusively revealed, if it is the 40N6 model, it will provide China with
the capability to cover a range of up to 400 kilometers. That will allow China
to strike over all of Taiwan as well as reach targets as far as New Delhi,
Calcutta, Hanoi, Seoul and all of North Korea. Armed with 40N6 missiles,
Beijing’s S-400 launchers would also be able to fully protect the Yellow Sea
and China’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea. But
even a shorter-range missile would represent a significant upgrading of China’s
capability for anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) operations (TASS, March 21).
This will certainly upset the military balance in the region, which is not
necessarily in Moscow’s interest. Yet, Russian defense expert Vasily Kashin, of
the Moscow-based Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technology, a think
tank closely tied to the defense industrial complex, has simultaneously
advocated for still more enhanced military cooperation with China. Furthermore,
Kashin has advocated for strong Russo-Chinese industrial cooperation in
electronics and mining (Xinhua, March 25).
On a different note, the Russian Ministry of Defense
announced plans to continue its major military buildup on the Kurile Islands,
the southernmost of which are claimed by Japan. In particular, Moscow is
looking to deploy Bal-E and Bastion-P mobile coastal defense missile systems,
anti-ship missiles, as well as Eleron-3 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). Russia
is also considering setting up a naval base on those islands (Ministry of
Defense of the Russian Federation, March 25).
It should be clear to any observer that this announcement
regarding the further militarization of the Kuriles is a direct insult to Japan
and its leader, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The timing of the announcement is
particularly damaging to Moscow-Tokyo ties, as Abe is planning to travel to
Russia to try and bring about a normalization of bilateral relations based on a
transfer of at least two of the Kuriles back to Japan. Evidently, Russia is not
prepared to make any meaningful concessions to Japan at the expense of Moscow’s
ties to Beijing — Tokyo’s arch-rival in East Asia. And this decision represents
a practical response by Russia to the closer coordination on regional security
that Xi has called for.
China and Russia’s joint opposition to the U.S. decision to
deploy the THAAD missile defense system to South Korea against a North Korean
threat provides another notable example. Similarly, with regard to competing
territorial claims in the South China Sea, while Russia says it would like to
see these issues resolved peacefully and is unlikely to be enthusiastic about
Chinese dominance there, its officials have now moved to follow China’s line by
calling for the United States to stay out of the region. Indeed, Russian
authorities have even declared that US presence in the South China Sea could
constitute a threat to Moscow (RIA Novosti, December 8, 2015.
[On April12 Moscow expressed unequivocal support for China's
position: "Regarding the situation in the South China Sea, we proceed from
the following premise. All states involved in these disputes must respect the
principle of the non-use of military force and continue searching for mutually
acceptable political and diplomatic solutions. It is necessary to stop any
interference in the talks between the concerned states and any attempts to
internationalize these disputes (as the U.S. demands).... Only negotiations,
which China and the ASEAN countries... are conducting, will produce the desired
result, that is, a mutually acceptable agreement."
Given all these signs of ever-closer rapprochement between
Moscow and Beijing, even at the expense of their other interests, is it really
possible — let alone useful — to continue to cling to the belief that the
Sino-Russian relationship is merely a temporary marriage of convenience?
— From Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 62, March 30,
2016.
———————
6. WASHINGTON
RATTLES MORE SABERS AT MOSCOW
 |
| U.S. NATO troops brought heavy artillery into Lithuania to train with that country's military. |
By Andrea Germanos
American military officials announced March 30 plans to
increase the number of U.S. troops and equipment in Eastern Europe to counter
what the Pentagon described as "an aggressive Russia." The plan still
needs approval from the U.S. Congress.
The decision comes just weeks after Russia's foreign
minister warned that NATO's military build-up near Russia's borders is
"counterproductive and dangerous," and that the military alliance's
members "are whipping up 'Russia's threat' myth." Part of the
expansion plan was already revealed
by the Obama administration last month.
U.S. European Command said in a statement Wednesday that
starting in February 2017, there will be continuous rotations of three Army
combat teams and upgraded equipment in Europe. "That equipment would allow
for the rapid deployment of ground forces," Military Times reports.
The Guardian notes
that the plan marks a reversal of President Obama’s reduction of forces after
concluding that Russian "aggression" poses an enduring threat to
continental stability.
"This is a big step in enhancing the Army's rotational
presence and increasing their combat equipment in Europe," U.S. European
Command head Gen. Philip Breedlove stated.
"This Army implementation plan continues to demonstrate our strong and
balanced approach to reassuring our NATO allies and partners in the wake of an
aggressive Russia in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. This means our allies and
partners will see more capability—they will see a more frequent presence of an
armored brigade with more modernized equipment in their countries."
The Wall Street Journal described it as "the
first such deployment since the end of the Cold War."
From the Journal's reporting
on March 30:
"The U.S. has been intermittently rotating about 4,200
troops in and out of Europe since 2014, on top of the roughly 62,000 U.S.
military personnel assigned permanently on the continent. The Pentagon now aims
to rotate in an Army armored brigade each year and divide the rotational force
of 4,200 among six eastern members — Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland,
Romania and Bulgaria."
The New York Times reported
last month:
"Under a 1997 agreement known as the NATO-Russia
Founding Act, both sides pledged not to station large numbers of troops along
their respective borders. Administration officials said they were confident
that the new deployments would not be seen as breaching that agreement. In any
event, Poland and the Baltic States argue that Russia’s incursion in Ukraine
was a clear violation of the act, and that NATO should no longer abide by it.
Russia's Permanent Representative to NATO Alexander Grushko
addressed the new development on Rossiya 24 TV March 30, according to Russian news agency Tass, saying,
"Cooperation will be possible only when NATO countries start realizing that
the policy of confrontation contradicts their own national interests."
— From Common Dreams,
March 30, 2016
———————
7. NEOCON WAR HAWKS BACK CLINTON, NOT TRUMP
 |
|
Hillary Clinton in Libya just after she and her
policies helped bring down the government in October 2011. This was Clinton's
project and she stands by it today even though warring factions have split the
country in several parts and the Islamic State now occupies extensive territory.
U.S. Special Forces and bombers are currently in Libya trying to avoid a
catastrophe. Clinton was also a strong advocate of regime change in Syria,
which led to the present deplorable situation, and she strongly backed the
Iraq war.
|
Hillary Clinton, one neoconservative writer wrote, had “begun the
campaign as the former First Feminist” and “ended it as the Warrior Queen, more
Margaret Thatcher than Gloria Steinem.”
The neoconservative Right would have you believe this
election affords them a uniquely tough choice. On the one hand, there’s Hillary
Clinton, liberal bogeywoman and hated embodiment of the Democratic
establishment. On the other, there’s Donald Trump, who has repeatedly called
the Iraq war a mistake, accused the Bush administration of lying to drag
the United States into said war, claimed he would be “neutral” in his dealings
with Israel and just recently sketched out
an “unabashedly noninterventionist approach to world affairs” for the
Washington Post editorial board.
Whether or not Trump believes any of this is, as usual, up
for debate. But some neocons are so disgusted with his rejection of foreign
policy establishment thinking that they’ve declared the unthinkable: They’re
going to vote for Hillary Clinton. Clinton, one neoconservative writer wrote,
had “begun the campaign as the former First Feminist” and “ended it as the Warrior
Queen, more Margaret Thatcher than Gloria Steinem.”
Concerned that Trump would “destroy American foreign policy
and the international system,” author Max Boot told Vox
that Clinton would be “vastly preferable.” Historian Robert Kagan has also come
out in favor of
Clinton, saying he feels
“comfortable with her on foreign policy.” Eliot Cohen, a former Bush
administration official who has been called “the most influential neocon in
academe,” declared
Clinton “the lesser evil, by a large margin.”
It would be convenient to accept that this support is just
part of a Faustian bargain neocons have reluctantly entered into because of the
looming specter of Trump. But the truth is, neocons and assorted war hawks have
long had a soft spot for Clinton and her views on foreign policy.
When President Obama nominated Clinton for secretary of
state in 2008, Richard Perle, one of the Iraq War’s primary
cheerleaders and chairman of the Defense Policy Board in the lead-up
to the war, said
he was “relieved.” “There's not going to be as much change as we were led to
believe.”
Perle, who was sometimes referred to as the “Prince of
Darkness” and who once
predicted there would be “some grand square in Baghdad that is named
after President Bush,” made clear his support for Clinton was not due to a lack
of choices. “I heard about others on the list [for secretary of state] that I
wouldn't be happy about,” he said. “Those were mostly Republicans.”
In the same interview, George Shultz, secretary of state
under Ronald Reagan and an early
proponent of what would come to be known as the “Bush doctrine,”
stated that: “I think she could be a very good secretary of state.” Deeming her
“well-informed” and “curious,” Shultz’s only concern about her selection was
that, having competed against Obama in a sometimes vicious
campaign
for the Democratic nomination, their relationship might be weakened.
That same year, conservative writer Noemi Emery, writing for
the neocon Weekly Standard, dubbed
Clinton “The Great Right Hope.” She wrote about the “relief” felt by
conservatives that she was bringing her “steely-eyed stare” to the position of
secretary of state, saying:
As for the conservatives, many of those who began 2008
willing to do anything to defeat her tended to end it feeling sorry she lost.
They began to tell themselves and each other they would sleep better at night
if she were the nominee of her party.
Clinton, she wrote, had “begun the campaign as the former
First Feminist” and “ended it as the Warrior Queen, more Margaret Thatcher than
Gloria Steinem.”
Three years later, Dick Cheney, the neocon’s neocon, appeared to
urge Clinton to launch a primary challenge against Obama. “I think
it’s not a bad idea,” he told ABC. Asked if she would have been a better
president, Cheney replied:
Hillary Clinton is a pretty formidable individual and I
think she’s probably the most competent individual they’ve got in their—in
their cabinet. And—frankly, I thought she was going to win the nomination last
time around…maybe there will be enough ferment in the Democratic Party so that
there will be a primary on their side.
(Continued at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/18998/neocon-war-hawks-want-hillary-clinton-over-donald-trump.-no-surprisetheyve
— From the In These Times blog, March 23.
——————————
——————————
8. LISTEN, LIBERAL
Kirkus Review of
Thomas Frank's new book:
Listen Liberal, Or, What Ever Happened
to the Party of the People?, 320 pages
In essence: How the "party of the working class"
has switched its focus to well-heeled professionals, more concerned with social
issues than economic inequality.
“This is a book about the failure of the Democratic Party,”
writes political analyst and Baffler founding editor Frank (What's the Matter With Kansas, Pity the
Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right,
2011).
“What ails the Democrats?” he asks. “So bravely forthright
on cultural issues, their leaders fold when confronted with matters of basic
economic democracy.”
Where David Halberstam once showed how reliance on “the best
and the brightest” resulted in wrongheaded decisions on Vietnam, Frank builds a
similar case for economic policy, as Ivy League presidents (Bill Clinton,
Barack Obama) have surrounded themselves with Ivy League advisers whose
perspectives aren’t those of what was once the blue-collar base of the
Democratic Party:
“Thus did the Party of the People turn the government over
to Wall Street in the years after Wall Street had done such lasting damage
to…well, the People.”
Frank is particularly
acidic on the Clinton presidency, calling his cabinet “a kind of yuppie
Woodstock, a gathering of the highly credentialed tribes,” and claiming, “what
he did as president was far outside the reach of even the most diabolical
Republican.”
In the author’s estimation, the hope of the Obama
administration turned hopeless. Since Frank is far from a lone voice in
the wilderness in his perspective, you’d think he might see allies in the
Occupy movement and the Bernie Sanders campaign, but he barely acknowledges the
former and makes no mention of the latter, making it seem as if more recent
developments lie outside his analysis.
Rather than insisting on radical reform from the left or
even a third party alternative, he seems to feel that Hillary Clinton is
inevitable: “I myself might vote for her,” because it would be a “terrible
thing” if any of the Republicans became president.
The book is a hard-hitting analysis of the Democratic Party that
may leave some readers confused by the author’s ambivalent, punches-pulling
conclusion.
———————
9. VERIZON STRIKERS CHALLENGE COMPANY GREED
 |
|
Striking Verizon workers picket outside a Verizon office in
Albany, N.Y. (AP Photo / Mike Groll)
|
By Donna Goodman
Nearly 40,000 Verizon workers went on strike from
Massachusetts to Virginia April 13, after 10 months of trying to negotiate with
the company, and after working without a contract since August 2015. Three
quarters of the striking workers are represented by Communication Workers of
America (CWA) and the remainder by International Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers (IBEW).
A statement by the New York State AFL-CIO declared:
"After 10 long months of negotiations, Verizon seems
unwilling to settle a fair agreement. Verizon made $39 billion in profits
over the last three years — and $1.8 billion a month in profits over the first
three months of 2016 — but the company is still insisting on givebacks that
would devastate jobs.
"The company wants to gut job security protections,
contract out more work, freeze pensions, shutter call centers and offshore
those jobs to Mexico and the Philippines. And that is just the beginning.
Verizon has also refused to negotiate any improvements in wages, benefits
or working conditions for Verizon Wireless retail workers who formed a union in
2014."
The policy that workers found most galling was the
transfers, for up to two months, out of their hometowns to work in some other
Verizon location. CWA member Kenny Trainor, a father of two, said he can't be
absent from his Poughkeepsie, N.Y., home for weeks at a time and has tried to
get himself removed from transfer lists. "Verizon's transfer policies are
a big hardship on families," he said. "The company doesn't care. They
just expect me to get family and friends to help out. But three weeks isn't babysitting.
Someone who's taking care of your kids for three weeks at a time is raising
your kids."
Verizon has not budged since June, when negotiations began,
and union members described the company's "last best offer" as no
different from its very first, unacceptable, offer. What drove the workers to
the picket lines was this ultimatum: unless the unions agreed to a litany of
concessions and ratified a concessionary agreement by May 20, the company would
assert the right to transfer workers to any Verizon location from Massachusetts
to Virginia, away from their families, for up to two months at a time
The company's business is divided between its wireless and
wireline divisions. Most of the striking workers are employed on the wireline
side, which includes landlines and the fiber optic network. The company views
the wireless side, which yields the highest profits, as its future. Workers in
these jobs are largely not unionized and are paid less than those in the
wireline side.
Dutchess County, N.Y., Executive Marc Molinaro addressed the
large Poughkeepsie crowd, offering his support to the strikers, and thanking
CWA for having supported him in his election campaign.
James Gescheidle, Executive Vice President of CWA Local
1120, called Verizon's refusal to negotiate with the workers "the face of
corporate greed." The company, he
said, is raking in more than $1.5 billion dollars a month in profits, pays no
federal income tax, and still wants more "flexibility" from its
workers. He noted that the company had refused to consider union proposals for
medical savings and wants to shift more healthcare costs on to retirees. More
than raises in salary, he said, the workers want an end to the transfers.
"Local workers are transferred from the Hudson Valley to Westchester, and
then to Brooklyn and the Bronx." The company also wants to contract out
more jobs.
Gescheidle predicted a long strike. "We want the public
to know that we completely reject outsourcing of jobs. We need to keep jobs
here in the Hudson Valley and in the United States. The company is turning what
was once a career into just a job." He said that unions like CWA were
protecting middle class jobs that are needed to bring everyone up. The strike
is getting support from both private and public sector unions.
 |
| Thousands of Verizon workers rallied in Midtown Manhattan April 18.(Credit CBS) |
Rob Pinto, Chief Steward of CWA Local 1120, said: "Verizon is bringing in more than 1.5 billion in profits per month and wants to decimate our contract and our families." Repeating the most consistent message of the day, he said, "We're not going to give back. We're on strike against corporate greed.
The Verizon strike is the biggest U.S work stoppage since 2011, when another Verizon strike lasted two weeks. It is also significant in light of the decades long decline of labor's power. While the strike remains a powerful tool in unions' struggles against management, its use has diminished for a variety of reasons: low union membership — the lowest since 1954 when union membership was quite high but the population was half today's size; the increase in corporations' holdings, so that closing down one plant or location does limited harm to the employer; companies' readiness to send jobs overseas; high unemployment rates and the availability of non-unionized strike breakers; laws and court judgments against strikes, which put strikers and union leaders in jeopardy of fines and prison; and anti-union sentiment among sectors of the public, who often don't support strikers, seeing the inconvenience strikes cause to consumers rather than the just cause of workers fighting for fairness at work.
The Verizon strike is the biggest U.S work stoppage since 2011, when another Verizon strike lasted two weeks. It is also significant in light of the decades long decline of labor's power. While the strike remains a powerful tool in unions' struggles against management, its use has diminished for a variety of reasons: low union membership — the lowest since 1954 when union membership was quite high but the population was half today's size; the increase in corporations' holdings, so that closing down one plant or location does limited harm to the employer; companies' readiness to send jobs overseas; high unemployment rates and the availability of non-unionized strike breakers; laws and court judgments against strikes, which put strikers and union leaders in jeopardy of fines and prison; and anti-union sentiment among sectors of the public, who often don't support strikers, seeing the inconvenience strikes cause to consumers rather than the just cause of workers fighting for fairness at work.
Two dramatic exceptions to this decline were the 2005 New
York City Transit Workers Union strike, led by Roger Toussaint, and the 2012
Chicago Teachers Union strike, led by Karen Lewis. The TWU strike yielded some
benefits to the workers but landed Toussaint in jail and cost the union
millions of dollars in fines. The Chicago strike was immediately successful,
but within a few short years the city administration began closing schools
again, one of the key issues on which the strike was based. The CTU held a
one-day job action on April 1 and is planning additional ones.
Public sector unions have been mobilizing for months to
protect their workers from court decisions that could deprive the unions of
dues from non-member fee payers. Having won the recent Supreme Court case
Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, the unions expect to face more
challenges, as dozens of cases are in the pipeline on the way to the Supreme
Court. The Verizon strikers at Wednesday's rally were quick to assert their
solidarity with public sector unionists.
To sign a petition to Verizon's CEO Lowell McAdam, asking
him to negotiate with Verizon workers, and to find the locations of picket
lines you can join, go to http://nysaflcio.org/verizon-strike/
.
— Donna Goodman is a co-editor of the Activist Newsletter
and an elected delegate of United University Professions, the union
representing faculty and professional staff of the State University of New York
system. Her book on feminism will be published in a few months.
———————
10. THE NEW MORALITY
OF POPE FRANCIS
[Every distant now and extremely remote then during the
nearly 2,000-year existence of the Roman Catholic Church it has been necessary
to implement certain reforms to preserve the institution from mass popular
disaffection. We live in one of these rare periods as the worldwide scandal of
priestly pederasty, among other issues, has drastically weakened Roman
Catholicism economically and as a vibrant moral presence. Progressive Pope
Francis was selected as the messenger of needed reform. His latest transformations
liberalize marriage, family life and sexuality — all, as usual, without an iota
of change in rigid Church doctrine. That's the price. Francis is 74, and his
eventual successors may not resume, much less enlarge, his campaign. But there
is a good chance that future Vatican bureaucracies will not disavow what he has
accomplished because it is too important for the survival of the Church. As
non-believing materialists, who view such reform as a small step forward, we
have considerable respect for Pope Francis, but who are we to judge? This
article clarifies what has just happened.]
 |
|
Pope Francis visited
thousands of refugees stranded in a camp in Lesbos, Greece, April 16 seeking
to bring their plight to world attention. Speaking to the multitude he
declared: "I have
wanted to be with you today. I want to tell you that you are not alone. In
these weeks and months, you have endured much suffering in your search for a
better life." Francis explained that he and the other religious leaders
present came not just "to be with you and to hear your stories, but also
to call the attention of the world to this grave humanitarian crisis and to
plead for its resolution."
|
By James
Carroll, New Yorker
I could have used Pope Francis’s latest apostolic
exhortation (April) 8, “Amoris
Laetitia” (“The Joy of Love”), when I served as a Catholic priest,
almost half a century ago. I was ordained in early 1969, a few months after the
promulgation of “Humanae Vitae,” the Vatican’s resounding condemnation of
“artificial birth control,” which would define my future. I was a chaplain at a
university where, true to the era, the norms of sexual morality had been
upended. I certainly saw the need, in those wild days, for a humane and ethical
analysis of the state of sexual intimacy, personal commitment, erotic longing,
and gender rights. But, believe me, the triumphalist salvo from Rome made the
moral condition worse, not better. Like many priests of my generation, I
declined to affirm the birth-control teaching. On the contrary, I encouraged
the young people who sought my advice to be sexually responsible, especially
since the mature use of contraceptives could avoid a later choice about
abortion.
Oddly, perhaps, this approach did not make me an outlaw
renegade. Priests like me, in counseling our fellow-Catholics, operated under
the rubric of the so-called pastoral solution, which allowed us to quietly defy
Vatican dogma when the situation seemed to call for it. In the confessional
booth or the rectory parlor, we could encourage our parishioners to decide for
themselves, by examining their own consciences, whether the doctrine of the
Church applied to them in their particular circumstance. (We cited the lessons
of the Second Vatican Council, which, taking up the theme of responsible
parenthood, only three years before, had said, “The parents themselves, and no
one else, should ultimately make this judgment in the sight of God.”)
The fact that, a generation later, the vast majority of
Catholics disregard “Humanae Vitae” shows how effective the pastoral solution
has been. But this solution has always been offered as an option in the shadowy
private forum — in those off-the-record consultations between confessor and
penitent. Preachers never addressed the subject from the pulpit. Everybody in
the Church knew that “Humanae Vitae” was a moral teaching with no center, but
that, too, was treated like a secret. Popes did not speak of the encyclical’s
being ignored, nor did bishops or priests. Catholic lay people have made their
declaration mainly by having about two children, like everybody else, and going
regularly to Communion, with no questions asked. There has been a tacit
understanding, as if the seal of the confessional itself applied, that this
nearly universal choice to disobey the Church not be spoken of. Why? To protect
the myth of the immutability of doctrine.
Pope Francis has now brought the pastoral solution out of
the Catholic shadows. “The Joy of Love” is his concluding exhortation after
the Synod on the
Family, which unfolded in the course of the past two years.
Comparable in scope, compassion, and eloquent wisdom to last spring’s climate-change
document, “Laudato Si’,” this new statement is, in effect, the
Pope’s summary and conclusion about the questions raised at the Synod, which
found itself focused on whether divorced and
remarried Catholics can receive Communion. Francis takes that
up. He says, all but explicitly, yes they can. But it is how he does so that
lends this declaration its revolutionary significance.
Formerly, in accordance with the Catholic doctrine of the
“indissolubility” of marriage, the divorced and remarried were officially
shunned. They remained in the pew while most others in the church went forward
to the Communion rail. But that shunning is history. “It is important that the
divorced who have entered a new union should be made to feel part of the
Church,” Francis declares. How that feeling is expressed in practice is to be
determined, he writes, not by “a new set of general rules, canonical in nature
and applicable to all cases,” but by “a responsible personal and pastoral discernment
of particular cases.”
The Pope — to the disappointment of many liberals, no doubt —
is not replacing an old set of harsh and restrictive rules with a new set of
flexible and merciful rules. Rules, actually, are not the point. It is true
that this document does little explicitly to uproot the structures of misogyny
and homophobia that have long corrupted the Catholic tradition, but it does
give a fresh impetus to change on these issues. Francis’s watchword is mercy,
but mercy adheres, first, not in alterations of doctrine but in the new way
that Catholics are invited to think of doctrine. When human experience, with
all of what the Pope calls its “immense variety of concrete situations,” is
elevated over “general principles,” a revolution
is implicit. Francis explains: “It is true that general rules set
forth a good which can never be disregarded or neglected, but in their
formulation they cannot provide absolutely for all particular situations.”
The pastoral solution lives in this realm of “particular
situations,” where, as Francis insists, “constant love” must prevail
over judgmentalism. Every situation is different, and a subtle moral
discernment is required to see how general principles apply to it. For
centuries, the assumption of the Catholic hierarchy was that lay people were
not capable of such discernment, but, with Francis, that is no longer true.
“The Joy of Love” is directly addressed to the laity, who are encouraged to
pursue conscientious moral discernment by consulting not only pastors but one
another. Who knows the ins and outs of married life better than married people?
Conservatives have long warned of the dangers involved in a
forthright, public acknowledgment that moral complexity requires flexibility.
Rules and doctrines, they worry, will be undermined if absolutist attitudes
about their meaning are mitigated. The conservatives are right, and they will
surely see this new exhortation as a further source of concern. Pope Francis’s
emphasis on mercy toward the divorced and remarried doesn’t only mean that
those people will more freely partake of Communion. It also means that the
doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage, however much it is still held up
as an ideal, will not grip the moral imagination of the Church as it once did.
 |
| Pope Francis addresses refugees, some with signs asking for help. |
Such a progression has already occurred in Catholic
attitudes about contraception. Once the vast majority of the faithful took for
granted their right and duty to weigh situation against principle — and
decided, mostly, that the principle didn’t apply — it was only a matter of time
before the hierarchy itself did the same. That is the significance of Pope
Francis’s own conclusion, offered in February on his plane ride back
from Mexico, that the Zika-virus pandemic requires a change in the Church’s
policies on contraception. In that drastic situation, the principle of “Humanae
Vitae” simply does not apply. As has happened before, the private forum had
become public. Official Church teaching on birth control may never change, but its
meaning will never be the same. Moral discernment belongs to the people.
The change that Francis has wrought on the Catholic
imagination is one that I, for one, all those years ago, never imagined would
come from the top, where order was taken to be holy, and the moral confusion an
uncertain young priest might feel was expressly forbidden. Better late than
never. Pope Francis is calling many of us home, while sending no one away. “I
understand those who prefer a more rigorous pastoral care which leaves no room
for confusion,” he writes. “But I sincerely believe that Jesus wants a Church
attentive to the goodness which the Holy Spirit sows in the midst of human
weakness.” The point, of course, is that the Church, too, is marked by human
weakness, as this halting progress toward reform so clearly shows. But here,
again, the goodness is what counts. Francis is inviting the Church to leave
behind the tidy moralism of the pulpit and the sacristy in order to do “what
good she can, even if in the process, her shoes get soiled by the mud of the
street.”
———————
11. WASHINGTON PROTEST SAYS 'NO' TO AIPAC
 |
| ANSWER and Al-Awda supporters marching Convention Center |
By the ANSWER Coalition
People from across the country converged on Washington, D.C., March 20 for a national demonstration in solidarity with Palestine. Co-sponsored by the ANSWER Coalition and Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, the rally was endorsed by dozens of organizations in the antiwar, international solidarity and anti-racist movements.
People from across the country converged on Washington, D.C., March 20 for a national demonstration in solidarity with Palestine. Co-sponsored by the ANSWER Coalition and Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, the rally was endorsed by dozens of organizations in the antiwar, international solidarity and anti-racist movements.
The marched was called to protest against the AIPAC
(American Israel Public Affairs Committee) convention. Held annually, the
gathering drew high-level politicians who declare their support to the racist
Israeli regime and its oppression of the Palestinians. This year, both Hillary
Clinton and Donald Trump gave speeches. Demonstrators were able to stand
directly outside the convention center where AIPAC was meeting, unfurling a
giant Palestinian flag.
———————
12. NEW YORK,
CALIFORNIA RAISE MINIMUM TO $15
By the Activist Newsletter
Big business and the conservative politicians of both
parties said it couldn't be done, but suddenly the minimum wage in California
and New York is gradually being raised to $15 an hour. Other states are in the
process of boosting the minimum to $10 and $12 an hour, while the federal
minimum remains at $7.50. What happened?
Times have been changing in America, as the 2016
presidential campaign clearly shows, largely because of stagnant wages, extreme
inequality, the loss of working class jobs, the big-money subversion of
democracy and the absence of government social programs to benefit working
families.
The "Fight for 15" began three years ago with the
first one-day strikes by low-wage fast food workers, helped in many cases by
the Service Employees International Union. At the beginning few observers
thought the goal would be won. But as other low-wage workers joined the
struggle — combined with anger at the government and the recent uprisings against the
established leadership of the Democratic and Republican parties — some
politicians finally recognized it was time to act.
Here's what is going to happen in California and New York,
courtesy of the Institute for Policy Studies:
In California, Gov. Jerry Brown will raise the minimum wage
to $15 in 2023 for all employees and in 2022 for those in firms with more than
25 employees. In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo's plan would raise the minimum
wage to $15 by 2018 in New York City and by 2022 in the City’s suburbs and on
Long Island. The minimum wage upstate would rise to at least $12.50, with the
possibility of then going higher. These increases are significantly larger in
scope than what has been typical of recent federal and state minimum wage
hikes. Furthermore, both proposals would raise the wage floor to levels
relative to the wages of typical workers that have not been the norm for at
least three decades....
The Berkeley Labor Center estimates that 5.6 million workers
— or the entire bottom third of the California workforce — would benefit from
the California increase (excluding those already helped by various city
initiatives). The Economic Policy Institute's analysis estimates that 3.2
million workers, or 37% of the New York workforce, would benefit from a
statewide increase to $15, although the number affected by the current proposal
would be less, given the smaller wage hike in the upstate region.
Adjusted for inflation, New York’s current $9 minimum wage
is 6% below the national minimum wage in 1968, its peak year in
inflation-adjusted terms. California’s current $10 minimum is just 4% above the
1968 value. Using the CBO’s projections for inflation, going to $15 by 2023 is
equivalent to $12.80 in 2015 dollars, a 28% boost from 1968. There are two
things worth noting about this increase in purchasing power. First, prices are
higher in New York and California relative to the national average (15.3% and
12.3% percent, respectively), so
comparing them to national price changes overstates the purchasing power of the
minimum wage for people in these states. Second, productivity has more than
doubled in the nearly five decades since 1968. These proposals would set a wage
floor that reflected just one quarter of the improvement in our economy’s
ability to generate income because of this productivity growth since the
Johnson administration.....
The California and New York targets will allow individuals
and households to come close to meeting a living standard that is ‘modest but
adequate.’ The Economic Policy Institute’s measure of a "modest but
adequate" family budget shows a single adult living in California and
working full time would need to earn $14.22 an hour in Fresno (in today’s
dollars) and $19.89 in San Jose to meet basic living expenses. In the New York
metro area and on Long Island, a full-time childless worker needs $20.92 and
$19.50, respectively, to meet this standard. Under the planned higher minimum
wages and with various social supports even the lowest-paid workers could attain
a decent standard of living. That is a goal worthy of bold policy making like a
higher minimum wage, which is essential to making sure that working people get
a fair return on their work and enjoy shared prosperity. It’s about time.
———————
13. GLOBAL WARMING
SWIFTEST SINCE DINOSAURS
 |
|
Albert Lukassen’s world is melting around him. When the
64-year-old Inuit man was young, he could hunt by dogsled on the frozen
Uummannaq Fjord, on Greenland’s west coast, until June. This photo shows him
there in April. (Photo credit: Ciril Jazbec National Geographic)
|
Carbon is pouring into the atmosphere faster than at any
time in the past 66 million years — since the dinosaurs went extinct — according
to a new analysis of the geologic record. The study underscores just how
profoundly humans are changing Earth’s history.
The heat-trapping carbon emissions rate is 10 times greater
today than during the prehistoric hot period that is the closest precedent for
today's greenhouse warming.
That period, known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum
(PETM), was marked by a massive release of the Earth's natural carbon stores
into the atmosphere. (It’s not clear what caused the PETM, but volcanic
eruptions and methane gas
release are suspects.) The excess carbon triggered a 5°C (9°F)
temperature increase, along with drought, floods, insect plagues, and
extinctions.
The new analysis of the sediment record concludes that the
carbon rush at the start of the PETM extended over at least 4,000 years. That
translates to about 1.1 additional gigatons of carbon per year. Today, fossil
fuel burning and other human activity release 10 gigatons of carbon annually.
Richard Zeebe,
an oceanographer at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who led the research published Monday in
Nature Geoscience, said the findings show the challenge for
predicting how the planet will change.
"It means we don't have a really good analog in the
past for the massive amount of carbon we're releasing," he said.
"Even if we look at the PETM and say the transition to a warmer climate
may have been relatively smooth, there's no guarantee for the future."
 |
|
Drought, one of the drastic consequences of global warming.
|
The PETM transition, 55.8 million years ago, caused massive
changes in where plants and animals lived, rapid evolution of some species, and
extinction of others. (See photos of how
scientists know what the climate was like in the PETM.)
Half of all single-celled shelled organisms on the sea floor
were wiped out, but many microorganisms on the ocean surface flourished during
the PETM and expanded their habitats. The new study suggests that today's
marine life may not be so lucky, wrote geologist Peter Stassen of the
University of Leuven in an editorial accompanying the new
research. During the PETM, those organisms may have had time to
adapt through migration or evolution—time that won't be available to modern sea
life.
Scott Wing,
curator of fossil plants at the Smithsonian Institution, said the rate of
carbon release during the PETM has been an important question. "A really
fast addition strongly changes the composition of the atmosphere and acidifies
the surface ocean, and of course, organisms have to deal with those BIG
changes," Wing wrote in an email.
It’s been hard to get a handle on the speed of the carbon
pulse that set off the PETM. Scientists have to read the story told in
sediment—the layers of organic material that have settled year by year on the
ocean floor. Zeebe and his colleagues, using a sediment core drilled in New
Jersey, based their analysis on the pattern of carbon and oxygen isotopes in
the sediment samples.
The new estimate of the rate of carbon release at the PETM
onset is similar to that found in 2011
by a team led by Pennsylvania State University. The Penn State group
based their sediment analysis on what is known as an "age model;"
they dated a sediment core sample drilled in Norway based on physicists'
recreation of the rhythms of Earth's orbit around the sun. Slight changes in
that orbit leave a pattern of iron concentrations in the sediment.
Lee Kump,
head of geosciences at Penn State, said he was "heartened" that the
new approach arrived at numbers in line with his team's estimates, although he
noted both papers come to the same grim conclusion.
"The lesson for society is the same," he said.
"We are now exceeding by an order of magnitude the rate of carbon release
during one of the most remarkable global warming events in Earth's
history."
— From the National Geographic, March 21, 2016
———————
14. ENVIRONMENTALISTS FACE DEATH
By Darryl Fears
Long before gunmen burst into Berta Cáceres Flores Flores’s house
in rural Honduras March 3, Beverly Bell gave up any hope that her friend would
live to an old age. “This was a marked woman,” said Bell, who kept a long list
of the death threats. “Everyone knew it.”
The slaying of the internationally known environmentalist
was condemned from the State Department to the Vatican. But for activists who
work in Latin America, Cáceres’s murder was tragically familiar.
Two-thirds of environmentalists who died violently around
the world since 2002 lost their lives in that region. For the five years ending
in 2014, more than 450 were killed, according to an international network of
conservationist groups. Over half were in Honduras and Brazil.
 |
| Berta Cáceres giving a speech. |
The common thread in virtually every case is the fight by
communities to stop government-approved corporate development of remote lands.
Slain environmentalists frequently have attempted to halt projects such as dams
and logging involving hundreds of millions of dollars, which stand to enrich
local providers of labor and materials.
Those locals have an interest in eliminating whoever gets in
the way, according to John Knox, a United Nations special rapporteur on human
rights and the environment and a professor of international law at Wake Forest
University.
Most victims are indigenous people “who are oppressed,
largely marginalized and are considered almost expendable by the powers that
be,” he said.
The risks they face also reflect a legacy of U.S.
intervention throughout the 20th century, noted Dana Frank, a history professor
at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
“The United States famously nurtured and funded
dictatorships, corrupt governments and military rule throughout most of Latin
America,” Frank said. “The post-coup regime in Honduras continues that
tradition,” and the same is true in Guatemala, Colombia and other countries,
she added. (Continued at:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/for-latin-american-environmentalists-death-is-a-constant-companion/2016/03/25/85920f96-ec69-11e5-bc08-3e03a5b41910_story.html
— Washington Post, March 25,2016,
———————
15. RALLY AGAINST
POLICE VIOLENCE
By Liberation News
In response to a national call to action by the Justice 4 Akai Gurley Family Committee to demand the maximum jail sentence for NYPD killer cop Peter Liang, the ANSWER Coalition and the Party for Socialism and Liberation mobilized in San Francisco’s Mission District on April 1.
In response to a national call to action by the Justice 4 Akai Gurley Family Committee to demand the maximum jail sentence for NYPD killer cop Peter Liang, the ANSWER Coalition and the Party for Socialism and Liberation mobilized in San Francisco’s Mission District on April 1.
In a rally and march that shut down several streets and
locked-down the Mission’s Police Station, the demonstration saw anti-police
brutality organizers from around the country stand in solidarity with San
Francisco’s own victims of racist police terror. The murders of Alex Nieto, Mario
Woods and Amilcar Perez-Lopez, among others, have sparked mass outrage, led to
organized resistance and fighting unity between San Francisco’s an
Speaker Kerbie Joseph of the ANSWER Coalition, declared:
"Right now in New York City, we had a two week trial where Liang was
convicted. But the DA, who is supposed to be working on behalf of the family,
recommended five years probation, six months house arrest, and five hundred
hours of community service. So basically within this system, you kill a Black
man on the street, you kill a Latino man on the street, you get to sit in your
house."
———————
16. LONG LIVE THE EASTER REBELLION
 |
| Rebel fighters in Dublin awaiting signal to launch Easter Monday uprising. |
By the Activist Newsletter
April 24 is the 100th anniversary
of the historic Easter Rebellion in Dublin, Ireland. This heroic struggle,
waged for independence against the colonial British Empire by about 1,200 armed
men and women followers of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, was
crushed in six days by the overwhelming force of “Britannia’s Huns with their
long range guns.” (Although the anniversary is usually celebrated on Easter
Sunday, which varies every year, the uprising actually took place on Monday,
April 24, 1916.)
The rebels were led by schoolteacher
Padraic Pearse and James Connolly, the great Irish socialist revolutionary and
working class leader. The insurgents seized the General Post Office and several
other locations, and issued a proclamation declaring that Ireland, subjugated
by Britain for several hundred years, was now a republic and a sovereign
independent state. They were attacked by a British force said to number 60,000.
British naval guns virtually destroyed the post office building (and other
sectors of Dublin) where the rebels were mainly situated.
Just before the rebels were forced
to surrender, Pearse wrote: “I desire now, lest I may not have an opportunity
later, to pay homage to the gallantry of the soldiers of Irish Freedom who have
during the past four days been writing with fire and steel the most glorious
chapter in the later history of Ireland. Justice can never be done to their
heroism, to their discipline, to their gay and unconquerable spirit in the
midst of peril and death. If I were to mention the names of individuals my list
would be a long one. I will name only that of Commandant-General James
Connolly, commanding the Dublin Division. He lies wounded, but is still the
guiding brain of our resistance.”
After the rebel defeat, in which
hundreds of patriots died, Britain executed 15 leaders of the rebellion,
including Pearse and Connolly, who was the last to die.
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Citizen Army gathers at headquarters of the Transport and
General Workers Union which Connolly headed. The sign atop the building reads: "We
serve neither King nor Kaiser , but Ireland."
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The uprising was doomed from the
start, a fact anticipated by many of the participants. Many people at the time
thought it reckless. And yet, as noted in the best of several books we have
read on the rebellion (Rebels — The Irish
Rising of 1916 by Peter De Rosa), “The final bullet exploding in Connolly’s
brain broke the last of Ireland’s chains.”
The failed uprising directly led
to the 1919-21 independence war, which resulted in the liberation of 26 of
Ireland’s 32 counties (the other six counties remain to this day a possession
of Great Britain). Would that Connolly had lived to help guide the liberation
effort and its aftermath, but that is another matter. This 100th anniversary is
a reminder that those who struggle for social justice or revolution often
suffer bitter defeats — but history shows that out of some such setbacks
eventual victory emerges, though not always as originally imagined.
Long live the martyrs of Easter
Monday, 1916! J.A.S.
— For photos of the Easter
Rebellion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Rising#/media/File:Easter_Proclamation_of_1916.png
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17. TOUGH TIMES FOR ENDANGERED ORANGUTANS
A Bornean orangutan
climbs 98 feet up a tree in the rain forest of Gunung Palung National Park, West Kalimantan, Indonesia. This
Press Photo contest. The photographer is Tim
Laman.
By the Activist Newsletter
Our closest animal relative — the orangutan, with whom human
animals share 97% of their DNA, and both of which are classified as a subgroup
of the Great Apes — is in deep trouble.
Extinction in the wild is likely in the next 10 years for the two living species — Sumatran Orangutans and soon after for Bornean Orangutans. They live in dense rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra in Southeast Asia. The Sumatran species (Pongo abelii) is critically endangered and the Bornean species (Pongo pygmaeus) of orangutans is endangered according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.
The Sumatran and Bornean Orangutans' rainforest habitats are
disappearing at an alarming rate. The reasons are human made:
1. Logging
is an obvious problem for orangutans who spend their lives in trees.
2. Fires
endanger the orangutans and the smoke confuses them leaving them vulnerable to
death from loss of habitat (food). Fires are commonly started to clear the land
and undergrowth for farming and palm oil plantations.
3. Palm
Oil Plantations are now the leading suppliers for a global market that demands
more of the tree's versatile oil for cooking, cosmetics, and biofuel. But palm
oil's appeal comes with significant costs. Palm oil plantations often replace
tropical forests, killing endangered species, uprooting local communities, and
contributing to the release of climate-warming gases. The orangutans that are
displaced starve to death, are killed by plantation workers as pests, or die in
the fires.
4. Poaching
orangutan infants and hunting for meat also threatens the species. Mothers are
often killed for their babies, which are then sold on the black market for
pets.
Orangutans are extremely patient and intelligent mammals.
They are very observant and inquisitive. In Malay and Indonesian
"orang" means "person" and "utan" is derived from
hutan, which means "forest." Thus, orangutan literally means
"person of the forest." Long may these "persons" remain in
their forests, but that is up to their larger-brained cousins, which isn't
particularly assuring.
— This information is based on several sources, primarily The Orangutan Project.
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