the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Dec 3, 2001
The National Bureau of Economic Research has now officially spoken: the recession started last March. Not in October, certainly not on September 11, but six months earlier.
Officially, it can now be told: the nation is enmeshed in its eleventh recession since the end of World War II, done in, not by the spectacular treachery of terrorists who dove planes into the World Trade Center, but by the very ordinary treachery which the capitalists commit periodically. Putting the daily chase for profit before everything else–before the well-being of the economy and the welfare of the population–they have regularly dragged us into another recession.
Of course, we knew a recession had been going on, no matter what they tried to tell us: we were the ones bombarded by lay-off notices, job-cut announcements and a tightening of conditions on the job.
This official declaration that we now are–yes, and have been–in a recession doesn’t change anything about the economy. But, at least, it demonstrates that demands being made on us to sacrifice for the common good are not a response to September 11; they are nothing but a pretext, sing the horror we feel about September 11 against us.
Big corporations didn’t give us flags out of pure patriotism–whatever that word means–they did it out of pure greed. Getting us to fly their flags, talking to us about pulling together to restore “our” nation’s strength, playing “America the Beautiful” at every sporting event–all of these things were means to get us to make sacrifices, not for the common good, but for the profit of the capitalists.
Let’s not fall for this orgy of jingoism! Let’s be outraged every time we see George Bush or one of his minions climb on that pile of rubble in which are still entombed a thousand or more people in order to make another announcement. The more outrageous their announcement, the more they rush to speak from on top of those dead bodies. Bush, when he talks, can’t even stop himself from smirking, he’s so proud of this con game he is pulling off.
Be done with it. Turn our backs on their outrageous demands–outrageous whether they are trying to enlist us in the wars they carry out on other people or in the war they are carrying out here at home against us.
We have big concerns right here, right now. They are raiding Social Security. They are cheating schools of money. They are reducing money for medical care. They have been draining money out of unemployment funds. And they are demanding more concessions from us in our workplaces–even while laying us off.
We have our own interests to defend. We, as workers, have our own solidarity to develop. We do have to stand together: not as Americans against other people, people who have done nothing to us, who have been victimized even more than we have been–and in many cases by the U.S. government or people like Osama bin Laden who worked for it.
We have to stand together as workers against our class enemy, American capitalists.
Dec 3, 2001
Republicans in the Senate have proposed that for one month Social Security tax will not be taken out of workers’ checks–nor will employers have to pay the matching tax. Democrats said they were open to the idea since the damage September 11th did to the economy had to be overcome.
For over a year now, we have been told that Social Security is in danger and the trust fund is running low. How is it that Social Security can suddenly afford to give up about 40 billion dollars of its surplus? That’s what this “tax holiday” will cost. This proposal shows that the talk about Social Security being in danger was only a lie designed to turn the money over to Wall Street.
It’s disgusting. The proposal for a Social Security holiday is to replace the $300 refund per person for lower paid workers who received nothing from the previous cuts received, which both Democrats and Republicans said they supported before this Social Security tax holiday proposal. Workers making $7 an hour working full time would get $75–while corporations will take home a bundle. The corporations couldn’t rob Social Security directly. So they are using September 11th to do it.
Dec 3, 2001
Enron, one of the largest companies in the country, ranked seventh on the Fortune 500, is close to bankruptcy. Its stock has fallen by more than 95% in a year. Meanwhile, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has begun an investigation into how the company keeps its books.
Yet, up until just a few short months ago, Enron was presented as a great corporate success story, a pioneer in pushing through and profiting from the deregulation of the natural gas and electricity industries, and becoming the biggest trading company in both those industries.
Enron was formed about 17 years ago, when two medium-sized Texas operators of natural gas pipelines merged. At the time, the natural gas industry, like electricity, was dominated by legal monopolies that were regulated by the government. In the mid-1980s, Enron and other such companies lobbied very hard for the federal government to deregulate the natural gas industry, and Enron soon became the largest marketer in that industry. Enron then set its sights on the deregulation of the electricity industry. Under big business urging, Congress then began the process of deregulating the production and sale of electric power, and Enron again rushed in. By 1997, Enron controlled about one-fourth of the new electricity trading market.
Of course, Enron and the politicians promised that the deregulation of energy markets would increase competition and lead to lower prices. While deregulation often did mean lower energy prices for big industries, consumers were hit by much higher bills.
Enron did own some gas pipelines and an electric utility in Portland, Oregon. But this only made up a very small part of its business. Enron, itself, produced or transported little of the gas and electricity it was trading. Instead, it made its money simply as the middleman, in effect taking a slice out of much of the electricity and gas consumed by the public. Enron was a capitalist’s dream–making money by buying and selling without ever having to worry about production. Wall Street rewarded the company with stock prices that, for a time, rose faster than the company’s sales and profits. Banks lined up to loan Enron money, and each new issuance of stock was snapped up like hot cakes.
As more of the electricity market was deregulated in the late 1990s, Enron’s trading operations really took off. Last year, Enron was the largest of the five big energy companies that, along with the big electric utilities, helped push electricity prices in California to record levels. California’s electricity crisis, with its shortages and blackouts, was merely a means to transfer tens of billions of dollars from taxpayers and consumers to companies like Enron.
These great successes encouraged Enron to branch out. It bought up a water company in order to begin to trade water. It also bought and sold large amounts of timber and internet capacity (called bandwidth). At the same time, it expanded its trading operations overseas. And it used its wealth to forge important political alliances. Its founder and chairman, Kenneth Lay, is very good friends with President George W. Bush, and Enron was one of the largest campaign contributors to Bush’s campaign and the Republican Party.
The company’s growth was spectacular. In its first 10 years, sales increased nine-fold. Then it grew even faster. In 1997, Enron’s sales stood at 20 billion dollars. By the third quarter of 2001, its annual sales were on track to reach nearly 200 billion dollars. In February, its newly appointed president and CEO, Jeffrey Skilling, became an instant celebrity and made the cover of Business Week.
The first inkling of Enron’s problems came in August, when Skilling, the new CEO, abruptly resigned. In October, Enron announced that it had lost 650 million dollars for the quarter. Less than a month later, Enron revised downward its profit figures for the previous three years. Then, within a matter of days, Enron admitted that it had hidden both tens of billions of dollars in company debt as well as untold losses in extremely complicated financial arrangements with outside partnerships–in other words with skimming Enron’s money into the pockets of its individual “entrepreneurs.”
Wall Street and the U.S. regulatory agencies had been perfectly willing to close their eyes to Enron’s questionable accounting procedures, its extremely risky and secret dealings and hidden debts, as long as the company seemed to be growing and making money. But it was quite another matter once Enron could no longer hide its losses. Enron’s stock was hit with panic selling that only halted temporarily when Dynergy, a much smaller energy trading company announced that it was going to buy Enron, and immediately extend a new loan of over 1.5 billion dollars to the company. Since 27% of Dynergy is owned by the giant Texaco-Chevron oil company and therefore has very deep pockets, Wall Street gave the deal its blessings, and the Enron stock rose a bit. But Enron could not stanch its losses, many companies lost confidence in Enron and began to avoid doing business with it, and its stock plunged anew. There was a real danger that Enron could soon run out of both cash and credit.
If Enron were to go bankrupt, it could set off a multi-dimensional crisis, in much the same way that the collapse of the electric utility “pyramid” helped set off and keep going the financial collapse of 1929-40. Because Enron is so dominant in such markets as gas, electricity, coal, metals, fertilizer, as well as bandwidth for the internet, its failure could create gridlock for the basic building blocks of the U.S. economy, starting with the electric and gas utilities. It could also set off major tremors for the financial structure as well. Not only are several large commercial and investment banks important creditors to Enron, many of them also set up their own units to trade and market gas and electricity and therefore have many business dealings with Enron. This is especially true of the JP Morgan Chase bank, a very large trader in electricity and natural gas.
So far, the biggest casualties of Enron’s collapse have been its 20,000 employees. They have been facing one round after another of layoffs... and the loss of much of their retirement savings. All along, while assuring Enron employees of the company’s prospects, top Enron executives had been selling Enron stock. Over the last three years, Kenneth Lay made 140 million dollars by cashing in his stock options. Skilling cashed in more than 60 million dollars worth. Meanwhile these executives froze their employees’ 401 (k) accounts, heavily laden with Enron stock, claiming that the firm was in the midst of changing account managers. This meant that employees were forced to hold onto their Enron shares, as their value plunged almost to zero.
The rise and fall of Enron reflects not only the extraordinary profits that were made from deregulation, but also the extraordinary risks that the speculation which was part and parcel of deregulation carried. Does that mean deregulation will be halted? Not if it depends on big business and its government.
Dec 3, 2001
The city of Portland, Oregon said it wouldn’t round up and interrogate dozens of Muslim men who were accused of no crime or even thought to be suspects in a crime. Attorney General John Ashcroft’s Justice Department has demanded that city police forces carry on this witch-hunt.
Portland city officials said to do so would mean violating a state law that holds that people can be investigated only if there is a reasonable suspicion that they were involved in a crime.
A top police official said he had grown up in Detroit and he know what it was like when innocent people were rounded up, and he wasn’t ready to do that in Portland.
It appears that even police can be appalled by police-state measures.
Dec 3, 2001
Petroleum and natural gas prices are at a nearly all time low, right? At least in the commodity markets they are.
MichCon, a major natural gas utility in the Detroit area, just raised its rates, which in some cases will nearly double gas bills for next year.
When you call MichCon’s customer service reps, they tell you it’s because the price of gas is going up! Huh???!!? Duh??
Petroleum and natural gas prices are, in fact, at a nearly all-time low, right? So what gives? Nothing but MichCon’s desire to cash in the way that California utilities did last year!
Dec 3, 2001
Because treasury income is down, Lansing imposes budget cuts and tiny raises for state workers.
Yet if the state is “broke” why hand out MORE corporate tax breaks?
In November, the “Michigan Economic Development Corp.” (MEDC) awarded a 25.8 MILLION DOLLAR, 20-year tax credit to the billion dollar pharmaceutical company, Pfizer.
In September, they gave a 5.6 million dollar tax credit to Comcast.
In August, they gave away a four million dollar tax credit to American Axel.
Gee, Governor, wonder why there’s less money in the treasury!
Reprinted from Michigan State Workers newsletter, Detroit, Michigan.
Dec 3, 2001
On Tuesday, November 27, delegates from selected Afghan ethnic and political groups started talks on the future of Afghanistan in Bonn, Germany. U.S. government officials say that this conference, sponsored by the United Nations, is a first step towards democracy and a lasting peace in Afghanistan.
Who are the participants in this conference? That is, who are the people who are supposed to bring democracy and peace to Afghanistan?
The Northern Alliance, a coalition of several warlords which in recent weeks ousted the Taliban government from some key Afghan cities thanks to U.S. bombing and military aid, will send 11 delegates. And there will be eight delegates representing the former king of Afghanistan, who was overthrown by his cousin in 1973 because of enormous corruption in the palace. And there is even a possibility that some defecting Taliban leaders will also attend this conference or be part of a future government.
The Taliban, the enemy? The Taliban that’s being overthrown? Yes. In fact, since the beginning of the bombing campaign in October, the U.S. has talked about including “moderate Taliban elements” (read: those warlords today allied with the Taliban who will be willing to switch sides) in a future government of Afghanistan. The U.S. says it wants this for the sake of “stability” for the Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group which makes up about 40% of Afghanistan’s population, is under-represented in the Northern Alliance.
Of course, there is no need to explain to anybody who has been watching the news lately what kind of democracy can be expected from Taliban leaders, no matter how “moderate” they may be. The U.S. government and media, since September 11, did a thorough job exposing the barbaric practices of the Taliban: beating women go to work or school, leave their homes without wearing the “burka,” the head-to-toe veil, or without being accompanied a male relative; beating people for listening to music or possessing photographs; jailing men for not growing their beards long enough, etc. If part of this Taliban ends up being part of the new government, it wouldn’t be the first time that the U.S. supported and worked with the Taliban. In fact, the Taliban owe their rise to power in 1996 to the direct support of two close U.S. allies, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, who were conduits for U.S. funds pass on to the Taliban.
While the Taliban’s participation in a future Afghan government is not certain, the Northern Alliance seems well-positioned to play a key role in the new government. After all, it’s different warlords who make up the Northern Alliance that currently control major Afghan cities. So what are the prospects of peace and democracy under these warlords? Their past, too, speaks for itself.
Kabul, the capital, is currently controlled by several warlords affiliated with the Northern Alliance. The dominant force in this alliance is the religious fundamentalist Jamiat-i Islami. Its leader, Tajik Burhanuddin Rabbani, was officially president of Afghanistan between 1992 and 1996, when he and other warlords fought over Kabul, ruining the city and killing 50,000 residents. Like the other militias, Rabbani’s army robbed, brutalized and killed civilians. And Rabbani, just like the Taliban, forced women to wear the burka and banned them from appearing in public without a male relative. In fact, it was Rabbani who set up the religious police to enforce these oppressive laws.
In the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, Uzbek militia leader Abdul Rashid Dostum is in charge. Dostum started his military career fighting alongside the Russian troops who occupied the country throughout the 1980s. After the Russians pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, Dostum correctly anticipated the imminent fall of the pro-Soviet regime and switched sides, joining Rabbani. Dostum soon defected again, however, to join forces with another fundamentalist, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In the mid-1990s, during the fight over Kabul, Dostum’s troops became notorious for committing atrocities against civilians. Dostum himself has made a reputation for brutality. His favorite punishment is said to be crushing people to death under tanks, which he uses against criminals, opponents and his own soldiers alike.
The eastern city of Jalalabad is under the control of Haji Abdul Qadir. Since Qadir is both a Pashtun and a member of the Northern Alliance, U.S. government officials call him a potentially “important player” in a future government–so important that they are willing to forget it was Qadir who gave shelter to Osama bin Laden in 1996 when bin Laden returned to Afghanistan from Sudan.
In addition, a certain Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is said to be returning to Afghanistan to participate in this “broad-based coalition.” If he has high hopes, it’s probably because he is also a Pashtun and he has already had a cozy relationship with the U.S. in the past. In the 1970s and ‘80s, Hekmatyar was the biggest recipient of U.S. aid among the warlords who fought against the Soviet-backed Kabul regime. Another ardent religious fundamentalist, Hekmatyar became known for killing government workers who had set up schools for girls. Hekmatyar is also well-remembered for directing the bombardment of Kabul for an entire year in 1994, killing 25,000 civilians.
All these warlords, and others not mentioned here, were also involved in ethnic cleansing, that is, driving civilians belonging to other ethnic groups from their homes. This practice turned one out of five Afghans into a refugee. So who could seriously expect these warlords to bring peace to the Afghan people, not to mention democracy, or equality for women. Having a very few women pose for photographers with part of their veils removed doesn’t change what their situation is.
That’s also supposedly why the U.S. wants to include in this coalition, as a “unifying figure,” the former king, Mohammed Zahir Shah. A unifying figure? An 87-year-old former king, who was known for his corruption and who has no influence or base whatsoever in the population?
“Well,” U.S. officials say again, “that’s why we propose an international peace-keeping force.” But what countries are supposed to supply these troops and guarantee peace in Afghanistan? The same ones that propped up all these warlords: Pakistan, for example, which was behind the Taliban; Russia, which supported Rabbani and Dostum; India, which helped fund Rabbani’s army; Turkey, which gave shelter to Dostum when he had to flee the country in 1998. And of course standing behind these lesser powers is the “big brother” U.S., still busy bombarding the country it claims it will bring peace and democracy to, along with its imperialist allies, Britain, France and Germany, all trying to secure their own influence in the region.
In short, there is room in this “broad-based” coalition for every single warmonger who participated in looting and ruining Afghanistan. Only one group is not represented: the people of Afghanistan. So now, after suffering nearly two months of bombing at the hands of the U.S., the people of Afghanistan can expect only one thing from this U.S.-led coalition: more oppression, more war and more destruction.
Dec 3, 2001
Pakistan is one of keys to the future of the Middle East not only because of the size of its population (140 million people) but because of the ethnic ties that exist with the people of Afghanistan. And yet the U.S. media gives few details about the ongoing demonstrations in Pakistan against the war in Afghanistan. We have to get news indirectly be reading the less-censored press from other countries.
A significant demonstration took place on November 9. This was the date chosen two weeks earlier by the Council for the Defense of Pakistan and Afghanistan, an organization which groups together 35 different Islamic and fundamentalist organizations, for a general strike and blockade of all traffic. At first the government responded to this call by arresting a number of fundamentalist leaders. But this was to no avail. Finding himself probably unable, and certainly not ready to engage in an outright confrontation with the fundamentalists, the dictator of Pakistan, General Musharaf instead used some obscure legal reference to declare this very same day a national holiday ... in honor of a Pakistani poet, Igbal.
This did not stop the strike from becoming a new demonstration of strength by the fundamentalist parties. Small shop keepers, business owners and artisans who dominate commerce and transportation followed the call for the strike in a number of cities, including most importantly Karachi, as well as throughout the Baluchistan region, which borders Afghanistan on the south. Even if a number of these “strikers” participated out of fear of reprisals by the fundamentalists if they didn’t do so, the fact that so many cities were paralyzed was a new success for the fundamentalist parties. This was despite the fact that the police were mobilized in mass to “encourage” the shopkeepers, transporters and businessmen not to shut down. Obviously, the result shows that these people found the fundamentalists more convincing than the police!
Three days earlier, the first national demonstration against the war called by anti-clerical groups took place in Rawalpindi (the twin city to the capital of Islamabad, and itself the fourth largest city in the country). This demonstration was called by the Alliance for Peace and for Justice, a legal coalition of hundreds of local unions, of left and extreme left-wing organizations whose militants function under the name of other “civic” associations which provide a legal cover for their activity. Eight thousand demonstrators took to the streets of the city to denounce both the dictatorship of Musharaf and the fundamentalists and to call for an end to the bombing in Afghanistan.
Without doubt, this demonstration was small in comparison to those called by the fundamentalists in the last weeks. Without doubt, the tone of the demonstration was set by organizations, including the three different communist parties in Pakistan, that prefer to speak in the name of pacifism rather than clearly to fight in the name of the mass of the poor people, Pakistani and Afghan.
But at least the participants in this demonstration made the choice not to let the fundamentalists be the only voice of opposition to the war. One can only hope that in the future many more voices will make themselves heard, going beyond the framework of pacifism to propose a revolutionary and class-based radicalism to the pseudo-radicalism of the fundamentalists.
Dec 3, 2001
We do not need the example of the Taliban to show us the danger that religious fundamentalism represents for the population of the poor countries. Indeed, in a number of these countries, the life of the entire population is shaped day in and day out by the terrorist bigotry of religious thugs–even when they are not in power.
In Pakistan, fundamentalist groups have existed for a long time. But it is only over the past two decades that they have began to develop on a real scale, thanks to their generous funding by the U.S. government, military and secret services, the increasingly catastrophic economic situation which impoverishes the vast majority of the population and the generalized corruption of the political system.
Today, the religious parties occupy the forefront of the political scene in Pakistan. Not only do they have deep roots in the Pakistani military and ISI (the Pakistani secret service); they also provide the avenue through which the population vents its anger against the murder of their ethnic brothers in Afghanistan by the U.S. military, its outrage at the spectacle of the richest country in the world attacking one of the poorest. These parties are the only ones to openly oppose General Musharraf’s support for the U.S. intervention.
And yet these religious parties are the same parties which burn down voluntary schools for girls and women, instruct their members to molest women who are “immodestly” dressed and attack clinics which employ women doctors. They call for dismemberment of human beings along with capital punishment. These parties are not just backward-looking and hysterical, they are deadly enemies of the poor!
It is not just in Pakistan or Afghanistan that fundamentalism has developed over the past period. Today there are significant fundamentalist movements from all kinds of religions, in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Iran, of course, Algeria and Morocco, but also Nigeria and South Africa, to name only a few examples. These movements may have different social roots and developments. But they all have three things in common: they reflect in a certain sense the reactionary shift which has taken place in society over the past period; they feed on the despair of populations which are trapped between repressive regimes, imperialist oppression and abject poverty, without any perspective of a better future; and they have been propped up, at some point in their development, by imperialism or its local agents.
It was not by mistake that the CIA chose to finance fundamentalist guerillas against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1978, nor later help establish the Taliban in power, using Osama bin Laden as a conduit.
Fundamentalist religious groups are useful weapons for the imperialist powers–they deprive the poor of their ability to understand and put into question the social organization of society and its exploitative nature and, above all, of their ability to change it.
Of course, weapons sometimes do explode in the hands of people who handle them. This is what happened with Osama bin Laden. The victims of the World Trade Center may have died as a result of a conspiracy conceived by bin Laden’s network, but it was U.S. leaders who created the conditions for this network’s emergence, as part of power games they played, not only in Afghanistan, but throughout the Middle East.
It is vital for the oppressed classes that religious fundamentalism be exposed and opposed. But no one should believe that what the U.S. is doing today in hunting for bin Laden or bombing the Taliban militias will in any way accomplish that.
If the poor masses of the Third World are to escape from the trap of fundamentalism, they have to be offered another perspective which will come only from people who propose collective action by the working masses to end the domination of capital over the economy and of imperialism over the planet.
Dec 3, 2001
It’s not only in the Middle East that medieval superstitions and reactionary ideas run rampant.
Try right here, in the good old USA, where women can be harassed and attacked for walking into a clinic to have an abortion, where doctors or nurses can be killed for working in women’s clinics where abortions are performed; where homosexuals can be beaten up or killed for their “unhealthy” life style; where couples can be condemned to prison or refused an apartment for cohabitation without marriage and where some states still keep miscegenation statutes on the books.
Artwork destroyed by the Taliban? You don’t have to look any further than Mayor Giuliani who attempted to pull art out of the Brooklyn Museum.
Books burned, science denounced? How about the state of Kansas which declared that schools do not have to teach evolution, plate tectonics or the formation of the universe. It seems they contradict the Word of God as put down in the Koran–oops, the Bible.
Dec 3, 2001
About 30 to 40 million of us will head to McDonald’s or Taco Bell or Burger King today. We spend more than 110 billion dollars per year on fast food, more than the country spends on higher education.
Eric Schlosser has written Fast Food Nation to show the changes in the way we eat. His perspective is clear in his subtitle: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. As a journalist, Schlosser has filled his book with details you never knew–about Roy Kroc and the McDonald brothers, about how fries get their flavor, about how the meat reaches the market. Did you know that kids watch 30,000 ads per year, and that ads for fast food have even entered their school books, while Pizza Hut and Pepsi gain space in their cafeterias?
The most entertaining stories in the book depict the flavor industry along the New Jersey turnpike. Factories there supply two-thirds of the flavors used throughout the country. For a Burger King strawberry shake, the ingredients include–but are not limited to–amyl acetate, amyl butyrate, anethol, benzyl acetate, butyric acid, dipropyl ketone, ethyl cinnamate, maltol, methyl salicylate, nerolin, etc.
But Schlosser is mostly angry at how the food industry is organized. Today there are 15,000 McDonald’s throughout North America. As of 2001, not a single one has been unionized. Two out of three workers in the fast food industry are younger than 20, and they average only three months on the job before quitting. There were a few unsuccessful attempts at organizing, but fast food remains a minimum wage industry. Its owners have been rewarded with special taxes called “The Targeted Jobs Tax Credit” and “Work Opportunity Tax Credit” by their friends in Congress.
Schlosser describes changes in the meat, poultry and potato industry that have turned these into big business. In 2000, for example, the top four meat processors–ConAgra, IBP, Excel and National Beef–slaughtered about 84% of all cattle.
Schlosser gives us a history of IBP, which started when two executives left Swift meat-packers to start Iowa Beef Packers in 1961. In 1961, workers slaughtered 50 cattle per hour; today the rate is up to 400 slaughtered per hour. The workers there often come from Mexico, thanks to a labor office and bus service which IBP maintains in Mexico. IBP even runs ads on Mexican radio stations to find people to work in their slaughter houses.
Meat-packing has always been an industry using new immigrants who may barely know English in one of the most dirty and dangerous jobs that exist. Schlosser says the rate of injury in slaughter houses is three times higher than the rate in U.S. factories. This book also shows some of the reasons that meat is contaminated seriously enough to kill people, or why millions of pounds of meat get recalled each year.
Although Schlosser wants us to blame it all on the Republicans, he points out that in 1978 the Department of Agriculture had 12,000 meat inspectors, while in 2000, it had only 7,500. That’s certainly too many administrations cutting too many inspectors to blame it all on the Republicans. Apparently he forgot how many times the Democrats controlled Congress.
From Schlosser’s book you would never know that the current state of food production and its results in the American diet are part of a long history of changes in farming. Nor would you know that Sinclair Lewis wrote The Jungle to expose the disgusting conditions in the meat-packing industry in 1906.
Still, Fast Food Nation is a fascinating look at various aspects of how we eat today. Reading this book will NOT encourage you
to go order a Big Mac, fries and a shake.
Dec 3, 2001
The following is part of a letter we received from a prisoner at Wabash Valley Correctional Facility in Indiana:
“The department of correction gets $28,000 to $30,000 per year to warehouse prisoners. This figure is about $76.70 per day per prisoner. This money supposedly covers the use of the law library, education, recreation, meals etc. Once the department of correction gets the money in its budget, they use an artifice of tricks to deceive the public that the prisoners did something to be placed on lock-down status. Once they place the prison on lock-down status, the above activities are suspended. The prisoners are locked in their assigned cells 24 hours a day and not allowed to participate in anything. So the allotted money is not used on the prisoners. The only allotted money used is for the meals, which is about $6 or $7 per day, if that much. What happened to the taxpayers other $70?
“I’ve been on lock-down status now for two months. And I don’t have any idea when we will be off it, nor do I know why we are on lock-down status. For example, I have been on lock-down status for 50 days, everything has been suspended–everything. So the IDOC has only been using about $6 of that money per day on me. Leaving over $70 left. 60 days times $70 = $4200. There are 176 prisoners in this cell house. There is another cell house with another 176 prisoners on lock-down, which brings the total up to $24,640 per day. This doesn’t count the similar amount of prisoners on the SHU and the D-segregation.
“This has happened every year since I have been here. The public is not aware of this. We stay on lock-down sometimes for five to six months at a time, at least once a year and for about 30 days at a time during the rest of the year. Two other units stay on lock-down status about seven months out of every year, which is about 49 million dollar a year saved on two cell houses alone. What happened to the rest of the allotted money? This probably goes on in other states.”
The writer asked that all prisoners’ family and taxpayers call Ms. E. Ridley-Turner, Commissioner, IDOC at (317) 232-5715, or write her at E334 Indiana Government Center South, 302 West Washington Street, Indianapolis, Indiana or Superintendent Craig Hanks, at P.O. Box 1111, W.V.C.F., Carlisle, Indiana,47838 to protest this lock down.
Dec 3, 2001
In recent weeks there have been increased criticism of the Bush Administration for holding thousands of men without charging them with criminal acts. Responding to this criticism, Attorney General John Ashcroft finally released on November 27 the names of 93 men who have been charged with various crimes. Of course, only four of them were tied in any way at all to the terrorist attacks. Two men are Hispanics who helped two hijackers obtain false Virginia ID. There is no reason to believe that these men knew that their customers were going to be hijackers. Then there were two Arabic men whose names were found in the car of one of the hijackers that was left at Dulles Airport. One man is being held for forging housing subsidy checks. The other, Osama Awadallah, was charged with lying to a grand jury about whether he knew one of the hijackers. A federal court judge just ruled that he had to be released on bail. She noted that he recanted his initial false testimony to the grand jury, and said, “this defendant is charged with making false declarations–not with terrorism, or aiding and abetting terrorism, or conspiring with terrorists.” None of the 93 men have been charged with terrorism or involvement in the September 11 attack.
What about the other 89 charged? Every single one of these charges were for the kind of things that happen everyday–usually without any notice paid to it: possession of child pornography, illegal possession of a firearm, buying drivers’ licenses, credit card fraud, lying on work or license applications. The other charges are the kinds of things which have existed in every immigrant community–starting with the Irish and the Italians: wrong addresses on papers, false papers, etc. What about the rest of the thousand or so now being held? There are no charges preferred against them. Apparently the government hasn’t been able to find any blots on their records!
The Bush Administration has announced that those who are charged with terrorism will be tried by secret military tribunals.
When we see what they’ve done with the 93 finally charged, we can see clearly why they want SECRET tribunals. The first reason is that with no real criminal acts committed by those arrested, the Administration prefers to dispatch their cases in secret before military officers. Anyone who’s been in the army can tell you what that means. There’s probably another reason. If they ever do arrest someone who was really tied into one of these terrorist networks, the U.S. authorities certainly don’t want a public trial. Think of all the government’s dirty linen that would be aired out. After all, bin Ladin worked with the CIA in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Ali Mohamed, who was convicted in the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania was trained in terrorist activities at Fort Bragg as a member of U.S. Special Forces. Several of the hijackers involved in the September 11 attacks were trained by armed forces and secret services in Saudi Arabia, a close ally of the U.S.
Prosecutors always say–if you did nothing wrong, then you’ve got nothing to hide. It appears by how much the U.S. government is trying to hide that it did a lot of wrong!
Dec 3, 2001
The Spanish government declared it won’t extradite eight men it says might have had some involvement in the September 11 attacks unless the U.S. renounces the use of military tribunals and agrees not to impose the death penalty. Spain, like most other countries in the European Union, signed an agreement on human rights which opposes summary military trials and the death penalty. Apparently, other European countries would also refuse U.S. requests under these conditions.
Bush has said countries are either for us or against us in the war on terrorism, that those who are against us will have to suffer the consequences.
Does this mean that the U.S. will now bomb Spain?
Dec 3, 2001
Thousands of students taking the National Assessment of Educational Progress scored lower on scientific knowledge in 2000 than they had in 1996. Only half the students knew even a bare introduction to science and only one in five could understand basic concepts by the time they were twelfth graders. Less than one in three children at the fourth grade level understood science appropriate to their grade level.
As the head of the National Science Teachers Association, Gerry Wheeler, put it, “Our nation continues to shortchange our students in science.” He spoke of the frustrations of science teachers, who report they lack time, money and even teachers to do a good job of explaining science. Wheeler said that we lack “the science-teaching work force that we need to produce the next generation of scientists and engineers,” people wanted both by business and government.
The lack of scientific understanding in young people makes fertile ground for other explanations of how the world works–like the religious explanations pushed by fundamentalists. Since the enormous strides made in recent decades in biology, physics, geology, chemistry remain a mystery to at least half the younger generation, the students become adults who are easily fooled. A rational explanation, based on evidence, might not be as interesting, or as believable as lies put forth by con men.
If we judge by the results of public education, that’s the kind of general population the rulers of this country prefer.
Dec 3, 2001
We read in the newspapers that Ron Gettelfinger will be the next UAW president. But the convention to vote for the next president is still seven months away. Even the elections to pick the delegates who will vote for the next officers are many months away.
Didn’t the newspapers forget something?