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 17, 2001
The holiday mood is not exactly filled with hope and cheer this year. Across the country, few workers’ families are planning big celebrations. We are not going out and spending a lot on presents. Many fewer of us are planning a trip out of town, or even to go out to a decent restaurant or show.
Is this because of September 11, as a lot of commentators and politicians keep saying? They certainly want us to believe it.
The fact is that we don’t have the money. And you can’t blame that on the terrorist attacks of September 11–as much as the politicians try to blame everything that’s wrong on September 11.
All across the country, big companies and small are laying off workers in droves. The ranks of the unemployed have ballooned by over 2.5 million people in just one year, the biggest annual increase in over 20 years. The bosses are closing factories and offices. They are cutting shifts, with the threat that this could be the prelude to new plant closings in the future.
Where did this all come from? Quite simply, they are doing what they always do, trying to squeeze more production out of fewer workers. Whether they call it “lean production” or “total quality,” it all amounts to the same thing–fewer workers are putting out more production. And this means job cuts. Eventually, as those laid off reduce their spending, it rebounds and causes drops in sales, drops in production and then more job cuts–a vicious cycle.
All the companies are crying poverty today. Over the last 10 years, these same companies made record profits. Executive salaries and bonuses and stock options produced untold wealth: new mansions, limos, private jets, yachts, jewelry, etc.
We did not benefit from this wealth–in fact, going into this recession, there are many fewer good-paying jobs than there were going into the last recession.
Now today, these same bosses are telling those of us still left with a job that we will have to accept even more job cuts in order for their companies to stay competitive.
So, no, there is not much to celebrate this holiday season.
Yes, the attack on September 11 was outright terrorism–disgusting. But the attacks that the bosses are carrying out right now are also a form of terrorism, economic terrorism. They are threatening to take away the roof over our heads, food from the dinner table. They are threatening the well-being of our families and the existence of entire communities that depend on those jobs and that income. Isn’t that terrorism?... and on a far greater scale than anything an Osama bin Laden could ever carry out!
George Bush, who is such good friends with Enron, who took all that campaign money from Enron executives, and who passed so many laws that favored Enron, wants to blame the layoffs on September 11.
No, put the blame where it belongs, on the biggest terrorists of all: our own bosses and the politicians who do their bidding.
Dec 17, 2001
On December 13, FBI agents questioned an independent researcher who has been pushing the government to look at its own military anthrax researchers as the most likely suspects in the recent anthrax mail attacks. “They wanted to know whether I had ideas about who did it,” said Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a molecular biologist at the State University of New York and chairwoman of a biological weapons panel at the Federation of American Scientists.
Rosenberg told the FBI she thought the anthrax terrorist’s motive might have been to stir up public fear and thus highlight the importance of building up defenses against germ attack. That is, to get more government money appropriated for germ warfare research.
It’s an idea–and it may turn out not to be true. But this respected researcher suspects it might be, the FBI takes her seriously and editors of leading newspapers all over the country print her suspicions. At the least, it shows they find it credible that someone working in a government program would kill innocent people to get more money for the program.
Why not? The people who are responsible for these programs know that their weapons will kill thousands, even millions of people very quickly. To people like that, what do a few lives more or less mean?
Dec 17, 2001
Several scientists at the U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah recently revealed that they have been making weaponized anthrax for years. Furthermore, they told reporters that the anthrax they make at Dugway is genetically identical to the anthrax mailed to Senators Daschle and Leahy, and before them, to a newspaper editor in Florida. In addition, the method of grinding the anthrax into fine particles and its very high concentration also links the mailed anthrax to the sophisticated weaponized anthrax at Dugway.
Following these revelations, a spokesperson for Dugway admitted that the U.S. Army has, in truth, been producing significant amounts of weaponized anthrax for almost a decade. It was the first time the Army has ever admitted this.
Of course, the army claims that it was doing so in order to carry out research into how to defend against weaponized anthrax. And it says that it can account for all the anthrax it produced–as though anthrax once produced doesn’t keep reproducing.
If the Army had been carrying out defensive research for a decade, it would have known immediately how to respond to the envelopes that were sent. It would have known that Cipro is NOT the best antidote to take, despite its manufacturer’s claims. It would have known that postal machines would have released anthrax spores through the pores of the envelope’s paper. It would have realized that very tiny amounts are enough to kill someone. And it would have organized an immediate response which would have prevented most of the deaths that occurred.
But it didn’t do those things.
This is not a surprise. It simply confirms that the aim of the government’s biological weapons research is not defensive, but offensive. It is studying how to kill civilian populations.
Certainly, the person who sent those six envelopes was a depraved human being–just as the program which produces anthrax is depraved.
But whoever it turns out to be that sent those envelopes, the fact is the U.S. military program to develop biological weapons is implicated in the deaths of the six people who succumbed to anthrax.
Dec 17, 2001
Frederic Mowrer, an associate professor of fire protection engineering at the University of Maryland, is one of the people leading the federal inquiry into the collapse of the World Trade Center. Mowrer recently released information indicating that inadequate or faulty fireproofing in both towers, which had gone unrepaired, probably contributed to the crash of the towers–or at least speeded it up.
There are 1,200 photos, made during more than 10 years, that show fireproofing in both towers had peeled off or had been inadequately installed. Large areas of the core columns had no fireproofing at all.
When a big sky scraper like the World Trade Center is built, the steel in the building is coated with fireproofing made of mineral fibers and concrete-like material called binders. This material is designed to insulate the steel in the event of a fire, to prevent it from heating and becoming too soft to support a load.
Even if the fireproofing had been perfectly in place, perhaps it wouldn’t have prevented the collapse of the towers, but, according to Mowrer, it probably would have taken longer to collapse. That would have allowed many more people to escape.
Where are the political authorities now? Why aren’t they denouncing the fire department and buildings department which let the WTC get away with not maintaining safety protections? Why doesn’t today’s “hero,” Rudolph Guiliani, the mayor of New York, demand an immediate investigation of those responsible–himself first of all?
Certainly the towers would not have collapsed without the terrorist attack. But the extremely poor fireproofing left the towers a fire trap in the event of any fire or explosion.
Buildings are no stronger than their weakest point, and this point was not only the fireproofing but their operation and control by a system that puts profits first.
Dec 17, 2001
The major powers of the world refuse to allow any international control over their overstocked arsenal of biological weapons. This was demonstrated, once again, at the November 23 conference on biological weapons held in Geneva.
An international agreement was ratified in 1972 by 143 countries of the world, including the United States, outlawing the development, fabrication, stockpiling and acquisition of biological weapons. However, no means have ever been put in place to verify whether or not these states have respected the agreement they signed.
There have been many attempts to establish controls since 1995. However, the discussions never seem to end, for the simple reason that the United States opposes them. Last July, the U.S. refused all inspections of its laboratories and its arsenals. In Geneva on November 19, a U.S. under-secretary of state repeated that it was a waste of time to elaborate additional controls because the U.S. would not agree to any of them. Ironically, this same U.S. official denounced a number of countries–including Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, the Sudan and Syria–of violating the very agreements the U.S. refuses to recognize. He said their refusal to allow the U.S. to carry out inspections is proof that they are continuing research and perhaps even mass production of biological weapons. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have anything to hide ...! The same, obviously, could be said of the U.S.
In fact, the international agreements that exist are not even very strict. They allow countries to continue carrying out research on a small scale for "defensive" purposes. They allow countries to keep a limited amount of biological weapons–the U.S. and Russia officially acknowledge that they each keep dozens of tons of such weapons which fall within the limits.
The very existence of these arms is a risk. There is nothing reassuring for the population–including in the U.S.–which may one day discover that it has been victimized by germs coming from these laboratories and arsenals maintained by the U.S. Defense Department.
What this all confirms is that the leaders of the major world powers are preparing for future wars and, as the anthrax scare has made clear, with the potential to be widely devastating to the civilian population.
Dec 17, 2001
Three men were released from prison on December 5 after serving almost half their lives there for a rape and murder they didn’t commit. A fourth man was also found innocent, but remains in prison on a shop lifting charge. DNA testing cleared the four men, who were arrested as teenagers for the attack on medical student Lori Roscetti in 1987
Most of prosecutors’ case against the teenagers was based on two false confessions. Marcelia Bradford was held incommunicado by the police for 24 hours and beaten several times before he signed a confession implicating himself and the other three boys. He was given a 12-year sentence of which he served six years. He remains in prison for shop lifting. The other confession came from 14-year old Calvin Ollins, who is mentally retarded. He was told he would go free if he confessed and implicated the others. At the trial, prosecutors also used the false testimony of one man who later admitted he lied in order to try to get a $35,000 reward. Another man falsely testified against the four in order to avoid being framed up.
The prosecutor introduced physical evidence which had been falsified in the trial. Chicago Police Department “expert” Pamela Fish testified there was no semen on Roscetti’s coat and jogging pants. An examination a couple of weeks ago revealed 22 semen stains, none of which matched the DNA of the four men accused. Fish is known to have falsely testified in at least 10 criminal cases, and undoubtedly did the same thing in numerous other cases. She remains employed as an administrator for the state police.
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley was the state’s attorney in 1987 when this fraudulent frame up occurred. Commenting on the case after the three men were released, he said he doubted he could have done anything different with the technology in existence back then. What about the false confessions, the false testimony, the dishonest testimony of Fish? None of that is changed by the new DNA technology.
The current state’s attorney, Dick Devine, said after the men’s release that the case was a failure of the system. No, it was the system at work. It was what regularly happens as the police try to claim success in solving dramatic crimes, such as a brutal rape and murder. They pin it on some poor people, coercing confessions, obtaining false witnesses, planting false evidence, and using dishonest so-called scientific experts. The proof is that the declaration of innocence of the four young men brings to 98 the number of rape and murder convictions overturned nationwide by the use of DNA. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. What about all those falsely convicted where there was no DNA evidence to start with or–what often happens–it was thrown out?
What were the results of this case for all involved? The three men just released had the entire decade of their twenties stolen from them. Omar Saunders, one of the four, was stabbed more than 14 times in prison, and has a jagged scar on his scalp. The fraudulent criminal “expert” Fish remains on the state payroll. The top prosecutor Daley remains as mayor. The police who fabricated all the testimony remain on the job with no consideration being given to convoking a grand jury to investigate and indict them for robbing half the lives of four innocent men. This is the system at work.
Dec 17, 2001
The Taliban has supposedly been defeated. So what is going on among the victors?
In some parts of the country armed fighting has broken out between the armies of various war lords. On December 12, for example, a battle occurred in Pul-i-Khumri, a town just south of Kunduz. This town had been captured by the Northern Alliance. Troops supporting Sayed Jaffar apparently attempted to move into the town and take it over. Sayed Jaffar is a member of the feudal family that long dominated the Ismaili people. The family had ruled Pul-i-Khumri until the Taliban took over, when the family fled the country. The Northern Alliance troops that captured the town don’t want to turn it over to him.
A New York Times reporter on the spot saw U.S. jets bomb the Northern Alliance forces. She also pointed out that the troops loyal to Sayed Jaffar had two trucks with U.S. equipment and back packs, as well as U.S. weapons and ammunition. The soldiers were dressed in new padded winter clothing. The same type of equipment was provided by the U.S. to Northern Alliance troops. They may have the same sponsor but that doesn’t prevent them from engaging in a new civil war among themselves.
The photo accompanying the article of December 13 showed a 12-year-old boy who was wounded in the fighting, with his mother watching–clad in the burka, the head to toe veil covering her entire face. Obviously it was not only the Taliban which severely oppressed the women of Afghanistan.
During the days of Taliban rule, various international relief operations complained that the Taliban had seized their vehicles, preventing them from feeding the starving, removing mines and helping the suffering. But now the relief organizations say the Northern Alliance forces have in turn stolen their vehicles. The acting governor of Kunduz Province drives around in a Land Rover taken from the Halo Trust, which had the truck to remove land mines. The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan that runs clinics and schools says 28 of their trucks have been seized by the Northern Alliance. “We captured it, it’s ours,” is their attitude.
It’s clear that the defeat of the Taliban carries little promise for an improvement in the lives of ordinary Afghanis, who are still subject to plunder, fighting, the oppression of women, and feudal lords fighting to maintain their power.
Dec 17, 2001
Translated from the December 7 issue of Lutte Ouvriere (Workers’ Fight), the newspaper put out by the Trotskyist organization in France with which we are in political solidarity.
We can only be moved and horrified by the suicide bombings in Israel–one on a packed bus and two in a pedestrian walkway–which left 30 dead and almost 200 wounded. The victims were civilians, children, teens, those who were out in the popular neighborhoods on a Saturday evening, as in many other places in the world. At the same time, we can only condemn those who conceived and prepared this carnage, which does not advance the cause of the Palestinian people whom the authors of these acts claim to defend.
But why are the leaders of the fundamentalist movement that carries out terrorism able to find people to carry out these acts and boast that they have the means to carry out similar attacks for the next 20 years if they have to? One of the men who blew himself up, wearing a belt of bombs around him, was only 17 years old. How much humiliation, frustration and despair is behind this action of a young man who chose to kill himself in order to achieve the maximum number of victims?
For several decades, the Palestinian people have lived under a regime of military occupation by the state of Israel with its superior weapons. The Palestinians are a people who have been plundered of their land, with a large part of them crammed into refugee camps in neighboring countries; a people who are not recognized as having a national state. For only the last few years a “Palestinian Authority” has been set up–but over a tiny, cut up territory, a real concentration camp of the poor.
This situation without hope and without perspective has led the Palestinian youth to the revolt called the Intifada. To try to wipe out this revolt, the Israeli army systematically used tanks and combat helicopters against an unarmed Palestinian population.
This war against the Palestinian people has left more than 1,000 dead and 30,000 wounded during the last 14 months. It has transformed the territory reserved to the Palestinians into a field of ruins in which the inhabitants are condemned to hunger each time the points of entry into Israel are closed. Ariel Sharon pretends to resolve the Palestinian problem in blood and violence: by state terrorism. But all this terrible repression and starvation of the Palestinian population has not put an end to the war, but on the contrary has pushed a growing number of youth into resistance and now toward suicide bombings.
The leaders of the imperialist world make a show of indignation, moralizing and calling on the Palestinian people to stay calm, while leaving a free hand to that man of the extreme right–Sharon. Disgusting! It is the big powers which have created this inextricable situation in which two peoples live in the same territory but are set one against the other. It is the big powers which wanted to turn the state of Israel, created by Jews fleeing Europe after the horrors of Nazism, into a guardian of imperialist domination over the Arab peoples surrounding this state.
These two people ought to be able to live together peacefully. But this would have required a policy whose aim was to achieve this. It would have meant that the newly created State of Israel would not be an instrument of plunder of the Palestinian people nor an instrument of oppression.
This is not what the successive leaders of Israel have done. They bear a huge responsibility not only toward the Palestinian people but also toward their own people for having led them into this political impasse. If the situation is desperate for the Palestinian people, it is in the process of becoming desperate for the Israeli people as well. One people suffers day after day from the terror of the Israeli state and the other suffers more and more from the individual terrorism which Israel’s state terrorism arouses. This is the situation which protects the big powers.
So long as oppression lasts, there will be people who choose to die rather than live in humiliation. Whoever spreads the violence receives it back as despair. On the two sides, however, it is not those responsible for the violence, but rather the people who pay.
Dec 17, 2001
Mark Brown, the United Nations official coordinating the “rebuilding” effort of Afghanistan, estimates it will cost 6.5 billion dollars over five years. This has officials of the biggest corporations seeing dollar signs.
Much of the rebuilding is expected to occur in agriculture, energy and a few other industries. Cargill Inc., the giant grain company, sees good opportunities there. Caterpillar, which makes heavy tractors, said it would be “the logical beneficiary” of a U.S. government promise to dig new irrigation systems. Unocal, the giant oil company, is looking to build a pipeline across the country to move oil from the Caspian sea area to foreign markets.
The companies say they expect higher profit margins due to the risks of operating in a war zone. But as the head of the construction division of Samsung said, “The money is a sure thing because it’s backed by UN member countries.”
During the Viet Nam war a U.S. commander said he destroyed a village in order to save it. Now U.S. imperialism is completing the destruction of Afghanistan in order to save it... so big corporations can make a profit.
Dec 17, 2001
On December 14, the U.S. government released a videotape showing Osama bin Laden laughing and boasting about the September 11 attacks that killed several thousand people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. In the words of Ari Fleischer, President Bush’s press secretary, “The tapes show the world just how evil Osama bin Laden is, and how he claims piety, while leading people to deaths...” And according to the U.S. government, this tape is the “smoking gun,” bin Laden’s confession in his own words, that he was the man responsible for the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Of course, there is always the chance that the video tape is merely a forgery of some kind. After all, the U.S. government admits that it possessed the tape for several weeks before releasing it. Given the U.S. record of lying to the American public and the world, for example, inventing supposed attacks out of whole cloth, like the Tonkin Gulf incident in 1964, it would come as no surprise.
Nonetheless, bin Laden–as he has shown himself to be–could very well have said all those things. But if the bin Laden tape is authentic, it doesn’t only implicate bin Laden in mass murder. It demonstrates the real hypocrisy of U.S. officials who today denounce him.
Who is this man, Osama bin Laden? He certainly is a mass murderer. But he is not just any mass murderer. No, as everyone knows, he was created by the U.S.’s intelligence agency, the CIA. He is no different today than when the CIA first recruited him more than two decades ago, when the U.S. encouraged him to attack not just the Soviet army, but the ordinary people of Afghanistan who dared oppose him. He was a terrorist then, and he is a terrorist now. The only difference is that he was the U.S.’s terrorist 20 years ago.
Bush knows this. Those at the head of the U.S. government and the U.S. military, who today denounce bin Laden, differ from him only in that they are guilty of mass murder on a much more incomparable scale. They don’t broadcast their own private meetings in the basement of the White House or the Pentagon, when they discuss one of their own “successful” campaigns or wars that have resulted in the deaths of thousands, tens of thousands and millions. We don’t see how they celebrated and gloated when new figures are released about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have starved to death or died from disease because of the economic embargo. But they certainly do gloat, for example, when they brag about the destructive power of their weapons, the “daisy-cutter,” for example, whose main purpose is to decimate any human being standing within thousands of yards. They brag about their bombing of Iraq. They just don’t mention who was killed.
To get bin Laden, the U.S. is carrying out its own brand of mass murder. It bombs one of the poorest countries on earth, Afghanistan. It kills thousands and destroys what was left of the cities and villages that had already been destroyed by a quarter century of wars that the U.S. had encouraged, propagated and funded. And in the process, it imposes one more new dictatorship on the people of Afghanistan, this time led by the old rulers of the “Northern Alliance,” while at the same time buttressing the other dictatorships of the region.
Today, the U.S. promises that this war will eventually lead to an end to terrorism. It promises that even if and when the U.S. eventually “gets” Osama bin Laden and the rest of his cohorts, the terrorism will end.
No, this war will not end the violence. It will only be used to further tighten the grip of U.S. imperialism and the dictatorships that it supports. It will only lead to greater impoverishment of the population of the region. And it will turn the region into more of a powder keg.
The war in Afghanistan is only a prelude to even more bloody confrontations in the future. The price will not just be paid by the people living in the region. But working people in the U.S. will also be forced to pay an increasingly heavy price, both in terms of our lives, the wealth that we create, and with increasing repression by the government against us at home.
All those hypocrites, President Bush, the rest of his administration, as well as all the other officials of administrations past, could just as well have been pictured on the tape, sitting at the table with bin Laden, congratulating themselves about all the civilian casualties that they have caused, alternating their congratulations with jokes and religious pronouncements about “doing away with evil.”
Dec 17, 2001
Three Baltimore cops were recently charged with assaulting a 26-year-old black man.
On October 2, they had accosted Dante Brown as he was crossing the street, grabbed him by the arm, put him in a choke hold, pinched his nostrils shut and tried to force his mouth open. They yelled, “Spit it out!” and “You’re about to be DOA (Dead On Arrival).” They flipped Brown onto his stomach and he passed out. They then kicked him several times “to revive him.”
After all of this, what did they have? Nothing–not a single stick of evidence against Brown–not even a hint. They didn’t even attempt to fabricate a charge–just told him to leave and hoped he’d forget the beating.
But he didn’t. He went to his grandmother’s house who got him to the hospital.
Ultimately, the case landed in the lap of the state’s attorney who brought the case to a grand jury which indicted the three cops.
Now the cops who assaulted Brown pretend that he had drugs and was trying to swallow them. BUT they didn’t charge him with anything at the time.
When Baltimore’s Police Chief was asked about the charges against his officers, he said he was “not happy it came to an indictment. I understand there were no lasting injuries.”
In other words, the cops were just carrying on as usual–beating someone who had done nothing, expecting to get away with it because they hadn’t permanently maimed or killed Brown.
But Dante Brown, apparently, was not ready to let them slide.
Dec 17, 2001
On November 27th, two weeks after their contract expired, clerical, secretarial and mailroom workers organized in the Office and Professional Employees International Union went out on strike against their employer, the NTC. What is distinct about this strike is the employer. The NTC is a joint program of the UAW and Daimler Chrysler.
The main issues of the strike were wages–these workers wanted the same 3% per year that workers at the Big 3 get–and the right to use their seven personal days a year as they want, without facing penalties.
Grievances by these support staff workers extend beyond the issue of wages and personal time. They include the fact that the NTC refused to allow three maintenance workers to join their union earlier this fall–with, according to Local 512’s chief steward, the refusal being pushed by the UAW’s associate co-director of the NTC!
According to some of the striking workers and their local officers, these issues are the very same grievances that the UAW has denounced in some of its fights with companies.
Like all bosses, the UAW claims the NTC can’t afford to give wage increases. One OPEIU union rep was told by a UAW rep that the NTC can’t grant wage increases because “it’s UAW members’ money. ”
He must have been laughing when he said it–given the money the NTC has expended on politicians and perks for the people who run the NTC. Almost 40% of the NTC budget, for example, goes to management expenses. Nearly $9,000 went to buy wine for a reception of the Democratic National Convention in 2000. Hundreds of thousands, if not into the millions, are spent on sponsoring NASCAR stock car race teams each year. The NTC sends thousands of people to meetings in Las Vegas each year; and hundreds of UAW officials to a plush resort in Palm Springs. The list of how the “UAW members’ money” is spent, goes on and on.
Like bosses everywhere, the NTC seems to have money for everything... but the people who do the work.
Dec 17, 2001
Ford Motor Company proudly hailed a report in early December that its newly re-designed Ford Explorer was a "best pick" from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
Ford hopes the results will help them sell more Explorers than ever, despite more than 200 lawsuits outstanding against the vehicle for at least 271 fatalities and more than 800 injuries.
But tests or no tests, Ford management forgot to mention one thing: the “re-designing” which produced these results was not the result of new technology. Ford was told by its own engineers 14 years ago that the vehicle was unsafe and needed to be re-designed.
If Ford finally acted on this advice after all these deaths, bad publicity and lawsuits–it’s hardly out of a concern for safety.
Chalk it up to Ford’s desire to keep a profit-gusher on the road.
Dec 17, 2001
On December 8th about 600 people demonstrated in Philadelphia in defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former Black Panther, who has spent 20 years in prison, falsely charged and convicted of murdering a cop. 100 Philadelphia cops responded, wielding clubs and attacking the demonstrators. One protestor suffered a concussion, another a fractured tail bone and a third a dislocated jaw. Nonetheless it was the demonstrators who were arrested: eight are now facing felony charges, including conspiracy to riot.
The demonstration protested the decision of Common Pleas Court Judge Pamela Dembe, who had ruled two weeks before that she didn’t have jurisdiction to order a new trial. According to Dembe, the new evidence Mumia’s lawyers wanted to present could not be heard because they missed the deadline. Their evidence includes the sworn confession by another man that he, and not Abu-Jamal, killed officer Daniel Faulkner in December 1981. It also included statements and documentation that the cops had suborned perjury by their main witnesses in the first trial.
Nonetheless, the judge ruled it was too late to hear the evidence.
In other words, Abu-Jamal might be innocent, but he will not have a chance to prove it. The judge is willing to let an innocent man be executed because he missed a deadline.
This is no surprise–this is the kind of reasoning the judicial system has used all along. They aren’t willing to let Mumia have his day in court to prove his innocence. At the same time, they have a problem since for most of the rest of the world Mumia Abu-Jamal is an innocent man, a political prisoner. Thus they tie up his case in the maze of the courts, waiting for attention to die down.
Nor was it a surprise to see the cops attack the demonstration. They want to brush this whole stinking case under the rug. They were the ones who tried to set up Mumia in the first place because of his political activity.
Abu-Jamal was a young journalist who was constantly exposing the corruption and brutality of the Philadelphia police when he was set up. He deserves our support.
Dec 17, 2001
A recent study by the Harvard School of Public Health concluded that 995 people will die every year, victims of the six coal burning power plants operated by Midwest Generation in the Chicago area. There will also be 1,555 hospital emergency visits for cases of asthma bronchitis attacks. Children in the areas surrounding the power plants have double the rate of asthma compared to children nationwide.
Midwest is the same company which provoked an 11-week strike by trying to impose concessions on its workforce last summer. Midwest Generation, in turn, is owned by the California-based Edison International, the owner of Southern California Edison. This is the company which organized power blackouts last winter in California in order to double what it charges for power.
Midwest Generation says that it is not legally obliged to remove the sulphur dioxide coming out of its smokestacks which causes respiratory illness. The plants are old and are considered “grandfathered” or exempt under the federal Clean Air Act.
It’s true that the law, as well as the courts and the Congress that passed the law, do in fact allow Midwest Generation to kill 995 people a year. And that shows us what the law is all about–not the protection of the population, but the protection of profit.
In three years, as many people will be killed in the Chicago area by Midwest Generation as were killed in the World Trade Center by terrorists. These deaths could be prevented–if the company were forced to spend a good sum of money to remove the particles coming out of its smokestacks.
But don’t wait on politicians and public officials to force them to do it. They’re too busy pretending to defend us to actually do it!
Dec 17, 2001
Two hundred twenty-eight teachers were jailed for going on strike in Middletown Township, NJ in November.
The 228, who were sentenced to a week for contempt of court, were only the first to be jailed. The rest of the 1000 striking teachers were to serve their time over the next few weeks.
The teachers had refused to continue working after five months of negotiations in which the board of education proposed that their annual health costs be raised considerably. The Middletown teachers pay a $250 annual flat fee and are also required to pay up to $1400 in deductibles before their health insurance pays out. The board proposed to increase their annual flat fee to $600.
The teachers are just like workers everywhere else–under attack from their bosses. And changes in medical benefits are one of the important ways that bosses today are trying to exact more sacrifices from their workers, whether in private industry or in public schools or government offices.
For a lot of teachers, it was hard to go to jail, as it would be for anyone. But, as one teacher put it, “In this process, the law is not fair and just. Sometimes good people have to stand up to fight an unjust law.”
On December 10, teachers went back to work after the court appointed a mediator.
If the teachers even got the Board to agree to a mediator, it’s because they were ready to make a fight. But mediation is often a trick. The board of education will have loads of documents to prove it does not have enough money.
What the teachers get from this mediation still depends on their readiness to make a fight.
Dec 17, 2001
The nuclear power industry says that nuclear waste must be moved NOW. You’ll never guess why! The threat of terrorist attack–so say these people who have produced this waste for decades without any idea of where the nuclear fuel would be stored when it was no longer useful.
They left that little problem for someone else to figure out–and pay for, of course!
If the nuclear waste can be threatened by terrorists, then how much more of a risk the nuclear reactors themselves must be. But industry executives seem to have forgotten that.
After all, they weren’t really concerned about protecting against a terrorist threat. They just wanted a pretext for doing something completely unreasonable.
Dec 17, 2001
The Department of Energy announced a sudden revision of its long-standing rules concerning permanent storage of nuclear waste.
In 1982, the U.S. Congress ordered the DoE to study the feasibility of using Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the site where nuclear waste would be dumped. At that time, the DoE claimed that Yucca Mountain’s geology was the main reason for choosing the site. Supposedly, the site had natural geological barriers which would have ensured that the nuclear waste would be safely isolated for thousands of years. For decades, while opposition to this site persisted throughout the state of Nevada and in nearby areas of the West, the DoE insisted that no place else matched the geological barriers provided by Yucca Mountain–that without them, all engineered barriers would be insufficient.
Now, however, extensive testing shows that Yucca Mountain is, in fact, a geological disaster area. Earthquake fault lines run riot throughout the area. There are large areas of underground loose rock, which, instead of acting as a barrier, actually channel water to the surface, thereby having the potential to carry radioactive material with it if waste were to be stored there.
What conclusion did the DoE draw? Go back to the drawing board and start all over, trying to work out a different way of getting rid of nuclear waste? Not at all. It simply issued new rules declaring that geological barriers are no longer needed. It will be protection enough to bury the nuclear waste in cylindrical casks placed in parallel tunnels underground.
If that’s the case, said some critics, then why not store the nuclear waste underneath the Department of Energy’s headquarters in Washington?