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 15, 2003
With the Dow Jones industrial average jumping above 10,000, cheers could be heard from Wall Street out to the yachts harbored in Newport Beach in California. It was an appropriate end to the year about to close. They year 2003 may have been marked by one bankruptcy after another–tens of steel companies, two of the biggest airlines, and literally hundreds of other companies all paraded to the bankruptcy courts. And yet, billions of dollars were to be made in 2003, including first of all in these bankruptcies. The wealthy had money falling out of their pockets as they rushed to Wall Street’s casinos to play the roulette wheels of fortune.
It was–as Dickens once wrote about the period leading up to the French revolution–the best of times. But, in this year, 2003, it was the best of times for the bourgeoisie.
To echo Dickens again, it was the worst of times. In the year 2003, it was the worst of times for working people. We were under an unremitting attack, one that continued from the year before, and the years before that.
We continued to lose jobs, one million and some, and still counting, since the supposed economic "recovery" began two years ago. The bankruptcies that produced so much money for the speculators produced only loss of jobs, loss of pensions, loss of medical care for the workers whose labor built those companies.
The prices of everything we bought–oil, gasoline, natural gas, electricity, fruits and vegetables, ordinary canned goods, medications, housing, etc.–went up. Our wages didn’t keep up.
The streets of the cities we live in are filled with ruts and bumps. The lights are dark almost as much as they are lit. The sewers and water system break, producing some spectacular floods. Garbage litters streets. Public services are in an advanced state of disrepair. The states and cities haven’t enough money to make the necessary repairs. At least that’s what the governors and the mayors tell us as they give billions away to big corporations, while laying off hundreds of thousands of those who did this vital work.
Workers comp, unemployment comp, welfare and medicaid are cut back again. It matters not that we are sick or disabled or unemployed. There isn’t enough money to cover all the social programs–so say the politicians.
Our children’s schools lack teachers; they lack books; they lack laboratory facilities, art, music and recreation supplies. And they lack maintenance–the simple basic maintenance required to keep furnaces running, toilets unstopped, broken windows fixed. No money for that either.
And yet there is money. The Dow Jones hitting 10,000 proves it. Someone has tons of money–they are using it to speculate.
The problem is not the lack of money. The problem is who controls it. We don’t. We may do the labor that produces the wealth of this society. But in this country in the year 2003, we did not decide how this wealth is to be used. We did not benefit from it.
It’s an outrage! And the capitalists know it. But in their unrestrained arrogance, they think they can go on living only the best of times while the rest of us live the worst.
They can be proved wrong.
Dec 15, 2003
The federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour has stayed the same for six years. Of course, the price of basic necessities has not stayed the same. As a result, the minimum wage today buys 14% less than it did six years ago.
The gap between the wealth of the richest U.S. capitalists and the working poor has always been great. Today it is enormous! Bill Gates of Microsoft is worth 46 BILLION dollars; investor Warren Buffet is worth 36 billion dollars; the family that owns Wal-Mart is worth 100 billion dollars.
How did they get so much wealth? They stole it from the labor of the working class. And workers who earn the minimum wage have especially helped these bosses to accumulate so much wealth.
Even by the U.S. government’s determination of poverty–which really understates the problem–minimum wage workers are losing ground. The current poverty rate for a family of four is a little over $18,000. Someone working full time at minimum wage gets only a little more than half of that, $10,500 a year.
Today’s minimum wage is in fact a misnomer. It represents less than an acceptable minimum by anyone’s standards who lives in the modern world.
Dec 15, 2003
Two panels set up by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) are about to decide whether the so-called "morning-after" pill can be sold over the counter. The medication currently is available only with a prescription.
If this were treated like a cough medication released for ordinary purchase in a pharmacy, the FDA would simply look at scientific studies about the medical aspects of this medication. Is it safe for people to buy, much like they buy aspirin or any other medication sold in pharmacies? Does its usage need to be closely monitored by a doctor?
But the "morning-after" pill is not just any medication. It is a birth control medication–to be taken within 72 hours after a woman has unprotected sex or has sex during which mechanical birth control devices fail. It’s obvious that because of the short time frame, getting a prescription in many cases will not be possible.
If the issue were to be decided simply on its medical merits, the panels would take the advice of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American Academy of Pediatrics. They all favor releasing it for ordinary sale.
But this question will not be decided on medical merits alone. The FDA panels are taking testimony from religious groups with no medical expertise, but who demand to be heard because they oppose abortion and birth control–the so-called "Christian right" and the Catholic church. Moreover, the FDA panels themselves contain people whose main "expertise" seems to be their opposition to abortion or birth control.
It’s an outrage. If these reactionaries, whose religious views make them act as though they are living in the 15th century, before the spread of scientific knowledge, that’s their business. If they want to put blinders on themselves, let them. But how dare they try to impose these unscientific views on everyone else! How dare they try to interfere in the lives of women in this country, the vast majority of whom want the option to choose birth control and abortion if they need them!
Dec 15, 2003
In early November, an epidemic of hepatitis-A spread from one Chi-Chi’s restaurant outside Pittsburgh, sickening at least 578 people and killing three.
The CDC, Centers for Disease Control, traced the early-November outbreak to uncooked scallions–green onions chopped into the restaurant’s salsa sauce. The restaurant had stored bunches of scallions together in large pails of ice water. One researcher called it "hepatitis soup."
But the restaurant’s unsanitary practice was no more than the tip of the iceberg. The CDC first said, and the media reported this heavily, that the onions were shipped in from Mexico–although they did not name the suppliers. Thus the first reports played into that current of opinion which is prejudiced against Mexico and Mexican workers.
However, there is more to the story, which is still developing–but this part is getting very little coverage. The Mexican suppliers are contractors, and sometimes the exclusive contractors, for big U.S. food distributors. It’s the U.S. distributors which make their big profits by turning a blind eye to poor sanitation in the fields under their control–and to child labor.
According to the CDC, in poor countries like Mexico, without adequate sewage treatment, without reliable clean water, hepatitis-A is a common childhood disease. The children who live through such infections are immune as adults. But when children who are sick are used as laborers in the fields, it’s not only possible but likely that some of the crops they handle will be contaminated.
The problem is compounded when grower companies provide less than adequate sanitation facilities for field hands. And, again, that’s a reason for big U.S. growers to go to less developed countries–to take advantage of their poverty and avoid health regulation, as well as hiding their responsibility behind shadow or captive "foreign" corporations.
Of course, these same companies sell unhealthy produce grown in this country–witness the regularly-recurring outbreaks of E-coli poisoning.
The problem is not where the produce was raised–it’s who controls the raising of it: U.S. capitalism.
Dec 15, 2003
The Ehrlich administration in Maryland announced it is going to make an exception to a state hiring freeze, allowing 50 more caseworkers to be hired by the Department of Social Services. About 30 are to work with Baltimore children in the department’s foster care program.
The additional caseworkers come about a year after a foster child was beaten to death in Baltimore. But they are barely a drop in the bucket of need. To fulfill the requirements of a 1998 state law, 400 more caseworkers for foster children would need to be hired throughout the state. And the department is still not complying with most of the provisions of a court order issued 15 years ago, that supposedly guaranteed home visits and medical care for all foster children and background checks of all potential foster parents.
Rather than being a way to provide decent care for all the state’s foster children, the few new caseworkers are nothing but a fig leaf to cover up the mistreatment of thousands of young people by the government.
Dec 15, 2003
This year’s flu season started early with at least 20 deaths of children so far and cases widespread, particularly in western states. Millions are considered at high risk. More than 30,000 people die annually in this country of flu, which is short for influenza. But doses of the flu vaccine are in short supply.
The two companies making flu vaccines, Aventis Pasteur and Chiron, reduced production of this vaccine to 83 million doses this year from 95 million last year. Yet the Centers for Disease Control estimates that 185 million people could use doses this year. Children under two, the elderly and those with certain medical conditions are especially at risk. But all children and almost everyone over 50 would benefit if the vaccines were widely available.
The companies did not produce enough flu vaccine for one simple reason: because they don’t make big profits on it. Since they don’t control its patent, they can’t charge their usual inflated prices.
To make matters worse, the vaccine produced for this year apparently isn’t effective on one strain of the flu–the one that has hit 75% of the cases seen so far. Something like this is bound to happen when not enough money or resources are put into the effort.
The public health system in this country is absolutely insufficient to deal with epidemics. And local institutions that could be auxiliaries to the public health system have been cutting back. Local school systems, for example, have cut nursing staffing. It’s true this country has federally funded Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and the National Institutes for Health in Washington. But delivery of health services has been left to a private health care system in which more than 40 million people have no care whatsoever and thousands of children fail to get necessary vaccinations every single year.
In the world’s richest country, health care is not a right. To stay alive and healthy remains a privilege for those who can afford it. Even for something as ordinary as the flu.
Dec 15, 2003
On February 17, a month before the U.S. attack on Iraq occurred, Dean said, "From the outset, the Administration has seemed oblivious to the simple fact that it clearly would be in our interests for any war with Iraq to occur with U.N. authorization and cooperation and not without it." Dean was not against the war on Iraq; he just wanted U.N. approval to cover for a U.S. attack.
As recently as December 13, Dean’s website highlights his demand of June 22 to put more U.S. troops into Iraq: "I believe that we need a very substantial increase in troops. They don’t all have to be American troops. My guess would be that we would need at least 30,000 and 40,000 additional troops."
As for Clark, after declaring he wasn’t eager to go to war, he says, on his website, "Nevertheless, we’re there now and that’s all ancient history. So, what we have to do is I think number one: establish legitimacy.... So, I’d go first to the United Nations. I’d say, ‘Look, we know you don’t have a security force. We’ll finish the job, we’ll work for security."
"Security," of course, is nothing but a mild-sounding word for the violence of war.
Opponents of the war? No!
Dec 15, 2003
On December 9, Al Gore endorsed Howard Dean for the Democratic presidential nomination. With the Democratic caucuses and primaries about to start right after the holidays, this gives Dean a boost facing the eight other major candidates.
In fact Dean, the former governor of Vermont, was already ahead in the polls, although no one would have predicted this six months ago. After all, Dean then wasn’t well known nationally, and he comes from a very small state. Yet he’s had the biggest, most enthusiastic audiences at his rallies and he seems to have collected more money than any of the other Democrats.
In great measure, Dean built up a following by speaking about the war in Iraq. He often repeats, "I opposed President Bush’s war from the beginning."
Dean is not the only Democratic candidate to position himself as a critic of this war, nor the only one to get support from a big Democratic honcho.
General Wesley Clark has also suggested that he questioned this war from the beginning. He has said, "I wasn’t one of those who was anxious to get into Iraq. I always was skeptical of it. I always doubted that there was an imminent danger that required us to do it." Clark was encouraged to run for the nomination by some other big names in the Democratic Party–Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton.
What’s happened? Has the Democratic Party suddenly become against this war? They certainly weren’t when resolutions were passed authorizing this war and the spending for it. The Democrats each time provided enough votes to let Bush say he had bi-partisan support, with the majority of Senate Democrats going on record favoring an immediate war. As for those who voted against, almost of them made it clear their disagreement lay only with Bush’s decision to go to war before the U.N. authorized it.
So, what’s changed? The war, of course, has turned out to be something less than the triumph Bush pretended. But that’s not a surprise–that had been predicted from the beginning. What changed were the polls that showed from week to week growing opposition to this war in the population. And the Democrats, although they may be rotten, aren’t stupid. They know that this opposition is much more widespread and profound even than what is revealed in the polls. If that weren’t true, an unknown like Dean couldn’t have made such an impact.
This use of the war issue by top Democrats doesn’t mean that they have been against the war all along. Al Gore, who supposedly was the most uneasy about war expressed himself thus in September 2002: "Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his weapons of mass destruction." He said he supported "regime change," and said it should be carried out with the U.S.‘s allies and the support of the U.N. In other words, he didn’t oppose the war, he only wanted to hide behind the cover of the U.N. when going into Iraq.
If the Democrats today seem ready to carry out a campaign based on a supposed opposition to the war, it’s only to get votes, not to oppose this war. In fact, if elected they would carry out the same horrific war.
Dec 15, 2003
The Bush administration sometimes refers to "the polls" when it tries to defend its indefensible occupation of Iraq. "The polls," said Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz, "show that most Iraqis want us to stay." Vice-President Cheney cited "the polls" showing that Iraqis want a U.S.-style government.
Well, no. The polls of Iraqi citizens don’t say those things at all. But in the hands of professional liars, anything can be twisted to serve their purpose.
The poll cited by Wolfowitz actually showed that 94% of Baghdad residents thought the city was more dangerous now than before the invasion, and only 33% thought they were better off now than before.
The poll cited by Cheney actually showed that only 21.5% of Iraqis wanted their new government to be like that of the U.S., and the same poll revealed that 58.5% said Iraq should be left alone to work out its affairs by itself.
Poll after poll shows in detail the same attitude among the great majority of Iraqis: the U.S. is making life worse and it should leave immediately. A poll which asked how much confidence Iraqis have in various leaderships showed that 78.8% said they have "little or no confidence" in the occupation forces of the U.S. and Britain.
That’s putting it mildly!
Dec 15, 2003
In early December, U.S. military spokesmen admitted that U.S. forces in Afghanistan had killed 15 Afghan children in two separate attacks within less than a week. Three adults were also killed. The military spokesmen said that these deaths were tragic accidents.
Accidents? In both attacks, U.S. warplanes bombed and rocket attacked villages. In one attack, an A-10 warplane launched 25 to 30 rockets against a home. In the other, U.S. planes bombed what it called "a compound" in the middle of a village.
These atrocities were the early results of what U.S. military officials describe as their biggest offensive in Afghanistan in two years. In "Operation Avalanche," they say that over 2000 U.S. troops are fanning out over the east, southeast and south of the country in search of "terrorists."
All reports indicate that the war in Afghanistan, which the U.S. declared a "victory" two years ago, has continued unabated. In fact, the old forces made up of warlords and religious fundamentalists have reconstituted and reinforced themselves.
The Taliban, which the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan had expelled from power, has been reorganizing and gathering strength in their old home base in the south of the country, and over the border in neighboring Pakistan. They have openly set up formal structures, almost like a rival government. They now are said to have a military council made up of all their old minsters, governors and commanders. Their "supreme commander," Mullah Omar, is said to have created a media commission led by his former spokesman, Tayab Agha, as well as the ex-ministers for information, education and the former director of the official Taliban radio network. They also have their own daily newspaper, Pasoon ("Uprising"), and in the town of Quetta just over the border in Pakistan, they have a weekly 40-page magazine printed in color called Azam ("Vow"). And there are reports that they have re-established contacts and ties with the old tribal leaders in Afghanistan, often convincing these tribal leaders with bribes and gifts. One person told a reporter from the French journal, Le Monde, "I personally know two men who have come away with new 4X4 sports utility vehicles after they agreed not to oppose the Taliban."
At the same time, the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar says that he has declared a holy war against the U.S. and is said to have reassembled many of the old mujahadin commanders from the wars of the 1980s and 1990s, in alliances that often cut across some of the ethnic and tribal divisions of Pashtuns, Tajiks, etcs. This is significant, given who Hekmatyr is. In the mid-1990s, he had been the prime minister in the government formed by the mujahadin. Then, when the U.S. drove the Taliban out of power in 2002, the U.S. put out feelers to Hekmatyr to be a part of the new regime that the U.S. set up in Kabul.
So, big parts of the country remain outside of U.S. control and the control of its puppet government led by Hamid Karzai. Karzai’s government remains in control of the capital, Kabul, with the support of 5,700 non-U.S. NATO troops, while about 10,000 U.S. troops are concentrated in a few bases just outside the capital, conducting periodic raid.
But little else in the country has changed. Certainly, there has been none, absolutely none, of the rebuilding and reconstruction that the U.S. promised for the infrastructure and economy that has been devastated by over 20 years of invasions, wars and civil wars. To keep order over most of the country, the U.S. and NATO troops have left the country under the control of the very same warlords and religious fundamentalists, some of whom have allied themselves with the U.S. and NATO, others of whom have opposed them–that is, when they were not also fighting amongst themselves.
Obviously, for the U.S. and NATO, Afghanistan–unlike Iraq–is not of key importance. It is somewhat isolated. It does not have much oil. Conditions remain extremely backward, rent by feudal divisions. Rather than expend more forces to try to gain control over the rest of the country, the U.S. tries to contain it in an equilibrium of violence, playing off warlords against each other, gambling that none of the warlords or the Taliban will ever be big enough to effectively oppose the U.S. To remind all these forces of U.S. power, the U.S. conducts raids and offensives, not just aimed at the rival warlords, but against the population, to keep the population terrorized, living in fear so that they continue to accept the most awful and unspeakable conditions. The main problem for the U.S., and especially for the Bush administration, is to make the war there disappear–at least off the front pages of American newspapers.
But, Afghanistan, like more and more of the most impoverished parts of this world dominated by imperialism, is descending into further chaos and war. Its people are paying a deadly price.
Dec 15, 2003
Currently, the U.S. is sponsoring a special council of the supposed representatives of the Afghan people, called a loya jirga, to adopt a new constitution for the country. The loya jirga’s adoption of the constitution will then supposedly pave the way for elections sometime next June. Of course, the constitution is nothing but a piece of paper, and whatever elections take place will have more to do with promoting George Bush’s election campaign than with "democracy."
But the contents of the constitution does indicate what the U.S. authorities have in mind for the people of Afghanistan. For the constitution stipulates that Afghanistan will be ruled under "Islamic" or fundamentalist law, which means the continued subjugation of ordinary people, especially women and children, just as they were under the Taliban. There is no mention in it of the rights of the ordinary people. But the constitution does allow whoever is selected as "president" to have absolute and dictatorial power over the population in the event that the government declares a "state of siege."
This is what the U.S. administration and the news media are peddling as the foundations for a new "democracy!"
Dec 15, 2003
So Saddam Hussein has been captured. Undoubtedly, significant parts of the Iraqi population will feel they have something to celebrate.
But does this mean that their attitude toward the U.S. occupation of their country has changed? Not at all. If they were against it before–as the very big majority were, they will still be against it. And for very good reasons.
First of all, the conditions of the Iraqi lives, which were bad enough under the Saddam Hussein regime, are measurably worse today, and they continue to degrade. If phones are now available, the electric supply continues to be much lower than it was even under Saddam Hussein. Baghdad continues to be hit by frequent multi-hour blackouts every single day, with the situation worse outside of the main areas of the big cities. And in Iraq, awash in oil, gasoline remains in such short supply that there are day-long waits to pump a tank of gas. Meanwhile, most sewage treatment plants are still not working, and most sewage continues to spill untreated into the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, leaving water sources unsafe and disease-ridden. And food is in such short supply that death by starvation is a real possibility in the coming winter months, while medicines needed to treat ordinary childhood diseases are non-existent.
None of this will change because someone close to Saddam Hussein turned him in, hoping for the big 25 million dollar prize offered by George Bush. Nor will it change because Saddam Hussein himself decides to "co-operate" with the U.S. led occupation–as Bremer reported him doing.
In fact, things are on the verge of getting much worse in Iraq for the people of Iraq. Over the last months, the U.S. occupation authorities have been instituting a real regime of terror in the country, and some of those leading the campaign have admitted it. This includes mass round-ups and arrests. And while they fill up Saddam’s old prisons and torture chambers with tens of thousands of new prisoners, the U.S. occupation authorities are bringing back Saddam’s old secret service, the Mukhabarat, to spy on Iraqis–now for the new U.S. masters. According to a recent report by Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker magazine, the U.S. has also brought in thousands of U.S. Special Forces to carry out secret assassination missions in a program reminiscent of the infamous Phoenix assassination program that the CIA employed during the Viet Nam War in the 1960s and early 1970s. The U.S. is also turning entire villages that they suspect of being hostile to the U.S. occupation into virtual prisons. They have been surrounding the villages with walls of barbed wire, requiring Iraqis who want to leave to get passes from the U.S. authorities. This is much like the Israelis have done for years with the Palestinian population. Finally, they have been openly responding to any attacks with enormous amounts of bombardments, including aerial bombardments and rocket attacks, which almost always results in the deaths of civilians, including of children and very old people.
None of these actions are meant to "improve" conditions in Iraq, bring order and security for the people, as the U.S. claims. They all have one purpose: to impose U.S. domination over the Iraqi population and its oil through terror, death and destruction. The only order and security they are meant to ensure are those of the U.S. occupiers. In this way, they are replacing the bloody military dictatorship of Saddam Hussein with a bloody military occupation led by the U.S.
If anyone has any doubts about what kind of future this terror and war can bring, all they need to do is look at another part of the Middle East, and the half century war by Israel to impose its rule over the Palestinians. The difference is that in Israel, the Israelis are the majority and the Palestinians are the minority. In Iraq, the Americans may have overwhelming fire-power with stockpiles of its own high-tech weapons of mass destruction, but they are surrounded not only by an increasingly hostile Iraqi population, but also by the rest of the hostile and outraged Middle Eastern population.
No one expects that the U.S. arrest of Saddam Hussein will change any of this. If it did, then Bush, Rumsfeld and all the rest of the Bush administration would not be doing what they are doing today. Sure, Bush may tell us that he intends to bring more U.S. troops home, and almost certainly, we will be treated to television images of troops who have rotated out of Iraq arriving here in the next weeks, as their one-year stint is done. But the fact remains that even more troops, 57,000 recently called up from the National Guard, are now being prepared to go over to Iraq–for another whole year. And tens of thousands of troops, who for years resided in Germany, are being shifted much closer to Iraq–to be "available" for whatever might be required.
The reality is that the U.S. is continuing to build up its military presence in Iraq and the surrounding areas in the U.S. capitalists’ efforts to more tightly control Iraqi and Middle Eastern oil and the Iraqi people.
For Bush, these U.S. troops are expendable. They are being used up, blown up and then thrown on the pile of the dead and half-dead. This is the bitter, tragic truth that so many of their families back at home will be learning in the months ahead.
This madness can end–if people in this country show by their actions they refuse to be used in this way.
Dec 15, 2003
In the past month, Congress’s General Accounting Office has made a lot of noise in issuing several reports on "terrorism." From the Air Marshal program to the tracking of terror financing, Congress has sounded a shrill alarm, warning about the danger of terrorist acts to the population and the need to step up the pace in addressing that danger.
On the other hand, just last month, that very same Congress ordered the Transportation Safety Administration to cut back on its airport screener force, from 60,000 to 45,000 by September 30, 2004–a 25% reduction.
The same people who say we’re at risk are cutting back on the very people they say will protect us. In other words, they don’t even believe their own propaganda!
When it comes to "terror alerts," Congress can scream all they want–but actions speak louder than words.
Dec 15, 2003
Farouk Abdel-Muhti is a Palestinian who had lived in the U.S. for 23 years before his arrest in April of 2002. After 9/11 the Justice Department made up a list of 6,000 people whose "crime" seemed to be that they originally came from the Middle East. Farouk was one of these people.
Significantly, he was arrested immediately after he had arranged speakers for a public radio station in New York on the situation in the West Bank. The policies of the Israeli military had killed numerous Palestinians and Farouk has long spoken out against the Israeli occupations there.
For much of the past year and a half since his arrest, Farouk has not only been held without being charged with any crime, he has also been put into solitary confinement. Prosecutors claim he falls under a 1995 deportation order, yet the U.S. Supreme Court ruled immigrants held more than six months cannot be deported.
If further proof were needed that Farouk’s persecution was for his political views, in November guards kicked and punched Farouk when they confiscated political reading materials in his cell. The materials included newspapers from three U.S. left-wing organizations which have opposed Israeli policies against Palestinians.
The U.S. government shows its determination to muzzle those who speak out against the murderous policies it represents around the world.
His supporters ask for people to speak out in defense of Farouk Abdel-Muhti. Letters of protest should be sent to David Venturella, Office of Detention and Removal, Department of Homeland Security, fax 202-353-9435 or david.venturella@dhs.gov.
More information on his case can be found at www.freefarouk.org.
Dec 15, 2003
Last week, an emergency hearing was held, halting the sentencing phase of a high profile terror case in Detroit. It turns out the prosecutors hid evidence which might very well have exonerated the defendants.
Last June, in federal court in Detroit, three men were convicted of document fraud and conspiring to provide material support for terrorists. Now, the sentences of all three have been delayed indefinitely.
The judge in the case, Gerald Rosen, criticized the government prosecutors for not turning over the evidence to the defense lawyers, but has not yet ruled. However he rules on the appeal, the fact is, the government was caught with its pants down.
From the beginning, the government’s case against these men was flimsy. It was based almost completely on posters and newspapers found in their apartment which were sympathetic to the Palestinian cause–and on the testimony of one witness, Youssef Hmimssa, who lived with them briefly before they were arrested.
Hmimssa testified against these men, saying they had plotted terror. In exchange, he got very light sentences in his own document and credit card fraud convictions.
Now, it turns out that the prosecutors, Keith Corbett and Richard Convertino, had at least two pieces of evidence that contradict Hmimssa’s testimony and raise questions about his truthfulness. By law, they’re required to share such evidence with the defense. Instead, it was hidden until after the trial ended in conviction.
One was a letter prosecutors received in December 2001–one month after the men were arrested–from a man who’d spent time in jail with Hmimssa. In it, he stated that Hmimssa told him he’d made his whole story up. This man offered to take a lie detector test and provide notes. He was never taken up on the offer.
Another was records of FBI interviews with another former roommate of the defendants, Zouaier Rouissi, who said the men NEVER discussed politics or terrorism.
The man who wrote the letter, Butch Jones, a convicted drug gang leader, certainly had nothing to gain from hurting the prosecution’s case, and in fact had a lot to lose. This can be seen from what happened to Rouissi after the FBI interviewed him. Unlike Hmimssa, who committed numerous serious crimes and got off with practically nothing after cooperating with prosecutors, Rouissi has been deported–for marriage fraud, that is, getting married to stay in the country.
The prosecutors say they never turned over the evidence because it didn’t seem important enough to make a difference in the defense’s case.
That’s obviously another lie. Taken together, they would have shot a big hole in the only serious piece of evidence the prosecution had: Hmimssa’s testimony.
The government obviously wanted a "terror" conviction in some case–any case–so much that they made up evidence and hid other evidence revealing this. Even so, the defendants weren’t convicted of anything real–not committing terror acts, but only of planning to help some unnamed persons commit some unknown terror acts, at some unspecified time in the future.
This is the so-called democratic freedom that the government pretends to uphold. Another lie!
Dec 15, 2003
In September, the U.S. military charged Muslim chaplain Youssef Yee with being part of a terrorist spy ring at its detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Yee was arrested in Jacksonville, Florida, charged with stealing classified documents.
The military used the fact that Yee had at one time studied in Syria and was carrying a paper on Syria to suggest that Yee was part of an elaborate plot by Syria to infiltrate the Guantanamo Bay military base.
All of this made big headlines of course, but once the story cooled, the military reduced the charges against Yee to "mishandling classified documents."
But Yee’s lawyer objected to even these reduced charges. The government had offered no proof the documents were classified. The military prosecutors backed off again, asking for a "postponement."
Yee was then released from jail and returned to active duty. So much for all the talk about spying. The paper on Syria turned out to be a term paper Yee had written for a course on international affairs.
Of course, having kept Yee in solitary confinement in a military brig in South Carolina for 76 days, often in shackles, the government had to charge him with something. Thus he now stands charged with the dangerous "crimes" of ... storing pornography on a government computer and committing adultery.
Imagine if the military were to court-martial every soldier who ever possessed pornography or had committed adultery! There would hardly be a soldier left in the barracks.
In the last two years since the September 11 attacks, the government has pretended to be pursuing "terrorists." A study by Syracuse University shows that 6400 people were picked up for "terrorism." Less than one third were ever charged. Of those, only 879 were convicted. Only 23 of those convicted received sentences of five years or more. And almost all of these 23 were for charges having nothing to do with terrorism. Half the people were given sentences no longer than 14 days. In other words, they were charged only with technicalities.
Yee’s case–like the other 6,399–is just part of a massive effort by the government to create hysteria about terrorism, to intimidate anyone who dares question government policies.
Dec 15, 2003
The business press reported it–productivity increased at a phenomenal annual rate of more than 9% in the third quarter. Some commentators would have us believe that this means good times just around the corner–complete with increased hiring and more jobs.
Fat chance! Increased productivity means that fewer workers can put out more goods. And in this system based on profit, the corporations rush to take advantage of that to cut jobs. Just look around at our own workplaces. See how many fewer of us there are–putting out how much more work.
It’s certainly true that increased productivity could allow each of us to reduce our hours of work–even while taking home higher wages. And this could allow more people to be hired.
There’s no reason this shouldn’t happen, except that the capitalists, always looking to squeeze more profits out of fewer workers, don’t want to do it. But the capitalists have been forced before to do things they didn’t want to do. They can be forced to do so again.
Dec 15, 2003
As the Southern California supermarket strike entered its tenth week, negotiations between the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) and the three largest national chains, Kroger, Safeway and Albertsons, continued under the supervision of federal mediator, Peter Hurtgen.
A recent Los Angeles Times article called Hurtgen a "consensus-builder," someone who can "win the trust of management and labor with his neutrality."
Neutrality? This is a man who was a long-time partner at the Washington law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius which represents ... management! In fact, the same Los Angeles Times article states that, as a member of the National Labor Relations Board from 1997 to 2002, "Hurtgen was consistently pro-management."
But even if he were "neutral," that would only mean that the supermarkets get half of what they want. And what they want are cuts in health care benefits and Sunday pay, and they want to introduce a two-tier wage scale with lower pay and benefits for new hires.
The grocery chains are on an all-out attack. For striking grocery workers and their families, there is too much at stake to leave things in the hands of anyone but themselves.
Dec 15, 2003
The AFL-CIO leadership carried out some early-December rallies and demonstrations in major cities to call attention to the anti-labor attitude of the Bush administration and to put in an early plug for electing Democrats to office.
The AFL-CIO points to the great loss of jobs during the Bush administration, and also to employers’ boldness in violating workers’ rights to organize on the job. In New York state alone, last year, some 14,000 workers filed NLRB suits against employers who illegally interfered with organizing efforts. The AFL-CIO offers, as a solution, to elect Democrats to office so that the Democrats will better enforce the laws on the books, and pass stronger pro-worker laws.
If reality were this simple, of course, things would be lovely. Unfortunately, in the real world, the lessons of history are not on the AFL-CIO’s side. Neither Democratic nor Republican administrations have ever widened workers’ rights, except when forced to by workers’ movements.
It was not FDR’s good will, for instance, that caused his administration to legalize the rising new CIO unions. No, the workers during the l930s organized and fought their battles without the help of friendly laws or lawmakers. When the movement expanded in l937 into a wave of victorious sit-down strikes that swept the whole Midwest, only then did Congress and the president move to legalize certain forms of unionization–not to aid the workers, but to stop the sit-downs and gradually put the brakes on the movement.
Again after the second world war, no friendly politicians told employers they had to raise workers’ pay to compensate for the wage freeze during the war. It took the largest strike wave in U.S. history to end the wartime wage controls and bring workers’ standard of living up to reasonable levels. Only in the face of these mass struggles did employers and politicians alike give ground. Only by these means did workers win their unions, their pensions, and their standard of living.
When union leaders try to persuade workers to wait for the government’s permission, they point workers into a blind alley.
Which Democratic administration, has ever come into office–with the help of union-organized votes–and then undone the anti-labor actions of previous administrations? Not a one. Mr. "I-feel-your-pain" Clinton did not reinstate the air traffic controllers fired under Reagan. Clinton, in fact, proposed an enormous 60 million dollar fine against the Mineworkers Union for carrying out a strike against Pittston Coal Company in 1989. After eight years of Democrat Clinton–four with also a Democratic Congress–neither workers nor their unions emerged stronger. Rather, their situation weakened even more.
If workers wait on politicians for help, then they will wait forever.