Pain And Conscience

By Charles Sullivan

30 May, 2008
Countercurrents.org

It is evident that a substantial majority of U.S. citizens are, in principle, opposed to the most destructive governmental policies stemming from the nation’s capital. These include, but are not limited to—the continuing war and occupation of Iraq, as well as the pervasive consumer fraud that preys upon the innocent and the unwary and causes them undue hardship. These charges are born out by the abysmal approval rating of Congress and the president. It is equally evident that the government, while pretending to be sympathetic to these views, continues to carry forth those same policies both at home and abroad. It does so without the consent of the people and, therefore, it has abrogated its responsibility to them.

These destructive policies are formulated in the various branches of government and in the corporate board rooms of America. They are a prominent feature of the run amok presidency of George W. Bush, where they manifest themselves to the world. However, their history precedes Bush and his corporate gangsters by generations, and they are an outgrowth of the exploitive capital system.

In some respects the presidency serves as a distraction from the machinations that are operating behind the scenes to spew forth one disastrous policy after another. With so much attention given to Bush, the people are failing to confront the root cause of which George W. Bush is but a single manifestation: the sociopolitical system that put the present criminal regime in power.

Beyond capitalism, other destructive paradigms are operating to produce a hybridized and even more virulent form of economics. One might call it hyper capitalism. This explains why the American form of capitalism is so much more destructive than most of its European counterparts. For example, most European workers enjoy a shorter work week, higher wages, and have more paid vacation than do American workers; and most of them have union representation and, therefore, more and better benefits. In Germany, even Wal-mart is unionized.

One of these harmful paradigms that interact synergistically with capitalism is the idea of American exceptionalism: the persistent belief that America knows best and everything we do is good for the world. This synergism is tinged with powerful elements of racism, sexism, and other belief systems that are rooted in bigotry, hate, and religious intolerance. It is this lethal combination that gave rise to the concept of Manifest Destiny. It was these paradigms that attempted to sweep the continent clean of its indigenous population, and is blowing across the planet, touching ground in the Middle East and beyond like a violent cyclone.

What is so exasperating to many of us is that the corruption of the political system is widely understood and yet so little is done about it. The people continue to participate in it; they continue to vote in the absence of meaningful choice and they continue to support it with their taxes. There have been peace marches and other forms of token protest, but they have had little bearing on the continuing policies of economic disparity, environmental destruction, and imperial war that are prominent features of American capitalism.

Because protest in America has become more symbolic than effective, those in power can afford to ignore it. Even when participation in protest is great, it is of short duration; it does not cause serious economic or political disruption, and it does not pose a real threat to the established orthodoxy. After a few hours of peaceful marching, the people pack up and go back to their lives and everything remains as it was before they came.

Effective protest causes economic and political disruption. It persists until the just demands of the people are met. The established orthodoxy feels pain and discomfort from it; it feels a palpable threat and understands that the injustice cannot continue. Either it addresses the demands of the people, or it perishes. This is a manifestation of democracy. It is serious stuff that requires enormous sacrifice from those who protest in this way. The Montgomery bus boycott of the 60s was that kind of protest; and it was a protest that was won by the people, despite a constant threat of violence and death.

These days few people are willing to put anything tangible on the line. One wonders: Is there anything that the American people are willing to fight and die for? Is there anything real that we really believe in? Or do we relish the symbols of freedom more than we love freedom itself?

American exceptionalism is fostered in all of our social and political institutions. This includes the educational system and religious institutions. Thus, these beliefs are continually reinforced from cradle to grave, and never more so than in the corporate media. So it is not surprising that our political leaders behave as if they were endowed with the powers of deities, even though they are nothing more than fallible human beings like everyone else. It requires enormous hubris for anyone to adopt such doctrines, but there appears to be an inexhaustible supply of hubris in this country and a paucity of humility and compassion. Those who think in this way are prone to behaving toward the world with vitriol, as we witness daily.

The collective result of so many individually destructive paradigms is dehumanization. When we allow people to be dehumanized it is easy to hate them and to exploit them; to see them as entities endowed with less inherent value than ourselves or our chosen kind. It is easy to kill or subjugate inferior people and inferior beings. That is also how the government (the economic elite) perceives the working class and in their eyes that perception makes working people exploitable and expendable. Giving our continued allegiance to such government is irrational and immoral; it is also cowardly and self-destructive.

We are faced with a situation in which the body politic not only does not care what the American people think; it disdains populism as much here as it does in Latin America and elsewhere in the world. Populism and its close cousin—democracy—pose an enormous threat to the established order; and that order provides wealth and privilege to a select few, while denying it to everyone else. This is why corrupt politicians and so many academicians spare no effort to suppress and crush democratic movements, and cover up their crimes through a disingenuous rendering of history.

Yet with so much of the population aware of the government’s disdain of the people’s needs, why isn’t there effective organized resistance to it? Why isn’t there widespread social and economic disruption? Why do the people not revoke their consent to be governed and refuse their allegiance to a government that is not only corrupt and devoid of moral capital but is also clearly predatory or even cannibalistic? Why do we continue to fund criminal governments, including our own, with our taxes? Why isn’t there social unrest and civil disobedience in the streets? Why are those who expose these crimes punished and the criminals go free and reap financial reward for their malfeasance?

One explanation for the widespread social malaise in this country is that people are overwhelmed by it; shocked and awed by it; disorientated by it. They cannot believe the audacity of the Bush regime. Disorientation makes the plunder of the commonwealth easy to carry out. Even while dazed and confused, so many people remain wed to the idea of America’s inherent goodness and moral superiority to the rest of the world, despite mountains of evidence against such views. Thus, they view the criminal Bush regime as an aberration rather than a continuation of an historical pattern.

Social justice advocates are rightly infuriated to know that amidst this worsening climate a solid majority of the people can remain indifferent and willfully ignorant of what is being done in their names. There is a reason for this. The American people do not want to acknowledge any wrong doing on the part of their government, which is, in theory, an extension of the people. Of course, that is not the actual practice. This refusal psychologically absolves them from guilt or complicity and it permits them the luxury of apathy. By refusing to acknowledge wrong doing, no further action is required of them. They can go on consuming, falling asleep in front of the television and sending their offspring to die in unnecessary wars, while sinking ever deeper into debt and economic servitude.

Furthermore, the inert masses are mentally and spiritually ill equipped to deal with reality; so they block it out of their minds—aided, of course, by the corporate media and the propaganda apparatus of the government, itself. This is why fantasy is freely substituted for reality; plutocracy is mistaken for democracy, and the majority of the people do not know the difference. Millions of good people thus refuse to allow into their psyche the suffering and misery that U.S. policy has produced and exported to the world, even as that reality is closing in upon them. Unfortunately, I can point to my own family as an example of such delusional thinking, as no doubt can many of my readers.

Understanding this, the greatest obstacle to creating a vibrant and effective social justice movement is convincing the inert masses that they must acknowledge the suffering we have caused and are continuing to inflict upon the world. The multitudes must see the wisdom of looking behind the veneer of propaganda and confronting an ugly and often painful truth: the brutal and violent history of our nation, including the suppression of democracy wherever it is encountered. Eventually, perhaps very soon, they must also come to grips with the demise of capitalism.

We the people must find the courage to confront reality, and that means that we must be willing to feel the pain and suffering we have inflicted on others. We must admit that we are not exceptional or superior, and that we are not more entitled to our share of the world’s bounty than any other people. But we must go even deeper than that: we must bring about restitution for our past wrong-doing.

The citizens of the United States must become one with the world and look beyond nationality; beyond race, sex, and religious creed. Suffering and joy are conditions of life and they should be kept in balance as much as possible. Because suffering causes discomfort that few people want to experience, the alleviation of suffering is powerful motivation to demand justice; and that is the force that motivates most good people to do what they do, which is resist the tyranny of evil government. Once our indiscretions have been acknowledged and acted upon, we will find that the world is more than willing to forgive our past transgressions. This act alone will allow us to rejoin the world, so to speak.

Many years ago I questioned my mother about eating meat and the suffering it caused so many innocent animals. Her response revealed much about the American consciousness. She did not witness the suffering of those animals. She did not hear their cries of pain. She saw no blood in the sanitized product that was sold in the grocery store, wrapped in clear plastic and served up on pristine styrofoam. So their suffering was not real to her; it was too far removed from her experience. But the suffering of those animals and their cries of pain are very real indeed; and so is the suffering the United States government is inflicting upon the world.

Were we on the receiving end of our government’s foreign policies, we would have a very different perception of them. But like wrapped meat in the grocery store, we do not see the pain and the blood—or the suffering. So for many people it is not real; it is not happening…but it is.

By admitting some of this pain into our lives we are simultaneously admitting all of the other things into our lives that define our collective humanity; among them hope and joy. Then, and only then, can we take a principled stand for social and environmental justice and build an effective movement toward these ends. We must pry open closed minds and allow reality to penetrate delusion, as witnessing cause and effect often does. By this process sheeple are transformed once again into people, each of them endowed with a conscience capable of distinguishing right and wrong. This moral evolution is itself a revolutionary act of monumental import to any justice movement. It provides the means for people to act according to the dictates of conscience, and that is an act of liberation from dogma.

Revolution begins by altering consciousness. We stand at the brink of a multitude of possible futures, many of them tragic. The failure to act and rebel when the conditions demand it is a betrayal not only of our own humanity; it is a crime of great magnitude. The world’s foremost thinkers and visionaries have always understood this. Can we?

Charles Sullivan is a nature photographer, a naturalist, an environmental educator and free-lance writer residing in the Ridge and Valley Province of geopolitical West Virginia. He welcomes your comments at csullivan@copper.net(no spam).

(Emphasis added - B.M.)

http://countercurrents.org/onesto270508.htm

The Capitalist Ground Shaken
By The Earthquake In China

By Li Onesto

27 May, 2008
Revcom.us

Monday, May 12, 2:28 pm. A huge earthquake, registering 8.0 on the Richter scale, struck Sichuan Province in southwest China. The violent shaking lasted more than a minute, leaving towns and small cities flattened. On Sunday, May 25, a powerful aftershock struck, causing thousands more buildings to collapse.

The death toll now stands at over 62,000 people. 160,000 have been injured. Five million left homeless. More than 200,000 homes completely collapsed and four million were damaged.

The quake hit in the middle of the day when schools were in session—children were napping, sitting at their desks, and playing in schoolyards. Some reports say 30-40 percent of the dead were schoolchildren. In the town of Mianzhu alone, seven schools, including two nursery schools, collapsed—burying more than 1,700 students.

*****

What happens when such a natural disaster occurs is profoundly affected by how a society is organized. And many things about the nature of China have been revealed by this catastrophe. Most people around the world watching this heartbreaking tragedy think China is a socialist country, run by a communist government. But in fact, since the reactionary coup led by Deng Xiaoping after Mao Tsetung’s death in 1976, China has been a capitalist country, dependent on and subordinate to global imperialism. And some stark things about the exploitative and oppressive nature of capitalist China have been revealed in the aftermath of this devastating earthquake.

“Tofu” Schools Became Death Traps

Close to 7,000 schools, a disproportionately high number of buildings, were destroyed. In some towns, an entire generation has virtually been wiped out.

Town after town, grief has turned to anger as parents accuse the government of shoddy construction to save money. Pu Changxue, whose son died, crushed in a classroom, said: “This was a tofu dregs project and the government should assume responsibility. We all know that earthquakes are natural disasters. But what happened to our children also has human causes, and they’re even more frightening.”

In Juyuan, a middle school collapsed. As many as 900 children were buried in the rubble, while nearby buildings remained standing. One resident said: “Look at the building materials they used. The cement wasn’t mixed with water in the right proportion. There are not enough steel beams. The sand isn’t clean.”

There are supposed to be seismic regulations and requirements for different types of buildings. But lack of money for education has meant old buildings have not been replaced. And many times, even when new schools are built, shoddy material is used and building codes are ignored in order to save money.

The bodies of kids pulled from the rubble have revealed an ugly truth about class society in China: That schools for kids from the bottom layers of society are very different than schools for students from well-off families. Children from the upper strata get a better education. They also get safer schools. And when the earthquake hit, this became a question of life or death.

According to a New York Times article, in Dujiangyan, the Xinjian Primary School had been poorly built and “never got its share of government funds for reconstruction because of its low ranking in the local education bureaucracy and the low social status of its students.” The parents who sent their children to Xinjian are poor. Many had lost their jobs when a local cement plant shut down—some collect small welfare payments and hold down odd jobs to support their families, others had left their children behind to look for work somewhere else. Hundreds of children died at Xinjian when the earthquake hit. Meanwhile, another local primary school, Beijie, suffered hardly any damage and students survived. Beijie was set up for the elite with the best facilities and finest teachers. (NY Times, “Chinese Are Left to Ask Why Schools Crumbled,” May 25, 2008)

Western media, as well as news reports in China, have suggested that developers tried to maximize profits by using inferior materials, cutting back on necessary work and paying off corrupt officials. The Chinese government has announced there will be investigations into whether sloppy work linked to corruption is to blame. And there will, no doubt, now be official accusations of bribery, scapegoats, and a campaign to “clean up corruption.”

But the fundamental problem here is NOT corruption, inept administrators, or bribery in the building of schools. Yes, that is truly horrible and resulted in the deaths of thousands of children. But targeting this doesn’t get to the root of the problem. The real problem here is the dynamics of capitalism—how the drive for profit trumps everything else, how economic growth is driven by intensifying exploitation, short-term gain, and cost minimization. And how these capitalist economic relations get reflected in and played out in the social and political relations in society and the thinking of people. Corruption is very real, but it is an outgrowth of capitalist development.

Some people say the problem is that there is not enough transparency in China. They pose the problem as: China being open or shut; listening or not; censoring the Internet or leaving it alone, etc., etc. But all this begs the fundamental question: What kind of society is China? What is its relationship to global capitalism? What does it mean that China has become a vast sweatshop for the world; that the gap between rich and poor in China is growing; that peasants in the countryside are desperate and impoverished—and that the lives of millions who were already desperately poor because China is subordinate to imperialism have been suddenly thrown into an even greater hell by this earthquake?

Widening Inequality Gap

Sichuan is one of China’s poorest areas and does not have a lot of manufacturing. But this province is an important grain and pork producer and has China’s largest reserves of natural gas.

Over the last decade there has been a burst of construction in rural, inland areas like Sichuan. But the huge inequality gap between urban and rural areas remains. And this gap has been further imprinted in the whole way that these smaller towns and cities are being developed.

Many in the areas most affected by the earthquake are poor peasants. In Wenchuan, at the epicenter of the quake, the average annual income was around 1,600 yuan in 2002 (latest available statistics), which is less than a fifth of the average income in the province’s capital city of Chengdu. The death, damage and suffering from the earthquake reflect this income gap. Living in more impoverished conditions to begin with resulted in greater devastation and now more ongoing hardship. And inequality between the city and countryside also impacts things. For example, people in rural areas have access to much less health care than those who live in the cities. This means they are less healthy to begin with and now have less access to desperately needed medical attention.

When China was truly a socialist country, a conscious goal of the government and society was to continually narrow (and eventually get rid of) inequalities in society—between different classes, between men and women, between different nationalities, and between the cities and countryside. But now, through the workings of capitalism, such differences are being widened.

Time magazine has written about how “economic reforms” have chipped away at the medical treatment available when China was socialist—health care that was often rudimentary but widely available to all citizens: “China’s famed ‘barefoot doctors,’ usually middle school graduates trained in first aid, hiked through hamlets offering prenatal examinations and setting broken limbs. The service, essentially free, helped to almost eradicate sexually transmitted diseases in China and nearly doubled the country’s life expectancy from 35 to 65 between 1949 to the mid-1970s. But in the early 1980s, the mainland began shifting from communism to capitalism, and peasants had to dig into their own tattered pockets to pay for health care. At the same time, cash-strapped local governments cut subsidies to rural hospitals and clinics, essentially privatizing them... City dwellers remain better-off, mostly because six in 10 of them have some form of health insurance. Only 10% of rural residents do, and most of them are government employees or live in wealthy coastal areas, where many work in factories.” (China’s Failing Health System, Time, May 12, 2003)

This kind of deepening economic and social inequality now exists in many different aspects of Chinese society—which can mean the difference between life and death when an earthquake hits.

Get-Rich-Quick Development

Over the last several decades China has become more integrated into and subordinate to the world capitalist system. Foreign investments have poured into China. Fortune 500 companies with investments in Sichuan include Pepsico, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, United Technologies, McDonalds, Lufthansa, Sony, Intel, Cisco Systems, and Archer Daniels Midland.

There has been all kinds of fast-paced “get rich quick” economic development. This has mainly been concentrated in the country’s eastern coastal areas where there are concentrated pools of cheap labor and access to shipping. But in recent years, this kind of rapid economic growth has branched out into interior areas, including into the cities and towns hit by the May 12 earthquake.

In many cases, such expansion has meant people being forcibly relocated. This push for rapid growth forces builders to move fast. And this has led companies and the government to trample on the rights of residents and ignoring building safety requirements. Policemen have been sent in to enforce evictions. And there have been several reports of people protesting demolitions and evictions by setting themselves on fire and committing suicide.

Five years ago, these massive renovations were mainly happening in large cities. Now they are going on in more medium and smaller cities—like Sichuan’s capital of Chengdu, about 145 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake. City officials there had announced plans to spend 10 billion yuan (US$1.4 billion) to build a new town in its northern suburbs.

Thousands of smaller cities are sprouting up on formerly uninhabited pastureland. This rapid urbanization has transformed Sichuan into one of China’s biggest provinces with a population of 82 million. It is this kind of demolition and quick construction that has created conditions for rampant corruption, leading to the kind of slipshod building that people are now pointing to in the wake of the earthquake. It is these rural areas and smaller towns that suffered the greatest destruction from the earthquake.

This kind of economic development—driven by short-term gains, rapid growth, and cost minimization—has also factored into the building of dams in China. And now, in the wake of the earthquake, there is an extremely dangerous situation where shoddily-built dams are damaged, putting millions in harm’s way of potential flood waters—especially given continuing aftershocks.

There have been reports that hundreds of dams have been damaged by the earthquake. For example, the Zipingpu Dam, completed in 2006, was built over the objections of seismologists who were concerned about its proximity to major geological faults. After the earthquake, soldiers rushed to the dam after reports that it was developing cracks.

Crocodile Tears Covering Up a Criminal System

Some news commentators have said this earthquake is a “godsend” for the Chinese government—pointing to the fact that world political opinion has not been going well for China. Its brutal repression in Tibet captured headlines for weeks, just as China was getting ready for its mega-PR campaign around the Olympics. There were numerous protests as the Olympic torch made its way around the world.

Now the earthquake has given China an opportunity to turn public opinion more favorable to China’s reactionary regime. Top government officials quickly flew to the devastated areas, crying crocodile tears and putting on a show of concern for TV cameras—knowing this would be beamed not only throughout China but around the world. The Chinese government is highly aware that, especially in the wake of the cyclone in Myanmar, its handling of this disaster is being closely watched, throughout the country and internationally. The storyline has been how competent, compassionate, and in control the rescue and relief efforts have been.

The rulers of China face a lot of necessity here—both domestically and internationally. They need to keep social control in the face of growing disparity and discontent. And they face a complex and changing economic and political polarization in the world as they try to press forward with their international ambitions. From the very beginning, the Chinese government has seen the Olympics as a way to create more favorable political conditions, both domestically and internationally.

The crocodile tears being shed by government officials after the earthquake only serve to cover up the real truth: The Chinese economy is deeply integrated into and subordinated to the global capitalist system. The development of capitalism in China has been and continues to be a living nightmare for hundreds of millions of people. And what China really needs is another revolution aimed at overthrowing the new capitalist ruling class, re-achieving national independence, and creating a genuine and truly liberating socialist society.

Li Onesto is a writer for Revolution (revcom.us) and author of the book, Dispatches from the People's War in Nepal, (Pluto Press and Insight Press, 2004)

May 5, 2008

Vermont Peace Activists Occupy General Dynamics

May Day Raid on Weapons Plant

By BENJAMIN DANGL

(counterpunch.com)

On May 1st, International Workers’ Day, ten peace activists in Burlington, Vermont entered General Dynamics and locked themselves together in the main lobby of the building in protest against the company’s weapons manufacturing and war profiteering. University of Vermont student Benjamin Dube, one of the dozens of other activists present at the event, leaned out a window of the lobby, and pointed to the GD building, explaining, "This is the gas tank of the war machine, and we are the sugar."

The demonstrators entered the lobby at around 3pm, and proceeded to lock their arms together with PVC piping, duct tape and other materials. According to a press release put out by the group, the activists were demanding that "General Dynamics stop giving campaign contributions to the politicians responsible for regulating it, stop making Gatling guns, missiles and other weapons of mass destruction and give back the $3.6 million dollars in Vermont tax breaks General Dynamics received in 2007."

While activists at GD chanted slogans such as, "Hey GD, what do you say, how many kids did you kill today" and "GD out of the Middle East, No Justice, No Peace," banners against GD and the Iraq War were set up on three major streets and highways in the area. This anti-war action in Burlington took place at the same time thousands of dockworkers at 29 major ports across on the west coast refused to go to work in protest against the Iraq War. In March, Vermonters in Brattleboro and Marlboro passed a measure in town meetings to arrest George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for crimes against the constitution if they ever arrived in either town.

Rachel Ruggles was one of the activists locked down in the GD lobby. Wearing a green bandana and glasses, this 19 year old from Vergennes, VT, and student at the University of Vermont, said "we are participating in this non-violent direct action to get attention and make a statement against the Iraq War, to say we don’t support GD’s war profiteering... GD is not contributing to the peace economy. The money from their tax breaks should go back to the Vermont community."

General Dynamics is a national company whose branch in Burlington produces, among other things, Hydra-70 rockets and missile launchers. Mike Ives, a journalist with VT based Seven Days, wrote in March of this year that, according to General Dynamics company spokesperson Tim Haddock, GD employees in Burlington "manufacture the "Goalkeeper Close-In Weapon System." The "Goalkeeper" is a 14,000-pound gun that's mounted to ships and can fire up to 4200 shots per minute of "missile-piercing" ammunition."

According to Time Magazine, St. Louis-based General Dynamics is the top defense contractor in the US. The Bush administration’s "War on Terror" has been good for GD business. In 2007, GD’s revenues were $7.8 billion, with $382 million in profits, an increase of 33% since 1983. GD also has a particularly close relationship with the Pentagon; 94% of its contracts come from the US government.

During 2007-2008, Vermont Democratic House Representative Peter Welch received $3,500 in donations from General Dynamics. An online petition in protest of this campaign contribution to Welch is available to sign here.

While holding a bag of bread and fruit for those inside the lobby, bearded, 20 year old activist, Dube said "it’s becoming clear that after five years people are against the war. And throughout New England there are weapons manufacturers making it possible for the US to subjugate the Iraqis." He participated in the protest at GD in part because in spite of all the economic needs in the US, hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent in on the wars abroad. "Our government is not dealing with the problems in our economy and global warming, and at the same time we’re giving tax breaks to weapons manufacturers like GD." Regarding the importance of the group’s tactics, Dube said, "We are trying to renew the focus of anti-war activism more on the complicity of our communities in war."

Peace activist Jonathan Leavitt was quoted in the press release as saying. "While our state struggles with [Governor] Jim Douglas’ budget cuts and layoffs, gas prices, affordable housing and lack of health coverage, war profiteers like General Dynamics steal tax breaks from working families. We’re here today as Vermonters to say no more handouts for war profiteers."

Dozens of activists remained in and around the GD lobby for over six hours, chanting slogans, waving signs and sharing food. The protesters in the lobby said they would not leave the building until their demands were met. However, officials from GD refused to speak with the activists. Burlington Lt. Emmet Helrich said "Nobody from General Dynamics is going to talk to you, that’s a fact." The activists in the lobby were arrested at 8:45 when the police went in to cut them loose.

Meanwhile, GD continues to reap enormous profits on the Bush administration’s wars. On May 2, the national company was awarded a $51 million dollar Abrams Tank contract.

See this video of the May 1st action at General Dynamics in Burlington, VT. Filmed and edited by Sam Mayfield: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppkrg-hNrPk&eurl
For more information, see
http://stopgeneraldynamics.blogspot.com/

Benjamin Dangl is the editor of TowardFreedom.com, a Vermont-based publication on international events.

May 2, 2008

Shutting Down the West Coast Ports

The ILWU's May Day Strike

By DAVID MACARARY

(counterpunch.org)

On Thursday, May 1, the ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union) staged a one-day (one shift, actually) walkout as a protest against the U.S. military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. The shutdown affected ports up and down the West Coast, from San Pedro, California, to Seattle, Washington.

Although the PMA (Pacific Maritime Association) had warned the ILWU leadership that an “unauthorized” strike such as this was illegal, and that any rank-and-file dockworker who participated could be punished with a fine, suspension or even termination, the one-shift shutdown went off as planned and was deemed a resounding success. Thousands of workers defied management and failed to show up for the morning shift, resulting in port traffic coming to a standstill.

Despite the threats, no one really expects the port authorities to take any disciplinary action against ILWU members. In fact, if any union member is even wrist-slapped, it will be genuine shock. There are two reasons for this.

The first is that, “illegal” or not, the 8-hour shutdown didn’t do any serious damage to the operation. There are, according to the PMA, 10,000 cargo containers loaded or unloaded during a typical day-shift, up and down the West Coast; and while that seems like a lot, with the afternoon shift reporting for work, as scheduled, and the loading and unloading of cargo resuming, the shortages can be made up in a hurry.

The second reason is a bit trickier. Simply put, the Longshoremen are the most powerful, cohesive and, in truth, respected labor union in the United States. You don’t take them on unless the stakes are incredibly high, or you absolutely have no choice. The boys at the Maritime Association will be prudent; they will not insist on showing who’s boss.

The ILWU has always been recognized as hard-working and well-compensated. Indeed, by union standards, the West Coast longshoremen have one of the sweetest deals in blue-collar America. Whenever they go on strike over a contract dispute (which doesn’t happen often), they remain unified and committed, and are not to be messed with. These people take their strikes very seriously. That’s why you never hear of any scab activity during an ILWU dispute.

Nobody crosses an ILWU picket line, not unless he wants to pick his teeth up off the floor or find his car on fire. Admittedly, some will call this “intimidation”; the Longshoremen prefer to think of it as “solidarity.” And, unlike other unions, when there’s a strike or a lockout, you don’t see management bringing in replacement workers. That doesn’t happen on the docks. The PMA simply won’t take on that kind of trouble.

One huge advantage the ILWU has over other unions (particularly those affiliated with manufacturing industries), is that their jobs are totally locked in. Not only can the ports not be moved, they can’t be circumvented. By contrast, factories are portable; factories get moved every day (to the Sun Belt, the Deep South, Mexico, Malaysia or elsewhere). As a consequence, manufacturing unions remain extremely vulnerable to management pressure. Not so the Longshoremen. And out of this iron-clad job security comes a sense of worker solidarity and prestige unmatched by any union in America.

But the larger story here is that an American labor union actually staged an anti-war protest. That’s big news. After all, even though they led the charge when it came to women’s rights, the abolition of child labor and the establishment of a living wage, labor unions aren’t exactly renowned for holding anti-war demonstrations. In fact, the opposite has often been the case.

During the Vietnam war, for example, there were several public demonstrations by union members against the anti-war protesters. The Teamsters, steel and construction workers, trade guilds, etc. . . . .these guys were, for the most part, unabashed, flag-waving patriots who viewed the radical peace movement as a form of “treason.” And we can’t forget that those same Teamies, with Jackie Presser as president, endorsed Ronald Reagan in 1980.

To be fair, however, it should be noted that the ILWU has a unique history, one that fits well with an anti-war, anti-imperialist ideology. The former president and spiritual leader of the Longshoremen was the legendary Harry Bridges, whom the U.S. government attempted, unsuccessfully, to deport (he was Australian), on the grounds that he was a Communist and a subversive. Bridges is still revered in West Coast labor circles.

In any event, the ILWU deserves enormous credit. It’s astonishing and wildly encouraging that a West Coast labor union would show more guts and determination than the U.S. Congress, in publicly defying a Republican administration.

Well done, my brothers.

David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright and writer, was a former union rep. He can be reached at dmacaray@earthlink.net

The Lords of Capital Decree
Mass Death by Starvation

By Glen Ford

30 April, 2008
Black Agenda Report

"No amount of emergency aid is sufficient to make up for the wild price rises that have already occurred."

Fidel Castro called biofuels "genocide," and he was right. And there can be no question as to the identity of the perpetrators of this global genocide: the Lords of Capital that formulate the foreign and domestic policy of the United States. That policy calls for 20 million acres of corn from states like Iowa to be converted from food to fuel. As should have been expected, such a massive diversion almost immediately pushed up the price of all other basic foodstuffs - a global disaster made quick and easy by the fact that, over the past several decades, planetary food production has been taken over by agribusiness - the speculative human parasites that control how food is bought and sold, and to whom, and for what purpose. These Lords of Capital are killers on a mass scale.

"Hot" money has totally distorted the "marketplace" for life-sustaining goods, causing millions of the desperately poor in scores of countries to take to the streets. "In less than a year," writes the Guardian newspaper, in Britain, "the price of wheat has risen 130 per cent, soya by 87 per cent and rice by 74 per cent."

These are nothing less than crimes against humanity, and cannot help but destroy the lives of millions who are already at the very edge of the precipice.

"The Lords of Capital have imposed a triage of death by starvation on the planet."

The so-called "market" - which is actually a club of super-rich men who distort and destroy everything of value to humanity that they touch - will be the death of us all, and much quicker than through the effects of global warming, which is also greatly accelerated by the ghoulish, greedy rush to grow food for cars rather than people. In such a murderous environment -manipulated purely for the profits of the Lords of Capital - neither trees nor peasants stand a chance. The United Nations says it needs about half a billion dollars for the most critical cases of starvation, but no amount of emergency aid is sufficient to make up for the wild price rises that have already occurred - and which will put trillions in the pockets of the Lords of Capital.

Agribusiness wiped out small farmers in the U.S., and impoverished and pushed off the land untold millions of peasants, worldwide. Now the Lords of Capital have imposed a triage of death by starvation on the planet. The people who live on two dollars or less per day will have to die, and then, as prices rise, the three dollar people will follow.

The men who profit from such mass murder use terms like "structural adjustment" and "economic fundamentals" to attach a veneer of rationality to a chaotic system they have created on the fly for the sole purpose of mega-theft. In the end, the Lords of Capital have mastered only one art: the production of overlapping calamities, each more lethal than the last. Soon, if not already, the Haitian poor will have no cooking oil to mix with clay for their diet of dirt pies. The Lords of Capital will have turned them into dirt for another Haitian's consumption and demise.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com

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From: roses4joanne@snip.net
To: roses4joanne@snip.net
Subject: ALERT: *May Day!*Longshore workers will shut down West Coast ports - Join in Support !
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2008 09:03:11 -0400

*May Day!*Longshore workers will shut down West Coast ports to stop the war

PTI calls for solidarity with ILWU
With the International Long shore and Warehouse Workers Union passing the resolution to oppose the war by stopping work on May 1, 2008, and doing so by a 90% margin, PTI finally has a solid and powerful partner in forging solidarity between labor and activist organizations. It is clear that we must build solidarity among the millions of Americans who oppose the current direction our government is taking us, before we can even hope to bring sufficient pressure upon the heads of Congress to compel our representatives to do the will of the people and impeach Bush/Cheney and scrap their aggressive war policies. The ILWU action is an opportunity for us to begin building that solidarity, and one we must not squander.

In our effort to help the International Longshoremen's Union and IWW Union (Port Truckers) in their strike, we are asking that you hand out the flyer below at every truck stop, or sea port near you, and inform every suffering truck driver, harbor worker, or otherwise outraged American that the day to warn Congress that American National Solidarity is at hand.Please Print Flyers and forward them widely.

Poster of National Diesel Strike for May 1:

http://pdsj.googlegroups.com/web/National%20Strike.doc?gsc=7xTx3AsAAADkusAcC0C--pRPjwAsHRD8

Poster#2 of National Truckers Strike for May 1:

http://pdsj.googlegroups.com/web/National%20Strike%20%232.doc?gsc=AWgRogsAAADsNoQSaQDuikVQfJNt4dJC

New York faculty/staff union supports IWLU anti-war work stoppage

The following anti-war resolution was adopted unanimously at the March 27 delegate assembly of the Professional Staff Congress, AFT Local 2334 at the City University of New York.

Whereas, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union has voted to stop work and shut down all 29 West Coast ports for the full 8-hour day shift on May 1st, in protest against the war in Iraq and Afghanistan; and

Whereas, this historic decision

http://www.transportworkers.org/node/740

*May Day!*
http://democrats.com/mayday <http://www.democrats.com/mayday>

May 1st is shaping up to be quite a day of resistance, with strikes by the ILWU, the Teamsters, Postal Workers, plus immigrant rights rallies,
and peace and impeachment activities.

It's Mission Accomplished Day (5 Years!)

It's Downing Street Minutes Day (3 Years!)

It's May Day, the original Labor Day (122 Years!)

*If you care about the future of our republic, we encourage you to visit your congress member's nearest office at high noon, local time, on May
1st, and ask for impeachment hearings for the Vice President for Torture, Dick Cheney.*

Let us know you plan to do it, and find others to do it with you at http://democrats.com/mayday

Remember to inform the media and to be the media. Please encourage all organizations and individuals to take part!

May Day: Longshore workers will shut down West Coast ports to stop the war
http://www.sfbayview.com/News/Bay_Area/May_Day_Longshore_workers_will_shut_down_West_Coast_ports_to_stop_the_war.html

by: Jonathan Nack {Submitted by Michael Scheinberg

Oakland - An unprecedented job action scheduled for May 1 could shake the West and reverberate
across the country. Longshore workers will shut down every port on the West Coast for the day
shift in protest against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Never before in U.S. history has any
union stopped work over a war.

The decision to down tools for eight hours was made by the longshore division of the
International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). The union has also issued a nationwide
call to action for other unions and workers to take anti-war actions on May 1. They call for the
day to be a "no peace, no work" holiday.

A march in San Francisco will begin at 10:30 a.m. at the Longshore Union Hall at Mason and Beach
streets. The rally will be at Justin Herman Plaza at noon. Speakers will include Cynthia McKinney,
Danny Glover and Cindy Sheehan.

The ILWU, particularly Local 10 of the Bay Area, has historically led on social issues. In 1978,
they refused to load bombs bound for Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile; in 1984, they refused to
move cargo to protest against Apartheid in South Africa; and in 2001, they closed Pacific ports to
protest the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. This will be the first time, however,
that they've closed the ports to protest war.

In an editorial published by The San Francisco Chronicle, Jack Heyman, an Executive Board member
of ILWU Local 10, wrote that at the meeting of the union's Coast Caucus, "the union's Vietnam
veterans turned the tide of opinion in favor of the anti-war resolution. The motion called it an
imperial action for oil in which the lives of working-class youth and Iraqi civilians were
being wasted."

The decision to take action on May 1 was deliberate. "In 2004, Local 10 launched the
Million Worker Movement, and one of the things that came out of that was the need to reclaim May
Day," according to Clarence Thomas, another Executive Board member of ILWU Local 10. "May Day
is celebrated throughout the world on May 1, but it grew out of the struggle for the eight-hour
day in America. It's no accident that we picked May Day to stop work at the ports," explained
Thomas.

The Port Workers Organizing Committee, which is organizing a march and rally in San Francisco in
conjunction with the ILWU's job action, has incorporated support for immigrant rights into
their themes. A number of immigrant rights activists are involved in the organizing and the
day's events are scheduled so as not to conflict with immigrant rights marches and rallies which
will be held later in the day in both San Francisco and Oakland.

"We believe labor should be united with the immigrant rights movement," said Jessica Sanchez
of the Coalition for Unconditional Amnesty and International Workers. "We want to end the wars
at home and abroad. We think globalization is the reason why there are so many undocumented
workers. Undocumented workers are among the most exploited, and amnesty for them is in the
interests of the U.S. working class," concluded Sanchez.

The response by other unions to the call to action has been modest. Letter carriers in San
Francisco and Greensboro, N. C., as well as postal workers in San Francisco and New York City
will observe two minutes of silence per shift on May 1. City College teachers in New York City
decided to organize a campus event. Teachers in Oakland also agreed to mark the day.

The call to action has been endorsed by the Vermont AFL-CIO and by Green Party Presidential
Candidate Cynthia McKinney. Both the San Francisco and Alameda County Central Labor
Councils AFL-CIO have also endorsed.

"Every step and action we can take, whether strategic or not, helps to further the awareness
needed to stop racism and end the incursion in Iraq," said Tim Paulson, executive director of
the San Francisco Central Labor Council.

For more information, visit http://maydayilwu.googlepages.com

The Ruthless American Empire

By Timothy V. Gatto

14 March, 2008
Countercurrents.org

I cannot watch the news on television anymore. I am tired of the lies told baldly to my face and the “spin” put on everything that is not in the Empires best interests. That is what we are; an Empire that rules the world in order for the benefit of The United States. Listen further my fellow Americans, when I say for the benefit of the United States, I am not talking about the people of the United States, rather I am talking about those that own and manage the United States. These people are the people in our government, our corporate leaders, and our mega-wealthy ruling class. The people of the United States are no more or less important to these people than anyone else in this world save for the fact that we pull the lever to put them in power.

Today that right is not even guaranteed. If this government can’t convince us with their fear and propaganda along with their wars and economic power over their own citizen’s to vote the cabal’s way, why… they’ll just change the vote! When there is no paper trail to visually verify the vote what are we left with, the word of the government official that tallied up the score? We saw this in our last two Presidential elections, will we see it again? Of course we will, for nothing has changed. We can’t even predict primaries on poll data; do you think something’s wrong here?

The people that promise to change the status quo are run out of the election by collusion between the corporate-run media and the corporate financed candidates. No one wishing to change the way this country runs can get equal footing with these “sponsored” candidates. What change will any of them bring? They will do as they are told and we will continue to have an Empire, again, not of the people for the people, but for the ones that control this nation’s destiny, and believe me brother, it’s not you or me. To these people that run this Empire we are a nuisance that they must deal with from time to time. We are allowed to believe that we are free by voting for one of them. Once in a blue moon we will actually get to vote for someone that is not part of the Empire, but that is a rare occurrence. We are the serfs of this Empire, back to being plundered by the “Robber Barons” and most people in this nation aren’t even aware of it.

This Global War on Terrorism is a lie. There are no Al Qaeda cells in every city in America and in over 60 countries in the world. This is the same “Red Scare” tactic our government has used so well since the end of the last World War. It is propaganda, pure bullshit. Deep in your hearts you know it’s true. To say or think differently would be seen as anti-patriotic. Well chew on this for awhile, why has this country been instrumental in bringing down close to 50 governments of other nations? Why did we finance the overthrow of Hugo Chavez in 2002 only to see his people rise up and re-install him? Why is Hugo Chavez, a man that works for the poorest of his country, so savagely attacked by the Empire? The reason is because like Fidel Castro, he won’t play the Washington game. He won’t sell his nation’s resources to the Empire for pennies on the dollar. Is he a threat to you? Is he a threat to any average American? The answer is obvious, but he is a threat to the multi-national oil cartel. The people controlling this Empire’s government will tell you any number of lies to watch out for their interests.

Why are we fighting in Iraq? Were we ever afraid of Saddam? Give me a break. We are fighting over there to pay for Lockheed-Martin and all the other defense contractors’ budgets. We are in Iraq to give the Empire military bases to control the Persian Gulf and to assert our presence to insure our interests. We care not for the people of Iraq, nor do we care for the soldiers that die on command. This is just another example of Empire at its most malicious. Killing, according to some estimates, over a million Iraqi’s and almost 4,000 American soldiers that die on the ground, many soldiers who died in the air on a medi-vac didn’t make the count. We have destroyed their infrastructure and now pay Halliburton, Cheney’s company to put the country back together with no-bid contracts.

We threaten Iran with attack for having the audacity to build a nuclear power reactor. The Empire which once overthrew their infant democracy and re-installed the Shah, now tells the people of Iran what they can and cannot do. Meanwhile the Empire is selling nuclear secrets to India and Turkey and is the world’s foremost owner of nuclear weaponry. How insane is this logic? Still, this is the dictatorial nature of the Empire that we let thrive and grow while they scared us with horror stories of “Evil Empires” out to crush us and our “freedoms”. Now we are locked into an Empire that we can’t reign in because they have shredded our Constitution and we have surrendered our rights as citizens.

In 2006 the American people sent the government a clear and concise message to this government. We elected the opposition party into power in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. We did this on the basis that they would rend the excesses of this administration and stop the war in Iraq. Yet to this day, there have been no meetings of oversight committees that have produced anything of note. Bolton and Miers thumb their noses at the contempt of Congress citation and the Speaker of the House puts out a civil suit. If this Congress had a backbone they would send the Federal Marshall's to the White House and put them in jail for contempt! This won’t happen, and you want to know why? It’s because the majority of Democrats are a working part of the Empire. The people’s party has been hijacked from the common American by politicians with a median income of $675,000.00 a year in the House and $1.7 Million in the Senate. http://www.opensecrets.org/pressreleases/
2008/CongressFinances.3.13.asp

This, my friends, is what you call an example of “Class War”. In this country we have the rich, the middle-class and the poor. The top 10% of the families in this nation control 71% of its wealth. This means that 90% of the people of this nation share 29% of its wealth. The median income of the Middle-Class is shrinking by $2,000.00 an year as we sell off our industries to countries that provide cheap labor. The individuals that own these industries care not if they stay in America to give its citizens work. We are expendable; the only thing that concerns these huge corporate interests is the bottom line. The Empire exists to serve its masters whether they are Americans or not. This is excessive, ruthless, unchecked capitalism of the worst sort. Unregulated economic barbarism for the influential and wealthy, the divide between the two major political parties has been bridged by wealth. The Unions have been bought off, the politicians work for their corporate masters and the corporate masters work for the American Empire because they are the Empire. We spend more money on the military than all the nations on Earth combined. We have military bases in 130 different countries.

How did this happen? The truth is that it has been going on for over 60 years. Almost everything our government in Washington tells us is a lie. They are so confident of maintaining power from either party that they hardly disguise the lies that they tell anymore. There is no great political genius waiting in the wings to give our government back to its people. There is no great movement that will restore our Constitution. Those on the left fight amongst themselves and those on the extreme right prepare for survival in a world gone mad. Meanwhile both factions have never been so close on their view of this government. This is underscored by the 9/11 truth movement that has both factions working together to find out what really happened on September 11th and who was involved.

On Wednesday, March 19th, there will be a mass civil disobedience demonstration on the steps of the Capitol. If you can be there, then be there. If you cannot attend, go to a rally near where you live. The future of this nation is at stake. This means our future is at stake. This monster that has been created must come to an end and this nation must return to its borders and re-join the community of nations. The simple fact is that all Empires fall. Do you want to be here when this one does?

That’s the way I see it.

(Emphasis added - B.M.)