CALL TO ACTION!!

Money for jobs; not for war... unemployed workers shouldn't have to pay any taxes.

Make the minimum wage a real living wage based upon all the cost-of-living factors as scientifically calculated by the United States Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics and then legislatively tie the minimum wage to cost-of-living increases.


A National Conference to Create Living-Wage Jobs,
Meet Human Needs and Sustain the Environment

November 13-14, 2009

New York, NY

The Problem: Even before the onset of our current, deep recession, we faced chronic unemployment, low and stagnant wages, myriad unmet needs and unprecedented environmental degradation.

Today’s rapidly escalating unemployment has put job creation back on the public agenda for the first time in recent history. Nearly 15 million workers were officially unemployed in June 2009, and hidden unemployment brings total joblessness up to almost 30 million with nearly 12 seekers for every available job. If it is possible to ignore the chronic unemployment that besets millions of people in normal times, it is much harder to ignore this current, mass unemployment and its staggering social and economic costs.

 What should progressive activists concerned about economic justice, labor, the religious community and other concerned people do about mass unemployment?
 What long-term goals should we have for the economy?
 How can we build a strong, effective unified movement to achieve full employment and living wage jobs for all?

A strong economic stimulus is imperative to meet the current emergency. Yet, even if the current stimulus package that achieves its intended goal of creating 4 million jobs, it would only reduce official unemployment by a third!

Nor is it good enough to return to official unemployment of 5 million women and men and millions more working poor even in the “best” of recent times, or to be satisfied with the host of unmet needs with which this recession began. In the words of FDR, “We cannot be content, no matter how high the general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people … is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.”

The Challenge: Crises present opportunities for progressive change. This is the time for Progressives people of good will to mobilize and to develop goals and strategies for an economy that provides living wage jobs for all, sustains the environment, and repairs our social and physical infrastructure and begins the transition to a more stable, productive economy that provides for shared prosperity.

Conference Goals and Intended Outcomes:

1. Expand public debate and action on the future of the U.S. economy
2. Increase public awareness of chronic unemployment and underemployment and its human and economic toll, even in better times
3. Build on Increase public awareness of current mass unemployment, its dire consequences for human beings and its waste of potential economic output;
4. Raise public awareness of our current economic dead-end—high personal and foreign debt, inequality, wage lag, environmental degradation, military overreach….
5. Steer public debate and action toward:
• Government promotion and creation of living-wage jobs, strengthening of the safety net and supportive fiscal, monetary and trade policies;
• Government promotion and creation of jobs that improve the physical and social infrastructure (repair of bridges, upgrading public transportation, building affordable housing, improving and expanding public education and child, health and elder care).
• Government promotion and creation of jobs that further the goal of a sustainable economy and begin to restructure it.
6. Develop plans to pay for this program of reconstruction through more progressive taxes and confinement of military spending to genuine defense needs

7. Initiate a movement for living-wage jobs for all and develop strategies for achieving this permanent economic reform-- including similar conferences in cities across the country and a mass mobilization in Washington on behalf of economic reconstruction.

You Are Invited to Be a Conference Convenor/Co-Sponsor: We seek broad participation and sponsorship for this National Conference, especially organizations with a primary focus on the quality and quantity of jobs, economic justice, social security, the safety net and poverty prevention. Other critical participants will be organizations not primarily concerned with employment, but whose goals for union rights, health care, education, child care, elder care, disability rights, housing, economic restructuring, public transportation, environmental sustainability, and the arts would be furthered by job creation in their areas of interest. The hope is to gain their ongoing commitment to conquering unemployment and low wages-- even after the crisis subsides. This would build on a plans of the National Jobs for All Coalition and the Chicago Political Economy Group to simultaneously create living wage jobs for all and, through a renewed public sector, to repair our deeply deficient social and physical infrastructure.

Remember Medicare for All in the healthcare reform debate

I received this e-mail this evening and thought I would pass it along here on my blog.

Cassandra




Excellent !!!!



Now all you have to do is hitch health care reform up to ending these dirty wars, stopping funding for the Israeli killing machine and call for slashing the military budget combined with a call to tax the heck out of the wealthy and the corporations--- and we might be able to muster the kind of united strength needed to win real health care reform.



On the bottom of everything you send out you should put:



Democrats & Obama beware: No real progressive health care reform; no votes.



Maybe distribute bumper-stickers with this message on it?



Alan L. Maki

58891 County Road 13

Warroad, Minnesota 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432

Cell phone: 651-587-5541

E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net



Check out my blog:



Thoughts From Podunk



http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/









-----Original Message-----
From: Walter Tillow [mailto:wtillow@bellsouth.net]
Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 11:09 AM
To: walter tillow
Subject: Weiner's "Medicare for All" Published on The Hill Blog









http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/66053-remember-medicare-for-all-in-the-healthcare-reform-debate



Remember Medicare for All in the healthcare reform debate
By Kay Tillow, Coordinator, All Unions Committee For Single Payer Health Care--HR 676, Nurses Professional Organization - 11/03/09 10:06 AM ET

We are in danger of losing the opportunity to bring Improved Medicare for All, a single payer plan, before the Congress. Last July Congressman Anthony Weiner and six of his colleagues on the Energy and Commerce Committee attempted to substitute the real public option—HR 676, a single payer plan—for the healthcare reform in the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi assured them that if they withdrew the amendment in committee they would have an opportunity to bring it to the House floor for a debate and vote. Now Pelosi is threatening to keep the Weiner Single Payer Amendment from seeing the light of day.

If we were able to get this plan really on the table and before the nation in a meaningful way, we could win this hands down. Even Blue Dog Mike Ross, in an unguarded moment, asked why not just have Medicare for All. HR 676, the national single payer legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers, would cover everyone for all medically necessary care through an Expanded and Improved Medicare for All. The bill and its advocates have been blocked, excluded, and beaten back in the current national healthcare reform debate.

Yet Medicare for All continues to raise its head. When single payer advocates were excluded from the White House kick off meeting for health care reform, doctors’ opened the door to two single payer advocates with a plan to protest at the White House gate. When Senate Finance Chair Baucus ruled single payer off the table, thirteen doctors, nurses, and others rose to protest. Baucus had them arrested. Those gutsy advocates pried open another door and won a round of publicity for single payer. But still not a place at the table.

Yet support for single payer continues to grow. Its simplicity, humanity, and economic efficiency win more supporters each day. The Kentucky House of Representatives, four other state legislative bodies, scores of cities and counties, a half dozen giant religious denominations, NOW, the NAACP, and the National Conference of Mayors have called for passage of HR 676. For unions, it’s the plan of choice. At each contract deadline the double digit rise in health care costs gobbles up the lion’s share of bargaining power. For that reason, 578 unions including 39 state AFL-CIO’s and 134 central labor councils have endorsed HR 676. In September the national AFL-CIO Convention declared unanimous support for single payer as the social insurance plan necessary to achieve social justice.

When Physicians for a National Health Program founder Quentin Young, testified before a House committee last June, Representative Weiner listened and was impressed. Weiner turned HR 676 into an amendment that would transform the House bill into a single payer plan. He popularized it as Medicare for All and catapulted the discussion into the national media with his feisty good humor and popular style.

Now Pelosi wants to renege on her promise to Weiner. We have sent an action alert to over 19,000 unionists asking them to contact Pelosi, and Waxman (who relayed Pelosi’s commitment publicly) and Slaughter (who heads the rules committee) to assure that they allow the Weiner amendment to come to the floor.

The “public option” that remains in both the Senate and the House bills is pitiful and powerless--totally incapable of providing cost control. Those bills, with their forced mandates and fines, their massive transfer of public funds to the insurance industry, and their ban on bulk buying power to rein in the pharmaceutical companies, will fail woefully to cover our people and to make that care affordable.

Pelosi should stick to her promise. We’ll keep up the effort to make her do so. Either now or later Medicare for All will have to come to the table. We’ll keep building the movement to make that happen.

Source:
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/66053-remember-medicare-for-all-in-the-healthcare-reform-debate

The contents of this site are © 2009 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

Call 800-517-5696 today to protest more war funding!

This important vote could come up this week; possibly next week… Act today.



Insist on a response in writing.



Call 800-517-5696 today to protest more war funding!



Do you want the United States government to spend tens of billions of dollars more to fund the war in Iraq and expand the war in Afghanistan?



Next week, your representative will be asked to vote on a war supplemental bill that would do just that.

Call toll-free on May 12
800-517-5696

Say no to more spending on two wars. Urge your representative to use our tax dollars to

bring the troops home

take care of them upon their return

rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan

take care of health, education, and energy here at home

Oppose more war funding.




The U.S. government already spends $1.9 million every minute on the military — and that doesn't include funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.



This is the position of our Organizing Council:



All of this money could be going towards the creation of a public health care system. Any country that can spend this kind of money on wars and militarism that includes funding over 800 U.S. foreign military bases dotting the globe; subsidizing the Israeli killing machine; and fighting wars in three countries at the same time certainly can afford to provide its own people a first-rate, world-class public health care system that is comprehensive, all-inclusive and universal which is publicly funded, publicly administered and publicly delivered. Everyone in. All the profiteers out. Health care for people not for profit.



As a working class mother I did not raise my children to go fight wars and kill other people so oil companies can profit.



I voted for Barack Obama very reluctantly and this war funding is not the change I voted for.



Please call today.



Call 800-517-5696 today to protest more war funding!



Maggie Bird

President,

Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council



Two-million casino workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry go to jobs in smoke-filled casinos getting poverty wages without any rights under state, federal or tribal labor laws.



The same government funding these wars created this injustice in the Indian Gaming Industry and refuses to right this wrong.


Distributed by:

Alan L. Maki

Director of Organizing,

Midwest Casino Organizing Council



58891 County Road 13

Warroad, Minnesota 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432

Cell phone: 651-587-5541

E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net



Check out my blog:



Thoughts From Podunk



http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

An e-mail with lots of info about U.S. imperialism

Over the years many people in the left-wing movements here in the United States and around the world have made mention that what is sorely lacking is the American people receiving good, consistent anti-imperialist education.

I never realized how true this was until I read the information below.

There are important facts and good suggestions.

Alan Maki has assembled a wealth of information in making his own point that the cost of imperialism being born by the American people is costing us dearly. Health care to be specific.

I hope everyone who reads this will pass this information along and hard copy it to give to friends.

Cassandra



-----Original Message-----

From: Alan Maki [mailto:amaki000@centurytel.net]

Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2009 3:49 PM

To: 'info@wpc-in.org'; 'wpc@otenet.gr'

Subject: Re: NATO, the Malvinas Islands, and US 4th Fleet and U.S. military bases vs human needs

Socorro Gomes President of the World Peace Council;

I read your statement below. I think it is an excellent statement.

However, I think there is a major weakness… in relation to acknowledging the far-flung network of military bases and operations of the United States all over the world; you should have inserted a suggestion as to what could be accomplished for humanity if these bases were closed down and the military operations and maneuvers were to cease.

Presenting alternatives to this militarization are, in fact, one of the most powerful incentives for the American people to engage in struggle in unity with other progressive forces around the world against imperialism.

Below is a letter I sent to a member of the clergy here in the United States just yesterday. Like you, who has presented a very lucid description of imperialism, he presented a very lucid argument against the rise of the right-wing here in the United States. The right-wing is the base of the warmongers and the militarists here in the United States, like else where in the world.

In my opinion, to put forward such critiques could be vastly improved since our goal is to bring people into struggle against imperialism.

I have included an article from “Asia Time” regarding how the U.S. military responds when pressure mounts (as well as changing circumstances) to get U.S. military bases off of foreign soil--- such as Clark Air Force Base and Subic Bay Naval Station in the Philippines. If the World Peace Council does not always place in context militarism vs. human needs no one else is going to do this consistently.

When I mention "Cooperative Security Locations" (CSLs) most people have never heard of this. The American people are intentionally being kept very ignorant when it comes to the operations of U.S. imperialism making it all the more important that you place some emphasis in how this is all costing the American people and what they could have if not for imperialism.

I hope in the future you will make some mention what humanity could use resources for instead of this waste on militarism. Therefore, I am sending you the letter I sent to Reverend Harry Cook… the gist of my suggestion is this (the full letter follows:


The United States has 800 military bases on foreign soil...
What we need--- instead--- is 800 public health care centers spread out across the United States where people can universally access, for free, all their health care needs from pre-natal care, to general health care to eye, dental and mental care right through to burial.


From: Alan Maki

To: Reverend Cook,

You quote a Richard Hoftsader, did you mean Richard Hofstadter?

I found your essay, Fear & Resentment, very interesting and a very lucid analysis of where we are at, and where we are headed.

I think Barack Obama has created the atmosphere for these “Tea Parties” to take place because he has refused to bring forward the kind of change people were anticipating when they voted for him.

The liberal, progressive, left community has refused to criticize Obama by insisting on real universal reforms aimed at solving very real problems:

- No moratoriums on home foreclosures and evictions.

- Wars in three countries rage on.

- No consideration of single-payer universal health care.

- The Democrats have backed away from the Employee Free Choice Act.

- Not a single mention of reforming the minimum wage to make it a real living wage has come from Barack Obama or the Democrats.

Without criticism and a proposed progressive agenda being pushed hard for real change, I think the right-wing is going to grow in strength way beyond what the religious right was able to accomplish.

Ironically, Obama has set-up liberals, progressives and the left for a smashing defeat; voters went to the polls expecting just the opposite from what they are getting from Barack Obama.

Where’s the change?

I think Barack Obama and the Democrats in betraying the American people--- first by acquiescing to Bush and the Republicans and now by derailing all real initiatives for real reforms that working people need and require to live and survive as capitalism collapses--- are doing more than their fair share to create “anger” in this country.

The anger is really growing out of mass confusion and disorientation surrounding who Barack Obama is and what he stands for.

The ideas expressed by Richard Hofstadter later in his life--- after 1939--- certainly aren’t going to do anything to allay fear or anger, let alone point people in the direction we need to go for real change.

Anyways, Barack Obama, in bringing forward the Wall Street agenda instead of what people expected from him has set the stage enabling an even more pernicious right-wing to make its way into power.

Like Richard Hofstadter would have done, you have critiqued the situation well; and, like him in his later years you don’t bring forward anything we can do to bring about real change… as a suggestion, you might want to check out Richard Hofstadter’s pre-World War II, depression era thinking; just a suggestion.

Something you might want to consider writing and speaking about:

The United States has over 800 military bases on foreign soil when what we need is 800 public health care centers spread out across the United States (16 in each of our 50 states) providing everyone with free health care instead.

We really need to provide the American people with an anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist ideological out look framed in a way that convinces them that what they are getting now for their tax dollars are the wrong things; while encouraging them not to fear struggling for what is right and just.

The two issues capable of uniting the people of this country are the need to end war and militarism and the need for real health care reform. Bring both issues together in a way that makes sense to people and you create a powerful bulwark against this vicious right-wing thrust taking the form of hate-mongering “Tea Parties.”

I don’t think your lucid analysis lacking a suggested alternative is going to be enough to halt the drive to the extreme right now underway.

Perhaps you have written about solutions to problems; but, like others like myself reading your essay here for the first time… any mention of solutions is missing.
I hope you take my criticism in the friendly manner intended because I appreciate and share your analysis concerning the danger from the right.

Liberals, progressives and the left allowed Barack Obama to get away without defining what kind of “change” he was talking about. Now we have the task of either letting the extreme right fill this void that has been created; or liberals, progressives and the left can vigorously challenge Obama to bring about the “change” that everyone was expecting.

I guess Obama had one idea what change consisted of and most voters had quite a different idea… I don’t think, based upon Obama’s actions, that he can be trusted to bring about the “change” we need in this country… he has a different agenda that is neither liberal nor progressive; it certainly isn’t an agenda that pre-war World War II Depression era Richard Hofstadter would have appreciated.

Albert Einstein’s very lucid thinking provides us with a better understanding of problems and lays a foundation for change more so than Richard Hofstadter’s constant, never-ending search for alternatives to capitalism did. You might want to Google up Albert Einstein’s, “Why Socialism?”

I have enclosed below something I recently sent out for people to consider.

Alan L. Maki
58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763
Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell phone: 651-587-5541
E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

Check out my blog:
Thoughts From Podunk
http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

The United States has 800 military bases on foreign soil...

What we need--- instead--- is 800 public health care centers spread out across the United States where people can universally access, for free, all their health care needs from pre-natal care, to general health care to eye, dental and mental care right through to burial.

Instead of moving in this progressive direction, President Barack Obama and the United States Congress are moving in a most reactionary direction towards establishing military bases in outer space as they seek to insure the profits of both the merchants of death and destruction and the profit-driven health care industries... talk about skewed priorities and your wacky ideas devoid of common sense.

In addition to these 800 U.S. military bases on foreign soil, Barack Obama and the United States Congress continue funding--- with our tax-dollars--- the Israeli killing machine to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.

A network of 800 public health care centers spread out across the United States would create over four-million good-paying, decent jobs--- talk about your "economic stimulus" package!

We would be planting the seeds of socialism while helping to eradicate poverty as we keep people healthy and get them well when sick.

Think about this kind of solution in relation to what Barack Obama, the U.S. Congress and the Wall Street bankers and coupon clippers are offering the American people, and the peoples of the world... just what is the reason for bailing out the banks and AIG and maintaining more than 800 expensive U.S. military bases on foreign soil?

The Mt. Carmel Clinic in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada offers us a glimpse at what militarization and wars continue to rob us of.

The problems created by Wall Street will not be solved as long as the military-financial-industrial complex is allowed to squander human and natural resources on militarism and wars... we might just as well be dumping these resources out into the ocean... at least no one would die in wars.

These merchants of death and destruction must be stopped if humanity is to survive in a livable world.

The time has come to talk about the working class Marxist politics and economics of livelihood... capitalism has failed humanity miserably and left us a real mess.

Something for working people to think about and discuss around the dinner table... the capitalist sooth-Sayers certainly are not going to broach such solutions to the problems of working people as they hide behind the skirt of Rosy Scenario as this global capitalist economic depression intensifies.

Fear and Resentment

By Harry T. Cook
4/24/09


"To ignore reason and judgment and all the fine sentiments that move [people] to follow blind force ... in the hope that fear will ... make all people safe is bad practice." (Clarence Darrow, 1926)

"American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years we have seen angry minds at work ... who have now demonstrated ... how much political leverage can be got out of animosities and passions." (Richard Hoftsader, 1964)

There's nothing like crying "FIRE!" in a crowded circus tent to get people's attention. As events have amply shown, the likely result is a stampede, each person with his or her eye fixed on the nearest exit rather than on others who may be in the way. It is instinct at work rather than reason, with the end-product being gross disorder.

Likewise, there's nothing like the politics of resentment to excite what Hofstader called "animosities and passions." Making decisions on the basis of anger has never worked very well for the human race.

The administration of George W. Bush, now blessedly part of the past, carried this nation into a pre-emptive war against a sovereign nation not only on a partially manufactured flood-tide of post-9/11 fear but on what finally must be called bald-faced lies, viz., nonexistent WMDs and the shameful prediction of mushroom clouds.

The 2004 presidential election was prosecuted by Karl Rove & Co. using fear as an engine -- fear then not so much of WMDs as of what moral disaster would occur if gay and lesbian people were allowed to marry. The echoes of the fear campaign that drove a hapless Congress into acquiescence over Iraq joined the chorus of homophobia to put Bush back into the White House.

Now comes the aftermath of another election, and still the politics of fear are made to reverberate, this time over who will pay what taxes at what rate and for how long. The ultra-demagogic Tax Day protests -- ours in Michigan featured Joe the Plumber -- were a reminder of how inchoate fear can suddenly find focus in narrow resentment.

President Obama and congressional Democrats are on notice from the likes of Karl Rove and the editors of The Wall Street Journal that anything that resembles a hike in federal taxes for anyone for any reason (including saving the country from economic catastrophe) will be exploited in the 2010 election cycle and beyond.

The politics of resentment are what Adolf Hitler and his Nazi thugs played in Germany to great effect and success. The German people were, in fact, wronged by some of the draconian elements of the Versailles Treaty, and were ripe for a rabble rouser. Hitler showed up just in time to start a Holocaust.

The year 2009 is no time -- if ever there is a time -- for the politics of fear and resentment. Resentment is a stupid emotion.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was spot-on in that oft-quoted remark about fear in his inaugural address of March 1933 during the worst year of the Great Depression. FDR was right: Fear is to be afraid of.

Of fear a late First Century C.E. Christian philosopher wrote: "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear." This "perfect love" is not some gooey thing of hugs and kisses and vapid smiles. It is an attitude of robust confidence which enables a person to step away from his or her own concerns to view them in a larger context beyond personal desire -- and to do so accepting the possibility of material diminishment of his estate.

Some significant number of people so enabled would cast out the kind of fear that poisons a nation's collective psyche, causing it to strike out blindly against perceived enemies and leaving chaos and old night in its wake.


© Copyright 2009, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.





NATO, the Malvinas Islands, and US 4th Fleet

Written by Socorro Gomes President of the World Peace Council

Wednesday, 08 April 2009

For us with the World Peace Council – WPC, an organization that is near completing 60 years of existence with branches in 109 countries, it is a great joy to be in the homeland of San Martin, of Ernesto Che Guevara, fighters who, like us, defend peace, sovereignty and the integration of Latin America.

I would like to thank the organizations responsible for this conference, comrades of Mopassol, the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights (PAHR) and Serpaj-Latin America.

This International Conference will address issues of great importance for the struggle for peace. We are sure that this initiative will contribute to update our analyses on the recent events in the international state of affairs and will also serve as the Latin American contribution to the international campaign against NATO throughout the world.

Complex and deep changes are taking place in the international scenery

Lately the world has been going through significant transformations that seem to signal a transition to another era. We have witnessed the policies of imperialism being questioned all over the world during the last years. There is a body of factors ranging from the emergence of new poles of economic and political power in the international scene, especially among countries of the so-called "developing south", to the increasing impasses in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Given those facts, the economic crisis of capitalism erupts and aggravates, having the USA as its epicenter. Those factors, among others, call into question the hegemony of US imperialism.
Comrades, there is no doubt that the current crisis will bring consequences to the struggle for peace, for it has an impact on the political outlook. As usually, the governments of imperialist countries try to place its effects on the shoulders of the workers from poor and dependent countries. The crisis will inevitably lead to the eruption of social struggles and political conflicts.

The international order found itself threatened by the grave crimes against humankind committed by Israel against the martyred Palestinian people. The events that took place in the beginning of the year were approved by the great powers, especially US imperialism, which sees Israel as its ally in its aim of reorganizing Middle East. We take advantage of this opportunity to affirm that Israel must be judged for the war crimes it has committed. Humankind longs for justice.

The new president of the United States has announced a withdrawal plan for the troops in Iraq, but also affirmed that the Arab country will remain occupied by 50 thousand soldiers and that its presence in Afghanistan will be intensified. Within a few days, when the Euro-Atlantic imperialist powers celebrate the sixtieth NATO anniversary, they will announce a new strategic concept that consists in widening that aggressive alliance, maintaining its expansion towards East and intensifying the cooperation among the military initiatives of the European Union and NATO as well.

Analysts of the US foreign policy are beginning to say that the new democrat administration will put in practice a Smart Power policy, a combination of the use of diplomacy with the use of force. That policy was previously called Soft Power.

Comrades, it is clear for us that the nature of imperialism will not be altered by a simple change in the presidential staff. The imperialist character of the United States' policy is still the same. Militarization and war will always be present. Peace is not a vocation of imperialism.

Generally speaking, the measures announced by the Obama administration so far placed the USA once again in the position of a hegemonic power. We must not fall for the idea that the US imperialism will give up being the center of the definitions regarding the international system. It is an outlook of great uncertainties.

According to sociologist Atílio Borón, the USA is an irreplaceable and undisputable actor within the international imperialist system. Its military power cannot be compared to that of any other country. Only US imperialism is present in 120 countries, having more than 700 missions and bases abroad. The military power is the final reserve of the system and war is an essential part of imperialism.

It is based on that complex international outlook that we must understand the role of those powerful war machines such as NATO and the Fourth Fleet and the meaning of the struggle for peace within that context.

Imperialism is not generous

The US establishment's ideas on Latin America are based on its interest in expanding its power over the region. Since when the United States became an imperialist power in the turn of the 19th to the 20th century and since when it became a hegemonic power, its foreign and military policy has always been focused on having this region under its direct influence. The agreements and treaties were always used to grant exclusively the interests of the USA. A classical example of that is the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance – ITRA, from 1947, part of the reorganization of the international system where the United States struggled in the Cold War against the Soviet Union. It is necessary to stress that during the whole of the 20th century the policy of force – the so-called Big Stick policy – prevailed.

Given the different proportions, ITRA can be considered the equivalent to NATO in the Southern Atlantic. Since it was the first collective security pact involving several countries, its grounds served two years later for the United States to constitute NATO. The United States' discourse in ITRA was aimed at maintaining the USA as the center of the inter-American system in order to, according to them, "ensure peace by all possible means," "promote reciprocal and effective aid" and "resist to all armed attacks" and any threats to the United Sates.

ITRA and OAS were the main tools to impose the hegemony of the United States in the region. Moreover, it was the main means in its campaign to isolate politically and economically the Cuban Revolution. But when ITRA was called to defend Argentina from the aggression committed by the English colonial forces in the Malvinas War, imperialism took the side of Britain. The USA not only denied the support that was "stated" in ITRA, but also offered logistic and intelligence support to the English. There should be no illusions regarding imperialism and its tools of domination – imperialism is not generous.

We take advantage of this opportunity to reaffirm our solidarity with the Argentinean people for recovering the Malvinas Islands, which are part of their territory. It is not possible to have territories occupied by colonialist forces in the 21st century.

Comrades, imperialism will not allow its influence in the region to be diluted without taking steps to avoid it. The reactivation of the Fourth Fleet is a clear demonstration of that.

The reactivation of the Fourth Fleet

Comrades and Argentinean friends, the US Navy Fourth Fleet is about to complete one year of operation, in July, in the waters of our continent. When we received that news, we were in Brazil with comrades Rina Bertacini, of Mopassol, and Ana Juanche, of Serpaj, participating in the Mercosur Social Forum, in the state of Paraná. Our analyses in the heat of the moment had much in common. It was the matter of another artifice of the United States with the objective of intimidating the political process of changes that was under development in the region, as well as taking a strategic position regarding our resources.

The importance given by the United States to its sea power, especially in the region, is nothing new. The first ideas according to which the United States needed a great sea power derived from the elaborations of Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, who in the turn of the 19th to the 20th century influenced the American elite in their expansionist policy. According to Mahan, the United States had to maintain full control of the seas, oceans and commercial routes based on the formation of a broad set of naval fleets of the merchant and warfare navies, therefore guaranteeing its continental power. Such ideas influenced the action to annex Hawaii in 1897, the Spanish-American war, in 1898, the seizure of the Philippines in Asia, and also Cuba and a few other Caribbean islands.

Inheriting Mahan's formulations, the US Navy Fleets were created in the middle of World War II in the struggle of the allies against the axis. The Fourth Fleet was created in 1943 with the objective of protecting the region from possible attacks from Nazi-Fascist forces. After the end of the war, it was dismantled in 1950.

Today the "Fleets" are distributed in six regions of the world. The Second Fleet is in the North Atlantic, the Third sails in the Pacific Ocean, the Sixth operates in the Mediterranean, the Firth sails in the Persian Gulf region and Southeastern Asia and the Seventh is found in the Indian Ocean and Southern Asia. With them the USA maintain strategic areas all over the world under military control.

By divulging the news of its reestablishment in Latin American waters, one immediately asks the question – why now? With which arguments and justifications?

Among the little information made public since the announcement of the reactivation of such powerful weapon of war, the only justifications made known are but euphemisms pronounced by the USA.

According to James Stravidis, chief of the US Southern Command, a structure to which the Fourth Fleet is subordinated, his missions have a humanitarian character, supporting peace operations and assisting in disasters and anti-drug operations, as well as helping the USA to fight terrorism. However, James W. Stevenson, chief of the Naval Forces Southern Command, clearly states that the reactivation "sends a clear sign to some people who we know are not necessarily our supporters." It is a clear demonstration of intimidation to the countries that dare to defy openly the USA.

Moreover, the Rear Admiral affirms that the ships in the Fourth Fleet are prepared to sail "even the magnificent river systems existing in South America, sailing brown waters more than blue waters."

During one of the activities taking place in the World Social Forum we asked – what a nuclear-powered ship docked in the middle of the Amazonas River would represent? What "humanitarian" missions would be assigned to such war machine? It the objective was good, why the countries in the region were not consulted?

A word to the wise is enough. Affirming that the Fourth Fleet is a signal to some governments with which Washington is not sympathetic is an open provocation to the political process in the region.

Since its reactivation the Fourth Fleet is subordinated to the US Southern Command, having the naval base of Mayport in North Florida as the port for its powerful ships. It has not an assigned fleet, but was made available an arsenal of war, including nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Among those we list the following:

• 1 Nimitz (nuclear) aircraft carrier able to transport up to 85 F-18 aircrafts • USS Boxer and USS Kearsage assault ships: each one carry up to 45,500 tons and is able to transport up to 1,800 men • Sea Knight helicopters (42 units) • AV-8 Harrier II fighter jets • LCAC landing crafts

It is clear that a force with such power of destruction is not merely bound to offer solidarity and support to the countries in the region. The Fourth Fleet is imperialism's reaction to the political changes taking place in Latin America. The Fourth Fleet is not a defensive force. It is an offensive and intimidating force.

The Fourth Fleet and the dispute for controlling the maritime routes and energy sources

There is no doubt that the reactivation of the Fourth Fleet involves imperialism's intention to deploy potent weapons and advanced structures that would allow, if necessary, its use for controlling routes and sources of energy.

In the USA National Defense Strategy the "Right to Oil" is preceded only by the defense of territorial integrity and the political independence of the USA. "Right to Oil" means, in other words, that the United States' imperialism, eager to guarantee its predatory consumption, can resort to force in order to ensure access to energy sources, wherever they are.

Another factor that we must be aware of is that the reactivation of the Fourth Fleet coincides with the recent discoveries of oil in waters of the Brazilian continental platform. The so-called pre-salt would place Brazil in the fourth or third position in the list of the world's greatest oil producers.

It is very likely that the Fourth Fleet will not be object to the news in the next months or even years. Its initial objective is not to call attention, but to pass some strategic messages of positioning and power, as well as to provide the monitoring of the region and terrorize the governments of Latin America that search for independence from United States' imperialism.

The Fourth Fleet Admiral's skills illustrate quite well that his priority mission will not involve humanitarian actions. Rear Admiral Joseph D. Kerman is a veteran military with the Naval Special Warfare Development Group in charge of intelligence missions and counter-terrorism. Joseph Kerman was for many years an instructor for the SEAL (Sea, Air, Land). He is part of the USA war elite. The SEAL offered "valuable services" in the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars with their divers and also in other missions mostly covered by the CIA.

The peoples of the world cannot stand still before such grave events. The Fourth Fleet is not only against Brazil or the countries in the region – it is connected to a strategy of international character.

One question remains unanswered. Is it possible that organizations such as the Fourth Fleet contribute to missions of alliances such as NATO? The US Naval Warfare fleets are spread all over the world in strategic points to control the flow of commercial routes and energy sources. The Naval Fleets participate in many war campaigns developed by imperialism and support military alliances of which the USA is part, such as NATO.

NATO – imperialism's mechanism against the peoples of the world

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization – NATO is a military organization that has been at the service of United States' imperialism since its onset. It played an important role in the Cold War and later had an important function as a military force in the reorganization of the political blueprint of a unipolar world. In the year of the 60th anniversary of that war machine the world is going through significant transformations and NATO is increasingly fit to support the intentions of great powers with the use of force.

Appearing in the heat of the Cold War, NATO was imperialism's tool to threaten and, if necessary, attack socialist countries. In the 1990s, when the so-called "socialist threat" disappeared, NATO's new role is materialized with a new strategic concept.

Since the end of the Cold War against the Soviet Union, the heralds of imperialism even affirmed that we would live a period of eternal peace – the end of history. Those affirmations were proved wrong shortly after, for, as we have said, war is an essential part of socialism.

The great powers, headed by United States' imperialism, soon tried to open routes to the East taking advantage of the political void left by the dismemberment of the Soviet Union with a view to control immense sources of energy – gas and oil – along with flow routes existing in the Balkans and Central Asia.

In that period NATO organized its conferences in London (1990) and Rome (1991), when it tried to seal its reconfiguration by assuming openly an offensive character in order to play the role of a strategic force with operational capacity and pro-active action outside the territorial area of its country members, acting as a war machine at the service of great imperialist powers, especially American imperialism.

That period is characterized by NATO's widening, involving some countries that were once part of the Warsaw Pact, making alliances with countries outside the geographical sphere of the alliance, such as in the case of the "Gulf Cooperation Council" and the "Mediterranean Dialogue." The first experience of that transformation had the Balkans as its backdrop. Especially after the bombings and invasion of Yugoslavia, NATO begins to widen militarily its area of influence, reaching the borders of Russia.

NATO in Latin America

It was under that context of new alliances and widening that the government of former Argentinean president Carlos Menem developed a strategy to approach the military alliance. According to that conception, Argentina would only reach a greater importance in the international scene if it maintained a policy of automatic alignment with the United States or, as said in the occasion, if it maintained a "carnal relation" with the super power either in the economic field or in its foreign policy and military cooperation.

Seminars and important conferences were held in the country to address the relation with NATO and several Argentinean authorities participated in NATO's deliberative instances with the objective of demonstrating commitment with the organization.

It was under those circumstances that Argentina became the only Latin American country to send troops to the first Gulf War in 1991. Later it sent troops to the so-called Stabilization Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina (SFOR), which was NATO's occupation force in the Balkans during the conflict in 1996. It was also in that occasion that former USA president Clinton proclaimed Argentina as a "non-NATO ally."

What is the meaning of being a non-NATO ally?

The title "non-NATO ally", coined in 1989, is a designation made by the Congress of the USA to a group of countries that obtain advantages in the acquisition of weapons that would be sold only to NATO countries. The first countries to receive that title were Australia, Egypt, Israel Japan and South Korea. In the Bush administration, that token was granted to his allies in the "war against terror" – New Zealand, Jordan, Bahrain, Philippines, Thailand, Kuwait Morocco and Pakistan.

Latin America is a strategic area to NATO

In the last years NATO has made efforts to approach the region once more. After being reconfigured as a military alliance with global challenges, some sort of world's sheriff, it considered to be important to maintain its presence in our area.

In 2008, as the campaign against Colombia's Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC-EP) peaked, Colombian Minister of Defense Juan Manuel Santos declared to newspapers that his country intended to send troops to Afghanistan and start collaborating with NATO. In the weeks preceding our conference, it became public that Colombia will send 150 soldiers as a first step in cooperating with the occupation in Afghanistan.

It could mean that Colombia will establish a new kind of cooperation with NATO in the medium term.

Another route being explored with less success is the attempt at involving the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP), based in Portugal, in NATO exercises. That, according to the Alliance's command, would project its actions to both margins of the Atlantic Ocean.

Widening the awareness of the anti-imperialist struggle and the defense of peace

Today, under international circumstances of uncertainties and deep contradictions, the peoples of the world must try to strengthen their anti-imperialist awareness, showing that the use of war to impose its plans and maintain its centrality in the international system is the very nature of imperialism.

NATO is completing 60 years of existence. We must take into account that the transformations taking place at the heart of that military alliance aim at strengthening its role as a privileged tool in incursions that imperialism carries out against the peoples of the world.

Military structures at the service of the empire complement each other in the logic of controlling the main routes of commercial flow and plundering energy sources. The Naval Warfare Fourth Fleet may be put at the service of NATO if necessary with the lame excuse that some country in the region may be "violating human rights" or "sheltering terrorists", among other fallacies that could be devised.

Our region is historically characterized by the efforts in defense of peace, what makes it a "Peace Zone." The general feeling of the peoples living in our region is one of sympathy for peace, of solidarity with struggling peoples. Comrades and friends, imperialism is going through a severe crisis, the hegemony of the United States is threatened. We are sure that, with the union of democratic, progressist and anti-imperialist forces, we may create a broad international front against imperialism and its war machines and a broad mobilization of the peoples to defeat imperialism. We are sure that it is not invincible and it will be defeated!

--
Socorro Gomes President of the World Peace Council–CMP and Cebrapaz-Brazilian Center for Solidarity to Peoples and Struggle for Peace
http://www.wpc-in.org/







http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/JB28Ae01.html


IN THE DRAGON'S LAIR

US prowls for China in the Philippines

By Herbert Docena

Since the closure of its military bases in the country in 1991, the United States has incrementally regained, transformed and deepened its military presence and intervention in the Philippines. The manner in which the US has attempted to re-establish basing in the Philippines illustrates its attempts to radically overhaul its global offensive capabilities to become more agile and efficient while overcoming mounting domestic opposition to its presence around the world.

The objectives with which the United States has sought to achieve this in the Philippines - a country that is firmly within what US analysts and strategists call "the dragon's lair" - point to the emerging US strategy toward what it has officially identified as the one country with "the greatest potential to compete with the United States" - China. In this strategy, the Philippines, by virtue both of its location as well as its political disposition towards the US relative to its neighbors, plays a crucial role.

Basing without bases
After George W Bush came to power, the US began to attempt in earnest to implement what its proponents bill as the most comprehensive reconfiguration of its global military presence since World War II. The underlying rationale is clear: the positioning and forms of US military bases of the past - built as they were for the Cold War - no longer suffice for the present. The US overseas basing must therefore be transformed so as to enable the US military to become leaner and meaner, quicker and more agile.

In the Philippines, as in a growing number of places around the world, the one persistent constraint for both the US and Philippine governments, however, has been the long-standing domestic sensitivity to US bases in the country. This opposition was actually an important - if not the decisive - factor in the decision to close the bases in 1991 and in the adoption in the post-Ferdinand Marcos 1987 constitution of provisions banning foreign military bases in the country.

As it has embarked on the project of transforming its global presence, the US has also sought to adapt to and undermine domestic opposition to its bases. In this, the US military's reconceptualization of its global military presence - no longer as merely a collection of physical structures but as a global "posture" - is illuminating. By posture, explained US Under Secretary of Defense Douglas J Feith, "We are not talking only about basing, we're talking about the ability of our forces to operate when and where they are needed."

Thus, recognizing that the local political situation is not yet ripe for the re-establishment of the kind of large military bases it once had in the Philippines, the United States has instead moved to achieve this ability in various other ways.

Recurring deployments
The United States has been deploying a growing number of its troops, ships and equipment all over the Philippines ostensibly for training exercises, humanitarian and engineering projects, and other missions. In 2006 alone, up to 37 military exercises were scheduled - up from around 24 in the preceding years. As many as 6,000 US troops are involved, depending on the exercise.

Although packaged as on-and-off temporary programs to train US and Filipino troops, such exercises are seen as an alternative way for the US military to secure access to the Philippines. "The habitual relationships built through exercises and training," former US Pacific Command head Admiral Thomas Fargo noted in March 2003, "is our biggest guarantor of access in time of need." He continued: "Access over time can develop into habitual use of certain facilities by deployed US forces with the eventual goal of being guaranteed use in a crisis, or permission to preposition logistics stocks and other critical material in strategic forward locations."

As US troops come and go in rotation for frequent and regular exercises, their presence - when taken together - makes up a formidable forward presence that brings them closer to areas of possible action without need for huge infrastructure to support them and without inciting a lot of public attention and opposition. As the US National Defense Strategy states, "Our posture also includes the many military activities in which we engage around the world. This means not only our physical presence in key regions, but also our training, exercises, and operations."

Along with troops, an increasing number of ships have also been entering the country's territorial waters and docking at various ports with growing frequency. Such ship visits are also seen as ways to establish presence. As the US Congressional Budget Office has pointed out, "[T]he Navy counts those ships as providing overseas presence full time, even when they are training or simply tied up at the pier."

Dual-use infrastructure
Apart from the troop deployments and ship visits, the US has also been constructing an increasing number of structures and facilities that could be useful for the US military when the contingency arises - while at the same time allowing it to buy political support from the national and local governments. In various parts of the country, especially in the southern regions of Mindanao, the US has been engaged in a flurry of construction activities, building or renovating airports, piers, wharves, roads and other infrastructure.

In General Santos City, for example, the US constructed a deep-water port and one of the most modern airports in the country, connected to each other by one of the country's best roads. Why the United States was so intent on financing and building this modern airport in a small city where relatively few passenger or cargo planes land could not be explained if not for its potential military use. In Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija, where US troops routinely go for exercises, the airport has been renovated and its runway strengthened to carry the weight of C-130 planes. In Sulu, the US is renovating the airport, upgrading roads, and building ports that can berth huge ships.

All this is consistent with a US Air Force (USAF)-funded study which recommended having more deployments to have more infrastructure. By increasing deployments, notes the study, the United States can get into arrangements that "include measures to tailor local infrastructure to USAF operations by extending runways, improving air traffic control facilities, repairing parking aprons and the like".

Cooperative security locations
The US is also establishing in the Philippines a new category of military installations it calls "Cooperative Security Locations" (CSLs).

As part of the innovations introduced in the ongoing revamping of the global US network of bases, CSLs refer to facilities owned either by host-governments or even by private companies that are to be made available for use by the US military as needed. According to the Pentagon, these CSLs are to be run and maintained by either host governments or private contractors and are as useful for prepositioning logistics support or as venues for joint operations with host militaries. While intended to be small so as not to attract attention, they could be expanded to become larger bases when necessary.

In August 2005, the US Overseas Basing Commission, the official commission tasked to review US basing, categorically identified the Philippines as one of the countries where such CSLs are being developed by the US in the region. The Philippine government, however, has refused to disclose the locations and other details about these CSLs.

Base services without basing
The US has obliged the Philippines to provide it with a broad range of locally provided services that would enable it to launch and sustain operations from the Philippines when necessary.

In November 2002, the US and Philippine governments signed the Mutual Logistics Support Agreement (MLSA), which researchers with the US Congressional Research Service describe as "allowing the United States to use the Philippines as a supply base for military operations throughout the region".

The MLSA obliges the Philippine government to provide the US with logistical supplies, support and services during exercises, training, operations, and other US military deployments. These supplies include food, water, petroleum, oils, clothing, ammunition, spare parts and components, billeting, transportation, communication, medical services, operation support, training services, repair and maintenance, storage
services, and port services. "Construction and use of temporary structures" is also covered.

In other words, through the MLSA, the US has secured for itself the services that it would normally provide itself inside a large permanent base but without constructing and retaining large permanent bases - and without incurring the costs and the political problems that such bases pose.

Forward operating base
Finally, the United States has succeeded in indefinitely stationing a US military unit in the country. Since 2002, a unit now called
the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines (JSOTFP) has been deployed to the southern Philippines. Contrary to the US and Philippine governments efforts to present the troops belonging to the unit as part of temporary training exercises, this unit has maintained its presence in the country continuously for the last six years. With the Philippine government not setting an exit date, it will continue to be based in the Philippines for the long haul.

The unit, which is composed of about 100-500 mostly Special Forces troops, is headquartered inside a Philippine military camp in Zamboanga City, but its "area of operations", according to a US military publication, spans 8,000 square miles, covering the entire island of Mindanao and its surrounding islands and seas. With various military facilities now being constructed for their use, members of the unit refer to their bases in Mindanao as "forward operating base-11" and "advanced operating base-921".

Though US and Philippine government officials have consistently claimed that the unit is not involved in actual combat, US troops themselves describe their mission as "unconventional warfare" and "counter-insurgency" operations in the country. They have confirmed that they join Filipino troops on patrol, provide them with intelligence, and assist in various aspects of their operation. Eyewitnesses claim to have seen them in the vicinity of operations. Most recently, US troops have been accused of joining Filipino soldiers when they perpetrated what was described as a massacre of innocent civilians in Sulu.

In terms of profile and mission, the JSOTF-P is similar to the Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa (CJTF-Horn of Africa) - which was established in Djibouti in eastern Africa in 2003, also composed mostly of Special Forces, and which has been described as the "model for future US military operations".

Greatest potential competitor
Taken together - the increasing troop deployments, the construction of more and more infrastructure to guarantee US military mobility, the designation of facilities as "cooperative security locations" to be used by the US military when needed, the assurance of support services in case of operations, and the indefinite stationing of US troops in the country - have significantly improved the US ability to operate in and from the Philippines, thereby locking the country firmly within the US global posture.

The determination to ensure and strengthen this ability cannot be adequately explained by the supposed threat posed by local or regional "terrorist" groups in the Philippines and in Southeast Asia. As brutal or as violent as the deeply splintered Abu Sayyaf Group has been in its operations, for example, the threat that its remaining 300 or so members pose to the US is quite low and cannot explain the magnitude, the form, and locations of US presence in the country. Not only doesn't the Abu Sayyaf pose an existential threat to the US, neither does it affect US strategic interests or limit its freedom of action in country or beyond. Nuisance does not a national security threat make.

Rather, the US military presence in the Philippines appears to be part of the US drive toward global military dominance in general, and, in particular, of the emerging US strategy towards China - the one power that has now been officially identified by the US as posing the greatest challenge to its global supremacy. As indicated by the series of provocative pronouncements by US officials against China in the past years, the actual US moves to encircle it with military bases and other forms of military presence, and its ongoing efforts to enlist various countries on its side and assemble a de facto anti-China coalition in Asia, US military basing in the Philippines appears to be part of what its advocates have proposed as a strategy for preserving US lone-superpower status by preventing the rise of potential rivals.

Location, location, location
If such a strategy is indeed being put into action, the Philippines appears to be of crucial strategic importance. Since the late 1990s, a growing chorus of US military strategists and foreign policy thinkers concerned with China's rise have warned about the deficiencies in the US military presence in Asia, particularly in Southeast Asia. In their recommendations for addressing this, the Philippines has since been repeatedly explicitly singled out as among the countries in which the US must move decisively to regain its presence. As various studies have concluded, in any possible face-off with China - whether in a long-drawn out competition or in an outright confrontation - the Philippines, by virtue of its location, can be pivotal.

At the same time, the US does not have many other choices. Other countries in the vicinity of China are either geographically less than ideal, or else, have proven to be unwilling to consent to US requests for basing or access. While Singapore, for example, has proven more accommodating to the US than others, its small size is seen as limiting US options. Indonesia and Malaysia, on the other hand, have not only openly castigated US actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, they have also rejected US demands to station in and operate from their countries. Even Thailand, which is a close US ally, has actually rejected US overtures to be allowed to station ships in or to deploy troops to its territory. Regardless of their attitudes toward the United States, most countries in the region simply do not see China as a threat and have therefore refused to go along any strategy that could antagonize it.

Hence, the United States finds that it needs the Philippines more than ever. Not only is it ideally located geographically, its government has so far stood out among its neighbors for being far more willing to align itself with US demands. But with China also aggressively courting Filipino leaders, this too could change. As the ensuing geopolitical competition heats up, the Philippines could tip the balance one way or the other.

Herbert Docena is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org) and a research associate at the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South.

(Posted with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus)








Alan L. Maki
58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763
Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell phone: 651-587-5541
E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

Check out my blog:

Thoughts From Podunk

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Global steel industry awaits auto turnaround as layoffs on the Iron Range mount and MN DFL twiddles thumbs

Statement of the Iron Range Club of the Communist Party, USA

Barack Obama in an Easter Sunday holiday message had the nerve to lie to the American people about the nature of the economic depression we are in. Obama said he sees "glimmers of hope."

We ask: Where are the "glimmers of hope?"



Obama has not been to the Iron Range.

We ask: Where's the change?



Here on the Iron Range there are no "glimmers of hope;" only the despair that accompanies growing growing joblessness and dire poverty making the Iron Range, what Alan Maki has referred to "the Appalachia of the North with the same pits, pollution and poverty."

The economic situation and social conditions are worsening by the day on the Iron Range as working class families are now experiencing dire economic straits our grand parents tell us they have not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930's.

We and our grand parents were assured such conditions would never come about again.

We were told that Karl Marx was wrong. We were told that the capitalist system could be managed by flaky, weirdos like John Maynard Keynes and Alan Greenspan.

This generation was assured by the best paid economists Wall Street could buy that this generation would never live through an economic depression where the capitalist system collapses.

Yet, today, all economic indicators--- contrary to Barack Obama seeing "glimmers of hope," are pointing to the worst depression ever along with all the misery for working people such a catastrophe will most certainly entail as this "ball continues to drop" if we don't push back against Wall Street, and push back hard.

Larry Summers, Director of the National Economic Council--- Barack Obama's chief economic adviser--- describes the economy like a "ball dropping from the table that has not stopped falling."

Something is terribly wrong with this entire scenario. We are being played for suckers and fools as if we do not have the brains or capacity to reason and think.

Vice-president Joe Biden stated months ago that he and Obama are trying to "dropkick the ball." Here we are, months later, with Larry Summers telling us "the ball is still dropping" and hasn't even touched the ground yet.

Key to Obama's lies is that he continues to state economic troubles were caused by the "crisis in the housing market." This is an outright lie. The housing market, sabotaged by a bunch of greedy crooks not of which one has been prosecuted to date as millions of people lose their homes, is part of the problem; part of the problem contributing to the main problem. But not the primary source of the problem that Barack Obama and his over-paid economic advisers are well aware of but refuse to acknowledge because to do so would expose the capitalist system for what it has become: rotten to the core.

The present crises the capitalist economic system is experiencing is the direct result of the corporate assault on the standard-of-living of the working class that has been well underway in this country for over thirty years, and Wall Street has intensified this assault on the working class over the last eight years of Republican domination over our lives while Democrats sat back like cowards and did nothing.

The problem is one from which the capitalist economic system cannot escape:

Workers not being paid enough to purchase back what they have produced. Most working people in the United States have been receiving poverty wages; unable to purchase even the minimal basic necessities required to live decent lives.

Capitalist exploitation is THE PROBLEM. Capitalists stealing the wealth created by the working class is the source of this economic mess.

Common sense tells us that if the wealth created by the many is being constantly stolen by the rich few there is going to be severe economic problems down the road; we are now at the end of that road.

High-paid corrupt union leaders like Leo Gerard, Ron Gettelfinger and John Sweeney have worked in cahoots with big-business in forcing concession after concession from the very workers whose dues are paying their big fat salaries when they should have been putting the unions' resources into organizing the unorganized. Instead, they plowed union dues into supporting Barack Obama and the Democrats who are now kicking workers in the head while down on the ground.

How else can one explain taking away the homes of working people who are jobless and going hungry?

A moratorium on all foreclosures and evictions should have been and still is the NUMBER ONE requirement needed by hard-hit workers. This is so basic to common human decency we Communists should not even have to be stating this.

Minnesota Senator David Tomassoni could not even get the vote of one single Democrat in support of "the Minnesota People's Bailout." And the United Steel Workers and United Auto Workers unions are pumping money into getting these servants of the Chamber of Commerce, the mining, auto, banking and power industries elected!

If Senator Tomassoni and any other DFL'ers who consider themselves "progressive" don't see the need to leave the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party after this (first it was betrayal and sell-out on saving the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant) now these same rotten Democrats have defeated "the Minnesota People's Bailout" which would have halted foreclosures and evictions so widespread across the Iron Range and the rest of the state and the entire country.

Now these same Democrats are kicking the living daylights out of the working class at every opportunity; not missing an opportunity to kick workers in the head. Case in point: the auto workers; and miners right here on the Iron Range.

No two unions did more to help elect Barack Obama and the Democrats than the United Steel Workers union (USW) and the United Auto Workers union (UAW).

Steel workers and auto workers are now getting kicked in the head by Barack Obama and the Democrats without any help from the Republicans.

What does this tell us about the two-party system?

It should tell us what Communist Party leaders William Z. Foster and Gus Hall said over and over again:

Labor needs its own political party.



The time has come for working people to get up off the ground and fight back.

Since the labor "leadership" is not willing to fight back; the rank-and-file is going to have to stand up and slug it out with these corrupt and wholly incompetent labor leaders, the Democratic Party and Wall Street.

Military recruiters are not shy about walking into our public schools trying convince our children to go fight Barack Obama's dirty imperialist wars.

A third of the ore that has been taken from the ground on the Range has gone into wars and militarism as our children die in these senseless wars that Barack Obama said were "stupid" when he wanted our votes.

Barack Obama and the Democrats are not as eager to solve our problems as they are to ship our kids off to war.

In fact, to a large extent the social and economic problems we are experiencing are directly related to these dirty imperialist wars.

As Alan Maki has pointed out, we need "800 public health care centers spread out across the United States instead of over 800 U.S. military bases dotting the globe."

On this Easter Sunday, we on the Iron Range don't see Barack Obama's "glimmers of hope."

The steel and auto industries need to be nationalized and brought under public ownership and the democratic control of the people.

We will not get a "people's bailout" until we organize some kind of "people's lobby" as part of a "massive people's front" in the struggle for an end to foreclosures and evictions and a legislated minimum wage that is a real living wage directly based upon and tied to all cost-of-living factors.

Polls now show the American people have completely lost confidence in capitalism.

The same polls demonstrate that the time is now to place socialism on the table; socialism is the only way working people are ever going to get out of this economic mess.

The time has come for working people to create a people's political party to challenge the monopolies for power, and put us on the high road to peace and jobs through socialism.

We ask Barack Obama and the lying, warmongering Democrats: Where's the change?

As the article below points out, the steel and auto industries are the key to any healthy economy.

We ask: Does anyone see any indication of these two industries ever recovering again under capitalism?



China bailed is out and saved thousands of jobs for us here on the Iron Range.

Now that Chinese "leaders" have betrayed their people like union "leaders" here and jumped in bed with Wall Street after having been sold a bill of goods by Alan Greenspan, the CATO Institute and the Heritage Foundation that capitalist markets could provide a "quick fix" to their problems there is no place else for us to look other than to our own strength which comes through our own working class unity in getting out from under this mess.

Make no mistake, this economic mess was made by Wall Street capitalists in their never-ending drive for profits; there is no reason for the working class to have to shoulder the burden by way of being driven into poverty to get these vultures and parasites out of this mess that they created.

The corporate CEO's and bankers who created this mess are walking away with multi-million dollar "unemployment checks"--- our tax-dollars; and Barack Obama and the Democrats who expect our votes can't even come up with unemployment checks for workers from time of unemployment until time of re-employment as part of a "people's bailout." This is a disgrace.

We ask: Where's the change?



Since working people are called upon to solve the problems we had no part in creating, we need to resolve these problems in a way that benefits the working class by improving the lives of working class families and not Wall Street pigs gorging themselves at the public trough provided courtesy of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party at our expense.

Again, we ask Barack Obama and the Democrats: Where's the change?



In response to those still saying: "Give Obama a chance;" we say:

Join the Communist Party.

Join the fight for peace and jobs through socialism.

Iron Range Club, CPUSA






Global steel industry awaits auto turnaround

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090412/bs_wl_afp/commoditiesmetalssteelsector


PARIS (AFP) – Steel is on edge and the global industry is cutting back hard, hanging on for either a budget blast from China, new credit for vast Middle Eastern building schemes or resurrection of the US auto industry.

Demand has dwindled and steelmakers, notably the giant of them all, ArcelorMittal, are damping down surplus furnace capacity while waiting for credit to flow, construction cranes to turn and factories to roll.

A decision by ArcelorMittal last week to pursue temporary production cutbacks, slashing European output by more than half from the end of April according to a union source, dramatises the extraordinary ride and role of steel in the last few years.

In just months the global industry has gone from a boom driven largely by China, emerging markets and a property extravaganza in the Middle East to a narrow line between excess capacity and the costs of waiting for recovery.

"Over the past six months, demand for steel has dropped dramatically and, as a result, producers have been cutting production," analysts at Barclays Capital said in a study last week.

In another report, Morgan Stanley predicted "the current demand shock to lead to excess steel capacity."

Consequently, the bank said, steel plants should operate at rates below 75 percent of capacity until 2012.

"The steel market is not very different from base metals as a whole, but steel has reacted more rapidly and dramatically since September," said commodities analyst Perrine Faye of London-based FastMarkets.

She said the future of the steel industry depended on three factors -- the impact of Chinese economic stimulus efforts, a pick-up in the Middle East construction sector and a revival of the once mighty US auto industry.

"Chinese imports and exports are at a standstill. Everyone is waiting for the Chinese stimulus package to see if it will revive demand."

The Chinese government last month announced a four-trillion-yuan (580-billion-dollar) package of measures that it said could contribute 1.5 to 1.9 percent to the country's economic growth.

Industry experts have meanwhile spoken optimistically of China's prospects.

Thomas Albanese, chief executive at steel maker Rio Tinto, said earlier this year that the company foresaw "a short, sharp slowdown in China, with demand rebounding over the course of 2009, as the fundamentals of Chinese economic growth remain sound."

Analysts have said steel inventories are falling in China in anticipation of projects expected to emerge from the country's huge stimulus package.

"It is encouraging that the inventory of steel products, especially long products, which are mostly used in construction projects, have started to fall (since the end of March), likely suggesting that end-demand is gathering momentum," Frank Gong, a Hong Kong-based economist for JPMorgan, wrote in a research note.

On-the-ground evidence suggested that the Chinese industry had been re-stocking in the first two months of the year, followed by a pause in March before major infrastructure projects were expected to start in the second quarter, Gong wrote.

In the Middle East, according to Faye, the big problem is a shortage of credit, notably for real estate developers and builders.

Construction planners had "counted on a higher price for oil and on credit to finance their huge projects."

In addition, demand for such facilities, especially in the Gulf, has died.

"They were hoping that Americans and Europeans would buy apartments. But property prices have collapsed in the Middle East as well."

In the United Arab Emirates more than half the building projects, worth 582 billion dollars or 45 per cent of the total value of the construction sector, have been put on hold, a study by Dubai-based market research group Proleads found in February.

In Dubai, one of the states of the UAE, prices in the real estate sector have slumped by an average of 25 percent from their peak in September after rallying 79 percent in the 18 months to July 2008, according to Morgan Stanley.

Faye said the fate of the steel sector was in addition tied to that of the struggling US auto industry, once a thriving steel market but one in which two of its giant players, General Motors and Chrysler, are staring at bankruptcy.

The two companies are currently limping along thanks to billions of dollars in government aid.

"We are waiting to see if the auto sector in the US will get out of the crisis intact," she said.

The United States has 800 military bases on foreign soil...

What we need--- instead--- is 800 public health care centers spread out across the United States where people can universally access, for free, all their health care needs from pre-natal care, to general health care to eye, dental and mental care right through to burial.

Instead of moving in this progressive direction, President Barack Obama and the United States Congress are moving in a most reactionary direction towards establishing military bases in outer space as they seek to insure the profits of both the merchants of death and destruction and the profit-driven health care industries... talk about skewed priorities and your wacky ideas devoid of common sense.

In addition to these 800 U.S. military bases on foreign soil, Barack Obama and the United States Congress continue funding--- with our tax-dollars--- the Israeli killing machine to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.

A network of 800 public health care centers spread out across the United States would create over four-million good-paying, decent jobs--- talk about your "economic stimulus" package!

We would be planting the seeds of socialism while helping to eradicate poverty as we keep people healthy and get them well when sick.

Think about this kind of solution in relation to what Barack Obama, the U.S. Congress and the Wall Street bankers and coupon clippers are offering the American people, and the peoples of the world... just what is the reason for bailing out the banks and AIG and maintaining more than 800 expensive U.S. military bases of foreign soil?

The Mt. Carmel Clinic in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada offers us a glimpse at what militarization and wars continue to rob us of.

The problems created by Wall Street will not be solved as long as the military-financial-industrial complex is allowed to squander human and natural resources on militarism and wars... we might just as well be dumping these resources out into the ocean... at least no one would die in wars.

These merchants of death and destruction must be stopped if humanity is to survive in a livable world.

The time has come to talk about the working class Marxist politics and economics of livelihood... capitalism has failed humanity miserably and left us a real mess.

Something for working people to think about and discuss around the dinner table... the capitalist sooth-Sayers certainly are not going to broach such solutions to the problems of working people as they hide behind the skirt of Rosy Scenario as this global capitalist economic depression intensifies.

Alan Maki

The big lie about AIG

The big lie about AIG:

From---

U.S.News & World Report (see complete article following my comments)


What's Good, What's Bad About the AIG Bailout

“It's keeping AIG's insurance businesses stable. Here's something that's really startling: The entire problem at AIG was caused by one unit, the Financial Products division, whose employees constituted less than one percent of AIG's overall workforce. AIG's insurance units - the core of its business - essentially had nothing to do with the fiasco. But if AIG had been forced to liquidate, it could have affected the insurance units and millions of policyholders. With a more orderly process underway, the policyholders are now completely protected.”

This is the truth:

The entire problem at AIG was caused by one unit, the Financial Products division

But if AIG had been forced to liquidate, it could have affected the insurance units and millions of policyholders. With a more orderly process underway, the policyholders are now completely protected.



Question:

Who are these AIG “policyholders?”

Answer:

These AIG “policyholders” are the largest multi-national corporations in the world… and include corporations from every industry, from media to banking/mortgage to auto and steel to toys.





Question:

What kind of insurance policies have the multi-national corporations purchased from AIG?

Answer:

These “policyholders” have purchased insurance from AIG to protect their profits.





Question:

What kind of “claims” are they filing?

Answer:

These multi-national policyholders are making claims based upon their loss of profits due to the recession/depression.





Comment:

Our tax-dollars are paying on “claims” being filed by these multi-national corporations for losses in profits as the economy goes south.



Comment:

While the disgraceful tens of millions of dollars in executive “bonuses” paid by AIG are now the justified topic of wide-spread discussion; these “bonuses” are being used a “Trojan Horse” of sorts by the media and politicians who don’t want to disclose to the American people where the hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars are going.



Comment:

Make no mistake, the $170,000,000,000.00 (one-hundred seventy billion dollars) paid out to AIG is just the beginning… as the depression deepens these multi-national corporations will continue filing claims and AIG will have to honor the policies these corporations purchased to protect their profitability… our tax-dollars are going directly into the pockets of the Wall Street coupon clippers and the very mortgage company crooks who ripped off the American people.



Comment:

For the American tax-payer, there is nothing “good” about the bailout of AIG… except to the stock and bondholders and bankers and mortgage companies and the big industrialists and investors who will continue to pocket profits at tax-payer expense, everything about the AIG “bailout” is bad.



Conclusion:

The “bailout” of AIG with our tax-dollars is doing nothing but stabilizing Wall Street “profits.”

AIG’s insurance business is the business of protecting multi-national corporations against a loss in profits.

Once the tax-dollars stop flowing into the coffers of AIG and flooding out to the multi-national corporations, the world stock markets will collapse and we will be in the midst of the worst capitalist economic depression humanity has ever known--- complete with all the accompanying human misery and social strife one would expect--- now being widely predicted by many diverse voices.

On top of all of this, the American dollar will become worthless and we will be forced to purchase oil with Euros and Rubles… then what?

And if the Chinese aren’t dumb enough to buy into the American capitalist economic mess… then what?

In spite of what the highest-paid capitalist sooth-Sayers are telling us, capitalism as an economic system is finished… it is time to explore a socialist solution where production takes place to solve human needs rather than for profit… there is no other solution.

The multi-national corporations purchased insurance policies to protect their profits against recession/depression incurred losses from AIG, a private--- for profit--- insurance company, which assumed the risk in underwriting such policies.

The multi-national corporations did not purchase insurance policies from the United States government; so why should tax-payers be the ones paying out on these claims?

This is the biggest corporate swindle in history… in comparison, Bernie Madoff is a piker… we are being played for suckers.

We need a national “people’s bailout” based on the “Minnesota People’s bailout.”

The time has come to take a “left turn” to get us off this road to perdition as the capitalist system collapses.

Big-business created this economic mess as they reaped the profits while leaving working people with ALL the problems.

Alan L. Maki





U.S.News & World Report
What's Good, What's Bad About the AIG Bailout

http://biz.yahoo.com/usnews/090317/17_whats_good_whats_bad_about_the_aig_bailout.html?.&.pf=insurance


Tuesday March 17, 1:52 pm ET
By Rick Newman

"There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce."

The latest surreal twists in the AIG bailout bring to mind Mark Twain, who could spot folly as if he were hunting for it with a spyglass. Had Twain had AIG to work with as raw material, we'd probably have another couple dozen enduring epigrams skewering the greedy and the foolish.

Many Americans would like to finish the farce and simply cut AIG off, especially now that the company has paid $165 million in bonuses to executives at the very unit that nearly caused the firm's downfall and triggered an unprecedented taxpayer bailout that now totals $170 billion. To almost everybody, it seems self-evident that traders shouldn't be rewarded for wrecking their company and then burning through vast amounts of public funds. Yet AIG insists it is legally obligated to pay the bonuses, because of contracts signed before the damage occurred and taxpayers got involved. There have also been suggestions that the rascals who devised these complex derivatives deals may be the only ones who know how to unwind them, so AIG has no choice but to keep them around - and pay for the privilege of their company. In other words, the bonuses amount to extortion.

Okay. Breathe deep. Think calming thoughts. Find your center. Amidst this outrage, it's worth keeping in mind that the AIG bailout is actually doing some good. It's also a kind of learn-as-you-go experiment that's never really been done before. Here's a rough scorecard of what's working and what's not:

What's working

The AIG bailout has helped stabilize the financial markets. Take a moment to revisit September 2008. That's when Lehman Brothers failed, Merrill Lynch almost did, and AIG would have been forced into a chaotic bankruptcy if the feds didn't arrange an emergency $85 billion loan. With a bit of hindsight, it's starting to seem that AIG, which brokered more than $2.5 trillion worth of derivatives known as credit-default swaps held by many of the world's biggest banks, was the death star of that troubled troika.

We've survived the Lehman bankruptcy, after all, and Merrill found a buyer. "The real surprise wasn't Lehman Brothers, it was AIG," Frederic Mishkin, a Columbia Business School professor and former member of the Federal Reserve Board, said in a recent speech. "Who would have thought that an insurance company would have been affected by all this? When that happened, all bets were off."

All that federal money has helped AIG redeem some of those derivatives contracts, getting them off its books and out of the system. The financial markets still aren't back to normal, but they're heading in that direction. Forestalling another industrial-strength financial failure, and the chain reaction it would have triggered if AIG had collapsed, has certainly helped.

It's also helping AIG unwind itself. AIG's problems snowballed in September when suddenly it had to produce billions of dollars worth of collateral to back up those credit-default swaps. The collateral call was triggered by an unexpected drop in AIG's credit rating, along with the plunge in value of mortage-backed securities around the world. AIG didn't have the cash, and to come up with it, the only option would have been to sell off illiquid assets like its highly profitable insurance divisions or its aircraft leasing company. Try doing that in a week.

Had AIG been forced to liquidate those assets, it would have had to accept fire-sale prices, which would have led to a sudden collapse in the prices of other similar assets and companies throughout the world. AIG would have gotten pennies on the dollar for valuable assets and many other businesses would suddenly have been devalued, too.

AIG is still in the process of selling off assets, to pay off the government loans that effectively served as its collateral. But it's doing that in a more orderly way, seeking the highest bidders and the best terms. That's generally good for everybody, and it's also the best way for taxpayers to get most or all of their money back.

It's keeping AIG's insurance businesses stable. Here's something that's really startling: The entire problem at AIG was caused by one unit, the Financial Products division, whose employees constituted less than one percent of AIG's overall workforce. AIG's insurance units - the core of its business - essentially had nothing to do with the fiasco. But if AIG had been forced to liquidate, it could have affected the insurance units and millions of policyholders. With a more orderly process underway, the policyholders are now completely protected.

What's not working

Revolting bonuses. It simply goes without saying that giving bonuses to the people who brought down AIG is a perversion of justice. Officials at the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Dept. should have put terms into the original bailout agreement that prevented this. They didn't. It was a chaotic time, and legitimate worries about a global financial collapse obviously clouded thoughts about rules to prevent rapacious traders from holding the government hostage. If it's any consolation, the $165 million bonus pool is relatively small. Still, it grates.

Counterparty payouts. AIG has used much of the $170 billion in government aid to basically refund money to big banks and other "counterparties," to cash out some of those credit-default swaps and reduce AIG's massive liabilities. That's sensible, and it's basically the original idea behind the "Troubled Assets Relief Program," which was intended to get the worst derivatives and other securities off the market.

The problem is that the government has apparently agreed to $105 billion worth of payouts - at the full face value of the securities. That means that banks like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Societe General and Deutsche Bank - among the world's most sophisticated investors - are taking no loss at all on securities that had a market value of half their face value or less when AIG redeemed them in full. It's like house prices falling in your neighborhood by 50 percent, and somebody coming in and buying one house for what it was worth at the market peak a couple years ago. And using a government loan to finance it.

Regulators at the Fed, Treasury, and other departments still haven't explained why the counterparties got all their money back. They're certainly going to be asked at upcoming Congressional hearings. But in a situation where just about everybody is taking a loss - taxpayers and consumers especially - it will be tough to make a case that the world's richest banks deserve full redemption.

Secrecy. We keep learning the terms of the AIG bailout well after the fact. Obviously there are times when the feds need to move quickly and can't have a 60-day comment period. But it's not the same crisis atmosphere as last fall. In general, we should learn the details of the bailout as they occur.

AIG strongly resisted releasing the list of counterparties that have been paid back with bailout money, for instance. As recently as March 5, Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Donald Kohn defended that secrecy, saying that firms might be reluctant to deal with AIG in the future if they knew their dealings could become public.

Then a week later, under mounting pressure, AIG released a list of counterparties. The world didn't end. AIG is also refusing to release the names of individuals in the Financial Products division who are getting bonuses. They may lose that battle too, since New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has asked for the names and started an investigation, much as he has with Merrill Lynch. Information is going to come out one way or the other, and AIG and its regulators should stop trying to protect the failing company any more than they already are. When AIG pays back that $170 billion in taxpayer money, they can keep all the secrets they want. In fact, once we've got our money back, the less we hear about AIG the better.





Alan L. Maki

58891 County Road 13

Warroad, Minnesota 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432

Cell phone: 651-587-5541

E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net



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