People Before Profit blog

REMEMBERING PAUL RICOEUR: 1913-2005 (French Philosopher)

Tue, 31 May 2005 03:56:00 +0000

5-30-05, 12;10pm

The May 24 New York Times has reported the death of one of Frances’s most famous philosophers (“Paul Ricoeur, 92, Wide-Ranging French Philosopher, Is Dead” by Margalit Fox”). Many of Ricoeur’s ideas are interesting even when they clash with the Marxist philosophical outlook. We can always learn from those who don’t share our philosophical commitments.

Fox quotes Dr. C. E. Reagan who said about Ricoeur, “In the history of philosophy, he would take positions that appeared to be diametrically opposed, and he’d work to see if there was a middle ground.” In that spirit I propose to see what middle ground Marxists might be able to share with Ricoeur ( I don't think we will find too many-- but at least two come to mind: peace is better than war and democracy is a postive good)) whose philosophy, forbiddingly, is a species of “phenomenological hermeneutics.”

This is not as bad as it sounds. Phenomenology is the “science” of how we experience the world and hermeneutics is a fancy word for “interpretation.” It comes from the Greek for ”interpret” (originally used for interpreting the Bible) and ultimately from the name of the Greek God “Hermes” (Roman Mercury) who was the messenger of Zeus.

Christopher Norris (The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. by Ted Honderich) wrote that Ricoeur found in his “middle ground” way of thinking a “kindred dialectic” with Marxism. Norris points out the double aspect of interpretation (it has a “positive” and “negative” moment). His interpretation of Freud is one example: the negative-- psychoanalysis looks for the past repressed information in the unconscious mind in order to find the positive-- a cure to repression and a new possibility for the future. He also sees this in Marxism: the negative-- class struggle, oppression, revolution leads to the positive-- a new society of human equality [hopefully].

G. B. Madson (The Columbia History of Western Philosophy, ed. by Richard H. Popkin) tells us that Ricoeur comes out of the tradition of the German Fascist philosopher Martin Heidegger(this sounds bad and it is bad but not as bad as it sounds). This tradition breaks with the mainstream of modern philosophy from Descartes through Russell and their contemporary followers (almost all philosophers but not professors of literature and cultural criticism).

The first part of the break is not so bad. Modern philosophers have a tendency to start with the isolated consciousness of a particular person, the ego, and then try to see how this ego can get to an external world independent of its own thinking mind. We can agree with Heidegger that human beings find themselves, “always already”, as Madson says “in a world.” Madson quotes Ricoeur: “The gesture of hermeneutics is a humble one of acknowledging the historical conditions to which all human understanding is subsumed in the reign of finitude.” No problem. We awake to find ourselves always already in a specific historical context-- e.g., I’m a French worker or a German bourgeois, etc. Let’s agree not to start with the ego. But we are going to go downhill from here.

We all agree with the historical consciousness as a starting point. We do not need Heidegger or his followers to tell us this. It is a basic core belief of Marxism already. Let us assume that I am a sugarcane cutter in 1950’s Cuba. My consciousness is determined by what Ricoeur calls its “historicality.” Madson says, “As Ricoeur characterizes it, effective historical consciousness is ‘the massive and global fact whereby consciousness, even before its awakening as such, belongs to and depends on that which affects it.” In other words, Mr. Cutter belongs to and depends upon the world dominated by Mr. Plantation Owner and overseen by Mr. President Batista (and globally Uncle Sam).

Ricoeur continues, “The action of tradition [effective history] and historical investigation are fused by a bond which no critical consciousness could dissolve without rendering the research itself nonsensical.” This leads to the conclusion, Madson says, that the Enlightenment is wrong in thinking effective history must be overcome in order to really understand the “truth.” When Ricoeur proclaims that truth is historical you begin to think he must be on to something. But wait!

We are informed that this way of thinking rejects the “correspondence theory of truth”. This is the theory accepted by Marxism. A proposition is true if it corresponds to a state of the external world. “My car is red” is true if and only if my car is red. But we find out, says Madson, that “a core tenet of philosophical hermeneutics is that genuine understanding is not representational but essentially transformative.” Mr. Cutter has been reading the Communist Manifesto and has decided that there is no correspondence between a just society and the world of Mr. Plantation Owner. He is told, “I’m sorry, but we don’t use the correspondence theory anymore.” What does it mean to say truth is transformative. Well, you read the Manifesto and it transforms you, you “appropriate” it and interpret it in your historical context-- Cuba 1950”s-- very different from Germany in 1848.

Mr. Cutter objects. He thinks the Manifesto is appropriate for any class society, that Marx and Engels had it mind to lay down general truths corresponding to the entire historical epoch of capitalism. Well then, we have missed “one of the most distinctive tenets of philosophical hermeneutics: The meaning of a text is not reducible to the meaning intended by its author.” Its meaning is now what you make of it.

Ricoeur is quoted: “The text’s career escapes the finite horizon lived by its author. What the text says now matters more than what the author meant to say, and every exegesis unfolds its procedures within the circumference of a meaning that has broken its moorings to the psychology of its author.”

This may be going too far. Original intent is important. We must first understand the text’ before we can interpret it. How to make sense of the phrase “what the text says now’? This means to Ricoeur something like “what it says to me”. But this sounds like relativism. Anyone can read Marx, etc., anyway s/he chooses. It is not relativism, says Madson. Philosophers in this school reject dogmatism and “maintain that it is never possible to demonstrate conclusively the validity of one’s interpretations, they also maintain, against all forms of relativism, that it is nevertheless always possible to argue for one’s interpretations in cogent, nonarbitrary, reasoned ways [the Enlightenment lives on!]. In other words... if our interpretations can reasonably lay claim to being true, they must adhere to certain argumentative criteria, such as coherence and comprehensiveness.”

Mr. Cutter decides that the Manifesto is both coherent and comprehensive and runs off to the mountains to join Fidel. Was he right to do so? Our philosophers, following Ricoeur, think that the purpose of interpretation, of understanding, of finding the “truth” is ultimately to better understand ourselves [the return of the ego]. They reject “objectivism” and want to suborn it to “communicative rationality.” People, Madson says, “reason together in such a way as to enable them to arrive at common agreements or understandings (however provisional) that enable them to live together peacefully, whether as members of a particular scientific discipline or as members of society.” A revolution would seem to be a braekdown of 'communicative rationality.' The war in Iraq would be another breakdown.

But Mr. Cutter and Mr. Plantation Owner can’t reason together. They don’t have a “human” relation-- only an exploitative economic one. What this philosophy represents is bourgeois liberalism. It represents “none other than the core values of liberal democracy.” Remember “truth” is not “objective.” It really is for these thinkers, “subjective.” Madson quotes Ricoeur: “The truth is... the lighted place in which it is possible to continue to live and think.” That really doesn’t say anything! Madson continues, “Ricoeur has asserted that “democracy is the [only] political space in which [the conflict of interpretations] can be pursued with a respect for differences”-- that is to say, with a respect for the pursuit of truth on the part of each and every individual human being. When all is said and done, the basic tenet of philosophical hermeneutics is that there is only one truth, which is the democratic process itself.”

Here is another quote from Ricoeur, from Le Monde [2004] (via BBC News): If I had to lay out my vision of the world... I would say: given the place where I was born, the culture I received, what I read, what I learned (and) what I thought about, there exists for me a result that constitutes, here and now, the best thing to do. I call it the action that suits.

This is an interesting quote, but what does it mean? This is true for everybody, including cats and dogs. It sounds like fatalism-- my actions are the result of my past history. A strange quote from someone associated with the exitentialist movement. Why not try thinking outside the box? Anyway, who cares what Ricouer meant? I can interpretet this to suit myself as long as I am coherent and comprehensive.

Mr. Cutter was right to run off to the mountains. In this class riven world where profits come before people this was the action that suits. The thinking of Paul Ricoeur cannot lead to the liberation of humanity from the bestial reality of monopoly capitalism and imperialism. We will have to evaluate him again when we live in a classless society. R.I.P.

Thomas Riggins is the book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at

Janice Rogers Brown’s Nomination to the DC Circuit—A Clear Threat to the Rights of Working Families

Tue, 31 May 2005 02:43:00 +0000

5-30-05, 10:45am

- President Bush has nominated California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown to a lifetime appointment on the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit—the second most powerful court in America.

- If confirmed, Brown will hear and decide cases involving working families’ fundamental rights and protections, such as the freedom to form unions and the right to safe workplaces.

- The D.C. Circuit hears more labor law cases than any other federal circuit court. It hears challenges to workplace safety rules and other important protections. The court’s decisions have national reach and affect the lives of tens of millions of workers and their families.

- Janice Rogers Brown has a dangerous and extreme legal philosophy that is completely at odds with working families’ interests and values.

- She calls programs such as Social Security “cannibalization” by senior citizens who are looking for “free stuff” from the government.

- She compares enactment of New Deal legislation such as the minimum wage and the 40-hour workweek to a “socialist revolution.”

- She compares “big government” to “slavery” and an “opiate.”

- She says the First Amendment protects racial harassment in the form of slurs in the workplace.

- She says leased employees shouldn’t ask the courts to find them eligible to participate in their employer’s pension plan because they represent a “new labor paradigm” that is “simply a matter of personal choice and private agreement” in which the courts should not interfere.

- Working families cannot risk having a judge like Janice Rogers Brown deciding cases on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Her nomination must be stopped.

SOUTH AFRICA: Remedying the medical brain drain

Tue, 31 May 2005 02:05:00 +0000

5-30-05, 10:12am

JOHANNESBURG, 27 May 2005 (IRIN) - The migration of doctors and nurses from Africa has taken a heavy toll of the continent's desperately overstretched health sector, according to a new study published in the British medical journal, 'The Lancet'.

Each migrating African health professional represents a loss of US $184,000 to the continent; the financial cost to South Africa, 600 of whose graduates are in New Zealand alone, is estimated at $37 million.

Researchers say the United Kingdom is especially to blame for the medical brain drain, with up to a third of practising doctors and 13 percent of its nurses born outside of Britain. By comparison, the figure for France and Germany is only around five percent.

The Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa has said that more than 300 specialist nurses leave every month, most of whom complain of poor working conditions and low wages at home. After four years' study, fully trained public-sector nurses in South Africa earn a starting salary of US $296 a month, rising to a maximum of US $716 a month.

Migrating health professionals are not unique to South Africa: in the last five years medical personnel have increasingly left the Southern African region as a whole to seek greener pastures in the more affluent West.

One of the worst cases of regional brain drain, cited by the Paris-based Institute for Development Research, is Zambia. A few years ago the country had 1,600 doctors; now there are only 400 in practice.

Lured by higher salaries and training, Zambian doctors have migrated to Europe, the United States and neighbouring Botswana, and according to a leading Zimbabwean financial newspaper, large numbers of doctors and nurses are also leaving Zimbabwe every month. In 2003 UK health officials and their South African counterparts agreed to tighten the screws on recruiting health professionals, including 'back-door' recruitment into Britain's National Health Services via the private sector.

Last year South Africa introduced a set of incentives aimed at retaining key medical staff, especially in under-resourced regions of the country.

The rural allowance targets professional nurses working in designated areas. Under the scheme, nurses working in underserved areas are entitled to additional stipends, ranging from 8 percent to 22 percent of their annual salary, depending on area and occupational category.

The scarce-skills allowance, which ranges from 10 percent to 15 percent of annual salary, applies to full-time health professionals in specified categories, such as dentists, pharmacists, radiographers, and nurses specialising in oncology, or intensive care.

Health department spokesman Sibani Mngadi told IRIN that while a 'comprehensive analysis' to gauge the success of the incentive schemes has yet to be undertaken, 'general reports suggest that it is paying off'.

One of the concerns raised in the Lancet report was the acute lack of adequate medical training facilities across the continent.

It was found that in sub-Saharan Africa, 24 out of 28 countries surveyed had only one medical school and 11 of them had no medical school at all.

Britain recently provided Malawi with US $193 million to increase the number of doctors and nurses in training by 50 percent, and raise salaries and pay for volunteer doctors and nursing tutors to cover the large number of open positions.

“Against terrorism, for truth and justice”

Tue, 31 May 2005 00:48:00 +0000

5-30-05, 8:50am

The Cuban chapter of the network of “In Defense of Humanity” networks calls on intellectuals, artists, union leaders, social activists, members of parliament and political leaders from our continent and other parts of the world to participate in the international conference “Against terrorism, for truth and justice”, to be held in the Havana Convention Centre from 2 to 3 June 2005.

In recent weeks, we have been outraged at how the government of the United States, self-proclaimed leader of the worldwide war on terrorism, protects the authors of monstrous crimes by virtue of its political alliance with Miami’s far-right sectors and its proven complicity in those crimes.

For months, US authorities ignored and even doubted the presence, in South Florida, of the renowned murderer Luis Posada Carriles, the confessed perpetrator of a chain of terrorist acts involving the placing of bombs in numerous Cuban hotels, a fugitive from Venezuelan justice and one of the men responsible, among other atrocities, for the blowing up of a civilian plane which claimed the lives of 73 people. During that time, this criminal enjoyed complete impunity, had access to the press and to his powerful friends in the US government. Only after Cuba’s repeated denunciation of this blatant double-standard and its media repercussions did immigration and customs federal services simulate an arrest which only extends this farce. As a result of this, the western hemisphere’s worst terrorist has been ridiculously and minimally accused of illegal entry into US territory. Numerous documents declassified by federal agencies, including the CIA, the FBI and the State Department, unquestionably demonstrate that Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, who freely walks the streets of Miami today, were responsible for sabotaging the Cubana flight in 1976 and that US authorities had prior knowledge of the crime.

Bosch and this group of Cuban-born terrorists were implicated in the murders of Chilean Minister of Foreign Affairs Orlando Letelier, his assistant, the American Ronnie Moffit, Chilean General Carlos Prats and his wife Sofia Cuthbert (all perpetrated at the service of the CIA and Pinochet’s DINA), and participated directly in the planning and execution of the sinister acts of torture, disappearances and murders of the so-called Plan Condor, in coordination with the CIA and security services of the Southern Cone military dictatorships.

Nearly thirty years later, the government which, in the name of its “war on terrorism”, is responsible for a veritable genocide in Iraq, questions the legitimacy of a request to extradite an international criminal, submitted by Venezuelan authorities and backed by that country’s parliament and supreme court. Over twenty US congress- people have backed the extradition request, while these facts receive more and more coverage in the US press. These murderers must be tried and convicted. The peoples of Latin America do not want vengeance, they demand justice. There is no justification for this double- standard nor any legal argument to turn down the request to extradite a renowned criminal and try his accomplices, trained by US special services, paid by the CIA for many years and protected by the White House, which will guarantee Bosch’s peaceful stay in Miami and today blocks Posada Carriles’ extradition.

In the name of the most elemental decency, the innocent victims of these terrorists and the right to truth, we demand that the US government immediately extradite Posada Carriles to Venezuela and try Orlando Bosch in Chile. We call on all men and women who love peace, freedom and justice to join in this demand.

“Humanity longs for justice”

GRANMA INTERNATIONAL/ONLINE EDITION

Discussions of the Cold War

Sun, 29 May 2005 04:57:00 +0000

5-28-05, 13:00pm

The question I think we should be asking is: was a policy of co-existence possible after WWII, had the U.S. continued Roosevelt's general policy and particularly provided the Soviets with the sort of reparations that Roosevelt suggested at the Yalta conference. Was what was bandied about in some circles before the developing cold war made it impossible to even think about, that is, a 'Finland solution' to Eastern Europe, possible. Finland remained a capitalist country with a strong left(social democratic led) and in effect was a 'protectorate' of the Soviet Union, in that it did not oppose the Soviets on any foreign policy issue(I have Finish social democrat friends who who in the past told me that the Finish schools avoiding any criticism of the Soviets in school texts). Was even a 'Tito' solution, that is, to work with Communist revolutionaries who were neither so beholden or willing to accept Soviet leadership(some thought rightly that the Chinese might be in this category, although those who expressed such thoughts were purged from the State Department and the Foreign Service).

The 'totalitarian theory,' which equates Joseph Stalin with Hitler makes it difficult to remember that Stalin had a world-view based on 'socialism in one country'(building Soviet power as the foundation for global socialism, protecting Soviet power by establishing buffer states around the Soviet union to thwart capitalist encirclement, and waiting for the contradictions within capitalism to deepen it general crisis and bring about the victory of socialism on a global basis. Keeping the capitalist states from attacking the Soviet Union, making it stronger and more self-reliant in a hostile world, was the essence of his thinking from the 1920s to his death in 1953. The practical effect of this thinking led Stalin to make deals with capitalist states and avoid direct commitments to support revolutionary movements, of which there are many examples. In the context of the global Communist movement, Stalin was a 'conservative,' in that he eschewed doctrines of actively promoting revolution, in Spain in the late 1930s, in Greece and China after the war, and for that matter, in Korea in 1950, where materials recently released on Stalin's communications with Mao Tse-tung, show Mao much more willing to fight in Korea than Stalin, who was supporting the idea of a buffer state around the Yalu and a North Korean government in exile in Peking.

On a much lighter note I thought of what might be if the various world leaders of 1945 came back and looked at events today. Roosevelt would probably laugh at a president as malapropic as Harding proclaiming a global crusade for 'democracy' while he attacks democratic rights at home, proclaims far-reaching presidential powers to defend the country from a 'war on terrorism' and seems to forget to forget three of the four freedoms, remembering only freedom of religion.

Hitler might be happy to see the Deutsche Bank back in Prague, Germany the Great economic power in Europe, the Soviet Union destroyed, and the Devil theory of Communism and 'internationalism socialism' of which he was the most famous adherent in the first half of the 20th century alive and well. He would of course be very hostile to the U.S., a power he identified with 'racial degeneracy,' being so influential in the world, hostile also to the European 'liberal' ideology connected to globalization, and most of all the influence of anti-racist thinking on the world scene, which he would probably attribute to the 'political correctness' of radical intellectuals polluting the pure Kultur of family values(kinder, kirche, kuche) civilization. If he could drop terms like 'JudeoBolshevik' and 'Aryan,' he might even become a ranter on talk radio and an occasional guest on Fox News. He would certainly be very confused about who eventually won the war.

Stalin, watching Bush give his Republican stump speech in Tsibilisi to his fellow Georgians would be even more confused. He would probably compose a rejoinder to all the writers who called him paranoid, contending that the capitalist encirclement and subversion that he condemned and launched great terroristic purges to stop had finally triumphed. He also might remember his comment to Roosevelt in 1945, 'how many divisions does the Pope have,' in a world where a former Hitler Jugend member and very late war Wehrmacht soldier is now Pope. Since he was never one to think dialectically, he might assume that the revolutionary movement was back to square one and advocate an underground strategy of the kind he participated in in Czarist Russia.

Churchill might be the most pleased. Not only are the Soviets gone, but so is the Socialist British Labour Party that he fought for so long and eventually defeated him in 1945. While I doubt he would have much respect at all for Bush and those around him(he didn't think that much of John Foster Dulles, from my reading, and Dulles looks like a rationalist compared to Rumsfeld et al) he never had Franklin Roosevelt's social vision. He might even smile at Bush's proclamations of a great age of democracy, remembering the British empire that he fought so hard to preserve proclaiming itself the exemplar of 'civilization, progress, and free trade,' as it built the largest colonial empire in human history in the 19th century.

Norman Markowitz

'Killing Their Own Poster Boy': Why Pat Tillman’s Parents Are No Longer Silent

Sun, 29 May 2005 01:48:00 +0000

5-28-05, 9:51 am

To kill with no pain Like a dog on a chain He ain't got no name But it ain't him to blame He's only a pawn in their game. – Bob Dylan When former Arizona Cardinals football player turned Army Ranger Pat Tillman died in Afghanistan, sonorous bugles moaned from coast to coast. We were told he died a 'warrior’s death' charging up a hill and urging on his fellow Rangers. His funeral was a nationally televised political extravaganza with Senator John McCain among others delivering eulogies over his open grave. Republican Rep. J.D. Hayworth was one of many singing Tillman’s praises. 'He chose action rather than words. He lived the American dream, and he fought to preserve the American dream and our way of life.' His Commander in Chief George W. Bush even took time during last fall’s Presidential campaign to address Cardinals fans on the Jumbotron at Sun Devil Stadium.

At the time, I wrote a small column stating that Tillman – who refused 'hundreds if not thousands' of offers by the Pentagon to shill publicly for the 'War on Terror'– would be repulsed by all the attention. I wrote that to Bush, McCain, and their pro-war ilk, Tillman was proving far more useful dead than alive. He had joined the Rangers for ideals like freedom and justice, but fought in a war for oil and empire. I wrote that the final injustice was that in death, even more than in life, he was little more than a 'pawn in their game.'

This observation didn’t click with the pro-war/occupation camp, as hate mail and death threats flooded my inbox. People claimed that the Masters of War were celebrating his heroism, not exploiting his death - and by not simply standing and saluting, I deserved a similar fate.

I want to know how the hate mongers and internet thugs feel now, knowing that they were duped about the real circumstances of Tillman’s death. Yes, once again the American people discover they have been lied to. Lied to by the same people who told us that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9-11, and that the US occupation was 'liberating' the people of Iraq by bombing their country to pieces and stealing their oil.

I can also only wonder if those so protective of Pat Tillman’s memory will exhibit a fraction of the bravery being shown by Pat’s parents Patrick and Mary. The divorced couple has decided to go public with their fury at a government that profaned the body of their dead son

Patrick and Mary now know that Pat did not die at the hands of the Taliban while charging up a hill, but was shot by his own troops in an instance of what they call 'fratricide.' Patrick and Mary now know that Tillman’s men realized they had gunned him down 'within moments.' They know that the soldiers – in an effort to cover up the killing of the All American 'poster boy' – burned Tillman's uniform and body armor.
They know that over the next 10 days, top-ranking Army officials, including the all too appropriately titled 'theater commander,' Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, hid the truth of Tillman’s death, while Pentagon script writers conjured a Hollywood ending. They know that the army waited until weeks after the nationally televised memorial service to even clue them in about 'irregularities' surrounding their son’s death. They know that the concurrent eruption of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal may have played a role in the cover-up, as the army attempted to avoid a double public relations disaster.

'After it happened, all the people in positions of authority went out of their way to script this,' Patrick Tillman said earlier this week to the Washington Post. 'They purposely interfered with the investigation, they covered it up. [T]hey realized that their recruiting efforts were going to go to hell in a handbasket if the truth about his death got out. They blew up their poster boy.'

Mary Tillman, like her ex-husband and son, a fiercely private person, spoke with a frankness that should put dissembling military planners to shame. 'It makes you feel like you're losing your mind in a way,' she said. 'You imagine things. When you don't know the truth, certain details can be blown out of proportion. The truth may be painful, but it's the truth. You start to contrive all these scenarios that could have taken place because they just kept lying. If you feel you're being lied to, you can never put it to rest.'

Now the Tillmans, consciously or not, are lending their voice to a growing chorus of military family members determined to speak out against this war. New organizations, like Gold Star Mothers for Peace and Military Families Speak Out, are made up of people handling their grief by refusing to be political props and instead making a country bear witness to their pain.

'Every day is sort of emotional,' Mary Tillman said. 'It just keeps slapping me in the face. To find that he was killed in this debacle -- everything that could have gone wrong did -- it's so much harder to take. We should not have been subjected to all of this. This lie was to cover their image. I think there's a lot more yet that we don't even know, or they wouldn't still be covering their tails. If this is what happens when someone high profile dies, I can only imagine what happens with everyone else.'

It is exactly for 'everyone else' dying throughout the Middle East, that we must follow the Tillmans’ example and regard silence as a luxury we can no longer afford.

--Dave Zirin’s new book 'What’s My Name Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States' will be in stores in June 2005. Check out his revamped website edgeofsports.com. You can receive his column Edge of Sports, every week by e-mailing edgeofsports-subscribe@zirin.com. Contact him at whatsmynamefool2005@yahoo.com.

Ideology over Science: Bush Threatens to Block Stem Cell Research

Sun, 29 May 2005 01:45:00 +0000

On August 9, 2001, Bush announced a new Federal policy that severely limited stem cell research in the United States. Now, a bipartisan group in Congress is working to eliminate the stifling restrictions the administration put into place. However, Bush has steadfastly refused to reconsider the issue, despite the fact that his own National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director admits that the President’s ideology is hindering scientific progress. Bush, who has yet to veto a single piece of legislation since he became President, is now threatening to veto a bill with overwhelming bipartisan support. As preparations are underway for the 2006 Congressional races, it is clear that President Bush is trying to mollify right wing conservatives who have made keeping the stem cell ban a priority.

While special-interests control the Republican Party, Americans across the country are pointing out that Bush’s stem cell policy hinders the search for medical cures. And America is loosing its technological advantage in stem cell research. The truth is a diverse set of stem cell lines is key to developing cures to diseases. The NIH director himself has admitted more cell lines would speed research. NIH director Elias A. Zerhouni noted in his testimony in front of Congress that there are inconsistencies in the right-wing position as many of the embryos that are in question would be destroyed at a certain point whether they are used for stem cell research or not. Bush is threatening to veto bi-partisan legislation offered by Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) and Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) and passed this week in the House. The bill would expand the number of embryonic stem cell lines eligible for federal research funding through the National Institutes of Health by removing the arbitrary August 9, 2001 date and impose strict ethical controls on the research. The bill moves to the Senate, where it also has bi-partisan support.

Rep. DeGette has worked on this legislation since before 2001 and was joined by Rep. Castle in the 2005 sponsorship. DeGette called this victory not only a victory for science guided by ethical controls that reflect our nation’s values but also for 'the 100 million Americans who have or know someone who has a disease like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Type 1 diabetes, cancers or nerve injuries.' Rep. Castle told the Wall Street Journal that the bill 'draws a strict ethical line by only allowing federally funded research on stem cell lines that were derived ethically from donated embryos determined to be in excess. ... This is consistent with current federal policy set by President Bush on August 9, 2001.'

The move for expansion of stem cell lines is supported by other influential Republicans, such as former First Lady Nancy Reagan. In May 2004, Nancy Reagan told a fundraiser for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation that stem cell research must be pursued 'to save families from the pain' of debilitating illnesses. 'I don’t see how we can turn our backs on this,' she said. 'We have lost so much time. I just can’t bear to lose any more.' [LA Times, 5/9/04]

Bush Administration Rejects Request for Extradition of Terror Suspect

Sun, 29 May 2005 01:42:00 +0000

5-28-05, 9:45 am

From Council of Hemispheric Affairs

The State Department’s summary and insulting rejection of the extradition request issued by the government of Venezuela for Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles was as shocking as it was predictable. The decision not to hand over Posada to be tried for his alleged role in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner which 73 innocent people were killed does violence to this administration’s respect for the rule of law. Yet this is nothing new for a White House which has a long history of selective indignation towards villainous acts committed abroad. Such a categorical rejection of the administration’s own antiterrorist rhetoric bears strong resemblance to its similarly hypocritical praise for the 2002 coup attempt against the democratically-elected Hugo Chávez, thus belying President Bush’s supposed commitment to the spread of democracy throughout the hemisphere. Worst of all, the Department of State has dishonored this country’s dead as a result of a terrorist act on September 11 by not honoring those murdered in 1976 when a bomb blew up on a Cuban Airlines flight over the Bahamas. A preponderance of evidence – some of it from the FBI and the CIA – and his subsequent acts of terror dispel any doubt that Posada is a world-class terrorist.

Just as it was entirely predictable that the Bush administration would reject the extradition request as a cheap slap in the face to its adversaries in Caracas, is the certain fate of Washington’s already precipitous decline in its standing throughout Latin America. The moral cynicism behind the State Department’s reluctance to extradite a major international terrorist suspect will certainly be pointed to by leaders of Latin America’s 'Pink Wave' as evidence of continued Yankee duplicity, and still another reason to disengage from the American hegemon.

While much of Latin America may be put off by Chávez’s style, they are not inclined to give any credence to the State Department’s claim that it does not extradite suspects for trial in a 'kangaroo court.' Foggy Bottom has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to extradite terrorist suspects to countries with a reputation for judicial integrity far below Venezuela’s, such as Syria and Uzbekistan – presumably because such lax judicial regulation will lead to the desired swift punishment for suspects. Embarrassingly to the average American, the joke has been circulating for weeks that the State Department would choose to turn down Venezuela’s extradition request for Posada on the eve of a Friday afternoon of a three-day national holiday, thus providing the slow news day environment in which indignation over his release would have time to cool down. This banal script was the exact one that the uncool Bush administration chose to follow.

But the administration’s decision was a fait accompli long before it was actually hatched. It has repeatedly revealed its inability to learn from its ethical pratfalls and to live by its own pretentious but non-observed standards, as evidenced by Bush’s nomination of the notorious intelligence manipulator, John Bolton, to be ambassador to the UN, and by the promotion of John Negroponte, who had a history of support for local death squads while he was Ambassador to Honduras. Additionally, the number two man in Bush’s National Security Council, Elliot Abrams, was an irresistable candidate for his post because he had to be pardoned by the first President Bush for lying to Congress during Iran-Contra. This White House has done itself and the nation a disservice by choosing to pander to the powerful Cuban-American interest groups in Miami rather than demonstrate its genuine dedication to the war on terrorism.

With Posada, Washington had a choice of maintaining the integrity of its already deeply troubled antiterrorism crusade or to cater to its hard right Miami campaign donors and political backers. Lamentably, there was never any mystery as to which road Washington would choose to take.

--Larry Birns is COHA’s director and Joseph Taves is a COHA Research Associate.

Groups Demand Inquiry into Bush’s Impeachable Offenses

Sat, 28 May 2005 00:57:00 +0000

5-27-05, 9:00am

A coalition of veterans’ groups, peace groups, and political activist groups announced a campaign today to urge that the U.S. Congress launch a formal investigation into whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses in connection with the Iraq war. The campaign focuses on evidence that recently emerged in a British memo containing minutes of a secret July 2002 meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top national security officials.

John Bonifaz, a Boston attorney specializing in constitutional litigation, sent a memo to Congressman John Conyers of Michigan, the Ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, urging him to introduce a Resolution of Inquiry directing the House Judiciary Committee to launch a formal investigation into whether sufficient grounds exist for the House to impeach President Bush. Bonifaz’s memo, made available today at , begins: “The recent release of the Downing Street Memo provides new and compelling evidence that the President of the United States has been actively engaged in a conspiracy to deceive and mislead the United States Congress and the American people about the basis for going to war against Iraq. If true, such conduct constitutes a High Crime under Article II, Section 4 of the United States Constitution.”

In February and March 2003, John Bonifaz served as lead counsel for a coalition of United States soldiers, parents of U.S. soldiers, and Members of Congress (led by Representatives John Conyers, Jr. and Dennis Kucinich) in a federal lawsuit challenging President George W. Bush’s authority to wage war against Iraq absent a congressional declaration of war or equivalent action. Bonifaz is the author of (NationBooks-NY, 2004, foreword by Rep. John Conyers, Jr.), which chronicles that case and its meaning for the United States Constitution.

The organizations forming the AfterDowningStreet.org coalition include: Global Exchange, Gold Star Families for Peace, Democrats.com, Veterans for Peace, Code Pink, Progressive Democrats of America, and Democracy Rising. These organizations, beginning today, will be urging their members to contact their Representatives to urge support of a Resolution of Inquiry.

Historical perspective: The Truth about the United States

Sat, 28 May 2005 00:49:00 +0000

5-27-05, 8:43am

A Cuban of universal stature had the opportunity to see first hand all the dangers implied by imperialism from the start: José Martí.

By 1880, US society was already capable of surprising a man like Martí, who by then had already spent time in Europe and several Latin American nations. The economic development and political system attained by that nation were different from everything else he had known. Nevertheless, Martí knew how to look beyond that and perceive some of the problems presented by US society, including the situation of immigrants, the duty of politicians to their country and the type of human being that was being formed. Thus, Cuba’s national hero demonstrated his concern for a country that while demonstrating a rapid material development, from the political point of view, could represent a threat for its neighboring nations to the south.

In March of 1894, Martí published in New York an article titled 'The truth about the United States' (Complete Works, Volume 28), which expresses his profound reflections on the northern nation and the contradictions within it: 'It is a mark of supine ignorance, of childish, punishable light-mindedness to speak of the United States, and of the real or apparent achievements of one of its regions or a group of them, as a total and equal nation of unanimous liberty and definitive achievements: such a United States is an illusion or a fraud. The hills of the Dakotas, and the barbarous, virile nation that is arising there, are worlds away from the leisured, privileged, class-bound, lustful and unjust cities of the East.'

Further on, in the same text, he writes, '(...) the bonds of union are loosening rather than tightening in the United States ... Rather than amalgamating within national politics, local politics divides and inflames it; instead of growing stronger and saving itself from the hatred and misery of the monarchies, democracy is corrupted and diminished, and hatred and misery are menacingly reborn.' A republic with those characteristics was not what Martí dreamed of for Cuba, or for the rest of the Americas, which is why he warns that 'an honorable man cannot help but observe that not only have the elements of diverse origin and tendency from which the United States was created failed – in three centuries of shared life and one century of political control – to merge, but their forced coexistence is exacerbating and accentuating their primary differences and transforming the unnatural federation into a harsh state of violent conquest.'

It was during the 1880s and 1890s that Martí’s political thought reached its highest development, and was consolidated in the struggle against Spanish colonialism and the expansionism of nascent US imperialism toward Latin America.

During those years, he had already learned from his trips through Europe and the young Latin American republics, where he engaged in praiseworthy intellectual labors and denounced the abuses of colonialism. He had the experience attained from preparing for a new war of independence for Cuba, in which he would fight not against the Spanish, but against the colonial government and system, without repeating the errors that caused the first war to fail.

In the United States, Martí dedicated himself to the arduous task of achieving unity among Cuban immigrants. On March 14, 1892, he founded the newspaper Patria, which he edited until he joined the Liberation Army. Regarding that publication’s objectives, he wrote, 'This newspaper is born, through the commitment and resources of Cuban and Puerto Rican independence advocates in New York, to contribute, without haste and without rest, to the organization of free men in Cuba and Puerto Rico (...).' This 'organization' that Martí refers to would turn out to be very important in terms of achieving the independence of the two islands and thus curbing the expansionist interests of the powerful Northern nation.

Shortly afterward, on April 10, 1892, he founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party, with the purpose of not only winning Cuba’s independence, but also fostering and aiding that of Puerto Rico. Other goals of this political organization, which proposed to 'establish (...) a new people, and one of genuine democracy,' was to ideologically prepare the armed struggle and achieve the internal organization of Cubans to win Cuba’s total independence. Only in that way could the island be kept from falling into the hands of the United States as a state or under the disguise of a protectorate or colony. Martí already knew the imperialist beast from within its entrails, and he knew that it had to be stopped or that it would end up swallowing all of Spanish America.

At that time, his idea of what kind of republic he wanted for his homeland was a mature one; it should be free of the stains of colonialism that offends and scorns, and of the vices of imperialism that denigrate and crush.

On May 19, 1895, José Martí was killed in his first battle for Cuban independence, struggling for the republic of which he had dreamed, one where 'the first law (...) should be reverence on the part of Cubans for man’s full dignity.' His anti-imperialist ideas remain an important instrument for understanding the problems currently threatening humanity. (Granma International)

Bush receives well-known accomplice of Posada at the White House

Sat, 28 May 2005 00:28:00 +0000

5-27-05, 8:29am

ON Friday, May 20 at the White House Oval Office, US President George Bush received a small Cuban-American delegation headed by terrorist Luis Zúñiga Rey, founder of the Cuban-American National Foundation’s paramilitary committee in Miami, which for years assured the financing and logistics of Luis Posada Carriles’ terrorist activities.

Zúñiga created and led the CANF paramilitary committee with Horacio García, Roberto Martin Pérez, Alberto Hernández and Feliciano Foyo. The international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles publically designated that committee and those individuals as his primary financial and logistical support.

That individual previously had been captured on August 1, 1974, near Boca Ciega, in Havana, when he was caught red-handed with a load of explosives and weapons, together with two other members of a terrorist commando who had infiltrated with the objective of carrying out attacks.

'DO IT AND YOU WILL BE WELL-COMPENSATED!'

Percy Alvarado, the famous Agent Frayle of Cuban state security, met Luis Zúñiga in Miami, during a mission.

'Zúñiga told me, face to face, that it was necessary to be violent and cold-blooded, calculating and merciless, to overthrow Fidel and the Revolution,' the Guatemalan recently recalled in a memoir.

'I can still see him that November night in 1993, when he proposed sinister plans by the CANF to set off powerful bombs in Havana’s Hotel Nacional and in a famous restaurant in that city.' 'He had no shame or concern for the consequences of the proposal he had just laid out for me: ‘Do it,’ he said, ‘and you will be well-compensated!’ A supply of weapons and explosives had to be organized so that my supposed cell would place the bombs in the hotels and tourist sites in Havana.'

'They also would give me eight capsules of live phosphorus to burn down cinemas and theaters full of innocent Cubans,' he recalled. 'During those nights of November and December of 1993, he had no pity, just irrational hate and a thirst for vengeance,' Percy Alvarado commented, adding that Zúñiga demanded that he study the vulnerability of Cuban hotels, thermoelectric plants and refineries for future attacks.

Former Agent Frayle specified that Zúñiga systematically recruited Cubans or visitors to the island to carry out acts of terrorism. In 1993, he charged him with blowing up the Tropicana nightclub in exchange for $20,000, making that proposal from his position as director of CANF.

Zúñiga is now executive director of the Cuban Liberty Council, an organization that brings together the most fanatical elements of the Miami mafia – several of them with pasts as CIA 'collaborators' – who supported, financed and supplied Posada’s criminal operations for decades.

A COWARDLY ATTACK ON FISHERMEN

The group received by the US president also included Eleno Oviedo Alvarez, arrested in Cuba on February 21, 1963, together with other members of a terrorist commando (Eumelio Viera Mollinedo, Domingo Martínez Cárdenas, Rafael Santana Alvarez, Juan Reyes Morales, Juan and Armando Morales Pascual and Agustín Viscaíno Pino) as they were unloading weapons and munitions on the Cuban coast.

Some of the prisoners admitted to having participated in an attack on Cuban fishing boats that belonged to a cooperative in Cárdenas, Matanzas, a week earlier, injuring two fishermen, Armando and Ramón López Ruiz. The attackers took both boats to Elbow Key, in the Bahamas, where the injured men were left to their fate.

Another of Bush’s guests was music businessman Emilio Estefan, a stockholder in Bacardí, which financed terrorist actions in Nicaragua, Angola and Cuba. Along with singer Gloria Estefan, he has generously sponsored organizations such as Brothers to the Rescue, led by terrorist José Basulto, who was a member of the CIA’s Operation 40, along with Luis Posada Carriles.

'The meeting took place at about 11:30 a.m. and lasted for some 45 minutes,' El Nuevo Herald reported, specifying that 'the subject of anti-Castro activist Luis Posada Carriles, who is being held in a detention center in El Paso, Texas, was not brought up.'

Tom DeLay: Judge Rules PAC’s Actions Illegal

Fri, 27 May 2005 23:53:00 +0000

5-27-05, 7:56am

A Texas judge ruled yesterday that a Political Action Committee (PAC) controlled by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) illegally used corporate donations to affect the outcome of Texas elections. The ruling is another blow to the embattled Republican in a drawn-out saga of corruption and influence peddling.

State District Judge Joe Hart ruled Thursday that Texas law is clear and that hundreds of thousands of dollars of unreported corporate and individual donations to Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC) were used to affect the outcome of Texas House elections in 2002.

More than $520,000 in donations and corresponding expenditures should have been reported to the Texas Ethics Commission, but were not. Further, corporate donations that need to be reported are the same sort of donations banned by law.

Republican state legislators, according to DeLay’s hometown newspaper the Houston Chronicle, tried to protect the Republican leader, their financial benefactor, by arguing that the state’s law banning corporate campaign contributions was unenforceable and vague. They also opposed a bill that would have made the state’s law on corporate donation’s indisputable.

The judge’s ruling came in a civil lawsuit filed against Bill Ceverha, treasurer of the political action committee attached to Texans for a Republican Majority, an organization that has provided hundreds of thousands of dollars not only to Texas Republican candidates but also to national Republican candidates.

As a result of the ruling, Ceverha will have to pay the plaintiffs in the lawsuit almost $200,000. Evidence for the plaintiffs included letters from officials of the political action committee to corporate donors vowing that the money they gave would be used to help Republican candidates.

DeLay’s ability to raise funds and to funnel those funds to the campaigns of Republican candidates is widely regarded as the main source of his strong influence on the Republican Party and his ability to enforce Party discipline in Washington.

The civil suit is separate from the Travis County grand jury indictments of three TRMPAC officials and eight corporations in connection with an investigation of alleged campaign violations.

The ruling in this lawsuit, however, strengthens the criminal case against officials who operated DeLay’s PAC by definitively stating that the use of corporate cash by TRMPAC to win Texas House elections was improper and illegal.

The grand jury, which has not indicted DeLay, may now have a broader case against the Republican Party’s number two person in the House.

According to a New York Times story in March, TRMPAC documents revealed that DeLay’s role in the day to day operations of TRMPAC, despite the congressman’s denials, was more active and direct than previously believed.

E-mails and memos released during the investigation show that DeLay personally forwarded at least one large corporate check to TRMPAC, and that he was in direct contact with lobbyists for some of the nation’s largest companies on the committee’s behalf.

One indicted TRMPAC fundraiser Warren M. RoBold told investigators that he was in direct contact with DeLay in 2002 about who to solicit funds from. According to the New York Times, documents provided to investigators showed that RoBold had asked that lists be made of major donors to TRMPAC, saying that “I would then decide from response who Tom DeLay” and others should call to help the committee in seeking a “large contribution.”

In another e-mail to RoBold, a political ally of Delay requested a list of corporate lobbyists who would attend a fund-raising event for the committee, adding that “DeLay will want to see a list of attendees” and that the list should be available “on the ground in Austin for T.D. upon his arrival.”

This activity is an apparent violation of House ethics rules, as it seems DeLay used his position and influence in Congress to solicit campaign donations for his PAC. It also appears to implicate DeLay in activity that Judge Hart ruled to be a violation of Texas law. The judge’s ruling in this case strengthens the criminal case against DeLay himself.

So far Travis County prosecutor Ronnie Earle has refused to say if he will bring an indictment against DeLay.

Read related articles here, here, here, here, and here.

--Reach Joel Wendland at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.

Report: Social Security is the Cornerstone of Retirement

Fri, 27 May 2005 23:38:00 +0000

5-27-05, 7:35am

Financial security for adults on the verge of retirement grew moderately stronger between 1989 and 2001, says a report released Wednesday by the Economic Policy Institute, and was fueled mainly by a strong growth in Social Security income.

According to the findings of economists Edward Wolff and Christian Weller, in a report titled, “Retirement Income: the Crucial Role of Social Security ” Social Security wealth increased $77,600, far more than private pension growth ($24,100) and all other wealth ($28,500) combined.

The study, sponsored by the non-partisan think tank, found that median-income households headed by someone between the ages of 56 and 64 became a little more able to replace at least 75 percent of its pre-retirement income and to count on income at least twice the poverty rate. This improvement came primarily because of the growth of Social Security wealth, not because of increased savings or because of a big showing by investments such as 401(k)s.

In fact, the study found that median-income households headed by someone between the ages of 56 and 64 had over four times as much Social Security wealth as private pension wealth to sustain them in retirement.

The growing trend of shifting retirement income from defined benefit pensions to private account-based plans has actually put a dent in the financial prospects of middle-income households with members nearing retirement. At the height of the privatizing trend and even with a rise in the stock market, private pension wealth declined from 1989 to 2001 for the median household in the 56-to-64 age group.

Despite the rise in stock market prices and the increasing value of family homes, the growth in income from Social Security has contributed by a count of 3-to-2, the increase in income derived from private investments and other property for middle-income households. “Social Security continues to be the bedrock on which most families are building their retirement,” said Wolff. “This remains true even in the midst of a historic run-up in housing values and a growing national focus on the aging of the baby boomers.”

Aside from contributing to the income of retired workers, Social Security is an important source of financial stability for disabled workers. The total Social Security benefit for disabled workers amounts to an average of $353,000 over that person’s lifetime.

The report further documents the importance of Social Security as the major source of retirement wealth for retiring people of color and single female-headed households. While these demographic groups shared the greatest financial difficulties in retirement, their retirement wealth grew dramatically in the period under study. This growth resulted mainly from increases in Social Security benefits.

The report also focused on the continuing wealth gap by race that hurts retiring minority workers. According to the study, the ratio of net worth of white workers aged 47 to 64 is well over 5 to 1 that of minorities. This fact contributes to a disparity in retirement wealth of up to 2.5 times for retiring whites.

While these numbers reflect a slight closing of the retirement wealth gap by race, the authors of the report show that the closure of the gap is due mainly to the growth of Social Security income not private account-based income.

Retirement wealth for whites grew by 34% and for minority retirees it grew by 122%. In the period of the study, retirement wealth from Social Security for minority retirees grew 49% for workers between the ages of 47 and 55, while their private pension wealth declined by 2%. Minority workers between 56 and 64 saw their retirement wealth from Social Security grow three times faster than their private-based retirement wealth. For minorities aged 65 and older, Social Security wealth grew by 129% and their private retirement wealth shrank by 7%.

The authors of the report argue that their findings show that private-based retirement plans have a poor record in providing for the needs of middle and lower-income workers. In fact, “The many ways in which Social Security has proven superior to private retirement benefits,” the authors insist, “should give pause to those who want to carve up Social Security through privatization.”

--Joel Wendland can be reached at jwendland@pliticalaffairs.net.

Democracy and Capitalism – Not a Pretty Couple

Fri, 27 May 2005 23:14:00 +0000

5-27-05, 7:17am

The actions of the United States in Iraq once again show that democracy and capitalism do not make a pretty couple. The problems that are inherent between the principles of democratic governing and capitalist economics are rarely more clearly expressed than during periods such as this. When the control of natural resources, in this case oil, demands military aggression, the mask that usually conceals the shortcomings of this union of politics and economics is removed and the pleasantries are tossed aside.

The U.S. President, his Cabinet, the U.S. House and Senate, and the military leadership rode into Iraq with the flag of democracy unfurled. The flaunting of such terms as “weapons of mass destruction” and “democracy” has greased the skids for transferring billions of domestic dollars from education, social welfare, and civil infrastructure programs to support the effort to “create democracy” in Iraq. To add insult to injury, many of those who have benefited most from the tax cuts over the past three years are also benefiting handsomely from construction and mercenary contracts paid for with these billions of “dollars for democracy.”

If the United States were merely attempting to breathe life into democracy in Iraq, our military would have been replaced by international peacekeeping forces long ago. Instead, it appears that plans have always included the construction of a dozen or more permanent U.S. military bases within the borders of this damaged, oil rich country. This permanent military buildup is intended to insure that Iraqi oil will flow through the hands of U.S. companies after the dust settles. The dust seems to be clearing far sooner than our leaders had planned. People the world over, and especially the Iraqis living the reality of foreign military occupation, are becoming painfully aware that this quest for control of natural resources outweighs the right of a people to determine its own destiny or to decide how and when to use the resources that they find beneath their soil.

Where does this leave us? No matter how one looks at it, the actions of the U.S. military and the consequences of our relentless grab for natural resources have our names written all over them. These policies and tactics all say Made in the U.S.A.

What can be done?! A critical look at the partnership of U.S. democracy and capitalist economics will offer some possibilities. First, do we have diverse representation within the elected chambers of our government? Far from it. Democrats and Republicans do not represent the broad spectrum of U.S. citizens that, if truly represented, could possibly temper the crassness of our capitalist economic system. A government of the primary beneficiaries of capitalist economics will certainly govern in the interests of their own extended families and friends. Putting these people in charge of election reform is laughable. It is truly time for considerable change in the way our democracy works.

Secondly, does the nature of capitalism lend itself to democratic governance? Will the Bush family along with all of their comrades within the Senate, the House, and the Cabinet and within the board rooms of the major global enterprises allow the Iraqi people to democratically control their vast oil reserves? Doubtful. Is this any more likely than the prospect of the U.S. electorate deciding how to divvy up the oil reserves under its own soil? Ownership and utilization of natural resources is the key to any economic system. It is truly time for considerable change in the way we assign ownership to natural resources.

We, as a national public and as a global society, need to think and talk about the relationship between economics and governance and take action. As a step toward a sustainable future, we must remove the U.S. military from Iraq, now, and replace it with health, safety and welfare task forces of monumental dimensions. Unfortunately the forces of greed, which are the muscle of our capitalist economy, will not be easily turned aside from their drive to control the oil wealth of Iraq.

--Contact Dale S. Scott at letters@democracywhenwherehow.org.

Bush Administration Attempts to Influence Global HIV/AIDS Policy

Fri, 27 May 2005 05:36:00 +0000

5-26-05, 13:35pm

In 2001, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria was established to coordinate international HIV/AIDS policies and distribute funding from many governments, health organizations, and religious institutions. The Global Fund has been successful by matching their programs to the specific needs of the nations most affected by HIV/AIDS. And The Global Fund has been willing to apply practical solutions for preventing HIV and treating AIDS, without being influenced by parochial religious viewpoints.

However, the Bush administration is now attempting to change that. This week, the administration forced The Global Fund to accept Randall Tobias, U.S. Ambassador for AIDS Coordination, as the chairman of the Policy and Strategy Committee. This will give the Bush administration undue influence on international HIV/AIDS policy, and will likely be a death sentence for many living with the disease.

In 2003, after pledging to spend $15 billion on international HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, the Bush administration created the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to oversee the disbursement of the funds and HIV/AIDS policy. Randall Tobias, a former Vice President of the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, was appointed to administer PEPFAR. Under Tobias’ leadership, the administration has been plagued by poor politics, bad medicine, and questionable ethics. The position of PEPFAR on the global use of AIDS medications has been consistently criticized since its inception. None of the $15 billion that PEPFAR distributes can be spent on generic drugs from foreign manufacturers, unless they have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Although the administration first characterized the global AIDS pandemic as a “crisis” in January of 2003, the FDA did not implement a fast-track program to approve generic AIDS drugs until almost a year and a-half later. The difference between the annual cost of generic versus brand AIDS drugs is very significant.

The annual cost of generic antiretroviral drugs per person averages approximately $140, compared to approximately $470 for brand drugs. Many foreign pharmaceutical manufacturers have successfully developed effective AIDS drugs. And the need for these drugs is staggering. Of the 28 million HIV-positive people in Africa, only 4% are receiving antiretroviral drugs. Yet it was not until January of this year, fully two years after the Bush administration referred to AIDS as a global crisis, that the FDA approved of generic drugs manufactured by a South African company.

In February, the Government Accountability Office, the non-biased investigative unit of Congress, released a report criticizing the administration for its position on the global use of AIDS drugs. The report stated that the administration’s plan is at odds with the strategies of international health groups and neglects the preferences of the nations in need. It criticized the Bush administration for not allowing the use or distribution of generic antiretroviral AIDS drugs that have not been approved by the FDA, given that the World Health Organization and other international health agencies have approved of multiple generic AIDS drugs.

The administration’s policy on AIDS prevention has severely influenced by conservative religious politics. Fully one-third of the international funds spent on prevention programs, approximately $130 million, are mandated to be spent only on promoting abstinence before marriage, and cannot be used to address the use of condoms or safer sex.

Ambassador Tobias gave a speech in 2003 in which he stated that condoms were not effective in preventing AIDS. Of course, this was contrary to commonly accepted medical science. His speech prompted the government of Uganda, one of the African nations with the highest rates of HIV/AIDS, to announce that condoms were no longer appropriate for use. Two months later, while speaking at the World AIDS Conference, Ambassador Tobias “flip-flopped,” to coin a phrase the administration used to their benefit in last fall’s election, when he corrected himself and stated that both condoms and abstinence can be useful in preventing the disease. Federal funding for domestic and international HIV/AIDS research by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been influenced by conservative religious politics. The National Institutes of Health is now required to subject grants to programs that pertain to sex outside of marriage to additional reviews before they can be approved. And scientists at both the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have complained that research proposals with the terms “homosexual,” “prostitute,” and “drug user” in their title are routinely rejected for funding.

The conservative Family Research Council, who, according to its literature, “champions marriage and family as the foundation of civilization, the seedbed of virtue, and the wellspring of society,” has close ties to President Bush. It publicly informed the Bush administration that it would not continue to support it if it sent a large number of condoms to Africa. Presumably, a small number of condoms being shipped to Africa, to prevent a small number of HIV infections, were acceptable.

Now that Ambassador Tobias has been installed as the leader of The Global Fund’s committee on HIV/AIDS policy, the Bush administration will almost certainly attempt to inject conservative religious politics into the organization. But rather than simply meddling with politics as usual, the administration will be meddling with the lives of millions of HIV/AIDS patients. And the prognosis is grim.

Amnesty International Calls for International Investigation of US Torture

Fri, 27 May 2005 02:43:00 +0000

5-26-05, 10:45 am

A report released by Amnesty International this week characterized the Bush administration’s 'war on terror' as making 'a mockery of President George Bush’s claims that the USA was the global champion of human rights.'

Torture at Abu Ghraib and 'mounting evidence of the torture and ill-treatment of detainees' held in US custody 'sent an unequivocal message to the world that human rights may be sacrificed ostensibly in the name of security,' the highly regarded human rights agency noted.

Continued mistreatment of prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, even after court orders demanded the administration alter its practices there, showed 'a marked ambivalence to the opinion of expert bodies such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and even of its own highest judicial body.'

The Bush administration delayed in obeying court orders to provide prisoners with some rights, such as having their cases addressed in courts. Some prisoners remained in secret custody in undisclosed locations. Amnesty characterized this practice as tantamount to 'disappearance.'

Amnesty International called on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating US officials implicated in the development or implementation of interrogation techniques that constitute torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

The urgency of an international investigation arises from the failure of the US administration ' to conduct a genuinely independent and comprehensive investigation.'

'Tolerance for torture and ill-treatment, signaled by a failure to investigate and prosecute those responsible, is the most effective encouragement for it to spread and grow,' said Dr. William F. Schulz, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA.

Schulz added, 'The U.S. government’s response to the torture scandal amounts to a whitewash of senior officials’ involvement and responsibility. Those who conducted the abusive interrogations must be held to account, but so too must those who schemed to authorize those actions, sometimes from the comfort of government buildings.'
The trials of a handful of low-level personnel don’t adequately cover the responsibility of high-ranking military officials and politicians who developed abusive policies and rubber-stamped techniques of interrogation that break the Geneva Conventions and other international agreements that govern the treatment of prisoners of war.

According to an Amnesty statement, 'Certain crimes, including torture and other grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, are so serious that they amount to an offense against the whole of humanity and therefore all states have a responsibility to investigate and prosecute people responsible for these crimes.'

Further, Bush’s foreign policy encouraged the blurring of the role of the military and domestic police forces in many countries that received aid and support from the administration. The administration’s demand for support for its 'war on terror' encouraged countries, such as the Colombian regime to target political opposition in that country under the guise of fighting terrorism while receiving billions in military aid from the Bush administration.

The human rights organization also chastised the US for pressuring governments to accept 'unlawful immunity agreements' shielding US personnel from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The rules governing the jurisdiction of the ICC state explicitly that its jurisdiction extends to countries only when the appropriate authorities in those countries fail to investigate and prosecute adequately those accused of war crimes and other atrocities.

According to Amnesty, 12 countries refused to sign such immunity agreements and as a result '10 had some military aid suspended as a result. In November the US Congress threatened to cut off development aid to countries that refused to sign.'

On the domestic scene, the US continued to flout international human rights standards by inflicting the death penalty on child offenders, people with mental disabilities, defendants without access to effective legal representation, and foreign nationals denied their consular rights. In 2004, 59 executions were carried out by a capital justice system characterized by arbitrariness, discrimination and error. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan described Amnesty’s report as 'ridiculous' and offered the Bush administration’s record of meager support for the global fight against HIV/AIDS as a sign of the administration’s compassion.

--Reach us with your comments at pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net.

Labor Takes on Wall-Street over Social Security Privatization

Fri, 27 May 2005 02:28:00 +0000

5-26-05, 10:31am

Trade union activists gave investment firm Charles Schwab shareholder’s meeting an earful last week in San Francisco, demanding that the company withdraw its support for the unpopular Bush/Republican Party Social Security privatization plan.

Schwab is part of a coalition of finance and investment companies that expect to benefit from the privatization plan that turns trillions in workers’ earnings over to them for private investment and brokerage fees.

Several shareholders at the meeting came directly from a rally sponsored by the AFL-CIO, the San Francisco Labor Council, the California Teachers Association, several union locals, community organizations, and non-profits groups.

According to one report, rally participants wore masks of CEO Charles Schwab and held signs saying “Double Talk Chuck,” mocking the company’s current ad campaign to “Talk to Chuck.” Clients and investors called on the company to withdraw from corporate coalitions and groups that are actively promoting plans by President Bush and California Governor Schwarzenegger to slash guaranteed retirement benefits for millions of workers.

The shareholder discussion was dominated by Schwab clients and shareholders who oppose the privatization plan and called for the company back off its support for Bush’s plan.

Twenty-six percent of shareholders withheld their support from the Schwab board, including the chairman, Charles “Chuck” Schwab. This was one of the highest votes to withhold support for directors in this year’s proxy season. Another resolution calling for annual elections of directors, seen as a blow to those who control the company, passed by a sizeable majority.

This particular action by trade unionists and their supporters is part of a larger campaign led by the AFL-CIO, the 13 million member umbrella organization of labor unions, targeting companies that have joined coalitions comprised of large corporations who support the privatization plan. Two ironically named big business coalitions of Bush’s supporters are the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security (AWRS) and Coalition for the Modernization and Protection of America’s Social Security (COMPASS). The Securities Industry Association, an organization of investment banks and brokerage firms that would receive and estimated $900 billion immediate windfall if Bush’s plan were adopted, has pledged upwards of $70 million in support for Bush’s plan.

Investment companies have also provided enormous amounts of cash to right wing and Republican-controlled think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, the Club for Growth and the Cato Institute to develop ways to soft-pedal and spin the privatization scheme.

A report (in pdf format) documenting Wall Street’s collusion with right-wing think tanks can be found by clicking here. An html version of the report can be found here.

Despite this cash cow and a $2.3 million taxpayer-funded publicity blitz of phony town hall meetings and fake news reports put together earlier this year by the Bush administration, opposition to the Republican privatization plan has grown from just over half of Americans to about two-thirds.

Other helpful websites for following this campaign can be found here: for updates on the campaign, and for more information look at .

--Reach Martha Kramer at pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net.

Michael Parenti: Good Things Happening in Venezuela

Fri, 27 May 2005 01:16:00 +0000

5-26-05, 9:22am

Even before I arrived in Venezuela for a recent visit, I encountered the great class divide that besets that country. On my connecting flight from Miami to Caracas, I found myself seated next to an attractive, exquisitely dressed Venezuelan woman. Judging from her prosperous aspect, I anticipated that she would take the first opportunity to hold forth against President Hugo Chavez. Unfortunately, I was right.

Our conversation moved along famously until we got to the political struggle going on in Venezuela. “Chavez,” she hissed, “is terrible, terrible.” He is “a liar”; he “fools the people” and is “ruining the country.”

She herself owns an upscale women’s fashion company with links to prominent firms in the United States. When I asked how Chavez has hurt her business, she said, “Not at all.” But many other businesses, she quickly added, have been irreparably damaged as has the whole economy. She went on denouncing Chavez in sweeping terms, warning me of the national disaster to come if this demon continued to have his way.

Other critics I encountered in Venezuela shared this same mode of attack: weak on specifics but strong in venom, voiced with all the ferocity of those who fear that their birthright (that is, their class advantages) was under siege because others below them on the social ladder were now getting a slightly larger slice of the pie.

In Venezuela over 80 percent of the population lives below the poverty level. Before Chavez, most of the poor had never seen a doctor or dentist. Their children never went to school, since they could not afford the annual fees. The neoliberal market “adjustments” of the 1980s and 1990s only made things worse, cutting social spending and eliminating subsidies in consumer goods. Successive administrations did nothing about the rampant corruption and nothing about the growing gap between rich and poor, the growing malnutrition and desperation. Far from ruining the country, here are some of the good things the Chavez government has accomplished: A land reform program designed to assist small farmers and the landless poor has been instituted. Just this month (March 2005) a large landed estate owned by a British beef company was occupied by agrarian workers for farming purposes. Education is now free (right through to university level), causing a dramatic increase in grade school enrollment. The government has set up a marine conservation program, and is taking steps to protect the land and fishing rights of indigenous peoples. Special banks now assist small enterprises, worker cooperatives, and farmers. Attempts to further privatize the state-run oil industry – 80 percent of which is still publicly owned – have been halted, and limits have been placed on foreign capital penetration. Chavez kicked out the U.S. military advisors and prohibited overflights by U.S. military aircraft engaged in counterinsurgency in Colombia. “Bolivarian Circles” have been organized throughout the nation, neighborhood committees designed to activate citizens at the community level to assist in literacy, education, vaccination campaigns, and other public services. The government hires unemployed men, on a temporary basis, to repair streets and neglected drainage and water systems in poor neighborhoods. Then there is the health program. I visited a dental clinic in Chavez’s home state of Barinas. The staff consisted of four dentists, two of whom were young Venezuelan women. The other two were Cuban men who were there on a one-year program. The Venezuelan dentists noted that in earlier times dentists did not have enough work. There were millions of people who needed treatment, but care was severely rationed by the private market, that is, by one’s ability to pay. Dental care was distributed like any other commodity, not to everyone who needed it but only to those who could afford it.

When the free clinic in Barinas first opened it was flooded with people seeking dental care. No one was turned away. Even opponents of the Chavez government availed themselves of the free service, temporarily putting aside their political aversions. Many of the doctors and dentists who work in the barrio clinics (along with some of the clinical supplies and pharmaceuticals) come from Cuba. Chavez has also put Venezuelan military doctors and dentists to work in the free clinics. Meanwhile, much of the Venezuelan medical establishment is vehemently opposed to the free-clinic program, seeing it as a Cuban communist campaign to undermine medical standards and physicians’ earnings.

That low-income people are receiving medical and dental care for the first time in their lives does not seem to be a consideration that carries much weight among the more “professionally minded” practitioners. I visited one of the government-supported community food stores that are located around the country, mostly in low income areas. These modest establishments sell canned goods, pasta, beans, rice, and some produce and fruits at well below the market price, a blessing in a society with widespread malnutrition.

Popular food markets have eliminated the layers of middlemen and made staples more affordable for residents. Most of these markets are run by women. The government also created a state-financed bank whose function is to provide low-income women with funds to start cooperatives in their communities.

There is a growing number of worker cooperatives. One in Caracas was started by turning a waste dump into a shoe factory and a T-shirt factory. Financed with money from the Petroleum Ministry, the coop has put about a thousand people to work. The workers seem enthusiastic and hopeful.

Surprisingly, many Venezuelans know relatively little about the worker cooperatives. Or perhaps it’s not surprising, given the near monopoly that private capital has over the print and broadcast media. The wealthy media moguls, all vehemently anti-Chavez, own four of the five television stations and all the major newspapers.

The man most responsible for Venezuela’s revolutionary developments, Hugo Chavez, has been accorded the usual ad hominem treatment in the U.S. news media. An article in the San Francisco Chronicle described him as “Venezuela’s pugnacious president.”i An earlier Chronicle report (30 November 2001) quotes a political opponent who calls Chavez “a psychopath, a terribly aggressive guy.”ii The London Financial Times sees him as “increasingly autocratic” and presiding over something called a “rogue democracy.”iii

In the Nation (6 May 2002), Marc Cooper – one of those Cold War liberals who nowadays regularly defends the U.S. empire – writes that the democratically-elected Chavez speaks “often as a thug,” who “flirts with megalomania.” Chavez’s behavior, Cooper rattles on, “borders on the paranoiac,” is “ham-fisted demagogy” acted out with an “increasingly autocratic style.” Like so many critics, Cooper downplays Chavez’s accomplishments, and uses name-calling in place of informed analysis.iv

Other media mouthpieces have labeled Chavez “mercurial,” “besieged,” “heavy-handed,” “incompetent,” and “dictatorial,” a “barracks populist,” a “strongman,” a “firebrand,” and, above all, a “leftist.” It is never explained what “leftist” means. A leftist is someone who advocates a more equitable distribution of social resources and human services, and who supports the kinds of programs that the Chavez government is putting in place. (Likewise a rightist is someone who opposes such programs and seeks to advance the insatiable privileges of private capital and the wealthy few.)

The term “leftist” is frequently bandied about in the U.S. media but seldom defined. The power of the label is in its remaining undefined, allowing it to have an abstracted built-in demonizing impact which precludes rational examination of its political content.

Meanwhile Chavez’s opponents, who staged an illegal and unconstitutional coup in April 2002 against Venezuela’s democratically elected government are depicted in the U.S. media as champions of “pro-democratic” and “pro-West” governance. We are talking about the free-market plutocrats and corporate-military leaders of the privileged social order who killed more people in the 48 hours they held power in 2002 than were ever harmed by Chavez in his years of rule.v

When one of these perpetrators, General Carlos Alfonzo, was hit with charges for the role he had played, the New York Times chose to call him a “dissident” whose rights were being suppressed by the Chavez government.vi Four other top military officers charged with leading the 2002 coup were also likely to face legal action. No doubt, they too will be described not as plotters or traitors who tried to destroy a democratic government, but as “dissidents,” simple decent individuals who are being denied their right to disagree with the government.

President Hugo Chavez whose public talks I attended on three occasions proved to be an educated, articulate, remarkably well-informed and well-read individual. Of big heart, deep human feeling, and keen intellect, he manifests a sincere dedication to effecting some salutary changes for the great mass of his people, a man who in every aspect seems worthy of the decent and peaceful democratic revolution he is leading.

Millions of his compatriots correctly perceive him as being the only president who has ever paid attention to the nation’s poorest areas. No wonder he is the target of calumny and coup from the upper echelons in his own country and from ruling circles up north.

Chavez charges that the United States government is plotting to assassinate him. I can believe it.

------ --Michael Parenti's recent books include Superpatriotism (City Lights) and The Assassination of Julius Caesar (New Press) which won Book of the Year Award, 2004 (nonfiction) from Online Review of Books. His latest work, The Culture Struggle, will be published by Seven Stories Press in the fall of 2005. For more information visit his website: .

Haiti Hunger Strike: Letter from Yvon Neptune

Fri, 27 May 2005 00:51:00 +0000

5-26-05, 8:53am

The health of constitutional prime minister Yvon Neptune continues to deteriorate on day 28 of a hunger strike to demand that he be tried or freed. He has been illegally imprisoned since June 27, 2004 without ever going before a judge (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. Vol. 22, No. 16, 6/30/2004).

Congressman Kendrick Meek (D-FL) visited Neptune on May 16 in his prison cell in the jail next to Police headquarters in the Pacot neighborhood of the capital. Meek called de facto government claims over the weekend that Neptune was in good health “totally inaccurate.”

'I had to get on the floor [next to Neptune's bed] just to hear him speak,' Meek said.

Meanwhile, in New York on May 11, Neptune’s daughter Maryvonne held a press conference at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). “We don’t know the condition of his organs,” she said. “I’m calling for action, for people to actively and openly put pressure on the people who are detaining him.”

South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) also sounded an alarm over Neptune’s “grave condition” in its weekly Internet newsletter. “As an immediate step, the interim government must either formally charge or release Yvon Neptune and other political prisoners,” the newsletter said. The ANC also said that “urgent steps need to be taken to end the brutalization of Haiti's population and open the way for a meaningful national dialogue towards the restoration of the country's constitutional order.”

Neptune’s situation is perhaps best conveyed by himself, in a letter which was translated into English by Serge Bellegarde, Guy Antoine, and Marilyn Mason. Neptune wrote it just after he was dragged to St. Marc on April 22 for a no-show judge. From the time I left the Prime Minister’s residence on March 12, 2004, up until June 27, 2004, the source of my insecurity had been the [de facto] Government itself. When the Government had me arrested on June 27, up until today, not only did this source of my insecurity increase and became more direct, but even worse, the Government deprived me of my freedom of movement, together with my freedom to speak freely, with all the length and breadth and depth that the Constitution allows for this right to be exercised.

The hunger strike I began on February 20 was aimed at forcing the Government to set me free and to stop being the cause of my insecurity.

Because of a promise the Government had made that it was going to liberate me, I accepted to put an end to my hunger strike and to go to the Argentine Hospital under the jurisdiction of the MINUSTAH/United Nations.

Even while in that hospital, however, my insecurity continued because of the Government’s continuing refusal to set me free.

That is why, while I was in the Hospital managed by the Argentinians/MINUSTAH, I continued to resist so that the United Nations would not send me to the trap of the supposed Villa in Pacot, but rather, that it would require instead that the Government free me and stop threatening my life. It was in the context of the dilatory tactics of this wicked Government that I was obliged to resume my hunger strike with even more force and why I am continuing it in the prison in Pacot, still with the aim of regaining my freedom and my security.

My friends, listen. On April 20, here is the information I had passed on: this plot aims at keeping me in prison by all means for as long as possible; that is one objective. The second objective is to take me, no matter what the conditions, to Saint-Marc to continue the political humiliation. Friends, listen: while I was already into the fifth day of my complete hunger strike, on Thursday afternoon, April 21, having given me guarantees that nothing would happen to me, the United Nations Forces took me, against my will, to a supposed Prison Villa in Pacot, close to the General Administration and Inspection Headquarters of the Police, despite the fact that I had explained to the UN Representative that this was a trap that the de facto Government had set up to implement the death plan it had for me. Above all, I told them that I would maintain my hunger strike in the supposed Prison Villa as long as I was not set free.

My friends, on Friday April 22, early in the morning, a team of 7 to 10 executioners I recognized from the prison system burst in on me to take me to Saint-Marc. I felt my life was in danger in the presence of these executioners; I told them I had not eaten, nor drunk anything in five days, and I asked them to leave me in peace because I was weak. When they picked me up with force, put me outside, and tried to handcuff me, I resisted for my life and I bit one of the many arms trying to force handcuffs on my wrists.

They drove me to Saint-Marc. I threw up all along the way. When we arrived in Saint-Marc, nothing was done. Supposedly, Mrs. Cluny Pierre Jules, the supposed Investigating Judge, declared that she was not coming because she had not been previously notified.

When the UN Representative received news of what the conditions were in Saint-Marc and of what kind of state I was in, he sent a helicopter to pick me up and take me back to Port-au-Prince, where I received some care in a UN ambulance which escorted me back to the supposed Prison Villa in Pacot.

I am continuing my hunger strike, so that I can regain my freedom and my security and so that the de facto Government will stop threatening my life, while it continues to trample on my dignity.

Yvon Neptune Former Prime Minister Member of Fanmi Lavalas Political Prisoner At the Prison in Pacot, Port-au-Prince

To be US 'strategic partner' or the partner of 'US strategy'?

Fri, 27 May 2005 00:26:00 +0000

5-26-05, 8:29am

US President George W. Bush and Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced after their talks held on May 23 that the United States and Afghanistan have established 'strategic partnership' formally and both sides will hold high-level meetings regularly on the issues of common concerns in the future in the fields of politics, security and economy according to a signed article by Zhang Jingyu and published by People Daily.

That the United States, the only superpower in the world, offers such a treatment of 'strategic partner' to a small country like Afghanistan generously seems to safe enough 'face' for President Karzai, making his visit seem to be a 'worthwhile trip'. Another coincided thing happened almost at the same time in the same area lets people produce doubt about the actual 'gold content' of the US 'strategic partner'.

It is revealed by Indian media on May 22 that the US government sent a letter to the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently, making clear its attitude that the US will impose sanctions on India according to the 'Law of D'Amato' if India goes its own way to insist in its cooperation with Iran in petroleum and natural gas regardless of US's opposition. India and the US established 'strategic partnership' as early as a few years ago and the US knows very clearly that India is in the serious shortage of energy and in the urgent need of international cooperation to ensure its power supply for economy.

Then why does the US take so impolite attitude towards its 'strategic partner'? The key lies in the behavior of India, which does not accord with the US control of Iran and with its pursuing western strategy of democracy in the whole world. This overbearing conduct of the rude interference in the normal international economic cooperation has completely revealed the true status of 'strategic partner' in the American mind. Out of its own interests, it may turn against a friend at any time.

President Karzai's visit to the US was made under the delicate background of the exposure of the US soldiers' profaning 'the Koran' incident that triggered off serious protests in Afghanistan as well as in many other Islamic countries. Prior to the visit he had many complaints about the US army's maltreatment of prisoners in Afghanistan as well as about the US behavior in searching private residences at will, demanding all the Afghan prisoners detained by the US troops return to Afghan government immediately. In addition, Karzai also asks for getting more administrative power over the US troops stationed in Afghanistan on behalf of the Afghan government, however his demand does not receive responses from the Bush administration. What did Afghanistan want was not obtained and 'accidentally' Afghanistan has established 'the strategic partnership' with the US. For President Karzai although there are some 'lip services with unlikely realities', but by contrast what the US has done seems to have even more 'strategic significance' than a certain commitment to solve a certain concrete problem. But since becoming 'partners', they should be equal and have consultations whenever there is anything that crops up with mutual help and understanding; it is not allowed to only deliberate own interests while ignoring 'partner's' feelings or even insulting the religions emotions of the Moslem world wantonly. There is not even minimum equal treatment mutually starting from the very beginning, how cannot such a partnership lose flavor for a long time?

The US choice of 'strategic partner' has been always conditioned. In 2002 when Bush made his visit to Peru for the first time both sides announced to form the 'strategic partnership for anti-terrorism and anti-drug drive', but nothing was said about the cooperation in other areas. Several years ago, the US upgraded the relations between the US and India to 'the strategic partnership', but, for no better reason than that it focused on the momentum that India emerged rapidly. The US hoped to draw the support from India for restraining its strategic rival in order to achieve the balance of strength in the South Asia or even in a larger range. For this reason, the US has repeatedly expressed its Indian friendship in recent years and showed constantly that it is glad to see India as a new emerging powerful country to play a role in Asia and the international arena. And when the 'partnership' conflicts with the US's own benefits, the true US intention of being affectedly bashful in the order of importance and urgency gives away and Washington can never sacrifice its own interests in order to look after the so-called 'partnership'.

The reason for US and Afghanistan to establish 'strategic partnership' is: first for 'putting out a fire' in order to put down the anger triggered off by the US soldiers in profaning 'the Koran' in Afghanistan and the Moslem world; the second for seeking a long-term cooperation with the Afghan government to consolidate the anti-terrorism result and prevent al Qaeda and Taliban's remnant forces from reviving. The starting point of the wishful thinking is for safeguarding US's own interests with the emphasis on the global strategy of US anti-terrorism, considering nothing of the terrible sufferings of the Afghan people.

As for the fashionable and debased 'strategic partnership', what is unforgettable is the vision and insight of a major media in India, which has warned its government and people meaningfully: 'Don't take seriously the so-called 'strategic partnership' with the US; be more careful, don't regard the 'strategic partnership' with the US as the partner of the 'US's strategy.'

By People's Daily Online