Mexico Is Now Building Their Own Wall On Border With Guatemala

From examiner.com

September 19th, 2010 1:42 pm ET

The Inter-Press Sevice (IPS) is reporting that the head administrator of the Mexican Superintendency of Tax Administration, Raul Diaz, has confirmed that his government is building a wall in the state of Chiapas, along the Mexican/Guatemalan border.

The official reason is to stop contraband from coming into Mexico, but as Diaz admitted: “It could also prevent the free passage of illegal immigrants.”

According to Mexico's National Commission on Human Rights, 500,000 people from Central America cross into Mexico illegally every year.

Just as Mexican authorities have opposed the construction of a fence by the U.S., along our border with their country, Mexico is now receiving a great deal of criticism from the Guatemalan government.

The executive coordinator of the National Bureau for Migration in Guatemala, Marila de Prince, told a local newspaper: “It is not a correct measure being taken by the Mexican government.”

Erick Maldonado, executive secretary of Guatemala's National Council on Migrants said: “We are watching the Mexican government's initiative with concern because the migrants are in a situation of highest vulnerability, as demonstrated by the massacre in Tamaulipas, where five Guatemalans died.”

Maldonado said the wall “is going to make the migrants' situation worse, because to meet their needs they are always going to find blind points where there are no migration or security controls, which implies greater risks."

Vice-President of Guatemala, Rafael Espada, said: “The walls are not the solution to the problems.”

The Catholic Church has been highly critical of U.S. treatment of illegal aliens, and one priest in Central America used the news of the Mexican wall to take another shot at the American people.

Father Francisco Pellizari, of the Casa del Migrante told IPS: “The dramatic increase in the cost of 'polleros' (human traffickers) and the corruption of the authorities is the result of the walls the United States plans to build and has built along the border. We can transpose the Guatemala case to this situation and the results will be the same.”

Peliizari said border walls “are supposedly intended to halt migration, but that hasn't happened. Instead they have triggered an economic hemorrhage and a shift in the migratory flow to inhospitable routes that lead to thousands of deaths.”

Of course, the U.S. press has completely ignored the story…They excoriate Americans for their desire to simply defend their own borders, but give Mexico a pass for building a wall to keep out illegal aliens.

White House Science Czar Says He Would Use 'Free Market' to 'De-Develop the United States'

In a video interview this week, White House Office of Science and Technology Director John P. Holdren told CNSNews.com that he would use the “free market economy” to implement the “massive campaign” he advocated along with Paul Ehrlich to “de-develop the United States.”

Thursday, September 16, 2010
By Nicholas Ballasy

President Barack Obama confers with his top science and technology adviser, John P. Holdren. (White House photo)

(CNSNews.com) - In a video interview this week, White House Office of Science and Technology Director John P. Holdren told CNSNews.com that he would use the “free market economy” to implement the “massive campaign” he advocated along with Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich to “de-develop the United States.”

In his role as President Barack Obama’s top science and technology adviser, Holdren deals with issues ranging from global warming to health care.

“A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States,” Holdren wrote along with Paul and Anne H. Ehrlich in the “recommendations” concluding their 1973 book Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions.

“De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation,” Holdren and the Ehrlichs wrote.

“Resources must be diverted from frivolous and wasteful uses in overdeveloped countries to filling the genuine needs of underdeveloped countries," Holdren and his co-authors wrote. "This effort must be largely political, especially with regard to our overexploitation of world resources, but the campaign should be strongly supplemented by legal and boycott action against polluters and others whose activities damage the environment. The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge. They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.”

CNSNews.com asked Holdren about this passage on Tuesday after he participated in an Environmental Protection Agency forum celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Clean Air Act.

CNSNews.com asked: “You wrote ‘a massive campaign must be launched to restore a high quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States’ in your book Human Ecology. Could you explain what you meant by de-develop the United States?”

Holdren responded: “What we meant by that was stopping the kinds of activities that are destroying the environment and replacing them with activities that would produce both prosperity and environmental quality. Thanks a lot.”

CNSNews.com then asked: “And how do you plan on implementing that?”

“Through the free market economy,” Holdren said.

CNSNews.com also asked Holdren to comment on the declaration he made in 1995 along with co-authors Paul Ehrlich and Gretchen Daily of Stanford University that mankind needed to “face up” to “a world of zero net physical growth” that would require reductions in consumption.

“We know for certain, for example, that: No form of material growth (including population growth) other than asymptotic growth is sustainable,” Holdren, Ehrlich and Daily wrote in an essay for the World Bank titled, “The Meaning of Sustainability.”

“Many of the practices inadequately supporting today’s population of 5.5 billion people are unsustainable; and [a]t the sustainability limit, there will be a tradeoff between population and energy-matter throughput per person, hence, ultimately, between economic activity per person and well-being per person,” Holdren, Ehrlich and Daily wrote. “This is enough to say quite a lot about what needs to be faced up to eventually (a world of zero net physical growth), what should be done now (change unsustainable practices, reduce excessive material consumption, slow down population growth), and what the penalty will be for postponing attention to population limitation (lower well-being per person).”

Holdren would not comment Tuesday about this statement, saying he had to get to another engagement.

Marriage: America’s Greatest Weapon Against Child Poverty | The Heritage Foundation

Marriage: America’s Greatest Weapon Against Child Poverty | The Heritage Foundation

How Obama Thinks

Dinesh D'Souza, 09.09.10, 05:40 PM EDT
Forbes Magazine dated September 27, 2010

The President isn't exactly a socialist. So what's driving his hostility to private enterprise? Look to his roots.

Barack Obama is the most antibusiness president in a generation, perhaps in American history. Thanks to him the era of big government is back. Obama runs up taxpayer debt not in the billions but in the trillions. He has expanded the federal government's control over home mortgages, investment banking, health care, autos and energy. The Weekly Standard summarizes Obama's approach as omnipotence at home, impotence abroad.

The President's actions are so bizarre that they mystify his critics and supporters alike. Consider this headline from the Aug. 18, 2009 issue of the Wall Street Journal: "Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling." Did you read that correctly? You did. The Administration supports offshore drilling--but drilling off the shores of Brazil. With Obama's backing, the U.S. Export-Import Bank offered $2 billion in loans and guarantees to Brazil's state-owned oil company Petrobras to finance exploration in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro--not so the oil ends up in the U.S. He is funding Brazilian exploration so that the oil can stay in Brazil.

More strange behavior: Obama's June 15, 2010 speech in response to the Gulf oil spill focused not on cleanup strategies but rather on the fact that Americans "consume more than 20% of the world's oil but have less than 2% of the world's resources." Obama railed on about "America's century-long addiction to fossil fuels." What does any of this have to do with the oil spill? Would the calamity have been less of a problem if America consumed a mere 10% of the world's resources?

The oddities go on and on. Obama's Administration has declared that even banks that want to repay their bailout money may be refused permission to do so. Only after the Obama team cleared a bank through the Fed's "stress test" was it eligible to give taxpayers their money back. Even then, declared Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the Administration might force banks to keep the money.

The President continues to push for stimulus even though hundreds of billions of dollars in such funds seem to have done little. The unemployment rate when Obama took office in January 2009 was 7.7%; now it is 9.5%. Yet he wants to spend even more and is determined to foist the entire bill on Americans making $250,000 a year or more. The rich, Obama insists, aren't paying their "fair share." This by itself seems odd given that the top 1% of Americans pay 40% of all federal income taxes; the next 9% of income earners pay another 30%. So the top 10% pays 70% of the taxes; the bottom 40% pays close to nothing. This does indeed seem unfair--to the rich.

Obama's foreign policy is no less strange. He supports a $100 million mosque scheduled to be built near the site where terrorists in the name of Islam brought down the World Trade Center. Obama's rationale, that "our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable," seems utterly irrelevant to the issue of why the proposed Cordoba House should be constructed at Ground Zero.

Recently the London Times reported that the Obama Administration supported the conditional release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber convicted in connection with the deaths of 270 people, mostly Americans. This was an eye-opener because when Scotland released Megrahi from prison and sent him home to Libya in August 2009, the Obama Administration publicly and appropriately complained. The Times, however, obtained a letter the Obama Administration sent to Scotland a week before the event in which it said that releasing Megrahi on "compassionate grounds" was acceptable as long as he was kept in Scotland and would be "far preferable" to sending him back to Libya. Scottish officials interpreted this to mean that U.S. objections to Megrahi's release were "half-hearted." They released him to his home country, where he lives today as a free man.

One more anomaly: A few months ago nasa Chief Charles Bolden announced that from now on the primary mission of America's space agency would be to improve relations with the Muslim world. Come again? Bolden said he got the word directly from the President. "He wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and math and engineering." Bolden added that the International Space Station was a model for nasa's future, since it was not just a U.S. operation but included the Russians and the Chinese. Obama's redirection of the agency caused consternation among former astronauts like Neil Armstrong and John Glenn, and even among the President's supporters: Most people think of nasa's job as one of landing on the moon and Mars and exploring other faraway destinations. Sure, we are for Islamic self-esteem, but what on earth was Obama up to here?

Theories abound to explain the President's goals and actions. Critics in the business community--including some Obama voters who now have buyer's remorse--tend to focus on two main themes. The first is that Obama is clueless about business. The second is that Obama is a socialist--not an out-and-out Marxist, but something of a European-style socialist, with a penchant for leveling and government redistribution.

These theories aren't wrong so much as they are inadequate. Even if they could account for Obama's domestic policy, they cannot explain his foreign policy. The real problem with Obama is worse--much worse. But we have been blinded to his real agenda because, across the political spectrum, we all seek to fit him into some version of American history. In the process, we ignore Obama's own history. Here is a man who spent his formative years--the first 17 years of his life--off the American mainland, in Hawaii, Indonesia and Pakistan, with multiple subsequent journeys to Africa.

A good way to discern what motivates Obama is to ask a simple question: What is his dream? Is it the American dream? Is it Martin Luther King's dream? Or something else?

It is certainly not the American dream as conceived by the founders. They believed the nation was a "new order for the ages." A half-century later Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of America as creating "a distinct species of mankind." This is known as American exceptionalism. But when asked at a 2009 press conference whether he believed in this ideal, Obama said no. America, he suggested, is no more unique or exceptional than Britain or Greece or any other country.

Perhaps, then, Obama shares Martin Luther King's dream of a color-blind society. The President has benefited from that dream; he campaigned as a nonracial candidate, and many Americans voted for him because he represents the color-blind ideal. Even so, King's dream is not Obama's: The President never champions the idea of color-blindness or race-neutrality. This inaction is not merely tactical; the race issue simply isn't what drives Obama.

What then is Obama's dream? We don't have to speculate because the President tells us himself in his autobiography, Dreams from My Father. According to Obama, his dream is his father's dream. Notice that his title is not Dreams of My Father but rather Dreams from My Father. Obama isn't writing about his father's dreams; he is writing about the dreams he received from his father.

So who was Barack Obama Sr.? He was a Luo tribesman who grew up in Kenya and studied at Harvard. He was a polygamist who had, over the course of his lifetime, four wives and eight children. One of his sons, Mark Obama, has accused him of abuse and wife-beating. He was also a regular drunk driver who got into numerous accidents, killing a man in one and causing his own legs to be amputated due to injury in another. In 1982 he got drunk at a bar in Nairobi and drove into a tree, killing himself.

An odd choice, certainly, as an inspirational hero. But to his son, the elder Obama represented a great and noble cause, the cause of anticolonialism. Obama Sr. grew up during Africa's struggle to be free of European rule, and he was one of the early generation of Africans chosen to study in America and then to shape his country's future.

I know a great deal about anticolonialism, because I am a native of Mumbai, India. I am part of the first Indian generation to be born after my country's independence from the British. Anticolonialism was the rallying cry of Third World politics for much of the second half of the 20th century. To most Americans, however, anticolonialism is an unfamiliar idea, so let me explain it.

Anticolonialism is the doctrine that rich countries of the West got rich by invading, occupying and looting poor countries of Asia, Africa and South America. As one of Obama's acknowledged intellectual influences, Frantz Fanon, wrote in The Wretched of the Earth, "The well-being and progress of Europe have been built up with the sweat and the dead bodies of Negroes, Arabs, Indians and the yellow races."

Anticolonialists hold that even when countries secure political independence they remain economically dependent on their former captors. This dependence is called neocolonialism, a term defined by the African statesman Kwame Nkrumah (1909--72) in his book Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. Nkrumah, Ghana's first president, writes that poor countries may be nominally free, but they continue to be manipulated from abroad by powerful corporate and plutocratic elites. These forces of neocolonialism oppress not only Third World people but also citizens in their own countries. Obviously the solution is to resist and overthrow the oppressors. This was the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. and many in his generation, including many of my own relatives in India.

Obama Sr. was an economist, and in 1965 he published an important article in the East Africa Journal called "Problems Facing Our Socialism." Obama Sr. wasn't a doctrinaire socialist; rather, he saw state appropriation of wealth as a necessary means to achieve the anticolonial objective of taking resources away from the foreign looters and restoring them to the people of Africa. For Obama Sr. this was an issue of national autonomy. "Is it the African who owns this country? If he does, then why should he not control the economic means of growth in this country?"

As he put it, "We need to eliminate power structures that have been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now." The senior Obama proposed that the state confiscate private land and raise taxes with no upper limit. In fact, he insisted that "theoretically there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed."

Remarkably, President Obama, who knows his father's history very well, has never mentioned his father's article. Even more remarkably, there has been virtually no reporting on a document that seems directly relevant to what the junior Obama is doing in the White House.

While the senior Obama called for Africa to free itself from the neocolonial influence of Europe and specifically Britain, he knew when he came to America in 1959 that the global balance of power was shifting. Even then, he recognized what has become a new tenet of anticolonialist ideology: Today's neocolonial leader is not Europe but America. As the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said--who was one of Obama's teachers at Columbia University--wrote in Culture and Imperialism, "The United States has replaced the earlier great empires and is the dominant outside force."

From the anticolonial perspective, American imperialism is on a rampage. For a while, U.S. power was checked by the Soviet Union, but since the end of the Cold War, America has been the sole superpower. Moreover, 9/11 provided the occasion for America to invade and occupy two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, and also to seek political and economic domination in the same way the French and the British empires once did. So in the anticolonial view, America is now the rogue elephant that subjugates and tramples the people of the world.

It may seem incredible to suggest that the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. is espoused by his son, the President of the United States. That is what I am saying. From a very young age and through his formative years, Obama learned to see America as a force for global domination and destruction. He came to view America's military as an instrument of neocolonial occupation. He adopted his father's position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder. Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America. In his worldview, profits are a measure of how effectively you have ripped off the rest of society, and America's power in the world is a measure of how selfishly it consumes the globe's resources and how ruthlessly it bullies and dominates the rest of the planet.

For Obama, the solutions are simple. He must work to wring the neocolonialism out of America and the West. And here is where our anticolonial understanding of Obama really takes off, because it provides a vital key to explaining not only his major policy actions but also the little details that no other theory can adequately account for.

Why support oil drilling off the coast of Brazil but not in America? Obama believes that the West uses a disproportionate share of the world's energy resources, so he wants neocolonial America to have less and the former colonized countries to have more. More broadly, his proposal for carbon taxes has little to do with whether the planet is getting warmer or colder; it is simply a way to penalize, and therefore reduce, America's carbon consumption. Both as a U.S. Senator and in his speech, as President, to the United Nations, Obama has proposed that the West massively subsidize energy production in the developing world.

Rejecting the socialist formula, Obama has shown no intention to nationalize the investment banks or the health sector. Rather, he seeks to decolonize these institutions, and this means bringing them under the government's leash. That's why Obama retains the right to refuse bailout paybacks--so that he can maintain his control. For Obama, health insurance companies on their own are oppressive racketeers, but once they submitted to federal oversight he was happy to do business with them. He even promised them expanded business as a result of his law forcing every American to buy health insurance.

If Obama shares his father's anticolonial crusade, that would explain why he wants people who are already paying close to 50% of their income in overall taxes to pay even more. The anticolonialist believes that since the rich have prospered at the expense of others, their wealth doesn't really belong to them; therefore whatever can be extracted from them is automatically just. Recall what Obama Sr. said in his 1965 paper: There is no tax rate too high, and even a 100% rate is justified under certain circumstances.

Obama supports the Ground Zero mosque because to him 9/11 is the event that unleashed the American bogey and pushed us into Iraq and Afghanistan. He views some of the Muslims who are fighting against America abroad as resisters of U.S. imperialism. Certainly that is the way the Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi portrayed himself at his trial. Obama's perception of him as an anticolonial resister would explain why he gave tacit approval for this murderer of hundreds of Americans to be released from captivity.

Finally, nasa. No explanation other than anticolonialism makes sense of Obama's curious mandate to convert a space agency into a Muslim and international outreach. We can see how well our theory works by recalling the moon landing of Apollo 11 in 1969. "One small step for man," Neil Armstrong said. "One giant leap for mankind."

But that's not how the rest of the world saw it. I was 8 years old at the time and living in my native India. I remember my grandfather telling me about the great race between America and Russia to put a man on the moon. Clearly America had won, and this was one giant leap not for mankind but for the U.S. If Obama shares this view, it's no wonder he wants to blunt nasa's space program, to divert it from a symbol of American greatness into a more modest public relations program.

Clearly the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. goes a long way to explain the actions and policies of his son in the Oval Office. And we can be doubly sure about his father's influence because those who know Obama well testify to it. His "granny" Sarah Obama (not his real grandmother but one of his grandfather's other wives) told Newsweek, "I look at him and I see all the same things--he has taken everything from his father. The son is realizing everything the father wanted. The dreams of the father are still alive in the son."

In his own writings Obama stresses the centrality of his father not only to his beliefs and values but to his very identity. He calls his memoir "the record of a personal, interior journey--a boy's search for his father and through that search a workable meaning for his life as a black American." And again, "It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself." Even though his father was absent for virtually all his life, Obama writes, "My father's voice had nevertheless remained untainted, inspiring, rebuking, granting or withholding approval. You do not work hard enough, Barry. You must help in your people's struggle. Wake up, black man!"

The climax of Obama's narrative is when he goes to Kenya and weeps at his father's grave. It is riveting: "When my tears were finally spent," he writes, "I felt a calmness wash over me. I felt the circle finally close. I realized that who I was, what I cared about, was no longer just a matter of intellect or obligation, no longer a construct of words. I saw that my life in America--the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I'd felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I'd witnessed in Chicago--all of it was connected with this small piece of earth an ocean away, connected by more than the accident of a name or the color of my skin. The pain that I felt was my father's pain."

In an eerie conclusion, Obama writes that "I sat at my father's grave and spoke to him through Africa's red soil." In a sense, through the earth itself, he communes with his father and receives his father's spirit. Obama takes on his father's struggle, not by recovering his body but by embracing his cause. He decides that where Obama Sr. failed, he will succeed. Obama Sr.'s hatred of the colonial system becomes Obama Jr.'s hatred; his botched attempt to set the world right defines his son's objective. Through a kind of sacramental rite at the family tomb, the father's struggle becomes the son's birthright.

Colonialism today is a dead issue. No one cares about it except the man in the White House. He is the last anticolonial. Emerging market economies such as China, India, Chile and Indonesia have solved the problem of backwardness; they are exploiting their labor advantage and growing much faster than the U.S. If America is going to remain on top, we have to compete in an increasingly tough environment.

But instead of readying us for the challenge, our President is trapped in his father's time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost.

Dinesh D'Souza, the president of the King's College in New York City, is the author of the forthcoming book The Roots of Obama's Rage (Regnery Publishing).

Red Maxine Waters

From New Zeal

Maxine Waters is a far left Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing the 35th district of California.

In the news recently over allegations of corruption, Maxine Waters, if the media was doing its job, should be equally well known for her socialist connections.

Waters has consistently attempted to present herself as a mainstream politician. However the facts tell a different story.

In May 1992 Waters put her name to a supplement in the Communist Party's newspaper, the People's Weekly World which called for readers to "support our continuing struggle for justice and dignity." Virtually all other signatories were known Communist Party members or supporters.

In October, later that year, she was the keynote speaker at a Coalition of Black Trade Unionists meeting in St Louis Missouri. The Coalition began as a Communist Party front.

In June 1996, the Communist Party's People's Weekly World held a tribute event for Southern California labor unionists Jerry Acosta and Gil Cedillo. Presentations to the honorees were made on behalf of Maxine Waters and (now U.S. Secretary of labor), Hilda Solis, by their staffers who were present at the event.

In 1997 Waters put her name to a "Jobs Bill" which had been originally introduced to Congress at the request of over 50 prominent labor leaders - many of whom were known members or supporters of the Communist Party.

Waters has been a member of the Democratic Socialists of America - linked Congressional Progressive Caucus from as early as 1998 up til the present. Her mid 1990s press secretary and speech-writer, Patrick Lacefield was a former National Director of the D.S.A.

Waters also serves on the Advisory Board for Progressive Democrats of America, an activist network within the Democratic Party, which is led by several D.S.A. connected activists, including National Director Tim Carpenter.

In May 2008, Waters made an embarassing tongue-slip during her televised questioning of a Shell Oil Executive. She queried, "...And guess what this liberal will be all about? This liberal will be all about socializing, uh, umm - will be about, basically. taking over, and the Government running all of your companies." The video of this incident can be viewed here.

If Maxine Waters is found guilty of ethics violations, it will one more example of the corruption/socialism connection, now so common in the U.S. Congress.

AFL-CIO

Sender: owner-imap%webmap.missouri.edu@WUVMD.Wustl.Edu Date: Fri, 3 Oct 97 09:13:39 CDT From: scott%rednet.org@WUVMD.Wustl.Edu (Peoples Weekly World) Subject: AFL-CIO Convention charts path to future Organization: Scott Marshall Article: 19180 To: BROWNH@CCSUA.CTSTATEU.EDU **AFL-CIO Convention charts path to future** AFL-CIO Convention charts path to future By Fred Gaboury, People's Weekly World 4 October 1997 PITTSBURGH - An aura of measured confidence and quite determination permeated the David Lawrence Convention Center as the 21st Constitutional Convention of the AFL-CIO opened on Sept. 22. During three and a half days of discussion and action, the 870 delegates took a hard look at the direction of the labor movement, reflected on the considerable progress made since election of the leadership team of John J. Sweeney, Richard L. Trumka and Linda Chavez-Thompson in 1995 and, at the same time, charted a path toward the new millennium. In the process, they adopted 11 policy resolutions; resolved to field 2,000 labor candidates in 2000; voted unanimously to remove the anti-communist clause from the federation's constitution (see below); re-elected the Sweeney team to a four-year term; raised per capita tax by a nickel a month to finance voter education and mobilization and, in general, trimmed the AFL-CIO ship for the storms ahead. "We put the train on the right track in 1995 and this time we built bridges to the 21st Century," Charles Deppert, president of the Indiana AFL-CIO, told the World. Delegates were hard at work even before the convention began. On Saturday, many attended the "Building a Movement for American Workers," organizing conference that capped a series of more than a dozen regional conferences held during 1997. Sweeney told the conference the AFL-CIO had set an example in the campaign to make organizing the top priority of the federation by earmarking 30 percent of its operating budget for organizing. On Monday, Sweeney set the tone for the convention with his keynote speech: "We've returned to Pittsburgh to continue our work of rebuilding and renewing our strength and to refocus our goals in building a new movement for American workers and creating a new voice for them in the workplace, in their communities, in their government and in the global economy," he told the nearly 900 delegates, alternates and invited guests from 40 countries. Following opening ceremonies, delegates began consideration of "Building a Broad Movement of America's Workers," a policy statement calling upon AFL-CIO affiliates to raise $1 billion for organizing by the year 2000. The resolution called the right for workers to form unions "the next great civil rights issue of our time." AFL-CIO CONVENTION During the discussion Sweeney shared the stage with 60 rank and file workers who spearheaded 2,000 successful organizing drives in the last two years. One of them, Larry Weiss, led the campaign to organize the faculty at the University of Alaska. "The organizing spirit of the 'new' AFL-CIO is exactly what the country needs right now," he said. Weiss, president of the 750-member United Academics- AAUP/AFT, told the World the decision of some 10,000 workers at US Airways to join the Communications Workers "makes it clear that workers across America are ready to go to the street to protect their living and working conditions." For convention delegates, going to the streets also meant going to the election wars. To that end they put the stamp of approval on "2,000 in 2000" - a program aimed at having 2,000 labor candidates on 2,000 ballots in the year 2000. They also agreed to assign 300 field organizers into the 1998 elections and cheered when told that more than 50 were already in the field mobilizing to defeat "fast track." Abby Demall Brown, a town council candidate in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, is one of 17 labor candidates in that state. "Several years ago we had 10 union folks in the legislature," she said. "But even then there were far to many lawyers, bankers and millionaires and not enough workers. That has to change. Politics is about who makes the rules," she told the World. Although the labor movement doubled its contributions to candidates between 1992 and 1996, corporations still out spent the labor movement by a ratio of 17-to-1. "We simply cannot double our contributions indefinitely," Steve Rosenthal, AFL-CIO political director, told reporters. "And even if we could, we can never catch up." In a strongly-worded resolution titled "Civil and Human Rights," the convention said, "The AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions are united in the belief that barriers that separate workers on the basis of race, gender, religion, nationality, sexual preference or physical abilities are barriers that fundamentally weaken our movement and strengthen our enemies." Pointing to the role that immigrants have played in "building the nation and its democratic ideals," the resolution added: "The labor movement in particular has been enriched by the contributions of immigrant workers ... who continue to make indispensable contributions to the strength and growth of our unions ... " The resolution acknowledged the labor movement's "responsibility to counter anti-immigrant bias where ever it occurs'" and urged "compassionate and humane treatment and due process of law for all people who enter or attempt to enter, the United States illegally." The resolution called upon political, civic and religious leaders to "refute and speak out against those who seek to blame immigrants for the country's economic and social problems." Delegates also spoke out strongly in defense of affirmative action: "Affirmative action has moved our society measurably closer to the democratic goals of equal opportunity. The gap remaining is too wide to justify relaxing our efforts and abandoning methods of proven effectiveness. If there are flaws in the execution of these methods," the resolution says, "then by all means we should correct them. But let us not use them as a pretext for returning to the complacent and degrading policies of the past." The Civil and Human Rights statement stressed the need for the labor movement to build coalitions with community organizations. "[In order] to bring all people into the mainstream of American life, labor must participate fully in effective and enduring coalitions with civil and human rights groups, religious groups and community-based organizations to pursue jointly corrections of the inequities and injustices in society," the resolution said. Delegates heard the requisite number of speakers, including: President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, three U.S. Senators, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt and Labor Secretary Alexis Herman. But it was not all work and no play: A block party on Sunday with tables set for 4,000 guests, a river boat ride and food provided by the Steelworkers union on Monday night and a rock concert headlining Billy Bragg on Wednesday. The convention ended with Rev. Jesse Jackson joining Sweeney in a rally for a living wage and against privatization. **AFL-CIO takes out old anti-communist clause** James Cavanaugh applauded when delegates to the 21st Constitutional Convention unanimously repealed language in the federation's constitution barring members of the Communist Party from full participation in the AFL-CIO or its subordinate bodies. Cavanaugh, president of the South Central Federation of Labor in Madison, Wisconsin told the World his organization had petitioned the AFL-CIO "for years" to remove the constitutional bar. "Now they've done it," he said. Walter Johnson, president of the San Francisco Central Labor Council, is glad to see the anti-communist clause go. "By getting rid of it," he said, "we are stepping away from one of our human frailties - confirming pre-formed conclusions and making judgments without knowing anything about a person or their beliefs." Warren Gould, president of the New Haven, Conn. Central Labor Council, said the timing of the amendment "was perfect. The AFL-CIO is opening its doors to everyone," he said. "The time has come for all activists to come together in a fight for the unemployed and all working people." George Meyers, chair of the Labor Department of the Communist Party USA, greeted the development. Pointing to the fact that the change was proposed by the AFL-CIO Executive Council, Meyers said, "This action is something that is not only long overdue but should never have been in the constitution in the first place." Meyers, who retired as president of the Maryland-DC CIO Council to enlist in the Army Air Force during World War II, said the anti-communist hysteria that followed that war was used as a smokescreen to pass the Taft-Hartley Act. "And," he continued, "red baiting within the labor movement virtually destroyed the coalition of left and center forces that built the CIO." Meyers said it is "fortunate" that the same kind of a coalition "is beginning to emerge as the labor movement is once again on the path of revitalization. This left-center coalition is key to strengthening the labor movement and building coalitions with its allies." The convention approved several other constitutional amendments, among them one increasing the term of office for officers and members from two to four years. Under the new provision, conventions will take place every two years with officers elected at every other convention. Delegates also adopted a new preamble to the constitution. In recommending the new language, the executive council said the preamble should express the AFL-CIO's "missions and goals in the various spheres in which it is engaged: organizing, politics, the economy and the community." Read the Peoples Weekly World Sub info: pww@pww.org 235 W. 23rd St. NYC 10011 $20/yr - $1-2 mos trial sub Tired of the same old system: Join the Communist Party, USA Info: CPUSA@rednet.org; or (212) 989-4994; or http://www.hartford-hwp.com/cp-usa/

Here's the link to above

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Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) is ‘simple, principled and do-able’

03/15/2010

Richard Trumka, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen

“A Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) is simple, principled and do-able”, was the clear message from Party of European Socialists President (PES) Poul Nyrup Rasmussen. Mr. Rasmussen was speaking at a high level conference organized by the Global Progressive Forum (GPF) and the FEPS political foundation. The conference, “Fighting for a financial transaction tax – how and why” saw over 100 progressive Brussels decision makers come together to generate momentum for the FTT concept.

Mr. Rasmussen added that; “Today, we are pressing for a global FTT – it is a progressive way out of the crisis; it makes those responsible for the crisis pay towards recovery; It acts as a coolant that calms the worst excesses of speculation; and it allows us to begin to fill the huge hole in our public budgets”.

Representatives from both sides of the Atlantic were there. Richard Trumka, the President of the AFLCIO, the biggest American Trade Union Federation, spoke from Washington by video link. He outlined the developments on the FTT in the United States. "He stated that the U.S. administration needs to find new revenues for job creation, the FTT provides this opportunity".

The participants acknowledged that the next big development was a report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the feasibility of the FTT. Participants pledged their commitment to react should the IMF attempt to sweep the proposals under the carpet. The report is due in early April.

The Party of European Socialists (PES) has called for a ‘European Action Day’ on 24 April to highlight the issue. PES activists all over Europe will hold events to highlight the need for an FTT.

The Action Day plans are part of a wider mobilization effort in the run up to the June G20 meeting in Toronto Canada.

See the photo gallery

For further information please contact Brian Synnott on +32 474
98 96 75 (brian.synnott@pes.org)

The Party of European Socialists (PES)

A link to above

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Dean to Socialist: Don’t Exit the Financial Crisis — Let’s Work For Global New Deal

New Evidence Undermines Feds' Case Against Arizona

By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
September 2, 2010

(AP File)

You've heard a lot about the Justice Department's lawsuit to stop the new Arizona immigration law. But that's just one part of the Obama administration's multi-front war on immigration enforcement in Arizona.

In addition to the drive to kill the new law, Attorney General Eric Holder is also suing the Maricopa Community College system in Phoenix, alleging it broke the law by requiring a job seeker to provide a green card before being hired. And on Thursday the Justice Department filed suit against the Maricopa County Sheriff's office, run by the flamboyant Joe Arpaio, as part of an extended investigation into alleged civil rights violations there.

Despite the splash of attention from the newest lawsuit, the Justice Department's investigation of Arpaio could end badly for Holder. When the Department first informed Arpaio that a probe was under way, back in March 2009, it sent a letter saying the investigation would focus on "alleged patterns or practices of discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures." But now we learn that just six months before that, in September 2008, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE, did its own investigation of Arpaio's office -- and gave it a clean bill of health. Arpaio's lawyers recently got a copy of the ICE report through the Freedom of Information Act.

ICE officials evaluated how the sheriff's office performed under a law that allows specially trained local law enforcement officers to enforce parts of federal immigration law. The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, which is the largest sheriff's office in the Arizona, has 189 officers who have been trained by ICE to enforce federal immigration statutes.

The report, crammed with acronyms and bureaucratese, is not light reading. But struggle through it, and the key sentence is this: "The OI and DRO supervisors consider the conduct and performance of the MCSO ... officers to be professional and meeting the requirement of the MOA." Translated, that means officials from the Homeland Security Department's Office of Investigation (OI), along with officials from the Detention and Removal Operations office (DRO), concluded that the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (MCSO), in its handling of illegal immigrants, acted in a professional manner and complied with a memorandum of agreement (MOA) under which the government gave them the authority to enforce federal law. That agreement included a ban on racial profiling.

ICE investigators also interviewed top federal officials involved in illegal immigrant cases in Arizona. They found an "excellent" working relationship between the sheriff's office and the feds. ICE talked as well to federal prosecutors in Phoenix, who described the cases brought by Maricopa County as "high quality."

In all, it's a quite positive assessment of an operation that just six months later would come under the Justice Department's microscope for alleged civil rights violations. It also lends indirect support to Arpaio's contention that the Justice Department investigation is politically motivated.

A tidbit of information contained in other government documents released under the Freedom of Information Act also suggests politics may be involved. Arpaio's lawyers found a March 11, 2009, e-mail, sent just after the Justice Department investigation was announced, from an ICE employee to John P. Torres, then the acting assistant secretary of ICE. "Did you see this?" the e-mail said, attaching a news report on the investigation. "Yes," Torres responded a few minutes later. "Interesting politics at play."

What happens now? It's been nearly a year and a half since the investigation began, and the Justice Department has not charged the sheriff's office with violating anyone's civil rights. Instead, Thursday's lawsuit goes after Arpaio for allegedly failing to cooperate fully in the probe.

"It's a totally political lawsuit," says Bob Driscoll, a former Bush Justice Department Civil Rights Division official who is representing Arpaio. "They want to find evidence of discrimination, but all they're finding is evidence of law enforcement that includes immigration enforcement." (The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.)

Failing to find proof of real discrimination in Maricopa County could ultimately doom the administration's entire crusade in Arizona. The much-publicized suit against the new immigration law is based on the possibility that it might result in future discrimination, but at the same time the department is struggling to find evidence of civil rights violations in Arpaio's office, which uses enforcement techniques similar to those outlined in the new law. There's a real chance that in the end Obama's war on Arizona will come to nothing.

Byron York, The Examiner's chief political correspondent, can be contacted at byork@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears on Tuesday and Friday, and his stories and blogposts appear on ExaminerPolitics.com.

A Few "Holy Crap!" Segments From Glenn Beck

More indoctrination in our schools... this time, coming from the Department of Labor... and your tax dollars going to people who are intent on destroying America. Unbelievable stuff!