Category Archives: Democracy

Massacre of teachers in Mexico, 11 dead

Socialist Teachers Alliance: MASSACRE OF TEACHERS IN MEXICO, 11 DEAD

Here are several reports on developments in Oaxaca, Mexico. The eyewitness report below here is both terrible and inspiring. Please respond to the request for letters denouncing the attack of teachers.

Dave Stratman
newdemocracyworld.org
20 Moraine Street
Boston, MA 02130
617-524-4073
********************

The state of Oaxaca MX and the MX federal government have launched an attack on striking teachers in Oaxaca and other popular organizations killing an as-yet unknown number. Teachers reclaimed the center of Oaxaca city, but new and larger attacks are expected (and may by now have happened). Please at least send a protest email (addresses below) and if you can, look for demonstrations (or create one) at Mexican consulates.

There is a sketchy report in the New York Times (Link unsatisfactory).

Two longer pieces below from Rich Gibson and Rouge Forum:
Massacre of Teachers in Mexico, 11 Dead
Urgent Protest Thursday, June 15, 5 p.m.
Outside the Mexican Consulate General,
27 East 39th Street (between Madison and Park Aves.)

Dear all,
Most of you will have heard by now of the violent repression of striking teachers in Oaxaca camped in the central plaza of Oaxaca City. The 70,000 schoolteachers in Oaxaca have been on strike since May 22nd, demanding a pay raise, differential pay for teachers working in high-cost regions, resources for school infrastructure, free school breakfasts, school supplies, and scholarships for students. For much of this time thousands have been camped in the centre of the city to press their demands.

This morning, state police attacked the encampments with riot police and helicopters. They also raided the union headquarters, a hotel that houses teachers and the Unionís radio station. Despite the force used against them, teachers were able to regain control of the main plaza and the blocks around it.

With all the chaos, the reports we have received of casualties are not firm and are sometimes conflicting, but it appears that at least 5 people, including one teachersí child, have been killed, dozens wounded and dozens more detained. There is fear that there will be more violence as police backed by federal re-inforcements attempt to take the plaza again.

If further violence is to be prevented, the Oaxacan teachers will need the support of the international community to pressure Mexican authorities to reign in their security forces and return to the bargaining table. We are requesting of the organizations of the IDEA Network to at least send letters of protest to the Mexican President and the governor of Oaxaca, with copies ot the Mexican section of the Trinational Coalition to Defend Public Education (see addresses below). However, it will have a much stronger impact if your organization can send a delegation to the Mexican consulate or embassy in your city to deliver the letters directly (and better still if some of you remain outside the consulates and embassies wiht signs denouncing the violence)..

I am attaching with this message information that we have received from the Mexican section of the Trinational Coalition about the conflict in Oaxaca, as well has an eyewitness report we received a few hours ago from the coordinator of the Oaxacan teachersí unionís research institute. I am also enclosing copies of the letters the IDEA network has sent to Mexicoís president and the governor of Oaxaca. Please feel free to modify the letters and use them for your own organization.

Thank You,
Steve Stewart,
Technical Secretary,
IDEA Network

Contact information below:
Lic. Vicente Fox Quesada
Presidente Constitucional de MÈxico
Fax 55 5277 2376,
vicente.fox.quesada@presidencia.gob.mx.

Dr. JosÈ Luis Soberanes
Presidente de la ComisiÛn Nacional de Derechos Humanos
Fax: 55 5681 7199

Dr. Ricardo Sep˙lveda
Coordinador de la Unidad para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos de la SecretarÌa de GobernaciÛn
Fax: 55 5128 0234

Lic. Ulises Ruiz Ortiz
Gobernador Constitucional del Estado de Oaxaca
Fax. 01 (951) 51 65 966,51-60677/ fax: 51-63737/ cel: 0449515470377
E-mail: gobernador@oaxaca.gob.mx.
with copies to urama@prodigy.net.mx, antonio_icn@hotmail.com radioplanton@hotmail.com, and the Mexican newspaper La Jornada

From: David
Dear Friends,

Iím writing about the situation in Oaxaca. As I write, the capital city is under siege. At approximately 5AM this morning the state police attacked the teachers occupation of the city center. Though reports are sketchy, it seems that three teachers have been killed, as well as a young girl. The teachers have taken three or four police hostage. A raging battle is underway to control the zocalo, the center of life in Oaxaca, and the heart of the teacherís encampment. In the dawn raid the teachers were forced out, but the local paper, Noticias de Oaxaca, has reported that at 9:30AM local time the teachers, armed with rocks and sticks, re-took the main square. Police are firing tear gas from helicopters right now. Thousands (tens of thousands) of people are involved in running battles in the streets. And there is the fear that upwards of 3500 federal riot police ó deployed to Oaxaca in the last two weeks by Vicente Fox ó are about to enter the city.

Iíve just gotten off the phone with friends in the center. They described the scene on the streets this morning at about 7:30AM. Hundreds of people crying from the mix of tear gas, smoke bombs and some other pepper spray. The men forming groups to launch the assault to retake the zocalo. Mothers telling their boys to take care of themselves as they fell into line. From the rooftops of the single story houses you can watch the helicopters flying overhead shelling tear gas canisters into the crowds. There is a heavy fear, but also, I was told, you could hear the sound of people marching and singing.

As a brief background, you might want to read:News

The teachers occupation of the city, known in Spanish as a ëplantoní began 23 days ago. More than 80,000 teachers from every municipality in the state had converged on the capital to press a list of demands for more resources for education. They have had two mass marches, the most recent bringing more than 120,000 people out, the largest demonstration in the cityís history. The planton has become an annual event since more than a decade, and I will never forget last yearís planton which happened while I was still living there. For about ten days the teachers occupied the entire center of town, sleeping on the streets under tarpaulins stretched overhead. They were extremely well organized and the city center was never more alive. The teachers and their families would cook large meals on open fires, play guitar and sing, rest on folded cardboard in the shade. They set up their radio station ìRadio Plantonî and played music on loud speakers. There were first aid tents, propaganda tents, mass meetings on every corner.

This year, many have remarked that the planton, and the teachersí mobilization generally, has been different. The question is: If the teachers brought 80,000 to the city, who are the other 40,000? Iím not close enough to give a good answer, but what I understand is that the teachers have offered an opening which hundreds of small community groups and social justice centers from around the state have chosen to follow. The past two years under the new PRI governor Ulises Ruis has intensified the level of state repression. Scores of activists in small villages have been killed, hundreds arrested and still in jail as political prisoners. The spike in repression was so great that Amnesty International sent a delegation to Oaxaca in May of 2005 to investigate. It appears that when the teachers marched on the capital three weeks ago they were joined by tens of thousands of others from the villages in what is becoming a broad movement to depose the governor. Ruis has refused to meet with the teachers, and has managed to pull in his partyís promisary notes to about half of the stateís municipal mayors who signed a decree condemning the teachers action. But there is a palpable sense that the social movements are converging and that something new is underway.

During the past three weeks, the movement has shown a great level of strength and creativity ó occupying the cityís airport, smashing the newly-installed parking meters throughout the city center, occupying the toll booths on the main road from Oaxaca to Mexico City ó not to stop the cars, only to stop the collecting of tolls, and the very fact that they have occupied the zocalo has great significance as the new governor, after spending upwards of $100 million to ëbeautifyí the zocalo, decreed that it was now off-limits for any demonstrations.

Three nights ago, Ruis met with business leaders at a late night gathering and promised to use the ëmano duraí or hard hand. There were reports that the first 1500 federal riot police were camped in the nearby town of Tlacolula. This morning the governor appears to have proven himself a man of his word. Some reports have said that the tear gas in the city center is so thick you canít see the hand in front of you.

I have not seen any reports in the US media, BBC etc. There is some information on indymediaís Mexico site, some more on the online version of Noticias de Oaxaca ó both in Spanish. (www.noticias-oax.com.mx/) I know that the police have shut down the teachersí radio station ëRadio Plantoní but as of 12:00 noon Oaxaca time the studentsí radio station ëRadio Universitarioí was still broadcasting and ìyou can hear the broadcast from every window and door in town.î The students themselves have occupied the university, but the latest reports suggest that the police are heading there now.

Iím writing this in the hope that you can help spread the word, and alert others in the network of media to turn their attention to the struggle ongoing.
In solidarity,
Dave

Violent represion in Oaxaca
posteado por vlax en jun 14, 2006 [21:35]

To the peoples of the world
To the people of Mexico
To the civil society
To the social political, and humans rights organizations,

Oaxaca de Ju·rez, Oaxaca, June 14 of 2006

Today, June 14, 2006, on of the most abhorrent manifestations of the exercise of power on behalf of the government has been perpetrated in Mexico. At 4:40 a.m., an act of repression against the social movement in Oaxaca began. At dawn today, state government police forces brutally and violently evacuated teachers who were occupying streets and the central square of downtown Oaxaca. We are speaking of more than fifty thousand teachers.

They also beat other people and destroyed the radio equipment of Radio PlantÛn, 92,1 F.M., a wireless station that is been continuously transmitting the situation of the teachers movement. This community radio, which has been operating for a year, has played an important role in the transmission of clear and transparent information as it occurs in Oaxaca and our country.

This act is yet another piece of evidence of the repression that governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz has orchestrated against those who disagree with policies that violate human rights and those who stand up to denounce social injustice and the state of siege lived in today.

There are disappeared teachers, people hurt and intoxicated with tear gases, apprehensions, and domiciliary persecutions. Also mentioned are the death of two children and at least three teachers. After five hours of skirmish, the teachers began to re-occupy the central square while ìthe forces of the orderî regroup in other places of the city to reinitiate the aggression.

The city¥s inhabitants are very disturbed and have begun to organize in support of the teachers. Similarly, social organizations are pronouncing themselves against the repression.

On the other hand, governmental and commercial media, both radio and television, try to cause the social irritation against the teachers. Due to the destruction of Radio PlantÛn, groups of students and teachers took over Radio Universidad, the station of the Independent University Benito Ju·rez of Oaxaca, and are transmitting minute by minute what is happening in the streets of the city. In addition, the University has announced its total support to the teachers, declaring that this conflict has taken on a widespread social character and invites the society in general to join the movement.

The main demands of the teachers are: adjustment of wages according to the cost of the life in Oaxaca; strengthening of support programs to the schools, mainly regarding infrastructure; allowance of equipment and diverse educational materials to students who live in the municipalities of greater marginalization; finally, an end to repression against education workers; clarification on cases of the disappeared; and the liberation of the political prisoners.

Currently, social discontent and mobilization increase. In the face of this barbaric repression, more protests have sparked:10 Municipal Presidencies have been taken over, among which are Juchit·n, Zimatl·n, Huautla de JimÈnez, Teotitl·n de Flores MagÛn, MatÌas Romero, Huajuapan of Leon, Port Angel and Puerto Escondido. Farmers are marching in from Tuxtepec. Inhabitants of San Salvador Atenco make their way towards the State Capital. The future seems uncertain, but hope grows.

For this reason, the teacher¥s movement, social organizations, and a great number of inhabitants of the city hold the governor of Oaxaca, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz responsible of the chaos and the violence currently affecting the most indigenous state of the country.

Finally, while a mega-march is being planned for next Friday, the government has sent orders of apprehension to the leadership. We hope to count on your support, and request the most ample circulation of this information.

Danger from the north? But from which group?

Canada—terrorist hotbed or just a patsy for the rich and powerful?

Today’s Washington’s Times op-ed praises the weekend arrests of 17 Muslim men for allegdedly plotting terror attacks in Canada (note however, the authorities have provided no evidence to back these charges).

But the the right-wing paper repeats the charge that Canada’s “lenient asylum, immigration and refugee-status laws have made Canada a haven for terrorists with easy access to the United States.”

While TV comedians made hay with the alleged bomb plot, Tories and Grits were united in their condemnation of such claims from Rep. John Hostettler, who last where said Canada “hosts an abundance of terrorists and as many as 50 terrorists organizations.”

Canadian pols labeld Hostettler’s comments as “completely uninformed and ignorant remarks.”

Hostettler also lashed out at “South Toronto,” which he said was “the type of enclave that allows for this radical type of discussion to go on.” Toronto is Canada’s largest city, but there is no area known as “South Toronto.” Crimes rates in the southern part of the city — which lies on the north shore of Lake Ontario — are relatively low.

But there is certainly danger to the north this week as Ottawa hosts the super-secretive society of the rich and powerful—The Bilderberg group.

Bilderberg members include European royalty, national leaders, political power-brokers, and heads of the world’s biggest companies. The Canadian Press reports that observers of “the Bilderberg group say it got Europe to adopt a common currency, got Bill Clinton to support NAFTA, and is spending this week deciding what to do about high oil prices and that pesky fundamentalist president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”

The Bildergroup is so secret and powerful that the Ottawa police officers standing on guard outside a dozen metal gates that serve as security checkpoints a half-kilometre from the hotel where the group is meeting have to show the their credentials to the half-dozen black-suited men working for Global Risk, a private security firm.

2006 Bilderberg participants include: David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Queen Beatrice of Holland, New York Governor George Pataki, and the CEOs of Coca-Cola, Royal Bank of Canada, and key players in the US invasion of Iraq: Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Ahmad Chalabi. Look here for a longer list of Bilderberg attendees.

Whose a bigger threat to the world? Those 17 young kids from Toronto or the Bilderbergers?
Monday » June 12 » 2006

Bilderberg holds secretive meeting

Canadian Press

Friday, June 09, 2006

OTTAWA (CP) — It’s like Woodstock for conspiracy theorists.

A serene suburban setting has been transformed into a four-day festival of black suits, black limousines, burly security guards — and suspicions of world domination.

On the outskirts of the nation’s capital, a tony high-rise hotel beside a golf course is hosting the annual meeting for one of the world’s most secretive and powerful societies.

It’s not the Freemasons. They’re called the Bilderberg group.

They include European royalty, national leaders, political power-brokers, and heads of the world’s biggest companies.

Those who follow the Bilderberg group say it got Europe to adopt a common currency, got Bill Clinton to support NAFTA, and is spending this week deciding what to do about high oil prices and that pesky fundamentalist president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ottawa police officers are standing guard outside a dozen metal gates that serve as security checkpoints a half-kilometre from the hotel.

But Ottawa’s finest are clearly not in charge here.

To approach the hotel property, even these uniformed police officers are required to show their credentials to the half-dozen black-suited men working for Globe Risk, a private security firm.

“This is pretty unusual,” one Ottawa cop said.

The Bilderberg group is a half-century-old organization comprising about 130 of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people. The group is named after the Dutch hotel where it held its first meeting in 1954.

An unsigned press release, sent by fax, confirmed this year’s meeting would deal with energy issues, Iran, the Middle East, terrorism, immigration, Russia, European-American relations and Asia.

The release included a list of participants at this year’s event.

The 2006 group includes David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Queen Beatrix of Holland, New York Gov. George Pataki, the heads of Coca-Cola, Credit Suisse, the Royal Bank of Canada, a number of media moguls, and cabinet ministers from Spain and Greece.

The group also includes a pair of prominent figures involved in planning the U.S. invasion of Iraq — Richard Perle and Ahmad Chalabi. Fellow White House power-players Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, now head of the World Bank, have spoken to the group in the past.

The prime ministers of Britain and Canada — Tony Blair and Stephen Harper — have addressed the group before, as has the late prime minister Pierre Trudeau.

Harper spoke to Bilderberg in Versailles, France, in 2003 but his office said he would not attend this year’s conference.

Canada remains well represented, however.

The Canadian contingent at this year’s event includes Power Corp. boss Paul Desmarais, Indigo books CEO Heather Reisman, and former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna.

The Globe and Mail newspaper publisher, Philip Crawley, was also there. However, Bilderberg followers say that media moguls whose outlets report leaked details from the meetings will see themselves banned in the future.

Unreported: The Zarqawi invitation

From Greg Palst.com:

They got him — the big, bad, beheading berserker in Iraq. But, something’s gone unreported in all the glee over getting Zarqawi … who invited him into Iraq in the first place?…UNREPORTED: THE ZARQAWI INVITATION

The real reason Rock the Vote is falling apart

This is from the May issue of Rock & Rap Confidential. Feel free to forward or re-post.

PULLING THE LEVER OR PULLING OUR LEG?… Rock the Vote is in shambles. According to a February 7 LA Times article by Charles Duhigg, the organization is $700,000 in debt and has cut its staff from twenty people in 2004 to two today. Rock the Vote hasn’t had a chief operating officer since the last Presidential election.

Duhigg attributes the crisis to overspending in non-election years and to the opportunism of the music industry executives who dominate the group’s board and use Rock the Vote primarily to promote their own artists.

Rock the Vote has a more fundamental problem: It has hitched its star to politicians who are completely hostile to the needs and desires of the American people. For example, check out the political hacks it has chosen to bestow its Rock the Nation Award upon.

There’s Bill Clinton, who presided over the 1996 Democratic Party convention which removed universal health care from the party platform even though more than 70 per cent of Americans are in favor of it.

There’s Hilary B. Rosen, who was head of the RIAA at the time she was honored. Rosen rocked the nation by launching the war against file-sharing. Sharing music on-line is, to say the least, wildly popular.

There’s Hillary Clinton, who, despite the unpopularity of the war in Iraq, has called for sending 80,000 more of our sons and daughters to the slaughter.

In June 2005, the Rock the Nation Award went to John McCain, one month after the Arizona Senator was part of the 100-0 Senate vote to approve Bush’s war funding bill. In his acceptance speech, McCain introduced himself as “Funk Master McCain.” Since then, Funk Master McCain has kept busy campaigning for California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose November ballot initiatives to cripple unions and give himself unsupervised power to gut social programs were soundly defeated by California voters.

In 2004, Rock the Vote, under the leadership of Jehmu Greene (who came to the organization directly from serving as Southern Political Director of the Democratic National Committee), registered 1.4 million voters in an effort to elect John Kerry. On March 2 of this year Kerry was one of 89 Senators who voted to make the Patriot Act permanent, even though more than 250 U.S. cities have passed resolutions calling for it to be abolished.

One of Rock the Vote’s few high points came in the early 1990s when the organization aired over 175 public service announcements in which artists gave their frank views on democracy. Our favorite was Ice-T’s. “I’m as anti ‘the system’ as you could possibly be,” he said. “We’ve got two options–the vote or hostile takeover. I’m down with either one.”

In other words, voter registration as a tactic can be useful when it’s part of an effort to transform the system. When voter registration is used as a strategy, what you get is Rock the Vote. It won’t be missed.

www.rockrap.com

Helen Thomas: “Why did we go to war?”

George Bush finally let Helen Thomas ask him a question after four years of ducking her. She asked him a simple question: “Why did we go to war?” Three years after the start of the war, he still has no answer that makes sense.

Here’s the video from the Bush’s March 21 press conference

American Sociological Association names “essential protest songs”

In the latest issue of the ASA sponsored journal Contexts, the editors compile a list of “essential protest songs.”

There are 14 songs on the list including standards as “We Shall Overcome,” Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” and the 1930s union anthem “Which Side Are You On?”

You can listen to a selection of essential protest song clips here

Here’s the full list of songs with commentary by the editors of Contexts:

“Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
Lyrics by James Weldon Johnson; music by J. Rosamand Johnson. Key lyric: “We have come over a way that with tears has been watered / We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.” Known as the “Black National Anthem”—the antidote
to “America, the Beautiful.”

“Which Side Are You On?”
By Florence Reece. “Don’t scab for the bosses, don’t listen to their lies / Us poor folks haven’t
got a chance unless we organize.” Written during the labor struggles in Harlan County, Kentucky, in the 1930s, it was later adopted by the civil rights movement.

“Strange Fruit.”
Performed by Billie Holiday. By Abel Meeropol (who later adopted the children of Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg). “Pastoral scene of the gallant south / The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth.” A chilling protest against lynching. Maybe the greatest protest song of all time.

“Pastures of Plenty.”
By Woody Guthrie. “Every state in this union us migrants has been /‘Long the edge of your cities you’ll
see us, and then / We’ve come with the dust and we’re gone in the wind.” Guthrie’s ode to America’s migrant workers.

“The Times They Are A-Changin’.”
By Bob Dylan. “There’s a battle outside and it’s raging / It’ll soon shake your windows
and rattle your walls.” Tough call between this and Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” “Masters of War,” “With God on Our Side,” etc., etc.

“We Shall Overcome.”
Adapted from a gospel song, the anthem of the civil rights movement. “Deep in my heart, I do
believe / We shall overcome some day.” Infinitely adaptable.

“Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round.”
Also adapted from a Negro spiritual. “I’m gonna keep on walkin’, keep on talkin’ / Fightin’ for my equal rights.” Another powerful civil rights anthem.

“I Ain’t Marching Anymore.”
By Phil Ochs. “It’s always the old to lead us to the war / It’s always the young to fall / Now
look at all we’ve won with the saber and the gun / Tell me is it worth it all?” An antiwar classic, complete with a revisionist history of American militarism.

“For What It’s Worth.”
Performed by Crosby, Stills, and Nash. By Stephen Stills. “There’s something happening here /
What it is ain’t exactly clear / There’s a man with a gun over there / Telling me I’ve got to beware.” Eerily foreboding.

“Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud).”
By James Brown. “Now we demand a chance to do things for ourself / We’re tired of beatin’ our head against the wall and workin’ for someone else.” A Black Power anthem by the Godfather of
Soul.

“Respect.”
Performed by Aretha Franklin. By Otis Redding. “I ain’t gonna do you wrong while you’re gone / Ain’t gonna do you wrong ‘cause I don’t wanna / All I’m askin’ is for a little respect when you come home.” The personal is political.

“Redemption Song.”
By Bob Marley. “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery / None but ourselves can free our
minds.” Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up” is also a contender.

“Imagine.”
By John Lennon. “Imagine no possessions / I wonder if you can / No need for greed or hunger / A brotherhood of man.” Lennon as utopian socialist.

“Fight the Power.”
By Public Enemy. “Got to give us what we want / Gotta give us what we need / Our freedom of
speech is freedom or death / We got to fight the powers that be.” An exuberant hip-hop call to arms.

UNFORGIVABLE LIAR… If Woody Guthrie lived today he might write, “Some men rob you with a six gun, others with a microphone.”

from the March issue of Rock & Rap Confidential….

UNFORGIVABLE LIAR… If Woody Guthrie lived today he might write, “Some men rob you with a six gun, others with a microphone.”

In January, Bono announced his latest campaign to save the poor through capitalism–or rather, the other way around. This is Red, a marketing scam which finds the increasingly deranged U2 frontman in business with Nike, Converse, The Gap, Giorgio Armani and American Express. Red products include Converse sneakers made from “African mudcloth,” “vintage” Gap t-shirts, Armani wraparound sunglasses, and a red American Express card. The companies will donate “a portion” of their profits to fighting AIDS in Africa, the continent for whose poor Bono claims to be the spokesman. This portion is for the most part unspecified (American Express promises 1% of spending). Nor is it specified whether Bono takes a cut–presumably he would be crowing if he weren’t, as he did when U2 pimped iPods for free.

“It’s just a couple of degrees from becoming a Saturday Night Live skit,” says Noel Beasley of the UNITE/HERE textile workers union. “”It’s like if you took Bob Dylan’s ‘The Times They Are A-Changing,’ used it to pitch Rolex watches and tried to convince people that if they bought enough luxury goods they could make a revolution. It’s ludicrous on its face.”

Financial Times termed Red “the latest in a series of marketing experiments by companies worried that television advertising is losing its punch. Many of these efforts are based on the idea of using good works or services as a way to get consumer attention.” The term for this, in respectable marketing circles, is “corporate social opportunity.”

As Beasley said on Kick Out the Jams, Dave Marsh’s Sirius radio show, “This is obviously the economic wet dream of every retailer and credit card loan shark in the world, if you can pitch consumerism and credit card debt as the salvation of the planet, while garment workers and shoe workers are starving to death and literally burning to death in horrific conditions in places like Burma and Thailand.” As a member of the executive committee of the International Textile, Leather and Garment Workers Foundation, Beasley regularly monitors sweatshop and slave labor conditions around the globe, up close and in person.

Bono announced his scheme at Davos, Switzerland, where he attended the World
Economic Forum, a meeting of leaders of the world’s richest countries. According to Financial Times, he got the Red idea from Robert Rubin, one of the architects of Clintonomics.

Bono explicitly believes that only such powerful insiders can effect meaningful change. Capitalism controls everything, and therefore, only capitalist solutions can be “effective.”

In Caracas, Venezuela, the World Social Forum took place at the same time as the Davos conference. The WSF is a meeting of leaders and activists from around the globe, from poor nations as well as rich ones. It is dedicated to the proposition that social justice occurs only when people govern themselves. The World Social Forum is the sound of some of the world’s have-nots speaking for themselves, which Bono sees as counter-productive. But today, five South American nations are run by governments that believe otherwise, while the countries where schemes like Red operate, particularly Britain and the U.S., allow their populations to grow poorer and more powerless by the day.

Bono claims to be a disciple of Martin Luther King. Dr. King spoke of the “triple evils”–racism, war and poverty–as inextricably connected. He eventually concluded that opposing one of them without opposing all of them didn’t make any sense. So Dr. King risked his relationship with the LBJ administration by first attacking the war in Vietnam, then starting the Poor Peoples Campaign, which raised exactly the same issues as the World Social Forum.

Bono and his ilk want to convince good-hearted folks that there is no need for the lowly to move. As long as Bono cuddles with the mighty, poverty and AIDS in Africa are being powerfully addressed. So Bono, “spokesman for the poor,” meets with Bush and never mentions Iraq or New Orleans.

For the past several years, Bono has argued that African nations need to be relieved of their multibillion dollar debt to rich countries. Much of that debt has been erased. This has produced no tangible reduction in poverty. Bono has issued pronouncements about increased U.S. aid to Africa after every one of his meetings with George Bush and his senior officials. That increase never comes and, as detailed by an article last summer in the U2 fanzine Rolling Stone, the way what little aid there is gets dispensed makes conditions worse.

The 2007 World Social Forum will be held, fittingly enough, in Africa. An offshoot, the U.S. Social Forum, will be held next year in Atlanta, a symbolic return to the South which gave birth to Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s Campaign. Both of these massive gatherings (20,000 people are expected in Atlanta, 300,000 in Africa) will be suffused with culture, as artists from around the world speak directly with poor people, not about them from afar. The sound of a certain Irish pop star, off shilling for sweatshop syndicates and their middlemen, will be heard only faintly, if at all.

To subscribe to Rock & Rap Confidential, send $15 for one year (12 issues) to RRC, Box 341305, Los Angeles CA 90034.

rockrap.com

Vancouver part of global anti-war rally

On the third anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, over 5,000 people marched through Vancouver today in solidarity with thousands around the globe in massive protests against the US imperialism.

Vancouver protestors began their march at the south side of the Burrard Street Bridge then down Robson and Georgia Streets before arriving at the Vancouver Art Gallery downtown. The crowd at the Art Gallery has been made up of families, students, and seniors, and advocacy groups including the members of StopWar.ca, Mobilization Against War and Occupation, Communist Party of Canada, B.C. Teachers Federation, Vancouver Raging Grannies, The Rouge Forum, and many more.

A number of speakers took to the podium including an American war deserter Klye Snyder, who spoke of his disillusionment about the US military involvement in Iraq and a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams who has just returned from the region.

Check out Howard Zinn’s latest ZNet Commentary: “Lessons of Iraq War Start With US History”

ZNet Commentary
Lessons of Iraq War Start With US History March 18, 2006
By Howard Zinn

On the third anniversary of President Bush’s Iraq debacle, it’s important to consider why the administration so easily fooled so many people into supporting the war.

I believe there are two reasons, which go deep into our national culture.

One is an absence of historical perspective. The other is an inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism.

If we don’t know history, then we are ready meat for carnivorous politicians and the intellectuals and journalists who supply the carving knives. But if we know some history, if we know how many times presidents have lied to us, we will not be fooled again.

President Polk lied to the nation about the reason for going to war with Mexico in 1846. It wasn’t that Mexico “shed American blood upon the American soil” but that Polk, and the slave-owning aristocracy, coveted half of Mexico.

President McKinley lied in 1898 about the reason for invading Cuba, saying we wanted to liberate the Cubans from Spanish control, but the truth is that he really wanted Spain out of Cuba so that the island could be open to United Fruit and other American corporations. He also lied about the reasons for our war in the Philippines, claiming we only wanted to “civilize” the Filipinos, while the real reason was to own a valuable piece of real estate in the far Pacific, even if we had to kill hundreds of thousands of Filipinos to accomplish that.

President Wilson lied about the reasons for entering the First World War, saying it was a war to “make the world safe for democracy,” when it was really a war to make the world safe for the rising American power.

President Truman lied when he said the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima because it was “a military target.”

And everyone lied about Vietnam — President Kennedy about the extent of our involvement, President Johnson about the Gulf of Tonkin and President Nixon about the secret bombing of Cambodia. They all claimed the war was to keep South Vietnam free of communism, but really wanted to keep South Vietnam as an American outpost at the edge of the Asian continent.

President Reagan lied about the invasion of Grenada, claiming falsely that it was a threat to the United States.

The elder Bush lied about the invasion of Panama, leading to the death of thousands of ordinary citizens in that country. And he lied again about the reason for attacking Iraq in 1991 — hardly to defend the integrity of Kuwait, rather to assert U.S. power in the oil-rich Middle East.

There is an even bigger lie: the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior.

If our starting point for evaluating the world around us is the firm belief that this nation is somehow endowed by Providence with unique qualities that make it morally superior to every other nation on Earth, then we are not likely to question the president when he says we are sending our troops here or there, or bombing this or that, in order to spread our values — democracy, liberty, and let’s not forget free enterprise — to some God-forsaken (literally) place in the world.

But we must face some facts that disturb the idea of a uniquely virtuous nation.

We must face our long history of ethnic cleansing, in which the U.S.
government drove millions of Indians off their land by means of massacres and forced evacuations.

We must face our long history, still not behind us, of slavery, segregation and racism.

And we must face the lingering memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It is not a history of which we can be proud.

Our leaders have taken it for granted, and planted the belief in the minds of many people that we are entitled, because of our moral superiority, to dominate the world. Both the Republican and Democratic Parties have embraced this notion.

But what is the idea of our moral superiority based on?

A more honest estimate of ourselves as a nation would prepare us all for the next barrage of lies that will accompany the next proposal to inflict our power on some other part of the world.

It might also inspire us to create a different history for ourselves, by taking our country away from the liars who govern it, and by rejecting nationalist arrogance, so that we can join people around the world in the common cause of peace and justice.

Howard Zinn, who served as a bombardier in the Air Force in World War II, is the author of A People’s History of the United States [ http://tinyurl.com/gqjvs ] (HarperCollins, 1995). He is also the co-author, with Anthony Arnove, of Voices of a People’s History of the United States [
http://tinyurl.com/gja83 ] (Seven Stories Press, 2004).

Quote of the year

By way of the Wall of Separation:

On Wednesday, March 1st, 2006, in Annapolis at a hearing on the proposed amendment to the Maryland state constitution that would prohibit gay marriage, Jamie Raskin, professor of law at AU, was requested to testify.

At the end of his testimony, Republican Senator Nancy Jacobs said: “As I read Biblical principles, marriage was intended, ordained and started by God – that is my belief,” she said. “For me, this is an issue solely based on religious principals.”

Raskin shot back that the Bible was also used to uphold now-outlawed statutes banning interracial marriage, and that the constitution should instead be lawmakers’ guiding principle. “People place their hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution; they don’t put their hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible,” he said.

The room erupted into applause.

Raskin is the author of a great book for high school students titled We the Students: Supreme Court Decisions for and About Students, as well as Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court Versus the American People in which he describes the transgressions of the Supreme Court against the Constitution and the people—and the faulty reasoning behind them—and lays out the plan for the best way to back a more democratic system.

He’s also running in the Democratic primary got Maryland State Senate in September against 20 year incumbent Ida Ruben.