Dockers and capitalists

Here are 10,500 dockworkers locked out at every port on the West Coast from Seattle to San Diego, with the shipping and terminal operators and big retail chains like Wal-Mart begging Bush to help them break the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), and Bush beginning the process of imposing an 80-day back-to-work order under the Taft-Hartley law.

He could escalate by trying to place the longshore workers under the aegis of the Railway Labor Act rather than the National Labor Relations Act. The former allows the government to close down a strike by fiat and impose a settlement.

Another line of attack would be to try to undercut the ILWU's strategic ace in the hole, its status as a bargaining unit for every port on the Pacific Coast. Before Harry Bridges won that right for the union back in the 1930s, the owners could simply whipsaw the different bargaining units by shifting shipments from a struck port to one still operating. A modern escalation of that would be the development of a port on Mexico's West Coast, where labor costs are negligible, and whence under NAFTA the containers could be funneled up by rail.

Thousands in Cincinnati protest Bush's call for war in Iraq

Thousands protested in Cincinnati yesterday [Monday, Oct. 7] as president George W. Bush spoke, calling upon the American people to support a Congressional measure which would give him the power to carry out a war against Iraq.

While Bush spoke inside, demonstrators lined the sidewalks in front of the Cincinnati Museum Center (the former Union Terminal) and for blocks around, chanting, singing, and waving signs opposing the war.

"What an amazing peace rally that was last night! When I first sent out an e-mail one week ago to mobilize people, I had hoped to get 1,000 people to protest Bush's speech for war. We estimate over 5,000 people gathered last night! It was beautiful!" said Sayrah Namaste, one of the organizers of the event. Local news media and NPR also reported "thousands" at the event.

Organized in just three days, protesters came from dozens of churches, several universities and high schools, and from people of all walks of life. Carrying signs reading, "No war on Iraq," "No blood for oil," and just plain "Peace," the demonstrators stood, marched, and danced for as long as four-hours first in the late

'In Defense of Black Reparations' -- Part One of Two

Throughout this year, the black reparations debate has become widely known, and it continued to attract increased national and international attention. In February 2002, CNN and USA Today commissioned the Gallup organization to conduct a national poll to assess public opinion on the issue. The results seemed to directly mirror the nation's parallel racial universes that are reproduced by structural racism. When asked whether "corporations that made profits from slavery should apologize to black Americans who are descendants of slaves," 68 percent of African Americans responded affirmatively, with 23 percent opposed, while 62 percent of all whites rejected the call for an apology, with only 34 percent supporting it.

'The Death of White Racism' -- Part One of Two

At the conclusion of his 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., expressed the "hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities."

Sick, sad tidings

AUSTIN, Texas -- We just lost the whole ballgame on corporate reform without the news even making it to the front page. The sick, sad tidings were tucked away discreetly on the business pages: "SEC Chief Hedges on Accounting Regulator." Now there's a sexy headline.

All of you who were shafted by Enron, shucked by Worldcom, jived by Global Crossing, everyone whose 401(k) is now a 201(k) (I think that's Paul Begala's line), you just got screwed again. They're not going to fix it.

They've already called off the reform effort; it's over. Corporate muscle showed up and shut it down. Forget expensing options, independent directors, going after offshore shams, derivatives regulation. For that matter, forget even basic reforms like separating the auditing and consulting functions of accounting firms and rotating accounting firms every few years. Bottom line: It's all going to happen again. We learned zip from the entire financial collapse. Our political system is too bought-off to respond intelligently.

Media Guide: How to view the United Nations

News coverage of the United Nations gets confusing sometimes. Is the U.N. a vital institution or a dysfunctional relic? Are its Security Council resolutions profoundly important for international relations -- or beside the point because global leadership must now come from the world's only superpower?

These days, we keep hearing that the United States will need to launch a full-scale attack on Iraq because Saddam Hussein has violated U.N. Security Council resolutions -- at the same time that we're told the U.S. government must reserve the right to take military action unilaterally if the Security Council fails to make appropriate decisions about Iraq.

To clarify the situation, here are three basic guidelines for understanding how to think in sync with America's leading politicians and pundits:

* The U.N. resolutions approved by the five permanent members of the Security Council are hugely important, and worthy of enforcement with massive military force, if the White House says so. Otherwise, the resolutions have little or no significance, and they certainly can't be

Drown out drums of war with the sound of dialogue

SAN FRANCISCO -- The conventional wisdom in Washington is that it's pointless or reckless for Americans to speak with Iraqi officials. But some on Capitol Hill are beginning to think otherwise.

Last month, for the first time since George W. Bush became president, members of Congress -- four Democrats -- visited Baghdad. Hopefully, more will be making the journey later this fall.

Rep. Nick Rahall, a 13-term congressman from West Virginia, started the trend in mid-September when he joined former Sen. James Abourezk of South Dakota to lead a small delegation of Americans to Baghdad. As a member of that group, I was impressed with the candor of the discussions during several hours of meetings with high-level Iraqi government ministers.

The White House was initially low-key about our trip. But when three more congressmen announced they were heading off to visit Iraq last week, the White House press secretary swung into action. Eager to throw cold water, Ari Fleischer claimed that Mr. Rahall's visit "did not turn out to be as he hoped it would because of the rough treatment he

After action reviews

AUSTIN, Texas -- One thing I have always admired about the U.S. military services is their ability to learn from their mistakes. They have institutionalized this ability in the form of remarkable After Action Reviews, which include rigorous dissection of every aspect of whatever operation they were last required to take.

These AARs are both unsparing and illuminating -- I recall the particularly trenchant review of the (SET ITAL) opera bouffe (END ITAL) episode in which they were required to invade Grenada, an exercise so stunningly silly that it is beneath comment. They should have sent a Texas Ranger.

Of course, the military spent years poring over Vietnam, the one it lost. Even now, the feelings of many are still so tender on that one that I feel obliged to point out they didn't actually lose it -- they were sent into an unwinnable situation.

October surprises

October surprises are built into our system, since elections come in November. Cliffhanger movies in Hollywood's old days could not have staged it better. Leaving aside hurricanes roaring out of the Gulf of Mexico and threatening to drown Louisiana, we have:

-- a lockout at every port on the West Coast, with the owners begging George Bush to help them break the Longshoremen's union (ILWU) by imposing a cooling-off period under Taft Hartley and threatening to bring in the armed forces to work the ports.

Meanwhile, Bush's Homeland Security bill is on life-support because many Democrats have stigmatized it as a savage assault on labor's ability to organize in the federal sector.

-- a white-lipped economy. In the second quarter alone, pension wealth fell by over $469 billion or 5.3 percent. House prices cushioned the blow a little but still left a net decline in wealth of 3.4 percent in one quarter, with its successor shaping up to be just as bad. There are uncertainties over the house price boom, plus rising unemployment. Bears rampage through the market.

The far, far left

AUSTIN, Texas -- I realize it's early days for this sort of thing, but I already have a nomination for dumbest sentence of the decade. You have a mere eight years to top this one, so you'd better get cracking.

I found it in the midst of nasty little ad hominem attack on Bill Moyers in The Weekly Standard. The writer, Stephen F. Hayes, is laboring under the delusion that Moyers is "dedicated to promoting the views of most extreme elements of the far left in America." One can only conclude that Hayes has never met anyone on the far left: Billy Don Moyers from Marshall, Texas, is actually a Baptist, albeit of the Jimmy Carter school.

Hayes worked himself up into a fine lather of indignation because "Moyers spends much of his time pointing out the conflicts-of-interest of those in government and corporate America." Some would call that journalism, but it was not the inanity of the attack on Moyers that stopped me. It was this sentence, which Hayes stuck in to show how far-left he thinks Moyers is: "Moyers used water rights in Bolivia as an illustration of the perils of capitalism."

Pages

Subscribe to Freepress.org RSS