WW News Service Digest #228
1) Layoff surge: Who's to blame?
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2) Iraq: Behind U.S. 'Oil For Food' scam
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3) Racak 'massacre' exposed as fraud
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4) San Diego youths protest anti-gay meeting
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5) Baltimore hospital workers take to the streets
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6) The problem with Bush's 'faith-based' initiative
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 15, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
LAYOFF SURGE:
WHO SHOULD PAY FOR CAPITALISM'S ECONOMIC CRISIS?
By Fred Goldstein
The 10-year U.S. capitalist boom may be coming to an end. It
has been a decade of obscene profits on Wall Street,
ruthless corporate restructuring, stagnant wages and
increasing pressure and hardships for working people.
Workers on the job and in the communities must prepare to
resist as the bosses and bankers, who have feasted off the
enormous production created by the working class, quickly
move to preserve their profit margins by launching a wave of
layoffs.
According to a report issued by the Department of Labor's
Bureau of Labor Statistics on Feb. 1, mass layoffs in the
fourth quarter of 2000 rose 54 percent over the same period
last year. A mass layoff as defined by the government occurs
when 50 or more workers are terminated at one time and then
file for unemployment insurance.
"In the October to December period," according to the Feb. 2
Wall Street Journal, "there were 5,248 mass-layoff events
involving 647,012 workers, compared with 3,943 events and
420,827 workers a year earlier." During the year there were
1.84 million workers laid off in so-called mass layoffs, so
more than one-third of them came in the fourth quarter.
According to the Journal, "there is some evidence that
layoffs accelerated in January ... first time claims for
unemployment insurance rose by 32,000 to 346,000" in the
last week of January alone.
California has the largest number of workers hit by these so-
called mass layoffs--155,000. But the manufacturing Midwest
was hit hardest. Mass layoffs in Ohio jumped 139 percent and
in Michigan 133 percent from last year. Indiana, Missouri,
Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were also hard hit, according to
the BLS report.
The statistics understate the problem because small
businesses employ more workers than big businesses and react
quickly to the slowdown in the economy. But workers laid off
by small businesses or by big businesses in numbers less
than 50 are not included in the statistics. The real number
could be several times more than stated in the report.
CONTRACTION IN MANUFACTURING
What is most significant about the current downturn, and
what is most worrying the bourgeoisie, is the persistent
contraction in manufacturing. "Manufacturing activity
plunged again in January," wrote the Wall Street Journal on
Feb. 2, "to levels that usually are seen only when the
entire economy is in recession." This is the sixth
consecutive month that manufacturing industries have
declined.
The National Association of Purchasing Management monitors
manufacturing based on information obtained from 350
industrial companies. Its report, showing a sharp decline
during December, was "a factor in the Federal Reserve's
surprise half-percentage-point" cut in the interest rates on
Jan. 3.
Ever since this latest boom got under way, the capitalist
pundits have been expounding on the miracle of the so-called
recession-proof "new economy." During the early 1990s it was
said that the "service economy" was going to replace the
"smokestack economy." Then in the mid-to-late 1990s, as the
expansion continued unabated, the economists began to
speculate whether the "technology miracle" was going to
totally transform capitalism and put an end to the business
cycle altogether.
But the laws of capitalist development, as discovered and
worked out by Karl Marx, were not repealed by the growth of
the service sector. On the contrary, only the law of
maximization of profit developed by Marx could explain the
growth of the service sector.
The growth of the low-wage service industries gave the
bosses new and highly profitable areas in which to absorb
workers as they laid them off en masse from the high-wage
manufacturing industries during the capitalist
restructuring. Meanwhile, large sections of manufacturing
were moved to low-wage areas abroad.
And the technology boom did not free capitalism from its
insoluble contradiction. Under the capitalist system
production only takes place for profit. Those
financial/corporate empires that accumulate the most profit
devour their rivals. Profit is the name of the game and it
comes from the unpaid labor of the workers--that is, from
exploitation.
CAPITALIST COMPETITION RESULTS IN OVERPRODUCTION
In the struggle of each giant corporation to expand
capitalist exploitation, production always outstrips
consumption. No matter how much the market grows,
competition among the monopolistic capitalist groupings--
i.e., the ceaseless struggle for "market share"--ultimately
results in overproduction.
Workers are made to work faster and longer hours. Technology
is put in to make them more productive--i.e., to intensify
their exploitation. Labor becomes more onerous the more
laborsaving devices are applied to production.
Sooner or later inventories begin to build up as production
outstrips the capitalist market. Commodities are produced in
such quantities that, although they are useful and needed,
they cannot be sold at a profit.
Instead of distributing the excess to meet the glaring needs
of the people, shifts are laid off, factories and offices
are shut down. Unemployment and poverty result. Social need
becomes greatest at the very moment that unsold inventories
are piling up.
TOO MUCH STEEL?
Right now there is worldwide capitalist overproduction in
steel. Eleven U.S. steel companies have filed for
bankruptcy.
Does that mean society doesn't need steel? All the steel
capacity in the U.S. could be put to use building public
housing for the working class and to house the millions of
homeless people driven out by greedy landlords; or to fixing
the thousands of bridges that are decayed; or to rebuilding
schools in the cities and the rural areas; or to rebuilding
all the structures destroyed in Iraq by U.S. bombs.
Because of capitalist overproduction the auto industry is
laying off thousands of workers right now and thousands more
are due to be furloughed. But there are workers all over
this country, in cities and towns with little or no public
transportation, who have to struggle every day to get to
work. When their cars break down, they lose their jobs.
Workers in Mexico who produce hundreds of thousands of autos
for U.S. companies to be sold here and in Latin America
cannot afford to buy the cars they produce. There is plenty
of social need for automobiles. The catalogue of unmet
material needs of the masses could be extended indefinitely.
Auto plants can be converted to produce desperately needed
public transportation. This would absorb manufacturing labor
from industries such as rubber, glass, steel, aluminum,
engineering and design, paint, fabric, plastic, computers,
etc.
Why should 26,000 DaimlerChrysler workers or any autoworkers
be thrown out on the street? Why should the workers who
created the wealth that built the auto industry be laid off
by those parasitical, non-worker moneybags who own it?
MAKE THE BOSSES PAY FOR THEIR CRISIS
It is time for workers to declare that they have a right to
their jobs. If anyone is going to give up something in this
economic downturn, let it be the bosses who raked in
millions and billions during this 10 years of profit
gouging, while workers had to struggle just to keep up.
It is time for vanguard elements in the labor movement and
their activist allies in the political movement to say "no"
to layoffs and assert the rights of workers to their jobs.
It is time to put the crisis on the shoulders of those who
created it--the bosses.
The owners of DaimlerChrysler, Ford and General Motors, like
all other capitalists, are driven by the thirst for profit.
They are all planning to make the working class pay the
price for the inevitable results of a system in which a tiny
group of millionaires and billionaires privately owns and
runs the vast worldwide system of production created by the
collective efforts of generations of workers.
There's only one ultimate solution to the problem of
layoffs, poverty, and all the divisive tools such as racism,
sexism and oppression of lesbian/gay/bi/trans people that
the employers and their media use to divert the class
struggle: socialism.
The only way to put an end to the contradictions that are
beginning to unfold in this economic downturn--and that
could end up in a disastrous crisis for the mas ses--is to
take the economy out of the hands of this small group of
super-rich owners and run it for the benefit of society.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 15, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
IRAQ: BEHIND U.S. "OIL FOR FOOD" SCAM
By Saul Kanowitz
In mid-January the fourth Iraq Sanctions Challenge spent
five days in Iraq. Seeing the situation there firsthand gave
the delegates excellent information to combat the lies and
distortions of the U.S. government and corporate media.
We heard from Iraqi government representatives as well as
from Iraqi workers about the difficulties involved in trying
to meet the country's needs under the U.S./United Nations
sanctions. One topic that came up was how the United States
and Britain use the "Oil For Food" (OFF) program--an
ostensibly humanitarian effort--as a tool to punish the
Iraqi people for their intransigence.
On Jan. 14 we had the opportunity to hear from Minister of
Trade Dr. Mohammed Mahdi Salih. He explained that Iraq
entered into the UN's OFF program in December 1996 as a way
to buy medicines and increase the food rations distributed
to every citizen and non-citizen.
Between January 1997 and January 2000, Iraq sold $40 billion
of oil. The money from the OFF program is deposited into an
account controlled by the UN 661 Committee. Resolution 661
imposed sanctions on Iraq on Aug. 6, 1990, and created the
infrastructure to enforce the genocidal sanctions that have
killed over a million Iraqis.
Salih explained that as of this January, only about $9.6
billion has been distributed to Iraq, or about 24 percent of
total sales. The UN has taken $13.6 billion, or 34 percent,
to compensate the U.S. puppet regime in Kuwait for the war
and to "administrate" the OFF program.
In other words, more money has gone to compensate Kuwait
than to feed and provide medical care for the Iraqi people.
'DUAL-USE TECHNOLOGY'
Salih told us that the U.S. and British representatives on
the 661 Committee have continually denied or delayed
proposals submitted by Iraq. The reason given was that the
materials requested constituted "dual-use technology"--
meaning it could have a military application as well as the
specified civilian use.
This definition includes almost everything needed to return
Iraq to the status of a modern industrial society and to the
living standard its people enjoyed before sanctions and the
war. For example, Iraq has been denied the right to import
pencils in any substantial amount because the graphite in
them "could be used to help build nuclear weapons,"
according to the U.S. and Britain.
Chlorine, desperately needed for the purification of
drinking water, is highly restricted because it could
theoretically be used in the production of chemical and
biological weapons.
The committee has denied over 90 percent of Iraq's contracts
for irrigation and water/sewage treatment facilities, one-
third of its food proposals and 60 percent of its
agricultural contracts. (See accompanying chart)
Salih translated the real impact of the OFF program in human
terms when he explained that $9.6 billion averages out to $7
per month per person over a four-year period.
With this minuscule amount of money Iraq's food rationing
system--described by the UN as one of the least corrupt in
the world--has managed to increase the average daily food
ration from 1,275 kilocalories to 2,188 kilocalories. But
this is still only two-thirds of the daily average before
the sanctions.
ROSTAMIA SEWAGE TREATMENT PLANT
Several delegates later visited the Rostamia Sewage
Treatment Plant in Baghdad. There we heard a similar story.
The 661 Committee rejected the purchase of gas masks and
aeration tubes for the workers, who wear this equipment when
they descend into the sewage tanks to clean clogged filters
and gates. The equipment protects them from toxic gases.
The workers continue to do their jobs without the safety
equipment. Eight months ago, one worker died after ingesting
the toxic gases. The 661 Committee rejected the purchase
because the gas masks could be used as a "component of
chemical warfare."
We also visited the State Enterprise for Drug Industries and
Medical Appliances in the city of Samara. This state-owned
facility was the source of 80 percent of the medicines
produced in Iraq before the sanctions.
The plant's director general described a production line,
scheduled for replacement in 1990, that had produced 1
million doses of gentomycin, a third-generation antibiotic,
annually. Prior to sanctions, quality control rejected about
5-10 percent of the product. Ten years later, using these
now antiquated lines, quality control rejects 60-70 percent
of the medicine.
A request to replace the production line was submitted and
approved by the 661 Committee. As part of the contract,
signed with a foreign company, a spectrometer critical to
quality control was included. The contract was sent back to
the 661 Committee, which approved the production line but
rejected the spectrometer because it had "dual use
capability."
In effect, the director general said, the 661 Committee had
voided the practical application of the contract. It was
impossible to produce medicines efficiently without a
spectrometer for quality control.
After spending five days in Iraq, we could clearly see the
genocidal intent of the sanctions. The deliberate sabotage
of the OFF program, and the policy of punishing the Iraqi
people for fighting for their sovereignty, has generated a
justifiable anger at the U.S. government.
But the Iraqi people are by no means vanquished. We were
impressed by their resolve and the remarkable warmth they
expressed to our delegation. We all left Iraq armed with a
greater knowledge of this crime against humanity carried out
by the U.S. and Britain and the resolve to fight harder to
end all sanctions on Iraq.
[The writer was a delegate on the fourth Iraq Sanctions
Challenge.]
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 15, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
RACAK "MASSACRE" EXPOSED AS FRAUD
By John Catalinotto
The justification for the U.S. and NATO's 1999 war against
Yugoslavia, as well as the so-called war crimes charges
against then-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, were all
based on a lie that has now been exposed before the world.
This exposure does nothing to help the 3,000 Yugoslavs that
U.S./NATO aggression killed. It should at least destroy the
credibility of the U.S. and NATO regimes to lead their
population into another war, whether in Europe or Africa or
Latin America.
In mid-January 1999, a gunfight between the U.S. puppet gang
known as the Kosovo Liberation Army and Serb police forces
broke out in the Kosovo town of Racak, a KLA stronghold. The
following day, the head of the European observer team--a
U.S. diplomat named William Walker--went to Racak at the
KLA's invitation. He saw a collection of bodies, then
proclaimed it a massacre and a "Serb atrocity" before the
world.
Immediately U.S. President Bill Clinton, German Defense
Minister Rudolph Scharping and others used this so-called
massacre to charge Belgrade with "genocide" and to justify
military intervention against Yugoslavia.
A team of Belorussian and Serbian forensic experts found no
massacre. U.S.-NATO forces challenged their findings. A team
of Finnish forensic experts then repeated the examinations.
At the time, the Finnish report was presented in such a
vague way that it allowed the original onslaught of anti-
Belgrade propaganda to carry the day.
Finally, after two years, a Berlin daily newspaper, the
Berliner Zeitung, reported on Jan. 18 that these Finnish
experts found no evidence that Serb security forces
massacred ethnic Albanian civilians in the Kosovo village of
Racak in January 1999.
Juha Rainio, Kaisa Lalu and Antti Penttila, from the Finnish
team, were unable to confirm that the 40 bodies they
examined were villagers from Racak, the newspaper said.
The Berliner Zeitung also reports that these findings were
completed as early as June 2000, but that their publication
had been blocked by the United Nations and the European
Union.
The Finnish team's report is due to be published soon in the
journal Forensic Science International. The newspaper
obtained a pre-publication copy.
"The Finnish experts were unable to find anything against
us," said Milan Milutinovic, Serbia's president at the time
of the events, who is still in office.
Milutinovic, along with Milosevic, is charged with war
crimes by the court that U.S. and NATO forces set up in the
Hague. At the core of these war crimes charges is the so-
called Racak massacre.
Workers World newspaper's original coverage of the Racak
events, using the evidence even then at hand, warned that
this incident was manufactured to provide justification for
U.S. aggression against Yugoslavia.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 15, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
SAN DIEGO YOUTHS PROTEST ANTI-GAY MEETING
Parents attending an anti-gay conference in San Diego,
Calif., Feb. 3 were forced to confront a crowd of 50 mostly
young demonstrators. The right-wing group "Focus on the
Family" sponsored the conference targeting youths and
teachers. It urged parents to attempt to "convert" their
gay, lesbian, bi and trans children into heterosexuals.
The conference was a reaction to the growing success of
programs such as Gay-Straight Alliances that create safe
places for youths to escape harassment in high schools.
Young people ranging in age from 15 to 25 chanted
relentlessly for four hours. Most were first-time
protesters.
They were joined by neighbors, who reported hearing chants
of "We refuse to live a lie," "We're equal, get used to it"
and "gay, straight, Black, white, same struggle, same fight"
from miles away. The rally also attracted young people away
from the conference. Local news media covered the
demonstration.
Protesters raised issues ranging from how
lesbian/gay/bi/trans people have been written out of history
books to recent attacks on immigrants on the U.S./Mexico
border.
A young lesbian read her letter of resignation to the U.S.
Navy, citing the repression she faced under the government's
"don't ask, don't tell" policy. A gay African American youth
recounted the violence he faced daily in high school.
Bob McCubbin from the International Action Center said: "The
community was ready for this. With Bush in office pushing
school vouchers, limiting a woman's right to choose and
putting in John Ashcroft as the racist, anti-gay attorney
general, people are left to organize ourselves. We need a
movement independent of the Democrats and Republicans."
--Joe Delaplaine
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 15, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
BALTIMORE HOSPITAL WORKERS TAKE TO THE STREETS
By Sharon Black Ceci
Baltimore
On Jan. 31 workers represented by Service Employees/1199E
Health and Hospital union staged a one-day strike at
Baltimore-area hospitals, including Johns Hopkins, Sinai and
Greater Baltimore Medical Center. As part of the day's
activities, workers and supporters rallied in a downtown
park across from Mercy Hospital.
Over 1,000 workers then took to Baltimore's streets,
chanting and waving to onlookers. The group marched from
Sara toga and St. Paul streets to the Inner Harbor, where
buses waited to pick up the workers.
Andre Powell, an organizer for the All-People's Congress,
said: "This is one of the largest union activities in recent
history and the largest march held in downtown Baltimore. It
is an inspiration to all low-paid workers fighting for their
rights."
Members of the APC, a citywide activist group, were among
the supporters who turned out. Others included the Student
Labor Action Committee, a student-based group at Johns
Hopkins University, and other AFL-CIO unions.
Brian Howard, an organizer for 1199E, stated: "What happens
to the hospital workers has a direct impact on everyone
because one out of every five workers in Baltimore is a
health-care worker. If we win, everyone wins."
Wages at Johns Hopkins are at poverty level for many
workers. Some are paid as little as $7.52 an hour.
Management has refused to budge on its offer to the workers,
according to 1199 representatives. The bosses have offered
only a 2-percent wage increase, no pension increase and
higher costs for health care.
Many workers said the action was a tremendous success. "This
was the biggest march we ever held," one proclaimed. "This
has to show the bosses that we mean business," said another.
The workers continued to sing, "We are the union, the
mighty, mighty union" as they boarded their buses.
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 15, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
THE PROBLEM WITH BUSH'S "FAITH-BASED" INITIATIVE
By Phil Wilayto
Just nine days after being sworn in as president, George W.
Bush announced the establishment of a new White House Office
of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. The stated goal of
the office is to help religious groups receive government
funds and contracts to deliver social services, especially
to the very poor.
"Real change happens street by street, heart by heart, one
soul, one conscience at a time," Bush piously explained the
following day, speaking outside a religious-based community
program in Washington.
Joining Bush at the photo-op was Sen. Joe Lieberman, the
recent Democratic vice -presidential candidate. Lieberman
said that he and Bush were of "like minds" concerning the
goals of the new initiative. Democratic presidential
candidate Al Gore had also called for a more active role for
religious groups in delivering federally funded social
services.
While most criticism of Bush's initiative has focused on
threats to the constitutional separation of church and
state, the problems with this program go far beyond that.
They also include the increasing privatization of government
services, deregulation of the delivery of social services,
weakening of public-sector unions and the development of a
layer of hand-picked "leaders" answerable not to the
communities they serve, but to the government and right-wing
foundations that provide their funding.
ASHCROFT OPENED THE DOOR
For many years, churches and church organizations have
received government contracts to provide services like food,
foster care and drug programs. Most of these contracts were
channeled through separate non-profit agencies like Catholic
Charities and Lutheran Social Services, which were supposed
to refrain from trying to convert their "clients" to their
religious views.
The door to direct funding of religious groups was opened
wide with the passage of the 1996 welfare reform act signed
by President Bill Clinton. That bill contained a section
called "Charitable Choice," which gave religious groups
contracting with the government the right to present their
religious beliefs along with their services.
The Charitable Choice provision was drafted by former
Missouri Sen. John Ashcroft--the anti-woman, anti-civil
rights, pro-Confederacy religious zealot who is now the top
law enforcement officer in the country.
To head up his new Office of Faith-Based and Community
Initiatives, Bush chose University of Pennsylvania Political
Science Prof. John J. DiIulio Jr., who describes himself as
a "New Democrat" and made his mark in the mid-1990s with his
prediction of a new and horribly brutal crime wave to be
carried out by children and teenagers.
His dire warning of a new class of "super predators" never
materialized, but both Democrats and Republicans seized on
DiIulio's predictions to justify their own wave of brutal
legislation, including the trying of children as adults,
harsh new sentences for juvenile offenders and the massive
expansion of juvenile prisons. All of this contributed to
the doubling of the prison population under the watch of
"New Democrat" Clinton.
Bush has also created a national advisory board for his
faith-based initiative, to be headed by former Indianapolis
Mayor Stephan Goldsmith. Goldsmith has been closely
associated with the Indianapolis-based Hudson Institute, a
right-wing think tank that heavily promotes the
privatization of government services.
Government funding of "faith-based" social services has long
been a goal of neo-conservative strategists, who see
privatization and deregulation as the way to restore a pre-
1929 style of capitalism free of any restraints on profit
making.
A FURTHER STEP BACKWARD
Here's some of what's wrong with Bush's initiative:
First of all, massive social issues like health care,
education and poverty can't be properly addressed on a small-
scale, piecemeal basis. By promoting the idea that social
services are best carried out by private groups, "faith-
based" funding undermines the principle that the government
has any obligation to "promote the general welfare."
It replaces the concept of entitlement--of the right to
government services--with the old notion of religious
charity. This leaves the government free to concentrate on
what the capitalist class believes to be its "proper"
functions of protecting corporate interests at home and
abroad--in other words, the repressive functions of the
police and the military.
What this really amounts to is a further step in taking back
the gains won by poor and working people through the
tremendous struggles of the 1930s, such as welfare,
unemployment insurance, public housing, Social Security,
etc.
The mere fact that a group is religious is no guarantee that
it has the interests of poor people at heart. In recent
years, many of these organizations have been accused of
fraud, mistreatment of clients and misusing tax dollars for
religious advocacy.
Transferring the delivery of social services from government
agencies to religious groups weakens public sector unions
like the State, County and Municipal Employees and the
Service Employees. It also results in the large-scale
destruction of good-paying jobs, since the largely non-union
religious groups are notorious for the low wages and few
benefits they offer their workers.
Many of the workers who stand to lose in this transition are
women and people of color.
Furthermore, under "Charitable Choice," religious groups
claim exemption from government licensing and performance
standards. They also claim the right to refuse to hire
lesbian, gay, bi and trans people.
Finally, it will be the right-wing Bush administration that
decides which "faith-based" groups receive contracts--thus
building up a layer of "leaders" beholden to Bush for their
livelihood and promoting the spread of the social
conservative agenda in poor communities.
It's clear that the Democrats can't be relied on to stop
this dangerous new initiative. They couldn't or wouldn't
even stop the outright theft of the presidential election.
But the objective basis is being laid for progressive
religious groups, labor unions, civil rights organizations
and the progressive movement to unite around opposition to
the illegitimate Bush administration and the whole rotten
system that it represents.
