WW News Service Digest #356
1) Hunger and homelessness soar
by WW
2) Postal union says: No safety, no work
by WW
3) Israel, Palestine and the U.S. war
by WW
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Dec. 6, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
HUNGER AND HOMELESSNESS SOAR
By Heather Cottin
Freeport, N.Y.
In the gourmet boutiques of Westhampton, Long Island,
shoppers decide whether to buy crabmeat or lobster for their
guests. But in Mastic Beach, 10 miles away, a woman at a
soup kitchen tells a social worker from Adelphi University:
"Our welfare benefits were cut. My husband lost his job, so
we can't pay our bills. ... Our housing was condemned and
social services did not provide enough rent for new housing.
... When we lost our jobs, we lost medical insurance."
The new Fairway supermarket in Plainview offers hundreds of
international cheeses to tease the palates of Long Island's
North Shore residents who can afford these delights. But
four miles away, in the Church of St. Kilian Outreach Center
in Farmingdale, a parishioner says, "My biggest fear is not
only going hungry, but ending up on the street because I
can't afford to pay rent. My food stamps have been
drastically reduced."
This was the picture long before the Sept. 11 disaster,
according to the report "Poverty Amid Plenty," published by
Catholic Charities and Adelphi School of Social Work in
April 2001.
This is the new face of homelessness. According to Newsday,
in June of 1999 suburban poverty was growing "at a
significantly faster pace than urban poverty."
Community Advocates--a housing-assistance agency--noted in
February that there were 50,000 homeless people on Long
Island, 20,000 of them children. Newsday on Nov. 13 reported
that "the homeless population of Nassau and Suffolk counties
has sharply increased in recent months, the highest since
the mid-1990s. There are also hundreds of families on the
brink [of homelessness], including those who work, who have
never been on public assistance."
But now Washington has confirmed that a full-blown recession
is underway. Some 40 miles away, in New York City, the
problem of hunger and homelessness has reached critical
proportions.
Columnist Bob Herbert wrote in the New York Times of Nov.
22, "There are more than 1,000 soup kitchens and food
pantries in the city, and they are stretched beyond
capacity. Last year in New York, about 20 percent of the
pantries in the city had to turn people away because they
ran out of food. That figure is expected to reach 30 percent
this year, according to Joel Berg, director of the New York
City Coalition Against Hunger."
Four days later the Times editorialized, "Food for Survival,
the city's largest supplier of emergency food, estimated
that more than a million New Yorkers were relying on soup
kitchens, food pantries and shelters to avoid going hungry.
The New York City Coalition Against Hunger, which represents
about 1,000 kitchens and pantries, reported a similar
upsurge in demand. Unless more food becomes available, the
coalition's members say they will be forced to turn away
hundreds of thousands of hungry people."
People are hungry and homeless, and the situation is
deteriorating in the recession. But these problems are not
new.
On May 24, the Guardian of Britain did an analysis of
poverty in the U.S. Food bank use back then was "up 75
percent in some American cities, [and] one in five U.S.
children lives in poverty; 44.3 million are uninsured. ...
According to several new reports, it turns out that the
reason for deepening U.S. poverty is rather simple: it's all
those rich people. Extreme wealth created in the top tier of
the economy, rather than trickling down and making everyone
better off, is having a direct negative impact on those
living in extreme poverty at the bottom."
RIPPING UP SAFETY NET FOR FUN AND PROFIT
Meanwhile, corporate lobbyists are flooding Washington with
a myriad of tax cut proposals that will save the big
corporations billions.
The House on Oct. 26 voted to repeal the Alternative Minimum
Tax on corporations. This is now part of the "economic
stimulus" package before the Senate. The AMT has required
profitable companies to pay at least some tax, no matter how
many loopholes they can find.
If the Senate passes the House version, the repeal would be
retroactive, so companies would get rebates of all the
Alternative Minimum Tax they've paid over the last 15 years.
The repeal would allow many companies to pay zero U.S.
income tax in perpetuity.
Wouldn't we all like to get back the taxes we've paid over
the last 15 years?
Plenty of economists agree that the claims these corporate
tax cuts will "stimulate the economy" are bogus. They know
full well that the corporate moguls have no intention of
investing in an economy that is operating at a recession
level.
In a recession, people don't buy much. Inventories are high
and manufacturers still have excess capacity, so tax cut or
no tax cut, capitalists won't invest in expanding
production.
What this amounts to is robbery from the workers who don't
have the loopholes that businesses do. These taxpayers will
be obliged, according to the Nov. 18 New York Times, to give
$1.4 billion to IBM, $833 million to General Motors, $671
million to General Electric, $572 million to Chevron Texaco,
and $254 million to Enron.
What Congress has accomplished since ending "welfare as we
know it" under Bill Clinton has been the whittling away of
the meager welfare system that was created under the New
Deal in the 1930s and expanded slightly under the War on
Poverty in the 1960s. In both these periods, worker
militancy pushed the government to do something for poor
people.
But "supply side" economics, which is just code words for
stealing from the poor and giving to the rich, has been
promoted since the 1970s, and has accelerated in this
declining economy.
Cutting assistance to poor families and failing to build
sufficient low-income housing in the past 30 years has had a
devastating effect on the poor. Housing costs are the single
most expensive part of a worker's budget. The
Adelphi/Catholic Charities report noted that poor families
spend almost 60 percent of their pay on housing. Finding
affordable housing is growing nearly impossible.
Even the paltry amount of assistance workers have received
for housing is being cut. The federal program known as
Section 8, which subsidizes low-income housing, is in grave
danger. Congress, according to the Nov. 17 New York Times,
is now unwilling to provide $800 million for the program. In
the tri-state region around New York City alone, this
program has enabled 62,000 households to afford apartments
by offsetting rent costs. Its disappearance would lead to an
exponential increase in homelessness nationwide, especially
affecting the elderly and disabled.
The capitalist class has its program--maximize profits at
any cost. The workers need to fight for their own program--
one that would guarantee food and decent housing, day care,
health care, culture and education for all.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
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From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (WW)
Date: sunnuntai 2. joulukuu 2001 18:57
Subject: [WW] Postal union says: No safety, no work
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Dec. 6, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
UNION SAYS: NO SAFETY, NO WORK
By G. Dunkel
Buried under all the news about the most recent case of
inhalation anthrax was a strong statement by Bill Burrus,
newly elected president of the 360,000-member American
Postal Workers Union, telling his members not to enter
infected facilities.
Since doctors disagree on how much anthrax is needed to
cause an infection, Burrus said, "I'm telling my members we
will not work in contaminated facilities. We will leave the
building until it's tested clean."
The post office has tested 278 facilities nationwide for
anthrax, and so far 21 have been found contaminated. Some
20,000 postal workers have been prescribed antibiotics as a
precaution. Two postal workers in Washington have died and a
number of others have been made sick by anthrax since
contaminated letters began appearing in October.
Burrus said having mail workers with masks and gloves do
their jobs while hazardous materials experts are cleaning up
nearby "is not sound medical procedure, and psychologically
is an absolute disaster."
This is exactly what happened at Morgan Station in
Manhattan. Morgan handles most of the mail delivered in that
borough, about 12.5 million pieces a day. If it were closed
down, as some facilities were in New Jersey, the post office
would have had major problems providing service.
"It's a continuing concern that so much uncertainty
continues to exist regarding the source of these
infections," said Burrus. He said even a negative test "did
not give me total comfort."
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (WW)
Date: sunnuntai 2. joulukuu 2001 18:58
Subject: [WW] Israel, Palestine and the U.S. war
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Dec. 6, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
ISRAEL, PALESTINE AND THE U.S. WAR
By Richard Becker
What is the Bush administration really trying to accomplish
at this time by sending a retired Marine general and an
assistant secretary of state to negotiate between the
Palestinians and Israel?
After a decade of intensive but failed talks involving
presidents and prime ministers, is it conceivable that a
much lower-level delegation could achieve a just peace in
the Middle East?
No, a real peace agreement is not the objective here. The
goal instead is pacification. What Washington is seeking is
diplomatic cover for its war effort. Public opinion
throughout the Middle East is highly inflamed over Israel's
brutal repression of the Palestinian people, as well as the
U.S./UN sanctions on Iraq.
Even among Washington's European allies, there is strong
popular opposition to Israel's use of U.S.-supplied
helicopters and missiles to assassinate Palestinian leaders
and wreak havoc on the people.
Holding together the U.S. war "coalition," especially if the
Bush national security team decides to take the war to Iraq,
Yemen or anywhere else in the Middle East, requires at least
a feigned attempt to calm the struggle in Palestine.
The soldier, retired general Anthony Zinni, and the
diplomat, Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs
William Burns, landed in Israel on Nov. 26, one week after
Secretary of State Colin Powell's "major policy speech" on
the Palestine-Israel conflict. The level of representation
was treated with editorial disdain by Israel's leading
newspapers. Instead of Foreign Minister Shimon Peres,
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has appointed a retired
"hard-line general," Meir Dagan, as his lead negotiator in
the talks.
Zinni and Burns arrived 14 months after the start of the
second Palestinian Intifada (uprising). Since September
2000, more than 700 Palestinians have been killed and 20,000
wounded. Thousands of homes, offices and other buildings in
the mere 5 percent of Palestine that is under the tenuous
control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) have been
destroyed. In the same time period, 190 Israelis have been
killed, though Israeli deaths always receive far more
attention in the corporate media here.
Secretary Powell's Nov. 20 speech included the usual
formulations, calling for the Palestinians to desist from
the struggle and the Israelis to "show restraint."
Israel's war criminal prime minister, Sharon, showed his
government's "restraint" two days later when the Israeli
Army (IDF) assassinated Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, one of the top
leaders of the Hamas-Islamic Resistance Movement. Abu
Hanoud, along with two associates, was blown to bits by a
missile fired at his car from a U.S.-provided helicopter.
Then, on Nov. 24, an Israeli army booby-trap exploded in the
Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza, killing five young boys
from the same family.
Both of these attacks took place inside Zone A, the tiny
part of Palestine that is supposed to be exclusively
controlled by the PA. Since September, IDF units have
occupied large parts of Zone A.
Huge Palestinian marches in the West Bank and Gaza protested
these killings. Palestinian urban guerrilla units launched a
mortar attack on an Israeli base in Gaza, killing an Israeli
soldier, the first reported Israeli death from a mortar.
When Israel struck back with massive firepower, it was
called "retaliation" in the U.S. mainstream media, although
the same term was not applied to the Palestinian mortar
attack. "Retaliation" implies moral justification, something
always conferred on the Israelis in the U.S. media and never
on the Palestinians.
WHAT BUSH WANTS, WHAT SHARON WANTS
The widely publicized stance of the Sharon regime is that
there can be no resumption of negotiations until the
Palestinians desist from the struggle.
Sharon specifically says that there must be "seven days of
absolute quiet." Of course, the Israeli army doesn't have to
end its occupation for the same week.
Sharon restated his position immediately following Powell's
speech, demanding again that the Palestinians halt their
struggle--in essence, call off the Intifada--as a pre-
condition for any further talks.
At the same time, Sharon directed the Israeli Army to
assassinate one of the top leaders of the Intifada. Such a
high-level hit could only have been carried out with the
prime minister's approval.
The assassination of Abu Hanoud and the murder of the five
Palestinian children in Khan Younis follow scores of other
political murders. In August, U.S.-supplied helicopters and
missiles were used by the IDF to assassinate Abu Ali
Mustafa, the general secretary of the largest Palestinian
leftist party, the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine. The following month, the PFLP retaliated by
shooting an extreme right-wing member of the Israeli
cabinet.
There is nothing more guaranteed to evoke Palestinian anger
and action than the systematic campaign of murdering
Palestinian leaders carried out by the Israeli military.
The timing of Abu Hanoud's assassination demonstrates
conclusively that Sharon has no interest in any kind of real
negotiations, even under the onerous and unacceptable
conditions he has laid down.
But Sharon is more than uninterested--he is, in reality,
opposed to any kind of agreement that would limit Israel's
domination of all of Palestine.
Sharon's bloody history, though largely concealed in the big
media here, is well known to the world. From the massacre at
Qibya, Jordan, in 1953, to his murderous reign as IDF
commander of Gaza after the 1967 war, to the 1982 mass
slaughter of 2,000 Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila
refugee camps of Lebanon, Sharon has left behind him a long
trail of death and destruction.
What is less known is that, beginning in the early 1950s,
Sharon was part of a grouping led by Israel's first prime
minister, David Ben-Gurion, that was determined to expand
the newly formed state's borders. Avoiding the fetters of an
internationally guaranteed peace agreement was regarded as
key.
Ben-Gurion's "favorite general" was Moshe Dayan, and Dayan's
chief operational henchman was Ariel Sharon.
As the Israeli "New Historian" Benny Morris has shown, using
declassified Israeli documents, Dayan directed a policy of
massive "retaliation" against the recently dispossessed and
exiled Palestinians who attempted to return to their
homeland. The aim was to eventually provoke a new war, "the
Second Round" as it was referred to by officials. ("Israel's
Border Wars, 1949-56," by Benny Morris.)
In 1949, Dayan was quoted by a Tel Aviv-based U.S. diplomat
as saying: "Boundaries--Frontier of Israel should be on
Jordan [River]. ... Present boundaries ridiculous from all
points of view." After the 1948 war, Israel occupied 78
percent of historic Palestine. The aim of Ben-Gurion, Dayan
and other Israeli leaders was from the very beginning to
conquer the remaining 22 percent--the West Bank and Gaza.
The Israeli ruling class has always regarded its state as
being too small to be the world power it desires.
The Ben-Gurion government of the 1950s was dedicated to
avoiding any peace agreement that would foreclose its
possibility of gaining control over all of Palestine in the
future. At the same time, it was politically necessary to
make it appear that Israel was seeking peace and also that
the Palestinians--along with Egypt, Jordan and other Arab
countries--were the obstacle to peace.
Border crossings, whether by starving Palestinians trying to
pick fruit from their former orchards, or armed attacks by
fedayeen guerrillas, were always presented by the Israeli
government as unprovoked criminal incidents for which Israel
had to "retaliate."
Much as it does today, the Israeli government of that time
pursued a strategy of avoiding a peace agreement while
simultaneously presenting itself to the world as the victim
of aggression. Much as it does today, the U.S. capitalist
media cooperated fully.
Now, as the war against Afghanistan deepens, and the U.S.
threatens to expand it to the Middle East, Washington is
seeking to convey an image of even-handed peacemaker. The
real purpose is to help out its dependent regimes in Egypt,
Jordan and Saudi Arabia, where the people overwhelmingly
support the Palestinian cause.
The masses in those countries, however, are acutely aware of
the fact that the high-tech weapons wielded against the
Palestinians by the IDF come from the United States, which
supplies about $4 billion in aid annually to Israel.
So the Bush/Powell diplomatic maneuver needs some help, if
only cosmetic help, from Sharon. But Sharon is not
cooperating.
How can a government so dependent on a non-stop flow of U.S
weapons and dollars decline to cooperate? If the U.S. ruling
class were united, no Israeli government, no matter how
"hard-line," could, in the end, resist.
But Sharon knows that the U.S. ruling class is divided over
the conduct of the war, such as whether to attack Iraq.
The extreme right-wing militarist wing of the U.S.
government now in the driver's seat is pushing for an all-
out assault on any forces resisting imperialist domination
in the Middle East.
Tactical differences aside, destroying the Palestinian
revolution ranks high on the list of objectives for the
entire U.S. ruling class, and has for many decades.
Liquidating the Palestinian struggle is seen in Washington
as central to the pacification of the Middle East as a
whole. The real aim is to open the entire region to
unlimited plunder by the big oil companies, banks and
military contractors who are the core of the U.S.
establishment.
For exactly this reason, solidarity with the Palestinian
people and their heroic cause remains as critical as ever.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
