Congressional Democrats voted down the agreement 224-195, overcoming the
pernicious forces in
their midst. Specifically, the Colombian government and cor****ate groups
have hired former
Clinton administration officials to champion the deal, paid off former
President Bill Clinton
with an $800,000 speaking contract, and employed Mark Penn - Hillary
Rodham Clinton's chief
presidential strategist - to push the pact.
Colombia trade agreement as a precedent - the Ludlow massacre
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/10/EDK6103CKL.DTL
David Sirota, Creators Syndicate, Inc. Friday, April 11, 2008
Ninety-four years ago on April 20, America made international news when
a
government-sanctioned paramilitary unit murdered Colorado union organizers
at a
Rockefeller-owned coal mine. The Ludlow Massacre was "a story of horror
unparalleled in the
history of industrial warfare," wrote the New York Times in 1914 - and the
abomination was not
just the violence, but the way political and cor****ate leaders colluded on
their homicidal plans
to protect profits.
Sanitized history teaches that our government has since changed. Quite the
contrary, as the Bush
administration attempted this week to legitimize the methods of Ludlow
through its Colombia Free
Trade Agreement. That attempt failed when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led
the House to a vote
that indefinitely postpones consideration of the pact.
Colombia resembles Colorado in the early 20th century, only with more
frequent slaughters. In
the last two decades, more than 2,500 Colombian labor organizers have been
assassinated, making
Colombia the world's most dangerous place for unionists.
This violence is underwritten by companies like Chiquita, which has
financed Colombian death
squads that "destroyed unions, terrorized workers and killed thousands of
civilians," according
to ****tfolio magazine. The brutality deliberately depresses labor costs in
a country where
business analysts cite exploitative conditions as reason to invest.
This situation, like Ludlow, developed not in spite of the governing
elite, but thanks to it. As
the Wa****ngton Post re****ts, Colombia's "most influential political,
military and business
figures helped build" the killing machine. Recently, prosecutors connected
these paramilitaries
to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's allies.
Colombian labor leaders have begged the White House to drop the deal,
saying it will undermine
their struggle for human rights by validating Uribe's thug-ocracy.
Nonetheless, President Bush
bolstered Uribe with a pact giving cor****ations incentives to leave
America for the
corpse-strewn pastures of Colombia - a union hater's paradise.
Bush justifies the deal as "urgent for our national security." The
rationale asks us to believe
that in backing tyrannical regimes, we will quell anti-Americanism among
the oppressed, rather
than sow it.
Congressional Democrats voted down the agreement 224-195, overcoming the
pernicious forces in
their midst. Specifically, the Colombian government and cor****ate groups
have hired former
Clinton administration officials to champion the deal, paid off former
President Bill Clinton
with an $800,000 speaking contract, and employed Mark Penn - Hillary
Rodham Clinton's chief
presidential strategist - to push the pact.
Oh, how we've regressed from Ludlow, when mere Rockefellers owned
everything. Today, Dubai
princes purchase our stock exchanges, Chinese communists buy our banks,
and now Colombian goons
bid on our politicians - and the results are trickling in.
When Bush dropped the deal on Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
complained only that his
tactics are "jeopardizing prospects" for the pact's passage. Instead of
blocking the accord, she
postponed it - a maneuver that could ensure its approval. National Journal
re****ts that
Democrats are considering "delaying a vote until after the November
elections." The scheme would
let Democratic candidates campaign as aw-shucks populists promisin' to
fight for the little
fella, and then head to D.C. to do the bidding of lobbyists and ratify the
deal in a lame-duck
session.
Between equivocating press releases, Pelosi said she worries that if voted
on now, the pact
"would lose, and what message would that send?" For starters, it would say
the Democratic Party
joins most Americans in opposing job-killing trade policies. It would also
declare the party
against rewarding murderous regimes on behalf of Clintonites now living
large off of Colombian
blood money.
But, then, such principled stands are considered uncouth in this, the
Ludlow renaissance.
Calendars may say it is 2008, but the Establishment mentality is 1914. On
the anniversary of the
butchery in Colorado, we see the hideous power of corruption in all its
pathological glory. Our
government is showing that it views the Ludlow Massacre not as an
embarrassment, but as an ideal
to be embraced and ex****ted.
On Ludlow Anniversary, Blood Money Drenches Democrats
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/on-ludlow-anniversary-blo_b_96271.html?view=screen
Posted April 11, 2008 | 02:52 PM (EST)
As progressives, we sometimes feel a bit uneasy about making declarative
statements about the
values people express in their actions. We hesitate, for instance, to call
things "evil," not
wanting to be like George "With Us, or Against Us" Bush. That's
understandable -- absolutism can
lead to bad places. However, sometimes when confronted with the blatant,
undeniable truth, we
have to call things out for what they are. That's what I did in my
newspaper column today -- the
first of a two-column series on the anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre. In
this column, I
discuss the problem with blood money being used to buy off the Democratic
Party.
We are watching our government attempt to ratify the murderous legacy of
Ludlow on the world
stage through its proposed Colombia Free Trade Agreement. That pact,
opposed by Colombian labor,
human rights and religious leaders (among others), would reward the
murderous Colombian
government -- a government that has effectively condoned mass murders of
union organizers; a
government that allows union persecution to continue; a government whose
president himself has
been caught on videotape commiserating with death squad leaders.
The worst part is the behavior of Democratic Party -- the supposed party
of the voiceless. Bush
and his cor****ate pals have long ago stopped pretending they represent
anything other than Big
Money -- no matter how much death and destruction that Big Money sows. But
Democrats were just
elected in 2006 pledging to fight for fair, humane trade policies. But now
with Colombian blood
money flowing to a powerful cadre of Clintonites, congressional Democrats
moved yesterday to
delay the Colombian trade deal for the explicit purposes of making sure it
ultimately p*****.
This is a very im****tant point that has gone almost completely unre****ted
by the media -- even
as Democrats go on record making statement after statement explicitly
saying they are delaying
the deal in order to pass it. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's move yesterday
to delay the deal is
being billed as some sort of great victory. And while sure, it's great
that the pact didn't
actually pass yesterday, Pelosi herself has said she made the move to
prevent the bill from
being voted down.
The New York Times barely mentioned that "Ms. Pelosi and other Democrats
said their intent was
not to kill the agreement," adding that "under the right conditions, a
sufficient number of them
could probably be found to join with Republicans in approving the pact
with Colombia." Pelosi
herself said she delayed the Colombia deal because "If brought to the
floor immediately, it
would lose." Rep. Greg Meeks (D-NY) -- who never met a cor****ate lobbyist
he didn't try to
shakedown - told Roll Call the delay "is actually going to save [the pact]
instead of kill it"
because it would have been defeated on the floor otherwise.
This is the power and pervasiveness of blood money and what it buys from
both parties in
Wa****ngton. We should not hesitate to label that money in those terms --
nor should we hesitate
to ask why the Democratic Party thinks it is acceptable to align with this
kind of regime. The
lawmakers who pretend to weep and cry at the atrocities in Tibet and
Darfur maneuver to reward a
Colombian government that helps commit human rights atrocities. It makes
you wonder if their
outrage over Tibet and Darfur comes only because they aren't getting blood
money from the
Chinese and the Sudanese governments.
You can read the whole column at the Denver Post, San Francisco Chronicle,
Ft. Collins
Coloradoan, The Vail Daily, TruthDig, Credo Action or Creators. Or, you
can listen to my podcast
of it here. The column relies on grassroots sup****t, so if you'd like to
see my column regularly
in your local paper, use this directory to find the contact info for your
local editorial page
editors. Get get in touch with them and point them to my Creators
Syndicate site. Thanks, as
always, for your ongoing reader****p and help contacting local editors.
This column couldn't be
what it is without your help.
()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * *
____________________________________________________________________________________
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ + + +
Finally, the campaigns of 1793 and 1794 set Clausewitz on the path of
recognizing war as a
political phenomenon. Wars, as everyone knew, were fought for a purpose
that was political,
or at least always had political consequences. Not as readily apparent
was the implication
that followed. If war was meant to achieve a political purpose, everything
that entered into
war — social and economic preparation, strategic planning, the conduct of
operations, the
use of violence on all levels — should be determined by this purpose, or
at least accord
with it. Even though soldiers had to acquire special expertise, and
function in what in some
respects was a separate world, it would be a denial of reality to allow
them to carry on
their bloody work undisturbed until an armistice brought their political
employer back into
the equation. Just as war and its institutions reflected their social
environment, so every
aspect of fighting should be suffused by its political impulse, whether
this impulse was
intense or moderate. The appropriate relation****p between politics and war
occupied
Clausewitz throughout his life, but even his earliest manuscripts and
letters show his
awareness of their interaction.
The ease with which this link — always acknowledged in the abstract —
can be forgotten in
specific cases, and Clausewitz’s insistence that it must never be
overlooked, are
illustrated by his polite rejection toward the end of his life of a
strategic problem set by
the chief of the Prussian General Staff, in which every military detail of
the opposing
sides was spelled out, but no mention made of their political purpose. To
a friend who had
sent him the problem for comment, Clausewitz replied that it was not
possible to draft a
sensible plan of operations without indicating the political condition of
the states
involved, and their relation****p to each other: ‘War is not an independent
phenomenon, but
the continuation of politics by different means. Consequently, the main
lines of every major
strategic plan are largely political in nature, and their political
character increases the
more the plan applies to the entire campaign and to the whole state. A war
plan results
directly from the political conditions of the two warring states, as well
as from their
relations to third powers. A plan of campaign results from the war plan,
and frequently - if
there is only one theater of operations - may even be identical with it.
But the political
element even enters the separate components of a campaign; rarely will it
be without
influence on such major episodes of warfare as a battle, etc. According to
this point of
view, there can be no question of a purely military evaluation of a great
strategic issue,
nor of a purely military scheme to solve it.’
Everyman’s Library, 1993 ISBN: 0679420436 On war /by Clausewitz, Carl
von, 1780-1831.
Knopf, 1993. From the introduction by Peter Paret, Pg7
_____________________________________________________________________
The U-2 is a jet-powered reconnaissance aircraft specially designed to fly
at high altitudes
(i.e., above 70,000 ft [21 km]). It was used during the late 1950s to
overfly the Soviet
Union, China, the Middle East, and Cuba; flights over the Soviet Union,
the primary mission
for which the plane was designed, ended in 1960 when a U-2 flown by CIA
pilot Gary Powers
was shot down over the Soviet Union. This event was a major political
embarrassment for the U.S.
http://www.espionageinfo.com/Te-Uk/U-2-Spy-Plane.html
Soviet Prime Minister Khrushchev's reaction to the overflights which
were discovered
just before a summit conference in Paris with President Eisenhower: "It
was as though the
Americans had deliberately tried to place a time bomb under the meeting" .
. ."How could
they count on us to give them a helping hand if we allowed ourselves to be
spat upon without
so much as a murmur of protest?" The only solution was to demand a formal
public apology
from Eisenhower and a guarantee that no more overflights would take place
. . .
But the apology Khrushchev was looking for would not come. Despite
having trespassed
on the Soviet Union for the past four years with scores of flights by both
U-2's and heavy
bombers, the old general still could not say the words, it was just not in
him. . . A time
bomb had exploded, prematurely ending the summit conference. . .
Back in Wa****ngton, the mood was glum. The Senate Foreign Relations
Committee was
leaning toward holding a closed door investigation into the U-2 incident .
. . In public,
Eisenhower maintained a brave face. He "heartily approved" of the
congressional probe and
would 'of course fully cooperate,' he quickly told anyone who asked. But
in private he was
very troubled. For weeks he had tried to head off the investigation. His
major concern was
that his own personal involvement in the overflights would surface,
especially the May Day
disaster. Equally, he was very worried that details of the dangerous
bomber overflights
would leak out. The massed overflight may in fact, have been one of the
most dangerous
actions ever approved by a president.
pg. 51-55 ~Body of Secrets; Anatomy of the Ultra Secret National Security
Agency
James Bamford
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of
the progress of
human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims,
have been born of
earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating,
all-absorbing, and for the time
being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does
nothing. If there is
no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and
yet depreciate
agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want
rain without
thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its
many waters."
"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may
be both moral and
physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and
it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and
you have found out the
exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and
these will continue
till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The
limits of tyrants are
prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of
these ideas, Negroes
will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as
they submit to those
devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men
may not get all they
pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we
ever get free from
the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal.
We must do this by
labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the
lives of others."
http://www.buildingequality.us/Quotes/Frederick_Douglass.htm
Frederick Douglass, 1857
- - - - - -> More political discussion continues at
http://www.politicsusaweb.com/
----------------------
This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been specifically
authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in
my efforts to advance
understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic,
democracy, scientific, and
social justice issues, etc. I believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any
such copyrighted
material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In
accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without
profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for
research and educational
purposes.
For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml.
If you
wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own
that go beyond 'fair
use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
|
