Coming
in October
From Common Courage Press
Today's
Stories
Uri Avnery
A Drug
for the Addict
Recent Stories
August 23/24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
August 22, 2003
Carole Harper
Post-Sandinista
Nicaragua
John Chuckman
George Will: the Marquis of Mendacity
Richard Thieme
Operation Paperclip Revisited
Chris Floyd
Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law?
Issam Nashashibi
Palestinians
and the Right of Return: a Rigged Survey
Mary Walworth
Other People's Kids
Ron Jacobs
The
Darkening Tunnel
Website of the Day
Current Energy
August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing
Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?
Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq
Ben Terrall
War Crimes and Punishment in Indonesia: Rapes, Murders and Slaps
on the Wrists
Elaine Cassel
Brother John Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Salvation Show
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Gouged by Banks
Marjorie Cohn
Sergio Vieira de Mello: Victim of Terrorism or US Policy in Iraq?
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
Website of the Day
The Intelligence Squad
August 20, 2003
Robert Fisk
Now No
One Is Safe in Iraq
Caoimhe Butterly
Life and Death on the Frontlines of Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
UN Bombing: Act of Terrorism or Guerrilla War?
Michael Egan
Revisiting the Paranoid Style in the Dark
Ramzi Kysia
Peace
is not an Abstract Idea
Steven Higgs
NPR and the NAFTA Highway
John L. Hess
A Downside Day
Edward Said
The Imperial Bluster of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Gridlock at Path 15: the California Blackouts were the "Wake
Up Call"
Website of the Day
Ashcroft's Patriotic Hype
August 19, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Blackouts Happen
Gary Leupp
"Our Patch": Australia v. the Evil Doers of the South
Pacific
Sean Donahue
Uribe's Cruel Model: Colombia Moves Toward Totalitarianism
Matt Martin
Bush's Credibility Problem on Missile Defense
Juliana Fredman
Recipe for the Destruction of a Hudna
John Ross
Fox Government's Attack on Mexican Basques
Sasan Fayazmanesh
What Kermit Roosevelt Didn't Say
Website of the Day
Tom Delay's Dual Loyalities
August 18, 2003
Uri Avnery
Hero in War and Peace
Stan Goff
The Volunteer Military and the Wicked Adventure
Cathy Breen
Baghdad on the Hudson
Michael Kimaid
Fight the Power (Companies)!
Jason Leopold
The California Rip-Off Revisited: Arnold, Milken and Ken Lay
Matt Siegfried
The Bush Administration in Context
Elaine Cassel
At Last, A Judge Who Acts Like a Judge
Alexander Cockburn
Judy Miller's War
Harvey Wasserman
The Legacy of Blackout Pete Wilson
Website of the Day
Fire Griles!
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 16 / 17, 2003
Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
Electric System Do We Want?
David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
for August 14, 2003
David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin
Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder
August 14, 2003
Peter Phillips
Inside
Bohemian Grove: Where US Power Elites Party
Brian Cloughley
Charlie Wilson and Pakistan: the Strange Congressman Behind the
CIA's Most Expensive War
Linville and Ruder
Tyson
Strike Draws the Line
Jim Lobe
Bush Administration Divided Over Iran
Ramzy Baroud
Sharon Freezes the Road Map
Tom Turnipseed
Blowback in Iraq
Gary Leupp
Condi's
Speech: From Birgmingham to Baghdad, Imperialism's Freedom Ride
Website of the Day
Tony Benn's Greatest Hits
August 13, 2003
Joanne Mariner
A Wall of Separation Through the
Heart
Donald Worster
The Heavy Cost of Empire
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Elaine Cassel
Murderous Errors: Executing the Innocent
Ralph Nader
Make the Recall Count
Alexander Cockburn
Ted Honderich Hit with "Anti-Semitism" Slur
Website of the Day
Defending Yourself Against DirectTV Lawsuits: 9000 and Counting
August 12, 2003
Ron Jacobs
Revisionist History: the Bush Administration, Civil Rights and
Iraq
Josh Frank
Dean's Constitutional Hang-Up
Wayne Madsen
What's a Fifth Columnist? Well, Someone Like Hitchens
Ray McGovern
Relax,
It Was All a Pack of Lies
Wendy Brinker
Hubris in the White House
Website of the Day
Black
Mustache
Hot Stories
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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August
25, 2003
"War Makes Privatization
Easy"
In
Iraq, Labor Protest is a Crime
By DAVID BACON
Iraq's legal code may be in disarray. The streets
of Baghdad may be filled with thieves and hijackers who seem
to have little fear of being arrested. But US occupation authorities
seem to have no trouble identifying one crime, at least. For
the four million people out of work in Iraq, protest is against
the law.
On July 29, US occupation forces in Iraq
arrested a leader of Iraq's new emerging labor movement, Kacem
Madi, along with 20 other members of the Union of the Unemployed.
The unionists had been conducting a sit-in to protest the treatment
of unemployed Iraqi workers by the US occupation authority, and
the fact that contracts for work rebuilding the country have
been given overwhelmingly to US corporations.
Their protest started when hundreds of
unemployed workers gathered in front of an old bank building
on Abu Nawas Street.. From there they marched to the office of
the ruling occupation council. According to Zehira Houfani, a
member of the Iraq Solidarity Project in Canada, who witnessed
the protest, workers in similar demonstrations in the past had
normally dispersed at that point. Each time, however, Madi told
Houfani, "the representatives of the occupation forces meet
and discuss with us, promise to solve the problem, but each time
their promises are not fulfilled and we are forced to take to
the streets again."
On this occasion they decided to step
up the pressure on US authorities. In the time-honored tradition
of workers from Mexico to the Philippines, they set up a planton,
or a tent encampment, outside the council gates. US soldiers
on guard ordered them to disperse, but the workers refused. Night
fell. Then, at one in the morning the soldiers returned, arrested
21 protesters, and took them inside the compound, where they
were held until the following morning.
One arrested union member, 58-year old
Ali Djaafri, told Houfani that the experience was "very
humiliating. At no other time during the occupation," he
said, "has my resentment towards the US soldiers been that
strong."
The unemployment rate is over 50% in
cities like Baghdad. Madi estimates that four million Iraqi workers
have no jobs. Thousands of public-sector workers employed by
the former government lost their jobs after the war. Many provided
services from healthcare to education, and those services have
yet to be restored. There is no money to pay those workers, nor
an Iraqi government to employ them. Even the records of their
employment went up in flames in the looting which followed the
occupation of Baghdad.
Thousands more worked in former government-owned
enterprises. Many of those have been closed down, and occupation
authorities have announced their intention to privatize huge
sections of the former economy.
That all adds up to thousands of working
families facing an extreme economic crisis. The new union for
unemployed workers has become the fastest-growing, largest labor
organization in the country as a result.
At the same time, the issue of the foreign
contracts has become a hot controversy among Iraqi workers because
the US corporations bring workers into the country to work under
those contracts. A Kuwaiti firm subcontracting to the US construction
giant Kellogg, Brown and Root, for instance, was recently found
to be bringing Asian workers into the port of Basra to perform
repair and reconstruction work. Meanwhile, Iraqi workers with
long years of experience sit idle.
Kacem Madi and other unemployed leaders
led the sit-in protest over this discrimination, and announced
that they would continue their demonstrations until they either
received jobs or some kind of unemployment payment. But occupation
authorities, instead of trying to address the problem, arrested
them. International labor organizations, including the International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions (of which the AFL-CIO is a
member) have sharply criticized the desperate situation of Iraqi
workers. "Ensuring respect for workers' rights, including
freedom of association, must be central to building a democratic
Iraq and to ensuring sustainable economic and social development,"
the ICFTU said in a statement made May 30. "Democracy must
have roots. It requires free elections, but also mass based,
democratic trade unions that help secure it and protect it as
well as being schools of democracy."
Arab trade unionists are even more critical
of the occupation's effect on workers. According to Hacene Djemam,
General Secretary of the International Confederation of Arab
Trade Unions, "war makes privatization easy: first you destroy
the society and then you let the corporations rebuild it."
He emphasized that Iraqi workers must be able to form unions
of their own choosing.
Unfortunately, the corporations who have
been granted contracts for work in Iraq by the Bush administration
have long records of fighting unions and violating labor rights.
In May, Amy Newell, national coordinator of US Labor Against
the War, and former executive secretary of the Monterey/Santa
Cruz Central Labor Council, went to Geneva to present a report
to international labor bodies, highlighting the record of 18
of those corporations.
USLAW is a network of unions and other
labor organizations opposed to U.S. policy in Iraq. The organization
charges that the U.S. government pays for a bloated military
budget with severe cuts in domestic social programs. It grew
out of the many demonstrations prior to the March 20 invasion,
by which time unions representing almost one-third of all organized
workers in the U.S. were on record against the war. At that time
even the AFL-CIO itself publicly opposed the Bush administration's
Iraq policy.
Companies highlighted in the report made
in Geneva include:
* Stevedoring Services of America. SSA
was a leader in last year's efforts by Pacific Coast shippers
to lock out west coast longshore workers, and worked with the
Bush administration to threaten the International Longshore and
Warehouse Union with breaking up its coastwise agreement and
bringing troops onto the docks. ILWU spokesperson Steve Stallone
called SSA "ideologically anti-union and anti-ILWU."
* MCI Worldcom. Worldcom has a long record
of opposing worker efforts to organize. It declared bankruptcy
in 2002 after fraudulently claiming $11 billion in earnings.
As a result, the retirement savings of thousands of workers were
completely wiped out, along with $2.6 billion in public pension
funds. The Iraq contract was awarded after the company was fined
$500 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission for its
illegal fraud.
* Eight of the eighteen companies with
the major contracts are completely non-union. Almost all have
records of fighting any union organizing effort.
The USLAW report also discusses the track
record of social responsibility of the corporations involved.
It found a long history of corporate corruption and bribery (Halliburton
Corp., which still pays $1 million a year to former director
Vice President Dick Cheney), organizing mercenary armies (Dyncorp/Computer
Sciences Corp.), and years of cooperation with repressive governments,
from Hussein's regime itself (Halliburton again, and San Francisco's
Bechtel Corp.) to the former apartheid regime in South Africa
(Fluor Corp.)
"Prior to its suppression by the
Hussein regime, Iraq enjoyed a robust and broadly representative
labor movement," the report concludes. [The pre-Hussein
government was overthrown in a 1956 cold-war coup organized by
the Central Intelligence Agency. ed] "Its legacy provides
the seedbed for reestablishing an independent labor movement
with internationally recognized workers' rights to organize,
bargain and strike. However, the occupying powers have invited
into Iraq private corporations with an established record of
labor, environmental and human rights violations. These corporations
were chosen by the Bush administration, which itself is considered
by many as the most anti- worker, union-hostile administration
in modern U.S. history. This does not bode well for respect of
workers rights in Iraq."
If the arrest of Madi and the unemployed
workers last month in Baghdad is any indication, that concern
is well deserved.
David Bacon
is a reporter and photographer
specializing in labor issues. He can be reached at: dbacon@igc.org
Weekend
Edition Features for August 23 / 24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
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