Echoing the story of David vs. Goliath, janitors in Houston are on strike and taking on such corporate giants as JPMorgan, Chase and Exxon Mobile in an effort to pressure the janitorial companies they employ to agree to the workers’ modest demands.

                            Modest Demands, Bold Actions

                        Inside the Houston Janitors Strike

                                    by MARK VORPAHL

 

 

Echoing the story of David vs. Goliath, janitors in Houston are on strike and taking on such corporate giants as JPMorgan, Chase and Exxon Mobile in an effort to pressure the janitorial companies they employ to agree to the workers’ modest demands. It is these big business behemoths that are the real powers behind cleaning contractors such as ABM, GCA, ISS etc. By striking against these contractors, and publicly targeting these contractors’ employers, the janitors are using their collective power in a showdown that has great significance for not only the Labor Movement but all workers.

The janitors are members of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1, which has a membership of 3,200 in Houston. Currently, these workers’ wages top out at $8.35 per hour. On average, they make under $9,000 a year. The government defines the poverty line as an income of $22,314 for a family of four and $11,139 for an individual.

The janitors are asking for a $10.00 per hour starting wage. In response, the contractors offered a combined 50 cents an hour raise over the course of a five-year contract. With the growing cost of living over this time, these workers would sink even further into poverty if they accepted this. The contractors’ proposal was nothing more than an insult.

Not content with merely insulting their employees, the contractors began to back up their position with injury. The janitors were subject to captive audience meetings where their jobs were threatened if they participated in union activity. Management warned that they would call for an immigration audit if the employees didn’t quiet down. In addition, they also withheld paychecks of some union supporters. In all, 13 Unfair Labor Practices have been filed with the National Labor Relations Board.

The Union contract expired on May 31st. The janitors held a series of rallies and one-day work stoppages in order to convince management that they meant business. However, because these actions did not seriously impact the contractors’ profits, they did not feel compelled to move. Consequently, the membership of SEIU Local 1 had no choice but vote to go on strike.

There are two features of this strike that make it exceptional.

One is how it highlights the growing inequality that exists in this nation and the need to fight it. Houston leads the nation in the growth of the number of millionaires. The companies targeted by the strike in its public campaign are some of the main players in the big business elite. On the other hand, not even the most rabid right-wing pro-corporate media can effectively portray the janitors as greedy unionists. This strike has the potential to tap into a growing discontent in the U.S. over inequality that helped launch Occupy as well as the Madison, Wisconsin Capital occupation in 2011.

The other exceptional feature of this struggle is the use of work stoppages and rallies nationally in solidarity with the Houston janitors. Solidarity strikes was one of the tactics employed by the CIO in the 1930s that propelled its rapid growth. Because of this tactic’s effectiveness, it was outlawed in 1947 with the bi-partisan passage of the Taft-Hartley Act.

To get around the rigged rules of this slave labor law, many SEIU janitorial contracts have a “conscience clause.” This clause enables janitors to refuse to cross a picket line at their work place without fear of penalty. As a result, picket lines have been set up in several cities at work sites that employ SEIU janitors, elevating the economic impact on the contractors, who are in Houston, to a national scale.

These contractors and their corporate employers are organized to pursue profits across the U.S. These profits are the only thing they care about. While they can more easily handle a strike isolated in one city, the nationwide solidarity work stoppage tactic employed by SEIU is much more difficult for them to deal with. If the bosses refuse to budge, it will be necessary to escalate this tactic further.

By highlighting the issue of inequality and countering the contractors with a nationwide response that uses work stoppages, SEIU is challenging the limits of the corporate political machine. It will be necessary to break these boundaries for Houston’s janitors, and all workers, to decisively win.

Currently, some Democratic politicians, such as Vice President Joe Biden, have voiced support for the strike. Given the massive funding both parties receive from Wall Street and the resulting pro-corporate policies they pursue, there should be no surprise that they either neglect or attack the issues of most importance to workers, so that such fine speeches like Biden’s have the appearance of cynical electioneering.

SEIU, and the unions in general, will not find a national voice by getting a seat at the table with these politicians who ignore or attempt to bind the membership’s struggles. Instead Labor must devote its resources towards empowering its own members to fight for their own needs, without fear of offending the politicians, and create a social movement that speaks for all workers.

The demands that the Houston SEIU janitors are putting forward are extremely modest. However, their actions and organizing are growing more bold. They are already providing an example of greater struggles for economic justice in the near future.

For more information and to support the strike go to http://www.seiu1.org/.

Mark Vorpahl is an union steward, social justice activist, and writer for Workers’ Action – www.workerscompass.org. He can be reached at Portland@workerscompass.org

The United States recently announced that Canada and Mexico will join negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—a secretive U.S.-led multinational trade and investment agreement currently being negotiated with eight other countries in the Pacific Rim region.

The Case Against the Trans-Pacific 

Partnership Agreement

NAFTA on Steroids

by MANU PEREZ-ROCHA and STUART TREW

 

The United States recently announced that Canada and Mexico will join negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—a secretive U.S.-led multinational trade and investment agreement currently being negotiated with eight other countries in the Pacific Rim region.

On the other side of the Pacific, Japanese legislators are defecting in droves to try to stop the country’s entry into the negotiations. But the situation is much different in Canada and Mexico, which were admitted to the table with much fanfare during the G20 summit in June. The Japanese response is justifiable, and a recent statement of solidarity against the TPP by North American unions offers a good building block for resisting an agreement that for Mexicans and Canadians amounts to a neoliberal expansion of NAFTA on U.S. President Barack Obama’s terms.

Mexico and Canada had been trying to secure a spot at the TPP table for months prior to the G20, and it became a leading story in both countries. Their anxiety played nicely into Obama’s hands, allowing the U.S. trade representative to put humiliating entry conditions on both countries — essentially giving these NAFTA neighbors a second-rate status, or what in Spanish is called convidados de palo (to be invited but without a say). Neither Canada nor Mexico will be able to see any TPP text until they finally join the negotiations in December, following the required 90-day U.S. congressional approval process. Once at the table, they will not be able to make any changes to the finished text or propose any new text in the finished chapters. There is a very real possibility that the existing TPP countries, the United States in particular, will use the following months to fashion a trap for the TPP latecomers.

North American Labor Solidarity

While most media outlets welcomed the NAFTA partners to the TPP table, national labor federations from the United States, Mexico, and Canada were cautious for very good reasons, and it wasn’t just the obviously imbalanced negotiating dynamic. On July 11, the AFL-CIO, the Canadian Labour Congress, and the National Union of Workers (UNT) of Mexico outlined some of those reasons in an important statement of solidarity, which included a vision of what they believe a 21st-centry trade agreement should look like.

The labor unions state that although they “would welcome a TPP that creates good jobs, strengthens protection for fundamental labor rights—such as freedom of association and authentic collective bargaining—protects the environment, and boosts global economic growth and development for all, American, Canadian, and Mexican workers cannot afford another corporate-directed trade agreement.” The joint statement explains that to have any positive effect on the region, “the TPP must break from NAFTA, which imposed a destructive economic model that expands the rights and privileges of multinational corporations at the expense of working families, communities, and the environment.”

The unions conclude that if “the TPP follows the neoliberal model and substitutes corporate interests for national interests, workers in all three countries will continue to pay a high price in the form of suppressed wages, a more difficult organizing environment, and general regulatory erosion, even as large corporations will continue to benefit.” Unfortunately, by all accounts, including leaked TPP chapters and statements from the U.S. trade representative, this is exactly what the Obama administration hopes to achieve through these negotiations.

Expanding Investor Rights

Instead of breaking with NAFTA, the TPP expands it in almost every chapter, from intellectual property rights to “regulatory coherence,” and from rules for increased “competition” in state-owned enterprises to opening government purchases to foreign bidders.

Particularly worrying to Canadians and Mexicans, and not mentioned in the joint statement from North American unions, are the extreme investors’ rights foreseen in the TPP. Under NAFTA, Mexico and Canada continue to be pummelled by investor-state lawsuits from U.S. and Canadian companies, or international firms using their U.S. registration to challenge government measures that can be shown to interfere with profits, even if that interference is not intended. These investment disputes, launched under NAFTA’s Chapter 11 protections, have resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in fines or settlements to be paid out from public funds. Two recent cases against Mexico and Canada help describe the problem.

In 2009, two separate NAFTA investment panels established through the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) ruled in favour of U.S. companies Cargill and Corn Products International in their nearly identical cases against a Mexican tax on drinks containing high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a sugar alternative. The tax was a means of levelling the playing field for Mexican cane sugar producers, who were having no luck accessing the U.S. market on equal terms to U.S. sugar producers despite NAFTA’s promises of open borders.

Cargill and CPI argued in part that the Mexican tax made soft drinks sweetened with HFCS less competitive on the Mexican market, depriving them of their national treatment rights in NAFTA. The ICSID panels did not agree that the HFCS tax amounted to a form of regulatory expropriation or performance requirement as the firms had also argued, but did agree on the national treatment claim. Cargill was awarded more than $77 million and CPI more than $58 million in damages. In the CPI case, the ICSID panel deprived Mexico of any countermeasures to defend against a one-way inflow of cheap sugar supplements from the United States.

Canada also just lost an important investor-state dispute with Exxon Mobil, which could cost the Canadian government as much as $65 million. At issue were measures requiring offshore oil and gas producers in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador to turn over a portion of their profits to research and development or education and training programs.  A NAFTA investment panel ruled in favor of the company, which claimed that the measures were an illegal performance requirement on the firm. Three Canadian courts had previously upheld the legality of the measures, and the Canadian government had excluded the legislation enforcing the measures from national treatment and other investment protections in NAFTA, making the investment panel ruling extremely perplexing. The frustration is worsened by the fact that Exxon Mobil was the richest company in the world in 2011. Under NAFTA and the TPP, investors have rights but no enforceable responsibilities to the countries in which they are operating.

These are just two local cases amid a myriad of investor lawsuits against countries all over the world. Though the Obama administration recently released a new model Bilateral Investment Treaty, it is almost identical to NAFTA, with only modest safeguards for regulation in the public interest — safeguards that closed-door tribunals are under little obligation to take into account. In fact, the trend globally is for these secret tribunals to rule expansively in the interest of corporations, perhaps as a means of perpetuating the system by making it more attractive to investors. There is simply no justification for reproducing the investor-state dispute regime in the TPP. In fact, NAFTA should be renegotiated to remove investor-state dispute settlement from Chapter 11.

This outcome—removing extreme investment protections from the TPP—is not out of the question. In June of this year, before a negotiating round in San Diego, California, 130 state legislators from all 50 states and Puerto Rico signed a letter to President Obama’s senior trade official warning that they will oppose the deal unless the administration alters its current approach. In the letter they say that “Our experience with NAFTA and other trade deals shows that investor-state dispute settlement is used by large corporations to undermine state and federal laws they don’t like – laws that are fully constitutional, that do not discriminate, and that are needed to protect public health and safety.”

There is also the question of Australia, the one TPP partner refusing to abide by these investment rules. In April 2011, the Australian government released a new trade policy that discontinues the inclusion of investor-state dispute settlement in bilateral or regional trade agreements. Despite their second-rate status at the TPP table, Canada and Mexico could eventually help the United States put pressure on Australia and others who doubt the value of these extreme corporate rights. But public pressure might prove strong enough to foil these efforts, as it did when the Multilateral Agreement on Investment was ditched in 1999, followed by the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in 2005.

A New FTAA, A New Struggle

With Canada and Mexico joining the TPP, the agreement is looking more and more like a substitute for the FTAA. So it is not surprising that opposition to the TPP is growing as quickly as it did against that former attempt to expand the neoliberal model throughout the Western hemisphere.

The intense secrecy of the TPP negotiations is not helping the Obama administration make its case. In their statement, North American unions “call on our governments to work with us to include in the TPP provisions to ensure strong worker protections, a healthy environment, safe food and products, and the ability to regulate financial and other markets to avoid future global economic crises.” But the truth is that only big business is partaking in consultations, with 600 lobbyists having exclusive passwords to online versions of the negotiating text.

A majority of Democratic representatives (132 out of 191) have expressed that they are “troubled that important policy decisions are being made without full input from Congress.” They have written to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk to urge him and his staff to “engage in broader and deeper consultations with members of the full range of committees of Congress whose jurisdiction touches on the wide-ranging issues involved, and to ensure there is ample opportunity for Congress to have input on critical policies that will have broad ramifications for years to come.” In their letter, the representatives also challenge “the lack of transparency of the treaty negotiation process, and the failure of negotiators to meaningfully consult with states on the far-reaching impact of trade agreements on state and local laws, even when binding on our states, is of grave concern to us.” U.S. Senators, for their part, have also sent a letter complaining of the lack of congressional access to the negotiations. What openness and transparency can we in Canada and Mexico expect when the decision to join the TPP, under humiliating conditions, was made without any public consultation?

NAFTA turns 20 years old in 2014. Instead of expanding it through the TPP we must learn from NAFTA’s shortcomings, starting with the historic lack of consultation with unions and producers in the three member countries. It is necessary to correct the imbalances in NAFTA, which as the North American union statement explains enhanced corporate power at the expense of workers and the environment. In particular, we need to categorically reject the investor-state dispute settlement process that has proven so costly, in real terms and with respect to our democratic options in Canada and Mexico. The unions’ statement of solidarity provides a strong foundation for the growing trinational opposition to the TPP in Leesburg, Virginia, and beyond.

Manuel Pérez-Rocha helps to coordinate the Networking for Justice on Global Investment project, as part of the IPS Global Economy Project.

Stuart Trew is the Trade campaigner for the Council of Canadians.
This article was distributed by Other Words.

The average house price in the U.K. is now almost 60 percent higher than in the U.S. It had been 20 percent lower in the mid-90s. In Canada the average house price is more than 70 percent higher than in the United States. The price of the median house in Australia is more than 225 percent of the median house price in the United States.

How to Wreck an Economy

The Trouble With Bubbles

by DEAN BAKER

 

 

The United States has more than 20 million people unemployed, underemployed or out of the workforce altogether because of a burst housing bubble. We also have more than 10 million homeowners who are underwater in their mortgages. And, we have tens of millions of people approaching retirement who have seen most of their life’s savings disappear when plunging house prices eliminated most or all of the equity in their home.

This situation could have been prevented if the government had taken steps to stem the growth of the housing bubble before it reached such dangerous levels. It is incredible that the Bush administration’s economics team failed to see the dangers of the bubble. It is even more remarkable that Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and the Fed ignored the growth of the housing bubble. But even more astounding is the fact that no one in a position of authority has learned any lessons from this disaster.

At the moment, there are housing bubbles in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia that are arguably larger, relative to the size of their economies, than the one that collapsed and wrecked the U.S. economy. The basis for saying that house prices in these countries are in a bubble is that there has been a sharp increase in the sale prices of homes that has not been matched by a remotely corresponding increase in rents.

In the case of the U.K., house sale prices increased more than 115 percent in excess of inflation between 1996 and 2010. Over this period, rents pretty much kept even with the overall rate of inflation. In Australia house prices rose by more than 80 percent between the start of 2002 and end of 2009, a period in which rents rose by roughly 30 percent. Canada has a similar story.

The average house price in the U.K. is now almost 60 percent higher than in the U.S. It had been 20 percent lower in the mid-90s. In Canada the average house price is more than 70 percent higher than in the United States. The price of the median house in Australia is more than 225 percent of the median house price in the United States.

Given that wages in the United States are the same or higher than in all three countries, it is difficult to see how this huge gap in house prices can make sense. Furthermore, since rents have not notably outpaced inflation in any of these countries, it does not appear that the price increases are being driven by the fundamentals of the housing market. If there was a serious shortage of housing we should expect it to be showing up in rents as well.

In short, there is good reason to believe that house prices in these countries will not be sustained anywhere near current levels. All three are likely to see the same sort of house price collapse that has wreaked so much havoc on the U.S. economy. It’s impossible to know what will be the triggering event; a rise in interest rates could certainly deflate a bubble quickly.

Alternatively, a sharp increase in supply could eventually swamp demand. A glut of supply was the factor that eventually burst the U.S. bubble. After five years of near-record rates of construction, vacancy rates reached levels never before seen. Once prices began falling, potential buyers and lenders no longer assumed that prices would continue to go up indefinitely and the bubble quickly deflated.

It is fair to assume that a collapsed bubble will have the same sort of devastating impact on the economies of these countries and the lives of their citizens as it has in the United States. Bubbles generate demand in the economy both directly and indirectly. They directly create demand by increasing construction. They indirectly create demand through the wealth effect on consumption. People will consume more when they see the value of their home rise, thereby making homeowners wealthier.

These sources of demand will disappear when a housing bubble bursts. Five years ago, it was standard thinking among economists that the demand generated by a bubble can be easily replaced; anyone who has been paying attention over this period should know that this is not true. There is no easy way to replace the 5-10 percentage points of GDP that is bubble-driven demand. That is why the effects of the downturn in the United States have been so severe.

In addition to the macro story there is also the impact on people’s lives. A housing bubble leads homeowners to believe that they have much more money than is actually the case. Therefore they spend more and save less than would otherwise be the case. When the bubble bursts, reality sets in and homeowners discover that they are now near retirement with almost nothing by way of savings.  That cannot be a good situation for a formerly middle class family to find itself in.

For these reasons, governments and central banks should be focused on preventing bubbles before they grow large enough to be so dangerous and disruptive. Central banks in particular are well-situated to take action, since central banks are designed to be less susceptible to short-term political considerations. This means that they can take steps to burst a bubble, which will likely be unpopular.

The tool box for central banks in this regard is extensive. First, clear warnings from a central bank using evidence to document the existence of a bubble will be difficult for actors in the financial sector to ignore. Bank executives will likely be forced to explain why they think the central bank is wrong if they keep lending. In the case of the U.S. bubble, they had no story that passed the laugh test.

Second, central banks and other regulatory authorities could use regulatory pressure to limit mortgage issuance. At the peak of the U.S. housing bubble, the largest mortgage issuers practically had neon signs on their buildings advertising fraudulent mortgages. It would not have been hard for the regulators to crack down on abuses, if they had chosen.

Finally, higher interest rates will sink any bubble. If a central bank announced a rate increase and that further hikes will follow until house prices have dropped by 30 percent (or whatever amount seems appropriate) it is likely that the housing market will take the warning very seriously.

There is probably no way at this point to deflate the bubbles in Australia, Canada, and the U.K. without causing considerable pain. It would probably still be better to take steps now than allow for even more people to become caught up in the bubble.

Perhaps more importantly, the public has to demand that central banks put bubble prevention at the top of their agenda. These banks have been ignoring economy-wrecking bubbles everywhere, somehow thinking they have down their job because they kept inflation at 2.0 percent. It’s wonderful that the central banks met their inflation target, but why should anyone give a damn?

Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy and False Profits: Recoverying From the Bubble Economy.

This column originally appeared in Al Jazeera.

There is nothing worse than being a refugee on the run, except being a refugee on the run again and again, with a legal status of perpetual statelessness, and with no country in which to seek shelter.

 

A Lurking Danger

Palestinian Refugees in Syria

by RAMZY BAROUD

“The flames are quickly approaching Yarmouk (as) someone is trying to drag the Palestinians into the fire,” reported Palestinian commentator Rashad Abu Shawar (as cited in Israeli Jerusalem Post, July 20).

Yarmouk is the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. Its inhabitants make up nearly a quarter of Syria’s entire refugee population of nearly 500,000. Despite the persistence of memory and the insistence on their right of return to Palestine, the Palestinian community in Syria is, on the whole, like any other ordinary community.

Of course, ‘ordinariness’ is not always a term that suits misfortunate Palestinian refugees in Arab countries. Ghassan Kanafani, a renowned Palestinian novelist, once wrote: “Oh, Palestinians, be warned of natural death.” He proudly articulated how his people are prepared for all possibilities. Kanafani himself was murdered, along with his niece, in a car bombing orchestrated by the Israeli Mossad in Beirut in July 1972.

Palestinian refugees in Syria also cannot expect to exist outside a paradigm of danger and unpredictability. Their brethren in Lebanon learned the same lesson years ago. Palestinians in Kuwait were also victimized on a large scale in 1991, along with other communities accused of being sympathetic to Saddam Hussein. True to form, the small Palestinian community in Iraq also received its share of maltreatment following the US invasion in 2003.

This is not to say that the Palestinian community has been the only one to suffer during times of war. But due to their lack of options, the state of Palestinian refugees is often the most perilous and desperate. They are stateless. Most Arab countries intentionally grant them precarious legal status under various guises to keep them contained and easily controlled. The problem is compounded, however, by wars which fuel mass exodus. Stateless refugees are always stranded, leaving them vulnerable to perpetual suffering and abuse.

Before 2003, a small community of 35,000 Palestinians resided in Iraq. They were hardly ever associated with political controversy. When the US invaded, however, they became an easy target for various militias, US forces and criminal gangs. Many were killed. Others ran in circles seeking safe haven elsewhere in Iraq, to no avail, and thousands found themselves stranded in refugee camps at the Jordanian and Syrian borders. It highlighted how the Palestinian refugee problem was as real and urgent as ever. The plight of Palestinians also shamed the Arabs, who never ceased to declare verbal wars on Israel, yet failed to host fleeing refugees. Even Palestinian factions, busy with their own infighting, offered only safe pitiful statements of support.

The situation in Syria promises to be even worse. Historically, there has been bad blood between Syria and some Palestinian factions, including Fatah, the party dominating the PLO, and also the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA). While Damascus played host for various Palestinian leftist factions throughout the years, Hamas didn’t relocate to Damascus until its break-up with Jordan.

In recent months, Hamas quietly vacated its offices from Damascus. It was impossible for the Islamic movement to function in a situation where it was firmly pressed to take sides. Its attempt to reach an acceptable middle ground – supporting the Syrian people but warning against foreign attempts to weaken Syria – fell on deaf ears. Some Arab governments insisted on pressurizing Hamas officials to reach a conclusive decision regarding a conflict not of their own making – and eventually forcing them to part ways with Syria.

The political discourse regarding Syria has been the most polarizing of all narratives related to the so-called Arab Spring. Palestinians have been caught in that polarization. Al Jazeera has done a disservice to Palestinian refugees by insisting on contextualizing Palestinians as part of the larger Syria discourse. The television network knows well what happens to stateless, vulnerable Palestinians when conflicts end. Reporters had done a good job documenting the humiliation suffered by Palestinian in Iraq. Even if for purely humanitarian reasons, Arab media should try to neutralize Palestinian presence in the Syrian conflict.

Palestinians are already being targeted. 300 Palestinian deaths have been reported in Syria since the conflict began. The PA says it is in contact with Syrian authorities to ensure the safety of the large refugee population. Many of the killings are reportedly taking place in Yarmouk. Arab media opposing the government of Syria’s Bashar Assad are blaming Syrian security forces for the targeting of Palestinians. But other media are telling a different story.

“In the worst incident, 16 members of the Palestine Liberation Army, which is backed by the Syrian authorities, were killed after gunmen stopped their bus and kidnapped them,” reported Khaled Abu Toumeh in the Jerusalem Post on July 20. “The bodies of the Palestinians, whose throats had been slashed, were later discovered in an open field in the suburbs of Damascus.”

A statement issued on July 16 by the Free Syria Army joint command, and cited by AFP, called “pro-regime Palestinian leaders on Syrian soil…‘legitimate targets.’” Considering that cooperation between various PLO factions and Syria goes back decades, the call resembles a death note to numerous Palestinians in Syria. The Palestine Liberation Army, for once, has more or less served a symbolic role. It was barely involved in any military action, whether in or outside Syria. The heinous butchering of these men points to a decided attempt at punishing innocent Palestinians.

Palestinian refugees might well find themselves on the run again as the situation is so perilous. Palestinian factions must place their personal interest aside and unite, even if temporarily, to protect Palestinian refugees in Syria. The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, whose primary purpose is “to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees”, must act now to ensure the safety of Palestinian refugees in any future grim scenario. The Arab League, which has done little to protect Palestinian refugees when caught in past regional conflicts, must act this time to redeem past failures.

There is nothing worse than being a refugee on the run, except being a refugee on the run again and again, with a legal status of perpetual statelessness, and with no country in which to seek shelter. As for Arab media, they should know well that their insistence on representing Palestinians as a relevant party in the bloodshed in Syria equals to setting them up for a major disaster, to say the least.

Ramzy Baroud is editor of PalestineChronicle.com. He is the author of The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle  and  “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London).

What had been a metaphor, or at worst a sub rosa crime against the profession of journalism (journalism as stenography; the use of prefab statements or video news releases as actual stories) is now on the front page of the New York Times. Sources now are editors.

Access Journalism at its Nadir

When Will the New York Times 

Show Some Spine?

by STEVE BREYMAN

 

I just stumbled across this headline: “McClatchy’s Washington Bureau Establishes No-Alter Quote Policy” (July 20). Sounds weird, no? Let me explain: I’m currently teaching my summer course “How to Read the New York Times.” Yes, it’s as fun as it sounds, and I even get paid.

Sure, we have a media studies textbook, the students maintain critical media literacy blogs, and will also surely tell you that I drone on (and on, and on) by the way of lectures, but the heart of the course is daily reading and deciphering of the Newspaper of Record.

Most summer’s come equipped with their own major stories, cheery stuff like the BP Gulf oil gusher, or the state-sanctioned murders aboard the Mavi Marmara. This summer the anemic coverage of the anemic presidential campaign must suffice, unless you count accounts of the never-ending stream of finance capital crime stories (so many it’s not easy to do).

We are of course most interested in stories (in the Times and elsewhere) on media protocols or practices, journalistic sleights of hand or publishing routines that illustrate larger points about the nature and workings of the corporate and alternative media in the twenty-first century.

The Times, as usual, has been good enough to supply us such stories. These include a couple by Jeremy W. Peters, whose beat includes the news media. Peters reported on July 15 (“Latest Word on the Trail? I Take It Back”) on the curious phenomenon known as “quote approval.” The practice is straightforward: officials with both campaigns will only consent to background interviews with themselves or others (like Mitt Romney’s five sons) should the interviewer send them a transcript and permission to edit it prior to publication.

What had been a metaphor, or at worst a sub rosa crime against the profession of journalism (journalism as stenography; the use of prefab statements or video news releases as actual stories) is now on the front page of the New York Times. Sources now are editors. The perennial struggle between reporters and sources as to what’s on the record, and what’s not, may now be over. At least at the Times, and at least for now.

Peters’ piece has a light, ironic tone; it helps make the medicine go down: “It was difficult to find a news outlet that had not agreed to quote approval, albeit reluctantly. Organizations like Bloomberg, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Reuters and The New York Times have all consented to interviews under such terms.”

Peters was back a week later (“National Journal Bars Quotations Tweaked by Sources,” July 22) with a report that he had found a news outlet unwilling to play along with the campaigns’ obsession with message control. “In a memorandum to the staff, Ron Fournier, National Journal’s editor in chief, said, ‘If a public official wants to use NJ as a platform for his/her point of view, the price of admission is a quote that is on-record, unedited and unadulterated.’” And today I came across the announcement from McClatchy’s Washington Bureau.

James Asher, McClatchy’s Washington Bureau chief, had this to say about the policy:

As advocates of the First Amendment, we cannot be intimidated into letting the government control our work. When The New York Times agreed with Bush Administration officials to delay publication of its story of illegal wiretaps of Americans until after the 2004 election, it did the nation a great disservice. Acceding to the Obama administration’s efforts to censor our work to have it more in line with their political spin is another disservice to America.

What alternatives to quote approval does Asher permit his reporters?

While it puts us at a disadvantage, we should argue strenuously for on-the-record interviews with government officials.

When they absolutely refuse, we have only two options. First, halt the interview and attempt to find the information elsewhere. In those cases, our stories should say the official declined comment. Second, we can go ahead with the interview with the straightforward response that whatever ultimately is used will be published without change in tone, emphasis or exact language.

So even though Asher condemns the practice, he believes it places his bureau at a “disadvantage.” Such a view is possible only through the lens of access journalism. Access journalism relies on physical or telecommunications proximity to and good relations with a rich, powerful or otherwise important subject in order to “report” a story. It’s the mode by which most news reporting proceeds on most political and business stories. No access, no story.

“Attempt to find the information elsewhere,” recommends Asher to his reporters barred access by the quote approval policy. Yes, do that (provided the “information” isn’t just the spin of a ‘senior campaign strategist’). Investigate, dig, verify, corroborate. Get off your behinds, stop serving as corporate or government mouthpieces.

“We don’t like the practice,” Dean Baquet, managing editor for news at the Times, told Peters in the July 15 article. “We encourage our reporters to push back. Unfortunately this practice is becoming increasingly common, and maybe we have to push back harder.” Yeah, like at the National Journal or McClatchy’s Washington Bureau. Just say no, Dean Baquet.

Perhaps the Times will do the right thing and issue a no-quote-alteration policy. Gee, other news media outlets might take a cue from the Times and stop the shameful bowing and scraping. Instead, the news news of late from The New York Times Company is of 20 twenty fewer jobs in the newsroom of the Boston Globe, a Times property.  The Globe’s publisher said the layoffs were “part of a program to rebalance the business and will allow us to reallocate resources toward the investments we need as we innovate and introduce new products.” The downsizing comes hard on the heels of the Globe’s reporting on Mitt Romney’s career at Bain Capital–probably the best investigative stories on the topic by any news organization, reported without comment by the Romney campaign.

Steve Breyman teaches in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Reach him at breyms@rpi.edu

In the words of Robert Welsh, the lawyer who represented the U.S. Army when Sen. Joe McCarthy tried to smear a young associate of Welsh’s with a Communist brush, “At long last, have you no shame?” he asked of McCarthy. That question applies doubly to U.S. Senator Larry Pressler. (R-SD)

Larry Pressler Dances on Alexander Cockburn's Grave

The Senator Without Shame

by JAMES ABOUREZK

 

A few days after the announcement of Alexander Cockburn’s death from a cancer affliction, former U.S. Senator Larry Pressler (R-SD) told the Rapid City, South Dakota Journal that he had obtained a “huge libel settlement from Alex’s publisher” as a result of a lawsuit Pressler said he initiated against Alex and his publisher.

In the words of Robert Welsh, the lawyer who represented the U.S. Army when Sen. Joe McCarthy tried to smear a young associate of Welsh’s with a Communist brush, “At long last, have you no shame?”  he asked of McCarthy.  That question applies doubly to Pressler.

Pressler, whose Senate career was largely unremarkable, took offense to a chapter in one of Alex’s books, Washington Babylon (with Ken Silverstein), in which he quoted various people as saying Pressler was gay, among other descriptions of Pressler’s moronic stumble through his Senate career.  Like  the time he left a Senate Committee hearing and tried to exit through a closet.  Waiting what he thought was an appropriate amount of time so there would be no one left in the hearing room, he came out of the closet to find everyone staring at him.

Not satisfied to ignore the chapter in Alex’s book, his television consultant for his 1996 re-election campaign decided to denounce both Alex and me in a massive television advertising buy, calling attention to Alex’s book.  Incidentally, Pressler’s advertising consultant whose brilliance conceived the idea of attacking Alex on the issue of gayness was a Pressler consultant named Art Finkelstein, described in part in his Wikipedia entry:

In 1996, Boston Magazine outed Finkelstein as a homosexual in a feature story.  In April, 2005, Finkelstein acknowledged that in December, 2004, he had married his partner of forty years in a civil ceremony at his home in Massachusetts.

Finkelstein, who is credited during his opportunistic career with making “liberal” a dirty word, has consulted for such statesmen as Avigdor Lieberman and Bibi Netanyahu, as well as a host of other Republican luminaries.

But for Pressler to find cheer in Alex Cockburn’s death is an act that is beyond the pale, even for a nonentity like Pressler.  Knowingly offering his grave-dancing to a South Dakota newspaper is so obscene that one can hardly find words to describe it.

Alex Cockburn was one of the few honest men left in America, someone journalism sorely needs.  Pressler is first among a number of persons who are not fit to shine Alex’s shoes.

JAMES ABOUREZK is a former U.S. Senator from South Dakota.  He is the author of Advise & Dissent: Memoirs of South Dakota and the U.S. Senate, a  memoir now available only on Amazon’s Kindle.  His e mail address is:  georgepatton45@gmail.com

To end the routine abuses of the cops we need conditions that don’t require cops, at least not cops who are outsiders charged with earning their collar by training their guns on youth, occupiers comparable to foreign troops in Afghanistan and Iraq who drop bombs almost as sport. We need conditions that allow for community self-policing based on values of kindness and respect. We need to replace the hurling of water bottles with demands for revolution.

"An Officer Involved Shooting"

The Real Crime in Anaheim

by GARY LEUPP

 

“He was a documented gang member,” say the Anaheim police of Manuel Diaz, a 25 year old unarmed man they shot dead  around 4:00 pm Sunday. They shot him in the buttocks as he ran, and as he stooped to his knees in someone’s yard they followed up by a bullet to the back of his head. Then they handcuffed their immobile quarry with a bloody face and a hole in his skull (as described by a 17 year old neighborhood resident), and searched his pockets before sending him to the hospital to die within three hours.

As I understand it, California law states: “Any person who actively participates in any criminal street gang with knowledge that its members engage in or have engaged in a pattern of criminal gang activity, and who willfully promotes,furthers, or assists in any felonious criminal conduct by members of that gang, shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail for a period not to exceed one year, or by imprisonment in the state prison for 16 months, or two or three years.”

It does not say that gang membership in itself is illegal, or that documented gang members may be shot on sight.

According to Associated Press, “The shooting sparked a melee in the neighborhood as some threw rocks and bottles at officers who were securing the scene for investigators to collect evidence.”

Evidence for a drug deal presumably.  But his sister Lupe Diaz said on the day of his murder that Manuel had been “just hanging out with friends,” adding “There is no explanation. It’s not fair.” Neighbor Yesenia Rojas (34) who received a welt on her stomach after the police attacked her with a bean bag Sunday, calls him a “good person” and asks, “Why kill this man?” (She’s the woman with the stroller whose grandson was nearly attacked by the K-9 police dog in the now-famous video.)

Even if he was  involved in a drug transaction, and even if he were known for such activity in the neighborhood, how could his murder not produce outrage?

A melee is a skirmish, brawl, free-for-all. Is that what happened? It’s not what the video shows. That’s not what the 22 photos posted on the Orange County Register site show.

The AP coverage continues: “Sgt. Bob Dunn, the department’s spokesman, said that as officers detained an instigator, the crowd advanced on officers so they fired bean bags and pepper balls at them.”

Yeah, like this?

I don’t see any attack on police. I see maybe a dozen woman and children approached by cops with rifles drawn and shooting bean bags and pepper spray (and maybe rubber bullets) at close range. One sobbing woman mentions seeing a person throw a water bottle at police before a police dog attacked her and her baby. Could it be that the cops angered at verbal and symbolic expressions of outrage “were provoked” to do what they clearly do in the video? And that that’s what produced statements of defiance? And after darkness set in, such symbolic actions as blocking a street with a dumpster filled with paper on fire?

The two officers involved have been placed on paid leave. You can bet your life they wouldn’t have been, had there not been a “melee” or two and a PR nightmare for the police department. Nor would the police department and the Orange County District Attorney’s Office have announced separate investigations of the incident, or Anaheim mayor Tom Tait said be asking California’s attorney general to assist in that. These are minimal measures to contain the natural outrage.

A video of a police statement carried on the Orange County Register site tells us a lot of how the police view these things.

“About 4 pm this afternoon,” says the spokesman, in  a pleasant upbeat voice, “uh, two of our officers were on patrol here in the 600 block of North Anna Drive in the center alley. They attempted to make contact with three subjects. Uh, during that contact the subjects fled, uh, a foot pursuit ensued. During that foot pursuit one of our officers encountered, uh, one of the males they had been chasing and an officer involved shooting occurred.  Only one person was hit during that officer involved shooting. That was the person that we were chasing, a male. He was transported to the hospital and at this point I don’t know what his condition is. So at this point the investigation is ongoing. There were two additional, uh, male  suspects in the alley at the time this foot pursuit began.  Uh, at this point we will be conducting an investigation to try to identify who those males are. This is still a very active crime scene. Anyone that saw anything or witnessed this that has not spoken to police this is welcome call and remain anonymous the Anaheim Police Department…”

“Attempted to make contact with three subjects…” What does that mean? Attempting to see what they were doing? Attempting to arrest them? Attempting to harass them?  The language is so  mundane and friendly sounding.

Why did they flee? A niece of Diaz, Daisy Gonzalez (16) told reporters that her her uncle probably ran from the two officers because, “”He (doesn’t) like cops. He never liked them because all they do is harass and arrest anyone.” Is that not a very common feeling, particularly among Blacks and Latinos, in cities throughout the country? Isn’t the fear totally justifiable?

“A foot pursuit ensued.” Notice how the passive voice leaves agency out of it. Why not just say, “The two policemen chased him?” And why “an officer involved shooting occurred”? As though there were no real people involved here. Like the officer didn’t really do anything but was just “involved” by something fated to happen.  Like for some reason a tree fell down. Why not be honest and say: “The officers chasing him shot him to death, from the back, as he ran?”

“He was transported to the hospital and at this point I don’t know what his condition is.” Why not mention that he’d been deliberately shot in the brain and was unlikely to survive? And why not mention that he was unarmed?

“This is still a very active crime scene.” Well yes, at least in the sense that, while no weapons have been found there, armed police continue to criminally harass people.

“Anyone that saw anything or witnessed this that has not spoken to police about this is welcome call and remain anonymous the Anaheim Police Department.” (Am I being to picky in noting that “that” ought to be “who” or “whom” when we are talking respectfully to people?) Feel welcome to fink, people, to help us get those who ran away successfully and who we want for reasons we don’t need to explain to you. Trust us, we know who’s good and bad.

The real crime here is obviously the murder of an unarmed young man charged with no crime, murdered for running terrified through a crowded neighborhood at 4:00 in the evening, in full view of the people. A crime compounded by a police attack on those people with rifles and a police dog. (I suspect the claim made Monday that the dog broke free from restraint and his trainer is mortified by what happened is more PR damage control. What was a police dog doing there in the first place?)

It was not (apparently) caught on tape, like the Rodney King beating. But the vicious assault on men, women and children just hanging out outside on a warm summer late afternoon, leaving welts, bites and scratches sending a few to the hospital should be equally infuriating. It’s just another statement of the impunity the police feel. However poorly paid (and they are); however closely they resemble the criminals they’re hired to hunt down and control, they are in the end the enforcers of a system which because it cannot satisfy human needs makes humans hard to control without guns and dogs, fear and repression.

Tuesday City Hall was surrounded with five or six hundred protesters, facing off against 250 police who arrested 24during seven hours of what AP calls “confrontations.” The protests were peaceful all afternoon—until the police moved into arrest someone around 6:30 supposedly threatening them with a gun. But like Diaz on Saturday, he had no gun. As on Saturday, unwarranted police action led the crowd to pelt the police with rocks, the weapon of the weak, of the intifada.

Police spokesman Dunn explained that some of the rock throwers appeared to be outsiders “who were prone to violence and wanted to incite” violence. We’ve heard this before many times.

The angry people (according to AP, citing Dunn) “took over an intersection, and a splinter group walked to the scene of one police shooting and back, throwing rocks, vandalizing cars and throwing a Molotov cocktail that damaged a police car… Throughout the night, knots of protesters spread through downtown, setting fires in trash cans and smashing windows of businesses, including a Starbucks… There also were reports that a T-shirt store was looted… A gas station was shut down after reports that some protesters were seen filling canisters with gas. Police used pepper balls and beanbag rounds. Twenty adults and four minors were arrested…”

We need more than a melee, more than a riot. To end the routine abuses of the cops we need conditions that don’t require cops, at least not cops who are outsiders charged with earning their collar by training their guns on youth, occupiers comparable to foreign troops in Afghanistan and Iraq who drop bombs almost as sport. We need conditions that allow for community self-policing based on values of kindness and respect. We need to replace the hurling of water bottles with demands for revolution.

GARY LEUPP is Professor of History at Tufts University, and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, (AK Press). He can be reached at: gary.leupp@tufts.edu

For many in our communities, to acknowledge the crisis would also require acknowledgement that we have not received much relief in the form of general or specifically tailored policies from the Obama administration

July 26, 2012 - Issue 482

Cover Story

Obama & Me:

An African American Activist’s Search for Clarity

By Ajamu Baraka

BC Guest Commentator

As an African American, I have been confused, frustrated, enraged and

mystified by what is now referred to as the “Obama phenomenon”

among African Americans. And while this phenomenon is complex, I

am only going to comment on one aspect of the phenomenon - the

almost irrational defense of President Obama by significant majorities

in the African American community.

With the election of Barak Obama in 2008, African Americans and

progressives in the U.S. and throughout the world celebrated what

appeared to be the beginning of a new era in the U.S. and a possible

change in how the U.S. relates to the world. So the pride felt by many

African Americans with the election of the first “Black” President was

understandable. And with the rise of the Tea Party and the clearly

racist treatment he was receiving, it was also understandable that

most African Americans would want to protect this president.

But what is not understandable, at least not in rational terms, is the

complete lack of critical discussion and/or analysis in the African

American community of the Obama administrations’ policies. For

example, as African Americans approach the next election and have an

opportunity to reflect on the administration and the impact of its

policies on the health and prospects for the development of African

American communities, one would assume there would be serious

discussions taking place in our communities where we would examine

the administrations’ past policies and formulate new demands that

represent our community's concerns and positions in order for the

administration to receive our votes. But that is not happening. Even

though our communities are facing an economic calamity unlike

anything experienced since the depression era of the 1930s, not only

are those discussions nowhere to be found, but to even suggest the

need for a conversation like that is usually met with hostility.

This is the most disturbing aspect of the Obama phenomenon. This

strange and dangerous disconnection between what is really

happening in our communities - unemployment more than double the

national average, capital disinvestment, record foreclosures, collapsing

housing stock for the poor, dwindling government services, abusive

police and a racist judicial system responsible for locking up more than

a million African Americans - and our unwillingness to acknowledge the

crisis that we face!

The only explanation is that, for many in our communities, to

acknowledge the crisis would also require acknowledgement that we

have not received much relief in the form of general or specifically

tailored policies from the Obama administration. And many of our

people are reluctant to do that because it might play into the hands of

Obama’s enemies, so it is claimed. Instead, convenient explanations

are offered by African American politicians and opinion leaders

regarding how hard it is for Obama to pass legislation with the

opposition he receives from the Republicans, while we pretend not to

notice the administration pushing through legislation that benefit the

banks and corporations and signing executive orders to expand and

protect the rights of almost every constituency group out there but us.

I know that the majority of African Americans are going to give the

Obama administration and the Democrats their votes, partly in

response to the very real threat of the radical right represented by the

candidacy of Gov. Romney, partly because of the “lesser-of-two-evils”

argument and partly out of habit. But at least before that great day in

November when the vote is tabulated, I hope that across this country

African Americans along with our allies and friends would sit down

together and discuss in rational terms just what we are getting for our

votes from the Obama administration.

But specifically for those of us in the African American community, I

also hope that, when we finally get past the Obama phenomenon and

come back to our senses, one of the lessons learned is that we cannot

put our faith or future in the hands of any one person or party - that

we finally understand that it is only through our own efforts that we

define and defend our rights, build our future and create a better

world.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Ajamu Baraka, is ahuman rights activist and veteran of the Black Liberation, anti-war, anti-apartheid and Central American solidarity movements in the United States. He is currently a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he is editing a book on human rights titled, “The Fight Must be for Human Rights: Voices from the Frontline.” The book is scheduled to be published in 2013. Click here to contact Mr. Baraka.