Workers' Compensation Crisis: Congress/White House Must Act

by Phil E. Benjamin & Joel Fredricson

Workers' Compensation Crisis: Congress/White House Must Act

Corporate America Greed Continues Attack on Injured Workers: Nation's Largest Health Organization Calls for Action

Union Shop Stewards Key To Changing the Equation for Workers

[With a Special Note on National Health Legislation}

Ask any worker and their union representative about the state-based system of workers' compensation and you'll probably get the most cynical response imaginable. There are real reasons that produce that reaction. It doesn't start with workers and their unions. On the contrary, it is employers and the workers' comp insurance carriers who cultivate that reaction and perception. They are the root of the problem.

Corporate America works overtime against any progressive reform of the workers' comp system. And, they've been doing it for 100 years. Union shop stewards are the answer to changing the system. They, and they alone, are in a position to support the legal and worker rights that are now disregarded and shamelessly opposed by employers and publicly elected officials. Profits are the mission of employers and the workers' compensation insurance carriers that they hire to oppose worker claims. This also keeps working conditions hazardous. Employers don't pay for their mistakes and conscious exposure of employees to killing dusts and other hazards; worker themselves pay.

The System

Workers' Compensation is a system that was enacted as a state-based system in the USA, starting in New York State in 1910. It was declared unconstitutional at the time. Laws, then, were not allowed to infringe on the profit rights of corporations. The "Robber Barons" were in charge. But the human carnage mounting from the industrialization of the U.S. in the steel and mine operations; on the railroads and in the agricultural fields was becoming a nation catastrophe. On-the-ground the nation's religious and social welfare organizations simply could not take care of the industrial victims. There was no unemployment insurance or social security to help victims. In 1914, New York State changed its constitution to allow for workers' compensation to become the law of the state. Other states followed suit, over the years.

Before 1914, workers were allowed to seek financial remedies from their employers in state courts by proving employer negligence. There are few if any cases of workers winning any money in those courts. The reasons were simple. The judges were clearly on the side of employers; rarely sympathetic to worker interests.

When a case was grievous enough to have a chance for a successful verdict, employers were allowed to use three defenses:

1. Workers "knew about" the hazards when they took the job;
2. The worker "contributed to" the accident;
3. A "fellow worker: caused the accident.

Given those defenses, workers didn't stand a chance in the courts.

If the disabled worker successfully navigated that tortuous road and the judge was about to award him or her money and medical benefits, employers often step forward to offer an out-of-court settlement. That closes the case without any evidence of employer wrongdoing.

In Europe; the 19th Century; USA Balks

In Germany, Bismarck enacted a national system of both workers' compensation and national health insurance in the 1880s to head-off revolutionary forces. Germany decided to establish a national system with no private insurance carriers.

England, which was facing similar industrialization and radical worker reactions later in the century, also enacted a national workers' comp system, but while keeping it nationwide, allowed for private insurance companies to write the insurance.

In the U.S. the worst of all solutions was adopted. There would be NO national system, only state-based systems, and private carriers would write most of the coverages. [See Note on National Health Legislation] Only federal workers, longshore workers and a few others would benefit by a federal system of workers' compensation. The federal workers' comp system is far better than any of the state-based systems. It pays wage replacement at a far higher level and the medical benefits are superior.

OSHA & MSHA

When the Occupational Safety and Health Act [OSHA] was passed in 1969/70 by a Congress that was heavily pressured by labor and worker support groups; they also asked for a complete re-evaluation of workers' comp. The Mine Safety and Health Act [MSHA} has passed at the same time. Both tied the failure of strong federal and state regulations to the rising toll of injuries and illness. A commission was established and reported back 5-7 years later. Some reforms were put forward, but by and large, the system was not changed. Congress rejected practically all of the pro-worker proposals put forward by the commission. Corporate America absorbed the battle defeat of the passage of OSHA and MSHA, and regrouped to defeat workers' comp reform that would help workers.

Coal miners, their union, the United Mine Workers Union and their supporters didn't wait for the national government to act. In the 1960s, they demanded in the state capital of West Virginia that Black Lung Disease, the respiratory disease that combined rock and coal dust and killed coal miners in a very predictable way, be recognized. That predictability meant that the word "Presumption" must be used. And, the Black Lung Association, the UMWA and physicians who diagnosed victims and stood up to the coal operators won this battle. Starting in West Virginia and then in Washington, D.C. a "Presumption" was established that if a coal miner works for a defined period of time, it is "Assumed" the miner qualifies for Black Lung Benefits. The use of x-rays and blood tests would not be the final test determinant. This was and remains a historic victory. The "presumption" concept was violently opposed by all other employer.

But, as you can imagine the struggle to protect miners from coal and rock dust is endless. The laws and regulations are not working as they should. According to the Charleston Gazette, Joe Main former Director of Occupational Safety and Health for the UMWA and now President Obama's head of MSHA, over 10,000 miners died of this dread disease in the last decade. And, there is fear that many are dying with not having extensive exposure.

The workers' comp system for everyone else is a system which replaces a portion of wages and gives medical care for disabilities for work-related injuries and illnesses with some money for death on the job. And, that has remained extremely low for decades. There is a very wide range of benefits between the 50 states.

Permanent Partial Disability

Having successfully won the battle to keep wages low and medical benefits meager, employers focused on cutting back on the benefits to workers suffering with PERMANENT PARTIAL DISABILITIES. These disabilities are the ones which workers suffer permanent respiratory damage to their lungs or other pafrtial physical injuries, but may still are legally allowed to return to their previous job and collect some money. In New York State, for example, permanent partial disability payments for non-respiratory illnesses were fairly good. But, it is next to impossible to collect for permanent partial for occupational respiratory, lung illnesses, e.g. silicosis.

[Note: One particular event took place in Gauley Bridge, West Virginia when Union Carbide, in the Depression years of the early 1930s, drilled a public works tunnel through "Hawks Nest" mountain, near Gauley Bridge. The purpose was to harness the Kanawha River for hydroelectric power. Over 5,000 miners died of silicosis since the rock they were drilling had very high silica content and Union Carbide knew it. They even expanded the breadth of the tunnel when they discovered its high percent silica [sand] content. Some workers died with as little as 5 months of exposure. That industrial killing is still one of the most severe cases of workers being murdered by employers. After Vito Marcantonio, Congressman from NYC, many of those miners were from NYC, held hearings, New York State passed a Permanent Partial Disability for respiratory diseases. The law lasted ONE YEAR and corporations in NY State forced the state legislature to remove that law; and, it did. That situation exists today.]*

Medical Exams

Any complicated medical diagnosis and determination brings a powerful corporate response. For example, often a medical dispute arises. The injured worker's doctors submit regular reports saying he is still disabled. The insurance company submits a report saying that the worker is fully recovered, able to go back to work and no longer entitled to benefits.

A trial follows. Testimony is taken from both doctors, the worker and the employers. In 3,4 or maybe 6 months the judge makes a decision as to which doctor is more credible. In NY, probably 85% or more of these cases are eventually decided in favor of the worker. BUT the judge MUST, by law, stop payment to the worker as soon as the insurance company presents its "no disability" report. [A controverted claim] The worker remains without income throughout the months it takes to resolve the dispute. The priority, written into the law, is to protect the insurance company from paying out money that, possibly, the worker is not entitled to, rather than protecting the worker's right to benefits that, in the vast majority of cases, he or she is entitled to, and the cutting off of which often results in destitution, hunger and homelessness.

In the above scenario, the Board is required to schedule a hearing within 20 days from receiving the "no disability" report from the insurance company. But an injured worker, unable to work, who seeks payment, can never get a hearing that soon, even with the new, in NY State, so-called "expedited hearing process."

But, that was not enough for Corporate America. They wanted more. So, recently, in order to get a very small increase in the maximum weekly wage replacement, NY State agreed to limit the length of time a worker could collect permanent partial workers' comp. This legislative act put millions dollars of profits back into the treasuries of the corporations.

But, if you think they are satisfied, you would be dead wrong.

Corporations still complain. Oh, how they complain. They threaten to leave a state if workers' comp wages and benefits are increased. Get the State vs. State scenario? These threats are worth million of dollars of profits for the corporations.

They continue to complain. They never stop complaining. Their fundamental, basic complaint is if you give workers too much on workers' comp, they won't return to work. Employers and the workers' comp carriers spend millions of dollars on attorneys and "billed time" fighting against any improvements and for cutbacks.

The mass media is a crucial part of the corporate strategy. For example, liberal oriented "Sixty Minutes" annually has a segment showing a disabled worker collecting benefits and still doing difficult, usually recreational fun. In New York City, for example, the NY Daily News, at least two times a year will print stories, given to them by the New York Transit Authority [NYC bus and subways] about the worker abusing the system. NY City Transit is a self-insurance company which challenges workers' comp plains two the three times private sector employers. But, these stories and the media attack have its affect.

Like other insurance carriers, they spend millions of dollars to influence every state capital politician; and, of course, Congress in Washington, D.C. The money they use is the premium dollars they accumulate. The medical payout ratio that keeps benefits low and awards that practice with loads of money for payoffs to politicians.

The net result of all of their millions and anti-worker strategy is that too many workers force themselves back to work far before they should.

In Europe and other industrialized countries, workers' wage replacement is almost the same as their working wages. Workers are regularly paid 90% of their wages. There is no problem with returning to work. Life for workers in Europe is not great, but compared to the USA, laws passed and respected and enforced to a greater extent than the USA>

The exploitation of workers in the U.S., around the issue of workers' comp, is at its gravest worst.

The cartoon image of disabled workers being thrown on to the scrap heat, ala a Charlie Chaplin movie, is an everyday reality in the U.S.A.

Public Health

The American Public Health Association, an organization over 30,000 health oriented members at their Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, where over 12,000 gathered, viewed this crisis and passed a resolution to begin to correct it.

The resolution said that the current system of workers' compensation is characterized by "mistrust, denied claims, stigmatization, payment delays, and refusals to pay benefits."

Currently, each state administers its own workers' compensation system and individual states differ, "often dramatically, on the level and scope of permanent disability benefits, coverage of mental health conditions resulting from work, and insurance and claims administration regulation."

The resolution called for the system to be re-vamped by "put[ting] prevention of injury and illness, and rehabilitation of those unable to return to work after injury an illness, as its foremost goals."

The resolution said that the "current fragmented workers' compensation system should be replaced by a national program with uniform coverage of health care and adequate loss-of-earnings benefits for all occupational injuries and illnesses."

The APHA resolution made the following recommendations:

· " The system should include a national standard of coverage for all workers, including all federal and state government workers. Individual state exemptions for seasonal agricultural workers, home care workers, domestic workers, part-time workers, contractors, immigrant workers, employees of small companies and all other special categories should be removed.

· " The system should be integrated in a seamless manner with the Social Security disability program (SSDI); benefits should be provided for all permanent injuries and illnesses.

· " Health care for injured workers should be provided by a national health care system independent of industry involvement and insurance industry control; health care providers should be removed from the responsibility of determining eligibility for benefits.
· "The system must have money set aside for: training of occupational health and safety professionals; preventive initiatives based on root injury and illness analyses; worker health and safety training; and mandatory reporting by health professionals.

· "There should be a national medical and statistical database on worker injuries, worker illnesses, worker toxic exposures and resultant diseases. A national database would lay the groundwork for research into the causes and consequences of occupational illnesses, and lead to improved diagnosis, treatment, prognosis, and ultimately, prevention of occupational diseases."

The Cost of the System

You'll note that the APHA policy statement and most worker and union advocates do not quote any numbers in regard to workers' compensation. Why? All of the numbers, i.e., the cost of the system; the number of workers seeking and successfully gaining their claims; and similar data is completely controlled by the workers' comp insurance companies, themselves. They are regulated; if that is what they would call it, buy themselves. Yes, "peer reviewed" regulation is what dominates in state governments. There is rarely if any independent review and analysis of their data reports.

With all of the popular talk about asbestosis, silicosis, coal workers pneumoconiosis, lead poisoning, occupational cancer and other occupational illnesses and diseases, in any one state of the union, less than 3% of all successful claims are for occupational illnesses and diseases. This means that the negotiated health benefit program pays the medical and related costs of work-related illnesses and diseases, if there is a union. If the worker has no union and no health insurance, the victim, he or herself pay it. This more often than not is the rule not the exception.

While in most states, the breakthrough in asbestos related workers compensation claims took place about 20 years ago, for most other illnesses and diseases, it is next to impossible to win those claims.

Liberty Mutual is the top insurance carrier among many and, they have successfully financially influenced state government to agree with their positions. At the same time they virulently influence Congress to keep workers' comp a state-by-state issue.

What is Lost With No Enforcement?

A good question would be: What is lost with no enforcement of already lax insurance laws and, essentially, permitting these practices? Simple. While compensating workers for work-related illnesses and diseases is the primary mission of workers' comp the other, and equally important reason is to penalize employer for not protecting their employees form the hazards that create the conditions that give workers those disabilities.

The penalty system is simple. Insurance carriers increase premiums for employers with records of hurting their employees. Successful claims translate into higher premiums and forcing employers to fix the workplace. It is the old fashion incentive system.

When this doesn't happen, workers and their unions are left with OSHA and MSHA to regulate the workplace. Well, we know the record of both OSHA and MSHA to force employer to do it right. Extremely bad! This is a "Lose-Lose" situation for workers.

Union Shop Stewards: First Line of Struggle

Yes, the crucial ingredient to protect workers is the elected [and appointed] shop stewards who are trained to protect their comrades from injuries and illnesses. They are the first line of defense and must be able to enforce their labor contract; and, strategically use OSHA [Public Employees S&H Laws for public workers] and MSHA laws. Shop stewards have historically been the called upon to perform these duties, but, an alert and aggressive local union leadership must provide the spark and support for this important union shop floor responsibility.

That is right, without a union, workers are essentially defenseless. They need aggressive regulation enforcement by state and federal laws and administrators. But without strong union enforcement, these regulations are just words on paper. Union shop steward make aggressive union action possible. Few workers will risk their jobs to call in OSHA inspectors. Without a union contract, and strong stewards the law protecting the right to report safety and health hazards and violations is almost impossible to enforce. Stewards can help workers file claims. Thousands of work-related injuries and illnesses are routinely not reported.

Those who want to help reduce these injuries and illnesses must also support measures to increase unionization of U.S. workers, such as the Employee Free Choice Act.

Public advocates in groups like the locally based Committees for Occupational Safety and Health [COSH groups] are very helpful.

The accumulation of shop steward generated data/experience with work-related injury, illnesses and diseases from a few key places could be used in state capitals to force real changes in workers' comp laws. A moderately long-term strategy to mount this strategy in a few key states could do what the Black Lung struggle did 40 years ago. These are the real life experiences that can change the situation toward workers' interest by arming state and national organized labor organizations to fight in state capitals and Congress.

The Crisis Demands Action

The Obama Administration is in a perfect position to take steps to correct worekrs' comp laws. The first step should be to enforce the National Commission's proposals to federalize state workers' comp system that don't achieve certain goals. Democratic Party control of the White House and Congress, in the past, gave some improvements to workers in this area of workers' rights.

The National Commission on Workers' Compensation has already set the basis for major workers' comp reform in the 1970s. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. The system is still the same anti-worker, anti-worker family since then. The only change has been for the worse.

The capitalist economic and financial crisis is making this bad system much worse for workers. For many disabled workers, either by physical injury, occupational illness or diseases and mental damage, the choices are few and none. They are reporting less of their disabilities and staying on the job as long as possible. The fear of unemployment, with the official jobless rate above 10%, especially when the worker might be the only earner in the immediate or extended family, forces workers to stay on the job. In these instances, a mild physical injury would grow worse. And, a respiratory problem would become more severe. In both instances, the source of the problem would go unchanged.

Corporate American is turning up the heat to produce more with fewer workers. The stock market is going great and the bonuses are high and wide at the big corporations like Goldman Sachs. Wall Street is sitting pretty. And, they continue to lay off more workers; and, of course, not employing them with their bail out money and super profits.

It is the U.S. worker who is paying for all of this greed. And, make no mistake about it; the greed that produced the economic bubble and the mortgage crisis is just as rampant now as then.

The sparks from the labor movement show that a rising tide of rage is taking place across the country. Workers' comp produces the kind of slow, deep-seated worker rage that is rarely understood by government and university policy makers. But, be sure that union leaders who have their ears to the ground understand it well.

The White House demand of Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act would be an important step.

Special Note: Lessons For Current National Health Legislation

Over the last decades' struggles for national health legislation, some community-based groups, rarely labor unions, have opposed a national health legislative program, rather they supported State-based health insurance programs. And, in fact, given the corporate/Wall Street ability to hamstring and kill off a national health program, some progressive political activists have called for the abandonment of a national program and for a State-based program with seed money coming from the Federal Government. Some of these progressive have clouded the demand by supporting the former Senator Paul Wellstone "Single Payer" proposal, which was entirely state-based. Wellstone was the popular deceased, former U.S. Senator from Minnesota.

There is mostly just bad experience with states enacting health coverage for its people. The recent Massachusetts Health Plan started off fairly good, but is now in terrible disarray and cutbacks are rather dramatic. Twenty years ago Massachusetts passed a similar state-based health bill that was also a disaster. Other activists have unsuccessfully spent great effort to get their state government to enact state-based health systems. Hawaii has a state plan which seems rather good, but its hard to extrapolate from the example, given the rather isolated location of the state.

The U.S. state-based workers' compensation programs as compared to the federal workers' comp system has the federal system winning hands down. It wins with far higher wage replacement, lasting a lifetime; and, far superior medical and mental health benefits. And, yet, that experience has not been considered in the Congress or the White House in the current national health discussions. National health care advocates, hopefully, will redouble their national health efforts, and forego state strategies for a while.

* Union Carbide, which is now owned by Dow Chemical, the manufacturer of napalm war materials, is the same company responsible for the deaths of over 15,000 people in Bhopal, India 25 years ago, this year. In that instance it was the release of poison chemicals.

Obama's Nobel Speech

By David Swanson

[ from opednews.com ]

That was not a peace prize acceptance speech. That was an infomercial for war. President Obama took the peace prize home with him, but left behind in Oslo his praise for war, his claims for war, and his view of an alternative and more peaceful approach to the world consisting of murderous economic sanctions.

Some highlights:
"There are the men and women around the world who have been jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice; those who toil in humanitarian organizations to relieve suffering; the unrecognized millions whose quiet acts of courage and compassion inspire even the most hardened of cynics. I cannot argue with those who find these men and women — some known, some obscure to all but those they help — to be far more deserving of this honor than I."
Yet, you did argue. You argued by accepting the prize " and then making a false case for war:
"War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease — the manner in which tribes and then civilizations sought power and settled their differences."
This is simply not true of all tribes and civilizations, unless we include war making as a criterion for being considered civilized.
"The concept of a 'just war' emerged, suggesting that war is justified only when it meets certain preconditions: if it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the forced used is proportional; and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence."
How dare someone responsible for illegal occupations and air strikes and the use of unmanned drones say these words? (Responsible, that is, given the failure of Congress and of we the people to stop him.)
"America led the world in constructing an architecture to keep the peace: a Marshall Plan and a United Nations, mechanisms to govern the waging of war, treaties to protect human rights, prevent genocide and restrict the most dangerous weapons."
How dare a president refusing to support a treaty on land mines speak in these terms? Are we supposed to not see the actions and just hear the words?
"I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King said in this same ceremony years ago: 'Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: It merely creates new and more complicated ones.'"
Very wise. Very true. And completely violated by Barack Obama's actions and the better part of the words in this speech. Are we supposed to hear these words in a different part of our brains from the rest of the speech and its advocacy of war?
"A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaidas leaders to lay down their arms."
Now a group of fewer than 100 angry people in Afghanistan, and their allies elsewhere, are the rough equivalent of "Hitler's armies" and justify the brutal occupation of a nation by tens and hundreds of thousands of soldiers and mercenaries, tanks and planes, and unmanned drones? And negotiations, with the Taliban or anyone else, are not possible because " because " well, because of that rhetoric about Hitler's armies.
"The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest."
A 1993 Congressional Research Service (CRS) study of the U.S. Navy's Naval Historical Center records identified "234 instances in which the United States has used its armed forces abroad in situations of conflict or potential conflict or for other than normal peacetime purposes" between 1798 and 1993. This list does not include covert actions or post-World War II occupation forces and base agreements. In a 2006 review of this study and two others, Gar Smith found that "in our country's 230 years of existence, there have been only 31 years in which U.S. troops were not actively engaged in significant armed adventures on foreign shores." In other words, fewer than 14% of America's days have been at peace. As of 2006, there were 192 member states in the United Nations. Over the past two centuries, the United State has attacked, invaded, policed, overthrown, or occupied 62 of them. Read more.
"I believe that all nations — strong and weak alike — must adhere to standards that govern the use of force. I — like any head of state — reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation."
The United Nations Charter, to which the United States is party, and which is therefore the supreme law of the United States under Article VI of the Constitution is apparently not a standard that governs the use of force, since President Obama has just thrown it away in a statement of Obama Doctrine that appears indistinguishable from the so-called Bush doctrine. Obama then doubles down with a Bush the Elder / Clintonian doctrine of humanitarian war:
"I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred by war. Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later. That is why all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace."
Obama equates non-military action, non-hostile action, with inaction, pure and simple. Where is aid? Where is diplomacy? Where is cooperation? Why are all non-hostile approaches to other nations banished from the text of a Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech a mere 25 years after 1984?
"Peace entails sacrifice. That is why NATO continues to be indispensable."
What can be said to render that statement less persuasive than it is on its own? Maybe this:
"That is why I prohibited torture. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. And that is why I have reaffirmed America's commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions."
Torture was illegal internationally and in the US code of law before Obama became president. He publicly instructed the Attorney General of the United States not to enforce those laws. He claimed the power to "rendition" people to other nations where they might be tortured. His CIA Director and a top presidential advisor have claimed the president has the power to torture if he chooses to. And President Obama has here claimed the power to prohibit or un-prohibit torture, spitting in the face of the very idea of the rule of law. The prison at Guantanamo is not closed, and moving those prisoners to Illinois or Bagram or any other lawless U.S. prison will not bring the United States into compliance with the Geneva Conventions.
"I have spoken to the questions that must weigh on our minds and our hearts as we choose to wage war. But let me turn now to our effort to avoid such tragic choices, and speak of three ways that we can build a just and lasting peace."
At last, mid-speech, we are presented with a drop of that toxic trademarked substance: hope. Only to swallow a mouthful of this:
"First, in dealing with those nations that break rules and laws, I believe that we must develop alternatives to violence that are tough enough to change behavior — for if we want a lasting peace, then the words of the international community must mean something. Those regimes that break the rules must be held accountable. Sanctions must exact a real price. Intransigence must be met with increased pressure — and such pressure exists only when the world stands together as one."
Set aside the hypocrisy of the globalism and rule-of-law talk from a commander in chief escalating wars and occupying 177 nations around the world. The message here is that a decent alternative to war is crippling sanctions that "exact a real price." The wisdom of a creative nonviolent outlook has not yet penetrated. And the President does not develop the idea any further, turning instead to nuclear arms:
""those with nuclear weapons will work toward disarmament. I am committed to upholding this treaty. It is a centerpiece of my foreign policy. And I am working with President Medvedev to reduce America and Russia's nuclear stockpiles. But it is also incumbent upon all of us to insist that nations like Iran and North Korea do not game the system. Those who claim to respect international law cannot avert their eyes when those laws are flouted."
The United States is not seriously pursuing disarmament, is developing new nuclear weapons, is in clear violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. And Iran is not.
"America has never fought a war against a democracy, and our closest friends are governments that protect the rights of their citizens."
President Obama, in his famous Middle-East speech earlier this year admirably acknowledged the U.S. overthrow of a democratically elected president in Iran, and the installation of a dictator -- who, like many dictators than and now, was one of our closest friends. The greatest success of international law in recent years has been the precedent set by prosecutors seeking to hold responsible Augusto Pinochet. Does anyone recall how he came into power?
"So even as we respect the unique culture and traditions of different countries, America will always be a voice for those aspirations that are universal."
Indeed.
"Let me also say this: The promotion of human rights cannot be about exhortation alone. At times, it must be coupled with painstaking diplomacy. I know that engagement with repressive regimes lacks the satisfying purity of indignation. But I also know that sanctions without outreach — and condemnation without discussion — can carry forward a crippling status quo. No repressive regime can move down a new path unless it has the choice of an open door."
And there, as this reprehensible speech is dragging to a close, are the words with which it should have begun, the words denied by the thrust of everything else here and by the actions of the man delivering the words. And then there was a bit more:
"[A] just peace includes not only civil and political rights — it must encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want."
A bitter statement for the people of Afghanistan or the United States to hear from a president who has acted to divert our resources upward to Wall Street and downwards into bombs and bases. But true and worth repeating nonetheless. Let's not imagine, however, that George W. Bush would not have said the same. He would simply have said it with a smaller military budget, a smaller war budget, fewer troops in the field, fewer mercenaries in the field, bases in fewer countries, and worse grammar.

David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press.

Evaluating the Senate Health Care Compromise

by John Case

How I will be Evaluating the Senate Health Care Compromise

If the expression on "Blue Dog" Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu's face is any indication, Senator Reid may have scored a major victory in the rumored compromise that hopefully will secure the needed 60 votes for health care reform. She looked whipped, like she had just been a guest at a vampire banquet. While weakly expressing satisfaction at disposing of the "public option", she then had to confess the sacrifice: making age 55 and over eligible for Medicare, making Medicaid open to all comers under 300 percent of poverty, and mandating that 90% of all coverage include less than 10% administrative costs.

Many details, and questions, await the Congressional Budget Office cost scoring of the compromise. The Blue Dogs appeared to have won the "public option" battle at the cost -- it seems -- of an even bigger public sector, and even more insurance company controls. The private hospitals and wealthiest doctor groups are protesting. They know that Medicare, despite itself needing many reforms, is in fact the most efficient, and most cost-effective large scale insurance administration.

This is the time in contract negotiations when we need to count the costs and benefits -- the real money on the table -- closely, and be careful of abstractions. When the details are released, we will should be able to calculate the real expansion of Medicare and Medicaid likely to occur; the real impact of a 10% admin cap in the new private and non-profit exchange, and it management by the the US Office of Personnel management; the remaining number of uninsured, including its impact on undocumented workers. Also important, and still undisclosed, are any agreements on how the coverage will be financed.

Am I covered? Who Pays? -- the two questions every competent Local Union president or Chief Steward I ever knew always dug into!

It's important to be wary of "absolute principles" that can cloud your ability to count the real money and benefits in play in negotiations.

I once worked with UE Local 258 in Windsor Vt on a strike that was provoked by a company demand to take-back a full retirement at 62 provision. Such a provision had been hard-fought and hard-won by the local in previous contracts. It gave machine shop workers a real incentive to retire at 62 without any early retirement penalty. Defending it was a principle on which some Local officers had campaigned for bargaining committee leadership. Company intransigence on this, although they did not tell us this until afterwards, was due to having changed their pension insurance to a carrier that did not support the 62 retirement benefit. Ill will grew; negotiations reached an impasse; mediation failed; a strike ensued. Meetings with the company continued during the strike. Eight weeks into the strike the midnight meeting to avoid mass scabs or burning the mill down, or both, takes place. The company makes a tentative offer to up the regular, age 65 pension pay, to a point where, even with an early retirement penalty, the age 62 retirees would STILL get a 15% raise, even though "full retirement at 62" would be removed from the contract. The most committed to "principle" resisted the deal. But the Local president said: "So you are willing to explain to the members, who are walking the line, to keep their families on strike without income in order to fight for a 15% Age 62 Retirement.

I will be thinking of that Local President -- Douglas Whitcomb -- when the details of the Senate compromise are released.

Video: Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Insurance Monopoly) debates himself on filibuster

The Death of Conservatism? FYI

BOOK REVIEW: 'The Death of Conservatism' Isn't As Good an Idea As It Might Appear to Liberals, Says Sam Tanenhaus

Reviewed By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic

I confess that I know who is a conservative less surely than I know who is a liberal. -- William F. Buckley Jr., 1963

Not much has changed in the 46 years since the late conservative icon and founder of National Review magazine made that statement, judging from a slim new book by Sam Tanenhaus, "The Death of Conservatism" (Random House, 144 pages, $17.00).

Tanenhaus, who is writing a biography of Buckley (1925-2008), quotes Buckley in his new book, which expands on an article Tanenhaus wrote for The New Republic shortly after the inauguration of President Barack Obama this past winter. The essay, "Conservatism Is Dead," prompted intense debate -- a debate that is sure to continue with this book-length expansion.

"The Death of Conservatism" comes with a bibliography, but no index, forcing the careful reader to make extensive handwritten notes. This is probably a good thing, since Tanenhaus crams a lot of facts and opinions into a small book. He supplies a brief history of the American conservative movement and asks the question: "why does the contemporary Right define itself less by what it years to conserve than by what it longs to destroy?"

For 75 years, he writes, the Right has been split between two factions: consensus-driven "realists" who believe in the virtue of government and its power to adjust to changing conditions, and ideologically driven "revanchists" who distrust government and society, and often are at war with America itself.

Tanenhaus includes among the "realists" Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Buckley and Whittaker Chambers (Tanenhaus is the author of an acclaimed biography of Chambers), but New York Times columnist and Nobel-Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has just written that we might include Richard Nixon in that list (link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/opinion/31krugman.html?th&emc=th).

Starting with the caveat that he considers Nixon the worst person -- other than Dick Cheney -- to control the executive branch, Krugman says that "the Nixon era was a time in which leading figures in both parties were capable of speaking rationally about policy, and in which policy decisions weren’t as warped by corporate cash as they are now. America is a better country in many ways than it was 35 years ago, but our political system’s ability to deal with real problems has been degraded to such an extent that I sometimes wonder whether the country is still governable."

Krugman continues: "As many people have pointed out, Nixon’s proposal for health care reform looks a lot like Democratic proposals today. In fact, in some ways it was stronger. Right now, Republicans are balking at the idea of requiring that large employers offer health insurance to their workers; Nixon proposed requiring that all employers, not just large companies, offer insurance. Nixon also embraced tighter regulation of insurers, calling on states to 'approve specific plans, oversee rates, ensure adequate disclosure, require an annual audit and take other appropriate measures.' No illusions there about how the magic of the marketplace solves all problems."

It's also important to remember that Nixon expanded the government with such agencies as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970 -- something that would be unthinkable to faux conservative politicians like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their like.

Tanenhaus explores issues raised by Krugman and argues that conservatives shouldn't tie all their fortunes to the Republican Party, which in the past eight years of Bush-Cheney has trashed traditional conservative values, including the importance of competence in governing the nation -- something important as we now observe the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and its devastation of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Among the points Tanenhaus makes in his important book -- important for liberals, libertarians, conservatives, independents and people like me who think labels are for ketchup bottles:

* Tying themselves to the GOP, as conservatives did during the Bush-Cheney years, resulted in the 2008 presidential loss. The nation, in electing Obama and Biden, rejected "the hard-edged, accusatory policies" of Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney.

* There is no authentically conservative reason to oppose health care reform (see the Krugman reference to Nixon). "This is an opportunity for Republicans to demonstrate that they can govern responsibly by joining the majority, precisely as they did in 1964 when they helped pass the landmark civil rights bill."

(It's ironic to note that conservative but consensus-building U.S. Sen. Everett M. Dirksen, R-IL, was a leader in the passage of the bill, while a current liberal icon, Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-WV, opposed the bill, along with segregationist Southern and other legislators. Dirksen (1896-1969) was also a sponsor of the 1968 Open Housing Act.)

* Conservatives need to serve as a counterbalance to liberals (many of whom call themselves "progressives" these days) who might interpret the election of Barack Obama as an opportunity to abandon the centrist policies of presidents like Bill Clinton and "veer off into 'left-liberalism,' becoming the party of LBJ instead of FDR. (I personally think Lyndon B. Johnson's administration was in many ways a continuation of FDR's, especially in acts like the passage of Medicare in 1965.).

* The unilateralist, America-centric foreign policy of the Bush-Cheney years was a failure. Why are conservatives like Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and John McCain trying to reestablish it in Iran even as more temperate Republicans like Richard Lugar and Henry Kissinger have praised Obama's restraint, Tanenhaus asks.

* Conservatives in the GOP need to transform it into a "big tent" party like the Democrats, embracing gay marriages and/or civil unions. Tanenhaus says that a generation ago, gays exemplified "alternative lifestyles." Now, he says, they want to join the mainstream and uphold family values. What serious-minded conservative would oppose that?

Well, as Krugman notes in the above referenced op-ed: "Part of the answer is that the right-wing fringe, which has always been around — as an article by the historian Rick Perlstein puts it, 'crazy is a pre-existing condition' — has now, in effect, taken over one of our two major parties. Moderate Republicans, the sort of people with whom one might have been able to negotiate a health care deal, have either been driven out of the party or intimidated into silence."

In his concluding chapter, where he quotes Buckley, Tanenhaus makes the same point: "Classical conservatives have all either deserted the Right or been evicted from it...The converts of yesteryear -- [James] Burnham and Chambers, [Daniel Patrick] Moynihan and [Irving] Kristol -- have been succeeded by writers and thinkers like Mark Lilla and Michael Lind, Francis Fukuyama and Fareed Zakaria, David Brooks and Andrew Sullivan, who have defected in the opposite direction, fleeing the cloistered precincts of the Right."

It may be too late to save the Republican Party. We may be at a point similar to that in the early- to mid-1850s when the Whig Party died and the Republican Party was formed from its remnants. Maybe it's time for conservatives and libertarians of both major parties to form a new party. I think Tanenhaus doesn't believe in such a drastic solution, believing that the Republican Party can be saved. In any case, "The Death of Conservatism" is an important book for readers of all political persuasions, especially those who consider themselves independents.

About the author: Sam Tanenhaus is the editor of the New York Times book review and also the paper's Week in Review section. From 1999 to 2004 he was a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. His previous book, "Whittaker Chambers: A Biography" (Random House, 1997) won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

Peru International Conference on Young Workers

by Mike Tolochko

Trade Union Youth Meet in Peru: Call for Peace, Defense of Planet; Right to Work at Equal Pay---No One is Illegal; Right to Education; Trade Union Autonomy

"A Different World Is Possible and that is Socialism"

Lima, Peru was recently the site of a major international conference that both attracted young workers and which were about young workers. Recently, at the AFL-CIO Convention in Pittsburgh, Pa, the federation also made young workers the focus of their attention. [See Below] Clearly there is national and international understand that young workers must be the focus of the trade union movement.

This Peru conference tackled that challenge on a national and international level:

"Given the far-reaching technological advances of our world today, young people act on processes that have changed the composition of the working class. The capitalists demand a "new professional" with initiative, critical awareness and ability to improve the production process. They demand teamwork with commitment to collective results, knowledge of languages, philosophy, continuous training, etc. But all these has one single purpose, to serve the labor market and not to contribute to the economic, social and political change, that our countries require."

Clearly employers across the world are relying young workers to produce their profits with wages, hours and working conditions that will yield the greatest profits.

The World federation of Trade Unionists and the General Confederation of Workers of Peru sponsored the three-day meeting: November 18-20, 2009.

The Final Declaration of the conference put the meeting into a perspective that made complete sense. And, then within that context, placed the crucial position of young workers:

"At the beginning of the 21st century the World remains a victim of a political and economic order that is unfair, exclusionary and exploitative. This order is leading the planet to its own self-destruction, which now is threatened by the climate change that comes in the middle of the biggest crisis in the history of capitalism.

"Young workers are the first victims of the labor market deregulation, produced by the imperialist globalization, and the results are alarming: millions of young workers are unemployed, sub employed or working in slavery-like conditions without health or social security; there homeless and persecuted emigrants, as well as child labor. In conclusion, a whole generation of young workers in material and spiritual ruin, with no promising future."

The conference cited the violence and individualism that permeates the world today. Social Solidarity that is the centerpiece of the labor movement and left wing political parties is up against corporate ideologues that see these values as a threat to their existence.

Latin America

Since the international conference was held in Latin America it stood to reason that the new and exciting events on the continent would be highlighted. They, of course, also demanded that the situation in Honduras be corrected:

"Latin America, where this first conference is being held, lives a change of time with democratic progresses and victories of progressive forces that must be defended and deepened. The response of the retrogrades, which are consolidated in the North American imperial government and with the support of its allies, is to prevent the self-determination of peoples, even by force. This fact demonstrates that they do not change. Their failed regime has nothing more to offer. The only thing that they can offer is domination, coercion, oppression, threats, aggression, and imposition of the war.

"In Honduras, the people are heroically fighting against this model of empire. The resistance of this people is an inspiration that proves that it is possible to defend our rights and sovereignty against the hypocritical and treacherous maneuver of the U.S. government and the oligarchs to circumvent the popular will and the demand of the international community. Once more we quote Che "...We cannot trust the imperialism, not even a little bit...". We demand the immediate and unconditional return of the legitimate government of Manuel Zelaya!"

In addition to Honduras, the Conference opposed the privatization of electricity and energy in Mexico City; U.S. military bases in Columbia and the Cuarta Flota new Venezuela.

They voiced solidarity with Peru workers in agro alimentary, shipping, textile and garments, miners, teachers, and civil construction.

European Union "Neo-Liberalism"

Of course, the neo liberal policies of the European Union received speical attention. The strengthening of transnationals and monopolies, which was promoted by the Lisbon Strategy, was condemned. The Lisbon Strategy was enacted by the EU to deal with their interpretation of low productivity and stagnation of economic growth. It was adopted in 2000 for a 10 years period. It grew into a virulent anti-labor, anti-worker program that each country in the EU attempted to enforce. Massive demonstrations have taken place in opposition to it.

THE FINAL DECLARATION

The final declaration of the Conference set a road ahead:

1)The peace. The humanity is one only. To the hypocrisy of the globalization and the capitalist barbarism and pillage we must oppose the globalization of solidarity. No to war and imperialism!

2) The defense of our planet, facing the transnational corporations pollution that in their pursuit of profit are leading us to our own destruction.

3)The right to work and to reduction of working time with equal pay and the elimination of precarious employment and contracts. No one is illegal.

4)The youth's right to education, to work with rights and to health.

5)The trade union autonomy is not neutrality, but the assertion of the class interests. For the freedom of trade union association with youth features to boost trade union affiliation and the generational renewal in our movement.

Young workers say, as we were taught by Mariategui, that. "... The proletariat does not enter in the history politically but as a social class; at the moment that it discovers its mission to build a higher social order .... ".

WE, THE YOUTH, BELIEVE IN THE FUTURE! A DIFFERENT WORLD IS POSSIBLE AND THAT IS SOCIALISM!

TO CONQUER IT, TO BUILD IT, TO PRESERVE IT IS THE HISTORICAL BATTLE THAT YOUNG WORKERS HAVE IN FRONT OF US!

The attendees came from 25 countries representing 250 trade unionists from 32 trade union organizations.

AFL-CIO Resolution on Young Union Members

42 • PROPOSED RESOLUTIONS AND CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS BOOK TWO AFL-CIO CONVENTION • 2009

WHEREAS, the continued strength and vitality
of the labor movement depends heavily on the
ability of younger union members to develop into
strong and effective labor leaders; and
WHEREAS, a powerful labor movement can be
built only through recognition and inclusion of the
full diversity of the labor force, including workers
of all ages; and
WHEREAS, the Massachusetts AFL-CIO has
developed a successful "Futures" Program,
which has introduced hundreds of younger union
members, from all sectors and industries, to the
broader labor movement in the commonwealth
of Massachusetts; and
WHEREAS, the Massachusetts AFL-CIO has
provided young union members a voice by
establishing a designated seat on the Executive
Council for a Futures Representative, approximately
age 35 or younger, elected by his or her fellow
delegates at an annual Massachusetts AFL-CIO
Futures Convention; and
WHEREAS, the establishment of the Futures
Program at the Massachusetts AFL-CIO has been
successful in getting younger union members
more involved in their local unions, the state and
national labor movement and charitable causes;
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the AFL-CIO
actively develop initiatives and programs
aimed at bringing young workers into the labor
movement at the national, state and local levels,
and dedicated to the leadership development of
younger union members throughout the country,
and that the Executive Council be regularly
updated on the status and progress of these
programs.

Canadian Government Helps Oil Industry Cover Up Pollution

[Is it just impossible to stop big oil from doing whatever it wants? tr]

Untold Levels of Oil Sands Pollution on Athabasca River Confirmed

ScienceDaily (Dec. 8, 2009) — After an exhaustive study of air and water pollution along the Athabasca River and its tributaries from Fort McMurray to Lake Athabasca, researchers say pollution levels have increased as a direct result of nearby oil sands operations.

University of Alberta biological sciences professor David Schindler was part of the team that conducted a long term air and water study and found high levels of Polycyclic Aromatic Compounds. PACs are a group of organic contaminants containing several known carcinogens, mutagens, and teratogens. The highest levels of PAC's were found within 50 kilometres of two major oil sands up graders.

Schindler says that government and industry have claimed the pollution is a naturally occurring seepage from the oil sands deposits and are not related to the oil sands industry.

The research team monitored water and snow packs concentrations of pollutants along the Athabasca in winter and summer of 2008. Schindler and the others report that levels of PACs increased the closer they got to the oil sands developments and reached a point where the airborne particulates left oil slicks on top of melted snow.

"We found PACs in parts per trillion but they are toxic at parts per trillion," said Schindler.

The new study took measurements at 60 locations along the Athabasca and its tributaries. Schindler says that currently the Federal Government operates one water quality collection point in the area.

The research will be published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Erin N. Kelly of the U of A Department of Biological Sciences was the lead researcher on the paper. Other U of A contributors are Mingsheng Ma, Alvin Kwan and Barbara Fortin.

A Woman Among Warlords

A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice
Book Author Malalai Joya
Review Author Emma Hamilton [reposted from BUST magazine]

The youngest female in one of the world’s youngest parliamentary systems, Malalai Joya recounts her life as an activist lauded, suppressed, and, finally, ousted from the infant Afghani government in A Woman Amongst Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice.
Malalai Joya was elected in 2005 as the youngest member of the new Afghan parliament. Her strident criticism of the very government she was a part of soon got her suspended; she has yet to be allowed to return. In this book, she tells her personal story, recounting growing up amid civil and international warfare, and her rise to activism. Joya paints a bleak picture of contemporary Afghanistan, describing the dominance of criminal warlords, the oppression of women, widespread poverty, and the continual threat of violence from all sides—the Taliban, the warlords, and the occupying NATO troops. Though she denounces the Taliban and hopes for democracy, she accuses the U.S.-backed Karzai government of being a corrupt and ineffectual sham democracy. Her book is both an inspiring story of an extremely brave and dedicated woman and an informative short history of Afghanistan in the 20th century. As the U.S. continues to step up its military presence, Joya’s book shows how the NATO occupation looks through Afghan eyes and questions whether this presence is legitimate in any of its stated aims, such as controlling the rise of militant jihadists and improving the lives of citizens. Joya makes a strong case for the withdrawal of foreign troops as one of the crucial steps toward establishing a true and independent democracy in Afghanistan and returning some stability to a country that has lacked it for so long.

NOW OR NEVER: THE LAST CHANCE FOR EARTH

Tim Flannery doesn't beat around the bush in his new book. We are at the point of no return, he says

Reviewed by Andrew Nikiforuk
[reposted from The Globe and Mail]

Nations that export fossil fuels often find it grossly inconvenient to believe in man-made climate change, and understandably so. Who really wants a responsible carbon budget that respects the finite nature of the atmosphere and the oceans when you can make a killing by exporting dirty oil? Real innovation might even result in a loss of hydrocarbon jobs and easy revenue for lazy governments, and that's bad.

Therefore, climate change driven by fossil fuels must be a hoax; a scientific fraud or another attempt by elitists at the United Nations to impose one world government on us all. So, long live the carbon liberation movement and Exxon Mobile.

Whenever I get e-mails from these happy carbon makers, I kindly invite them to open a profitable business on lifeless Mars, where CO2 has become the dominant gas. I also recommend that they try fishing on an ocean of carbolic acid.

Now or Never: Why We Need to Act Now to Achieve a Sustainable Future, by Tim Flannery, HarperCollins, 167 pages, $22.99
Tim Flannery's important and elegant essay, Now or Never, probably won't sway many members of the oil-exporting crowd or bridge the solitude. But it might help to broaden a grassroots political movement that forces our political leaders out of the camp of libertarian carbon makers and into the common-sense realm of caring about our children. Flannery, a world-renowned paleontologist and specialist in the evolution of mammals, argues that we will probably fail to achieve sustainability unless we observe an ancient commandment: “Thou shalt not steal – even from future generations.”

So this essay doesn't beat about the bush. The author of the bestselling The Weather Makers[ reviewed on PAEDITORSBLOG--tr] and Australia's proud version of David Suzuki, Flannery makes a convincing case that we are about to provoke a dangerous biological meltdown driven by climate warming and our addiction to fossil fuels. “Humanity is now between a tipping point and a point of no return,” he writes, “and only the most strenuous efforts on our part are capable of returning us to safe ground.”

Given that the atmosphere is the smallest of the world's vital organs, it is also the most vulnerable to carbon pollution. Flannery soberly notes that the oceans are 500 times larger than the great aerial sea, and they are already acidifying. The last time the polar ice caps melted, 250 million years ago, the ocean became green with algae and belched hydrogen sulphide. The fishing was really bad.

Here's the climate problem as the best science sees it. The consumption of fossil fuels has taken CO2 to astonishing levels of 385 parts per million in the atmosphere. The evidence suggests that we are about to surge to 450 ppm. The latest science warns that we can't avoid a Martian-style carbon economy (and not much business takes place there) unless we stabilize emissions at 350 ppm. That requires some restraint, which is not our most polished virtue as a species. Moreover, international climate scientists have “underestimated the scale of the task by two-thirds,” Flannery adds.

The solutions, Flannery admits, are not elegant. A carbon-trading scheme as proposed by the centrist Obama administration really won't start a green revolution by itself. Burying carbon from coal, the source of about 40 per cent of the problem, remains a wild science experiment that irrationally requires the burning of more coal. Electric cars equipped with batteries that boast a high storage capacity could solve the intermittent nature of wind and sun. Reclaiming tropical rain forests is a no-brainer. Eating less meat and eating locally should be part of every North American menu. Protecting grasslands from soil erosion with holistic management techniques is proven and low-cost. But in the absence of leadership, we are not doing much at all except calling burning of fossil fuels “sustainable.” That's how thieves behave.

Flannery wants to believe that the civilization that abolished slavery – and slave exporters thought that was a really damn inconvenient crusade – can do the same with oil and its carbon legacy. But given the appalling performance of countries such as Canada in relation to the problem, he doesn't think there's a yes-or-no answer about avoiding disaster.

Flannery's provocative essay ends with a number of short responses to his passionate call to action. Journalist Bill McKibben encourages readers to visit 350.org and do something to protect biological investments such as your children's future. The great entrepreneur Richard Branson advises the business community to really step it up by “creating ways of giving financial value to eco-services provided by rain forests.” Gwynne Dwyer, who has written a terrifying book on climate change, suspects that we will hit runaway global warming without Zeus-like geo-engineering of the atmosphere. Peter Singer, the animal-rights activist, chastises Flannery for not advocating for radical reductions in ruminant livestock population, a source of nearly one-fifth of the world's emissions. And Canada's Alanna Mitchell, who has chronicled the rapid destruction of life in the oceans, champions the power of hope.

Years ago, the great Catholic thinker Ivan Illich wrote that high-energy-consuming societies ultimately degrade what is truly human with their speed, pollution and unhappiness. In other words, energy grows at the expense of equity. He thought it would be impossible to solve the energy/carbon crisis by consuming more energy. But what Illich called the “the rain dance of time-consuming acceleration” is about to end. In many ways, Flannery's wonderful essay is a moral appeal to restore equity, and in so doing to become human again. Or let the chaos begin.

Andrew Nikiforuk is the author of Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of the Continent. It won the City of Calgary W.O Mitchell Book Award and the Rachel Carson Environment Book Award, and was a 2009 finalist for the Grantham Prize .

Darfur and Imperialism

Saviors and Survivors: Review
by Alex de Waal

Mahmood Mamdani's Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror is the most ambitious book yet on the Darfur crisis. Unlike the vast majority of other writing on the crisis, which is political science, human rights, or ethnographic narrative, specific to the Darfurian or the Sudanese situation, Mamdani places Darfur in deep and broad world-historical contexts.

The historical account is deep in that Mamdani sees the Darfur war less as the outcome of the immediate political grievances of Darfurians and the Sudan Government's specific objectives, but rather as the product of long encounter between the colonial and neo-colonial powers and Africa. His account describes how under the independent Sultanate, Darfurian society was adopting administrative and social structures that transcended and down-played ethnic identities, but the colonial encounter -- brief but profound -- created administrative tribalism and a racial hierarchy. Mamdani argues that the legacy of this intrusion and distortion, as it played out especially in the system of land ownership based on tribally-owned dars, can be seen in the recurrent internal wars in Darfur from 1987 to 1999 and the wider war that erupted in 2003.

In this account, we see common threads from Mamdani's previous books. Citizen and Subject dealt with how European colonialism imposed concepts of tribe and race on Africa, generating specific oppositions and tensions, for example between those labeled as 'natives' and 'settlers.' When Victims Become Killers developed the account for Rwanda, tracing the legacy of European imperialism in the social, economic, and ideological construction of eliminationist violence. The 'survivors' of Mamdani's Darfur book are the people of Darfur (and Sudan in general) who struggle to retain agency amid a comparable history, written by powerful outsiders using the language of race and tribe in pursuit of colonial and Cold War interests.

The historical account is broad in that it brings to bear some of the great issues of our day -- American power during the age of the War on Terror -- on Darfur. Again, a dichotomizing, even Manichean worldview imposed by a global power determines events in a distant land. In this, we see continuities from Mamdani's Good Muslim, Bad Muslim --the 'bad Muslims' in this case being the Sudanese Arabs, both the rulers in Khartoum and the Darfurian Janjawiid, and the 'good Muslims' implicitly being the 'African' civilians and rebels. Mamdani sees the Save Darfur campaign as representing a refracted version of the moral logic of the War on Terror, with the Arabs in both cases branded as evil, except this time because they are genocidaires instead of terrorists. The campaign to bring international troops to Darfur and to indict the Sudanese leadership at the International Criminal Court, and the willful ignorance about the successes of the African engagement with Darfur and the changing situation on the ground, are all portrayed as the product of this agenda.

Mamdani concludes:

"For Africa, a lot is at stake in Darfur. Foremost are two objectives, starting with the unity of Africa: The Save Darfur lobby in the United States has turned the tragedy of the people of Darfur into a knife with which to slice Africa by demonizing one group of Africans, African Arabs. . . At stake also is the independence of Africa. The Save Darfur lobby demands, above all else, justice, the right of the international community -- really the big powers in the Security Council -- to punish 'failed' or 'rogue' states, even if it be at the cost of more bloodshed and a diminished possibility of reconciliation. More than anything else, 'the responsibility to protect' is a right to punish but without being held accountable -- a clarion call for the recolonization of 'failed' states in Africa. In its present form, the call for justice is really a slogan that masks a big power agenda to recolonize Africa."

Is Mahmood Mamdani right? He is certainly correct that 'For Africa, a lot is at stake in Darfur.' The arguments whereby he reaches this conclusion -- and the other conclusions in his bold book -- are certain to be controversial. Over the next few weeks we [ i.e., Justice Africa NOT PA--tr ] shall be hosting a debate on Saviors and Survivors.

Alex de Waal is the director of Justice Africa. This article was first published in Making Sense of Darfur on 12 April 2009, and it is reproduced here for educational purposes. [reposted from Monthly Review]