editorial

Another construction worker killed on the job

This time, it was a weak plywood scaffold that gave way at a luxury high rise condo project in Costa del Este, causing the second death at this particular unsafe worksite. The SUNTRACS construction workers' union has warned of strike action, has blocked streets over previous deaths this year, and is recruiting new members among the minority of construction workers not affiliated with the union over the job safety issue.

The government has responded by supporting illegal company unions, killing unarmed union members and prosecuting SUNTRACS leaders. The new minister of government and justice, formerly of General Noriega's high command, warns that he won't tolerate any street protests.

So what's a militant construction workers' union to do?

SUNTRACS ought to get smart about politics and throw its weight behind efforts begun by some leaders of smaller unions and leftists to put a party the defends the interests of working people on the ballot, or else join with those groups and field a slate of independent candidates for seats in the National Assembly and local offices.

Would the PRD-dominated Electoral Tribunal invent illegal obstacles? Of course it would. Would the government treat campaigning for the candidates for such an opposition as a crime, as it did the passing out of "no" leaflets during the referendum campaign? Of course it would. Would some of the candidates who get past these obstacles and find themselves elected let their egos get the best of them and ultimately prove unworthy? Most likely that would also happen.

But the cure for abuse of power is to take the power away from the abusers, and along the road to political power every movement has to start somewhere, testing its potential candidates for higher offices by their performances in lower offices.

A new party is not going to win the presidency in 2009, but it might end up as the legislature's swing factor between the PRD on the one hand and traditional opposition politicians on the other. Even if the PRD and the other rabiblanco parties gang up to avoid any pro-labor swing factor, having some union members in political office as representatives of a working class movement would give organized labor opportunities to deliver its message that it now does not have.

It's time for labor and its friends to fight smarter. Don't block the streets --- block the ambitions of the abusive politicians and the greed freaks whom they represent.

Betrayal is an apt description

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani and a number of his fellow party members have thrown fits about an ad in The New York Times by the online activist group MoveOn.org that not only took issue with the report that the US commander in Iraq, General Petraeus, made to the American people and their elected representatives, but played on the man's name and alleged that his mission was to "betray us."

Maybe it was a silly play on words, a bit of juvenile name-calling. Maybe it was the hook to grab more attention than the usual political ad. These are questions of tactics, style and manners.

But coming before the American people with a misleading report that rests largely upon bogus statistics about the violence in Iraq in order to get the nation to pour more money and lives into that lost cause IS a betrayal. It's based on an improper presumption that US military officers serve the narrow political aims of presidents rather than work for the American people. It's a violation of the general's West Point honor code that goes "I will not lie, cheat or steal, or tolerate those who do."

Yes, "betrayal" is an awfully strong word. But this is an administration that outed an undercover CIA agent for political convenience and if the antiwar movement had done the same thing "betrayal" would be one of the softer words the Bush supporters would be using to describe it. This is an administration that ordered torture and set up an elaborate network of overseas prisons to carry out this illegal policy, and when it was caught threw a few pathetic enlisted men and women to the wolves while protecting the officer corps and their civilian superiors. This is an administration that vilified and fired brave and conscientious military officers who stated their independent professional judgments that conflicted with the preconceptions of the administration's civilian ideologues and turned out to be remarkably accurate in hindsight.

The Iraq War has been a series of betrayals of the American people and General Petraeus's use of figures that, for example, only count political killings where the victim is shot through the back of the head as assassinations, is yet another betrayal and not even close to the biggest.

The really big deceit in which Petraeus, Bush and the hawks have indulged is the pretense that the insertion of tens of thousands of troops into parts of Baghdad and Anbar province, which of course led the insurgents to flee or lay low in order to fight again at another time or place, amounts to "progress," "success," "victory" or any such thing.

Don't they remember? They already pulled that lie on us at the beginning of the war, when Bush declared "mission accomplished" as the underground insurgency was just beginning to unfold its counter-attack.

Is it a lack of civility and decorum to use strident descriptions of what George W. Bush and the generals behind whom he hides have done? Well, yes. But then people who start wars over lies and then commit war crimes have no valid claim to polite reactions, and even less so when after all that, they have led their country to a disastrous defeat.

Bear in mind...

The trouble with some women is they get all excited about nothing --- and then they marry him.

Cher

Know thyself? If I knew myself, I'd run away.

Goethe

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.

Bill Cosby