DesperatelyObvious.com

Cheney announced that Bush will veto the Employee Free Choice Act if it is passed. This act would make it easier for workers to organize.

First off, the resolution makes it easier for unions to get started. The legislation will change current law so that workers need only to get a majority to request union representation. Currently, an employer can require a secret election even in the case that a majority of workers request a union.

Also, the act will further protect workers from being fired or otherwise mistreated for organizing. The resolution adds some enforcement measures to the protection already instituted by the National Labor Relations Act.

The National Labor Relations Board cited that over 20,000 workers per year from 1993-2003 were “illegally fired, demoted, laid off, suspended without pay, or denied work by their employers as a result of the workers’ union activity.” These actions do more than suppress the organizing activities of 20,000 workers. The real value is in the intimidation factor that sends a powerful message to countless other workers who might be interested in protecting their rights. Organize and you will pay for it.

There is no need to repeat here the dire state of unions in America and the resulting effects this low union membership has on wages, benefits, human rights, and other indicators. These observations have already been well documented elsewhere.

Unions are the worst enemy of big business, and Bush is sure to score points with the corporate crowd for resisting this legislation.

This legislation, or the veto of this legislation, will have real effects on workers and all Americans. Those who care about workers rights will be sure to push for the passage of this act, as part of a larger struggle to win real change for workers everywhere.

Tuesday, the New York Times reported Lebanon civilians suffered a terrorist attack from internal forces. They report that the attack “was the first such attack — directed at ordinary civilians, not public figures — since the end of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war.”

The Times’ emphasis on this attack being the first in years rewrites the record of recent events from last summer when Israel directly attacked hundreds of civilians. These attacks include the types of crimes that the Times reported on August 3, 2006:

On a mountain road just south of here, a convoy of Lebanese villagers was fleeing north shortly after the war began. They had heard Israeli soldiers telling them to evacuate. Suddenly, a rocket struck a pickup truck full of people. Twenty-one people were killed, more than half of them children.

The Times goes on to explain that “Israel said it believed the convoy was transporting rockets.” Apparently Israel’s admission of a belief is sufficient evidence for these journalists as the title of the article, “Civilians Lose As Fighters Slip Into Fog of War,” reveals which party the Times thinks is really to blame.

According to the same report, Israel’s attacks were not limited to rural villages: “In Beirut…the scale of destruction in the southern Shiite suburbs is breathtaking.” In the suburbs of Beirut, the United Nations estimated that at least 2,500 housing units were destroyed and twice as many damaged. The damage against Beirut and the rest of the country is too extensive to discuss here, but several human rights organizations have begun to assess the destruction.

To say that the recent attacks in Beirut were the first directed against civilians in 15 years is a brazen lie that defies countless pages of evidence documented by human rights organizations over the past year. Including the fact that at least a third of the civilians Israel killed in Lebanon last summer, were caused by bombs dropped in areas where there was no evidence of Hezbollah forces.

The New York Times and the rest of the corporate media refuses to see attacks carried out by the United States and our allies as acts of terrorism. The Times understands that America and Israel may slip up, and sometimes there is collateral damage, but viewing our attacks in the same light as those we label terrorists is simply unthinkable. Although the thought is never seriously entertained, they quickly dismiss any notion of such an idea in favor of repeating rhetoric that explains the true intentions of our attacks.

Hitler, as well as virtually every other state criminal, professed nothing but good intentions as he carried out the most hideous crimes in history. Americans, who already recognize that politics is a game played between elites in their own interests, will do well to look past the meaningless rhetoric of our leaders and take an honest look at their actions.

Most Americans are unusually privileged in having the right to speak out against our country’s illegitimate wars without fear of reprisal. Those we ask to protect our country have no such right.

Lt. Ehren Watada was the first officer to refuse deployment to Iraq, he argued his case based on legal and moral grounds:

“It is my duty as a commissioned officer in the United States army to speak out against grave injustices. My moral and legal obligation is to the constitution. Not to those who issue unlawful orders. I stand before you today because it is my job to serve and protect American soldiers and innocent Iraqis who have no voice. It is my conclusion that the war in Iraq is not only morally wrong, but also a breach of American law.”

He concluded that the Iraq war violated the U.S. Constitution, the War Powers Act, the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, and the Nuremberg Principles. He rightfully labeled the invasion of Iraq as a “war of aggression” as defined in the Nuremberg Principles. Furthermore, Watada adhered to the Nuremberg Principles which require soldiers to disobey illegal orders.

For following supreme international law, Lt. Watada may now face up to six years in prison on the grounds of refusing orders and speaking out against the war. Earlier this year, a judge ruled that Watada could not present his defense based on the Nuremberg Principles because the legality of the war is a “nonjusticiable political question.”

The court martial of Lt. Watada which started Monday is sure to gather the military a lot of negative publicity. Evidently, the need to instill fear in those soldiers already committed to service outweighs the negative effect this press will have on recruitment. The military commanders must certainly be weary of a greater military resistance to the war, given how unpopular it is among the troops.

Americans have an obligation to stand up for Lt. Watada. We don’t live in a police state, and dissidents should not be thrown in jail, regardless of whether they are part of the military.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) insisted in it’s latest annual report that we must do more to win the “hearts and minds” of Arabs. Although our military might is unmatched, we apparently are not winning the psychological war.

The IISS said that we must go beyond leaflets that spread the good news of U.S. occupation like those that explain “we are here to help” or “life is getting better.” IISS explains to policymakers who may be out of touch, “In reality, life may not be getting better and in the eyes of the target audience the military presence could be contributing to the problem.”

At least in Iraq, this explanation is a giant understatement. Life is certainly horrible there and shows no signs of getting better. The International Medical Corps (IMC) reported that over a half million Iraqis were displaced last year, while the UN estimates that in total 1.7 million are internally displaced while 2 million have fled the country completely. Although many left the country before the U.S. invasion, IMC notes that “the pace of those fleeing is accelerating at a dramatic rate. Since last November alone, the number of those displaced has jumped by 43%.”

The Inter Press Service reported on conditions in Iraq last December, noting that “everyone agrees that the situation now is worse than ever”

“I wish I could flee to any Third World country and work in garbage collection rather than stay here and live like a frightened rat,” Adel Mohammed Aziz, a teacher from Baghdad, told IPS. “We are all living in fear for our lives; death chases us all around.” …

The body count has increased to a minimum of 100 a day, with most killed after monstrous torture.

“We cannot go to work, cannot go to pray in our mosques, and cannot send our children to schools,” young mother Um Rheem from the Shaab quarter in Baghdad told IPS. “Many Sunni men have been killed by Shia death squads who have the full support of the government and Americans.”…

“We cannot open our shops for more than three to four hours a day,” a carpet seller on the volatile Rasheed Street told IPS. “Many of my colleagues have been abducted for ransom or killed for sectarian reasons on the way to work. We expect death every minute.”

The economic disaster is now an emergency. More than 5 million Iraqis are living below the poverty line, close to half of them in desperate conditions, according to a government study.

As a result, it is not surprising to anyone that simple-minded messages about how the U.S. is going to save the day aren’t very convincing.

It is well known by now that the vast majority of Iraqis want the U.S. to leave and furthermore that over half of Iraqis support insurgent attacks against American forces. Likewise, convincing the Iraqis that we are there for their benefit is a lost cause. A few months after we invaded, Gallup reported that 1% of Iraqis believe the U.S. invaded to “establish democracy,” while 5% believed the invasion was intended to “assist Iraqi people.”

Policymakers and analysts such as the IISS rightfully see these opinions as a big problem. Like any good imperial strategist, they suggest the solution is not to listen to and obey the wishes of Iraqis but rather to change their opinions. They said that the military must begin to “incorporate so called ‘influence activities’ as an integral part of pre-deployment preparation for complex warfare missions.”

As an example, they point out that “using ‘body count’ as a measure of effect has a very different impact within the area of operations than it does with a home audience. While boasting about our killing our enemies may raise morale at home, “in the theater of operations…every publicly announced kill delivering more willing recruits to the cause” of the insurgents.” It may be difficult for American leaders to grasp why the locals would not be encouraged by advances in our noble mission.

If the United States follows the advice of the IISS, we will step up our propaganda war in Afghanistan and Iraq. In places where the results of our aggression are so vividly horrific, it will surely take a much greater effort to influence the minds of the population than it does here in America.

Americans with concern for democracy and the sovereignty of other nations will be interested in the opinions of Iraqis and other victims. They likely believe that Iraqi wishes should be respected not influenced with “psychological warfare.” For different reasons, those interested in controlling the most strategically important region in the world may also be concerned with the thoughts of the victims, but only to the extent that those attitudes might hinder America’s imperial strategy.

It is clear that the Democrats, Republicans, and think-tanks like the IISS are not actually interested in such notions as democracy and freedom, while they continue to debate the best way to complete the mission, refusing to question the legitimacy of our invasion.

Many of those who oppose the war in America recognize it that was an illegal, unjust invasion carried out for self-serving reasons. Furthermore, many Americans will continue to demand that we obey the wishes of the victims and end our occupation of Iraq.