Feb 5, 2005

CUBA NEWS

Five Cuban men, in U.S. jails for six years, have gained support throughout the world because of the justice of their cause — defending Cuba against terrorism. The enormity of their sentences — life sentences for three of them — and the hideous irregularities in their trial have focused necessary attention on their appeals as well as easing their lives in jail and helping family members. But increasingly the men themselves are becoming the story.

The year 2004 closed with some tentative steps toward electoral reform in Canada, but no guarantee of real change. In December, Quebec became the first provincial government to submit a draft bill for mixed member proportional representation voting, although the legislation is considered weak by critics of the current “first past the post” system.

The University of Miami Law School's recently released report exposes widespread human rights abuses taking place in Haiti under the U.S.-imposed government. The U.S.-sponsored coup on Feb. 29, 2004 ousted elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide. A team of investigators from UMLS’ Center for the Study of Human Rights visited Haiti, Nov. 11-21, 2004.

Canada: Union calls for marriage rights / South Africa: Laborers to get land back/ China: Deputies urge more social security / Brazil: Jobless rate hits new low

Should taxpayer money go to the creation of poverty wage jobs? Should public dollars go to virulently anti-union companies? A resounding “no” was the answer in Portland, Ore. when 85 workers at the Parry Center, a residential care facility providing direct care to children with severe mental illness, won a two-month strike.

WASHINGTON (PAI) — Using the presidential inauguration as leverage, workers at Washington, D.C.’s top hotels reached a new three-year contract with major downtown chain-owned hotels. Local 25 set its strike deadline after learning the hotels planned to overwork the employees through George W. Bush’s inauguration — and then lock them out. The strike threat forestalled that scheme.

The Great Depression shattered the myth that capitalism—a for-profit market economy—constituted a fail-safe, efficient system of economic organization. Before the Great Crash and the free fall of the world economies (excepting the Soviet Union), orthodoxy insisted that the marketplace was a rational, self-correcting mechanism, that markets might stumble, but in the long run they would deliver the most efficient distribution of goods and services.

A year-end report from the Commonwealth Fund highlights core, mainstream health care issues. These, in turn, show some key points of struggle in 2005.

Love and union

The merger last summer of the Union of Needletrade, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees was the reflection of an earlier “merger” which took place on a smaller scale. We reprint below UNITE’s interview with Rosa Garcia.

A St. Louis stop on freedom’s train?

ST. LOUIS — The history of slavery and racism is a horrible, shameful part of American history. It is a scar on the face of the ideals that our democratic nation holds dear.