Comment
Comment Imperialism with a Human Face The unlamented departure of Ferdinand Marcos from the Philippines has occasioned an outburst of self-congratulation in Washington. The Reagan Administration...
...Representative Stephen Solarz, Democrat of Brooklyn, who led the Congressional assault on Marcos, stressed that the dictator had to give way to someone who could better fight the communists and protect the U.S...
...policy emerges in times of stress...
...Reagan didn't let such little setbacks rain on his parade...
...From the news wires, February 21: 'Environmental Protection Agency tests at an Olin Corporation toxic waste dump found the dangerous chemical dioxin at 630 times the level needed for Federal action, officials said...
...What workfare actually does, though, is deprive its participants of their rights, displace public employees—often unionized public employees—and lay the blame for poverty squarely on the shoulders of its victims...
...Find some popular figure—Napoleon Duarte in El Salvador, Vinicio Cerezo in Guatemala, Aquino in the Philippines—and hold an election ratifying that surro-gates's titular power, even though real power resides with the military, which under Washington's guidance represses the Left...
...So begins Jonathan Schell in a profoundly important article in the February 3 issue of The New Yorker...
...The hopelessness of nuclear war never enters the Pentagon's consciousness...
...Most growers were locked into purchase agreements with processors, however, who refused to pay enough to cover fair wages and benefits to pickers...
...But I got a lot...
...Instead of resurrecting this archaic form of punishment, Federal and state governments could better serve the poor, and the entire nation as well, by putting people to work building the schools, hospitals, shelters, and systems of mass transit that America really needs...
...The baldness of U.S...
...And with Enrile and Ramos holding positions of power, little hope exists of cleaning up the military or reaching some accord with the New People's Army, which has a sizable presence in most areas...
...Touted as a means to get the impoverished back into the mainstream job market, these programs have been praised in the media and by politicians who claim the concept delivers opportunity and self-empowerment to the poor...
...Government should yield the bases and bring the American troops home...
...Q: I really do understand it's a difficult question...
...I can tell you who some friends are...
...He basked in what he called "the warm sunshine of liberty and justice," sniped at the government of Nicaragua, and took pleasure in Cuba's economic difficulties...
...Savimbi, who is fighting the government of Angola, danced before television cameras and hobnobbed with Congressional heavyweights...
...Griping is the media's business, but this instance seems to reflect a more cosmic concern: It is no longer enough simply to know that something beautiful is out there...
...security is not threatened, however, even if communists gain power...
...It's a perfectly good question, but I really need to know what context...
...Indeed, they represent a threat to the security of the United States, for they could help induce the United States to commit terminal blunders...
...I couldn't help you with that...
...We need to recognize the limits of our political situation, and by so doing, open up new channels of radical activity...
...It takes a certain suspension of intellect to ascribe the victory of Corazon Aquino to the efforts of the Reagan Administration...
...with blue smoke and mirrors, balloons, and hot air," Wynn said at the winter meeting of the AFL-CIO Executive Council...
...Though providing $40 a week to each striker, the UFCW has urged other unions not to contribute money to the P-9 campaign and ordered Hormel locals not to honor P-9's request to go out on strike with them...
...The latest dog-and-pony show brought Jonas Savimbi to town...
...those are the breaks when you're free...
...Instead, it will apply imperialism with a human face—until the confrontation boils over and the military seizes formal power again...
...Soup's On It's time to take the posters depicting Campbell's Cream of Exploitation Soup off the wall and into the labor-history archives...
...And you know, Nick Brady...
...Aquino herself comes from one of the wealthiest families in the country...
...They hold down the Asian front for the Pentagon, readying U.S...
...Solidarity and other elements of the Polish opposition recognized early on, Schell argues, the impossibility of bringing down the Jaruzelski regime and the futility of a frontal assault against Soviet dominance...
...Corazon Aquino and the Filipinos who surged behind her were the ones who brought Marcos down—not Reagan, and not renegade Philippine military leaders Juan Ponce Enrile and Fidel Ramos...
...I mean, ah, he's a very, very close friend...
...Q: That's fine...
...Rarer by far than originality in science or art is originality in political action...
...In a way, it was a sunny display of U.S...
...I just can't go into that...
...line...
...Unfortunately, the level of U.S...
...Just explain how you want to use it...
...Pepperidge Farm, and V-8 Juice, has signed a contract with some of the workers who pick its vegetables, thus ending an eight-year-old strike and a seven-year-old boycott called by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), the Toledo-based union that represents thousands of agricultural laborers in the Midwest and Northeast...
...nor will it cease its anticommunist obsession—in the Philippines or elsewhere...
...This approach is sure to receive bipartisan support...
...Last year, Arturo Cruz was the stooge of choice, preening his feathers for all to see...
...But the U.S...
...But Ronald Reagan's sympathies could not hold back the tide of change...
...I'm getting kinda gun-shy politically...
...A: But it depends on how you define "friends...
...The opposition proceeded directly, and without postponement, toward its goals," Schell writes...
...Workfare and Foul Play Agrowing number of states—thirty-nine at last count—are adopting "workfare" programs to solve the budget squeeze...
...Is somebody gonna say, "What's this person's views...
...Rogers and Guyette successfully manipulated a democratic institution...
...They called him Uncle Reagan and said he had done great things for them...
...In 1983, with the Grenada invasion under way, Washington called on world-famous Eugenia Charles, leader of Dominica, to sell the soap...
...Vice President George Bush to Ferdinand Marcos, June 1981: The United States 'loves your adherence to democracy and democratic principles/ If this occurs, Aquino would fit in with the style of counterinsurgency in the Reagan era...
...Heinz, which also sells a lot of pickles, has pronounced the Campbell contract to be "an industry-wide issue...
...Until December, when Campbell executives first found their way to a bargaining table, they maintained that FLOC's grievances were not their affair and the union should talk to the people who own the farms...
...The contract covers only a handful of FLOC members—about 600 who pick tomatoes in Ohio and cucumbers in Michigan—but it fully merits a celebration...
...Their biggest enemy is not Hormel, however...
...Space Cadets Months before Halley's Comet returned for a visit, astronomers cautioned Earthlings not to expect much...
...It is a policy of imperialism with a human face...
...What's more, William Wynn, head of the UFCW, has smeared the efforts of the Austin local...
...A: Yeah...
...U.S...
...Government will not abandon Clark and Subic Bay...
...But that doesn't mean giving up on activism or retreating into narcissism...
...The unstated premise of the coverage was that the bases are essential to U.S...
...For more than six months now, 1,500 members of Local P-9 of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) have been on strike against the Hormel meatpacking company...
...Like it or not, rto great political upheaval is in the offing here...
...presence in the Philippines...
...Mystery has become frustration...
...Out of necessity, the resistance movement abandoned traditional avenues of revolutionary politics...
...And rarer still is original political action that enlarges, rather than blights or destroys, human possibilities...
...Workfare recipients have none of the traditional rights accorded regular workers...
...The Reagan Administration boasts a triumph of its foreign policy...
...A: I couldn't give you...
...Both premises are false...
...Instead, like the Polish resistance, the Left should exercise power—peacefully, honestly, openly—in other areas of the society: in the trade unions, churches, schools, home, marketplace, and theater...
...Feature writers and happy-talk newscasters are now complaining that the professional stargazers built up hopes...
...Social discontent will increase, and Aquino will face a choice: institute radical changes or follow the U.S...
...The government of the Philippines remains firmly in the hands of the entrenched elites...
...Now is a propitious moment, since the despot we helped prop up for two decades has left the scene...
...I don't know...
...One of the things we've been blessed with is many, many friendships...
...instead, U.S...
...Guyette, in turn, said Wynn was engaging in a "vicious antiunion attack" that "is unprecedented in labor history...
...Even after Marcos had forfeited his last shred of credibility, the mindless figurehead who serves as our President seemed eager to support him...
...And they hoped he would do more—especially send cash...
...And then the processors canceled all business with growers who signed contracts with FLOC...
...Q: Give me a political answer...
...Viewed rationally, the bases at Clark Field and Subic Bay serve no positive function...
...If you want to just leave it be there I can understand...
...Its simple but radical guiding principle was to start Within Limits Comment doing the things you think should be done, and to start being what you think society should become...
...The Reagan Administration had decided to send military aid to Savimbi, and it was trying to figure out the best way to deliver the booty...
...It's the national leadership of the UFCW, which has repudiated the aggressive tactics of P-9 president James Guyette and labor consultant Ray Rogers...
...Odds are she will play ball with the United States, agreeing to let the International Monetary Fund squeeze the economy and giving the military under Enrile and Ramos a free hand in repressing the communists...
...Sure enough, something was up...
...Strangers in Paradise Whenever the U.S...
...Clark Air Force Base and the naval station at Subic Bay represent the largest U.S...
...No additional thought is required...
...But it's not unprecedented, it's an old story: Big Labor putting the brakes on rank-and-file militancy...
...Eleven years after the fall of Saigon, the dominos have not fallen...
...This year, though, the union officials who attended—including three national vice-presidents who must have forgotten the words to 'Solidarity Forever'—crossed a union picket line to get in...
...We don't have the power...
...The Reagan Administration had expected Marcos to win easily and with only the usual level of corruption, and was planning to increase aid to him as soon as he was sworn in...
...They cannot join a union...
...America is not Poland, but Schell's analysis carries lessons for the Left in this country...
...The Vietnam war should have been an object lesson about entering Third World conflicts...
...Like C. Fred Chambers, for whom we named our dog...
...They were right, of course—the comet is a dud— but their forecast apparently fell on deaf ears...
...Hail the Conquering Hero Oh, it was a grand welcome the cheering multitudes of Grenada gave their liberator when he dropped in for a visit in February...
...The economy lies in shambles, and the social inequalities that feed discontent are as glaring as ever...
...Their appointment to Aquino's cabinet delighted the Reagan Administration, which recognized the Aquino government even before Marcos had departed...
...security and that a communist takeover in the Philippines would have catastrophic consequences...
...Or are you talking about friendship...
...One such victim, Sam Chini of Lackawanna, New York, worked for three years in the sanitation department, was laid off and forced on welfare, and then found himself riding the same garbage truck as before as a workfare participant—at one-third his former wages...
...The bigwigs of the AFL-CIO made their usual winter retreat to Miami Beach, and the Hyatt Hotel hosted its usual brunch to entertain them...
...installations...
...military bases at Clark Field and Subic Bay...
...Seventy-one other cucumber growers with Campbell contracts have agreed to union representation elections this summer, and an executive of H.J...
...The opportunistic defection of Enrile and Ramos, however, has proved a blessing to the United States...
...The feminist battle cry of the 1970s, "the personal is political," got it just about right, for it is in our everyday lives that we can make the most difference...
...In addition to heavy rains that made the tracks in Georgia unsafe, the train also avoided a possible encounter with a minor earthquake along the Georgia-South Carolina border.' FLOC leaders stopped believing that nonsense almost twenty years ago, when the union won a series of strikes and signed thirty-three contracts with small tomato growers...
...Don't Organize, Mourn The plight of the labor movement resides in Austin, Minnesota, where the American people have been spectators at a public pissing match between a union local and its national leadership...
...policy since the era of John Foster Dulles, is to fight communism wherever it appears...
...The Secret Friends of George Bush The following exchange is from a transcript of an interview with Vice President Bush conducted by the conservative Washington Times: Q: Eventually, with all the people who get to be President, other people will say, "Who are their friends...
...The U.S...
...Or do you want to know who our really close friends are...
...embargoes have played in undermining the achievements of Fidel Castro and the Sandinistas...
...Should I give you a political answer...
...forces for combat in conventional wars against Third World countries and establishing a beachhead for a nuclear war against China or the Soviet Union...
...Within the next few months, once the bloom is off Aquino's victory, these pressing problems will again come to the fore, and it will no longer be possible to blame them all on the Marcos dictatorship...
...The contract signed in February, a three-way deal among not only Campbell and FLOC but also thirty-two owners of tomato or cucumber farms, opens the door...
...Schell's subject is Poland, but his theme is universal: Peaceful, liberating revolutions can succeed without firing a shot and even without toppling a government...
...Giving up the bases would greatly reduce the urge to squash communists in the Philippines, since Washington's primary fear is that the communists would seize the U.S...
...I mean it's too political...
...Who's gonna be shaping a Bush Administration...
...Public-sector employees who lose their jobs in budget-tightening manuevers may find their former positions filled by workfare participants...
...policymakers tinker with counterinsurgency scenarios...
...You know—how's this going to be analyzed...
...they receive no real wages...
...The Reagan Doctrine, which with minor exceptions has been U.S...
...Halley would be no spectacle, the scientists said, trying to preempt hype and save reputations...
...The Polish opposition has created liberated zones without holding a single acre of territory, and it has done it all peacefully, openly, and honestly, Schell says...
...Perhaps the CIA should review its casebook, because it's been there before...
...they are not entitled to health insurance, social security, workers' compensation, or sick leave, and they have no guarantee of employment with the agency to which they are assigned...
...Rather, it focused radical efforts on nonpolitical spheres—social, cultural, moral, and spiritual...
...From the news wires, February 14: 'Unsafe railroad tracks in Georgia led the Department of Energy to reroute a "white train" believed to be carrying nuclear warheads to a South Carolina submarine base...
...that's their lookout...
...assistance has been dropping and the unemployment rate has risen from 15 to 30 per cent since the United States set Grenada free...
...so will this one...
...He didn't bother mentioning the part U.S...
...Under Henry Kissinger's tutelage, the CIA in 1975 funneled $32 million of military aid to Savimbi and other rebel forces fighting to prevent the leftists from taking power...
...The network coverage epitomized what Noam Chomsky has called "the bounds of thinkable thought" (The Progressive, October 1985...
...Workfare's lineage extends back to 1619, when the borough of Speenhamland, England, found that forcing the poor to work drove down all other wages...
...military outpost abroad...
...The agribusiness conglomerate, whose labels also include Vlasic Pickles...
...day in and day out, the masters of war plan for the big one...
...conservatives and neoliberals embrace renewed interventionism...
...If we can't see it up close— if it doesn't streak across the television screen in living color—then nature has failed...
...But I mean if you're doing a political piece and then some "analyst" there at the paper is gonna say, "Well, ya didn't even mention anybody in politics...
...California remains a part of the United States...
...An EPA spokesman said there is no immediate health threat....' But recognition of limits neither squashed hope nor stifled resistance...
...But as the backslappers grow weary and the champagne goes flat, a different picture emerges...
...Maybe other processors will get the message...
...Throughout the crisis in the Philippines, during hour after hour of endless chatter by television talking heads, no one raised a question about the validity of the U.S...
...Where you have friends that, I mean, ah...
...But in the new Holy War, such realities are deemed irrelevant...
...A rational U.S...
...During the graft-laden election campaign in February, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos supported Aquino and condemned the "U.S.-Marcos dictatorship...
...But ideology also plays an independent role...
...That effort failed miserably...
...And we don't much care whether anticommunists go hungry, either...
...We don't much care whether communists go hungry...
...A: In other words, be sure we got it all balanced out by states, and stuff like that...
...Reagan opted for "covert" aid— $ 15 million worth—and instructed the CIA to handle the operation...
...foreign policy would call for disengagement from the Philippines...
...With determination, the workers have taken their stand against wage give-backs and other concessions that prey on organized labor...
...The king is dead, long live the queen...
...and this could go on and on...
...even-handedness...
...And not just because union contracts for farm workers are so rare...
...This contract gives the lie to the food-processing industry's claim that the growers who sell the produce to such companies as Campbell—and who hire the farm workers—are independent contractors over whom the companies have no control...
...Whether by forming a food co-op or a tenants' union, joining a local sanctuary group or a gay-rights organization, writing children's books or playing punk rock, we can all participate in little revolutions...
...Who do you listen to...
...Government deems it expedient to launch aggressive action oversees, it likes to parade before the American public some hitherto-unknown foreign figure to tug at our heartstrings—or at least our purse strings...
...Both are old-time Washington allies, dedicated to wiping out communism in the archipelago...
Vol. 50 • April 1986 • No. 4
