Where is the money going to come from? CAW members all want job security, but who is going to pay for it? Single mothers on social assistance? Students? Cigarette smokers? Pensioners? Does this affect other unions besides the CAW? Are union brothers and sisters in the United States also confronted with this issue? Your comments would be appreciated and would help me on the job and at union meetings.

Cliff Mack
Montreal, Quebec
 
 
Mexico police chief lied!
Your article titled "Ex-police chief in Mexico is indicted for murders of student activists in 1970s" hit a close chord. I’m sure you, as I, are further relieved by the facts now known in public, that these cops lied, falsified, accused falsely, and killed, to advance their interests.

I thank you and all of the supporters of my struggle which prevented the same fate for me as all of the other youth accused along with me. They were murdered by these cops.

But the truth comes out, as the truth did on the falsified documents used to frame-up Iraq by the Bush administration--on so-called weapons of destruction--to justify the use of such weapons by Washington.

Yet, working people in Mexico and the United States need some explaining about these developments from a working-class standpoint. Or else, I’m afraid, we can develop wrong ideas or illusions as to what these events signify.

The Mexican political system is in an electoralist setup trying to score points. The present government, whose president Mr. Fox (not Don Fox) is using the crimes committed by his predecessors to get ahead in the game, discredit them, and secure re-election. That is what this circus is.

Led by Don Fox, my former boss, longtime Coca-Cola chief executive officer in Mexico (who barely speaks Spanish) and against whose company I tried to organize a union in Texas, is now the "Guardian Angel" of human rights for Mexicans. The debate on the torture and disappeared is his regime’s way of pornographication of Mexican politics, as he kisses Washington’s feet leaving Lewinsky way envious.

I also look at these "investigations" as the debate amongst executioners of death, killers of working men and women. One hooded one is a PRI (former party in power) member, the other is a member of the party in power today (PAN-Fox’s party). They both have decapitated many workers and peasants, tortured them, exploited them, raped their daughters in passing, but one has power now and the other doesn’t. Fox is using it to discredit the previous regime, the other hooded guy, to show that his hooded buddy in charge will be better.

I go with Rosario Ibarra, mother of an arrested, tortured, killed and disappeared fighter mentioned in Barry Fatland’s article. The fight is on, she says. And she means it.

The new revelations hardly cover the whole spectrum of crimes, which had to involve more than a couple of official military units, government agencies, and CIA props. It was a brutal, well-armed and -greased machine with murderers at the command with a green light to kill.

Rosario will go down in history as a woman who is a fighter, unconditional, principled, self-sacrificing, tireless, and unflinching. Many more women like her are already clear-minded, willing to fight and are not confused by the "Hooded Executioners" act played by imperialism. Their eyes go far deeper, they want not only the ax but all the executioners. They say: PRI, PAN, Democrats, Republicans. All the clowns and hooded executioners. All the same gangrene.

Keep up the good work. Extend my solidarity to Róger Calero.

Héctor Marroquín
by e-mail
 
 
Protests in Greece
In mid-April the European Union summit officially signed eight Eastern European workers states and two former British colonies into membership. This summit was met with demonstrations throughout the day in Athens. The demonstrators marched to the U.S., UK, Italian, and Spanish embassies. The focus of the protests was thus one group of imperialist powers. The predatory nature of EU expansion into Eastern Europe is not being dealt with by the major forces involved.

Over the last period there has been at least one weekly mass demonstration against the war in Athens and other cities and towns throughout Greece. These have had a large participation of youth, with three high-school and university student and teacher strikes. There has also been a significant participation of working people, including among organized workers, as the General Confederation of Greek Workers and the Supreme Council of Public Employees have called strikes, too. These actions have ranged from about 20,000 to 200,000 in Athens.

The axis of all the actions and the vast propaganda carried out by the middle-class Stalinist and Social Democratic currents leading the workers movement, however, has been that the world’s evil comes from the vile Anglo-American alliance. More and more voices are heard calling for boycotts of American goods. When criticism is leveled at the Greek government it is that it has not more firmly allied itself with the European, that is Franco-German axis. That it is vacillating.

On the one hand a major section of the Greek bourgeoisie, which sees its future in an expanding Greek presence in the Balkans, has had its wings clipped by the U.S. gains in the Balkan wars. These forces look to Europe, in particular the French and German imperialist states. On the other hand, taking on the U.S. may prove to be a losing proposition. This is particularly true for the large shipping bourgeoisie, which needs to operate in a world trade system they see as dominated by U.S. imperialism.

The problem with the protests at the summit and the antiwar actions has been that they have not only left off the hook some of the biggest European imperialist powers, which incidentally played a criminal role in the war in Yugoslavia, but they have allowed them to be painted in a positive light. Among them the Greek imperialists who have been pushing for their share of post-war construction contracts in Iraq, and Greek oil refinery companies (a force in the Balkans as a whole) salivating at the prospect of higher profits throughout the Balkans as the price of oil drops.

Some ideological gains have been made in deepening the false idea that working people and young fighters share common interests with our "Greek" bourgeoisie and the broader imperialist "peace camp" of Europe. This is an obstacle to working people here as they begin to figure out who their enemies are and who their allies are.

Georges Mehrabian
Athens, Greece


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Please keep your letters brief. Where necessary they will be abridged. Please indicate if you prefer that your initials be used rather than your full name.  
 
 
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