Mickey Z

Cool Observer

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

NYC Transit Strike/U.S. invades Panama: 16 years ago today

The strike is on

Yesterday, I was riding an N Train...listening to someone loudly pontificate on the strike situation. White man, in his 40s, reasonably well-dressed. He bellowed something like this: “These people don’t do any work anyway. They’re so lazy. They don’t deserve a raise. If they go on strike, I say fire them and hire non-union workers. These people are gonna ruin my holiday? The hell with them. We should get rid of all the unions in New York. The city would run better. These people are so damn lazy.”

It went on and on and on from there...with plenty more references to these people. From my experience, most of the transit workers in NYC are people of color (and their very vocal, passionate leader is a black man with a strong Caribbean accent)...so draw your own assumptions as to what he meant by these people.

It’s a powerful propaganda potion we’ve been fed to entice subway riders into siding with billionaires like Bloomberg over the poor soul sweeping up piss, shit, and vomit in a subterranean tunnel of transportation. Don’t get me wrong...the strike sucks for me. I’m a freelance worker. The money I’ll lose this week cannot be made up and yes, I’ve had my share of negative interactions with transit workers over the years. But that doesn’t mean I should just forget all about principles and start hoping the city crushes the union.
(Note: I’m not saying this makes me special...just consistent.)

Mitchell Cohen sez:
“There is a $1 billion + surplus, but the MTA, in its final offer, demanded that new hires increase the amount they pay into their pension plan from the 2 percent currently to 6 percent of their wages (which would have created a 2-tier system, and beaten down current workers with the threat of replacing them with new hirings). What does it mean to have a wage increase of 3 percent this year, 4 percent next year, and then 3.5 percent again the following year when new hirings would have to give that right back 2x over with 6 percent payments towards pension—a sleight of hand trick by Pataki and his lackies to recoup twice as much from new workers as they are given in wage increases?”

Good luck, TWU...

+++

Unhappy anniversary in Panama

Just two weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall, President George H.W. Bush ushered in the post-Cold War era by sending 25,000 troops into Panama on December 20, 1989. Called Operation Just Cause (as in “just cause” we feel like it), the foray would have been deemed a “surprise attack” if any other nation had initiated it.

“That invasion, less than eight months before Iraq invaded Kuwait, was condemned by the UN General Assembly,” Ramsey Clark explains. “No action was taken, although the United States violated all the international laws later violated by Iraq when it invaded Kuwait, plus a number of Western Hemisphere conventions and the Panama Canal Treaties.”

(http://tinyurl.com/7f8o7)

U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Thomas Pickering defended the invasion, claiming that Article 51 of the UN Charter “provides for the use of armed force to defend a country, to defend our interests and our people,” and argued that the U.S. was compelled to invade because Panama was “being used as a base for smuggling drugs into the United States.” As an illustration of how fast someone can go from being an ally to an enemy, practically overnight, Panamanian leader General Manuel Noriega fell from grace as a reliable CIA asset.

Thousands of Panamanian civilians were killed during the invasion. As if to confirm the basic tenet of U.S. vs. Them—where our lives count more than theirs—Bush the Elder was later asked if getting Noriega was worth all those deaths. He replied: “Every human life is precious, and yet I have to answer, yes, it has been worth it.”

(excerpted from The Seven Deadly Spins: http://tinyurl.com/77jo4)

(Thanks, Rosemarie)