Never fear, a satisfying, comprehensive solution is within reach: the Megamerge Dissolution Solution. Simply dissolve the border along with the failed Mexican government, and megamerge the two countries under U.S. law, with mass free 2-way migration eventually equalizing the development and opportunities permanently, with justice and without racism, and without threatening U.S. sovereignty or basic principles.

To read the complete solution, Google “Megamerge Dissolution Solution”, or click url.

You write a challenging article. I appreciate your clarity. It’s also great the you used a small “c.” It’s interesting to have come through so many years of continued and, I think principled, class conscious participation in the labor movement, without ever owning up to, or denying being a capital “C” Communist. The label hasn’t kept the members from electing me, year after year, to represent them in Labor Councils, to Executive Board, conventions and as Vice President of the most – or one of the most progressive unions in the South Bay Area.

I don’t know what happened to David McLure. Do you? The last I knew was that he talked about meeting with some old-fashioned, nasty violence in return for effective outspokeness in the Plumbers’ Union in San Francisco. At about that time he made the rounds of union meetings in the Bay Area promoting the boycott of J.P. Stevens. That was the same organizing campaign, I think, that brought Bruce Raynor into prominence and underlay the film “Norma Rae.”

Interesting that Raynor is now in the middle of what seems to be an SEIU effort to cut up UNITE/HERE and make some or all of it part of the Andy Stern
empire.

The book you may be waiting for with a well documented history and a non- Chavez worshipping perspective is well on the way. Look for an encyclopedic volume by Frank Bardacke.

Get in touch please.

In Solidarity,

Fred <fredhirsch@cruzio.com.

P.S. You were kind enough to mention that AFL-CIA connection.

Just today Amy Goodman devoted her program to the cancerous destruction wreaked by the W.R. Grace Co. in Libby, Montana. You might be interested in the following email I sent her:Hello Folks at Democracy Now,

What I”m about to write down is off the top of my head. I don’t have the backup documents in hand, but I’m sure there is enough information to follow up the story. Either I could find it or you might.

I was on your show in July of 2005 with Kim Scipes. We were talking about the “Unity and Trust” resolution which was submitted to the AFL-CIO Convention in Chicago. The Resolution was submitted to the AFL-CIO by the unanimous vote of the California Labor Federation. The main body of the resolution came out of my Local Union, Plumbers and Fitters Local 393 in San Jose, California and out of the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council (SBLC). The SBLC was once referred to by then AFL-CIO President as the “labor council with its own foreign policy.”

The “Unity and Trust” resolution called upon the AFL- CIO to open its books on the history of the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD). its other “Labor Institutes,” and American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS), which continues to be the Federation’s arm for overseas activity in at least 27 countries. It also called upon the Federation to cut off its funding relationship with the government for its international activities. About 95% of the funds for ACILS (also called the Solidarity Center) comes from the federal government, largely through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which was set up during the Reagan administration. NED, according to one of its founders, was established to overtly accomplish the work that the CIA had previously done covertly.

During the 2005 AFL-CIO Convention, the Resolutions Committee substituted its own resolution (quite obviously prepared by its ACILS people) for the Unity and Trust Resolution. When it came to the floor Gerald McEntee of AFSCME, who chaired that session, permitted two speakers in favor of the resolution recommended by the Resolutions Committee and said “Did I hear someone call for the question?” A delegate complied with a word and a hand up and McEntee shut down debate while three delegates were lined up to speak on the issue.

The “Unity and Trust” resolution briefly referred to the groundwork done by AIFLD leading to the the overthrow of the government of Salvador Allende in Chile, and to behind the scenes work of the current Solidarity Center preceding the 2002 coup against the government of Hugo chavez in Venezuela.

I give you this detail only to show that there has been a continuum of government financed activity abroad that has operated to sabotage organized labor movements abroad which might challenge U.S and corporate foreign policy and to promote the equivalent of company unionism which meet the foreign policy robjectives of the the U.S. Government and Corporate America.

AIFLD was set up in 1962 with an Executive Board that included a number of U.S. union notables, a few of the same from Latin America (As I remember,even then it included labor representatives from both Chile and Venezuela.) and some of the most high-powered U.S. Corporate executives. I believe George Meany was the first president of AIFLD, followed by Lane Kirkland. The organizational “mastermind” of AIFLD was Serafino Romualdi, who had previously been an OSS operative in Italy and subsequently worked for Rockefeller in Latin America. One of the people responsible for bringing together AIFLD’s collaborative Executive Board team, was Arthur Goldberg who had headed up the Labor Desk of the OSS and later designed the legal aspects of the merger of the AFL and CIO (The merger established the AFL-CIO. Among many other things, it enabled the two organizations, which previously had disparate connections and policies abroad, to work together in unified foreign operations, on the government payroll and in collaboration with the CIA.) The first Director of AIFLD was William C. Doherty, who was authoritatively identified as a CIA agent by Philip Agee. (Doherty’s father, from a postal union, had served as Ambassador to Jamaica.)

The corporations involved in promoting AIFLD were undoubtedly interested in having good labor relations abroad with unions that wouldn’t give them any trouble and which would not support any governments that might threaten expropriation of their ill-gotten commercial gains. As ever, the government served the needs of the corporate elite that ruled the roost and was quite interested in obtaining the services of blue collar, rather than striped pants diplomats. What a convenient way, with the decline of colonialism, to open doors for an expanding , neoliberal empire.

That’s where J. Peter Grace, CEO of W.R.Grace Co., fits in. He became the Treasurer of AIFLD and served as such for nineteen years, during the very same years that the company was killing the working families of Libby, Montana, producing a product that spread the poison of vermiculite throughout the U.S. and undoubtedly transnationally – wherever Grace Corp. could make a buck.

I believe W.R. Grace was once connected to the Grace Line, a major shipping company that opened up trade to Latin America. The company’s main line of trade and development came to be chemicals. The company probably had been involved with its German subsidiary in the 1930s-40s producing the chemicals that were so useful to the Nazis during the Holocaust.

J. Peter Grace had a close relationship with Otto Ossman (I hope that is the name. It’s been a while.) who was very important person in Grace Co.’s operations in Germany. J. Peter wanted to bring Ossman here to work for him in the U.S. Ossman had some trouble getting a visa and J. Peter wrote a friendly letter of recommendation and praise to whoever was heading up the Immigration and Naturalization Service (now ICE) in about 1981.

The letter must have come to the attention of some good investigative reporter. J. Peter was not only CEO of his company and Treasurer of AIFLD, he was selected by Ronald Reagan to head up an investigation into cutting the costs of the government. It was the first major effort to fit the government into a bathtub so it could be drowned. J. Peter made a nationwide tour, holding hearings and grabbing headlines about wasteful government spending.

It was about then that the letter recommending Otto Osman for entrance into the U.S. Became an issue. I remember seeing a snippet on “Twenty-Twenty” or “Sixty Minutes” (perhaps just a news program) with a reporter asking J. Peter Grace about his Otto Ossman connection. J. Peter brushed aside the microphone and tried to duck the camera, refusing to answer the question. It seems that in obtaining entry to the U.S., J. Peter was Ossman’s only saving grace. Ossman’s visa problems stemmed from the fact that he had been convicted of “slavery and mass murder” in connection with his executive and technical work having to do with death camps, Dachau I believe.

Not long after that J. Peter Grace was discontinued as Treasurer of AIFLD and was no longer affiliated with the corrupt government financed dealings of the AFL-CIO abroad. It is a history the labor movement must learn in order to develop a future of genuine worker- to-worker solidarity among labor movements across the planet.

Perhaps with your exposure of the murderous W.R. Grace profiteering with vermiculite our understanding of the poisonous nature of collaborating with exploiters and profiteers will be enlarged.

Thank you for your work. I try to listen every day and today was outstanding!

If you would like to discuss this matter further, I can be reached at 408/821-1394.