Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 9. Juni 2005 / Time Line June 9, 2005
Version 3.006/09/2005
Nobelfredsprismodtageren
Bertha von Suttner fødes 1843.
06/09/2005
Niels Bohrs åbne
brev til FN
1950.
06/09/2005
NARA set to open military records
On 11 June 2005, the National Archives and Records Administration
(NARA) National Personnel Records Center in Overland, Missouri will
unseal the first release of what is expected to be a "a mother
load" collection of interest to military historians, biographers,
and genealogists. The center houses the military records of some 56
million individuals, beginning in the 19th century and extending
into the 20th.
A total of three batches of individual records are slotted to be
released: Navy enlisted men from 1885 until 8 September 1939;
Marine Corps enlisted men from 1906 until 1939; and the first 150
of about 3,000 Americans identified as "persons of exceptional
prominence." Included in the last category are the military records
of generals George S. Patton Jr. and Omar Bradley; African American
sports hero Lt. Jackie Robinson; President John F. Kennedy; author
Herman Wouk; actors Clark Gable, Audie Murphy, and Steve McQueen;
and, yes, entertainer Pfc. Elvis Presley, writes NCH WASHINGTON
UPDATE (Vol. 11, #26; 9 June 2005). Personnel Records Center, 9700
Page Avenue, Overland, Mo. 63132; phone: 314-801-0850.
06/09/2005
Iraqi labor leaders fight for rights
By Alexandra Klaren
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20050609-105532-1284r
WASHINGTON, June 9 (UPI) -- Iraqi labor leaders plan to meet with
U.S. lawmakers and other officials to drum up support for greater
workers' rights in Iraq, organizers say.
"This is a chance for people in the U.S., especially working
people, to hear from Iraqis themselves about what they want to have
happen with their country," David Bacon, a labor journalist and
co-organizer of the tour, told United Press International. "Unions
are a fundamental building block of Iraqi civil society and if Iraq
is going to become a democratic country, trade unions must play a
very important role in determining what direction that is."
The group, invited by U.S. Labor Against The War, a
Washington-based non-governmental organization, arrives in
Washington Friday to begin a June 10-24 national tour that takes
them to 20 cities. Members from the Iraqi Federations of Trade
Unions, the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq, and
General Union of Oil Employees plan to meet with U.S. workers,
union leaders, members of Congress and others to seek help for
greater rights in Iraq.
"We have more resources than them," Bacon said. "They could use the
help of U.S. unions and working people in terms of trying to change
their status."
President Bush, in his 2004 State of the Union address, said he
would send Congress a proposal to double the budget of the National
Endowment for Democracy, a body created in 1983 to work with
pro-democracy groups around the world through non-governmental
efforts.
"I will send you (Congress) a proposal to double the budget of the
National Endowment for Democracy, and to focus its new work on the
development of free elections, and free markets, free press, and
free labor unions in the Middle East," he said. "And above all, we
will finish the historic work of democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq,
so those nations can light the way for others, and help transform a
troubled part of the world."
Despite his statements, however, laws that prohibit labor
organizing still exist in Iraq.
When the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority took over Iraq
following the ouster of President Saddam Hussein in 2003, chief L.
Paul Bremer implemented 100 orders that repealed a huge chunk of
the Iraqi legal structure. Not on the list, however - as noted by
Matthew Harwood in the April 2005 issue of the Washington Monthly
-- was Saddam's 1987 Labor Code, which reclassified workers of
large state enterprises, the majority of Iraqi workers, as civil
servants, denying them the right to form unions in the public
sector.
"Much of the CPA's effort in Baghdad was devoted to helping create
a conservative's ideal state, complete with a 15-percent flat tax
on individual and corporate income," Harwood wrote.
Gene Bruskin, a USLAW co-convener, said there was some language in
the transitional law that says unions should have a right to
organize, but there was no implementation.
"Iraq's economy is organized around basic industries that are
publicly owned so if you have a clause in the transitional law that
says that unions have a right to organize but public employees
don't, it's a meaningless clause," he told UPI.
Iraqi labor leaders have made significant efforts in working with
the U.N.-backed International Labor Organization to develop a new
labor code that they hope will be a part of the new Iraqi
constitution, which is still on the drawing board.
"I think it's broadly recognized by virtually every democratic
leader and government and society in the world that you cannot have
democracy without free trade unions," Bruskin said. "And so we
think it's really important for people in the U.S. to hear directly
from Iraqis, and these Iraqis in particular, because they represent
secular, democratic, progressive voices."
Of almost equal concern to Iraqi workers is the issue of
privatization. Later in his article, Harwood wrote, "Bremer's crew
was so zealous that they tried, in September 2003, to privatize
virtually the whole economy -- 200 state-owned firms."
Since the new Iraqi government has come to power, these ideas have
found new life. According to the Institute for War and Peace
Reporting, Iraqi Industry Minister Mohammed Abdullah, following
Iraq's new strategy to create a liberal free-market economy,
recently drew up plans to partially privatize the majority of
Iraq's 45 state-owned companies, including its lucrative oil
sector.
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