From The WarZone 

by Mike Griffin
MgriffWZEF@aol.com

IN SOCIETY TODAY NOTHING HAS been more widely accepted, used, and promoted
that the art of 'Doublespeak'.  The damage from the practice of this dark
art has impacted America's standing in the world, caused countless deaths
abroad, including more than thirteen hundred American troops and thousands
of maimed, disfigured, and disabled. One prime example of doublespeak was
the justification for war in Iraq, based on myths, lies, and deceit.
Creative intelligence analysis used to bring an unquestioning media and both
sides of the aisle on board to support the outrageous lies of the Bush
Whitehouse. Cowardly journalists who refused to speak up out of fear of
being labeled 'unpatriotic', if you don't support the war, 'you are aiding
our enemies'. American media owned by the very corporations who benefit from
endless wars always, always, in the name of profit.  Lies are now considered
'misstatements' and facts are akin to beauty, 'in the eyes of the beholder'.

A second group guilty of doublespeak and double standards is organized
religion.  While claiming Separation of Church and State many church leaders
are walking the line in becoming the great deceivers spoken about in the
Bible, the inspired, written word of God.  While blindly heaping praise on a
President who most certainly would be prosecuted in a world court, many
church leaders are turning a blind eye to the lies and deceits this
administration has used to justify their assault on sovereign nations and
the United States Constitution. Criticizing the church is not pleasurable,
but relevant to the puzzle unfolding in America.  Church organizations are
using donated funds for political purposes to support the agenda of the
extreme right based on social issues such as abortion, gay rights and prayer
in schools.  While important issues, it is hypocritical to rail against
abortion deaths and turn a blind eye to a hundred thousand dead in Iraq, the
needless deaths of more than thirteen hundred American soldiers, and scores
of thousands of innocent Afghanistan civilians. Church leaders can picket an
abortion clinic but look the other way when missiles were used against an
Afghani wedding party.  While America's economy is being literally blown
away in Iraq, homelessness, poverty, and child hunger are rampantly rising
here at home. By choosing their words carefully, ignoring the reality of the
corporate assault on other nations, and our own, the church has engaged in
doublespeak to justify its agenda. The church is promoting a President and
his party in acts of destruction and corruption of unparalleled evil.

In the House of Labor, doublespeak has become the main speak and nowhere
else in society is deception used with such finesse. A current example is
the New Unity Partnership {NUP}, the gang of five International Union
Presidents involved in a coup to take control of the AFL-CIO.  If you listen
to the rhetoric, the doublespeak, they will bring new direction to an ailing
movement; till you sift through bull. They will increase 'market share' by
'downsizing' the number of affiliates from 66 to twenty. Sounds kind of
corporate doesn't it?  It is! Business Unionism run from the top by corrupt
and greedy leadership is nothing new.

While this gang of five, Doug 'Cash' McCarron, Carpenters union, Andy Stern,
Service Employees, Wilhelm, Hotel Employees Union, Bruce Raynor, UNITE, and
Sullivan from the Laborers Union with the feeble assistance of labor's
notorious flip-flopper, James Hoffa, Teamsters, are promising a resurrection
for labor; read between the lines! As they embrace the 'corporate mantra' it
is unbelievable how closely they are aligned with the employers to the
detriment of ordinary workers.  Nowhere in their spiel is there any mention
of democracy, member's rights, or involvement in decision-making.  They
propose 'downsizing' the current federation from 66 unions to 20 or less.
What say would members of the 66 unions have?  Absolutely none!  There is
nothing in their program committed to defending current manufacturing jobs
that have decent pay and benefits, after many has been destroyed by NAFTA.
Realistically, there is no fight coming from any union in the AFL-CIO to
defend current jobs, current benefits and pay scales. Not one union today is
fighting for its members and many are aligning with employers to roll back
the clock to 1950.  Two tiered wages, few benefits, and employee paid
health-care are common in every contract signed in the last decade.  The
United Auto Workers, Steelworkers, Paperworkers, Grocery workers; you name
it.  While selling out rank and file workers and pissing on the sacrifice of
those who fought and died for the union, 'mis-leadership' in every union is
refusing to fight while wallowing in absolute comfort corruption at the top.
Bigger salaries for the bureaucrats, the best health-care, multiple
retirements and lavish expense accounts are common.

Many in the house of labor today are Ivy Leaguers like Stern and Raynor, who
have never worked a day in their lives.  Most labor leaders today are
scrambling to organize service industry jobs, low pay, no benefits, and no
hope of improving their lot in life.  Organizing campaigns full of
doublespeak make promises that are never delivered, poverty level jobs with
just enough left to pay dues to support those at the top. While promising to
revitalize labor, not one of these self-embodied saviors mentions the
rampant corruption in their existing organizations. Almost weekly,
indictments are handed down against leaders of these unions, but that will
never be mentioned in Carpenter magazine or the AFL-CIO news.  If they have
something new to offer, why can't they rid themselves of the massive
corruption in their own organizations?

In the unions wanting to downsize, leaders have stripped locals of power,
formed District councils, and moved decision-making further from rank and
file members.  One ringleader has a patent on doublespeak. McCarron of the
Carpenters has systematically stripped the members of involvement.
Combining locals, forming District and Regional Councils, looting local
union treasuries to foot the bill, no one has done more to mirror the
Bastards of the Boardroom.  Members have been stripped of the right to elect
who represents them, to vote on contracts, and have no rights on the job.
Contractors have the right to hire and fire at will and it has become the
job of Business Agents to back the contractor.  Contractors can change work
hours on a minutes notice, work conditions and operate as unsafe as he sees
fit.  Any protest or resistance on work conditions or safety will be met
with termination. No grievance, no representation, no hope. Anyone who dares
challenge a contractor or the Business Agent will be dealt with.
Blackballing is alive and well in the UBC. Members are often starved out or
brought up on phony charges and sometimes removed from membership.

While McCarron uses The Carpenter magazine to pump up the rhetoric for his
're-organization' of the UBC, his forked tongue often spits out terms like
'competitiveness', 'market share', and 'cooperation' with 'our friends',
union contractors. At the National Erectors Association meeting in Hawaii he
told his 'Friends', 'It is our job to know what the contractors need and to
give it to them'. Clearly, UBC members no longer matter.  McCarron has
allied himself with George Bush, labor's number one enemy, flying around on
Air Force One and inviting Bush to the UBC training Center in Las Vegas.  In
a carefully worded article in The Carpenter, McCarron told members the UBC
would not endorse either party in the national elections in spite of the
fact that an overwhelming number of locals and councils supported the
Democrats.  In doublespeak he told the members that he favored their right
to choose whom they voted for.  Amazingly enough, McCarron's sudden penchant
for democracy does not extend inside the UBC.  Bush's friendship and that of
Elaine Chao, Secretary of labor, does have its advantages as he continues to
illegally rob his members of democracy.

George Dubbya said the Carpenters Union is my kind of union. Did he mean the
fact it is a dictatorship, or just corrupt enough he can control it?

In spite of McCarron's speeches on union values, and his laughable articles
in Carpenter magazine, he has created the best example of a company union in
modern times.  Many see his efforts, me included, as building a huge Rat
Contractor organization willing to raid the work of other unions. A rat
Manpower with a union logo, UBC Inc.

McCarron and his sheep took the UBC out of the AFL-CIO over two years ago
without a vote of the membership and in fact, without the members even
knowing it.  In perfect doublespeak, McCarron and his henchmen laid claim to
the excuse that organizing was the key issue.  Copies of letters between
John Sweeney and McCarron tell a different story.  McCarron's main request
was for the AFL-CIO to suspend the articles of the AFL-CIO Constitution
governing jurisdiction.  Those rules prevent one union from raiding another.
In Hawaii McCarron told his corporate playmates that when it comes to
deciding work, it is the contractor's jobs, let them decide.

McCarron continues to boast of UBC organizing efforts but once again, double
speak, smoke and mirrors.  The UBC has managed to drag into the UBC,
employees from rat contractors but without organizing the contractors and
the work.  Thousands of Millwrights and Carpenters are literally being
starved out and many of those newly organized return to the rat contractors
where there is work.  What little work is left is controlled by appointed
Business Agents who make sure nepotism and cronyism rules the out of work
lists. 

In the union movement, doublespeak is the ultimate betrayal.  Unions are
supposed to be about worker solidarity, a brotherhood; the social diocese of
the working class.  When leaders betray their own class, lie for personal
power and gain, they become lower than the employing class we have every
right to despise.  If business unions are brotherhoods, they are incestuous
relationships. Lies, deceit, and doublespeak are all anti-union traits. They
represent an evil far more damaging than anything an employer can conjure
up. 

There was another time in history when the same organizations were co-opted.
When the media refused to ask the hard questions; when both sides of the
aisle fell into servitude, when the unions became servants of the corporate
masters and the church fell into line behind a leader controlled by powerful
industrialists, just prior to World War Two.  Fascism took control and
Hitler rose to power forming 'Homeland Security' to subvert the rights of
German citizens. Deceit and carefully crafted doublespeak masked the horror
that lay ahead. Are we headed down that road again?

Mike Griffin 

Decatur IL