Marianne Faithfull covers John Lennon’s classic “Working Class Hero.” It’s a fitting song tonight as I reflect on the week. It’s been awhile since the American left celebrated a labor victory and this week we clearly had one in Chicago where the workers of Republic Windows and Doors stood up for their rights and won. And then there’s Ron Gettelfinger, whose stiff resolve in not conceding the gains of the past, also deserves the accolade of a working class hero.

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Tactically, the President-elect is rather shrewd. His “kitchen sink all in one” approach may actually work in moving the ball forward on a whole host of issues that have laid dormant for a generation.

From the Associated Press

In naming his choice for housing secretary, President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday rounded out his economic team and gave new prominence to the mortgage crisis that has dragged the country into a recession.

The selection of Shaun Donovan as secretary of Housing and Urban Development puts the current New York City housing commissioner at the forefront of one of the more nettlesome economic challenges confronting the new administration — the soaring foreclosures that are threatening homeownership nationwide.

The Federal Reserve estimates that lenders are on track to initiate 2.25 million foreclosures this year, more than doubling the annual pace before the crisis set in. What’s more, falling housing values and a plunging stock market have contributed to $2.8 trillion in lost household wealth in the third quarter.

Donovan joins a team led by Tim Geithner, Obama’s nominee for Treasury secretary, and Larry Summers, who will chair Obama’s National Economic Council. Obama has his team working on an ambitious economic recovery plan that includes saving or creating 2.5 million jobs over the next two years.

Stemming foreclosures and stabilizing the battered housing market will be daunting tasks that have already bedeviled Congress and the Bush administration.

“We need to approach the old challenge of affordable housing with new energy, new ideas, and a new, efficient style of leadership,” Obama said upon naming Donovan during his Saturday radio address. “We need to understand that the old ways of looking at our cities just won’t do.”

Donovan will inherit various tools to confront the problem. Obama wants to use the second half of a $700 billion financial industry rescue plan to help stem foreclosures. Congress this year also put in place a $300 billion program designed to let troubled homeowners swap risky loans for more affordable ones, though few have applied. Moreover, homeowners have continued to default on mortgages despite government efforts to lower interest rates and modify repayment terms.

With one in 10 U.S. homeowners delinquent on mortgage payments or in foreclosure, Obama said Donovan will bring “fresh thinking, unencumbered by old ideology and outdated ideas” at the Housing and Urban Development Department to help resolve the housing and economic crisis.

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In a gruesome killing spree dating back to July 2007, at least 13 and perhaps as many as 16 gay men in Carapicuíba, a suburb of sprawling São Paulo, have been killed by a serial killer that the press has dubbed “the Rainbow Maniac.” A recent study by the Grupo Gay da Bahia, Brazil’s oldest gay rights group, found that Brazil leads the world in the murder of homosexuals. According to the study, there were 122 homophobic murders in Brazil in 2007, compared with 35 in Mexico and 25 in the US (38 gay men have been killed in the US so far in 2008). A previous study claimed that between 1980 and 2006 at least 2,680 gay people were killed in Brazil, mostly as a result of homophobic violence.

More from the UK Guardian:

São Paulo is the annual stage for the largest gay pride march on Earth and home to one of South America’s most vibrant gay communities. But a wave of homophobic murders has cast a shadow over one of the most tolerant cities in Latin America.

Six months after 3.5 million revellers gathered on the streets to celebrate gay pride, police announced last week that they were hunting for a serial killer thought to be responsible for as many as 16 murders on the western outskirts of São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city.

Police believe the killer – labelled the Rainbow Maniac by the press – is behind the murders of 13 men in Carapicuíba, a city of nearly 400,000 people in greater São Paulo. They were killed in a park used as a gay meeting point. Police are now investigating whether the same killer was behind three murders in the neighbouring city of Osasco, where a similar weapon was reportedly used.

One of the victims was a transvestite, shot in one of the city’s many love motels. ‘In his head, he thinks he is doing a clean-up job,’ said Paulo Fernando Fortunato, the police chief heading the inquiries. ‘He doesn’t like homosexuals, he hates them.’

The killing began on 4 July 2007 when 32-year-old José Cicero Henrique was murdered in the Paturis park. Since then another 12 men have been killed in the park, nine in virtually identical circumstances. Their half-naked bodies were dumped in the undergrowth with a .38 bullet in the back of the head and their trousers wrapped around their knees.

Fortunato said one of the men was beaten to death while the latest victim, whose body was found in August and has not yet been identified, was shot 12 times. Police sources told newspapers the hail of bullets had turned his body into a ’sieve’. One local newspaper suggested the killer may have arranged meetings with his victims over the internet, using the social networking service Orkut.

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Here is news from Latin America.

Ecuador To Intentionally Miss A Payment on Its 2012 Global Bonds
Ecuador’s leftist President Rafael Correa declared a default on the country’s foreign sovereign bonds on Friday, vowing to fight “monster” debt-holders in court. The amount itself is fairly trivial, Correa is refusing to make a $31 million interest payment due on Monday on Ecuador’s 2012 global bonds. Correa, who had often threatened to default, will offer bond-holders a tough restructuring deal. Last month, Ricardo Patino, a top debt adviser to Correa, said investors should expect a reduction of more than 60 percent in the nominal value of the global paper in any negotiations. Ecuador’s global bonds — the 2012s, 2015s and 2030s — total $3.8 billion of its roughly $10 billion debt. More from Reuters and the Washington Post.

The Revolution at Fifty
Cuba will celebrate fifty years of its quixotic revolution on January 1st. The Miami Herald has a special profile.

Fifty years ago, an attorney turned bearded guerrilla marched triumphantly into Havana and declared victory over a departing dictator. Then he became a despot himself.

Fidel Castro forever changed the landscape of both Cuba and Miami. He jailed or executed his enemies, seized private property, divided families, and drove nearly two million Cubans into exile. His nation became a Cold War pawn.

At the same time, Castro launched a massive literacy campaign. The island churned out armies of new doctors. Cuba became an international player, inspiring guerrilla movements and supplying soldiers for ”anti-imperialist” wars around the globe. Castro’s refusal to kowtow to the United States won him praise.

As the Jan. 1 anniversary of the revolution’s triumph approaches, many of the social welfare achievements that were the trophies of the communist regime have rusted. Years of failed economic policy, waves of mass exodus, and Cuba’s inability to recover from the collapse of its patron, the Soviet Union, have dulled Castro’s touted crown jewels — the advances in health and education.

Still, the revolution that ousted Fulgencio Batista and transformed a tropical getaway into a communist state remains one of the Western Hemisphere’s most significant events of the last century.

Raul Castro Visits Venezuela in Maiden Presidential Trip Abroad
Raul Castro began his first international trip as Cuba’s president in Venezuela on Saturday, a symbolic choice of destination aimed at strengthening ties with the island’s socialist ally and main benefactor. More from the Miami Herald.

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The co-ordinated attacks on Mumbai provoked a wave of international sympathy and solidarity, but devastating bombings in the same city two years ago received a fraction of the attention.

Al Jazeera’s Todd Baer reports from Mumbai, where the city’s poor say that lack of media attention was because they bore the brunt of the attack.

A few articles on social inequality in India.

Social Inequality Threatening India’s Economic Stability
By Anupam Mukerji in Fast Company.

Can a country where a third of the population is illiterate be an Information Technology superpower? Can a country where 78 million rural homes have never seen electricity be an economic superpower? Can anyone feel safe living in islands of prosperity in a sea of poverty? While India’s educated elite are reveling in their new found status on the global stage, inequitable distribution of wealth and opportunities are shaking the very foundation of India’s new economy. Will the Indian government’s apathy towards the rural poor bring India’s party to an abrupt end?

In the last 12 years, India’s economy has grown at an average annual rate of about 7 percent, reducing poverty by 10 percent. However, 40 percent of the world’s poor still live in India, and 28 percent of the country’s population continues to live below the poverty line. More than one third live on less than a dollar a day, and 80 percent live on less than two dollars a day. India’s recent economic growth has been attributed to the service industry, but 60 percent of the workforce remains in agriculture.

The rate of increasing disparity between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’, is hard to miss in tech centers like Bangalore, Chennai and Delhi. Technology professionals are returning, having made their millions in the US. They are driving expensive cars and living in luxury apartments. Cities are growing in all directions. Farmlands are being acquired to build luxury townships, golf courses, five star hotels, spas and clubs. Poor farmers get paid off, and are forced to move further away from the city. And while global leaders and businessmen wax eloquent about India’s growing status as an IT superpower, everyone turns a blind eye to the majority of the population untouched by the economic growth.

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Call it the Manama Declaration. Don’t mess with Obama. Yesterday in Manama, the capital of Bahrain, Defense Secretary Robert Gates assured a gathering of Persian Gulf leaders that President-elect Barack Obama will continue the U.S. commitment to the Middle East after he takes office and warned terrorists not to test President Obama. From the New York Times:

The top American commander in Iraq said Saturday that some soldiers would remain in a support role in cities beyond summer 2009, when a new security agreement calls for the removal of American combat troops from urban areas.

The commander, Gen. Ray Odierno, said American troops would remain at numerous security outposts in order to help support and train Iraqi forces. “We believe that’s part of our transition teams,” he told reporters in Balad while accompanying Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who arrived on an unannounced trip Saturday.

General Odierno declined to say how many American troops might remain in Iraqi cities past the summer and said the number still remained to be negotiated with the Iraqi government under the terms of the so-called status of forces agreement. “But what I would say is we’ll maintain our very close partnership with the Iraqi security forces throughout Iraq even after the summer.”

Later on Saturday, a spokesman for General Odierno, Lt. Col. James Hutton, reiterated that the soldiers staying in cities would not be combat forces but rather “enablers,” who would provide services like medical care, air traffic control and helicopter support that the Iraqis cannot perform themselves. He said that all their actions would be closely coordinated with the Iraqi government, and that all tenets of the security agreement would be followed.

Mr. Gates met with General Odierno for an hour and then was scheduled to return to Washington. Before the meeting, Mr. Gates held a question-and-answer session with American soldiers and repeated the Bush administration’s pledge to the Iraqi government of a complete troop withdrawal by the end of 2011.

But General Odierno said Saturday, as Pentagon officials have said previously, that the agreement might be renegotiated with the Iraqi government. “Three years is a very long time,” he told reporters.

Mr. Gates came to Baghdad from Manama, Bahrain, where he warned that foreign powers should not try to “test” President-elect Barack Obama with a crisis in his first months in office. He said the new administration would be committed to security in the Gulf and criticized Iran as trying to destabilize the region.

“The president-elect and his team are under no illusions about Iran’s behavior and what Iran has been doing in the region and apparently is doing with weapons programs,” he said.

Mr. Gates, who was speaking at a conference on regional security, said that Mr. Obama and his advisers had done more extensive planning across the government for the transition than any other incoming administration he could remember and asserted that they would therefore be prepared from their first day in office. Mr. Gates, who is staying on as defense secretary, has worked for seven presidents; Mr. Obama will be his eighth.

“So anyone who thought that the upcoming months might present opportunities to ‘test’ the new president would be sorely mistaken,” Mr. Gates said at the conference. “President Obama and his national security team, myself included, will be ready to defend the interests of the United States and our friends and allies from the moment he takes office on Jan. 20.”

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This week’s events in Washington have brought forth a new dark lord menacing the rights of labor and threatening to subsume the American way of life in a tsunami of the jobless. Meet Bob Corker, our new not-ready-for-primetime nefarious threat from the right. We vanquish one dark wizard after eight years of bitter struggle and up pops another to fight in his stead. This new dark lord though only a junior member of the Senate Banking Committee singlehandedly derailed the $14 billion Detroit relief package by insisting that the concessions agreed to by the United Auto Workers union take effect immediately rather than in 2011 when the current contract expires. Still out of the ashes of this debacle a new hero arises to meet and challenge this new dark lord. Meet Ron Gettelfinger.

From the New York Times:

For more than 70 years, the United Automobile Workers union has known who its adversaries were: company executives, foreign automakers and right-to-work advocates who fought its organizing drives.

Now it has another: Senator Robert Phillips Corker Jr.

On Thursday night, Senator Corker, a freshman Republican from Tennessee, pushed the U.A.W.’s president, Ron Gettelfinger, to agree in principle to tough contract concessions before the Senate Republicans would agree to provide a lifeline to General Motors and Chrysler.

But Mr. Gettelfinger, after giving ground in recent years on health care, job security and pay issues, would not agree to let the concessions take effect next year. The impasse effectively killed the chances for a $14 billion bailout package from Congress.

While the deal was lost, both Mr. Gettelfinger and Senator Corker can claim a victory of sorts, perhaps setting the stage for future showdowns.

Mr. Gettelfinger’s tough stand risked pushing the companies into bankruptcy, which would abrogate the union contracts he was trying to protect.

But on Friday, President Bush and the Treasury said they would consider using money from the $700 billion financial bailout to help automakers.

Mr. Gettelfinger needed to show he was defending his union’s members. Since he took office in 2002, the U.A.W. has given up health benefits and agreed to sweeping wage cuts, and for the bailout, it was prepared to abandon pay guarantees for workers who had lost their jobs.

Mr. Gettelfinger also appeared during Congressional hearings as more of an ally — rather than usual sparring partner — of the chief executives of Detroit’s auto companies, sitting next to them while the group endured hours of grilling.

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Madagascar: No welcome for sex tourism

From the United Nations High Commission for Refugees:

The warning posters start at the airport in the capital, Antananarivo, informing visitors that Madagascar says “NO to sex tourism” and “Malagasy women are not tourist souvenirs”.

Large billboards notifying arrivals that the authorities will also prosecute those caught having sex with children line the route into the city, and at tourist hotels – along with a colourful “Welcome to Madagasikara – the land of the lemurs” – there is likely to be a sign saying the hotel has a right to check the age of anyone accompanying guests to their rooms.

Madagascar, the vast tropical island off the east coast of Africa, is trying to expunge itself from the sex tourism map, and especially to close its doors to paedophiles shopping for minors.

To underline its commitment, the government has adopted a new law against the sexual exploitation of children that includes punishment of the adult exploiters; several foreigners have been convicted as a result.

But a walk after dark through the streets of Toliara, a thriving tourist town in southern Madagascar, shows that much still needs to be done. Sex workers own the streets, blowing kisses and waving at foreigners, trying to cash in on the tourists who are not visiting this impoverished Indian Ocean island for its unique bio-diversity.

“It’s a very cheap place, women are beautiful, there are few controls on sex tourism. Nobody says anything about this; you can come here and do whatever you want,” said Jose Louis Guirao, who runs projects for Bel Avenir, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) promoting educational, social and health-related initiatives. “The women start when they are 10 to 12; they are very young.”

A report by the US State Department this year said Madagascar was a “source country for women and children trafficked within the country for the purposes of sexual exploitation”, but praised the government for trying to tackle the problem.

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