It is still hard for me to believe that a national newspaper can get away with this over and over again.
Is is the demographics, where they are? Are they really communists?
I still don't get it. Excuse me.
To answer that question I decided to look into who they are. United for Peace is apparently a front for a group called Global Exchange. Global Exchange, at first glance seems pretty innocuous as far as leftist organizations go at first glance. That all ends once you start wading through the fluff and get into the details.
The best way to illustrate that point is with their own words. Unfortunately, I did not have the patience or the stomach to plod through everything but it did not take long to find some interesting examples. What follows are quotes from their own website.
Role of the State
We propose a fully democratic state, economically and socially accountable to its citizens, which radically challenges corruption at every level; a state with a qualitatively new role within the economy. We are not proposing an oversized state burdened by huge, inefficient enterprises. The number and size of public corporations is less important than the role they fulfill. Society, not only governments, should make decisions relating to industries in the public realm.
Corporations known as "state-owned enterprises" in fact belong to society and are only administered by the state. These public sector corporations are not established for personal profit, but are vehicles for healthy economic development, safeguards of sovereignty, and instruments of social and environmental justice.
More gibberish:
A main objective of any agreement should be the reduction of inequalities within and among nations, between women and men, and among races.
A) Among nations: The rush toward the integration of highly unequal economies without social protections is creating a climate in which large corporations can reduce the standard of living and wages in all regions of the world. The new rules should include mechanisms to reduce imbalance among nations through raising living standards in the poorest countries. This would not only be a step toward meeting the demands for justice and equity in these countries. It would also reduce the power of corporations to take advantage of such inequalities to weaken standards and wages everywhere by threatening to move production to areas where labour costs and environmental protections are lower.
B) Within nations: Inequalities and extreme poverty have been on the increase for more than a decade in the Americas. The new rules should reduce these inequalities, encouraging redistribution of income, land and natural resources.
C) Between women and men and among races: Women, people of colour, and indigenous people have had to shoulder a disproportionate share of the economic and social decline caused by neo-liberal policy. The cuts to public sector services and employment and the reduction of secure employment and democratic structures have personally affected more women then men and have hit girls harder than boys.
When resources are scarce, decisions made by many families and societies, consciously or unconsciously, tend to favour males. On top of this, as society's traditional care-givers, women end up with the responsibility to help others whose access to jobs or publicly-funded programs have been cut. This burden comes in addition to existing disparities in the economic, legal, social, and political position of women in countries throughout the hemisphere.
Their views on Cuba:
Under such leaders as Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, among others, the Cuban Revolution burst onto the international scene on January 1, 1959, -- overthrowing the U.S.-supported dictator Fulgencio Batista -- with a commitment to feed, clothe, house, educate, employ and provide health care for its entire population, a formerly unrealizable dream.
On Israel and Palestine:
The Palestinian-Israeli dispute is one of the longest unresolved conflicts in modern history. For 54 years Israel has dispossessed the Palestinian people of their homeland via territorial conquest, occupation and war. During the 1967 war, Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jerusalem. Since that time, the Palestinian people have been divided into three groups: three million living under Israel's occupation, one million living inside Israel, and four million as refugees dispersed throughout the Arab countries and worldwide.
On the United States:
When most Americans hear of human rights abuses, they likely think of atrocities in some far off country in a forgotten corner of the globe. And when Americans consider the idea of democracy, it's probably accurate to say that they think of our government as a model to be emulated. The reality, of course, is more complicated. Abuses against individuals' basic rights also occur regularly here in the United States, and our money-saturated political system hardly deserves the title 'democracy.'
It sounds to me like they are in favor of state run industries (all of them) because they believe only the state can fairly allocate resources and wealth. They also seem to have a problem with moral equivalency. To them Cuba is a paradise while the US is a major source of atrocities.