Immigrant Children Protest Sherrif Arpaio's Anti-Family Raids

I was very moved by this demonstration of children demanding that Sheriff Arpaio stop the anti-immigrant raids that break up families.

The Most Truth Packed into a few Seconds of a Fictional Hollywood Movie

“The richest one percent of this country owns half our country’s wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It’s bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own.”—Gordon Gekko to Bud Fox (Wall Street, 1987, directed by Oliver Stone)

This Is Where We Take Our Stand, Episode 3: Why We Fight

This is a very interesting and candid film of Iraq Veterans Against the War discussing their various motivations for organizing G.I. resistance against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they all come from different perspectives. Some have become radicalized in their opposition to U.S. imperialism and militarism, and are motivated by the immorality of what these wars have done to the Iraqi and Afghani peoples. Others are motivated by more patriotic issues and are most concerned with how these wars are killing and maiming their fellow soldiers and hurting the interests of the country. Of course these various perspectives and concerns need not be mutually exclusive. But it is very interesting how these war veterans debate these issues amongst themselves. I have a lot of respect for these people. I hope we never forget that in the 2000s the veterans were the vanguard of the anti-war movement. Can we have a "hoorah for peace"?

Here is a synopsis from the website:

Flashback to January, three months before Winter Soldier. How do you bring hundreds of veterans to Washington DC, to tell their stories? An IVAW national planning meeting reveals sharp differences among the members. Is the point of Winter Soldier to show how these wars are hurting America, or the destruction America is bringing to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan? Is the goal to strengthen the military, or weaken it? Despite the differences, a deep unity is built because, as Geoff Millard declares, the bottom line is “No one can hear our stories and still support this shit.”

Why We Fight 7/21 from Displaced Films on Vimeo.

Hooray, I Love Long Hot Showers!

Hooray, I do indeed love to take a nice long hot shower, or at least I did before I moved to Arizona! Anywhoo, I am grateful to to Derrick Jensen for relieving me of the guilt I feel against my crime against Mother Earth and Humanity in his article "Forget Shorter Showers, Why Personal Change Does Not Equal Political Change". But seriously, an essential part of the capitalist culture is to reduce all action down to the level of individual choice and action. Want to save the earth? Recycle that aluminum can and buy a GE energy saver light bulb. Want to do something about world hunger and the suffering of animals in corporate food production? Then become a holier than thou vegan. It's all bullshit. To really effect genuine change requires macro level changes through radical mass action. So don't recycle, ORGANIZE! And enjoy a nice long hot shower! Here are some beginning excerpts from the article:

"Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance. An Inconvenient Truth helped raise consciousness about global warming. But did you notice that all of the solutions presented had to do with personal consumption—changing light bulbs, inflating tires, driving half as much—and had nothing to do with shifting power away from corporations, or stopping the growth economy that is destroying the planet? Even if every person in the United States did everything the movie suggested, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by only 22 percent. Scientific consensus is that emissions must be reduced by at least 75 percent worldwide."

"Or let’s talk water. We so often hear that the world is running out of water. People are dying from lack of water. Rivers are dewatered from lack of water. Because of this we need to take shorter showers. See the disconnect? Because I take showers, I’m responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans. Collectively, municipal golf courses use as much water as municipal human beings. People (both human people and fish people) aren’t dying because the world is running out of water. They’re dying because the water is being stolen.

Continues at linked sentence above."

Socialist Oasis Survives in Capitalist Russia?!

Here is a story on a socialist village oasis in the midst of now capitalist Russia. Interesting.

Chomsky on the Limits of Acceptable Debate

I have been pretty swamped with life lately. I have go about 10-15 posts unfinished posts of my own actual thoughts, writing and ranting, but I can't seem to finish them to my satisfaction. So I will just post this quote by Chomsky that I came across on a list-serv. This pretty well sums up political debate in America today, yesterday, and probably unfortunately tommorow.

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum -- even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate" [Noam Chomsky].

Is the Right Out Organizing the Left on Healthcare?

Is the Right out organizing the Left on health care reform? I am afraid so. There has been a little noise lately about how this "tea bagger" movement is putting on demonstrations to shout down any kind of health care reform discussion at "townhall meetings", even the corporate insurance sponsored kind most of us here don't want. The links within this message are from John Amato of the soft-left liberal blog Crooks and Liars. Within those blog posts are embedded videos of these tea-baggers in action, shouting down members of Congress.

In one of the videos Rachel Maddow dismisses these protests as simply being orchestrated by right-wing think tanks and lobbying firms; aided and abetted by talk radio and Fox News. But it really doesn't matter, they are mobilizing people against health care reform. Some may say that that is just fine if they derail the Democrat's corporate welfare health care plan. Maybe it is to a certain extent. However, as far as the right-wing tea-bag protesters are concerned the details are inconsequential, they already think they are protesting against "socialized medicine" or the single-payer plan.

Carrol Cox opined on some thread here on this list that single-payer won't be won until people are in the street demanding it. He's probably right. But shouldn't we also be at these "townhall meetings" exposing the bullshit of the dominant Democratic plan and demanding a single-payer plan be put back on the table? Are we really going to let these right-wing idiots who don't even know what the hell they are fighting against out organize us?

I would like to hear lbo-sters opinion on this.

(The above is a post I wrote for Doug Henwood's Left Business Observer email-list, just so the reader understands the context of the message).

A Great Working Class American Classic Film, Salt of the Earth!

So many real world working class American issues packed into only the first 10 minutes of the great radical film Salt of the Earth! Lets list them: Accumulation by dispossession, internal colonialism, western expansion, sexual division of labor, childbirth, racism and child hood fights, work place safety, organized labor and the UNION!, debt. Salt of the Earth is a great film made by people blacklisted from Hollywood by McArthyism in the 1950s. Check it out! Availble in full from Netflix or in pieces on Youtube.

We Are Still at War! Shout Out to This is Where We Take Our Stand

Let's not forget, although the nightmare of George Bush actually inhabiting the White House is over, we are still left with his active legacy of U.S. troops fighting wars overseas. If there is any hope left of something half-assed progressive actually coming out of the Obama administration it will still be spoiled with his legacy of escalation in Afghanistan. Now is the time to rev-up the anti-war movement, and not get complacent with Obama in the White House. Thankfully, the IVAW is still on the job. So here is a shout out to This is Where we Take Our Stand!

For Those Who Would Judge Me 7/17 from Displaced Films on Vimeo.

Penalty for Being Poor: Guatemalan Woman Deported and Her Children Stolen

Stories like this really piss me off! File this one under "Why I don't love America". So the woman probably doesn't have the resources to get the proper care for her children, so they take her children and deport her? What a shitty country and a shitty system!

The Weak Voice of the Communist Party USA

Update below.

Come on now! Is this the best Peoples' Weekly World can do? (Organ of the so-called Communist Party USA.)

“Members of the United Steelworkers (USW) and their families are appreciative of efforts by the U.S. House leadership to fix our broken health care system by introducing ‘America’s Affordable Health Choices Act’ (HR 3200). The legislation meets President Obama’s goals to control runaway health care costs, offering all Americans real choices for expanded access to quality health care. .............."

Granted Peoples' Weekly is only posting a statement from a union official, but why no added commentary that criticizes the centrist Obama and Democrats in their compromising betrayal? They rolled out the red carpet and offered the for profit insurance corporations a "seat at the table" while taking single-payer "off the table". Senator Bernie Sanders and Congressman Dennis Kucinich are stilling speaking up and fighting for a single-payer plan, so why isn't the Communist Party USA? Seriously, socialists should be calling for a complete expropriation of private health insurance corporate assets, justified by the massive fraud and theft they have committed on the American people and at the expense of their health!

Pathetic!

Update, one day later:

I should clarify that the above quoted statement posted by the Peoples' Weekly World is from a Leo Gerard of the United Steel Workers union. It is true that the whole statement fails to mention the fight for a single-payer system, nor does the Peoples' Weekly, which is the main target of my criticism. As it turns out, Leo Gerard, in an interview with the Real News, argues that even if the political winds in congress are tilting against a single-payer plan, the left still must argue for it in principle. Posted below is the Real News interview with Leo, which is quite good. I think my criticism of Peoples' Weekly and the CP-USA still stands. And that is that they are failing to be a critical left voice either within of outside of the Democratic Party coalition.

No, You Give Me A Break!

Now this is just the most silly argument from John Stossel for whatever kind of health care reform, no matter how shitty.

"That's what health insurance does to medical care. Patients rarely even ask what anything costs. Doctors often don't know. Often nobody even gives a damn. Patients rarely ask, "Is that MRI really necessary? Is there a cheaper place?" We consume without thinking. By contrast, in areas of medicine where most patients pay their own way, service gets better, while prices fall.

Why not just have a free market where people can buy whatever kind of health insurance they want? Competition would then bring prices down."

No, people are not going to consume as much health insurance as they can. And no, competition is not going to magically lower prices. But cutting out the executive salaries and stock dividends that go to for-profit insurance company investors would. And generally people don't sit around and say, "Hey, I feel fine, but I think I will go get poked and prodded by a doctor and nurse, because hey, what the heck it free."

I am sure for a well paid free-market ideologue propagandist like Stossel he actually believes that it is a simple matter to go out and buy the health insurance ones needs. This is far outside of the reality of most working Americans. Their reality is that if they don't get insurance through a group plan from their employers, then they can't afford it period. They can't even come close to affording it. I know, I did shop around for it before I had my present job, and I could only afford to pay for my son, leaving myself uninsured.

It is easy to make these delusional "free-market" arguments from one's perch in the elite corporate media. But it just doesn't fly here in working-class America!

Another Excellent Article Arguing for Single Payer

I am rather lazy this weekend (I have Monday off), and so I am just going to introduce another great article on health care reform and an argument for single-payer. This from the web-magazine Swans, American Sick Care Vs. Wellnes by Gilles d'Aymery

And just a couple of my favorite exerpts:

"A recent study shows that the country is wasting about $700 billion, or about 30 percent of all sick care costs, in unnecessary procedures created by fee-for-service specialists who not only are paid to provide the services, but create the services in the first place. Not surprisingly, these specialists are by-and-large members of the American Medical Association, which has come out against any kind of public-financing system.

They, and the paid-for ideological whores in the commentariat, wail against public financing and finger out Canada as the evil incarnate lurching to bring socialism to our beloved freedom-loving country."

"Perhaps the biggest hogwash of all that needs to be swiftly dispelled is the argument made by the opponents of a single-payer system that it would significantly increase taxes. How people can repeat this humbug with a straight face is beyond comprehension. If you are self-employed and buy your own insurance or you get your insurance through your employer, premiums are paid to the for-profit insurance companies. With a single payer-system these premiums -- while about 30 percent lower -- would be paid to, say Medicare. They are not taxes, even if collected through Payroll. They are premiums -- with lower or no deductibles and co-pays, and much cheaper prescription drugs."

Read the piece in its entirety at: http://www.swans.com/library/art15/ga270.html

Several Good Articles and Blog Posts on Health Care Reform

Here are some links and exerpts from several good blog posts and articles I have read on the inter-tubes about health care reform (or not).

Here is a link to a video and partial transcript of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) being interviewed by CNN's Wolf Blitzer at the Crooks and Liars web site. Problably only Bernie out of all the 100 senators has the cajones to say what needs to be said. Sanders is defending single payer, here are some good money shots:

Sanders: United Health Insurance. A couple of years ago the head of that company was a guy named William McGuire. He received $1.6 billion in stock options. Now, do you think that's a cost effective way of putting money into health care? We don't have enough primary health care doctors -- one guy has $1.6 billion.

SANDERS: All that we're changing -- we're not telling people they should go to a different doctor. We're not telling people they don't have a free choice --

BLITZER: But you're telling them they should go to a different health insurance company.

SANDERS: Do you think people are saying, Oh, my God. I want a freedom of choice of hundreds of health insurance companies? That's not what they're saying. They're saying, I want to go to the doctor that I want to go to. I want to go to the hospital --

First, Sanders draws attention to something that is rarely addressed in mainstream discourse, and that is the fact that for-profit insurance companies are parasitic on the system. You and your employer pay your insurance premium, part of which is paid out not for health services, but to stock dividends and corporate executive salaries. Also, notice how Blitzer simply adopts the anti-reform framing of confusing choice of insurance companys and choice of doctors. Sanders rightly clears up this obfuscation in arguing that a single-payer system would still allow people a choice of doctors.

Next article is from the web site Dissident Voice and Kevin Zeese. Here is the introduction:

"Thursday, as Senator Tom Harkin (D-IO) left the health care hearing room he leaned over to me and said:

I used to sell insurance. The basic rule is the larger the pool the less expensive the health care. Today we have 1,300 separate pools – separate health care plans – and that is why health care is so expensive; 700 pools would be more efficient and less expensive and one pool would be the least expensive. That’s why single payer is the answer.

Nothing like common sense."

Finally, I picked up this link from Louis Proyect on the Marxmail list to a Pappadablogger, who spills the beans on how so many prominent Democrats are in the monied pockets of the health for profit industry, either through campaign contributions, personal ties, or as actual share holders. Here is a small excerpt:

"A key House committee member, Rep. Jane Harman from California, is not only married to one of the richest men in the country, she personally has – are you still sitting down? – Congresswoman Harman personally owns $3.2 million of healthcare industry corporate investments.

In fact, the 11 key members of the House and Senate have a total of $27 million in healthcare corporate investments. And they will write the bill? Are you feeling sick yet?"

Yep!

Leo Panitch on The Relevancy of Marx, Climate Change and the Need for Financial and Industrial Planning

Leo Panitch has been the editor of an excellent series of yearly edited volumes known as the Socialist Register, each organized around a particular theme.

Recently, Leo Panitch was asked to author an article for Foreign Policy magazine on the relevancy of Marx to understanding modern capitalism. This was the event that led the Real News to interview Leo. I have embedded Part II below, but you can find Part I on You Tube.

In summary of Part II, Panitch discusses the financial-economic crisis, the collapse of Detroit's auto industry, and the problems of addressing climate change under capitalism.

Panitch points out that the "cap and trade" schemes currently being devised are a lot like the complex financial products of derivatives, mortgage securities, and credit default swaps that played a role in the speculative housing bubble that lead us into the current financial crisis. And of course there is the more obvious problem that these schemes only create incentives for industries to voluntarily reduce carbon dioxide emissions it it is profitable. They don't directly create policies that drastically cut emissions, which is really what is needed.

This is basically all that the present liberal wing of the ruling class establishment has to offer. Basically they are afraid to consider the more rational alternatives like economic planning. Instead of massive bank bail-outs, Panitch argues that a socialist response would be the nationalization of the banking and auto industries to be run as a public utilities. With those financial and industrial assets in hand they could be directed towards re-orientating production into green technologies.

Panitch points out that the collapse of the auto industry is a great loss of human skill and know-how. There is no reason that those people could be put back to work building solar panels.

Another key point of the interview is that Marx was not in the business of giving advice to capitalist states. He was under no illusion that those who control the state and economic institutions of capitalism would implement rational solutions to problems if it was contrary to their class interests. As always, what is needed is a working-class movement from below.

Sometimes Capitalists Can Be Such Fucking Pricks!

Somewhere in Capital, Marx is famous for arguing that the evils of capitalism are not due to some inherent moral depravity of the owners of the means of production. Instead the dehumanizing conditions of workers are the result of capitalists responding to the structural imperatives of the system. They must make decisions with the goal of maximizing profits, and the interests and well-being of working people are a casualty of this drive to maximize profits.

However, sometimes in an effort to protect their assets and interests, capitalists can stoop to new lows in callousness and disregard for the workers they employ. Here is an example from the BBC web site, "Spain to Punish Barbaric Bakery"

...The statement comes amid shock over the case of a Bolivian worker whose arm was cut off in an accident at work. Bosses at the bakery in Valencia are accused of dumping him 100m (330 feet) from the hospital entrance and throwing the severed limb in a rubbish bin.

A Spanish trade union has lodged a complaint against the bakery. The union - the Workers Commissions (CCOO) - claims that in the early hours of 28 May, the arm of Franns Rilles was severed in a kneading machine while he was working. It was allegedly dumped in a rubbish bin and only discovered by police the following day, by which time it was too late to reattach it.

Investigation

Mr Rilles was allegedly warned by the son of the bakery owner not to tell doctors where his accident had taken place, and was left a distance of some 100m from the hospital entrance, while bleeding heavily. Mr Rilles, 33, worked 12-hour days at the bakery, earning 23 euros a day (£20; $32) under no contract, for about a year and a half, the union says.

He is recovering in hospital, reported Spanish news agency Efe. Police are investigating allegations of mistreatment. The case has made national headlines, and on Thursday Work and Immigration Minister Celestino Corbacho vowed that "the weight of the law" would come down on the bakery if the allegations are substantiated. Mr Corbacho said abusive practices were on the rise as workers' vulnerability jobs increased amid the economic downturn.The bakery has reportedly been shut down and two bosses detained.

Chomsky, An Honest Equal Opportunity Criticizer

I happpened upon this recent interview with Chomsky. Of course righty-idiots assume that Chomsky is so obsessed with hating America that he rarely could ever spare a breath to criticize other countries, like those "socialist" bastards (actually capitalism with a safety net) over in France and and Sweden. But that is just not so.

"And in Europe, there are severe restrictions on what you can write. If a book or article is published in England, it has to be vetted by lawyers to make sure that no problem is posed by England's utterly disgraceful libel laws, which are a severe infringement of freedom of speech. France is much worse. French intellectuals hardly even have a concept of freedom of speech, and material is often banned. I know of a case in Sweden where a book was withdrawn by the one major left publisher because it challenged doctrines of fundamentalist religion among European intellectuals about their nobility in bombing Serbia."

To Fight For the Middle Class Or the Working Class?

The other day I was watching progressive talk show host Thom Hartmann on the "Real News"I generally like Hartmann (unless he brings up atheism, but that is another story), and regard him as a well meaning, left-leaning, reformist, progressive Democrat. He is certainly no radical. But if the majority of elected Democratic Party officials had his politics, it might be worth a shit.

Anyway, Hartmann's most recent book is titled: Screwed, The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class and What We Can Do About It. Which raises an issue that annoys the hell out of me about mainstream Democratic political discourse. The term "middle class" is often emphasized, as in a Democrat politician promising to "fight for America's middle-class".

The fact is that the nature of this phrase is one of exclusion. It excludes that sector of the population whose income is lower than what is required to be "middle-class". Think about it a second. To have "a middle-class" one must have a "lower-class". To emphasize the rhetoric of "fighting for the middle class" suggests that one is content to have a "lower-class", and to not "fight for them".

Yes,the term "middle-class" does reflect an aspect of social reality in the distribution of income in the United States. There is a sector of the working-class that has higher income and health benefits than the lower income sector of the working class, and the "working-poor". And the issue isn't necessarily one between white vs. blue collar or professional vs. skilled trades occupations. Within either of those categories one can be part of the "middle-class". At least that used to be true.

In a story I heard on public radio this past weekend about how the economic crisis is hurting both the "middle-class" and the "lower-class" or "working poor" , a sociologist defined the "middle-class" as those who have a stable job, health and other benefits, a pension plan, and sufficient income to buy a home and possibly save for their children's education.

So why shouldn't employment, health care, adequate housing, an old-age pension, and education be extended to all people in this wealthy country? Come on Democrats, why just fight for the "middle-class" in America?

The term "middle-class" is a phrase that reinforces the mystification of social-relations in this country and under capitalism. The term relies on gradations of income, thus blurring distinctions between classes. As a linguistic device it appeals to peoples' sense of hierarchy, giving them comfort in identifying their position as above the so-called "lower-class" rif-raf below them. It intentionally is meant to avoid a more dreaded and dangerous term socio-economic classification, that of the "working class".

On the other hand, the phrase "working-class", through a Marxist perspective, sharpens and clarifies the social relations of capitalism. To survive, to bring in an income, does one sell their labor-power to a business owner or corporation? Must one work for a wage? If yes, then that person is a member of the working-class.

One may work in cubicle, dress in a white shirt and tie, type away at a computer, doing a job that requires a college education. One may have a decent home, a car, a plasma screen television, and make 40 to 70 grand or more a year. If one must sell their labor, then one is of the working class. Just as the the maid, janitor, or factory worker, who may make considerably less.

And for the relatively well paid sector of the working class, they should never forget, that the material benefits of being "middle-class" can be taken all away, as is happening now with the massive job losses and foreclosures. And this it is not just a phenomena of the recession. The employing class continually pushes to impose lower wages, offer fewer benefits, and cajole workers for more hours of work. In fact for the professional sectors of the working class, such as those in lower level management positions, the expectation of working more many more hours beyond the normal 40 for a salaried position is the norm. And although the "middle-class" of the working-class may enjoy more materially, they still often don't escape the experience of alienation that comes with production for profit.

So the term "middle-class" helps to undermine the potential solidarity of the working class. It tacitly accepts that some people will be left in the lower class, despite societies' material capacity to eliminate the conditions that people of the "lower-class" must endure.

Ironically, this acceptance of this two tiered division of the working class is also a betrayal of some of the professed values of American capitalism, such as equal opportunity, and hard work. Of course the working poor work hard, yet so many are denied the conditions of health care, adequate housing, equal opportunities to education and personal development.

So why? Why do allegedly left-leaning Democrats accept and perpetuate these terms? I would argue its because they truly lack any solid political principles to stand on, and thus are only committed to serving any constituents that can assist them in getting elected, and even then they are still willing to stab them in the back.

Sotamayor, Not So Empathetic After All, Sticks to the Letter of Bourgeios Law

As is well known, President Obama has said that one of the qualities, among many, he would like in his supreme court nominees is that of "empathy". And of course the mainstream idiot-right that so dominates American political discourse seized upon this one word to criticize Obama and his nominee Sotamayor. They have of course also seized upon the words of a speech by Sotamayor, saying that the "rich experiences of a wise Latina woman" might lead a judge to make better decisions than a white-male judge. Never mind that much of the noise by the idiot-right is without substance.

On the other hand, their has been some substantive talk about Sotomayor and her judicial record. Republican Senator John Kyle would at least seem to be a little more reasonable, but of course within the boundaries of Bourgeois Democracy. From CBS News:

Kyl on the other hand said she will definitely have to assure members
of the Judiciary Committee that she will live by the oath of the Supreme Court.

The Republican Senator took out a piece of paper and read the oath which reads, "'I will administer justice without respect to persons and do equal right to the poor and to the rich.'"

Kyl said that oath means that she will have "not bring in her empathy for the poor person, for example. If the law is on the side of the rich person, then she has to rule
in favor of the rich person. If she will do that, then I think she'll have no trouble in her confirmation hearing."

I don't think law makers such as Kyle, whether Democrats or Republicans, who make laws that favor the rich and corporate interests in the first place have anything to worry about.

Former attorney and famous Salon.com blogger Glen Greenwald has written about the idiot-right's silly noise about the Sotomayor nomination, and he has also brought to light facts about Sotomayor's actual judicial record. I highly recommend these articles.

As it so happens, Greenwald was actually the attorney for a plaintiff that lost a race and age discrimination lawsuit against a hospital. I have copied and pasted the parts I want to emphasize here below, and I snipped a bunch, so do read the original if interested.

Thursday May 28, 2009 07:29 EDT A Revealing Anecdote About Sonia Sotomayor

(snipped intro)

My writing about this issue from the start has not been based on my
view that Sotomayor is the best choice for the Court. There is still too
much unknown about her to reach a conclusion in that regard (though see this
encouraging snippet of her at Oral Argument in a critical case). My
interest has been due to the fact that the smears against her were both totally
unrecognizable, driven by very ugly sentiments and enabled by reckless
"reporting" methods. Along those lines, I want to recount the facts behind
a case I had before Judge Sotomayor because it helps to demonstrate just how
false and baseless are the attacks thus far against her:

That case, Norville v. Staten Island University Hospital, involved one
of the most sympathetic plaintiffs I had in my legal career. The
plaintiff, Wendy Norville, was a black woman who grew up in poverty in the
Caribbean, moved to the U.S., and put herself through nursing school while
working as a maid and raising her children as a single mother. After
graduating at the age of 44, she went to work at SIU hospital as an R.N. in the
neurology unit, where, for the next 12 years, she compiled an exemplary record
of uniformly excellent performance reviews.

During her 13th year as an R.N., while working in the neurology
unit, a very tall male patient had a seizure while lying on a table.
Norville attempted to restrain the patient to prevent him from injuring himself
or falling on the floor, and when doing so, she sustained a very severe back
injury. She was unable to work for a full year, but after extensive
rehabilitation, she told the hospital she wanted to return to work, but her
back injury imposed some mild physical restrictions -- such as limitations on
her ability to lift heavy objects -- and she requested that they find a nursing
position for her where heavy lifting was not required.

The hospital claimed that the only positions they could offer her
were ones that were part-time or would require her to lose all of her union
seniority and benefits, and after a couple of months of pretending to search
more, the hospital notified her that there were no comparable positions for her
and they thus fired her. Because she was 56 years old and disabled by
then, she was unable to get hired by another hospital. So after working
for 12 years as an R.N., she was left fired and unemployed -- all because of an
injury she sustained on the job, while helping a patient. She then
sued the hospital (which was large and fully insured) for failing to
accommodate her disability under the ADA and for race and age
discrimination (they had accommodated white nurses far more injured than
she and also rejected her for the one open nursing position in favor of a much
younger nurse).

If ever there was a case where one's "emotions" for "the
downtrodden, the powerless and the voiceless" would be strong, it was this
one. This was a poor, black and highly admirable woman who -- through
no fault of her own -- was left jobless and impoverished at the age of 56, suing
a large and fully insured corporation. And her case was not only
emotionally compelling, but legally strong as well: the federal judge
presiding over the case from the start refused to dismiss any of her claims at
the close of discovery, holding that there was ample evidence to support all of
her claims and to enable a jury to decide in her favor.

Right before her trial was to begin, that judge got caught up in a
massive criminal trial, and as a result, a federal judge from Louisiana was
shipped to New York to preside over the trial. This visiting judge hated
the case and the plaintiff from the start. At trial, he excluded most of
her best evidence showing discrimination, then dismissed her race and age
discrimination claims before they even got to the jury, and then -- on her sole
remaining claim for violations of the ADA -- gave the jury patently
unfavorable and inaccurate instructions about the law that caused the jury to
decide against her.

That was the state of the case as it was appealed to a three-judge
panel of the Second Circuit. Judge Sotomayor was by far the most active
questioner at Oral Argument and it was she who wrote the opinion for the unanimous appellate court. Without a trace of sympathy or even interest in the plight of the plaintiff, Sotomayor methodically recounted the evidence of discrimination and, in as cold and legalistic a manner as possible, concluded that Norville "produced insufficient evidence at trial to show that the hospital"
discriminated against her. She thus affirmed the trial judge's
dismissal of Norville's claims of race and age discrimination.

So there you have it, evidence that Sotomayor isn't that empathetic at all. "In a cold and legalistic manner" she sided with the wealthy owners of the hospital and insurance companies. And that is how the system is set up, defend the interests of the wealthy, and dispose of people no longer useful to the profits-first capitalist system.

Shrill Alarmism From Morris, Forgets Who U.S. Allies Are

Why does anybody take this Dick Morris clown seriously? Just listen to the first few seconds of this video where Dick (very appropriate name) Morris just simply "forgets" well known obvious facts. He complains that:

"....he (Obama) is visiting Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but not visiting our one ally in the region, Israel."

Saudi Arabia and Egypt are not U.S. allies? Morris knows of course that they are, but he just says this kind of stuff for the ideological consumption of Fox News watchers. These people will say anything to criticize Obama, but never anything of substance. They are like adolescents mocking and dissing their peers on any straw that they can grasp.

More Children Being Murdered, Anti-Abortion Zealots Continue Not to Notice

A couple of week ago I posted on the fact that many children die of hunger and malnutrition, and anti-abortion zealots hardly seem to notice.

It was recently brought to my attention that there is another active killer of children. Left I on the News fills us in:

"One by one, the killer claims victims. The latest, a 12-month-old infant named Muhammad Rami Ibrahim Nofal. Just last week, another 1-year-old named Odai Samir Abu Azzoum and 10-year-old Ribhi Jindiyeh. The majority of victims of this serial killer have been children. Remarkably, though, virtually none of these murders have even been reported in the Western media. Much less has there been
an outcry to do something about the killer, even though the identity and location of the killer is well-known.

Of course this killer is Israel, but, sad to say, there plenty of accomplices. Active accomplices like the U.S., E.U., and Egypt, who actively help to promote and enforce the blockade which claimed these victims - the 337 Palestinians who have died because they were refused or delayed entry into Israel where they could have obtained medicine or medical care unavailable in Gaza - and many more - the unknown number who have died in Gaza, the victim of "natural" causes which were anything but natural.

Why do I call this murder? I don't know what the law states, but if someone is poisoned and you hold the antidote in your hand and refuse to give it to them, surely you're as much of a murderer as the person who administered the poison. It's not a perfect analogy, since the "poisoner" in at least some of these examples is actually genetics, although in others, it's even worse, since it may well be that the one with the antidote is also the "poisoner," that is, that Palestinians in Gaza are developing deadly medical conditions which never would have occurred in the first place had they been living under less squalid conditions. Continues.... "

Al Jazeera English has a specific story on how the Israeli blockade of Gaza caused the death of a two year old by denying him medical care in a timely manner. It should be noted that Israeli doctors wanted to treat him.

Like I had wondered before, why are there no demands by these so-called "pro-life" people to demand radical action to end this horrible oppression? Is it because only some babies are worthy of concern? Or that only in gestation babies are worth saving because it gives these zealots a moralistic finger to wag at "loose" women? Hmmmm?

Felicitaciones El Salvador! Una Pequena Victoria, y Los Venceran Mas Ojala!

Today when I went out to get a bite to eat I picked up the Spanish language newspaper La Voz Arizona. Eventually I made my way to a column by the Univision news personality Maria Elena Salinas, who was noting the end of an era in El Salvador. The end of Antonio Saca's presidency and the 2o year rule of his right-wing ARENA party, and most importantly the beginnings of the presidency of Mauricio Funes of the FMLN (Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional). Maria Elena Salinas writes:

"El difunto fundador del derechista partido Alianza Republicana
Nacionalista, Roberto D'Aubuisson, se ha de estar revolcando en su tumba."
(Translation: The dead founder of the ARENA party, Roberto D'Aubuisson, is
rolling in his grave)

Good, I hope he never rests in peace another day! Roberto D'Aubuisson was a member of El Salvador' oligarchy and probably a leader of El Salvador's death squads.

Although the FMLN has won the presidency, it looks as though they will have an uphill battle to make any sweeping changes, at least until they can win more seats in the National Assembly. An article at MRZine by Jay Hartling outlines the challenges.

On Monday, June 1, 2009, El Salvador will turn a new page in its history with the inauguration of the country's first left government, joining the ranks of the majority of Latin America. Representing the FMLN (Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional), Mauricio Funes and Salvador Sanchez Ceren, president and vice-president elect, will face a national assembly where the FMLN is
outnumbered by more than 2:1. Out of a total of 84 seats, the FMLN has only 35. This will make broad sweeping changes difficult, though not impossible, and may force Funes to use the power of the presidential veto as a bargaining chip. It is important that those of us observing from a distance understand the complicated environment within which the new government will be operating.

The new government represents a coalition of interests including the FMLN, its national grassroots system of committees, and a broad cross-section of civil society. As June 1 approaches, more and more information is coming to light that despite the glowing picture painted by the outgoing right-wing ARENA party, the country is bankrupt -- the result of twenty years of failed economic andsocial policies and rampant corruption by ARENA and its allies the PDC and PCN. It is likely that the new government will discover the depth of the corruption and mismanagement after it assumes office.

To further complicate matters, the outgoing ARENA government has been very busy over the last few weeks passing a number of laws and renewing contracts for ARENA's allies and supporters to ensure its continued control of the economy. The FMLN won on a platform of priorities created by the people of El Salvador -- through a lengthy, inclusive, and thorough popular consultation process. The priorities expressed by the people are access to adequate food, medicine/healthcare, jobs, affordable energy, and security. The Funes-Sanchez Ceren government will have to be creative in its approach to solving some of El Salvador's many problems, most of which have been exacerbated over the last twenty years. Continues.....

On a personal note. My first political involvement was with the Central American solidarity movement in the 1980s. In those days I was relatively well informed about the history and then present situation in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and I followed the situation closely. Through those activities I traveled to Nicaragua where I built houses for campesinos for four months. In the states I became friends with a Salvadoran refugee whose family was murdered by death squads. In short the events in Central America took on a personal dimension. They were not just poor people in some distant space on the globe. I actually came to know those people as real live human beings.

The situation of these countries educated in so many ways about the nature of revolutions, class, imperialism etc.. The Nicaraguan revolution captured my imagination, and I was hoping for a guerilla victory in El Salvador. Of course history proved to be much more complicated, the Sandinista's lost the 1990 Nicaraguan elections, and the FMLN wasn't able to sieze power. And now, as we look at recent developments in all of Latin America, the horizon is looking brighter for peoples' movements of the left.

So, Buenas Suerte El Salvador, I wish you peace and social justice and a better future. History knows that you have suffered enough for it.

A Doctor who Performed Abortions and was Singled Out by Bill O'Reilly was Murdered Today

A hat-tip to the Daily Doubter blog where I first picked this up. Wichita Kansas doctor George Tiller was murdered at his church today. First news outlet provided by Google news with this story is CNN.

Of further significance is that this doctor had often been singled out by Bill O'Reilly on both his television and radio show. The Daily Doubter has commentary and links to other blog sources documenting and discussing this.

Of course there is no way to directly link what right-wing commentators say with the violent actions of those who decide to take those actions. However, they are indirectly responsible for creating a political climate that encourages actions through their rhetoric.

To the American Working Class (or Sheeple?), Time to Fight Back!

This is an excellent article from the Counterpunch website on the recent history of American working people rolling-over as their employer's cut into their wages, benefits and pensions; and he contrasts that with the behaviour of the French people when faced with similar adversity.

Have We Turned Into Sheep? By DAVID MACARAY

Here are some key quotes:

"Although people joke about France’s laid back, c’est la vie attitude,
let’s give French workers credit for knowing how to respond to an outrage.
When corporations try to tell French workers they’re going to slash their health
care benefits or mess with their pensions, the workers behave the way people
should behave when the wealthy and powerful try to snow them. They go
totally ape-shit."........

"While there are no simple answers, one thing is clear. We’re making
it way too easy for these people. Without resistance, nothing’s going to
change. Without resistance, corporations, politicians and, yes, union
leadership will continue to pacify us with promises and excuses."

A Militant and Inspiring Song from Len Chandler (with Pete Seeger)

Wow! What a militant and inspiring song this is from Len Chandler.

I had never heard of Len Chandler before I saw the film "FTA" (Free/Fuck the Army), about Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland and other entertainer's Vietnam era anti-war show for GIs. Its a good film, available on Netflix, released into theatres for a week in the early 1970s and then buried, and Louis Proyect reviews it here along with the classic documentary about Vietnam, "Hearts and Minds".

Anyway, within "FTA" is Len Chandler singing another great song, "My Ass is Mine" which I take to be a play on an army officer's phrase "your ass is mine". I have looked for a You Tube clip of that part of "FTA", and haven't found one. (FYI, the You Tube clip of Rita Martinson that I posted for Memorial Day also from the file "FTA".) Whatever happened to these great resistance artists?

Anyway, here are some of the lyrics from Len Chandler singing "Move on Over (John Brown's Body)" Enjoy the video below.

"Your jails are filled with black men, and your courts are white with hate,
And with every bid for freedom, someone whispers to us "wait".................,
Move on over, or we will move on over you............
It is you who are subversive, you are the killers of the dream......
In a savage world of bandits, it is you who are extreme........"

Thanks Business Week for Clarifying Some Things

Its been a little grating on the nerves of socialists to hear all these righty-idiots blabbering about Obama and the Democrats enacting a socialist agenda. Finally, we can thank a publication of the bourgeois press for clarifying some things, and letting genuine socialists speak for themselves. Business Week published an article titled "Socialism? Hardly Say Socialists" with interviews with representatives of the Socialist Party U.S.A., International Socialist Organization (ISO), and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), about what a socialist politics and program would actually look like. Here are some choice quotes:

The DSA works within the Democrat Party, by the way, which is what Business Week means by "more inclusive", and doesn't consider itself a party as misrepresented in the article.

"But even to the more inclusive DSA, Obama is no socialist. "The discussion
of socialism that has appeared in the media is surreal," says Llewellyn. "Nobody
in their right mind would think Obama is a socialist if they knew anything
about the meaning of the word. Obama is acting as Roosevelt did, trying to
save capitalism from itself."

The ISO is a bit more radical:

"Sherry Wolf, an activist with the Chicago-based U.S. branch of the
International Socialist Organization (ISO), scoffs at the idea that the U.S. is
at the dawn of a socialist era. "What Marxists mean by socialism is different
from what Rush Limbaugh means," she says. "We believe the class that produces
the wealth should own and control that wealth. That's a far cry from what's
happening now. The state is propping up banks, mortgage, and insurance
companies, while the lives of working people are torn apart by foreclosures,
evictions, and unemployment. It's an effort to save global capitalism from its
own excesses."

Wolf's group sees itself as "revolutionary," meaning it advocates not
incremental changes but rather a "total transformation of society and political
economy."

Finally there is the Socialist Party USA, which is kind of a nostalgic organization for the great World War I era socialist Eugene Debs. (the picture at right is Socialist Party campaign material from 1912, Debs is on the left). Their representative Billy Wharton was quoted as saying:

"You see [Obama] operating as a hedge fund Democrat on health care now,"
Wharton says. "He blocked advocates of a single-payer system from presenting
their case to the Senate Finance Committee."

So there. Finally genuine socialists have gotten a chance to break through the mainstream media silence barrier to actually give their perspective. Although on one level irritating, perhaps the right's false accusations of Obama and his party as socialists has done us genuine socialists a favor. Now the word is on the tongue of many more people, and they might endulge in some curiosity and further research into future socialist possibilities. And the time is right with capitalism entering such a profound crisis. I never thought I would be thinking "Thank you Sean Hannity". I hope he lives to see and regret what he may have done, perhaps opening up a socialist Pandora's box.

"Food Inc.", Another Item in Why Capitalism Sucks

Well here is another quick post and embedded YouTube trailer on a film that looks like it will be very informative, but of course never quite radical enough. I still can't wait to see it, but it probably won't be coming to a theatre near me, as I don't live in the big city with any theatres showing any alternatives to big Hollywood bullshit. But hopefully it will put another chink in the armour of obscurantist illusions about the insane system of profits above people and nature that is capitalism. Louis Proyect over at the Unrepentant Marxist has seen the entire film and has a review, and some excellent commentary.

On a personal note I have lately become more aware the consequences of capitalist factory farming from both an ecological and a healthy diet perspective. Thanks in part to the author Michael Pollan who is a featured commentator in the film. Despite that fact, it is nearly impossible, or at least very expensive and difficult to escape from the system of factory farming produced and overly processed foods. The solution is not simply for us to vote as consumers by shopping at Whole Foods or some other overpriced yuppie-hippy grocery store. Instead, to solve these human and ecological problems requires systemic transformations.

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On Republicans Attempting to Re-brand the Democrats as Socialists

Well everybody has heard about the Republicans attempting to brand the Democrats as the "Democratic Socialist Party" or some such silly thing like that. If you haven't here is the link to a YouTube video, but I am not going to clutter up my pretty blog and embed it here, so just click on the link. These guys are just going loopy!

Here is what I had to say in the comments:

First of all, there are already genuine socialist parties like The Socialist Party. This is just bull shit. It was the banks and the auto industry that came begging for bailouts, not a hostile expropriation from the Obama administration! Oh how I wish it had been otherwise though as a genuine socialist!

So how about rebranding Republicans as:

The Republican Greedy White Man (with a few Uncle Toms) Party?

Or how about the Republican Capitalist Pig Party?

Or maybe the War, Torture, and Exploitation Party.

Or maybe just Republican Idiots Party.

Then another commenter said this:

"The GOP are the Party of the Wealthy, the Corporations, and people that don't know any better."

That about says it all. I will have to get back to the subject of the accurate branding of the Democrats as the party of false progressive hope. Another day.

Macro and Micro Levels of Socialist Transformation

In an article at MRZine titled Capitalist Crisis, Socialist Renewal Rick Wolff argues that now the time is right to develop a new socialist program. As part of that new program is a critique of prior socialist projects such as the Soviet Union and China, and their degeneration.

The framework for Wolff's critique of the 20th century's socialist projects is to look at them from the perspective of macro and micro levels of socialist organization. So in contrast to capitalism with its private ownership of the means of production and the anarchy of the market, at the macro level the socialist project focused on the social ownership of productive property and national economic planning. However, at the micro level, within factories and productive enterprises there was no qualitative differentiation between capitalism and socialism.

"Thus, when and where socialists became politically dominant, the basic internal structures of enterprises were not fundamentally altered. Laborers still finished their work days and departed, leaving behind their labors' fruits and leaving to others -- boards of directors -- the decisions about what to produce, how, and where, and what to do with the surpluses/profits. True, socialists emphasized state regulation of those boards' decisions or sometimes replaced private corporate boards of directors with state officials. However, the basic structures connecting workers to enterprise decision-makers remained, where socialists shaped them, markedly like their counterparts under capitalism."

Another way to say this is that at the micro level, the actual "relations of production" were not tranformed despite socialist ownership relations. And this of course has political consequences and dimensions as well, for if actual workers are not in control of their workplaces, then they could hardly be able to exercise real political control at the national level.

Although not mentioned by Wolff, we have seen more in experiments in actual workers control recently in Venezuela as part of the Bolivarian revolution and in Argentina as portrayed in the film The Take , and recently covered further on Democracy Now!

In watching the The Take however, one is struck with the sense that the factory expropriation and worker control movement could go so much further with a national macro level political movement. Regardless, lets hope we are entering a historical period where we can start putting together the pieces of a wholistic macro-micro socialist project. Enjoy the trailor for The Take.

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Memorial Day II, Rita Martinson from the Vietnam Era FTA Tour

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Memorial Day I, Remembering What War Does to Families

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Summer Study Projects: Marx's Capital and David Harvey's Limits To Capital

Recently I became aware of the online course Reading Capital with David Harvey, a radical geographer and Marxist theoretician. The course lectures are delivered through either mp3 audio or various video formats. I downloaded the first two course sections and listened to them on a long drive to a temporary work detail location. After doing so I decided that I wanted to make another attempt at reading and understanding Karl Marx's classic "Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production", that is with David Harvey's assistance. Its tough book to read alone without some direction. There is also an online forum for the course, so one can even hopefully engage in discussion with others reading the text.

In I think the second lecture Harvey mentions that many people give up the attempt at a serious reading of Capital in the very tough third chapter. Come to think of it, thats about where I put it down about four years ago!

I also just ordered and received David Harvey's book Limits to Capital which is a book that attempts to put the theoretical ideas of Marx's Capital in today's historical context. Although I haven't seriously started reading the book, while scanning the pages to the 2006 edition I came upon an interesting factoid.

After Mexico began its program of neoliberal economic restructuring and privatization in 1988, twenty four Mexican billionaires appeared on Forbes' 1994 list of the world's wealthiest. Then of course the North American Free Trade Agreement was passed in the early 1990s. By 2005 Mexico had more billionaires than Saudi Arabia. NAFTA had the effect of massively restructuring the agricultural sector of Mexico's economy, turning small farming campesinos into wage workers. While some of this population was absorbed into the border zone "maquiladora" factories, many of these still could not compete with lower wage labor in China. Ultimately many of these people migrated to the United State to become cheap labor and treated as second class "illegal immigrants". This is one example of the process that Harvey calls "accumulation by dispossession". In the video below Harvey talks further about "accumulation by dispossession" in lecture 12 of the online course.

What Was My Point About America's Memory Hole?

Oh, yeah, and this article by Chomsky published at Alternet (originally at TomDispatch) fits well with my previous post and commentary on America's easy forgetfullness about atrocities committed in our name.

American Amnesia: We Forget Our Atrocities Almost As Soon as We Commit Them
by Noam Chomsky

"The torture memos released by the White House elicited shock, indignation, and surprise. The shock and indignation are understandable. The surprise, less so.

For one thing, even without inquiry, it was reasonable to suppose that Guantanamo was a torture chamber. Why else send prisoners where they would be beyond the reach of the law -- a place, incidentally, that Washington is using in violation of a treaty forced on Cuba at the point of a gun? Security reasons were, of course, alleged, but they remain hard to take seriously. The same expectations held for the Bush administration's "black sites," or secret prisons, and for extraordinary rendition, and they were fulfilled."

More importantly, torture has been routinely practiced from the early days of the conquest of the national territory, and continued to be used as the imperial ventures of the "infant empire" -- as George Washington called the new republic -- extended to the Philippines, Haiti, and elsewhere. Keep in mind as well that torture was the least of the many crimes of aggression, terror, subversion, and economic strangulation that have darkened U.S. history, much as in the case of other great powers.

Accordingly, what's surprising is to see the reactions to the release of those Justice Department memos, even by some of the most eloquent and forthright critics of Bush malfeasance: Paul Krugman, for example, writing that we used to be "a nation of moral ideals" and never before Bush "have our leaders so utterly betrayed everything our nation stands for." To say the least, that common view reflects a rather slanted version of American history."

(continues at link)