tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39283336206567934572024-03-13T21:27:17.031-07:00Guerrilla PressBypassing White House slant and corporate spin.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.comBlogger217125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-26762405370901013042014-11-24T12:17:00.000-08:002014-11-24T12:17:35.233-08:00Welcome To the Police State<br />
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The preemptive mobilization of <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/11/17/missouri-gov-jay-nixon-declares-state-of-emergency-ahead-of-ferguson-announcements/" target="_blank">state police and the National Guard in Ferguson, MO</a>, in anticipation of a grand jury's long-awaited verdict on whether or not to indict Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot and killed unarmed black man, Michael Brown, gives credence to what many activists have long claimed: We live in a police state.<br />
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In a highly controversial move, Missouri's ironically named, Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, has already mobilized police and military forces in anticipation of rioting, looting, and vandalism by protesters. (Curiously, though a decision is expected from the grand jury any day now, many are already predicting Wilson will be exonerated.)<br />
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Gov. Nixon claimed, in <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/17/jay-nixon-ferguson-grand-jury_n_6174954.html" target="_blank">a recent press conference</a> declaring the state of emergency, that previous protests over the shooting led to wanton acts of violence by the protesters. According to Nixon, "Vandals smashed the windows of small businesses. Criminals looted and set fire to stores. Gunshots and Molotov cocktails endangered citizens exercising their First Amendment rights and law enforcement attempting to maintain peace."<br />
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But the <a href="http://socialistworker.org/2014/11/17/demonizing-dissent-in-ferguson" target="_blank"><i>Socialist Worker</i>'s Elizabeth Schulte</a> disputes this version of events, maintaining the protests following Brown's death were entirely peaceful. Rather, she insists, it was the police and National Guard that caused the damage and destruction Nixon cites ("Demonizing dissent in Ferguson," 11/17/2014).<br />
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Indeed, <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/8/18/6043763/cnns-jake-tapper-on-the-police-in-ferguson-this-doesnt-make-any-sense" target="_blank">CNN's Jake Tapper</a> compared the police presence in Ferguson to "a scene out of U.S.-occupied Afghanistan," in his coverage of those August protests.<br />
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"Nobody is threatening anything," Tapper said of the peaceful protesters. "Nobody is doing anything. None of the stores here that I can see are being looted. There is no violence."<br />
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Tapper goes on to observe that the police are "dressed for combat."<br />
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Free speech? First Amendment rights? Right of the people to "peaceably assemble... for a redress of grievances"? Such lofty ideals are promptly discarded when the corporate state shows its true oppressive face.<br />
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And yet, what is happening in Ferguson right now is nothing new. It represents the same racist, authoritarian forms of control black Americans have endured since this nation's founding.<br />
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Yet, sadly, many white Americans still do not get it. They insist on demonizing black Americans as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akNpU8T5vzI" target="_blank">"The Other,"</a> or claiming, in typical right-wing blame-the-victim fashion, that they only have themselves to blame for their problems.<br />
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Conservative race-baiters like Maine blogger, <a href="http://tommclaughlin.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Tom McLaughlin</a> and Fox News' <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwSuaj5064c" target="_blank">Bill O' Reilly </a>snidely attribute the struggles of young African American men to their alleged lack of good parenting, positive role models, and absent fathers. (Bill Cosby and Oprah Winfrey have also been longtime proponents of this "blame-the-negligent-fathers" mindset, much to black America's detriment.)<br />
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McLaughlin, in his latest post (<a href="http://tommclaughlin.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">"Lacking Temper," 11/18/2014</a>), even goes so far as to claim Americans are "not buying the media spin [sic] on the incident in Ferguson...since the facts of the case don't support it."<br />
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Yet, in typical fashion, McLaughlin does not bother to back up such a claim with any substantiated evidence whatsoever. Allow me to pick up the slack when it comes to McLaughlin's shoddy "reporting." Everything one needs to know about the shooting of Michael Brown is enumerated in <a href="https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/11/20/everything-know-shooting-michael-brown-darren-wilson/" target="_blank">Ryan Devereaux's point-by-point chronicle of the incident</a>, which he contributed to <a href="https://firstlook.org/theintercept/" target="_blank">The Intercept</a>.<br />
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Neither McLaughlin nor O' Reilly mentions the staggering prison rates among black Americans--particularly young black men. African Americans constitute 1 million of the nearly 2.3 million Americans in prison, <a href="http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet" target="_blank">according to the NAACP</a>. Likewise, a recent report by the Washington D.C.-based advocacy group, The Sentencing Project, estimates <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/04/racial-disparities-criminal-justice_n_4045144.html" target="_blank">one in three black males will go to prison</a> "at some point in their lives." The vast majority of these men are imprisoned for petty felonies or minor drug-possession charges.<br />
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Michelle Alexander's <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Crow-Incarceration-Colorblindness/dp/1595586431" target="_blank">The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness</a> </i>is essential reading on the subject of race in the 21st century.<br />
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"Arguably the most important parallel between mass incarceration and Jim Crow," Alexander writes, "is that both have served to define the meaning and significance of race in America."<br />
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Indeed, a primary function of any racial caste system is to define the meaning of race in its time. Slavery defined what it meant to be black (a slave), and Jim Crow defined what it meant to be black (a second-class citizen). Today mass incarceration defines the meaning of blackness in America: black people, especially black men, are criminals. That is what it means to be black.</blockquote>
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The corporate state has shown its draconian hand when it comes to its preferred method of dealing with peaceful protests: It calls the police. Rather than addressing the legitimate concerns of Occupy Wall Street protesters, for example, then-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg opted to <a href="http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2011/09/30/mayor-bloombergs-scorn-for-occupy-wall-street/" target="_blank">first denigrate</a> and then crush them with force.<br />
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Fellow activists routinely attribute Occupy Wall Street's "failure" to the movement's "fizzling out," or "lack of a coherent message." Yet this popular narrative blatantly ignores the fact that the original encampment in Zuccotti Park was<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/news/blog/2011/nov/15/occupy-wall-street-police-action-live" target="_blank"> forcibly shutdown by the corporate state</a>.<br />
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Occupy did not fail on its own merits as this misleading account suggests. It was destroyed.<br />
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Indeed, many of the police forces sent to dismantle Occupy protests were more or less hired by Wall Street banks like JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. As ProPublica's Justin Elliott revealed in a story for Salon.com (<a href="http://www.salon.com/2011/10/07/the_nypd_now_sponsored_by_wall_street/" target="_blank">"The NYPD, now sponsored by Wall Street," 10/07/2011</a>), in the lead up to the 2011 Occupy demonstrations several Wall Street institutions contributed millions of dollars to the NYPD, "in an arrangement that critics say compromises" the police force. JP Morgan alone donated $4.6 million.<br />
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Not that this practice of the police acting as <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/152173/how_the_surveillance_state_protects_the_interests_of_the_ultra-rich" target="_blank">capitalism's armed-guards </a>is anything new, of course. Even trash-talk radio host, Rush Limbaugh, understands the job of the police is to "protect wealth."<br />
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As the communal writers' group, <a href="http://crimethinc./">CrimethInc.</a> write in their anti-capitalist manifesto, <i>Work</i>: <br />
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The more unequal the distribution of resources and power [in society], the more force it takes to maintain it....<br />
[A]t bottom, political repression and crime prevention serve the same purpose. Shrewd police spokesmen can shift their rhetoric seamlessly from fighting crime to fighting political extremism and back again according to what is most convenient.</blockquote>
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And President Barack Obama's codification of the NSA's massive warrantless surveillance program has only furthered the police state. We are the most spied-upon, most video-taped and photographed people in history. Thanks to the revelations of <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-courage-to-resist.html" target="_blank">Edward Snowden</a>, we understand just how widespread and mind-bogglingly comprehensive the surveillance state is. Indeed, it goes far beyond anything George Orwell could have envisioned.<br />
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There is no way any of this can be considered democracy. A citizenry this spied-upon, that faces constant repression by the police is in no way free.<br />
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And that is why we must all stand in solidarity with the residents of Ferguson. Their fight is our fight.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-72964305444665991032014-11-17T12:41:00.000-08:002015-05-15T08:14:24.282-07:00Veterans For Peace Not Welcome in Veterans Day Parade<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix2o-h6oi8AdVvQErFlyqjgkDb6hCkO_ilIvnbb-93iPQ5XZ9z_qW45mvw_nFSz-b07iUKcbfymg1iVcc7DaaosWaFfSiR7sb021LeRDSmvaqw3Gvh_JE6JnP2UtOPPmVxXwxFUzjFuzg/s1600/Joe+Bangert+Tony+Flariaty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="349" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix2o-h6oi8AdVvQErFlyqjgkDb6hCkO_ilIvnbb-93iPQ5XZ9z_qW45mvw_nFSz-b07iUKcbfymg1iVcc7DaaosWaFfSiR7sb021LeRDSmvaqw3Gvh_JE6JnP2UtOPPmVxXwxFUzjFuzg/s1600/Joe+Bangert+Tony+Flariaty.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Members of Veterans for Peace, Boston, being arrested at the city's 2007 Veterans Day Parade. Parade organizers denied VFP permission to attend the march. They showed up anyway. Click <a href="http://thephoenix.com/boston/news/51229-stand-against-silence/" target="_blank">here</a> for the full story.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Spectators at Portland, Maine's annual <a href="http://www.wcsh6.com/story/news/local/portland/2014/11/11/portland-veterans-day-parade/18878575/" target="_blank">Veterans Day Parade</a> last week may have noticed something odd.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While all of the traditional veterans' groups, including the U.S. Navy, the Marines, the Air Force and the local branch of the American Legion were well represented, members of Veterans for Peace were relegated to holding their own small vigil on Monument Square while the parade passed by.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Turns out <a href="http://vfpmaine.org/vfp.asp" target="_blank">Maine Veterans for Peace</a> (Tom Sturtevant chapter), the founding branch of the nationwide antiwar protest group composed of soldiers-turned-peace activists, is more or less barred from participating in the annual Veterans Day Parade.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While the group is not expressly prohibited from marching with their fellow veterans ("Veterans for War"?) in the parade, many of VFP's members feel they may as well be. Given the parade organizers' relentless attempts to marginalize and undermine VFP over the years--to say nothing of the constant barrage of verbal harassment thrown members' way by other vets and spectators--many in VFP have simply given up on the parade.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The American Legion seems to be the primary antagonist in these efforts at keeping VFP out of municipal veterans' events. While the nationwide group bills itself as <a href="http://www.legion.org/mission" target="_blank">a "nonpartisan" organization</a>, their political clout in perpetuating the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has been <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/04/05/319950/-VFW-and-American-Legion-Betray-Iraq-and-Afghanistan-Vets#" target="_blank">well documented</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"After many years of feeling like step-children, our chapter decided to stop participating," said Bruce Gagnon, VFP Maine secretary, who also heads the antiwar group, <a href="http://www.space4peace.org/index.htm" target="_blank">Global Network Against Nuclear Weapons in Space</a>, "which likely made the parade organizers quite happy."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So much, it seems, for the constant imperative to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7DdWmWUa_8" target="_blank">"support our troops."</a> Perhaps the neocons and other perpetual proponents of this ubiquitous mantra should clarify the phrase: "Support our troops <i>who support our wars</i>." The rest of them can rot in hell.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It would be one thing if this sort of treatment of antiwar groups was an isolated incident--or relegated to just Veterans Day. Sadly, neither is the case.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 2008, branches of Veterans for Peace in Washington state and Washington, D.C. were both banned from participating in their towns' <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-fog-of-war.html" target="_blank">Memorial Day</a> parades. According to the story in the <i>Daily Kos</i> (<a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/05/21/519976/-On-Memorial-Day-veterans-dissing-veterans" target="_blank">"On Memorial Day, Veterans Dissing Veterans," 05/21/2008</a>), both VFP groups were barred on the grounds they are "too political." Indeed, this is a common justification parade organizers and city officials cite in excluding antiwar groups and voices.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But this asinine excuse implies that the parade itself, which all but glorifies war and the military, is somehow "apolitical." Everything about war--including the decision to go to war, who makes those decisions and who does the actual fighting, whether the justifications for war are legitimate and the use of military force, truly essential--is inextricably tied to politics.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As Prussian general and military theorist, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_Clausewitz" target="_blank">Carl von Clausewitz</a> wrote in <i>On War</i> ("Vom Kriege"), "War is merely the continuation of politics by other means."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As such, the entire parade is one giant political spectacle. Most Americans, for whom "politics" is narrowly defined as <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2012/11/now-what-democracy-beyond-voting-booth.html" target="_blank">voting in elections every two to four years</a>, simply lack the broader political and cultural understanding to view it that way.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We are <a href="http://post.mainelymediallc.com/news/2014-11-14/Front_Page/School_assembly_honors_veterans.html" target="_blank">inculcated from childhood</a> to revere all things military. Despite the allegedly deep and irreconcilable ideological divides which separate liberals and conservatives, The Military and The Troops remain one of the few unifying bonds. War, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/nov/10/petraeus-scandal-media-military" target="_blank">as Glenn Greenwald observes</a>, has become our new religion.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Voice even the mildest criticism of The Troops and U.S. Empire--a mistake MSNBC host Chris Hayes made a few years back <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/28/chris-hayes-uncomfortable-soldiers-heroes_n_1550643.html" target="_blank">when he gently and articulately pondered whether all U.S. soldiers should be unblinkingly referred to as "heroes"</a>--and you become a pariah. The only reason Hayes is still on the air is because he promptly apologized for his "offensive" remarks--which he could not have parsed more carefully.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But the lesson of Hayes' criticism is clear: Speak outside the acceptable parameters of discourse--as Chelsea Manning, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/01/us/bergdahl-deserter-or-hero/" target="_blank">Bowe Bergdahl</a>, Edward Snowden, Daniel Ellsberg, and the late reporter, <a href="http://www.salon.com/2012/01/06/michael_hastings_on_war_journalists/" target="_blank">Michael Hastings</a> have bravely done--and you are cast out and savagely denounced by the corporate state.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And this, I suspect, is why the power elite go to such lengths to silence the voices of antiwar groups like Veterans for Peace.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country," <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1954/hemingway-bio.html" target="_blank">Ernest Hemingway </a>wrote in his 1935 <i>Esquire</i> article, "Notes On the Next War: A Serious Topical Letter." "But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My paternal grandfather, Davide Dario Marletta, was a conscientious objector in Mussolini's Italy, during WWII. He spent three years in an Italian prison. Upon his release, he was extremely weak and malnourished. While conscientious objector status was still a relatively new concept at the time, Axis nations like Italy--along with France, Belgium, and the Soviet Union--had no laws recognizing their rights.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even after the war's end, my grandfather was regarded as a unpatriotic traitor by his neighbors. His pacifism made him a pariah in his own country. He and my grandmother eventually fled to Scotland, where my father was born, and, later, to the United States.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Much as he hated Mussolini and the Italian Army, my grandfather claimed he would not have fought alongside the Allies, either. He simply despised war--<a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/07/world-war-ii-not-so-good-after-all.html" target="_blank">no matter how "noble" the cause</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I suppose, the proverbial apple did not fall far from the tree...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But there are no parades, celebrations or federal holidays for conscientious objectors like my grandfather. People did not stand reverently and heap prodigious amounts of praise on him whenever he entered a room. Those, like my grandfather, who display <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2012/05/courage-to-resist.html" target="_blank">the courage to resist war</a> have no place in our imperial, military-obsessed culture.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Indeed, I think it says something highly disturbing about our country when those advocating for an end to war and militarism--including many of those who have fought in wars and come to regret doing so--are derided as vile, blasphemous or "unpatriotic." Those who insist on celebrating--worshiping, even--war, meanwhile, are considered "non-political." These "Veterans for War," we are told, are the "realists." They understand that <a href="http://warisacrime.org/content/why-war-not-inevitable" target="_blank">war is "inevitable,"</a> and always waged for <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/08/why-there-is-no-such-thing-as.html" target="_blank">"humanitarian" reasons</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet those antiwar resisters who dare to raise their voices for peace see through these facile, childish rationales. They see war for the carnage that it truly is--"The horror! The horror!" as Joseph Conrad famously wrote in <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Heart-Darkness-Dover-Thrift-Editions/dp/0486264645" target="_blank">Heart of Darkness</a></i>. And in denouncing the horror of war, they make the rest of us uncomfortable.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The words of Hemingway are, again, instructive.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A critical chapter in <i>A Farewell to Arms</i>, finds WWI medic, Lt. Frederic Henry rejecting the trite, cliched romanticism frequently used to describe war. Henry, in his first-person narration, explains the utter vapidity of words like "sacrifice," "glorious," and the expression, "in vain" when it comes to the battlefield. The only words that have any real significance for the jaded protagonist are the concrete, tangible names of soldiers, roads, villages, and calendar dates.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He says:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">...I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity... Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and dates.</span></blockquote>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-3266342574965366782014-11-11T09:28:00.000-08:002014-11-11T09:28:21.017-08:00Bulls on Parade<br />
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<h3>
<b><i>A Midterm Postmortem</i></b></h3>
<br />
A neighbor a few houses down from me has had two large signs posted on his lawn for the last month now. They read, "Save America: Vote Republican!"<br />
<br />
I imagine he is quite happy with the outcome of <a href="http://www.alternet.org/election-2014/its-rout-democrats-lose-badly-gop-extremists-consolidate-power-congress-and-across" target="_blank">last week's midterm elections</a>.<br />
<br />
Of course, the idea that either of the two corporate parties will "save America," is absurd. Both the Republicans and Democrats are beholden, first and foremost, to corporate interests, Wall Street profits, and to furthering the <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/09/battlefield-earth.html" target="_blank">permanent war economy</a>.<br />
<br />
Indeed, how "small-government"-oriented conservatives can condone spending 20 percent (<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/07/everything-chuck-hagel-needs-to-know-about-the-defense-budget-in-charts/" target="_blank">$716 billion in 2013 alone</a>) of the federal budget on maintaining the largest military in the world seems a striking contradiction in their ideology. (But heaven forbid we spend one dime on government benefits for "welfare cheats"...)<br />
<br />
The truth is it matters little which party controls Congress. The policies of the Democratic and Republican parties are nearly identical. Both serve to enrich the corporate state at the expense of the poor and working class.<br />
<br />
"The divide in America is not between Republican and Democrat," Chris Hedges writes in his 2010 book, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Death-Liberal-Class-Chris-Hedges/dp/1568586795" target="_blank">Death of the Liberal Class</a></i>. "It is a divide between the corporate state and the citizen. It is a divide between capitalists and workers. And for all the failings of the communists, they got it."<br />
<br />
Here in Maine, not only was <a href="http://www.pressherald.com/2014/11/05/the-next-four-years-under-newly-re-elected-gov-paul-lepage/" target="_blank">Republican Gov. Paul LePage re-elected</a>, but he won with a bigger margin than his razor-thin victory over independent Eliot Cutler in 2010. Meanwhile, ultra-conservative <a href="http://bangordailynews.com/2012/02/02/politics/state-treasurer-poliquin-under-fire-for-possible-misuse-of-tax-abatement-program/" target="_blank">tax-evader, Bruce Poliquin</a> sailed to victory in Maine's 2nd congressional district, and "moderate" Republican Susan Collins crushed her Democratic opponent, Shenna Bellows--though <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/10/vote-nobody.html" target="_blank">there was really never much doubt she would</a>.<br />
<br />
With Republicans now in control of both houses of Congress, many professional political pundits expect President Barack Obama to "tack to the right," policy-wise. My question for these people is where do they believe the president and the Democratic party have been operating from the last six years...?<br />
<br />
Indeed, urging Democrats to <a href="http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/move-over8212over-and-over/" target="_blank">"move to the center"</a> is the corporate media's default strategy to shutdown or delegitimize progressive reforms.<br />
<br />
While we can point to a number of factors that lead to the Democrats' trouncing (low voter turnout, lack of enthusiasm for Democratic candidates, newly-implemented voter suppression laws, the increasing role of <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/11/koch-steyer-senate-elections-rove-big-money" target="_blank">"Dark Money,"</a> lack of youth turnout, anger at Obama, etc.), if the Dems are looking for someone to blame, they need only look in a mirror.<br />
<br />
Given the number of <a href="http://www.citizensforethics.org/worst-governors-in-america" target="_blank">controversial and highly unpopular governors</a> on the ballot throughout the country (Wisconsin's Scott Walker, Florida's Rick Scott, Michigan's Scott Snyder, and Maine's LePage, to name a few), the Democrats should have won many of Tuesday's races, no contest.<br />
<br />
But they did not. As usual, they blew it.<br />
<br />
And it is not--despite what the media will tell you--because America is a <a href="http://nation.foxnews.com/conservatives/2011/08/01/gallup-america-conservative-country" target="_blank">"conservative country,"</a> after all. In fact, polling throughout the years has consistently shown Republicans' policy ideas are <a href="http://socialistworker.org/2014/08/27/how-can-republicans-be-winning" target="_blank">extremely unpopular with a majority of Americans</a>. One need only look at the four states--Alaska, Arkansas, South Dakota, and Nebraska--and two California cities, San Francisco and Oakland, that <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014/11/6/maximum_progress_on_the_minimum_wage" target="_blank">passed referendums to raise the minimum wage</a> for further evidence of this.<br />
<br />
No, the Democrats lost big this year for the same reason they suffered similar midterm losses in 2010: The party which, ostensibly anyway, stands for working class Americans and labor, long ago ceded the populist ground to the Republicans.<br />
<br />
Observing that this was the "fourth hard-times election in a row," author and reporter, Thomas Frank (<i>What's the Matter With Kansas?</i>, <i>Pity the Billionaire</i>) writes at Salon.com (<a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/11/09/the_gops_poisonous_double_speak_thomas_frank_on_how_republicans_hijacked_the_midterms/" target="_blank">"The GOP's poisonous double-speak...", 11/09/2014</a>):<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Lasing out blindly and in all directions against the powerful--against low wages as well as against a comfortable "class" that is amply represented in Washington--is still our political default position, some six years after the financial crisis and the Wall Street bailout. For many Americans, the recession is still on. They know that their region hasn't recovered... that their household wealth isn't coming back... that people like them no longer have a shot at the middle-class life in which they were raised.</blockquote>
<br />
While a great deal of it does derive from ignorance, we must understand that much of the anger that middle-class working Americans feel--even those on the right--is completely legitimate. It does not come out of nowhere. And--as the midterm elections showed--those of us on the left ignore or attempt to mock that anger at our own expense.<br />
<br />
Indeed, the greatest tragedy of Obama's presidency is that he missed a prime opportunity to unite liberals and conservatives in their anger at Wall Street for trashing the global economy.<br />
<br />
Readers may recall that Americans on both the left and the right <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/10/bank-bailout-opinion-harris_n_1415647.html" target="_blank">unanimously opposed the 2008 Wall Street bailouts</a>, or TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) by a ratio of 100 to 1. In fact, public opposition to the bailout was so great the initial vote on TARP in the then-Democratic-led House of Representatives <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/business/30bailout.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" target="_blank">failed</a>. Then-Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson literally got down <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/sep/27/wallstreet.useconomy1" target="_blank">on his hands and knees and begged Nancy Pelosi</a> to hold another vote on the bill.<br />
<br />
"This was the largest single act of class warfare in the modern history of this country," former Ohio <a href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081006_dennis_kucinich_on_the_democrats_bailout_betrayal" target="_blank">Rep. Dennis Kucinich said of the bailout at the time</a>. "It is a direct attack on the American people's ability to be able to stabilize their homes and their neighborhoods... We are back to taxation without representation, to markets that are openly rigged."<br />
<br />
And Obama's failure to break up the "Too Big To Fail" banks--many of which top the <a href="http://fortune.com/fortune500/chevron-corporation-3/" target="_blank">Fortune 500 list</a>--let alone prosecute any of their criminal CEOs, represents an even greater betrayal. By refusing to uphold the law and make an example out of the reckless Wall Street speculators who decimated the economy through fraud and manipulation, Obama has all but assured these hucksters will merely engage in the same behavior again.<br />
<br />
Even with the understanding that the U.S. electoral system likely makes it impossible for a truly progressive--let alone radical--president to ever take office, it is nonetheless frustrating to contemplate what could have been. Obama had a once-in-a-generation mandate to enact truly populist reforms.<br />
<br />
But he did not seize it. He rescued the banks and let "Main Street" continue to drown in debt, unemployment, low-wages, foreclosures and the bitterness of dashed dreams and unrealized expectations. My generation is the first since WWII that is expected to be worse off than our parents. "The American Dream," while always, an admittedly silly concept, is now <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/07/the-american-dream-is-dead/" target="_blank">irrefutably dead</a>.<br />
And the Democrats killed it.<br />
<br />
The irony is old, angry, white men like my neighbor--<a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/11/05/midterms_2014_64_percent_of_white_men_voted_republican.html?wpsrc=fol_tw" target="_blank">the primary voting bloc in last week's elections</a>--naively believe the Republicans are the party of working people. They foolishly believe the right-wing, scientifically-illiterate nutjobs that will now take charge of the government care any more about them than the Democrats do. And we are all going to suffer because of their ignorance.<br />
<br />
My neighbor should change his sign so it reads more accurately: "I love corporate fascism." <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-32274188188624844792014-10-27T11:29:00.000-07:002014-10-27T17:29:22.293-07:00Vote Nobody<br />
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<br />
<b><i>George Will was right: </i></b><b><i>Elections are not about "whether elites shall rule, but </i>which<i> elites shall rule."</i></b><br />
<br />
The late Howard Zinn once remarked of the United States' stifling two-party duopoly, "If the gods had wanted us to vote they would have given us candidates."<br />
<br />
Given the utter lack of any anti-corporate voices in Maine's upcoming congressional and gubernatorial races, I find myself agreeing more with Zinn's sentiment this year than any other election in recent memory.<br />
<br />
Putting aside the broader question of the overall efficacy of electoral politics, these midterm elections are becoming increasingly frustrating for Greens, activists, socialists or anybody looking to defy the corporate state.<br />
<br />
(<a href="http://www.mainegreens.org/" target="_blank">The Maine Green Independent Party</a> opted not to run a candidate for governor this year largely due to the ridiculously immense--and blatantly unconstitutional--ballot-access hurdles in place for third-party candidates.)<br />
<br />
Sure, there is independent Eliot Cutler. But Cutler is about as "independent" as Maine U.S. <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2012/04/angus-king-curb-your-enthusiasm.html" target="_blank">Sen. Angus King</a>.<br />
<br />
Like King, Cutler is socially liberal (i.e. he does not hate gays and women) and fiscally conservative. I prefer to think of him as "GOP-lite": Not as extreme as <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/178573/maines-paul-lepage-might-just-be-worst-governor-all#" target="_blank">Republican Gov. Paul LePage</a>, but not particularly moderate, either.<br />
<br />
A former corporate lobbyist who is largely self-financing his own campaign, Cutler talks of "branding" the state of Maine like a corporation. He supports tax reform, merit-based pay for teachers, eliminating--rather than reforming--government programs that are inefficient, and "reforming" welfare in a language reminiscent of Bill Clinton.<br />
<br />
And, in his previous bid for governor in 2010, Cutler and LePage both cited New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as <a href="http://thetippingpoint.bangordailynews.com/2014/01/10/state-politics/you-might-be-surprised-what-gov-lepage-and-eliot-cutler-agree-on/#.UtBNdPRDvSg" target="_blank">a politician they admire</a>.<br />
<br />
In other words, Cutler is another Establishment politician. He would fit right in with either the Republican or Democratic parties--which makes sense, since he has been enrolled in both parties before going independent.<br />
<br />
All of that said, <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/07/in-defense-of-cutler-sort-of.html" target="_blank">I find the persistent calls for Cutler to drop out of the race highly antidemocratic</a>. Even if I do not personally support his policies, Cutler has a constitutional right to run for public office. As voters, we should be encouraging <i>more</i> candidates to run for office. And we could do just that if Maine adopted a ranked-choice or instant run-off voting system for all statewide elections--just like Portland uses to elect the mayor.<br />
<br />
However, Maine Democrats resist any calls to reform our antiquated winner-take-all electoral system. They likely realize that, if given a choice, progressive voters would abandon them in droves.<br />
<br />
Then we have Democratic U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud, a candidate almost as bland and uninspiring as former U.S. Rep. Tom Allen.<br />
<br />
Like Allen, Michaud's career in the House of Representatives has been colored by his rank-and-file party loyalty, his utter lack of leadership qualities, and a record that, above all, demonstrates a thorough refusal to rock the boat in even the slightest manner.<br />
<br />
In a succession of flip-flops to rival John Kerry, Michaud was opposed to women's reproductive freedom before he was for it. During his first year in Congress, Michaud earned a ten percent rating from the leading women's advocacy group, NARAL Pro-Choice America, one of the worst ratings the group has ever given.<br />
<br />
Now, the very same group has endorsed him for governor, praising Michaud's "evolution" on women's rights. "We know he'll be an excellent advocate for women," writes NARAL president Ilyse Hogue in an op-ed in the <i>Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram</i> (<a href="http://www.pressherald.com/2014/04/30/commentary__michaud_has_earned_pro-choice_group_s_endorsement__abortion-rights_advocate_says_/" target="_blank">"Mike Michaud has earned pro-choice group's endorsement, abortion rights advocate says," 04/30/2014</a>).<br />
<br />
Likewise, Michaud opposed gay rights before he <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/04/mike-michaud-comes-out-gay_n_4210599.html" target="_blank">came out as gay himself</a>, shortly after announcing his intent to run for governor last fall.<br />
<br />
While in the Maine State Legislature, Michaud <a href="http://chrisbusby.bangordailynews.com/2013/11/21/politics/mike-michauds-pitiful-political-past/" target="_blank">voted against gay rights legislation five times</a>. But try bringing this up with Michaud's supporters and they promptly inform you he simply "changed his mind" on the issue. (Meanwhile, liberals like <a href="http://steed.bangordailynews.com/2014/01/08/a-quick-reminder-to-my-fellow-straight-people/" target="_blank"><i>Bangor Daily News</i> blogger, Alex Steed</a>, argue, ludicrously, that Michaud's sudden about-face on gay rights is "off-limits" for straight people to criticize. Yes, he actually wrote this.)<br />
<br />
Even in the lead-up to Maine's passage of gay marriage in 2012, Michaud remained completely silent on the issue. He could have, at the very least, expressed his support for the ballot measure. Doing so would not even have necessitated disclosing his own sexual orientation.<br />
<br />
As obnoxious as LePage is, at least the man has principles and, in the eyes' of his supporters anyway, integrity. And that is, sadly, why he will likely be re-elected.<br />
<br />
Finally, there is U.S. Senate hopeful, <a href="http://bellowsforsenate.com/" target="_blank">Shenna Bellows</a> who is running an uphill contest against long-serving "moderate" Republican Sen. Susan Collins. Sure, Bellows is highly unlikely to win. But let's put that pesky fact aside for the moment.<br />
<br />
On paper, Bellows looks great. She supports <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/10/ebola-and-need-for-single-payer-health.html" target="_blank">single-payer health care,</a> legalizing marijuana, raising the minimum wage, and equal pay for women. Likewise, she has been a fierce critic of the <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/03/spies-damned-spies-and-other.html" target="_blank">NSA surveillance state</a> and has been vocal in her opposition to the Iraq war. (She has, however, remained mum on the <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/09/battlefield-earth.html" target="_blank">six or so other wars the U.S. is currently involved in</a>...)<br />
<br />
Yet, while Bellows has clearly staked out a populist campaign (and there is no debate that Collins has long overstayed her welcome in Washington, D.C.), she, like 2012 Senate hopeful, Cynthia Dill, is something of a sacrificial lamb for the Democrats--put up more for show than as a serious contender. Readers may recall that Dill, who was vying for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Olympia Snowe, received <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/19/cynthia-dill-main-senate_n_1687805.html" target="_blank">virtually no backing from the Maine Democratic Party</a>, which threw its support behind eventual winner, Angus King.<br />
<br />
The Democratic Machine has left Bellows similarly stranded while it has brought out the big guns for Michaud. (Bill Clinton, Michelle Obama, and Hillary Clinton have all come to Maine to stump for Michaud in recent weeks, with President Barack Obama scheduled for a campaign event on Thursday.)<br />
<br />
As <i>Press Herald</i> reporter Kevin Miller writes in a recent story on Bellows' "quixotic" campaign, "Bellows has raised more than $2 million--far less than her opponent, but a respectable sum for a campaign that has received little fundraising help from a Democratic Party focused elsewhere" (<a href="http://www.pressherald.com/2014/10/12/race-for-the-u-s-senate-the-first-timer/" target="_blank">"Race for the U.S. Senate: The first-timer," 10/12/14</a>).<br />
<br />
But candidates like Bellows--who, on the face of it at least, support everything the Democratic Party ostensibly stands for--nonetheless serve a purpose. That purpose is to draw jaded, betrayed liberals back into the Democratic Party.<br />
<br />
As Elizabeth Schulte explains in a recent piece on Elizabeth Warren--whom many have compared to Bellows, including Bellows herself--for the <i>Socialist Worker</i>, "Like so many other liberal figures before her, Warren's main impact is to put a populist facade on a Democratic Party that stands for preserving corporate power" (<a href="http://socialistworker.org/2014/10/20/a-progressive-face-on-regression" target="_blank">"The progressive face of a regressing party," 10/20/2014</a>).<br />
<br />
She continues:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The hope among so many Democratic liberals is that people like Elizabeth Warren will bring the Democratic Party back to its true populist roots. But the opposite is true. The role of liberal figures like Warren--like Dennis Kucinich or Jesse Jackson or many more before them--is to pull progressive supporters of the Democrats back to the party at election time. </blockquote>
<br />
After all, the Dems can't risk alienated liberal voters leaving the Democratic Party for, say the Green Party, can they? Even despite Bellows' all but certain defeat at the polls, many Democratic insiders believe she is "laying the groundwork" for subsequent campaigns.<br />
<br />
And therein lies the real function of figures like Bellows. Even if Bellows were to win on Election Day, she would, in all likelihood, promptly abandon her progressive platform and, like Warren, fall in lockstep with the Democratic rank-and-file.<br />
<br />
No, Shenna Bellows will not save us. Nor will a Gov. Mike Michaud or Eliot Cutler. The only hope for true progressive change--in Maine and nationwide--is by breaking away entirely with the two-party corporate duopoly.<br />
<br />
All of the major democratic reforms throughout history--from the right of women to vote, the civil rights movement, labor rights, regulatory and environmental reforms--have come from outside the two-party system. Even FDR had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to enact his New Deal policies--though one would never know it from high school history class or Ken Burns' recent hagiographic documentary, <i>The Roosevelts: An Intimate History</i>.<br />
<br />
It was only through the hard-won struggles of socialists, anarchists, feminists and labor leaders that we gained Social Security, child labor laws, Medicare/Medicaid, workers' comp., the five-day, 40-hour work week and weekends off. Few of the activists behind these struggles ever achieved formal positions of power.<br />
<br />
To be clear, I am not advocating <i>not</i> voting--though, at the same time, I can perfectly understand why some voters might choose to stay home next Tuesday. And yes, I too can't stand LePage. The man is an arrogant, ignorant bully. But I can't stand Michaud, either. And <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2012/10/rejecting-practical-or-how-i-learned-to.html" target="_blank">I gave up on voting for the "lesser evil" a long time ago</a>.<br />
<br />
"I'd rather vote for what I want and not get it," socialist leader and perennial presidential candidate, <a href="http://debsfoundation.org/politicalactivist.html" target="_blank">Eugene Debs</a> said, "than vote for what I don't want and get it." <br />
<br />
<br />
<i>What do you think of this essay-style op-ed? Did you love it? Did you hate it? Why? Will you consider making a donation? It's really easy to do and helps keep this blog going. As always, thanks for reading.</i><br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-25268478511918645452014-10-20T15:15:00.000-07:002014-10-20T15:15:50.884-07:00Ebola and the Need For Single-Payer Health Care<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj63Zl3M2D5tnCp14uy5EUEvAa9tnoktuq6WENp7DPSPB_djQkrnMvWJIzptwTHycaKBYhjel6N_tAMqF1cgkGk2oaSgWCJxy1g3ILjM7Mw05rtF-1v_3_WguCWlrs7WoADsahKnt2HDQ8/s1600/Fox+Fear.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj63Zl3M2D5tnCp14uy5EUEvAa9tnoktuq6WENp7DPSPB_djQkrnMvWJIzptwTHycaKBYhjel6N_tAMqF1cgkGk2oaSgWCJxy1g3ILjM7Mw05rtF-1v_3_WguCWlrs7WoADsahKnt2HDQ8/s1600/Fox+Fear.png" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>A screenshot from Fox News'</i> Sean Hannity Show.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<b><i>Forget about Ebola. The real disease is capitalism.</i></b><br />
<br />
America is a strange country--a "land of superstition," as Henry David Thoreau wrote. Our sensationalized, "If-It-Bleeds-It-Leads" corporate media has us all scared to death of Ebola, even though your chances of actually contracting the disease are pretty minimal. Meanwhile, anthropogenic climate change is causing the planet to hurtle full-throttle toward a catastrophic 4-6 degree rise in temperature, yet the media <a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/09/22/sunday_shows_ignored_the_largest_climate_march_ever/" target="_blank">do not seem to be that concerned</a>.<br />
<br />
Point being, in the grand scheme of things global warming represents a far greater, more immediate, and decidedly deadlier threat to human civilization than Ebola (or, for that matter, <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/09/battlefield-earth.html" target="_blank">ISIS</a>.)<br />
<br />
But try telling that to the average Fox News-watching American.<br />
<br />
That is not to say Ebola is completely harmless. It is not. Officials at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are right to take proper precautions to prevent the disease from spreading.<br />
<br />
But, as AlterNet's Larry Schwartz points out in a recent article titled, <a href="http://www.alternet.org/ebola-scary-these-6-things-are-lot-scarier?page=0%2C0" target="_blank">"Ebola is Scary, But These 6 Things are a Lot Scarier"</a> (10/15/2014), we have far more to fear from lack of gun control, smoking, vehicular fatalities (wherein the victim was not wearing a seat belt), and over-consumption of alcohol which is responsible for over 88,000 deaths annually.<br />
<br />
Schwartz, a health, science and nutrition writer, goes on to explain that the only way to become infected with the Ebola virus is through direct contact with a victim's "blood, vomit, or other bodily fluid," via one's "eye, mouth, nose or [an] open cut."<br />
<br />
"Ebola is very hard to get," he writes. "Period."<br />
<br />
Schwartz goes on, "Americans tend to worry a great deal about illnesses they shouldn't worry about, while at the same time not worrying about very real threats to their health."<br />
<br />
So wash your hands, folks (with soap and warm water--not that generic <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/prescriptions/2010/02/how_to_sell_germ_warfare.html" target="_blank">Purell crap</a>), and chill out. The Ebola outbreak is not the long-anticipated "zombie Apocalypse" many have feared and/or hoped for.<br />
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But if you want to talk about something <i>really</i> frightening, let's consider how the U.S. for-profit health care system impacts the Ebola epidemic. Indeed, our lack of universal health care both hinders efforts to contain (and ultimately treat) the virus and almost assures it will spread further.<br />
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(For the record, "Obamacare" <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2012/08/guerrilla-press-fact-checker-busting.html" target="_blank">is nothing like single-payer, universal health care</a>, even though a number of liberal pundits--Paul Krugman most notably--routinely claim it is the same thing.)<br />
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Consider, for instance, the budget-cutting austerity measures politicians have enacted on most of the West and parts of Europe. Much has been made of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital's botched response to the death of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/01/us/retracing-the-steps-of-the-dallas-ebola-patient.html?_r=0" target="_blank">Thomas Duncan</a>, the first person to die from Ebola in the U.S. on Oct. 8.<br />
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While conservatives have pointed to the hospital's failure to properly diagnose Duncan and its various other missteps as evidence that "Big Government" is incompetent and incapable of responding to widespread health emergencies, if anything, these failures are more an indictment of the <a href="http://climateandcapitalism.com/2013/02/28/like-unicorns-the-free-market-is-a-myth/" target="_blank">(fictional) "free-market."</a><br />
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In fact, the budgets for both the CDC and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have been cut in recent years in the name of <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2012/11/when-austerity-attacks.html" target="_blank">austerity</a>, according to the <i>New York Times</i>. The NIH saw its budget decrease from $31.2 billion in 2010 to $30.1 billion in 2014.<br />
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Likewise, the nurses who treated Duncan at the Dallas hospital were woefully ill-equipped to properly protect themselves from exposure to the virus--again, due to budget-cuts and a lack of clear protocols.<br />
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According to <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ebola-dallas-20141014-story.html#page=1" target="_blank">the <i>Los Angeles Times</i></a>, nurses at THPH "described a hospital with no clear guidelines in place for handling Ebola patients..." And their protective gear was almost laughably inefficient, consisting of "gloves with no wrist tapes, gowns that did not cover their necks, and no surgical booties" according to the <i>Times</i>' story.<br />
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As Nicole Colson states in an article for the <i>Socialist Worker </i>(<a href="http://socialistworker.org/2014/10/16/our-alarming-health-care-system" target="_blank">10/16/2014</a>), "The idea that critical government agencies in charge of protecting the public health could have their budgets slashed in the richest country on earth is absurd."<br />
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Yet, in a move straight out of the Ayn Rand screw-the-workers-playbook, THPH and health officials are placing blame for Duncan's death on Nina Pham and Amber Vinson--the two nurses who treated him. CDC Director Dr. Thomas R. Frieden claims 26-year-old Pham became infected with Ebola due to her own "protocol breach," <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/12/texan-healthcare-worker-ebola-thomas-duncan-us" target="_blank">in a press conference</a> shortly after Duncan's death. <br />
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It is worth pausing to ponder why it is that Europeans are not freaking out about Ebola the way we are in the West. Much of it could be due to the fact that most European countries have two vital worker-health laws the U.S. lacks: Single-payer health care and paid sick-leave.<br />
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Indeed, as Dave Lindorff observes in a recent post on his news-blog, This Can't Be Happening.net (<a href="http://thiscantbehappening.net/node/2505" target="_blank">"Dickensian US Working Conditions Almost Guarantee Ebola Catastrophe," 10/12/2014</a>):<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
One reason Europeans are not in a state of hysteria about Ebola the way the US public is, besides the confidence Europeans have in their universal health care systems, is that they know that waiters, maids and housekeepers have a right to paid sick leave, so they are not going to be on the job infecting others if they get the disease. They'll be availing themselves of free or next-to-free healthcare and getting tested and if necessary, treated.</blockquote>
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The nurses' union, <a href="http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/" target="_blank">National Nurses United</a> (NNU) has made a similar argument. "As NNU pointed out in a statement," Colson writes in her piece, "because the U.S. lacks a national health care system, preparedness for a crisis like Ebola is woefully uneven from hospital to hospital."<br />
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America remains the only industrialized country in the world that does not treat health care as a basic human right. Even <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-dorlester/guaranteed-health-care-in_b_280528.html" target="_blank">post-invasion Iraq has single-payer health care</a> as guaranteed by the Bush-drafted and Iraqi-approved 2005 constitution. In other words, single-payer is good enough for the people of the countries we illegally invade and "democratize" via gunpoint, but not for citizens of our own country.<br />
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So take a deep breath, America. Turn off the fear-mongering cable-news talking heads. Many of them are simply using the Ebola outbreak as <a href="http://socialistworker.org/2014/10/06/ebola-and-epidemic-fear" target="_blank">an excuse for racism</a>. There is plenty of truly scary stuff out there to be worried about--capitalism being chief among them.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-29739278418011177692014-10-13T10:41:00.000-07:002014-10-13T10:41:08.029-07:00Foul Play<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6r4N6-Ux9NdmJqerQUa3I-1ERqdkFMYXv_AeXSL0CadHQy8xthYrzvEcQgm9vEBy9j4GR2F-gyzVF2QeFSUpNi04Da9CQUgl4zdw1gsn3xbOlADBpCBXEzKyTtr7xW3WZPQkdEkerGQw/s1600/pg2_g_troops-football_576.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6r4N6-Ux9NdmJqerQUa3I-1ERqdkFMYXv_AeXSL0CadHQy8xthYrzvEcQgm9vEBy9j4GR2F-gyzVF2QeFSUpNi04Da9CQUgl4zdw1gsn3xbOlADBpCBXEzKyTtr7xW3WZPQkdEkerGQw/s1600/pg2_g_troops-football_576.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Photo from ESPN.com</i>.</td></tr>
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<b><i>On the intersection between sports and militarism.</i></b><br />
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Is there any greater evidence of the violence routinely celebrated in American culture than the popularity of professional sports? The question is not meant to be hyperbolic or rhetorical.<br />
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No doubt spectator sports, like any other form of popular entertainment, play a role in pacifying and distracting citizens from more pertinent civic matters. The Romans had their gladiator games--their "bread and circuses." We have our <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2012/02/super-bowled-sports-as-opium-of-masses.html" target="_blank">Super Bowls</a>.<br />
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But, at the same time, sports also reinforce imperial sentiments of war, competition, sexism and homophobia, aggressiveness, and an "us-versus-them" mentality fostered by team rivalries like that between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees.<br />
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While there is nothing wrong with a little healthy competition--indeed, it is an integral part of the game--Red Sox and Yankees fans take this bitter, often vulgar rivalry so far one would think the two sides are not competing baseball teams but feuding mobsters, each sworn to the other's destruction.<br />
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It is not a stretch to see the same sort of "Otherness" Yankees fans take on in the eyes of Red Sox supporters replicated in the <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/09/battlefield-earth.html" target="_blank">"War on Terror."</a> Muslims at large have become the new Communist--a terrorist "Other" from a supposedly backward, barbaric part of the world we Americans do not--and make no effort to--understand.<br />
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As a result, sports are the perfect method of indoctrinating young people into the militarism of American empire--if not into the U.S. military itself. We often hear African Americans talk of the <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/tsr/education-under-arrest/school-to-prison-pipeline-fact-sheet/" target="_blank">"school-to-prison pipeline,"</a> in comparing the two authoritarian environments. Consider high school and college athletics the "sports-to-military pipeline."<br />
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As world-renowned linguist and political dissident, <a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/10/10/noam_chomsky_corporate_business_models_are_hurting_american_universities_partner/" target="_blank">Noam Chomsky </a>observes in the 1992 documentary film, <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz1nIHv6P6Q" target="_blank">Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media</a></i>, (based on the book of the same name which Chomsky co-wrote with Wharton School Professor Edward Herman) sports serve as a way to instill in young people "irrational attitudes of submission to authority," along with "group cohesion in irrational jingoism."<br />
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Certainly, these are traits well suited to the young solider recently deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, or one of the other numerous nations we are currently involved in.<br />
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George Orwell was more blunt in his assessment of sports.<br />
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"Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play," Orwell wrote. "It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules, and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting."<br />
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Nowhere was this link between sports and the military more abundantly clear than at Kennebunk High School's recent "Armed Forces Night," in my hometown of Kennebunk, Maine. The newly-launched "thank-you-for-your-service" ceremony, which started last year, honors current, former and "fallen" local soldiers during the KHS early October football game.<br />
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The event is the brainchild of KHS assistant football coach Nick Parent. In a story (10/18/2013) in the local weekly rag, <i><a href="http://post.mainelymediallc.com/news/2013-10-18/Community/High_school_hosts_Armed_Forces_Night.html" target="_blank">The Kennebunk Post</a></i> (the free paper is little more than advertisements, press releases, and feel-good puff pieces), Parent mouthed the same tired, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWQASPoAD-I" target="_blank">empty platitudes</a> to "supporting the troops," who <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-fog-of-war.html" target="_blank">"fought for our freedom,"</a> we are routinely bombarded with by politicians, the media, and popular culture.<br />
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(Of course, our gratitude is reserved only for those veterans who dutifully read from the Pentagon-sanctioned script and extol the virtues of war upon returning home. Those veterans who speak honestly of the true horrors of war or, even worse, openly question the rationales for the wars entirely--soldiers like <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2014/6/6/the_inside_story_of_bowe_bergdahl" target="_blank">Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl</a> or members of <a href="http://www.ivaw.org/" target="_blank">Iraq Veterans Against the War</a>--are, apparently, not worthy of our support.)<br />
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The crowd at the Armed Forces Night game cheered jubilantly at every mention of the army. Many of them, including the cheerleaders, wore camouflage-colored bracelets that said, "U.S. Armed Forces." Throughout the game, several local veterans were called to the field and singled out for their service.<br />
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Yet there was no mention of drone strikes, targeted assassinations, <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/06/in-defense-of-privacy.html" target="_blank">the surveillance state</a>, or the very real and chilling fact that, <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2011/12/imprisoned-in-kafkas-nightmare.html" target="_blank">under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)</a>, anybody in the audience could be randomly swept up by the government, at any time, for any reason, and imprisoned indefinitely with no trial.<br />
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I guess those inconvenient facts would have dulled the otherwise celebratory atmosphere of the night. The rousing pop-songs by artists like Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus that intermittently blared through the speakers further reinforced the sentiment that war is one giant party. And you, too, can be invited. Sign up here.<br />
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It all begs the question: To what extent do events like this serve as an elaborate recruitment tool for the U.S. military? Furthermore, what sort of message are we sending our children when public schools appear to be pushing the military as a worthwhile and <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich/2010/0813/America-s-biggest-jobs-program-The-US-military" target="_blank">perfectly reasonable career option</a>?<br />
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Indeed, the unspoken irony of the night was the fact that schools and universities throughout the nation are seeing <a href="http://www.pressherald.com/2014/10/10/faculty-senate-proposes-closing-a-usm-campus/" target="_blank">budgets, faculty, staff, and resources slashed</a>, while we ramp up our numerous and ever expanding wars against ISIS in Syria and our recent recommitment in Iraq. Over 50 percent of our <a href="https://www.nationalpriorities.org/works-on/military-security/" target="_blank">federal income taxes</a> go to the "Defense" budget.<br />
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Then again, sports teams like The Kennebunk Rams will likely be spared. It is the music, theater, and liberal arts classes that are always first to go in times of fiscal crises. Sports? They're sacrosanct.<br />
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But war is not a game. It is nothing like <i>Saving Private Ryan</i> or other glitzy Hollywood war movies. Soldiers do not return from war as hypermasculine warrior-heroes.<br />
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As former <i>New York Times</i> foreign correspondent, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/War-Force-that-Gives-Meaning/dp/1400034639" target="_blank">Chris Hedges</a>, points out, most Americans have little concept of the true horrors of war. And given our all-volunteer army, the majority of us spend precious little time even thinking about our state of <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/02/permanent-war-new-opium-of-masses.html" target="_blank">permanent war</a>. They have become an abstraction that we simply tune out in favor of <i>American Idol</i> or <i>Downton Abbey</i>.<br />
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So by all means, root, root for the home team, if you so desire. Just be sure you understand what it is you are really rooting for: "War minus the shooting."<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-30117337951220404822014-09-30T07:15:00.000-07:002014-09-30T07:15:47.113-07:00Eric Holder: A Dubious Legacy<br />
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Attorney General Eric H. Holder's announcement last week that he intends <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/attorney-general-eric-holder-to-step-down/2014/09/25/9b1dbb7a-44c3-11e4-b47c-f5889e061e5f_story.html" target="_blank">to leave the White House</a> after six years in the Obama administration has lead to a series of debates among the cable-news talking-heads and political elites <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/09/25/351363171/eric-holder-to-step-down-as-attorney-general" target="_blank">about his legacy. </a><br />
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Given how absolutely abysmal Holder's stint as attorney general has been, such "debates" need not be very long. Good riddance, I say.<br />
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As the nation's first African American attorney general--and the last remaining of President Obama's original cabinet members--Holder has presided over the largest expansion of executive power in U.S. history. Rather than rolling back the Bush administration's worst excesses and abuses of power, Holder has allowed Obama to codify them into law, ushering in a frightening "new normal."<br />
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He has overseen the continuation and militant expansion of the "War on Terror,"--a Cold War-style conflict <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/09/battlefield-earth.html" target="_blank">which, by design, can never end.</a> Holder has codified torture as a legitimate (and legal) method of prisoner interrogation, as well as <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2012/06/death-from-above-2012-on-presidents.html" target="_blank">the outright killing of U.S. civilians (and their children)</a>.<br />
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Holder has been a key ally in Obama's unprecedented war on journalists and whistleblowers. Indeed, embattled <i>New York Times</i> investigative reporter <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/17/james-risen-obama-greatest-enemy-press-freedom-generation" target="_blank">James Risen</a> calls President Obama, "The greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation." Risen is currently facing jail time under <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/06/obama-abuse-espionage-act-mccarthyism" target="_blank">the Espionage Act </a>for refusing to reveal a source and testify against a former CIA agent accused of leaking state secrets.<br />
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Likewise, Holder has overseen the most rampant <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323848804578608040780519904" target="_blank">militarization of municipal police forces</a>, which have proven quite effective at breaking up peaceful demonstrations like Occupy Wall Street and those in Ferguson, MO.<br />
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And, as the nation's top law enforcer, Holder has refused to hold any of the CEOs or other managers of the "Too Big to Fail" Wall Street banks that torpedoed the global economy accountable for their crimes. He has, furthermore, resisted following the logic of "Too Big to Fail" (hence, "Too Big to Jail") to its logical conclusion, and broken-up <a href="http://www.forbes.com/pictures/eehd45egjjk/1-jp-morgan-chase/" target="_blank">the largest conglomerate banks</a> like JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Citigroup.<br />
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In the words of former bank regulator, William Black, speaking to <i>The Real News Network </i>(<a href="http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12433" target="_blank">09/29/2014</a>), Holder is going to leave the Justice Department, "without even a token conviction."<br />
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Not exactly a record to brag about, if you ask me.<br />
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True, there have been a handful of progressive gains under Holder surrounding civil rights, gay marriage, and the war on drugs. But most of these victories are the result of the attorney general's refusal to enforce various laws, rather than--with the exception of <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/06/on-doma.html" target="_blank">the Defense of Marriage Act</a>--any substantial change in the laws.<br />
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As a result, it is difficult to view Holder's record on civil rights, voting rights, etc. as actual "victories," since the next AG could well reverse course, and simply go back to enforcing the laws Holder chose to ignore.<br />
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Yet, it is this handful of half-measures many within the liberal intelligentsia would prefer to focus on as Holder plots his departure.<br />
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A recent editorial in <i>The Washington Post</i> (<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eric-holders-legacy-protecting-civil-rights/2014/09/26/a0d1cb36-45a6-11e4-b437-1a7368204804_story.html" target="_blank">"Eric Holder's legacy: Protecting civil rights," 09/26/2014</a>) is a case in point, offering high praise for Holder's record on voting rights. "Democracy depends on everyone having unencumbered access to the voting booth," the editors write.<br />
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And while this is no doubt true, does democracy not also depend on every citizen's right to due process...? The Op-Ed makes no mention of Anwar al-Alwaki or the use of drones.<br />
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Georgetown University Professor Michael Eric Dyson, likewise, <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2012/09/a-frustrating-debate.html" target="_blank">is another Obama-apologist</a> who would prefer to accentuate the positive. In a recent debate on Holder's legacy on <i>Democracy Now!</i> (<a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2014/9/26/eric_holders_complex_legacy_voting_rights" target="_blank">09/26/14</a>), Dyson, along with NAACP legal defense fund director, Leslie Proll, praised the outgoing attorney general as "one of the nation's finest and most extraordinary." Proll goes on to compare Holder to Robert Kennedy.<br />
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Dyson, meanwhile, dismisses criticisms of Holder's failure to prosecute Wall Street bankers as an "abstract" issue, a phrase he uses multiple times. "[W]hen we look at his [Holder's] record," he says, "we've got to put it in the context of the abstract versus the real, the abstract versus what is achievable..."<br />
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Dyson would do well to get out of his ivory tower and talk with some of the people--the majority of whom are people of color--who lost their homes, filed for bankruptcy, lost their jobs or endured some other form of very real financial, emotional or psychological hardship as a result of the Great Recession. Try telling them their concerns are "abstract."<br />
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Furthermore, Dyson's insistence that Obama had no choice but to bail out the financial institutions that ravaged the economy--"...you can't overcome that [hypothetical newspaper] headline...'Nation's First Black President Allows the Financial Institutions to Fail'"--ignores the fact that a majority of Americans--conservatives, liberals and independents--<i><a href="http://thefinancialbrand.com/28633/consumer-attitudes-towards-big-bank-bailouts/" target="_blank">opposed the Wall Street bailout</a></i>.<br />
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In other words, had Obama simply invoked the <a href="http://climateandcapitalism.com/2013/02/28/like-unicorns-the-free-market-is-a-myth/" target="_blank">(supposed) "free-market"</a> orthodoxy and told the banks to sleep in the beds they had made for themselves, he would have been on the same side as majority popular opinion. But Dyson is more afraid of what the corporate, Wall Street-owned newspapers might think. This why I maintain <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/12/how-identity-politics-destroyed-left.html" target="_blank">identity politics destroyed the left.</a><br />
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Saint Augustine was right: "In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?"<br />
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Fellow progressives derided <a href="http://mainecampus.com/2009/09/28/op-ed-torture-probe-doesn%E2%80%99t-go-far-enough-up-chain-of-command/" target="_blank">my calls for Bush and Cheney's impeachment</a> in the flagging years of their second term as a "distraction." Obama, likewise, urged Americans to "look forward rather than backward" with regard to the war crimes and gross violations of power of his predecessor.<br />
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But here is the problem with that lofty approach: Law enforcement is inherently about "looking backward," because, outside of the dystopian movie, <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdUxwYScrFo" target="_blank">Minority Report</a></i>, crimes take place in the past. Hence, the entire purpose of criminal investigation is to recreate or retrace events that have <i>already occurred</i> in order to identify and arrest those responsible.<br />
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As for impeachment being a "distraction," if that is the case, it seems odd that the framers of the U.S. Constitution mention the legislative process six times. Indeed, this was when I realized that, according to the narrow parameters of contemporary U.S. politics, those who support enforcing and upholding the rule of law are considered "radicals." Conversely, those who have no trouble ignoring war crimes and torture committed by their own government, are deemed "moderates."<br />
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The most regrettable aspect of, not just Holder's tenure, but Obama's overall presidency, is the tragic missed opportunity. Obama could have pulled the reins on Bush's worst excesses. Indeed, many on the left who elected Obama--not once, but twice--believed that was what they were voting for.<br />
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In closing, Holder has been an obedient and faithful servant to the corporate state. Celebrate him if you want. But history will likely be a far harsher judge.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-52969297669160624092014-09-15T13:41:00.000-07:002014-09-15T13:41:06.613-07:00Battlefield Earth<br />
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<b><i>Why Obama's war with ISIS is bound to fail, and why the "War on Terror" will never end.</i></b><br />
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In May of 2013, President Barack Obama <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/05/war-immemorial.html" target="_blank">announced his plan for "wrapping up" the "War on Terror." </a>While his supposed end-game for the now 13-year-long, Cold War-style conflict seemed more rhetorical than substantive, Obama has now dropped even his efforts at the former and recommitted the U.S. to the nebulous, open-ended battle.<br />
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Last week, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spIWGoNZnaU" target="_blank">the president outlined his "strategy"</a> for defeating the al-Qaeda offshoot, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. I put the word "strategy" in quotes because, despite what Obama and the corporate media would have you believe, there is nothing at all unique about Obama's plan for destroying this latest incarnation of al-Qaeda. His solution is the same as that of George W. Bush: More war.<br />
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In his address, the president went to great lengths to stress his intention not to have "boots on the ground," in Syria or Iraq. Instead, his strategy relies primarily on <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2012/06/death-from-above-2012-on-presidents.html" target="_blank">air-strikes and drones</a>. Perhaps he believes this will make his plan for defeating ISIS more palatable to an American public largely fed-up with endless wars.<br />
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But whatever empty military jargon we use to describe this latest American combat mission--"Targeted strikes," "Coordinated attacks," "Surge," etc.--the end result will be the same: Innocents slaughtered, families torn apart, neighborhoods obliterated, and a further stoking of anti-American sentiments.<br />
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As the editors of the <i>Socialist Worker</i> note in a recent Op-Ed (<a href="http://socialistworker.org/2014/09/10/us-wont-fix-disaster-it-caused" target="_blank">"The U.S. won't fix the disaster it caused in Iraq," 09/10/2014</a>), "Revving up the war machine will only add to the suffering and violence."<br />
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They write:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
...That war [the latest campaign in the "War on Terror"] will be waged in the name of stopping more horrors in the Middle East and protecting the security of the U.S. But the American empire will do nothing of the sort. As they have for more than 10 years already--not to mention a century of imperialist aggression before that--the warmakers of Washington will only make the world more unstable, more oppressive and more violent.</blockquote>
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It is worth noting, as the <i>SW</i> editors point out, that ISIS--or, for that matter, any incarnation of al-Qaeda--was not present in Iraq before <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/04/on-bended-knee.html" target="_blank">the United States' 2003 invasion</a>. Just as we originally armed and trained Osama bin Laden during the Soviet-Afghanistan war, the so-called Islamic State is a product of our own imperialist overreach.<br />
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Like <i><a href="http://shakespeare.mit.edu/othello/full.html" target="_blank">Othello</a></i>'s Iago, we are blinded by hubris, power, and greed. We sow the seeds of our own destruction. "This is the night," the manipulative Iago acknowledges, "that either makes me or fordoes me quite."<br />
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And so it goes. Thirteen years after the brutal--<a href="http://anti-imperialism.com/2014/09/11/never-forget-911-who-are-we-remembering/" target="_blank">yet perversely romanticized</a>--Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the United States has not relinquished its war posture one iota.<br />
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Obama "ended" Bush's illegal and unfounded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (if we take "ended" to mean he scaled them down slightly), only to provoke further <a href="http://dirtywars.org/preview" target="_blank">"dirty wars"</a> in Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya, and Syria. Where Bush utilized quasi-legal doctrines of "pre-emptive strike," and private military forces, Obama prefers unmanned predator drones. Where Bush and his sadistic sidekicks attempted to legally justify the most<a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-body-trembles-question-of-torture.html" target="_blank"> heinous acts of torture</a>, Obama simply kills the bad-guys--<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/world/middleeast/anwar-al-awlaki-a-us-citizen-in-americas-cross-hairs.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" target="_blank">even if they are U.S. citizens</a>.<br />
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Then, for good measure, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/opinion/the-drone-that-killed-my-grandson.html" target="_blank">he kills their kids, too.</a><br />
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The "War on Terror" is, perhaps by design, a war against an ambiguous, ever-changing enemy. This enemy--be it al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban, or al-Shabaab--has no central country or base of operations. It is everywhere. "The world is a battlefield." And this is to say nothing of the utter inanity of waging a war on an abstract--and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/22/boston-marathon-terrorism-aurora-sandy-hook" target="_blank">subjectively defined</a>--tactic.<br />
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As such, <a href="http://truth-out.org/news/item/19685-perpetual-war-how-does-the-global-war-on-terror-ever-end" target="_blank">the "War on Terror" is potentially endless</a>--which is, as George Orwell noted in <i>1984</i>, the entire point. "The war is not meant to be won," Orwell wrote of Oceania's state of permanent war, wherein the enemy-nation constantly changes, "it is meant to be continuous."<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance... In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and the object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact. </blockquote>
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By keeping its citizens in a state of perpetual fear, the power elite are better able to control them. This constant, often irrational fear (of terrorism, communism, another economic crash, etc.) makes citizens more willing to trade-in their freedoms and civil liberties for the facade of security. As a result, we have become <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/06/in-defense-of-privacy.html" target="_blank">the most photographed, video taped, and otherwise surveilled nation</a> in human history.<br />
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Thirteen years after 9/11 (which, curiously, has yet to earn itself any other, more proper-sounding historical name like "Pearl Harbor," or "D-Day") we continue to promote this infantile notion that we were attacked because the Islamic world, "hates our freedoms."<br />
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Putting aside whether the prolonged wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, etc. have actually made us any appreciably "freer" as a nation, the truth is the 9/11 hijackers were likely motivated more by anger over nearly a century's worth of U.S. invasions, occupations, coup d'etats and imperialism in the Middle East.<br />
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But this sort of critical self-reflection falls outside the sphere of what Noam Chomsky calls "acceptable discourse," and is, therefore, immediately dismissed by the corporate media, which prefers to keep things simple.<br />
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Erstwhile presidential candidate, Ron Paul, discovered this the hard way <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD7dnFDdwu0" target="_blank">during a 2008 Republican presidential "debate."</a> Say what you will about Paul's libertarian economic philosophies--many of which are admittedly frightening. While a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, he was a consistent voice against war, military-spending, and the relentless rollback of our civil liberties.<br />
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Through our unending military invasions, drone attacks, and imperialist slaughter of innocents, we inflict the same barbaric violence upon others that we so vehemently decry when unleashed upon ourselves. And with this latest campaign of military aggression, Obama has all but solidified his codification of the "War on Terror."<br />
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Unless "We the People" nonviolently revolt--in whatever ways we can, no matter how seemingly insignificant--we, like the citizens of Orwell's Oceania, will remain forever locked in a state of permanent war.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-31059033046128032412014-09-08T14:26:00.000-07:002014-09-08T14:29:13.435-07:00Marching Towards Oblivion<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Bill McKibben leads the "Forward on Climate" march in Washington D.C., in Feb. 2013.</i></td></tr>
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Environmental activists will descend on the United Nations' headquarters in New York on Sept. 21, for a global warming rally billed as the "largest climate march in history."<br />
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The so-called <a href="http://peoplesclimate.org/march/" target="_blank">"People's Climate March,"</a> will feature all of the major environmental advocacy groups--350.org, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Sierra Club--as well as less strictly environmentally-focused progressive groups like Amnesty International, the League of Women Voters, and local chapters of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).<br />
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The march comes in advance of the U.N.'s <a href="http://www.un.org/climatechange/summit/" target="_blank">"Climate Summit 2014" conference</a>, a gathering of world leaders in preparation for next year's U.N. Climate Conference in Paris. Activists and participants are hoping to call attention to the imperative urgency of a renewed climate change negotiation to dramatically reduce global CO2 emissions.<br />
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"With our future on the line and the whole world watching," the People's Climate March website reads, "we'll take a stand to bend the course of history."<br />
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I have attended dozens of marches, rallies, vigils and similar street events like this. I have marched in Washington D.C., New York, and in my hometown of Kennebunkport, near George Bush I's vacation home at Walker's Point. (In fact, Kennebunk had a <a href="http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20070823-NEWS-708230363" target="_blank">fairly strong anti-war contingent</a> during George W. Bush's presidency. But like so many anti-war factions, it has <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/04/antiwar-opportunists.html" target="_blank">all but evaporated since Barack Obama's election.</a>)<br />
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And I am becoming increasingly convinced these events are largely a waste of time.<br />
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Some of them are, admittedly, rather fun--even if the issue allegedly being denounced is quite somber (war, illegal wiretapping, torture, the imprisonment of Chelsea Manning, etc.).<br />
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But these pseudo-protests rarely entail any genuine sense of risk for protesters. They are often so meticulously prearranged--with those few protesters who wind up getting arrested typically having planned to do so ahead of time--they amount to little more than glorified street theater.<br />
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Consider:<br />
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As a rule of thumb, these events occur exclusively on the weekend--when Congress <i>is not in session</i>. In keeping with this rule, the People's Climate March is scheduled for a Sunday. While march facilitators' desire to maximize turnout is understandable, what good is any sort of rally if there is no government present to shut-down, disrupt or otherwise protest?<br />
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Participants march along a predetermined route via police escort often with rally facilitators running ahead to coordinate traffic. This portion of the event usually follows an interminable lineup of speakers--some of them famous, celebrity-like figures of the left, like Michael Moore or Rev. Al Sharpton--whose job is to "work the crowd" like a football coach.<br />
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During the march, protesters recite cheerleader-style chants ("The people/United/Will never be/Defeated!") and wave semi-witty homemade signs like "Go Frack Yourself!" or "Bush + Dick= Screwed." In what seems to be a fairly recent trend, some protesters will even dress up (the Guy Fawkes mask inspired by <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/V-Vendetta-Alan-Moore/dp/140120841X" target="_blank">V for Vendetta</a></i> is a popular choice of attire). Earlier this year, I attended an anti-GMO, <a href="http://www.march-against-monsanto.com/" target="_blank">"March Against Monsanto"</a> where many people dressed up as bees.<br />
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Far be it from me to impinge on anyone's creativity. But seriously, people--is this a political demonstration or a Halloween party?<br />
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Actually, I should back up.<br />
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Before the rally can even take place, event facilitators must first obtain a permit from the city or town. I have no idea how this permit process works, but I assume city officials could conceivably deny permit-seekers for any reason. I am trying to envision <a href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/thomas_paine_our_contemporary_20140525" target="_blank">Thomas Paine</a> waiting calmly to receive written permission from the British monarchy before circulating copies of <i>Common Sense</i>--an incendiary document that, mind you, was calling for colonial revolution.<br />
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As a result, these events have become completely symbolic. They are, in the words of Macbeth, so much "sound and fury, signifying nothing."<br />
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Much of the problem lies with the liberal environmental groups that typically coordinate these rallies--groups like Greenpeace, Sierra Club, and the aforementioned 350.org.<br />
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As <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-lefts-clear-skies-initiative.html" target="_blank">I wrote last year</a>, while these "non-profit" groups are generally staffed by well-intentioned progressive activists, they are, at the end of the day, completely beholden to the Democratic Party. The liberals that run these groups generally have disdain for the Green Party, <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/14/how-not-to-stop-a-pipeline/" target="_blank">Ralph Nader</a> or any other environmentally-conscious third-party.<br />
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Therefore, the entire premise that outfits like MoveOn or 350 can effectively make any sort of genuine demands of President Obama and congressional Democrats is laughable. The fact is, Bill McKibben and his 350 followers will remain loyal to Obama no matter what he does or does not do.<br />
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Indeed, all of the "Big Green" groups endorsed Obama for re-election <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0412/75274.html" target="_blank">as early as April of 2012</a>, hailing him as the "greenest" president in history despite his penchant for nuclear power and something called "clean coal."<br />
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The fact that many recent global warming marches have appeared more like campaign rallies--complete with <a href="http://charlottesierraclub.org/2013/01/31/sierra-club-forward-on-climate-bus-to-dc-online-registration-and-payment/" target="_blank">protest signs that unapologetically ape Obama's campaign </a>logo--does not help matters.<br />
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If we are to create a truly effective and formidable movement to save the planet, we must move beyond these empty street theater rallies. Perhaps they were genuinely effective at one point in time. But that time is long gone. The corporate state, along with the progressive NGOs who have been all too eager to play by the rules, has successfully neutered these marches, rendering them impotent. We must create our own grassroots movement, independent of the Big Green Groups that are essentially lobbyists for the Democrats.<br />
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We must engage in massive acts of nonviolent civil disobedience to literally disrupt business as usual. We must, in the words of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhFvZRT7Ds0" target="_blank">Mario Savio</a>, put our "bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you have got to make it stop."<br />
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This is where, I believe, <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/04/bedtime-for-democracy.html" target="_blank">Occupy Wall Street</a> got it right. Occupy can still offer us a blueprint for how to seriously take on corporate power and mitigate the climate crisis.<br />
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While liberals continue to invest their energy toward appealing to traditional systems of power--the White House, Congress, the U.N., state legislatures, etc--Occupy correctly understood where real power rests in this country: ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Citigroup, and J.P. Morgan. These are the corporations that are, quite literally, <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/05/capitalism-is-killing-planet.html" target="_blank">killing the planet</a>. We should be marching on their headquarters.<br />
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As Frederick Douglass famously observed:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters... Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.</blockquote>
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<i>A few groups are planning more "serious" actions in conjunction with </i>The People's Climate March<i>. Click <a href="http://convergeforclimate.org/" target="_blank">here</a>, and <a href="http://globalclimateconvergence.org/" target="_blank">here</a> for additional details on the </i>NYC Climate Convergence<i>. And as always, if you want to keep this blog going, please consider making a donation. Any amount is greatly appreciated.</i>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-48052997303772433462014-09-01T09:59:00.001-07:002014-09-01T15:58:09.933-07:00Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos<br />
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The shooting of unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Mo has thrust the topic of race back to the forefront. Many media pundits urge us to "discuss" the incident and racial tensions. "We can talk about Ferguson," a recent headline of <a href="http://portland.thephoenix.com/news/159416-we-can-talk-about-ferguson/" target="_blank">the <i>Portland Phoenix</i></a> declares.<br />
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But for many black residents of Ferguson, and other predominantly African American communities, the time for "talk" is long over. Talk, as they say, is cheap.<br />
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We do not need another university-style discussion on race and police brutality. These sorts of indiscriminate shootings of unarmed young black men--with the memory of Trayvon Martin still fresh in our minds--have gone on far too long.<br />
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What we need now is action.<br />
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Nationwide, the unemployment rate for African Americans is nearly double that of whites--at <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/06/why-is-the-black-unemployment-rate-so-high/372667/" target="_blank">11.5 percent as of June</a>. Yet, as Demos senior fellow and former <i>New York Times</i> columnist, Bob Herbert notes, in a recent article for AlterNet (<a href="http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/bob-herbert-ferguson-just-latest-long-line-racist-fueled" target="_blank">"Ferguson Just the Latest in Long Line of Racist Fueled Tragedies," 08/27/2014</a>), soaring unemployment rates have plagued the black community long before <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-great-american-stickup.html" target="_blank">Wall Street crashed the economy</a>.<br />
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"I remember the stunned reaction of so many Americans back in the summer of 2005," Herbert writes, "when legions of poor black people in desperate circumstances seemed to have suddenly and inexplicably materialized in New Orleans during the flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina."<br />
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He continues, "...People found themselves staring at the kind of poverty they thought had been largely wiped out decades earlier."<br />
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We like to believe that racism is a thing of the past. We think of slavery as an ugly, unforgivable stain on our country's history, but one that we have, in modern times, more or less atoned for. Republican politicians <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/19/us/mlk-conservative/" target="_blank">grossly misconstrue</a> Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s call to judge others not by the color of their skin, but "by the content of their character" as a free-market argument against affirmative action programs.<br />
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In the years since President Barack Obama's election, some pundits have even gone so far as to claim we now occupy a "post-racial" era.<br />
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Last year, the Supreme Court took this suggestion even further by obliterating key parts of the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/us/supreme-court-ruling.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" target="_blank">1965 Voting Rights Act.</a> In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts echoed the "post-racial" concept, writing, "Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions."<br />
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Yet this sort of childish thinking merely allows for the perpetuation of white supremacy--which is likely the point.<br />
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Even here in lily-white Maine (94.4 percent of the population is non-Hispanic white according to the 2010 U.S. census), we are not immune to racist bigotry.<br />
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When I (briefly) <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/09/welcome-to-servant-economy.html" target="_blank">worked at Staples in Falmouth last year</a>, a young co-worker complained that he "didn't see what the big deal" was concerning the death of 17-year-old <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/181404/how-trayvon-martins-death-launched-new-generation-black-activism" target="_blank">Trayvon Martin</a>. (These were his exact words. I kid you not.) He suggested that the death of "one black kid," did not, in his mind, compare to the "dozens" of his white friends who were "killed by black people." Can you see now why I quit...?<br />
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Yet, in an unqualified display of hypocrisy, this same individual, who is Jewish, threw a fit one night after a customer made what he perceived to be an anti-Semitic remark. Noam Chomsky is correct: "For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit."<br />
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Every significant political philosopher has understood the inherent--and inextricable--link between racism and capitalism. Socialism of any sort can never fully take form without eliminating racial as well as income inequality.<br />
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Karl Marx observed this link in <i><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/" target="_blank">Capital (Vol. 1)</a></i>, writing of the factors that lead to the rise of capitalism:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The discovery of gold in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the indigenous population of the continent, the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of black skins are all things that characterize the dawn of the era of capitalist production.</blockquote>
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He continues later, "In the United States of America, every independent workers' movement was paralyzed as long as slavery disfigured part of the republic."<br />
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While the antiquated, overt forms of slavery and racial segregation of the 19th century have been (mostly) done away with, the corporate state now uses more subtle, sophisticated methods to keep African Americans in chains.<br />
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The most common apparatus of racial segregation is the U.S. prison-industrial-complex--the largest in the world. Today, the vast majority of young black men are in prison--most of them for petty crimes or minor <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/11/portland-paves-way-on-pot.html" target="_blank">drug possession charges.</a> Blacks constitute 1 million of the nearly 2.3 million Americans in prison, <a href="http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet" target="_blank">according to the NAACP</a>. Blacks are imprisoned at six times the rate of whites. In fact, a recent report by the Washington, D.C.-based reform group, the Sentencing Project, estimates <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/04/racial-disparities-criminal-justice_n_4045144.html" target="_blank">one in three black males will go to prison</a> at "some point in their lives."<br />
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This system of racial incarceration constitutes the "new Jim Crow," according to author and law professor, Michelle Alexander, in her provocative 2010 book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Crow-Incarceration-Colorblindness/dp/1595586431/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1409527117&sr=8-1&keywords=new+jim+crow+by+alexander" target="_blank">The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness</a></i>. Alexander argues the mass incarceration of black Americans has effectively made them a permanent "under-caste."<br />
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"We have not ended racial caste in America," Alexander writes, "we have merely redesigned it."<br />
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So, by all means, let's discuss the situation in Ferguson.<br />
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But let's also understand that any discussion without meaningful, preferably nonviolent, action to back it up, is meaningless and will change nothing. Let privileged corporatists like Portland musician <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/08/who-owns-land.html" target="_blank">Samuel James</a> split hairs over whether Brown's death was motivated by <a href="http://portland.thephoenix.com/news/159524-michael-brown-class-or-race/" target="_blank">"race" or "class,"</a> seemingly oblivious to the intricate connection between the two.<br />
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Let us return, as Herbert does in his piece, to the words of <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/james-baldwin-9196635" target="_blank">James Baldwin</a>. In his 1962 classic, <i>The Fire Next Time</i>, he writes:<br />
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"I know that what I am asking is impossible. But in our time, as in every time, the impossible is the least that one can demand..."<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-68752463657278299182014-08-12T11:43:00.000-07:002014-08-12T11:43:11.249-07:00Why There is No Such Thing as a "Humanitarian" War<br />
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President Barack Obama became the fourth president in a row to authorize military action in Iraq, on Thursday. Obama ordered <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/08/world/middleeast/obama-weighs-military-strikes-to-aid-trapped-iraqis-officials-say.html?_r=0" target="_blank">airstrikes over the region</a> in retaliation to increased aggression by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or ISIS, a newly-formed branch of al-Qaeda. The president hinted over the weekend of further U.S. actions to come.<br />
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But fear not: This is strictly a "humanitarian" mission. We know this because, in addition to the countless Hellfire missiles the U.S. is raining down over Iraq, we are also dropping food packages for the Iraqi people. Hence, the <i>New York Times </i>headline the following day (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/08/world/middleeast/obama-weighs-military-strikes-to-aid-trapped-iraqis-officials-say.html?_r=0" target="_blank">Fri, 08/08/2014</a>) reads, "U.S. Drops Food Aid to Iraqi Refugees; Militants Bombed." (The headline to the online version of the article differs from the print edition.)<br />
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This is what reporters typically refer to as "Burying the lead."<br />
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Indeed, given the similarity of Obama's actions to those of <a href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/obama_airstrikes_protect_iraqi_kurds_1991_deja_vu_all_over_again_20140809" target="_blank">George H. W. Bush in the 1991 Gulf War</a>, combined with the fact that the top-grossing movie in the country is <i><a href="http://insidemovies.ew.com/2014/08/09/box-office-update-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles/" target="_blank">Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles</a></i>, Americans may be forgiven for thinking they may have stumbled into some sort of time-warp. Relax: It's merely a glitch in the Matrix.<br />
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Just to review: The hostage situation in Iraq is a "humanitarian crisis," which "necessitates" a U.S. response. Yet, when Israel slaughters close to 2,000 Palestinian women, children, and civilians, well, that is just Israel exercising its <a href="http://www.alternet.org/world/palestinians-have-right-defend-themselves-why-obvious-truth-suppressed" target="_blank">"right to defend itself."</a> It is a curious hypocrisy, worth reflecting on.<br />
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While many progressive commentators now lament Obama's sudden "shift in strategy" over Iraq, the truth is he never really was the anti-war champion the press has made him out to be. <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99591469" target="_blank">Candidate-Obama said himself</a>, "I don't oppose all wars... What I am opposed to is a dumb war."<br />
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In fact, that one vaunted speech essentially constitutes the extent of Obama's supposed "criticism" of the Iraq War. And even despite his misgivings about the war, as a U.S. Senator, Obama dutifully voted for every single supplemental war-funding bill that came up during his term.<br />
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Likewise, the media narrative that Obama ended George W. Bush's war in Iraq is also an outright lie. Sure, he pulled some--but certainly not all--of the military forces out of Iraq. But the remaining 30,000 "non-combat troops" as well as private mercenary operatives like Blackwater/Xe, have allowed the <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views/2011/09/07/headlines-or-not-iraq-war-not-over" target="_blank">brutal U.S. occupation of Iraq to continue all along. </a><br />
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In fact, it is likely our initial 2003 invasion of Iraq, as well as our unwavering support for U.S. puppet Nouri al-Maliki, <a href="http://rt.com/op-edge/168064-isis-terrorism-usa-cia-war/" target="_blank">led to the creation of ISIS in the first place</a>. Our latest terrorist bogeymen--just like al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden--are born out of our own imperialist overreach and shortsighted alliances. In our insatiable quest for global empire and corporate profits we, like Mary Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein, unwittingly sow the seeds of our own destruction.<br />
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The CIA has a term for these sorts of unintended consequences: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blt9_hy1di4" target="_blank">"Blowback." </a><br />
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To be certain, the situation in Iraq is dire. ISIS's takeover of the Mosul Dam in the town of Sinjar has sent tens of thousands of Kurdish refugees fleeing the area.<br />
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And so the inevitable question arises: "What should we do?" The goal of "humanitarian intervention" is a longstanding "go-to" rationale for waging war. (Comparing the enemy to Hitler is also popular with war-makers.) And it is one traditionally embraced and supported by supposedly "anti-war" progressives. Indeed, <a href="http://rt.com/news/yugoslavia-kosovo-nato-bombing-705/" target="_blank">Bill Clinton's bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999</a> was sold to the public as just this type of "humanitarian" intervention.<br />
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Yet, even when these sorts of humanitarian interventions are launched out of a genuine desire to stop violence, end human rights abuses, and save lives, they rarely achieve any of these goals. If anything, bombing civilians in an effort to save them tends to make matters worse.<br />
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As blogger and anti-war activist, <a href="http://warisacrime.org/" target="_blank">David Swanson</a> writes of the Iraq War in his 2010 self-published book, <i>War is a Lie, </i><br />
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Rather than "spreading freedom" with bombs and guns, what would have been wrong with spreading knowledge? If learning leads to the development of democracy, why not spread education? Why not provide funding for children's health and schools, instead of melting the skin off children with white phosphorous? (96)</blockquote>
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Glenn Greenwald, writing at The Intercept.org (<a href="https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/08/08/us-bombing-iraq-redundant-presidential-ritual/" target="_blank">"U.S. 'Humanitarian' Bombing of Iraq: A Redundant Presidential Ritual," 08/08/14</a>) concurs, pointing out the historical repetition of the so-called "humanitarian" war. He writes:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Humanitarianism" is the pretty packaging in which all wars...are wrapped, but it is almost never the actual purpose. There are often numerous steps the U.S. could take to advance actually [sic] humanitarian goals, but those take persistence and resources, and entail little means of control, and are thus usually ignored in favor of blowing things and people up with Freedom Bombs.</blockquote>
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Finally, the utter hypocrisy implicit in the very concept of a "humanitarian intervention" is, again, worth noting. Quite simply, if the United States truly desires to be the exalted "Cop of the World," then we cannot pick and choose which victims we save. We cannot, within the span of the same week, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/senate-approves-funding-for-israels-iron-dome/2014/08/01/2180ebd6-1997-11e4-9e3b-7f2f110c6265_story.html" target="_blank">bankroll Israel's latest horrific onslaught of the Palestinians</a>, but claim the Kurds are somehow more worthy of our help.<br />
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Is the crisis in Gaza not deserving of "humanitarian intervention"? Where are the "targeted airstrikes" and "precision bombings" over Israel? (Cue anti-Semitism accusations in five, four, three...) <br />
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The rank hypocrisy of the American military empire--wherein we strategically pick and choose which atrocities to condemn and which to condone as if the globe is one giant chessboard--reminds me of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAeqVGP-GPM" target="_blank">my favorite line </a>in Stanley Kubrick's classic film, <i>Dr. Strangelove</i>. "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here!" declares Peter Sellers's U.S. President. "This is the war room!"<br />
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In the end, as Kubrick as well as <i>Catch-22</i> author, Joseph Heller observed, all war amounts to little more than such contradictory absurdities.<br />
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War--whether it takes the traditional form of ground-soldiers and tanks, or that of modern high-tech weaponry like drones and "precision" bombings--is never a force for good. It does not save or "liberate" citizens, no matter how oppressed they may be.<br />
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This is not to suggest we do <i>nothing</i> to squelch the very real and deadly violence carried out by ISIS. But to insist, as so many do, that our only conceivable options are one of two polar extremes--War and Passivity-- constitutes an abysmal failure of imagination. Indeed, it is a damning indictment of civilized man--and so-called human "progress"--when war and mass killing are deemed our only acceptable means of resolving international conflicts.<br />
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Albert Einstein put it best. "War cannot be humanized," he said. "It can only be abolished."<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-35610019684051960972014-08-04T10:42:00.002-07:002014-08-04T10:42:44.871-07:00Striking Market Basket Workers Rally Behind CEO<br />
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The actions of <a href="http://www.popularresistance.org/market-basket-revolt-a-sign-of-fed-up-times/" target="_blank">Market Basket workers</a> in the last two weeks have been nothing short of remarkable. They have single-handedly--without any union support--shutdown the Massachusetts-based grocery store chain. Like last year's fast-food worker strikes, and the growing <a href="http://fightfor15.org/en/homepage/" target="_blank">"Fight for $15"</a> campaign, the Market Basket walkout is another encouraging sign that low-wage workers have finally reached their limit.<br />
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Employees at Market Basket stores in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and <a href="http://www.pressherald.com/2014/07/26/customers-of-market-basket-in-biddeford-protest-presidents-ouster/" target="_blank">Biddeford, Maine</a> are striking in protest of CEO and family heir, Arthur T. Demoulas's ouster. In the latest escalation of a decades-long family feud between Demoulas and his cousin, Arthur S. Demoulas over company ownership, Arthur T. ("Artie T." as Market Basket employees affectionately refer to him) was forced out of the family business in a corporate ouster last month.<br />
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The Demoulas brothers are heirs to the Market Basket franchise, which originally opened in Lowell, Mass., as Demoulas Super Market in 1917. Market Basket is known throughout Massachusetts and New Hampshire for its low prices.<br />
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The Biddeford store, which opened last summer, was originally intended to be the first of many in Maine. However, the strike has put any plans for additional stores on hold, indefinitely. Striking workers at all 71 Market Basket locations are encouraging customers to boycott the stores until the situation is resolved.<br />
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(Given the lack of union involvement, the protest at Market Basket cannot, technically, <a href="http://nhpr.org/post/market-basket-reminder-most-rallying-workers-not-actually-strike" target="_blank">be considered an actual "strike."</a> Regardless, many employees are refusing to work until their demands are met--which is essentially the same concept as a labor strike. As such, I use the word "strike" here loosely.)<br />
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Market Basket associates now worry their worker benefits--which include profit-sharing options, regular bonuses, and generous sick leave/vacation time--may be in danger. These benefits--<a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/09/welcome-to-servant-economy.html" target="_blank">which are highly uncommon in the retail industry</a>--are not limited to full-time employees. Part-time workers are eligible for them, as well.<br />
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But beyond what some may perceive as motivations of purely personal self-interest, Market Basket workers want to retain their boss because he is, by all accounts, a really great guy.<br />
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"Artie T. is a man of integrity," Pat Berry, one of the striking workers at the Biddeford store, told me. "He is a humble leader who takes care of his employees."<br />
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Berry is clearly not the only one who thinks so. In fact, nobody seems to have anything bad to say about Demoulas.<br />
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Instead, I heard repeated stories of him visiting sick workers in the hospital, of attending funerals for employees or their families, and, on happier occasions, watching associates graduate from high school or college. During the Biddeford store's grand opening about a year ago, Berry recalled, it took Demoulas a full hour to walk from the outside ceremony to the inside of the store because he wanted to personally shake hands with every single person present.<br />
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Many of the striking workers held signs that read, "Bring back our 'Daddy,'" referring to Demoulas. Another stated, "Arthur T. is for MB & you and me." A number of workers talked of Market Basket as a "family."<br />
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To be certain, Demoulas seems like a relic from a bygone era: A sincere, compassionate boss who actually cares about his employees. Indeed, a growing body of evidence suggests <a href="http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20140306-do-you-work-for-a-tyrant" target="_blank">most professional managers today are, quite literally, psychopaths</a>. At a time when the average corporate CEO makes <a href="http://rt.com/business/163052-us-ceo-330-earn/" target="_blank">330 times the average worker</a>, according to a 2013 study by the AFL-CIO's Executive Paywatch, it is not hard to see why Demoulas is so loved.<br />
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As recent story in the <i>Boston Globe </i>(<a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/07/30/arthurs/pHOF5ySLsjQusOWEQ3HwNP/story.html" target="_blank">07/31/2014</a>) notes:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The employee rallies on behalf of Arthur T. constitute an extraordinary show of support for a multimillionaire chief executive in an era when most corporate workers barely know their CEOs and would be loath to risk their jobs on behalf of top executives.</blockquote>
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But here is what the corporate media won't tell you: The workers are winning.<br />
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Last week, Market Basket's co-chief executives warned it would <a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/07/30/arthurs/pHOF5ySLsjQusOWEQ3HwNP/story.html" target="_blank">start laying off striking employees</a> who do not return to work by Monday, Aug. 4. The store is hemorrhaging millions of dollars a day, especially in wasted food. Threats of job-losses--however real--aside, this means the walkouts are having an effect. The Market Basket workers have successfully disrupted business as usual. The corporate chieftains are, predictably, angry.<br />
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"On their side the workers had only the Constitution," <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/mother-jones-9357488#synopsis" target="_blank">Mother Jones</a> wrote. "The other side had bayonets."<br />
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While I would personally like to see the rallying workers take their demands even further--like pushing for <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/05/your-job-is-prison.html" target="_blank">worker ownership</a> of the Market Basket stores, for instance--the protests are nonetheless interesting to watch unfold. Taken alongside the "Fight for $15" campaign, they represent yet another sign Americans are fed-up with low-pay, increased hours for decreased benefits, hyper-corporatization, and even, in some cases, <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/07/capitalism-and-its-liberal-apologists.html" target="_blank">capitalism itself</a>.<br />
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<a href="http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Upton_Sinclair/The_Jungle/" target="_blank">Upton Sinclair's <i>The Jungle</i></a> remains the ultimate muckraking expose of the soul-crushing plight of the immigrant working-class in the unsanitary Chicago slaughterhouses. While the book became best known for its revealing, insider account of the lax health regulations rampant in turn-of-the-century industrial America, <i>The Jungle</i> is first and foremost a searing expose of the social injustice inherent in capitalism.<br />
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Sinclair writes of the plight of the meat factory workers:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Here is a population, low-class and mostly foreign, hanging always on the verge of starvation and dependent for its opportunities of life upon the whim of men every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave drivers; under such circumstances, immorality is exactly as inevitable, and as prevalent, as it is under the system of chattel slavery.</blockquote>
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Solidarity forever!<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-37684002155967318782014-07-28T18:42:00.000-07:002014-07-28T18:42:31.791-07:00In Defense of Cutler (Sort of...)<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdtLbnJUhQo8yDUWX-CGKq5fnabkNbFX4hgSoYq0hDwXg4TlWezb8MyGx4kqM8CsiaTZLcDXt8A3yOLr8RJ9sPJDaMqmnB7zRwPjb9jWNST-ca2rgjXXHS8Bo4apuROvi2oddhm6LZqGY/s1600/Cutler.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdtLbnJUhQo8yDUWX-CGKq5fnabkNbFX4hgSoYq0hDwXg4TlWezb8MyGx4kqM8CsiaTZLcDXt8A3yOLr8RJ9sPJDaMqmnB7zRwPjb9jWNST-ca2rgjXXHS8Bo4apuROvi2oddhm6LZqGY/s1600/Cutler.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Eliot Cutler. Photo from the </i>Bangor Daily News.<br /></td></tr>
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Maine independent gubernatorial candidate Eliot Cutler should not drop out of the race. Frankly, I find all calls for him to do so--primarily coming from the Maine Democratic Party and liberal voters--highly anti-democratic.<br />
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A recent MPBN report on the candidates' campaign finances ("<a href="http://news.mpbn.net/post/viability-cutler-campaign-questioned-wake-finance-reports" target="_blank">Viability of Cutler Campaign Questioned in Wake of Finance Reports," 7/23/2014</a>), finds Cutler trailing Republican incumbent Paul LePage, and Democratic Congressman Mike Michaud, with only $527,000 on hand. Michaud, meanwhile, is leading with more than $1 million, with LePage following close behind, with a little more than $900,000, according to the report.<br />
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The independently-wealthy Cutler is largely self-financing his campaign--a fact MPBN reporter, A.J. Higgins makes the focus of the story. In the warped logic of our <a href="http://www.dollarocracy-book.com/" target="_blank">money-driven political system</a>, Higgins and other local media pundits are using Cutler's comparative lack of campaign cash to further justify calls for him to drop out of the three-way race.<br />
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Higgins goes on to raise fears that Cutler will "take away votes," from Michaud (as if the latter candidate is somehow entitled to them) and, thus, "spoil" the governor's race. This accusatory word, "spoiler," holds a unique place in the U.S. political lexicon in that it applies <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/05/democrats-to-third-parties-drop-dead.html" target="_blank">exclusively to third-party candidates.</a> It is the same asinine, discriminatory accusation Democrats continue to hold over Ralph Nader for allegedly "costing" Al Gore the 2000 presidential election.<br />
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The truth, of course, is that <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/mar/12/uselections2000.usa" target="_blank">Gore <i>won</i> that election</a>. It was the conservative-led Supreme Court, in refusing to allow the Florida vote recount to continue, that essentially anointed George W. Bush president.<br />
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But, as is often the case in the contemporary world of corporate politics, if voters are fed a false talking-point enough times, most of them come to accept it as true. Besides, why blame the real culprits for a stolen presidential election when you can just blame the long-admired consumer advocate who just happens to be the only candidate talking about corporate crime and single-payer health care?<br />
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Thus, this notion that third-party challengers to the corporate two-party duopoly are "spoilers" for the "real" candidate (i.e. the Democrat) persists in the minds' of voters and has carried over to the state-level. As a result, the rage--and that is the only accurate word to describe it--that Maine Democrats display toward Cutler is not much different from that which they hold for Nader.<br />
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Cutler, to his credit, says he is giving "zero thought--maybe less than zero, if that's possible--to getting out of this race." He notes, likewise, he has been forced to largely fund his own campaign given how severely Maine's election laws are stacked against third-party and independent candidates. Those same laws are the reason why the <a href="http://www.mainegreens.org/" target="_blank">Maine Green Party</a> is not running a gubernatorial candidate this year.<br />
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Let me be absolutely clear: I am <b>not</b> a Cutler supporter.<br />
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In fact, I find Cutler, overall, to be only slightly less conservative than LePage. He supports charter schools and merit-based-pay for teachers. He is anti-union. He talks of "reforming" welfare. His previous career as a corporate lobbyist and his general ties to business are worrisome. And, in his previous bid for governor in 2010, both Cutler and LePage cited New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie <a href="http://thetippingpoint.bangordailynews.com/2014/01/10/state-politics/you-might-be-surprised-what-gov-lepage-and-eliot-cutler-agree-on/#.UtBNdPRDvSg" target="_blank">as a politician they admire.</a><br />
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In fact, Cutler is not all that different from <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/07/we-have-met-enemy.html" target="_blank">Sen. Angus King</a>: Socially liberal (i.e. they don't hate gays and minorities) and fiscally conservative. But, like King, Cutler does not challenge the fundamental workings of the economy, foreign policy or capitalism. Though both claim to be "Independent," each would fit right in with either the Democrats or the Republicans. (In fact, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/04/10/angus-king-suggests-he-may-caucus-with-gop-if-it-retakes-senate/" target="_blank">King may be headed to the GOP himself come November</a>, depending on which way the political winds blow.)<br />
<br />
As such, neither King nor Cutler are truly good examples of third-party candidates, which traditionally have operated outside both the two-party structure, and its corporatist ideology. <br />
<br />
That said, Cutler is by all indications not as extreme as LePage. He is clearly an intelligent, articulate adult, unlike the bullish, tantrum-inclined man-child currently representing the state. I do not think we would need to worry about a Gov. Cutler telling the NAACP to "kiss my butt," or making vulgar jokes about Vaseline to his opponents.<br />
<br />
But I prefer to stick to the issues. Character traits and personality differences are best left to the cable-news networks to quibble over. While Cutler--and Michaud, for that matter--may not be as openly rude and hostile to the poor, welfare recipients or the unemployed as LePage has been, the two of them would pursue the same corporatist policies.<br />
<br />
To that end, it is largely irrelevant who is elected governor in November. Strange as it is to be quoting George Will, the conservative syndicated columnist was correct when he claimed, in 2008, that elections are not about "whether elites shall rule, but which elite."<br />
<br />
So, why am I standing up for Eliot Cutler if I do not even really support him, you ask? Because, unlike most liberals, I believe in every candidate's constitutional right to run for office--whether or not I agree with them ideologically. That is kinda the whole point of free speech, in fact.<br />
<br />
Beyond that, I have this crazy idea that more candidates--and, thus, a wider range of discussion, debate, and choice--is actually a good thing for democracy. And why stop with just three candidates? I would like to see four, five, six...hell, ten, 15 or even 25 candidates from different parties on the ballot. Indeed, the U.S. remains stubbornly antiquated as the only industrialized democracy in the world that restricts its political choices to two parties. The fact that those two parties <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-myth-of-congressional-gridlock.html" target="_blank">have become virtually indistinguishable</a> in recent decades does not help matters.<br />
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If we utilized a ranked-choice or <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/reforms/instant-runoff-voting/what-is-irv/" target="_blank">instant runoff voting</a> system as many other countries do, not only would it create more room for a wider diversity of candidates, it would also negate the absurd "spoiler" argument as it would level the political playing-field. Such a system is not as "impossible" to achieve as one may think. <a href="http://bangordailynews.com/2011/12/19/news/portland/does-ranked-choice-voting-have-a-future-in-maine/" target="_blank">Portland already elects its mayor</a> via a ranked-choice ballot. Why not merely expand the procedure to Maine's statewide and Legislative elections?<br />
<br />
Maine Democrats are, naturally, not too enthused about this idea. When I contacted Maine Speaker of the House Mark Eves earlier this year about the issue of ranked-choice voting, his assistant was adamant it is not something his party intends to pursue. In fact, the minute I said the words, "ranked-choice" she began yelling, "No! No! No!"<br />
<br />
Adopting a ranked-choice voting system, Eves's spokesperson told me, would "ultimately be up to the people."<br />
<br />
"But," she added, "it would never work if you didn't have a viable candidate."<br />
<br />
Ummm... OK...<br />
<br />
Whether the people the Speaker has answering the phones truly understand how ranked-choice voting works or have simply been instructed to stick to tired talking points of "viable" candidates, is not entirely clear.<br />
<br />
I had a much less hostile--albeit briefer--conversation with Michaud's <a href="https://twitter.com/Lizzy_Reinholt" target="_blank">Communications Coordinator, Lizzy Reinholt</a>. While she assured me Michaud, as governor, would remain invested in "opening Maine's electoral system to Democrats, Republicans, and Independents," restructuring the state's election system is, nonetheless, something he would approach with caution. Reinholt said Michaud would be particularly concerned about "the price-tag" such a restructuring would entail. She repeatedly stated such a "conversation" about IRV would have to be "serious," as if suggesting there is something inherently "non-serious" about the subject.<br />
<br />
Clearly, the biggest hurdle to any sort of electoral reform in Maine--or nationally--is the Democratic Party.<br />
<br />
This is ironic, given that it was the Dems' own candidate, milquetoast Libby Mitchell, who "spoiled" the race--to use their own word--in 2010 and got LePage elected in the first place. She received 19 percent of the vote. All the accusations that Cutler is "washed-up," and "incompetent" ignore the fact that he came within 200 votes of becoming governor.<br />
<br />
Here is the takeaway: If Michaud is threatened by Cutler's campaign, the solution is not to disparage, demean, and otherwise denounce him into dropping out of the race. Rather, it means Michaud has to work <i>all that much harder</i> to convince voters that he--and not Cutler--is truly the best person to represent Maine.<br />
<br />
But the Democrats are not interested in hard work. They think they are entitled to government office simply by virtue of being an Establishment party. Case in point is <i>Nation</i> reporter and standard-bearer liberal, Eric Alterman. In the Nader documentary, <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw1Aji8FzJc" target="_blank">An Unreasonable Man</a></i>, he derides third-party voters as "stupid," and "people who know nothing about politics."<br />
<br />
But until we truly open our electoral system to a range of candidates and parties, I tip my hat to anybody who attempts to challenge that Establishment.<br />
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<i><br /></i>
<i>Send love letters, advice, hate mail, or other correspondence to adamd.marletta@gmail.com, or via carrier pigeon. If you like what you read here on </i>Guerrilla Press<i>, make a donation via the "Donate" button. Any amount is greatly appreciated. I realize people get sick of being hit up for donations on the Internet. But such is capitalism... </i>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-49501548489607159482014-07-14T13:38:00.001-07:002014-07-14T13:38:43.202-07:00World War II: Not so Good After All<br />
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<br />
One of the results of becoming politically conscious is you come to realize 95 percent of what you were taught in history class is simply not true. Columbus did not actually discover America; Abraham Lincoln's allegedly singular role in "ending slavery" is considerably overblown; the Founding Fathers were largely uninterested in democracy; and World War II was hardly the "good war."<br />
<br />
Of course, this last one presupposes that any war can be considered "good," "great" or otherwise just. Certainly, there may be times in human history when a nation must resort to military force to defend itself from an invading country that cannot be reasoned with or appeased.<br />
<br />
But once you start labeling certain wars with superlative adjectives (World War I & II, The Civil War, The Revolutionary War), it creates a false concept that some forms of mass slaughter are, ultimately, acceptable. The so-called "bad" wars, meanwhile (Vietnam, <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/06/iraq-war-redux.html" target="_blank">the Iraq War</a>, Granada, Haiti, Cuba, the Spanish-American War, to name just a few), were not, we are told, so much "wrong" or "immoral" in terms of their justifications. (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/We-Meant-Well-American-Project/dp/0805096817" target="_blank">"We meant well..."</a>) These wars were fought for the "right reasons," the wars' architects assure us. They were just poorly executed.<br />
<br />
World War II, more so than any other major military conflict, has taken on mythic status in American culture. Acclaimed movies like <i><a href="http://www.leftfieldcinema.com/saving-private-ryan-%E2%80%93-review" target="_blank">Saving Private Ryan</a>,</i> <i>Schindler's List, </i>and <i>Flags of Our Fathers</i> along with realistic (and disturbingly popular) video games like <i>Call of Duty</i> have further reinforced WWII's celebrated status.<br />
<br />
Bruce Russett, professor of political science at Yale, sums up the war's unassailable status. "Participation in the war against Hitler remains almost wholly sacrosanct, nearly in the realm of theology," he writes.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Whatever criticisms of twentieth-century American policy are put forth, United States participation in World War II remains almost entirely immune. According to our national mythology, that was a "good war," one of the few for which the benefits clearly outweighed the costs. </blockquote>
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Case in point is the <a href="http://www.brickstoremuseum.org/" target="_blank">Brick Store Museum</a> in my hometown of Kennebunk. The museum's featured exhibit of the summer is called <a href="http://www.pinterest.com/bsmuseum/vitamin-v-how-food-fought-the-second-world-war/" target="_blank">"Vitamin V: How Food Fought the Second World War."</a> In addition to the exhibit itself, local singer/songwriter, Monica Grabin performed a set of shows at the museum featuring folk songs from the two respective world wars.<br />
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Grabin--a dyed-in-the-wool liberal who boasts <a href="http://www.monicagrabin.com/" target="_blank">on her website</a> of having Democratic Maine State Rep. Emily Cain join her on-stage to sing a song last year--regularly performs these sorts of "historical" folk shows. While there is certainly no debating Grabin's talent and musical prowess, her musical history lessons are not altogether different from your high school teacher's. Hers is more a sort of "pop" history, not unlike what one might find on The History Channel. She reinforces all the commonly believed myths surrounding WWI and II, while leaving the very notion of the moral legitimacy of these wars as less than an afterthought.<br />
<br />
"But wasn't World War II fought for all the right reasons?" you ask. "Weren't we fighting to save democracy from fascism? Besides, wasn't Hitler just innately evil?"<br />
<br />
Certainly, I am not suggesting the U.S. should have remained passive while hundreds of thousands of innocents were sent to death camps. And, while I am not a fan of labeling any human being as necessarily "evil"--or for that matter, especially "good"--there is no denying Hitler and the Nazis' acts were indisputably heinous.<br />
<br />
That said, it is no great breach of morality--and certainly <a href="http://www.chomsky.info/books/dissent01.htm" target="_blank">not a form of "anti-Semitism"</a> as some may reactively suggest--to question the motives behind U.S. involvement in the so-called "good war."<br />
<br />
Indeed, it is difficult to make the case America was fighting for any sort of moral high-ground in WWII (i.e. to "save the Jews") when it deliberately kept half of its own citizens--African Americans--segregated, cut-off from mainstream white society, and otherwise politically, economically, and socially disempowered.<br />
<br />
As historian Howard Zinn writes in <i><a href="http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinnpeopleswar.html" target="_blank">A People's History of the United States</a>, </i>"...blacks, looking at anti-Semitism in Germany, might not see their own situation in the U.S. as much different" (p. 409).<br />
<br />
Ironically, black Americans who did enlist to fight overseas found themselves fully segregated from the white soldiers throughout their training and deployment. And this is to say nothing of the internment of thousands of Japanese-Americans at home.<br />
<br />
Hmmm... I wonder how many songs Grabin sang about these racist double-standards?<br />
<br />
The fact is, in 1939 while Hitler was rapidly conquering parts of Europe, Americans were in no rush to enter a second world war. Not only had the devastating economic impacts of the Great Depression generated a strong sense of isolationism among Americans. But they also created a widespread--<a href="http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/04/16-3" target="_blank">and conveniently ignored in high school history textbooks</a>--feeling that capitalism had utterly failed.<br />
<br />
While Roosevelt's New Deal programs helped stave off this attitude, American involvement in WWII was the real clincher. It was, to put it bluntly, a war to save capitalism. Saving the Jews, protecting democracy, defeating fascism--all of these concerns were secondary to maintaining Western capitalism and ensuring the United States' global supremacy.<br />
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As Leon Trotsky <a href="http://www.isreview.org/issues/10/good_war.shtml" target="_blank">observed at the dawn of WWII</a>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The present war--the second imperialist war--is not an accident; it does not result from the will of this or that dictator. It was predicted long ago. It derived its origin inexorably from the contradiction of international capitalist interest.... The United States must "organize" the world. History is bringing humanity face to face with the volcanic eruption of American Imperialism.</blockquote>
<br />
Indeed, after the war, only two nations emerged as the indisputable super-powers of the globe: The United States and the Soviet Union. Less than 50 years later, the latter country ceased to exist, leaving America as the world's sole military and corporate empire.<br />
<br />
The post-war era also marked a profound change in America's very identity, as the country shifted from a production-based economy, to one centered on consumption. Public relations pioneers, <a href="http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-century-of-the-self/" target="_blank">Edward Bernays</a> and Walter Lippmann utilized Sigmund Freud's controversial theories of psychoanalysis to manipulate public opinion, creating false needs and desires <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2012/10/and-now-word-from-our-sponsors.html" target="_blank">that could only be appeased through material consumption</a>, and otherwise <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQhEBCWMe44" target="_blank">"manufacture consent,"</a> to use Lippmann's term. The very role of the individual dramatically changed during this time from one of citizen to consumer.<br />
<br />
Indeed, one could argue all the various crises that currently plague our democracy--the dominating role of the corporate state; the legal pretense of corporations as "people"; the corroding influence of money in politics; <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Death-Liberal-Class-Chris-Hedges/dp/1568586795" target="_blank">the death of the liberal class</a> and with it, the <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-myth-of-congressional-gridlock.html" target="_blank">Democratic Party</a>; the rise of the military-industrial-complex; the overconsumption that is ravaging the planet; <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/05/capitalism-is-killing-planet.html" target="_blank">the climate crisis</a>, etc--were set in motion during the post-WWII years.<br />
<br />
And here I thought we <i>won</i> the war. Seems more like a victory for the corporate state than the American people, if you ask me.<br />
<br />
Finally, even if one concedes that World War II was "inevitable," that war with the Nazis was simply "unavoidable," nothing Hitler's armies did justified what was arguably the conflict's most egregious war crime: The use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.<br />
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All historical evidence suggests the U.S. would have easily defeated Japan without the use of nuclear weapons. In fact, Japan was on the verge of surrendering before the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, on Aug. 6, 1945. And the U.S. was well aware of Japan's impending surrender since they had, by that time, cracked their communication codes.<br />
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No, America's use of the first nuclear weapon was less about defeating Japan than about <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDBCCPpUEEs" target="_blank">demonstrating military supremacy to the world--to the Russians, especially</a>. As a result, some 100,000 Japanese were horribly killed. Thousands more slowly died from radiation poisoning.<br />
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We study history in order to learn from the mistakes of the past, so that they may not be repeated in the future. But how are we to truly learn from the past when so much of what we think we know about it amounts to propaganda, distortion, and outright lies?<br />
<br />
More importantly, we need to move beyond this childish concept that some wars are "good,"--even "noble" or "desirable." War is always a choice. Often the choice to go to war is not made by the American people themselves, but by a small, zealous cabal of corporatists fighting for profits, interests and motivations that have no impact on the rest of us. But war is a choice, nonetheless. And it is rarely a wise one.<br />
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"War is by definition," said Zinn during a speech titled <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUBYI97cUgU" target="_blank">"Three Holy Wars,"</a> "the indiscriminate killing of huge numbers of people for ends which are uncertain.... The means are horrible, certainly. The ends, uncertain."<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-48423160097138481552014-07-07T17:39:00.000-07:002014-07-07T17:39:07.751-07:00Capitalism and its Liberal Apologists<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbyJ2E531LQBU8dpWz5MYFGsZT3OvB3aW_RoPYAjacjCSN86CECGc69gHM7_waYDUgE0tGMjsEpslLZii9UGiJWX_yJmPv40PxXk-ZL45_uYvimPc-LI1G80MDExpxSmtpbsHldfJuu1s/s1600/piketty_otu_img_0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbyJ2E531LQBU8dpWz5MYFGsZT3OvB3aW_RoPYAjacjCSN86CECGc69gHM7_waYDUgE0tGMjsEpslLZii9UGiJWX_yJmPv40PxXk-ZL45_uYvimPc-LI1G80MDExpxSmtpbsHldfJuu1s/s1600/piketty_otu_img_0.jpg" height="280" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>French economist, Thomas Piketty, author of</i> Capital in the Twenty-First Century.</td></tr>
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<br />
Sinclair Lewis, in his 1920 satirical novel, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Street_(novel)" target="_blank">Main Street</a></i>, uses the characters of Vida and Carol to illustrate the difference between liberals and radicals. Lewis, a socialist and fierce critic of the dehumanizing effects of Industrialization, wrote the novel as a scathing send-up of conservative small-town America.<br />
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Carol Kennicott, the novel's rebellious, free-spirited protagonist, moves with her more conventionally-minded husband from the city to the rural country town of Gopher Prairie, a fictional town modeled after Lewis's own hometown of Sauk Centre, Minnesota. Much of the novel's loosely-structured plot focuses on Carol's inept, at times perhaps naive, attempts to influence the uncultured, smug conservatism of Gopher Prairie with her progressive, feminist beliefs.<br />
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Ironically, Carol finds the greatest impediment to her efforts to "modernize" the town come, not from its conservative, middle-class residents, but from comfortable, unimaginative liberals like Vida. Vida criticizes Carol for trying to "work outside" the system with "foreign ideas." <br />
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The narrator explains:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Vida was, and always would be, a reformer, a liberal. She believed that things could be excitingly altered, but that things-in-general were comely and kind and immutable. Carol was...a revolutionist, a radical, and therefore possessed of "constructive ideas," which only the destroyer can have, since the reformer believes that all the essential constructing has already been done.</blockquote>
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This, according to Lewis, is what separates liberals from radicals. Liberals--as currently embodied by the <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-hollow-men-politics-as-spectacle-ii.html" target="_blank">Democratic Party</a>--prefer to tinker around the edges, while leaving the overarching structures of society (capitalism, corporate power, wealth inequality, class-struggle, etc.) intact.<br />
<br />
Indeed, throughout history, it has always been the socialists, anarchists, communists, labor activists, anti-war protesters, radicals and revolutionaries, that have brought about fundamental democratic change in America.<br />
<br />
Liberals in power merely adopt, co-opt, and water-down these ideas. Then they implement the second-rate versions and claim all the credit. (See: <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2012/03/health-care-still-waiting-for-real.html" target="_blank">The Affordable Care Act</a> as substitute for universal health care.) Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, unemployment, the five-day, 40-hour work week, child labor laws, free public education--<a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/29/1078852/-75-Ways-Socialism-Has-Improved-America#" target="_blank">all of these hallmarks of modern democratic society were born from the radical ranks of the Left</a>. It was only through fierce, bloody, violent struggle that any of them were ever adopted by the power elite.<br />
<br />
A popular bumper-sticker, erroneously attributing the development of earned-income benefits to Democrats, has it backwards. It should read: "Got Social Security? Thank a Socialist."<br />
<br />
As the late Peter Camejo, Ralph Nader's 2004 vice presidential running-mate observes in the documentary film, <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVRevKOtSh0" target="_blank">An Unreasonable Man</a></i>,<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Every major progressive law in the United States--whether it's the right of women to vote, Social Security, rights of the labor party... Never [did] any of these major proposals come out of the two parties. They always came from the grassroots, from the people. And there were people who led those struggles who were independent and not functioning as agents of these two parties who were always called names and suffered personal abuses... </blockquote>
<br />
Which brings me to capitalism's latest liberal apologist, Thomas Piketty.<br />
<br />
Piketty's bestselling book, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/067443000X" target="_blank">Capital in the Twenty-First Century</a></i> is a rarity in the publishing industry. A tome of economic theory, replete with intricately designed graphs, and nearly 100 pages of footnotes, it is, suffice to say, not the sort of book Americans are typically clamoring to read--especially in the summertime. Yet the book has spent 12 weeks on <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/2014-07-13/hardcover-nonfiction/list.html" target="_blank">the <i>New York Times</i>'s bestseller list</a>.<br />
<br />
Clearly, the book's success illustrates Americans' increasing impatience with the sour economy, their lack of faith in so-called "free-market" economics--perhaps even in the institution of capitalism itself. To wit, according to a 2011 Pew Research Center poll, 49 percent of young Americans ages 18-29 have a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/29/young-people-socialism_n_1175218.html" target="_blank">much more favorable view of socialism</a> than older respondents.<br />
<br />
Yet the title of Piketty's book--a seeming nod to Karl Marx's similarly lengthy 1867 treatise, <i>Capital </i>or <i>Das Kapital</i> in its original German--presents a bit of false advertising. Not only does Piketty's book have precious little in common with its titular forebear (the book actually has nothing to do with the nature and social role of capital; its primary focus is income inequality), Piketty himself claims <a href="http://socialistworker.org/blog/critical-reading/2014/05/18/david-harvey-reviews-thomas-pi" target="_blank">to have never read Marx's work</a>.<br />
<br />
Here is the takeaway: Piketty takes 577 pages to arrive at the conclusion that, contrary to the claims of both conservatives and liberals, "free-market" capitalism does not evenly spread the wealth around. There is no "trickle-down" effect where the massive wealth of the exalted "job creators" magically flows down to the middle and working classes.<br />
<br />
But this is hardly news to most of us on the Left. In fact, I think it is safe to assume anyone who is reading this blog long ago arrived at the same conclusion. Robert Reich, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Price-Inequality-Divided-Endangers-ebook/dp/B007MKCQ30" target="_blank">Joseph Stiglitz</a>, and Paul Krugman have been saying more or less the same thing for the last decade or more.<br />
<br />
And therein lies the difference between Marx, Piketty, and the aforementioned economists. Marx's writings were driven by an urge to fundamentally change society by abolishing capitalism in favor of a more equitable system--Communism, specifically. Piketty, on the other hand, merely wants to "fix" capitalism's unequal distribution--to make it "work for everyone," so to speak.<br />
<br />
Yet, as Marx correctly observes in <i>Capital</i>, capitalism's unequal distribution of wealth is not something that can be fixed. It is not a flaw in the system. It is, rather, the inevitable result of an inherently exploitative, unequal system that favors the wealthy owner-class over the working-class.<br />
<br />
"The philosophers of our time have merely interpreted the world," Marx wrote. "The goal, however, is to change it."<br />
<br />
This is not to say there is no value in Piketty's <i>Capital</i>. The writing is fairly straightforward and accessible, and he deserves credit for his persuasive research. But throughout the book Piketty remains the stereotypical "objective" academic, going to pains to give equal weight to "both sides" of the income inequality debate.<br />
<br />
This bogus concept that professors and journalists should not have their own beliefs and opinions on what they write about is the great disease of both professions. It has rendered <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/04/class-dismissed.html" target="_blank">the universities</a> and <a href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_creed_of_objectivity_killed_the_news_business_20100131" target="_blank">the press incapable of taking moral stands</a>, of pointing out society's ills, and giving voice to the disenfranchised. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ehc3V1g5pm0" target="_blank">Howard Zinn</a> was correct: You cannot be neutral on a moving train.<br />
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We cannot afford to tinker around the edges of the corporate state. We need a complete system overhaul. And liberal reformists will not help us achieve it.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-41189392907342628652014-06-30T06:53:00.000-07:002014-06-30T06:53:51.601-07:00The Corporate Welfare State Revisited<br />
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In early 2013, I wrote a piece titled <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/01/welcome-to-corporate-welfare-state.html" target="_blank">"Welcome to the Corporate Welfare State,"</a> which generated considerable reader response. It remains the most-viewed post on this blog to date, with close to 250 views.<br />
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In the post I pointed out that corporate welfare--in the form of bailouts, subsidies, handouts, loopholes, tax-breaks and Tax Increment Financing (TIFs)--far outpaces traditional or individual welfare.<br />
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(Contrary to Maine Republican Gov. Paul LePage's recent statements, <a href="http://www.pressherald.com/2014/06/25/gov-lepage-views-social-security-medicare-as-welfare/" target="_blank">Social Security is not welfare</a>. It is an earned-income benefit that workers pay into throughout their working-lives.)<br />
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For instance, in 2012 alone the government spent <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-gibson/cut-corporate-welfare-not_b_2421340.html" target="_blank">$205 billion on corporate subsidies</a> according to the Cato Institute. Compare that to the roughly $59 billion spent on individual welfare programs annually. In the words of <a href="http://www.usuncut.org/" target="_blank">U.S. Uncut</a> co-founder, Carl Gibson, this means taxpayers spent "six times more on giving free money to companies making record profits than we did to making sure the people who were laid off by these corporations can still feed their families" ("Cut Corporate Welfare, Not the Safety Net," <i>Huffington Post</i>, 01/07/13).<br />
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He adds, the $205 billion in "corporate goodies" was "okay with [House] Speaker [John] Boehner, but $60 billion in Hurricane Sandy relief apparently wasn't."<br />
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Yet this disparity is almost never highlighted in media discussions of welfare.<br />
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Instead, most media "debates" on welfare remain myopically focused on individual welfare recipients (whom Ronald Reagan once callously dubbed "Welfare Queens"), typically thought of as single mothers, immigrants or people of color--even though actual welfare statistics dispel this stereotype. Statistically, black and white Americans take advantage of welfare benefits <a href="http://charlotte.cbslocal.com/2013/07/02/poverty-in-america-myths-about-welfare-recipients/" target="_blank">at nearly comparable rates.</a><br />
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Then again, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6" target="_blank">most of our news</a> comes from networks owned by the very corporations living high on the government teet (<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/11/general-electric-taxes_n_2852094.html" target="_blank">tax-dodger G.E.-NBC, for instance</a>). So it makes sense they would not want to shine too much light on just how much they are costing American taxpayers.<br />
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Case in point is a recent front page story in the <i>Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram</i> highlighting a recent poll on Mainers' views on welfare (<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6" target="_blank">"In Maine, a stark divide in attitudes about welfare," 6/23/2014</a>).<br />
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The poll results are, frankly, nothing especially surprising or even newsworthy.<br />
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Conservative voters believe welfare "does more harm than good," and recipients "do not need the assistance and are taking advantage of the system." (The latter claim constitutes a wholly unsubstantiated accusation, which the story offers zero evidence to support.) Liberals, meanwhile, tend to be more supportive of welfare programs.<br />
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Overall, 46 percent of respondents claim welfare does "more harm than good," with a close 43 percent asserting the reverse.<br />
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Predictably, the nearly 1,700-word story by <i>PPH</i> staff writer Steve Mistler makes no mention of corporate welfare. The subject was not included in any of UNH's polling questions.<br />
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When I called UNH Survey Center director Andrew Smith to inquire why questions on corporate welfare were left out, he gave the telephonic equivalent of a shrug.<br />
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"It's not the kind of thing most voters think exists or see," he said.<br />
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But this logic is completely circular:<br />
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Voters are not knowledgeable about corporate welfare because the mainstream media--where the majority of Americans get their information about the world--rarely ever report on it. Reporters and editors, in turn, claim they do not cover the issue because their readers and viewers do not express concern over it. But how can they express concern over something they know nothing about...?<br />
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This is the same baseless excuse the corporate press use to exclude third-party candidates from their election coverage. There is a term for this deliberately selective sort of news coverage which intentionally leaves out major aspects of a story: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGHXJmsqRVE" target="_blank">Agenda-setting</a>. <br />
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So, when are these behemoth corporations going to start working for a living? When will they pull themselves up by their own bootstraps? Most of them do not pay taxes as it is.<br />
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Thirty Fortune 500 companies routinely avoid paying any federal income taxes according to a 2011 report by the group <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/03/360185/30-corporations-no-taxes/" target="_blank">Citizens for Tax Justice</a>. Of the companies scrutinized, 280 paid "only about half" their obligatory amount at the current 35 percent tax rate. These corporate tax-dodgers include Proctor & Gamble, DuPont, Verizon Wireless, Wells Fargo, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/business/economy/25tax.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" target="_blank">General Electric</a>, and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/mar/02/arms-sales-top-100-producers" target="_blank">weapons-manufacturer Honeywell International</a>.<br />
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Additionally, it is impossible to talk about corporate welfare without bringing up the <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-fight-for-higher-wage.html" target="_blank">minimum wage</a>, as the two issues go hand-in-hand. In essence, we as taxpayers are paying low-wage workers at Walmart, McDonald's, and Starbucks because their employers are too cheap to.<br />
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A recent study by the University of California Berkeley finds <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/15/fast-food-low-wages-high-cost-taxpayers" target="_blank">U.S. taxpayers dole out nearly $7 billion a year </a>to fund the public assistance programs utilized by the majority of fast-food workers, most of whom subside on $8.94 an hour or less. The fast-food industry--which accounts for 44 percent of job growth since the Great Recession--is a multibillion dollar industry, with McDonald's alone <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/21/mcdonalds-profit-taxpayers_n_4136336.html" target="_blank">boasting profits of $1.5 billion</a> last year.<br />
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This is yet another form of corporate welfare. Fast-food franchises intentionally keep worker wages low while they reap the profits. This is not "free-market" capitalism in any way, shape or form. It is socialism for the rich.<br />
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Furthermore, these pervasive instances of corporate welfare completely undermine Friedmanites' utopian vision of an unregulated economy free of any government "distortions." Corporate welfare is the ultimate distortion. As Naomi Klein makes clear in her seminal 2007 book, <i><a href="http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine" target="_blank">The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism</a></i>, such a completely unfettered capitalist economy has never existed in any human society on its own. Free-market ideologues and Chicago School disciples have always had to install such an economy by violent force and repression (a la Pinochet's military coup of Chile in 1973).<br />
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Turns out Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" is not so invisible after all.<br />
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Let's just call these perpetual attacks on welfare and the social safety net what they really are: a <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-war-on-poor.html" target="_blank">war against the poor</a>.<br />
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Both Republicans <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-debt-talks-obama-offers-social-security-cuts/2011/07/06/gIQA2sFO1H_story.html" target="_blank">and Democrats</a> have their sights on privatizing Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. The great irony--and one of the chief reasons neither George W. Bush nor Barack Obama have been successful with privatization efforts--is these so-called "entitlement" programs <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/polling/medicare-social-security-cuts-face-wide/2012/08/21/083c59f4-e3fb-11e1-89f7-76e23a982d06_page.html" target="_blank">are actually extremely popular with Americans</a> of all political persuasions. Conservatives may rant and rave against welfare programs in polls like the<i> PPH</i>'s, falsely believing they are to blame for our country's fiscal woes. But when it comes to their personal Social Security checks or Medicare benefits, they suddenly change their tune. (Funny how that works out, isn't it?)<br />
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Frankly, I think polls like this one do more to <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-myth-of-congressional-gridlock.html" target="_blank">reinforce the bogus narrative</a> there is a supposedly irreconcilable ideological divide between congressional Democrats and Republicans. But if papers like the <i>PPH</i> insist on conducting these surveys, let's at least present both sides of the debate--you know, "objectivity" and all of that.<br />
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"Freeloading large corporations have taken too much for too long," writes Ralph Nader (<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ralph-nader/corporate-welfare-state-of-the-union_b_2671283.html" target="_blank">"President Obama--Get Tough on Corporate Welfare," <i>Huffington Post</i>, 02/12/13</a>).<br />
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He is right. Let's make corporate handouts an integral part of welfare discussions. Goldman Sachs, G.M., Bank of America and others are the true "Welfare Queens,"--not the single mother working three part-time low-wage jobs just so she can (barely) get by.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-53325760801814789342014-06-23T13:08:00.000-07:002014-06-26T20:48:28.968-07:00Iraq War Redux<br />
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<br />
I stood outside the town hall in my hometown of Kennebunk on Friday holding a hastily scrawled sign that read, "DON'T ATTACK IRAQ (AGAIN)!" I stood there for about an hour.<br />
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I did this in response to President Barack Obama's <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/19/obama-100-special-forces-iraq" target="_blank">announcement last week he will send some 300 "military advisers"</a> to squelch the ever worsening violence in Iraq. This action may be followed by drone strikes.<br />
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I honestly expected more of an angry response than I received. As it is, only one person yelled at me as he drove by.<br />
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"We <i>need</i> to be there!" he shouted at me. There are a lot of things this country needs: Universal health care, jobs, <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/04/class-dismissed.html" target="_blank">free college education</a>, forgiveness of student debt, a robust clean-energy program, democracy, etc. Another Middle Eastern war is not one of them. <br />
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Two passerby actually praised me. One middle-aged man assured me as he jogged by, "I'm with you in spirit!" whatever that means. I have never heard of protesting wars "in spirit" only, but, thanks... I guess.<br />
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And Kennebunk police chief, Robert MacKenzie (the town hall is across from the <a href="http://kennebunkmaine.us/index.aspx?nid=182" target="_blank">police station</a>) approached me, read my sign, and walked away. Had he given me any trouble, I was fully prepared to present him with my "permit": A pocket-sized version of the U.S. Constitution.<br />
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Most people, however, simply drove by. A few, stopped at the adjacent traffic light, read my sign then quickly and uncomfortably looked away. I suppose if my sign had said something like, <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/08/justice-for-whom.html" target="_blank">"Justice for Mary Tanner!"</a> or "Death to Cancer!" I would have received more support.<br />
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War, of course, is itself a cancer upon the human race, though we tend not to think of it in such terms. It is, as George McGovern said about the Vietnam War, "[A] moral and political disaster--a terrible cancer eating away at the soul of our nation."<br />
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I am not so naive as to think my lone protest, ignored, as it mostly was in my yuppie, <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/06/12/321323465/bush-41-keeps-a-promise-celebrates-90th-birthday-with-parachute-jump" target="_blank">Bush-worshiping town</a>, will have any discernible impact on the president's plans for resuming military conflict in Iraq--let alone halt those plans. This was merely my means of registering my dissent. I remain unwavering in my belief--contrary to <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2012/10/why-i-hate-liberals.html" target="_blank">the defeatist excuses of most liberals</a>--that any form of dissent, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, matters.<br />
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"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty," wrote Henry David Thoreau. "The obedient must be slaves."<br />
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Resuming military conflict in Iraq is a horrendous mistake. Most Americans, I believe, realize that.<br />
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It is the corporate news media--over a decade after their complicity in launching the Iraq War--that still needs convincing, however.<br />
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Indeed, in the last week the corporate networks have faithfully, and without irony or shame, trotted out the very same people--<a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/dick-cheney-and-liz-cheney-the-collapsing-obama-doctrine-1403046522" target="_blank">Dick Cheney</a>, Tony Blair, Bill O' Reilly, Bill Kristol--that lied and deceived the public about "Weapons of Mass Destruction" to sell us the last Iraq debacle. One would think these people have lost any iota of credibility they may have once possessed on foreign policy matters.<br />
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As FAIR's (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) Peter Hart observes in a recent blog post, "It's obviously quite revealing that these people are invited onto television at all--further proof... that there is no accountability for being so wrong in so many important ways" (<a href="http://www.fair.org/blog/2014/06/18/drawn-back-into-war-in-iraq/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=drawn-back-into-war-in-iraq" target="_blank">"'Drawn Back into War' in Iraq," 6/18/2014</a>).<br />
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Have we learned nothing?<br />
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George W. Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq left <a href="https://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/" target="_blank">well over 100,000 Iraqis killed</a>, thousands more injured, the country destroyed, and opened massive, perhaps irreparable rifts between Iraqi factions--most notably the Sunnis and the Shiites which, contrary to popular perception, have not always been at each other's throats as they have been in recent years.<br />
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We left Iraq shattered. And now our proverbial chickens have come home to roost.<br />
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Arguments over whether Iraq would have been "better off with Saddam Hussein" in power are hypocritically hollow. Our collective historical amnesia--if not outright ignorance--makes us forget <a href="http://theweek.com/article/index/248745/how-the-us-helped-saddam-hussein-use-chemical-weapons-against-iran" target="_blank">who allowed Hussein to come to power in the first place:</a> The United States. Any WMD Hussein may have once possessed were those we sold to him during the Iraq-Iran war.<br />
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Hussein's replacement, the U.S.-installed, Nouri al-Maliki <a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/12/22/iraqi_vice_president_maliki_becoming_new_saddam" target="_blank">has proven just as morally degenerate</a>. We merely replaced one dictator with another. Then we shamelessly and patronizingly chastise the citizens of Iraq for the turmoil we caused. I guess they simply did not want democracy enough, we shrug.<br />
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"They who have put out the people's eyes," <a href="http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/book_1/" target="_blank">John Milton</a> famously wrote, "reproach them for their blindness."<br />
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And can we please end this <a href="http://www.alternet.org/world/its-just-shocking-what-drone-war-cheerleaders-are-willing-say-out-loud" target="_blank">pervasive myth</a> that unmanned predator drones are somehow "safer," more "precise" killing machines?<br />
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Maine's U.S. Senator Angus King deserves a share of the blame for spreading this nonsense. <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2013/02/08/liberal-senator-defends-drone-policy-as-civilized-way-to-fight/" target="_blank">Last year he told MSNBC's Joe Scarborough</a> drones are "a lot more civilized" compared to 19th century methods of warfare. Except I can think of something even more civilized than drones: Not going to war in the first place.<br />
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"I think it's actually a more humane weapon," said King, "because it can be targeted to specific enemies and specific people."<br />
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Here is how "precise" drones are: The U.S. military counts every "military-aged male" within the vicinity of a drone strike to be an "enemy combatant," whether or not they actually are. This rationale, as revealed in a 2012 <i>New York Times</i> expose (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" target="_blank">"Secret 'Kill List' Proves a Test of Obama's Principles and Will," 5/29/2012</a>), is based on the assumption that any civilian who happens to be within the general proximity of a known al-Qaeda operative is "probably up to no good."<br />
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In other words, if you are an American reporter covering the conflict in, say Syria or Pakistan, and you just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, as far as the U.S.. government is concerned, you are an "enemy combatant." That is how "accurate" drone strikes are.<br />
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We cannot squelch sectarian violence by bombing the hell out of people. Our renewed military presence in Iraq will only further inflame hostilities, anti-U.S. sentiments, and cause more innocents to die. It is the arrogance of imperialism that makes America believe it is the exalted, self-appointed policeman of the globe. Al-Qaeda was not present in Iraq until our 2003 invasion.<br />
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<a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/04/on-bended-knee.html" target="_blank">The Iraq War</a> was the costliest, bloodiest, most morally reprehensible foreign policy blunder in my lifetime. I opposed it then--I oppose it now. It was a war of choice based on lies and deception. To date, none of the war's architects have faced criminal accountability for their crimes against humanity. These contemptible charlatans--most of whom have never served in combat themselves--should not be on television urging us to go to war again. They should be in prison.<br />
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I refuse to sit back and passively watch my government repeat the crimes of the recent past. I have learned and experienced too much in the last ten years to remain silent.<br />
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If that means standing alone, so be it.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-75872842184553202002014-06-09T16:04:00.000-07:002014-06-09T16:04:40.826-07:00Reclaiming Feminism<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmOEOnVeWLoSVpso_u85HBVoWkWMTni_2c5RFSr__hXwnSaWz9bhIrsBz9g7F-7FGMUUhjyQ0S263G13iFamTkssvcHOf-jVqslIpACRkSLq4twV0C8fZdnh6ZP39_rKECC-1Dp9lyDxg/s1600/pussy-riot-628.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmOEOnVeWLoSVpso_u85HBVoWkWMTni_2c5RFSr__hXwnSaWz9bhIrsBz9g7F-7FGMUUhjyQ0S263G13iFamTkssvcHOf-jVqslIpACRkSLq4twV0C8fZdnh6ZP39_rKECC-1Dp9lyDxg/s1600/pussy-riot-628.jpg" height="317" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Nadya Tolokonnikova of Russian feminist punk-rock band, Pussy Riot.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Last month, <i>Forbes</i> magazine issued its annual list of the <a href="http://www.forbes.com/power-women/list/#tab:overall" target="_blank">"100 Most Powerful Women."</a> Prominent female power-brokers and "buzzworthy" women-of-the-moment like Sheryl Sandberg, <a href="http://msmagazine.com/blog/2012/07/23/please-tell-me-this-is-a-joke-marissa-mayer-is-not-a-feminist/" target="_blank">Marissa Mayer</a>, Hillary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel (she's #1) round-out the top-20.<br />
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All of the women featured are government officials, CEOs or celebrities. (Hence their qualification as "most powerful," I suppose.) There are no working-class women featured. Those who are CEOs represent some of the largest, most insidious corporations in the world including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Facebook, and <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/179117/ralph-nader-gm-scandal-detroit-has-washington-pretty-greased#" target="_blank">criminally negligent General Motors</a>.<br />
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Of those from the United States, a mere seven are African American. Only one woman, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MosKyMBihk" target="_blank">Lady Gaga</a>, is under the age of 30. (Queen Elizabeth II is the oldest, at 88.) Most are Baby-Boomer-aged or older.<br />
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The deliberate exclusion of prominent female figures like Jill Stein, <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2014/6/5/seattle_s_socialist_city_council_member" target="_blank">Kshama Sawant</a>, Naomi Klein or members of Pussy Riot leads me to believe <i>Forbes</i>'s editors do not consider these women "powerful" enough for their exclusive millionaires club. Perhaps they were overlooked because, even collectively, they do not possess Beyonce's (#17) estimated <a href="http://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/celeb/singer/beyonce-net-worth/" target="_blank">net worth of $350 million</a>.<br />
<br />
Take a good look, young girls of America.<br />
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These A-lister elites are, according to <i>Forbes</i> and the rest of the corporate media, the women you should emulate. Yes, you too can join the ranks of Michelle Obama and Nancy Pelosi, so long as you work hard, get an MBA from a prestigious university, and "lean in" to use Sheryl Sandberg's phrase. (Marrying a rich guy doesn't hurt, either. I mean, it worked for <a href="http://bangordailynews.com/2011/06/19/news/rep-pingree-fund-manager-sussman-wed-on-north-haven/" target="_blank">Maine's U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree</a>, right?)<br />
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These women are also notable for something else: They have effectively killed feminism. At the very least, they have dramatically scaled-back, compromised, and redefined its goals.<br />
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Feminism as it currently exists is little more than an appeal to the corporate state for inclusion. Millionaires like Sandberg and GM CEO Mary Barra, by co-opting the language and spirit of feminism, claim to speak for all women. They disingenuously insist they can relate to the plight of the average working-class woman. And, through books like Sandberg's self-help bestseller, <i><a href="http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/feminisms-tipping-point-who-wins-from-leaning-in" target="_blank">Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead</a></i>, they claim to offer women the "advice," and "skills" necessary to "have it all."<br />
<br />
For the corporate media, books like <i>Lean In</i> and the ascension of a few privileged women like Sandberg in the corporate office, reinforce its perpetual narrative that we now live in a "post-feminist" society. This, incidentally, is not much different from the narrative that we now occupy a "post-racial" society, as evidenced in the election of Barack Obama. If only either concept were true.<br />
<br />
Elizabeth Schulte in an article for the <i>Socialist Worker </i>calls this a sort of "trickle-down feminism" (<a href="http://socialistworker.org/2013/03/20/trickle-down-feminism" target="_blank">"Trickle- Down Feminism?", 03/20/2013</a>). The media drumbeat over our supposed "post-feminist" era, she explains, "rarely address the concerns of the vast majority of women who are a part of the working class."<br />
<br />
Schulte writes:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
They [the media] measure the success of women at large by the success stories of a few corporate executives or political officials at the top--and argue that these examples of "having it all" will eventually trickle down to all women.<br />The inevitable focus of these [post-feminist] articles and books is what women can do <i>personally</i> to succeed. (Italics hers.)</blockquote>
<br />
By highlighting a few isolated success stories and subtly berating others for not following suit, the media, according to Schulte, "ignore the institutional gender inequality that is at the heart of U.S. society."<br />
<br />
As a result, young women are beginning to confuse this pseudo-corporate brand of feminism with the real thing.<br />
<br />
They chant they are <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/hillary-clintons-goldman-sachs-problem" target="_blank">"ready for Hillary,"</a> as if the probable presidential candidate is any sort of champion of women's rights. They continue to invest their energy into a Democratic Party that views empty appeals to "feminism" as an easy way to increase its own ranks locally and nationally. (See the women's political-training seminar, <a href="http://www.emergemaine.org/" target="_blank">Emerge Maine</a>. Admission price: $800.)<br />
<br />
And they retreat into agonizingly academic discourses on the concept of gender, using arcane poststructuralist terms like "cisgender."<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, in the world outside of the Ivory Tower, 11 states have passed laws severely restricting access to abortion. The words "terrorist" or "terrorism" <a href="http://www.fair.org/blog/2009/06/01/on-the-terrorists-who-still-arent-in-the-news/" target="_blank">are never applied</a> to the zealous anti-choice mercenaries who blow-up abortion clinics or <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2013/5/31/four_years_after_murder_of_dr" target="_blank">kill abortion providers</a>, despite the fact these violent individuals represent more of a real threat to U.S. security than al-Qaeda.<br />
<br />
Likewise, women <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jillian-berman/yes-by-any-way-you-measur_b_4725356.html" target="_blank">still receive less pay than men</a>--77 cents to every dollar--for the exact same work. Earlier this year, Maine's Senator Angus King <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/10/us/politics/senate-republicans-block-bill-on-equal-pay.html?_r=0" target="_blank">joined Senate Republicans in shooting down a bill</a> that would have addressed this inexplicable pay disparity. Upon returning home from these gyp-jobs, many women are faced with a mountain of unpaid "domestic labor," the majority of which still disproportionately falls on them.<br />
<br />
This is where the limits of <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/12/how-identity-politics-destroyed-left.html" target="_blank">identity politics</a> manifest themselves.<br />
<br />
Certainly, if we are to create a truly egalitarian social democracy, gender equality must be an integral part of it. But, as with other identity-driven equal-rights struggles, the narrow, often personal focus of feminism prevents it from creating a framework for broad, systemic change. Instead the Horatio (Horatia...?) Alger stories of a few privileged ceiling-smashers become the default model of expectation for all.<br />
<br />
Yet identity politics has become the raison d'etre of the left. Rather than fighting poverty, <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-fog-of-war.html" target="_blank">militarism</a> or for a broader sense of social justice, progressives dabble in the boutique activism of multiculturalism, racism, sexism, and other forms of identity politics. As a result, the left has become splintered, atomized, and <a href="http://harpers.org/archive/2014/03/nothing-left-2/" target="_blank">largely ineffective</a>. <br />
<br />
"Women have discovered that they cannot rely on men's chivalry to give them justice," wrote Helen Keller in 1916. Keller--who was <a href="http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/the-radical-dissent-of-helen-keller" target="_blank">far more radical than your history teacher <u>led you to believe</u></a>--was an early crusader in the fight for women's suffrage in the early part of the 20th century. While Keller was universally praised for her strength in overcoming her physical disabilities, her outspoken socialist, feminist, and anti-war views were met with cold reception, and bitter denouncement.<br />
<br />
Indeed, many of the early feminists like Keller saw a direct, inextricable link between the goals of feminism and socialism. <a href="http://socialistworker.org/2012/08/07/the-story-of-the-rebel-girl" target="_blank">Elizabeth Gurley Flynn</a> for example was a labor activist, IWW leader, and a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Flynn wrote in her autobiography <i>Rebel Girl</i>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A domestic life and possibly a large family had no attraction for me... I wanted to speak and write, to travel, to meet people, to see places, to organize for the I.W.W. I saw no reason why I, as a woman, should give up my work for this...</blockquote>
We in the left need to rediscover this language. We need to realize that overthrowing the corporate state, and promoting the equality of women are not mutually exclusive goals. They are one and the same.<br />
<br />
But we cannot accomplish this so long as economic elites like Sandberg, Winfrey and Barra are held up as "feminist" proponents. Let's all of us--women and men--reclaim feminism for the masses. Then we can show corporate publications like <i>Forbes</i> what real power looks like.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-76349581730932603512014-06-02T17:58:00.000-07:002014-06-02T18:01:55.205-07:00Death of the Fourth Estate<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL2BXEmNvXv324b-KZZJxkxoL3HU200Wb0M5PUnsNu7DtDUI8vuUCPKA7gM3yp9V5UPzFt-jzVUKtcamsqMti77VBlxIwiZg4XhK_UxOFpL2-UbbqPdhT9nrLurIYZDtiwBLaivKO2ZAU/s1600/Bob-schieffer-claire-danes-ap_606.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL2BXEmNvXv324b-KZZJxkxoL3HU200Wb0M5PUnsNu7DtDUI8vuUCPKA7gM3yp9V5UPzFt-jzVUKtcamsqMti77VBlxIwiZg4XhK_UxOFpL2-UbbqPdhT9nrLurIYZDtiwBLaivKO2ZAU/s1600/Bob-schieffer-claire-danes-ap_606.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>CBS' Bob Schieffer hobnobs with actress Claire Danes at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Real journalists do not enjoy--nor do they seek--this sort of access to power and celebrity.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The vacuous shell that has become of American journalism was on full display last week during NBC's savagely hostile interview with Edward Snowden. Indeed, <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/edward-snowden-interview/watch-primetime-special-inside-mind-edward-snowden-n117126" target="_blank">Brian Williams's attempted takedown</a> of the former National Security Agency (N.S.A.) contractor-turned-whistleblower proved an embarrassing backfire given Snowden's calm, thoughtful, reasoned responses to his host's vacuous, uninspired questions.<br />
<br />
At one point during the interview, Williams held up what he called a "burner" cell phone--or a temporary, disposable phone typically used by drug dealers (and, apparently, NBC reporters...) which is meant to be promptly discarded after use so as to avoid detection--and asked Snowden what specific information the N.S.A. could obtain from it.<br />
<br />
Snowden did not miss a beat. "Well, that's got to be the most expensive 'burner' I've ever seen," he said of Williams's high-end smartphone.<br />
<br />
This brief segment, incidentally, was the only part of the interview that focused on the actual details of the N.S.A. surveillance programs Snowden went to such heroic lengths to reveal to the American public. The majority of the piece centered exclusively on Edward Snowden himself--his early life, his politics, his exact title at the N.S.A., and other biographical details. In fact, NBC's much hyped, exclusive interview is titled, "Inside the Mind of Edward Snowden,"--not say, "Inside the U.S. Surveillance State."<br />
<br />
This tactic of focusing almost entirely on the character of the whistleblower, the activist, or the reporter--be it Julian Assange, <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/08/and-justice-for-all.html" target="_blank">Chelsea Manning</a>, Thomas Drake, or Glenn Greenwald--has become the media's default approach to dealing with whistleblowers. The goal is always the same: Shoot the messenger, ignore the message. Ergo, Assange, we are told, is an "anti-social egomaniac,"; Manning, <a href="http://wlcentral.org/node/1981" target="_blank">a sexually confused youth</a>; and Greenwald an <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/opinion/a-conversation-in-lieu-of-a-column.html?_r=0" target="_blank">"activist journalist,"</a> (as if any other kind exists) whose reporting is driven by his political agenda rather than facts.<br />
<br />
The point is to discredit the source of pertinent government crimes or abuses of power. Call them disloyal, unpatriotic, or accuse them of enabling <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/07/we-have-met-enemy.html" target="_blank">"the enemy."</a> And, even if this personal smear campaign fails, the corporate media have still succeeded in shifting the discussion away from the actual content of the crimes, themselves. From the media's perspective, it is a win-win strategy. And Williams's interview deviated little from the playbook.<br />
<br />
Williams wastes no time with his accusatory questioning. In fact, he kicks the interview off not with a question, but a declarative statement: "A lot of people would say you have badly damaged your country."<br />
<br />
He follows this up with a slight variation on the previous statement, quoting former N.S.A. Director Keith Alexander who claims Snowden has done "significant and irreversible damage to the nation...." Williams makes no mention of the fact that Alexander <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/15/1247400/-NSA-Director-Admits-He-Lied-About-Surveillance-Thwarting-54-Terror-Plots#" target="_blank">lied outright to a congressional committee concerning the N.S.A.'s illegal spying last fall.</a><br />
<br />
Could it be that G.E.-owned NBC--one of the world's largest weapons manufacturers and, as such, a <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/28/8560" target="_blank">major proponent for the Iraq war</a>--is just as "agenda-driven" as Greenwald?<br />
<br />
"Journalism," wrote <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/orwell_george.shtml" target="_blank">George Orwell</a>, "is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations."<br />
<br />
Brian Williams is no journalist--not in the traditional sense of the word. Neither is Scott Pelley, Katie Couric, Bill O' Reilly, David Gregory, Charlie Rose or Rachel Maddow. They are, at best, celebrities. At worst, they are facilitators of corporate propaganda.<br />
<br />
Williams, for instance, makes <a href="http://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/brian-williams-net-worth/" target="_blank">$13 million a year</a> hosting NBC's <i>Nightly News</i>. His net worth is placed at $40 million. This sort of money is unheard of for actual reporters like Amy Goodman, Seymour Hersh or Jeremy Scahill.<br />
<br />
Furthermore, Williams has repeatedly appeared on popular <a href="http://www.mrctv.org/videos/nbcs-brian-williams-jokes-about-sex-hook-ups-30-rock" target="_blank">TV shows like <i>30 Rock </i></a>playing himself or a parody thereof. While this sort of sitcom moonlighting shows Williams is not afraid to poke fun at himself, it nonetheless begs the question: is he a journalist or an entertainer? (Williams's daughter, Allison Williams, stars on HBO's <i>Girls </i>so it must run in the family.)<br />
<br />
Williams was ranked the second "most trusted" TV news reporter in America in a <a href="http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/shocker_of_the_day_stewart_sti.php" target="_blank">2009 <i>Time</i> magazine readers poll</a>. The Comedy Central satirist, Jon Stewart was number one. While some media scholars objected to Stewart's inclusion in the poll among "serious" reporters, it makes perfect sense, really. The only difference between Stewart and the "Establishment" reporters he routinely sends up, is he openly acknowledges everything on his show is a joke.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6" target="_blank">Six corporations</a> currently determine all of the news we read and watch: Disney (ABC), Newscorp (Fox News/<i>Wall Street Journal</i>), CBS Corporation (CBS), General Electric (NBC/Comcast), Time Warner (CNN/HBO/<i>Time</i> Magazine) and Viacom. Not only does this sort of mega-merger consolidation significantly decrease the number and diversity of voices in the mainstream news, it is the antithesis of a free and independent press.<br />
<br />
"[J]ournalists are not in control of the instruments they play," writes <a href="http://billmoyers.com/" target="_blank">Bill Moyers</a>, in the introduction to his excellent essay collection <i>Moyers on Democracy </i>(Anchor Books, 2008)<i>. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
As conglomerates swallow up newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, and networks, and profit rather than product becomes the focus of corporate effort, news organizations... are folded into entertainment divisions. The "news hole" in the print media shrinks to make room for advertisements, and stories needed by informed citizens working together are pulled in favor of the latest celebrity scandals because the media moguls have decided that uncovering the inner workings of public and private power is boring and will drive viewers and readers away to greener pastures of pabulum. Good reporters and editors confront walls of resistance in trying to place serious and informative reports over which they have long labored. Media owners who should be sounding the trumpets of alarm on the battlements of democracy instead blow popular ditties through tin horns, undercutting the basis for their existence and their First Amendment rights (p. 5-6).</blockquote>
<br />
Real journalism--the kind television entertainers like Williams know nothing about--rarely makes reporters rich. Real investigative reporting is tedious, time consuming, and often expensive. It requires a fierce loyalty to the truth, no matter how unpleasant that truth may be. Truth is not to be confused with the corporate media's professed journalistic "objectivity." Truth is rarely nestled comfortably between the "right" and "left" or two similar opposing viewpoints. Truth, in the words of the late <a href="http://www.alternet.org/authors/molly-ivins" target="_blank">Molly Ivins</a>, "has the oddest habit of being way the hell off on one side or the other."<br />
<br />
Without a free and independent press--one that speaks truth to power, is fiercely critical of authority, and remains steadfastly committed to truth and journalistic integrity--democracy is not possible. We are reduced to captive, ignorant prisoners in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69F7GhASOdM" target="_blank">Plato's metaphorical cave</a>, entertained by the shadows on the walls.<br />
<br />
Yet we are living in an era of <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/05/beat-press.html" target="_blank">unprecedented crackdown on journalists</a> and an attempt to criminalize, through draconian laws like the <a href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_im_suing_barack_obama_20120116?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+Truthdig%252FChrisHedges+Chris+Hedges+on+Truthdig" target="_blank">National Defense Authorization Act</a> (NDAA), the very work they do. The Obama administration has overseen more prosecutions of government whistleblowers than any other administration in history. President Obama has invoked the 1917 Espionage Act twice as many times as all previous presidents combined.<br />
<br />
This has created a chilling effect among government insiders and sources. As a result, according to the <i>New Yorker</i>'s Jane Mayer, "Investigative reporting has come to a standstill."<br />
<br />
Independent muckraking journalism has played an integral role in American history. From <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography/rockefellers-tarbell/" target="_blank">Ida Tarbell</a>'s expose on John D. Rockefeller in the early 20th century; to Upton Sinclair's inside look at the unsanitary, inhumane working conditions in the Chicago meat factories chronicled in <i><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/140/140-h/140-h.htm" target="_blank">The Jungle</a></i>; to I.F. Stone and Edward R. Murrow's takedown of Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s; and Seymour Hersh's horrific revelations of the My Lai Massacre in the Vietnam War and, years later, the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/gall/0,8542,1211872,00.html" target="_blank">Abu Ghraib prison abuse</a> in Iraq.<br />
<br />
"It is the responsibility of journalists to go where the silence is," writes <i><a href="http://www.democracynow.org/" target="_blank">Democracy Now!</a></i> host Amy Goodman in her book, <i>Breaking the Sound Barrier</i> (Haymarket Books, 2009), "to seek out news and people who are ignored..."<br />
<br />
She continues:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
What is typically presented as news analysis is, for the most part, a small circle of pundits who know so little about so much, explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong. While they may appear to differ, they are quibbling over how quickly the bombs should be dropped, not asking whether they should be dropped at all (p. 1).</blockquote>
So do not labor long over NBC's recent corporate assault on democracy. It is, in the end, so much bread and circuses for a dying empire.<br />
<br />
<i>You can watch Brian Williams's entire interview with Edward Snowden below.</i><br />
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<i>Like what you read here on </i>Guerrilla Press<i>? Consider making a donation via the "Donate" button on the right. Any amount is greatly appreciated and allows this blog to keep running. I realize Internet users get tired of constant appeals for donations. But, unfortunately, such is the nature of capitalism. We can change that--but the revolution needs to be televised (downloaded...?) before it can be implemented. So don't be afraid to give a few bucks. This is radical news analysis you won't find on NPR.</i>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-77305175612949150822014-05-26T09:42:00.000-07:002014-05-26T10:33:29.763-07:00The Fog of War<br />
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<b><i>Memorial Day musings on the culture of war and empire</i></b><br />
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Is there any American holiday more blatantly militaristic than <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2012/05/courage-to-resist.html" target="_blank">Memorial Day</a>?<br />
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Whether or not we are capable of admitting it, the entire long weekend is a celebration of war and empire. At the very least, one is unlikely to see any serious critique or challenge to either institution in one's various Memorial Day travels.<br />
<br />
Of course, this is not how most Americans perceive the various parades and patriotic observances that mark the day's events. These parades are meant, we are told, to honor the soldiers who died "fighting for our freedom." While this refrain is no doubt comforting to the families of service members who have died, its legitimacy warrants some closer examination.<br />
<br />
Have the long, bloody, unnecessary wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan really made us appreciably "freer" as citizens? Do our <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2012/06/death-from-above-2012-on-presidents.html" target="_blank">daily drone strikes of Syria, Yemen and Somalia</a> truly enhance and strengthen our democracy? Indeed, if these wars are fought to maintain our freedom, then why have we lost so many of them--<a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/06/in-defense-of-privacy.html" target="_blank">our right to privacy</a>, to peaceful dissent, to habeas corpus to name just a few--since 9/11?<br />
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By that measure, these wars seem to be failing. Yet even allegedly "anti-war" liberals unblinkingly swallow this infantile rhetoric--the more eagerly so <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/04/antiwar-opportunists.html" target="_blank">when the presiding Warmonger-in-Chief is a Democrat</a>.<br />
<br />
Our young men and women did certainly fight and die for something, but it was not freedom. They died for empire, Wall Street, global U.S. hegemony, and corporate profits. They gave their lives so Halliburton, Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), General Electric, and Raytheon could get richer while towns across America continue to close schools, slash budgets and reduce assistance to the poor. (Because, you know, <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2012/11/when-austerity-attacks.html" target="_blank">"we're broke."</a>)<br />
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"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country," Ernest Hemingway wrote in his 1935 <i>Esquire </i>article, "Notes on the Next War: A Serious Topical Letter." "But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason."<br />
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Politicians cynically use Memorial Day to pledge their unwavering support and commitment to The Troops. Those returning soldiers who continue to read from the nationalistic script of war-as-necessary-for-freedom may even be trotted out to speak on the Sunday news shows about their "heroic" experiences in fighting overseas.<br />
<br />
But any other time of year we cannot turn out backs on these young men and women--kids, really--fast enough.<br />
<br />
Those that survive the horrors of war return physically and psychologically maimed. The majority of U.S. soldiers come from poor or working-class families. For many of them, the military is the <a href="http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/newspaper/vol-6-no-10/the-economic-draft-and-the.html" target="_blank">only career option</a>. A disproportionate number of military enlistees <a href="http://nationalpriorities.org/analysis/2011/military-recruitment-2010/" target="_blank">come from Maine</a>, particularly the northern, more economically-deprived part of the state. Suffice to say, you typically do not see the wealthy, the privileged or the college-educated shipping off to Afghanistan or Iraq.<br />
<br />
Upon returning from war, soldiers often find it impossible to re-acclimate themselves to civilian life, and struggle to find those wonderful jobs the military disingenuously promises them. After dutifully fulfilling their "patriotic" role in defending empire, they are promptly discarded like so much human cattle.<br />
<br />
"Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder," observed Socialist leader and perennial presidential candidate, <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1918/canton.htm" target="_blank">Eugene V. Debs</a> in denouncing World War I.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
...And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars. The subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose--especially their lives. </blockquote>
<br />
Hence the importance of a national, highly subsidized military in any capitalist society. As the <a href="http://crimethinc.com/" target="_blank">"CrimethInc."</a> authors explain in their self-published book, <i>Work: Capitalism, Economics & Resistance</i> (2011), "The military is by far the most socialized sector of the US economy. Without the employment opportunities it offers the poor and restless, many of them might seek their fortune in <i>another army</i>" (p. 128, Italics theirs).<br />
<br />
But this all goes well beyond the simplistic, nationalistic cant of the average Memorial Day parade. To the extent that Americans reflect on issues of war and peace at all (most of them spend the three-day weekend at the beach or grilling E. coli-tainted meat from Hannaford), the shallow rhetoric rarely transcends beyond, "thanking" the troops for their "service."<br />
<br />
War has become our new religion. While membership in traditional religious faiths continues to decrease, Americans remain intimately connected through the language, rituals, and iconography of, in the words of Glenn Greenwald, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/nov/10/petraeus-scandal-media-military" target="_blank">"all things military."</a><br />
<br />
And I am not merely referring to jingoistic conservatives, here. Allegedly anti-war liberals have, under Barack Obama's presidency, proven themselves just as hawkish.<br />
<br />
Case in point, during the 2012 Democratic National Convention, speaker after speaker praised the assassination of Osama bin Laden as one of Obama's chief first-term accomplishments. ("Bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive!" vice president <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKCwQnIygcw" target="_blank">Joe Biden exclaimed triumphantly</a>.) Liberal convention-goers greeted this exaltation with jubilant cheers and banal chants of "USA!, USA!"<br />
<br />
(For the record, it is perfectly legitimate to fervently despise an individual's criminal actions, and still refuse to rejoice at that person's death. Life is frequently full of such ambiguous complexity, despite our media and politicians' desperate attempts to reduce everything to simplistic, "us-vs.-them" sloganeering. I, for one, would have preferred to see bin Laden arrested, tried, and imprisoned for his crime against humanity.)<br />
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This type of behavior is typical of those infected with the childish, barbaric mentality of war. The language of war--like the iconography of advertising--replaces rational, complex thought with simplistic symbolism and irrational emotional appeals. Or, in the moronic words of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2012/dec/21/nra-newtown-wayne-lapierre-gun-control" target="_blank">NRA spokesman, Wayne LaPierre</a> in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, "The only thing that stops a bad-guy with a gun is a good-guy with a gun." Such an infantile worldview is far more pervasive than most of us care to realize. It is a direct product of a culture steeped in the language of war.<br />
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As with any religion, those who offer even the most mild criticism of its doctrines or prophets, those who speak outside the narrow parameters of what is deemed "acceptable discourse," are banished and treated as unpatriotic pariahs.<br />
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This is precisely what happened to historian Howard Zinn, author of the bestselling, <i>A People's History of the United States, </i>when he too dared to question the priorities of Memorial Day in an op-ed column in the <i>Boston Globe </i>on June 2, 1976. Zinn, who was a regular <i>Globe</i> columnist at the time, in a piece titled, <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0528-07.htm" target="_blank">"Whom Will We Honor Memorial Day?</a>" had the audacity to observe the holiday should be a day "for putting flowers on graves and planting trees."<br />
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"Also," he added, "for destroying the weapons of death that endanger us more than they protect us, that waste our resources and threaten our children and grandchildren."<br />
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Dear lord. Planting trees is one thing, but "destroying weapons of death"...? And Zinn calls himself an American...?<br />
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This was, predictably, the last editorial Zinn wrote for the <i>Globe</i>. He was fired shortly thereafter. Remind me again what George Orwell said about truth-telling becoming a revolutionary act in a time of "universal deceit."<br />
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Here's the takeaway: Let's make Memorial Day obsolete by no longer sending our service men and women to war. This is not a call for "weakness," or "surrender." It is a call for a renewed sense of humanity. War does not make us safer or freer. It does nothing to enhance our democracy. Quite the reverse--it erodes it. It makes us less safe--more vulnerable to retaliatory "blowback." As anti-war author <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Green-Parrots-Gino-Strada/dp/8881584204" target="_blank">Gino Strada</a> urges, we must go beyond helping the victims of war to abolishing war itself.<br />
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And if we are serious about abolishing the institution of war then it is essential we understand the intimate connection between the forces that send us to war--the so-called <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyBelJ85KfY" target="_blank">military-industrial-complex</a>--and <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/05/capitalism-is-killing-planet.html" target="_blank">capitalism</a>.<br />
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Again, the words of the late Howard Zinn are instructive. In a chapter entitled "War is the Enemy," in his essay-collection, <i>A Power Governments Cannot Suppress</i> (City Lights, 2007) he writes:<br />
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My hope is that the memory of death and disgrace will be so intense that the people of the United States will be able to listen to a message that the rest of the world, sobered by wars without end, can also understand: that war itself is the enemy of the human race (p. 196).</blockquote>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-42753639195008401952014-05-19T13:57:00.001-07:002014-05-19T20:21:52.104-07:00Your Job is a Prison<br />
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My <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJVXg1AHQTY" target="_blank">favorite scene</a> in the 1999 film <i>American Beauty</i> occurs when Kevin Spacey's middle-aged, disillusioned office drone, Lester Burnham turns in his job description to his boss, who is in the middle of company job-cuts. His boss, Brad, reads aloud Lester's unhinged rant of his job description.<br />
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"My job," Lester writes, "consists of basically masking my contempt for the assholes in charge and, at least once a day, retiring to the men's room so I can jerk-off while I fantasize about a life that doesn't so closely resemble Hell."<br />
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It is a hilarious, triumphal scene, not merely because our Every Man hero finally tells the boss off. But I imagine audiences enjoy a vicarious thrill in it, perhaps imagining themselves in Lester's shoes. Later at the dinner table he nonchalantly tells his teenage daughter, played by Thora Birch:<br />
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"Janie, today I quit my job. And then I told my boss to go fuck himself and then I blackmailed him for almost sixty thousand dollars. Pass the asparagus."<br />
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In quitting his job, Lester regains something he thought he had long ago lost: His freedom.<br />
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And therein lies the greatest irony of America, a nation that exalts itself for its "freedom" and "democracy." (After all, didn't the 9/11 hijackers attack us because of "our freedoms?" I mean, what other <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pfcW0_sSuw" target="_blank">motivations could they possibly have had...?</a>)<br />
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Because the truth is we spend the vast majority of our waking lives in the most undemocratic institution in modern life: The workplace.<br />
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Unless you are part of a worker-owned cooperative (more on those later), there is nothing remotely democratic about your job. Democracy does not exist at work. The workplace is, at best, a benevolent dictatorship--and believe me, I have held more than a few jobs where the rulers were not at all benevolent.<br />
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(True story: I once worked at a <a href="https://financiallit.org/" target="_blank">"nonprofit" in South Portland</a> where the executive director would routinely hurl her shoes and shout obscenities at the administrative assistant when she would make the most minuscule of mistakes. The only thing more astounding than her behavior was the fact the subservient secretary never actually got up and quit.)<br />
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As economics professor <a href="http://www.rdwolff.com/content/progressive-interview" target="_blank">Richard D. Wolff observes</a>,<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The capitalist workplace is one of the most profoundly undemocratic institutions on the face of the Earth. Workers have no say over decisions affecting them. If workers sat on the board of directors of democratically operated self-managed enterprises, they wouldn't vote for the wildly unequal distribution of profits to benefit a few and for cutbacks for the many.</blockquote>
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Here is the dirty little secret about American democracy--one your history and government teachers neglected to tell you. The Constitution, while it does, through the First Amendment, offer us the freedom of speech, religion, the press and the right to petition and assemble peaceably, it does not explicitly grant any of those things at work.<br />
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The exact wording of the First Amendment is, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." The key word here is "Congress." The First Amendment says nothing about what employers (essentially property owners) in a private business can or cannot do. In other words, there is no <i>public law</i> denying citizens free speech. Outside of your job, you can, legally speaking, do whatever you desire. Should you run into any attempts to abridge your freedoms, Congress (i.e. the federal government) will have your back. (Post-9/11 exceptions, noted.)<br />
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But the First Amendment says nothing about private business. While the federal government has some regulatory control over private business (though not nearly enough, despite what conservatives may claim), its primary function is the daily operations of <i>public</i> life.<br />
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Therefore, the First Amendment does not apply at work.<br />
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Consider: Workers have little to no say over the duration of their work, the conditions under which it takes place or how much they get paid. (It is even taboo to ask how much a job pays during an interview, even though it is a completely legitimate question--one that may well determine whether or not an applicant accepts the position.)<br />
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In certain "unskilled" jobs--like retail--workers have no say in when they can take their break. Sometimes they cannot even use the bathroom without permission from a manager. Certain jobs, likewise, mandate what employees wear, the length of their hair, and whether or not they can have piercings, tattoos, jewelry or facial hair.<br />
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Indeed, in today's anemic economy many do not even have a say <i>in the job itself</i>. <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/09/welcome-to-servant-economy.html" target="_blank">They must settle for whatever they can find.</a><br />
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Even those who work at home or are self-employed, while they may seem to have escaped the "rat-race" of the traditional work environment, are still beholden to the same rules, guidelines, and strictures as the rest of us. The only difference is they have brought the dictatorship of the workplace into their own homes. Indeed, many small-business owners often complain about how all-consuming their work schedules can be. Store owners, for example, must remain open on weekends and major holidays, because that is when they do their most business. And because small-businesses typically <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-fight-for-15-part-ii.html" target="_blank">do not employ as many people as big-box stores</a>, the majority of the work inevitably falls on the owner.<br />
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And forming a union? Good luck with that. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates only about 11.3 percent of American workers belong to a union today--the lowest level in 97 years (<i>The New York Times</i>, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/24/business/union-membership-drops-despite-job-growth.html?_r=0" target="_blank">"Share of the Workforce in a Union Falls to a 97-Year Low..." 01/23/2013</a>). Most retail employers--Walmart, Hannaford, Target, etc.--expressly forbid workers from unionizing, despite the fact it is <a href="http://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/employee-rights" target="_blank">completely legal to do so</a>. Target, Walmart, and Home Depot force new hirees to watch <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTPx1Lh7ZuQ" target="_blank">blatantly anti-union propaganda videos</a> as part of their indoctrination, err, I mean "training."<br />
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What freedoms we do enjoy at the job (weekends and holidays off, overtime pay, sick-time, maternity leave, child labor laws, worker's compensation, mandatory break times, etc.) are all thanks to the gains of labor unions. The United States had the bloodiest labor battles in history. Union members, labor leaders and activists were beaten, shot at and, in some cases, killed for their worker-advocacy actions.<br />
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Employers did not benevolently grant workers these rights on their own. They had to be pressured, prodded, pushed.<br />
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It is curious, certainly, how Americans often react with horror at draconian working conditions in developing nations like China or garment factories in Bangladesh. But are we really any freer at our own jobs? Ours is merely a more subtle, deceptively cheery form of workplace dictatorship--propaganda in place of the bludgeon, as<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Media-Control-Second-Edition-Achievements/dp/1583225366" target="_blank"> Noam Chomsky puts it</a>.<br />
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"They caught me singing and they told me to stop," Arcade Fire's Regine Chassagne sings on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awHWColYQ90" target="_blank">"The Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)."</a> "Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock."<br />
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But increasingly workers are fighting back, demanding the same civil liberties that (ostensibly) protect us in the public sphere extend to the private one as well. Worker-owned cooperatives allow employees to do just that.<br />
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In a worker co-op, there is no boss. Rather, all employees have an equal say in running the business. All decisions are made democratically. And employees typically have the option to engage in profit-sharing. Essentially, a co-op brings the principles of democracy, into the workplace.<br />
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This decentralized operational model not only allows for greater worker participation, but higher worker productivity as well. This means less instances of workers calling out sick, or showing up late for their shift. Empowering employees tends to make them happier at work in general--something both the workers and the business benefits from.<br />
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And no--worker co-ops are not something strictly "European." (And even if they were, I do not see how that would necessarily be a bad thing...) They exist right here in the U.S. <a href="http://www.localsproutscooperative.com/cafe" target="_blank">Local Sprouts Cafe</a>, on Congress Street in Portland is one.<br />
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<i>Guerrilla Press</i> will continue to explore worker cooperatives in future installments and how they are altering the nature of work for the better. Stay tuned.<br />
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<i>If you like what you read here on this blog consider making a donation via the "Donate" button on the right-hand side of the screen. Any amount is greatly appreciated and allows me to update more frequently. That's a win-win for both of us. </i>Guerrilla Press<i> offers radical, muckraking views and reporting you won't find on NPR.</i><br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-3116296314681051702014-05-12T13:45:00.000-07:002014-05-12T13:45:06.157-07:00Capitalism is Killing the Planet<br />
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The White House released its most comprehensive global warming report to date last week, warning of increased sea-level rise, flooding, drought, heat-waves and other ominous forms of climate disruption. The <a href="http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/" target="_blank">National Climate Assessment report</a> urges lawmakers and policymakers to take meaningful action now to halt the most destructive effects of climate change.<br />
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The report, which comes on the heels of a similarly bleak summary by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) <a href="http://billmoyers.com/2014/03/19/climate-change-abrupt-unpredictable-irreversible-and-highly-damaging/" target="_blank">released earlier this year</a>, is notable for being one of the first to dispel the widely believed myth that climate change is a "future threat," the effects of which will not be seen for decades to come. Global warming, the authors note candidly, is not a "looming threat." It is happening right now.<br />
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"Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future," they write, "has moved firmly into the present."<br />
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This, of course, is hardly news to those of us who are paying attention. One need only glance at the morning headlines to understand we are already experiencing the effects of climate change.<br />
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California is experiencing <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/california-drought-matters-more-just-california" target="_blank">the worst drought in decades</a>. Over half of the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/sep/14/arctic-sea-ice-smallest-extent" target="_blank">Arctic sea ice has melted</a>. The previous decade was the warmest on record, while 2012--the year <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-perfect-storm-this-is-what-climate.html" target="_blank">"Superstorm" Sandy</a> wreaked havoc on New York and New Jersey coastlines--was the warmest in history. And last year, the overall concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere reached a dangerous <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/may/14/record-400ppm-co2-carbon-emissions" target="_blank">400 parts per million (ppm)</a>--an amount not seen since prehistoric periods. According to esteemed climatologist and former Goddard Institute for Space Studies chief, James Hansen, <a href="http://350.org/about/science/" target="_blank">any CO2 level above 350 ppm is not compatible</a> with a "planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted."<br />
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The planet is hurtling toward a two-four degree rise in temperature. While that may not seem like a lot, given the Earth's delicate natural balance any rise in temperature, no matter how modest, can have devastating repercussions for the climate. <i>The Washington Post</i>, meanwhile, puts the overall temperature rise at an unfathomable <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/world-on-track-for-nearly-11-degree-temperature-rise-energy-expert-says/2011/11/28/gIQAi0lM6N_story.html" target="_blank">10 degrees Fahrenheit</a>.<br />
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<a href="http://www.pressherald.com/news/nationworld/Global_warming_report_warns_of_climate_disruption_in_Maine__New_England_.html?pagenum=full" target="_blank">Maine and the rest of the Northeast can expect</a> to see more flooding from sea-level rise; greater damage to coastal homes and communities; increased threats to fisheries; and a greater prevalence of Lyme disease-carrying ticks.<br />
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Yet Congress is all but incapable of meaningfully responding to climate change. Our lawmakers have been bought-off by the very coal, oil, and gas companies <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/20/90-companies-man-made-global-warming-emissions-climate-change" target="_blank">responsible for the majority of greenhouse gas emissions</a> since the start of the Industrial Revolution.<br />
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The best "solution" Congress can offer is a <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB122826696217574539" target="_blank">woefully inadequate cap-and-trade bill</a>, which basically allows corporations to pay to continue polluting the atmosphere. Not only does cap-and-trade do nothing to lower greenhouse gas emissions but, like the <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/174113/how-wall-street-defanged-dodd-frank#" target="_blank">Dodd-Frank Wall Street regulations</a>, it puts the very corporations that created the climate crisis in charge of "fixing" it.<br />
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Perhaps the biggest failure of the corporate press (indeed, a failure of design) when it comes to global warming is its inability to clearly and frankly denounce the root cause: <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-disease-of-capitalism.html" target="_blank">Capitalism</a>.<br />
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"[U]nfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force," writes Chris Hedges in his book, <i>Death of the Liberal Class </i>(Nation Books, 2010), "that consumes greater and greater numbers of human lives until it finally consumes itself" (17).<br />
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It is not just the supposed "excesses" of the system that are to blame, as many liberals would have us believe. It is the system itself. Capitalism is predicated on the concept of unceasing, infinite growth on a planet of finite resources--one with tangible physical limits.<br />
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Not only is such a concept unrealistic, it borders on the psychotic. When energy companies view the newly opened land in the rapidly melting Arctic <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-29/diamonds-to-oil-bring-gold-rush-dreams-to-melting-arctic.html" target="_blank">as another business opportunity</a> rather than a frightening sign of environmental destruction, something is horribly wrong. Little wonder then that the directors of the 2003 documentary film, <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMNZXV7jOG0" target="_blank">The Corporation</a></i>, using the physicians' Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), determine a corporation is essentially a psychopath.<br />
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Like a psychopath, a corporation--a legally defined "person"--displays a callous disregard for the feelings of others, an inability to make and sustain enduring relationships, and an incapacity to experience guilt among other characteristics. (In fact, new research confirms something I have long suspected: The majority of successful bosses, managers, and CEOs routinely display <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/19/business/psychopath-boss/" target="_blank">more than a few psychopathic tendencies</a>.)<br />
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In essence, the business model of ExxonMobil, Chevron, and B.P.--whether or not their executives realize it--is to literally destroy the planet. The profit-motive of capitalism necessitates that they do no less.<br />
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And contrary to the claims of current <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFIYlDEpLcQ" target="_blank">"Go Green"</a> campaigns, climate change cannot be solved by individuals alone. Even if every single American got rid of her car tomorrow and committed to walking or biking everywhere, the effect, in terms of reducing global CO2 emissions, would be negligible. Like the hippie counterculture and punk-rock before it, the current phase of "green" marketing merely represents the latest corporate co-option of what was originally a genuine grassroots artistic movement.<br />
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"We have to do away with the word 'environment' itself," writes Stefanie Krasnow in the latest issue of <i><a href="https://www.adbusters.org/" target="_blank">Adbusters</a></i> magazine ("Blueprint for a New World, Part II: Eco," May/June 2014),<br />
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along with all the campaigny phrases--"reduce your footprint," "care for the planet," "live sustainably" and "go eco-friendly"--they're all just a cheap ticket to a clear conscience. This language has convinced a whole generation that you can 'buy into' saving the world, as if you can consume your way to sustainability.</blockquote>
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As author and philosophy professor Clive Hamilton notes in his sobering book, <i>Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth about Climate Change</i> (Earthscan, 2010), responding to climate change will not only require collective, rather than individual, action. It will also necessitate forming a radically new relationship with the natural world.<br />
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Invoking the Greek myth of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus" target="_blank">Prometheus</a>, who stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind, Hamilton writes:<br />
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Climate change is intimately linked not just to the transformative powers of the scientific-industrial revolution, or even the political and cultural forces of growth fetishism and consumerism; it arises from the reshaping of human consciousness. Disconnection from Nature led inexorably to a stronger orientation towards the personal self. The shift is by no means complete and has met resistance along the way, but its extent renders an adequate response to climate disruption much more difficult. For if we are mired in an existential crisis because Prometheus was unbound, salvation requires the shackling of Prometheus once more (158). </blockquote>
No, Congress and "enlightened" consumer-spending cannot solve the climate crisis.<br />
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And, while many of the Big Environmental organizations--Greenpeace, 350.org, The Sierra Club, etc.--are made-up of well-meaning, environmentally-conscious activists, their questionable sources of funding and <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-lefts-clear-skies-initiative.html" target="_blank">refusal to operate outside the corporate two-party duopoly</a> (routinely supporting Democratic candidates that share none of their environmental concerns), render them virtually impotent as well. When it is <a href="http://warisacrime.org/content/pseudo-protests-and-serious-climate-crisis" target="_blank">impossible to tell</a> a 350.org Keystone XL Pipeline protest from an Obama campaign rally, it is worth asking if this is, indeed, the best use of environmentalists' resources. <br />
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Rebellion is our only hope. Only through mass acts of peaceful yet defiant civil disobedience can we hope to fend off the worst aspects of climate change. And it is going to take more than merely getting arrested outside the White House lawn. Ultimately, if we are to maintain a planet that is habitable for human life, capitalism must go. It really is as simple as that.<br />
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Fawzi Ibrahim, author of the eco-socialist book, <i><a href="http://climateandcapitalism.com/2013/02/25/capitalism-versus-planet-earth-an-irreconcilable-conflict/" target="_blank">Capitalism Versus Planet Earth: An Irreconcilable Conflict</a></i>, sums it up best:<br />
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"Today, humanity faces a stark choice: Save the planet and ditch capitalism or save capitalism and ditch the planet."<br />
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<i>If you like what you read here at </i>Guerrilla Press<i> please consider making a donation via the button on the right-hand side of the screen. Any amount is greatly appreciated. </i>Adam Marletta<i> can be contacted at</i> adamd.marletta@gmail.com.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-34024175111943390252014-04-22T17:09:00.001-07:002014-04-22T20:05:38.828-07:00Antiwar Opportunists<br />
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Political bumper-stickers are funny things.<br />
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Drivers who adorn their vehicles with numerous stickers can sometimes inadvertently convey contradictory messages. For example, I often see cars with peace symbol stickers or phrases like, "Don't Attack Iran!" next to one for "Obama/Bidden, '12." I shake my head and wonder if the driver is aware the former sentiment is essentially cancelled out by the latter. <br />
<br />
Point being, President Barack Obama is not a peace president. In fact, as I have detailed many times on this blog, he has been more of a military hawk than George W. Bush--who once bragged to the late Tim Russert that, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3470139.stm" target="_blank">"I'm a war president."</a><br />
<br />
The U.S.'s overall military-spending as well as our troops' global presence have increased dramatically under Obama. We currently maintain military personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq (yes, <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/29/the-iraq-war-is-not-over-for-the-iraqi-people/" target="_blank">we are still in Iraq</a>), along with daily drone bombings in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. And Obama has all but codified the Bush administration's criminal policy of "preemptive" war under the <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/05/war-immemorial.html" target="_blank">interminable "War on Terror."</a><br />
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Yet try to point any of this out to a room full of liberal Obama supporters, and you will be greeted as though you are from Mars. The fact that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in the fall of 2009--while he was currently planning his escalation of the Afghanistan War, now the longest military conflict in U.S. history--has only further cemented liberals' conception of Obama-as-peacemaker. <br />
<br />
But go back and listen to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3uU_mCNcKM" target="_blank">Obama's Nobel acceptance speech</a>. The president used the occasion to invoke the nonviolent actions of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., only to then summarily dismiss their antiwar views as naively unsuitable for "the world as it is" today. ("Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms," he claims, despite the fact that the U.S., under both Bush and Obama, <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/chertoff-negotiation-with-al-qaeda-futile/" target="_blank">has rejected al-Qaeda's every offer for peaceful negotiations</a>.)<br />
<br />
What is that quote again about truth being the first casualty of war...?<br />
<br />
The biggest misconception about liberals is that they are ideologically opposed to war whenever it can be avoided. They are not. <br />
<br />
Liberals only express antiwar sentiment when it is a Republican president that is advocating the war. When the man in the White House is a Democrat liberals have no problem dutifully falling in line to "support the troops." This is why the antiwar movement has essentially shutdown under Obama.<br />
<br />
Case in point, hundreds of thousands of liberal Americans protested Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003. Indeed, these were some of the largest antiwar demonstrations in history and they were not relegated to the United States. Yet there have been no comparable protests against Obama's continuation of the very same war or the conflict in Afghanistan (which Obama campaigned on expanding as a candidate in 2008). And there has been even less discussion--never mind critique--of Obama's covert <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KpzBAKJmig" target="_blank">"dirty wars"</a> in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia.<br />
<br />
Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the antiwar women's group, <a href="http://www.codepink4peace.org/" target="_blank">Code Pink</a>, describes her firsthand account of the antiwar movement's evaporation even before Obama was elected president in a recent interview on the online <em>Real News Network </em>("<a href="http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11495" target="_blank">Media Benjamin on 'Reality Asserts Itself'</a>," 04/16/2014).<br />
<br />
"What happened to that [antiwar] upsurge?"<em> RNN</em> host, Paul Jay asks Benjamin.<br />
<br />
"Well, you said it," she replies. "It's a one word answer: Obama."<br />
<br />
"We had a huge movement," Benjamin continues.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
You just look at one group like Code Pink: We came out of nowhere, and suddenly we had over 300,000 people on our mailing list. And we had over 300 groups around the country and, really, around the world... When Obama started to gain steam as a candidate, those started fizzling out. And when he won the election we had half the numbers of people we had before on our mailing list. And most of the groups started to disintegrate. </blockquote>
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The antiwar movement, in other words, is the victim of simple partisanship.<br />
<br />
This is precisely the conclusion reached by researchers at the University of Michigan and Indiana University in a Sept. 2013 study. The researchers surveyed 5,300 antiwar protesters from 2007-2009 and found that the majority of protesters who identify themselves as Democrats, "withdrew from anti-war protests when the Democratic Party achieved electoral success" in the 2008 presidential election ("<a href="https://www.truthdig.com/report/item/what_happened_to_the_anti-war_movement_20130905" target="_blank">What Happened to the Anti-War Movement?",</a> Truthdig.com, 09/05/2013).<br />
<br />
Summing up the researchers' findings, reporter David Sirota writes, "...during the Bush years, many Democrats were not necessarily motivated to participate in the anti-war movement because they oppose militarism and war--they were instead 'motivated to participate by anti-Republican sentiments'."<br />
<br />
The fact is mainstream liberals have never been the knee-jerk pacifists Fox News makes them out to be. Historically, liberals have a long tradition of supporting military intervention--especially when it is the name of "humanitarianism." (See: Bosnia, Kosovo, the Gulf War, Iraq War I--hell, even World War II was fought for "humanitarian" reasons. And yes, it is perfectly legitimate to question the justifications for the United States' involvement in "<a href="http://www.isreview.org/issues/10/good_war.shtml" target="_blank">The Good War</a>.") Indeed, this liberal thirst for interventionism dates back to WWI, during which a Democrat--Woodrow Wilson--was president.<br />
<br />
As if further evidence of liberals' penchant for war, a recent cover story in that bastion of elite liberal opinion, the <em>New York Times</em>, illustrates recent military recruits' frustration--even disappointment--over the lack of any current major (declared) military conflict in which to build their careers on ("<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/14/us/in-new-officers-careers-peace-is-no-dividend.html?_r=0" target="_blank">In New Officers' Careers, Peace is No Dividend</a>," 04/14/14). "[F]or the [West Point Academy] class of about 1,100 cadets," the article laments, "there may be few, if any, coveted combat patches on their uniforms to show that they have gone to war. <br />
<br />
Reinforcing the mythic national narrative of war as a glorious, noble pursuit where boys become brave men of valor and courage and similar nonsense, the <em>Times</em>' story continues, "Many of them may not get the opportunity to one day recall stories of heroism in battle, or even the ordinary daily sacrifices--bad food, loneliness, fear--that bind soldiers together in shared combat experience."<br />
<br />
Then again, what should one expect from one of the leading publications that successfully sold readers <a href="http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html" target="_blank">the lies and deceptions that launched the Iraq war?</a><br />
<br />
(Ironically, all of the young soldiers interviewed for the story express a desire to transfer to the Special Operations forces, the elite mercenary unit primarily involved in the U.S.'s covert missions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and Ethiopia. The military careerists claim that is where "the real action is.")<br />
<br />
It is the Left--the radicals, anarchists, socialists, and communists--not liberals, that have consistently been the staunchest opponents of war. <br />
<br />
The outspoken Socialist leader and perennial presidential candidate, Eugene Debs, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1918 under the Espionage Act for <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1918/canton.htm" target="_blank">passionately denouncing World War I</a>. "Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder," Debs spoke to a massive crowd in Canton, Ohio. ".... And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars. The subject class has always fought the battles..."<br />
<br />
Yet contemporary liberals have little connection, both to the history of this nation's radical left-wing movement, and to the socialist ideals many of its members like Debs advocated. The truth is, liberals tend to support empire (they call it "neoliberalism"), which is inextricably linked to <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014_03_01_archive.html" target="_blank">capitalism</a>. Liberal acolytes like Katrina vanden Heuvel, Van Jones, Todd Gitlin, and Rachel Maddow may correctly decry capitalism's excesses or foibles from time to time. But by definition, liberals are only interested in reforming the system. Radicals want to overthrow it.<br />
<br />
As a result, liberals are not necessarily opposed to war as a means of foreign policy. Like Obama, they are merely opposed to "dumb wars," as he famously referred to the war in Iraq. And this is why the antiwar movement has atrophied under Obama. Liberals do not want to challenge war and mass killing when it is "their guy" in the White House.<br />
<br />
Glenn Greenwald is right: Obama is not the "lesser evil." He is the <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2012/11/14/glenn_greenwald_starting_with_fiscal_cliff" target="_blank">"more effective evil."</a><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-28571364709194840182014-04-14T13:47:00.000-07:002014-04-14T18:49:52.235-07:00Class Dismissed<br />
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<br />
Portland has, in recent weeks, become the latest case study in the ongoing corporatization of higher education. <br />
<br />
Last month, The University of Southern Maine laid off 15 full-time faculty members--the majority of which belong to the humanities and liberal arts department--in order to make up for a $14 million budget shortfall. All of the laid off professors are tenured, but have been "retrenched," which, as the <em>Portland Phoenix</em>'s Nicholas Schroeder explains in a recent cover story ("<a href="http://portland.thephoenix.com/news/157832-crisis-at-usm/" target="_blank">Crisis at USM,"</a> 03/28/2014), is a "jargony term for eliminating specific programs without appearing to violate faculty union contracts." <br />
<br />
The departments cut include Music, Theater, English, Sociology and Women and Gender Studies, along with Geosciences, Recreation and Leisure Studies, and New England Studies. And this is only the first round of cuts to as many as 50 total positions across the University of Maine System. The USM administration, currently headed by President Theodora Kalikow and Chancellor James Page, cites declining enrollment and tuition freezes as the need for the cuts.<br />
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Kalikow says she wants to remake the sprawling, multi-campus college as a <a href="http://bangordailynews.com/2014/03/14/education/usm-president-proposes-cutting-four-programs-20-30-faculty-positions/" target="_blank">"Metropolitan university."</a> With all due respect to both Portland and USM, the words "metropolitan," and "Maine" really do not belong in the same sentence. <br />
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But students and faculty are fighting back.<br />
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The anti-austerity activist group <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/03/26-1" target="_blank">#USMFuture</a>--which consists of current and former USM students, faculty, members of the Portland Green Independent Committee, the Southern Maine Workers' Center, and <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/04/bedtime-for-democracy.html" target="_blank">Occupy Maine</a>--staged a rally and march against the layoffs in Portland's <a href="http://www.pressherald.com/news/USM_protesters_rally_to_reject_program_cuts__layoffs_.html" target="_blank">Monument Square on April 10</a>.<br />
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Andy Moxley, one of the rally's participants from the organization <a href="http://www.socialistalternative.org/" target="_blank">Socialist Alternative</a>, drew comparisons between the ongoing corporatization of education and the nationwide drive for a higher minimum wage (the <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-fight-for-higher-wage.html" target="_blank">"Fight for $15,"</a> as it is being called). <br />
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"These issues are absolutely related," said Moxley. "They are both issues that affect working-class young people. We keep belt-tightening until we have no room anymore. This sort of austerity is not working. I think people are realizing that. And the fight for $15 is definitely a part of this [larger] struggle."<br />
<br />
Many protesters carried signs that read, "Students Are Not Customers," and "Education is Not a Business Transaction." Yet, that is increasingly how colleges are treating both. <br />
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More and more, college recruiters and administrators, parents, employers, and even a few professors, are pushing students away from the liberal arts courses, traditionally the backbone of higher education. They insist these disciplines are not "practical" and will not lead students to a career. Courses in the humanities (Music, Philosophy, Creative Writing, Literature) are considered "superfluous" because they will not make anyone (monetarily) rich. And this has perverted the <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2013/04/education-or-indoctrination.html" target="_blank">entire purpose of education</a> which is inherently self-critical, political, and even, at times, subversive. <br />
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Universities are becoming glorified vocational training mills, emphasizing job skills over actual learning.<br />
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"Education," W.B. Yeats famously wrote, "is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."<br />
<br />
John Branson, a Portland attorney who served as the pro-bono lawyer for Occupy Maine, echoes Yeats's sentiments. In a recent Op-Ed to the <em>Portland Daily Sun</em> ("<a href="http://www.portlanddailysun.me/index.php/opinion/columns/11812-in-defense-of-the-liberal-arts" target="_blank">In Defense of the Liberal Arts,"</a> 04/03/14) Branson recalls the benefits of his own liberal arts education at Yale.<br />
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"We [Branson and his classmates] were to become lifelong learners," Branson writes, "equipped with the intellectual ability and moral courage to contribute meaningfully not only to our future employers but society itself."<br />
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He continues:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Unfortunately, instilling our young people with the moral courage and intellectual ability to think for themselves is directly at odds with both the dominant paradigm of indoctrination and the corporate model for modern education reform. .... The goal of the modern corporatocracy... is to develop linear thinkers devoted to the absorption and acceptance of conventional knowledge, wisdom, and opinions; to mold pliant workers reluctant to rock the boat; and to create an army of malleable consumers easily influenced by modern advertising and marketing.</blockquote>
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Let's be honest: The UMaine public schools have never been outstanding. They are average at best. (The truly excellent schools--Colby, Bates, and Bowdoin--are financially out of reach for most students and their families.) USM is a glorified commuter school, and the system's flagship college, The University of Maine in Orono, suffers from perpetual understaffing of faculty. Like most major colleges, UMaine overly relies on graduate students and part-time adjunct instructors to teach most of its courses. <br />
<br />
But these budget cuts only threaten to make mediocre schools even worse.<br />
<br />
And this dumbing down of education is not limited to our universities. The national trend toward <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2012/11/when-austerity-attacks.html" target="_blank">austerity</a> has led to a defunding of public schools, teacher layoffs, and a lack of adequate resources and learning spaces. Lawmakers complain they "do not have the money" to properly fund K-12 education, yet seem to have no problem with mega-retailers like Walmart and McDonald's <a href="http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/20254-meet-americas-biggest-welfare-queens" target="_blank">basically living off of taxpayer expense</a>. <br />
<br />
And the emergence of charter schools in recent years--privately owned, for profit schools that are still publicly funded--threatens to usher in a future in which all education is privatized and commercialized.<br />
<br />
The Kennebunk school district (RSU 21) where I teach as an Ed Tech recently <a href="http://post.mainelymediallc.com/news/2014-04-04/Front_Page/Common_Core_put_into_practice.html" target="_blank">finished implementing the new Common Core learning standards</a>, which 46 states plus the District of Columbia have essentially been forced to adopt. (Adoption of the Common Core curriculum is tied to federal "Race to the Top" funding--some $4.35 billion. States not on board with Common Core are not eligible for the funding.) <br />
<br />
These new standards mean more student learning will be "measured" by standardized tests and mandated educational outcomes. It also means more teacher salaries--and, in some cases, continued employment--will be based on their students' test scores. Indeed, this brave new world of corporatized education, in which the so-called "bad teachers" are those whose students do poorly on standardized tests, forgets that teaching is, as radical educator <a href="http://www.freire.org/paulo-freire/" target="_blank">Paulo Freire</a> observed in <em>Pedagogy of the Oppressed</em>, a reciprocal endeavor. Even the most talented and engaging educators can only lead students to the metaphorical fountain of knowledge. They cannot force students to drink from it. <br />
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Yet the corporate forces--including the "philanthropic" <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/11/27/gates-foundation-pours-millions-into-common-core-in-2013/" target="_blank">Gates Foundation</a>--that are pushing curriculum like Common Core do not understand this. They only understand one thing: How to make a profit. They see money in public education and they want it. All of it. And if we do not stop them, these corporate forces will destroy not only our nation's education system, but the very concept of an informed, engaged citizenry along with it.<br />
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<br />
<strong>UPDATE, 04/11/2014:</strong><br />
<br />
President Kalikow announced Friday afternoon that all faculty layoffs <a href="http://www.pressherald.com/news/USM_president_reverses_faculty_layoffs.html" target="_blank">have been rescinded</a>. According to the <em>Portland Press Herald</em>, Kalikow made the decision just minutes before the USM Faculty Senate Meeting and claims the student-led protests "did not play a role" in her reversal. This, of course, seems highly unlikely. However, Kalikow made clear the university must still account for the budget shortfall and is "open to alternative plans."<br />
<br />
So, is this a win for us? It is hard to say. As Maine Green Independent Party chairman and state senate candidate, Asher Platts points out, this is, at best, a temporary victory. There are still structural changes needed to the University of Maine System's administrative board in order to change the ever increasing Business-orientation of higher education. Platts writes on the <a href="http://www.mainegreens.org/victory_sort_of" target="_blank">Maine Green Party's website</a>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
While it's great that the faculty layoffs have been rescinded, we must keep our eyes on the prize of reforming the UMaine system to allow for more democratic means of making decisions, review funding models, and [to improve] the state of Maine's relationship to the UMaine system or we will be fighting this same battle over and over.</blockquote>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03552863137069648949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3928333620656793457.post-69198672980391673222014-04-09T12:28:00.002-07:002014-04-09T12:28:59.228-07:00Bedtime for Democracy<br />
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In the wake of 2010's disastrous Supreme Court decision, <em>Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) </em>and now this week's equally game-changing, <em><a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2014/4/3/the_next_citizens_united_mccutcheon_opens" target="_blank">McCutcheon v. FEC</a></em>, which lifts the cap on campaign contributions from rich donors, it might be time to start asking the obvious question we are all too afraid to pose:<br />
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Do we even still live in a representative democracy, anymore? Or has the United States become a sort of oligarchic plutocracy where only the very wealthy have any ability to influence government?<br />
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(Let's put the broader question of whether the U.S. has <em>ever </em>truly been a democracy, aside for the time being. For the sake of argument, let's assume America was founded as a democratic nation. I'll let readers fight this one out in the "Comments" section.)<br />
<br />
Many progressive pundits have lamented in recent years the state of our "beleaguered," or "weakened" democracy. But just how "weak" must a country's democratic institutions become before they finally gasp their last metaphorical breath? At what point is the transition from an open, free society, to a closed, totalitarian one complete? Have we, in fact, now reached that point? Does our democracy exist in name only?<br />
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Chilling questions, to be certain. Yet the Supreme Court's campaign-spending decision last week demands we treat them as more than academic hypotheticals. <br />
<br />
Those Americans whose civic participation <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2012/11/now-what-democracy-beyond-voting-booth.html" target="_blank">starts and ends in the voting booth</a> once every four years might want to start paying more attention. And you might want to start contemplating alternative forms of action while you are at it, given how increasingly pointless those elections are becoming--unless that is, you happen to be rich.<br />
<br />
Last week's <em>McCutcheon</em> decision--which raises the so-called aggregate limit on the amount of money an individual can directly contribute to a candidate, PAC (Political Action Committee), or political party from $2,600 to $3.5 million--maintains the Roberts-led court's trend of equating the spending of money with free speech.<br />
<br />
While many conservatives have lauded the Justices' decision as a win for "freedom," it is a freedom only a very small, wealthy percentage of Americans can exercise. As Andy Kroll makes clear in his recent coverage of the <em>McCutcheon</em> decision in <em>Mother Jones </em>("<a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/03/supreme-court-mccutcheon-citizens-united" target="_blank">The Supreme Court Just Gutted Another Campaign Finance Law..."</a>, 04/02/2014), this will no doubt further the vastly disproportionate influence the extremely rich already yield in our elections. <br />
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"The decision is a boon for wealthy donors," Kroll writes, "a potential lifeline for the weakened Democratic and Republican parties, and the latest in a series of setbacks dealt by the Roberts court to supporters of tougher campaign [spending] laws." <br />
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It is time to start thinking outside of the voting booth. Occupy Wall Street had the right idea, initially. Not only did the movement leave an indelible impact on our vocabulary, with phrases like "One percent," and "99 percent," still widely in use today. But it also made clear, to anyone who still did not understand, where the real centers of power are in this country: Not the White House, but Wall Street.<br />
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Unfortunately, the widespread emergence of "sister occupations" throughout the country (including <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2011/12/responding-to-occupy-maine-critics.html" target="_blank">here in Portland</a>) kind of lost the plot. It is hard to occupy Wall Street--based in Manhattan--when you live in, you know... Maine. Had the Portland Occupiers set up camp in front of a local TD Bank or <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/07/us-bankofamerica-settlement-idUSBREA361FJ20140407" target="_blank">Bank of America</a> (or even the Portland offices of Preti Flaherty, law firm of Harold Pachios, a longtime Democratic donor and strategist), that would have made sense. Instead they quixotically settled for about five months in Lincoln Park, where most of their anti-corporatist message was mistaken by passerby for "camping."<br />
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When Occupy re-emerges--and I believe it or something like it will--I hope it can move beyond these fledgling failings and coalesce a truly populist mass movement. Still, the Occupiers were on the right track. And this is why the movement was ultimately <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/nyregion/police-begin-clearing-zuccotti-park-of-protesters.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" target="_blank">crushed by the corporate state</a>. They knew it was a threat.<br />
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In his remarks shortly after forcibly evicting the Occupy protesters from Zuccotti Park, New York's "independent" Mayor Michael Bloomberg dismissed the group's grievances as <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/mike-bloombergs-marie-antoinette-moment-20111103?link=mostpopular5" target="_blank">"totally unfounded."</a><br />
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It is increasingly clear any substantive effort at restoring our democracy and the rule of law is going to come from outside the two-party system. Real progressive change will come, as it always has, through activists, socialists, and third-parties like the Green Party. (Full disclosure: I am the Secretary for the Portland Green Independent Committee, of the <a href="http://www.mainegreens.org/" target="_blank">Maine Green Independent Party</a>.) <br />
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Contrary to popular opinion, Greens can win elections. We have had particular success on the local and state levels where voters are more willing to look past the <a href="http://nader.org/2012/01/10/third-parties-are-not-spoilers/" target="_blank">bogus "spoiler" argument</a>. And even if Greens fail to win office we can still influence the election by bringing up issues--like <a href="http://guerrillapress.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-fight-for-15-part-ii.html" target="_blank">raising the minimum wage</a>, or instant run-off voting--the Democrats and Republicans would not otherwise discuss.<br />
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Our democracy has been hijacked by an unfettered corporate state. It has been sold to the highest bidder. Extremely wealthy capitalists like the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson and Warren Buffett now own America. And the only hope we have of taking our country--and our democracy--back is by stepping outside of the system. <br />
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Do not "Keep Calm and Carry On," as the ubiquitous motivational slogan urges. It is time to get mad and f*&@ sh#! up. <br />
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