People Before Profit blog

Nationalize BP!

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:15:00 +0000

Those of us who live along the Gulf Coast have been shocked by the callous disregard for safety, worker's lives and destruction of our environment exhibited by BP in Texas and Louisiana. In March, 2005, 15 workers lost their lives in an unnecessary explosion at the BP refinery in Texas City. Just recently, 11 workers were thrown off a BP oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and are presumed dead.

The oil rig continues to leak oil into the Gulf and threatens to destroy the coastal environment of Louisiana just as the area is beginning to recover from the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina. Some say the disaster may eclipse the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Investigations into the 2005 explosion indicated that BP decided it was cheaper to pay the possible fines than to follow OSHA safety guidelines. As a result, 15 workers died and many more had preceded them in previous years.

It is clear that the damages inflicted on the Gulf Coast by these two incidents are inestimable and the people of the area will suffer for many years to come. Some say the economic impact of the disaster on Louisiana will be catastrophic.

It is this writer's opinion that our government should seize all the assets of BP in this country and put this capital to work to rebuild and restore the communities damaged by this gigantic multinational corporation.

If the refineries and oil rigs were owned by our government, adequate safety standards could be maintained so that worker's lives could be saved. Instead of the profits being neatly stowed away in some large banks, they could be used to clean up the mess, compensate workers and their families and provide funds for research into green energy sources. The money could also be used to build state of the art levees such as they have in Europe to protect New Orleans from the next major Hurricane. Texas City is unbelievably polluted and money could be spent to clean up the environment there and make the area more livable for the many residents.

The U.S. military is assisting this foreign company in cleaning up the mess they have made in our backyard. The question facing our nation is, "Who is going to pay the bill?" Will it be the working people of this country? Will it be the villains responsible for this catastrophe? People of the Gulf Coast need answers to these questions now.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/uscgd8/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Why the Democratic majority will grow in 2010

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:18:00 +0000

In talking about the current Democratic majority and its fate in the 2010 elections, news editors have been using words such as "slipping," "imperiled," and even "doomed" in their headlines.

Reading such press, one gets the idea that the Republican Party is poised to take over the country and derail a nascent era of reforms even before it gets off the ground. Some say the GOP takeover will be, perhaps, on a scale as grand as the 1994 "revolution" led by Newt Gingrich.

But April, despite the messages from the Republican Party and their friends in much of the media, is a strange time to consider the fate of a November election. And even stranger to say it's fate is sealed. Polls are notoriously misleading. People's opinions are fluid. And the Republican Party is on the wrong side of virtually all issues important to the American people.

To see how the Republican Party's program is exactly at odds with the desires of the people, all one has to do is look at the attitudes of the public towards Wall Street, and then at the Republicans in Congress, where they act as the chief defenders of the Goldman Sachs and their ilk.

Plus, the experience of the New York City 2009 mayoral election is instructive. Voters were told for weeks, even right up to Election Day, that the mayoral race would be a blow out. Billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg would defeat Democratic challenger Bill Thompson handily, the pollsters screamed. The big question, according to the pundits, was whether Thompson would lose by more than 20 points, or less.

But hardly anyone in real life seemed to be saying they liked Bloomberg. The most common refrain was, "Why bother voting? He has it in the bag." In essence, the media was operating in Bloomberg's camp, trying to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The polls were wrong. Bloomberg won by less than five points, despite predictions of victory by a historic margin. Bloomberg spent $200 million, more than any other municipal candidate in the history of the world. How come he won by such a small margin? How were the polls so wrong?

Polls focus on "likely voters" and "prime voters" (those who've voted in the past few elections, in primaries and in off-year elections). But others have begun to register and vote. Obama won in 2008 based on the mobilization of millions of people who had never voted before. These newly-energized people weren't counted in the polls then, and still aren't.

Polls also fail to take into account the state of the movements around candidates, in this case, Thompson and Bloomberg. The state of movements leads to another question: How did David come so close to slaying Goliath?

Bloomberg had the support of Wall Street and lots of money, and a mass base of people he had won over through a combination of coded racism and fake liberal rhetoric.

But around Thompson was a potentially more powerful coalition. He had the African American, Latino and Asian elected leadership in the city, as well as the clergy and other leaders of those communities. These communities came out strong for Thompson. Further, huge sections of the labor movement were behind the Democratic candidate: AFSCME District Council 37, the Transport Workers Union Local 100, and other unions in the city. These unions were able to mobilize tens of thousands of members, as well as provide a grassroots, organizational backbone to the campaign.

It was this powerful movement that was able to bring Thompson so close to victory.

David was able to cause Goliath a great deal of pain, but his slingshot didn't mortally wound. Influences of racism and Bloomberg's bucks had an impact. But the most significant factor that kept Goliath alive was a divided labor movement. While two of the biggest unions went with Thompson, three of the others either didn't endorse or went with Bloomberg. Consequently, tens of thousands of working people weren't mobilized, and the organization was weakened.

In contradiction to the mayoral race, the coalition came together completely in the race for city comptroller. The entire labor movement, all of the communities of color, the LGBT community and many others came together behind John Liu. Liu was running against three other candidates, all of whom Wall Street backed in an attempt to crush him. But with this coalition's support, he won 40 percent in a four-way race, and crushed his Wall Street opponent in a run off. The coalition, when united, crushed Wall Street and its candidate.

If we want to make sure the Republican extremists don't take back the House and Senate, the movement that elected Obama-mainly labor unions, the African American, Latino and Asian communities, women and young people-has to come together in states and congressional districts across the country.

Good news is many are already mobilizing for the November mid-term elections. And many key coalition constituents are at work around big issues: health care, jobs, immigrant rights. This helps to build unity, momentum and score victories.

That's why I am boldly predicting the Democrats will hold onto their majority, and pick up a few seats to boot.

President Obama makes history - again!

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:29:00 +0000

In a dramatic departure from the days when workers were scorned by the White House President Obama yesterday became the first president to issue a proclamation for Workers Memorial Day. In that proclamation he notes that 40 years ago, with passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, the nation was declaring that all American workers have the right to a safe workplace and that all employers have an obligation to provide such a safe workplace.

"Yet today," the president declared, "We remain too far from fulfilling that promise."

The record shows the president could not be more correct. Each workday, it is likely 14 workers won't go home to their loved ones because they will be killed on the job.

In 2008, along with the 5,124 workers killed, there were the 50,000 who died from work caused diseases, the 4.6 million who were reported injured and the almost 10 million who were injured but feared that reporting the injury would result in loss of their jobs.

In his proclamation the president mourned the 29 miners killed recently in West Virginia, the seven killed at the refinery in Washington State, and the 11 killed when an oil platform exploded in the Gulf of Mexico
.
To his credit the president didn't stop there. He noted that as horrible as these tragedies were most workplace deaths happen one at a time, away from the spotlight.
The labor movement notes that the vast majority of these "out of the spotlight" deaths and injuries would not occur if health and safety laws were followed. For too many employers safety takes a back seat to production. For too many employers laws that protect workers are completely ignored.

The president, again to his credit, noted that the health and safety laws that are on the books resulted from many years of struggle by workers themselves and by unions and that the task for his administration now is to achieve safe working conditions for all Americans by strengthening those laws and by creating stronger enforcement.

We applaud the president for his historic and bold proclamation on Workers Memorial Day and we take this opportunity to renew the call for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. When workers choose unions they get safer workplaces. Millions of new union members will bring us closer to the day when no one, union or non-union, has to risk his or her life when they go to work in the morning.

Photo: United Mine Workers of America president Cecil Roberts, left, and President Barack Obama, right, comfort the families of miners at Beckley, W.Va., memorial for victims of Upper Branch Mine explosion, April 25. Steve Helber/AP.

A reality check on Wall Street

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:46:00 +0000

Much of the commentary on the financial meltdown and regulatory reform has been first-rate. Many writers, including in the mainstream press, have explained in popular language how Wall Street ruined the economy and how it got richer doing so.

It's not a pretty picture - far from the rosy concepts college students learn in introductory economics courses.

In the real world, in contrast to college textbooks, financial markets are neither free nor self-correcting. Nor do they act as an intermediary that connects savers and borrowers. Nor is their main function to channel investment dollars to the productive economy as they once did.

Financial giants - Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Bank of America - sit at the apex of our financial system. And in that position (because of their connections, insider knowledge, bottomless pockets and strategic position in the global economy, and because of weak regulation), they are able to legally and illegally rig markets to their advantage.

More and more, their profits come from speculative and non-productive activities within the sphere of finance - packaging, buying, swapping and selling various kinds of financial instruments, most of which are only incidentally and remotely connected to the real economy of goods and services. To say that the financial system has turned into a gambling casino is pretty much on the mark.

Moreover, as we have just learned, these markets - filled with hyper-inflated toxic assets, interconnected by a thousand threads, and concentrated in a few hands -can go south at breakneck speed, leaving the larger economy in shambles and slow to recover. Indeed, long-term stagnation in the aftermath of a financial shock is more likely than robust growth, as evidenced recently in Japan. There a real estate bubble burst and threw the economy into a decade-long funk in the 1990s.

In other words, unregulated financial markets have a built-in tendency to systemic meltdown - that is, the collapse of one or two major banks or investment houses can derail the whole economy. No non-financial corporation can claim that power.

So how do we change this? Some say increase oversight and capital requirements; others argue for a new up-to-date regulatory structure; still others talk about tightening control of derivatives and a tax on short-term capital movements; and finally, many insist that financial institutions should not be so big that if they fail, they bring the economy to its knees.

Each of these elements is a part of the current Senate debate over a financial reform bill. True to form, Republicans, who have been portraying themselves as anti-Wall-Street populists, want none of it. So far they have been able to prevent debate and any action on regulatory reform. Democrats, with one exception, favor reform, but most (along with the White House) are keeping their distance from the needed step of breaking up giant financial institutions into smaller units.

Nevertheless, it appears that some form of regulatory reform will pass and place some restraints on Wall Street. And that will be a good first step.

As I see it, however, no regulatory reform, even far-reaching reform, is foolproof as long as the financial system is embedded in an economic system - capitalism - that contains inherent pressures on its players to grow bigger, out-compete their rivals, pursue a risky investment strategy, bend and break the law, and, above all, maximize their year-end profits and bonuses. The pressures are both external (other competitors) and internal (capitalists are in business to make money in the first place).

Therefore, a more fundamental solution to the recent financial crisis requires taking over and democratizing the financial system, including the Federal Reserve Bank. By any objective measure, Wall Street has given up its right to manage our nation's finances.

But there is a hitch. The American people and Congress have yet to be convinced that such action is necessary.

But worry not! In my opinion the dialectics of struggle will bring this idea into the mainstream. It is hard, for me anyway, to see how the economy can be restructured along a robust, sustainable and job-creating developmental path without turning the financial system into a public utility and resource.

Want to become a day laborer?

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 12:52:00 +0000

Book Review

"Catching Out. The Secret World of Day Laborers"
By Dick J. Reavis
Simon & Schuster, 2010

Day labor status is being forced on more and more full-time American workers, whether they want it or not. In his new book, English professor Dick J. Reavis tells precisely what day labor is like. He also summarizes what little is known about this growing sector of the working class, and he adds cogent recommendations to head off the trend toward disaster.

Reavis' regular job is at the University of North Carolina, but he's a Texan through and through. His book is dedicated to his wife and, then, "to John Stanford, who set an example of decency." Stanford, a contributor to the People's World, is well known in Texas activist circles.

How does Reavis know about day labor?

To gather the information and insight for this book, the author spent considerable time posing as a down-and-out day laborer. Most of the book, which reads rather like Steinbeck's "Cannery Row" or "Tortilla Flats," consists of descriptions of the jobs he was assigned and the people he worked with. He fully absorbed every nuance of day labor life and shares it with us in his book.

What do the statistics say?

The bonus is his summary of virtually everything known about contingency workers, scanty as it is. He points out that the clearest example of what happens comes from Japan, where "life-long" employment was the norm until their big economic crisis. In the 20 years since then, Reavis finds, fully one-third of the Japanese have become contingency workers!

Here in the U.S., Reavis reports that 20 percent of the workforce is on contingency, but that represents "a sixfold increase since 1971 when the temp industry came into its own." He points out that contingency work takes a bigger bite out of the full-time workforce with every economic crisis. Obviously, this one, the worst crisis since the Great Depression, will result in several big bites!

What do the bosses say?

The bosses' spin on contingency work was reflected in an April 19 article by Michael Luo in The New York Times. Luo says, "Many embrace part-time work." To the extent that people don't "embrace" being shoved out of regular employment, Luo rationalizes that it's just a trend without a cause. He writes, "The notion that the nature of work is changing - becoming more temporary and project-based, with workers increasingly functioning as free agents and no longer being governed by traditional long-term employer-employee relationships - first gained momentum in the 1990s." Why? He doesn't say.

What can we do?

Reavis promoted his book on the Dallas KNON radio program "Workers Beat" on April 19. He completely smashed the bosses' preposterous view by stating flatly that the contingent workforce is growing for one reason and one reason only - because bosses can make more money that way! The day laborers, and don't forget that he knows them intimately, desperately long for full-time employment!

Reavis said that good national health care would go a long way, and that Americans could benefit from a European law, in effect for years, that stops employers from paying contingency workers less than full-time employees. It works similarly to our Davis-Bacon law for construction workers, and requires that a "prevailing wage" be paid for all work. Reavis warned that everyone should learn more about the contingency workforce and fight for laws that would give day laborers the possibility of organizing. "Organizing is the only real solution," he said.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/87913776@N00/ / CC BY 2.0

Answer to youth violence is jobs, not National Guard

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 15:28:00 +0000

While the urgency to address Chicago's rampant wave of violence is extremely warranted, I think it's absolutely ridiculous that two Illinois lawmakers are requesting to bring in the National Guard as a way to control the problem.

In a press conference Sunday Chicago Democratic Reps. John Fritchey and LaShawn Ford said they want Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat, to activate the National Guard as a solution to save lives.

Granted the city has seen a rising surge of violence recently, especially now that the weather appears to be warming up. Every year residents here have to deal with a deadly trend that only gets worse as summer approaches and it's our children that continue to suffer its tragic consequences.

Last week alone seven people died and 18 were wounded, mostly by gunfire. Chicago has had over 100 homicide victims so far this year. And 25 Chicago student's lives have been cut short due to youth violence.

The numbers are grim and the reality of young lives lost is staggering.

At the same time working-class families in Chicago, weather Black, Latino or white are dealing with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Good jobs that pay livable wages with decent benefits not to mention health insurance are increasingly scarce these days.

Everyday families across the city are being hit with dire unemployment figures and many continue to lose their homes in an on-going foreclosure crisis.

Chicago Public Schools recently announced sweeping cuts and is expected to fire hundreds of union teachers while the majority of our schools remain overcrowded and under-funded.

Widespread poverty, lack of opportunities and a consistent lack of public resources for our young people are the norm for most low-income neighborhoods.

Overall, Illinois, like states nationwide, is undergoing one of the worst budget disasters in recent history leaving thousands jobless and dozens of low-income communities without badly needed human services.

Arguably these are dismal times for many. And issues related to our struggling economy may have a direct result as to why so many young people see street gangs as their only option.

But for Reps. Fritchey and Ford to suggest bringing in the military as a way to solve the violence plaguing Chicago's streets, is way off the mark.

When our neighborhoods lack job opportunities, affordable housing and face failing educational institutions, daily life for families in these communities and particularly single-parent households becomes extremely difficult.

Street gangs offer young people a sense of belonging and a quick money fix. And when you have broken families and areas that struggle with constant disparities, than the children of those neighborhoods become vulnerable for gang recruitment.

What is needed, not only from community leaders, but also more importantly from our elected officials is real common-sense solutions and political action.

Too much money is being spent on incarcerating and criminalizing young people and too little is being allocated toward violence prevention measures to keep youth from ending up in jail or in a coffin. And we need common-sense gun laws too.

Meanwhile the billions of dollars being spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan should be used toward fighting the war here on the streets and used for creating positive opportunities for young people like summer jobs.

A report I came across a couple of years ago finds that heavy-handed suppression efforts have a poor track record when it comes to reducing crime and can actually increase gang cohesion. The report: "Gang Wars: The Failure of Enforcement Tactics and the Need for Public Safety Strategies," notes that more police, more prisons and more punishments don't work.

Released by the Justice Policy Institute, the study says gang member's account for a relatively small share of crime in most jurisdictions. And street gangs do not dominate or drive the drug trade. And the public face of the gang problem may seem Black or Latino only, yet it's whites that make up the largest group of adolescent gang members and the majority of gun victims.

Job training, mentoring, after-school activities and recreational programs make significant dents in gang violence, according to the report.

I wholeheartedly agree.

State lawmakers should be fighting tooth and nail toward allocating more funds for public schools and social programs and less for large-scale arrests, prison initiatives or calling in the U.S. military.

Young people need positive alternatives and educational opportunities to grow and become successful leaders of our communities. They need resources and jobs and our elected officials ought to lead by example and be their main advocates.

Public safety is a major concern for families who just want to work, live in peace and make sure their children receive an education out of harm's way.

But we also know that one way to solving community violence in our neighborhoods is by uniting and fighting for our basic rights like jobs, public education and alternative programs that young people deserve.

Calling in the National Guard and purporting more stringent forms of enforcement on our troubled and unemployed youth is not the answer.

They need jobs.

Photo: Wesley Keith, 8, right, pretends he is dead in a coffin carried by Lamar Robinson, 16, center, and other members of the Greater Roseland Community Committee Youth Voices Against Violence group during the Day of Action Rally in Chicago, June 18, 2009. Lane Christiansen/Chicago Tribune/AP

Arizona immigration law: A civil rights catastrophe

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:51:00 +0000

The signing last week by Arizona's Republican Governor, Jan Brewer of SB 1070 should be a signal for action by everybody who cares about human and workers' rights.

The Arizona law criminalizes not only undocumented immigrants but anybody who helps them or who fails to carry paperwork proving legal status at all times. Further, it will encourage frivolous lawsuits against state and local government agencies and officials who somebody claims are not cracking down on undocumented immigrants. Clearly, this law will be enforced only against people who appear to be Latino or foreign, leading to a great increase in racial and ethnic profiling.

The Arizona law is only the latest in a series of state and local measures aimed at persecuting immigrants by subjecting them to harassment and repression and denying them basic human services. Some of these laws have been withdrawn when it was found how much their enforcement would cost the taxpayers, or have been found to be unconstitutional. But political demagogues are undaunted, as is their motive is to get votes and campaign contributions instead of solve problems.

With straight faces, Governor Brewer and other Arizona politicians have assured us that they will not let this new law lead to profiling. The fact is that such profiling is already an everyday reality in minority communities in Arizona and across the country. This law will encourage such profiling by giving it full legal sanction. There are now efforts in several states to pass similar laws.

Demonstrations were quickly organized all over the country, and the Arizona law will surely give an additional spur to immigrants' rights marches being organized for May 1. President Obama denounced the law, as did the governments of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. There is talk in both the United States and Mexico about trade sanctions against Arizona. There will be legal challenges. All of these things are promising.

However, until Congress passes comprehensive immigration reform legislation which allows for the legalization of the estimated 10.7 million undocumented immigrants in the country and a rational plan for managing the inevitable future labor migration (with full legal protections for both immigrant and US born workers), the issue of undocumented immigration will continue to be used in this unconscionable way. Studies show that the legalization of the undocumented would be an economic boon to the nation, adding up to $1.5 trillion to the GDP over 10 years.

The time has come to act.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kretyen/ / CC BY 2.0

An appeal from Arizona

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:50:00 +0000

Things are truly the worst here in Arizona. I was born and raised in this beautiful state. It's been a challenge but it's not been insane - til now.

Here in Tucson, Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., had to close his offices yesterday to protect his staff from serious death threats. But he was out this morning in front of an audience of hundreds, calling for optimism in this struggle for basic human rights and decency that includes all of us in Arizona and the USA against the country's most evil anti-immigrant, racist, and unconstitutional bill (SB 1070). We are tired of being the laughing stock of the U.S., we are tired of being threatened, we are more than tired, WE ARE REALLY PISSED OFF. And we want the rest of you to also be pissed off. One reason our legislature and governor think they can get away with this crap is that no one else in the country is paying attention or cares.

So we can use some loud voices in support of the national economic boycott of Arizona called by Raul Grijalva. Already the American Immigration Lawyers Association has dropped plans to hold their convention here. If you know of any other organizations who are planning events here, if you know people who are planning vacations (the Grand Canyon is fabulous but stay away until it is safe to come), moving a business, buying anything from us (especially citrus and other agricultural items), tell them to stop. We are fighting against our own apartheid, our own flirtation with ethnic cleansing.

Economic sanctions are appropriate. We listened when our brothers and sisters in South Africa called on the people of the world for economic sanctions because they knew that theirs was a greater goal; a little suffering and struggle would yield justice and freedom. We sustained an economic boycott here in Arizona when an earlier racist governor of the state of Arizona cancelled our Martin Luther King Day; we won that struggle when the folks organizing the Super Bowl said they would never hold an event here in Arizona until there was a reversal. And we can win again.

We need to know you have our back. We have more crazies that we deserve in Arizona at the moment. We need your support and we need an organized call from every state for real, honest, humane, and just Immigration Reform.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dreamactivistorg/ / CC BY 2.0

Reform or revolution

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 11:53:00 +0000

Abraham Lincoln composed the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation for a cabinet meeting in July 1862. He believed, however, that a Union victory on the battlefield was necessary in order that the proclamation would appear both credible and strong. The Battle of Antietam, in which Union troops turned back a Confederate invasion of Maryland - and it remains the largest single day of casualties in our history, gave him the opportunity to issue a preliminary proclamation on Sept. 22, 1862.

As the Civil War progressed through 1862, over rivers of blood that astonished the world, the proclamation drafts became ever more firm, emancipating ever larger shares of the slave population. Following its official invocation, on Jan. 1, 1863, the emancipation erased from history and existence two social classes, two entire ways of life: slaves, and slaveholders. When they were gone, so too went an entire social order, and an entire system of practices, laws, religion, occupations, relations of production, land management, professions, institutions and beliefs. Those familiar with early U.S. history know that this collision did not erupt overnight, but after "four score and seven years" of attempts at compromise. Kansas proved that the nation could not remain "half slave, and half free." The system of chattel slavery could not, and would not, be "reformed" out of existence, and it could not coexist, even within a single state, with free labor, free soil, or industrial capitalism.

As Fredrick Douglas wrote:

"The Dreadful Calamity came not unbidden,
nor by Accident, nor was the truth from any hidden
Shun not the harvest of blood sown beam-deep

By acts of horror by God forbidden
Repeat not the mistakes of our Fathers known
Because God is not dead, by blood alone
must Slavery fierce and foul have been undone."

How can this not be called "revolutionary" change? Perhaps the largest armed mobilization in history (up to that time) alongside the suspension of habeas corpus (the right to review arbitrary detention and arrest) - both turned against a nation's own people - should dispose of any argument that the civil war was a "reform" movement. And yet, the entire rebellion and its complete suppression occurred within a constitutional framework. Powers employed by the president were granted by Congress, and upheld by the Supreme Court. This "constitutional" feature was hardly an unimportant aspect of American success in maintaining its union, and strengthening its democratic republic.

There is an interesting connection between the U.S. Civil War, and the Russian 1905 revolution that, in the end, failed to overthrow the czarist autocracy. In that revolution all forces, including those of the czar, agreed in words with the proposition that there should be a popular "constituent assembly." However, in reality, no democratic republic could succeed that did not abolish the ancient feudal classes of lords and peasants, and that did not free all those classes bound to "putrid and oppressive relations" (Vladimir Lenin's phrase).

If the first American revolution of 1775-1783 had not destroyed any chance of such relations overtaking our land from England's monarchy, we might still be colonies. In a sense, the Russian revolution of 1905 failed because it adopted a "reform" position on social and economic questions that would not wither away of their own accord. The "constituent assembly" founded in that rebellion thus was fatally compromised because it did not accomplish the task of actually constituting itself - which would have required, as did the abolition of slavery in the U.S., force of arms to resolve.

That failure led directly to the 1917 ultimate collapse of the Russian state in the midst of World War I. The Russian Social Democrats, as they were known at the time, with a strong base in the industrial working class, and in the armed forces, proved the only social group sufficiently coherent to get the job of abolishing feudalism done. But they were compelled to do so under the most adverse circumstances imaginable: no constitution, no democratic institutions, and a country starving, destitute and ruined by war. Unlike in the U.S., the emerging capitalist (business) classes could not be persuaded to drop their ties to the feudal system. The salvation of their country fell to Russian workers and peasants alone, a titanic task for which later history perhaps showed they were unprepared, but from which they did not shrink.

Now we are confronted with a question: Is the social and economic class of "finance capitalist" no longer compatible with a genuinely democratic republic? There is no question, in this writer's view, that they must become LESS powerful, LESS dominant, and a SMALLER component of both our economy and our political system. That's what "financial reform" is all about. I am currently of the opinion that reform is possible. I do not think the time has come to put this class out of business. But I am not sure we can wait "four score and seven" to find out for sure, given the stakes at hand. History gives contradictory answers.

As Carl Davidson says, we have to keep on keeping on - and the truth will be revealed. Reform, or revolution? Either way, we will make it!

Realizing the promise of ‘nuclear spring’

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 11:43:00 +0000

Speaking in Prague a year ago, President Obama proclaimed "America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons," and outlined a sweeping agenda to address both longstanding and emerging perils from the world's only true weapon of mass destruction.

Those pledges included:
• reducing the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. national security strategy;
• negotiating a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia;
• pursuing ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, signed but not yet ratified by the U.S.;
• seeking a new treaty to end production of "fissile materials for use in state nuclear weapons;"
• strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; and
• launching a new international effort to secure all vulnerable nuclear material worldwide in four years.

It's a sweeping agenda to start moving nuclear issues among states off the dead-center of the Bush years. It addresses changing international realities, including the end of Cold War adversarial relationships and the growing problem of "non-state actors" like Al Qaeda pursuing weapons-grade nuclear materials and technology.

This spring elements of the agenda are emerging, with the release of the Nuclear Posture Review, the signing of the U.S.-Russia "New START" agreement and the 47-nation Nuclear Security Summit. The process will continue as the U.S. participates in the Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference at the United Nations in May.

As with all complex political processes, there are pluses and minuses. Support by the majority of Americans who hope nuclear weapons will be abolished in our lifetimes can help to uphold the program's many positive aspects against far right obstructionism. And positive pressure can help to strengthen areas where contradictions exist.

The Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) lays out the administration's fundamental approach to nuclear weapons and nuclear arms control and disarmament. It declares the U.S. "will not use or threaten to use" nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states that signed and are in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty. At the same time, the U.S. is not yet ready to say its nuclear weapons exist only to deter a nuclear attack.

This is a big step away from old Cold War policies - and an area that needs strengthening.

As Arms Control Association executive director Daryl Kimball wrote recently in the Moscow Times, "Assigning U.S. nuclear weapons any role beyond ‘core nuclear deterrence' is both unnecessary and counterproductive. The United States, as well as Russia, should adopt a ‘sole purpose' policy now rather than later."

The NPR also declares the U.S. will not conduct nuclear tests and will not develop new nuclear warheads, new military missions or capabilities.

But observers express concern over its discussion of "life extension programs," including refurbishing existing warheads, reusing nuclear components from different warheads, and even "replacement" of nuclear components under limited conditions.

Scott Yundt, staff attorney for Tri-Valley Communities against a Radioactive Environment (Tri-Valley CAREs) writes that this can open the way for the powerful nuclear weapons laboratories "to research and develop what will be essentially new warheads." Tri-Valley CAREs cites scientific advisors who warn that "replacement" is both unnecessary and scientifically risky. The Arms Control Association's Kimball says that "given the success of ongoing U.S. warhead life-extension programs," new warheads and renewed testing aren't necessary to maintain reliability of the existing nuclear stockpile.

The signing of New START in Prague earlier this month is another big step forward in the Obama agenda. While the cuts in long-range offensive nuclear weapons are modest - the negotiators say 30 percent and many experts say it's less - they represent progress that has been lacking for many years.

On the plus side, according to John Isaacs of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, are better verification and a "stable and predictable U.S.-Russian nuclear relationship" that "sets the stage for discussion on deep reductions in U.S. and Russian arsenals in the future." Since each country can still destroy the other, and the world, many times over, those new discussions will be vital for real disarmament.

Though Senate consent to ratify New START is by no means certain, many observers believe that enough of a bipartisan consensus exists to make ratification likely.

But the price of such a consensus may be conditions that undermine the administration's stated objectives.

In December 40 Republican senators, joined by Connecticut independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, wrote to President Obama insisting on a big hike in nuclear weapons spending before they would back the new pact. According to Tri-Valley CAREs, they demanded that the entire nuclear arsenal be replaced with new modified nuclear weapons, as well as a series of new warhead component production facilities.

And indeed the president has now proposed the largest-ever budget for nuclear arms.

All of which means the "nuclear spring" heralds major advances that deserve and need the full support of the majority of Americans who would like to see a world without nukes, while at the same time demanding our critical attention to eliminate weaknesses that could scuttle those advances.

Much remains to be done before our country can truly say it is living up to the commitment the world's acknowledged nuclear powers made when they signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty four decades ago: "to pursue negotiations in good faith" to achieve complete nuclear disarmament and to conclude a treaty for complete and general disarmament.

Capitalism replaces human rights with inhuman rights

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 15:50:00 +0000

LISBON (Avante) -- Proclaiming that "all men are born free and equal" and that government of the people arises from the citizens themselves, rather than from any "divine right," the French Revolution began a new era in human history.

However, for the liberal revolutions of the 19th century, social rights were not counted among the rights of man or of citizenship. Only with the great social revolutions of the 20th century such as the Soviet Revolution and post-World War II revolutionary processes, were social rights transformed into political reality.

However, once big capital regained its domination over the former USSR and the countries of Eastern Europe it decided that it was time to roll back history.

Portuguese Prime Minister Sócrates' recent "Pact for Economic Stability and Growth," and other economic recovery plans all across the capitalist world are now being floated on this dark sea of reaction.

These economic recovery plans turn the idea of human rights inside-out, replacing human rights with inhuman rights.

High-placed EU officials in Brussels, singing in chorus with capital-dominated governments, proclaim the "right" to throw millions of people out of work. Radio and TV commentators demand cuts in job-related benefits and state social services, presenting as "inevitable" the transfer of social rights to private capital, "just like any other item of merchandise."

Singing in tune, they all look for new and more "modern" ways to ratchet up the intensity and quantity of work, and to freeze or cut salaries, retirement and benefits. The "right" to free circulation of capital gives the green light to gigantic, planetary-scale speculation that plunges entire countries into crisis and despair. Any country's economy can be brought to its knees overnight by factors beyond national control, violating the people's right to manage their own resources as they see fit.

A transfer of the political power to manage society into the hands of those who hold economic power is now being openly proposed as an "alternative" to democracy. This is the "hard line" that is being ever more insistently advocated in order to achieve "economic recovery."

When inhuman rights try to turn back history, it is time to sound a loud alarm. Time does not run backward. We must act to safeguard that heritage of generations that we call "human rights."

Photo: Avante

Aurelio Santos writes for Avante, the newspaper of the Portuguese Communist Party. Translation by Owen Williamson.

Novels, memory and the Holocaust

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:20:00 +0000

Holocaust Remembrance Day just passed, and it got me thinking about memory and empathy.

"What are we going to do when the last survivor passes?" asked David G. Marwell, director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, located in New York City. Textbooks aren't adequate to describe the crimes of Nazism, Mr. Marwell said. "We rely increasingly on the second generation to tell their parents' stories, so that there is still the human factor."

With so many decades gone by since that nightmarish time, and so few survivors left, how can this human factor be conveyed? How can we help the next generation understand the brutal anti-Semitism that resulted in the Holocaust? And how to help them understand, and oppose, the anti-Semitism that still exists?

Besides the testimony of survivors and their families, the museums, exhibits and documentaries, there are movies: "Sophie's Choice," "Schindler's List" and "Life is Beautiful," which had huge impacts on mass audiences.

Less well-known are the many novels about this period, which are also powerful and emotional ways to educate.

I checked Amazon and Powells, and depending on how I searched, came up with 350 to 700 titles. But here are a few to start your list.

"The Seventh Cross," by Anna Seghers, is about a group of men who escape from a Nazi prison camp, and are re-captured one by one. The prisoners are forced to stand all day in front of seven crosses that are erected in the camp, and severely punished if they falter. The seventh cross stays empty, because the leader of the group, George Heisler, successfully escapes. He does so due to the courage of ordinary people who understood and resisted the Nazi regime.

"Naked Among Wolves," by Bruno Apitz, is the riveting (and true) story of how prisoners at the Buchenwald concentration camp hid a small Jewish boy, even as they planned to liberate the camp from within, risking both the success of the plan and their own lives.

If you haven't heard of these two wonderful books, it's not a surprise, since the heroes are Communists. (But you can find them both on Amazon.com.)

"The Good German," by Joseph Kanon, set in postwar Berlin, delves into the stories of the people who survived, and how they did so. Although its focus is not on the experience of the Jewish people, the terror and the horrific crimes of the Nazis come through, including through details of the underground camps where people were worked to death on the German rocket program.

Last but not least is a book I read to my children, and highly recommend. "Number the Stars," by Lois Lowry, is a beautifully written account of the evacuation of almost the entire Jewish population of Denmark to Sweden, in which many Danish people participated. A sense of the fear and violence of the time comes through this less-told story of collective resistance to the Nazis.

Photo: Survivors of Nazi slave labor in Buchenwald concentration camp. National Archives/Public Domain

Hate speech can bring deadly results

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:11:00 +0000

April 19 marked the 15^th anniversary of the bombing in Oklahoma City, which took the lives of 168 people including 19 children. Timothy McVeigh, the right-wing terrorist who set the bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, to his dying day never showed any remorse or regret for his heinous crime. In fact, taking a human life was not a problem for him. He had been in the U.S. military and had accepted fascist ideology somewhere along the way, becoming dehumanized to the point where killing innocents served what he thought was a "higher purpose" -- revenge for the federal government's role in the Waco shoot out.

It brings to mind how wrong the people are who try to play down, even dismiss, the racism and threatening/violent speeches at the tea party rallies. Their hateful words cannot be rationalized because, "people are as mad as hell" at the policies of the Obama administration. This is no movie. This is the real world.

And what is their anger all about? They say they are angry about high taxes, but Obama has actually lowered taxes on 95 percent of the people.

They sat they are angry about gun control, which Obama has not been particularly pushing.

They're oppose to government spending to bail out Wall Street, but they are even more opposed to putting any restrictions on Wall Street's thievery that brought on the current crisis.

They also oppose government spending to help people without health coverage, and are even angrier at helping those facing foreclosure, or who are jobless, hungry and homeless.

And at their rallies, the overwhelming presence of racist and red-baiting signs and humiliating speeches, aimed at degrading Obama, shows a deep and irrational hatred for our first African American president.

They say they are not racist, but no one in that movement is speaking out against racism.

These people are on the extreme ultra right fringe politically. Despite all the media hype, they represent just 18% of the population, according to a recent poll.

Yet, they should not be discounted because the dominant right-wing media has given them a voice far bigger then their real numbers. They have attracted a lunatic fringe that includes those who are openly for a right-wing armed insurrection and are preparing for it. This is not a legitimate movement that just wants to be heard.

Here are some alarming reports mentioned in recent USA Today article on a Washington, DC tea party rally.

After referring to the federal government as "the gangster government," Michele Bachman, R Minn., said, "We need to take out some of these guys"
Sharon Angle, Republican seeking her party's nomination to run against Nevada's Senator, Democrat Harry Reid, urged the "open carry" of guns. "I feel a little lonely today. I usually bring Smith and Wesson."

At another tea party rally in Austin, Texas, Jim Dillon walked through the crowd carrying an AK47, he said was unloaded and legal. A state trooper stopped him examined the weapon and let him continue walking with it, USA Today reported.

What also comes to mind is the disgruntled taxpayer who flew his plane into the IRS building in Texas, February 19, killing two people and himself.

Also, James Von Brunn, known white supremacist and anti-Semite who entered the Holocaust Museum in January, opened fire and killed Stephen Tyrone Johns, an African American museum security guard.

This week, the New York State Supreme Court convicted a white teenager from Long Island, N.Y., of manslaughter for stabbing to death Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorian immigrant. Immigrant advocates had criticized the police department for their failure to follow up complaints of anti-immigrant bias attacks. They also blamed local county leaders and politicians for "fueling the hostility with anti immigrant statements."

In a recent interview, former President Bill Clinton, who was in office when the Oklahoma bombing took place, pointed out that before the bombing then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich had characterized the Clintons as "enemies of ordinary Americans." That was done in the highly charged atmosphere after the Branch Davidian shootout that ended in tragedy in Waco, Texas.

In response to the anti government rhetoric coming from the tea party and politicians associated with them, Clinton said, "There can be real consequences when what you say animates people who do things you would never do."

I am reminded of June 1963 when George Wallace stood in the doors of the University of Alabama and uttered those defiant words, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." This was a bold defense of Jim Crow racism but it was done in the name of "states' rights." That is the same rationale used by Republicans today to block health care reform in states they control.

But the most important thing to remember was Wallace's words, standing in the door, gave license to the Klan, blinded by hate, to set that bomb off at the 16^th St. Baptist church, which killed those four little girls. That August, 250,000 people came to Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

If these racist, government haters are not politically defeated and the authorities don't do their job to protect the innocent, new hate crimes will be committed and a tragic part of our history will be repeated.

For starters, we all need to heed the words of AFL-CIO's Richard Trumka when he said, "What I believe is the only way to fight the forces of hatred" is with a "progressive tradition that includes working people in action, organizing unions and organizing to elect public officials committed to bold action to address economic suffering."

Let's do it!

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/streetprotesttv/ / CC BY 2.0

Betting on all sides

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 15:19:00 +0000

If you listened to the recent testimony of Wall Street executives before the bipartisan commission looking into the financial crisis, you would think that they were mere innocent spectators to it all.

That takes a lot of .... You can fill in the blank.

Did the Masters of the Universe really think that housing prices could only go in one direction - up, that investor risk was a non-issue in their financial games, that economic turbulence was a thing of the past?

I know that many economic theorists peddled these notions in recent years, actually going back to the late 1970s. Federal Reserve Bank governor (now chairman) and former Princeton economics professor Ben Bernanke, for example, asserted in a speech in 2004:

"One of the most striking features of the economic landscape over the past 20 years or so has been a substantial decline in macroeconomic volatility. ... Several writers on the topic have dubbed this remarkable decline in the variability of both output and inflation 'The Great Moderation.'"

Then the supposedly erudite Bernanke went on to say:

"The increased depth and sophistication of financial markets, deregulation in many industries, the shift away from manufacturing toward services, and increased openness to trade and international capital flows are other examples of structural changes that may have increased macroeconomic flexibility and stability." (my italics)

Such was the conventional wisdom of the economics profession and too many politicians, Republican and Democratic alike.

Still, I doubt that the "titans" of finance, who manipulate money and markets 24/7, embraced this "wisdom" entirely. Unlike university professors, they have to pay attention to what is happening in the real world. The bottom line is what guides their behavior, not high-sounding generalizations resting on unrealistic assumptions (free, efficient and self-correcting markets, for example).

So assuming that I am right, that financial executives themselves, unlike the free-market theorists, kept at least one eye on the real world, and further assuming that they aren't just plain stupid, why did they continue to invest in bundles of subprime mortgages of deteriorating quality in terms of return and risk? Why didn't they reconsider their investment bets in a ballooning and increasingly unsustainable housing market in which prices got so out of whack with actual value?

The short answer is that financial firms operate in a very competitive capitalist market in which there are internal and external compulsions to accumulate higher and higher profits in the short term. (That get-rich-quick compulsion was aptly summarized by economist John Maynard Keynes, who famously said: "In the long run, we are all dead.")

The longer, and more revealing, answer is that a few giant firms dominate the financial industry, and with size comes competitive advantage - resources and connections, an ability to make deals on both sides of the market (when it is going up and when it is coming down) - and an assumption (backed by earlier precedent) that the government will bail out these same firms when trouble arises. As a result these "too big to fail" financial institutions are both unafraid to ride the speculative wave as long as it lasts and also nimble enough to pull themselves safely out of turbulent waters when the wave breaks - so they think.

In other words, the financial giants are positioned to win no matter what the outcome. There is no better example of this phenomenon than Goldman Sachs. As the Security and Exchange Commission complaint alleges and as Michaels Lewis's new book "The Big Short" discusses in some detail, Goldman Sachs (and probably other financial giants) played all sides of the market and, not surprisingly, broke laws while doing it and suckered the government into cleaning up its bad bets with taxpayer dollars.

To be more specific, Goldman was drowning in mounting piles of worthless securities and was effectively insolvent (more liabilities than assets), as many of its bets on subprime mortgages went sour (not all of its bets though, because it shrewdly and apparently illegally bet that the housing bubble would burst - "shorting" the market - which brought billions into its coffers).

In the meantime, Goldman executives, arguing (correctly) that financial markets occupy a strategic position in the overall economy and relying on their web of connections with the White House, Congress and federal agencies, rushed to Washington and demanded ransom money and a Wall Street fix to the market meltdown. Washington quickly obliged.

In hindsight, President Obama and congressional Democrats, for whatever reason, and there is more than one, missed an opportunity to insist that the biggest financial institutions be placed under public democratic control or, more modestly, broken up and scaled down in size. Public opinion, shaken by the enormity of the crisis and seething with anger towards Wall Street, could have been mobilized to support such far-reaching measures.

Now the moment is less opportune. Nevertheless, anti-bank anger continues and some form of financial regulatory reform is going to become the law of the land. The question is: will the new law have teeth?

Will it break up "too big to fail" banks?

Will it bring the shadow banking system (hedge funds, private equity firms, etc.) and derivatives (financial instruments that bet on the future price of housing mortgages, interest rates, currencies, etc.) under tight control?

Will it establish a consumer protection agency with real power to rein in credit card companies and the like?

Will it increase leverage requirements (money on hand at financial institutions to cover outstanding bets on financial instruments, such as stocks, bonds, futures, swaps, options, etc.)?

Will it guarantee that regulators will be tough on and independent of financial institutions?

Will it provide for public oversight of the regulators and the Federal Reserve Bank?

Will it prohibit banks from selling derivatives and other exotic financial instruments?

Will it contain a tax on financial transactions?

All this will be decided soon. Much will depend on the bargaining posture of the president and the mobilization of the American people for real regulatory reform. So far the labor movement and its leadership are setting the pace. The rest of us need to get on board.

Besides Crystal Bowersox, American Idol falls short

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 16:07:00 +0000

For what it's worth the talent and wow factor on American Idol this season is way off the mark. Week after week the remaining Idol contestants just seem unimpressive except for a solid performance here and there.

On Tuesday the final seven chose inspirational songs and were coached by the lovely Alicia Keys, who says she's a big fan of the popular television show.

Here's a recap:

Aaron Kelly sang "I Believe I Can Fly" by R. Kelly. The judges said they appreciated his big vocals yet something special was lacking in his performance. They also said the arrangement was a bit off.

Kelly, perhaps the youngest on the show, I think gave a solid performance overall. His vocals come off kind of country with a hint of rhythm and blues flavor. His performance was good but short of great.

Casey James sang Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop." I have to admit James knows how to rock out on the electric guitar but the performance was weak and even boring. His raspy and bluesy voice can be pleasing but it's also getting old. The judges said he lacked any connection to his song choice. I agree. At this point in the show he has to nail every song or he could be out.

My favorite on the show is Crystal Bowersox who sang Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready." She reminds me of friends I had in high school, children of parents who were hippies that probably protested during the 1960s and 70s. I really like her unique look and the originality in her voice. She really stands out on the show that is known for producing pop-artists year after year.

For the first time Bowersox sang without a musical instrument and began the song a cappella. The judges called her singing the most inspirational performance of the night. She truly is a winner and made an emotional connection to the song leaving her teary-eyed at its end. She has been consistently great all season. She sings from the heart and if she keeps it up she could win the whole thing.

Lee DeWyze sang Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer." He too is becoming quite the contender on the show. He really connected and told a story through the song. He has a very soulful and raspy-rock voice. I thought his performance was good but he needs to step up his game if he hopes to compete better with Bowersox.

Big man Michael Lynche sang "Hero" by Chad Kroeger featuring Josey Scott. I actually like the song especially because it was the soundtrack hit of the Spider-Man movie, which was disappointing. And so was Lynche. It was arguably not his best performance. I'm a fan of the big guy but the song choice was not a smart one. I can't see him necessarily making rock albums in the future. Hopefully he'll last another week, but he really needs to step it up next time.

My not so favs of those remaining are Sioban Magnus and Tim Urban.

Magnus sang "When You Believe," originally sang by powerhouse vocals Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. I just think Magnus' vocals were way too controlled and mechanical. It just didn't flow and she seemed to lack confidence in herself. The performance was pitchy and I don't think her range is anywhere near that of Mariah or Whitney's.

Urban sang "Better Days" by Goo Goo Dolls. What can I say about this guy? His grungy look is very hip and appealing in a popular and youthful kind of way. But his vocals week after week are well, just weak. He might have had one or two good performances this season mostly for choosing smart song choices, which is part of the game. But he is simply no match for the likes of Bowersox, DeWyze or Lynche. Poor kid. But the voters have surprisingly voted for him week after week. Why? Not sure.

I can see Urban, Magnus, James or even Lynche ending up in the bottom three on Wednesday due to their performances this week.

If you ask me I think it's time for Urban to go, but like I said he has given worse performances and continues to be saved by Idol voters at home.

Lynche was saved a couple of weeks ago by the judges after being voted off. I could see him, Magnus or James singing their last song.

At the end of the day though there is not anything special about Idol this year besides Bowersox's much anticipated performances. However there are rumors that she wants to leave the show. I can see why. Idol's pop-star character just doesn't seem to personify Bowersox's unique talents and artistic originality. It would be a shame though if she left, she's really the only great talent on Idol this year. As a fan it would be nice to see her succeed.

Photo: http://www.americanidol.com/photos

Chomsky, fascism and the working class

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 11:29:00 +0000

Famed linguistics professor and left-wing icon Noam Chomsky made remarks recently that gave me pause.

Chomsky, 81, said he recalls the rise of Hitler in Germany, and recent political developments like the tea party movement bring him back to that frightening time.

"I have a memory of the texture and the tone of the cheering mobs, and I have the dread sense of the dark clouds of fascism gathering," Chomsky said.

He warned left and progressive people that "[r]idiculing the tea party shenanigans is a serious error." I couldn't agree more.

But, on other things, I couldn't agree less.

Chomsky was off-base in implying the tea party is a working-class phenomenon. It's true that, as he said, there is a "class" resentment among the tea party movement, and the context is the devastating economic crisis and wealth gap that exists in the United States. Undoubtedly there are working-class people among the tea partiers. But the working class does not make up the majority of this movement. Nor does this movement represent working-class interests.

In a recent poll, it was wealthier and more educated Americans, more than others, who identify with the tea party anti-government, anti-Obama rhetoric.

The U.S. working class is a multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, multi-generational, multi-sex class. In my opinion, the broadly-defined view of working class is anyone who has to work for a living. The mono-racial (virtually all white) tea party movement represents corporate and wealthy America's "anti-government" interests, like no taxes on capital gains, or no regulations on pollution, etc. To suggest that this movement is an expression of working class resentment distorts who makes up the social base of fascism.

Fascism springs from the ruling elite, which through their extensive media apparatus, etc., attempts to influence the great majority of working people. And it's the use of racism, in the first place, along with anti-Semitism, immigrant-bashing, homophobia and anti-woman and anti-union attacks, along with anti-government, quasi-religious demagogy, that is the ideological backbone of a fascist movement in America. At a time of mass unemployment, they use racism and anti-immigrant rhetoric to let corporate America off the hook.

Chomsky argued that in the "popular" mind President Obama, the nation's first Black president, is associated with the banking industry and Wall Street. He claimed the administration is ineffective and could be on the verge of collapse, like the Weimar Republic that preceded the Nazi takeover of Germany.

But, first of all, it was not the Weimar Republic that put Hitler in power. Hitler came to power with a nod and wink from the highest levels of German capital.

Fascism - as a system - comes out of the most reactionary sectors of capital. In our country, energy and oil, finance and military capital lead the way and the Republicans are their political party of choice. The most reactionary sector, when most threatened, will consider a suspension of democratic rights, and implementation of a terror-based system of government - with no rights for unions, women, racial/national/religious/sexual minorities, etc.

Chomsky ignores the substantial measures the Obama administration is trying to take to rein in the banks and curb their power, and the bitter opposition campaign being waged by the Republicans and Wall Street.

Republicans have shut down the government, invited in corporate lobbyists to actually write bills and now have turned into the "Party of No" in blocking any reforms.

By ignoring this reality, Chomsky weakens the fighting ability of the democratic movement. After all, if Obama is like the Republicans, and only represents Wall Street, why bother fighting side by side with the administration?

While many of Obama's reform efforts, like the health care law, are not nearly as radical as many of us on the left would advocate, they do represent a step forward, crucial for mobilizing and unifying the class and social forces necessary to prevent any fascist takeover.

There was another speech given recently on anger in America. This one was by Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO and former mineworker, at Harvard University. I thought his speech sought to unify the class, to clarify who is to blame for the economic crisis, and to mobilize, alongside, not against, Obama in order to win reforms that can improve the lives of all people, as well as lay the basis for a more progressive political atmosphere.

Trumka said reactionary forces use divisive "racist and homophobic hate" to channel "justifiable anger" about the wealth gap towards President Obama and "heroes like Congressman John Lewis" and "to divide working people."

He called on the "progressive tradition" of working people in action "organizing unions and organizing to elect public officials committed to bold action to address economic suffering."

It is that kind of rousing vision of unity and action that can block any move towards fascism.

I hope Professor Chomsky, who is an inspiration to so many, considers Trumka's words.

Hidden from history: Communists and civil rights

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:40:00 +0000

Recently I've been watching reruns of Eyes on the Prize--the old PBS documentary about the history of the civil rights movement--and a thought keeps barging in that wasn't there when I first saw it back in 1987: Why doesn't the Communist Party get some air time in this program? U.S.-based Communists made significant contributions to the civil rights struggle, but you wouldn't know it from most documentaries and history books, which make room for radical political figures like, say, Malcolm X, but ignore people like William L. Patterson, Benjamin Davis, William Z. Foster, and John Gates.

Until fairly recently, I was clueless myself, and I had no idea that American Communists had been effective participants in the fight for civil rights that rapidly gained strength after World War II. Or that there was a Communist-backed group, the Civil Rights Congress (CRC), whose members made a mark through their support of black criminal defendants like Willie McGee, the Martinsville Seven, and the Trenton Six. I know more now--for the past few years, I've been working on a nonfiction book about the McGee case--but I can assure you that, for most people, this is history that doesn't exist. Mention Patterson or the CRC and you'll draw blank stares.

My book, The Eyes of Willie McGee, tells a true story of race, rape, and Jim Crow justice whose details will, I hope, bring new attention to a neglected part of civil rights history--the years between the end of the war and 1954, when Brown v. Board of Education, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King ushered in the golden-age period that is the primary focus of Eyes on the Prize.

But there was a lot going on before that, including episodes of incredible race-based violence that ought to be familiar to all Americans, but aren't. For example, most of us know about the 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi, which happened after he allegedly whistled at a white woman. Most of us don't know about Ernest Lang and Charles Green, a pair of 14-year-olds who were brutally lynched in south Mississippi in 1942, based on a sketchy claim that they'd sexually assaulted a teenage white girl.

In those days--and well into the postwar period, which saw an eruption of lynching violence starting in 1946--mainstream news organizations still tended to bury their reports on such atrocities or ignore them altogether. As a result, the most substantial coverage usually appeared in the African-American press and The Daily Worker. In the Worker, correspondents like Harold Lightcap--a.k.a. Harry Raymond, an old-school reporter who covered everything from the Columbia, Tennessee, riots of 1946 to the Willie Earle lynching of 1947 to the McGee case--created a detailed (if sensationalized) journalistic record that, slowly but surely, began to be matched by newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post.

The McGee case is the best example of how the left's journalistic witness boosted public awareness. The story began in November 1945, when McGee--a poor, semi-literate African-American truck driver from Laurel, Mississippi--was arrested and charged with raping a white housewife named Willette Hawkins. In the aftermath, he narrowly escaped getting lynched. As was common practice in Mississippi by the 1940s, he was jailed in a fortress-like lockup in Jackson, the capital city, and brought back to Laurel for trial under heavily armed guard. His first trial lasted only a day and featured court-appointed defense attorneys who barely asked any questions. McGee was hauled into court wearing a helmet, so terrified that he couldn't or wouldn't speak. An all-white, all-male jury found him guilty in 2 1/2 minutes and sentenced him to death.

The Daily Worker published a brief story about the trial that caught the eye of George Marshall, a white Communist who, at the time, was running a New York-based CRC precursor called the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties. Behind the scenes, Marshall arranged for a successful appeal, which was followed by a dramatic five-year period of trials, retrials, ever-growing protests, and additional courtroom fights.

It all ended grimly, with McGee's execution in Mississippi's "portable" electric chair on May 8, 1951. But though the fight to save McGee's life failed, the effort to bring his story to the world worked amazingly well, thanks largely to the efforts of William Patterson--an African-American Communist who took over the CRC in 1948, after Marshall was jailed on a politically motivated Red Scare charge--and the appeals court work of a young Bella Abzug. By the end, President Harry S. Truman was receiving hundred of telegrams and letters every week, demanding that he save McGee from a sentence--death for rape--that in Mississippi was only applied to black defendants. McGee's plight made headlines everywhere, from Memphis to Marseilles to Moscow.

In my rendition of the case--which is based on thousands of hours of archival research, interviews, and Freedom of Information Act requests--the Communist Party is not lauded at every turn. Late in the case, the CRC began publicly pushing a claim by McGee that the real story involved a love affair, not rape. He said that Mrs. Hawkins had trapped him into a long-running relationship that ended only when her husband found out, and that she "cried rape" to save herself. As it turns out, this alibi has serious holes in it. I believe the CRC knew this, but persisted with the story anyway, in a desperate attempt to save McGee's life against unfair, unbeatable odds. Ever since then, the woman has been routinely vilified, when the real blame for McGee's fate ought to lie with that era's local, state, and federal courts.

On balance, though, the case is a bright spot in the history of American Communism. Back then, the party line on the right--and among "liberal" anti-Communist Democrats--was that the Communists were simply using McGee as a propaganda tool and cared nothing about him as a person. That's not true, a fact that becomes abundantly clear when you look at the moving correspondence that flowed between McGee and CRC personnel like Patterson, Aubrey Grossman, Abraham Isserman, and Lottie Gordon. To claim otherwise denigrates the commitment of individuals who put themselves on the line for civil rights, long before it was fashionable to do so. More Americans need to know about who they were and what they did.

Alex Heard is editorial director at Outside magazine in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He has worked as an editor or writer with various publications, including Wired, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, Spy, Slate, and The New Republic. His upcoming book The Eyes of Willie McGee will be release in May 2010. Go to the author's website, The Eyes of Willie McGee, for updates on the book or to have a conversation with the author.

Photo: Image from the Daily Worker archives at NYU's Tamiment Library.

Human rights hypocrisy and Cuba

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 14:47:00 +0000

Ted, a friend, had a question about Cuba: "What about that hunger striker who died in prison there."

He didn't know Orlando Zapata was a criminal of the usual type, who had prolonged his jail time by defying rules. He was no political prisoner. His medical care included surgical removal of a brain tumor.

Ted didn't know that Cuba's enemies had mounted a vicious, worldwide media campaign encouraging the hunger strike, one that afterwards painted his death as a human rights violation. Nor did he know about 2,000 murder victims found late last year in a common grave in Colombia, killed and buried by the U.S. supported Colombian Army. In March someone assassinated labor activist Jhonny Hurtado, weeks after he showed the grave to a visiting British delegation. His was the seventh unionist murder since January.

Had the Cuban Army acted likewise, had a Cuban done the fingering, U.S. and European opinion shapers could have called upon massive reserves of venom.

Ted didn't know that many so-called prisoners of conscience in Cuban jails were actually make-believe journalists, working for a handout. At their trials in 2003, video evidence showed almost 75 of them taking money and goods from U.S. officials in Havana.

He didn't know that in 1996 the Helms Burton Law authorized U. S. funding of an internal Cuban opposition. Cuba responded by passing laws identifying foreign mercenaries as criminals. That's what sovereign nations do.

He doesn't know that U.S. government money still flows to Cuba, mostly by way of Miami. The amounts dispensed rose from $3.5 million in 2000 to $20-25 million annually in recent years. A recent State Department "Congressional Notification" suggests the intended purposes of money to be to be dispensed this year: http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/Library/resources/documents/Cuba/cuban-triangle/economicsupportfunds.pdf). In 2006, investigations showed a lot of the money getting stuck in Miami rather than being sent on to Cuba. CIA money headed for Cuba is not a matter of public record.

Jose Pertierra, Venezuela's lawyer in Washington, recently outlined where the money went this year. The rundown includes: $750,000 "to promote human rights," $250,000 for prisoners' families, $500,000 for prisoner liberation, $900,000 for artists, musicians, and bloggers via Freedom House, $500,000 to change Cuban labor policy, $500,000 towards religions practice by individuals, $2,000,000 for individual economic initiatives, $2,900,000 so the State Department can promote "free expression," $2,500,000 so Creative Associates can widen change-oriented "social networks," $400,000 so the Institute for Sustainable Communities can "identify the new leaders," and $2,600,000 so Development Associates Inc can "widen the support network."

Ted worries about the "Ladies in White." Cuban police, he said, beat up wives and mothers of jailed Cuban prisoners demonstrating on their behalf. In fact, female police officers ushered them into vans and took them home, protecting them from young counter-demonstrators. And the Ladies too are on the take.

He didn't know their benefactor is Santiago Álvarez in Miami, that in 2008 Michael Parmly, head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, served as courier. He didn't know Santiago Álvarez sent arms to Cuba, masterminded bomb attacks, and plotted to kill former Cuban President Fidel Castro. Álvarez is paymaster and protector of Luis Posada, wanted in Venezuela for having a bomb exploded on a Cuban airliner in 1976, killing 73 people

He doesn't know why hyperbolized media accusations on human rights offend Cuba, especially when as in late March they arrived coupled with photos of Posada joining a demonstration in Miami for the Ladies in White. Those accusations flourished earlier as five Cuban men were being railroaded to prison in Florida for defending their country against terrorism. They are the Cuban Five.

Advice to Cuba on the rights of prisoners and their family members has a hollow ring. . For over a decade, U.S. authorities have prevented two Cuban women, Adriana Pérez and Olga Salenueva, from visiting their husbands in U.S. jails, two of the Cuban Five.

U.S. pontification on human rights gains little mileage in Cuba. Repeatedly commentary there returns to U.S. coups and violent repression in Latin America, civilians victimized in U.S. wars with Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, and terrible prisoner abuse recently.

For "a country blockaded, besieged and attacked by the United States," vilification comes naturally, says Jose Pertierra, who explains, "Washington cannot tolerate the island being governed outside the scope of U.S. tutelage. It has been this way for more than fifty years."

For "a country blockaded, besieged and attacked by the United States" vilification comes naturally, says Jose Pertierra, who explains: "Washington cannot tolerate the island being governed outside the scope of U.S. tutelage. It has been this way for more than fifty years".

Goldman Sachs: going broke for profit

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 10:36:00 +0000

Lonesome Hobo Economics:

... Kind ladies and kind gentlemen ...
Once I was very prosperous
There was nothing I did lack
I had fourteen carat gold, in my mouth,
and silver on my back

But I did not trust my brother
I carried him to blame
Which led me to my fatal doom
To wander off in shame.

- Bob Dylan, "Lonesome Hobo," 1967

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Goldman Sachs with massive fraud. The golden boys, the guys with so many connections they could NOT lose, the ones that played the big games at the top, whose true dimensions of gangsterish culture even Hollywood has not, despite thousands of attempts, yet fully captured. Them.

Here's the smoking gun email:

"At the same time, GS&Co recognized that market conditions were presenting challenges to the successful marketing of CDO transactions backed by mortgage-related securities. For example, portions of an email in French and English sent by Tourre to a friend on January 23, 2007 stated, in English translation where applicable: ‘More and more leverage in the system, The whole building is about to collapse anytime now ... Only potential survivor, the fabulous Fab[rice Tourre] ... standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstrosities!!!' Similarly, an email on February 11, 2007 to Tourre from the head of the GS&Co structured product correlation trading desk stated in part, ‘the cdo biz is dead we don't have a lot of time left.'"

It turns out they sold billions of dollars of dubiously rated securities to their customers while privately using hedge funds and credit default swaps to bet even more money - the fees they collected and their own money - that their foolish customers would likely be wiped out!

This is called "going broke for profit" in a famous study by George Akerlof and Paul Romer on why bailouts can encourage gangsterish activity in the most "high-minded and prudent people" (Alan Greenspan's affectionate salute to the bankers' mentality).

Not only that, Goldman made another fabulous getaway. They persuaded the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department that regardless of whatever else may happen to companies like insurance giant AIG, the money owed Goldman would be paid in full, by taxpayer dollars if necessary.

It looked like they were going to sail untouched through the greatest financial crisis since the 1930s.

Once client alone, Paulson & Company, cost investors close to $1 billion in mortgage-backed securities while investing heavily in a hedge fund, to capitalize on the housing bust. As noted above, the Goldman executive accused of shepherding the deal boasted about the "exotic trades" he created "without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstrosities!!!"

The news sent Goldman Sachs shares and the stock market reeling as the SEC said other financial deals related to the meltdown continue to be investigated.

Goldman Sachs denied the allegations. In a statement, it called the SEC's charges "completely unfounded in law and fact" and said it will contest them.

Of course the real crime of Goldman Sachs - buying the U.S. government through lobbying and placing former executives as appointees in high places - is not yet exposed. Like CEO Blankenship of Massey Energy, who blatantly bought one, possibly two, state Supreme Court justices to put itself beyond law enforcement, the Hobo would like to see both him and Goldman CEO Blankfein doing the "perp" walk for supreme corruption.

The case highlights the urgent need to bear down on financial reform, and put the shadow banking system which permitted the fraud under firm public control and regulation. Goldman is the argument par exemplar for also breaking up the big banks, and especially the investment houses. It can be argued that Goldman effectively captured the government regulators of the past 20 years - it will be harder for any regulatory regime to enforce the public interest when the regulate-ee has 10 times the resources of the regulator!

For true nuclear security, disarmament is essential

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 13:02:00 +0000

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama vowed to pursue "a world in which there are no nuclear weapons." He also pledged that during his first year in office he would "lead a global effort to secure all loose nuclear materials."

This spring his administration is building on those promises with its Nuclear Posture Review, the New START treaty to cut U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons, and now this week's nuclear security summit. The process will continue next month as the United States participates in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference.

As it advocates smaller weapons stockpiles and narrows the criteria for U.S. use of nuclear weapons, the Nuclear Posture Review also highlights the need to secure vulnerable nuclear materials worldwide.

Addressing the summit, President Obama highlighted "a cruel irony of history - the risk of a nuclear confrontation between nations has gone down, but the risk of nuclear attack has gone up" and now "is one of the greatest threats to global security."

In its final statement, the summit called on nations to cooperate for nuclear security, including keeping "non-state actors" from being able to use nuclear materials "for malicious purposes," and barring illicit nuclear trafficking.

International cooperation in "nuclear detection, forensics, law enforcement and the development of new technologies," strengthening "physical protection" and "material accountancy" - all are indeed vital in today's world.

But no matter how successful such cooperation becomes, true nuclear security also depends on fulfilling the president's other objectives: preventing more countries from acquiring nuclear weapons, ensuring "strategic stability" among current nuclear powers, and reducing and ultimately eliminating all stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

Much rests on what is sure to be a centerpiece of next month's review of progress under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - the obligation of all signers under its Article VI "to pursue negotiations in good faith" to achieve complete nuclear disarmament and to conclude a treaty for general and complete disarmament.

Only when this great goal is won will it be possible to truly end the threat of catastrophe from the "malicious" use of nuclear materials, whether by nations, by "non-state actors" or by accident.

Photo: A 2007 Palm Sunday peace march in Melbourne, Australia. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rallyleadbanner1.jpg