People Before Profit blog

New York elections not just about Cuomo

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:07:00 +0000

NEW YORK - Figuring out who to vote for in New York State this year is trickier than usual for those who want to advance labor rights, equality and democracy.

The state mirrors the national picture in many ways. Since the 2008 elections, the right has gone on a rampage, especially with the formation of the tea party, perhaps the most openly racist movement this country has seen in decades. It is at once sad and frightening, and, despite a relatively small base of support, it occupies much media coverage.

Against that, there have been significant victories under the new balance of forces that was ushered in with Obama's election, especially health care reform and the stimulus package of 2009 - but, economically and in most other ways, the country isn't out of the woods, and Obama and allied forces looking for a road forward are perpetually stymied. Every good initiative has run up against immediate obstruction by the minority Republican Party.

Here in New York, using the current economic crisis as a pretext, the corporations and developers are on a rampage to break unions and to decisively shift power away from working people towards Wall Street. Their first line of attack has been to cut services and, as we've seen in the budget fights and the attempt to privatize schools under the guise of creating more charters, to break the public sector unions.

The assault on public workers is an assault on all workers: the aim is to divide those who work in the public sector from those who work for private companies, in order to weaken the working class fightback overall.

While the big corporations have a home in both the New York Democratic and Republican parties, the Republicans are leading the most vicious assault. And while there are Democrats in our state leadership who've taken some terrible positions, the legislative Democrat caucus has been the group most responsive to the needs of working people.

Consequently, as bad as outgoing Democratic Gov. David Paterson has been, the main enemy for progressives is still the Republican Party.

Unfortunately, there's nothing to be excited about when it comes to the Democratic candidate for governor, Andrew Cuomo, the current state attorney general. He's been arguing for exactly the same business-friendly, reactionary economic policies as Paterson. Further, his shocking insensitivity to the African American, Latino, Asian American and Afro-Caribbean communities is deplorable. How can it be that there is not a single member of any of these communities on the statewide Democratic ticket?

The answer: insensitivity at best, racism at worst.

It's easy to understand the indignation felt by African Americans and other communities. Still, it's hard to see the formation of the new Freedom Party, co-chaired by City Council member Charles Barron, as a viable tactic in the fight against racism. History has shown that the only way to defeat racism and other social evils is for a united fight by the Black, white, Latino and Asian communities, male and female, old and young, unionized and unorganized. It doesn't seem like the bulk of these forces is ready to abandon Cuomo and the Democrats this year, despite the obvious shortcomings and chauvinism in his campaign.

Barron is right in charging that Cuomo is banking on the vote of the Black and other minority communities in New York State without planning to deliver on their needs and concerns. But the elections are not simply about the current Democratic ticket; more important is which block of social forces will gain supremacy this fall, those around the Democrats or those around the Republicans.

We have to ask how all working people, the racially and nationally oppressed, women and youth can build up the movement to push state Democrats to offer better choices. We've seen that, in communities across the state, this has been possible: look at the progressive, labor-oriented, Black, Latino and Asian city council members. There are many in and around the Democrats who are part of this fight: the labor movement, community organizations, women's rights organizations and others.

It's only this movement that can defeat the Republicans in November, and that can strengthen the anti-corporate, anti-racist currents within and around the state Democratic Party, many of whom are also working within the Working Families Party. Eventually, these currents will be able to, in some form or another, establish a labor-based people's party that can consistently challenge the big corporations.

This year, the Working Families Party, despite many concerns, may well offer Cuomo their ballot line. If he is able to win with a large number of WFP votes, a message will have been sent: we are voting for Cuomo because he's better than the Republican, but we support, and will fight for, pro-labor and pro-people policies.

Despite Cuomo's shortcomings, the November elections can be a huge step forward in defeating the anti-worker, racist extremists and in building a broader and more united movement for peace, equality, civil rights and democracy, both at the state and national levels.

The U.S. & Yemen: A “lethal blend”

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:24:00 +0000

How involved is the U.S. military in Yemen, and is the Obama administration laying the groundwork for a new foreign adventure? According to several news agencies, including Agence France Presse, UPI and the Washington Post, very involved and likely to be more so in the future,

"U.S. military teams and intelligence agencies are deeply involved in secret joint operations with Yemeni troops," says Dana Priest, the Post's ace intelligence and military affairs reporter, including "the U.S. military's clandestine Joint Special Operations Command, whose main mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists."

The quarry of these assassination teams are supposed leaders of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), but the deepening U.S. alliance with the authoritarian government of Yemen may soon entangle it in two complex civil wars-a rising by disenfranchised Shiites in the north, and an increasingly powerful succession movement in the country's south.

Expanding the "footprint"

According to UPI, the White House is quietly expanding "the footprint" of "elite forces inside Yemen." One military official told the news agency, "The numbers are definitely going to grow." The Obama administration increased "security" funds for Yemen from $67 million to $150 million.

Navy Seals, Delta Force troops, and intelligence units are working closely with the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, providing weapons, training and intelligence. And sometimes more.

On Dec. 17, 2009, a U.S. BGM-109D Tomahawk cruise missile attacked the village of al-Maajala in south Yemen, killing 55 people, the bulk of them women and children. The Tomahawk-launched from a U.S. surface ship or submarine- was armed with a cluster warhead that spread a storm of razor sharp steel and incendiary material over 500 square feet.

Amnesty International's Mike Lewis said his organization was "gravely concerned by evidence that cluster munitions appear to have been used in Yemen," because "cluster munitions have indiscriminate effects and unexploded bomblets threaten lives and livelihoods for years afterwards."

Long-standing internal conflict

The target was a supposed al-Qaeda training camp, but the Saleh government draws no distinction between AQAP and the Southern Movement (SM), a group advocating an independent south Yemen. The SM has a long list of grievances reflecting problems going back to 1990 when North Yemen and the southern Democratic People's Republic of Yemen were unified.

That merger between the conservative north and the better educated and socialist south was never a comfortable one and led to a particularly nasty civil war in 1994. The north won that war by using jihadists freshly returned from fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. Since the end of that four-month war, the SM charges that the north siphons off the south's oil without adequate compensation, discriminates against southerners on access to jobs, and has cornered the country's vanishing water supplies. Southern protests are met with tear gas and guns, and, according to SM leaders, some1500 "secessionists" have been imprisoned and more than a hundred killed.

According to UPI, "The [Saleh] regime's heavy-handed response to the southerners has only fueled the demand for independence and encouraged the disparate southern groups to come together."

Saleh claims the SM is closely tied to AQAP, which immediately gets Washington's attention, and has allowed his government to tap into the resources of the American "war on terrorism." Southern independence leaders, like Tariq al-Fadhli, deny any ties to AQAP and say the Southern Movement is non-violent. Whether it will remain so under the Saleh government's continued assaults is an open question. The December cruise missile strike is not likely to encourage pacifism.

The fighting in the north between the Saleh government based in the capital, Sanaa, and the Shiite Houthi, who inhabit the north's forbidding terrain, is long-standing. While Saleh and his supporters in Saudi Arabia say Iran is stirring up the trouble, there is no evidence for ties between Iran and the Houthi. The tensions between the Saleh government and the Houthi are local and generally have to do with access to political power. But by bringing Iran into the picture, Saleh can claim he is fighting terrorism, thus making his regime eligible for arms, intelligence, and training.

Ratcheting up special operations

The U.S. is ratcheting up the use of Special Operations Forces (SOF) worldwide. The administration has increased the number of countries in which SOFs are deployed from 60 to 75, and upped the SOF budget 5.7% to $6.3 billion for 2011. The White House also added an additional $3.5 billion for SOFs to its 2010 budget.

One military official told the Washington Post that the Obama administration had given the military "more access" than former President George W. Bush. "They [the Obama administration] are talking publically much less but that are acting more. They are willing to get aggressive much more quickly."

In a recent talk that sounded very much like the Bush administration's doctrine of pre-emptive war, the White House's counterterrorism expert John Q. Brennan said that U.S. strategy was not to just "respond after the fact to terrorism," but to "take the fight to al-Qaeda and its extremist affiliates, whether they plot and train in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and beyond."

Poverty and communal conflicts

If the U.S. does increase its military footprint in Yemen, it will be expending hundreds of millions of dollars in the poorest country in the region, a country where 40 percent of its 22 million residents are jobless and where water is becoming a scare commodity. The U.S. shares much of the blame for the current economic crisis in Yemen. When Yemen refused to support the 1991 Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, Saudi Arabia expelled 850,000 Yemeni workers, and the U.S. cut $70 million in foreign aid. The effect of both actions was catastrophic, and Yemen never recovered from the one-two blow.

U.S. support for the Saleh regime will inevitably draw it into the conflicts in the north and the south, with disastrous results for all parties.

"In Yemen the U.S. will be intervening on one side in a country which is always in danger of sliding into a civil war," says the Independent's Middle East reporter Patrick Cockburn. "This has happened before. In Iraq the U.S. was the supporter of the Shia Arabs and Kurds against the Sunni Arabs. In Afghanistan it is the ally of the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazara against the Pushtun community. Whatever the intentions of Washington, its participation in these civil conflicts destabilizes the country because one side becomes labeled as the quisling supporter of a foreign invader. Communal and nationalist antipathies combine to create a lethal blend."

This article originally appeared in Conn Hallinan's blog, "Dispatches from the Edge," on Aug. 3.

“Takers” and “Get Low” - what’s the right age?

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:18:00 +0000

Movie Review

"Takers"
Directed by John Luessenhop
Starring Matt Dillon, Idris Elba, Marianne Jean-Baptiste and more
107 min., PG-13

"Get Low"
Directed by Aaron Schneider
Starring Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Bill Murray and more
U.S./Germany/Poland
100 min., PG-13

"Takers" is a good heist movie with preposterous, extreme chase scenes, shoot-outs (some in slo-mo to sobbing violins) and even a few poignant moments. It's high on melodrama with the big plus of a superb cast, some stuck in two-line bit parts.

If you saw it you may have noticed, as I did, that there are some outstanding Black and Latino performers in the film and wondered, like I did, why they had to settle for a good film when they should have been in a really great film.

The plot in "Takers" blurs the line between good and evil. One of the bank robbers, played by the stunningly handsome Idris Elba, is trying desperately to help his coke-addicted sister (Marianne Jean-Baptiste gives it heart and soul) get through rehab. Two brothers (Chris Brown and Michael Ealy) want to build their father a house - in five years when he gets out. After a successful robbery the gang makes sure to give 10 percent - like the biblical tithe - to a list of favorite charities.

On the other side of the law, Matt Dillon plays a cop who's been at it too long and seen too much. He can't even mange to be a good weekend father without bringing his young daughter into the station to follow up a lead. He's broken too many rules and too many promises. His younger partner, played by Jay Hernandez, has a wonderful family but huge money worries: his son needs costly dialysis treatments and his wife just got laid off.

The young gang members want what a lot of young guys think they want, the GQ dream of stylish clothes, hot rides, sharp cribs. And of course beautiful women. They smoke cigars and drink the top shelf stuff with a studied air. But most everyone is doomed by irresistible temptation, revenge (Tip Harris is terrific as Ghost), and the ubiquitous (in films these days) Russian mob.

"Takers" is an interesting example of the way films are marketed - they certainly weren't expecting too many 60-something white folks in the audience. All the previews shown before the feature seemed targeted to a young, urban crowd. I don't think we 60-plus folks should let the marketers get away with this - we miss too much.

Two weeks ago I saw "Get Low," a real "actors' film," thoughtful and challenging. As I looked around at that audience I thought how the box office must have sold a lot of senior tickets that day. But it's not a film FOR geezers, though you could say it's mainly acted BY geezers.

Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Bill Murray, Bill Cobbs and Gerald McRaney give such fine performances, not because they have lined faces and arthritic hands, but because they have years of experience and highly developed skills. They are ably assisted by a couple of talented young actors, Lucas Black and Lorie Beth Edgeman, along with a cute scene-steeling baby, and a mule.

So how old do you have to be to appreciate "Get Low"? Old enough to have had a dog who died, to have loved and lost, to have done something terrible that you deeply regret.

How young would you need to be to appreciate "Takers"? Young enough to remember your teenage fantasies, hopes and desires, to have loved and lost, and to have done something terrible that you deeply regret.

"Takers" is rated PG-13 for a great deal of shooting. "Get Low" is also rated PG-13, why I do not know.

Photo: http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/takers

Glenn Beck rally: sound and fury, signifying ...

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:48:00 +0000

The much vaunted "Restoring Honor" rally, hosted by Fox News' Glenn Beck, promoted 24/7 on that station and others, and bankrolled by far-right billionaires, drew an estimated 87,000 people, according to CBS News.

(Even if there were as many as 500,000 people, as the event's organizers claimed, does it really matter? The higher figure pales in comparison to the 2 million people who turned out for President Barack Obama's inauguration.)

Despite Beck's claim that the rally was not political, the politics were clear. Among the major speakers were icons of the Republican Party, including former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and, reportedly, FreedomWorks' Dick Armey, the former Republican House majority leader.

Then there was the politics of race and racism. Whether or not Beck and his corporate puppetmasters deliberately chose the Aug. 28 date with this in mind, it certainly became their conscious choice to manipulate the significance. Aug. 28 is the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Dr. Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. Aug. 28, 1963, was a coalition effort that brought together black and white, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans along with United Auto Workers members, public workers and other union members, civil rights groups, religious leaders and believers of all faiths and Hollywood stars as well.

Beck's rally was overwhelmingly white, yet Beck claimed the mantle of the civil rights movement. "We are the people of the civil rights movement," he outrageously declared. "We are the ones that must stand for civil and equal rights, justice, equal justice. Not special justice, not social justice. We are the inheritors and protectors of the civil rights movement. They are perverting it," he said, sounding like a plaintiff in a "reverse racism" court case.

Organizers of the carefully staged rally clearly were on the defensive about being considered a racist movement. They undoubtedly worried that if anti-Obama signs and speeches filled the National Mall it would doom the Republicans' hope for a November triumph. Americans of all colors are disgusted by what is widely perceived as the tea party/Fox News/Wall Street movement's racism towards the nation's first African American president and towards African Americans as a people. They are repulsed by Latino-and immigrant-bashing, and the new crop of Rupert Murdoch media-created Islamaphobia. And perhaps they considered the reality that President Obama enjoys 90-plus percent approval ratings among African Americans, a major voting block.

Did the organizers think that making it religious could bring more of the Republican-leaning Evangelicals back into the largely secular tea-party fold and get them mobilized for November? That's another voting block the organizers may have had their eye on. It seems what was once the backbone of the Republican grassroots effort - the Christian Coalition and such - has taken second seat to the more libertarian, conspiracy theorist, anti-government tea party.

Did the organizers choose to "honor" the troops because the Republicans have lost much support among military families? The GOP base in the military has shrunk due to failures like Iraq and veterans' care, while at the same time, President Obama's support among GI Jane and Joe has strengthened. Perhaps the rally speakers thought a few demagogic speeches would undo all the damaging policies.

What the rally boiled down to was November midterm election posturing. In a bid to claim the country's grassroots, the ultra-right GOP tea party is trying to show a much bigger base than perhaps it really has. Like the man behind the curtain portraying the Wizard of Oz as all-powerful, is it really a humbug? It is possible to expose them as such.

Saturday's Glenn Beck-Sarah Palin spectacle, and the Republican/Wall Street-supported coalition behind it, has real limits. It represents only a small section of American society. Some of the people caught up in this ultra-right movement are looking for answers to real life problems they have. And some - not the majority - are working-class people who will never find solutions - especially to economic problems -- in such a movement.

This fall is a test for small and large "d" democrats, progressives and independents. The first challenge is to show that the grassroots doesn't belong to the tea party, with an equally large turnout for the NAACP's One Nation, Working Together march on Oct. 2.

And the biggest challenge will be to hit the streets and help mobilize for a big voter turnout to defeat the ultra-right in November.

Photo: AP

Jeers to fat assets, cheers for action on jobs

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:06:00 +0000

JEERS to news that a majority of companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index are sitting on $1.18 trillion while simultaneously reducing spending and obliterating, instead of creating, jobs. (From Bloomberg)

CHEERS to Jobs with Justice for calling a nationwide "Jobs Emergency Day of Action" for September 15. (From Jobs with Justice)

CHEERS to the new CBS News poll revealing that a solid majority of Americans favor expiring the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy for households earning more than $250,000 a year. (From AFL-CIO)

JEERS to the Iraqi police who stormed the offices of the Iraqi Electrical Utility Workers Union in Basra as part of a general anti-union crackdown. (From U.S. Labor Against War)

CHEERS to United for Peace and Justice for their strong endorsement of the "One Nation" march on Washington October 2, 2010. (From UFPJ)

JEERS to capitalist news coverage of hate-mongering Fox news personality Glenn Beck's "Restoring Horror" march on Washington, for glorifying Beck, downplaying the simultaneous genuine civil rights march, and somehow failing to notice that Beck's entire entourage was pale white! (From various corporate news sources)

CHEERS to the Alliance for Retired Americans (ARA) for demanding the resignation of Republican Senator Alan Simpson as co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform for disparaging senior citizens and their main source of income, Social Security. His most recent slander was to compare Social Security to "a milk cow with 310 million tits." Previously, he had referred to seniors as "greedy geezers!" (From ARA via Jim Lane)

JEERS to the noticeable increase in public school class sizes. JEERS to "wise guys" who think it doesn't matter! (From USA Today)

CHEERS to the economists who posted "10 reasons not to raise the Social Security retirement age." (From Economic Policy Institute)

JEERS to America's broadband speeds, which lag behind many countries, including Romania, Latvia and South Korea. (From Alliance for Retired Americans)

JEERS to talk show barfly Sarah Palin for using the term "union thugs" during a speech in Tyler, Texas. CHEERS to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka for calling her out on it and adding, "She'll go down in history like [Joe] McCarthy. ‘Palinism' will become an ugly word." (from Politics Daily)

CHEERS to Nobelist Paul Krugman for revealing that rich people and their puppets in politics want to keep the Bush tax cuts, not because it would be good for America, but because it would put $680 billion more in their pockets! (From The New York Times)

JEERS to the wave of privatization of publicly owned assets in America's cities. Assets like parking spaces, zoos and perhaps even airports are going to corporations. Milwaukee has proposed selling its water supply. (From The Wall Street Journal)

Graphic by Brad Walker.

Organized crime: Part of the system in Guatemala

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:53:00 +0000

GUATEMALA CITY -- Tens of thousands of Guatemalans are going hungry and hundreds of thousands of children suffer from malnutrition and even die of hunger, thanks to a system that keeps them submerged in extreme poverty.

Alejandro Giammatti, ex presidential candidate of the GANA, Grand National Alliance party, acts as a faithful representative of this system, primarily at the service of big financial capital, both foreign and domestic. Giammattei has recently made a fool of himself by going on a hunger-strike in an attention-seeking effort to evade justice.

The National Commission against Impunity in Guatemala has submitted evidence not only of Giammattei's involvement in criminal activities and human rights violations, but also of his links with gangs and organized crime, evidence that also suggests the involvement of an ex-government minister and of the ex-Director of the National Civil Police.

Evidence has already been released detailing relationships between criminal gangs (here known as "maras") operating from within the country's prisons, and the highest government authorities in Guatemala. It is said that gangs pay a regular "quota" to all government officials, beginning at the cabinet level and including the chief of police and prison officials. It is alleged that individuals who were aware of these links have been systematically murdered, one by one, in order to erase any evidence of state involvement with organized crime under previous governments.

There are also allegations of criminal involvement on the part of powerful business leaders, members of the country's oligarchic class, who have been accused of both directing and benefitting from organized criminal gang activity in Guatemala. It is said that these are the ones who hire paid thugs (being those who can afford such luxuries!) in order to repress social and people's movements, and who arrange the selective assassinations of the people's bravest leaders, seeking to maintain power through terror and intimidation by neutralizing struggles for popular demands.

Everything indicates that this is part and parcel of a neoliberal effort to weaken the state as much as possible, leaving it powerless to act against domestic and international financial gangsters who launder their criminal profits through the system's banks.

These great tax-evaders oppose any fiscal reform that might allow the country to develop a social budget that might give the country modern hospitals that could save human lives and schools that could offer access to education to the entire population.

They are the ones who will not allow the strengthening of public safety organizations, keeping them too weak to fight back against corruption and crime. They are the ones who oppose additional investment, seeking to avoid laying the foundation for economic and social development that might generate jobs, to fight unemployment and misery.

It is sad and even ridiculous that the same media outlets, columnists and institutions that have always called for the strengthening of a state of laws, for absolute respect for the law, and who have argued that each of us, without exception, ought to be subject to the rule of law, and that no individual is above the law, are now changing their tune.

Now that representatives of a government that they were part of or felt part of are being investigated and/or jailed, they rush to defend the accused, spinning the facts and questioning the impartiality of a Supreme Court of Justice chosen in an electoral process that they, themselves promoted and watched over.

Now they are even questioning the quality of the National Commission against Impunity investigative work, when just recently they were offering it their total confidence and support when they saw it as an ideal instrument for bringing down their political opponents.

Pablo Monsanto is secretary general of the Alternative New Nation Party, and signatory to the Guatemala Peace Accords. Originally published in Alternativa Nueva Nacion, ANN, and reproduced here with the author's permission.

Photo: A protest against violence in Guatemala, July 23. (Moises Castillo/AP)

The U.S. and Iraq: what now?

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:37:00 +0000

Since President Obama took office, more than 90,000 U.S. troops have come home from Iraq. Last week, the Pentagon reported, the last U.S. combat brigade left. The number of U.S. combat troops there is now below 50,000, officials say. That fulfills Obama's pledge to pull out all but 50,000 troops by the end of this month, with the vow that the U.S. combat mission in Iraq is over. The question is: now what?

Actually there are several big questions.

To what extent are "combat troops" being replaced by Special Operations forces, other U.S. personnel, and private contractor mercenaries?

Will all U.S. troops leave in December 2011, as the U.S.-Iraqi agreement specifies? Reports are that Special Operations forces will stay on. What about other U.S. forces and private contractors?

What exactly is the U.S. role in Iraq between now and the end of 2011? And what will it be beyond that?

What is the U.S. responsibility to the Iraqi people, and how should it be fulfilled?

The president says the "transitional force" now remaining there will switch its focus from combat to "supporting and training Iraqi forces, partnering with Iraqis in counterterrorism missions, and protecting our civilian and military efforts."

"Make no mistake: Our commitment in Iraq is changing - from a military effort led by our troops to a civilian effort led by our diplomats," he told a convention of Disabled American Veterans in Atlanta Aug. 2.

He told the veterans he wants to bring the Iraq war to a "responsible end." We applaud that. Certainly, as we read of new rounds of vicious violence around Iraq, leaving dozens of innocent Iraqis dead and wounded, we ponder the U.S. responsibility for this violence. As we read about Iraq's ravaged economy, the sewage running in the streets, the lack of electricity, the joblessness, we remember that it didn't have to be this way.

Some Iraqis, most notably the Iraqi Communist Party - with a heroic record of resistance to Saddam Hussein's bloody dictatorship - warned that a U.S. invasion was not the way to get rid of Saddam.

After the shock and awe invasion, instead of handing over power to Iraqi democratic forces, the U.S. installed its own occupation viceroy, fanned sectarian discord, opened the floodgates of contractor boondoggles and corrupt cronyism - all focused on making Iraq and its vast oil a junior partner to U.S. oil interests.

Seven years later, the thousands of dead and maimed, the shattered families - Iraqis first of all, but also Americans - present the U.S. with a profound responsibility.

Yes we do have a responsibility to help Iraq train its armed forces and security personnel so they can protect their own people, and to provide them with the necessary resources, which the Bush administration failed miserably to do. But it's not our job to manipulate their economy or their politics, to pick and choose who should govern their country.

We do have a responsibility to help rebuild their hospitals, water systems, schools, cultural facilities - wrecked in the invasion or later under our watch or by our own contractors. But the U.S. should not be directing the money or deciding the projects.

Unfortunately, we're seeing some warning signs that point in the wrong direction. A massive State Department presence in Iraq is being developed. Vast numbers of private U.S. contractors are deployed there. And notions are being floated that the U.S. military presence may "need" to continue beyond next year.

Let's make sure all of our occupation of Iraq ends - military, economic and political.

It's time to shed the old foreign policy habit, that sees Iraq as nothing but a giant oil well to fuel America's oil-based economy, and a geopolitical pawn and military launch-pad to keep the rest of the region's oil flowing our way. We just can't afford it - not in taxpayer dollars, not in human lives, not in the survival of our planet.

Photo: (CC)

Graduation day

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:14:00 +0000

Layloni Marshall, an African American community activist and mother of three, gave her nephew, Melvin Berry, a card with the following message on the occasion of his graduation from Oakland High School earlier this year. We reprint it here as a contribution to discussions of racism, stereotypes, reality and struggle.

Dear Melvin-Pelvin,

Society says...

You're supposed to be a

teen dropout,

Society says...

You're supposed to be a

statistic,

Society says...

You're supposed to be a

nothing.

But Melvin Pelvin showed

Society that a young black man with plenty of swag can do whatever he puts his mind to!

Melvin-Pelvin!!

You did it.

Melvin Berry has since entered college in Houston.

Photo: (University of California)

Germans take note of wealth gap in America

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:40:00 +0000

The days when Europeans believed that in America the streets are paved with gold are long over. The usually conservative German magazine, Der Spiegel, has joined a legion of voices in Europe concerned about the growing gap between the rich and poor in the United States.

Thomas Schultz, writing for the magazine this week, says: "While America's super rich congratulate themselves on donating billions to charity, the rest of the country is worse off than ever. Long term unemployment is rising and millions of Americans are struggling to survive. The gap between rich and poor is wider than ever and the middle class is disappearing."

The German reporter drove north about an hour from Los Angeles to Ventura where luxury homes dot the hillsides. It didn't take long for him to notice that on numerous streets in the town people were sleeping in their cars.

"This is normally illegal, both in Ventura and the rest of the country," he wrote, "where local officials and residents are worried about seeing run-down vans full of Mexican migrant workers parked on residential streets."

"But sometime at the beginning of last year," wrote Schulz, "people in Ventura realized that the cars parked in front of their driveways at night weren't old wrecks, but well-tended station wagons and hatchbacks. And the people sleeping in them weren't fruit pickers, but their former neighbors."

The German reporters were amazed to find that people in Ventura were driving up to Salvation Army headquarters to take advantage of free meals and that some were driving up in their BMW's, reluctant to give up the expensive cars that reminded them of better times.

The German journalist was quick to pick up on exactly who are recovering from the economic crisis and who are not doing so well at all.

"Companies nationwide are reporting strong growth, and the stock market has almost returned to its pre-crisis levels. Even the number of billionaires grew by a healthy 17 percent in 2009," writes Schulz

"For people in the lower income brackets, the recovery already seems to be falling apart," he then goes on to say. "Experts fear that the U.S. economy could remain weak for many years to come. And despite the many government assistance programs, the small amount of hope they engender has yet to be felt by the general public. For many people things are headed dramatically downward."

The Der Spiegel article cites what it found as troublesome signs for the future.

Saying the middle class is systematically being wiped out of existence, it also mentioned an article by columnist Arianna Huffington who "issued the almost apocalyptic warning that America is in danger of becoming a third world country."

On unemployment, the German journalists pick up immediately on government figures that don't tell the whole story:

"The overall unemployment rate remains consistently above 9.5 percent, more than a year after the official end of the recession. But this is just the official figure. When adjusted to include the people who have already given up looking for work or are barely surviving on the few hundred dollars they earn with a part-time job and are using up their savings, the real unemployment figure jumps to more than 17 percent."

Food insecurity was another area that did not escape the sights of the German journalist. His article notes that at some point during the last year 50 million Americans, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, couldn't afford to buy enough food to stay healthy.

The Der Spiegel article closes with the assessment: "Americans face a bitter reality of fewer and fewer jobs after decades of stagnating wages and dramatic increases in inequality. Only in recent months, as the economy has grown but jobs have not returned, as profits have returned but poverty figures are on the rise, the country seems to have recognized that it is struggling with a deep seated, structural crisis that has been building for years."

Not a bad analysis at all for an article in a magazine that, for years, helped spread the idea that in America the streets are paved with gold!

Photo: Luxury home in Bel Air, Calif. (CC)

Factory farms produce more than eggs

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:05:00 +0000

When I was a little boy, I remember following my grandmother out to the wooden chicken house on our family farm. There were eight or nine hens, softly clucking. We collected a few eggs every morning, stayed out of the way of the rooster, and I watched, surprised, when my tender, sweet grandmother slaughtered a hen from time to time.

In the early 1970s, I took a job at a brand new "industrial" hen house in Indiana. A friend of mine had told me about hen house construction and how I could work on the crew, building A-frame chicken cages and hooking up the snow-plow-like devices that would move the manure out of the giant manure pits. Everything was clean and spotless because there were no chickens there yet.

When the construction was done, I decided to stay on and help carry chickens upside down from the trucks and put them in their new homes. Chickens seem to become very quiet when you grab several of them and carry them upside down. But when they are jammed six to a cage, 20,000 to a house, 60,000 to the complex, their combined soft cluckings sound like a roar of a crowd after a touchdown at a football game.

One of my fellow workers loved to walk into the chicken house first thing in the morning and yell drill sergeant style, "Chickens!" For a moment, 20,000 chickens would go completely silent, then pick up one by one until the dense roar was in the air again.

The chickens, I was told, were given something in their food to make them lay eggs faster. They acted strange, attacking each other, sitting in the corner of the cage, dying. And they died by the hundreds. One worker was hired per chicken house to haul out dead chickens, to be taken away by the rendering truck, which picked up a 50 gallon drum of dead chickens every day. These were chickens who were brought to the house in the prime of their life, by chicken standards.

At the end of the cycle, we carried the survivors upside down to the truck, where they were hauled to a plant to be made into chicken soup. I didn't eat canned chicken soup for 20 years after that. I still don't eat the brand name that used the chickens.

The water pipes kept the water dripping continuously into each cage, and their feed was there for them all the time, laced with whatever needed to be in it to make them lay eggs faster than their nature meant them to. The conveyor belt that carried the massive supply of eggs to the packing house ran continuously at a certain time of day. The egg cases had little pictures of chickens walking in chicken yards with the sun shining and chickens wandering free underneath trees and sky.

The pictures on the egg cartons looked a little bit like the backyard on our family farm in the 1950s, and I think that was just the point. The producers wanted us to think about something in our past when we broke the eggs in our pan and made our eggs scrambled or over-easy.

I did some maintenance work at the chicken house, and I guess I didn't know what was happening to me as I did this work. The job I did was to replace chicken manure plow cables when they would break under the weight of the manure. The engineers had designed the cable to be a little too small to handle the great weight of the manure generated by 20,000 chickens per house. The manure pits in theory probably looked great but when we had to climb down into the pit with rain coats and leg-high rubber boots on to splice the cables with U-bolts, knee-deep in manure, it wasn't quite so nice as I am sure the blue print looked to the engineer who designed it. Even when we had taken the boots off and the rain coats off, the smell saturated our clothing.

When we arrived at the local town bar for lunch, somebody would always call out, "Lord God, there comes the chicken crew!"

It seemed to me that there were enough bad things going on that maybe we could have used a union. My parish priest had sparked my interest in the United Farm Workers in the 1960s, and I contacted the UFW who were organizing boycott activities in the region and talked to them about our situation and what it would take for us to become part of the United Farm Workers. I talked to several of my fellow workers and the task of unionization seemed overwhelming. The United Farm Workers didn't seem like it fit their organizing strategy, and my fellow workers thought being in a union was a pipe dream, and said "I won't be here too long." So I gave up.

The smell did more than saturate my clothing. After a period of time, I begin to notice that my face and forehead ached, and then they ached all the time. I had splitting headaches. I went to the dentist because I thought I had an infected tooth. He told my friends who were with me, "He does not have an infected tooth; he has a massive sinus infection and needs to go to the emergency room immediately."

I passed out on the way to the hospital. I looked at my signature later when I was admitted to the hospital. It was barely "chicken scratch." I was in the hospital for a week, shot full of the latest antibiotics of that time, having my sinuses drained with a great needle, and at the end of the stay, the doctor said to me, "Son, I have rarely seen a sinus infection so bad. If you had gotten it in the days before antibiotics, back in the day when I started practicing as a doctor, you would have died."

I asked the doctor, "I worked in the big chicken houses-- do you think that had something to do with it?"

"I don't know," he said. And that was the end of it. After having my sinuses drained one more time, I moved on with my life.

Safety issues and farmworkers' rights, as brought out in the latest "egg scandal," were there for everyone to see at the very beginning of the factory farms, if you were there. I was there. I saw it. I felt it, but the overwhelming majority of people did not see it, did not feel it.

The very positive work of the young activist in publicizing the terrible conditions at some factory farms makes a coalition ever more possible between farm workers, potential organic farmers, and the food-consuming public (meaning all of us).

We must support the United Farm Workers and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee in their efforts to become nationwide unions, representing farm workers everywhere while keeping their wonderful grassroots qualities as both movements and effective unions.

If you are not already interested in organic food as a consumer, start studying the interconnection between organic food production, worker and consumer health, environmental quality, and animal protection.

Even if you're not a vegan or vegetarian, there is a possible alliance with animal rights' activists and people who would like to eat organically grown, humanely produced meat, eggs, and milk.

If you are in some way connected to a family farm or the agricultural industry, fighting for national policies that emphasize organic production and humane production benefits us all.

Many farmworker rights activists, organic farmers, environmentalists, animal rights' activists, and consumers interested in consumption of organic milk, meat, and eggs have a natural common interest together.

Photo: FarmSanctuary.org/CC

Not so simple

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 10:10:00 +0000

I found it "over the top." What? The reactions among the liberal, progressive and left (lpl) commentariat to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' criticism of the "professional left" for its negativity toward the Obama administration.

And here's why!

First of all, what goes around comes around. Let's face it - lpls have been very critical of the new president, sometimes stridently so. And even where he has won important political victories (health care legislation) or staked out a positive position on a controversial issue (defense of religious freedom in connection with the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero), he has caught hell. So not to expect some blowback from the administration is naïve or presumptuous. Is there anyone who doesn't blow off steam from time to time?

But some of the responses to Gibbs' remarks verge on paternalism: the notion that you - Obama - are in the White House because we put you there and therefore ... (you get the gist). An illustration of this is Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel's Aug. 15 blog post (and Nation writer John Nichols' post too). In what otherwise is a very insightful article (most of her posts are), she writes:

"When Barack Obama embarked [on] ... an audacious campaign for the presidency, the question was whether a newly-elected senator from Illinois could entice Democrats to consider a contender other than a former first lady ... What ultimately won him the Democratic nomination in 2008 was a decision by the principled left [my italics] - professional and amateur - that the one leading candidate who had expressed blunt opposition to the war in Iraq before it began had shown better judgment than Hillary Clinton or John Edwards."

She continues:

"So it was that an exercise in political purism by the broad left put Obama on the path to the presidency. "

Really? The lpls made the difference? Were decisive? Put Obama on the path to the presidency?

Of course, the lpls did make a huge contribution to Obama's victory in the primaries and the general elections.

But to claim more suggests a misunderstanding of the nature of the relationship of the left to this administration and the broader movement, the dynamics of the 2008 elections, how change happens, and what it will take to make a fundamental turn in political direction.

It is also unwarranted self-congratulation.

A stronger case for being the decisive element in 2008 could be made by the labor movement or the African American people or young people or Obama himself. But actually, the game changer was a united people's coalition, inspired by candidate Obama, that powered his successful path to the nomination and presidency.

Gibbs may be guilty of overstatement, but smart people will cull the grain of truth from his remarks. Too often the lpls, as he correctly suggests, are inclined to judge President Obama abstracted from the context in which he governs.

Insufficiently factored in is the considerable power of right-wing extremism, the influence of the corporate class and the class character of the capitalist state, the anachronistic practices of Congress that allow a minority to frustrate majority rule and popular democracy, the conservative pressures from within the Democratic Party and Obama's Cabinet, and, importantly, the inadequate scope and intensity of the popular upsurge, compared to the 1930s and 1960s.

The president doesn't govern in a vacuum. Every word he says and everything he does will be filtered, spun, and turned inside out by his opponents, and at times his friends. The lpls don't carry that burden.

His political calculus has to anticipate how the American people of every political persuasion will react to his words and to what degree they will make him vulnerable to the inevitable attacks from the extreme right. His constituency includes the citizens of Lubbock and Sioux City as much as the citizens of New York and San Francisco.

It is almost an article of faith in left and progressive circles that the American people in their majority are ready to embrace left positions if only the president articulated them, if only he campaigned for them. If he says it, "they will come."

Implied is that the left has a much better read on the public mood than the administration does. But do we? Are the American people, if given the green light by the president, ready, if not to storm the barricades, then at least to fight for radical reforms?

I don't believe it is that easy. It strikes me as not so much naïve as simply wrong to make such a claim. It misreads where people are at, what they are ready to fight for, what they are up against, and what it takes to move them to higher ground.

Three decades of right-wing ideology - a nasty variant of capitalist ideology that individualizes social problems and blames the victim, fractures any sense of human solidarity, extols the free market, disdains the notion of economic, social, and political rights, and is steeped in racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia - has had a profoundly corrosive effect on popular thinking.

Today's much talked about "enthusiasm gap" reflects, it is said, people's frustration with Congress and the administration, but it also expresses a shift in mass consciousness in a democratic/progressive direction that is uneven, lacks sufficient depth of understanding on issues of class and race, and has yet to fully shed important elements of right-wing ideology.

My suspicion is that the country is neither center-left nor center-right. Both categories are too static, not dialectical enough. Popular opinion is more capricious, mercurial, and unpredictable than too many of us allow for. At any given moment progressive and even radical ideas can give way to backward thinking, and vice versa.

What people are thinking depends on the issue(s) and event(s) - sometimes unforeseen (9/11 and the financial meltdown, for example), on which side is able to frame the discussion and grab the political momentum, on the overall political atmosphere, and, not least, on their own experience. All this constantly shapes and reshapes mass thinking in unexpected ways.

Taking Gibbs to the woodshed for a verbal thrashing is easy. Much more - a thousand times more - difficult is the task of expanding, deepening and sustaining the movement that elected this president two years ago. I'm not against parsing the words and actions of the administration, although it should be done in a constructive and unifying way. But it can't substitute for uniting a broad people's movement into collective action.

We need such a coalition now and going forward.

Michigan governor race: Snyder the outsourcer vs. Bernero the fighter

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:42:00 +0000

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- In the race for the Michigan governor's job, the choice is simple. The Republican is a former corporate executive who oversaw moving jobs out of the country while the state's economy tanked.

The Democrat, Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero, presided over new economic growth in the past year that saw the creation of 3,100 manufacturing jobs in mid-Michigan.

According to state government data, the return of mostly unionized manufacturing jobs to mid-Michigan outpaced job growth in all sectors. Industry analysts have been pleasantly surprised by the new jobs creation and link it directly to new growth in the auto sector. Right now, Bernero's city trails only Detroit in manufacturing jobs growth.

In the state as a whole, since the implementation of President Obama's recovery act, Michigan's high unemployment rate has fallen by more than 2 percentage points. Michigan Republicans uniformly opposed the recovery act, and other job-creating measures, claiming a "do nothing" approach would be better.

After a significant federally-financed bailout of two of the big three auto companies and the wildly popular "cash for clunkers" program last summer, Ford, GM and Chrysler have reported new profits in the billions. GM even has announced plans for a new stock sale to repay the government funds.

Clearly, however, the hard work and sacrifices Michigan working families have been most responsible for the turn around.

While some Michigan Republicans supported the auto bailout, most did not. As a potential candidate for the Republican nomination for governor last year, corporate executive Rick Snyder kept mum. In fact, he still has little to say, a stance that risks alienating the anti-bailout hysteria of the angry Tea Party base of the Michigan GOP.

On the other hand, Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero earned a national reputation for his consistent defense of autoworkers and Michigan from attacks by the national mainstream media and the hacks who blamed workers for the collapse of the industry and Michigan's economy. Bernero criticized parts of the bailout plan that asked working families to take wage and benefit cuts to pay for bad corporate decisions that led to problem in the first place.

For this, the right-wing, big business media labeled him "America's Angriest Mayor," a nickname he now wears proudly.

In a recent interview on mid-Michigan talk radio, Bernero said, "What I was angry about was how the national pundits in news media were treating Michigan autoworkers."

"It really did get under my skin, they way they talked about autoworkers, the auto companies, and even the UAW," the son of a retired autoworker said. "I think there was just an unfair portrayal of our state."

Bernero pointed out also that during the crisis he helped organize a trip to Washington with other mayors whose towns and cities need a strong auto industry to fight for its revitalization.

Even as auto recovers, experts have noted that new job growth in Michigan hasn't been confined to auto. New jobs are being created in significant numbers in the bio-medical and renewable energy fields, both a special focus of outgoing Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm (D), who cannot run for reelection.

New economic growth has become increasingly diverse, reported Mark Bashore of East Lansing's WKAR radio. He cited the opening of plants in mid-Michigan that are making medical devices and wind energy products.

Meanwhile, GOP gubernatorial candidate Rick Snyder's record on jobs is less than appealing to Michigan workers still concerned about high unemployment. Michigan Democrats recently slammed Snyder for his role in sending jobs out of the country in the midst of Michigan's economic crisis. While an executive at Gateway Computers based in Ann Arbor, Mich., Snyder's company reportedly outsourced 20,000 jobs out of the country.

Even a report in the conservative Wall Street Journal recently questioned Snyder's own claims about his achievements in business, saying he didn't really create jobs as a venture capitalist and noting the "jury is still out" on the success of some of his business investments.

While Snyder correctly claims he can't be held responsible for every single one of the jobs outsourced by Gateway, he offered no criticism of his company for doing so. He has refused to provide a serious plan to recover those jobs, except to reward his old company, and others like it, with new tax breaks for killing jobs at the expense of an already overstretched state budget.

In fact, companies like Gateway Computers may have led the way in slowing economic growth on a national scale since the recession began. A new study out this week from the Commerce Department revealed that since the recession began in 2007, outsourcing companies have reduced the number of jobs in their U.S. operations by 2.1 percent while increasing their workforces in other countries by 1.1 percent. These small percentages add up to millions of lost jobs.

Fortunately, some of the loopholes in tax law that rewarded companies for moving jobs out of the country are being closed. As part of the recently passed state aid and teacher jobs bill - a bill opposed by every single Michigan Republican member of Congress - corporations will no longer be given tax breaks in the U.S. for creating jobs in other parts of the world.

While Michigan's working families aren't ready to sing "Happy Days are Here Again," the economy is pointed in the right direction, and they can ill afford to risk that future by voting for Snyder the outsourcer.

Roy Kaufman, freedom fighter, dies at 80

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:19:00 +0000

CLEVELAND -- "Freedom fighter," "Poor man's lawyer," and "One of the most beautiful people I ever met" --- these were the words of speakers as several hundred gathered to mourn the passing and celebrate the life of progressive attorney Roy Kaufman at the Good Shepherd Baptist Church here in Cleveland Aug. 19.

Kaufman was also an auto worker, a union official, a peace activist and a grassroots fighter against racism, corruption and police misconduct.

He died Aug. 12 at the age of 80 after several years of fighting Alzheimers.

Kaufman was active in the fight for justice for families of two young men, one Black and the other Puerto Rican, shot and killed by a notorious Cleveland police officer, who because of public outcry, was eventually forced off the street. He then led a ballot effort establishing the city's Police Civilian Review Board.

He also founded, and for many years led, the Cleveland Chapter of the American-Soviet Friendship Council, which organized numerous delegations of trade unionists, youth and clergy to visit the USSR, and hosted cultural and other delegations from the Soviet Union.

He was a founder and served as vice president of the Grassroots Political Action Committee that relentlessly exposed a shocking case where police authorized sale of drugs in the Black community allegedly to raise money for a sting operation. The group also backed progressive candidates and fought machine politics.

"There were no toes too big for Roy to step on if they got out of line," said Bert Jennings, another founder of the group.

Kaufman was a proud member of the Communist Party, who served in the U.S. Army at the end of World War II, only to be discharged for his political beliefs. It took acts of Congress and a long fight by his second wife, Joan El-Bey, to restore his service as honorable and win his full benefits.

But struggle was in Kaufman's roots and was his life blood. As his sister, Gladdie recalled, the family's ancestors took part in the Underground Railroad and fought the Ku Klux Klan in the Carolinas.

With two other brothers and another sister, Kaufman grew up on a farm in Massillon, Ohio. They all played music and, as a family band, performed at many events. Their mother, Edna, led the Stark County Progressive Party and their father, William, led the county's farmers' cooperative.

After leaving the army, Kaufman went to work at General Motors Fisher Body plant in the Cleveland suburb of Euclid. He soon became a shop steward and vice president of the United Auto Workers local. While working there he went to college and law school and fixed up four houses his daughter, Heidi, recalled.

"He always met a challenge," she said. "He walked the walk. He did not give up. My mother said it was hard to live with a saint"

When the plant closed Kaufman started a law practice with another progressive attorney, Eugene Bayer. He continued to take cases from his union brothers and sisters who had lost their jobs. When they had no money, Kaufman often worked pro bono. One worker gave him an accordion.

The law office trained other working-class and progressive attorneys and was frequently used for meetings of labor and other activists.

George Edwards, a national leader of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR) recalled how Kaufman fought for civil rights in his union and, in an amicus brief, argued an historic seniority rights case for Black steelworkers before the Supreme Court.

"If he were alive today," Edwards said, "he would be fighting for equality for Muslims and immigrants. He would be fighting for jobs and be fully involved in the political challenge we face in the elections."

Elder Rawle Garvey recalled how Kaufman dressed in cowboy boots and wore a bolo tie. "He had a cowboy hat, but no mask. He was always open and inviting.

"He never professed to be a Christian, but he lived a life of service," he said. "Roy was a real life hero, a true champion of the underdog."

"Roy Kaufman fought for people with little power," said East Cleveland Mayor Gary Norton. "He fought for people who were born a different color, workers in the steel mills and many others. We give thanks for his life. He made some people mad, but he made life better for many more."

Photo: Roy Kaufman

The Republican Party does have a platform

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:33:00 +0000

The Republican Party of "NO" has been accused of having no platform, no plan. That is not accurate. The following are the 38 "covert" planks that defines the GOP.

1. Cut taxes for the rich. Enable the wealthy to increase their wealth.

2. Cut social spending. Social programs for the disadvantaged do not enrich or advantage the advantaged.

3. Destroy unions. The unions created the middle class. The wealthy class does not intend to share with the middle class.

4. Outsource jobs. Send American industry overseas. This further destroys unions and foreign slave labor is profitable.

5. Deregulate business. Regulations or rules prevent capitalistic gouging. Gouging the economy, the consumer, the people is profitable.

6. Privatize everything. Enable corporations to profit, unimpeded by governmental competition.

7. Cut big government. Big government is a big threat to profiteering. Regulations and oversight impedes profits.

8. Support law and order. Hold the disadvantaged down so they do not pose a threat to the wealthy's wealth and property.

9. Secure (close) the border. Keep immigrants (Mexicans) out. Mexicans who become citizens vote Democratic.

10. Increase the Social Security collection age. Hope that the retired worker dies before she collects what she put in. Social Security does not further enrich the wealthy.

11. Hike Social Security taxes. Make the worker pay more into a retirement fund that he will hopefully not live long enough to collect.

12. Privatize Social Security. Create a gravy train for the Wall Street profiteers. Allow the banksters to gamble away retirery's subsistence.

13. Privatize Medicare and Medicaid. Provide vouchers to the helpless and elderly with which they must grovel, hat in hand, to the big insurance companies. Big insurance will get much bigger. This is an untapped gold mine of corporate profits.

14. Perpetuate a state of war. Create eternal enemies abroad. Institutionalize hatred and fear. Nothing is more profitable to Fortune 500 companies than military contracts.

15. Increase military spending. Increase military contracts. Privatize the military and warfare. Nothing is more profitable.

16. Adopt Obstructionism. Promote misery. Destroy any attempt at recovery or relief by voting "NO" on everything. Miserable people are too frustrated to vote, or vote for the party out of power.

17. Religiocize Capitalism. Write it into the Constitution. Make private property, profit and exploitation a commandment from God.

18. Harness Hate. Pander to the loco fringe, the Tea Party, the right "Wingnuts." Maintain deniability. Spread their message, utilize their support, but disassociate from their nonsense.

19. Satanize Islam. Generate fear and hate by associating Muslims with al Qaeda and the Democrats. Constantly remind the public that the president's middle name is Hussein. Prey on prejudice.

20. Criminalize abortion. Save babies (read: save tax dollars) by not funding abortions and throwing disadvantaged mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters into prisons. We the wealthy will abort our daughter's bastards safely, privately, discretely. We will appear sanctimonious, and will appease our fundamentalist supporters.

21. Legitimize all lobbying. Deregulate and institutionalize political bribery. Elevate lobbying to the fourth branch of government. Protect this lucrative welfare source, perhaps with a constitutional amendment.

22. Support the "Old Boy's Network." Keep the club small, private, and exclusive. Qualification depends on wealth, name, race, and conservatism.

23. Defend inherited wealth to the death! Conservative power depends on conserving the wealth. Block all inheritance taxation. Rename the "inheritance" tax the "death" tax. After all, everyone dies. By all means, preserve the "lucky sperm club."

24. Lionize business, demonize labor. Business is an asset. Labor is a liability. Business represents profit. Labor represents loss.

25. Denigrate the opposition. Portray all who support peace, the poor, fairness, and egalitarianism as traitors, radicals, terrorists, levelers, anarchists, jihadists, Satanists.

26. Oppose gay marriage. Republican core values are based in conservative Christian fundamentalism. Also, gay individuals tend to be liberal. Liberals tend to vote Democratic.

27. Support Israel right or wrong. Ignore any Israeli outrage, injustice or atrocity. After all, Jewish people and fundamentalist Christians are the Biblical "chosen people."

28. Promote super-patriotism. Distract the masses from the economic disparity by waving the flag. Make the people feel grateful to live in this capitalistic paradise.

29. Support tradition over innovation. Tradition conserves the status quo (economic inequality and injustice). Innovation will result in economic egalitarianism and redistribution.

30. Support family values. Toleration of alternative lifestyles is a liberal concept that will upset the status quo, and benefit the liberal (Democratic) opposition. Also, the family values the woman as mother, not competitor in the business world.

31. Suppress compassion. Characterize caring as liberal sentimentalism. Dehumanize the homeless. Equate unemployment with laziness. Shame welfare. Compassion may generate a demand for social spending.

32. Delegitimize the president. Question his American citizenship. Cast doubt on his right to serve. Create a perception that the Black president is not "one of us." Pander to the "birthers."

33. Bash public schools and teachers. Teachers are liberal because they are educated. Liberal education opens, liberates the mind. Liberated minds oppose greed and economic disparity. Too, teachers are a unionized Democratic block.

34. Promote school prayer. Misuse of prayer as a social opiate to produce docile, passive citizens. For it is written, the meek shall inherit NOTHING!

35. Endorse closet racism. "Colored" people procreate alarmingly. Keep them as a cheep labor pool.

36. Derail gun control. Pander to the National Rifle Association, white supremacist, and the "cowboy" element of society. Ignore the terror that illegal guns have wreaked in our inner cities.

37. Promote Francophobia. Mock the French. Fear the French, and British, and Canadians, and Scandinavians, and all the enlightened nations that provide universal health care and Socialized social programs. The demand, the virus might spread here!

38. Maintain the Big Lie. Misrepresent the Republican Party. Keep this platform secret. If the masses know what we really stand for, they will vote their economic interests, and the Republican Party will be consigned to the trash bin of history.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sylvar/274843113/sizes/o/

Little things count in elections

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 11:42:00 +0000

DALLAS -- Linda Chavez-Thompson, towering over Texas at five foot three, is running for the all-important post of lieutenant governor. Jamie Dorris and Loretta Haldenwang aren't much taller, and their goal is to take seats in the Texas House this November.

For want of a nail, they say, a horseshoe was lost. For want of the shoe, a horse was lost, and then a knight, and then a kingdom. Everything depends on the little things.

Chavez-Thompson spoke at a fund raiser in Grapevine, a tiny part of the Dallas Metroplex, on August 18. A few people paid $50 to come early for cocktails, but most of the participants, all working people, paid $25 for a small reception with tiny canapés. The small donations accumulated, because there were 400 people packed into every chair and standing in the back. Then the Machinists and the United Food and Commercial Workers, who had initiated the evening's events, handed over big checks, and others started chipping in. It adds up.

The former AFL-CIO leader's incumbent Republican opponent, one of the richest men in Texas, started with $12 million in his campaign fund, and Chavez-Thompson spent her life savings before she won the Democratic primary. Because she is known as a worker from the cotton fields of faraway Lubbock through the top leadership of the AFL-CIO, the little people of Texas support her, and we matter.

We matter in the race for the Texas House, too. The day before, over in Garland, another little part of the Metroplex, longtime incumbent Republican State Rep Big Joe Driver hit a little bump. The Associated Press revealed that he had been "double dipping" his transportation expenses, a little dip at a time, throughout his long political career. He protested innocently that he had no idea that he couldn't charge his expenses both to the taxpayers and to his campaign committee; so his voting constituents get to decide whether he's a giant crook or just a little stupid. Jamie Dorris, his ingenuous little long-dismissed Democratic opponent, is suddenly a mighty contender.

Dorris' campaign matters because the Democrats are within five seats of taking the state House. That means they could control the 2011 redistricting of Texas, including the U.S. Congressional seats, and send a bunch more progressives to Congress. The Texas delegation is the second largest in America, still growing, and has been in the choke-hold of far-right Republicans since the last census.

Big Joe Driver's legal problems are similar to those of Linda Harper-Brown, the Republican rep from Irving, another part of the Metroplex, who drove around during her two-year tenure in a Mercedes paid for by a company that does business with the state. Democrat Loretta Haldenwang, who weighs around 110 pounds, is nipping at Harper-Brown's heavy heels. Democrats have been gaining numbers in the State House for the last two elections.

If Little Linda Chavez-Thompson is elected, she would be one of the five statewide officers on the redistricting committee, not to mention that she would virtually control the Texas Senate.

Standing on a box behind the podium, Chavez-Thompson told her audience that every miniscule effort can accumulate into victory this year. It's the little things.

Photo: Jim Lane

90 years of women's suffrage

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 14:55:00 +0000

Exactly 90 years ago today, women finally won the right to vote. The 19th amendment, which enshrined the right into law, was enacted after Tennessee's legislature, after three rounds of tied-votes, came out in favor, meaning that the amendment has been agreed to by the constitutionally requisite three-quarters of states.

Of course, as is the case with all rights, suffrage wasn't won by waiting for those in power to grant it. Without the decades of struggle that women and their male allies waged, the right would not have been won. (The women of Switzerland had to wait until 1971.) The first women's suffrage convention, a regional affair of 240 women and men in Seneca Falls, New York, took place more than 70 years prior.

Even after the success of Seneca Falls, the future of the fight was far from certain. Could a national convention be organized, advocates wondered. They decided to try: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Abby Kelley, Lucretia Mott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, and William Lloyd Garrison signed a call to convene. Just two years after the regional convention, the question was answered. The first ever national convention for women's rights was held in Worcester, Massachusetts. This time there were more than 1,000 delegates and, according to the New York Tribune, "if a larger place could have been had, many more thousands would have attended."

Quite obviously, we've made progress; women occupy positions near the top of the political ladder: While we still have yet to see a female president, we did see, for the first time in 2008, a woman leading the ticket of a major political party, and both the Secretary of State and Speaker of the House of Congress are women. Women, because they fought and continue to fight, have made huge strides forward in the workplace. They have many times led union struggles and won big victories.

But there is still more to be done; the struggle is far from over. Women still earn less than 80 cents for each dollar men make on average, and also face hurdles men don't even need to consider.

Women are still bravely leading the fight forward and they have an ally in the White House, President Barack Obama, who signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act almost immediately upon entering office. It is vitally important to the women's movement to make sure then, that Obama's hand is strengthened-something that would in turn strengthen the hand of the women's movement-in the upcoming elections by adding to the number of allies in the Congress.

As always, the fight for women's rights is the fight for all rights, something recognized long ago. In the Worcester convention, Sojourner Truth connected the fight against slavery to the fight for women's equality, and the convention resolved that "the trampled women of the plantation" deserved the same rights that the women of the convention were demanding. We saw the same principle in action when millions of women and African Americans, trade unionists and others, male and female, teamed up in 2008 to ensure that Obama became president. That victory was a step forward in the fight against racism and other grave social injustices as well as against sexism.

We celebrate all the achievements women have made, and look forward to celebrating future victories.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/32912172@N00/3506678369

Is the U.S. moving toward a rational Cuba policy?

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 13:12:00 +0000

During the 2008 election campaign, Barack Obama stated that he would be willing to meet without preconditions with the leaders of countries with which the United States has had hostile relations, including Cuba.

At an April 2009 summit meeting in Trinidad, Obama repeated his willingness to try to open up a new chapter in U.S. relations with Latin America. These statements received a guardedly positive response from left-wing leaders in the area, including Cuba's President Raul Castro.

Some hoped that perhaps it was a sign that things would go back to the "high point" in post-Revolution U.S.-Cuba relations, during the administration of Jimmy Carter where some significant advances were made.

The Cubans, though reluctant to raise unrealistic hopes, felt so too. President Raul Castro began to drop very broad hints that as a start, if the United States would release the Cuba 5, Cuba might respond with a parallel gesture, perhaps releasing some individuals that the United States claims are "political prisoners".

There has been some softening of; U.S. policy toward Cuba. Talks about visas for Cubans wishing to immigrate to the United States resumed this spring, and the Obama administration cancelled restrictions that had been imposed by George W. Bush on Cubans-Americans visiting their relatives in the island or sending them money.

However, the main Cuban wish list has been left untouched: An end to the 50 year trade blockade, an end to restrictions on travel by U.S. residents to Cuba, a change of the "wet foot-dry foot" policy that encourages dangerous rafter trips from Cuba to the United States, an end to U.S. efforts to destabilize Cuba and the extradition of anti-Cuba terrorists in the United States, such as Luis Posada Carriles, if not to Cuba then at least to Venezuela to stand trial, and freedom for the Cuban Five.

Over the last month, Cuba has offered a major gesture by starting to free the last of a group of Cubans sentenced to prison terms of various lengths for having accepted money from the United States to carry out anti-government activities, a specific violation of Cuban law. The Cuban government, the Roman Catholic Church and the Spanish government worked together to achieve the humanitarian release of these 52 people.

But as yet no move has been made to free the Five, and two of them have not even been allowed to receive visits from their wives.

Now a new issue has arisen: The arrest of a U.S. Agency for International Development subcontractor in Cuba late last year on suspicion of immigration and espionage violations. The arrestee is Alan Gross, who worked for his own company, D.A.I., under contract to the U.S. "Office of Transition Initiatives" (OTI). OTI is a secretive and scandal ridden USAID program whose job it is to fund projects within Cuba which are supposed to return the island to capitalism. Gross had entered Cuba on a tourist visa (that was the immigration violation) and had been working to provide Cuban dissidents with high powered and very expensive satellite phones, which are not permitted in Cuba. The State Department claims he was trying to help Jews in Cuba to maintain contact with the outside world, and on June 13 Secretary of State Clinton called on Jews in the United States to come to Gross's defense.

However, journalist and filmmaker Saul Landau, who is very familiar with the Cuba scene, talked to Jewish leaders in Cuba who told him that they had no problem in communicating with the outside world, and that they had never heard of Gross. Click here for more information.

So it would appear that Cuban security caught Gross dead to rights.

Landau says the United States should simply exchange 5 for a "Gross" (pun intended).

Some news reports suggest that the Obama administration might be on the point of loosening up rules for getting licenses for trips to Cuba, which was made very difficult by the Bush administration (See Ginger Thompson ("U.S. Said to Plan Easing Rules for Travel to Cuba", New York Times August 17). No official public statement has been made, but there is a strong bipartisan campaign to end the Cuba travel ban completely to which this could be a response. A bill to this effect (HR 4645) passed the House Agriculture Committee by a vote of 25 to 20 on June 30 and is awaiting further action.
Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) has introduced a companion measure, S 3112.

The success of any effort to bring U.S.-Cuba relations out of the deep freeze still depends on people in the United States pressuring the White House, State Department and Congress to make these changes.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mario_carvajal/4739056675/sizes/o/

According to the fruits of their labor

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 10:51:00 +0000

A photo-essay about blueberry workers in eastern Maine by the outstanding photojournalist David Bacon resurrected my own memories of picking blueberries in Maine as a young boy.

I was roughly 9 or 10 years old. Over summer vacation, a school bus would pick up and transport a group of us to nearby fields where we would harvest green beans and blueberries.

The beans were low to the ground and picked by hand in an open field, usually under a bright sun. When a good-sized basket was full, it was weighed and the picker would be paid by the pound.

It was stoop labor, no fun. And I was an unenthusiastic and exceedingly slow worker, spending more time daydreaming about baseball or swimming in my favorite waterhole than picking beans. I wasn't long for the job, but fortunately for me, my best friends joined me in getting fired not long after we got the job.

The best pickers by far were older women who did this work every summer. Their hands moved at warp speed compared to mine. Even so at day's end their pay was slim, probably adding a little extra money to family income. By no means was it the primary source.

Raking blueberries was a tad or two worse than bean-picking. Actually, it was in the blueberry fields that my friends and I met our Waterloo.

It too was stoop labor, sometimes raking from your knees. Unlike green beans, blueberries were harvested with a heavy metal flat-bottom rake with a short handle and fork-like prongs. You had to sweep the rake through the low growing blueberry bushes, and that is tiring.

If the bushes were not full of berries (and many times that was the case), it would take a long time to fill a box, so our pay seldom amounted to much when we called it quits for the day. Compared with the exertion and sweat expended, it hardly seemed worth it in my young mind.

Which brings me back to Bacon's short article and photos. They suggest few things have changed in the blueberry fields, except for the labor force. When I picked blueberries, most if not all of us were locals earning some supplemental income. It wasn't our main income, and we went home at the end of the day. But in today's blueberry fields, Bacon points out, most of the pickers are Mexicans, Hondurans and MicMac Indians from Canada who have traveled far from their homes, live in labor camps, and depend on this income to feed, clothe and house their families, here and in their home countries.

Moreover, they encounter racism and discrimination as immigrants and workers of color.

Out of curiosity I called Wyman Industries, the Maine blueberry company that Bacon wrote about, and asked a company representative what conditions are like in the fields. Guess what? His story didn't square with Bacon's photos or comments.

To hear him, life is good for the blueberry workers whether picking in the fields or processing berries in the factories. Wages are more than respectable, he said. Housing is free. And Sunday, well that's the Lord's Day, except for many of the blueberry workers who labor on Sunday.

The workday for the rakers starts at 5:30 a.m. and ends at 2:30 p.m, so I was told. (It's too hot by that time to work in the fields). Meanwhile, the immigrants in the factory labor for 12 hours a day at roughly $8.50 to $9 per hour with overtime after 40 hours. The company rep also said the rake handle was a bit longer now, after I mentioned that the handles were very short when I raked 50 years ago.

Not a word was said about injuries and the quality of the housing.

By the time he finished talking, it seemed almost idyllic, more like a summer camp than a labor camp. I could almost visualize myself laboring in those fields, this time with a look of contentment, knowledge that I would be well remunerated, and with a lovely home nearby to rest my weary body.

But thanks to David Bacon we know the real story, one of exploitation and racism, of an unchanged labor process, of invisible unpaid and underpaid labor in every blueberry we eat.

It should give inspiration to all of us to fight for another world in which democracy, justice, sustainability, and peace are the bedrock.

In this world that has yet to be born, farmworkers and immigrants will receive the full fruits of their labor, possess a powerful voice in the organization of their work, and enjoy society's profound respect. Justice will no longer be denied.

It can't come too soon.

Photo: One of David Bacon's photos of migrant workers in the Maine blueberry camp.

Some thoughts on the class struggle

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 10:12:00 +0000

The class struggle is the most basic, fundamental and important fact of life. The conflict between working people and corporate power permeates all aspects of society - the economy, politics, ideology and culture.

Why is this, and why can't the two sides just call a truce and live in peace? Because the nature of the capitalist system divides people into opposing camps with irreconcilable interests and forces the fight. The workers who comprise over 80 percent of the population create the wealth, but the corporate owners and financiers take the lion's share.

According the U.S. Department of Labor, for every $4 in new wealth created in manufacturing, workers get $1 (in wages and benefits). The corporate forces get $3. Put another way, during a 40-hour week workers create the value they are paid in 10 hours, and for 30 hours they work without pay, creating wealth for the bosses.

This is the origin of the class struggle. A vast, but finite, amount of wealth is created by the workers and a conflict arises over its distribution. Whatever the workers get, the capitalists don't get, and vice versa. The workers seek to sustain themselves and their families. The capitalists have lavish lifestyles and are not motivated by consumer needs. They are motivated by the competition they face from the rest of the capitalist class. They are driven to get maximum profits. They cannot be magnanimous to their employees without being squeezed out by less scrupulous competitors. This is the law of the capitalist jungle and the values that flow from that are the values they seek to impose on society.

The workers must fight back to survive. Unlike the capitalists they have few resources. Their strength is in numbers, unity and organization. They reject the "each person for themselves" ideas of the bosses and form unions, self-defense organizations that include everyone and work for the common good.

But fighting simply in the economic arena of grievances, contracts and strikes does not solve the problem. The capitalists are able to use their power in the political and broad economic arena to take back wage increases through taxes, rents, interest, insurance and inflated prices for goods. Through various stratagems, the companies renege on promised pensions and benefits. They resist laws to make the workplace safe and healthy.

Similarly the workers must battle the corporations over who gets taxed and how the revenues are used - whether to benefit working people and the great majority in terms of education, health care, public services, in cultural and scientific development, or whether to fund wars launched on various pretexts to expand the realm of corporate power and profits.

The corporations and their mouthpieces scream about the evils of "big government," by which they mean any regulations or programs that benefit the working class and people, but they avidly promote all forms of corporate welfare in the areas of research and development, incentives to go overseas and especially military spending.

Thus workers are forced to fight and find community allies in the broader political and social arena.

They find they must contend with a powerful ideological onslaught seeking to keep them isolated, divided, discouraged and defeated. They are encouraged by powerful media to avoid and fear those who differ from them in race, language, religion, age, gender, sexual preference, or immigration status. They are lectured by professors that they are irrelevant and admonished by preachers to be meek, obedient and respectful of the powers that be. They are presented with negative images of themselves by degraded corporate culture. Winning the class struggle therefore means fighting for principles of unity, solidarity and equality - ideas that send the capitalists into a frenzy of hatred, contempt and fear.

The fact that it pervades all aspects of society and its outcome determines the conditions of life is the basis for the powerful generalization stated by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the opening lines of the Communist Manifesto: human history is the history of the class struggle.

This is also the basis for saying the class struggle is an objective reality. Despite claims by corporate spokesmen to the contrary, the class struggle is no one's invention. It is not created or instigated by "subversives." It goes on and has gone on for thousands of years in all times, places and situations regardless of whether anyone is even conscious of it. Left, progressive individuals and organizations rarely in fact have the power or influence to call the shots or determine the battle lines.

Because class oppression pervades everything, grassroots fightback movements continually arise. Some are small or narrow; some are very large and broad. Some are short-lived or transient; others, like the fight for equality and against racism, go on for generations.

But all are ultimately rooted in the exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class and because of that all have the potential to broaden and deepen to the point that they can upset the entire applecart. It is out of these movements that class and socialist consciousness arise and that the most effective and far-sighted leaders emerge.

Of particular importance are those movements which are led or deeply invested in by organized labor. Of all the people's movements labor is the largest, with the greatest resources and experience, and the movement that most directly challenges corporate power. Particularly in the recent period the labor movement has been a magnet around which all other important democratic forces have gravitated. Labor has emerged as the leader of a broad, progressive social movement.

The class struggle pervades everything but in each political period all fights tend to gravitate around central battles. In these major battles both sides mobilize the largest proportion of their resources and troops. The role of labor and its allies becomes critical.

Throughout 2009 and into the spring of 2010, the focus of the class struggle in the United States was the battle for health care reform. The issue was to extend access to health care to the tens of millions unable to afford private insurance. Many progressive groups and individuals had ideas on how to do this. Some advocated a national health care system such as exists in England where hospitals are run by the government, doctors and health care workers are government employees and access is free to all. Many others called for extending Medicare to everyone, like the "single-payer" system in Canada where hospitals and doctors are private, but the government pays the bills.

But that is not where the battle lines were drawn. In the end they were not even drawn around the modest proposal for a "public option," where government-run insurance would compete with private companies. The battle lines were drawn around the reform and regulation of the existing private insurance system, and the battle was fierce. The insurance companies flooded Congress with lobbyists and poured millions into the fight.

The Republicans spread every possible lie - the reform meant "death panels," government takeover and socialism. Together with Fox News and right-wing talk jocks they spread racist poison and incited disruptions of town hall meetings by so-called "tea baggers," some carrying arms.

The Republicans were not simply doing the bidding of the insurance and drug companies. They also saw this as a way to defeat the Obama administration politically and set back the entire progressive promise it represented. It was to be Obama's "Waterloo."

On the other hand labor and its allies mobilized their resources. Rallies, forums and demonstrations were held. Phone banks were mobilized. Lobbying went on by mail, Internet and in the halls of Congress. Democratic officials and the president himself hit the campaign trail. Obama's coalition of labor and its progressive allies on the one hand and the liberal Democrats on the other held firm and understood what was at stake.

All the forces of progress were arrayed on one side and all the forces of reaction were on the other.

In the end the battle was won by the narrowest of margins. It was a huge victory for the working class and people and a huge defeat for the ultra-right.

The forces of progress did not determine the battle lines but they fought on the side of the working class once the battle lines were drawn. As the old labor song says: "Where workingmen defend their rights, that's where you'll find Joe Hill."

Joe Hill, symbolizing the most progressive, militant and dedicated members of the labor movement, does not dismiss the actual battle at hand as not sufficiently advanced. He does not go off and do his own thing. He stands shoulder to shoulder with the workers wherever they choose to fight.

"The Communists," says the Manifesto, "have no interests separate and apart from the working class as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mold the working class movement."

But in the framework of the ongoing class struggle Communists have a dual role. T hey fight "for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class." But, in addition, "in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement."

In fighting for reform and regulation of the insurance companies, Communists and other progressives also represented the fight for future advances in health care and defended the ability of the people to fight the next battles against the corporations and the ultra-right. No one could say to them: where were you with your advanced ideas about health care and socialism when we were fighting for reform and the survival of the Obama presidency?

No sooner were the votes counted and the Republicans defeated in their effort to turn health care reform into Obama's Waterloo, than they launched their next assault with the strategic goal of regaining control of Congress in the midterm November elections. That immediately became the next focal point of the class struggle.

The fact that this comes down to a fight between Democrats and Republicans is not something that progressives choose and many of the Democrats with whom we are allied have serious shortcomings. But that is reality. That is where the battle lines are drawn. Like it or not, that is where the class struggle is being ferociously waged. Too much is at stake. We have no choice but to fight.

The global pop militancy of M.I.A.

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 14:11:00 +0000

CD Review

"Maya"
N.E.E.T. Recordings
2010

"Maya" is the new CD from M.I.A., the Sri Lankan-British singer/graphic artist. Like her earlier efforts ("Arular," 2005 and "Kala," 2007), "Maya" is fun and engaging with moments of honest sweetness emerging from an overall mordant tone. However, despite the always-inventive sound layering and genre mash-ups, I felt less of a connection to the new release.

Best known for her 2007 breakthrough hit "Paper Planes," an infectious call for "Third World democracy" that was featured with her Oscar-nominated song "O, Saya" on the "Slumdog Millionaire" soundtrack, M.I.A. has of late garnered more attention for her feud with New York Times interviewer Lynn Hirschberg and for trashing Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey.

A recurring theme in M.I.A.'s songs is that of subjugated people of the global South/East using the tools and techniques of neoliberalism (mobility, militarism, the Internet, wireless technology, and drugs) to undermine the power structures of the global North/West. However, M.I.A.'s glossy celebrity status and marriage to an heir of the Seagram's liquor empire somewhat undercuts her street cred. Some on the left may dismiss her as indulging in postmodern "identity politics" - M.I.A. herself has said that her work explores her "otherness."

Indeed, M.I.A. herself is frequently the subject of her songs. She references her own "other" celebrity-hood when she sings, "You know who I am ..." ("Steppin' Up") and "You want me be somebody who I'm really not," ("XXXO"). There's even a sinister allusion to her hubby in "Teqkilla" ("when I met segram/sent chivez down my spine"). I prefer the sappy side of M.I.A. My favorite song on the disc is "It Takes a Muscle," a song about love, not global politics or postmodern identity.

Still, M.I.A. continues to shout out on behalf of the world's oppressed. In "Meds & Feds," she sings in empathy with the economically/geographically displaced:

"while we become workers
you become golfers
the modern day coppers
beatin' on us for the papers"

Musically, "Maya" makes use of a wide assortment of genres and styles, among them reggae, electronica, "world music," digital hardcore, and punk. Songs feature layers of booming club beats, sampled sounds of power tools, jet engines, ring tones, and other fuzzy digital ephemera. M.I.A.'s singing/chanting/rapping is as inventive as the music. However, at times the electronic experimentation threatens to drown out her voice.

M.I.A.'s visual style is a striking element of her work. Her graphic art in the CD's accompanying booklet is a remarkable amalgamation of PC desktop visual clutter, cheesy computer graphics, and photography that suggests an insurgent aesthetic of global pop militancy.

Photo: The cover of "Maya."