Common Sense: What We Choose Now Matters

Click here to access article by Dan Hind from New Left Project. (This is the introduction to his new book entitled, Common Sense: Occupation, Assembly and the Future of Liberty, which unfortunately for me is available only in the Kindle edition.)

I think that this British author really captures the spirit of our times (zeitgeist), probably better than anyone else. I haven't read the book, but this introduction makes a very important statement: there is now occurring a real revolution in the minds of many ordinary people. 

However, there is also much confusion and pain that people are experiencing because of this latest capitalist economic bust, the never-ending wars, the full spectrum surveillance over our communications, and the dissonance between the reality of our experience and the discourse carried over corporate media networks. Our past complacent understanding of reality (weltanschauung) that has been propagated by the media and educational institutions of the One Percent is now being seriously challenged. It is an ideologically challenging time for many people. Some simply give up and go along with their programmed thinking.  Some vacillate, and others, such as those in the Occupy movement, are actively exploring new ideas to gain some measure of control over their sense of confusion.

The pursuit of truth in defiance of widely accepted errors is a kind of self-harm. If those whose opinion must be taken into account say one thing, it is painful for us to believe another. And there is more to it, even than this. We have made ourselves out of claims that are unsafe. To call things by their proper names makes a revolution in us, before it changes anything else. If we are to be free, we must change, and to change is to kill some part of ourselves. It is no wonder that we hesitate.

The Power of Plutocracy

Click here to access article by Rob Urie from CounterPunch. 

The author provides a good assessment of the current reign of the plutocrats, and the broad reforms they could enact if they were at all serious about turning our economy around. But then he errors fundamentally by proposing a set of more specific reforms that should be instituted to start the process of "undoing the existing economic / political order that has created current conditions...." 

This is a liberal prescription for change. It assumes 1) a rational ruling class (plutocrats) that could be interested in strengthening the US economy, and it assumes 2) the possibility of creating fundamental change within their existing system. These are profoundly wrong assumptions, and they are assumptions which retard any progress toward changing the system and preventing it from devolving into a dystopia for most people and the destruction of the planet.

The error in number one is that the ruling class has, or could have, any interest in improving the US economy. They are globalists. Capitalism, in case you haven't noticed, has gone global. They don't need American workers any more to reap their profits and associated power. American workers are more expensive and more organized than workers in countries such as Bangladesh, China, and Indonesia. Also, the latter countries have much less in the way of environmental regulations that hamper the pursuit of profit. From their limited perspective informed by their addiction to power and profits, plutocrats are acting rationally in the pursuit of their interests. Hence, for them pursuing our interests is irrational.

They find such efforts at reforming the system laughable. They heap scorn on, and mock the recent efforts of the Occupy movement to change political-economic arrangements. The following commercial running almost hourly on Bloomberg TV illustrates this attitude of smug arrogance and scorn:



Publicly they like to voice their affirmation of "democracy" and "human rights", but behind closed doors they frankly boast about their newly created "plutonomy" as revealed in leaked documents such as the following from Citigroup:

• “Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances” Oct. 16, 2005 (35 pages)
• “Revisiting Plutonomy: The Rich Getting Richer” March 5, 2006 (18 pages)
• “The Plutonomy Symposium — Rising Tides Lifting Yachts” Sept. 29, 2006  (64 pages)

Regarding the author's 2nd assumption, only a fool would think that the ruling One Percent will permit any such reforms to the existing arrangements. Around election time they sometimes allude to such reforms, but they are completely forgotten afterwards. In fact, what we have seen after elections are accelerated efforts by the One Percent to attack Medicare, Social Security, any efforts to increase taxes on the wealthy while they pursue more foreign wars and military interventions abroad.

Only an organized, inclusive, grassroots movement such as the Occupy movement has the potential to force fundamental changes on our nation and other nations of the world. Because capitalism, and the Empire which enforces the system on the world, is global, we, as working people, must organize globally in order to fight effectively for new classless societies in which we can live in harmony with each other and with nature.

The Corporate Hijacking of America’s Land-Grant Universities

Click here to access article by Tim Schwab from Civil Eats. 

This fairly brief article shows how the One Percent is taking over public educational institutions of higher learning in the US to serve their interests. With the focus of this website on food, their treatment of this subject is limited to corporate control over information and research about the food we eat. Their recommendation for correcting this insidious trend of private influence is the following:

So how do we weed out the agribusiness influence?  A good place to start would be increasing federal support for agriculture research—and directing this money to projects that serve the public interest.  This would go a long ways toward reducing land-grant university’s dependence on corporate funding and allow researchers more independence.

This is another example of a very superficial analysis that informs thinking about solutions. First of all, the privatization of education not only affects the food we eat, but even more importantly the ideas we hold. Secondly, the One Percent is taking control of all our institutions including the government. So, to advocate less direct funding from private sources will change little. Finally, private interests will never retreat from taking direct control of institutions unless forced to by an aware, militant, and organized public.

Of Conspiracies, Critics, and the Crisis: Reflections on the 99% Spring

Click here to access article by Edmund Berger from Dissident Voice. 

This is a highly intelligent examination of various groups in the US trying to co-opt and distract the Occupy movement into more acceptable actions that will not interfere with business as usual. Some among them are simply are not conscious of the fundamental problem that informs so many disasters awaiting us if we fail to change the capitalist system.

Recent and influential treaties, such as The Shock Doctrine and The Corporation, or the articles published in progressive magazines such as The Nation and Mother Jones, have raised awareness about the destructive tendencies of neoliberalism, showing how they dissolve national boundaries, exploit poor and undeveloped countries, and curtail representative democratic practices by buying off politicians. Yet these publications, for the most part, tend to equate capitalism with its current neoliberal incarnation, and also serve to position corporations – not the underlying structures of the capitalist mode of production – as the problem.

Only groups and people who support horizontal democracy deserve our support and, more importantly, our participation. See this, and this.

Do You Know Who Owns Your Congressional Representative?

Click here to access article by Robert Oak from the Economic Populist. 

Even Bloomberg News, the premier TV news program of US capitalists, find bank funding of the astroturf Tea Party as a bit over the top. I can clearly imagine capitalists having a good chuckle over playing the 99 Percent for fools once again.

Otherwise, the article is about this:

To see how little the people matter and elections are more about voting for the least objectionable corporation, check out open secrets. Look up your own representative. Following the money can finally explain your representative's nonsensical voting record.

Bottom line elections and representation, including legislation, is the battle of the corporate lobbyists and big money special interests. Regular people, or what plain makes common sense, doesn't stand a prayer's chance. The only difference here is a new twist, manipulating you so severely you actually vote for your own economic destruction.

US Health Care Still Radically More Expensive Yet Not More Effective

Click here to access article by Jon Walker from FireDogLake.

Few issues in the US can illustrate the contradiction better between capitalists' concern about cost-effective programs and the public good as does medical insurance for its citizens. The apparent contradiction reveals that capitalists are much more interested in the private accumulation of wealth, not the public good. In other words, capitalism only serves one small class of people--the One Percent. 

Of course, the other countries are run by capitalists, but they were forced to compromise with much more militant members of the 99 Percent than has existed here in the US.

However, the article from this liberal source misses the point with its exclusive emphasis on regulation of prices. All of these countries, including Japan, have some major form of government involvement in medical coverage of its citizens and have excluded the private sector believing correctly that profit-making enterprises have no place in healthcare. Looking at the Japanese plan, according to Wikipedia the government does regulate prices, but it also forbids private ownership of hospitals; and from my reading of the Wikipedia entry, it also forbids private health insurance for employees--they are covered by non-profit plans such as the following: 

• Union Managed Health Insurance
• Government Managed Health Insurance
• Seaman’s Insurance
• National Public Workers Mutual Aid Association Insurance
• Local Public Workers Mutual Aid Association Insurance
• Private School Teachers’ and Employees’ Mutual Aid Association Insurance

A Maple Spring?

Click here to access article by Jane Gatensby from Ceasefire. [Part 1 of ?]

 Quebec is a place where people fight for the things that matter to them. That’s something you don’t see very much any more in North America, and it, along with Quebecers’ stubborn insistence to go on speaking French while surrounded by Anglo-American cultural dominance, is what makes this Canadian province (or nation, as it often refers to itself)  unique.

New Study Predicts Frack Fluids Can Migrate to Aquifers Within Years

Click here to access article by Abrahm Lustgarten from ProPublica. 

A new study has raised fresh concerns about the safety of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, concluding that fracking chemicals injected into the ground could migrate toward drinking water supplies far more quickly than experts have previously predicted.

(Note: Fracking or hydraulic fracturing is the blasting of water with chemicals additives in underground rock layers such as sandstone, shale, limestone, etc. to create fractures in order to release natural gas and oil. According to Wikipedia, 

"Although hundreds of chemicals have been used, some that are known are: benzene (causes cancer, bone marrow failure), lead (damages the nervous system and causes brain disorders), ethylene glycol (antifreeze, causes death), methanol (highly toxic), boric acid (kidney damage, death), 2-butoxyethanol (causes hemolysis).")

Punishment and Profits: Immigration Detention [23:52m video]

Click here to access 23:52m video from Al Jazeera, a Fault Lines production.

The system based on the private appropriation of socially produced wealth is now into the business of exploiting immigrant labor. The video shows how corporations commit a variety of other crimes against humanity while pursuing their exploitation of immigrant labor. 

Because Al Jazeera is essentially owned by the Emir of Qatar which has close ties with the US Empire, the video does not make any direct connection to the fact that immigrants are people forced out of their countries of origin by the destruction of their home economies under neoliberal policies.

Let the Games begin: London’s Dystopian Olympics

Click here to access article by Matt Carr from Ceasefire. 

The largest peacetime security operation in British history cannot be simply attributed to paranoia and an overzealous desire to protect the public. On the one hand it reflects an overlap between homeland security and corporate profiteering that has become a feature of the post 9/11 world.

Occupy May Day: the march on Wall Street — in pictures

Click here to access pictures from Reflections on a Revolution.

"Connecting the Dots" Between Extreme Weather and Climate Change

Click here to access article by Jamie Henn from Huffington Post.

...in the United States, 82 percent of Americans say that they've experienced a natural disaster or extreme weather event first-hand.

Yet, despite a few notable exceptions, the mainstream media has failed to connect the dots between this string of extreme weather events and global warming. Instead, coverage of climate change has dropped precipitously.

Of course, mainstream which is owned by the One Percent, can never connect climate change with the imperative of growth built into the system that provides them with so much power and wealth.

The author goes on to argue what needs to be done to connect the dots. (Clue: it's up to us.)

May 1st and an Independent Workers Movement

Sourced from Real News where you can follow the transcript of this 15:33m video discussion with Leo Panitch and Sam Gidin. 

They discuss the necessity of bringing in workers to support the activism started by the Occupy movement.

 

Only a Populist Movement Will Lead to True Freedom and an Inclusive Democracy

Click here to access article by Greg Ruggiero from Buzzflash. 

This is a revised introduction to a new book by Noam Chomsky entitled, Occupy, which attempts to assess the accomplishments, explain the significance and the possibilities of the Occupy movement.

Underlying Occupy's success has been its focus on the daily details of organizing. Major protests, civil disobedience and arrests are key parts of movement strategy, but the day-to-day activities of discussion, working groups and general assemblies are the deep structure, the ongoing forces adding mass and momentum to Occupy's wave. ...It's truly gone global, even reaching places like New Guinea. And online technology, like that used to create InterOccupy.org, is connecting Occupy forces around the country and helping to facilitate regional gatherings, strategies and actions.

Unemployment in Europe. Where will it stop?

Click here to access article by Merijn Knibbe from Real-World Economics Review Blog.

What I think is really significant here are the high rates of unemployment for youth (under 25 years of age)--they are usually double the rate for the general working populations across Europe. Thus, it seems reasonable to expect to see the most militant activism taking place in Spain, Greece, and Portugal as well as in Europe in general. However, in this age of instant communication and electronic social networking, ideas and methods to combat the ravages of capitalism and imperialism will spread rapidly from one country to another.

The Business of War in Afghanistan

Click here to access article by Antony Loewenstein from Al Akhbar (Beirut, Lebanon). 

It appears that private militias and spy services in alliance with a local bought-and-paid-for oligarchies is the model being used by the Empire to secure its newly won colonies in the Middle East. The end result is chaos, social disintegration, and widespread suffering by ordinary people. The author describes the model as applied in Afghanistan.

Privatized security and intelligence is now a natural part of Western war making. America simply cannot and will not launch missions without the backing of often unaccountable companies that compliment its defense industry.

The story is similar in Pakistan as described by the same author in the last half of this report.

It is a nuclear-armed nation which is seemingly always on the verge of collapse due to both a desperate need for American money and its need to secure its regional position against India and Afghanistan. The result is a quasi-police state, backed by private security, silencing critics of its politics of capitulation toward militants and Washington. Courageous journalists and human rights activist are lone voices of dissent.

Over a decade of manoeuvring has left the state divided by ethnic tensions, insurgent activity, corruption, and self-censorship. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have compounded the problem by treating the nation as little more than a testing ground for new weapons against supposed terrorists. Tragically, civilians have born the brunt of the onslaught and turned the country into a cauldron of poverty, resentment, elite disdain, and silence.

Mayhem 2012: gearing up for a global spring of discontent

Click here to access article by Jerome Roos from Reflections on a Revolution.

In May, the 99 percent will open up new avenues of resistance as activists around the world gear up for the intensification of popular protest and direct action. 

The Working Class Hero Takes a Bow

Click here to access photos celebrating Lebanese workers from Beirut based Al Akhbar. 

This is an illustration of how international May Day is: workers all over the world are celebrating it. It all began in Chicago in 1886 with the one of the first battles of the class war against capitalists called the Haymarket riot and massacre.

Workers' Rights

A poem by David Chalk. 

So far I haven't been able to find out much about this British poet except that he has written some great poems.

Workers’ Rights

In the not-so distant past
Workers had no rights
To achieve them they organised
To win them they had to fight

From Tolpuddle and Unions
And the right to strike
Working folk won their rights
Against greedy financial might

But what they won was a victory
In a battle not the war
As some seek to re-set the clock
To what there was before.

What they won was fairness
And dignity for all
But these rights were limited
And then restrained and worn

And slowly these rights were reduced
Gradually made weak and small
And now financial privilege claims
They should not exist at all.

They say removing rights is necessary
It’s what our country needs
They say it’s to restore the economy
That such rights are economic weeds

Thus does greedy financial might
Try to steal what has been won
With lies and excuses about our plight
And what must be done.

Those who believe in justice
Those who support what’s fair
Must fight these lies with honesty
And forever remain aware.


Here is David Chalk reading his poem.

A short history of May Day

Click here to access article from Libcom. 

The history of the world holiday on the 1st May - May Day, or International Workers Day, held in commemoration of four anarchists executed for struggling for an 8-hour day. 

There is also a 3 part PBS video series that does quite a good presentation of the history of this event. Because PBS is under US government control (which, of course, is controlled by the One Percent), you need to make allowances for statements such as in Part 2 where carefully selected narrators and historians, while making reference to public reactions to the Haymarket riots, make statements like "Labor's largest paper called them [rioters] 'wild beasts'". Very likely this was in the newspaper of the AFL, a very conservative, pro-business labor union. Most other labor newspapers in the US, and indeed throughout the world, were very sympathetic to the protesting workers in Chicago. All were shocked by the barbarous response of the police and the extreme reaction by the legal establishment of the One Percent.

Then there were other statements made in the PBS program such as "It was very frightening to many people throughout the world" which implied that they were frightened by rioting anarchists. They were frightened mostly by the police repression. And, "Throughout the nation Americans were almost unanimous in the repression of the anarchists...they were seen to be a threat of the first order." This refers to mainstream media coverage and spokespeople for the One Percent. As you can see, some things have not changed much since 1886.

Generally, I think that too much emphasis was placed on the conflict at the McCormick Harvester plant which tended to suggest that the strikers were Luddites, that this was what caused the riots. This emphasis served to downplay the fight for an eight hour workday that workers had been struggling to obtain starting in 1863 when workdays for many were 12 hours. The conflict at the McCormick plant was a spark, but the fuel behind worker protests was the eight hour day objective.

Many working people felt that the bomb thrown at the police was by an agent provocateur to justify the extreme police crackdown.


PBS Part 1: Haymarket Martyrs--Origin of International Workers Day  [5:13m]


PBS Part 2 [4:50m]


PBS Part 3  [5:17m]