Death and Joblessness

by Annie Lowrey from The Washington Independent. 

The author takes an intimate look at how unemployment is driving some in the US to suicide.

The stories show the deeper wounds of unemployment, and especially long-term unemployment. It is not just the loss of a job, but the loss of community, routine and purpose. It means worse health. It means higher rates of divorce. It means alcohol abuse. All of these are also risk factors for suicide.

Contradiction and the Law of Value (2 videos: 8:10m & 7:12m)

from Kapitalism101.

The videos (and transcript) explains the basic Marxist concepts of exchange and use value, surplus value (profit), and other related concepts important in understanding the capitalist system.

Society has enough food, housing and technology that the entire world’s population could work a lot less and still have all of the basic amenities of life. (Maybe we couldn’t all have mansions, fancy cars, and all the expensive cocaine we wanted, but we could live comfortable lives.) And they’d probably be more fulfilling if we didn’t spend our whole life working for someone else. But we don’t have such a society because our labor is not aimed at creating use-values for society but at creating profit for capital.

Pakistan flood catastrophe: West gives `billions for killing, little for life'

by John Passant from International Journal of Socialist Renewal.  

The sharp contrast between the aid the US is giving to Pakistan to allay the terrible suffering from the recent floods and the military spending in the "war on terror" shows, once again, that the Empire's real intentions in this war is the domination of that area of the world.

In this article the author argues that the US ruling class is not only terrorizing the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan, but also the earth's ecological system. We can expect "blowback" from newly recruited "terrorists" as well as from a damaged ecological system in the form of more extreme weather incidents.

Time out

General McChrystal’s New Job: Dig a Bit, Please

by Russ Baker from Who, What, Why. 

The writer is an investigative journalist who authored Family of Secrets, which I highly recommend, about the Bush dynasty and its shenanigans. Here he takes a look at the hiring of the recently fired General McChrystal and his new job at Yale, one of US' leading universities.

The incident illustrates once again that the ruling class is insuring that those who serve the military-industrial complex insinuate themselves into the leading universities to maintain the latter's focus on serving the Empire. 

The incident also illustrates how the system works, and that it works as a system to insure that all of its components are working in harmony with the leaders of the system--those who profit from the private ownership of important economic property. 

In this example it involves a leading educational institution that trains and indoctrinates a variety of professionals who will be assigned leading roles in the various institutions of society. Once there they in turn insure that those institutions and their personnel serve the values and needs of the capitalist ruling class. 

Such a system depends upon a hierarchical system to enable a small ruling class to control all the components of a society. Thus unquestioning obedience to authority is one of the basic virtues that is inculcated in all citizens throughout their lives. Those whose behavior does not reflect that virtue almost inevitably find themselves marginalized occupationally, economically, and socially. But there are exceptions.

Although in this example the General was fired for insubordination, usually a key sin in a hierarchical system, during his career he has clearly demonstrated allegiance to the Empire and its ruling class. Thus the "authorities" don't really mind that he was insubordinate to another of their employees, the President of the US.

Crisis. What Crisis? Profits Soar!

by James Petras from Voltaire. 

In this article the author reports on the bonanza of profits that big corporations are enjoying by mostly exploiting the opportunities that this current economic crisis provides. And he is critical of progressives who keep claiming that the system will disintegrate due to its contradictions.

While Exxon-Mobile reaped over 100% growth of profits in 2010 and the auto corporations recorded their biggest profits in recent years, the workers’ wages and living standards declined and state-sector employees suffered harsh cutbacks and massive layoffs. It is clear that the recovery of corporate profit is based on the harshest exploitation of labor and the biggest transfers of public resources to the large private corporations. The capitalist state, with Democratic President Obama in the lead, has transferred billions to big capital via direct bailouts, virtual interest free loans, tax cuts and by pressuring labor to accept lower wages and health and pension givebacks. The White House plan for ‘recovery’ has worked beyond expectations – corporate profits have recovered; “only” the vast majority of workers have fallen deeper into crises.

Behind the Hamptons Hedges

by Jessica Flint from Vanity Fair. This week's visit to the habitats of our fellow Americans referred to as the 1%. Check out their lives and see how much we have in common with them.

The Hamptons  were once an idyllic enclave where Manhattanites decamped to escape the bustle of city life. But in recent summers, the sleepy community on the Atlantic Ocean has become infested with pop-up shops, bass-thumping nightclubs, and publicity parties. If you look for it, though, the romantic charm of Long Island’s South Fork does still exist. We asked eight young people who do the East End right to show us around their Hamptons habitats.

Global Empire and the International Banking Cartel (part 2)

by Damon Vrabel from Council on Renewal. This is a continuation of last week's article--see my post regarding Part 1. 

From my cursory review of this website, it appears to me that he comes from a libertarian point of view in company with Ron Paul, Ellen Brown, etc, but his understanding of politics in the broadest sense appears to be very limited. I do not share his libertarian perspective as I've argued previously in this post. But much of the work exposing the banking scams have been done by libertarians, and we owe them a debt of gratitude.

The author makes some very interesting observations and assertions, but I need far more study of the subject to evaluate his points. I don't think that the subject of banking and money is all that difficult; but because it has been so obfuscated beyond recognition and the difficulty in finding reliable, informed sources of information, it takes time to unravel. To be sure, it is a vital, necessary-to-understand subject if we are to create a world safe for working people.

For a European coordination of struggle against the debt and austerity plans !

from CADTM (Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt). (Why not abolish all world debt owed to the large banking cartels?) This article reports on European efforts to join together to fight back against the austerity measures that the European elites are imposing upon their societies.

With the help of the IMF and of the European Commission, Capital and the leaders of European countries are resolved to have the lower classes pay for the crisis.

What is at stake is social regression, rising unemployment, and a challenging of peoples’ fundamental rights.

Top Expert: Geology is "Fractured", Relief Wells May Fail ... BP is Using a "Cloak of Silence", Refusing to Share Even Basic Data with the Government

from Washington's Blog. 

It seems to me that corporate secrecy over a major catastrophic event such as the oil drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico illustrates so dramatically how private interests (corporations, ruling class) today thoroughly trump the public interest. BP's secrecy has been carefully hidden from public view and revealed by this source.

Is WikiLeaks the antidote to the Washington K Street Kool-Aid?

by Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould from Boiling Frogs. More cogent observations about the recent WikiLeaks revelations.

The logic train of the war on terror and its fundamental rooting in Afghanistan had finally become clear. The perpetual Taliban/Al Qaeda threat fueled a perpetual war that could never be won, justifying an endless string of restrictions on civil liberties and governmental transparency, which then prevented Americans from seeing how their money was spent. Locked out of this “alternative geography of the United States,” Americans have become helpless to stop their democracy and their economy from being lifted right out from under them.
 

Stop Talkin' Bout a Green(washed) Revolution

by Sandy LeonVest from Toward Freedom. 

I think the author makes the very relevant point of targeting liberal environmentalists who refuse to target the US war machine in order to remain "respectable" to ruling class authorities. Educated middle class people who engage in activism of any sort are often exceedingly careful not to go against the interests of the ruling class. Such people pose a major problem for activist groups. Their expertise is needed, but their views often shield the real underlying problems.

Most of these people have been thoroughly indoctrinated in the values and viewpoints of capitalism by their extensive educational experience. Read Disciplined Minds by Jeff Schmidt for details on this important subject.

Then when highly trained middle class people get into their careers they must play it safe in order to advance their careers. They play it safe by remaining within "acceptable" opinion limits. Jeff Schmidt's firing from the American Institute of Physics after his book was published illustrates what happens to people that stray.

When it comes to “connecting the dots,” European activists have it all over their peers in the US. In Europe, coalition-building between single-issue groups has long been a primary strategy. Most European activists view war, climate change, privatization and globalization as part of the same problem – corporate control of the political system.

Time out

Net-neutrality talks resume in DC without the FCC or Google

by Sara Jerome from The Hill. 

Private interests are circling the internet like vultures honing in on their prey. This does not bode well for open access to the internet for views that capitalists disagree with. If these corporations and their lobbyists succeed, the internet will be transformed into what radio and TV has become--information and cultural wastelands. 

Media Access Project, a net neutrality proponent, panned the development.

"These ‘negotiations’ are illegitimate. They do not involve representatives of people who use the Internet for free expression and commerce, and they lack representation from the infant businesses that depend on an open Internet to build the future Ciscos, Microsofts, and Skypes," said MAP senior vice president Andrew Jay Schwartzman.

Mississippi Shrimpers Refuse to Trawl, Fearing Oil, Dispersants

by Dahr Jamail from IPS. 

The author reports that local fisherman are not taken in by US government authorities who insist that the Gulf fisheries are in fine shape. They are doing their own testing, and the results are discouraging.

 Miller and Stewart, who were both in BP's Vessels of Opportunity programme and were trained in identifying oil and dispersants, have been accused by some members of Mississippi's state government of lying about their findings.

"Why would we lie about oil and dispersant in our waters, when our livelihoods depend on our being able to fish here?" Miller asked IPS. "I want this to be cleaned up so we can get back to how we used to live. But it doesn't make sense for us or anyone else to fish if our waters are toxified. I don't know why people are angry at us for speaking the truth. We're not the ones who put the oil in the water."

The fruit of sharing

by Joanne Poyourow from Transition US. 


The article illustrates some small steps by local neighborhoods to secure a source of food. Such local efforts promotes valuable lessons in cooperation through communities taking responsibility for food security.

3 Pillars of a Food Revolution

by Anna Lappé from Yes! Magazine. 

I think she has some great ideas about how the food/agricultural system will need to be revamped to fit into the sustainable world that working people will create--or maybe I should say, "must create" if the human race is to survive capitalism. 

However, she seems to suggest that we can change this subsystem without changing capitalism. This viewpoint illustrates a typical liberal shortsightedness, an inability or resistance to looking at social issues from a systems perspective.

The assault on US workers’ wages

from World Socialist Web Site. 

This article does a good job of illustrating how this globalization phase of capitalism is working its magic on US working people. 

The US capitalist ruling class whose wealth was created in large part by the sweat, toil, and creativity of US workers has become increasingly integrated with a global class of elites. To be sure, this global elite is being led by US capitalists whose military is by far the most powerful in the world. However, they all share the same interests of exploiting labor and the environment to enrich themselves and increase their power to insure their continued domination over working people and the earth. Thus the tendency is to have all workers in the world compete over jobs and wages so that capitalist enterprises get the best rates, hence greater profits. 

Therefore it is becoming less and less important as to where a worker lives than what he/she can offer employers for the least wages. For US workers this tendency has resulted in stagnant wage increases from the 1970s till the latest economic crash in 2008, and now we are beginning to see the decline in the wages of workers.

Have you noticed that whereas the barriers to capital movements throughout the world have been largely removed, control of the movement of workers has been sharply curtailed? 

Control of working people has always been in the interest of capitalists. When needed, they can always move highly skilled workers and others to serve their enterprises anywhere in the world. But when it is in the interests only of workers to move where the jobs are, the latter face huge obstacles. 


There are several reasons for this that come readily to mind. The ruling elites instill fear of foreign worker competition in order to keep wages low and also respond to these fears by passing onerous immigration laws, to cast blame onto foreign workers for the problems that domestic workers face, and to encourage the increase of desperate but "illegal" immigrant workers who are usually very compliant because they have no protections whatsoever.

Like Warren Buffet once admitted, "yes, there is class war and my class is winning". Well, they have been winning, but for how long is anybody's guess.

Phantoms in the machine: GM corn spreads to Mexico

from The Age (Australia). This is an edited extract from the recently published book entitled, The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Politics and Power, by Marie-Monique Robin. 

I found this excerpt to be most fascinating in its details about the apparent political impact that biotechnology industry has had on scientific research, academia, and science publications in addition to the spread of trans-genes to other varieties of corn and their unusual effects.

Tensions Rise in Greece as Austerity Measures Backfire

by Corinna Jessen from Der Spiegel.

The austerity measures that were supposed to fix Greece's problems are dragging down the country's economy. Stores are closing, tax revenues are falling and unemployment has hit an unbelievable 70 percent in some places. Frustrated workers are threatening to strike back.

I think that it is a good idea to keep an eye on Greece to get a preview of events in other Western capitalist countries that are instituting programs of austerity.